And then he had spoiled it.
He knew too well how such omissions could feel like a species of deception, however unintended. He had seen the change in her face when she realized he had been closer to the affair than she had understood. He had seen the hurt, and then the careful restraint that followed it.
That restraint troubled him more than any anger could have done. Anger, at least, was honest. It came with color in the cheek, force in the voice and some outward sign by which a man might know how much damage he had done. But Aurelia’s withdrawal had been quiet, akin to a closing of shutters against weather she had long expected.
He had thought of it all through dinner, though he ate what was set before him and answered his mother when she spoke.
He had heard the clink of glass, the faint scrape of silver upon china and his mother’s little sighs of dissatisfaction, but all of it had seemed to come from a room adjoining the one in which his thoughts resided. He saw only Aurelia turning her face from him, Aurelia gathering herself with that painful dignity which asked for no comfort because it had learned not to expect any.
When his butler entered the study after dinner with a single note upon a tray, Owen looked at it as though it might deliver either pardon or sentence. He took it at once. As soon as he was alone, he broke the seal and unfolded the letter beneath the lamplight.
My Lord,
I could not be easy this evening without writing to you, for I would not have you think me either ungrateful or unjust after what passed between us this afternoon. I understand now why you did not speak sooner of your own closeness to that unhappy affair, and though I was startled at first, I do not believe you meant to mislead me. I hope you will therefore allow me to say plainly that I forgive you.
I must also ask your pardon for the manner in which I answered when you referred to my last letter. I had written more openlythan I ought, and I found, when you spoke of it aloud, that I was ashamed of having let so much of myself appear.
It is a foolish inconsistency, but I begin to think I live in two different ways at once. We all do, perhaps, in society, showing one face and keeping another hidden. Yet for people such as you and me, it feels stronger than that, as though the life one presents and the life one truly lives scarcely belong to the same person.
I looked again this evening through what remains of my father’s notes, and I am now almost certain that Sergeant Carter left the army very soon after the operation. I remember my father saying once, in great frustration, that he had gone before he could be properly found. I cannot prove it, but I have long suspected he was paid off, or in some manner encouraged to disappear.
I wished to tell you this at once, and also to say that I was sorry the afternoon ended in discomfort, for before that I had thought it a very happy one.
Yours sincerely,
Aurelia Finch
Her forgiveness affected him. So did the frankness of her thoughts on divided selves, on letters, on truth. More than any of those, perhaps, he was struck again by the fact that she would never have said half of this aloud, not because she lackedcourage, but because the world had trained caution into her too deeply. And yet on paper she gave him these things freely, trusting he would understand them.
The trust humbled him. It warmed him, too.
He read the letter again, lingering absurdly over phrases that had no bearing on Sergeant Carter or General Langley or the altered report.
Before that, I had thought it a very happy one.
The words ought not to have pleased him as much as they did. They were simple enough. Any acquaintance might have written them after a few hours of tolerable entertainment. Yet, he knew that she had not written them lightly.
Aurelia Finch was not a woman who scattered assurances as other women scattered compliments over tea. If she admitted happiness, it was because the feeling had first survived the scrutiny of her own distrust.
That, too, he understood.
Owen reached at once for another sheet of paper. He did not pause to debate whether he ought to write again so soon. He had spent enough time already forcing himself into silence when instinct urged otherwise.
The truth was simple: he wanted to answer her. More than that, he wanted to continue the strange private conversation that had opened between them in ink and somehow felt more intimate than many spoken exchanges.
He had spent the entire day with her and yet, still felt compelled to tell her about it. That fact ought to have given him pause. Instead, it only made him pick up the pen more quickly.
Miss Finch,
Your letter has relieved me more than I can easily express, and I thank you for it with all sincerity. I had not fully understood, until I read your words, how much I feared I had forfeited your good opinion. To know that you do not judge me harshly in the matter is a greater comfort than I deserve.
You need not ask pardon for anything you said this afternoon. If there is inconsistency in finding some truths easier to write than to speak, then I am guilty of the same fault. I understood very well what you meant in describing the feeling of living two different lives, and I think you are right.
Most people carry some division between what they show the world and what they keep for themselves, but in certain cases the separation grows so great that the two halves scarcely seem to belong to one another. I have often felt something of the kindmyself, though I do not believe I should have known how to put it so well.
What you say of Carter is of real consequence. If he left the army so soon after the operation, and under circumstances sufficiently irregular to draw your father’s notice, then I agree there is reason to suspect he was induced to remove himself. Whether by money, pressure, or fear, I cannot yet tell, but it gives us a direction, and that alone is no small gain.
You say the afternoon ended in discomfort. I am sorry for the part I played in that. Yet since you have spoken with such kindness, I will confess in return that until then, I had found it one of the happiest I have spent in a very long while.
