Will You Love Me in September

The moments seemed to drag interminably. Lance was looking at me, trying to speak. I bent my head down so that I could hear him.

He said, "It was the only way. Understand, Clarissa. I was too slow. He got me first.”

"The doctor will come," I told him. "You'll be better then.”

He smiled, and as he did so I saw the blood on his lips, and that frightened me more than seeing him lying there.

The doctor came. He shook his head gravely. The bullet was too deeply embedded. He could not remove it. Besides, Lance had lost too much blood.

There was no hope and there could only be an hour or two left to him.

So Lance, the gallant gentleman, the exquisite dandy, the inveterate gambler, was dying, and his death was typical of the way he had lived. It made me bitterly angry to think of how he had thrown his life away ... uselessly, unnecessarily. But that was Lance.

I heard Jack Etherington say that Blaydon was preparing to get out of the country quickly. That could only mean that he knew he had killed Lance.

Lance lingered for a few hours, and during that time he was lucid and talked to me a little. I told him to preserve his breath, but it seemed to comfort him to talk.

"Oh, Clarissa, my Clarissa," he said. "I loved you always, you know. Still, it wasn't what we looked for ... not quite, was it? There were shadows between us. I was the gambler. I couldn't stop. I wanted to ... for you. I know how you hated it. But I went on ... and on. It was between us, wasn't it ... the barrier ... There'll be debts, Clarissa. I would have paid them ... in time ... out of winnings.”

Later he said, "For you there was Dickon. You never forgot him, did you? I knew he was there. A shadowy ghost in our house ... at our table ... in our bedchamber. Those were the shadows between, Clarissa. But it was good ... all the same, it was good.”

I kissed his lips and his brow. He smiled faintly.

I bent over him and said quietly, "Lance, it was wonderful.”

And he closed his eyes and passed away.

The Return

It was nearly ten years since Lance had died. I was completely shattered by his death; so was Sabrina. I saw the old fear in her. eyes which I had detected all those years ago when Damaris had died.

"What is it about me?" she cried to me. "Why am I fated to bring disaster? There was my mother. I was indirectly responsible for her death. And now ... Lance. If I had not thought of marrying Reggie, I should never have gone to that house that night. I should not have left the stole behind, and Lance would be alive this day.”

"It is not your fault that things happened the way they did," I insisted.

"But why me? Why should I be the one every time to bring disaster and death?”

"You saved my life. Don't forget that. I never shall.”

"Oh, Clarissa, I'm so unhappy. There is a terrible guilt on me.”

"No," I cried. "You must not feel this. Be sensible, Sabrina.”

The task of bringing her out of that terrible gloom was mine, just as it had been all those years ago, and I felt more than ever that our lives were inextricably woven.

I was closer to her even than to my beloved daughter Zipporah.

Zipporah was soft and feminine and yet, strangely enough, more equipped to take care of herself than Sabrina was ... She had her friendship with Jean-Louis and I think, in her heart, was fonder of him than of anyone else.

Sabrina did not marry Reggie. After that dreadful night she could not bear to be with him. It reminded her too much. Poor Reggie was heartbroken. He went abroad to some members of his family-in Sweden, I think. But Sabrina had done something for him, I was sure. She had restored a certain confidence to him, but perhaps that was partly due to the fact that his father, of whom he had been in such obvious awe, was dead. However, he went out of our lives. I sold the house in Albemarle Street and we settled in the country. I decided we would live there quietly, away from the social scene, although after the manner of such affairs, the scandal of Sir Ralph's death was soon forgotten.

During those ten years Priscilla and Leigh had died and Uncle Carl had come home to take over the management of the Eversleigh estates. Occasionally I went to see him, but it was a sad business now that Arabella, Carleton, Priscilla and Leigh were no longer there.

The old generation passed on; the new ones were coming up. I myself was now forty-three years old, and Sabrina herself was thirty. People were amazed that she had never married. Such a beautiful young woman, they said of her. She had had her admirers, of course, but I was sure that contemplating marriage brought back to her too vividly that scene in the bedroom, and always she shied away from it.