Painting The Darkness (37 page)

‘I don’t blame you, Richard. You least of all. I would blame no man – for standing by his son.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Papa knew all along that Hugo was your child. He told me so himself. Don’t worry. He told nobody else. The only person he felt he needed to tell was his only son.’

IV

As the evening stretched towards night, we grew nervous, Miss Rossiter and I. There was nothing more to be done until Constance arrived; and that, I suppose, is what pressed hardest on our minds. All was done now, all was prepared. We had only to wait
.

After a dinner of sorts, Miss Rossiter asked if she might go up to her room to rest: she felt drained by the anxieties of the day. I was left alone then, alone to re-read her statement, to swallow
a
few pegs of whisky and savour the prospect of the victory I felt sure lay within my grasp. I grew easier in my mind, more confident that I could carry off the prize
.

When the drawing-room clock struck eight, it roused me from a light doze. I was instantly alert, surprised, almost betrayed, by my own drowsiness. An irrational fear seized me, but was swiftly quelled: there was the statement, where I had left it in the bureau. Nevertheless, the experience worried me. It might be several hours yet before Constance was with us. I folded the statement, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, then took it up to my study and locked it in the escritoire
.

Once it was done, with the key to the lock nestling in my waistcoat pocket, my anxiety faded. I crossed to the window, pushed back the curtains and looked out down the drive into Avenue Road. It was a still, black, fog-wrapped night. I studied the shapes of the trees carefully, comparing each with my memory of what was normal until I was as certain as I could be that nobody, Quinn or anyone else, was lurking near the house
.

I drank another Scotch and imagined my reunion to come with Constance: how I would break the news to her, how I would be both more merciful and more masterful than I had ever been. It would not be long now, not long before she saw me in my true light
.

Feeling a return of the earlier drowsiness, I stepped out on to the landing and looked down the passage towards the guest room. The door was ajar, but the only light from within was the flickering glow of the fire. I moved towards it, telling myself that a concern for Miss Rossiter’s comfort was my only motive
.

She was asleep on the bed. I had only to push the door open an inch or so to see her head on the pillows. She had loosened the high collar of her dress and let down her hair from the bun in which it had been tied. Its rich tresses, intensely black against the white counterpane, reached almost to her waist
.

I stepped into the doorway and looked at her, at the imperious eyes, closed now but still seeming to command me behind their pale lids, at the full-lipped half-smiling mouth, the faintly jutting chin, the pulse of an artery in her exposed neck, the rise and fall of her bosom beneath the dress, the barely perceptible movement
of
the petals of her corsage, minutely stirred by the rhythm of her breathing. In that moment, forgetful that I would soon no longer be alone with her, I felt the first rush of a terrible longing. To run my fingers through her hair, to kiss her soft lips, to touch …

I was in the passage again, the door of the guest room closed behind me. I was panting, sweating, grappling to comprehend what I had so nearly done. The monstrous folly even to have thought of it stood compounded by the ease with which I might have succumbed. Within hours, I was to be reunited with my wife. What was I dreaming of? Miss Rossiter had come to me for help, and this is how I had rewarded her
.

I stumbled back to the study, poured myself another Scotch and swallowed it in two gulps. Calm seemed instantly restored. With Miss Rossiter out of sight, I could dismiss what I had felt as a momentary aberration. I went to the window and looked out once more. All was quiet. I checked the escritoire. It was securely locked
.

As I turned back towards the centre of the room, my head swam. I had drunk too much, I was over-tired. Whatever the cause, I felt overwhelmingly heavy of limb and thought. I pulled out my watch. It was nearly nine o’clock, the time when Thompson would be waiting for me at the Lamb and Flag. Or was it so late? The hands and the figures of the watch-face were so blurred when I looked at them that I could be sure of nothing, save that Thompson would wait in vain
.

I moved unsteadily to the
chaise-longue
and flung myself down on it. A little rest, I told myself, was all I needed. I would be awake and refreshed long before Constance arrived. But I cannot pretend that my last waking thought was of my wife. It was, in truth, of Melanie Rossiter. It seemed, for an instant, that her face was before me, as it had been when I had watched her sleeping in the guest room. Yet now she was no longer asleep, for her eyes were suddenly open, wide and dark and fathomless, and looking straight at me
.

V

Emily Sumner had lodged for the night in a temperance hotel near Charing Cross regularly patronized by the Dean’s wife when attending committee meetings of her charity for fallen women of the East End. Whether the Dean’s wife would have approved of Emily’s mission to the capital is doubtful, but it would certainly not have escaped her attention that Emily had returned to the hotel that evening in a state of unladylike agitation, nor that she had been heard talking to herself in the residents’ lounge before retiring to her room with a quite unreasonable request that dinner be served to her there, rather than in the dining-room. In the circumstances, it was as well for Emily’s reputation that the Dean’s wife was ensconced at the Deanery in Salisbury, blissfully unaware that not one but both of the Sumner sisters had deserted the close.

When there came a knock at the door shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Emily assumed it was the maid, come to collect the dinner-tray. But when she opened the door, tray held ready in her arms, it was to find her sister Constance standing breathless on the threshold.

‘Constance!’ she exclaimed. ‘I never thought—’

‘Neither did I. May I come in?’

‘Of course, of course.’ She set down the tray and ushered her sister in. ‘Close the door. Virtually every resident seems to be a friend of the Dean’s wife, or at any rate her informant.’

Normally, such a remark would have raised a smile between them, but it was neither said nor greeted humorously.

‘I received this telegram from William,’ said Constance gravely, handing Emily the crumpled message. ‘It left me no choice but to come at once.’

‘So I see. But this … It makes no …’

‘What is it?’

‘William interrupted James’s testimony in court today.
He
accused him of lying. In the end, the judge had to have him removed.’

Constance looked away. ‘As I feared. They are at each other’s throat.’

‘No!’ Emily touched her sister’s shoulder. ‘James did not react at all. He behaved impeccably throughout.’

‘Tell me what happened,’ Constance replied, facing her once more. ‘I must know everything.’

Emily was moved to tears before she had completed her account of the day’s proceedings. For her and her sister, Norton’s refusal to speak ill of his dead father was obvious evidence that he was indeed the stubbornly loyal son he claimed to be. For them, his refusal to answer Giffard’s crucial question was proof they scarcely needed of his nobility and sincerity – above all, of his enduring love for Constance. Without knowing it, he had chosen the one route by which he might still win her, the one route which also ensured the forfeit of his claim.

When Emily had finished, and was drying the last of her tears, Constance, who had remained silent and expressionless throughout, put her hand to the coffee-pot on the dinner-tray and, finding it still warm, poured some for both of them. Only when they had drained the shared cup of black reviving liquid did she speak.

‘Do you know what I most loved in James? Do you know what it is that I still love in him?’

‘He is a dear good man, Constance.’

‘Yes. And so, by his lights, is William. But James, you see, has an inner strength that sets him apart. When he first told me that he was leaving and that our wedding could not take place, I tried every way I could imagine to dissuade him, even … Well, no doubt you can guess the extremity I was driven to. But he was not to be swayed. He could not be tempted. I know now why he felt he had to leave, why he could not, for any sake, marry me: but to have carried through his purpose, to have resisted the need he must have felt to confide in somebody, to have turned his back on the world he knew, to have exiled
himself
so that his father’s shame might remain hidden: that is true courage, that is true goodness.’

‘He is still … hiding his father’s shame.’

‘And is prepared to lose this case for the sake of it. I cannot understand what his family are thinking of.’

‘Themselves,’ said Emily bitterly.

‘Yes. I fear it is so.’

‘What are we to do, then?’

Constance rose, as if the decision had already been made. ‘William would not have made that exhibition of himself in court if he’d had the proof he spoke of in the telegram. It was dispatched at two o’clock this afternoon. When did you say he was removed from Lincoln’s Inn?’

‘It must have been shortly after noon.’

‘So either he came upon the proof in the space of two short hours or …’

‘Or what?’ Emily could tell by the determined line of her sister’s mouth that she favoured the alternative.

‘Or his claim to have such proof is as irrational as his outburst in court. I blame myself for leaving him alone these past weeks, alone to brood on his resentments. He has not James’s strength of mind, Emily. There’s no telling what he may have been reduced to. Come: we must see him at once.’

‘You wish me to accompany you?’

‘If you will.’

‘But he’ll be expecting you to be alone.’

‘Since William claims to have proof, he cannot complain if I choose to bring a witness.’

Emily was so flattered at being asked to accompany her sister that she scarcely considered what awaited them at The Limes. Constance, however, was already debating in her mind whether William’s proof was merely a forgivable device to lure her home or a contemptible bid to add his voice to those already denouncing the man she had secretly loved all her adult life. Whilst Emily busied herself with bonnet and muffler, Constance reconciled herself to facing at last the unthinkable choice between her lawful
husband
and the only man she had ever truly wanted to marry.

VI

I was lying on the
chaise-longue,
the furniture of the room, its very walls, blurring and shifting around me. I was panting desperately, straining for breath, my heart pounding. My hands, with which I twitched feebly at my collar, were awash with perspiration. Above me, in the very cornicing of the ceiling, plaster serpents uncoiled and hissed their grey probing tongues
.

I pulled myself into a sitting position and hung my head, listening to the rasping quest of my throat for air. There were dragons woven in the pattern of the carpet. They had always been there. Yet now they were moving, massing, marching, leering up at me. I dragged my head upright. On the other side of the room, the oil-lamp on my desk pulsed with a golden unnatural energy. Its light was dazzling, its heat tangible
.

There came a tapping at the door, scarcely audible yet persistent. When I rose to answer it, my weakness vanished, all its symptoms of a disabling fever transmuted into a certainty of mental and physical strength. I strode to the door and turned the handle. But it was locked. I turned it again and again, to no avail
.

The tapping continued, its volume unaltered. ‘Who’s there?’ I shouted. The force of my voice shocked me. It seemed to echo within the confines of the room, bouncing back at me from walls and ceiling and floor. Only when it had faded into absolute silence did I hear the answer, in tones as soft and insistent as the knocking that had gone before
.

‘
Melanie. I’ve come as you asked
.’

I stooped close to the frame and whispered my reply. ‘I didn’t ask you. Why have you come?
’

‘
Because you wanted me to
.’

‘
No. Go back. Leave me alone
.’

‘
But you wanted me
.’

‘
No, I tell you. No
.’

Something akin to a stifled sob reached my ears, then a rustle of fabric
.

‘
Melanie?
’

There was no answer. Suddenly I regretted what I had said, regretted it with the ferocity of an immense and sickening remorse. I dropped to my knees and peered through the key-hole. There she was, retreating along the passage, her long dark hair flowing over a white shift. I heard myself shouting her name: ‘Melanie! Melanie!’ She stopped and turned slowly round. ‘Come back! Please come back’.’ She smiled and ran towards me
.

I was on my feet, grappling with the handle. But still it would not yield. I heard her rattling it from the other side, then her voice, raised in distress. ‘You said you would let me in
.’

‘
I can’t. It’s locked
.’

‘
You have the key. You could open it … if you truly wanted me
.’

Of course. The key. I had it all along. I reached into my waistcoat pocket and drew it out, then stared at the crazily magnified angles and notches of its patterns, stared and tried to comprehend what deception they represented
.

‘
What are you waiting for?
’

‘
There’s something wrong. This isn’t the right key
.’

‘
Of course it is
.’

‘
No. It’s … for something else. I can’t remember what, but …
’

‘
Try it …
’

‘
No. I mustn’t. I know I mustn’t
.’