A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [41]
“Charles’s mother chose them,” Eliza repeated. “Nothing has ever been changed since her day. Charles won’t have it. He was devoted to her.” There was defeat in her voice, and a terrible loneliness, as if she were a stranger in her own house, unable to find anything that was hers.
“What about a painting of you?” Caroline suggested. “And surely he would love to have one of Alice? She has a lovely face, and if she wore something warm in color, she would draw the eye away from all those sour old men.”
“I don’t think so,” Eliza said, but she was clearly turning the idea over in her mind. “But you know, I think I’ll try asking him anyway. Tell me, Mrs. Fielding, was Alice’s play really any good? Please don’t make up a comfortable lie. It would not be kind. I think I need a truth to cling on to, even a bad one.”
“Yes, it was,” Caroline said honestly. “And by the time we had worked on it and rehearsed it that last time, it had become really excellent. There were some moments in it that were unforgettable. Above all it touched on the real nature of evil, not of attack by the supernatural, but seduction by the darker side of ourselves. Mr. Ballin was very clever, you know, and Alice could see that. She had both the courage and the honesty to learn from him.”
“Thank you. That comforts me a great deal, although I don’t think Douglas will allow her to write another, or indeed to have that one performed properly, by people with the talent to understand it. It is … it is a great pity that it will not happen this Christmas.”
“Yes, it is,” Caroline agreed. “But please don’t give up hope for the future.”
“Douglas doesn’t like it. He won’t allow it. He has said so.” There was the finality of defeat in her eyes and in the downward fall of her voice.
“Are you sure?” Caroline asked with a growing fear inside her. Was that perhaps the reason for Ballin’s death? It would not only ensure that Alice’s play was not performed, but also be a kind of punishment for Ballin because he had been the one whose suggestions had brought the work to life, the vivid depiction of fear and the reality of evil.
“Oh, no!” Eliza breathed the words more than said them, following Caroline’s train of thought. “He wouldn’t—”
“Who wouldn’t?” Caroline asked, knowing Eliza had no answer.
Eliza gave a tiny gesture of helplessness but said nothing.
Caroline touched Eliza’s hand, and then went into the hall, leaving her a few minutes of privacy before the next demand on her time came from one servant or another, with their domestic concerns.
She found all the cast in the large withdrawing room, sitting around in various chairs reading or talking quietly to one another. Douglas Paterson was there as well, listening to Lydia describe something to him. Caroline could not hear the murmured words but she saw the animation on Lydia’s pretty face, and the delicate gestures of her hands as she gave proportion to the scene of her recollection. Douglas’s eyes never left her. He was oblivious to everyone else in the room, including Alice, who was talking with Joshua near the window.
Vincent, Mercy, and James were all reading, grouped close together as if only moments before they might have been involved in some discussion. None of them looked up as Caroline came in. Suddenly she felt the same sense of exclusion that she knew Eliza must constantly feel. She was here, this was the right place for her to be, and yet she did not belong. She had never stood on a stage in her life, never played a part so convincingly that a vast sea of people in the shadow of an auditorium listened to her words, watched her face, her movements, while she held their emotions in her hands, moved them to laughter or tears, to belief in the world she created with just her presence. It was a magical art, a power she was not gifted