“You’ve imagined them.”
“I don’t think so. My room is at the top of the house, above the schoolroom. I can see a long way, and I’ve seen the lights. Truly I have.”
I was silent and she went on earnestly: “You don’t believe me. You think I’ve imagined it. If I see it sometime may I show it to you? But perhaps you don’t want to see it.”
“If it existed I should,” I said.
“Then I will.”
I smiled. “I’m rather surprised at you, Alice. I thought you were a very practical girl.”
“Oh, I am, Mrs. Verlaine, but if something is there it wouldn’t be very practical to pretend it wasn’t, would it?”
“The practical thing would be to try to find out the cause.”
“The cause would be because Beaumont couldn’t rest.”
“Or someone playing a trick. I’ll wait and see the light first before I wonder what caused it.”
“You are certainly very practical, Mrs. Verlaine,” said Alice.
I admitted to it and dismissing the subject talked of music and musicians all the way back to the house.
“I must say,” said Mrs. Rendall, “that I find this most inconvenient. After all we have done…I am surprised. As for the vicar…”
Her plump cheeks shook with indignation as I walked with her up the path to the vicarage door. I had come over to give Sylvia a piano lesson while Allegra and Alice were with the curate.
Mrs. Rendall went on in this strain for some minutes before I discovered the cause of her indignation.
“He’s such a good curate…and what he thinks he is going to do in that outlandish place I can’t imagine. Sometimes there is more useful work to be done at home. I think it is time some of these earnest young men realized this.”
“Don’t tell me that Mr. Brown is going away.”
“That is precisely what he intends to do. What we are going to do, I can’t imagine. He is going to some village in Africa, if you please, to teach heathens! A nice thing. I’ve told him that he will no doubt end up by being served for dinner.”
“I suppose he feels he has a vocation.”
“Vocation, fiddlesticks! He can have a vocation for working here at home. Why does he want to go to one of these far off places. I said to him, ‘The heat will kill you, Mr. Brown, if the cannibals don’t.’ And I didn’t mince my words. I told him straight out that I for one should consider it his own fault.”
I was thinking of the quiet young man…and Edith. And I wondered whether his decision to go right away had any connection with his feeling for her. I was sorry for them both; they seemed like two helpless children caught up in their emotions.
“I’ve told the vicar to talk to him. Good curates are hard to come by, and the vicar is overworked. In fact I have thought of telling the vicar that the bishop might be able to help. If Mr. Brown was told by the bishop that it was his duty to stay…”
“Is Mr. Brown very eager to go?” I asked.
“Eager! The young idiot is determined. Mind you, since he told the vicar of his decision he has been growing more and more mournful every day. I cannot imagine how he could have got such a foolish notion. Just when the vicar…and I…had taught him to make himself so useful.”
“And you can’t persuade him?”
“I shall go on attempting to,” she answered firmly.
“And the vicar?”
“My dear Mrs. Verlaine, if I can’t persuade him, nobody can.”
What about Edith? I asked myself as I went into the house.
When I saw Edith that morning, I noticed how desolate she looked. She stumbled through the Schumann piece, not in time, playing several false notes.
Poor Edith—so young and so bitterly buffeted by life. I wished I could help her.
After I had played for Sir William, Mrs. Lincroft came into the room and said that he wished to speak to me.
I took the chair beside him and he told me that he had fixed a date for the occasion when he wished me to play for his guests.
“You could play for about an hour, I thought, Mrs. Verlaine, and I shall choose the music. I will let you know in good time so that you can run through it a few times if you feel that is necessary.”
“I should like to do that.”
He nodded. “My wife used to be rather nervous on these occasions. Mind you, she enjoyed them…but that was afterwards. She would never have been able to perform in public. It was quite different in the family circle.”
“I think one is always a little nervous when one is going to perform before an audience. My husband was and he…”
“Ah, he was a genius.”
He closed his eyes, which was an indication for me to leave. Mrs. Lincroft told me that he became tired suddenly and the doctor had warned her that when he showed the least signs of fatigue he needed absolute quiet.
So I rose and went away. Mrs. Lincroft came in as I was leaving. She smiled her appreciative smile. I had the notion that she liked and approved of me, which was pleasant.
The musical evening was obviously a great event.
The girls were always talking of it.
Allegra said: “It will be like old times…before I was born.”
“So,” Alice said gravely, “we shall know what it was like before we were here.”
“No, we shan’t,” contradicted Allegra, “because it’ll be quite different. Mrs. Verlaine will be playing instead of Lady Stacy. And then nobody had been shot nor committed suicide, nor got the gypsy servant into trouble.”
I pretended not to hear.
They were excited though because although they would not be at the dinner party, they were to be allowed into the hall to hear my playing, which was to take place between nine and ten o’clock.
They were having new dresses for the occasion and they were very pleased about this.
I had decided to wear a dress which I had not worn since Pietro’s death. I had worn it only once—on the night of his last concert. A special dress for a special occasion. It was of burgundy-colored velvet—a long flowing skirt, a tightly fitting bodice which fell slightly off the shoulders. On the front was an artificial flower—a mauve orchid—so delicately colored, so beautifully made that it looked like a perfect bloom. Pietro had seen it in the window of one of the boutiques in the Rue St. Honoré and had bought it for me.
I had thought never to wear that dress again. I had kept it in a box and never looked at it until now. I had told myself it would be too painful to look at it. Yet when I had known that I was to play before these people I had thought of this dress and I knew that it was just right for the occasion and that it would give me the confidence I needed.
I took the dress from its box, lifting it out from the layers of tissue paper and spread it on my bed. How it came back to me…Pietro…coming onto the platform, that almost arrogant bow; the quick searching for me, finding me and smiling, comforted because I was there, because he knew that I shared every triumph and that I cared as deeply for his success as he did himself, and at the same time he would be telling me: You could never have done this.
When I thought of that night I wanted to throw myself onto that soft velvet and weep for the past.
Put it away. Forget it. Wear something else.
But no. I was going to wear that dress and nothing must prevent me.
While I was looking at it the door of my room opened stealthily and Miss Stacy looked in.