expert embroiderer.
Rose sat in one of the chairs and thought a bit about Tamar. Then she thought about Jean. All these thoughts were painful, fearful, remorseful. She considered going downstairs again and joining the others, but Gerard and Jenkin and Duncan would probably be locked in some theoretical argument, and she did not feel like entertaining Lily and Gull who had been in the process of going to bed anyway. She had better go to bed and seek the silent innocence of sleep and the silly anxiety of dreams. Dear sleep, like death. She noticed Daniel Deronda lying on the bedside table under the pink-fringed shade of the lamp. She couldn't read it. She thought, perhaps I have come to the end of reading. J’ai lu tous les livres. She knew all her favourites by heart. No novel pleased her now with that glad feeling of escape and refuge. She did not want to read biographies, or the well-informed political books which Gerard sometimes recommended. No one reads books of imagination now, one of Reeve's friends had told her (Tony Reckitt, a farmer, the man who had called her mother `idle'), they want facts. Rose could not do with facts, but the other things had gone too. Was she becoming, like the century, illiterate?
Outside in the snowy darkness a fox barked. For a moment Rose took the sound to be a dog's bark before she recognised the crazy sound of the fox. In any case, no village dog would be so near unless it was lost. A barking dog in the country always made her remember Sinclair's dog, Regent. He had disappeared soon after Sinclair died. For a long time Rose had expected him to return, scratching at the door, down at Boyars, or in London. Even now she expected him, a ghost dog, coming back to look for his master. Listening to the fox back again, wildly, crazily, sadly, desperately, she shuddered. Then she actually began to feel afraid.
She thought, am I growing old at last? I must take a grip upon myself, upon my life. It's all about Gerard, this pointless feeling, this fear. Rose had suffered anguish, terror, as she watched Gerard and Lily dancing upon the ice. That utterly unexpected intrusion, that theft, had made her want to weep and scream. She would never forget those moments and the entirely new and special and intense feelings of jealousy, even of rage, even of hatred, with which she had witnessed LilyBoyne’s triumph. She had congratulated Lily afterwards, put her arm round her shoulder, laughed and smiled with Gerard as he exclaimed joyfully. It had been a terrible portent, a warning arrow. Yet what was she afraid of, did she think Gerard would fall in love with Lily? It's the same old trouble, she thought, it's the same old endless illness. There were dear good men that I might have married, that I loved, but I wasn't in love, my heart was a captive with a life sentence. I am a fool, it's wicked to be so stupid.
As if to allay the fear, the loneliness which the fox's cry had carried to her out of the dark, she began to feel and welcome the love-pain, the hideous desire, the longing for Gerard which came to her sometimes, which she had felt so intensely when she stood at the window of Levquist's room at the dance and saw the tower bathed in light. Sometimes it seemed to her that Gerard had become her brother, taking Sinclair's place. Did he feel this, had he uttered that dread word once, and then seeing her wince never repeated it? Perhaps it was a sense of her as a sibling which made him so calmly content with their deep intimate yet somehow passionless, even hygienic, relation. God, how I want to smash it all sometimes, she thought, and rush at him screaming. How displeased he would be by such a ,tantrum', as she could hear him call it, and how kindly he would forgive her! Her position was hopeless, however ingenious she was there was no move she could make. It was too late now to have his children. Rose averted her thoughts from these too conceivable beings. But why was she thinking of that? Marriage with Gerard had never been a possibility, she could not even accuse him of having 'led her on'. That strange episode after Sinclair's death was more like a kind of sacred rite, something with no consequences, to be wrapped in it religious silence. She recalled something she had heard Jenkin say about Gerard. 'The thing to remember about him is that he is basically dotty!' She had been annoyed at the time; later it had even brought her comfort.
But I must do something, thought Rose, who had risen now and was walking up and down, to still the pain. I must see him now, tonight, I must see him. I'll go down soon, and if he's in his room, even if he's gone to bed, I'll knock on his door, I'll talk to him properly, now I feel so extreme, I'll have the courage. I'lI be frank and honest, there's a way of saying it which won't appal him. What it comes to is that there must be a pay between us, I must be certain of him. Am I to spend the rest of my life watching Gerard in a state of terrified anxiety? Yet how, really, could she put it? Just be mine only and don't go away. Live with me, live near me, let me see you every day, let me be closest, let me be dearest. Promise never to marry, unless you marry me. Surely these were ludicrous, even immoral, demands. I just want an assurance from him, she thought, something to live on, to take away pains like these. I must go to him now, when I see him I'll find some words.
Rose went to the dressing table mirror and looked at her calm untroubled face and her wide open eyes which Marcus Field had called her 'fearless eyes'. She scrubbed a little powder onto her nose and combed her hair, her blond hair which was now turning to a pallid, gilded grey. She shook out the skirt of her long dress. Then she left the room and went swiftly and silently down the stairs. Lights were on. She listened in the hall. Silence. She went into the drawing room. All the lamps were on but the room was empty, the furniture all askew, glasses and coffee cups everywhere, the fire burning brilliantly, an empty whisky bottle in the grate. Rose put the guard in front of the fire, put the bottle in a wastepaper basket, left the cups and glasses as they were, turned out the lights in the drawing room and the hall, glided up the stairs again and along the landing. She could see the light under Gerard's door. Site paused, she crept and listened. No sound. She tapped on the door and heard Gerard say 'Come in', and she opened the door.
Jenkin and Duncan were sitting on Gerard's bed, while Gerard, on one knee, was rummaging in his suitcase. They all leapt up. 'Rose darling,' cried Gerard, 'an angel to the rescue! I thought I'd brought some whisky but I can't find it! Be a sweet dear and bring us a bottle from somewhere, would you?'
Gulliver's Housman poem about 'the head that I shall dream of, and 'twill not dream of me' would have been suitable that night, for utterance by Rose, since Gerard, now alone, was certainly not thinking about her, he was thinking about Jenkin.
Jenkin and Duncan had gone and Gerard was sitting on hot bed. He was feeling rather, unusually, drunk. Duncan had been even drunker, but he was used to it and had been drinking hard all day. He had maintained, during an excited argument, a perfect clarity of speech, but had been unable to walk straight and had departed with one arm round Jenkin's neck. Jenkin, who had apparently drunk at least as much as Gerard, remained agile, fresh, his boyish tints unimpaired by the flush which reddened Duncan's face and to a less extend Gerard's. They had been arguing, not of'course about personal matters, but about the reasons for the astonishing success of Christianity in the fourth century A D. I hope we didn't make too much row, Gerard thought, touching his flushed cheek with a little shame.
Last night Gerard had dreamt of his father. His father seated at a desk before which Gerard was standing, was wearing on his right hand a large black leather glove such as falconers use for the hawk to perch upon. The word ‘jesses’, came into Gerard's mind and he thought, where are the jesses? Staring portentously at him, his father thrust his hand into the drawer of the desk and brought out something wrapped up in newspaper which he handed to Gerard with the words, 'It’s dead.' Gerard, horrified, thought, that means the bird is dead. He began to fumble with the newspaper and managed to undo it. Inside was not a dead bird but a small live rabbit. He put the rabbit inside his coat where it nestled, making him warm. When he looked up he saw that his father had extended his gloved hand meaningfully toward him. Gerard drew off the glove – and saw with horror that his father's hand was bleeding copiously, it was in fact a flayed hand. At that moment Gerard also realised, I was mistaken about the rabbit, it's not alive, it's dead. He woke up in a state of great distress. He thought about Grey opening his wings and looking at him with his wise gentle witty eyes, and all his childish imaginings tot `where is he now' came back with a timeless ache. He recalled his father shortly before he died with a sad pathetic frightened look which he occasionally wore for a second and then wiped away. His father was afraid of death. Gerard had enacted death when he was eleven years old. Now he felt something like death reaching out and
