Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [45]
Dolly laughed.
“For heaven’s sake, my dear, most men are like that. One simply finds one’s own way ’round it. A little flattery, a little charm, and a great deal of tact to his face, and disobedience once his attention is elsewhere and most things can be achieved.”
“She did not want to have to work for what she felt was every woman’s right.”
“You are sounding like a ‘new woman’ yourself!”
“Certainly not. I am a very old woman.” Vespasia changed the subject. “What does this Christabel Thorne do that is so radical? She has not left her home, I’m sure.”
“Far worse than that.” Now there was real disapproval in Dolly’s face; the laughter had gone entirely. “She has some sort of an establishment which prints and distributes the most detailed literature encouraging women to educate themselves and attempt to enter the professions. I ask you! Who on earth is going to employ a woman lawyer, or architect, or judge, or a woman physician? And it is all quite pointless. Men will never tolerate it anyway. But of course she will not listen.”
“Extraordinary,” Vespasia said with as little expression in her voice as she could manage. “Quite extraordinary.”
They got no further with the subject because another caller arrived, and although it was well past four o’clock, it was apparent that Vespasia should take her leave.
The last person she visited was Nobby Gunne. She found her in her garden staring at the flag irises, a distracted expression on her face. Curiously, she looked anxious and yet inwardly she had a kind of happiness which lent her skin a glow.
“How nice to see you,” she said, turning from the iris bed and coming forward. “I am sure it must be teatime. May I send for some for you? You will stay?”
“Of course,” Vespasia accepted.
They walked side by side across the wide sunny sweep of the lawn, the occasional longer spikes of the uncut edges catching their skirts. A bumblebee flew lazily from one early pink rose to another.
“There is something about an English summer garden,” Nobby said quietly. “And yet I find myself thinking more and more often of Africa.”
“Surely you don’t wish to go back there now, do you?” Vespasia was surprised. Nobby was past the age when such an enterprise would be either easy to arrange or comfortable in execution. What was an adventure at thirty could be an ordeal at fifty-five.
“Oh no! Not in the slightest.” Nobby smiled. “Except in the occasional daydream. Memory can be misleadingly sweet. No, I worry about it, most particularly after the conversation we had the other evening. There is so much money involved in it now, so much profit to be made from settlement and trade. The days of exploration to discover a place, simply because no white man had seen it before, are all past. Now it is a matter of treaties, mineral rights and soldiers. There’s been so much blood already.” She looked sad, gazing at the honeysuckle spilling over the low wall they were passing.
“Nobody talks about missionaries anymore. I haven’t heard anyone even mention Moffatt or Livingstone in a couple of years. It is all Stanley and Cecil Rhodes now, and money.” She stared up at the elm trees shining and whispering in the sun, and below them the climbing white roses beginning to open. It was all intensely English. Africa with its burning heat and sun and dust seemed like a fairy story not real enough to matter.
But looking at Nobby’s face, Vespasia could see the depth of her emotion, and how deeply she still cared.
“Times do change,” she said aloud. “I am afraid that after the idealists come the realists, the practical profiteers. It has always been so. Perhaps it is inevitable.” She walked quietly beside Nobby and stopped in front of a massive lupine whose dozen spikes were already showing pink. “Be grateful that you were privileged to see the best days and be part of them.”
“If that were all”—Nobby frowned—“if it were only a matter of personal regret, I would let it go. But it really does matter, Vespasia.” She looked around,