Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [31]
“Come on!” Emily said sharply. “There isn’t time to stand there admiring yourself. You must put black over it, or it will hardly be decent. I know lavender is mourning as well, but you look like a duchess about to receive. There’s this black shawl. Don’t fidget! It’s not in the least hot, and it darkens the whole thing. And black gloves, of course. And I’ve found a black hat for you.”
Charlotte did not dare ask where she had “found” it. Perhaps she would be happier not to know. Still, it was church, so it was necessary to wear a hat, apart from the obligations of fashion.
When the hat came it was extravagant, broad brimmed, feathered and veiled. She set it on her head at rather a rakish angle and started Emily giggling.
“Oh, this is awful! Please, Charlotte, do watch what you say. I’m so nervous about it you make me laugh when I don’t mean it at all. Inside I am doing everything I can not to think of that poor girl. I’m occupying my mind with all sorts of other things, even silly things, just to keep the thought of her away.”
Charlotte put her arm around her.
“I know. I know you’re not heartless. We all laugh sometimes when we really want to cry. Tell me, do I look ridiculous in this hat?”
Emily put out both her hands and altered the angle a little. She was already in the soberest black herself.
“No, no, it looks very well. Jessamyn will be furious, because afterward everyone will look at you and wonder who you are. Bring the veil down a little, and then they will have to come closer to see. There, that’s perfect! Don’t fiddle with it!”
The cortege was awe-inspiring in the deadest black: black horses pulling a black hearse, black-crepe-ribboned coachmen and black-plumed harness. The chief mourners followed immediately behind in another black, fluttering carriage, and then the rest of the attendants. Everything moved at the most august walk.
Charlotte sat with Emily, George, and Aunt Vespasia in their carriage and wondered why a people who profess a total belief in resurrection should make a melodrama out of death. It was rather like bad theater. It was a question she frequently had considered, but had never found anyone appropriate to ask. She had hoped one day to meet a bishop, although there seemed little chance of it now. She had mentioned it to Papa once and received a very stiff reply, which silenced her completely but in no way provided an answer—except that Papa obviously did not know either and found the whole matter grossly distasteful.
Now she climbed out of the carriage, taking George’s hand to alight gracefully, without tipping the black hat to an even more rakish angle, then, side by side with Aunt Vespasia, followed Emily and George through the gate of the churchyard and up the path to the door. Inside, the organ was playing the death march, with rather more exuberance than was entirely fitting and with several notes so wrong that even Charlotte winced to hear them. She wondered if the organist were the regular one, or an enthusiastic amateur drafted in ignorance for the occasion.
The service itself was very dull, but mercifully short. Possibly the vicar did not wish to mention the manner of death, in all its worldly reality, in such an unworldly place. It did not belong with stained-glass windows, organ music, and little sniffles into lace handkerchiefs. Death was pain and sickness, and terror of the long, blind, last step. And there had been nothing resigned or dignified in it for Fanny. It was not that Charlotte did not believe in God, or the resurrection; it was the attempt to soothe away the ugly truths with ritual that she hated. All this elaborate, expensive mourning was for the conscience of the living, so that they might feel they had paid due tribute and