“I do not believe a whole day has passed yet,” George said.
“A day is a long time,” Imogen agreed. “Twenty-four hours. How can one turn off memory for that long? And would one wish to? One thinks one does until it happens for a few hours.”
“This is precisely what I mean,” Ralph said. “It is guilt pure and simple. Guilt over being alive and able to forget—and smile and laugh and feel moments of happiness.”
“If I had died, though,” Vincent said, “I would have wanted my mother and my sisters to live on and have happy lives and to remember me with smiles and laughter. Not every day, however. I would not have wanted them to be obsessed with remembering me.”
“One good way to forget,” Flavian said, “is to fall off your h-horse and land on your h-head after someone has shot you through it and then have someone ride over you. Behold the blessing of my poor memory: no g-guilt whatsoever.”
Which they all knew to be a lie.
But if he had died, he would have been quite happy at the notion of Velma’s marrying Len—his betrothed and his best friend, respectively. At least he thought he would have been happy. Except that no one could be happy when he was dead. Or unhappy either, for that matter.
Anyway, he had not died—but it had happened anyway. Velma had come and told him. Len had not. Perhaps he had decided against it when he heard what happened after Velma came. Perhaps he had judged it best to keep his distance.
Now Len was dead, and they had not spoken in more than six years while he still lived. And Flavian felt guilty about it—oh, yes, he did, unfair as it seemed. Why should he feel guilt? He was not the one who had done the betraying.
Usually these late-night sessions made them all feel somewhat better, even if they solved nothing. Flavian did not feel better the next morning, however. He had gone to bed feeling as if he had leaden weights in his shoes and in his stomach and in his soul, and he woke up with one of his headaches and deep in one of his depressions.
He hated them more than the headaches—that feeling of dragging self-pity and the fear that nothing was worth anything. It was the one shared mood the Survivors’ Club had all fought against most fiercely during those years they had spent together at Penderris. Bodies could be mended and made to work again, at least well enough to enable the person inside them to live on. Minds could be mended to the degree that they worked efficiently again for the one who inhabited them. And souls could be soothed and fed from an inner well of inspiration and from an outer sharing of experience and friendship and love.
But one never quite reached the point at which one could relax and know that one had made it through to the other side of suffering and could now be simply content, even happy, inside a balanced mix of body, mind, and spirit.
Well, of course one did not. He had never been quite naïve enough to expect it, had he? Surely, even when he had been head over ears in love with Velma, and she with him, and they had become betrothed at the end of those brief weeks of his leave and had expected a life of happily-ever-after, surely even then he had not believed it to be literally possible. After all, he had been a military officer, and there had been a war to fight. And his brother, David, had been dying.
Why the devil had they got betrothed and even celebrated the event at a grand ball in London the night before he set off back to the Peninsula, while David was at Candlebury dying, and Flavian had come home for the express purpose of being with him? And why had Flavian gone back to war when the end for his brother had obviously been near and he was about to be landed with the responsibilities of the title and property? He frowned in thought, trying to remember, trying to work it out, but the trying merely made his head thump more painfully.
The sun was shining from a clear blue sky again, he could see, and the daffodils beckoned. Or, rather, the enchantress among the daffodils beckoned. Would she be there? Would he be disappointed if he went and she was not? Would she be disappointed if she went there and he did not? And what did he intend if he did go? Conversation? Dalliance? Seduction? On Vince’s property? With the viscountess’s friend? He had better stay away.
Ben, Ralph, George, and Imogen were going riding. They expected to be gone all morning, since they were going beyond the confines of the park.
“Will you come with us, Flavian?” Imogen asked at the breakfast table.
He hesitated for the merest moment.
“I will,” he said. “Vince is taking Hugo and the l-ladies over the wilderness walk, and it sounds alarmingly s-strenuous. I will come with you and l-let my horse do all the exercising.”
“What I am going to do,” Vincent said, “is show everyone what they cannot see because they have eyes.”
“The boy has taken to talking in riddles,” George said, looking at him fondly. “Yet, strangely, we know just what you mean, Vincent. At least I do.”
“I am even going to sacrifice my morning’s practice in the music room,” Vincent said.
“He p-put me to sleep there yesterday morning,” Flavian said.
“With a lullaby, Flave,” Vincent protested, “for which you asked. I would say I was singularly successful.”
Flavian chuckled.
“Oh,” Lady Darleigh said, her hands clasped together at her bosom, “I am so looking forward to this evening, and I am quite certain you will all be vastly impressed, even though some of you spend time in London and must attend all sorts of concerts with the very best performers.”