Where Love Shines (8 page)

“Hear, hear!” Col. Biggar seconded.

The Misses Bales applauded.

A lively discussion followed as to methods for organizing. They must study the problem, gain official attention for action, and form a visiting committee to take aid to the victims of such sin and crime.

“Yes! And we must petition the Public Health Committee for an inspector. When they have examined the drains and latrines as they did in Scutari—” Jennifer felt a sharp jab of her mother’s elbow in her ribs. She looked up to see Lady Eccleson’s complexion change from bright red to an alarming purple.

Jenny closed her eyes, wishing she could crawl under the silk-fringed shawl that provided modesty for the legs of Lady Eccleson’s piano. One did not mention drains—and worse—in a lady’s drawing room, even during a committee meeting.

Fortunately Lord Selbourne broke the silence before the Misses Joye and Grace Bales could begin a fit of giggles. “Ah, you have foreseen my concern precisely, Miss Neville. I will send a letter to Dr. Pannier, who has just been appointed to a position in the Health Department. I understand he worked in the Crimea, so he should be well aware of such situations. Now I propose that this committee go on record as supporting…”

Jennifer struggled to follow the discussion of plans for tearing down a slum and building a row of model houses like those Prince Albert had designed for the Great Exhibition. She put a finger to her right temple and pushed firmly. Her head was beginning to pound. She made no attempt to grasp the statistics, but a statement of Lord Selbourne’s suddenly caught her attention. “When we have provided a source of clean drinking water, then the poor will pay more attention to our urgings that they drink from the fount of Living Water.” The words brought into focus the element she had been struggling to identify—the missing element in so much of the discussion she had heard since she came home. It seemed that since the Earl of Shaftesbury’s committees had published the blue books exposing the plight of the poor, all the world was caught up in the work of improving conditions. But how many took up the work because it was a popular cause or because they wanted to live in a cleaner city themselves? And how many were working because they saw the poor as children of God and wanted to share His love with them?

A verse ran through her aching head again and again:
Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing… nothing… nothing.
Yet she had no clear understanding of how to apply those words. They rang as a warning to her—a warning to understand her own motives for any work she should undertake.

She couldn’t claim a spiritual call such as Florence Nightingale’s. She hoped she could at least claim as noble a goal as the betterment of society. She hoped she wasn’t looking for a cause simply because society expected it of her or because she needed something to do—an amusement or escape from boredom.

Just when she thought she couldn’t sit there another moment without crying out, the debate buzzing around her was interrupted by the entrance of Lady Eccleson’s tardy niece Caroline and her daughter Lavinia. Jennifer was surprised that the daughter was almost her own age, after Lady Eccleson’s reference to her niece’s “children.” As Jennifer acknowledged the introductions, she was thinking she would like to get to know this Lavinia. But for now the disruption of the meeting offered her a chance to escape.

“Please excuse me for a few moments. Just a breath of fresh air to clear my head, if you wouldn’t mind, Lady Eccleson,” she begged.

The great lady regarded Jennifer with the full gaze of her piercing blue eyes. “You look exceedingly peaked, my dear. Nursing is no work for respectable young ladies, no matter how much your services may have been needed by our brave, young men. It won’t do, you know—young women gallivanting off to the other side of the world. I should never have allowed my great-niece to do such a thing.” She leveled a severe look in the young lady’s direction and then directed a scowl at Mrs. Neville before turning back to Jennifer. “I cannot imagine what your parents were thinking of. My dear, fresh air is highly overrated. Do not go into the garden. A sudden chill would not be the thing at all. There is a most comfortable sofa in the library. Branman will show you.” Lady Eccleson pulled a tapestry bell rope behind her chair to summon her silently moving butler.

At the door of the library Jennifer declined the butler’s offer of tea or smelling salts. She slipped quickly into the dark, cavernous coolness of the high-ceilinged, wood-paneled room with its deep Persian rug. The double doors clicked shut behind her, and she felt herself relax. She walked toward the sofa in the center of the room. Then she stopped.

She was not alone.

I
t was several moments before Jennifer’s eyes adjusted to the dimness enough to see the form sitting with deathlike stillness at a small writing desk against the far wall. She gasped.

Why would anyone sit at a desk in a library with the shutters half-closed? “Well?” His voice was irritable. The single word wasn’t spoken loudly, but it sounded like a gunshot in the silence of the room.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.” Jenny took a step backward and started to turn when he raised his head and leaned in the direction of her voice. Light from the half-shuttered window fell across his face. It couldn’t be. Yet it was. “Lieutenant Greyston!”

Now she moved forward rapidly, expecting him to hold out his hand just as he always had in the Barracks Hospital. “How is this possible? I thought you lived in Newcastle.”

He did not offer his hand. His voice was so bitter Jennifer doubted that, if she had not seen his face, she would have known him. “I do not ‘live’ anywhere. My body accompanies my mother and sister wherever it is bid, but that can hardly be called living. If I had been two inches closer to that exploding cannon, it could have done its work properly and taken the top off my head as it was meant to do.”

Jennifer longed for a pillow to plump or a blanket to straighten, any movement to break the tension and give her time to think. Her impulse was to open the shutters, but she recalled vividly the searing pain the light pouring through the hospital windows had caused her patient. Then she spotted a book on the floor and moved to pick it up.

She had no idea what to say, but she did know two things: that she should not offer sympathy and that Richard must be rescued from his doldrums, as surely he had been rescued from the fever in Scutari. With the book returned to its shelf and her headache forgotten, Jennifer took a chair near Richard, near enough that she could reach out and touch him, but she didn’t.

She felt a restraining awkwardness in their new situation. Besides, she had already committed one serious error today by speaking without thinking.

“Well, isn’t this amazing?”

He made no reply.

She smoothed the satin of her skirt and forged onward. “So you must be Lady Eccleson’s great-nephew. I have just met your sister, but I had no notion that the Lavinia I was introduced to was the ‘dearest Livvy’ of your letters.”

“Correct on all counts.”

Jenny cleared her throat and shifted on her chair. Richard sat with his hands folded on the small table before him. He had not moved since she entered the room.

“Doubtless you are finding the adjustment extremely difficult.” She tried again in her most matter-of-fact tone. “I have been home only a week, but in many ways it seems that I have returned to a different world.”

When Richard failed to respond, she continued with perhaps more vigor than she felt. “I suppose the change is more in myself than in my family or in London…” Her voice trailed off as she thought. Then she leaned forward in her chair. “That is it, isn’t it? They haven’t changed at all. And I have changed so much.”

“It’s certain I have changed.” His voice was thick with irony.

Again she fought against the dead silence in the room. “I apologize for interrupting you. Your thoughts must have been deeply engaged.” She hated the stiffness separating them after the closeness of those hours spent holding his hand in the hospital. Why must there be these barriers now?

“I was not engaged at all. To be brutally honest, I was hiding out from Mama and Livvy who forever insist that I accompany them on their visits. It took me only one experience to discover that a costermonger or policeman would be more welcome in a drawing room than a blind man as soon as the novelty of entertaining a war hero has worn off. ‘What
does
one say when he sloshes his tea, my dear?’”

Jenny forced a small laugh at his bitter humor. Then she noticed the odd papers on his desk with the little rows of bumps on them. “But what are those papers? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“It’s my excuse for taking refuge in here. A French fellow named Louis Braille invented a method for the blind to read and write using a system of raised dots. Mama is most enthusiastic that I should learn it, and so she will excuse me from any other activity if I tell her I wish to read. It doesn’t work as well on Livvy, however, for she is still convinced my sight will improve, and I’ll have no need of such rigmarole.”

“And what does your doctor say?”

“My ‘doctor’ includes half the sawbones on Harley Street to whom Mama has dragged me off. Although she is energetic at the present, Mama has long suffered sporadic bouts of invalidism. She is well acquainted with that community. We have yet to find one doctor with a cogent idea of what to do beyond rubbing my eyelids with citron and spermaceti ointment and hoping for the best.”

Jennifer could think of no reply, so she asked, “What are you reading?”

“Nothing. This confounded system is so slow. Or rather I am so slow at it. I have no patience for this. If I had such inclination, I would have remained quietly reading law at Cambridge instead of convincing Father to purchase my commission. My dear mother entertains notions of my returning to something like that, and I haven’t the heart to dissuade her. After all, she is Lady Eccleson’s niece—she will admit to nothing, even blindness, being more than an inconvenience. And surely one could form a committee to deal with even that. The trouble is, I have never been the least good at waiting. I always thought Milton’s line ‘they also serve who only stand and wait’ the silliest sentiment in all literature. Now I know it so.” He pushed his chair back abruptly and rose to his feet with a jerk. He began pacing a small area in front of the corner bookshelves.

Jennifer held her breath lest he crash into the furniture. Should she rescue the porcelain urn from the pedestal next to the chair on the far wall?

“Richard—”

He seemed to sense her uneasiness. “What? Are you fearing for the family porcelains? A priceless collection, as is appropriate for a pottery owner, Aunt Charlotte will tell you. Relax. I can see shapes well enough to identify objects. I can tell a cat from a dog, a horse from a cow, and a man from a woman quite readily. Useful knowledge to possess. The trouble is, I can only bear to look at anything if the room or weather is too dark for even a clear-sighted person to see well. So what it comes to is that I could see a meager amount if I could bear to see at all.”

“So Livvy’s optimism isn’t entirely without foundation?”

“That depends on what one is being optimistic about. It’s clear I’ll never be of use to my regiment again.”

“And therefore you can never be of use to anyone?” If Jennifer had hoped to goad him into moderating his position, his next words made it clear that she had failed.

“It’s hard to see how. I certainly have no desire to join the Inns of Court and qualify as a solicitor. And my brother George will take over the pottery one day.” He flung his lanky form into a wing-backed chair. As if to demonstrate his imperfect vision, he hit the chair slightly sideways and knocked it into the bookshelf, but did not fail to find the seat. Ignoring the ruckus he made, he continued, “Since you went to such considerable trouble to save my life, I suppose I owe it to you to explain this the best I can. It is as if I had ridden Legend at a full gallop straight at a high stone wall, and we hit it full tilt. The world has simply come to a crashing halt.” He paused. “And there it is.”

Now the silence in the room grew deep, but not with the uneasiness Jennifer had feared before. She took her time, giving careful consideration to all Richard had said. Certainly she, too, had been plodding through her days ever since she had returned home. Richard was not the only one without a goal, a reason for getting up in the morning. Her mother would have her fill her calendar with social functions. Arthur would have her plunge into social causes for the good of England. But she had found no way for herself.

With Richard sitting so near a new realization dawned on her. She suddenly saw that it was
he
who had sustained
her
through the worst days in the Barracks Hospital just by being there for her to care for. She had sped through chores that could easily have bogged her down, because she knew that if she finished in time, she could then go to Richard. She hadn’t given a single thought to returning home with Mary Stanley or any of the other nurses, not because of the countless number of men who needed her, but because of one man who needed her.

She rose and walked to him, and this time she did not wait for him to hold out his hand. She simply took it in both of hers. She felt the slight jerk and thought he was going to pull away. But he didn’t.

“Richard, I am so glad to have found you again. I—”

“Miss Neville!” The double doors burst open with a crash, causing Jennifer to jump backwards. “Great-aunt Charlotte has sent me to fetch you. Tea is being served.” Livvy Greyston stood in the lighted doorway, blinking at the darkened room. “Oh, I see you’ve met my brother. I don’t suppose it’s any good asking you to come to tea, is it, Dick?”

He shook his head, holding up a hand to shade his eyes against the light from the open doors.

“All right. I’ll tell Branman to bring you a tray, shall I?”

“Oh, could I take mine here with your brother? We’re old acquaintances, you see. I was one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses at Scutari.”