giving away his goods to feed the poor, at giving his whole life in service. If he sounds boring, or unlikely, that’s only because you don’t know him.”
“Are you sure you do?”
Tallulah looked up. “Oh, yes. He’s a parish priest in Whitechapel. I haven’t been there, of course. It’s the most fearful place. They say even the smell is enough to turn your stomach. Open middens everywhere. You can taste them in the air. All the people are dirty, and thin, and terribly poor.”
Emily thought of her own experiences with poverty, the times she had helped Charlotte or Pitt and seen the reality of hunger: people crowded ten or twelve to a room, sleeping on the floor, always cold, without privacy even for the most intimate functions. She knew far better than Tallulah what they were speaking of. Perhaps this Jago really was good.
“How do you know him?” she said aloud. “He’s not exactly your circle. I can’t see him at something like this.” Her eye strayed to the giggling women, their corseted waists, their flowing skirts, their gleaming white shoulders and necks colored with gems. If anyone here had gone hungry, it would be for vanity’s sake. But to be fair, at least in the unmarried ones among them, beauty was survival.
“He used to be,” Tallulah responded. She looked at Emily frankly. “You think I’m seeing him through a romantic haze, don’t you? That I have no idea what the real person is like … that I only see his calling and his professional self.” She shook her head. “That’s not true. He’s the same age as my brother, Finlay, and they used to be friends. Finlay’s older than I am. Eight years. But I can remember Jago coming to the house often when I was about sixteen, just before I came out into society. He used to be awfully sweet to me then.”
“But he isn’t now?”
Tallulah looked at her with bitterness.
“Of course not. He’d be polite if we chanced to meet, naturally. He’s polite to everyone. But I can see the contempt in his eyes. The very fact that he speaks at me, through a glass wall of good manners, as if I’m not a real person to him at all, says just how he despises me.”
“Why should he despise you? Isn’t that pretty intolerant?”
Tallulah’s face set into misery again, losing all its brightness and courage.
“Not really. Perhaps ‘despise’ is too strong a word. He just has no time for me. I spend my life indulging myself. I go from one party to another. I eat wonderful food which I don’t work to buy; I don’t even cook it myself.” She lifted one elegant shoulder. “To be frank, I don’t even know where it comes from. I simply order it from the kitchen and it arrives, on the plate ready for me to eat. And when it’s finished someone removes it and does whatever they do. Wash it, put it away, I suppose.”
She smoothed her hands over the silk of her skirt, her fingertips caressing the soft, bright fabric.
“And I wear gorgeous dresses, which I don’t make, and I wouldn’t begin to know how to care for,” she went on. “I even have a maid to help me put them on and take them off. She sends them to the laundry maid, who washes them, except the best ones, like this, which she will do herself. I think some of them even have to be unpicked to be cleaned properly, I’m not sure.”
“Yes, they do,” Emily told her. “It’s a very long job.”
“You see?”
“No. Lots of people live like that. Don’t you like it?”
Tallulah’s head came up, her mouth pressed into a thin line, her eyes fixed on Emily’s.
“Yes, I do. I love it! Of course I love it. Don’t you? Don’t you want to dine and dance, look beautiful, spend your time in beautiful places, watch plays and laugh with witty people? Don’t you want to be outrageous at times, lead fashion, say shocking things and spend time with marvelous people?”
Emily knew exactly what she meant, but she could not help smiling and allowing her eyes to wander to the group of staid and very proper ladies a dozen feet away who were sitting upright-a necessity in whalebone corsets-and discussing in hushed voices the very minor improprieties of an acquaintance.
“Perhaps his idea of marvelous people is not the same as yours?” she suggested.
“Of course it isn’t,” Tallulah said sharply, although the flash of humor in her face betrayed that she took the point. “I think Oscar Wilde is marvelous. He is simply never, ever a bore, and never speaks down to one, except artistically, which is quite different. And he is sincerely insincere, if you know what I mean?”
“I’ve no idea,” Emily confessed, waiting for an explanation.
“I mean …” Tallulah searched for words. “I mean … he does not delude himself. There is no pomposity in him. He is so preposterous you know that he is laughing at everything, and yet it all matters intensely. He’s … he’s fun. He never goes around trying to improve other people or making moral judgments, and his gossip is always witty, and entertaining to repeat, and does no harm.” She looked around the room. “This is so … crashingly tedious. Not one person has said a single thing worth remembering, let alone recounting to anyone else.”
Emily was obliged to agree.
“So what is it about Jago that holds you? From what you say, he is as unlike Mr. Wilde as it would be possible to be.”
“I know,” Tallulah admitted. “But then I like to listen to Oscar Wilde. I wouldn’t ever want to marry him-that’s quite different.”
Perhaps she did not realize what she had said. Emily looked at her and saw the earnestness in her face, the self-mockery lying just beneath it, and realized whether she had intended to speak it aloud or not, it was what she meant.
“I don’t know why,” Tallulah went on. “I don’t think I want to know why.”
They were prevented from discussing the matter any further by the arrival of the gentlemen. Jack looked very serious. He came in, deep in conversation with a heavily whiskered man with a ruddy complexion and the scarlet ribbon of an order across his chest. He glanced at Emily, held her eyes, then continued on. That moment was intended to convey that he could not be interrupted, and she understood.
She also understood nearly an hour later when he came over and told her, with much apology, that he was obliged to leave the party early and go to the Home Office with the gentleman of the whiskers, and he would leave the carriage for her to return home when she wished. She should not wait up for him, as he could not say when his business might be concluded. It was just conceivable that it might last all night. He was very sorry indeed.
So it was that twenty minutes later, so bored that it was difficult for her to make sensible answers to trivial questions, she was delighted to see Tallulah FitzJames again.
“I can’t bear this anymore,” Tallulah said in a whisper. “My cousin is apparently succeeding with Miss Whatever-her-name-is and I can safely leave him to enjoy his victory.” Her tone suggested how little she thought that was worth. “Reggie Howard has invited me to go to a party he knows of in Chelsea. The sort of people we were talking about will be there, artists and poets, people of ideas. They’ll discuss all manner of things.” Now she was full of enthusiasm. “Some of them have been to Paris and met the writers there. Indeed, I heard that Arthur Symons is just back, a month or two ago, and could tell us of his meeting with the great Verlaine. It has to be immeasurably more interesting than this!”
It was clearly an invitation, and Emily hesitated. She ought simply to excuse herself and take her own carriage home. She had acquitted her duty and it would be acceptable.
But she was weary of doing her duty to those who expected it and were barely aware of her. She was not needed by Jack or her children. The house ran itself; her decisions were merely a matter of form. She was asked only out of politeness. The cook, the butler and the housekeeper would all do precisely the same whether she was there or not. Her mother was remarried and far too absorbed in her own happiness to need either company or counseling.
Even Charlotte had not needed or wanted her help lately. Pitt had not had a case in which they could assist. She did not even know what he was involved with at the moment.
But Tallulah FitzJames had a grief to which she might offer some very good advice. It was there on the edge of her tongue as she thought about it. The answer was a matter of priorities and inner honesty. No one could have everything, and somehow choices needed to be made. One should make them with candor and courage, and then have the sense to see that one accepted the decision and realized the consequences.
And it might be great fun to hear what was going on in Paris, in the way of outrageous ideas.
“How exciting,” she said with decision. “I should love to come.”
“Reggie will take us,” Tallulah said instantly. “Come on, Reggie. Do you know Mrs. Radley? The Honorable Reginald Howard.” And without waiting for them to do more than nod to each other, she led the way to their
