and strong.
“Who are you thinking of?” she asked, knowing it was not simply memory speaking, dear as that was.
He turned to her, his eyes grave. They were nearly there and it would be time to alight in a moment, join the throng gathering on the opera house steps, women in laces and silk, jewels winking in the lights, men in shirts so white they gleamed.
“Not a man, my dear, so much as a time.” He looked around them. “This cannot last, the extravagance, the inequality and the waste of it. Look at the beauty and remember it, because it is worth a great deal, and too much of it will go.” His voice was very soft. “Only a little wiser, a little more moderate, and they could have kept it all. That is the trouble—when anger bursts at last it destroys the good as well as the bad.”
Before she could press him further the carriage stopped and he alighted, handing her down before the footman could do so. They went up the steps and in through the crowds, nodding to a friend or acquaintance.
They saw Charles Voisey standing deep in conversation with James Sissons. Sissons was looking flushed, and every time Voisey hesitated he cut in.
“Poor Voisey,” Vespasia said wryly. “Do you think we are morally obliged to rescue him?”
Mario was puzzled. “Rescue him?” he asked.
“From the sugar factory man,” she said with surprise at having to explain to him. “He is the most crashing bore.”
An aching pity filled Mario’s face, a regret that filled her with longing for things which could never be, not even all those years ago in Rome, except in dream.
“You know nothing of him, my dear, not of the man beneath the awkward surface. He deserves to be judged for his heart, not his grace … or lack of it.” He took her arm and with surprising strength led her past Voisey and Sissons and the group beyond them, and up the stairs towards the box.
She saw Voisey take his seat almost opposite them, but she did not see Sissons again.
She wanted to enjoy the music, to let her mind and her heart be fully with Mario in this little space of time, but she could not rid her thoughts of what Charlotte had told her. She turned over every possibility in her mind, and the longer she did so the less could she doubt that what Lyndon Remus had been led to was hideously close to the truth, but that he was being manipulated for purposes far beyond everything he understood.
She trusted Mario’s heart. Even after all those years she did not believe he had changed so much. His dreams were woven into the threads of his soul. But she did not trust his head. He was an idealist; he saw too much of the world in broad strokes, as he wished it to be. He had refused to allow experience to dull his hope or teach him reality.
She looked at his face, still so full of passion and hope, and followed his glance across at the royal box, which was empty tonight. The Prince of Wales was probably indulging in something a trifle less serious than the deliberation of the doomed gods of Valhalla.
“Did you choose
Something in her voice caught his attention, a gravity, even a sense of time running out. There was no laughter in his eyes as he answered.
“No … but I could have,” he said softly. “It is twilight, Vespasia, for very flawed gods who wasted their opportunities, spent too much money that was not theirs to cast away, borrowed money that has not been paid back. Good men will starve because of it, and that makes more than the victims angry. It wakens a rage in the ordinary man, and that is what brings down kings.”
“I doubt it.” She did not enjoy contradicting him. “The Prince of Wales has owed so much money for so long it is only a slow anger left now, not hot enough for what you speak of.”
“That depends who he has borrowed from,” he said gravely. “From rich men, bankers, speculators or courtiers; to some extent they took their own risks and can be thought to deserve their fate. But not if the lender is ruined and takes others down with him.”
The houselights were dimming and a silence fell in the theater. Vespasia was hardly aware of it.
“And is that likely to happen, Mario?”
The orchestra sounded the first ominous notes.
She felt his hand touch hers gently in the darkness. There was still remarkable strength in him. In all the times he had touched her he had never hurt her, only broken her heart.
“Of course it will happen,” he replied. “The Prince is as bent on his own destruction as any of Wagner’s gods, and he will bring all Valhalla down with him, the good as well as the bad. But we have never known how to prevent that. That is their tragedy, that they will not listen until it is too late. But this time there are men with vision and practical sense. England is the last of the great powers to hear the voice of the common man in his cry for justice, but perhaps because of that it will learn from those of us who failed, and you will succeed.”
The curtain went up and showed the elaborate set on the stage. In its light Vespasia looked at Mario, and saw the hope naked in his face, the courage to try again, in spite of all the battles lost, and in him still no generosity to wish victory for others.
She almost wished it could succeed, for his sake. The old corruption was deep, but in so many cases it was part of life, ignorance, not deliberate wickedness, not cruelty, simply blindness. She could understand Charles Voisey’s arguments against hereditary privilege, but she knew human nature well enough to believe that the abuse of power is no respecter of persons: it affects king and commoner alike.
“Tyrants are not born, my dear,” she said softly. “They are made, by opportunity, whatever title they give themselves.”
He smiled at her. “You think too little of man. You must have faith.”
She swallowed the tears in her throat, and did not argue.
