Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [125]
She hurried inside and found Callantha Swynford sitting by the fire in the parlor, a tray of tea in front of her and Gracie hovering anxiously, twisting her fingers in her apron.
Callantha, her face pale, stood up as soon as Charlotte came in.
“Charlotte, I do hope you will forgive my calling upon you, after—after that distressing scene. I—I am most deeply ashamed!”
“Thank you, Gracie,” Charlotte said quickly. “Please bring me another cup, and then you may leave to attend to Miss Jemima.” As soon as she had gone, Charlotte turned back to Callantha. “There is no need to be. I know very well you had no desire for such a thing. If you have called because of that, please put it out of your mind. I bear no resentment at all.”
“I am grateful.” Callantha was still standing. “But that is not my principal reason for coming. The day you spoke with Titus, he told me what you had said to each other, and ever since then I have been thinking. I have learned a great deal from you and Emily.”
Gracie came in with the cup and left in silence.
“Please, would you not care to sit down?” Charlotte invited. “And perhaps take more tea? It is still quite hot.”
“No, thank you. This is easier to say if I am standing.” She remained with her back half toward Charlotte as she looked out the French windows into the garden and the bare trees in the rain. “I would be grateful if you would suffer me to complete what I have to say without interrupting me, in case I lose my courage.”
“Of course, if you wish.” Charlotte poured her own tea.
“I do. As I said, I have learned a great deal since you and Emily first came to my house—nearly all of it extremely unpleasant. I had no idea that human beings indulged themselves in such practices, or that so many people lived in poverty so very painful. I suppose it was all there for me to see, had I chosen to, but I belong to a family and a class that does not choose to.
“But since I have been obliged to see a little, through the things you have told me and shown me, I have begun to think for myself and to notice things. Words and expressions that I had previously ignored have now come to have meaning—even things within my own family. I have told my cousin Benita Waybourne about our efforts to make child prostitution intolerable, and I have enlisted her support. She, too, has opened her eyes to unpleasantness she had previously allowed herself to ignore.
“All this must seem very pointless to you, but please bear with me—it is not.
“I realized the day you spoke to Titus that both he and Godfrey had been beguiled into giving evidence against Mr. Jerome which was not entirely true, and certainly not true in its implication. He was deeply distressed about it, and I think a great deal of his guilt has come to rest upon me also. I began to consider what I knew of the affair. Up until then, my husband had never discussed it with me—indeed, Benita was in the same circumstance—but I realized it was time I stopped hiding behind the convention that women are the weaker sex, and should not be asked even to know of such things, far less inquire into them. That is the most arrant nonsense! If we are fit to conceive children, to bear and to raise them, to nurse the sick and prepare the dead, we can certainly endure the truth about our sons and daughters, or about our husbands.”
She hesitated, but Charlotte kept her word and did not interrupt. There was no sound but the fire in the grate and the soft patter of rain on the window.
“Maurice Jerome did not kill Arthur,” Callantha went on. “Therefore someone else must have—and since Arthur had had a relationship of that nature, that also must have been with someone else. I spoke to Titus and to Fanny, quite closely, and I forbade them to lie. It is time for the truth, however unpleasant it may be. Lies will all