CORDELIA WAS QUITE UNABLE TO CONCEAL THE FACT that something momentous had happened, and before Harry's return she had confided her feelings to her aunt and uncle (though not to Beatrice, who, to her immense relief, would be spending the weekend in London with an old friend from school). To distract herself during the interval, she spent a great deal of time in the room with the pictures, thinking about how Henry St Clair's studio might have looked when he was painting her grandmother's portrait in the summer of 1896. Uncle Theodore, with some misgivings, despite her assurance that the trustees would not object to the bequest being housed in two adjacent rooms, agreed to let them store some of the furniture in the empty bedroom next door. He was plainly troubled, not only by her having formed an attachment to the lawyer representing the trust, but by her determination to-in her own phrase-restore the studio.
'I just feel this is something I must do,' she said to him, struggling to explain why it seemed so important. 'It will be-it will be like Henry St Clair painting his exorcisms. The room has always been left as Ruthven de Vere would have wanted it-everything cluttered in a heap and shut away in the dark. If we make it look as if-well as if Henry could come back and work in it-light and airy and clean-then de Vere will have lost his power over us.'
'But my dear-you don't
'If we can find him-I mean if he is still alive, yes. Don't you think it would be wonderful? And then we would have undone some of the wrong my grandfather did him. Just to restore the studio will be a start.'
'I fear that only trouble will come of it. This Henry Beauchamp-'
'Harry, uncle-'
'Harry, then-seems to be taking a very cavalier view of his responsibilities to the trust. If we lost-that is to say, if you lost your income through some breach of the trust-well, we should have to sell this house.'
'I know Harry would not put us at risk, uncle; you will see for yourself when you meet him. And please, please promise me that you will do your very best to like him.'
'I shall, my dear, for your sake. But I wish you would leave that room alone.'
WALKING BACK WITH HARRY FROM THE STATION ON Saturday morning, Cordelia was quite overcome with shyness; he too seemed ill at ease, and she performed the introductions wishing she had never said a word about him. Though she could tell he was making a good impression upon her aunt and uncle (she had intimated to Harry that the subject of the pictures had best be left until later on), her discomfort grew worse in their presence, so much so that she was compelled, several times during lunch, to hide in the kitchen on the pretext of arranging dishes she had actually prepared beforehand.
Yet as soon as they entered the studio, their intimacy was restored as completely as if no time had passed since they left it four days ago. Harry seemed to understand, without her having to explain any further, exactly why she wanted to restore it, and to agree entirely with her intuition as to what ought to go where. And he did not try to prevent her from lifting things, but worked alongside her on equal terms. Getting covered in dust and grime while hauling furniture about also helped to disguise her renewed attraction to him; it was natural that her colour should be high, and that they should touch frequently; and as the afternoon went on, she felt increasingly certain that all of her feeling was returned. At one point she caught herself thinking that if they were to marry and live in London, the pictures would go with her. A few moments later, Harry had remarked, seemingly out of the blue, 'of course if you were ever to move to London, the pictures would come with you; you could have a room like this, you know, your own private gallery, and invite people to see them. There's nothing in the trust to prevent it.' He spoke with such warmth that she felt sure his thought was running beside hers.
By the end of the day, they had sorted through everything that had been stacked in the centre of the floor. The bed now stood beneath the windows; Cordelia had been amazed to discover that the bedding, despite thirty years in storage, had escaped the attentions of moths, silverfish, and damp, and was only a little musty. She had placed the table and two upright chairs between the bed and the door, and a small sofa against the wall to the right of the doorway. An empty easel stood in the middle of the room, with Henry St Clair's palette-tray attached to it. The tubes of colour had, of course, long since dried up, but she set them out anyway, along with his brushes and palette knives and other implements. Some of the unfinished or scraped-out pictures, along with pieces of board and canvas and framing were still stacked along the other two walls, so that it would look as much as possible like a real working studio.
They had made a preliminary selection of about twenty finished paintings for display, so that the pictures would no longer be jammed together. Cordelia had wanted to consign all of the exorcisms to the room next door, but Harry persuaded her that even the darkest aspects of his vision ought to be represented, and so several of the night scenes remained, along with 'The Drowned Man', resting on its lectern in the corner opposite the door.
With everything swept and polished, and light filling the room, she felt that the malignant spirit of Ruthven de Vere had at last been banished for good. They had looked through every box and bundle and found nothing sinister; other than bedding and linen, the various boxes and bundles yielded only more painting materials, including a set of carpenters tools, presumably for fashioning frames. Aside from 'The Drowned Man', the only object that Cordelia had felt slightly uneasy about retaining was a box-or rather a cube, since there seemed to be no way of opening it-made up of panels of dark polished wood, about fifteen inches square. It was not very heavy, and clearly hollow. The panels gave slightly when you pressed them, and if you rocked it to and fro, you could hear-at least Cordelia was half-persuaded she could hear-a very soft rustling noise. But it was so elegantly made that she decided to keep it in the corner nearest the sofa.
After she had bathed, and put on a dress of apricot silk which especially suited her colouring, she went downstairs to fetch her uncle and show him what they had done. Harry, now clad in a surprisingly elegant suit, had come down before her and was chatting to Uncle Theodore as if they were old acquaintances.
It was close on sunset, and in the fading light the transformation seemed even more remarkable; it really did feel as if they were stepping back thirty years. The illusion grew stronger still as Cordelia lit the candles she had already arranged. There was no electric light in the room; St Clair's belongings had been stored here long before the house was electrified, and Theodore had preferred not to disturb them. It occurred to her, as her uncle stood contemplating the results of their labours, to ask him if he recalled seeing electric lights in the restaurant in Soho on that dark winter afternoon.
'No, my dear, I don't think I did. In fact I'm sure there were none; I remember a gas-lamp on the wall. Electric light was still a luxury, you know; they would have been far too poor. And you're sure,' he added, to Harry, 'that the trustees would approve of this?'
'Entirely sure, sir. After all its our-that is to say, your-duty to ensure that everything is well cared for, and this could only be seen as an improvement.'
Uncle Theodore asked several more questions along these lines, and seemed reassured by the replies, which encouraged Cordelia to make the request that had been shaping itself in her mind.
'Uncle… would you mind terribly if we were to bring Imogen's portrait in here and put it on the easel? We could have another key made-I don't think Beatrice would care, she never looks at it-so you could come in and see it-I mean, any of the pictures' (remembering she had told Harry nothing of her uncle's love for Imogen de Vere) 'whenever you like.'
'You don't have to ask my permission, my dear; it's for you to decide. But why do you want to?'
'I shan't unless you approve, uncle. I'd like to because… because then the room would look just as it did before.'
'Before?' he prompted.
'Well, before everything went wrong,' she floundered, realising this was delicate ground.
'I see… You can't undo the past, you know.'
'I know that, uncle. I just feel it would be the right thing to do.'
'Well my dear, I shall trust your feeling, and accept your offer of a key.'
She could tell that he was uneasy, but felt sure of persuading him once the portrait was back in its rightful place. One of Henry St Clair's luminous daylight visions could take its place on the landing.
At dinner that night, Harry insisted upon acting as her assistant, and between them they made a game of waiting upon her uncle and aunt. In Cordelia's private bestiary, her aunt had always been, in the nicest possible sense, bovine: large, placid, gentle, utterly without malice or guile. She could not walk very far, these days, because her legs tended to swell, and her heart was not strong. But tonight she wore her best dove-grey silk, and beamed upon Harry as if he and Cordelia were already engaged. Uncle Theodore brought out a couple of bottles of his best wine, and as the evening unfolded it seemed to Cordelia that everything in the room took on a deeper and richer
