Authors: Mary Alice Monroe
“Why are you smiling?” Stuart asked.
“Oh, I was thinking…If Mrs. Hodges had known how many people would be charmed by these paintings, she might not have put young Kate to bed without supper.”
“Speaking of supper,” he said, looking at his watch. “If you’re done here, we should go. We have reservations.”
She cast a final lingering glance at the murals, then followed Stuart downstairs. Before entering the formal dining room she caught the tempting aromas of garlic, spices, and hot rolls emanating from the kitchen. The dining room was now the Manor House restaurant. Instead of one long dining table there were several small tables, each draped with heavy white linen and covered with white folded napkins, ruby-trimmed china, sparkling crystal, and fresh flowers. The room was empty and Stuart selected a table at the window.
Mia enjoyed the luxury of being taken to a fine restaurant again. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d dressed up to go out. She unfolded the napkin, fingering the fine damask linen, remembering a time when such opulence was taken for granted. Her gaze drifted around the room, taking in the heavy brocade wallpaper; the velvet, tasseled curtains; the fireplace with the dentil molding. Over it was a magnificent portrait of a dark-haired gentleman in nineteenth-century clothing. So, she thought, this was Robert Watkins. Despite surviving the agony of the Civil War and the trials of the Reconstruction era, he assumed the typical aloof expression of gentry for his portrait. Suddenly, her eyes widened.
“Stuart, look! In the painting, behind the man. It’s the armoire!”
He grinned. “I thought you’d recognize it. After I saw it at the cabin I knew I’d seen it somewhere but couldn’t place it. Then weeks later I was having a business meeting here and I glanced up and there it was. I almost choked on my lunch.”
“So she
did
bring the furniture from the house. Of course she would. The dining table would have been in here, with all the leaves, of course.”
“And the mahogany sofa…”
“In the living room by the fireplace.”
He was amused. “Is the house as you imagined it?”
“In some ways, yes. I didn’t expect to covet living here so much. The house makes me wish I lived in the twenties.”
“People always assume if they lived in an earlier era that they’d live in a house like this one. More than likely, most of us would have been in a cramped house without electricity or running water, or the downstairs staff of a house like this one. I’d have been the gillie taking the gentry out fishing.”
Mia laughed lightly, thinking of how she imagined she was the mistress of the house. Every girl has dreams of Pemberley, she thought.
“I wonder if Belle has ever seen this house. If the family hadn’t lost their fortune, she would have been born here. Maybe even grown up here. Imagine that.”
“More than Belle, I wonder if her mother ever saw it.”
“Theodora? She must have. At least the outside. Oh, Stuart, imagine how hard that was for her, living out in the cabin and to come here and realize all this could have been hers.”
“She’d be bitter.”
“I wonder if that’s part of the reason why she was so angry at her mother. Even though Kate or her father wasn’t to blame. Many families lost their fortunes in the crash of twenty-nine.”
“We can see that now, in retrospect. But Theodora was what? Seventeen? That’s reason enough.”
The waitress came and delivered their drinks. Stuart had Scotch and Mia selected a chardonnay. They took a few minutes to study the menu. Mia ordered the trout but Stuart selected the filet, explaining that, given how he made his living, he had lost his taste for trout. He was committed to catch and release.
Mia sighed and changed her order to the chicken.
“What did you think of Kate’s murals?” he asked.
“They’re just as I imagined them. The vitality I found in her words was right there in her colors, too. But…” She looked around the room, at so much luxury compared to the ruggedness of the cabin. “I don’t sense Kate in this house. Not even in her bedroom. Not like I do in the cabin.”
“She loved the cabin.”
“But she loved this house, too.”
“I’d imagine if she’s lingering anywhere, she’d be where she had her love affair with DeLancey. She wouldn’t have brought him here, not with Dad in the library.” He chuckled. “And Mrs. Hodges.”
“But there was sadness at the cabin, too.”
“Well, we don’t really know that, do we?”
She shook her head. There were still so many things she didn’t know.
He brought the conversation around to fly-fishing. As always they never were bored with each other’s company. The summer sun shone bright through most of their dinner, too bright for the seductive glimmer of candles. It began its slow descent only by the time they were drinking their coffee. Several more diners had joined them in the room, and two more couples were waiting to be seated.
“Thank you,” Mia said after Stuart paid the bill. “I haven’t had such a wonderful time in I don’t know how long. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed dining at a fine restaurant.”
“It’s only eight o’clock. If you’ve got time, I’d like to show you some paintings I’ve found stored in the carriage house. The old chauffeur’s apartment has been a storage facility for the house for years. There’s this group of paintings up there that caught my eye. They’re all of trout. I liked them and saved them for the shop, but when I saw Kate’s fishing diary I was struck by the strong similarity in style between the trout in the diary and the trout in the paintings.”
“You think they were done by Kate?”
“They’re not signed, but it’s a possibility.”
“I’d love to see them,” she said with barely restrained enthusiasm.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The sky had turned crimson over the mountains when they left the Manor House. The lake shimmered with a pearly reflection, its stillness broken here and there with the concentric circles of trout sipping.
The carriage house was an ivy-covered building built for four vehicles. The base was built of stone and the roofline was steeply sloped in the style of the Manor House. Stuart guided her through a heavy wood door. Inside she saw lots of new framing and piles of sawdust, buckets, tools, and other signs of active construction. The floor was made of beautiful stone and she was glad to hear they were keeping it. Stuart described with grand gestures where the clothing section would be, where rods and reels would be sold, and where he would have an entire section dedicated to flies and fly-tying classes. He talked excitedly about the circular wood counter in the middle of the store that he’d designed for customer service and checkout. She saw boyish enthusiasm in his eyes, and as he described the scope of the project she realized that he would be single-handedly responsible for its success. It dawned on her how high up in the management he had to be to take on this operation and it tilted her perception of him.
“Will you stay here once the shop opens?” she asked. “Or will you go back to Orvis headquarters?”
His eyes searched her face. “I don’t know yet where I’ll end up. This is the third shop I’ve established and the company is looking at a few more locations. They might want to move me, but I’m tired of traveling around and corporate politics. I put in to manage this one. It’s close to home. I’ll have to wait and see. The storage is through here. Take my hand. It’s dark up these back stairs.”
He opened a door and, taking her hand, led her up the dark, dusty, narrow staircase to the second floor. As she followed him, her mind wrestled with the possibility that Stuart could leave the area. To where? she wondered. Orvis was located throughout the country. In her mind he was fixed here, like the other town residents. Even though he’d told her he was a wanderer, she’d just assumed he would always be here.
He opened a narrow door at the top of the stairs. The rooms were dark and she felt a blast of heat from the closed space. “Wait here while I find the light switch,” he told her. A moment later light filled the room.
She entered a rabbit warren of small rooms that had once been the chauffeur’s quarters and now was filled with clutter like an old attic. Cobwebs hung from the rafters, the small windows were caked with dust, and old furniture and boxes crammed the small space. It was as hot as an oven and she felt her silk dress cling to her skin. Stuart went to open a few windows and let the cooler night air in.
“There’s dust and dirt everywhere. I’d hate for you to get your dress dirty.”
“No matter,” she said, admiring the wood bed frame with beautiful acanthus leaves climbing up the four posts. “I’ll bet this beauty is original to the house. It’s a shame to see it wallowing in here. Or this bureau.”
“Not mine to deal with. I went through the art looking for something I might want for the shop. The paintings are over here.”
Her gaze lingered on a standing mirror, a rocking chair, and a wrought-iron garden table as she followed him. I would love to spend a few hours going through those boxes, she thought. Who knew what treasures were there? She joined him in a corner where several framed paintings were stacked against the wall. He grabbed hold and hoisted three frames up and brought them to the wrought-iron table.
“Here they are.”
Mia came closer to look. They were oil paintings on paper framed in simple, chipped, black wood frames and glass. She looked around for a cloth of some kind and, finding none, took the end of her shawl and wiped a layer of dust from the glass. The painting was of a glorious rainbow trout leaping with exuberance from the dark water, droplets spraying from its whipping tail. Its rosy band shone across the fish’s gray dots.
“The detail and color…it has to be Kate’s.” Excited now, she lifted the first painting and handed it to Stuart. The second painting was of a brown trout as it rose toward a brilliant dragonfly hovering at the water’s surface. The bright red dots across the body stood out like neon against the yellow-brown. She lifted this one and Stuart took it.
The final painting was of the wild brook trout, the most elusive of all the trout in the area. In the painting the small brookie was caught by an elaborate dry fly, all bright yellow with spiked hackles. The trout’s smooth, dark brown coloring and wormlike markings along its back contrasted sharply with its brilliant ruby-colored belly and fins. The fish was rolling to its side, as though relinquishing the long fight. Kate, she knew, had once compared herself in the diary to a brook trout.
“The glass is cracked on this one,” she said, concerned about the condition of the painting. Dirt and insect wings were embedded under the glass, staining the paper. “It has to be cleaned and remounted before it’s ruined.” She pulled her shawl off and bent over the painting. Carefully she removed the pieces of cracked glass, then used her shawl to gently brush off the insects. She clucked her tongue. “There’s mold peppering all of them.”
She turned the painting over and began to peel away the cheap cardboard backing. “It’s so primitively done. She must’ve framed this herself,” she muttered as her fingers dug in at the corner to tug the old cardboard away from the frame. “Damn,” she exclaimed as she scraped her skin against a small nail.
“Careful,” Stuart said, coming closer.
“I’m OK, it’s just a scratch,” she said, determined to see the back of the painting. The cardboard sagged and tore back, and she got purchase with the corner. “I’ve almost got it.” With pressure from the front she pushed out the cardboard and peeled it out from the frame. A yellowed sheet of paper fell from the back of the frame. She caught it in her hand, surprised. It was as light as tissue.
“Look,” Stuart said, pointing to the back of the painting. “There it is. She signed it.”
In a bold red ink Mia saw the initials
KW
on the back. “You were right,” she exclaimed. “They
were
hers.” She looked up and in his eyes she saw the shared elation of discovery.
Stuart put down the other paintings and drew closer, curious. “What is that paper that fell out?”
“I don’t know.” Mia lifted the tinder-dry sheet. Three stanzas were handwritten in a tight script. The ink had paled and it was hard to read, so she had to hold it close to make it out.
“It’s a poem,” Stuart said, standing behind to read over her shoulder.
“Not just any poem,” Mia replied soberly. “It’s from Dante’s
Inferno.
It’s one of the most famous cantos, where Francesca tells Dante the story of her love for Paolo.”
He shook his head, not understanding the reference.
Mia brought to mind this section of Dante’s great epic poem, which she’d always found so poignant. “In the
Inferno,
Dante visits different parts of hell and he comes upon Francesca and Paolo, two lovers condemned to hell for adultery. In life they were reading together the story of Lancelot and Guinevere and they were moved by how similar that story was to their own.” Her smile was bittersweet, remembering the words. “They kissed and they didn’t read any more that day. It’s really a story of love versus lust. Their hell was to spend eternity circling near each other but never together.”
Stuart brought the thin, yellowed paper closer and read aloud. Mia leaned against him, her cheek against his shirt, moist from the intense heat. She closed her eyes and listened to her love read to her a love poem.