Charlotte found her own attention wandering. It was probably the safest thing to do; Clitheridge was unbearable, and the young curate was so full of genuine distress she found it too harrowing to look at him. Instead her eyes roamed upward over and across traceries of stone, plaques of long-dead worthies, and eventually, with a jolt of returning memory, to the Worlingham window with its almost completed picture of the late bishop in the thin disguise of Jeremiah, surrounded by other patriarchs and topped by an angel. She recognized the bishop quite easily. The face was indistinct-the medium enforced it-but the thick curls of white hair, so like an aureole in the glass with the light shining through, was exactly like the portrait in the family hallway and it was unmistakable. It was a remarkably handsome memorial and must have cost a sizable sum. No wonder Josiah Hatch was proud of it.
At last the formal part of the service was over and with immense relief the final amen was said, and the congregation rose to follow the coffin out into the graveyard, where they all stood huddled in a bitter west wind while the body was interred.
Charlotte shivered and moved a little closer to Aunt Vespasia, and behind her half a step, to shield her from the gusts, which if the sky had been less clear, would surely have carried snow. She stared across the open grave with Clitheridge standing at the edge, his cassock whipping around his ankles and his face strained with embarrassment and apprehension. A couple of yards away Alfred Lutterworth was planted squarely, ignoring the cold, his face somber in reflection, his thoughts unreadable. Next to him, but several feet away, Stephen Shaw was folded in a mixture of private anger and grief, the emotion so deep in his face only the crudest of strangers would have intruded. Amos Lindsay stood silently at his elbow.
Josiah Hatch was taking control of the pallbearers. He was a sidesman and used to some responsibility. His expression was grim, but he did his duty meticulously and not a word or a movement was omitted or performed without ceremony. It was done to an exactness that honored the dead and preserved the importance above all of the litany and tradition of the church.
Clitheridge was obviously relieved to allow someone else to take over, however pedantic. Only the curate seemed less than pleased. His bony features and wide mouth reflected some impatience that appeared to increase his grief.
Charlotte had been quite correct, there were about fifty people present, most of them men, and quite definitely neither Angeline nor Celeste Worlingham were among them; nor was Flora Lutterworth.
“Why are the Worlinghams not here?” she whispered to Aunt Vespasia as they turned at last, cold to the bone, and made their way back to the carriages for the short ride to the funeral supper. She had not been specifically invited, but she fully intended to go. They passed Pitt standing near the gate, so discreet as to be almost invisible. He might have been one of the pallbearers or an undertaker’s assistant, except that his gloves were odd, there was a bulge in one pocket of his coat, and his boots were brown. She smiled at him quickly as they passed, and saw an answering warmth in his face, then continued on her way to the carriage.
“I daresay the bishop did not consider it suitable,” Aunt Vespasia replied. “Many people don’t. Quite idiotic, of course. Women are every bit as strong as men in coping with tragedy and the more distressing weaknesses of the flesh. In fact in many cases stronger-they have to be, or none of us would have more than one child, and certainly never care for the sick!”
“But the bishop is dead,” Charlotte pointed out. “And has been for ten years.”
“My dear, the bishop will never be dead as far as his daughters are concerned. They lived under his roof for over forty years of their lives, and obeyed every rule of conduct he set out for them. And I gather he had very precise opinions about everything. They are not likely to break the habit now, least of all in a time of bereavement when one most wishes to cling to the familiar.”
“Oh-” Charlotte had not thought of that, but now some recollection returned to her of other families where it had been considered too much strain on delicate sensibilities. Fits of the vapors detracted rather seriously from the proper solemnity due to the dead. “Is that why Flora Lutterworth isn’t here either?” That seemed dubious to her, but not impossible. Alfred Lutterworth apparently had great ambitions towards gentility, and all that might seem well-bred.
“I imagine so,” Vespasia replied with the ghost of a smile. They were at the carriages. Caroline and Grandmama were somewhere behind them. Charlotte glanced over her shoulder and saw Caroline talking to Josiah Hatch with intense concentration, and Grandmama was staring at Charlotte with a look like thunder.
“Are you waiting?” Vespasia asked, her silver eyebrows raised.
“Certainly not!” Charlotte waved her arm imperiously and Emily’s coachman moved his horses forward. “They have their own equipage.” It gave her a childish satisfaction to say it aloud. “I shall follow you. I assume the Misses Worlingham will be up to the occasion of the funeral supper?”
“Of course.” Now Vespasia’s smile was undisguised. “That is the social event-this was merely the necessary preamble.” And she accepted her footman’s hand and mounted the step into her carriage, after handing to the crossing sweeper, a child of no more than ten or eleven years, a halfpenny, for which he thanked her loudly, and pushed his broom through another pile of manure. The door was closed behind her and a moment later it drew away.
Charlotte did the same, and was still behind her when they alighted outside the imposing and now familiar Worlingham house, all its blinds drawn and black crepe fluttering from the door. The roadway was liberally spread with straw to silence the horses’ hooves, out of respect for the dead, and the wheels made barely a sound as the coachman drove away to wait.
Inside everything had been prepared to the last detail. The huge dining room was festooned with black crepe till it looked as if some enormous spider had been followed by a chimney fire and an extremely clumsy sweep. White lilies, which must have cost enough to feed an ordinary family for a week, were arranged with some artistry on the table, and in a porcelain vase on the jardiniere. The table itself was set with a magnificent array of baked meats, sandwiches, fruits and confectionary, bottles of wine in baskets, suitably dusty from the cellar and carrying labels to satisfy even the most discriminating connoisseur. Some of the Port was very old indeed. The bishop must have laid it down in his prime, and forgotten it.
Celeste and Angeline stood side by side, both dressed in black bombazine. Celeste’s was stitched with jet beads and had a fall of velvet over the front and caught up in the bustle. It was a fraction tight at the bosom. Angeline’s was draped over the shoulders with heavy black lace fastened with a jet pin set with tiny pearls, a very traditional mourning brooch. The lace was also echoed across the stomach and under the bombazine bustle; only the most discriminating would know it was last year’s arrangement of folds. And it was even tighter around the bosom. Charlotte guessed they had performed the same service at Theophilus’s funeral, and perhaps at the bishop’s as well. A clever dressmaker could do a great deal, and from observation it seemed, like many wealthy people, the Worlingham sisters liked their economies.
Celeste greeted them with deep solemnity, as if she had been a duchess receiving callers, standing stiff- backed, inclining her head a fraction and repeating everyone’s names as though they were of significant importance. Angeline kept a lace-edged handkerchief in her hand and dabbed at her cheek occasionally, echoing the last two words of everything Celeste said.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt.” Celeste moved her hand an inch in recognition of a relative stranger of no discernible rank.
“Mrs. Pitt,” Angeline repeated, smiling uncertainly.
“Gracious of you to come to express your condolences.”
“Gracious.” Angeline chose the first word this time.
“Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould.” Celeste was startled, and for once the fact that she was a bishop’s daughter seemed unimpressive. “How-how generous of you to come. I am sure our late father would have been quite touched.”
“Quite touched,” Angeline added eagerly.
“There would be no reason for him to be,” Vespasia said with a cool smile and very direct stare. “I came entirely on Clemency Shaw’s behalf. She was a very fine woman of both courage and conscience-a rare-enough combination. I am truly grieved that she is gone.”
Celeste was lost for words. She knew nothing of Clemency to warrant such an extraordinary tribute.
“Oh!” Angeline gave a little gasp and clutched the handkerchief more tightly, then dabbed at a tear that started down her pink cheek. “Poor Clemency,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
Vespasia did not linger for any further trivialities that could only be painful, and led the way into the dining
