pushed her intentionally, do you.” It was a statement, not really a question.
He hesitated a long time before he answered, and when he did it was slowly; he was frowning, and looking not at her but straight ahead of him at the blur of the street and the other traffic.
“It is completely unlike the man I know,” he said. “When I first met Ramsay I was at the lowest point I have ever been in my life. Every day seemed a gray desert with nothing beyond the horizon but more of the same pointless struggle.” He was nervously chewing his lower hp as if even the memory of that time still disturbed him, the knowledge that it was possible to feel such an utter inability even to hope. It was an abyss whose existence was a fear in itself. The darkness of it was naked in his eyes.
She wanted to ask why, but it would be intrusive, and she had no right to know. She wondered if it had anything to do with Sarah’s death, even though it must have been several years after. She wanted to touch him, but that also would be too personal. It was too long since they had known each other so well, and one could not bridge that gap in an instant.
“I despised myself,” he went on, still not looking at her, and speaking only loudly enough for her to hear, but not the coachman in front of them.
“For feeling despair?” she said softly. “You shouldn’t. It is not a sin. Oh, I know religious teaching says it is, but sometimes one cannot help it. Perhaps self-pity is, but not genuine despair.”
“No,” he said with a dry laugh. “I didn’t despise myself for my misery; I was miserable because I despised myself. And I had cause.” His hands tightened in his lap. She could see the leather of his gloves shining as it stretched over his knuckles. “I have no intention of telling you how worthless I had become, because I don’t wish you to think of me like that, even in the past. But I had sunk into being completely selfish, thinking of no one else, living for the moment and my immediate appetite.”
He shook his head fractionally. “That is no life for any creature with the intelligence to think. It is less than human, a waste of life, a denial of the mind, the spirit, the soul, if you like. It is killing by neglect all that makes anyone worth valuing or loving. There is no kindness, no courage, no honor or grace or dignity in it.” He glanced at her, then away again. “I despised myself for being almost nothing of what I could have been. I was wasting all my possibilities. You can’t truly condemn anyone who had no chances, but you can those who had them and threw them away out of cowardice, laziness or dishonesty.”
Excuses came to her mind, but she saw in his face that he would not have found them a kindness, only a failure to comprehend, so she remained silent. They were coming into a street with shops on either side, and they would shortly reach the haberdasher.
“And Ramsay Parmenter helped you?” she prompted.
He straightened his shoulders again, a slight smile touching his lips as if the memory were sweet. “Yes. He had the charity and the strength of faith to see far more in me than I saw in myself.” He gave a jerky laugh. “He had the patience to persevere with me, to put up with my mistakes and my self-pity, my endless doubts and fears, and continually help me to the point where I believed in myself as strongly as he did. I can’t tell you how many hours and days and weeks that took, but he never gave up.”
“You didn’t take the cloth to please him, did you?” she asked, then wished the moment after that she had not. It was insulting, and she had not meant to do that. “I’m sorry …”
He turned to look at her, and he was smiling fully now. The years had suited him very well. His face was less beautiful in an obvious way, but the lines in it made it subtler, more refined. There was nothing bland or unfinished in him anymore. It was a greater beauty because it had meaning.
“You haven’t changed, have you.” He shook his head. “Still the same Charlotte, saying what you think the minute you think it.”
“I have changed!”