The face of a stranger Page 16

  "That is something of a euphemism," Lovel added, his face hardening. "He was murdered in his flat in London, as no doubt you will hear. The police have been inquiring into it, even out here! But they have not arrested anyone yet."

  "I am terribly sorry!" Hester meant it with genuine shock. She had nursed a Joscelin Grey in the hospital in Scutari, only briefly; his injury was serious enough, but not compared with the worst, and those who also suffered from disease. She recalled him: he had been young and fair-haired with a wide, easy smile and a natural grace. "I remember him—" Now Effie's words came back to her with clarity.

  Rosamond dropped her fork, the color rushing to her cheeks, then ebbing away again leaving her ash-white. Fa-bia closed her eyes and took in a very long, deep breath and let it go soundlessly.

  Lovel stared at his plate. Only Menard was looking at her, and rather than surprise or grief there was an expression in his face which appeared to be wariness, and a kind of closed, careful pain.

  "How remarkable," he said slowly. "Still, I suppose you saw hundreds of soldiers, if not thousands. Our losses were staggering, so I am told."

  "They were," she agreed grimly. "Far more than is generally understood, over eighteen thousand, and many of them needlessly—eight-ninths died not in battle but of wounds or disease afterwards."

  "Do you remember Joscelin?" Rosamond said eagerly, totally ignoring the horrific figures. "He was injured in

  the leg. Even afterwards he was compelled to walk with a limp—indeed he often used a stick to support himself."

  "He only used it when he was tired!" Fabia said sharply.

  "He used it when he wanted sympathy," Menard said half under his breath.

  "That is unworthy!" Fabia's voice was dangerously soft, laden with warning, and her blue eyes rested on her second son with chill disfavor. “I shall consider that you did not say it."

  "We observe the convention that we speak no ill of the dead," Menard said with irony unusual in him. "Which limits conversation considerably."

  Rosamond stared at her plate. "I never understand your humor, Menard," she complained.

  "That is because he is very seldom intentionally funny," Fabia snapped.

  "Whereas Joscelin was always amusing." Menard was angry and no longer made any pretense at hiding it. "It is marvelous what a little laughter can do—entertain you enough and you will turn a blind eye on anything!"

  "I loVed Joscelin." Fabia met his eyes with a stony glare. "I enjoyed his company. So did a great many others. I love you also, but you bore me to tears."

  "You are happy enough to enjoy the profits of my work!" His face was burning and his eyes bright with fury. "I preserve the estate's finances and see that it is properly managed, while Lovel keeps up the family name, sits in the House of Lords or does whatever else peers of the realm do—and Joscelin never did a damn thing but lounge around in clubs and drawing rooms gambling it away!"

  The blood drained from Fabia's skin leaving her grasping her knife and fork as if they were lifelines.

  "And you still resent that?" Her voice was little more than a whisper. "He fought in the war, risked his life serving his Queen and country in terrible conditions, saw

  blood and slaughter. And when he came home wounded, you grudged him a little entertainment with his friends?"

  Menard drew in his breath to retort, then saw the pain in his mother's face, deeper than her anger and underlying everything else, and held his tongue.

  "I was embarrassed by some of his losses," he said softly. "That is all."

  Hester glanced at Callandra, and saw a mixture of anger, pity and respect in her highly expressive features, although which emotion was for whom she; did not know. She thought perhaps the respect was for Menard.

  Lovel smiled very bleakly. "I am afraid you may find the police are still around here, Miss Latterly. They have sent a very ill-mannered fellow, something of an upstart, although I daresay he is better bred than most policemen. But he does not seem to have much idea of what he is doing, and asks some very impertinent questions. If he should return during your stay and give you the slightest trouble, tell him to be off, and let me know."

  "By all means," Hester agreed. To the best of her knowledge she had never conversed with a policeman, and she had no interest in doing so now. "It must all be most distressing for you."

  "Indeed," Fabia agreed. ."But an unpleasantness we have no alternative but to endure. It appears more than possible poor Joscelin was murdered by someone he knew.''

  Hester could think of no appropriate reply, nothing that was not either wounding or completely senseless.

  "Thank you for your counsel," she said to Menard, then lowered her eyes and continued with her meal.

  After the fruit had been passed the women withdrew and Lovel and Menard drank port for half an hour or so, then Lovel put on his smoking jacket and retired to the smoking room to indulge, and Menard went to the library. No one remained up beyond ten o'clock, each making some excuse why they had found the day tiring and wished to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Breakfast was the usual generous meal: porridge, bacon, eggs, deviled kidneys, chops, kedgeree, smoked haddock, toast, butter, sweet preserves, apricot compote, marmalade, honey, tea and coffee. Hester ate lightly; the very thought of partaking of all of it made her feel bloated. Both Rosamond and Fabia ate in their rooms, Menard had already dined and left and Callandra had not arisen. Lovel was her only companion.

  "Good morning, Miss Latterly. I hope you slept well?"

  "Excellently, thank you, Lord Shelburne." She helped herself from the heated dishes on the sideboard and sat down. "I hope you are well also?"

  "What? Oh—yes thank you. Always well." He proceeded with his heaped meal and it was several minutes before he looked up at her again. "By the way, I hope you will be generous enough to disregard a great deal of what Menard said at dinner yesterday? We all take grief in different ways. Menard lost his closest friend also—fellow he was at school and Cambridge with. Took it terribly hard. But he was really very fond of Joscelin, you know, just that as immediately elder brother he had—er—" He searched for the right words to explain his thoughts, and failed to find them. "He—er—had—"

  "Responsibilities to care for him?" she suggested.

  Gratitude shone in his face. "Exactly. Sometimes I daresay Joscelin gambled more than he should, and it was Menard who—er ..."

  "I understand," she said, more to put him out of his embarrassment and end the painful conversation than because she believed him.

  Later in a fine, blustery morning, walking under the trees with Callandra, she learned a good deal more.

  "Stuff and nonsense," Callandra said sharply. "Joscelin was a cheat. Always was, even in the nursery. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he never grew out of it, and

  Menard had to pick up after him to avoid a scandal. Very sensitive to the family name, Menard."

  "Is Lord Shelburne not also?" Hester was surprised.

  "I don't think Lovel has the imagination to realize that a Grey could cheat," Callandra answered frankly. "I think the whole thing would be beyond him to conceive. Gentlemen do not cheat; Joscelin was his brother—and so of course a gentleman—therefore he could not cheat. All very simple."

  "You were not especially fond of Joscelin?" Hester searched her face.

  Callandra smiled. "Not especially, although I admit he was very witty at times, and we can forgive a great deal of one who makes us laugh. And he played beautifully, and we can also overlook a lot in one who creates glorious sound—or perhaps I should say re-creates it. He did not compose, so far as I know."

  They walked a hundred yards in silence except for the roar and rustle of the wind in giant oaks. It sounded like the torrent of a stream falling, or an incessant sea breaking on rocks. It was one of the pleasantest sounds Hester had ever heard, and the bright, sweet air was a sort of cleansing of her whole spirit.

  "Well?" Callandra said at last. "What are your choices, H
ester? I am quite sure you can find an excellent position if you wish to continue nursing, either in an army hospital or in one of the London hospitals that may be persuaded to accept women." There was no lift in her voice, no enthusiasm.

  "But?" Hester said for her.

  Callandra's wide mouth twitched in the ghost of a smile. "But I think you would be wasted in it. You have a gift for administration, and a fighting spirit. You should find some cause and battle to win it. You have learned a great deal about better standards of nursing in the Crimea. Teach them here in England, force people to listen—get rid of cross-infection, insanitary conditions, ignorant nurses, incompetent treatments that any good housekeeper would

  abhor. You will save more lives, and be a happier woman."

  Hester did not mention the dispatches she had sent in Alan Russell's name, but a truth in Callandra's words rested with an unusual warmth in her, a kind of resolution as if discord had been melted into harmony.

  "How do I do it?" The writing of articles could wait, find its own avenue. The more she knew, the more she would be able to speak with power and intelligence. Of course she already knew that Miss Nightingale would continue to campaign with every ounce of the passion which all but consumed her nervous strength and physical health for a reformation of the entire Army Medical Corps, but she could not do it alone, or even with all the adulation the country offered her or the friends she had in the seats of power. Vested interests were spread through the corridors of authority like the roots of a tree through the earth. The bonds of habit and security of position were steellike in endurance. Too many people would have to change, and in doing so admit they had been ill-advised, unwise, even incompetent.

  "How can I obtain a position?"

  "I have friends," Callandra said with quiet confidence. "I shall begin to write letters, very discreetly, either to beg favors, prompt a sense of duty, prick consciences, or else threaten disfavor both public and private, if someone does not help!" There was a light of humor in her eyes, but also a complete intention to do exactly what she had said.

  "Thank you," Hester accepted. "I shall endeavor to use my opportunities so as to justify your effort."

  "Certainly," Callandra agreed. "If I did not believe so, I should not exert them." And she matched her stride to Hester's and together they walked in the wood under the branches and out across the park.

  * * * * *

  Two days later General Wadham came to dinner with his daughter Ursula, who had been betrothed for several months to Menard Grey. They arrived early enough to join the family in the withdrawing room for conversation before the meal was announced, and Hester found herself immediately tested in her tact. Ursula was a handsome girl whose mane of hair had a touch of red in its fairness and whose skin had the glow of someone who spends a certain amount of time in the open. Indeed, conversation had not proceeded far before her interest in riding to hounds became apparent. This evening she was dressed in a rich blue which in Hester's opinion was too powerful for her; something more subdued would have flattered her and permitted her natural vitality to show through. As it was she appeared a trifle conspicuous between Fabia's lavender silk and her light hair faded to gray at the front, Rosamond in a blue so dull and dark it made her flawless cheeks like alabaster, and Hester herself in a somber grape color rich and yet not out of keeping with her own recent state of mourning. Actually she thought privately she had never worn a color which flattered her more!

  Callandra wore black with touches of white, a striking dress, but somehow not quite the right note of fashion. But then whatever Callandra wore was not going to have panache, only distinction; it was not in her nature to be glamorous.

  General Wadham was tall and stout with bristling side whiskers and very pale blue eyes which were either far-sighted or nearsighted, Hester was unsure which, but they certainly did not seem to focus upon her when he addressed her.

  "Visiting, Miss—er— Miss— "

  "Latterly," she supplied.

  "Ah yes—of course—Latterly." He reminded her almost ludicrously of a dozen or so middle-aged soldiers she had seen whom she and Fanny Bolsover had lampooned when they were tired and frightened and had sat up all night with the wounded, then afterwards lain together on a single straw pallet, huddled close for warmth and telling each other silly stories, laughing because it was better than

  weeping, and making fun of the officers because loyalty and pity and hate were too big to deal with, and they had not the energy or spirit left.

  "Friend of Lady Shelburne's, are you?" General Wad-ham said automatically. "Charming—charming."

  Hester felt her irritation rise already.

  "No," she contradicted. "I am a friend of Lady Cal-landra Daviot's. I was fortunate enough to know her some time ago."

  "Indeed." He obviously could think of nothing to add to that, and moved on to Rosamond, who was more prepared to make light conversation and fall in with whatever mood he wished.

  When dinner was announced there was no gentleman to escort her into the dining room, so she was obliged to go in with Callandra, and at table found herself seated opposite the general.

  The first course was served and everyone began to eat, the ladies delicately, the men with appetite. At first conversation was slight, then when the initial hunger had been assuaged and the soup and fish eaten, Ursula began to speak about the hunt, and the relative merits of one horse over another.

  Hester did not join in. The only riding she had done had been in the Crimea, and the sight of the horses there injured, diseased and starving had so distressed her she put it from her mind. Indeed so much did she close her attention from their speech that Fabia had addressed her three times before she was startled into realizing it.

  "I beg your pardon!" she apologized in some embarrassment.

  "I believe you said, Miss Latterly, that you were briefly acquainted with my late son, Major Joscelin Grey?"

  "Yes. I regret it was very slight—there were so many wounded." She said it politely, as if she were discussing some ordinary commodity, but her mind went back to the reality of the hospitals when the wounded, the frostbitten and those wasted with cholera, dysentery and starvation

  were lying so close there was barely room for more, and the rats scuttled, huddled and clung everywhere.

  And worse than that she remembered the earthworks in the siege of Sebastopol, the bitter cold, the light of lamps in the mud, her body shaking as she held one high for the surgeon to work, its gleam on the saw blade, the dim shapes of men crowding together for a fraction of body's warmth. She remembered the first time she saw the great figure of Rebecca Box striding forward over the battlefield beyond the trenches to ground lately occupied by Russian troops, and lifting the bodies of the fallen and hoisting them over her shoulder to carry them back. Her strength was surpassed only by her sublime courage. No man fell injured so far forward she would not go out for him and carry him back to hospital hut or tent.

  They were staring at her, waiting for her to say something more, some word of praise for him. After all, he had been a soldier—a major in the cavalry.

  "I remember he was charming." She refused to lie, even for his family. "He had the most delightful smile."

  Fabia relaxed and sat back. "That was Joscelin," she agreed with a misty look in her blue eyes. "Courage and a kind of gaiety, even in the most dreadful circumstances. I can still hardly believe he is gone—I half think he will throw the door open and stride in, apologizing for being late and telling us how hungry he is."

  Hester looked at the table piled high with food that would have done half a regiment at the height of the siege. They used the word hunger so easily.

  General Wadham sat back and wiped his napkin over his lips.

  "A fine man," he said quietly. "You must have been very proud of him, my dear. A soldier's life is all too often short, but he carries honor with him, and he will not be forgotten."

  The table was silent but for the clink of silver on porcelain. No one
could think of any immediate reply. Fabia's face was full of a bleak and terrible grief, an almost devastating loneliness. Rosamond stared into space, and Lovel looked quietly wretched, whether for their pain or his own was impossible to know. Was it memory or the present which robbed him?

  Menard chewed his food over and over, as if his throat were too tight and his mouth too dry to swallow it.

  "Glorious campaign," the general went on presently. "Live in the annals of history. Never be surpassed for courage. Thin Red Line, and all that."

  Hester found herself suddenly choked with tears, anger and grief boiling up inside her, and intolerable frustration. She could see the hills beyond the Alma River more sharply than the figures around the table and the winking crystal. She could see the breastwork on the forward ridges as it had been that morning, bristling with enemy guns, the Greater and Lesser Redoubts, the wicker barricades filled with stones. Behind them were Prince Menshikoff's fifty thousand men. She remembered the smell of the breeze off the sea. She had stood with the women who had followed the army and watched Lord Raglan sitting in frock coat and white shirt, his back ramrod stiff in the saddle.

  At one o'clock the bugle had sounded and the infantry advanced shoulder to shoulder into the mouths of the Russian guns and were cut down like corn. For ninety minutes they were massacred, then at last the order was given and the Hussars, Lancers and Fusiliers joined in, each in perfect order.

  "Look well at that," a major had said to one of the wives, "for the Queen of England would give her eyes to see it."

  Everywhere men were falling. The colors carried high were ragged with shot. As one bearer fell another took his place, and in his turn fell and was succeeded. Orders were conflicting, men advanced and retreated over each other. The Grenadiers advanced, a moving wall of bearskins, then the Black Watch of the Highland Brigade.

  The Dragoons were held back, never used. Why? When

  asked, Lord Raglan had replied that he had been thinking of Agnes!