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But now instead of the struggle against it, against the fear and the injustice, there was something inside her close to acceptance. Perhaps it was only tiredness, but it was better than the desperate struggle. There was a sort of release in it.
Now she did not want to listen to talk of hope, because she had passed beyond it, but yet it would be cruel to tell Imogen so, and the new calm was too fragile to be trusted. Perhaps there was still something in her which clung to unreality? She did not want to put it into words.
Imogen stepped back and looked at her. She must have seen or sensed some change, because she said nothing more about it but bent and picked up the dropped soap and the lavender.
“I didn’t ask if you could have them,” she said matter-of-factly. “Maybe you should hide them?”
Hester sniffed and took out her handkerchief to blow her nose.
Imogen waited.
“Thank you,” Hester said at last, reaching out to take them and push them down the front of her dress. The soap was a trifle uncomfortable, but even that had its own kind of satisfaction.
Imogen sat down on the cot, her skirts in a huge swirl around her, exactly as if she were visiting a lady of Society; although since Mr. Latterly Senior’s disgrace, she did not do that anymore. The Misses Begbie were now the height of her aspirations.
“Do you ever see anyone else?” she asked with interest. “I mean other than that fearful woman who let me in. She is a woman, I suppose?”
Hester smiled in spite of herself. “Oh yes. If you saw the way she looks at Oliver Rathbone, you’d know she was.”
“You don’t mean it?” Imogen was incredulous, laughter touching her in spite of the place and the occasion. “She makes me think of Mrs. MacDuff, my cousin’s governess. We used to rag her terribly. I blush when I think how cruel we were. Children can be devastatingly candid. Sometimes the truth is better not told. It may be in one’s own heart one knows it, but one can behave so much better if one is not forced to keep looking at it.”
Hester smiled wryly. “I think I am in exactly that situation, but I have very little else to take my attention.”
“Have you heard from Mr. Monk?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Imogen looked surprised, and suddenly Hester felt as if Monk had let her down. Why had he not written? Surely he must know how much it would have meant to have received even a word of encouragement? Why was he so thoughtless? And that was a stupid question, because she knew the answer. There was little tenderness in his nature, and what there was was directed towards women like Imogen, gentle, sweet-natured, dependent women who complemented his own strengths, not women like Hester, whom he regarded at the best of times as a friend, like another man, and at the worst as opinionated, abrasive, dogmatic, and an offense to her own sex.
Loyalty and justice would demand that he search for the truth, but to expect or look for comfort as well was bound to end in hurt and in an inevitable sense of having been let down.
And that was precisely what she did feel.
Imogen was watching her closely. She read her as only another woman could.
“Are you in love with him?” she asked.
Hester was horrified. “No! Certainly not! I would not go so far as to say he is everything I despise in a man, but he is certainly a great deal. Of course he is clever, I would not take that from him for a moment, but he is on occasion both arrogant and cruel and I would not trust him to be gentle, or not to take advantage of weakness, for a minute.”
Imogen smiled.
“My dear, I did not ask if you trusted or admired him, or even if you liked him. I asked if you were in love with him, which is quite a different matter.”
“Well I am not. And I do like him … sometimes. And …” She took a deep breath. “And there are matters in which I would trust him absolutely. Matters of honor where justice is concerned, or courage. He would fight against any odds, and without counting the cost, to defend what he believed to be right.”
Imogen looked at her with a strange mixture of amusement and pain.
“I think, my dear, you are painting him with your own virtues, but that is no harm. We all tend to do that….”
“I am not!”
“If you say so.” Imogen dismissed the matter with disbelief. “What about Mr. Rathbone? I must say I rather like him. He is such a gentleman and yet I formed the opinion he is extremely clever.”
“Of course he is.” She had never doubted it, and as she spoke, memories of a startling moment of intimacy returned with a sweetness she was not sure now if she imagined or not. She would never in the world have kissed a man in such a way without meaning it intensely. But she did not know men in that way, and perhaps they were very different. All she had observed told her that they were. She was disinclined to attach any importance to it at all. She realized with a hollow ache how little she knew, and that now she would almost certainly die without ever having loved or been loved in return. Self-pity welled up inside her like a tide, and ashamed of it as she was, it still filled her.
“Hester,” Imogen said gravely, “you are giving in. It is not like you to be pathetic, and when all this is over you are going to hate yourself for not having matched up to the moment.”
“Brave words are all very well when you are talking to somebody else,” Hester replied with a twisted smile. “It is a different matter when you are facing the reality of death. Then there isn’t any afterwards.”
