George Moore, glanced at his wrists, his hands seemed more hardened than before, the color of the wrists was a bronze brown. A bandage tightened his head, but this hospital wing was definitely not Cuba. The speech of the beautiful nurses, it was more flat, and they looked at him and Dicks golden haired lovely self-consciously cool Leslie, with a flash of pity under the professional veneer.
George clenched his hands into fists, in faint effort to keep them from not shaking. He had lost thirteen years, thirteen years he had lived the life of his beloved cousin, without knowing it.
The thought was simply incomprehensible.
Dick, the sorrow from Dick´s recent death cut through him with piercing agony.
George remembered clearly how in all the ports and taverns not to mention of those dockside whorehouses, when the Four Sisters had sailed in her journey, Dick had glanced at George in his familiar precisely charming way, as he had said, " The East Wind it comes, soon, that same wind took me here, as did that sense of adventure that only the sea can give. The sea and the love of the right kind of woman, which is either taken by force or with coaxing. My Leslie, she can be cool as the coldest sea water, but she is worth it, the thrill of it, the chase, is everything. My Pretty, gives it all to me, her coolly aloof ways, she is a stong one, as it should be. I can't respect a woman who crumbles instantly. Nothing can break Pretty, not even me, though I've tried."
There had been lewd carousing, as Dick had spun out his charms, as the women had gathered around him, as if Dick had been a jar of honey, amid the raucous laughter and pulsating Cuban music.
The heat had been scorching, as they had toiled for a long day with the cargo. There had been few mosquitoes around them. Dick had stood in his lofty style next to the heavy packing box, sweat had stung George's skin, his shoulders had been battered by the physicality of the work, but there was also satisfaction in that pain.
Dick had taken out his silver watch, it had flashed brightly in the sun.
The traders had shouted their products, the bright tropical fruits had smelled intoxicating.
Dick had licked the Papaya juice off his fingers in a slightly mischievous way, fully aware that several members of the crew were eyeing him sideways, as ever, as he stood in his dark pants, and blue-and-white marinière carelessly slung over his tanned shoulder, his Mermaid tattoo, was on full display.
George had noted, fondly "Dick, you are such a show-off."
That look in his Moore eyes had been sharp, but warm, as it always was only to George, as Dick, just nodded as he whistled and started working again, the mosquito sat almost lazily on Dick's shoulder, it must have happened
Four Sisters sailed on, without them.
Dick's condition worsened as he played cards, with dogged determination, patrons in sailor places, were all around them, in the gloom. Outside, in the greenery, Royal poinciana, those vibrantly red flowers smelled. Dick caught a glimpse of their shadows through the open window as he noted, "That color is like that red silk scarf that's always around Pretty's waist, accentuating her curves in a most pleasing way. I've thought I'd bring Pretty some seedlings of crown of thorns, for as you know, the plant is associated with the crown of thorns that was worn by Christ, with them our garden, Prettys garden will be the envy of whole region, as women, those critters takes stock with that kind of social thing, flowers and all kinds of fripperies, like laces and vibrant silks."
Two weeks passed.
In their cluttered, shabby quarters. His eyes bright with fever, Dick clung to George's hands with crushing force as he murmured, "George, give me Pretty's last letter, read me my dear's words, once more."
George, glanced at the neat feminine handwriting and read a stern, even Stark almost formal letter that seemed to pulse with a strange feeling between veiled lines. It was an intimate and secretive portrayal of his cousin's marriage to his golden-haired siren.
Four Winds,
Moore Farm
Dick,
The spring sowings were successful. Oats are now growing in the eastern field. I have been asked to substitute at Glen's school for a few months as Miss Hawthorn, the current school teacher had to give up her job due to unforeseen circumstances. It was like you said, she was carrying on with somebody, although I didn't believe it. You have an unfailing instinct for all kinds of carrying on, but you usually don't tell no tales.
You are an incurable scoundrel in your particular Moore way, but you have your own peculiar moral code to live by, as we both know. It could be summarized as a Maxim of some kind, but you have never been a philosophical person, or a writingman. Life is always a conquest for you, you don't make a difference, but my questionable luck is that you also understand grayness and silence in your own way.
This house is so gray and quiet it is slowly but surely decaying. Before you left, you gave me a few memorable occasions in the kitchen and on the staircase, as you probably remember. The deepest desire of your heart has not come true, if you have a heart at all.
The only sound is the sound of Carlo's paws on the floors and sometimes the hum of the wind in the willows. Carlo is waiting for you frantically, when you left it refused to even move from the door.
In the evenings I walk along the reddish shores with the waves of the greenish blue sea crashing into the shores, here there is no exotic music, no satin soft nights, the chirping of crickets or insects, no splendor of colors and tastes, no wonder you fled from this corner of the world to where there is light and warmth that you don't get from me.
Leslie.
George looked at Dick in silence. His powerful fingers stroked the graceful signature sleepily, and perhaps a little regretfully, but sometimes even George found it hard to decipher his cousin.
And then George asked, "Would you really have wanted to come back from this trip to the farm with a baby crying all night, or maybe two, if that Moore trait of twins could have bred true, suckling on your wife's breasts?"
A quiet stinging smile had risen on Dick's dry cracked lips as he had said hoarsely, "I wouldn't. My Pa desperately wants a grandchild. That old goat, lusted after Pretty before even me. He tried to court fair Rose, Pretty's lovely widow of a blooming mother, for a time, but Rose turned Pa down with persuasive flair, so skillfully that Pa probably still doesn't know how it happened and at the same time Rose secured Leslie for me. Rose was a clever woman, poor Frank West was a lucky devil. Pretty knows what she's doing, as she dabbles with her herbs, as sensible women do. It is women's business. I don't mind, though Pretty thinks I don't know."
George quietly shuffled the cards and began to deal. The Queen of Hearts hit the table.
George had done what he could for his cousin, watched by his side as he nursed him, but the virulent, virulent epidemic strain of yellowfever had gotten its claws into Dick. Fever wasted his muscles away.
Helplessly, George watched as the yellowness rose on Dick's skin, then the whites of his eyes turned yellowish, his always violent and seething Moore temperament surged, like waves, as Dick threw furniture, then came headaches and muscle stiffness, and cramps, and finally bleeding, from his orifices.
The doctor had been called, he had only glanced once at Dick and said with a sniff, in accented English, " This one is not long for this world."
Dick feebly tried to raise himself on his pillows, but failed.
The room smelled of sweat, blood and the sweet smell of opium and sangria.
Dick's breathing was intermittent, he slipped in and out of consciousness, but there were also clear moments, few and far between.
A fever sizzled on his skin.
George leaned closer, as Dick whispered, "I have not been a good man, I have been in fact most rotten one to my Pretty, to dearest lovely Leslie. You are my kin, closer than a brother to me. Promise me you will tell the news to Pretty, and that you protect her, for we know that a woman, not even a beautiful woman, can be alone for very long. Your lovely Sianna is waiting for you, in Halifax as well as your sister. You will be happy, happier than me, even though you're also Moore, we're the same, those possessive traits, they're deep in us."
George Moore clasped his hands in silence as Leslie said uncharacteristically gently, "So, Dick regretted his treatment of mine, at the end. It's no consolation, but I find it helps a little."
Those same eyes, almost shyly without Dick's arrogance, glanced at Leslie's face as a smooth baritone voice said, "That was like yesterday to me, so I remember his words exactly, after all, I was there when my cousin slipped under that everlasting curtain, which will come before us all someday."
There was silence, it was a little uncomfortable. Leslie noticed how the mottled flush rose on George Moore's neck, the sight was peculiar. Avoiding Leslie's dark blue gaze, he muttered, "The thing is, I'm engaged, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing my fiancée again, if she hasn't forgotten me, after all this time. And if I've understood correctly, you've thought I've been Dick, so one can assume that over the years we have been in contact, intimately. If there are any responsibilities or dependants like bairns, of course I do my responsibility, for them."
George saw how that fine-featured, utterly enchantingly beautiful face tightened a little, almost imperceptibly, as the heavy golden hair glistened in the sickly light of the hospital room, as Leslie's posture straightened and a soft voice said coolly gently, and a little mercilessly, "No, there's no need to worry, we're not. The rooms were separate."
Leslie saw George Moore nod as if to himself, as if her words would have confirmed something.
Then George Moore looked at Leslie, for a long time. That look was different from before, it was quick, and weighing, and extremely accepting, but not lascivious, Leslie saw the unreserved admiration of her looks in that look, it was twined with similar sort of old fashioned courtesy that Captain Jim often directed at her.
Leslie let a small, soft charming smile come to her lips, as she noted effectively, "Well, I'll do my best to help you. Is there anyone in your family, of those Halifax Moores, to whom I could write?"
Little dazzled, from that smile, George, thought to himself that Dick had been right about his wife, Pretty was indeed truly formidable, and no one else could really hold a candle to her. Coolly brisk and softly disconcertingly warm in turns, she was changeable like the spring weather, as she extremely efficiently sketched out an action plan and wrote three beautiful letters that George approved of before sealing them, as his own handwritng was barely legible, it had always been so.
Days after operation passed slowly, as Montreal bustled around them, but George couldn't concentrate, because he was full of inner turmoil in effort to, trying to understand his own peculiar circumstances. There were doctors and orderlies and cleverly sharp eyed nurses. A silent panic pulsed beneath his outward, almost stoic calmness, which he tried his best not to show to Leslie, but from careful glances George noted that she understood.
They talked sometimes, snippets and snaps, as Leslie painted grim picture of life in failing farm, in the middle of glowing nature in idyllic island. And then suddenly, George started humming, in a seductive, erotic tune. He noted how Leslie's face turned pale, as she rubbed her arms, as if she were cold. Gently George stopped humming, and said, "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend."
Leslie had a faraway look in her eyes as she whispered, "That tune, it. I've heard it so often over the years, but I never know the name of it. I only knew you were happy, the way you hummed."
The silent connotations behind Leslie's words were chilling, as George felt a chill creep up his spine, but he forced himself to say lightly, like to a startled, wounded bird, "Ah, it is something that sticks in my mind, some local light music, like zarzuela, I have always had an ear for music, as Dick also had."
At night, alone in his bed, George would toss and turn as the nurses made their rounds. The fear of what was to come twisted in his stomach like a cool knife, and at the same time he remembered, like through a deep fog, how the slim, well-portioned regal woman's body had pressed against him, in the quiet milonga, under their feet had been brightly colored rag rugs, and the light had been milky bright and somehow cold, from somewhere nearby had been heard the rustling of the wings of large birds.
The next morning, when Leslie arrived again, George inquired, "Did we ever dance?"
Leslie nodded slowly, and then she noted, "It seemed to help, sometimes."
One morning, Leslie brought a letter bearing Halifax stamps, and with a glance George recognized his older sister's handwriting. A week after that, Sarah Moore looked at her little brother with teary eyes, as Leslie left the siblings alone.
George, glanced at Leslie over the shoulder of his sister's brown walking dress, and there was unspeakable gratitude in that look, and with his other hand, George, made a gesture of honor, a short sharp salute, to Leslie, in his best sailor way.
There was a choked, tearful laugh from Sarah Moore, as she whispered, in his ear, " Brother of mine, Sianna has waited for you all these years, faithfully."
A slow beaming smile crept onto George's lips as his worst fear was unfounded.
Leslie thought of her hurried letter to Anne, which she had written as soon as she awoke from her fainting spell. Everything still felt unreal, she walked like in a fog, Montreal's May-Summer heat, George Moore's searching, watchful gaze, Leslie was sure that he hadn't told nearly everything, maybe not even half. His self-control had been almost as steely as Leslie's, and as Dick's sharp determination, but George seemed to be more jovial, more kind, than Dick, was, no had been.
Never again did she have to wake up in the middle of the night, and hear Dick's footsteps on the stairs, feel those rough hands on her waist, feel Dick's greedy kisses on her body, tearing her clothes, forcing her into submission, with mocking laughter, violence, burning marks, burning oil, no more had to hide bites and bruises under long sleeves. Her old demon, her tormentor had been dust for thirteen years.
The truth had set her free.
The cage, strangling, cutting, cage, was no more.
She, she was now free.
It was a was brilliant moment of early summers moment of twilight, as Anne looked up from her flowers as she saw Leslie standing in the garden of House of Dreams, she had snuck in, like Kiplings cat that walks alone.
Driven by a compelling inner impulse, Anne wrapped her arms around Leslie, and looked at her freshly beautiful face, where the traces of the last weeks and the strain of traveling were visible in the pallor, as she kissed her, warmly, extremely softly.
Anne had feared that Leslie would pull back coldly, leaving part of her heart in tatters at Leslies feet, but that was not to be.
Leslie responded to that caress, softly passionately, extremely carefully, but with warm intent as she carefully wrapped her arms around Anne's shoulders, taking care of her stomach, which was heavy with impending child.
Leslie sat down at Anne's feet with a contented sigh.
The scent of the flowers in the twilight was intoxicating, as Leslie slowly opened her heart to Anne, " When I returned to that house where I had been so unhappy for many bitter years, my first feeling was shamefully lonely. It is so hard to believe that that cage is not there. Although I have indeed been filled with folly, whose shame is bitter, like a hamlock, you remember what I told you, at the sandbar that one time. I'm lucky to have you, dearest, dearest Anne, life can't be empty when you're in it."
Leslie's slender tanned fingers plucked grass, in absentminded way, as she laid her splendid gleaming head agaist Annes knees, as she murmured, " Anne, dearest, would you pet me for a little while?"
With a light silvery laugh Anne complied, her fingers calmly twining into Leslies hair, in calm caressing way, as Leslie in a low voice, almost whispering, told one secret from her battered heart. A quiet happiness from those words, that jagged, passionate fragmented confession, flooded Anne's soul, as the sunset blazed across the horizon, like a brilliant fanfare.