Part 29 (2/2)
”She looked pale,'' Mary replied, pulling a little face.”But then she always does. I think she's in a temper, myself- although I shouldn't say that.”
Hester smiled. The feet that Mary should not say something never stopped her, in fact it never even made her hesitate.
”With whom?” Hester asked curiously.
”Everyone in general, but Sir Basil in particular.”
”Do you know why?”
Mary shrugged; it was a graceful gesture. ”I should think over what they said about Miss Octavia at the trial.” She scowled furiously.'' Wasn 't that awful! They made out she was so tipsy she encouraged the footman to make advances-” She stopped and looked at Hester meaningfully.”Makes you wonder, doesn't it?”
”Was that not true?”
”Not that I ever saw.” Mary was indignant. ”She was tipsy, certainly, but Miss Octavia was a lady. She wouldn't have let Percival touch her if he'd been the last man alive on a desert island. Actually it's my belief she wouldn't have let any man touch her after Captain Haslett died. Which is what made Mr. Myles so furious. Now if she'd stabbed him, I'd have believed it!”
”Did he really l.u.s.t after her?” Hester asked, for the first time using the right word openly.
Mary's dark eyes widened a fraction, but she did not equivocate.
”Oh yes. You should have seen it in his face. Mind, she was very pretty, you know, in a quite different way from Miss Araminta. You never saw her, but she was so alive-” Suddenly misery gripped hold of her again, and all the realization of loss flooded back, and the anger she had been trying to suppress. ”That was wicked, what they said about her! Why do people say things like that?” Her chin came up and her eyes were blazing. ”Fancy her saying all those wretched things about Dinah, and Mrs. Willis and all. They won't ever forgive her for that, you know. Why did she do it?”
”Spite?” Hester suggested. ”Or maybe just exhibitionism. She loves to be the center of attention. If anyone is looking at her she feels alive-important.''
Mary looked confused.
”There are some people like that.” Hester tried to explain what she had never put into words before. ”They're empty, insecure alone; they only feel real when other people listen to them and take notice.''
”Admiration. ”Mary laughed bitterly. ”It's contempt. What she did was vicious. I can tell you, no one 'round here'll forgive her for it.”
”I don't suppose that'll bother her,” Hester said dryly, thinking of Fenella's opinion of servants.
Mary smiled. ”Oh yes it will!” she said fiercely. ”She won't get a hot cup of tea in the morning anymore; it will be lukewarm. We will be ever so sorry, we won't know how it happened, but it will go on happening. Her best clothes will be mislaid in the laundry, some will get torn, and no one will know who did it. Everyone will have found it like that. Her letters will be delivered to someone else, caught between the pages, messages for her or from her will be slow in delivery. The rooms she's in will get cold because footmen will be too busy to stoke the fires, and her afternoon tea will be late. Believe me, Miss Latterly, it will bother her. And Mrs. Willis nor Cook won't put a stop to it. They'll all be just as innocent and smug as the rest of us, and not have an idea how it happens. And Mr. Phillips won't do nothing either. He may have airs like he was a duke, but he's loyal when it comes down to it. He's one of us.”
Hester could not help smiling. It was all incredibly trivial, but there was a kind of justice in it.
Mary saw her expression, and her own eased into one of satisfaction and something like conspiracy. ”You see?” she said.
”I see,” Hester agreed. ”Yes-very appropriate.” And still with a smile she took her linen and left.
Upstairs Hester found Beatrice sitting alone in her room in one of the dressing chairs, staring out of the window at the rain beginning to fall steadily into the bare garden. It was January, bleak, colorless, and promising fog before dark.
”Good afternoon, Lady Moidore,” Hester said gently. ”I am sorry you are unwell. Can I do anything to help?”
Beatrice did not move her head.
”Can you turn the clock back?” she asked with a tiny self-mocking smile.
”If I could, I would have done it many times,” Hester answered. ”But do you suppose it would really make a difference?”
Beatrice did not reply for several moments, then she sighed and stood up. She was dressed in a peach-colored robe, and with her blazing hair she had all the warmth of dying summer in her.
”No-probably none at all,” she said wearily. ”We would still be the same people, and that is what is wrong. We would all still be pursuing comfort, looking to save our own reputations and just as willing to hurt others.” She stood by the window watching the water running down the panes. ”I never realized Fenella was so consumed with vanity, so ridiculously trying to hold on to the trappings of youth. If she were not so prepared to destroy other people simply to get attention, I should feel more pity for her. As it is I am embarra.s.sed by her.”
”Perhaps it is all she feels she has.” Hester spoke equally softly. She too found Fenella repellent in her willingness to hurt, especially to expose the foibles of the servants-that was gratuitous. But she understood the fear behind the need for some quality that would earn her survival, some material possessions, however come by, that were independent of Basil and his conditional charity, if charity was the word.
Beatrice swung around to face her, her eyes level, very wide.
”You understand, don't you? You know why we do these grubby things-”
Hester did not know whether to equivocate; tact was not what Beatrice needed now.
”Yes, it isn't difficult.”
Beatrice dropped her eyes. ”I'd rather not have known. I guessed some of it, of course. I knew Septimus gambled, and I thought he took wine occasionally from the cellars.” She smiled. ”In feet it rather amused me. Basil is so pompous about his claret.” Her face darkened again and the humor vanished. ”I didn't know Septimus took it for Fenella, and even then I wouldn't have cared about it if it were sympathy for her-but it isn't. I think he hates her. She's everything in a woman that is different from Christabel-that is the woman he loved. That isn't a good reason for hating anyone, though, is it?”
She hesitated, but Hester did not interrupt.
”Strange how being dependent, and being reminded of it all the time, sours you,” Beatrice went on. ”Because you feel helpless and inferior, you try to get power again by doing just the same to someone else. G.o.d how I hate investigations! It will take us years to forget all we've learned about each other- maybe by then it will be too late.”
”Maybe you can learn to forgive instead?” Hester knew she was being impertinent, but it was the only thing she could say with any truth, and Beatrice not only deserved truth, she needed it.
Beatrice turned away and traced her finger on the dry inside of the window, following the racing drops.
”How do you forgive someone for not being what you wanted them to be, or what you thought they were? Especially when they are not sorry-perhaps they don't even understand?”
”Or again, perhaps they do?'' Hester suggested.”And how do they forgive us for having expected too much of them, instead of looking to see what they really were, and loving that?”
Beatrice's finger stopped.
”You are very frank, aren't you!” It was not a question. ”But it isn't as easy as that, Hester. You see, I am not even sure that Percival is guilty. Am I wicked still to have doubts in my mind when the court says he is, and he's been sentenced, and the world says it is all over? I dream, and wake up with my mind torn with suspicions. I look at people and wonder, and I hear double and triple meanings behind what they say.''
Again Hester was racked with indecision. It would seem so much kinder to suggest that no one else could be guilty, that it was only the aftermath of all the fear still lingering on, and in time it would melt away. Daily life would comfort, and this extraordinary tragedy would ease until it became only the grief one feels for any loss.
But then she thought of Percival in Newgate prison, counting the few days left to him until one morning there was no more time at all.
”Well if Percival is not guilty, who else could it have been?” She heard the words spoken aloud and instantly regretted her judgment. It was brutal. She never for an instant thought Beatrice would believe it was Rose, and none of the other servants had even entered the field of possibility. But it could not be taken back. AD she could do was wait for Beatrice's answer.
”I don't know.'' Beatrice measured each word.”I have lain in the dark each night, thinking this is my own house, where I came when I was married. I have been happy here, and wretched. I have borne five children here, and lost two, and now Octavia. I've watched them grow up, and themselves marry. IVe watched their happiness and their misery. It is all as familiar as bread and b.u.t.ter, or the sound of carriage wheels. And yet perhaps I know only the skin of it all, and the flesh beneath is as strange to me as j.a.pan.''
She moved to the dressing table and began to take the pins from her hair and let it down in a s.h.i.+ning stream like bright copper.
”The police came here and were full of sympathy and respectfully polite. Then they proved that no one could have broken in from outside, so whoever killed Octavia was one of us. For weeks they asked questions and forced us to find the answers-ugly answers, most of them, things about ourselves that were shabby, or selfish, or cowardly.” She put the pins in a neat little pile in one of the cut gla.s.s trays and picked up the silver-backed brush.
<script>