George was delighted to hear about the new life Ben was making for himself and believed it would suit his friend down to the ground even if he did get some coal dust beneath his fingernails. He had some startling news too. Hugo and Lady Muir had indeed married in London, at St. George’s on Hanover Square, as planned. All the Survivors had been present except Ben and Vincent, who could not be found. However, he had arrived on Hugo’s doorstep two days after the wedding, bringing with him Miss Sophia Fry, a young lady whom he intended to marry without delay. And marry her he did, by special license, two days later, also at St. George’s, with all his friends around him except Ben. The new Lady Darleigh was in expectation of her first confinement just before March, when the Survivors’ Club usually gathered for a few weeks at Penderris Hall, and had suggested that they meet at Middlebury Park in Gloucestershire, Vincent’s home, instead, since Vincent had declared that he would not leave his wife and child so soon after the birth. Now Ben would be able to give his opinion on the matter. Everyone else was in agreement, the duke reported.
Life had gone on without him, Ben realized. And Vincent, the youngest of them, the blind one, was married too. It sounded as though there must be a story behind such hasty nuptials. Ben would hear it in time, he supposed. But he hoped it was a happy marriage. Those friends of his were like brothers—and one sister.
He wrote again to George as well as to Hugo to explain why he had not replied to his wedding invitation. And he wrote to Vincent, knowing that someone—perhaps his wife—would read the letter to him. How strange to think of Vince with a wife!
Mr. Bevan finally set a date for the planned meeting at Cartref to discuss Ben’s future as his overseer. It was to be one week before Christmas, and was to coincide with a ball he had planned for his friends and neighbors. They would spend a few days together, he said, relaxing and talking things over. There would be a few other guests too to make things more sociable.
He did not say if Samantha would be at the ball.
Samantha was almost entirely happy during those months. Sometimes she felt guilty about it, for poor Matthew was dead and perhaps she ought to be far sadder than she was. But though she thought of him frequently and mourned the fact that his life had been cut off so early and so unhappily, she did not dwell upon what she could not change anyway.
She and Mrs. Price and even Gladys worked hard at making her house into a home. She changed curtains and rugs and replaced some vases and ornaments with ones she liked better. She purchased some pieces from the village potter. The only actually new piece of furniture she added was a pianoforte, which she purchased when she knew there was a music teacher in the village who had time to take on another pupil. There had been a harpsichord in the house when she was a girl, and while her mother lived she had taken lessons. But she had never enjoyed them and had abandoned them after her mother’s death. Now she regretted having done so and was determined to learn to play again, at least well enough to amuse herself. More important, perhaps, the same teacher gave her voice lessons and taught her how to use her mezzo-soprano voice to best advantage.
She took Welsh lessons from Mrs. Jenkins, the vicar’s wife, and wondered if it really was the most difficult language in the world to learn or if it just seemed that way because she had never tried learning anything else but French.
She made numerous friendly acquaintances among her neighbors and one definite friend in Mari Pritchard, the schoolmaster’s wife. She might have attracted the romantic interest of a number of men but took to wearing gray and lavender on public occasions so that it would be known that she was still in mourning.
Her grandfather did not come near her for a week after she and Ben had dined with him at Cartref. Finally, Samantha went to see him and was fortunate to find him at home. The next day, he told her, he would be going away and staying for a couple of weeks or so. She wondered if he would be seeing Ben, but he did not say so and she did not ask.
She sat with him in the main drawing room, from the window of which there was a magnificent view down across the park and the village beyond it to the sea. And she told him her story, ending with her decision to come to the cottage, which she had expected to be a mere run-down hovel, and Ben’s decision to accompany her here.
He nodded his head slowly.
“And you knew nothing of me,” he said, “and nothing of your heritage here.”
“Nothing.” She shook her head.
“Drink is a terrible thing,” he said. “Or, rather, drink in the hands of a weak and foolish man is a terrible thing.”
“You overcame it.”
“For myself, yes,” he said. “But that was no consolation to your mother, was it? I am glad she found a good man. And that she had you for a daughter.”
“I would like,” she said after a short silence, “to call you grandfather.”
She watched tears brighten his eyes, but he did not shed them, and after a moment or two he went to stand by the window, his back to her.
“I loved her with an all-consuming passion,” he said after a while. “Your grandmother, I mean. Unfortunately I was young, and I had no wisdom to balance out the passion. When she left, she took everything that was me with her and left behind an empty shell of raw pain. Love ought not to be like that, Samantha. One should love from a position of wholeness. One should have a firm and rich sense of self no matter what. For there is always pain—it cannot be avoided in this life, more’s the pity. But pain should not destroy the person who feels it. I should not have been destroyed. I had my life and my health, this home, my work, friends. Most of all, I had Gwynneth. I loved her too, more than life, I believed before her mother left me. But it turned out that I loved my self-pity more, and the drink helped me wallow in it until I had lost my daughter as well as my wife.”