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“Please don’t apologize, Dr. Wade,” she responded sincerely. “I don’t wish to have only the easy cases.…”
His face softened. “I’m very grateful for that. I had heard well of you, it seems with good reason. Nevertheless, it must be disturbing when there is so little you can do, anyone can do, to help.” He frowned and his voice dropped. He stared at the floor. “I’ve known the family for years, Miss Latterly, ever since I came out of the navy—”
“The navy?” She was caught by surprise. It was something she had not even imagined. “I’m sorry … I have no right to …”
He smiled suddenly, illuminating his features and changing his appearance entirely. “I was a naval surgeon twenty years ago. Some of the men I tended had served with Nelson.” His eyes met hers, bright with memory, seeing in his mind another age, another world. “One old sailor, whose leg I amputated after a cannon had broken loose and pinned him to the bulkhead, had served in the victory at Trafalgar.” His voice was thick with concentration. “I don’t suppose there is another woman I know to whom I could say that and she would have some idea of what it means. But you have seen battle, you have watched the courage amid horror, the heart and the strength, the endurance through pain and in the face of death. I think we share something that the people around us can never know. I am extremely grateful that you are nursing poor Rhys and will be here to support Sylvestra through what can only be a dreadful ordeal for her.”
He did not say so in words, but she saw in his eyes that he was preparing her for the fact that Rhys might not recover. She steeled herself.
“I shall do everything I can,” she promised, meeting his gaze steadily.
“I’m sure you will.” He nodded. “I have no doubt of it whatever. Now … I will see him. Alone. I am sure you understand. He is a proud man … young … sensitive. I have wounds to tend, dressings which must be changed.”
“Of course. If I can be of assistance, just ring the bell.”
“Thank you, thank you, Miss Latterly.”
In the afternoon Hester left Rhys to rest and spent a little time with Sylvestra in the withdrawing room. It was crowded with furniture, as was the rest of the house, but warm and surprisingly comfortable—to the body, if not to the eye.
The house was very quiet. Tragedy seemed to have settled over it with peculiar loneliness. She could hear only the flames in the fireplace and the driving of rain against the windows. There were no sounds of servants’ fe
et across the hallway, or whispers or laughter as there were in most houses.
Sylvestra asked after Rhys, but it was merely to make conversation. She had been in to see him twice during the day; the second time she had stayed for a painful half hour, trying to think of something to say to him, recalling happiness in the distant past, when he was still a child, and half promising that such peace and joy would come again. She had not mentioned Leighton Duff. Perhaps that was natural. The shock and wound of his loss were far too new, and she certainly would not wish to remind Rhys of it.
In the silences between them, Hester looked around the room for something to prompt a conversation. Again she was unsure whether speech was wanted or not. She was conscious of a painful isolation in the woman who sat a few feet away from her, a polite smile on her face, her eyes distant. Hester did not know if it was loneliness or simply a private dignity of grief.
Hester saw among a group of photographs one of a young woman with dark eyes and level brows and a nose too strong to be pretty, but her mouth was beautiful. She bore a marked resemblance to Rhys, and the gown she was wearing, the top half of which was very clear in the picture, was of very modern style, not more than a year or two old.
“What an interesting face,” Hester remarked, hoping she was not touching on another tragedy.
Sylvestra smiled and there was pride in it.
“That is my daughter Amalia.”
Hester wondered where she was and how soon she could be there to help and support her mother. Surely no family duty could be more important?
The answer came immediately, again with a lift of pride and shadow of puzzlement.
“She is in India. Both my daughters are there. Constance is married to a captain in the army. She had the most terrible time during the Mutiny, three years ago. She writes often, telling us about life there.” She looked not at Hester but into the dancing flames of the fire. “She says things can never be the same again. She used to love it, even when it was most boring for many of the wives. During the heat of the summer the women would all go up to the hill stations, you know?” It was a rhetorical question. She did not expect Hester to have any knowledge of such things. She had forgotten Hester had been an army nurse, or perhaps she did not understand what that really meant. It was another world from hers.
“They can never trust now as they used to. I has all changed,” she went on. “The violence was unimaginable, the torture, the massacres.” She shook her head. “But of course they can’t come home. It is their duty to remain.” She said it without bitterness or the slightest resentment. Duty was a strength and a reason for life, as well as its most rigid boundary.
“I understand,” Hester said quickly. She did. Her mind flew back to officers she had known in the Crimea, men, clever ones and foolish ones, to whom duty was as simple as a flame. At no matter what cost, personal or public, even when it was painful or ridiculous, they would never think of doing other than what was expected of them. At times she could have shouted at them, or even lashed out at them physically, through sheer frustration at their rigidity, at the sometimes unnecessary and terrible sacrifices. But she never ceased to admire it in them, whether at its noblest or its most futile—or both together.
Sylvestra must have caught something in Hester’s voice, a depth of answering emotion. She turned to look at her and for the first time smiled.
“Amalia is in India too, but her husband is in the Colonial Service, and she takes a great interest in the native peoples.” There was pride in her face, and amazement for a way of life she could hardly imagine. “She has friends among the women. Sometimes I worry that she is very rash. I fear she intrudes where Westerners are not wanted, thinking she will alter things for the good, when in truth she may only do damage. I have written advising her, but she was never good at accepting counsel. Hugo is a nice young man, but too busy with his own tasks to pay sufficient attention to Amalia, I think.”
Hester’s imagination pictured a rather stuffy man shuffling papers on a desk while the spirited, more adventurous Amalia explored forbidden territories.
“I’m sorry they are not closer, to be with you at this time,” Hester said gently. She knew it would be months before any letters from Sylvestra with the news of Leighton’s death could travel around the Cape of Good Hope and reach India, and the answers return to England. No wonder Sylvestra was so terribly alone.
Mourning was always a time for family closeness. Outsiders, no matter how excellent their friendship, felt intrusive and did not know what to say.
“Yes …” Sylvestra agreed, almost as if speaking to herself. “I would dearly like their company, especially Amalia. She is always so … positive.” She shivered a little, in spite of the warmth of the room, the heavy curtains drawn across the windows against the rain and the dark, the empty tea tray with the remains of crumpets and butter. “I don’t know what to expect … the police again, I suppose. More questions for which I have no answers.”
Hester knew, but it was kinder not to reply. Answers would be found, ugly things uncovered, even if only because they were private, and perhaps foolish or shabby. They would not necessarily include finding the man who had murdered Leighton Duff.
