Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [106]
“How do you do, Miss Farber.” She inclined her head graciously, but there was no interest in her face. “How do you do, Miss Pitt,” she added, when Clio had supplied the missing name. Charlotte did not bother to correct the title (something she would normally have leaped to do), but any possible connection with Thomas was to be avoided.
“How do you do, Mrs. Harrimore,” she replied, regarding the old lady curiously. She had a remarkable countenance, powerful, and yet with a knowledge of fear, a guardedness about it that was at the same time belied by its boldness. There was iron will in it, and yet also anxiety, a looking for reassurance to her son. It was full of contradictions.
“I did enjoy the music.” Charlotte summoned her thoughts to the present. “Did you not think the pianist was excellent?”
“Very gifted,” Adah conceded with the slightest pucker between her brows. “Many of them are, in that field.”
Charlotte was lost. “I beg your pardon. Many of whom, Mrs. Harrimore?”
“Jews, of course,” Adah replied, her frown increasing as she looked at Charlotte more closely, surveying her strong face and rich, deep coloring, her hair like polished chestnut. “Not that I suppose that has anything to do with it,” she added inconsequentially.
Charlotte knew at least a smattering of history in the matter.
“It might have. Did we not in the past deny them most other occupations apart from medicine and the arts?”
“I don’t know what you mean—deny them!” Adah said sharply. “Would you have Jews into everything? It’s hard enough they are in all the finances of the nation, and I daresay the whole Empire, without being everywhere else as well. We know what they do in Europe.”
Devlin O’Neil smiled briefly, first at Adah, then at his father-in-law. He stood very close to his wife. “It’s as bad as the Irish, isn’t it?” he said cheerfully. “Let them in to build the railways, and now they’re all over the place. One is even obliged now and then to meet them socially. And into politics too, I’ll wager.”
“That is not at all the same thing,” Prosper Harrimore said, without even the faintest flicker of answering humor in his face. “The Irish are just like us, my dear boy. As you know perfectly well.”
“Oh indeed,” O’Neil agreed, putting his arm around Kathleen. “For some they even are us. Was not the great Iron Duke himself an Irishman?”
“Anglo-Irish,” Prosper corrected, this time the shadow of a smile on his narrow lips. “Like you. Not the same thing, Devlin.”
“Well, he certainly wasn’t a Jew,” Adah said decisively. “He was good blood, the best. One of the greatest leaders we ever had. We might all be speaking French now without him.” She shivered. “And eating obscenities out of the garden, and heaven only knows what else, with morals straight from Paris. And what goes on there is not fit to mention.”
Charlotte did not know what possessed her to say it, except perhaps a desire to break the careful veneer of good manners and reach some deeper emotion.
“Of course Mr. Disraeli was a Jew,” she said distinctly into the silence. “And he was one of the best prime ministers we ever had. Without him we would forever be having to sail all the way ’round the bottom of Africa to get to India or China, not to mention getting our tea coming back. Or opium.”
“I beg your pardon!” Adah’s eyebrows shot up and even Devlin O’Neil looked startled.
“Oh.” Charlotte recollected herself quickly. “I was thinking of various medicines for the relief of pain, and the treatment of certain illnesses, which I believe we fought China very effectively in order to obtain—in trade …”
Kathleen looked polite but confused.
“Perhaps if we hadn’t gone meddling in foreign places,” Adah said tartly, “then we would not have acquired their diseases either! A person is better off in the country in which God placed him in the first instance. Half the trouble in the world comes out of people being where they do not belong.”
“I believe Her Majesty was