London, London—where she yearned to return, where she belonged, but which Edmund always opposed, on the grounds of the too-great expense and the danger to the children’s health.
Mary urged her mount forward along the cobbled street, until she spotted the bridle-path made by other wanderers over the years, a path which led into chestnut forests spilling across the hillside. It was fashionable, these days, to fall into raptures over a fine prospect or a lightning-blasted oak, but Mary had never pretended to be an enthusiast for the sublime. She saw Nature, inanimate Nature, with little observation. It was enough that, ill-disposed as she was for human company, she could indulge in the silence afforded by a thick canopy of trees and follow a winding path through patches of dappled sunlight.
She dwelt upon the futility of her efforts to make her husband into what he ought to be. In understanding, appearance, countenance, air, Edmund was exceptional. And after living abroad he now spoke excellent French and passable Italian. Could he but obtain a position in the diplomatic corps, or enter into Parliament! He ought to be a shining character, but he preferred to lead a private life.
Mary had never accepted this fate. Not only were Edmund’s talents wasted, so were hers. She could have been the mainspring behind her husband’s rise to power; with her skills of address, with her connections with the titled and powerful, such as Lord and Lady Delingpole. She was fitted by character and ability to be the wife of a great man, a man whose name and reputation outlived his death, someone whose bust adorned the halls of Parliament.
While living in London with her friend Mrs. Fraser, Mary had collected and made fair copies of her husband’s sermons, intending to have them published. But Edmund’s formal style, so much like his father’s, was of a previous age. She wanted to find a writer who could anonymously revise her husband’s measured, balanced, classical essays and turn them into passionate epistles, but one candidate took her money and produced, after much delay, some very indifferent work, and another had rejected her overture so indignantly that she was too mortified to ask anyone else.
So her aspirations remained unfulfilled and she was approaching her thirtieth year, a fact she contemplated with equal parts incredulity and dread. She admitted to being six-and-twenty in company and her pretty face, lively address and trim figure did not contradict her.
As she revolved these familiar thoughts, she attempted to push anger away and replace it with resolve. Her hands tightened on the reins. How she had tried! How she had sacrificed! Now she must stake everything on her last hand. She must return to London in triumph. She must become an important hostess. She would be a woman of influence, of standing, of lasting fame.
Her thoughts so absorbed her, she didn’t perceive the sound of rushing water until it became so loud so as to obtrude itself on her notice. Whilst at breakfast, she had chanced to hear other lodgers speaking of a waterfall hidden in the midst of the forest and a beautiful stream that flowed along a rocky chasm. She thought the sight would make as good a destination as any for her ride that morning, so she directed her horse to leave the path, and continue uphill through the trees toward the sound of the waterfall.
Before long she passed through a fringe of chestnuts and came to a clearing which revealed a narrow, stony gorge. She halted her horse, slid down from the saddle and tied off the reins before advancing on foot to the edge of the gorge. About four feet below her, a narrow stream flowed, hemmed in by large boulders on either side. She could not judge the water’s depth, for it was so clean and clear she could see the pebbles and sand on the bottom.
Uphill, a tumble of boulders obscured the sight, but not the sound, of a small waterfall. Sunshine illuminated the leaves of a grove of alder trees which had managed to establish itself on top of the rocky escarpment. Apart from the rushing water, the grove was absolutely quiet, and so still that when she sensed a movement amongst the boulders, it startled her. Looking up, she saw a large creature. It was not a bird, because it had no feathers, nor a beast, because it was not covered in fur.
Was she hallucinating? Had all the hours of walking about in Italian palaces and museums, viewing old frescoes of nymphs and fauns disporting themselves in sylvan glades, so affected her fancy? For here, perched on top of the highest boulder, with his back to her, was a naked faun.
But—weren’t fauns covered all over with fur? Or at least, didn’t they have hairy haunches? She tried to recall, with exactness, the paintings she had viewed in Rome and Pisa and Florence. This faun on the rock above her was bare-skinned and so slender that his spine, shoulder blades and ribs were all clearly visible. And, now she could see the faun was reading a book. Did fauns read books?
Just then, her horse noisily passed wind. The sound pulled the attention of the faun from his reading, and he looked around, looked down, and saw her. An amused smile broke over his face.
“Hello!”
The faun rose, turned to face her, and made an exceedingly graceful bow, as though they were both in the Court of St. James. He was completely naked. He made no effort to use his book to shield his private parts. He had long slender legs, Mary observed, which were not hairy. From her vantage point below, she was denied a view of his feet so that she could not determine if
