for.”
“How very sensible you are,” Kezia said without an iota of admiration.
“I’ve cut off my nose to spite my face too often to think it’s clever,” Charlotte replied, keeping her temper.
“I find that difficult to imagine.” Kezia picked up the poker and leaning sideways, prodded viciously at the fire.
“That is because you leap to judgments about other people and find it very difficult to imagine their feelings at all,” Charlotte replied, letting go her temper with considerable satisfaction. “It seems to me the fault you criticize in your brother is exactly the one you suffer from yourself.”
Kezia froze, then turned around very slowly, her face red, although it was impossible to tell whether it was with anger or the heat from the fire.
“That is the stupidest thing you have said so far! We ate exact opposites. I followed my faith and was loyal to my people at the cost of the only person I have ever loved, as Fergal commanded me to. But he’s thrown everything away, betrayed all of us, and committed adultery with a married woman, as well as a Roman Catholic actually representing the enemy!”
“I meant the inability to place yourself in anyone else’s situation and imagine how they feel,” Charlotte explained. “Fergal did not understand that you truly loved Cathal. He saw it only as a matter of obedience to your faith and loyalty to your people’s way of life. Without any compassion at all, he ordered you to give him up.”
“And I did! God forgive me.”
“Perhaps he has never been really in love, wildly, utterly and madly in love, as you were—until now?”
“Is that an excuse?” Kezia demanded, her pale eyes blazing.
“No. It is a lack of understanding, or even the effort to imagine,” Charlotte answered.
Kezia was surprised. “What are you saying?”
“That you have been so in love, why can’t you imagine how he feels now about Iona, even if you can’t condone it?”
Kezia said nothing, turning away again, the flames’ reflection warm on her cheek.
“If you are honest, absolutely honest,” Charlotte went on, “would you be so bitterly angry if you had not loved Cathal and been forced to give him up? Isn’t a lot of your rage really your own pain?”
“What if it is?” Kezia still had the poker in her hand, gripped like a sword. “Is that not fair?”
“Yes, it is fair. But what will be the result?”
“What do you mean?”
“What will be the result of your not forgiving Fergal?” Charlotte elaborated. “I don’t mean you should say it is all right—of course it isn’t. Iona is married. But that will carry its own cost. You don’t need to exact it. I mean your cutting yourself off from Fergal.”
“I … I don’t know ….”
“Will it make you happy?”
“No … of course not. Really, you ask the strangest questions.”
“Will it make anyone happy, or wiser, or braver, or kinder, or anything you want?”
Kezia hesitated.
“Well … no …”
“Then why are you doing it?”
“Because … he’s so … unjust!” she said angrily, as if the answer should have been apparent to everyone. “So self-indulgent! He’s a total hypocrite, and I hate hypocrisy!”
“Nobody likes it. Although it is funny, sometimes,” Charlotte rejoined.
“Funny!” Kezia’s brows rose very high.
“Yes. Don’t you have any sense of the ridiculous?”
Kezia stared at her. At last her turquoise eyes began to sparkle a little and her hands unclenched.
“You are the oddest person I ever met.”
Charlotte shrugged lightly.
“I suppose I shall have to be content with that.”
Kezia smiled. “Not a wholehearted compliment, I admit, but at least there is no hypocrisy in it!”
Charlotte glanced at the newspaper lying on the table where it had been left.
“If Mr. Parnell loses his leadership, who do you think will succeed him?”
“Carson O’Day, I imagine,” Kezia answered. “He has all the qualities. And he has the family as well. His father was brilliant, but he’s an old man now. He was a great leader in his day. Absolutely fearless.” She relaxed, retreating into memory, her inner vision far away. “I remember my father taking Fergal and me to hear him at a political meeting. Papa was one of the finest preachers in the north. He could stand there in the pulpit and his voice rolled all around you like a breaking sea with all the foam white and the tide so strong it took you off your feet.” Her voice grew stronger, rich with feeling. “He could make you see heaven and hell, the shining pavements and the angels of God, the endless joy and the singing; or the darkness and the fire which consumes everything, and the stench of sin like sulfur which chokes the breath out of you.”
