Page 18 of Enlightened
David gazed at the other man earnestly. “And she will be again. She’s had a hard time of it, but she’ll come round, with Donald’s help. She’s strong, and no woman could want a more attentive husband.”
A faint nod at that and a matching smile, happy and melancholy all at once. “They are happy together. A true love match. That’s—” He broke off, closing his eyes and tensing again. David raised himself from his chair and leaned over the other man, concerned but not knowing what to do.
After a minute, Chalmers opened his eyes and gestured shakily at the jug on his nightstand. David carefully poured him a cup of what looked like plain water and held it to Chalmers’s lips, slipping his arm around the other man’s shoulders to support him while he drank. He could feel Chalmers’s shoulder blades through his nightshirt, sharp and frail, and the weight of him was puny on David’s arm. He was like a husk, dried out and ready to blow away with the winds.
Once Chalmers had drunk his fill and rested for a minute, he began to talk again.
“My Kitty married a man she loves, thank God. It’s the only reason to marry, lad.”
David watched his friend. Chalmers knew better than anyone how often people married for reasons other than love. His own marriage was a cold affair. What was more, Elizabeth, his oldest and favourite daughter, had married Sir Alasdair Kinnell after being disappointed in love by David himself. David, guilty over his clumsy rejection of her, had been relieved to hear of the marriage, glad that she’d married so well. It was only later that he learned how Kinnell was abusing her.
“I did not marry for love,” Chalmers said. “Margaret was the daughter of a senior man at the bar. Four years older than I. Her father let it be known she had a good dowry, and that he’d give my career a leg up.” He closed his eyes. “I was ambitious back then.”
David was not surprised to hear that Chalmers’s marriage had been devoid of any tender feelings, even at the beginning. Chalmers’s wife was a proud, haughty woman. She’d shown no affection and little respect for her husband in all the time David had known Chalmers, and she didn’t bother to hide her contempt for anyone he invited into their home whom she considered to be inferior.
“I would not change anything now,” Chalmers continued. “I have four wonderful girls who I love more than life. But the truth is, our marriage was never a happy one. She was always cold.” He closed his eyes again, breathing against another wave of pain. For a while he was silent, then he added, “And perhaps I was too. We were never more than strangers who lived in the same house.”
David couldn’t help but contrast the bleak picture Chalmers presented with his own parents’ quiet contentment. They had never had the money or position enjoyed by Chalmers and his wife, but they had something else far more valuable, a deep love for one another that had survived a hundred trials—lost babies and bad harvests and severe winters. No matter how bad things had ever been for them, they always had each other to lean on.
“It must have been difficult,” David murmured, “to live like that. Like strangers.”
“I didn’t realise how much, till I met someone I truly cared for,” Chalmers confessed, his voice raw with emotion. He paused before adding, “I did not set out to do it. She was a client—a widow. We became friends first. Then, much later, lovers.”
David was shocked. He’d never even guessed at this. Chalmers had given no hint of it before. “Does she know about this?” he asked. “Your illness, I mean?”
Chalmers shook his head. He closed his eyes, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. Eventually, he said, “She passed away three years ago.”
“Ah God, Chalmers, I’m sorry.”
“At the time, it was terrible. There was no one I could speak to about her. She was the love of my life, and I had to act as though she had never existed. As though my heart had not been destroyed.”
David’s heart squeezed at that painful confession. “What was her name?”
“Mary. Mary Cunningham.”
“I’m glad that you—that you found some happiness with her.” The words came out rather stiltedly, but they were sincerely meant, and somehow David knew Chalmers understood that.
“And I’m glad I can speak of her to someone. For all this time, it has felt as though I’ve been denying her very existence. Denying that I loved her.” He paused. “Love should not be denied.”
“She’d have understood,” David replied, believing it.
Chalmers didn’t answer that right away, but at last he said quietly, “I don’t know about that. She died alone. After she took ill, I hired a nurse for her, since I couldn’t be with her all the time. It happened after I left her one evening so I could attend a dinner party Margaret had arranged.” He closed his eyes and his voice shook with regret as he continued. “She died in the early hours of the morning. I was not with her, and I should have been. I can never get that chance back again—to be there for her when she passed. I was too busy slinking back here to dine with some bore Margaret wanted me to charm.”
The agony on Chalmers’s face was palpable. This was a soul-deep pain, far worse in its way than the physical pain the man now endured.
“Do you still think she’d have understood, lad?” Chalmers whispered.
David couldn’t deny that Chalmers’s confession altered his view. He found himself imagining Murdo leaving his side to perform an obligation to some hypothetical future wife and was surprised at how painful he found the mere thought. Not that he intended to find himself in such a position. He’d decided long ago that he would break off with Murdo as and when a potential wife appeared on the scene.
“But that is not even my greatest regret,” Chalmers continued in a pained voice.
“What is then?”
“That I did not tell Mary I loved her till she was too ill to understand the words.”
Chalmers’s face was twisted into an expression of self-loathing, and David’s heart ached for his friend. “I’ll wager she knew,” he whispered. But Chalmers just shook his head.
“Words have power,” he said. “I held my confession back to punish myself for my infidelity. But when Mary lay dying, I realised I had punished her too. Saying the words was”—a shaking breath—“it was far more powerful than I realised it would be. But without Mary to hear those words, they were stillborn. Sometimes things must be said.” He closed his eyes. “And they must be heard too.”