Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [61]
“You can have no concept of how terrible some of it is. I pray God you never do!” His face tightened. “The damage is irreparable.”
“He certainly does not do enough.” Mrs. Marchand agreed, turning to him with a pucker between her brows. “I think you should write to him, my dear, say that many of us are deeply concerned about the openness of very private emotions expressed on the stage, which may suggest to susceptible minds that women in general may be possessed of the kind of . . . of appetites indicated by Miss Antrim’s character—”
“I already have, my dear,” he interrupted.
She relaxed a little, her shoulders easing, a slight smile returning to her lips. “I’m so glad. Think of the kind of effect, the fearful notions, that could place in the minds of young men . . . like . . . like Lewis! How could he, or they, grow up with the tenderness and respect towards their wives and daughters, not to say mothers, that one would desire?”
Caroline understood only too easily what she meant. It was not herself she thought of, but her own daughters. She remembered with grief, even now, so many years afterwards, how Sarah had suffered, before her death, the fear and the disillusion in her husband because of his behavior. Any censorship at all was better than the misery they had endured then.
“Of course,” she concurred, but there was a small voice nagging at the back of her mind, one that condemned cowardice and told her she was sacrificing honesty for comfort. She quelled it and continued with her dinner, although she was aware that Mrs. Marchand had been far more easily reassured than her husband. He had been gentle with her, wanting to give her a comfort he himself could not share.
When she arrived home, Joshua was in the withdrawing room, sitting in the large chair he liked best, a book open in his lap and the gaslight turned high so he could read. It caught the few strands of silver in his brown hair and the shadows of weariness around his eyes. He closed the book and smiled at her, rising to his feet slowly.
“Nice evening with the Marchands?” He came towards her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She felt the warmth of him and the very slight smell of stage makeup, and that indefinable odor of the theatre: sweat, excitement, fabric, paint. Ten years ago it would have been as alien to her as a foreign land. Now it had familiarity, a host of memories of laughter and passion. She realized with a rush of confusion how much she was still as sharply in love with Joshua as if she were a girl and this were her first real romance. It was absurd, ludicrous in a woman of her age. It made her unbearably vulnerable.
“Yes, very pleasant,” she answered, forcing herself to smile brightly, as if it were all quite casual. “I met their son for the first time. A very shy boy.” She walked on past him towards the fire. It was not really cold outside, but she was shivering a little. And she was unprepared for the intimacy of retiring to bed. Her mind was still busy with conflicting thoughts, Edward and the past, Samuel Ellison’s smile, his stories, Hope Marchand’s fear of the depiction of new ideas, the passion to protect the young from the intrusion of violence and degradation of things they needed to believe in as pure, and Ralph Marchand’s longer sight and far deeper fear of things to come. He was right in believing that when you lost the ability to feel reverence, you lost almost everything.
She thought of her own daughters when they had been young. Joshua would not understand that; he had no children. The need to protect was so deep it was far more elemental than thought or reason, it was at the core of life. And it was so much more than merely physical . . . it was a need to nurture all that was of beauty in the heart, that gave happiness. Who wanted her child alive but incapable of faith in the essential value of love, honor or joy?
“Caroline?” There was an edge of anxiety in Joshua’s voice.