been reading a book lately about its history. Of course, most of what I know is after the British arrived there, but a little about before that too. I should have done it a long time ago…' She smiled at Mrs. Hanning defiantly, daring her to take offense or argue the issue. She came farther into the room. 'I should have been so much more of a companion to Gabriel.'
Mrs. Hanning drew in her breath. It was impossible to tell whether she was hurt or not.
Perdita knew what she had done, but she was too defensive certainly to retreat.
'Since I didn't go out with him, it is the least I can do now.' She smiled, tilting her chin up a fraction.
'Naturally, if you feel it your duty.' Mrs. Hanning smiled back with the merest movement of her lips. 'Then no doubt it will be of comfort to you. I am delighted you have found something… in your situation… my dear.'
'It is not duty,' Perdita corrected her. 'It is my pleasure, and naturally it is distressing, of course, because of all the suffering and the wrongs, the injustices-'
'You mean the barbarity of the Indians-the disloyalty!' Mrs. Hanning finished for her.
'No, I meant the injustices we committed towards them,' Perdita corrected. 'I don't think it is wrong to defend your country. I should want to defend England if Indian armies came here and tried to make us part of their empire.'
Mrs. Hanning laughed. 'That is hardly the same thing, my dear. The Indians are barbarians. We are English.'
'I think if you read the accounts of some of our conquests, you will find that we are barbarous as well.' Perdita was insistent. 'We were just rather better at it.'
'You are very young,' Mrs. Hanning said patiently. 'I think perhaps someone should advise you more suitably as to your reading material. It is obviously not sound. I am sure your intentions are good.' Her voice dropped in tone. 'But your doctor will tell you that Lieutenant Sheldon needs peace and rest, and a quiet and loving home, a wife to read of pleasant things to him, or to play a little piano music, not lecture on the history of India. Allow me to guide you, my dear.'
'Thank you,' Perdita replied. 'I am sure you mean well, and it is very kind of you to have come, but I want to learn about India so that if Gabriel wishes to talk to me I can listen with intelligence.'
'I think you will find that sweetness of nature is what is required, not intelligence,' Mrs. Hanning said with an assured smile. 'A man does not wish to discuss serious subjects with his wife. He has any number of friends and colleagues with whom to do that-gentlemen like Mr. Monk.' She glanced at Monk briefly.
Monk looked across at Hester. Her eyes were bright with satisfaction. She cared fiercely for Perdita and Gabriel, and their victory was hers. He had not appreciated before how much feeling she invested in her patients, how much emotion filled her. He felt at once thrilled by it and full of admiration for her; he also sensed a kind of envy because it was something wholehearted and generous. There was a warmth in it which was not in his feeling for his clients. He kept a reserve, a coolness, even sometimes an anger. He recognized this difference, a side of Hester which had almost certainly been there always but that he had not seen. He had not wanted to. It was more comfortable to criticize her arbitrariness, her autocratic ways, her too forcibly expressed opinions, her generally awkward manner.
All of which were still there.
This new mixture of emotions was disturbing, and yet too sweet to let go of just yet. It was an astonishing gentleness under the prickling exterior.
Mrs. Harming had paid her duty visit. It had not been a success. She was preparing to leave-or rather more accurately, to beat a strategic retreat.
Perdita thanked her again for coming and prepared to accompany her downstairs. She walked very straight with her head high and her hands clenched by her sides, betraying her tenseness.
Monk looked back at Gabriel. He was still sitting upright, his shoulders stiff, but there was the beginning of a smile on the good side of his face. In spite of the fear in his eyes, there was also a flare of hope as he watched Perdita's back disappear into the passageway.
Hester came into the room.
Monk wondered if she would refer to it or not. Perhaps it would be clumsy. Maybe it was still too delicate to be caught in words.
She looked at Gabriel, then at Monk, with anxiety in her eyes. Monk realized with a shock that she was not sure of what she had done. She had prompted the confrontation with hope but no certainty. He wanted to laugh because of the knowledge of her vulnerability it gave him. Without thinking about it he stood up and put his hand on her shoulder. It was a gesture of companionship, a desire she should know he understood.
She stiffened, motionless for a moment, then relaxed as if he had often done such a thing.
'How is your case progressing?' she asked him. Her voice quivered almost undetectably.
'Disastrously,' he replied. 'I came hoping you could offer some advice, although I am not sure anything will do any good now.'
'Why? What has happened?' Now she forgot his gesture and thought only of the case.
'Nothing,' he said. 'That is the point. The case is going to come to a conclusion without Rathbone's having offered a shred of defense.'
Hester glanced at Gabriel.
He smiled back, his eyes bright, his right hand closing tightly on the chair arm. They could hear Perdita's feet going down the stairs and Mrs. Hanning's heavier tread a moment after.
None of them spoke. Again the silence filled the room so overwhelmingly Monk could hear a horse's hooves on the road beyond the garden wall and the echo of a dropped tray somewhere far below them in the house, presumably the kitchen. He even thought he heard the front door open and close. Footsteps returned up the stairs. They all faced the door.
Perdita appeared, looking first at Gabriel, then at Hester.
'I was terribly rude, wasn't I?' she said shakily. 'I should never have said that to her about being a good companion. Her husband is dead, isn't he?' She gulped her breath and sniffed loudly. Now that Mrs. Harming was gone she no longer had the courage or the anger to hold herself up.
'Well…' Gabriel started.
'Yes, you were rude,' Hester agreed with a smile. 'I daresay that is the first time a lieutenant's wife has ever insulted her with impunity. It will do her the world of good.' She swung around. 'Won't it, Gabriel?'
He was uncertain whether to relax, as if it might be too soon-now that the moment of effort was past and quite different control was called for, a different self-mastery. He looked from Hester to Perdita as if he was seeing some aspect of his wife for the first time. Their relationship had altered. They had to begin again, discover, find the measure of things they used to take for granted.
'Yes…' Gabriel said tentatively. 'Yes-I…' He laughed a little huskily. 'Meeting her gives me a new feeling for John Hanning. I perceive things about him I didn't before.'
'What was he like?' Perdita asked quickly. 'Tell me about him.'
'Well-well, he was…'
Hester took Monk by the arm and led him out of the room, leaving Gabriel to tell Perdita about John Hanning: his nature, his weaknesses and strengths, how he fought, what he loved or hated, his memories of boyhood and home, and how he died in Gwalior during the Mutiny.
Outside on the landing Hester looked at Monk, searching his eyes.
He looked back at her, long and steadily. It was not uncomfortable; neither was daring the other to look away. For once there was no challenge between them, no sense of battle. There was no need for any kind of explanation.
She smiled slowly.
He put his arm around her shoulders, feeling the warmth of her through the thick gray-blue stuff dress. She was stiff and too thin, but then that was how she was. She had been thin the very first time he had seen her in the church with her sister-in-law. He had thought Josephine so much the more beautiful then. She probably still was, and until this moment he had forgotten her.
'How can I help with your case?' she asked, moving away and opening the door to the sitting room.
'I don't suppose you can,' he answered, following her in. 'Zillah Lambert seems to be a perfectly normal pretty young woman who flirts a little but whose reputation is blemishless. I don't even know what to look for.'
Hester sat down on one of the chintz-covered chairs and concentrated.
