The Face of a Stranger (27 page)

"My eldest brother was killed in the Crimea." Hester still
found the words hard to say. She could see George in her mind's eye, the way he
walked, hear his laughter, then it dissolved and a sharper memory returned of
herself and Charles and George as children, and the tears ached in her throat
beyond bearing. "And both my parents died shortly after," she said
quickly. "Shall we speak of something else?"

For a moment Fabia looked startled. She had forgotten, and now she was
faced with a loss as huge as her own.

"My dear—I'm so very sorry. Of course—you did say so. Forgive me.
What have you done this morning? Would you care to take the trap out later? It
would be no difficulty to arrange it."

“I went to the nursery and met Harry.'' Hester smiled and blinked.
"He's beautiful—" And she proceeded to tell the story.

* * * * *

She remained at Shelburne Hall for several more days, sometimes taking
long walks alone in the wind and brilliant air. The parkland had a beauty
which pleased her immensely and she felt at peace with it as she had in few
other places. She was able to consider the future much more clearly, and
Callandra's advice, repeated several times more in their many conversations,
seemed increasingly wise the more she thought of it. The tension among

the members of the household changed after the dinner with General
Wadham. Surface anger was covered with the customary good manners, but she
became aware through a multitude of small observations that the unhap-piness
was a deep and abiding part of the fabric of their lives.

Fabia had a personal courage which might have been at least half the
habitual discipline of her upbringing and the pride that would not allow others
to see her vulnerability. She was autocratic, to some extent selfish, although
she would have been the last to think it of herself. But Hester saw the
loneliness in her face in moments when she believed herself unobserved, and at
times beneath the old woman so immaculately dressed, a bewilderment which laid
bare the child she had once been. Undoubtedly she loved her two surviving sons,
but she did not especially like them, and no one could charm her or make her
laugh as Joscelin had. They were courteous, but they did not flatter her, they did
not bring back with small attentions the great days of her beauty when dozens
had courted her and she had been the center of so much. With Joscelin's death
her own hunger for living had gone.

Hester spent many hours with Rosamond and became fond of her in a
distant, nonconfiding sort of way. Callan-dra's words about a brave, protective
smile came to her sharply on several occasions, most particularly one late
afternoon as they sat by the fire and made light, trivial conversation. Ursula
Wadham was visiting, full of excitement and plans for the time when she would
be married to Menard. She babbled on, facing Rosamond but apparently not
seeing anything deeper than the perfect complexion, the carefully dressed hair
and the rich afternoon gown. To her Rosamond had everything a woman could
desire, a wealthy and titled husband, a strong child, beauty, good health and
sufficient talent in the arts of pleasing. What else was there to desire?

Hester listened to Rosamond agreeing to all the plans, how exciting it
would be and how happy the future looked,

and she saw behind the dark eyes no gleam of confidence and hope, only a
sense of loss, a loneliness and a kind of desperate courage that keeps going
because it knows no way to stop. She smiled because it brought her peace, it
prevented questions and it preserved a shred of pride.

Lovel was busy. At least he had purpose and as long as he was fulfilling
it any darker emotion was held at bay. Only at the dinner table when they were
all together did the occasional remark betray the underlying knowledge that
something had eluded him, some precious element that seemed to be his was not
really. He could not have called it fear—he would have hated the word and
rejected it with horror—but staring at him across the snow-white linen and the
glittering crystal, Hester thought that was what it was. She had seen it so
often before, in totally different guises, when the danger was physical,
violent and immediate. At first because the threat was so different she thought
only of anger, then as it nagged persistently at the back of her mind,
unclassified, suddenly she saw its other face, domestic, personal, emotional
pain, and she knew it was a jar of familiarity.

With Menard it was also anger, but a sharp awareness, too, of something
he saw as injustice; past now in act, but the residue still affecting him. Had
he tidied up too often after Joscelin, his mother's favorite, protecting her
from the truth that he was a cheat? Or was it himself he protected, and the
family name?

Only with Callandra did she feel relaxed, but it did on one occasion
cross her mind to wonder whether Callandra's comfort with herself was the
result of many years' happiness or the resolution within her nature of its
warring elements, not a gift but an art. It was one evening when they had taken
a light supper in Callandra's sitting room instead of dinner in the main wing,
and Callandra had made some remark about her husband, now long dead. Hester had
always assumed the marriage to have been happy, not from anything she knew of
it, or of Callandra Daviot, but from the peace within Callandra.

Now she realized how blindly she had leaped to such a shortsighted
conclusion.

Callandra must have seen the idea waken in her eyes. She smiled with a
touch of wryness, and a gentle humor in her face.

"You have a great deal of courage, Hester, and a hunger for life
which is a far richer blessing than you think now— but, my dear, you are
sometimes very naive. There are many kinds of misery, and many kinds of
fortitude, and you should not allow your awareness of one to build to the value
of another. You have an intense desire, a passion, to make people's lives
better. Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become
what they are, not what you are. I have heard you say 'If I were you, I would
do this—or that.' T am never 'you'—and my solutions may not be yours."

Hester remembered the wretched policeman who had told her she was
domineering, overbearing and several other unpleasant things.

Callandra smiled. "Remember, my dear, you are dealing with the
world as it is, not as you believe, maybe rightly, that it ought to be. There
will be a great many things you can achieve not by attacking them but with a
little patience and a modicum of flattery. Stop to consider what it is you
really want, rather than pursuing your anger or your vanity to charge in. So
often we leap to passionate judgments—when if we but knew the one thing more,
they would be so different."

Hester was tempted to laugh, in spite of having heard very clearly what
Callandra had said, and perceiving the truth of it.

"I know," Callandra agreed quickly. "I preach much better
than I practice. But believe me, when I want something enough, I have the
patience to bide my time and think how I can bring it about.''

"I'll try," Hester promised, and she did mean it. "That
miserable policeman will not be right—I shall not allow him to be right.''

"I beg your pardon?"

"I met him when I was out walking," Hester explained. "He
said I was overbearing and opinionated, or something like that."

Callandra's eyebrows shot up and she did not even attempt to keep a
straight face.

"Did he really? What temerity! And what perception, on such a short
acquaintance. And what did you think of him, may I ask?"

"An incompetent and insufferable nincompoop!"

"Which of course you told him?"

Hester glared back at her. "Certainly!"

"Quite so. I think he had more of the right of it than you did. I
don't think he is incompetent. He has been given an extremely difficult task.
There were a great many people who might have hated Joscelin, and it will be exceedingly
difficult for a policeman, with all his disadvantages, to discover which one
it was—and even harder, I imagine, to prove it."

"You mean, you think—" Hester left it unsaid, hanging in the
air.

"I do," Callandra replied. "Now come, we must settle what
you are to do with yourself. I shall write to certain friends I have, and I
have little doubt, if you hold a civil tongue in your head, refrain from
expressing your opinion of men in general and of Her Majesty's Army's generals
in particular, we may obtain for you a position in hospital administration
which will not only be satisfying to you but also to those who are unfortunate
enough to be ill."

"Thank you." Hester smiled. "I am very grateful."
She looked down in her lap for a moment, then up at Callandra and her eyes
sparkled. "I really do not mind walking two paces behind a man, you
know—if only I can find one who can walk two paces faster than I! It is being
tied at the knees by convention I hate—and having to pretend I am lame to suit
someone else's vanity."

Callandra shook her head very slowly, amusement and sadness sharp in her
face. "I know. Perhaps you will have to fall a few times, and have someone
else pick you up, before you will learn a more equable pace. But do not walk
slowly simply for company—ever. Not even God would wish you to be unequally
yoked and result in destroying both of you—in fact God least of all."

Hester sat back and smiled, lifting up her knees and hugging them in a
most unladylike fashion. "I daresay I shall fall many times—and look
excessively foolish—and give rise to a good deal of hilarity among those who
dislike me—but that is still better than not trying."

"Indeed it is," Callandra agreed. "But you would do it
anyway."

8

The
most productive of Joscelin Grey's acquaintances was one of the last that Monk
and Evan visited, and not from Lady Fabia's list, but from the letters in the
flat. They had spent over a week in the area near Shelburne, discreetly
questioning on the pretense of tracing a jewel thief who specialized in
country houses. They had learned something of Joscelin Grey, of the kind of
life he led, at least while home from London. And Monk had had the unnerving
and extremely irritating experience one day while walking across the Shelburne
parkland of coming upon the woman who had been with Mrs. Latterly in St.
Marylebone Church. Perhaps he should not have been startled—after all, society
was very small—but it had taken him aback completely. The whole episode in the
church with its powerful emotion had returned in the windy, rain-spattered land
with its huge trees, and Shelburne House in the distance.

There was no reason why she should not have visited the family,
precisely as he later discovered. She was a Miss Hester Latterly, who had
nursed in the Crimea, and was a friend of Lady Callandra Daviot. As she had
told him, she had known Joscelin Grey briefly at the time of his injury. It was
most natural that once she was home she should give her condolences in person.
And also certainly within her nature that she should be outstandingly rude to a
policeman.

And give the devil her due, he had been rude back— and gained
considerable satisfaction from it. It would all have been of no possible
consequence were she not obviously related to the woman in the church whose
face so haunted him.

What had they learned? Joscelin Grey was liked, even envied for his ease
of manner, his quick smile and a gift for making people laugh; and perhaps even
more rattier than less, because the amusement had frequently an underlying
caustic quality. What had surprised Monk was that he was also, if not pitied,
then sympathized with because he was a younger son. The usual careers open to
younger sons such as the church and the army were either totally unsuitable to
him or else denied him now because of his injury, gained in the service of his
country. The heiress he had courted had married his elder brother, and he had
not yet found another to replace her, at least not one whose family considered
him a suitable match. He was, after all, invalided out of the army, without a
mer-chandisable skill and without financial expectations.

Evan had acquired a rapid education in the manners and morals of his
financial betters, and now was feeling both bemused and disillusioned. He sat
in the train staring out of the window, and Monk regarded him with a compassion
not unmixed with humor. He knew the feeling, although he could not recall experiencing
it himself. Was it possible he had never been so young? It was an unpleasant
thought that he might always have been cynical, without that particular kind
of innocence, even as a child.

Discovering himself step by step, as one might a stranger, was stretching
his nerves further than he had been aware of until now. Sometimes he woke in
the night, afraid of knowledge, feeling himself full of unknown shames and
disappointments. The shapelessness of his doubt was worse than certainty would
have been; even certainty of arrogance, indifference, or of having overridden
justice for the sake of ambition.

But the more he pulled and struggled with it, the more stubbornly it
resisted; it would come only thread by thread, without cohesion, a fragment at
a time. Where had he learned his careful, precise diction? Who had taught him
to move and to dress like a gentleman, to be so easy in his manners? Had he
merely aped his betters over the years? Something very vague stirred in his
mind, a feeling rather than a thought, that there had been someone he admired,
someone who had taken time and trouble, a mentor—but no voice, nothing but an
impression of working, practicing—and an ideal.