They were seated and the maid had come with soup when Damaris opened the door and stood on the threshold. She was dressed in a very slender gown, almost without hoops they were so small, the whole outfit in black and dove-gray, her hair pulled back from her long, thoughtful face with its lovely bones and emotional mouth.
For a moment there was silence, and the maid stopped with the soup ladle in the air.
“Sorry I'm late,” she said with a tiny smile curling her lips, her eyes going first to Peverell, then to Edith and Hester, finally to her mother. She was leaning against the lintel.
“Your apologies are wearing a little thin!” Felicia said tartly.”This is the fifth time this fortnight that you have been late for a meal. Please continue to serve, Marigold.”
The maid resumed her duty.
Damaris straightened up and was about to move forward and take her seat when she noticed Charles Hargrave for the firsttime. He had been partly shielded by Randolph. Her whole body froze and the blood drained from her skin. She swayed as if dizzy, and put both hands onto the door lintel to save herself.
Peverell rose to his feet immediately, scraping his chair back.
“What is it, Ris? Are you ill? Here, sit down, my dear.” He half dragged her to his own abandoned chair and eased her into it. “What has happened? Are you faint?”
Edith pushed across her glass of water and he seized it and held it up to Damaris's lips.
Hargrave rose and came forward to kneel beside her, looking at her with a professional calm.
“Oh really,” Randolph said irritably, and continued with his soup.
“Did you have any breakfast?” Hargrave asked, frowning at Damaris. “Or were you late for that also? Fasting can be dangerous, you know, make you light-headed.”
She lifted her face and met his eyes slowly. For seconds they stared at each other in a strange, frozen immobility, he with concern, she with a look of bewilderment as if she barely knew where she was.
“Yes,” she said at last, her voice husky. “That must be what it is. I apologize for making such a nuisance of myself.” She swallowed awkwardly. “Thank you for the water Pev- Edith. I am sure I shall be perfectly all right now.”
“Ridiculous!” Felicia said furiously, glaring at her daughter. “Not only are you late, but you come in here making an entrance like an operatic diva and then half swoon all over the place. Really, Damaris, your sense of the melodramatic is both absurd and offensive, and it is time you stopped drawing attention to yourself by any and every means you can think of!”
Hester was acutely uncomfortable; it was the sort of scene an outsider should not be privy to.
Peverell looked up, his face suddenly filled with anger.
“You are being unjust, Mama-in-law. Damaris had no intention of making herself ill. And I think if you have some criticism to make, it would be more fitting if you were to do it in private, when neither Miss Latterly nor Dr. Hargrave would be embarrassed by our family differences.”
It was a speech delivered in a gentle tone of voice, but it contained the most cutting criticism that could be imagined. He accused her of behaving without dignity, without loyalty to her family's honor, and perhaps worst of all, of embarrassing her guests, sins which were socially and morally unforgivable.
She blushed scarlet, and then the blood fled, leaving her ashen. She opened her mouth to retaliate with something equally vicious, and was lost to find it.
Peverell turned from his mother-in-law to his wife. “I mink it would be better if you were to lie down, my dear. I will have Gertrude bring you up a tray.”
“I…” Damaris sat upright again, turning away from Hargrave. “I really…”
“You will feel better if you do,” Peverell assured her, but there was a steel in his voice that brooked no argument. “I will see you to the stairs. Come!”
Obediently, leaning a little on his arm, she left, muttering “Excuse me” over her shoulder.
Edith began eating again and gradually the table returned to normal. A few moments later Peverell came back and made no comment as to Damaris, and the episode was not referred to again.
They were beginning dessert of baked apple and caramel sauce when Edith caused the second violent disruption.
“I am going to find a position as a librarian, or possibly a companion to someone,” she announced, looking ahead at the centerpiece of the table. It was an elaborate arrangement of irises, full-blown lupins from some sheltered area of the garden, and half-open white lilac.
Felicia choked on her apple.
“You are what?” Randolph demanded.
Hargrave stared at her, his face puckered, his eyes curious.
“I am going to seek a position as a librarian,” Edith said again. “Or as a companion, or even a teacher of French, if all else fails.”
“You always had an unreliable sense of humor,” Felicia said coldly. “As if it were not enough that Damaris has to make a fool of herself, you have to follow her with idiotic remarks. What is the matter with you? Your brother's death seems to have deprived all of you of your wits. Not to mention your sense of what is fitting. I forbid you to mention it again. We are in a house of mourning, and you will remember that, and behave accordingly.” Her face was bleak and a wave of misery passed over it, leaving her suddenly older and more vulnerable, the brave aspect that she showed to the world patently a veneer. “Your brother was a fine man, a brilliant man, robbed of the prime of his life by a wife who lost her reason. Our nation is the poorer for his loss. You will not make our suffering worse by behaving in an irresponsible manner and making wild and extremely trying remarks. Do I make myself clear?”
Edith opened her mouth to protest, but the argument died out of her. She saw the grief in her mother's face, and pity and guilt overrode her own wishes, and all the reasons she had been so certain of an hour ago talking to Hester in her own sitting room.
“Yes, Mama, I…” She let out her breath in a sigh.
“Good!” Felicia resumed eating, forcing herself to swallow with difficulty.
“I apologize, Hargrave,” Randolph said with a frown. “Family's hit hard, you know. Grief does funny things to women-at least most women. Felicia's different-remarkable strength-a most outstanding woman, if I do say so.”
“Most remarkable.” Hargrave nodded towards Felicia and smiled. “You have my greatest respect, ma'am; you always have had.”
Felicia colored very slightly and accepted the compliment with an inclination of her head.
The meal continued in silence, except for the most trivial and contrived of small talk.
When it was over and they had left the table and Hester had thanked Felicia and bidden them farewell, she and Edith went upstairs to the sitting room. Edith was thoroughly dejected; her shoulders were hunched and her feet heavy on the stairs.
Hester was extremely sorry for her. She understood why she had offered no argument. The sight of her mother's face so stripped, for an instant, of all its armor, had left her feeling brutal, and she was unable to strike another blow, least of all in front of others who had already seen her wounded once.
But it was no comfort to Edith, and offered only a long, bleak prospect ahead of endless meals the same, filled with little more than duty. The world of endeavor and reward was closed off as if it were a view through a window, and someone had drawn the curtains.
They were on the first landing when they were passed, almost at a run, by an elderly woman with crackling black skirts. She was very lean, almost gaunt, at least as tall as Hester. Her hair had once been auburn but now was almost white; only the tone of her skin gave away her original coloring. Her dark gray eyes were intent and her brows drawn down. Her thin face, highly individual, was creased with temper.