“Emily has asked a young poet to come and read us some of his work,” Phoebe said with brittle cheerfulness. “I have heard it is most provoking. Let us hope we can understand it. It will give us food for much discussion.”
“I hope it is not vulgar,” Miss Lucinda said quickly. “Or erotic. Have you seen those quite dreadful drawings of Mr. Beardsley’s?”
Charlotte would like to have commented on Mr. Beardsley, but since she had never seen any of his drawings, or indeed heard of him, she could not.
“I cannot imagine Emily choosing someone without doing all that one can to assure that he is neither,” she replied, with an immediate edge to her voice. “Of course,” she went on, “one is not able to control what one’s guests say or do once they come, only to judge to the best of one’s ability whom to invite.”
“Of course.” Lucinda colored faintly. “I did not mean to imply anything but mischance.”
Charlotte remained cool.
“I believe he is political rather than romantic.”
“That should be interesting,” Miss Laetitia said hopefully. “I wonder if he has written anything about the poor or social reform?”
“I believe so.” Charlotte was pleased to have caught. Miss Laetitia’s interest. She rather liked her, especially since Vespasia had told her about the long past scandal. “They are the best things about which to try to stir people’s consciences,” she added.
“I’m sure we have nothing to be ashamed of!” It was a stout elderly lady who spoke, her body marvelously corsetted into a peacock-blue dress and her face above square-jawed and reminding Charlotte of a Pekinese dog, although vastly larger. She guessed her to be the Misses Horbury’s permanent guest, Lady Tamworth, but nobody introduced her. “Poor Fanny was a victim of the times,” she went on loudly. “Standards are falling everywhere, even here!”
“Do you not think it is up to the Church to speak to people’s consciences?” Miss Lucinda asked with a slight flaring of the nostrils, although it was not clear whether her distaste was for Charlotte’s political views or Lady Tamworth having brought up the subject of Fanny yet again.
Charlotte ignored the remark on Fanny, at least for the time being. Pitt had not said she must avoid political discussion, although of course Papa had outrightly forbidden it! But she was not Papa’s problem now.
“Perhaps it is the Church that has stirred his will to speak in the way he is best equipped?” she suggested innocently.
“Do you not feel he is then usurping the Church’s prerogative?” Miss Lucinda said with a sharp frown. “And that those called of God for the purpose would do it far better?”
“Possibly,” Charlotte was determined to be reasonable. “But that is not to say others should not do the best they can. Surely the more voices the better? There are many places where the Church is not heard. Perhaps he can reach some of those?”
“Then what is he doing here?” Miss Lucinda demanded. “Paragon Walk is hardly such a place! He would be better employed somewhere else, in a back street, or a workhouse.”
Afton Nash joined them, his eyebrows raised in slight surprize at Miss Lucinda’s rather heated comment.
“And who are you consigning to the workhouse, Miss Horbury?” he inquired, looking for a moment at Charlotte, then away again.
“I’m sure the back streets and the workhouses are already converted to the need for social reform,” Charlotte said with a slight downward curve of her mouth. “And indeed for the ease of the poor. It is the rich who need to give; the poor will receive readily enough. It is the powerful who can change laws.”
Lady Tamworth’s eyebrows went up in surprize and some scorn.
“Are you suggesting it is the aristocracy, the leaders and the backbone of the country, who are at fault?”
Charlotte did not even think of retreating for courtesy’s sake, or because it was unbecoming in a woman to be so contentious.
“I am saying there is no purpose in preaching to the poor that they should be helped,” she replied. “Or to the workless and illiterate that laws should be reformed. The only people who can change things are the people with power and money. If the Church had already reached all of them, we would have achieved our reform long since, and there would be labor for the poor to earn their own necessities.”
Lady Tamworth glared at her and turned away, affecting to find the conversation too unpleasant to continue, but Charlotte knew perfectly well it was because she could think of no answer. There was a delicate type of pleasure in Miss Laetitia’s face, and she caught Charlotte’s eye for a moment before also leaving.
“My dear Mrs. Pitt,” Afton said very carefully, as if speaking to someone unfamiliar with the language, or a little deaf. “You do not understand either politics or economics. One cannot change things overnight.”
Phoebe joined them, but he disregarded her entirely.
“The poor are poor,” he continued, “precisely because they do not have the means or the will to be otherwise. One cannot denude the rich to feed them. It would be insane and like pouring water into the desert sand. There are millions of them! What you suggest is totally impractical.” He managed a smile of condescension for her ignorance.
Charlotte seethed. It took all the self-will she possessed to master her face and affect an air of genuine inquiry.
“But if the rich and the powerful are unable to change things,” she asked, “then to whom does the Church preach, and to what purpose?”
“I beg your pardon?” He could not believe what he had heard.
Charlotte repeated herself, not daring to look at Phoebe or Miss Lucinda.
Before Afton could form a reply to such a preposterous question, another voice answered instead, a soft voice with a delicate intonation of accent.
“To the purpose that it is good for our souls to give away a little, so that we may enjoy what we have, and still sleep easily at night, because we can then tell ourselves we have tried, we have done our bit! Never, my dear, in the hope that anything will actually change!”
Charlotte felt the color sweep up her face. She had had no idea at all that Paul Alaric was so close and had heard her opinionated baiting of Afton and Miss Lucinda. She did not look at him.
“How very cynical, Monsieur Alaric.” She swallowed. “Do you believe we are all such hypocrites?”
“We?” his voice rose very slightly. “Do you go to Church and feel better for it, Mrs. Pitt?”
She was caught in complete indecision. Certainly, she did not. Sermons in church, on the rare occasions she went, made her squirm with anger and a desire to argue. But she could not say so to Afton Nash and hope to be even remotely understood. And it would only hurt Phoebe. Damn Alaric for making a hypocrite of her.
“Of course I do,” she lied, watching Phoebe’s face. The anxiety ironed out of it, and she was immediately rewarded. She had nothing in common with Phoebe, and yet she felt an ache of pity for her every time her plain, pale face came to mind. Perhaps it was only because she imagined all the hurt Afton could do with his hard, thrusting tongue.
She turned to face Alaric and was shaken all over again by the humor in his eyes and the precise understanding of what she had said and why. Did he know she was not one of the rich, that she was married to a policeman and had barely enough to make ends meet, that her beautiful dress was a gift from Emily? And that the whole argument about giving to the poor was academic for her?
There was nothing but a charming smile on his face.
“If you will excuse me,” Afton said stiffly. He almost pulled away Phoebe, who walked beside him as if her limbs were bruised and weak.
“A generous lie,” Alaric said gently.
Charlotte was not listening to him. Her mind was on Phoebe, and the painful, almost distant way in which she walked, holding herself in from Afton’s touch. Was it just years of hurt; the instinctive withdrawal, as the burnt hand moves away from fire? Or did she know something new, perhaps only by instinct as yet? Was some memory stirring within her of a change in Afton, a lie remembered now, maybe something between him and Fanny-no, that was too obscene to think of! And yet it was not impossible! Perhaps in the dark he had not even known who it was, simply a woman to hurt. And he loved inflicting pain, that she knew herself as surely as any animal knows its predator by sight and smell. Did Phoebe know it, too? Was that why she walked afraid on the landing of her own house and
