Wonders of the Invisible World

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “In this case, I believe I do. I don’t see why I should bother to persuade the gallery owner to hang an exhibit of little-known, though possibly talented, women painters if you do not pose for me.”

  She opened her mouth, stood wordless a moment, too astonished to speak. Then her eyes narrowed. “Mr. Wilding,” she said softly, “I believe this is what they call blackmail.”

  “Do they?” he said indifferently. “Well, no matter, as long as I can have my Boudicca. I’ll just step in and let Adrian know where you’re going. Join me when you’re ready.”

  Ned painted feverishly all day in his own comfortable studio on the top floor of his house. He had enlarged and added windows on all sides of the studio; he could see the river to the east, city to the north and south, and the park to the west, where, when the sun came to roost like a great genial bird on the top branches of the trees, he intended to be strolling with Miss Emma Sophronia Slade. Or, as would be as soon as respectably possible, Mrs. Emma Bonham.

  He whistled while he tinkered with a painting that he never seemed to get right. He had been working on it for several years, shutting it away in exasperation when he got tired of reaching his limitations. The subject was along the lines of Linley Coombe’s poem: a man lost in a wood and glimpsing in a fall of sunlight the Fairy Queen and her court riding toward him. The figures emerging through the light could barely be seen; some of them he conceived as only half human, figures of twig and bark on horseback, with faces of animals, perhaps, or exotic birds. The look on the man’s face, of astonishment tinged with dawning horror as he realized he had walked out of the world, never seemed convincing. Most of the time he looked simply pained, as though berries he had eaten earlier were beginning to make themselves known. The fairy figures were no less difficult; color had to be suggested rather than shown, and the strange faces, part human, part fox or bluebird, were extraordinarily elusive.

  A good thing, he reminded himself, I’m not doing this for a living.

  At last the sun sank within an inch of the trees in the park. Shafts of lovely, dusty-gold fairy light fell between the branches, gilded the grass below. It was one of those spring days that revealed how much more ease and warmth and loveliness there was to come. A perfect mellow dusk for a first walk into the future. He cleaned and put things away quickly, slipped on his coat and went around the block to Adrian’s apartment.

  Adrian, who was in the midst of paying Euphemia Bunce, received Ned with pleasure and without surprise.

  “Come at the same time tomorrow, Buncie,” he requested. “Maybe I can finish those veils and we can start on the platter you’re holding. Ned, I don’t suppose you would let me borrow your head. You’ve got exactly that combination of innocence and strength in your face that I need.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it helped me much if my head winds up on a platter.”

  “You can bask in the company of Miss Bunce and me for a couple of weeks. And Mrs. Dyce’s cooking.”

  “Might Miss Slade be basking with us?” He glanced around. “Has she returned from the women’s studio? We had plans to walk.”

  “Oh.” Adrian’s amiable smile diminished slightly. “I’m afraid she’s been snared by Wilding.”

  “What?”

  “He apparently talked Miss Cameron into letting my sister pose for him first. That’s what he told me, at any rate. I doubt that’s the full story. But we’ll have to wait for Emma to tell us the rest. She should be here soon.” He folded Miss Bunce into her shawl. “Tomorrow morning, then, Buncie.”

  “That Mr. Wilding is a mischief-maker,” she said tersely. “I’d keep your eye on him.”

  “I will do just that with both eyes,” Adrian promised, opening the door for her.

  “Thank you, Mr. Slade. Goodnight, Mr.—Bonham, was it?” She flashed him a smile. “I hope your head will join us.”

  “So that’s what she was doing in those veils,” Ned murmured. “Salome dancing about with the severed head. I wondered. Do you suppose the public will appreciate it?”

  “They will appreciate Miss Bunce. And your guileless and saintly head, cut so tragically short from its body, will affect them deeply, I’m sure. There won’t be a dry eye at the exhibit.” He was cleaning his brushes with a great deal of energy, glancing down at the street now and then.

  Ned paced a step or two, then stopped and said simply, “Where is Wilding’s studio? I’ll go and meet her there.”

  “Yes,” Adrian said emphatically. “Good idea. It’s straight down Summer Street beside the river, a yellowish villa-ish sort of thing with red tiles on the roof. You can’t miss it.”

  Even if he had missed the eye-catching villa at the corner of Summer Street and River Road, the monkey chattering at him on the wall beside the gate would have alerted him to Wilding’s domain. The monkey wore a thin gold chain around its neck, long enough for it to reach the ground, but too short for it to do more than climb back up. Ned opened the gate cautiously, wondering what other wildlife roamed Wilding’s garden.

  The only wildlife he found on the other side of the wall was Emma and Bram Wilding, walking together toward the gate.

  “Ah, Bonham,” Wilding said, with a faint smile in his eyes. “How good of you to come and visit me. Miss Slade is just leaving.”

  Ned looked at her. She had colored at the sight of him, but other than a trifle embarrassed, she seemed quite pleased to see him.

  “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” he told Wilding with satisfaction. “I have an appointment to escort Miss Slade through the park.”

  “So she told me when I tried to persuade her to accept some supper. Another time, perhaps, Miss Slade. I will see you tomorrow at noon?”

  “Unless my brother needs—”

  “Now, Miss Slade,” Wilding interrupted gently. “We discussed this. I need my Boudicca. I will be more grateful than you can imagine for your time.”

  “I would be happy to join you, Miss Slade,” Ned offered. “I would like to see Mr. Wilding’s work.”

  “Oh, yes—”

  “Alas, I find it difficult to work when I’m watched. You understand, Mr. Bonham.”

  “Perfectly,” Ned assured him, watching the monkey rise on the wall behind Wilding and fling what looked like a chestnut from last autumn’s crop at Wilding’s head. It bounced off its target with a satisfying thump.

  “Mr. Wilding,” Emma said, her hands flying to her mouth. Her voice wobbled. “Are you hurt?”

  Wilding turned briefly to stare at the monkey as he rubbed his head. “Perfectly fine, I assure you.” He added, his eyes on Ned, “I should tell you that there are occasionally creatures in the garden who might be dangerous if surprised. I need to know exactly when my guests are coming or leaving so that I can have them put away. You were fortunate that I’d already done so before you came in. Didn’t Slade tell you?”

  “He did not,” Ned answered, surprised. “Perhaps he thought I would find Miss Slade on the street.”

  He offered his arm to Emma, whose face had lost expression.

  “Miss Slade,” Wilding said with his charming smile.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Wilding,” she said perfunctorily, and went through the gate without a backward glance. “I don’t believe in his dangerous animals,” she whispered when the gate closed behind them. “I think he just said that to keep you away.”

  “Why—”

  “Mr. Bonham, do you know where Marianne Cameron’s studio is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Will you please take me there now?”

  “Not the park?” he said wistfully.

  “I’m sorry.” Her fingers tightened a little on his arm; she added ruefully, “I know none of this makes much sense. But when I speak to Miss Cameron, you’ll understand.”

  The women’s studio, which Ned had visited several times, was the second floor of an old warehouse along River Road. Ned smelled paints and turpentine, mold and the lingering odors of mud flats as they climbed the creaky flight of stairs. The stair
s ended at a long sweep of floorboard beneath unpainted rafters. Light came from tall windows overlooking the river, inset where doors had once opened in midair for goods to be grappled and winched up for storage off boats in the full tide below. Older windows on the other side gathered the morning light. The vast room was filled with easels, canvases, paints and paper, stools with stained smocks hanging over them. The painters had vanished into the fading light; only Marianne was there, lighting lamps to continue her work.

  She looked stricken when she saw Emma, and came to her quickly. “Oh, Miss Slade, I do apologize. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’m so glad you came here. Hello, Mr. Bonham. Have a stool.”

  “Hello, Miss Cameron.” He sat, looking at them puzzledly. “I wish someone would explain what I’ve missed.”

  “Mr. Wilding—” Emma began.

  “I invited Miss Slade to pose for us—”

  “And then Mr. Wilding begged me to pose for him, and I refused because I had promised Miss Cameron, and anyway I wanted to come here and paint—He knew that, and yet he found a way to sabotage our plans.”

  Miss Cameron’s broad face flushed. “He offered us an exhibit, Mr. Bonham. A promise to talk to the owner of a new gallery about a women’s show. If we let him have Miss Slade first.”

  “Will he keep his promise?” Emma asked grimly.

  “As long as he gets what he wants, he will. I felt dreadful giving you up like that, but—it was too much to refuse. I’ve been trying for years to get someone to agree to exhibit us. And he paints wonderfully well; you’ll be pleased with what he makes of you.”

  Emma sighed. “But I have to endure his company for hours. I thoroughly dislike him. I didn’t know why at first, but now I do.”

  “Has he been rude to you?” Ned asked abruptly. “If he has, he’ll be wearing his painting around his neck.”

  “No. He hasn’t. I just feel a bit trapped.”

  “And so you have been, and I’ve been complicit in your entrapment,” Miss Cameron said ruefully. “How can I make it up to you? Can you find time to come and paint with us? I won’t charge you for studio space; you can come and go as you please, and see what the rest of us are doing.”

  “Yes,” Emma said emphatically. “That’s why I came to talk to you. I would love a corner here to work in. I feel underfoot at my brother’s, and his friends, though terribly interesting, are so terribly distracting. I could paint here in the mornings, then pose for Mr. Wilding in the afternoons...” Her voice trailed away; Ned found her blue eyes on his face as though she had sensed his sudden pang of distress. She was silent a moment, conjecturing; then she added softly, “And in the evenings, Mr. Bonham, you and I can draw one another.”

  He said, his odd heartache gone, “I can think of nothing I would like better. Well, actually I can, but that will wait until the fullness of time.”

  Miss Cameron eyed them speculatively. “I see you have outplayed us all, Mr. Bonham,” she murmured. “Even the paragon, Mr. Wilding.”

  “I was the more fortunate,” he admitted. “Speaking of posing, your brother wants my head for Salome’s platter. Shall I give it to him?”

  “What a wonderful idea,” Emma said, laughing. “Yes, I think you should indulge my brother. You can get to know him better and meet all of his disreputable friends.”

  “And what is Mr. Wilding making out of you?” Marianne asked her curiously.

  “I am Queen Boudicca, about to plunge into my last battle.”

  “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a warrior queen,” Marianne said thoughtfully. “May Queen, maybe, or Queen of the Fairies, something with a lot of flowers.”

  “Mr. Wilding prefers to set me off with a musty bearskin rug over my shoulders. He claims he shot it in some wilderness or another. Oh, and he says he must put a horse in the painting as well, as soon as he finds the right one.”

  She was looking at Ned speculatively as she spoke. So, he realized uneasily, was Miss Cameron.

  “Perhaps,” Marianne mused slowly, “when your brother is finished with him.”

  “Yes. As what, do you think?”

  “Something with dignity,” Ned pleaded, envisioning himself barelegged on a pedestal with a bow in his hand, dressed fetchingly as Cupid, the object of intense and critical female scrutiny.

  “The young knight errant, going forth into the world to rescue maidens and do battle with wicked knights who look like Wilding?”

  “Can’t I be evil? Just once?”

  “Can’t you settle for being triumphant?” Emma asked with such affection and trust in her eyes that he could only be grateful for his fate.

  He bowed his head and acquiesced.

  “For you.”

  Emma found herself whirling through her days like a leaf in a sluice. In the mornings, she went to Marianne’s studio, where she had set up her easel. She drew whatever caught her eye in the endless supply of still life on the studio’s shelves, which held everything from old boots to exotic draperies and vases in which dried grasses, seed pods, and flowers purloined from the park could be arranged. Occasionally, as she worked, someone would come to sketch her. She scarcely noticed. Sometimes she herself drifted through the room, watching the other women work in ink and watercolor, pencil and oil. She confined herself to sketching for a while, to improve her technique. Miss Cameron moved among them now and then, gently suggesting, never criticizing. She was in the midst of an oil, mostly whites and grays and browns, of the river beyond the window, beneath lowering sky, and the boats and ships that moved ceaselessly along it, the buildings on the far shore, and the stone bridge in the distance, tiny figures crossing it the only flecks of brightness in the painting.

  While Emma drew, she let her thoughts wander about, searching for a compelling subject to paint. Something simple, she wanted, like Ned’s solstice or Marianne’s river. But with a human face in it, drawing the viewer’s eye and kindling emotions. Whether the face was male or female, mortal or mythical, and what emotions it should evoke, Emma could not decide. She was content for the moment just to be in the company of painters, watching and learning from them, her mind an open door to inspiration, not knowing what face it would wear when it finally came knocking.

  Somewhere around midday, the contentment would fray. Mr. Wilding would enter her thoughts and refuse to go away. Finally time would force her to put away pencil and paper, take off her smock, and say goodbye to Miss Cameron, who always looked a little guilty when she left.

  “Don’t fret,” Emma told her. “When Mr. Wilding procures the exhibit for us, I’ll be in it, too. That will make up for everything.”

  She would return to her brother’s for one of Mrs. Dyce’s excellent and very informal lunches: Adrian fed anyone who happened to be there. Invariably, he and Ned would make her laugh. And then Ned would walk with her through the streets to Wilding’s villa.

  Sometimes Mr. Wilding met her at the gate; more often it was a silent, wraithlike servant whose eyes would dart nervously about the garden as he escorted her to the house. He carried a roughhewn walking stick carved out of a tree limb; the polished burl at the top looked formidable.

  Curious, she commented on it once; he answered briefly, “In case they left one out of their cages, Miss.”

  “One what?” she said incredulously.

  He rasped his prickly white chin. “Can’t rightly say, can I, Miss? Whatever they are, he gets them from far away.”

  “Are they like the monkey? Or more like big cats?”

  “Big,” he conceded. “That they are. But I wouldn’t say either monkey or cat. More like—like—Well, I couldn’t say that either, Miss, since I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. Not even at the zoological gardens, where I have been a time or two in my youth.”

  She was silent, willing to doubt they were real, but disturbed by the thought that Wilding was terrifying his servants with mythological monsters.

  Mr. Wilding only laughed when she expressed her doubts. “Do you think I’ve conj
ured up a garden full of harpies and manticores? Of course they’re real. Most are harmless, though they might not look it. Most would run from old Fender.”

  “Most?”

  “I’m very careful,” he assured her. “I value my friends too much to want them eaten by beasts.”

  Friends by the dozens might come to visit, but never, it seemed, while he was working. At mid-afternoon the villa was as still as though it stood in one of the countries whose houses it emulated: the ones that drowsed in heat and light and came alive at night. Mr. Wilding himself painted silently much of the time. From what Emma saw of the painting, it could become a masterwork. Each hair on the bearskin hanging across her shoulders was meticulously recorded by a brush as fine as an eyelash; as a whole the painted pelt, thick and glossy, made her want to run her hand over it, feel its softness.

  Her own face emerging out of the canvas slowly, like a figure from a mist, astonished her. It was fierce and lovely, nothing tentative about it that she could recognize.

  “That doesn’t look like me at all,” she protested.

  He smiled tightly. “Oh, yes, it does. When you look at me.”

  “Really?”

  “You dislike me, Miss Slade. Your face is quite expressive. Luckily, Boudicca didn’t like her enemies, either; that makes you perfect.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did you do that deliberately, Mr. Wilding? Make me dislike you for this?”

  “No,” he said, surprised. “Turn your head again; you’re out of position. I want very much for you to like me. A little more. Lift your chin. Stare me down. Because I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, and one of the most intelligent and interesting. I hoped—Chin up, Miss Slade; I have come to steal your realm and slay your people. I hoped you would confess to some truer feeling about me.”

  “Truer,” she said through rigid jaws.

  “You are afraid of me because you are drawn to me. That makes you dislike me. So you turn to the much safer and predictable Mr. Bonham.”

  Her jaw dropped; so did her spear-arm. “Mr. Wilding—”