Only she couldn't pour it all out on the stage, for she was too young to play Hecuba. The stage was simply the one place offering peace and forgetfulness. She could only tell herself: Time heals all wounds while not believing it. Asking herself why it should go on hurting so. When Dane was alive she hadn't really thought very much about him except when she was with him, and after they were grown up their time together had been limited, their vocations almost opposed. But his going had created a gap so huge she despaired of ever filling it.
The shock of having to pull herself up in the midst of a spontaneous reaction-I must remember to tell Dane about this, he'll get such a kick out of it-that was what hurt the most. And because it kept on occurring so often, it prolonged the grief. Had the circumstances surrounding his death been less horrifying she might have recovered more quickly, but the nightmare events of those few days remained vivid. She missed him unbearably; her mind would return again and again to the incredible fact of Dane dead, Dane who would never come back.
Then there was the conviction that she hadn't helped him enough. Everyone save her seemed to think he was perfect, didn't experience the troubles other men did, but Justine knew he had been plagued by doubts, had tormented himself with his own unworthiness, had wondered what people could see in him beyond the face and the body. Poor Dane, who never seemed to understand that people loved his goodness. Terrible to remember it was too late to help him now.
She also grieved for her mother. If his dying could do this to her, what must it have done to Mum? The thought made her want to run screaming and crying from memory, consciousness. The picture of the Unks in Rome for his ordination, puffing out their proud chests like pouter pigeons. That was the worst of all, visualizing the empty desolation of her mother and the other Drogheda people.
Be honest, Justine. Was this honestly the worst? Wasn't there something far more disturbing? She couldn't push the thought of Rain away, or what she felt as her betrayal of Dane. To gratify her own desires she had sent Dane to Greece alone, when to have gone with him might have meant life for him. There was no other way to see it. Dane had died because of her selfish absorption in Rain. Too late now to bring her brother back, but if in never seeing Rain again she could somehow atone, the hunger and the loneliness would be well worth it.
So the weeks went by, and then the months. A year, two years. Desdemona, Ophelia, Portia, Cleopatra. From the very beginning she flattered herself she behaved outwardly as if nothing had happened to ruin her world; she took exquisite care in speaking, laughing, relating to people quite normally. If there was a change, it was in that she was kinder than of yore, for people's griefs tended to affect her as if they were her own. But, all told, she was the same outward Justine flippant, exuberant, brash, detached, acerbic. Twice she tried to go home to Drogheda on a visit, the second time even going so far as to pay for her plane ticket. Each time an enormously important last minute reason why she couldn't go cropped up, but she knew the real reason to be a combination of guilt and cowardice. She just wasn't able to nerve herself to confront her mother; to do so meant the whole sorry tale would come out, probably in the midst of a noisy storm of grief she had so far managed to avoid. The Drogheda people, especially her mother, must continue to go about secure in their conviction that Justine at any rate was all right, that Justine had survived it relatively unscathed. So, better to stay away from Drogheda. Much better.
Meggie caught herself on a sigh, suppressed it. If her bones didn't ache so much she might have saddled a horse and ridden, but today the mere thought of it was painful. Some other time, when her arthritis didn't make its presence felt so cruelly.
She heard a car, the thump of the brass ram's head on the front door, heard voices murmuring, her mother's tones, footsteps. Not Justine, so what did it matter?
"Meggie," said Fee from the veranda entrance, "we have a visitor. Could you come inside, please?"
The visitor was a distinguished-looking fellow in early middle age, though he might have been younger than he appeared. Very different from any man she had ever seen, except that he possessed the same sort of power and self-confidence Ralph used to have. Used to have. That most final of tenses, now truly final.
"Meggie, this is Mr. Rainer Hartheim," said Fee, standing beside her chair. "Oh!" exclaimed Meggie involuntarily, very surprised at the look of the Rain who had figured so largely in Justine's letters from the old days. Then, remembering her manners, "Do sit down, Mr. Hartheim."
He too was staring, startled. "You're not a bit like Justine!" he said rather blankly.
"No, I'm not." She sat down facing him.
"I'll leave you alone with Mr. Hartheim, Meggie, as he says he wants to see you privately. When you're ready for tea you might ring," Fee commanded, and departed.
"You're Justine's German friend, of course," said Meggie, at a loss. He pulled out his cigarette case. "May I?"
"Please do."
"Would you care for one, Mrs. O'neill?"
"Thank you, no. I don't smoke." She smoothed her dress. "You're a long way from home, Mr. Hartheim. Have you business in Australia?" He smiled, wondering what she would say if she knew that he was, in effect, the master of Drogheda. But he had no intention of telling her, for he preferred all the Drogheda people to think their welfare lay in the completely impersonal hands of the gentleman he employed to act as his go-between.
"Please, Mrs. O'neill, my name is Rainer," he said, giving it the same pronunciation Justine did, while thinking wryly that this woman wouldn't use it spontaneously for some time to come; she was not one to relax with strangers. "No, I don't have any official business in Australia, but I do have a good reason for coming. I wanted to see you."