Hills.” He gestured roughly to the south. “Several of us went up that way one Sunday and we saw them, outlined against a clear sky, and then a summer storm came up. It was rather dramatic.”
“Good use of opportunity,” Joseph observed. “Do it when you can, as long as it doesn’t destroy the spirit of the author. The way you have it here, I think it adds to it. It was the right feel.”
Foubister beamed. It lit up his dark face, making him suddenly charming. “Thank you, sir.”
“Who else was there and saw it?”
Foubister thought for a moment. “Crawley, Hopper, and Sebastian, I think.”
Joseph found himself smiling back, an easy, genuine feeling full of warmth. “I should have told you earlier,” he said. “It’s very good.”
In the middle of the afternoon Connie sent Joseph a note inviting him to join Mary Allard and herself for a cold lemonade. He recognized it as a plea for help, and steeled himself to respond. He closed his book, walked across the quad, and went in through the Fellows’ Garden, where he found Mary Allard alone.
She turned as she heard his footsteps on the path. “Reverend Reavley,” she acknowledged him, but there was no welcome in her eyes or her voice.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Allard,” he replied. “I wish I had something helpful to tell you, but I’m afraid I know nothing of comfort.”
“There is nothing,” she said, her tone very slightly softening the abruptness of the words. “Unless you can stop them saying such things about my son. Can you do that, Reverend? You knew him as I did!”
“I didn’t know him as you did,” he reminded her. “For example, I did not know that he was engaged to be married. He never mentioned it.”
She looked up at him defiantly. “That is a personal matter. It had been arranged for some time, but obviously he would have completed all his studies first. What I meant was that you, of all people, knew his quality! You know he had a clarity of mind, of heart, that he was honest in a way most people do not even understand.” The anger and the hurt burned through her words. “You knew that he was nobler than ordinary men, his dreams were higher and filled with a beauty they will never see.” She looked him up and down as if seeing him clearly for the first time and finding it incomprehensible. “Doesn’t it hurt you unbearably that they are questioning his very decency now?” Her contempt was raw and absolute.
At that moment Elwyn came out of the sitting room door and walked toward them. Mary Allard did not turn.
“When you love someone, surely you must also find the courage within yourself to see them with honesty, the light and the darkness as well?” Joseph said to her. He saw her anger gathering to explode. “He was good, Mrs. Allard, and he had amazing promise, but he was not perfect. He had much growth of spirit yet to accomplish, and by refusing to see the shadows in him we reinforced them instead of helping him to overcome them. I am guilty as well, and I wish it were not too late to mend it.”
Mary’s face held no forgiveness. “Reverend Reavley—”
Elwyn took her by the arm, his eyes meeting Joseph’s. He knew his mother was wrong, but her weakness was something he did not know how to face, let alone to overcome. His eyes pleaded with Joseph not to be forced to.
“Let go of me, Elwyn!” Mary said sharply, leaning away from him.
“Mother, we can’t help what people are saying! Why don’t you come inside? It’s hot out here, especially in black.”
She whirled on him. “Are you suggesting I shouldn’t wear black for your brother? Do you imagine a little discomfort matters a jot to me?”
Elwyn looked as if he had been slapped, but also as if he was used to it. He did not let go of her. “I’d like you to come inside where it is cooler.”
She snatched her arm away. She was hurting too deeply to be kind, absorbed in her own pain and careless of his.
Joseph was suddenly angry with her. Her grief was unbearable, but it was also selfish. He turned to Elwyn. “Some pain is intolerable,” he said gently. “But it is generous of you to be more concerned for your mother than for yourself, and I admire you for it.”
Elwyn flushed deeply. “I loved Sebastian,” he said huskily. “We weren’t much alike—he was cleverer than I’ll ever be—but he always made me feel he respected what I could do, sports and painting. I think a lot of people cared for him.”
“I know they did,” Joseph agreed. “And I know he admired you, but more than that, he loved you also.”
Elwyn turned away, embarrassed by his emotion.
Joseph looked steadily at Mary until a deep stain of color worked up her cheeks. With a look of fury at him for having seen her weakness, she went after her younger son and caught up with him as he reached the steps to the garden door.
Joseph followed her inside, but she barely hesitated in the sitting room. Offering the briefest apology to those there, she hurried after Elwyn through the other door into the hall.
Joseph looked at Thyer, Connie, and Harry Beecher standing uncomfortably in the silence. “I can’t think of anything helpful to say,” Joseph confessed.
Thyer was by himself, nearest the garden doors, Connie and Beecher at the other side of the room, closer to each other, glasses of lemonade in their hands.
“No one can,” Connie said. “Please don’t blame yourself.”
Thyer smiled slightly. “Particularly her husband, poor devil, and he’s trying the hardest.” There was pity in his face, and a degree of irritation. “Strange how in times of severest grief some people move further from each other, not closer.” His eyes flickered toward Connie and then back to Joseph. “I would like to remind her of her husband’s loss as well as her own, but Connie says it would only make it worse.”
“Everything makes it worse,” Connie answered him. “It’s Elwyn I’m sorriest for. Mr. Allard is old enough to look after himself.”
“No, he isn’t.” Beecher contradicted her quietly. “No one is ever old enough to hurt alone. A little tenderness would help him face it, and then begin to recover enough to start again with something like normality.”
Connie smiled at him, the warmth filling her eyes, her face. “I don’t think Mary is going to see that for a long time. It’s a pity. In grieving for what she has lost, she risks forfeiting what she still has.”
Beecher’s face tightened.
Connie saw it, blushed a little, and looked away.
Joseph heard Thyer draw in his breath, and glanced across at him, but his face was expressionless.
Connie plunged into the silence, talking to Joseph. “We’ll do what we can, but I don’t think we’re going to make much difference. I’ve tried to reassure Elwyn, but I know a word or two from you now and then would matter to him more.”
“He’s in an impossible situation,” Thyer added. “Neither of them seems to give a damn about him.”
Connie put her glass down. “Sometimes what people are is so much woven into their nature and their lives that no outside force, however great, can change them. They were like this long before Sebastian was killed.”
It was later the same afternoon that Joseph caught up with Edgar Morel walking on the path along the river.
The conversation began badly.
“I suppose you think I killed him over Abigail!” he challenged Joseph as soon as he caught up with him.
Joseph felt pressed to find the truth before it did any more damage. “I hadn’t thought it,” he replied.
Morel’s face was hard and defensive. “Of course if Sebastian was killed, it has to have been because he knew something foul about someone else, doesn’t it?” he said bitterly. “It has to be envy of his brilliance, or his charm or some bloody thing! It couldn’t be that he was cheating someone, or stealing, or anything so grubby!” The sarcasm was too overwrought to be truly cutting. “He’s far too good for that.” Unconsciously he was mimicking Mary Allard’s voice. “Nothing’s ever his fault. To listen to his mother you’d think he’d been martyred in some holy cause and the rest of us were heretics dancing on his grave.”
“Try to have patience with her,” Joseph urged. “She has no means of coming to terms with her loss.”
“No one has,” Morel said with sudden fury. “My mother died last year, just about the time Abigail dumped me
