‘I hate you!’ she shouted, and stamped her foot upon the ground. ‘I hate you for coming here. I hate you in my room.’ She seized the table edge with both her hands behind her and rattled it on its legs.
Steerpike watched her carefully.
His mind had been working away behind his high forehead. Unimaginative himself he could recognize imagination in her: he had come upon one whose whole nature was the contradiction of his own. He knew that behind her simplicity was something he could never have. Something he despised as impractical. Something which would never carry her to power nor riches, but would retard her progress and keep her apart in a world of her own make-believe. To win her favour he must talk in her own language.
As she stood breathless beside the table and as he saw her cast her eyes about the room as though to find a weapon, he struck an attitude, raising one hand, and in an even, flat, hard voice that contrasted, even to Fuchsia in her agony, with her own passionate outcry said:
‘Today I saw a great pavement among the clouds made of grey stones, bigger than a meadow. No one goes there. Only a heron.
‘Today I saw a tree growing out of a high wall, and people walking on it far above the ground. Today I saw a poet look out of a narrow window. But the stone field that is lost in the clouds is what you’d like best. Nobody goes there. It’s a good place to play games and to’ (he took the plunge cunningly) ‘and to
‘I saw today,’ he said, ‘a horse swimming in the top of a tower: I saw a million towers today. I saw clouds last night. I was cold. I was colder than ice. I have had no food. I have had no sleep.’ He curled his lip in an effort at a smile. ‘And then you pour green filth on me,’ he said.
‘And now I’m here where you hate me being, I’m here because there was nowhere else to go. I have seen so much. I have been out all night, I have escaped’ (he whispered the word dramatically) ‘and, best of all, I found the field in the clouds, the field of stones.’
He stopped for breath and lowered his hand from its posturing and peered at Fuchsia.
She was leaning against the table, her hands gripping its sides. It may have been the darkness that deceived him, but to his immense satisfaction he imagined she was staring through him.
Realizing that if this were so, and his words were beginning to work upon her imagination, he must proceed without a pause sweeping her thoughts along, allowing her only to think of what he was saying. He was clever enough to know what would appeal to her. Her crimson dress was enough for him to go on. She was romantic. She was a simpleton; a dreaming girl of fifteen years.
‘Lady Fuchsia,’ he said, and clenched his hand at his forehead, ‘I come for sanctuary. I am a rebel. I am at your service as a dreamer and a man of action. I have climbed for hours, and am hungry and thirsty. I stood on the field of stones and longed to fly into the clouds, but I could only feel the pain in my feet.’
‘Go away,’ said Fuchsia in a distant voice. ‘Go away from me.’ But Steerpike was not to be stopped, for he noticed that her violence had died and he was tenacious as a ferret.
‘Where can I go to?’ he said. ‘I would go this instant if I knew where to escape to? I have already been lost for hours in long corridors. Give me first some water so that I can wash this horrible slime from my face, and give me a little time to rest and then I will go, far away, and I will never come again, but will live alone in the stone sky-field where the herons build.’
Fuchsia’s voice was so vague and distant that it appeared to Steerpike that she had not been listening, but she said slowly: ‘Where is it? Who are you?’
Steerpike answered immediately.
‘My name is Steerpike,’ he said, leaning back against the window in the darkness, ‘but I cannot tell you now where the field of stones lies all cold in the clouds. No, I couldn’t tell you that – not yet.’
‘Who are you?’ said Fuchsia again. ‘Who are you in my room?’
‘I have told you,’ he said. ‘I am Steerpike. I have climbed to your lovely room. I like your pictures on the walls and your book and your horrible root.’
‘My root is beautiful. Beautiful!’ shouted Fuchsia. ‘Do not talk about my things. I hate you for talking about my things. Don’t look at them.’ She ran to the twisted and candle-lit root of smooth wood in the wavering darkness and stood between it and the window where he was.
Steerpike took out his little pipe from his pocket and sucked the stem. She was a strange fish, he thought, and needed carefully selected bait.
‘How did you get to my room?’ said Fuchsia huskily.
‘I climbed,’ said Steerpike. ‘I climbed up the ivy to your room. I have been climbing all day.’
‘Go away from the window,’ said Fuchsia. ‘Go away to the door.’
Steerpike, surprised, obeyed her. But his hands were in his pockets. He felt more sure of his ground.
Fuchsia moved gauchely to the window taking up the candle as she passed the table, and peering over the sill, held the shaking flame above the abyss. The drop, which she remembered so well by daylight, looked even more terrifying now.
She turned towards the room. ‘You must be a good climber,’ she said sullenly but with a touch of admiration in her voice which Steerpike did not fail to detect.
‘I am,’ said Steerpike. ‘But I can’t bear my face like this any longer. Let me have some water. Let me wash my face, your Ladyship; and then if I can’t stay here, tell me where I can go and sleep, I haven’t had a cat’s nap. I am tired; but the stone field haunts me. I must go there again after I’ve rested.’
There was a silence.
‘You’ve got kitchen clothes on,’ said Fuchsia flatly.
‘Yes,’ said Steerpike. ‘But I’m going to change them. It’s the kitchen I escaped from. I detested it. I want to be free. I shall never go back.’
