His words came back to her as she stood on the chilly landing. The mention of her father-and a certain unease in Theodore's tired, kindly, slightly bloodshot eyes (a beagles, or a bloodhounds; she had never quite decided)-had stirred an old, obscure suspicion that his death was somehow the cause of the estrangement. As if summoned by Imogen de Vere's intent, shadowed gaze, her thoughts were drawn along a path from which she had always turned uneasily aside, as she had once avoided the corridor that led past Grandmama's bedroom.
Papa had blamed Beatrice for their mother's death. Not consciously, she felt sure; and perhaps "blame" was too strong. He would have been shocked, no doubt, if anyone had confronted him with the idea. But just as she had always known that she was Papa's favourite, so she had become aware of a certain constraint in his manner towards Beatrice. Whenever he came home on leave, the two girls would be allowed to wait, if they were not at school, at the front gate, and run along the lane to greet him as he appeared at the turning. Cordelia, being the elder, would always reach him first, and fling herself into his arms, and he would swing her high into the air and onto his shoulder. But with Beatrice he was never quite as spontaneous; sometimes he seemed almost to recoil for an instant, though the shrinking would be as swiftly checked, and it seemed to Cordelia that he never sought Beatrice out, whereas he would often come looking for her when he wanted a game (which was how he had caught her wearing Grandmama's veil that afternoon). Everyone else in the house, including Mrs Green, had made a special pet of Beatrice, and yet Cordelia had never felt any the less loved; on the contrary, she was proud to be included in a sort of adult conspiracy to spoil Beatrice (though nobody had put it quite like that), especially when Papa was away with his regiment. They had kept up the conspiracy through four anxious years of war, until the arrival of the letter from the War Office, the dark winter of grieving, and Beatrice's retreat into sullen, resentful silence.
The suspicion that her father had, however unconsciously, held Beatrice responsible for the loss of their mother, did not begin to trouble Cordelia until after his death. The more she struggled against the idea, the more firmly it took root, until she felt compelled to question her aunt. But instead of offering the hoped-for reassurance, Aunt Una had looked very grave, and talked of how deeply Papa had loved their mother, and how he had married her as soon as they had both turned twenty-one and no longer needed their parents' consent-though Grandmama, she added hastily, had given them her blessing; they had been married from Ashbourn House… and of course it had been a terrible blow to Papa, losing their mother so young, but Cordelia must always remember that he had loved both her and Beatrice very dearly, and try not to think such troubling thoughts.
Years later, she had learned from Uncle Theodore that the reason they had never seen their grandparents on Mama's side, and the reason Papa had never so much as mentioned them, was not because they were dead, but because they had never forgiven him for the death of their only daughter. They had blamed him, in other words, just as he had blamed Beatrice.
But why should Beatrice have turned against her, Cordelia, on account of their fathers death? For that was what had happened, she was sure of it. That subtle note of accusation… as if Cordelia had somehow betrayed her sister; but how? By having been his favourite? Or had Beatrice divined the reason behind Papas reserve and taken the burden of Mamas death upon herself?-and then assumed that Cordelia blamed her too? Such a heavy burden… but why should she assume that? And spurn all reassurance? It is not fair; why does she hate me so?
Cordelia again became conscious of her surroundings, realising that she had spoken the words aloud. The face of Imogen de Vere seemed to coalesce out of its dark background, glowing as if lit from within. "No, it is not fair," she imagined the portrait replying; "do you think it was fair that I lost my beauty overnight?" Of course not, any more than the loss of Papa had been fair; but knowing that half the families in the kingdom had lost fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers had not made their own loss any easier to bear. It had not been fair of Mama's parents to hold Papa responsible for her death. Or to refuse to acknowledge their own granddaughters because of it. "Unto the third generation…" But Papa had not sinned; and besides, the last of her belief-at least in the omnipotent God of the Scriptures-had died with him.
Aunt Una and Uncle Theodore had done their conscientious best, making sure that she and Beatrice had been christened and confirmed, but Cordelia felt that neither of them really believed. Even Mr Gathorne-Hyde, the present vicar, did not sound as if he believed his own sermons about God's mysterious ways and the gift of free will. A poisoned, maleficent gift, that allowed men to slaughter one another wholesale. Or a single child to starve. Beatrice had refused to enter a church since the day the War Office letter arrived. Yet Cordelia still occasionally attended. More often, she would slip into St Mary's when it was empty and stand for a while in the dim silence, which seemed to echo even when the church was completely still, breathing the smells of ancient timbers and stone, musty cassocks and snuffed candles and dried flowers, "hoping it might be so"-without even knowing what "it" might be.
Last autumn, she had gone with Uncle Theodore to visit Percival Thornton, the father of one of Papa's dead comrades. Robert Thornton had died only a few months before Arthur de Vere, and the families had kept in touch. Their visits, though inevitably painful, meant a great deal to Mr Thornton, a widower who lived quite alone. Each time they saw him, he looked thinner, greyer and more stooped; his grief was visibly consuming him. Roberts medals, brilliantly polished, were displayed in a mahogany case in the parlour; his dress uniform, immaculately brushed, hung beside his bed in his old room, and the house was crowded with photographs of Robert at every stage of his short life, most of them taken by Mr Thornton.
There was a settled ritual to these visits. They began with an inspection of various mementoes, followed by tea, which Cordelia always insisted on preparing, and then a stroll in the garden if the weather was fine. But on this occasion, it seemed to Cordelia that he was striving to conceal an unwonted, almost feverish anxiety. She noticed, too, that since their last visit his hands had become curiously blotched and stained. As they were finishing their tea, he asked, rather hesitantly, whether he might show them a photograph.
They were naturally expecting yet another portrait of Robert, but the picture he brought out showed only a vacant bench which stood against the hedge at the rear of Mr Thornton's garden, beside an ornamental fountain-a tiered array of stone dishes, each wider than the one above, with a cherub at the top, though the water had long ceased to flow: the dishes were filled with autumn leaves. Dappled sunlight, evidently filtering through the branches of an overhanging tree, was falling upon the bench.
Cordelia had moved over to sit on the arm of her uncles chair; Mr Thornton remained hovering on the other side. She could feel his agitation increasing as the seconds passed, and neither she nor Uncle Theodore could find anything to say.