Southampton Row - Anne Perry [41]
“That is most unsuitable!” he said sharply. “He painted the sort of person you should have no interest in. Rake’s Progress, indeed! Sometimes I think you have lost all sense of responsibility, Isadora. It is time you took your position a great deal more seriously.”
“It was an exhibition of his portraits!” she said tartly, turning back to look at him. “There was nothing unsuitable about them at all. There were several of domestic servants with very agreeable faces and dressed right up to the ears. They even had hats on!”
“There is no need to be flippant,” he criticized. “And wearing a hat does not make one virtuous! As you should know!”
She was stunned. “Why on earth should I know that?”
“Because you are as aware as I am of the laxity and spiteful tongues of many of the women who attend church every Sunday,” he replied. “With hats on!”
“This conversation is absurd,” she said, exasperated. “What is the matter with you? Are you unwell?” She did not mean it in any literal way. He bordered on hypochondria and she no longer had patience with it. Then she realized the remarkable change in him. The little color he had bleached out of his skin.
“Do I look ill?” he demanded.
“Yes, certainly you do,” she answered honestly. “What did you have for luncheon?”
His eyes widened as if a sudden thought had come to him, a bright and uplifting one. Then anger swept over him, color making his cheeks pink. “Grilled sole!” he snapped. “I prefer to dine alone this evening. I have a sermon to prepare.” And without saying anything further, or even glancing up at her, he turned on his heel and went back to his study, closing the door with a sharp snap.
However, at dinnertime he changed his mind. Isadora did not particularly wish to eat, but the cook had prepared a meal and she felt it ungracious not to partake, so she was seated alone at the table when the Bishop appeared. She wondered whether to make any remark on his feeling better, and decided not to. He might construe it as sarcasm, or criticism—or worse, he might tell her, in far more detail than she wished to know, exactly how he was.
For the entire soup course they ate in silence. When the parlormaid brought in the salmon and vegetables the Bishop at last spoke.
“Things are looking dark. I don’t expect you to understand politics, but new forces are gaining power and influence over certain parts of society, those easily enamored of new ideas, simply because they are new—“ He stopped, apparently having forgotten his train of thought.
She waited, more out of courtesy than interest.
“I am afraid for the future,” he said quietly, looking down at his plate.
She was used to pompous statements, so it startled her that she really believed him. She heard fear in his voice, not pious concern for mankind, but real sharp anxiety, the sort that wakens you in the night with sweat on your body and your heart knocking in your chest. What could he possibly know that would shock him out of his habitual complacency? Certitude that he was right was a way of life with him, a shield against all the arrows of doubt that afflict most people.
Could it be anything that mattered? She really did not want to know. It was probably some miserable issue of insult or quarrel within the church hierarchy, or more tragic, someone he cared for fallen from grace. She should have asked him, but tonight she had no patience to listen to some variation on old themes she had heard over and over, in one form or another, all her married life.
“You can only do your best,” she said calmly. “I daresay when you tackle it a day at a time, it will not be so bad.” She picked up her fork and began to eat again.
They both continued in silence for a while, then she looked up at him and saw panic in his eyes. He was staring at her as if he peered far beyond to something unendurable. His hand holding the fish fork was trembling and there were beads of sweat on his lip.
“Reginald, what has happened?” she said with alarm.