Callander Square - Anne Perry [67]
“I suppose so,” Jemima agreed reluctantly. “But it seems a terrible price to pay for it. So many who do not come back. Think of all the wives, and families.”
“There is not much that can be purchased without a heavy price,” Charlotte said, thinking back on the few things she knew of real value—of compassion, gratitude, understanding. “What we do not pay for in some way, unfortunately we tend not to regard in its true worth.” She smiled to soften the words a little.
Jemima frowned.
“Do you not think sometimes we value a thing merely because we have paid for it?” she asked. “And perhaps paid too much? And so we cling to it, and go on paying?”
Charlotte thought about it for a moment. She had become bound to a thing, committed to it for no better reason than all that she had already sacrificed for it. Perhaps some of her early infatuation for Dominic held some element of such a habit of emotion. But was Jemima thinking about the price of possessions, of war—or about the fear that Brandy Balantyne might fight somewhere, and be killed? She recalled other small fragments of conversation they had had, gentle, frequent mention of the Balantynes.
“Yes,” she agreed, bringing herself back to the moment. “Oh yes. Men tend to do that with wars and politics, and perhaps women do so with marriages.”
Jemima relaxed with a little rueful sigh.
“Well, for women, where else is there to go? One cannot give up a marriage, however empty it may be; there is nothing to do but work at it. One has no means to leave. Even if one possessed money beforehand, when one marries it becomes the property of one’s husband. If one leaves, one goes without anything. And no one in society will help, because divorce is not acceptable. My elder sister—still, that is an unhappy subject, and I am sure you don’t wish to hear of it. Tell me more about the work you are doing. You told me that General Balantyne actually saw the charge of the Light Brigade, himself! I pray there may never be such a dreadful, useless waste of lives again. How can the women ever forgive for all those deaths, the losses, and all so unnecessary: a little common sense could have—”
“Common sense is excessively rare,” Charlotte interrupted. “I have often seen afterward things which I would permit no one to tell me at the time.” She wondered if she should say something about Brandy Balantyne. It was his relationship with Euphemia Carlton that concerned her, of course. If he could have been her lover, he must be a most unprincipled man, and could bring Jemima nothing but pain. One needed only to have been in love once, to have ached in secret and unfulfilled, to see it clearly in others.
She felt the wound now for Jemima.
No, it was better to say nothing. She would have curled with mortification to have had anyone else know how she had felt, in the past. Now of course she loved Pitt, and it hardly mattered. But for Jemima it was the present, and there was no Pitt.
So she talked instead of other things, of teaching history to children, and heard tales of the schoolroom, some that made her laugh. Presently she took her leave and returned to the library, resolved to deal somehow with the matter herself.
She worried about it all evening, till Pitt asked her what absorbed her so, and of course she was unable to answer, since she felt it was an entirely feminine confidence, and he would not understand. She replied that it was a friend whose romance exercised her, and he seemed satisfied not to press further. And indeed, it was true enough.
Much of the night she lay awake, wrestling with her conscience as to whether she