Abigail by Malcolm Macdonald Read Free Book Online Page B

is, as you call it, ‘the best fun ever.’ For women, too, whatever learned doctors may say to the contrary. More than fun. A kind of intoxication. A delirium. All the high-flown love poetry you’ve ever read is a pale echo of…a mere hint.”
    He smiled and the tremble left his voice; now that the ice was breached, the unthinkable could be thought, the unsayable said, quite easily and calmly. “Difficult to believe? I have known it since I was thirteen. Not because I am in any way cleverer, but because men grow up differently—men are different. With men, our passions are all on our sleeve. Simple. Even a bit mechanical. It prevents us from ever really becoming noble, of ourselves, of our own accord. It’s as if we must always look for a light ahead to guide us, a pattern to copy, a better example. In other words: women. So a woman, both in her upbringing and in her very nature, is different, is purer, is nobler—of herself and of her own accord. That is why this knowledge is not for her, at least until she marries. For she has a darker, more earthy, less noble side to her nature, too—every woman, I mean. You have it, though I’m sure you aren’t remotely aware of it yet.”
    She noticed that his eyes strayed from her face during these last few words. Did he fear to see a denial there? she wondered. She wanted to assure him it was true: She had no such side to her nature. Yet, paradoxically, his utter assurance affronted her—so much so that she felt like shouting aloud: “It’s not true! I feel it just as you do!”
    “Funnily enough,” Caspar went on, “it was Nick’s father—Uncle Walter, I mean—who made it clear to me. He caught us, Nick and me, gawping at the fallen women outside the station in York.” Caspar edited and bowdlerized the memory for her; Walter had actually caught them doing more than merely gawping. “I’ll never forget it. He told us how a woman’s nobility, her purity, was like a lighthouse to a man in the storms and tempests of life; and so it is something doubly precious—to her, and to him. Only the very worst kind of man trifles with it and sullies it. Because it is a very short step from being pure to being polluted; it can be five minutes’ work. But once it’s done, it can never be undone. The polluted woman can never find her way back to purity.”
    “What about Mary Magdalene?”
    Caspar was puzzled. “Well, she was saved ,I suppose. Yes, of course she was. But she was never made pure again.” And when Abigail frowned, as if about to argue, he added, “In a religious sense I’m sure she was patched up as good as a saint. But I’m talking about Society. Forgiveness is God’s business, not Society’s, or it would all fall to bits, wouldn’t it? No. Believe me—once a woman has crossed that narrow line, there’s no way back.”
    “And men?”
    He smiled. “Sinners all, I fear.” He took a new cue and began to assess the lie of the table. “But it don’t signify, Abbie, dear love. It don’t signify. We bear no children. Our father’s bastards, as you so wittily said—and before you even understood what you meant—our father’s wayside oats are ‘only Stevensons by charity’—with a big and a small C. They’ll never assume any legal relationship to us.”
    Next morning, while Abigail was out riding, he sent Annie home to London, carrying a letter to his mother, Lady Wharfedale.

Chapter 6
    Not until the day after her return to London did Abigail notice her maid’s absence. “Where’s Annie?” she asked her mother.
    Nora met it head on. “I’m afraid there was no question of her continuing in our service,” she said.
    For a moment Abigail did not understand. “She gave notice?”
    “I dismissed her.”
    “But why?”
    “You know very well why.”
    Abigail stared at her, numb at the shock of her dawning understanding. “She told you?”
    “In the end. There was no point in her trying to deny it.”
    “You threw her out?” Abigail