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Rosamond had found her poem at last, and was so absorbed in it that she was unaware of Hester's movement towards her, or that Hester glanced over her shoulder and saw that it was an anonymous love poem, very small and very tender.
Hester looked away and walked to the door. It was not something upon which to intrude.
Rosamond closed the book and followed a moment after, recapturing her previous gaiety with an effort which Hester pretended not to notice.
"Thank you for coming up," she said as they came back into the main landing with its huge jardinieres of flowers. "It was kind of you to be so interested."
"It is not kindness at all," Hester denied quickly. "I think it is a privilege to see into the past as one does in nurseries and old schoolrooms. I thank you for allowing me to come. And of course Harry is delightful! Who could fail to be happy in his presence?"
Rosamond laughed and made a small gesture of denial with her hand, but she was obviously pleased. They made their way downstairs together and into the dining room, where luncheon was already served and Lovel was waiting for them. He stood up as they came in, and took a step towards Rosamond. For a moment he seemed about to._ speak, then the impulse died.
She waited a moment, her eyes full of hope. Hester hated herself for being there, but to leave now would be absurd; the meal was set and the footman waiting to serve it. She knew Callandra had gone to visit an old acquaintance, because it was on Hester's behalf that she had made the journey, but Fabia was also absent and her place was not set.
Lovel saw her glance.
"Mama is not well," he said with a faint chill. "She has remained in her room."
"I am sorry," Hester said automatically. "I hope it is nothing serious?"
"I hope not," he agreed, and as soon as they were seated, resumed his own seat and indicated that the footman might begin to serve them.
Rosamond nudged Hester under the table with her foot, and Hester gathered that the situation was delicate, and wisely did not pursue it.
The meal was conducted with stilted and trivial conversation, layered with meanings, and Hester thought of the boy's essay, the old poem, and all the levels of dreams and realities where so much fell through between one set of meanings and another, and was lost.
Afterwards she excused herself and went to do what she realized was her duty. She must call on Fabia and apologize for having been rude to General Wadham. He had deserved it, but she was Fabia's guest, and she should not have embarrassed her, regardless of the provocation.
It was best done immediately; the longer she thought about it the harder it would be. She had little patience with minor ailments; she had seen too much desperate disease, and her own health was good enough she did not know from experience how debilitating even a minor pain can be when stretched over time.
She knocked on Fabia's door and waited until she heard the command to enter, then she turned the handle and went in.
It was a less feminine room than she had expected. It was plain light Wedgwood blue and sparsely furnished compared with the usual cluttered style. A single silver vase held summer roses in full bloom on the table by the window; the bed was canopied in white muslin, like the i
Fabia was sitting up in her bed, a blue satin bedjacket covering her shoulders and her hair brushed and knotted loosely so it fell in a faded coil over her breast. She looked thin and much older than Hester was prepared for. Suddenly the apology was not difficult. She could see all the loneliness of years in the pale face, the loss which would never be repaired.
"Yes?" Fabia said with distinct chill.
"I came to apologize, Lady Fabia," Hester replied quietly. "I was very rude to General Wadham yesterday, and as your guest it was inexcusable. I am truly sorry."
Fabia's eyebrows rose in surprise, then she smiled very slightly.
"I accept your apology. I am surprised you had the grace to come-I had not expected it of you. It is not often I misjudge a young woman." Her smile lifted the corners of her mouth fractionally, giving her face a sudden life, echoing the girl she must once have been. "It was most embarrassing for me that General Wadham should be so-so deflated. But it was not entirely without its satisfactions. He is a condescending old fool-and I sometimes get very weary of being patronized."
Hester was too surprised to say anything at all. For the first time since arriving at Shelburne Hall she actually liked Fabia.
"You may sit down," Fabia offered with a gleam of humor in her eyes.
"Thank you." Hester sat on the dressing chair covered with blue velvet, and looked around the room at the other, lesser paintings and the few photographs, stiff and very posed for the long time that the camera required to set the image. There was a picture of Rosamond and Lovel, probably at their wedding. She looked fragile and very happy; he was facing the lens squarely, full of hope.
On the other chest there was an early daguerreotype of a middle-aged man with handsome side-whiskers, black hair and a vain, whimsical face. From the resemblance to Joscelin, Hester assumed it to be the late Lord Shelburne.
There was also a pencil sketch of all three brothers as boys, sentimental, features a little idealized, the way one remembers summers of the past.
"I'm sorry you are feeling unwell," Hester said quietly. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"I should think it highly unlikely; I am not a casualty of war-at least not in the sense that you are accustomed to," Fabia replied.
Hester did not argue. It rose to the tip of her tongue to say she was accustomed to all sorts of hurt, but then she knew it would be trite-she had not lost a son, and that was the only grief Fabia was concerned with.
"My eldest brother was killed in the Crimea." Hester still found the words hard to say. She could see George in her mind's eye, the way he walked, hear his laughter, then it dissolved and a sharper memory returned of herself and Charles and George as children, and the tears ached in her throat beyond bearing. "And both my parents died shortly after," she said quickly. "Shall we speak of something else?"
For a moment Fabia looked startled. She had forgotten, and now she was faced with a loss as huge as her own.
"My dear-I'm so very sorry. Of course-you did say so. Forgive me. What have you done this morning? Would you care to take the trap out later? It would be no difficulty to arrange it."
“I went to the nursery and met Harry.'' Hester smiled and blinked. "He's beautiful-" And she proceeded to tell the story.
She remained at Shelburne Hall for several more days, sometimes taking long walks alone in the wind and brilliant air. The parkland had a beauty which pleased her immensely and she felt at peace with it as she had in few other places. She was able to consider the future much more clearly, and Callandra's advice, repeated several times more in their many conversations, seemed increasingly wise the more she thought of it. The tension among the members of the household changed after the di
Fabia had a personal courage which might have been at least half the habitual discipline of her upbringing and the pride that would not allow others to see her vulnerability. She was autocratic, to some extent selfish, although she would have been the last to think it of herself. But Hester saw the loneliness in her face in moments when she believed herself unobserved, and at times beneath the old woman so immaculately dressed, a bewilderment which laid bare the child she had once been. Undoubtedly she loved her two surviving sons, but she did not especially like them, and no one could charm her or make her laugh as Joscelin had. They were courteous, but they did not flatter her, they did not bring back with small attentions the great days of her beauty when dozens had courted her and she had been the center of so much. With Joscelin's death her own hunger for living had gone.