William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

ma’am,” he said aloud, brushing her fingertips with his lips. If Barrymore chose to present him as a gentleman, he would play the part; indeed, he would find acute satisfaction in it. Even though undoubtedly it was done for Mrs. Barrymore’s benefit, to spare her the feeling that her life was being pried into by lesser people.
    “It is truly terrible,” she agreed, blinking several times. Silently she indicated where he might be seated, and he accepted. Mr. Barrymore remained standing beside his wife’s chair, a curiously remote and yet protective attitude. “Although perhaps we should not be taken totally by surprise. That would be naive, would it not?” She looked at him with startlingly clear blue eyes.
    Monk was confused. He hesitated, not wanting to preempt her by saying the wrong thing.
    “Such a willful girl,” Mrs. Barrymore went on, pinching in her mouth a little. “Charming and lovely to look at, but so set in her ways.” She stared beyond Monk toward the window. “Do you have daughters, Mr. Monk?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “Then my advice would be of little use to you, except of course that you may one day.” She turned back to him, her lips touched by the ghost of a smile. “Believe me, a pretty girl can be an anxiety, a beauty even more so, even if she is aware of it, which does guard against certain dangers—andincreases others.” Her mouth tightened. “But an intellectual girl is immeasurably worse. A modest girl, comely but not ravishing, and with enough wit to know how to please but no ambitions toward learning, that is the best of all possible worlds.” She looked at him carefully to make sure he understood. “One can always teach a child to be obedient, to learn the domestic arts and to have good manners.”
    Mr. Barrymore coughed uncomfortably, shifting his weight to the other foot.
    “Oh, I know what you are thinking, Robert,” Mrs. Barrymore said as if he had spoken. “A girl cannot help having a fine mind. All I am saying is that she would have been so much happier if she had contented herself with using it in a suitable way, reading books, writing poetry if she so wished, and having conversations with friends.” She was still perched on the edge of her chair, her skirts billowed around her. “And if she desired to encourage others, and had a gift for it,” she continued earnestly, “then there is endless charitable work to be done. Goodness knows, I have spent hours and hours upon such things myself. I cannot count the numbers of committees upon which I have served.” She counted them off on her small mittened fingers. “To feed the poor, to find suitable accommodation for girls who have fallen from virtue and cannot be placed in domestic service anymore, and all manner of other good causes.” Her voice sharpened in exasperation. “But Prudence would have none of that. She would pursue medicine! She read all sorts of books with pictures in them, things no decent woman should know!” Her face twisted with distaste and embarrassment. “Of course I tried to reason with her, but she was obdurate.”
    Mr. Barrymore leaned forward, frowning. “My dear, there is no use in trying to make a person different from the way she is. It was not in Prudence’s nature to abandon her learning.” He said it gently, but there was a note of weariness in his voice as if he had said the same thing many times before and, as now, it had fallen on deaf ears.
    Her neck stiffened and her pointed chin set in determination.
    “People have to learn to recognize the world as it is.” She looked not at him but at one of the paintings on the wall, an idyllic scene in a stable yard. “There are some things one may have, and some one may not.” Her pretty mouth tightened. “I am afraid Prudence never learned the difference. That is a tragedy.” She shook her head. “She could have been so happy, if only she had let go of her childish ideas and settled down to marry someone like poor Geoffrey Taunton. He was extremely reliable and he would have had her. Now, of course, it is all too late.” Then without warning her eyes filled with tears. “Forgive me,” she said with a ladylike sniff. “I cannot help but grieve.”
    “It would be inhuman not to,” Monk said quickly. “She was a remarkable woman by all accounts, and one who brought comfort to many who were in the throes of intense suffering. You must be very proud of her.”
    Mr. Barrymore smiled, but was too filled with emotion