with no substance. Charlotte realized it was courage she was witnessing, not joy.
Had Helen somehow ascertained that her husband had had no part in her father's death? Or had the whole burden upon her been simply the pain of knowing that he did not love her with the depth and the commitment she longed for, which indeed he was incapable of doing. And now that she had faced the truth, tempered by the knowledge that it was a weakness in him, not in her, she had ceased to try to procure it by forfeiting her self-esteem, her dignity, and her own ideas of right. Perhaps it was a wholeness within herself she had recovered.
Three times during the service Charlotte saw James speak 243
to her, and on each occasion she answered him civilly, in a whisper; but she turned to him not so much like a woman desperately in love, but rather with the patience of a mother towards a pestering child who is at the age when such things are to be expected. Now it was James who was surprised and confused. He was used to being the object of her suit, not the suitor, and the change was sharply unpleasant.
Charlotte smiled and thought with sweetness of Pitt standing at the back in his wet coat, watching and waiting, and in her mind she stood beside him, imagining her hand in his.
After the last hymn and the final amen, many rose to leave. Only the widow and the closest mourners followed the pallbearers and the coffin to the graveside.
It was a grim performance; nothing of the music and pageantry of the church, not a dealing with the spirit and the words of resurrection, but the tidying away of the mortal remains, the box with its unseen corpse, and the cold spring earth.
Here emotions might show raw, there might be in some face or some gesture a betrayal of the passions that moved the hearts beneath the black silk and bombazine, the barathea and broadcloth.
The sunlight was sharp outside, brilliant on the stone face of the church walls and the thick green grass sprouting around the gravestones. Old names were carved on them, and memories. Charlotte wondered if any of them had been murdered. It would hardly be written in the marble.
It was wet underfoot, and the clouds above were gray-bellied. The wind was chill, and any moment it might rain again. The pallbearers kept their even measured tread, balancing the load between them, the breeze tugging at the fluttering crepe on their black hats. They kept their faces downward, eyes to the earth, more probably from fear lest they slip than an abundance of piety.
Charlotte followed decently far behind the widow, managing to fall in step beside Amethyst Hamilton. Charlotte
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smiled briefly in recognition-this was not the place to renew an acquaintance with words-and kept close to her as she followed her brothers towards the great oblong hole hi the earth with its fresh, dark sides falling away into an unseen bottom.
They gathered on three sides while the pallbearers lowered the coffin, and the grim ritual was played out, the wind whipping skirts and pulling at streamers of black crepe. Women held up black-gloved hands to secure their hats. Lady Mary and Zenobia put up their arms at exactly the same moment, and the two huge brims were pitched at even wilder angles. Someone tittered nervously and changed it into a theatrical cough. Lady Mary glared round for the culprit in vain. She skewered the ferrule of her umbrella into the ground with a vicious prod and stood with her chin high, looking straight ahead of her.
Charlotte watched Jasper Royce and his wife. She was well-dressed but unremarkably so and appeared to be there as a matter of duty. Jasper was a softer, less emphatic version of his brother. He had the same sweeping forehead but without the striking widow's peak. His brows were good, but straighter and less powerful; his mouth was more mobile, the lower lip a little fuller. He was not as individual, not nearly as striking, and yet, Charlotte thought, perhaps an easier man with whom to spend any degree of time.
Now he was bored; his glance wandered idly over the faces opposite him on the for side of the grave, and none seemed to catch his interest. He might have been thinking of dinner or the next day's patients, of anything but the purpose for which they were come.
Sir Garnet, on the other hand, was alert; in fact he seemed to be studying the others present quite as diligently as Charlotte herself, and she had to be careful he did not catch her eye and mark her observation of him. To stare at him as steadily as she was doing, if caught, would seem extraordinary and require an explanation.
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He watched quietly as the coffin was lowered into the grave and the first drops of rain spattered on the hats and skirts of the ladies and the bare heads of the men, and umbrellas were twitched nervously, and left alone. Only one person broke his poise
