Rattray is just as afraid, but I think for himself, and Perth won’t leave him alone. The poor boy looks wilder every day. Even I am beginning to think he must know something, but whether it is something that matters or not, I have no idea.”
They moved from the temporary shade of the archway out into the next quad.
“What about Elwyn?” he asked. He was concerned for them all, but Elwyn particularly. He was a young man with far too much weight to bear.
“Oh, dear,” she said softly, but her voice was full of emotion. “That is the one thing for which I really dislike Mary. I never had children of my own.”
Was it pain in her voice, masked over the years, or simply a mild regret? He did not turn to look at her—that would be unpardonably intrusive—but he thought of her love affair with Beecher with a new clarity. Perhaps there was more to understand than he had imagined.
“I cannot know what her loss is,” she went on, looking at the sunlight on the grass ahead of her, and the castellated roof against the blue of the sky. “But Elwyn is her son also, and she is indulging her own grief without any thought for him. Gerald is useless! He mopes around, most of the time saying nothing beyond agreeing with her. And I’m afraid he is helping himself to rather too much of Aidan’s port! He is glassy-eyed more often than not, and it is not simply out of grief or exhaustion. Although Mary would be enough to exhaust anyone!”
Joseph kept step with her.
“Poor Elwyn is left to try to comfort his mother,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s attempting to shield her from the less pleasant truths that are emerging about Sebastian, who has reached the proportions of a saint in her mind. Anyone would think he had been martyred for a great cause rather than killed by some desperate person, in all likelihood goaded beyond endurance.” She stopped, turning to face Joseph, her eyes wretched. “It isn’t going to last. It can’t!”
He was startled.
“She’s going to find out one day, she has to!” she said so softly he had to lean toward her to catch the words. Her voice was tight with fear. “And then what can we do for her?” Her eyes searched his. “For any of them? She’s built her whole world around Sebastian, and it’s not real!” Then she sounded surprised at herself. “Sometimes I feel desperately sorry for him. How could anyone live up to what she believed of him? Do you suppose the pressure of it, his own knowledge of what he was really like, drove him to some of the ugly things he seems to have done? Is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. They were walking very slowly. “Perhaps. He was remarkably gifted, but he had flaws like any of us. Maybe they now look the greater because we hadn’t known they were there.”
“Was that our fault?” she asked earnestly. “I thought he was . . . golden. That he was superbly clever, and that his character was as beautiful as his face.”
“And his dreams,” he added. His own voice was hoarse for a second as grief overcame him for the loss not only of Sebastian, but for a kind of innocence in himself, for the lost comfort it carried with it. “And yes, it was my fault, certainly,” he added. “I saw him as I wanted him to be, and I loved him for that. If I were less selfish, I would have loved him for what he was.” He avoided meeting her eyes. “Perhaps you can destroy people by refusing to see their reality, offering love only on your own terms, which is that they be what you need them to be—for yourself, not for them.” It was true, gouging out the last pretence inside him, leaving him raw.
She smiled very slightly, and her voice was very gentle. “You didn’t do quite that, Joseph. You were his teacher, and you saw and encouraged the best in him. But you are an idealist. I daresay none of us are as fine as you think.”
Again her love for Beecher rushed into his mind, and the hard, abrasive thought that Sebastian had known of it and used it to manipulate Beecher into things painfully against his nature.
“No,” he agreed quietly. They had reached the shade of the next archway and he was glad of it. “I think I have learned that. I wish I could help you with Mary Allard, but I’m afraid she is too fragile to accept the truth without it breaking her. She is a hard, brittle woman who has built a shell around herself, and reality won’t intrude easily. But I’ll be here. And if that is any help at all, please turn to me whenever you wish.”
“Thank you, I fear I will,” she replied. “I can’t see the end of this, and I admit it frightens me. I look at Elwyn and I wonder how long he can go on. She doesn’t seem even to be aware of his presence, let alone do anything to comfort him! I admit, sometimes I am so angry I could slap her.” She colored faintly; it made her face vivid and uniquely lovely. He was aware of her perfume, which was something delicate and flowery, and of the depth of color in her hair. “I’m sorry,” she said under her breath. “It’s very un-Christian of me, but I can’t help it.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Sometimes I think we imagine Christ to be a lot less human than He was,” he replied with conviction. “I’m sure He must feel like slapping us on occasion—when we bring our grief not only upon ourselves, but upon everyone around us as well.”
She thanked him again with a sudden smile, then turned to walk away back into the sun toward the master’s lodgings.
Joseph sensed the tension mounting all afternoon. He saw Rattray carrying a pile of books. He walked quickly and carelessly, tripping on an uneven paving stone at the north side of the quad and dropping everything onto the ground. He swore with white-lipped fury, and instead of helping him, another student sniggered with amusement, and a third told him off for it sarcastically.
It was left to Joseph to bend down and help.
He met a junior lecturer and encountered several sarcastic remarks to which he replied calmly, and in his annoyance unintentionally snubbed Gorley-Brown.
The ill feeling finally erupted at about four o’clock, and unfortunately it was in a corridor just outside one of the lecture halls. It began with Foubister and Morel. Foubister had stopped to speak to Joseph about a recent translation he was unhappy with.
“I think it could have been better,” he complained.
“The metaphor was a little forced,” Joseph agreed.
“Sebastian said he thought it referred to a river, not the sea,” Foubister suggested.
Morel came by and had gone only a few steps beyond when he realized what he had overheard. He stopped and turned, as if waiting to see what Joseph would say.
“Do you want something?” Foubister asked abruptly.
Morel smiled, but it was more a baring of the teeth. “Sounds as if you didn’t hear Sebastian’s translation of that,” he replied. “That’s the trouble when you only get bits! It doesn’t fit together!”
Foubister went white. “Obviously you got it all!” he retaliated.
Now it was Morel’s turn to change color, only it was the opposite way, blood rushing to his cheeks. “I admired his work! I never pretended otherwise!” His voice was rising. “I still knew he was a manipulative swine when he wanted to be, and I’m not going to be hypocrite enough to go around saying he was a saint now that he’s dead. For God’s sake, somebody murdered him!”
There was a roll of thunder overhead and a sudden, wild drumbeat of rain. No one had heard footsteps approach, and they were all jolted into embarrassment when they saw Elwyn only a couple of yards away. He looked bowed with exhaustion, and there were dark smudges under his eyes, as if he were bruised inside.
“Are you saying that means he must have deserved it, Morel?” he asked, his voice tight in his throat and rasping with the effort of controlling it.
Foubister stared at Morel curiously.
Joseph started to speak, then realized that his intervention would only make it worse. Morel would have to answer for himself, if he could make his voice heard above the drumming of the rain on the windows and the gush of water leaping from the guttering.
Morel took a deep breath. “No, of course I’m not!” he shouted above the roar. “But whoever did it must have believed they had a reason. It would be much more comfortable to think it was a lunatic from outside who broke in, but we know it wasn’t. It was one of us—someone who knew him for at least a year. Face it! Somebody hated him enough to take a gun and shoot him.”
“Jealousy,” Elwyn said hoarsely.
Beecher emerged from the doorway of the lecture room, his face white. “For God’s sake, be quiet!” he shouted. “You’ve all said more than enough!” He did not appear to see Joseph. “Go on back to your work! Get out!”
