Set In Stone

by Linda Newbery

  ‘Well, we have managed perfectly well by ourselves.’ He stood between Juliana and Marianne, his arms resting lightly on their shoulders. ‘We hardly noticed you were gone. Our dinner party went splendidly without you.’

  My eyes were on Charlotte’s face; I saw her glad expression change to one of hurt rebuff, which she immediately concealed. ‘I am pleased to hear it,’ she replied.

  ‘I missed you!’ said Marianne, ducking away from her father, and taking Charlotte’s arm. ‘So did Juley! Let me tell you all about the guests, and the ladies’ dresses, and—’ She would have moved into the morning room, but her father said, ‘Don’t bore Miss Agnew with your chatter, Marianne.’

  ‘I am not bored,’ Charlotte replied.

  Mr Farrow nodded. ‘Well, it’s good to see you back,’ he said.

  ‘Charlotte, you must be tired, and hungry besides,’ said Juliana. ‘I have asked Mrs Reynolds to have something ready.’

  I wished I had thought of that myself - for Charlotte had looked after me better, when I had been the weary traveller. Fifteen minutes later she was seated in the dining room with a light meal of soup, bread and fruit.

  Shortly after, at my urging, the two girls retired to bed, content that she was back under their roof. I stayed on, taking my chance for the private conversation I had wanted; but of course, the two subjects most occupying me could not easily be broached with Charlotte. Namely: the contrivances that seemed intent on pairing me with Juliana; and the determination I had formed, of travelling to Chichester at the first opportunity, to seek out Gideon Waring. Instead, I attempted to make up for Mr Farrow’s brusqueness.

  ‘Don’t take to heart what he said just now - for I could see you felt slighted. We all missed you sorely, especially at the dinner party. He felt your absence as much as we did, I am sure. This is just his way.’

  Charlotte looked bleak for a moment. I understood how highly she prized Mr Farrow’s approval, and how keenly she felt any slight. Quickly she changed the subject, asking me about my impressions of the dinner guests, and how the drawing lessons were progressing, and whether there had been any more instances of sleepwalking on Marianne’s part.

  ‘No, I think not,’ I answered. ‘Juliana, at her own suggestion, has been sleeping in Marianne’s room, and neither has mentioned any disturbance. I’m sure, though,’ I added, ‘that all of us will sleep more soundly, now that you’re back with us.’

  ‘Thank you, Samuel, for all you have done during my absence. Knowing that you were here made me a good deal easier in my mind than I should have been otherwise.’

  It struck me at once - this was the very first time she had dropped her reserve sufficiently to address me as Samuel. Secretly pleased, I protested that I had done nothing at all; and on that cordial note of mutual appreciation, we wished each other goodnight.

  Upstairs in my room, I sat as usual with my windows thrown open to the air, for I loved to hear the night sounds: the owl that haunted the grounds, the baaing of sheep from the hillside, the little nameless squeaks and cries of small animals or birds about their nocturnal business. After a while, at the risk of attracting moths and other flying insects, I turned on the lamp, and fetched my sketchbook.

  It had become my custom, for the half-hour or so before getting into bed, to work on a set of drawings I did not intend anyone to see. Some were of Juliana, for I had become intrigued by the sadness that belied her habitual air of mild content. Most, though, were of Marianne, and from memory, for I would not risk discovery by putting pencil to paper in her presence.

  Whilst in London, and a frequent visitor to galleries and exhibitions, I had become much interested in the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. My tutor at the Slade had been scathing on the one occasion when I mentioned this, condemning Rossetti for lack of technique and for sensationalism. He directed my attention instead towards Ingres, Stubbs, Reynolds and Gainsborough, but Rossetti’s paintings continued to attract me. More accurately, I should say that his women fascinated me, with their bold glances, their sensually curved lips, and their rippling manes of hair. Since I had come to Fourwinds, Rossetti’s Mary Nazarene, his Beata Beatrix, and his Damsel of the Holy Grail, had been replaced in my thoughts by Marianne. Marianne as I dreamed of her, Marianne as I tortured myself my imagining her: her flesh-tones, her wondrous hair, her peculiar intensity that seemed to impress her personality on mine. Maybe Marianne matched the ideal that these paintings had formed in my mind, and that was why I had immediately been attracted to her; or perhaps her beauty and personality had supplanted all other images, making me almost believe that Rossetti had her in mind while he gazed at his model.

  I worked at my drawing, concentrating on the glint of eye-white, the lips softly parted, the texture of hair. I could possess her in this way, if in no other.

  Footsteps in the corridor outside barely disturbed my concentration; I assumed it to be Charlotte, on her way to her room. When the steps paused at my threshold, I listened more keenly. After a pause came a light rapping at my door - yes, Charlotte it could only be, come with some query, or some important reminder.

  And so my smile was for Charlotte as I opened the door.

  It was Marianne who stood there - in a long white nightgown, a fringed shawl of peacock blues and greens thrown over it, her hair loose about her shoulders, and her eyes - the eyes I had just been trying to capture with line and shade - looking brightly into mine. Had it not been for the intentness of those eyes, I should have suspected her of sleepwalking again. I found myself thinking of Ophelia, in the Millais painting - beautiful drowned Ophelia, clutching her posy of wild flowers, her hair floating on the water.

  ‘Samuel, let me come in.’ She was almost past me - quickly I stretched out an arm to the doorframe, barring entry.

  ‘You cannot!’ My heart was beating so powerfully that I felt sure Marianne must hear it.

  ‘I want to show you something.’ She held, not a posy, but her sketchbook. ‘Please, Samuel, don’t be stuffy. It’s important.’

  The gallery was in darkness; the household was asleep; the only light came from the lamp on my bureau. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Let me in - I’ll show you.’

  I hesitated; no one need know. ‘Very well - but only for a moment. It is not seemly, Marianne, for you to visit me here, and at this hour - you know that.’ I dropped my arm, and as she entered, quickly crossed the room to close my own drawing pad, which lay open on the bureau.

  She made a small sound of derision at my warning. ‘I saw your light - I knew you were still up. What are you doing, so late?’

  ‘Reading,’ I lied. I saw her eyes flickering round my room with interest, resting on each of my possessions in turn. ‘Now, what is it that cannot wait till morning?’

  She flicked open her sketchbook, and held it out to me. ‘I wanted to show you this. The West Wind. I know you are just as intrigued as I am. I meant what I said at dinner, Samuel - the West Wind must be found! Everything will go amiss, until he is in his place.’

  She gazed at me earnestly - almost passionately. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering if she could really be in her right mind; this seemed such an obsession with her.

  ‘He?’ I queried. ‘You are sure of that?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Taking her drawing, I carried it over to the lamp to study it. She waited in silence. I looked up at her; looked back at the page.

  ‘You see,’ she offered, ‘when I picked up your sketch the other day, I saw that you had been trying to guess - but you had made him female, and quite different in character.’

  ‘You looked at my sketch?’ For a dizzying instant I thought myself discovered; then gratefully remembered that the drawings of her were in a separate book, which never left my room.

  ‘Yes.’ She coloured slightly. ‘You left it lying on the bench while you went to fetch something. I did not think you would mind.’

  I did mind; but could hardly reprimand her, in the knowledge that I had been identi
cally tempted by her sketchings. ‘My attempt was all wrong, you say -how can you know that?’

  ‘Because…’ She came nearer, and gestured towards the book in my hand.

  I turned the page and looked. ‘When did you draw this?’

  ‘Some while ago - when Mr Waring was with us.’

  ‘And you copied this? From a sketch of his? Or -from the carving itself?’

  She darted me a look in which fear and daring were mingled. ‘Yes. I have seen it.’

  ‘So a carving exists? You have seen it here? Marianne, you have never told me that - though I am certain I’ve asked you. Where was it?’

  ‘I did see! Why won’t you believe me? No one else did. Gideon was… secretive, about his carvings. He would never let Papa see the pieces until they were finished. But he let me watch him in his workshop. He never minded.’

  ‘Why was that?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Because I was interested. I loved to watch him at work. His hands - how skilled they were, how clever.

  The same way I love to watch you paint, now,’ she said simply, ‘when you don’t object.’

  She was standing a little too close. My senses were so full of her that I could hardly breathe. If I moved my hand towards her, I could entwine it in her hair, trace with my finger the smooth line of her neck - I swallowed, making an involuntary gulping sound -surely she could not be unaware? With one movement I could draw her to me, let my arms enfold her strong, supple body, I could inhale the perfume of her skin, her hair, I could—

  ‘Marianne,’ I said, and making a stern effort to master myself, I took a step back, colliding awkwardly with the chest of drawers, ‘you must go now. Goodnight.’ I stepped round her, moving towards the door. ‘I hope you will sleep well. Thank you for showing me this,’ I added, realizing that I still held her book. ‘Maybe I shall borrow it another day, if you agree. I should like to make a copy.’

  ‘Keep it now!’ Following me, she paused in the doorway. ‘I want you to look at the other drawings there. Samuel, please?’

  ‘Of course, if that is what you wish.’

  She left without wishing me goodnight, as if suddenly anxious to be gone. I waited while she ran lightly down the stairs towards her own room; then closed my door, went to the window and inhaled deeply. Marianne! Breathing out, I pronounced her name soundlessly. Blood was pulsing fast through my veins; I was tingling and hot; to tell the simple truth, I was on fire with longing. This, as I have said, can be an almost comical state when observed in others -how mercilessly Chas and I had teased Johnny for his lusting after the furniture-shop girl! But, experienced like this, urgent and insistent, it called upon some deep, powerful instinct - an instinct that seemed to make me one with the night outside, with the stars in their courses, with the unseen creatures that lived and spawned and fought and died. What compelled their actions was the same irresistible force that stirred every part of me now. It was almost a torture to stand here, attempting to calm myself by will alone, when my blood and my heart and all my senses yearned for fulfilment.

  I went to the washstand and splashed cold water over my face, hands and neck, soaking my shirt in the process. Roughly towelling myself, I paced the floor a few times; then remembered that Marianne’s room was directly underneath, and that she might hear. She could already be in bed: I pictured her abundant hair spread on a pillow, her eyes closed, her body warm in sleep - then let out a groan as I tried, against hope, to banish such thoughts from my mind.

  Her drawings. I would look at her drawings, and apply my mind sternly to composition and execution. Sitting at my window, I took up the book she had handed me, and opened it at its first page.

  She had been right to say that my imagined version of the West Wind was very little like hers. Allowing for the roughness of her technique, she had caught something of Waring’s style - the clean line, the simplicity, the animation. My West Wind had been a benign female zephyr, rather anodyne, lacking the character of her brothers and sister. The figure Marianne had drawn certainly did not lack personality. He was male-I had supposed that balance and symmetry required a female, but he was emphatically male - less ethereal than his brother the East, more solidly muscled, more human. It was the face that demanded attention. Possibly, what I saw was attributable more to Marianne’s heavy-handedness than to the sculptor’s intent: a face that could have belonged to a medieval gargoyle, a face contorted with malice and scheming. Even the posture suggested creeping, spying, and furtiveness. I looked and looked, and saw that with his opposing pairs of Winds - if Marianne’s rendering was at all accurate - Waring had created various contrasts: not only the obvious warmth and coldness, but also youth against age, fear against aggression, innocence against cynicism. More than ever I longed to see the original of this, the living - for I could not avoid thinking of it as living - stone. Had Mr Farrow, I wondered, seen it and disapproved? Rejected it, even-asked Waring to start again? Could that be the cause of the rift - rather than, as Charlotte supposed, Waring’s liaison with Eliza Hardacre?

  I turned the page, turned again, and again. Marianne must have drawn the sketches that followed in the grip of feverish obsession, even hallucination. She had drawn the stone figure not once, but many times; the pages seemed to tell a story. In her clumsy drawing, the gargoyle figure rose from his stone background and became a living, breathing man; he stole up on the benign female figure of the South Wind, he gripped and overcame her, he twisted her to face him, he clasped a hand over her mouth - I caught my breath, unable to believe what I saw in the final drawing. I saw male and female body locked together; I saw grasping hands, spread legs, a humped back; I saw the act of coupling, grossly delineated—

  In revulsion I turned away; then looked back, trying to make sense of what Marianne had drawn.

  How could she have imagined such a thing?

  Immediately the answer supplied itself: She had not imagined. Charlotte’s words floated into my mind: ‘Marianne has seen things that no child ought to be exposed to.’ And I knew that I was looking at Gideon Waring and Eliza Hardacre, as Marianne must have seen them - must, surely, have stumbled across them, caught unawares in careless fornication.

  If I were shocked by what I saw here, what impression must it have made on her tender young mind?

  I slapped the book shut, feeling that I was in possession of something incriminating, something filthy. What could be Marianne’s motive in bringing it to me? Why did she wish me to know what she had seen? Was there, perhaps, a kind of bravado in it, a wish to show me that she was not a child? I recalled her fear that the West Wind was gusting free; that it must be recaptured and fixed in place on its wall. Did she feel herself at risk, while it roamed?

  I let out an appalled exclamation; I stood, sat on my bed, stood again; I was quite beside myself with the shock of realization.

  It was Waring she feared; it must be. In her torment she had confused him with the Wind of his creation. Had he - had he dared to force his attentions on her, taking advantage of her innocent interest? Good God - the thought was not to be tolerated! And was this, then, the reason for his dismissal?

  I paced my room; I sweated; I was nauseous with loathing and impotent with anger; my fists clenched in futile aggression.

  And part of my anger was turned against myself. Had I not - only now - been indulging, even enjoying, my own aching desire? For an instant I felt the same revulsion for myself as I did for Gideon Waring; I felt tainted with his lasciviousness. Yet I could not quite call it lasciviousness; there was such pure, instinctive, single-mindedness in my yearning that I could not believe it harmful, either to myself or to the unwitting Marianne.

  But this…

  Eventually, slowly, I undressed for bed. I was certain I should not sleep, but was woken by early birdsong, my head teeming with images of faces and bodies, twining, grappling and writhing. That grinning gargoyle visage leered at me, mocking and triumphant.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Proposal

 
My feelings on returning to Fourwinds were very much mixed.

  Having looked forward to everything being exactly as I left it, of course I was disappointed. Juliana, though evidently much happier than when I had left her, was so irrevocably changed in my view that I hardly knew how to look at her. Samuel I planned to manipulate for my own ends, or rather for Juliana’s. Mr Farrow seemed intent on demonstrating that I had not been missed at all; it was his way, I suppose, of showing disapproval. As for myself: I was not quite the person who had departed only a few days ago, though I had determined to say and do nothing with regard to my changed circumstances. Only Marianne, full of chatter and excitement at my return, was quite as I expected.

  Naturally, they were curious, all of them (Marianne overtly, the others with more discretion), about how my time had been spent in Eastbourne, and who I had seen there. Fobbing them off with vague replies, I diverted the conversation to what had happened at home during my absence, and was gratified to learn that the dinner party had given enjoyment to all concerned. Juliana, indeed, looked as though she had more to tell me, when we were alone. However, after I had given them their presents, the two girls retired to bed, leaving me with Samuel.

  Having spent so much time alone in Eastbourne, I was glad indeed to see him again. Looking at his kind grey eyes, his nose a little reddened by the sun, and a dab of green paint on one cheek (for he had been painting by the north front when I arrived in the pony-chaise), I felt a rush of affection that almost made me forget my own deviousness. Dear boy: he was such an innocent, so open in his nature, so good-hearted! Although only a year his senior, I felt decades older in worldly wisdom and scepticism.

  He told me a little more of the dinner guests, and of his attendance at church with the two girls. ‘But how I ramble on!’ he concluded. ‘I am tiring you - I am sorry.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ I assured him; and, almost involuntarily, reached out a hand to smudge away the paint-mark from his cheek. He seemed to stop himself from flinching; then regarded me with surprise, as well he might. ‘Pardon me,’ I said, flustered; ‘I could not help it - there is paint on your cheek which I have been longing to wipe away. But I am afraid the mark is still there.’