glow. Harry and her uncle did most of the talking; she was perfectly content to sit and gaze at her beloved, bathed in a radiance so entrancing she felt she had never seen candlelight before.
GIVEN THAT HENRY ST CLAIR'S ENTIRE PROPERTY HAD been seized without warning, they had expected to find papers, letters, perhaps even a diary. Harry-to his uncle's displeasure, as he cheerfully acknowledged-had spent much of the interval inquiring after the painter, without result: no one in any of the established galleries or salerooms had ever heard of a St Clair, let alone seen the man himself. Nor, thus far, was there indication that he might have continued working under another name. They began their search of his belongings with high hopes; but late on Sunday afternoon they were compelled to admit defeat. There were no books, no keepsakes, no photographs, no papers of any kind. The sole clue to his identity was his signature on the paintings.
'I don't understand,' said Cordelia, when they had put away the last box and returned to the studio. 'If they let him keep everything personal, why not his painting things?'
'I think,' Harry replied, 'that de Vere' (Cordelia had told him that she disowned her grandfather) 'must have destroyed everything of that sort.'
He was standing at the lectern, examining the face of the drowned man, as he had done several times that morning it seemed to hold a particular fascination for him. By leaving off the clasps that secured the last panel, he could display the final opening without having to lay out the rest of the work.
'But then why would he leave everything else?'
'Well… madness aside, it does look as if he removed anything that might have given us a clue to St Clair's whereabouts. Which suggests to me that he wanted to make sure nobody
'And suppose… suppose you hadn't been interested, just left them locked up; then in due course the whole lot would have been burned by the trustees without anyone ever having seen them. De Vere really would have managed to erase all trace of St Clair's existence. 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'…'
He paused, still gazing at the drowned man's face.
'But even now, if we could only find him-and somehow I feel sure he's still alive-we could change that, and perhaps save his pictures as well For ever, that is.'
'I see what you mean,' said Cordelia. 'But supposing we did find him, and it turned out that everything really did belong to him, the income would stop and my uncle would have to sell this house. I'm not saying we shouldn't try-we must do what's right-but it will make him terribly anxious. He loves Ashbourn-so do I-and I should hate to be the cause of his losing it.'
It crossed her mind that her uncle and aunt would not always be here-and what would happen to Ashbourn after that?-but this was a train of thought she did not want to pursue.
'On my reading of the deed that wouldn't necessarily follow, not at all. Besides, St Clair would surely be happy to see his pictures here; he wouldn't want to do anything to harm you, of all people. And to recover possession of the pictures, he would have to bring an action against the trust, which could be very costly. No, my idea is that we would look after them for the life of the trust, but if we could establish St Clair's claim, then we ought to be able to persuade the trustees that the pictures couldn't be burned; if they went to the nation, nobody could be accused of profiting from the change.'
It seemed to Cordelia that this chain of reasoning depended on a great many 'ifs', but she was too delighted by 'we would look after them' to care. Warm scents of blossom drifted in through the open window, where she was perched, in her usual fashion, on the sill with her feet upon the counterpane of the bed. The portrait of Imogen de Vere, serene and luminous as ever, rested upon the easel as if the artist had just laid down his brushes. Yes, she thought, we really have banished the last of the evil; the intended curse has turned out to be a blessing. Without the pictures I would never have met Harry; now this room will be our special place until we have a house of our own. Harry had accepted Uncle Theodore's invitation to join them again the following weekend, so eagerly that she really could not doubt it… and perhaps, one day soon, they would find Henry St Clair and bring him here, and show him that his work had not, after all, been lost. If only Imogen were still alive, everything would be perfect. It was a pity, too, that Henry St Clair had not painted a self-portrait; but she could picture him so vividly, it scarcely mattered. He would have looked very like Harry… who was once again absorbed in contemplating 'The Drowned Man', moving his head in the way that caused the face to metamorphose from youth to age and back again.
'What is it that fascinates you so?' Cordelia asked.
For a second or two, when he looked up, he seemed not to know who she was.
'I don't know… it draws me, that's all. The way it changes… it's like being reminded of something, and not being able to remember what it reminds you of…'
He folded away the panel and closed the cover, and seemed to come fully awake again.
'Shall we go for that walk now?' he asked. 'There's still plenty of time before the evening train.'
'Oh, yes,' she said eagerly, and the uneasy moment was forgotten.
BEATRICE CAME HOME THE NEXT DAY. THOUGH CORDELIA strongly suspected Uncle Theodore of taking her aside and enjoining her to be on her best behaviour, Beatrice betrayed no awareness that anything out of the ordinary was afoot; she did not even ask what had become of Grandmama's portrait. Walking back from the station with Harry the following Saturday morning (now with her arm in his; the lane was obligingly slippery after several days of rain), Cordelia warned him that her sister was inclined to be cool and distant, so that he must not be hurt if she seemed aloof, or even hostile. But on this occasion, Beatrice behaved quite out of character; her normal self- possession vanished when she was introduced to Harry, and she became quite bashful and tongue-tied. At lunch, Cordelia noticed that her sister was very pale; she ate almost nothing, and spoke even less than usual, but followed the conversation intently, her eyes darting constantly between Harry and Cordelia. And then, as she helped clear the table, Beatrice surprised her sister still more by asking, quite humbly, whether she might be allowed to come up to the studio with them to see the pictures.
Not wanting to appear ungenerous in front of Harry, Cordelia agreed, hoping she would have seen all she wanted in fifteen minutes. But Beatrice stayed nearly two hours. She asked so many questions, and listened so attentively to the answers, that before she left she had elicited much of what Uncle Theodore had revealed two months before. Yet she did not seem to be making a set at Harry. Her behaviour throughout was that of a young girl grateful for the attention of an admired older sister and her accepted suitor. She praised Cordelia's arrangement of the studio, and admired the pictures one by one, displaying every appearance of genuine curiosity, until, despite her suspicions, Cordelia began to wonder if perhaps she did not know her sister nearly as well as she had imagined.
Beatrice seemed especially interested in 'The Drowned Man', at whose face she gazed intently for some time before asking Harry to explain how the strange metamorphosis between youth and age might have been achieved. While they were talking, Cordelia, who was standing a little way behind them, found herself glancing from Beatrice to the portrait-as Harry had done that first afternoon with her. It was not a likeness in the ordinary sense-Beatrice's face was narrower, her eyes differently shaped, her hair a smoky brown rather than copper-coloured-rather, something in the carriage of her head, an aura, an atmosphere. Cordelia felt as if a veil had been lifted, not from the portrait but from Beatrice, who was listening with her whole attention to what Harry was saying, intent, receptive, with no trace of her usual watchful self-awareness. But for the most part, she addressed her questions to Cordelia while Harry watched and listened, becoming visibly more perplexed as he saw how much of the family's history was new to Beatrice. As he said to Cordelia later, when she had finally got him away for a walk in Hurst Wood, if he had not known otherwise, he would have sworn that she and her sister were the best of friends.
That evening, Beatrice (who usually preferred them to take turns at the cooking) offered to help Cordelia prepare the meal, and did so with perfect amiability. But then she came down in a striking dark blue gown which Cordelia had not seen before. Perhaps she was simply obeying her uncle's instruction to be on her best behaviour- but it seemed to Cordelia that Harry's eyes were straying rather too often in her sister's direction, and she lay awake most of the night, alternately fearing the worst and hating herself for giving way to jealousy and suspicion. On Sunday morning during another walk in the wood (Harry insisted that exercise was good for his injured leg, and refused to coddle it), she fought down the impulse to tell him just how uncharacteristically Beatrice was behaving, observing instead, 'My sister is very beautiful, don't you think?'
'Indeed she is,' he replied, 'almost as beautiful as you', and with that he kissed her-or perhaps she had kissed
