William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

quite different way from Miss Araminta. You never saw her, but she was so alive—” Suddenlymisery gripped hold of her again, and all the realization of loss flooded back, and the anger she had been trying to suppress. “That was wicked, what they said about her! Why do people say things like that?” Her chin came up and her eyes were blazing. “Fancy her saying all those wretched things about Dinah, and Mrs. Willis and all. They won’t ever forgive her for that, you know. Why did she do it?”
    “Spite?” Hester suggested. “Or maybe just exhibitionism. She loves to be the center of attention. If anyone is looking at her she feels alive—important.”
    Mary looked confused.
    “There are some people like that.” Hester tried to explain what she had never put into words before. “They’re empty, insecure alone; they only feel real when other people listen to them and take notice.”
    “Admiration.” Mary laughed bitterly. “It’s contempt. What she did was vicious. I can tell you, no one ’round here’ll forgive her for it.”
    “I don’t suppose that’ll bother her,” Hester said dryly, thinking of Fenella’s opinion of servants.
    Mary smiled. “Oh yes it will!” she said fiercely. “She won’t get a hot cup of tea in the morning anymore; it will be lukewarm. We will be ever so sorry, we won’t know how it happened, but it will go on happening. Her best clothes will be mislaid in the laundry, some will get torn, and no one will know who did it. Everyone will have found it like that. Her letters will be delivered to someone else, caught between the pages, messages for her or from her will be slow in delivery. The rooms she’s in will get cold because footmen will be too busy to stoke the fires, and her afternoon tea will be late. Believe me, Miss Latterly, it will bother her. And Mrs. Willis nor Cook won’t put a stop to it. They’ll all be just as innocent and smug as the rest of us, and not have an idea how it happens. And Mr. Phillips won’t do nothing either. He may have airs like he was a duke, but he’s loyal when it comes down to it. He’s one of us.”
    Hester could not help smiling. It was all incredibly trivial, but there was a kind of justice in it.
    Mary saw her expression, and her own eased into one of satisfaction and something like conspiracy. “You see?” she said.
    “I see,” Hester agreed. “Yes—very appropriate.” And still with a smile she took her linen and left.
    Upstairs Hester found Beatrice sitting alone in her room in one of the dressing chairs, staring out of the window at the rain beginning to fall steadily into the bare garden. It was January, bleak, colorless, and promising fog before dark.
    “Good afternoon, Lady Moidore,” Hester said gently. “I am sorry you are unwell. Can I do anything to help?”
    Beatrice did not move her head.
    “Can you turn the clock back?” she asked with a tiny self-mocking smile.
    “If I could, I would have done it many times,” Hester answered. “But do you suppose it would really make a difference?”
    Beatrice did not reply for several moments, then she sighed and stood up. She was dressed in a peach-colored robe, and with her blazing hair she had all the warmth of dying summer in her.
    “No—probably none at all,” she said wearily. “We would still be the same people, and that is what is wrong. We would all still be pursuing comfort, looking to save our own reputations and just as willing to hurt others.” She stood by the window watching the water running down the panes. “I never realized Fenella was so consumed with vanity, so ridiculously trying to hold on to the trappings of youth. If she were not so prepared to destroy other people simply to get attention, I should feel more pity for her. As it is I am embarrassed by her.”
    “Perhaps it is all she feels she has.” Hester spoke equally softly. She too found Fenella repellent in her willingness to hurt, especially to expose the foibles of the servants—that was gratuitous. But she understood the fear behind the need for some quality that would earn her survival, some material possessions, however come by, that were independent of Basil and his conditional charity, if
charity
was the word.
    Beatrice swung around to face her, her eyes level, very wide.
    “You understand, don’t you? You know why we do these grubby things—”
    Hester did not know whether to equivocate; tact was not what Beatrice needed now.
    “Yes, it isn’t