Anne Perry - A Christmas Journey

“We know what has happened,” Blanche Twyford said angrily. “Mrs. Alvie spoke inexcusably last night, and poor Mrs. Kilmuir was so distraught that she took her own life. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

Lady Salchester froze. “I beg your pardon?” she said, ice dripping from her voice.

“For heaven’s sake!” Blanche flushed. “I did not mean it personally. It is an expression of—of clarity. We all know perfectly well what happened!”

“I don’t.” Lord Salchester came surprisingly to his wife’s aid. “To me it is as much of a muddle as the nose on your face!”

Vespasia wanted to laugh hysterically. She suppressed the desire with difficulty, holding her napkin to her lips and pretending to sneeze.

Blanche Twyford glared at Lord Salchester.

Salchester opened his blue eyes very wide. “Why on earth should a perfectly healthy young woman on the brink of matrimony throw herself into the lake? Merely because her rival insults her? I don’t understand.” He looked baffled. He shook his head. “Women,” he said unhappily. “If she had been a chap, she’d simply have insulted her back, and they’d have gone to bed friends.”

“Oh, do be quiet, Ernest!” Lady Salchester snapped at him. “You are talking complete nonsense!”

“Am I?” he said mildly. “Wasn’t she going to be married? That’s what everyone said!”

Bertie stood up, white-faced, and left the room.

“Good God! He’s not going to the lake, is he?” Salchester asked, his napkin sliding to the floor.

Isobel left the table, as well, only she went out the other door, toward the garden, even though it was raining and not much above freezing outside.

“Guilt!” Lady Warburton said viciously.

“I think that’s a little harsh,” Sir John expostulated. “She was—”

“Both of them!” his wife cut across, effectively cutting off whatever he had been going to say. He lapsed into silence.

Omegus rose to his feet. “Lady Vespasia, I wonder if I might talk with you in the library?”

“Of course.” She was grateful for the chance to escape the ghastly meal table. She scraped her chair back before the footman could pull it out for her.

“You’re not going to just leave it!” Lady Warburton accused him. “This cannot be run away from. I won’t allow it!”

Omegus looked at her coldly. “I am going to think before I act, Lady Warburton. An error now, even if made with the purest of motives, could cause grief which could not later be undone. Excuse me.” And leaving her angry, and now confounded, he left the room with Vespasia at his heels.

In the silence of the book-lined library with its exquisite bronzes he closed the door and turned to face her. “Evelyn Warburton is right,” he said grimly. There was intense sadness in his eyes, and the lines around his mouth were drawn down.

“It was foolish,” she agreed. “And unkind. Both are faults, but not in any way crimes, or most of society would be in prison. It is dreadful that Gwendolen should have taken her life, but surely it is because she believed that Bertie would not marry her after all? It cannot be simply that Isobel behaved so badly.”

He regarded her with patience. “It is not necessarily what is but what is perceived that society will judge,” he answered. “Whether it is fair or not will enter into it very little. If we allow it to pass without addressing it, each time it is retold it will grow worse. What Isobel actually said will be lost in the exaggerations until no one remembers the truth. Tales alter every time they are retold, and, my dear, you must know that.” There was a faint reproof in his voice.

Of course she knew it, and felt the color burn in her face for her evasion. “What can we do?” she said helplessly. “What do you suppose the truth is? And how will we ever know? Gwendolen can’t tell us, and if Bertie quarreled with her, do you imagine he will tell us, in view of what has happened? Did Lady Warburton go after her? Do you know?”

“Apparently not. Do you know anything of medieval trials when someone was accused of a crime?” he asked.

She was astounded. Surely he could not have said what she thought she had heard. “I beg your pardon?”

Somewhere in the garden a dog was barking, and a servant’s rapid footsteps crossed the hall. The ghost of a smile curved his lips. “I am not referring to trial by combat, or by ordeal. I was thinking of a process of discovering the truth so far as we are able. If Isobel is indeed guilty of anything, or if Bertie is, then all of us agreeing upon a form of expiation would absolve them of guilt, after which we would make a solemn covenant that the matter would be considered closed.”

A wild hope flared up inside her. “But would we?” she said, struggling to believe it. “Would we agree to it? And could we find the truth? What if the guilty person would not accept the expiation?” She lifted her shoulders very slightly. “And what could it be? What if they simply walk away? We have no power to enforce anything. Why should they trust us to keep silent afterwards, let alone to forgive?”

He walked over to the heavy velvet curtains and the window overlooking the parkland with its rolling grass and great trees, now winter bare. Rain spattered against the glass.

“I have thought about it,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “The idea always appealed to me, the belief in expiation and forgiveness, a new start. Surely that is the only hope for any of us. We need both to forgive and to be forgiven.”

Looking at him standing with the harsh light on his face, she saw more pain inside him than she had in the years she had known him, and also a far greater understanding of peace. In that instant she wished above all to fulfill this faith in her, to make him pleased that it was she to whom he had turned.

“But why should they agree?” she said anxiously. “We have no power other than persuasion.”

He smiled and turned to face her. “Oh, but we have! The power of society is almost infinite, my dear. To be excluded is a kind of death. And if one is spoken of with sufficient venom, invitations cease, doors are closed, and one becomes invisible. People pass one by without a glance. One finds that in all ways that matter, one no longer exists. A young woman becomes unmarriageable. A young man has no career, no position; all clubs are closed to him.”

It was true. Vespasia had seen it. It was the cruelest fate because the people to whom it could happen were unfitted for any other life. They did not know how to earn a living in the work done by ordinary men and women. Those occupations also were closed to them. No woman born a lady could suddenly become a maid or a laundress. Even had she the skills, the temperament, and the stamina, she was not acceptable either to an employer of the class she used to be, or to the other employees to whose class she did not belong, nor ever could.

And she was not fitted or trained for any of the other occupations in which a woman could earn her way.

Suddenly Vespasia realized just what might be ahead for Isobel, and she felt cold and sick. “How will that help us?” she said huskily.

He looked at her with great earnestness. “If I explain to everyone what I have in mind, and they agree, then they will all be bound by it,” he answered. “The punishment for breaking their word would be exactly that same ostracism which will be applied to whoever is found at fault in Gwendolen’s death. Anyone who refuses to abide by that brands himself as outside the group of the rest of us. No one will wish to do that.” He shook his head a tiny fraction, lips tight. “Don’t tell me it is coercion. I know. Few people accept the judgment of their peers without it. It will offer a way for us to prevent the pain, and perhaps injustice, that may result otherwise.” His voice became softer. “And as important, it will at least give Isobel, or Bertie if it is he to blame, a chance to expiate the act of cruelty they may have performed.”