by John Harwood
BEATRICE REMAINED, SO FAR AS CORDELIA COULD TELL, in this melancholy frame of mind for the next few weeks, as summer approached and Harry's weekend visits became a settled thing. Then, early in June, Beatrice went up to London to spend a few days with her friend Claudia in Bayswater. On the evening of her return to Ashbourn, she announced to her uncle and Cordelia (Aunt Una had already retired to bed) that she wanted to learn type-writing, with a view to earning her living in London.
"Miss Harringay's academy in Marylebone will take me, and Claudia's mother has said I am welcome to stay with them. I can go up to town on Monday morning and come back each Friday. I wish to earn my living, especially now that Cordelia will soon be married-"
"He hasn't asked me yet."
"I'm sure he will, very soon. And then you will need the money from the pictures-"
"No I shan't," said Cordelia sharply. "Uncle knows that the income will stay with him; he has cared for us all our lives, and I shouldn't dream of taking a penny of it."
Cordelia and her uncle had already spoken of this. He wanted her to take at least her share of the income when (as everyone now assumed) she and Harry were married, but she had declined absolutely. The securities in which the trust's capital was invested had declined in value, reducing the income to less than four hundred a year, only just enough to maintain her uncle and aunt at Ashbourn with the extra help they would need if she and Beatrice were to leave. She loved Ashbourn, and did not want to see it sold, any more than her uncle did. Of course now that Beatrice would be leaving… it came to her suddenly that her ideal would be to live here with Harry, and that when, as must eventually happen, Ashbourn descended to her and Beatrice, she might be able to use the income to buy out Beatrice's share of the house. But then Harry was very much attached to London, and if, as she hoped, he were to give up the law, and seek a position in one of the galleries or auction houses, it would be even less practical for him to leave.
"Beatrice was just saying, my dear, that it will cost three guineas a week, all in all, for her to attend this academy; and that the training will last about twelve weeks. So the question is, whether you approve?"
"If you mean about the money, uncle, it is for you to say; speaking for myself, of course I approve."
"We can just afford it," said Theodore, "but we shall have to make some economies."
"Then let us make them," said Cordelia. It struck her as she spoke that Beatrice would be only a mile or two from Harry throughout the week, while she would be very much tied to Ashbourn by the need to look after her aunt. But it was too late to call back the words, and besides, it was only for three months; though of course, if Beatrice were then to find work in town, could she really leave her aunt and uncle to manage alone? Cordelia tried her best to appear enthusiastic for the rest of the evening, but these depressing speculations followed her up to bed.
CORDELIA HAD ALWAYS IMAGINED A PROPOSAL OF MARriage as a sort of magical transformation: one minute, perhaps, you were still wondering whether he really did care for you; the next (provided you adored him) you were the happiest woman on earth. By the time Beatrice announced her intention of leaving home, Harry was talking as if their future together was already a settled thing; of what "we" might do with the pictures in "our" house in London, for example; or how wonderful it would be if Henry St Clair should reappear and become "our" friend; and so forth. He would say these things quite unselfconsciously, but despite constant encouragement he had not come to the point of proposing, and she had not liked to ask him directly.
Oddly enough, it was Harry's continuing fascination-she was beginning to think of it as an obsession-with "The Drowned Man" that brought about their betrothal. Whenever they were in the studio, and he was not actively engaged in conversation, or studying one of the other pictures, he would begin to drift towards the lectern, there to sink once more into half-mesmerised contemplation, swaying slowly back and forth. She was reminded of the way in which she used to lose herself in her grandmothers portrait; but to lose yourself in the face of a corpse, locked in its final agony, with bloodshot eyeballs straining from their sockets, and weed and water flowing in and out of its gaping mouth… It was all the more troubling because, when she ventured to distract him, she would sometimes detect a flash of irritation, even hostility, before his features resumed their normal cheerful cast. Away from the studio, he would agree that his fixation might be unhealthy, but she could tell that he did not like to speak of it. The face reminded him of something, he would repeat, something he felt sure would help him in his search for Henry St Clair, if only he could draw it to the surface. But many hours of concentration seemed to have brought him no nearer to understanding what that something might be. She had asked him twice if he thought it might be a despairing self-portrait, painted after he had lost Imogen. Possibly, he replied, but that was not what drew him to it. Nor, thus far, had his inquiries around the galleries, or his researches in Somerset House, Chancery Lane, the Reading Room of the British Museum, and other repositories of records and documents, yielded the slightest trace of Henry St Clair's existence.
On the Saturday after Beatrice's announcement, Cordelia and Harry were once more in the studio, at his instigation. He wanted to look again at one of the waterscapes (as she liked to call them) to see if he could establish where it had been painted. To Cordelia this was no more than a pleasant game of speculation; without benefit of tide it was plainly impossible to identify any location, even on the remote chance that the place was one you had visited yourself. But she agreed readily enough, hoping she could lure him away for a walk in the wood before "The Drowned Man" could ensnare him. It was a perfect summer afternoon outside, and there was a particular spot she had in mind; a grassy bank beside a stream where they had lain side by side and he had fallen asleep, so that by insinuating herself closer she was able to embrace him while he slept. And then when he had woken he had kissed her for quite some time before saying that perhaps they ought to think about getting back. Although she loved him for being so protective of her virtue, she would happily have stayed there for ever; it was like receiving the keys to paradise, and then being told you could only go there for a few hours every week.
The room diagonally below that in which Henry St Clair's pictures were stored had been "Harry's room" from the first; his things were scattered around it, and throughout the summer his khaki greatcoat had remained on the hook behind the door. Theodore's bedroom was at the other end of the same first-floor corridor (one of the intervening rooms being that in which Grandmama's things were still gathering dust, undisturbed). The two girls slept on the next floor up; Cordelia next to her favourite sitting-room, and Beatrice about half-way along the corridor. To reach Harry's room undetected, Cordelia had only to tiptoe past her sisters bedroom, along the landing and down the staircase, carefully avoiding the treads that creaked. Several times now, always while he was away during the week, she had stolen into his room at night, wrapped herself in his khaki greatcoat and curled up on his bed, wishing she had the nerve to do so when he was actually there. Really there was nothing to prevent her (Uncle Theodore was a heavy sleeper) except the fear that Harry would be shocked, and think her "fast". And why should he not? A well-brought-up girl was not supposed to creep into a young man's bedroom in the middle of the night, however passionate her longing to see, and touch, and above all embrace him: the most startling thing about these newly discovered desires was her inability to feel ashamed of them.
THE PICTURE HARRY WANTED TO STUDY HUNG IMMEDIately to the left of the doorway: the rippling waterway, bearing a few small boats in the foreground, a dim green promontory in the distance, the great sweep of the sky overhead. He had said several times that he was sure he had been somewhere exactly like this; but today's scrutiny brought him no closer to deciding where.
"Shall we go now?" Cordelia asked. "It's much too beautiful to stay indoors."
"Yes, of course," he replied, moving towards the lectern, "I'll just…"
"Please
don't. Wouldn't you rather be…?" She broke off, not wanting to sound imploring.
"Yes, of course," he repeated. But his feet carried him another pace closer.
"What is it that draws you?"
"I must…" His voice sounded muffled, as if by a strong wind.
"No, you must not. Please look at me."
He turned, reluctantly, to face her. Again she had the eerie impression that he did not recognise her. "Like a man defeated by his craving for drink"-that was what de Vere's valet had said. She was suddenly afraid of him, and then very angry.
"I think you care more for that hideous face than you do for me. It is enslaving you, and you know it, and yet you… you would rather look at a corpse…"
Tears choked her, and she ran from the room and down the stairs. But then to her relief she heard footsteps echoing across the floorboards, followed by the irregular rhythm of Harry's tread as he too began to descend. She did not look back, however, but continued on down, praying she would not meet anyone, especially Beatrice, out through the kitchen door and around into the lane, out of sight of the house. There she waited until he caught up with her, gasping out apologies and assurances of devotion, and took her in his arms.
"I am so sorry," he said a little later. "You're quite right; it's bad for me; we'll put it away in the other room and I shan't look at it ever again."
"I'm sorry too, I didn't mean it. Only, I wish you would tell me-what do you see? what do you feel?-that compels you so?"
"I can't… it goes, like a dream, when you wake in the night and you're sure you'll never forget, and then in the morning it's gone… all you can remember is that you meant to remember, and can't."
Cordelia suspected that he was withholding something, but from there they progressed to the grassy bank beside the stream, where they lay down and embraced as she had hoped, and where, a little later, he asked her to marry him, and the drowned man was quite forgotten.
ON A STIFLING, OVERCAST EVENING TOWARDS THE END of summer, Cordelia was once again watching from her old place in the upstairs window, waiting for Harry to appear at the turning of the lane. A scrawled note in yesterdays post had told her he would be arriving late on Friday, some time between five and seven-thirty, depending on when he could get away from the office.
The day had been exceedingly hot, the sun too fierce to venture out in; it had been a relief, at first, when the clouds came over. But still the heat pressed down like a blanket. The air was heavy with the perfume of the climbing roses on the porch below, mingled with that of a dozen different flowers, scents of foliage and bark and leaf-mould, warm stone and woodwork and paint still soft from the heat of the sun. She turned once more to look at the clock on the mantelpiece. Eight minutes past six.
For the first few weeks of their engagement, Harry had seemed perfectly content. A long spell of fine weather had enabled them to spend a great deal of time out of doors, including several paradisal hours on the riverbank. But even then, the intervening days had passed very slowly indeed. With Beatrice in town all week, Cordelia was effectively tied to Ashbourn, partly for reasons of economy, and partly because Aunt Una, after visiting a London heart specialist, had been ordered to avoid exertion, and rest for several hours every day. And since the house had no telephone, and Harry was, as he cheerfully conceded, hopeless at letters, she would usually have heard nothing from him since the last farewell.
He was also constitutionally incapable of catching a specified train, being always liable to slip into the Museum, or a saleroom, "just for five minutes" and emerge an hour and a half later. And then at Hurst Green he might be drawn into conversation with the stationmaster, or someone he met in the village street, and lose track of yet more time before he came into view of the house, waving as enthusiastically as ever. So she had got into the habit of settling herself with a book in the upstairs window at the earliest possible time, though she seldom did much reading. Her imagination was too active, her emotions too keen; and all too often, especially once the expected hour had come and gone, morbid anxieties would begin to flit about her mind. The train has been delayed. He has accepted another invitation and forgotten to tell me. He has simply forgotten. He no longer loves me. He has met someone else. There has been an accident The train has crashed. He is injured… he is dead. I shall never see him again… all in the most vivid detail. It was like waving away midges at twilight: as fast as you drove one off, another would dart in and stab, on and on interminably, until they were banished by the familiar wave and greeting from the lane below.
For those few perfect weeks, that first embrace had seemed to her the purest essence of joy: she would twine herself around him, only wishing she could hold him close enough to annihilate all distinction between them. Until-she could not say exactly when; the more she brooded upon where the first shadow had fallen, the further back it seemed to stretch-she had become aware that his passion no longer matched her own. She had tried persuading herself that he was merely embarrassed by excessive displays of ardour in public, but even since she had learned to be more restrained, he was likely to say "Here, steady on, old thing", and glance nervously up at the windows. And then he had begun to say such things in private. Her conviction that she must be perfectly, blissfully happy had carried her along, as if she had set out for a walk on a cloudless day, too absorbed to notice the fine, tell-tale streaks of vapour overhead, the gradual weakening of the light, until quite suddenly she had looked up, and shivered, and realised that she had been cold for a long time.
She shivered in fact, though there was nothing chill about the present evening. The house was completely silent. Aunt Una would be lying down in her room; Uncle Theodore was no doubt reading in his study; Beatrice had not yet returned from town. Her lessons at Miss Harringay's were normally over by two o'clock each Friday, and she was supposed to come straight home. But perhaps Harry had got in touch, and suggested she travel down with him, though this had never happened before. At Uncle Theodore's insistence, Beatrice had always taken the first train up each Monday morning, rather than returning with Harry on the Sunday night. Theodore had told Beatrice, when she. began at Miss Harringay's, that he wanted her to impose as little as possible upon her friends in Bayswater; but Cordelia suspected that he had understood how she would have felt to see Beatrice and Harry setting off together, and was grateful to him. She had not realised until too late just how much she was giving up for Beatrice's sake. The four happy years she had spent at Ashbourn since leaving school now seemed to have vanished in a sort of contented sleep; she too wanted to be out preparing to earn her living, as she meant to do when they were married; and in London she could have seen Harry every day.
Beatrice, to do her justice, had not once suggested that Harry should escort her. Her manner towards him had grown still more constrained, but that was capable of more than one interpretation. Cordelia had not been able to stop herself asking Harry, every so often, whether he had seen anything of Beatrice in town; he always assured her he had not; but on the other hand, he had never asked whether she thought he ought to, which suggested he knew better than to ask. And once she had begun to doubt the strength of his feeling, her anxieties had multiplied and swarmed. Until, after tossing and turning for hours on the previous Saturday night, she decided to go down to the kitchen and make herself some cocoa (and perhaps, if she felt bold enough, look in at Harry while he slept). As she approached the room in which they had stored the remainder of Henry St Clair's belongings, she saw light shining from beneath the door.
Unlike the studio, which had its own special lock, this door opened to the same key as all the other rooms in the corridor. Had somebody left the light on? But why? She had not entered the room for many weeks; not since they had put away "The Drowned Man" and turned the key on it. She listened, holding her breath. No sound came from within, but it seemed to her that there was a very faint, rhythmic pulsation in the pool of light around her feet. Which would be worse: to look and see, or lie awake with her imagination ru
nning wild? She took hold of the handle and softly opened the door.
Harry-still fully dressed, though it was two in the morning-stood facing her over the lectern, swaying slowly back and forth. She had last seen it in the far corner, draped in a cloth. Now it stood in the centre of the floor, directly beneath the light. If he had glanced up, their eyes would have met, but his entire attention remained fixed upon the lectern. She could see the glitter of his shadowed eyes, and it seemed to her that he was very faintly smiling. She waited, willing him to look at her, until the suspense became unbearable.
"Dearest?"
The rhythm of his breathing faltered like that of a sleeper on the verge of waking, but his concentration did not waver. How long had he been creeping in here at night? Dust was already thick upon the floor, and on the furniture, and yet the lectern, what she could see of it, looked spotless.
She took another step into the room, her hand still on the doorknob. But the hem of her dressing-gown caught on an empty frame and brought it clattering to the floor.
His head jerked up. For a dreadful moment, he glared as if he had come face to face with his worst enemy; he seemed to be gathering himself to spring. Slowly, recognition returned; now, he looked like her imagination of a burglar caught red-handed. He lowered his eyes, closed the panel, and slunk out from behind the lectern.
"I… I must have been sleep-walking," he muttered.
"Please don't lie to me. If you must look at it, at least trust me enough to tell me so."