“What of the child’s parents? They might have different ideas about naming the baby.”
“Edith will be eager to give way to Sir William’s wishes.”
“And Napier?”
“My dear Mrs. Verlaine, he could raise no objection.”
“I don’t see why. He might want to forget that…painful incident.”
“He would never go against Sir William’s wishes. If he did it might mean that he were sent packing again.”
“You mean having done his duty in siring a child and bringing a Beaumont back to the family he might once more get his congé.”
“You are in a very strange mood today, Mrs. Verlaine. It is unlike you.”
“I am becoming too interested in the family affairs I expect. Please forgive me.”
She inclined her head. Then she said: “Napier’s staying here depends on Sir William. I think he knows that.”
I looked at my watch. The old excuse of work to prepare was on my lips. I did not want to hear any more. I had thought of him as bold, frank—at least that. I did not like to think of him knuckling under to his father for the sake of his inheritance.
On my way back to my room I met Sybil Stacy. I had the idea that she had been hanging about waiting to intercept me.
“Hello, Mrs. Verlaine,” she said, “how are you?”
“Very well, thank you, and you?”
She nodded. “It’s a long time since you’ve seen me, isn’t it? But it’s not a long time since I saw you. I saw you talking to Napier…In fact I’ve seen you several times. I saw you coming in one evening after dusk.”
I felt indignant. The woman was spying on me!
She seemed to sense this and be amused by it.
“You’re very interested in the family, aren’t you? Now I think that’s very kind of you. I’ve discovered you are a very kind person, Mrs. Verlaine. I have to observe you, don’t I, if I am going to paint you.”
“Do you paint everyone who comes to work here?”
She shook her head. “Not without reason. And only if they are interesting to paint. I believe you are going to be. Come along to my studio now. You said you would, didn’t you? After all you didn’t see very much when you came before.”
I hesitated, but she laid her hand on my arm with her little girl gesture. “Oh please, please…”
Then she clasped her hands together and as she was standing so close I saw her face in the harsh daylight and thought once more how grotesque the blue bows were on that white hair, how pathetically childish simpering was at odds with that wrinkled face.
But she fascinated me, as everyone in this house seemed to do and I allowed myself to be led to her studio.
The picture of the three girls was still on the easel. My eyes went to it immediately and she stood beside me wriggling a little in pleasure.
“It’s a good likeness,” she said.
“It’s very good.”
“But time hasn’t drawn anything on their faces…yet.” She pouted as though she had a grievance against time. “It makes it very difficult for the artist. You can’t read anything in those faces, can you?”
I agreed. “They look so young and innocent.”
“Yet we are all born in sin.”
“Some people manage to live good lives in spite of it.”
“Oh, you’re one of those optimists, Mrs. Verlaine. You always believe the best of everyone.”
“Isn’t that better than believing the worst?”
“Not if the worst is there.” Her face puckered. “I used to be like you. I believed…I believed in Harry. You look puzzled. You don’t know who Harry is. Harry is the man I was going to marry. I’ll show you a picture of him…two pictures of him, shall I? At the moment I am working on Edith.”
I looked at her steadily. She had tripped over to a pile of canvases; and I was aware that her footsteps were soundless. I pictured her silently watching the comings and goings of the people in this house…myself included. Why did she watch? Merely so that she could learn of our secret motives, so that she could come up to this room and record them on canvas? The thought made me uneasy; and she was aware of it and amused. Beneath the little girl attitude was a character she wished to hide.
“Edith!” she mused. “You see her on the picture with the girls. How charming they look there. Now look at this one…” She whipped out a canvas and put it on the easel covering up the one of the trio.
There was a figure hardly recognizable. It was picture of a heavily pregnant Edith, her face twisted in an expression of something between fear and cunning. It was horrible.
“You don’t like it.”
“No,” I said. “It’s…unpleasant.”
“Do you know who it is?”
I shook my head.
“Oh Mrs. Verlaine, I thought you were honest.”
“It has a look of Edith…but I am convinced she never looked like that.”
“She will though. She is very frightened now. And each day she will grow more frightened. She will never stop being frightened until the day she dies.”
“I hope no one has seen that picture.”
“No. I will show it later…perhaps.”
“Yet you have shown it to me.”
“That is because you are as interested as I am. You are an artist too. You hear music where others do not. Is that not so? You hear it in the sighing of the wind, in the trees and the rippling water of a stream. I find what I want in the faces of people. I never wanted to paint landscapes. I never cared for them. It was always people. When I was in the nursery I would take a pencil and sketch our governesses. William said it was uncanny. But I didn’t have the same gift then. It was only after Harry…” Her face puckered and I thought she would burst into tears. “I sometimes feel an urge to paint one person. I haven’t that urge to paint you yet, Mrs. Verlaine, but I know it will come…so I’m stalking you…like a lion stalks his prey. But lions never eat until they’re hungry, do they?” She came close to me and laughed up into my face. “I’m not hungry for you yet, but I’m in touch.” She lifted a hand and her face broke into a seraphic smile. “I’m in touch…with…powers. People don’t understand.” She touched her head. “Do you know what they say in the village? People are three halfpence short—not all there. That’s what they say of me. I know it. The servants say it. William says it, and so does that Mrs. Lincroft of his. Let them. I’m far more here than they are because I’m in touch…in touch with powers they know nothing about.”
A feeling of claustrophobia came to me; she would keep grasping my arm, putting her grotesque little girl face close to mine…and I was in agreement with those who said she was not all there.
I glanced at my watch and said: “The time…I’m forgetting…”
She had a little enameled watch pinned to her frilly pink blouse and she looked at it and then shook her finger at me.
“You haven’t to take Sylvia until half past. So you have twenty minutes.”
I was startled that she knew so much about my schedule.
“And,” she went on, “you were all last afternoon preparing their lessons.”
I felt very uneasy.
“Now that there is no curate at the vicarage—” I began.
“They are all working on the tasks Mrs. Lincroft has set them. What a clever woman she is.” She began to laugh. “I know how clever. And getting her child brought up here too. That would be one of her conditions. She thinks the world of Alice.”
“It’s natural that she should think a great deal of her own daughter.”
“Oh, very very natural; and there we have Miss Alice brought up in Lovat Stacy, for all the world as though she were a daughter of the house.”
“She is a good child and works very hard.”