Ashworth Hall (11 page)

He made a rather sweeping statement about Protestant ethics.

“There is much of it that is personal,” he said, leaning forward a little across the table, speaking to Justine. “It has to do with individual responsibility, direct communication between man and God, rather than always through the intermediary of a priest, who, after all, is only mortal, and fallible like all human beings.”

“Some more fallible than others,” Kezia said bitterly.

Fergal colored very slightly and ignored her.

“The Protestant preacher is merely the leader of his flock,” he went on, fixing his gaze on Justine. “Faith is of the utmost importance, simple and utter faith, but not in miracles and magic, in the redeeming power of Christ to save souls.”

“We believe in hard work, obedience and a chaste and honorable life,” Kezia said, staring at Justine as if no one else had spoken. “At least that’s what they say.” She swung around to Fergal. “Isn’t it, my dear brother? Chastity is next to godliness. No unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of heaven. We are not like people of the Church of Rome, who can sin from Monday to Saturday as long as they tell the priest all about it on Sunday, when he sits in his dark little room behind a grill, and listens to all your grubby little secrets, and tells you to say so many prayers, and it’s all washed away—until next time, when you’ll do the same thing all over again. I’ll wager he could say it for you, he’s heard it so many times—”

“Kezia …” Fergal interrupted.

She ignored him, fixing Justine with blazing eyes, high spots of color in her cheeks. Her hands, holding her knife and fork, were shaking.

“We are not like that at all. We don’t tell anyone our sins, except God … as if He didn’t already know! As if He didn’t know every dirty little secret of our dirty little hearts! As if He couldn’t smell the stink of a hypocrite a thousand miles away!”

There was a hot silence around the table. Padraig cleared his throat, but at the last moment could think of nothing to say.

Eudora gave a little moan.

“Really …” Ainsley began.

Justine smiled, looking straight back at Kezia. “It seems to me that the only thing that matters is whether you are sorry or not. Whom you tell is beside the point.” Her voice was very soft. “If you see that what you have done is ugly, and you no longer wish to do anything like it, then you have to change, and surely that is what matters?”

Kezia stared at her.

It was Fergal who spoiled it. There was a flush of embarrassment on his fair cheeks, but also of self-defense.

“The idea that you are accountable to someone other than God, that any human being is in a position to judge you, to forgive or condemn—”

Kezia swung around in her seat. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She laughed harshly, her voice rising out of control. “Nobody is fit to judge you. For God’s sake, who do you think you are? We judge you! I judge you, and I find you guilty, you hypocrite!”

“Kezia, go to your room until you have calmed down,” he said between his teeth. “You are hysterical. It is …”

His words were lost as she flung back her chair, picked up her half-empty glass and threw the dregs in his face. Then she rose to her feet and ran from the room, almost bumping into a maid, coming in with fresh gravy, who moved out of the way only just in time.

The silence burned with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” Fergal said unhappily. “She is … very … nervously disposed at the moment. I’m sure she will be profoundly sorry tomorrow. I apologize for her, Mrs. Radley … ladies ….”

Charlotte glanced at Emily, then stood up. “I think I should go and see if she is all right. She seemed in a state of some distress.”

“Yes, yes, that is a good idea,” Emily agreed, and Charlotte caught in her eye a glimpse of envy for her escape.

Charlotte left the dining room and, after a glance at the empty hallway, started up the stairs. The only place Kezia could be sure of privacy would be her bedroom. It was where Charlotte herself would have gone had she just made such a scene. She certainly would not want to risk anyone coming after her in some other public place such as the conservatory or the withdrawing room.

On the landing she saw one of the young tweenies, about the age Gracie had been when she had first come to them.

“Did Miss Moynihan come past here?” she asked the girl.

The girl nodded, eyes wide, hair poking out in wisps from under her lace cap.

“Thank you.” Charlotte already knew which was Kezia’s room, and as before, she went to it and opened the door without waiting for admittance.

Kezia was lying on the bed, curled over, her shoulders hunched, her skirts billowing around her.

Charlotte closed the door and went over and sat on the end of the bed.

Kezia did not move.

There was nothing Charlotte could say which would alter what Kezia had seen and the only possible meaning anyone could attach to it. All that could be changed was how Kezia would feel about it.

“You are very unhappy indeed, aren’t you …?” she began quietly, in a calm, unemotional voice.

For several minutes Kezia did not move, then slowly she turned around and sat up, propping herself against the pillows, and stared at Charlotte with profound contempt.

“I am not ‘unhappy’ ”—she pronounced the word distinctly—“as you so quaintly put it. I don’t know what your moral beliefs are, Mrs. Pitt. Perhaps fornicating with someone else’s wife is perfectly acceptable in your circle, although I should prefer not to think so.” She hunched her shoulders, as if she were cold, although the room was warm. “To me it is abhorrent. To anyone at all, it is a sin. In someone who knows the values my brother does, who was raised in a God-fearing household by one of the most honorable, righteous and courageous preachers of his day, it is unforgivable.” Her face was ugly with rage as she said it, her clear eyes, red-rimmed with weeping, blazed her fury.

Charlotte looked at her steadily, trying to think of something to say which would reach through the tide of emotion.

“I don’t have a brother,” she said, searching for ideas. “But if my sister were to do such a thing, I should be hurt and grieved more than anything. I would want to argue with her, ask her why she threw away so much in return for so very little. I don’t think I would refuse to speak to her. But then she is younger than I am. I feel defensive for her. Is Fergal older than you?”

Kezia looked at her as if the question was nonsensical.

“You don’t understand.” Her patience was wearing thin. “I am trying hard to be reasonably civil to you, but you come into my room uninvited and sit here preaching platitudes to me about what you would do in my place, and you haven’t the remotest idea what you are talking about. You are not in my place, or anything like it. You have no political ambition or flair. You don’t even know what it is for a woman. You are very comfortably married—with children, I expect. You are obviously very fond of your husband, and he of you. Please go away and leave me alone.”

Both the condescension and the assumptions galled Charlotte, but she controlled her tongue with an effort.

“I came because I could not go on happily eating my dinner when you are in such distress,” she answered. “I suppose what I would do is irrelevant. I just wanted you to see that by refusing to talk to your brother, you are hurting yourself most of all.” She frowned. “If you think about it, what is the result of your withdrawing from him going to be?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Kezia leaned back, her eyes narrowed.

“Do you think he is going to stop seeing Mrs. McGinley?” Charlotte asked. “Do you think he will realize how wrong it is, that it is morally against all he has believed throughout his life, and certainly politically unwise if he hopes to represent his people? For heaven’s sake, isn’t Mr. Parnell’s situation evidence enough of that?”

Kezia looked faintly surprised, as if she had not yet even thought of that. And yet she must have been aware of the divorce presently being heard in London where Captain William O’Shea was citing Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Nationalist party as corespondent. Perhaps she had refused to realize what O’Shea’s victory would mean.

“It doesn’t look like it to me,” Charlotte continued. “When people fall in love, madly, obsessively, they frequently do not stop to weigh the cost if they are found out. If all that he stands to lose has not held him back, will your displeasure?”

“No,” Kezia said with a harsh laugh, as if the idea were funny in a twisting, hurting fashion. “No, of course not! I’m not doing it because of anything I expect him to feel or to do. I’m just so … so furious with him I can’t help myself. It’s not even the denial of his beliefs, the throwing away of his career, or the betrayal of the people who believe in him. It’s the sheer damnable hypocrisy that I can never forgive!”

“Can’t you?” Charlotte asked with a slight lift of question. “When people you love fall far below what is even honorable, much less what one knows they could be, it hurts appallingly.” Swift memories returned of past pain of her own, discoveries she would much rather not have made, and then of the learning to accept afterwards, the slow forgetting of the worst of it, the gentleness that followed for her own sake, to keep the parts that were precious and good. “One is angry because one feels it didn’t have to be. But perhaps it did. Perhaps he has to work his way through his weakness in order to conquer it. Eventually he may be less quick to condemn others. He—”

Kezia let out a bark of disgust. “Oh, for heaven’s sake be quiet. You have no idea what you are saying!” She moved around and raised her knees, almost protectively. “You are talking pompous rubbish. I could forgive him easily enough if he were merely weak. God knows, we all are.”

Her face, with all its soft, generous lines, was twisted hard with pain and the memory of pain. “But when I fell in love with a Catholic man, loved him with all my heart and soul, just after Papa died, Fergal wouldn’t even listen to me. He forbade me from seeing him. He wouldn’t even let me tell him myself.” Her voice was so harsh with remembered pain the words were indistinct. “He told him! He told Cathal I would never be permitted to marry him. It would be blasphemy against my faith. He told me that, too!

“I was too young to marry without permission. He was my legal guardian, and I couldn’t have run away without forfeiting the Church’s blessing. I listened to Fergal and obeyed him. I let Cathal go.” Her eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks, not in fury this time, but remembered sweetness and the reminding of its loss. “He’s dead now. I can’t ever find him again.”

Charlotte said nothing.

Kezia looked at her. “So you see, I can’t forgive Fergal for going and lying with a Catholic woman, and somebody else’s wife to add to it. When I put flowers on Cathal’s grave, how can I explain that to him?”

“I’m not sure I could forgive that either,” Charlotte confessed, not moving from where she sat. “I’m sorry I was so quick to presume.”

Kezia shrugged, and searched for a handkerchief.

Charlotte handed her one from the bedside cabinet.

Kezia blew her nose fiercely.

“But what I said is still true,” Charlotte added apologetically. “He is your only brother, isn’t he? Do you really want to cut the bonds that hold you to each other? Won’t that hurt you as much as it does him? He’s done a terrible thing. He’ll suffer for it, sooner or later, won’t he?”

“Divine justice?” Kezia raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure that I believe in it.” She tightened her lips, more in self-knowledge than bitterness. “Anyway, I don’t think that I’m prepared to wait for that.”

“No, quite ordinary human guilt,” Charlotte corrected. “And that doesn’t usually take that long to come, even if it is not recognized as such immediately.’’

Kezia thought in silence.

“Do you really want to create a gulf between you that you cannot cross?” Charlotte asked. “Not for him, for yourself?”

Again it was a long time before Kezia replied.

“No …” She said at last, reluctantly. She smiled very slightly. “I suppose you are not quite as pompous as I thought. I apologize for that.”

Charlotte smiled back. “Good. Pomposity is such a bore, and so masculine, don’t you think?”

This time Kezia did actually laugh.

The rest of the evening was strained. Kezia did not return, which was probably as well, but even so, Lorcan’s presence was sufficient to keep the disaster in everyone’s minds. The subject of the Parnell-O’Shea divorce was studiously ignored, which meant a great deal of political speculation had also to be avoided. The conversation degenerated into platitudes, and everyone was glad to retire early.

Charlotte sat on the dressing stool in the sanctuary of her bedroom.

“This is ghastly,” she said, running a silk scarf over her hair to keep it smooth and make it shine. “With this atmosphere one hardly needs to worry about Fenian dynamiters or assassins from outside.”

Pitt was already sitting in bed.

“What did Kezia Moynihan say? Is she going to make scenes all weekend?”

“She has a certain amount of justice on her side.” She repeated what Kezia had told her.

“Perhaps I should be protecting him,” Pitt said dryly. “From Kezia and from Lorcan McGinley, who has even more justice on his side; from Iona, if they quarrel or he breaks it off or she wants to and he won’t … or from Carson O’Day, for his jeopardizing the Protestant cause.”

“Or Emily,” Charlotte added, “for making a bad party into a complete nightmare.” She put the scarf down and turned out the gas lamp above the dressing table, leaving no light in the room except the glow from the last embers of the fire. She climbed into bed beside him and snuggled down.

For a second morning in a row they were woken by a shrill, tearing screaming.

Pitt swore and stirred, burying his head in the pillow.

The scream came again, high and terrified.

Reluctantly Pitt got out of bed and stumbled across the floor, grasping for his robe. He opened the door and went out onto the landing. Twenty feet away the handsome maid, Doll, was standing in the open doorway of the Grevilles’ bathroom, her face ashen, her hands to her throat as if she could barely breathe.