Relinquebatur
Written for Waen.
Oh, Andrew! she cries as the cart stops before her small house at the end of town. She asks sadly if he's gone away and fallen in love again, and he tells her yes, in a quiet, ashamed voice.
Germaine nods and goes to help him unload his things from the cart, taking the birdcage carefully in both arms. The birdcage. Germaine always knows what's most important.
Andrew, she says, and tells him he must stop going so far when he falls in love. Pourquoi doesn't like it. It makes Pourquoi nervous, and he loses his feathers.
Pourquoi is the bird, of course.
Then Germaine brings the birdcage inside, and after that helps with all the rest of his things as he stumbles and drops them trying to move them. Eventually, everything is gotten into the house; Pourquoi's cage hung by the window and Andrew's portmanteau in the spare bedroom--really his bedroom, because he's been there so often.
Germaine leads him to the table, where there's tea and seedcake sitting out. He always has tea and seedcake when he comes back. Germaine knows that. Germaine knows everything, and is ready for anything, too. After he's sat, she asks him to tell her about the girl.
So Andrew begins.
She was beautiful. That much he can say correctly, and not even that without seeming like a fool. He trips over words the way he trips over imaginary stones in his path. But the girl was beautiful, he tells Germaine. Her name was Olivia. He first saw her at her brother's funeral, where he also met her uncle.
That's what made it all go to pieces, Germaine guesses. Her uncle.
Andrew is quiet, because she's right. Then he explains there was a boy, who waited on Count who was also courting the Lady, and she was in love with that young man. She married him. After that, Andrew says, her uncle threw him out, and he came home with Pourquoi and the rest of his things. He's sniffling childishly over his seedcake now and Germaine hushes him.
It will be all right, she says. Perhaps not to-day, not to-morrow, but it will be all right. She'll take care of him. She'll see that he's got a home and a sister (Andrew likes the idea of having her for his sister) until he's all right again.
So in the evenings he makes her a fire in her fireplace and burns himself lighting it; and then she reads to him, because he was never a good hand at reading. In the mornings, he gathers the eggs from her chickens and only drops a few, berating himself and not remembering that at first he used to drop them all. With the eggs, Germaine makes breakfast, and they use her old, old eggcups, which her grandmother gave her.
He doesn't break the eggcups.
Sometimes Germaine sings for him. She isn't very good at singing, but Andrew can't tell, and he presses her into it and loves every moment. Pourquoi becomes settled and begins to trill again, and they take turns feeding him.
Then, one day, Andrew goes out. Germaine waits at home. He continues to go out, a little further every day, just walking or driving around the hills. Finally he visits his parents. They aren't proud of him, but their servants call him Sir Andrew and they give him money to spend. He kisses his mother's cheek and tells her he loves her; shakes his father's hand and says good-bye; and then goes back to Germaine in the country, rather afraid of looking behind him.
One day, out in the hills, he accidentally meets the daughter of a merchant in Scotland. She's visiting the neighbouring town but goes home to-morrow, and she explains that she enjoys walking out in the hills. She says she walked at home. She's polite but distanced, trying to push away everything except the beautiful sky and the hugeness of the wide, empty hills around her. But Andrew is in love again.
He returns home long enough to put his things together with Germaine's help, and drives away in the cart with the birdcage on his lap and Pourquoi making trilling protests. Germaine watches him go with quiet, sad eyes and waves until he's out of sight.
She knows he'll be back soon. He always is.
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