William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

not tell his family about, or a girl of dubious reputation.”
    Sylvestra smiled; the smile was full of fear, but there was self-mastery in it also. “That sounds like Rhys himself, I’m afraid. He tended to find respectable young ladies rather boring. That was the principal reason he quarreled with his father. He felt it unfair that Constance and Amalia were able to travel to India to have all manner of exotic experiences, and he was required to remain at home and study, and marry well and then go into the family business.”
    “What was Mr. Duff’s business?” Hester felt considerable sympathy with Rhys. All his will and passion, all his dreams, seemed to lie in the Middle East, and he was required to remain in London while his elder sisters had the adventures not only of the mind, but of the body as well.
    “He was in law,” Sylvestra replied. “Conveyancing, property. He was the senior partner. He had offices in Birmingham and Manchester as well as the City.”
    Highly respectable, Hester thought, but hardly the stuff of dreams. At least the family would presumably still have some means. Finances would not be an additional cause for anxiety. She imagined Rhys had been expected to go to university and then follow in his father’s footsteps in the company, probably a junior partnership to begin with, leading to rapid promotion.His whole future was built ahead of him, and rigidly defined. Naturally, it required that he make at the very least a suitable marriage, at best a fortunate one. She could feel the net drawing tight, as if it had been around her also. It was a life tens of thousands would have been only too grateful for.
    She tried to imagine Leighton Duff and his hopes for his son, his anger and frustration that Rhys was ungrateful, blind to his good fortune.
    “He must have been a very talented man,” she said, again to fill the silence.
    “He was,” Sylvestra agreed with a distant smile. “He was immensely respected. The number of people who regarded his opinion was extraordinary. He could perceive both opportunities and dangers that others, some very skilled and learned men, did not.”
    To Hester it only made his journey into St. Giles the harder to understand. She had no sense of his personality, apart from an ambition for his son and perhaps a lack of wisdom in his approach to pressing it. But then she had not known Rhys before the attack. Perhaps he had been very willful, wasting his time when he should have been studying. Maybe he had chosen poorly in his friends, especially his female ones. He could well have been a son overindulged by his mother, refusing to grow up and accept adult responsibility. Leighton Duff might have had every reason to be exasperated with him. It would not be the first time a mother had overprotected a boy and thereby achieved the very last thing she intended: left him unfit for any kind of lasting happiness, but instead a permanent dependent, and an inadequate husband in his turn.
    Sylvestra was lost in her own thoughts, remembering a kinder past.
    “Leighton could be very dashing,” she said thoughtfully. “He used to ride over hurdles when he was younger. He was terribly good at it. He didn’t keep horses himself, but many friends wanted him to ride for them. He won very often, because he had the courage … and, of course, the skill. I used to love to watch him, even though I was terrified he would fall. At that speed it can be extremely dangerous.”
    Hester tried to picture it. It was profoundly at odds with the rather staid man she had envisioned in her mind, the dry lawyer drawing up deeds for property. How foolish it was to judge a person by a few facts, when there were so many other things to know. Perhaps the law offices were only a small part of him, a practical side which provided for the family life, and perhaps also the money for the adventure and imagination of his truer self. It could be from their father that Constance and Amalia had inherited their courage and their dreams.
    “I suppose he had to give it up as he got older,” Hester said thoughtfully.
    Sylvestra smiled. “Yes, I’m afraid so. He realized it when a friend of ours had a very bad fall. Leighton was so upset for him. He was crippled. Oh, he learned to walk again, after about six months, but it was only with pain, and he was no longer able to practice his profession. He was a surgeon, and he could not hold his hands steadily enough. It was very tragic. He was only