Bethlehem Road (29 page)

Zenobia swallowed hard. She thought of Peter Holland that last night before he sailed for the Crimea. How he would have laughed at this! He would have seen the danger—and the absurdity. “You might tell me something about those women who are striving to obtain the franchise.” She saw the immediate tightening of disapproval in Lady Mary’s face, the drawing together of the brows and the sharpening of the pale blue eyes. “What manner of people are they? Indeed, who are they?”

“What they are is very easy,” Lady Mary replied. “They are women who have failed to make a suitable marriage, or who have an unnaturally masculine turn of mind and desire to dominate rather than be the domestic, gracious, and sensitive creatures they were intended to be, both by God and nature. They are women who have neither made themselves attractive nor acquired such arts and accomplishments as are becoming to a woman and useful in her natural functions of bearing and raising children and ordering a house which is a refuge of quiet and decency for her husband, away from the evils of the world. Why any woman should choose otherwise I cannot imagine—except, of course, as a revenge upon those of us who are normal, whom they cannot or will not emulate. I regret to say there is a growing number of such creatures, and they endanger the very fabric of society.” Her eyebrows rose. “I trust you will have nothing to do with them, even if your natural instincts and your spinster circumstances tempt you!” For a moment malice was plain in her eyes, and old memories sharp. Mary Carfax’s pretense at pity was a sham; she had forgotten and forgiven nothing.

“Heaven knows,” she continued in her rather thin voice, “there is enough unrest and distress in the country already. People are actually criticizing the Queen, and I believe there is talk of revolution and anarchy. Government is threatened on all sides.” She sighed heavily. “One only has to consider these ghastly outrages on Westminster Bridge to realize that the whole of society is in peril.”

“Do you think so?” Zenobia affected a mixture of doubt and respect, but there was a fleeting smile inside her, an old fragment of warmth, like a snatch of song returning.

“I am certain of it!” Lady Mary bridled. “What other interpretation would you put upon affairs?”

Now it was time for innocence. “Possibly the tragedies you speak of arise from a personal motive: envy, greed, fear—perhaps revenge for some injury or slight?”

“Revenge on three such men, all of them members of Parliament?” Lady Mary was interested in spite of herself. She breathed in slowly, glanced at the photographs of Gerald Carfax and of James on top of the piano, then let out a sigh. “One of them was the father-in-law of my son, you know.”

“Yes—how very tragic for you,” Zenobia murmured superficially. “And, of course, for your son.” She was not sure how to proceed. What she needed was to know more about James and his wife, and asking Lady Mary would produce only her own opinion, which was inevitably biased beyond any use. But she could think of no other avenue to pursue. “I imagine he is very much affected?”

“Ah, yes—of course. Of course he is.” Lady Mary bristled a trifle.

Zenobia had watched people of many sorts, gentry and working people, artisans, gamblers, seamen, adventurers and tribesmen. She had learned much that all had in common. She recognized embarrassment under Lady Mary’s stiff hesitation and the very slightest tinge of color staining her scrubbed and pallid cheeks—Mary would never descend to paint of any sort! So James Carfax was not grieving for his father-in-law.

Zenobia tried a more sympathetic tack, sensing an opening. “Mourning is very hard for young people, and of course Mrs. Carfax is no doubt most distressed.”

“Most,” Lady Mary agreed instantly this time. “She has taken it very hard—which is only natural, I suppose. But it puts a great strain upon James.”

Zenobia said nothing, her silence inviting further enlightenment.

“She is very dependent upon him,” Lady Mary added. “Very demanding, just at the moment.”

Again Zenobia understood the hesitation, and the wealth of memory behind it. She recalled Lady Mary as she had been thirty years ago: proud, domineering, convinced she knew what was best for all and determined—in their interest—to accomplish it for them. No doubt James Carfax had been prime among them, and Lady Mary would not approve the vying demands of a wife.

Any further thought along this line was prevented by the entrance of the parlormaid, who returned to say that Mr. James and Mrs. Carfax had called, and indeed they were right behind her. Zenobia regarded them with profound interest as they came in and were introduced. James Carfax was above average height, elegantly slender, with the kind of easy smile she had never cared for. But was that a judgment of him, or of herself? Not a strong man, she thought, not a man she would have taken with her up the great rivers of Africa—he would panic when she most needed him.

Helen Carfax was a different matter. There was strength in her face, not beauty, but a balance of bone and a width to her mouth which was pleasing, and which would grow more so with time. But she was a woman under extreme stress. Zenobia had seen the signs before: she did nothing so obvious as wringing her hands, tearing her handkerchief, pulling at her gloves, or twisting a ring; it was in the eyes, a rim of white between the pupil and the lower lid, and a stiffness in her walk as if her muscles ached. It was more than grief or the pain of a loss already sustained; it was the fear of a loss yet to come. And her husband appeared to be unaware of it.

“How do you do, Miss Gunne.” He bowed very slightly. He was charming, direct, his eyes were handsome and he met hers with a candid smile. “I do hope we do not interrupt you? I call upon Mama quite regularly, and I have nothing of urgency to say. In time of mourning there are so few calls one can make, and I thought it would be so pleasant to be out for a little while. Please do not curtail your visit on our account.”

“How do you do, Mr. Carfax,” Zenobia answered, regarding him without disguising her interest. His clothes were beautifully cut, his shirts of silk, the signet ring on his hand in perfect taste. Even his boots were handmade and, she guessed, of imported leather. Someone was making him a handsome allowance, and it was not Lady Mary, unless she had changed out of all character! She would give a little at a time, Zenobia knew, carefully, watching how each penny was spent: it was her form of power. “You are very gracious,” Zenobia said aloud. It was habit, not any liking for him that prompted her words.

He gestured towards Helen. “May I present my wife.”

“How do you do, Miss Gunne,” Helen said dutifully. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“And I yours, Mrs. Carfax.” Zenobia smiled very slightly, as one would to a woman one had only just met. “May I offer my deepest sympathy on your recent bereavement. Everyone of sensibility must feel for you.”

Helen looked almost taken aback; her mind had been on something else. “Thank you,” she muttered. “Most kind of you ...” Apparently she had already forgotten Zenobia’s name.

The next thirty minutes passed in desultory conversation. James and his mother were obviously close, socially, if not emotionally. Zenobia watched them with intense interest, making occasional remarks to Helen sufficient to be civil, and now and again searching her face when she was watching her husband. From those trivial words, the exchanges of polite society, the pauses between, the flicker of resentments, suppressed pain, habits of manner so deeply ingrained as to be unconsciously adhered to, and the edge of fear unheard or ignored by others, Zenobia guessed at a whole history of hungers unmet.

She knew Mary Carfax and was not surprised that she both spoiled and dominated her only son, flattering him, indulging his vanity and his appetites, and at the same time kept the purse strings tightly in her own jewel-encrusted fingers. His carefully well-mannered resentment was inevitable, his shifts between gratitude and rancor, his habit of dependence, his underlying knowledge that she thought him a fine man, the best, and his own whispering doubt that he had never justified such esteem and almost certainly never would. If it had been Mary Carfax who had been murdered, Zenobia would have known where to look immediately.

But it was Etheridge. The money leapt to mind, massive, lavish, all that even James Carfax could need to gain his precious freedom. But from whom? Only from Mary—it would tie him to Helen, now that the Married Women’s Property Acts had been passed.

Or would it? One had only to glance at Helen’s pale face, her eyes on James’s or staring blindly through the window at the sky, to see she loved her husband far more than he did her. She praised him, she protected him, a faint flush of pleasure touched her cheeks when he spoke gently to her, her pain showed naked when he was patronizing or used her as the butt of his swift, light jokes, distasteful in their subtle cruelty. She would give him whatever he wanted in an attempt to purchase his love, and Zenobia’s heart ached for her, knowing her pain would never cease. She was seeking something which he did not possess to give. Changes unimaginable would have to be wrought in James Carfax before he had the depth or the power within him from which to draw generous or untainted love. Zenobia had loved weak men herself, when she was alone in Africa, and old memories resurfaced, and old hungers. She had woken to the slow, scalding pain that her love would never be returned. You can draw little from a shallow vessel; the quality of feeling reflects the quality of the man—or woman. The soul with little courage, honor, or compassion may give what they have, but it will not satisfy a larger heart.

One day Helen Carfax would know that, would understand that she would never earn from James what he did not have to give her, or to anyone else.

Zenobia remembered some of her own romantic adventures, the rash giving, the clinging to hope, and wondered with a cold, sick fear if Helen had already paid the greatest price of all, having taken her father’s life with her own hands, for the money to buy her husband’s loyalty.

Then she looked again at the pale face with its white-rimmed eyes, now resting on James’s elegant figure, and thought the fear was for him, not for herself. She was afraid that he had done the deed, or somehow contrived to have it done.

She stood up slowly, a trifle stiff from having sat so long.

“I am sure, Lady Mary, that you have family business to discuss and would care for a little privacy. It is such a delightful day I should like a short walk in the sun. Mrs. Carfax, perhaps you would be so kind as to accompany me?”

Helen looked startled, almost as if she had not understood.

“We might walk as far as the top of the road,” Zenobia persisted. “I am sure the air would do us good, and I should appreciate your company, and perhaps your arm.”

It was ridiculous—Zenobia was far stronger than Helen and assuredly had no need for support, but it was an invitation Helen could not civilly refuse, phrased in such terms. Obediently she excused herself to her husband and mother-in-law, and five minutes later she and Zenobia were outside in the sunny street.

It was a subject that could not possibly be approached directly, yet Zenobia felt impelled, even at the risk of causing serious offense, to speak to Helen as if she had been a daughter, a reflection of her own youth. She was prepared to mix truth of emotion with invention of setting in order to do it.

“My dear, I sympathize with you deeply,” she began as soon as they were a few yards from the house. “I too lost my father in violent and distressing circumstances.” She had not time to waste recounting that piece of fiction; it was merely an introduction. The story that mattered was of Zenobia’s desperate attempt to win from a man a love of which he was not capable, and how instead she had lost her own integrity, paying a fortune for an article that did not exist, for her or for anyone.

She began slowly, extending her invented bereavement into her journeys to Africa, avoiding the numbing reality of Balaklava and Peter Holland’s death. Instead she created first an imaginary father snatched in his late prime, then on to a suitor, a mixture of men she had known and cared for in one fashion or another—but never Peter.

“Oh my dear, I loved him so much,” she sighed, looking not at Helen but at the briar hedge a little to their left. “He was handsome, and so considerate, such delightful and interesting company.”

“What happened?” Helen asked out of politeness, not interest, because the silence seemed to require it.

Zenobia mixed disillusion with a modicum of poetic license.

“I gave him the finances for his trip, and unwisely many gifts towards it also.”

Helen’s whole attention was caught for the first time. “That is only natural—you loved him.”

“And I wanted him to love me,” Zenobia continued, aware that she was about to wound, perhaps intensely. “I even did things that on looking back I realize were dishonorable. I suppose I knew it at the time, had I been brave enough to admit it.” She did not look at Helen, but kept her eyes on the white drifting clouds scudding across the sky ahead of them. “It took me a long time and much heartache before I understood that I had paid a high price for something which was not real, something I could never hope to gain.”

“What?” Helen swallowed hard, and still Zenobia did not look at her. “What do you mean?”

“That it is an illusion many women have, my dear, that all men are capable of the kind of love we long for, and that if we are only faithful, generous, and patient enough they will give it to us in the end. Some people are not capable of that commitment. You cannot draw a deep draft from a shallow vessel, and to try to do so will only cost you your peace of mind, your good health, perhaps even your self-esteem, the integrity of your own ideals which are at the heart of all lasting happiness.”

Helen said nothing for several minutes. There was no sound but the steady rhythm of their footsteps on the pavement, a bird singing in a high tree, green against the blue sky, and upon the main road the clop of horses’ hooves and the hiss of carriage wheels.

At last Helen put her hand very gently on Zenobia’s arm. “Thank you,” she said with difficulty. “I think I have been doing the same thing. Perhaps you knew? But somehow I shall find the courage to cease now. I have already done enough damage. I have cast blame on the women fighting to be represented in Parliament, because I was desperate to direct the police away from my household, when in truth I have no idea that they have any guilt in my father’s death. It was a shabby thing to do. I pray no one has been injured by it—except myself, for my poverty of spirit.