This was the one place where he could be free of it. Or if not totally free, then at least if it were mentioned at all, it would be of his own choosing, and not hers.
She knew he had been to Whitechapel, and she knew what it was like. He could not have forgotten the numerous times when she had seen slum tenements, smelled the stinking gutters, the dark, narrow houses with their generations of filth seeped into the walls, the tired, hungry and anxious people.
But in order to help, one had to keep one’s own strength. Agonizing for people accomplished nothing useful. To help the masses one needed laws, and change of heart in those with power. To affect an individual one needed knowledge, and perhaps money, or some appropriate skill. Above all one needed nerve and judgment, one needed all one’s own emotional strength.
So she sat quietly and sewed, waiting until Pitt was ready to share with her whatever it was that bothered him, or to deal with it by at least temporarily forgetting and allowing himself to restore his spirit with what was good.
3
Emily Radley, Charlotte’s sister, about whom she had been concerned, was indeed dispirited. It was not a specific problem. She had everything she considered necessary to be happy. Indeed, she had more. Her husband was charming, handsome, and treated her with affection. She was unaware of any serious fault in him.
When they had met he had been well-born, living largely on his value as a lively, delightful companion and guest, his exquisite manners and his ready wit. Emily had been fully aware of the risks entailed in falling in love with him. He might prove shallow, spendthrift, even boring after the first novelty had passed. She had done it just the same. She had spent many hours telling herself how foolish she was, and that there was even a high possibility he sought her primarily for the fortune she had inherited from her first husband, the late Lord Ashworth.
She smiled as she thought of George. Memory was very powerful, a strange mixture of sadness, loss, sweetness for the times that had been good, and a deliberate passing over of those which had not.
All her fears had proved groundless. Far from being shallow, Jack had developed a social conscience and a considerable ambition to effect changes in society. He had campaigned for a seat in Parliament, and after his first defeat had returned to battle, and at the second attempt had won. Now he spent a considerable amount of his time, and his emotions, in political endeavor.
It was Emily herself who seemed a little trivial, a little spendthrift.
Edward, her son and George’s heir, was in the schoolroom with his tutor, and baby Evangeline was upstairs in the nursery, where the maid was caring for her, seeing to the laundry, the feeding, the changing. Emily herself was largely unnecessary.
It was late in the morning and Jack had long since departed to the City to various engagements before the House of Commons met. Watching him fight for his selection, then campaign, lose, and campaign again, she had gained a respect for him which added very greatly to her happiness. He was consolidating his position with skill.
So why was she standing in the sun in the great withdrawing room in her lovely town house, dressed in lace and coffee-colored tussore, and feeling such a sense of frustration?
Edward was in the schoolroom. Evie was upstairs in the nursery. Jack was in the City, no doubt fighting for reform of some law he believed outdated. Cook would be with the butler preparing luncheon; they would not need to serve dinner tonight. Emily and Jack were due to dine out. She had already asked her maid to prepare her clothes for the occasion. She had a new silk gown of dark forest green trimmed with ivory and pale gold flowers, which complemented her fair skin and hair. She would look beautiful.
She had seen the housekeeper. The accounts were attended to. Her correspondence was up to date. There was nothing to say to the butler.
She wondered what Charlotte was doing. Probably something domestic, cooking or sewing. Since Pitt’s promotion she could afford more help, but there was still much she was obliged to attend to herself.
What about Pitt? His world was completely different. He would be investigating a crime, perhaps only theft or forgery, but possibly something much darker. His problems would be urgent, to do with passions, violence, greed. He would be using the skill and imagination he possessed, working until he was exhausted, seeking to unravel the tangle of events and find the truth, to understand the good and the evil, to bring some sort of justice to it, or at least a resolution.
In the past she and Charlotte had helped him. In the pursuit of the Hyde Park Headsman they had contributed a great deal.
She smiled without being aware of it. The sunlight streamed through the long windows onto a bowl of late delphiniums-the second blooming-catching their blue and purple spires. It had taken Jack a little while to forgive her for the risks she had run in that affair. She could hardly blame him. She could have been killed. She had known better than to offer any excuses, just apologies.
If only something would arise in which she and Charlotte could help again. Lately she had hardly even seen Pitt. Since his promotion he seemed to have been involved in cases which concerned more impersonal crimes, crimes whose motives lay outside her world, such as the treason in the Foreign Office just a month or two ago.
“What are we having for luncheon?” a querulous voice demanded from behind her. “You haven’t bothered to tell me. In fact, you don’t tell me anything! I might as well not be here.”
Emily turned around to see the short, black figure of her grandmother standing just inside the doorway from the hall. The old lady had been obliged to move from her own home when Emily’s mother had remarried, and since Charlotte had not room for her, and Emily had abundant room and means, there had been no reasonable alternative. It was not an arrangement either of them cared for, Emily because the old lady was extraordinarily ill- tempered, and the old lady because she had determined that she would not, on principle. It was not her own choice.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what is for luncheon,” Emily replied. “I left it to Cook to decide.”
“Seems to me you don’t do anything around here,” the old lady snapped, coming forward into the room, leaning heavily on her cane, banging it down. It was a border-painted wooden floor, and she disapproved of it. Too ornate, she said. Plain wood was quite good enough.
She was dressed entirely in black, a permanent reminder to everyone-in case they should forget-that she was a widow, and should be regarded and sympathized with as such.
“Cook rules your kitchen, housekeeper runs your servants,” she said critically. “Butler runs your pantry and cellar. Ladies’ maid decides what you’ll wear. Tutor teaches your son, nursemaid looks after your daughter. All that done for you, and you still cannot find time to come and talk to me. You are thoroughly spoilt, Emily. Comes of marrying above your station first, and beneath it next. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Emily agreed. “You never did know much about it. You assumed one half and ignored the other.”
The old lady was aghast. She drew herself to her full, but negligible, height.
“What did you say?” Her voice was shrill with indignation.
“If you wish to know what is for luncheon, Grandmama, ring down to the kitchen and ask. If you would care for something different, I expect they can accommodate you.”
“Extravagance!” The old lady clicked her teeth disapprovingly. “Eat what’s put in front of you, in my day. It’s a sin to waste good food.” And with that parting shot she turned and stumped out of the room. Her heavy feet echoed on the polished parquet of the hallway. At least this way they had avoided discussing Caroline’s latest whereabouts, and the general selfishness of her having remarried and thrown everyone’s lives into consequent disarray. Nor had there been another diatribe about actors in general, or Jewish actors in particular, and how they were, if such a thing were possible, socially even more of a disaster than policemen. The only thing good about it, in the old lady’s vociferous opinion, was that at least at Caroline’s age there would be no children.
No doubt at least one, if not all, of these subjects would arise over the luncheon table.
Emily spent the afternoon writing letters, more for something to do than any necessity, and then went
