with them. Even Sherringham, who would keep on repeating things and remembered everything you ever said to him, but slightly wrong, just enough to ruin the meaning completely.”
Dominic was about to say something, but she moved towards the conservatory door and led the way in. The damp smell of leaves was very pleasant, almost invigorating. The conservatory was all glassed arches and white wood above the palms and lilies.
“What was so different about Unity?” Vita went on, walkingalong the brick path between the beds. Twenty feet away, the chair where Mallory had been studying was empty, but his books and papers were still there, piled on a white-painted, cast-iron table. She was moving very slowly now, looking down at the ground. “Ramsay has changed, you know,” she went on. “He is not the man he used to be. You couldn’t know that, of course. It is as if there is a dark shadow over him, something that eats away at the confidence and the belief he had before. He used to be … so positive. Once he was full of fire. The very quality of his voice would make people listen. That’s all changed.”
He knew what she was referring to: the secular doubts that had afflicted many people since the popularity of Charles Darwin’s theories on the origin of mankind, an ascent from lower forms of life rather than a unique descent from a divine Father in Heaven. He had heard the doubts in Ramsay’s voice, the lack of passion in his belief and in his reiteration of it for parishioners. But Unity Bellwood was not responsible for that. She was certainly not the only person to believe in Darwinism, or the only atheist Ramsay had encountered. The world was full of them and always had been. The essence of faith was courage and trust, without knowledge.
Vita stopped. There was a dark stain of something across the pathway, at least four feet wide and in a spreading, irregular pattern. She wrinkled her nose at the faint, sharp smell which still came from it.
“I wish that gardener’s boy would be more careful. Bostwick really shouldn’t let him in here. He keeps forgetting to put the tops on things.”
Dominic bent down and touched the stain with his finger. It was dry. The brick must have absorbed it. It was brown, like the mark on Unity’s shoe. The conclusion was inescapable. But why had Mallory lied about having seen her?
“What is it?” Vita said.
He stood up. “I’ve no idea. But it’s dry, if you want to walk over. It must have gone into the brick very quickly.”
She picked up her skirts anyway, and stepped over the stain lightly. He followed her into the open central area amid the palms and vines. She gazed past winter lilies, oblivious of their delicate scent, her face pale and set.
“I suppose it was the unbearable frustration,” she said quietly. “She went on and on, didn’t she?” She bit her lip, and there was acute sadness in her eyes and in the angle of her head. “She never knew when to allow a little kindness to moderate her tongue. It is all very well to preach what you believe to be the truth, but when it shatters the foundations of someone else’s world, it isn’t very clever. It doesn’t help; it only destroys.” She reached out and touched one of the lilies. “There are people who cannot cope with losing so much. They cannot simply rebuild. Ramsay’s whole life has been the church. Ever since he was a young man, it is all he has lived for, worked for, sacrificed his time and his means for. He could have been outstanding in university life, you know.”
Dominic was not sure if that was true. He had an uncomfortable feeling that Ramsay’s scholarship was limited. He had thought it brilliant when he had first known Ramsay, but gradually over the last three or four months, as Unity Bellwood had worked with Ramsay, Dominic had overheard remarks, discussions and arguments which he had been unable to forget. He had tried not to be aware that she was quicker than Ramsay to see a
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