“Do you believe in life after death?” Rose repeated earnestly. “I mean real life, not some sort of general holy existence as part of God, or whatever.”
“I suppose I do. Not to would be too awful. Why?”
Rose gave an elegant shrug, her face noncommittal again, as if she had retreated from the edge of some greater honesty. “I just thought I’d shock you out of your political practicality for a moment.” But her voice held no laughter, nor did her eyes.
“Do you believe in it?” Emily asked, smiling a little to make the question seem more casual than it was.
Rose hesitated, obviously uncertain now how she was going to answer. Emily could see the emotion in the angle of her body—her dramatic gown with its rich wine and flesh colors, and the tension in her arms where her thin hands gripped the edge of the chair.
“Do you think there isn’t?” Emily said quietly.
“No, I don’t!” Rose’s voice was steady with total conviction. “I am quite sure there is!” Then just as suddenly she relaxed. Emily was certain it had cost her a very deliberate effort. Rose looked at her, then away again. “Have you ever been to a séance?”
“Not a real one, only pretend ones at parties.” Emily watched her. “Why? Have you?”
Rose did not answer directly. “What’s real?” she said with a tiny edge to her voice. “Daniel Dunglass Home was supposed to be brilliant. Nobody ever caught him out, and many tried to!” Then she swiveled to look directly at Emily, a challenge in her eyes, as if now she were on firmer ground and there was no hurt waiting under the surface were she to misstep.
“Did you ever see him?” Emily asked, avoiding the direct issue, which she was quite certain was not Dunglass Home, although she was not sure what it was.
“No. But they say he could levitate himself several inches off the floor, or elongate himself, especially his hands.” She was watching Emily’s response, although she made light of it.
“That must have been remarkable to see,” Emily replied, unsure why anyone would wish to do such a thing. “But I thought the purpose of a séance was to get in touch with the spirits of those you knew who had gone on before.”
“It is! That was just a manifestation of his powers,” Rose explained.
“Or the spirit’s power,” Emily elaborated. “Although I doubt any of my ancestors had tricks like that up their sleeves . . . unless you want to go back to the witch trials in Puritan times!”
Rose smiled, but it went no further than her lips. Her body was still stiff, her neck and shoulders rigid, and suddenly Emily was convinced that the whole subject mattered intensely to her. The trivial manner was to shield her vulnerability, and more than the pain of being laughed at, something deeper, perhaps having a belief snatched from her and broken.
Emily answered with total seriousness she did not have to feign. “I really don’t know how the spirits from the past could contact us if they wanted to tell us something important. I cannot say that it wouldn’t come with all kinds of strange sights, or sounds, for that matter. I would judge it on the content of the message, not on how it was delivered.” Now she was not sure whether to go on with what she had intended to say, or if it were intrusive.
Rose broke the suspense of the moment. “Without the effects, how would I know it was real, not just the medium telling me what she thought I wanted to hear?” She made a casual little gesture of dismissal. “It isn’t what you would consider entertainment without all the sighs and groans, and the apparitions, the bumps and glowing ectoplasm and so on!” She laughed, a brittle sound. “Don’t look so serious, my dear. It’s hardly church, is it! It’s only ghosts rattling their chains. What is life if we can’t be frightened now and then . . . at least of things like that, which don’t matter at all? Takes one’s mind off what is really awful.” She swept one hand into the air, diamonds glittering on her fingers. “Have you heard what Labouchere is going to do with Buckingham Palace, if he ever has his way?”
“No . . .” Emily took a moment to adjust from the profoundly emotional to the utterly absurd.
“Turn it into a refuge for fallen women!” Rose said in a ringing voice. “Isn’t that the best joke you’ve heard in years?”
Emily was incredulous. “Has he actually said so?”
Rose giggled. “I don’t know . . . but if he hasn’t yet, he soon will! When the old Queen dies, I don’t doubt the Prince of Wales will do that anyway!”
“For heaven’s sake, Rose!” Emily urged, glancing around them to see who might have overheard. “Keep a still tongue in your head! Some people wouldn’t know sarcasm if it got up and bit them!”
Rose tried to look taken aback, but her pale, brilliant eyes were shining and she was too close to hilarity to carry it off. “Who’s being sarcastic, darling? I mean it! If they haven’t fallen yet, he’d be just the man to help them!”
“I know, but for heaven’s sake don’t say so!” Emily hissed back at her, and then they both burst into laughter just as they were joined by Mrs. Lancaster and two others who were aching to know what they might have missed.
The ride home in the carriage from Park Lane was entirely another matter. It was after one in the morning but the street lamps lit the summer night, making the way clear, and the air was warm and still.
Emily could see only the side of Jack’s face closest to the carriage lamp, but it was sufficient to show a seriousness he had hidden all evening.
“What is it?” she asked quietly as they turned out of Park Lane and moved west. “What happened in the dining room after we left?”
“A lot of discussion and planning,” he replied, turning to look at her, perhaps not realizing it cast his face into shadow. “I . . . I rather wish Aubrey hadn’t spoken so much. I like him enormously, and I think he’ll be an honest representative of the people, and perhaps more importantly, an honest man in the House . . .”
“But?” she challenged. “What? He’ll get in, won’t he? It’s been a Liberal seat for as long as anyone can remember!” She wanted every Liberal to win who could, so as to put the party back in power, but just at this moment she was thinking of Rose, and how crushed she would be if Aubrey failed. It would be humiliating to lose a safe seat, a personal rejection, not a difference of ideas.
“As much as anything is certain, yes,” he agreed. “And we’ll form a government, even if the majority isn’t as large as we’d like.”
“Then what’s wrong? And don’t tell me ‘nothing’!” she insisted.
Jack bit his lip. “I wish he would keep some of his more radical ideas to himself. He’s . . . he’s closer to socialism than I realized.” He spoke slowly, considering his words. “He admires Sidney Webb, for heaven’s sake! We can’t take reform at that pace! The people won’t have it and the Tories will crucify us! Whether we should have an empire or not isn’t the point. We do have, and you can’t cut it loose as if it didn’t exist and expect to have the trade, the work, the status in the world, the treaties, or anything else we do, without the reason and the purpose behind it. Ideals are wonderful, but without an understanding of reality, they can ruin us all. It’s like fire, a great servant, yet totally destructive when it’s master.”
“Did you tell Aubrey that?” she asked.
“I didn’t have the chance, but I will.”
She said nothing for a few moments, riding in silence, thinking over Rose’s sudden, strange questions about séances and the tension within her. She was uncertain whether to worry Jack with it or not, but it hung heavily with her, an unease she could not dismiss.
The carriage turned a corner sharply into a quieter street where the lamps were farther apart, shining up with ghostly gleam into the branches above.
“Rose was talking about spiritualists,” she said abruptly. “I think you should suggest that Aubrey tell her to be discreet about that, too. It could be misinterpreted by enemies, and once the election is called in earnest there’ll be plenty of those. I . . . I think perhaps Aubrey isn’t used to being attacked. He’s such a charming man almost everyone likes him.”