Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [118]
Vespasia shook her head very slightly. “You cannot heal her, but you can allow her time and room to heal herself . . . a little . . . if she wants to. After these years of anger it would take a miracle . . . but miracles do happen from time to time.” She gave a very slight smile. “I have seen a few. Never give up hope. If she can believe that you have hope, she may learn to have it herself.”
“It doesn’t sound a great deal,” Caroline said reluctantly.
Vespasia moved very slightly, the light silver on her hair.
“The damage done by that kind of abuse is very, very deep. The physical is nothing, in comparison. It is the wound to the faith, to what one believes of oneself, that may be irrevocable. If you cannot love yourself, and believe you are worth loving, then it is impossible to love anyone else.” She gave a tiny shrug, the sun shimmering on the silk of her gown. “When Christ commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves, the ‘self’ part was just as important. We forget that at a terrible price.”
Caroline considered it for several minutes. She thought also of Pitt, and the photographs of Cecily Antrim, and young Lewis Marchand’s face. In stilted words she told Vespasia about that also.
When she had finished, Vespasia was smiling.
“That must have been very difficult for you,” she said with approval. “Please do not chastise yourself over what you cannot change. There is a limit to what any of us can do, and sometimes we take the blame for things far beyond our power to affect. We each have our own agency to choose how we will react to our circumstances. We cannot take that from anyone, nor should we wish to, even if we have the arrogance to believe we know better than they do how they should behave or what judgments they should make. We may beg, plead, argue, we may pray—and we should—but in the end the only person anyone can change is themselves. Please be content with that. It is all you will receive, I promise you. And it is all you should. It is sufficient.”
“And what about the pictures?” Caroline asked. “We talk very freely about not censoring art. But the people who say that don’t think of the damage they can do. If they had seen young Lewis Marchand’s face, they wouldn’t have thought their freedom worth so much. They aren’t the people with children . . . they . . .” She stopped, realizing how wrong she was. “Yes, they are . . . at least Cecily Antrim is.” She frowned. “Am I old-fashioned, repressed, backward-thinking? She would say I am boring and getting old!” The words hurt as she said them. Spoken aloud they were even worse than silent in her mind.
“I am not getting old,” Vespasia replied vigorously. “I most assuredly have arrived there. It is not as bad as you may fear . . . in fact it has distinct pleasures. Go and read your Robert Browning, and have a little more faith in life, my dear. And so far as being boring is concerned, kindness and honesty are never tedious. Cruelty, hypocrisy and pretentiousness always are . . . excruciatingly so. A fool may not be interesting, but if he or she is generous and interested in you, you will find you like him, however limited his wit.”
“Why would Cecily Antrim pose for such pictures?” Caroline followed her thoughts. “When Joshua finds out he is going to be so distressed . . . I think . . .”
Then suddenly she was terribly afraid he would not be, it would be she herself he thought out of step, critical, imprisoned in old thought.
Vespasia was looking at her very steadily, her eyes silver-gray in the soft light of this clear, uncluttered room. The sun was bright on the grass beyond the windows, the trees motionless against the blue sky.
Caroline felt transparent, all her thoughts, her fears, naked.
“I think you are being a trifle unfair to him,” Vespasia said frankly. “Of course he will be hurt, and wish to judge her more kindly than may prove possible. Disillusion cuts very deep. He will need you to be sure of yourself. I think you should consider long and carefully what it is you hold most dear, and then do not let go of it.”
Caroline said nothing. She