Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [107]
Helen sat upright, her shoulders square, facing directly forward. During the entire service she had participated with something that looked like the very first germ of enthusiasm. There was a resolution in her quite unlike the distress and anxiety Zenobia and Pitt had described. And yet as Charlotte watched her gloved hands holding the hymn book in her lap, her pale cheeks, and the slight movement of her lips, she was quite certain that any relief Helen felt was only that of having reached some decision, not of having had her fear dissolve or turn out to be a shadow with no substance. Charlotte realized it was courage she was witnessing, not joy.
Had Helen somehow ascertained that her husband had had no part in her father’s death? Or had the whole burden upon her been simply the pain of knowing that he did not love her with the depth and the commitment she longed for, which indeed he was incapable of doing. And now that she had faced the truth, tempered by the knowledge that it was a weakness in him, not in her, she had ceased to try to procure it by forfeiting her self-esteem, her dignity, and her own ideas of right. Perhaps it was a wholeness within herself she had recovered.
Three times during the service Charlotte saw James speak to her, and on each occasion she answered him civilly, in a whisper; but she turned to him not so much like a woman desperately in love, but rather with the patience of a mother towards a pestering child who is at the age when such things are to be expected. Now it was James who was surprised and confused. He was used to being the object of her suit, not the suitor, and the change was sharply unpleasant.
Charlotte smiled and thought with sweetness of Pitt standing at the back in his wet coat, watching and waiting, and in her mind she stood beside him, imagining her hand in his.
After the last hymn and the final amen, many rose to leave. Only the widow and the closest mourners followed the pallbearers and the coffin to the graveside.
It was a grim performance; nothing of the music and pageantry of the church, not a dealing with the spirit and the words of resurrection, but the tidying away of the mortal remains, the box with its unseen corpse, and the cold spring earth.
Here emotions might show raw, there might be in some face or some gesture a betrayal of the passions that moved the hearts beneath the black silk and bombazine, the barathea and broadcloth.
The sunlight was sharp outside, brilliant on the stone face of the church walls and the thick green grass sprouting around the gravestones. Old names were carved on them, and memories. Charlotte wondered if any of them had been murdered. It would hardly be written in the marble.
It was wet underfoot, and the clouds above were gray-bellied. The wind was chill, and any moment it might rain again. The pallbearers kept their even measured tread, balancing the load between them, the breeze tugging at the fluttering crepe on their black hats. They kept their faces downward, eyes to the earth, more probably from fear lest they slip than an abundance of piety.
Charlotte followed decently far behind the widow, managing to fall in step beside Amethyst Hamilton. Charlotte smiled briefly in recognition—this was not the place to renew an acquaintance with words—and kept close to her as she followed her brothers towards the great oblong hole in the earth with its fresh, dark sides falling away into an unseen bottom.
They gathered on three sides while the pallbearers lowered the coffin, and the grim ritual was played out, the wind whipping skirts and pulling at streamers of black crepe. Women held up black-gloved hands to secure their hats. Lady Mary and Zenobia put up their arms at exactly the same moment, and the two huge brims were pitched at even wilder angles. Someone tittered nervously and changed it into a