A sudden, fearful death - Anne Perry [50]
Mr. Barrymore coughed uncomfortably, shifting his weight to the other foot.
“Oh, I know what you are thinking, Robert,” Mrs. Barrymore said as if he had spoken. “A girl cannot help having a fine mind. All I am saying is that she would have been so much happier if she had contented herself with using it in a suitable way, reading books, writing poetry if she so wished, and having conversations with friends.” She was still perched on the edge of her chair, her skirts billowed around her. “And if she desired to encourage others, and had a gift for it,” she continued earnestly, “then there is endless charitable work to be done. Goodness knows, I have spent hours and hours upon such things myself. I cannot count the numbers of committees upon which I have served.” She counted them off on her small mittened fingers. “To feed the poor, to find suitable accommodation for girls who have fallen from virtue and cannot be placed in domestic service anymore, and all manner of other good causes.” Her voice sharpened in exasperation. “But Prudence would have none of that. She would pursue medicine! She read all sorts of books with pictures in them, things no decent woman should know!” Her face twisted with distaste and embarrassment. “Of course I tried to reason with her, but she was obdurate.”
Mr. Barrymore leaned forward, frowning. “My dear, there is no use in trying to make a person different from the way she is. It was not in Prudence’s nature to abandon her learning.” He said it gently, but there was a note of weariness in his voice as if he had said the same thing many times before and, as now, it had fallen on deaf ears.
Her neck stiffened and her pointed chin set in determination.
“People have to learn to recognize the world as it is.” She looked not at him but at one of the paintings on the wall, an idyllic scene in a stable yard. “There are some things one may have, and some one may not.” Her pretty mouth tightened. “I am afraid Prudence never learned the difference. That is a tragedy.” She shook her head. “She could have been so happy, if only she had let go of her childish ideas and settled down to marry someone like poor Geoffrey Taunton. He was extremely reliable and he would have had her. Now, of course, it is all too late.” Then without warning her eyes filled with tears. “Forgive me,” she said with a ladylike sniff. “I cannot help but grieve.”
“It would be inhuman not to,” Monk said quickly. “She was a remarkable woman by all accounts, and one who brought comfort to many who were in the throes of intense suffering. You must be very proud of her.”
Mr. Barrymore smiled, but was too filled with emotion to speak.
Mrs. Barrymore looked at Monk with faint surprise, as if his praise for Prudence puzzled her.
“You speak of Mr. Taunton in the past tense, Mrs. Barrymore,” he continued. “Is he no longer alive?”
Now she looked thoroughly startled. “Oh yes. Yes indeed, Mr. Monk. Poor Geoffrey is very much alive. But it is too late for Prudence, poor girl. Now, no doubt, Geoffrey will marry that Nanette Cuthbertson. She has certainly been pursuing him for long enough.” For a moment her face changed and an expression came on it not unlike spite. “But as long as Prudence was alive, Geoffrey would never look at her. He was ’round here only last weekend, asking after Prudence, how she was doing in London and when we expected her home again.”
“He never understood her,” Mr. Barrymore