3.

Nor had she told Gabriel that she had chosen the Eagle.
She had told no one. Moreover, to be on the safe side, she
had kept the *Three Birds*, that is her share in them. " I am
Elizabeth Siddall," she said to herself and that in the begin-
ning, was the bird in the middle.

She had left her room and come across the river, dressed
up (for to dress as she used to, was "dressing up" now) in the
very dress she had worn at Mrs. Tozer's. She kept it carefully
for these occasions. It was as if Dad were an actor or a
clergyman, talking out of a book and talking about honour.
She did not say, "I am engaged to marry Mr. Rossetti," for that
wouldn't have made any difference. She had come to say some-
thing else, at last secure. But she might have been a prospec-
tive governess being interviewed, whose credentials are not
satisfactory. This would not be the drawing-room itself, but
a small ante-room *of a big house*. There would be a garden
outside. The new sheds and houses had encroached on their old
play-ground and you could hardly see the masts now, at Wapping.
She was playing her old game again, she must not let them know
(not even Gabriel) that she was an Eagle displayed.

She could almost bless Harry now. It was like that.
It was even like that afterwards, with "the very knife he did
it with." Mum said it couldn't have been, but that didn't make

4.

any difference. It was the way Harry lunged out at her,
pretending to be Mr. Greenacre. She was to have married him.

Then, when she thought of the bride (as she always did
before going to sleep), that night for the first time, she
could count the pieces. She went on counting them, severed
arms, legs, the head caught in the weir. She counted them
carefully and then something happened. She was no longer afraid.

She could go on with her work in the parlour under the
lamp, and not say anything, and wait for Annie or even Lyddie
to shout, "Now, stop it, Harry, that's long past." Later,
they all agreed that Harry wasn't quite right and James, a grown
lad now, in the shop with Dad, made it his own concern that
Harry stopped plaguing his three sisters, for it was three
still; though Annie had got married, Clara had joined the
ranks of the Three Birds.

That is why she blessed Harry and if only Dad would stop
talking, she would ask him if that new school had agreed to
keep on Harry. It was Harry hissing and spitting "gin-gin-ginger
cat" that had driven her to take refuge in the fancy that her
hair was like the feathers of a golden eagle. But she had
to remember that she was also one of the Three Birds and the
first now and "an example to the others"; she heard her father

5.

saying, "you are an example to the others and - my favourite
daughter."

If only Lyddy would come in. Could she interrupt him
to ask him about Lyddy? Lyddy had had the room to herself,
and that was another reason for moving across the river. It
wasn't only Gabriel, though it was all Gabriel. Lyddy could
never sleep lying down.

"I wanted Mum and Lyddy and you, all together - to tell
you the news." But he thought it was something else.

"Your mother went with James to fetch Lydia from your
Aunt Day's."

Lyddy was in Aunt Lucy Day's shop now; she slept there,
working-days.

No-one had ever crossed the river to Cranbourne Street,
not that she remembered, to fetch her home from Mrs. Tozer's.

"Do they always call for Lyddy on Saturday?"

"When I can spare James."

"Why?" asked Elizabeth Siddall. "At least he had stopped
talking about honour or perhaps that is what he was still say-
ing, but saying it differently and saying it about Lyddy. It
wasn't the crowds and anyway, she liked walking alone. What

6.

had happened that they had gone to Aunt Day's shop to fetch
Lyddie? She could not really believe that they went often.
She had been so happy when Mum's friend, out of her Euston
Road days, had said she could work in the shop. She had
been in there with Mum when she was a child, and admired Mum's
old friend who wasn't married then. But she married Mr. Tozer.
He was a little old gentleman and it seemed funny, a man in a
bonnet-shop. But his father was, he said, French and he spelt
his name differently. It was something about war that brought
them to England, and he called her mademoiselle and said, would
she like to help them.

He gave her some scraps and she made a pin-cushion for
Mum's Christmas. She never forgot Mr. Tozer.

He had even helped her with Dad's present. Annie was
hemming the handkerchiefs and Mum always gave Dad the black
scarf. Mr. Tozer said, what did Dad do? Gentlemen had their
preferences. He would like something for polishing the cut-
lery and lenses perhaps? But he had the soft pieces sent from
Sheffield, she told him, from the same place where her grand-
father got the chamois. And Mr. Tozer said, that would anyway,
be in the way of business and the shop, he understood, was now
separate. Christmas was for personal-like reminders. His

7.

own Dad was easy enough to plan for. It was always the same
from that nice place in Haymarket - it was old too, and they
remembered their clients from year to year and preferences.
Times are different, they always remarked friendly, and the
old gentleman (he was dead now) was the last, as he remembered,
to say, "Mr. Toussier - your father's usual mixture?" But
Dad, she had to tell him, didn't take snuff.

She didn't know why but she couldn't tell even Mr. Tozer
that Dad played the violin.

She thought of the times she had hemmed the black square
of that special soft cotton and of how she had scolded Clara,
more than once, for polishing the table with it. "But I
always know where to find Dad's duster," Clara told her.

The violin-case was standing in the corner.

The leather folder with the music was lying on the table.

She realised that she was sitting "tight in her chair",
the way she had so often sat, lifting her head from her sewing,
about to take a deep breath, as Annie flung down her scissors,
and (firm as Mum and grown-up now and going to be married)
rapped out, "Harry, no more fooling." It was for Mum's sake
they stood it. Mum said he was growing too fast and all lads
were a bit wild at that age.

8.

It was Mr. Tozer's idea really.

He even cut these rounds of velvet for her, but he let her measure and cut the inside circles of ordinary cloth to wipe the pens on.

The black velvet pen-wiper was still on his table in the office.

On the black velvet, she had embroidered the eagle that was stamped on the music folder. It was not, Annie said, their Eagle. Annie said she thought it was a Church Eagle from the Cathedral where Dad's father had sung in Sheffield. There were other animals (Annie remembered the Cathedral) carved on the choir-stalls, a Lion, a Bull and there was an Angel that went with them.

She had asked a question, it seemed a long time ago, but it couldn't have been, for Dad had gone on talking and when he said, "its these roughs about, at war-time", she remembered that the question had been about Lyddy and why did James and Mum call for her. She asked again, "do they always call for Lyddy?" and he answered, "not always - only lately, crowds get out of hand, excitable, almost like the last war." She made an effort, "I am Elizabeth Siddall," she said to herself, "and I can't remember the last war," and then she remembered

9.

how Mr. Tozer had explained or tried to explain it to her, how
they were looked after by the friend of Mr. Tozer's former master,
who had been - who had been ... it was the flash of the
knife in the lamp-light that she hadn't even seen then, for then
there was no Mr. Greenacre and the snow that fell and fell, but
there was a word that Mr. Tozer said that flashed broader than
the Greenacres that had been their play-ground and brighter
than Dad's polished silver and sharper than any steel in Shef-
field. It was a Doctor Guillotine who had invented it, but
her head caught in the weir.

"War," she said, trying not to ask a question. She was
only prompting him. Now she wanted him to go on talking, even
if it was about war. Mr. Tozer had talked about war, how kind
they were; they had been friends, his father's master and the
English gentleman, and then everything changed and it was
Frenchie, Frenchie and throwing stones at him and barking and
howling, "some on Tozer." He laughed, Mr. Toussier, when he
told her.

Of course, it had all started with her going to work in the
shop. She had wanted to help them, surely Dad knew that. And Mrs.
Tozer was a friend of Mum's, and Mum and she both remembered Mr.
Tozer. And Dad knew (or perhaps he didn't) how his teaching her to/
keep

10.

the books for him and checking up on the accounts, had really
given her her place there; Dad said she was good at numbers.
She was happy when Mrs.Tozer called her out of the shop, into
the little office and said, "Lizzie, just see what's wrong
here," and she could sit there, after she got the sum right,
nursing Tabby and warming her toes at the tiny fender. She
remembered when it happened.

Mrs.Tozer said, "thanks Lizzie, and now will you give
a hand to Jenny and Ellen, that buyer had all the bonnets down."
She was reaching up, she was taller than the others, putting
the boxes back on the upper shelf, when she felt something.
She turned with her arms still lifted. It wasn't a face re-
flected in the window. It was a face in the window.

It was two faces.

They were looking at her, that was the strange thing
about it.

---

But she mustn't think of the faces in the window, until
she found out what Dad meant about war. Yet somehow the faces
in the window and Mr.Allingham by the street-lamp on the corner,
bowing to Ellen and Jeannet did not encroach nor confuse. It
was going on there, and it was going on here, at the same time.

11.

It was that Mr. Allingham who was looking in the window.

"I am twenty-two," thought Elizabeth Siddall, "I was seventeen then."

They said they were alone, Ellen and Jeannet that evening; would she walk with them? They knew she didn't like meeting strangers.

"It's Miss Sid," said Jeannet. She would drop them as soon as she could. It was a gentleman from Ireland, Ellen had explained afterwards, substantial. They had met him looking round the shops and had asked him if they could help him. He said, "yes, girls know best what girls like," he was taking them presents back to Killarney. He had the pleasantest way of speaking. He was official. It was something to do with ships, but by way of customs or controlling. They hadn't really expected to see him again but in return for his confidence, they had told him where they worked. He knew Leicester Square and all that neighbourhood. He spent all his time in London, at the play. He did say he was going back, so Jeannet really was surprised to see him. He turned to "Miss Sid" but he didn't embarrass her by saying anything. She felt, he felt she wanted to get away.

But she didn't get away.

13.

me. It was out of Shakespeare. It was Viola he wanted.
The Academy had already hung a picture and it was an honour
for so young a man, though they said his father being head of
Somerset House and the School of Design, helped give him his
advantage. Mum told you all about it. Mum and me talked it
over. She was not condescending, Mum said, Mrs.Deverell when
she came to call and Mum said even the greatest ladies could
spoil a visit by something you'd hardly notice, what Mum
called condescension. Not that we need apologize." Elizabeth
Siddall looked round the room.

"Mrs.Deverell didn't really want a bonnet. Mum said
that was real proof of her son's intentions, his bringing his
mother in to choose a bonnet, before even he spoke to me.
It was, in fact, his mother asked me. 'But I must speak to
your mother first,' she said. I remember how she said it.
Mrs.Deverell asked me if I liked reading, she didn't ask me
if I read Shakespeare, she just went on with it, did I not
think Viola somehow, was reminiscent of Rosalind? I said, no,
Viola was the sea and Rosalind was the forest. 'O, I mean, '
she said, 'their doublet and hose. Would you mind wearing a
page-costume, the jerkin comes almost to the knees, with pointy
shoes and a Rosalind-sortof cap to hide away the aureole.'

14.

She meant my hair. It was my hair they wanted for their
pictures.

"There was another Shakespeare, Mr. Millais' Ophelia.
Mr. Hunt did Silvia and another Viola. Mr. Deverell didn't
finish The Marriage of Rosalind and Orlando but Mr. Rossetti
said he would finish it. Mr. Deverell had what he called
The Flight of an Egyptian Ibis in mind but he didn't even
begin. He wanted me to do Ophelia again. Mr. Deverell
died a year ago last winter."

She waited for her father to say something.

"Mrs. Deverell came out through the garden and sat in
the studio. She read aloud sometimes. Mr. Deverell had to
work at odd hours because of his classes at the School of
Design. Mr. Deverell was not strong and after his father's
death, he overworked, looking after his mother and his sisters."

She was talking about Walter Deverell because she knew
that Dad knew she was thinking about Gabriel.

She took the plunge suddenly. "Mr. Rossetti is concerned
too, about his family, though Miss Maria and Miss Christina
are very clever and teach at languages and Mr. William Rossetti
is on the Board of Trade. They are still grieving for their
father, who died a year ago last April. Miss Maria and Miss

15.

Christina took turns reading and translating. Mrs. Rossetti never left him. Mr. Rossetti was elderly and his work was Dante. Mr. Rossetti was going blind. It was for that reason that I did not wish to intrude. I found Miss Maria very pleasant but they are intellectual superior ladies. Miss Christina writes poetry."

The clock was ticking. If she started counting, beating out a rhythm, she would put words to it. Gabriel said her poetry was not good, she was trying to override his admiration for Christina. But this was not true. She had scribbled in the stitched-together leaves of her wrapping-paper note-book, long before she heard of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Soon must I leave thee
This sweet summer tide.
That other is waiting
To claim his pale bride.

XXXXXXXXXX
YYYYMMXXXXXXXI and II
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXX

But that was after Walter Deverell walked across Blackfriars Bridge, that February morning. Stephens was leaning out of the window with her, so it wasn't just another of her fancies; "I thought Dev was too ill to be out," he said. It is true that it was snowing. He was too ill to be out but it was Deverell. He had died, they ascertained afterwards, at the exact moment that they saw him.

"Mr. Gabriele Rossetti was an authority on Dante;

16.

Mr. Gabriel Rossetti his son, has now been entrusted with
the rendering of the *Vita Nuova.*"

Still the clock was ticking.

"Mr. Gabriele Rossetti was for some time before his
marriage, a close friend of - of -" she had forgotten
the name of the gentleman in Malta.

"It was the Bourbons," she struck out wildly, she was
beyond her depth now, "and the fight for freedom and him, Mr.
Gabriele Rossetti being hidden in a cellar along with cholera
victims and getting recalled at the last to life, because of
some poems he had written. It was Lady Moore inquiring for
the poet, Gabriele Rossetti that led to their finding him.

It was that same family.

What family?

Dad did not ask, "what family?"

"It was Spain, it was Napoleon, it was Lady Moore finding
him and Sir Graham Moore bringing him to Malta with the fleet
and Gabriele Rossetti teaching Italian and learning English and
writing the book about Dante and Divine Philosophy and circles
and circles - you could not begin to understand it, even if
you knew Italian - but Mr. Frere - I remember his name was
Frere, the gentleman in Malta - and him, between them had

17.

mapped out what they called a system that spelt a different
story, begun (Mr. Frere maintained) by the Knights themselves
in Malta, and beyond them, the Crusaders."

It was indeed difficult to explain. Was painting more
important than poetry? Gabriel said yes, in her case. She
had begun the sketches, partly because she wanted something to
do, he didn't like to see her sewing. She never scribbled in
a note-book when there were people around, as he did. He said
he liked her drawings. They were not good.

That was the reason for her withdrawing or holding back
the simple statement, the thing she had come to tell them.
And now it seemed fabulous and impossible, after Dad giving her
to understand that he would take her back in the shop and for
more than Mrs. Tozer had given her, she having had that additional
experience. It was no good, it was too difficult to explain,
it spelt a different story.

"Mr. Stevens, one of the gentlemen," she said, "lived in
the Tower."

Why did she say that?

"The Tower?" Dad had asked a question at last.

"His father was official," she said.

18.

"Mr. Allingham - " what should she say about Mr. Allingham? Mr. Allingham himself had a post at Customs - in Ireland. He came back and forth to London."

It did not explain Jeannet and Ellen and the elegant line of the dark blue broadcloth and the gentleman standing by the lamp-post. But how explain anything?

How could he believe that Mr. Ruskin had offered her one hundred and fifty pounds a year? That is, for the out-put of all the painting she might do in that year. She did not believe it herself.

"Miss Christina herself sat for her brother, in The Girlhood of the Virgin."

She had come to make a simple statement, to tell them about Mr. Ruskin and his offer. But she knew what her father thought about wastrels, spendthrifts, idlers with no set income, artists, painters and the harlots that sat for them.

"Miss Christina was the Virgin," she had come back to Christina, the last person she would have thought to be appealed to, in this, her defence.

"They call The Carpenter Shop of Mr. Millais, the family party. That is, it was his own father stood for Joseph, and the little boy was -" She realized that her father did not know what she was talking about. "It is a study - Nazareth.

19.

You see outside, through the door left open. His mother kneels on the floor and He has been trying to help his father, and His mother holds open His hand, where the nail caught it. They are concerned with the little boy, cutting himself like that and one of them brings a bowl with water for Mary to tie up His hand.

"They are not all religious. Mr.Hunt does historical pieces and things out of books and Mr.Brown, too." She remembered helping Emma Brown cut out the fleur-de-lis to sew on the king's coat. But she had not seen the finished picture and she did not remember the name of the king. She remembered how she had seen his likeness before she met Gabriel. That is, Mr.Deverell had used him for the Fool in Twelfth Night. Mr.Allingham had stipulated, before he brought Walter Deverell to look in the shop-window, that the lady, "Miss Sid", as he went on calling her, was (if she was what Walter wanted for his Viola) to sit only for him. That was in the beginning. Walter wanted to finish the picture; he expected the Academy would hang it, if he finished it in time. He wanted someone tall for the page, it wasn't her hair that time. Walter Deverell had painted himself for the Duke Orsino and it looked like him and the costume suited him. The other, he explained

20.

when he first showed the picture to her, was done from a friend
who also, was a painter. No, the Royal Academy hadn't yet
hung any of his pictures. He did not mention his friend's name.
"You remember the occasion," he said.

She did not fit in the grouping and the rough indication
(already sketched in) of Viola, with any special scene in
*Twelfth Night*.

But there was another occasion.

It was late and they were alone, for Mrs. Deverell was
ailing. There was a knock on the door but the door opened
before Walter had time to lay down his brush.

"It's your Gab, and he went on painting."

Gabriel flung down his cape. He brushed his hair from
his forehead, combing the fingers of his left hand through it.
His hair looked untidy, longer than Walter's, but it was the way
he flung back his head. When he spoke, you knew that it was
*Twelfth Night*, you knew it was the Fool, you knew that it was
he was not as tall as Mr. Allingham. There was no
elegant line of broadcloth, his coat did not match his trousers
and his coat was a dark plum-colour. "You'll better come back
with me to my digs," he said, "it's cold here," but he did not

21.

turn and put on his cape again, as she expected. He made
as if he were plucking a lute, but making a joke of it:

"Come away, come away, death, that is one of the best things
I ever wrote," he said, "And in dark cypress let me be laid."

But she knew the Fool's song in Twelfth Night. Why did
he say he wrote it?

Come away, come away, death,
And in dark cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

"O, Dev," he said, "did you know or do you think that
cypress, in that instance, means not cypress, wreath, tree,
funereal you know - but just the colour or even the stuff -
but he calls the shroud white, so it couldn't be the stuff,
could it? Cypress means just black sometimes, not tree,
wreath or anything. Why the devil must I go on like this?
Probably those paraphrases of old Gab - Dante, you know -
no, not Dante Gabriel Rossetti but Gabriele, the old gentleman.
He's been working too hard. Old Antique knows more Italian
than Maria and Christina put together, but dear mamma must
have a rest sometimes. I can't say I helped much this evening,

23.

I've taken to keep off it and to damn their stinking old
Academy. And with that, too - O, so there's your model."

It was the first time Elizabeth Siddall had heard herself
referred to as a model.

Deverell said, "I'm through painting. Get your things,
Gab, we'll go immediately."

Automatically, as Walter Deverell stuck his paint-brush
in the jar, she pulled off her cap.

"So that's who you are," said Gabriel Rossetti.

She was only wearing the jerkin over her dress, that
evening.

She went on unlacing the strings.

She slipped her arms out of the sleeves.

She folded the jacket, as she always did, and laid it
on the chair below the estrade. She laid the cloth cap on it.
She did not look at Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Her hair was not really coming down.

She found her outdoor coat, hanging on the peg behind
the door, where she had left it.

Walter Deverell would understand her not saying good-
night. He was putting away the easel.

He always left it standing. He was putting it away,
so as to give her time to slip out.

24.

"I don't think I caught your name, Miss, did I?" said Gabriel Rossetti. "Mine's Punchinello, yours to favour. I mean, Madame, yours to command. It was a night on the Rialto - no, not Shakespeare - this is another story; do you remember the moon? Come, don't say you have forgotten me?

"Madame, it was I, not Titian who invented your hair.

"I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave. Do you really like Browning? I don't. Taken all in all, he and the would-be laureate, I mean Tennyson, are provincial. And likewise, Mrs. Browning, O great god Pan by the river. It is Madame, exactly what I mean. They never got out of Pimlico. Do you like poppies? You see the black coal in the centre. But Lor', Madame, we are not in Manchester - or is it Newcastle, they bring coals to?"

She was shivering, though it was not late and it was still mid-summer.

"I can't wait for Mum and James and Lyddy, will you tell them?" she said.

She was standing. She glanced down at the music-folder, with what Annie had told her was a Church Eagle, stamped or embossed upon it.

"It's by way of a commission," she said, "you'll tell the others. But for that -

25.

"I mean, it's an undertaking and already paid for.
It's for a year's work. I couldn't forfeit the promise I've
made. I'll come back when I can stay and tell them properly.
It's for - design and drawing. Mr.Ruskin wants a whole
portfolio."

Her father said, "And who is Mr.Ruskin?"

27.

and he finds her crouching by the bridge, this very Blackfriars
Bridge corner, but then Gabriel said he couldn't paint it there
and stayed in Kew to be near a wall that he had found that
would do better.

The cholera rumours had started last summer, but she had
stayed at her own room in Weymouth Street. It was not far
off, so that she could be in and out, sitting for Gabriel.
But she couldn't stay in Weymouth Street, now that he was so
far away as Highgate, and while he was away, it was something
to stay in his rooms.

When they were married, he said, he would have a door
cut through, back of the books in the hall. The hall joined
the bed-room to the two front rooms. Gabriel said that would
make the place twice as large as it was now. His study or
his studio was the first room, but she was sitting in the long-
room as he called it, where Maria and Christina had come in to
take tea that day.

It was all right about Christina. She had told Dad,
this afternoon, that Miss Christina was superior. So she was
and she had a right to it. It was nice about the drawings.
She just wasn't interested. She knew that what she wrote was
what she wanted to write, when she said:

29.

brought Walter Deverell to look in the Cranbourne Street shop-
window, that Annie was to sit for no one else, only he excepted
Mr. Boyce. It was while Annie was sitting for Mr. Boyce that
Gabriel got to know her, though they had all met her before.
Mr. Hunt was having her educated with the intent to marry. It
was Mary Howitt who thought with Barbara, it was a pity, Annie
Miller throwing away her chances. And with Gabriel, it was
only (he told Mr. Allingham) for a joke, "Hunt stole my
picture," he said, "so I'm stealing his model."

Mr. Hunt's picture was a success, it and The Light of the
World, last May at the Academy. Not that she liked Annie
Miller. She didn't pretend to like her. She knew that Mary
Howitt and Bessie Parkes, who Barbara always kept rooms for,
at Scalands Gate, were working for her good. That is, Annie
Miller's good, but it involved something that she had no care
then, to be discussed openly - about herself and Gabriel.
As an engaged man, did Gabriel have the right to carry on openly,
that way and with the model too, that one of his best friends
was going to marry? At least, that is, Mary Howitt explained,
what she had asked Mr. Allingham. Mr. Allingham was living
in London now, writing; he was one of the contributors to
Mr. Howitt's paper that had first printed Gabriel's Sister Helen.
Mary Howitt would never take her eyes off her, wherever she was.

30.

When she was thinking about ladies, she wasn't really remembering everybody. There was Mary's mother. The Howitts had the house at Highgate, the Hermitage, not so far from the Browns'. They would walk out there or go part way by bus. It was with Mary, almost idolatry, the way she looked at her. Mrs.Howitt said, "you understand the Spirits," naturally, like Mrs.Deverell talking about Shakespeare. It was there they had what Mrs.Howitt called their home-circle. Mr.Howitt was away on a long voyage and Mrs.Howitt asked if she and Gabriel would help them with their contact.

It was there at Highgate, that she got to know Barbara Leigh-Smith and Bessie Parkes and Mary. The Howitts had been Quakers but now they followed the new faith. You could say, yes, Bessie Parkes and Barbara were ladies, but they were fashionable young ladies, and Barbara always wore her breeches in the country and dragged back her hair. It was funny her taking the words out of Mum's mouth, about ladies and condescension. Mrs.Howitt wasn't so much of a lady as a sort of a little saint.

Quakers or Friends, as she called them, were like that, communing in the silence. It was different at the Howitts. All the same, there was comfort sometimes to be had at the

31.

seances at the Academy in Sloane Street. She might go there
again.

But there was no use going and asking, how does cholera
take people? You picked up your own worry out of the air,
and an answer came back to you that might mean almost anything.
With that simplicity of Mrs. Howitt, just loving her husband
and wanting word, for there had been no letters - he had
sailed for the Gold Fields - the Spirits gave consolation
and spoke simple words and spoke them very clearly. That is,
it was what Mrs. Howitt called "Rapping Spirits", they could
say yes and no, with one rap or with two raps, and letters like
N for north and H for hope - Mrs. Howitt had a list of words
they used - that was life-giving and inspirational. And
Gabriel was gentle with Mrs. Howitt and with Mary, but he said
at the end, it was too slow and he went to the Academy for
Spiritual Research, in Sloane Street.

She went there too, after the death of Walter Deverell.

They put ideas into your head and gave you comfort that
way. It was a way that might keep you alive, if you lost hope.
Not that she had lost hope, not that she didn't love Gabriel.
But when she first began to realize that he was angry with her

32.

"(your chin, your chin, you've spoiled that line, don't you)", it was as if her heart were torn from her very insides, as if she must have someone, something and there was no-one to go to, for she couldn't complain to the others about Gabriel.

She was happy at first - perhaps Mrs. Howitt could have told her it was spiritual pride, but Mrs. Howitt would never have said that. It wasn't just that Gabriel liked her. But did he like her?

He never said thank you, after a long hour's sitting.

It was how she came to think of Walter Deverell, he kept books by the <u>estrade</u> for her to read between times.

With Gabriel, there were no between times.

If she fell into a chair, just hanging on exhausted, till she put on her coat, Gabriel would say, "don't move" and she would wait there.

It was how she came to think of Walter Deverell.

And thinking of him, maybe got it into the air somehow.
"It's a French name," the lady-medium said. There were four
others in the circle, "it's for one of you five ladies."
Nobody seemed to know any French "on the other side", as the
lady-medium called it, and then she remembered Mr. Toussier.
Maybe just thinking of Mr. Toussier, gave the lady-medium the
idea that it was for her. She said, "It's a gentleman and

33.

it's something about Christmas."

She did not think of Twelfth Night.

"It's for this lady - no, it doesn't begin with T,
the name of the helper who is calling. He says (indicating
I'm right) it's for you. It's that way, Miss, many times,
but you're sure to remember when you get home."

She did remember. She remembered before she got home.
Gabriel had told her that Walter Deverell was descended from
the D'Evrolles who had come in with the Conqueror.

"Being what you are, how can anyone expect you to be
other?" There were times when she remembered Gabriel's non-
sense, like remembering something in a book, a play-book, some-
thing you've heard over and over, as if you were another actor,
and yet heard it always for the first time.

"Strictly between ourselves,

Lizzy, Lizzy,
You make me dizzy,

and all my energy, my perfect and precise detachment, is re-
quired to get your chin right. If you painted, Lizzy, you
would understand this, or even if you wrote poetry. No-one
could expect you to be clever, endowed with the ambrosial locks

34.

and the dim, disenchanted eyes of Circe. But Circe in good time, and Medea.

"I do not care what you think of Tennyson. I say, he never got out of Brixton. Or perhaps for reason of alliteration or assonance or mere crude rhyme or rhythm, which I can not expect you to follow, he remains and will remain to me always, the perfect translator of Catullus; my favourite phrase of his correct and polished rendering is,

O silver-shining Pimlico,
like a boot-black, polishing the boots of the perfect prince
and his lady, looking like Mrs. Tibbs o' Sundays. But you
didn't know Mrs. Tibbs, did you, O Queen Hermione? But it
must be Guinevere, next time.

"You say I did not thank you for the *Damozel*. It was three months ago that I stopped working on the *Damozel*. What a memory you have. But the *Damozel* isn't finished, and why should I thank you, anyway; it is you who should thank me, for making you immortal."

"As to the *Bones of Venice* - "

But she stopped him.

She was, he said, dictating to him and he couldn't have that.

But he agreed with her afterwards about Mr. Ruskin,

35.

"The old sneak behaved like a gentleman."

She had never met Effie.

There was only one person who knew all about it, Emma said, and that was Mr. Ruskin's valet, Mr. John Hobbes.

But then Emma didn't like Effie, or the idea that Mr. Millais counted more with Mr. Ruskin than her own Madox Brown. Mr. Ruskin was not fair to Madox, Emma maintained. Emma said that Madox had run across Mr. Hobbes at the Working Men's College, where they took turns lecturing and giving lessons. Mr. Hobbes had gone in to explain that Mr. Ruskin must discontinue his teaching for a short space, for health reasons. He was going to the Continent.

"Mr. Hobbes' language was something terrible," said Emma. "Not that I don't suppose Madox told me everything." It was a delicate subject. "Him," said Mr. Hobbes, "and her, after all he's done for both of them. And now people calling Mr. Ruskin a name you don't meet nowhere but in the Bible. Mr. Brown, if it's the last thing I do, I declare to you - but then with my all-but oath to Mr. Ruskin, you don't know anything, no more than I. What I could say -"

But Emma said, "He grit his teeth in a manner that spoke everything and he was even at that minute, catching his train" and that was all that anyone heard official, if you could say

36.

what Madox Brown said was hinted at, by Mr. Hobbes, the valet,
was official.

"It was a scandal such as had not been heard in England,
nor would probably not be heard again," so Emma said, and a man
like him, so Madox said, with a mind like those crystal chande-
liers he had all over the house (though Emma had never been
there), reflecting like crystal-glass, so Emma said Brown said,
and yet with a drawing-back as it might be, like those sea-
medusas, like you get at Hastings (Emma had seen them too, at
Brighton), all feeling and nerves yet cold as crystal-glass;
it was a contradiction, but that was genius, so Emma said that
Madox Brown had told her.

The decree was granted to Euphemia Chalmers/(falsely
known as Ruskin) on grounds of mullicity.

✓ Elizabeth Siddall had always liked John Millais.

"The cold is due to the house-foundation being under water
at high-tide," Elizabeth Siddall said to herself. At least,
she could stay hunched in the basket-chair that Gabriel
wanted to get rid of. Or she could get up if she wanted; it
worried her that one window in the studio was closed, even
though it was summer. The window had been nailed secure be-
cause of the rattling and the draught last winter, but now it
should be attended to, only Gabriel said he liked the light

37.

blocked out from that side and she hadn't the strength to drag a ladder all the way up the stairs, even if Mrs.Birrell had one.
Gabriel had forbidden Mrs.Birrell to touch anything; Elizabeth was sure there was an accumulation of dust behind the long single curtain that was actually tacked into the wall below the ceiling. It was beautiful cloth, some old piece Gabriel had picked up but it should have been cleaned and hemmed before he hung it. The curtain was hung when Mrs.Birrell sent the man up to nail the window. Anyway, Gabriel did not like to see her sewing, and she had so little time to herself, that she liked to rest and dream, then. He would stop her, even in pulling out a table or folding up a length of drapery, in order to do a drawing. If it was a matter of long bastings for a surcoat or pinning loose sleeves over tight ones, for Saint Cecelia or Francesca, he didn't call it sewing - nor did she for the matter of all that, it was too exciting and it was designing.

He had told her she was proud and put on airs, that her reserve was a sort of self-chastisement. He did not realize the self-control she practised, not to straighten a chair set at an impossible angle or a rug crooked on the floor. It was only natural to pick up a piece of drawing-paper that the draught was fluttering in the corner. As to pins -

39.

ask Gabriel if Millais had done the picture. John Everett Millais was Mr. Ruskin's best friend.

Walter Deverell had not wanted her to sit for other people. His mother had made the arrangement and explained things to her. It was a shilling an hour for special work, five shillings for a full morning, seven and six for the whole day, and there were other things to consider, 'bus fares and so on. Elizabeth Siddall said she did not need the money, her work at Mrs. Tozer's was well paid for and she liked coming to the studio. Mrs. Deverell insisted on her having the usual School of Design fee for what she called the work, although Elizabeth insisted on the pleasure that it gave her to come there to Kew. She hadn't thought of giving up Mrs. Tozer's, until Mr. Hunt came in, one Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Deverell came over to the studio to ask first if she would mind; a friend of Walter's, she said, was planning to do another scene from Shakespeare and he didn't want to begin until he had seen Walter's picture, in case it might appear that he was taking Walter's subject. In fact, they were much alike, Mr. Hunt was doing Silvia in *Two Gentlemen of Verona*.

40.

Mrs.Deverell presented Mr.Hunt and excused herself as there were other guests in the drawing-room.

Mr.Hunt said, not knowing anything about her, would she sit for him?

Walter Deverell said that Miss Siddall was not a model.

Walter Deverell tried to dissuade her from sitting to other people. She did not read now but they talked together, in the "rest". He told her that he had wanted to be an actor but the family were against it and he was glad now that he had stayed on at the School. The stage offered, at best, only a precarious living. He was interested in her writing but he said that that too, would never earn a living.

She said, "I've been thinking it out, since Mr.Hunt came in last Sunday." She explained to him that twenty-four divided by twelve is two; that is, counting twelve months to the year, she had two pounds a month. The weeks were uneven, but counting four weeks to a month, she had ten shillings a week - but a little less. Counting five shillings a morning for two mornings in the studio, she had ten shillings, as it were, for the whole day. She had left out Sundays but then, there were those extra days at the end of every one of the twelve months. She would have free time to read, to write, even to do some dress-patterns for Mrs.Tozer. Even as a little girl, Mr.

41.

Toussier - that is, it was originally a French name - had
helped her in some simple stitch-work embroidery. Mrs.Tozer
was really very good to her and did not insist on her staying
on late, but for the sake of Mr.Toussier who was dead, she
liked to see orders filled in time, in the rush season. Mrs.
Tozer didn't officially take in orders from the makers, but
sometimes the buyers who had known Mr.Toussier in the old days,
would rush in, for a special favour, with a last-minute ball-
gown. They had really, though not officially, done some lovely
costumes; the lace and drapes, Mrs.Tozer left to her discretion.
Mrs.Tozer was better on the bonnets. Perhaps if she spent her
time, working on design, one of the big costumiers would take
her for outside patterns. Mrs.Tozer, she knew, would sympathize
with her ambition, but she must see out the season.

She remembered, Walter Deverell was standing by the
window. "But I promised Allingham," he said.

She said, "Mr.Allingham was very pleasant, the few times
I saw him, but he wasn't particularly my friend."

He said, "Allingham may have had other - ideas for you.
He might have - he might have thought he could help you with
your writing."

"How could Mr.Allingham know that I did any writing?"

42.

"Well - you might have told him."

"I only saw him those few times, and never alone."

She remembered, Walter Deverell came back and began scraping his palette. "It's this way," he said, "I understand how you feel about your job. I feel the same way about mine. I resented it at first, now I don't think I could be without it. It sets a shape to the day, and all the time I'm teaching, I'm thinking how happy I'll be to get back to my work. Well - why do I call this work? This is my life and the other - the classes, family (interruption even) set a sort of fence about a pasture. I might get slack and lazy or indifferent, if I could get to my painting any time of the day. Do you see what I mean?"

She thought she saw what he meant.

"I'm independent now and my mother says that it might be better if I had a place of my own to work in. It's cold here and the light's none too good, so we saw no reason for rebuilding this old shed. I've been looking for something, ever since we moved here. I'd save time and energy if my studio was nearer the School. I don't think you should give up your job entirely. But if your Mrs.Tozer agrees to take you part-time, I would be grateful if you would continue sitting

43.

for me. I have the *Ibis* in mind, there's *Rosalind* and then
*Ophelia*. I personally see no reason why you should not help
Hunt with his Silvia. It's only that I gave my promise."

She said she would be glad to sit for him, when he found
his studio, if Mrs. Tozer would agree to part-time work.

Walter Deverell said he actually had a place in mind,
but he had to wait till next quarter to move in.

The studio he told her, was set back in a garden. It
was number 176 in Red Lion Square.

But he did not tell her what William Allingham had told him.

Mary Howitt helped Mrs. Howitt edit *The People's Journal* and
*Household Words*, while Mr. Howitt was away.

Mrs. Howitt was working separately as well, writing a
book on the new faith.

Mary should not have shown her the letter, but Mary
didn't know Mr. Allingham then, and Mary didn't know that she
had met Mr. Allingham. Gabriel took him out to the Hermitage,
after they had printed *Sister Helen*; Mr. Allingham wrote poetry.
But Mrs. Howitt made no reference to the letter when Gabriel
presented Mr. Allingham to her and Mary in the garden.

44.

Elizabeth wondered if Mary remembered the letter and the poem that Mr. Allingham had enclosed with it.

She wondered if Mary connected the name of the writer of the poem with this Mr. Allingham.

She didn't think that Mary did somehow, but she felt that Mrs. Howitt went out of her way to bring up the subject of the new faith, so that Mr. Allingham could say, "I'm afraid that I'm not interested."

something It was as if somehow, it was understood between them, that he would say that.

It was a long letter and while she was reading the first page, Mary said, "but I thought this was a poem for Words or for the Journal. But I see it's confidential; I'll put it back with mother's private papers."

The address was written at the top of the page but Mary didn't then know Mr. Allingham or that he lived in Ireland. Perhaps she hadn't even seen the signature.

It was about an experience.

Would Mrs. Howitt send him word, he knew of her communications. He would be grateful for some sort of guidance.

A friend of his was doing a portrait of a lady. He had seen the lady in London and walking home with his friend, he was

45.

overwhelmed with a strange foreboding. Why should this be?
He had stayed awake all night; he was returning the next day
to Ireland. The poem enclosed could better explain his feel-
ings. The poem, of course, Mrs. Howitt understood, was not
for publication. It was called *The Cold Wedding*. He felt
he was looking at the lady through a snow-storm. Why should
he feel that his friend's portrait should bring disaster? His
friend was a person of distinction, of high spiritual attainment.

Ere she was born
That vow was sworn;
And we must lose into the ground
Her face we knew.

Elizabeth Siddall could not have read the four lines more
than twice, but she remembered them.

She had seen Mr. Allingham only three times and "never
alone", as she had told Walter, but actually she had only spoken
to him once; how could she have told him about her writing?

Mrs. Deverell had asked her to Kew to look at the studio
before the sittings began. "We've already arranged the lamps,"
she said, "but it's hardly a place to work in. I'm afraid
you'll get cold here. We think we can have a small stove

46.

fitted in the corner later, and I'm having some old curtain-
stuff fastened up over the door and windows. By day of course,
Walter will need the windows but he can only work by day-light,
on Sunday - has he explained it to you? Walter says the light
won't be too difficult, not for your sittings, as he has al-
ready finished himself (I'm glad you like it, he makes a good
Orsino) and the Jester. Maria and Margaretta have promised
to help Miss Black put up the curtains this evening. Ah,
forgive me, my dear - I thought we were to be alone. Tell
him to come in, Ann."

When Mr. Allingham bowed to her, when Mrs. Deverell said,
"Miss Siddall," she wondered if she could claim to have met
him before.

"Miss Sid," they had said, laughing by the lamp-post.
He had not actually addressed her and she slipped off.

The second time was only a face in the window, and another
face.

This was the third time.

She stood and instinctively dropped a little curtsey,
the way Mum had showed them they did, at her lady's house in
Sheffield.

"Walter even as a child, was always absorbed in Shake-
speare," Mrs. Deverell said, after Ann had left the tea-things.

47.

"But except for a Mr. Garrick or a Miss Siddons, there's hardly a career in acting, is there? He was always casting everyone he knew for a part - now Miss Siddall - "

Mr. Allingham put down his cup and looked at her, as if he had never seen her before.

Elizabeth Siddall held her cup steady, and her hand did not tremble.

"Miss Siddall has agreed - she also is fond of Shakespeare - as a special favour, to sit for Walter in his Twelfth Night."

Mr. Allingham said, "I trust Walter does a faithful likeness of Miss Siddall."

"He has done his own portrait excellently. There is something about Walter. He was hardly fitted for a solicitor's office - he may have told you how concerned we were about it. We couldn't have him go on the stage, but we agreed to his leaving his uncle Traver's office, if he would give up acting. Mr. Dyce and Mr. Herbert at the Academy, recommended his painting highly, so his father had no competition about giving him an under-mastership at the Schools. But tell me about yourself, Mr. Allingham."

Mr. Allingham said, "I am off again to Ireland."

48.

Mrs. Deverell said, "you prefer Ireland?"

"O no," said Mr. Allingham, "it's my work there. I find London attracts me more every time I come here. Besides my official work, I am doing reviews for a Dublin journal, news of things and people here, books and art. Mr. William Rossetti has also placed a few things of mine. William Rossetti, as you no doubt know, is now on the staff of the *Spectator*. I hope in time, to make a livelihood of writing. Then I will stay in London."

Elizabeth Siddall felt that he was speaking to her, though he addressed himself to Mrs. Deverell.

"You enjoy the life in London?"

"Exceptionally."

"We are so busy at the Schools, that I don't get about now, as I used to. But I hear much talk of books and people from my son. It is odd that I do not miss Wykeham and Spenser more. You will think I am, what a mother should not be, partial. I have heard Walter referred to as the handsomest fellow in London. He is singularly immune to flattery. It is not only his appearance; for all his indifference to society, I have heard from Mrs. Dyce that at the Academy, he was known for his exquisite manners. His nature is affectionate."

49.

"Yes," said Mr. Allingham, "William Rossetti calls him
troubadourish."

"You have been to their gatherings? My son tells me
there are (at what he calls _casa Rosetti_) much come and go of
famous characters, Mr. Mazini, Paganini - but they invite the
piano-tuner and the dancing-master, as well as Father Gavazzi
and the Maestro."

Mr. Allingham said, he had not attended their formal
gatherings but had spent pleasant evenings, reading and dis-
cussing poetry with the two brothers.

"The sisters are likewise gifted. And I hear that Mrs.
Rossetti is not only a brilliant linguist but a good cook. She
is partly English; though her maiden name, Polidori sounds
Italian, my son tells me that he has heard it may be Greek.
I sometimes worry foolishly, but Walter is not really strong
and after coming back from the Rosettis, he seems sometimes
to be burning with a fever and enthusiasm which I fear his
body is too frail to withstand."

Mr. Allingham said, "their inferences are not always
sound but their enthusiasms are contagious."

"Their father's book has been printed, Walter tells me,
but not circulated. How can that be?"

50.

"The volume is perhaps a little too erudite for general circulation. No doubt, it will find its place in time, in the universities and on the Continent. But I can express no opinion. The book is written in Italian with, I believe, certain explanatory notes in Latin."

"The book is political?"

"I should not say so. Only in so far as Mr. Rossetti's system, as I believe he calls it, would unravel or untangle certain ancient evils. But I am all at sea, here. I have heard of Machiavelli but for the life of me, I don't know why I think of him now. Except that he too, came from Florence. Something to do with an ideal king or ruler. Virgil led Dante through circles in the Inferno and apparently with penetrating acumen and a brilliant sense of historical parallels, Mr. Rossetti would untangle the threads, solve the riddle or enigma and apply Dante's criticism, say of the Italian tyrants, to the pope's of his own day. There is no doubt, a fanatical ring about Mr. Rossetti's code or re-arrangement of letters, names and places, so that they spell in some instances (Gabriel tells me) other names and other places. But Italian spelt upside down, backward or anagramatically, can convey little to the uninitiate and nothing to one who has no Italian and whose Latin is at best, fragmentary and unreliable."

51.

"But Mr. Allingham - it savours of - what shall I say? It makes me think of Mr. Bulwer Lytton's _book_, Zanoni."

"Magic? I see, Mrs. Deverell, but I think I can assure you that the Conte de/Gobelin and Caliostro would get scant welcome from Mr. Gabriele Rossetti. He is a devout man. He began his researches with an older brother, a priest, I believe in the Abruzzi."

"But you say he applied what he calls his system, to denouncing the evils of Rome?"

"He applied his system to show how Dante, guided by the poet Virgil, denounced or rather formulated the circles or the easy steps to Avermus. I do not say that Gabriele Rossetti goes so far as to apply his system to the evils of to-day."

It was not only Gabriel. She could remember what other people said, like listening to a play, watching from the basket-chair, herself acting.

She could hear the words best when she was shivering or when she was frozen, too cold to shiver.

Not that she was actually shivering.

The tide-water lapped round the house-foundation.

54.

She could not now recall the exact sequence, there were preliminary sketches, then Gabriel would toss aside a sheet of drawing-paper and say, "We'll finish Saint George later. I must find a proper brocade first, for the Princess Sabra. I've a half-offer for a Triptych but I must do Dante. There's the *Salutation* and I must finish the *Dream*."

The first drawing was a sketch for the *Salutation*.

She did not move when Walter said, "My hour's up."

Gabriel said, "Mine isn't."

Walter said, "The lady is not a model. I promised a - a friend, when she consented to sit for Viola, that she was not to be approached by any other artist."

"But I am not an artist," said Gabriel Rossetti, "the Academy don't like me."

Gabriel leaned back, he tossed the stringy lock out of his eyes.

"And moreover," said Gabriel, "I made no promise to nobody, about this or about any other lady."

Walter Deverell motioned to Elizabeth Siddall to go.

"St-tt -" hissed Gabriel, "one moment."

Walter Deverell went over to the easel.

"Now - almost enough for this, anyway - preliminary - my *Salutation*."

55.

Gabriel Rossetti laughed, a mirthless, high-pitched
cackle.

She felt he was clowning, like he did with the lute,
that first time she saw him.

He was not really laughing.

"St-tt -" he hissed again, but he sank back, though he
still held the pencil.

Walter Deverell stood behind the easel.

"I'm sorry," he said, "Gabriel, but I can't kick you out."

"Not that I don't like Raphael, it's them that followed
after. And them that followed them that followed after. A
fashionable set-piece painter. Block in your pyramid formation,
regard your colour and proportion it discreetly. Let light
shine from this direction or from that direction, but never
from any other. Mechanical rules laid down by Reynolds; there
is no God but Raphael and Reynolds is his prophet. But you
know all this, Dev."

-----

And another day (she and Gabriel were alone in the
studio):

56.

"The blessed Damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven,
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand
And the stars in her hair were seven.

I wrote that when I was nineteen and now I've found you, would
you mind telling me if your lilies were the usual, or could
they be white iris? But why white, you ask me, though you
don't say anything. I see, old Dev told you, discretion is
the better part of valour. Did he ever do any talking?
And you must have said something, sometime. He told you to
keep quiet?"

She said (that was in the beginning, at Red Lion Square),
"He told me to rest sometimes."

"He amused you, talking?"

"He talked about Shakespeare."

"Ha - a horse, a horse - Did he do Petruchio for you?
Miss Clementina Black as Bianca. Did you see Clementina out
there? Margaretta was Katherine. Do you think her as pretty
as Maria? Stiffish, Spenser and dear Wykeham, the few times
I saw them. Why d'you suppose he wouldn't tell me your name,
that first time I saw you? Or would mamma not meet you?"

"It was Mrs. Deverell who first arranged my sittings for
Viola."

57.

"Ha - 'I promised a friend,' says Dev, speaking for the first time in his life like Wykeham, 'the lady is not a model; I assure you, my dear Rossetti, on my honour, I promised a friend that the lady was not to be approached by any profli-gate, thief, beggar or brother-artist.' He should have con-fided simply that you were Clementina's cousin from the country and he had promised mamma to keep an eye on you. It may be that Walter's doting mamma had a look at you, before she al-lowed you to take up headquarters at Kew. But Dev wouldn't have gone all pompous, 'my word as a gentleman - a friend', if it had only been a promise to his mother. Who was the friend?"

She did not ask his permission, she trailed down from the *estrade*. He had folded a length of worn blue stuff about her shoulders. The stuff, he told her had been rifled from the Polidori attic, "only curtain," he said, "but I promised Aunt Charlotte not to cut it." She lifted the trailing blue and stood behind the easel.

"White rose - for service meetly worn - yellow like ripe corn - st-tt, we must get a little more gold in, for a' that and a'that - red-gold, not yellow. I blocked them in anyway, the iris, and I think you are right; blue is better for fleur-de-lis."

58.

It was Aunt Charlotte who paid the rent last time.

How could they manage the double rent, when "we are,"
as he said, "married."

And what more would marriage bring her than she had now -
or what less?

She didn't think she would die, giving birth to his child,
but marriage had something to do with death.

If she married him, she would die.

She didn't really want to marry him, though she knew that
Mary Howitt, Barbara and Bessie Parkes blamed Gabriel.

He was angry with Allingham; she remembered how he had
stormed at her when he came down to Hastings, last summer.
Mary had actually written to Gabriel, but how did Mary know
(he asked her) that he - well - he and Allingham had taken
Annie Miller to Madame Tussaud. A harmless little outing.
Can't these sneaks leave me alone? What else did Allingham
tell Mary? What the dickens does Allingham think he's doing?

"So you went to Madame Tussaud's?" She remembered the
words in her mouth, the taste and sting of them and the strength
she got from saying them. "Mr. Allingham told Mary nothing -
and in any case, whatever got about, no one mentioned Madame
Tussaud."

59.

"Lizzie," he stopped storming, "I almost suspect sometimes, you have a sense of humour. Or aren't you trying to be funny?"

"I can be funny without trying," she said.

"Mary wrote me you were dying."

"Well - what of it?"

"I tell you, Lizzie - and I went out to the Hermitage to tell Mrs. Howitt - "

"How was Mrs. Howitt?"

"Damn you - I went out with Allingham, your precious Allingham who started all the mischief, to clear away - misapprehension. These misunderstandings - "

"Mary Howitt's waiting downstairs. Don't shout."

But he went out to the corridor and screamed down Mrs. Elphick's narrow staircase, "come up here, Mary."

Elizabeth Siddall did not know why, but the scene was somehow familiar. It might almost have been one of the old houses across the bridge, beyond the tan-yards, or it might even have been Kent Place or Aunt Day's rooms above the shop in Pentonville.

Elizabeth Siddall was at home here, Mrs. Elphick might have been Aunt Day. It was Gabriel who had come from outside.

60.

But there was more to it than just that. Say there was
a row - not Mum and Dad - but like there was sometimes on
that built-in court, the short-cut to the river, people hanging
out of windows and shouting across that it was 'im or that it
was 'er, and arguments about whatever it was that had caused
all the commotion. Yes, she had had one of her attacks.
What of it?

Elizabeth Siddall followed Gabriel and stood with him on
the boxed-in wooden platform that was like an estrade, at the
head of the stairs.

Dad said she was good at numbers. She did not actually
count her friends or number her adversaries, but she thought,
"It's like what Gabriel calls Mr. Rossetti's Dante's three-
ringed circus. I have Mrs. Elphick and most of High Street,
Hastings; he has his brother to stand up for him and editors
and journals - perhaps even Mrs. Howitt. But I have Mary
Howitt."

Mary Howitt was standing at the foot of the stairs.

"This isn't the Battle of Hastings," said Elizabeth
Siddall, "it isn't all that important. But why tell the town
about it, Gabriel? Come back in the bed-room. Mary -"
she heard herself speaking; even William Rossetti had admitted

61.

(Mary told her), "I never heard her speak other than correctly." There was patronage about it. She knew when she was speaking like Dad, almost out of a book, old-fashioned. Mr. William Rossetti was hardly one to comment on her way of speaking. As to Mum's friendly way of talking, that was equal and more than equal to Miss Maria's and Miss Christina's English - "governessy", Barbara called them. Mum got a sing-song in her voice too, sometimes, that was pretty. Mum was Welsh really, a Miss Evans.

But she must not think how her voice sounded, as she did when she pretended she was acting. "It's about Scalands, Mary," she said, "and my going out there." That would please Mrs. Elphick if she were listening.

When she closed the door, Gabriel said, "I want this gossip cleared up, Mary. I went out to see your mother. Can't they leave a fellow alone?"

Mary was looking out of the window.

"I want to show you a new cove, I found," she said, "Lizzie. It was the turn of the tide when I went out there, and I couldn't get those brittle-star and feather-star, I told you about. Properly, you can only see them under water and my colour-box holds no vermilion or dye-purple that contents me. You can help me decide what blue edges the ordinary

62.

star-fish. You wouldn't think they could ever be blue, when
you see them dried out. I can sketch in the background of
sea-weeds with my pencil, and colour afterwards. You can
paint the flat shells or a dog-whelk at home - "

Gabriel interrupted, "let there be no more gossip. I
am not engaged to marry Lizzie."

Mary turned from the window. Elizabeth Siddall re-
membered - so long ago - when she had said to Mrs. Deverell,
"Viola is the sea." Perhaps it was Mary speaking of dye-purple.

Mary said, "I forgot to tell you, Lizzie. I heard from
my mother yesterday. She especially sends her love."

"Did you hear what I said, Mary?"

"She remarked about other things that have nothing to
do with you, Lizzie, saying letters other than business or
editorial, shouldn't be shown. People showing strictly pri-
vate letters to other people, is a breach of confidence or
worse. It isn't honourable. I couldn't tell you what was
in the letter that she spoke of, nor did she tell me. In
fact, she would not read the letter that was handed to her.
She handed it back to Mr. Gabriel Rossetti. It was his letter
and it was written to him by me. Besides that, taking a
daughter's letter back to show her mother - I don't know.
Perhaps it's because mama gets so many private letters,

63.

considering them as sacred, that we feel as we do. A letter
is more sacred even than the word spoken."

One or the other of them must go. Elizabeth Siddall
laughed. "I am the *Bridge* between them," she thought.

Or the circle in the middle, at this moment of their
three-ringed circus.

Yes, Mary belonged with gallant Barbara, though she had
an added grace and dignity-- and there was Mrs. Howitt.

There was Mrs. Deverell in that circle and of course,
Walter, and Mrs. Howitt herself. She had forgotten Mrs. Howitt's
book on the new faith, when she had connected her with editors
and journals. She was thinking only of *Sister Helen* and people
calling Gabriel a genius.

There was Mr. Allingham in their circle, and separate
yet in no way inferior and never condescended to, by those in
Mary Howitt's circle, there was her own circle, Mum and Dad,
Lyddy, Aunt Day and other people; if it came to a row, there
was, she had just realized, Mrs. Elphick and most of High Street,
Hastings.

"Why are you laughing, Lizzie?"

"Won't you sit down, Gabriel?"

"Not while Mary's standing."

64.

He had, people remarked, easy, charming manners. He had always been exceptionally gentle with Mrs. Howitt and with Mary.

"I am sorry that I showed your letter, Mary."

But there was something else that had offended Mary.

She did not look at Gabriel.

"It is odd sometimes, Lizzy, about honourable people - I mean, spiritually honourable, you know, something that shows or glows in the way they ask a question; it may be just 'Miss Mary, how are you this evening?' And something shines out like the colour of the brittle-star or the feather-star. They look like other people, though perhaps there is something special in the way their Inverness cape seems different, ordinary but princely, at the same time. They look like other people, all dried star-fish above the tide-line, and then something's somehow different - quite, quite different. Perhaps it is as mama says, the Spirit is like water, the sea - and suddenly, such a one, in the way he sweeps up his gloves from the console table in the hall, seems to reveal himself, or in any other gesture, like flinging his cape with his right hand, over his left shoulder. I mean, you see him with blue, edged round him, like the under-water living star-fish. Then

65.

he is alive and he makes you alive with wonder. I am speaking
without reserve, for so mama taught me as a child, as her mother
taught her. That is, to speak or write without fear and with
no embarrassment, when the Spirit moves you."

Gabriel said, "Mary, almost thou persuadest me - "

"That Gabriel Rossetti should have taken a letter,
wrung from me by my love of you, Lizzie, when you were so ill,
out to the Hermitage to show my mother, is no matter. We
sometimes think the same thoughts at the same time, mama might
even have written the letter for me. It is that the discre-
tion and courtesy of Mr. Allingham should have been challenged
and by Gabriel Rossetti."

"You look so pretty when you hold forth, Mary," said
Gabriel.

---

It was in no way her fault, she told Mary afterwards.
Lyddy naturally was curious and they were all uneasy when she
gave up Mrs.Tozer altogether, and sat for Mr.Hunt for Silvia.
That was the first outside person - she did not count
Gabriel. But she gave up Mrs.Tozer because Gabriel wanted
to rush through a picture for the Academy, though he said he

66.

would put the matter into the hands of his solicitor, if anyone suggested hanging it. The Academicians that Stevens brought in (no doubt prompted by Gabriel) didn't like it. Gabriel pretended he had never contemplated the Academy. "That sneak, Freddy Stevens got Redgrave or Hornsley into the studio, to give an opinion." There were other pictures; if she gave up Mrs. Tozer, she must make up, and Mr. Millais and Mr. Hunt both wanted her. She had to explain to Gabriel that she could not sit to him for ever. And Walter Devereill was not working so regularly. He was not well.

She had taken Gabriel's extravagant statements, at their face value, from the beginning; he had given her the clue the first time she saw him, with "Come away, come away, death - that is one of the best things I've ever written."

It was as if she were painting the pictures herself, burning with his fire.

She could be quieter within, with Mr. Hunt and Mr. Millais. That was just a job that she was being paid for.

But Mum and Dad had to be told something, when she first had her own room across the river.

"It's confidential, Lyddy," she told Mary she had told her sister, "I'm working at design too, to put in time before -"

67.

"Liz," Lyddy hugged her, "then you're going to be married?"

A little later she told Lyd that the design now was taking up more time, and she was working in Mr. Rossetti's studio as his pupil. It meant being odd hours in the studio, as she was sitting as well, for Mr. Millais, and Gabriel had work out and commissions. Would Lyd tell no-one?

Elizabeth Siddall knew that Lydia would tell her mother.

By this time, Deverell had moved out altogether and Gabriel had found another place to work in.

They were not insistent, but she went out of her way to show Lyddy the house she lived in.

It was a nice room and the people at Weymouth Street were very pleasant, and as Gabriel was out of town that Sunday, she suggested to Lyddy that she might just like to stroll across and see the studio.

She explained to Lyddy that the bridge was Blackfriars, Whitefriars was across the river. This was Bridewell.

The street seemed empty, she told Lyddy, because it was all offices. Mrs. Birrell who was housekeeper in number/14, where the studio was, said it had at one time been residential.

Lyddy thought it all great fun, climbing the stairs past

68.

the polished name-plates of Mr. Keates, Consulting Chemist and
that of Mr. Benthall. Lyddy looked out on the river and said
the ships reminded her of Wapping.

The things, Elizabeth explained to Lydia, were some of
them borrowed. His aunt lent him brocades and satins for
his pictures, and sometimes, furniture. She had tidied up
the place in Gabriel's absence, but she was seeing it through
the eyes of Lydia and her mother. "It looks like a curiosity-
shop, I do admit it. I confess, I don't like that chiffonier
there, but I clear a space on the table; it's difficult working
in the Weymouth Street bed-room."

"Does he sleep here?" said Lyddy.

"There's a little bed-room; if he's late working, he
stays sometimes. He has his home to go to."

Elizabeth was glad that Lydia (prompted perhaps by
delicacy) did not ask to see the bed-room.

Her mother seemed happier when Mr. Wheeler discovered
Lydia. "Liz and Lyd - I always said you had an influence
on Lyddy, didn't I, Liz?"

"What's Lyddy done now?"

"The same as you and in somewhat the same manner. Your
Aunt Day told me sometime back, she was suspicious how often

69.

a certain gentleman stopped in for matches. You know your Aunt Day. Nothing too good for her girls, as she always calls you and Lyddy. Well, this Mr. Wheeler, she found out, was working on a paper in the City, working steady, a journalist with what Aunt Day called a column. I haven't yet met Mr. Joseph Wheeler - but it's funny how things happen, like Mrs. Deverell chancing by to look at bonnets, and having her son with her.

Elizabeth had told them she had first seen Mr. Rossetti when Mr. Deverell was working on the picture, at Kew.

But Dad wouldn't be talking about honour, when he was telling her, this afternoon, about Lyddy. It was Lizzie, he was talking about. She would have asked him, if there had been time, why Mr. Wheeler didn't see Lyddy home, if Lyddy had to be seen home. She had noticed no more crowds than usual, rather less if anything, but this was another part of London. And Mr. Wheeler might have work too, on that column, as Aunt Day called it, keeping him overtime or taking him out of London, now that Dad brought it to her notice about war.

She had intended to settle in and maybe stay to supper, not frightened about what they might find out about Gabriel, any longer, for she was formally engaged now, though Dad had not given his consent.

70.

Gabriel had taken her to see his mother. Elizabeth Siddall was well aware that Mrs. Rossetti didn't want her in the family, any more than Dad wanted him, but Gabriel was her idol; it was idolatry and Mrs. Rossetti didn't want to lose Gabriel. You could see her hope was that Gabriel would change his mind.

She didn't like the way Mrs. Rossetti tried to find out things from Madox Brown. "But she didn't get anything from your old watch-dog," said Emma. Emma told her that Madox said, "I agree, they shouldn't marry. The lady should be better cared for. Gabriel hasn't enough to keep a wife on." Elizabeth didn't want Emma to go on. She did not want to know what Mrs. Rossetti thought about Gabriel's "model", as she called her or "that girl from the bonnet-shop." Mrs. Rossetti could hardly say with her second son, "I never heard her speak other than correctly," for as far as she could recollect, she had said nothing.

Gabriel did all the talking.

He was good on these occasions and he was shrewd and business-like when his mind was on it, when he was getting the better of someone, like luring Annie Miller from Mr. Hunt, because he was annoyed that Hunt stole, as he said, his picture.

71.

Gabriel could be patient and his easy negligence could hide a predatory something - what she meant was a cat stalk-ing a bird. Harry had called her gin-gin-ginger and now there was that Fanny, the wife of Hughes who used to be the porter at Somerset House, calling her a cat too, a civet-cat, whatever kind of a cat that was. Fanny came to sit here sometimes, in the studio, but now she was engaged to Gabriel, she could stop that, simply by setting up her easel. Fanny didn't like sitting while she was around; Elizabeth knew that. It was Fanny, he had found at last suitable, for the girl in the *Bridge* picture.

"There is money in the *Bridge*," Gabriel told her, "that's why I want to finish it, so as to cut that door through, and make some alterations and improvements in the place here."

He had already sold *Found*, but he was selling it again. "I have only to dash off another copy, but I must finish this first; I've sold *Found*. I've as good as sold *Lost*. This is the *Bridge*." It was the same picture.

She did not want to have another scene, not just now. It was all so confusing. How could he sell a picture that wasn't finished, and then sell it again? He had only changed the title. She did ask him, "What became of *The Drover*?" But

72.

that time, perhaps it was just as well, he didn't sense the
taste and sting in the words and the strength she got from
saying them. Fortunately, he didn't realize that she was
being funny.

She was the Dove now.

What had she not been?

She was Ruskin's Princess Ida.

They had called her the Sid; they got that from Mr.
Allingham still calling her "Miss Sid".

Who was Gabriel walking? She was not taken in, by his
new attitude, always seeing her home and leaving the door open,
so that people passing on the landing outside her room at
Weymouth Street, could see her, could see him, whatever they
were doing.

He was engaged to be married, in other words, to all
intents and purposes, he was married, and he was free now, as
the way was on the Continent, to have a mistress.

But it wasn't as simple as all that - and what did
she know of the Continent and mistresses? It was things
that concerned them in the plays, Gabriel took her to, in
which Miss Herbert acted. Elizabeth would like to have been
an actress. And it was not likely that Miss Louise Herbert,

73.

Mrs. Crabbe as she was, would look at Gabriel.

It was something else, and Dove though she might be,
in the grey shot-silk she had made up in her own fashion,
without hoops, to please him, she could sense things no Dove
could be aware of.

It took her back to this afternoon again and <u>Three Birds</u>
<u>and the word Honour</u>. She was, she had remembered, one of
the <u>Three Birds</u>, at home. But she remembered also, that she
was the Eagle, and the way she came to find herself the Eagle,
was Harry spitting and making cat-calls at her.

This wasn't like home, but Gabriel was making outwardly,
the same distinctions. It was Fanny calling her the civet-cat
that made her wonder. She was not afraid of Fanny.

She remembered how she was not afraid of Harry.

She was not afraid of Gabriel.

She was afraid of something that was stalking her.

And she recalled the ease and assurance of Gabriel's
manner, she remembered how he had flung his challenge even to
Christina, that day he took her formally to see his mother.

"No," he said, "Ruskin - I'll arrange, Christina, for Lizzie
to take you out there." It was his knowing how Christina,
for all his admiration of her poetry, must wilt and wither

74.

inside, at the suggestion that she Lizzie, "Gabriel's model"
was socially (as far at least as Denmark Hill was concerned)
her superior. For all of _Goblin Market_, Christina had not
yet managed to meet Mr. Ruskin.

It was the way, smiling, you felt him feel Christina
wither.

And then, that sudden turn-about at Scalands, last summer.
"Of course, I won't marry you, Gabriel."

There was Mum, there was Lyddy. She was one of the
<u>Three Birds</u>.

There was Aunt Julia and Barbara and Bessie Parkes and
Mary.

There was Barbara, "you're too good for Gabriel."

There was Bessie, "Gabriel says you've consented, at last."

There was Mary.

Elizabeth did not want to remember what Mary had said.

She thought of the letter that Mary wrote to Gabriel
when she was so ill there at Hastings, and that other letter:

"Yes," she said, "Mary, I am going to marry Gabriel."

75.

She stepped into the magic-circle of Gabriel's fame
and influence.

There were three circles, she had clearly reasoned, that
day at Hastings when Gabriel, enraged at Mary writing to him
about Annie Miller, had pronounced sentence on her, "Let there
be no more gossip, I am not engaged to Lizzie."

It was a life-sentence, she then thought, but oddly,
she was not broken by it.

She could trump up an excuse about her illness, a "secret
engagement", now cancelled and Dad would be pleased.

There were things she could do, even if she left off sitting for the painters.

Suddenly, she was almost happy that he had behaved so
badly.

There would be two circles, even as she had visualised
them, Mum and Dad, Lyddy and Lyddy's children, and people who
loved her. She could help Mrs. Howitt in the new centre, she
hoped to model for girls, after The Working Men's College
pattern. Barbara and Bessie Parkes helped in the old Rescue
Home, but Mrs. Howitt wanted something "happier" she said,
bright rooms and talks. "This is not the Battle of Hastings,"

76.

Elizabeth had said to Gabriel, but it was a battle. And
she had laughed - he had said, "why are you laughing,
Lizzie?" - at the way (better than anything she had ever
seen with Miss Herbert) Mary had refused to speak to Gabriel.
They would refuse to speak to Gabriel. There was something
stronger, even than that charm, that was, someone said, like
a spell that Gabriel cast on people.

But the very thing that was standing, as you might say,
at her elbow, waiting to rescue her, had betrayed her.

It was like a conspiracy.

It was *Three Birds* and the word Honour.

It was three circles certainly, out of Mr. Rossetti's
book on Dante.

And maybe it was *Three Birds*, but one of them was
an Eagle displayed.

It was a hawk really, like they carried on their wrists,
like the picture in *The Triumph of Death*, an old book that
John Millais's father had given Gabriel. It was, Gabriel
had explained, a collection of engravings from old frescoes
from the *campo santo* at Pisa. It was this very book, he had
explained, that had started them in their ideas; these painters
looked at things differently, they were pre-Raphael, that is
before the Renaissance in Italy. The little flowers in the

77.

grass were all painted separately, like Madox Brown did Emma's
whawl in The Last of England. And she, he said, who Bessie
Parkes said Mr. Allingham had remarked on as "strange and af-
fecting but never beautiful", was like those people on the
campo santo walls that had peeled off. Mr. Ruskin said the
same, she was like the pictures in the Missals that he showed
them.

That special picture, _The Triumph of Death_, was what had
most impressed them in the Lasinio book, as Gabriel called it.
The book was in the hall, with loose papers and prints in
folders, all untidy, on the shelves, that joined the bed-room
to this room. If she touched the prints with their curled-up
edges or the dusty folders, Gabriel would be sure to say that
she had displaced the very thing he was looking for, to copy
a door-way or a flight of steps, for the background of a Dante
picture. The Lasinio pictures were about the same time as
Dante. She had found some sort of comfort in the book, she
did not know why; it was all so horrible. There were ladies
and gentlemen in costume of the period, all riding across that
sort of flower-meadow with every daisy showing separate in the
grass. They seemed to be laughing and joking, all except
the first pair, who already see what the others will soon see.

78.

The lady has a hood with veils. Her sleeves are wide, the
embroidery is indicated carefully; though this was only a
print, you could imagine what the original was like. The
first lady carried a hawk or falcon on her wrist. There is a
chord fastened on the bird's leg. To her, that chord was the
most important detail of the picture; she called it
*The Golden Chord*. The dress swept almost to the ground;
Elizabeth imagined the embroidered hem; there might be strawberry-leaves right round it, and little strawberry-flowers
and now and again, an embossed, thicker knot of embroidered
berries.

He, out of the same picture, wears an ordinary feather-
cap, like a scene from Shakespeare. His sleeves are caught
in at the wrists, as if for better drawing his bow.

These two see what the others, who are still laughing,
will soon see. There is a ditch or fosse; three kings in
open coffins lie there. It isn't just that they are dead;
there was careful drawing, but this part was not impressive.
The eaten-away faces and hands were only grotesque.

The look of sudden horror on the faces of the first
two, is intended to make you feel some kind of like horror,
seeing a decomposing body.

79.

Perhaps on the walls of the arcaded chapel of the
campo santo at Pisa, the picture, before it began to peel
away, might make you feel things.

Elizabeth Siddall had never been on a horse, and she
did not accept Barbara's offer to take her riding, when she
was at Scalands. Barbara rode astride. "Why won't you
come?" asked Barbara. "I haven't the clothes," Elizabeth
answered, but Barbara said her Aunt Julia's old habit would do
nicely, and Aunt Julia didn't hunt now. But that wasn't
quite what Elizabeth meant. Perhaps it was the saddle-bow
that worried her. She felt it now, the cramp in her right
leg and she twisted her left foot round it, leaning sideways
and loosening her right knee where it clamped in, under the
saddle-hold. She was annoyed and breathless. It was her
bird, but the others had gone on, her own party, ladies for
the most part. Her outrider with the feather-cap out of a
scene from Shakespeare, had left her where the road forked.
Most of the gentlemen followed him into the forest for venison.

She shifted the bird from her right wrist, and drew
her left hand, still holding the reins, forward to receive it.
She had forgotten the chord. It was looped about and wound
in a ball, which carelessly, she had left on her lap, instead

80.

of tucking into the saddle-pocket. The ball rolled to the
ground and she jerked at the reins.

There was sand mixed with the moss and dried leaves
of the clearing. They were not far from the sea.

The others had taken the sea-road.

They would be pounding ahead now, while she with her
clumsy gauntlet, was trying to disentangle the chord from the
reins, and all the time, she had to hold her left arm, fairly
steady, for the bird perched there.

If she dropped the reins altogether, her palfrey would
consider it a signal to race on.

He was curveting in a circle, not knowing what she wanted.

Unless she balanced properly, the saddle would slip.

Elizabeth Siddall straightened and tightened her hold -
but it was the arm of the basket-chair she was clinging to;
Sometimes it was like that, she had been dreaming, but
awake. She couldn't have been sleeping. There were no
kings in coffins. That was out of the engravings from the
Lasinio book, as Gabriel called it because it was edited by an
Italian called Lasinio. The prints were copied from frescoes,
many of which had now crumbled away. The book was from
Florence, (Firenze, it was written); she had worked out the

81.

date, MDCCCXXXII. She remembered the Roman numerals
because that was the year she was born.

She was thinking of another book, when her right foot
slipped from the stirrup.

It was a book they were reading. Was it something
Gabriel told her? But he swept her hand from the page;
It was illuminated writing.

If her palfrey turned too quickly, he would tread on
her, break an arm or ... there were drawings in the Lasinio
book of devil tortures, entrails pulled out, ...

Where was she?

By some miracle of wit, she had righted herself. She
was standing in the moss and siftings of sea-sand. The bird,
her familiar, had fluttered to her shoulder.

It was cutting out the costume for Francesca, that made
her think in costume, as if she were one of the ladies in the
picture. Gabriel had done a number of sketches for Paolo and
Francesca.

And the new dress of hers that made him call her the
Dove and her objecting in herself, to being called the Dove.

There was the same bird that she carried on her wrist, stitched
on the saddle-cloth;

She could imagine it all so clearly, it was their coat,

82.

Per Bend Verd and Gules: an Eagle displayed.

The palfrey was nosing for grass round the edges of the clearing. He dragged the gold skein, it was still tangled in his bridle. It lay in loops and tangles on the sand and moss.

She started winding the skein, she pulled off her left gauntlet, then the other.

She did not care to catch up with them now.

Perhaps he would come round through the forest, knowing some way, where she was, and meet her in the clearing.

She could not remember what Gabriel had told her and what she made up, sitting there in the midsummer darkness in the basket-chair, with the tide-water lapping round the house-foundation. ⚙️ Paolo and Francesca were in hell, in the Inferno in one of Dante's circles; but she could not follow it and Gabriel made it no easier by saying that his father had the theory that some of it was irony, that Dante put in, for political reasons, some whom he most hated in the heaven-circle and others, in Inferno whom he loved. ⚙️ Beatrice was or was not his own soul, or the soul of a suppressed Church, the Church of Love - but wasn't it all like that? Here, she should be in heaven, engaged to Gabriel and already she was finding a way

84.

at Kent Place,

She remembered how she was stiff then, as she was now,
scarcely breathing and in the dark, like she was now, not
wanting to light the candle because of Lyddy. Once Lyddy
got to sleep, propped, almost sitting upright, she must leave
her sleeping. Lyddy did not have dreams but she had the
same terror and the memory of Mr. Greenacre, a large man in
a farmer's smock, living almost next door with another woman
to keep house for him; but it was Hannah Brown that he was
going to marry. He was reputed well off, landlord of the
row of cottages in Jane Place, but Hannah Brown had put aside
her earnings and was said to have jewels, perhaps stolen
from the lady she had worked for. It was his cutting her
up ... trying to recall the pieces, made her suddenly feel
nothing.

There were gnawed bones and human remnants in some of
the devil pictures in the Lascinie drawings.

85.

III

But her midsummer madness was interrupted or inter-
cepted by Mr. Ruskin.

Ida must get out of England.

His choice for her was Switzerland, but she must stop
off in Paris and see the Brownings.

No, he did not care to discuss alternative suggestions.
Gabriel however, found a travelling companion for Lizzie, one
of the Pierce connection. Well, Ida might go to Nice, Ruskin
finally consented, if she refused his gentians.

But "Ida must go South immediately ... Paris will
kill her," he was soon writing Gabriel.

Elizabeth Siddall stayed six weeks in Paris; she had
crossed early in September.

Gabriel was trying to get Ruskin to "advance" more money
on pictures already sold, so that he could join Lizzie.

For the first time since their meeting six months ago,
John Ruskin was in no way, amenable to Gabriel Rossetti's
suggestions. The crystal did not even reflect the molten
rose of Gabriel's fanned-up embers. The famous, negligent
manner and flattering insinuation caught no prismatic flash
from the impenetrable Scot.

What had happened?

86.

It was only the fare over, that Gabriel wanted. Ruskin himself had said that Lizzy should leave Paris. He was simply going over to see her off to the South. But since the suggestion about the fare had been snubbed, Gabriel nonchalantly redeemed his call, with "I only looked in to get a letter from you, to the Brownings."

John Ruskin reminded Gabriel that he had already met the Brownings, "write them yourself."

As to the fare to Paris, Ruskin said, "it is impossible, I am hard up."

Lizzy in the meantime, had taken it into her head to write Ruskin that she could no longer conscientiously accept his offer for paintings which she had not even begun and was sure she would never finish.

Gabriel had heard of Ruskin writing to someone last summer, from the Vaudois, of an experience he had had, lying in the grass and hearing dead soldiers talking. The letter couldn't have been entirely confidential, in any case, Freddy Stevens had got hold of the story. Gabriel thought that he might safely broach the subject. He suggested Ruskin joining him that evening, with another fellow, at the Academy in Sloane Street. Ruskin said, "on no account, Rossetti," Gabriel

87.

noted the deliberate mispronunciation of his surname, "I
have heard of their so-called psychic investigation. On no
account and at no time, will I go there to a séance."

The other fellow was waiting as pre-arranged, in what
Gabriel called the foyer of the Academy. Gabriel had dined
after a fashion and wined out of proportion. "Ressetti,"
he said, "a fellow called me Ressetti, before dinner. It's
true, the guv'nor's father was a blacksmith - my guv'nor's,
that is. His deals in wines, a better business altogether.
Ruskin something-or-other and Domecq. Adele Domecq broke
his heart the first time; he kept a glove of hers eighteen
years, even after the fatal Euphemia (Mrs.Millais as is) came
trailing clouds of glory. Ever heard of Domecq?"

His friend said he had.

"Ever heard of Effie?"

"Who hasn't?"

"The sneak called me Ressetti - deliberate. Now why?
It's true my grandfather was a blacksmith - what was his?
Euphemia - I mean euphuism - rosso, a horse? His name
was della Guardia really, the blacksmith's. Who was Ruskin
but a red-skin? My brother in Carmel - carnal - Carmelite -
confession - confusion. What about the séance?"

88.

"Let's have a smoke first," his friend said.

"What I say is, no harm waiting in the foyer. We can go in later. What I say is, do you think Rossetti is horse or rosette? My kingdom for - I mean blacksmith. What was his red-skin?"

His friend laughed.

"Everyone knows the story but Sco-Scotus gave fresh details the other evening, at a party. No, it was - "

His friend stopped him, "Ely," he said.

Gabriel staggered to his feet as Dr. Ely brushed past them on his way to the séance.

"Funny, his fish-eyes," said Gabriel, "do you notice? Even in this half-light, they go phosphorescent."

Gabriel staggered forward like a moth to the flame.

His friend dragged him back. "We can wait here. We'll go in at the break. The second part is always more amusing."

"Of Vasto, the Abruzzi, the counts of Della Guardia - why Rossetti?"

"It's something on your 'scutcheon, I'll wager, a rose or rosette," his friend said.

A late arrival left the street door open. The night air seemed a palpable presence in the dim hall. "Br-rr," said Gabriel, "I never did like fresh air. Let's find a warm pub."

89.

But his friend said, "I've got to wait here."

"For why, Gus?" said Gabriel.

"Well - er - he isn't certain how he'll feel, after
his talk. I sometimes help him."

Gabriel Rossetti seemed suddenly sobered. "You mean
it's all fake - or do you actually - see things yourself?"

"No," said Gus, "I'm a sort of secretary, and it's by no
means all fake. He keeps the afternoons for maiden-ladies,
for simple-Simon faith-healing and the mediums from Bayswater.
He can't do everything and he can't waste his - his power.
Depending who turns up - no, Norton Ely is no fake."

"I didn't know that you were in the business, Gus. You
just say that."

"By no means, Gabriel."

Gabriel straightened in his chair. He reached for a
cigar, but his hand rested on his breast-pocket and Gabriel
Rossetti forgot the cigar. Those voices - those voices
from the Abruzzi - the governor's older brother who started
him on Dante - a priest. "You know Italian?"

"No," said Gus.

"Ely know Italian?"

"No," said Gus.

"You say you're not in the business, you're lying to me."

92.

Napoleon.

He remembered Paganini, Michael Costa and again Mazzini.

"But the rest were dancing-teachers and piano-tuners."

"Piano-tuners can be useful."

The cards were on the table - or was this just a joke?
In any case, Gabriel was an old hand at this game. He had
been familiar with codes, secret-signs, pass-words, revolution,
conspiracy ever since he could remember. A fellow like Gus
was sure to be in, on something.

"Better begin at the top," said Gabriel, "if you're
dealing with old masters. I'll take you to see Ruskin."

If there were anything in this, Bill with his Board of
Trade connection, could be trusted to follow a clue.

Gabriel let his chin sink forward. Then he started,
as if suddenly aware of his surroundings. "Can't sleep here -
or can I? Had I better go home and come back later? But
he'll be worn out to-night, after his lecture. Hardly worth
sitting an hour with twenty people and the Bayswater medium,
for a message from great-grand-mamma's pet tabby - or is it?
Better than nothing, you'll say and it's fun watching the
others. But," Gabriel pulled himself, as with difficulty to
his feet, "you said Ely wouldn't see me again, for a private
sitting. Who are you, anyway, Gus?"

93.

"I've just told you. I'm Dr. Ely's secretary. I
make arrangements."

"Oh, I thought you were the tambourines or Rain-in-the-face
or whatever he calls himself in Bayswater."

"We don't have tambourines here - "

"Come, came Gus, don't put on airs. It's your job, you
just said so - but about those other irons in the fire.
Browning's in Paris - or was - on the way to Florence."
Gabriel pulled his cape about him. "Faut de Browning, will
Ruskin do as understudy? He's a cad and a sneak but he knows
everybody. Called me Ressetti this evening, before dinner.
How about coming out for a sandwich and a drink?"

"I told you I had to wait and see that they don't stay
too long, after the group's over."

"Good-night, till soon -" said Gabriel. He walked
half-way to the door before he turned round. "Oh, by the way,
arrange a sitting for me - when old Ely is not too tired."

---

Norton Ely did not look up from his table. He was
apparently writing letters. He looked more like a clerk in
a counting-house, now that Gabriel saw him seated in his own

94.

room. The shaded lamp cast a half-circle of light on the thin hand that held the pen. Dr.Ely held the pen like a schoolmaster, not like a creative writer. Gabriel noticed these things. He noticed everything. You could see from the way Dr.Ely sat at his desk, that he was a man with a conscience. He would sit up half the night, correcting sums of exercise books, French or Latin. That reminded Gabriel, he must not forget to bait Ely about languages. He would forget, once Ely turned round.

You can't judge a man only, by his eyes. The man was sitting at a desk, after school-hours, correcting papers, or he was going over the books after office-hours, because someone had been ill in the estimable but second-rate firm he worked for - or there was two farthings missing. He was not forging a cheque.

He might be forty-ish from the back of his head.

The cloth was good, he wasn't a parson, new cloth, cut, old-fashioned. Gabriel forgot, for a moment, that Norton Ely was from America. Must remember to mention his great country. Gabriel had been directed to Dr. Ely's private office. Maybe, this wasn't actually for a sitting.

Scratch - scratch - "his is not the pen of a ready writer," thought Gabriel.

95.

Norton Ely turned round. "Don't look at his eyes," said Gabriel to himself. Gabriel bowed, "do not let me disturb you." Dr. Ely passed his hand over his forehead. He laid down his pen. He said, "pray, be seated." I leave the arrangement of the groups to the desk. But I require a personal interview before I engage a new medium. My secretary sent you?"

Gabriel said, "yes."

"Ours is, you understand, a personal dedication." But already, the movement is growing, perhaps growing too fast. There are new, unforeseen developments. Now, as to that congress in Cleveland; they are already arranging for branch societies and supervision of group-centres. It appears, all this is necessary but it is really beyond my power to control the more popular and sensational aspects of our work. I don't know. They say we must have some sort of hold over meetings and demonstrations. They say, how else control but by committees and supervision? I don't know. I say, let control come from within - guidance will best serve and personal devotion. It was at the suggestion of Miss Fox, the elder of the sisters, that I came here to help establish this London centre."

Gabriel saw from the shadow, that Norton Ely now had his back to the light. He looked up.

96.

Norton Ely's eyes were half-closed; "dead tired," thought Gabriel.

"But I need not interview you," said Dr. Ely, "you are a seeker. They will tell you, at the desk downstairs, your duties if you wish to work here."

Dr. Ely coughed. He turned back to his table, a polite intimation that the interview was over. "Good-night, sir."

"I'm sorry," said Gabriel, "I am not a medium."

"It's Miss Mary," said Dr. Ely, "I do not frankly, approve of Miss Mary, a sensitive, delicate lady, appearing at public meetings."

"(Those Fox sisters," thought Gabriel. He had heard Mrs. Howitt speak of them.)

"But I see you are too tired to-night," said Gabriel, "for a sitting."

"Mr. Manuel does not send clients to my private office."

"It was a special arrangement."

"You are a friend of Manuel?"

"You do not remember me?" said Gabriel.

Norton Ely turned. The phosphorescence was burnt out. He had probably been working, earlier in the evening. Gabriel had especially wanted to see Dr. Ely when he was not tired.

97.

"Manuel, like myself, is not wholly English. My name is
Rossetti."

"I think I remember seeing you. I think I remember
your face."

"I have attended your lectures and sat with your mediums at the séances. But I am grateful to say, you gave me two private sittings."

"I am all gone this evening," said Dr. Ely. "It's
thinking of Miss Mary. Pray - did you receive guidance
from my Guardian?"

"Guidance and consolation," said Rossetti.

"Then I will ask your guidance now," said Dr. Ely. "I
am not in two minds about it. But they argue round me." He
lowered the lamp. "They say if you have a message, you must
give it. We in America, are a divided people. We do not
pretend to see the future, but war is coming. What can we do
to stop war? Nothing. But we can do this. We can leave
the door open."

"Je dis que le tombeau ... Ouvre le firmament,"
said Gabriel.

"I do not understand," said Ely.

"You do not speak French?"

98.

"I know no foreign language."

"It is a line of Hugo."

"Hugo?"

"Victor Hugo, a French poet. I learn he is in Jersey."

"Jersey?"

"One of the Channel islands. I am told that he, too, communicates with the Spirits."

"This is a message from the Spirits?"

"You asked me for my guidance and I thought of this poem." Gabriel remembered how Mary Howitt had brought the poem to him and asked him to translate it for _The People's Journal_. He was back in their good graces at the Hermitage.

"The translation is,

_The tomb, I declare it ..._  
Opens the star-gate,

but star-gate is not literal, _firmament_ he says, firmament or heaven."

"I take it for an answer. We must go on. My personal predeliction is for - secrecy. But secrecy is not quite what I mean. I would have more selection and smaller gatherings. It is not so much persecution from outside that I dread, but actual submergence. I can not interview everyone who enters these doors. It is a tide-wave. I am

99.

told that Italy, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Spain - the whole
world has been swept into this current. There are undesirable
write-ups and sensations, about the movement. Is it the Lord's
doing?

Gabriel was silent.

"In confidence, Mr. - "

"Rossetti."

"You know languages. You are French?"

"Italian," said Rossetti.

"Mr. Manuel is conversant with foreign languages. In
confidence, I have not yet signed this."

Dr. Ely turned to the table. He handed Gabriel a letter.

Gabriel leaned forward to the half-circle of the light.

It was unquestionably, Manuel's writing, dashing and ornate.

French

Ely said, "It is a foreign princess."

not

"Well - a Bourbon," said Rossetti.

"It is difficult for me to follow things in Europe -
the Continent, Manuel calls it."

Gabriel handed back the letter. "What did you tell
Manuel to say?"

"I asked him to explain in a few words, our predicament.
We have funds. Chiefly, how communicate?"

Fontanelle

100.

"I see. This Madame de Villiers does not, I gather, expect you to lecture to her group or circle?"

"No, she specified a favour - one or more private sessions. It got about, I might take a trip to Europe. The International Society, as it now calls itself, sends out a monthly bulletin. I guess this Lady de Villiers talks English."

"It is possible," said Gabriel.

"It is different with lectures and discussions. That is, someone at hand to prompt you or them, or to explain or interpret generally, doesn't put you out. Foreign people call here. Generally, they are diplomatic or connected with the Foreign Office and talk English, but there are times when they bring a distinguished visitor."

Gabriel with no visual effort, saw the visitor. He had seen so many in his time, that is while old Gabriele (as he called his father) was still living.

What was it Ely wanted to know? Didn't he trust Manuel? But Gus was, as Gabriel had already admitted, no fool.

"Manuel simply says what you say," repeated Gabriel, "that for a private sitting, you don't want interpreters. But Manuel says it, of course, as if dictated by you. Perhaps he is a little - well, gushing at the end, but felicitations and all that, is the French way of writing."

102.

Gabriel had read between the lines; Manuel knew what he knew - Norton Ely did not realize that his trance communications were sometimes delivered in foreign languages of which he himself, knew not one word.

And Gabriel wondered what ordering of fate had caused him casually to ask his neighbour, one evening at one of the lectures, to come out afterwards for a drink.

"Has Manuel always been your secretary?"

"I never had a private secretary till recently. I needed someone for these foreign letters."

There was honour among thieves, whichever way you look at it. Gabriel gathered that whatever else Gus was up to, there was some sort of tacit agreement, that to let Dr. Ely know what happened in his trance-state was to break the charm, or the power, as Ely would have called it.

There was honour among thieves.

"I assure you, Dr. Ely," said Gabriel, "that this is the sort of letter that passes merely for ordinary politeness in France. It is a difficult language, untranslatable.

Je dis que le tombeau ...

Ouvre le firmament;

when I gave you my English words for those lines, it was
stones for bread, or stones for star-dust."

103.

"It's what in a way, I have been saying to myself. But you couldn't call anybody swine, even in the Scriptural sense. It's those pearls."

Dr. Ely was tired certainly, but Gabriel believed there would be no difficulty now. Gabriel felt he could help Ely, without cutting across Manuel. He had only to find out what evening or evenings, Ely put aside for letters. He was a methodical man.

"Miss Mary is only a girl, but her devotion to her father compels her to vow not to marry, though Mr. Fox is dead now. Miss Cathy won't leave her sister. They are really up-state people, but Mr. Fox had, out of sentiment, kept on their Connecticut farm."

Now Gabriel was listening to a foreign language.

"Connecticut?"

"Pretty with golden-rod up to the door, and asters drifting to the stone-walls. They wouldn't let the hired man mow down the field, that September. It was the first year they were alone there, after Mr. Fox died. I didn't know what took it into Miss Mary's head to leave the golden-rod and asters, growing in their front-yard."

"They lived there?" Gabriel felt that Ely was retreating into his reverie. "But I must not keep you from your letters."

104.

"Pray, Mr. Rossetti, forgive my being absent. I was there in that farm. Not a large place, counting in acres, but containing an edge of wood-land. The spring rose beyond the wood, from a hollow-dip. There was fern there, may-flower and violets. Miss Cathy was child-like in her ways and would always set the violets in one of her grand-mother's old mugs. She had notions. The barns were empty though there had been cattle, in the old days. There were of course, blackberry tangles, the run of the stone walls. The sumac made red splashes there; Indian paint-brush, some call it."

"Paint-brush?"

"The Indians painted themselves."

"Were there many Indians?"

"Mr. Rossetti, you will forgive me, but here, you are singularly ignorant about our country. The Indians but for the Far West, have all gone."

"I am ignorant, I grant you - Con-neкт-ti-cut? Is it a town?"

"One of our New England states."

Ruskin was planning to send pictures to some exhibition in America. But America to Gabriel, was chiefly associated with talks at home in the old days, Ida de St.Elme and discussions of a certain Louisianna Purchase.

105.

"I confess to ignorance. There was talk at one time,
at my father's home, about Louisiana."

"French and Spanish," said Dr. Ely, "far away but near
at hand, too. It concerned Miss Cathy when Miss Mary said,
they would move out of New York state altogether and live
there, at the farm, all the year round, not only in the
summer. They were working for the run-aways."

"Run-aways?"

"The slaves, Mr. Rossetti. The Friends in Philadelphia
had the tunnels. The slaves got across from Maryland, even
from the deep-south, and worked their way up. The Abolition-
ists in Boston and the Friends in Philadelphia, it was being
reported being said from Virginia, would land the country in
war."

"War?"

"Secession, they call it - the right to what the
plantation-owners call their own property; some of the states
already plan breaking away. I told you our country was
divided. It is a grave problem, but it is no problem. It
was worry about the slaves got Miss Mary thinking of the
Indians. Hiram the man, was son of old Hiram who was head
of the farm in grand-father Fox's day. He was loyal. But
he stopped my buggy on the road. He stated there was talk

106.

from people driving down that way to the rocks, to watch the
sun-set, summer-evenings. But Thanksgiving Day was near, and
Miss Mary and Miss Cathy had just told Hiram they would stay
the winter. Hiram didn't want to be seen, coming to my office.
I had heard some rumour, a doctor must be pleasant, and you
can't always keep a patient quiet. Hiram suggested I look
in some day, just for an excuse in passing. I made the ex-
cuse that I heard they were staying for Thanksgiving, would
they spend it at our house. We always had what strangers
there were about, for Thanksgiving. Not that Miss Mary and
Miss Cathy were strangers. My wife is a good woman."

"Is Mrs. Ely with you here in London?"

"No. It is partly on her account, that I contemplate
the trip to Europe."

Norton Ely went on, "they wouldn't come for Thanksgiving.
Miss Mary said they were keeping it with the Indians.

"Miss Cathy took me to the door. 'Dr. Ely,' she said,
'it's getting about that Mary is touched. You know our father.
I would consider it charitable of you, if you would contradict
any rumours.' She supposed I had heard what people said
about them. She went with me to the fence. 'Mary keeps
the garden this way, for the Indians.' I confess I wondered
if Miss Cathy was touched, too.

107.

"They were not exclusive and they knew people. They had been to Philadelphia. They read what Mr. Hawthorne wrote on evil that had been done by early settlers. Indian villages were burnt out and Indian mothers and the children smoked out and destroyed, like you smoke out a hornet's nest and with no more feeling, for they were heathen. Miss Mary had been writing to Mr. Hawthorne in Liverpool; he was then on consul or diplomatic business. Perhaps it was Mr. Hawthorne being talking of coming to England that first put it into Miss Mary's head that I might come here. But she said it was the voices."

Dr. Ely placed his two hands flat on his knees. He sat upright.

There was a tension in the atmosphere. Gabriel recognised what he called the "symptoms". His own hackles, he felt, were rising. Or like a cat, watching a mouse-hole, his whiskers felt the stir beneath the boards, where there was no stir. Gabriel was reputed to be the most selfish man in London. He was the last to defend his reputation. But Gabriel Rossetti had his moments.

"Dr. Ely," he tried to be casual, "I've taken enough of your time. Some evening, when you are disengaged, perhaps you will let me come again to see you."

"You are yourself engaged this evening?"

108.

"If I were, I would gladly cancel any previous arrange-
ment, for the sake of talking with you."

"I will tell you then, what I have told no-one," said Norton Ely.

But still he sat there, erect, as he did when the
trance took him.

"I was kept for lying-in cases and the dying sometimes,
half the night, on my circuit. I could not confide in Mrs.
Ely. But I could make occasion to pass the Fox farm, hitch
up the buggy, sometimes even unharness, for Hiram helped me
and kept grain ready in the feed-box. In conscience, I could
say I was helping the Fox sisters, for who was there to help
them? It had begun in the old grand-mother's time and she
had talked about it, but grand-father Fox forbade mention of
irreligious subjects, as he called the tales of hauntings,
ghosts and rappings. It was wind in the pine-trees, the
wood was closer to the house then, even it might be, wind from
the sea, or old boards creaking. Grand-mother was what in the
old days, they called a wise-woman, what in the older days,
they burnt for witches.

"It never had taken Miss Mary until she went to Phila-
delphia. Some said, unmarried women and girls should not know
things, but Mary was with the plain Friends, working for the

109.

cause - the run-aways. Some had marks of chains and marks burnt on them of their masters. Miss Mary attended meeting and though not a Friend, the Spirit moved her to stand up and witness. She was afraid after that, Miss Cathy told me. Mary said she had lost conscience of her surroundings, when she spoke. What did she speak of? Cathy told her. But then their father was sick, they came back, he died. When they got here, it was as it had always been, with pansies by the door-stoop. 'We'll leave them this time,' said Mary, 'then, we'll get pansy-violets from behind the spring-house and put them in, and let what's wild stay.' Cathy said she liked the crow-foot and the pansy-violets, but gran always had the pansies. Mary said, 'gran tells me, let it run wild.'

"It was Cathy I got to be afraid for, Mary was away on her trances but Cathy was there all the time. It is a letter to Miss Catharine Fox there, lying at my elbow."

Gabriel could think of nothing to say. Dr. Ely was waiting for him to speak.

The Fox sisters - he had thought of a music-hall turn, the first time he heard of the Fox sisters.

Now there was Cathy with crow-foot ... "What is crow-foot, Dr. Ely?"

110.

"It's a violet, bigger than field-violets. It's because of the leaf, Cathy told me, that it's called crows-foot. I asked that very question."

"I see ... and a spring-house?"

"It's usually of stone, with slabs over the stream or spring; this was a stream flowing out of the spring in the hollow. The slabs or slates hold the cold, and butter is laid there and raspberries on plates or in leaves. My mother pulled grape-leaves."

"I should think raspberries would look very well on vine -- I mean, on grape-leaves," Gabriel spoke at random.

"Nothing tasted the same iced; they got to storing ice in ice-pits, to last all summer."

"The summers are hot there?"

"Very hot and the winters are very cold."

But Gabriel knew that they were marking time. He must ask a question or Norton Ely would not tell him what he had told no-one.

"And the voices?" said Gabriel Rossetti.

"It was Indians speaking. Gran, Cathy said, brought them. Gran at first, talked for them. Afterwards, they came by themselves. Mary talked with Indian voices."

111.

"And you understood her?"

"This is out of St. Paul. There are tongues and the interpretation of tongues. Cathy interpreted."

"She understood the language?"

"This is what we are trying to find out - there is a new word, telepathy. She understood the thought back of the language."

"But Miss Mary understood the language, I gather?"

"Miss Mary was in trance. She did not know she spoke with tongues. Cathy said, gran said that the Indians would not come, if Mary (or any but us) knew. It would go, the gift, if Mary knew about it."

"I see," said Gabriel Rossetti.

"What happened, we thought, was summer-people. Cathy said she felt Mary might break up. She would sing or intone, at times. That too, worried us - for I was, as it were, Mary's left hand now, Cathy being her right, like Paul again and the Body Spiritual. We were a whole Body, though only three. But there were moonlight picnics and summer-people loitering in their wood, that second summer, and down by the shore. Cathy remembered her gran's little table. It would be quieter and the three of us would take the power together."

112.

Their gran had made a secret of the three-legged table for them, when they were children. But there was always grand-father Fox who might break in on them, and their own father had been sympathetic but he was taken up with Swedenborg. Cathy got out the little table.

"It might have been Mary and Cathy sitting alone with the table, in the summer with the door open or (Hiram's wife was away with a sick mother) the new girl in, part time from the Bridgefield farm. She was only supposed to be there, mornings, but she would stop in evenings, with the breakfast eggs, or she got curious. Anyway, it was in his wife's absence, that Hiram thought it started. They had the same foreman's cottage beyond the barns, where Hiram had been born. There would be no way to convey how Hiram said, summer-people.

"It was the summer-people. Some out-of-town journalist got hold of the story, rappings and voices at Haunted Hollow.

"It came to be known in less time than you can think, that Miss Mary and Miss Cathy were in communication. They called them the Fox sisters, and try as I would to avoid them, anybody, at any time, in town or on my rounds, would hand me a newspaper. 'You will be interested, Dr. Ely, in happenings on your circuit.' And head-lines, local re-prints of articles

113.

from New York and Chicago and worst of all, the Hollow beseiged
by visitors, ladies from Albany or even from New York, 'we hear
you tell fortunes here, Miss Fox,' showing them, Mary and
Cathy, pieces from home newspapers, brought along in their
hand-bags.

"It was beyond all reason.

"Mrs. Ely is a loyal woman. She listened to no gossip.

"As a matter of fact, it didn't actually come out."

Gabriel thought it time to put in a word, "Your sitting
with them at the table?"

"Well that - that was a recreation, you might say,
a rest from the other."

"From Miss Mary's trances?"

"Yes - and from mine.

"Cathy was the go-between, between us.

"Of course, Cathy gave me to understand that my states
were on a different level, stronger maybe, but Mary was nearer
the Spirit. Mary said we were the same, but Mary didn't know
what Cathy and I knew, that she (Mary) spoke with tongues, in
trance state. It was somehow agreed between us, without too
much talk, that I was to leave town."

"It is fortunate for us, Dr. Ely," said Gabriel, "that
you came here."

217.

Faulkner had plenty of friends for his experiments and it had seemed wiser to avoid speaking of the table, after Ted and Dixon backed out. He himself and Lushington, he knew, had followed Faulkner and would have gone on with the work. But he rarely saw Faulkner alone and then talk was as a rule, along the usual philosophic, sociological, college gossip and literary lines.

"I like coming here," said William Morris. "It's all very well but Dixon with his church, warden's pipe, doesn't really understand my feeling about St. Albans."

Godfrey was a fellow who could go on and on about nothing, in an easy conversational manner. He could turn a slightly serious accent into pleasing laughter, the moment he saw the seriousness was not acceptable. He was witty in a subtle way, he lacked, Ted said, humanitarian virtues. He didn't seem to care what became of the Church and State, he had no sociological bee in his bonnet, he might never have heard of Keble or Newman, he listened politely when Harry Macdonald held forth on social reform. He occasionally proffered a noncommittal comment when the names of Kingsley, Carlyle or Ruskin came into the conversation. He liked _The Stones of Venice_. He liked Tennyson. He could not say that Browning was the greater poet. He liked Browning.

218.

He preferred however, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He preferred Shelley to Keats. He agreed that Pope's influence was regrettable, but that Pope and Dryden were the inevitable reaction, after the extravagances of the later Elizabethans. He liked sitting up till all hours talking. He liked being alone.

Godfrey didn't think that Ted and Dixon had really pushed the table, not seriously, a little ragging at the end, perhaps. They wanted to get out of it and that was the way of saying so. "Why couldn't they come out with it? We discuss everything," said Morris. "They might have thought it ungracious to old Faulkner." "Dixon can shout down anyone in an argument, he doesn't mind what he says." "Perhaps Dixon was afraid to shout about it and so retreated to the Englishman's final refuge, the practical joke." "Can't say it's funny, there's a sort of - sort of spiritual discourtesy about it." William Morris was speaking in what they called his husky whisper; his usual terse brusque utterances seemed to be shouted from a battlefield, but in moments of emotion, his husky whisper carried echoes through dim corridors.

Godfrey Lushington realized that Morris was disappointed in his friend Jones.

a

218.

"Jones is a sensitive chap," said Godfrey, "the tappings may have taken it out of him. He wouldn't like to say so."

"There were three of them at the table."

"Jones being more sensitive than the others, may have got more of his share of what I believe they call the power."

"Don't think so. I think he and Dix talked it over in the vestry."

"I thought Jones was getting out of the Church."

"Well, we wanted to get in to a Church, we vowed to be positive whatever happened. We couldn't go back to Rome, though we even talked of that too. We found the Anglo-Catholic ritual lacked the guts of Amiens and Beauvais. We wanted colour and direction, we didn't just want to mark time with Pater Nosters done in English. We wanted the rose of Rome, the rose of England, not a plaster rosette."

"Well, there's the old circle."

"Circle?"

"They called it the Rose, didn't they?"

"You mean the Round Table?"

"In general - but didn't those old Rounds always have an inner circle and so on and so on, till you got to the inmost?"

219.

"Can't say I know much about it."

"I thought it was you started them all on Malory."

"Can't say I remember Malory going on about the Round Table as - what you call a circle."

"I may be wrong. I always thought it was what it was all about."

"A circle in the sense of -"

"Well, not always talking-tables but meetings; that Chapel Perilous was the last, I gathered, test before the Rose."

"Interesting - ah - theory -"

"Jones and Dixon and perhaps old Browning (don't you think) couldn't keep vigil all night."

"All night?"

"The night of doubt, depression, of hope lost."

"Who is Lushington? William Morris had heard the question asked on a number of occasions. The answer was always the same, that's the frightfully good-looking fellow from Balliol with the pleasant manner. He looked at Godfrey, stretched out in his chair. Godfrey looked like a greyhound. Yes, he was handsome enough, in that sort of devil-may-care aristocratic manner. But he did care. But who could imagine Godfrey Lushington knowing anything of hope lost? He would win every

220.

battle. He was the not important actor who appears in the last scene, like Richmond in Richard III. "Can you unite the red rose and the white?" asked William Morris. He knocked out his pipe on Godfrey's fender. The wood had burnt out but there was still a glow in the embers. Are white roses, red roses burnt out? But what would Godfrey know of these things?

"The white rose is red," said Godfrey.

"Ah," said William Morris, he went on tapping his pipebowl on the fender, "you mean those York-and-Lancasters. We had them in the rose-garden at home." But he was not thinking of the Water House at Walthamstow. He returned to Woodford Hall, for his roses. They had left Woodford Hall, before he came back from Marlborough, on his first holiday. He was only fourteen but he felt that they should have consulted him, about giving up the Hall. He must take his father's place, they had insisted, there were the younger children. Relatives were deferential, they kept repeating that he looked more than his age. There were, to be sure, the two older sisters, but he was the first son and there was the battalion of youngsters after him, four brothers and two little sisters, nine of them altogether. He had taken his father's place, and they had not consulted him.

"Youngers have funny notions," William Morris remarked

221.

solemnly, standing before the fireplace.

"Such as?"

"Bashing around with wooden swords and rescuing the fair from dragons."

"You mean Malory?"

"Yes and - children. Ghost stories and roasted chestnuts, dressing up for charades, guessing-games, split-proverbs, anagram letters spilled out on the table, card-houses - playing cards. I was thinking, there was always a rickety round-table in every nursery and they drag out card-tables from the hall or under the stairs when there's company after dinner. This sitting around a table suggests sociability and games. I don't say the thing is futile, as Ted does, but isn't it - well, childish?"

William Morris did not want to know why Godfrey Lushing-ton said, "The white rose is red."

But Godfrey said, almost as if he hadn't heard him, "There was always the tradition."

Godfrey said, "I ran through a lot of stuff at the Bibliothèque National when I was last in Paris - some loose pages, difficult to follow in the old script. A chap I know is collecting Chrétien de Troyes; dates are difficult but he said they had pretty well cleared and catalogued Marie de France."

222.

William Morris had never heard of Chretien de Troyes nor Marie de France.

Morris said, "ah, yes - about the Wolfgang von Eschenbach Minnesinger period."

"Troubadours - Minnesingers - I suppose it's the same thing?"

Godfrey Lushington seemed to take an immense time, getting to his feet. He couldn't lose a battle. He would stroll in when all hope was over; the Saracens in full panoply, had already announced victory. William Morris saw them caught in a noose and the rope drawn tighter. But it wasn't a miracle. There was something almost apologetic in Godfrey's manner, as the host turned. But any chap could have done this, he seemed to say, I came in at the last minute. He was as polished as his blade and as unbreakable. Godfrey said, "they're afraid of the unspoken question."

Godfrey Lushington placed the decanter and the glasses on the table.

"I haven't a crusader in my family," said William Morris, "only a fellow in wool, in the north of England. But what question?"

"The question they daren't ask," said Godfrey as he filled the glasses.

223.

"To the question," said Godfrey, as he raised his
glass, "I don't mean just the spoken question."

"Are you talking of those planes and waves and thought-
transferences that Faulkner was trying to check up on?"

Godfrey said, "Vernon and I started it with this chap
from Paris. His sister or his *belle-soeur* rather, had a
group there. As you say, there are always tables, usually
the one you want is in the servants' hall, but we found one
in the attico. Vernon suddenly discovered that he wanted to
do some sketching and got out his easel; he set it up in
the summer-house; they would have chucked the table out of
the library or carted it off to be varnished, if we had had
it in one of our rooms. Funny how you start with intrigue;
the whole story starts with how and where you find the table,
and how you can disguise it. Vernon became suddenly tempera-
mental - you know - a fellow has to be alone sometimes.
Poetry? they asked him and he said, no, his brother was the
poet. They talked about Byron at the house, one had the
answers."

So his brother was the poet.

"Mind if I take your chair," said William Morris. "Um -
what sort of poetry?"

"I was trying my hand at translation - the old French
things - with Roland."

224.

"Any ready for - "

"I must see my way first, thanks all the same. I like your *Unknown Church*. It's like that; a sort of screen of secrecy is thrown around a situation that brings it into the realm of intrigue. You have all the trappings of a situation - Byronio, if you will - and you are planning all day, your way to the *rendez-vous* and all night, thinking about it. It's true, we overdid it. But Rolando had to get back to Paris."

"Um - rather difficult -"

"Of course, there are always difficulties, that's part of it."

"I mean, I shouldn't think a summer-house was quite the place for that sort of secrecy."

"It's one of those octagonal tower-rooms, really, with a door and seven windows. We called it the summer-house."

"Up and away through the drifting rain!
Let us ride to the Little Tower again,"
said William Morris.

"You note in any of the early stories, the lady is inevitably likened to a rose."

"Traditional."

"That's what I was saying, there was always the tradition about the meeting, the love-affair. The troubadour or the

225.

poet meets with thorny hedges. The rendez-vous is secret.
There is always danger. There is always a husband, another
lover or some false friend at hand to betray their meetings -
also traditional. Those are the world, the church, the mis-
understandings and inevitable falling off of old friends - who
won't or who can't follow. The rose is the lady - "

"Though our arms are wet with the slanting rain,
There is joy to ride to my love again,"

said William Morris.

"Faulkner's table was all right," said Godfrey Lushington,
'I was asking it questions, myself."

"But you didn't do any talking."

"You don't have to ask the question out loud - just so
the question is clear in your own mind - "

"Um - "

"Don't you like this port?"

William Morris raised his glass. It was all there, the
light through the ruby glass at Chartres.

"I like looking at it."

William Morris was no greyhound, he was (Rossetti was
right) a great St. Bernard or a young lion.

He must pad carefully through the jungle.

"Funny fellow, Ruskin - did you know his people were in
sherry?"

226.

"Hadn't heard so."

"Good stuff, I believe, Ruskin and Domecq. Um - it was Rossetti told me."

He had said Rossetti.

"That painter fellow?"

"Um - "

"What I mean is, the whole of the Roman de la Rose tales are symbolic. The Rose is the table."

"Weren't they - curious/at the house?"

"Suspicious, you mean? Naturally. It was all the young French gentleman of course, leading our young gentlemen into God knows what lecherous company - none of the young ladies in the Hall, mind you."

"This - Rolando's a good fellow."

"It didn't matter what they said about him, he said; he was going back to Paris, but we all agreed it might be diplomatic if occasionally, Vernon and I spent an evening out of his company, so we rode off to Quarles, but we made a <u>détour</u> and met Roland at the Tower (Rolando called it the Tower). It only came out afterwards, that we'd never been to Quarles. But by that time, Roland had gone and it didn't matter. Nothing really mattered."

The lion had made a <u>détour</u>, he padded into the open.

227

"Ah - what sort of questions did you ask Faulkner's table?"

"Faulkner had put a question, rather vague, I don't remember - I cut across it. The answer to Faulkner's question or to mine rather, was Vernon."

"I remember."

"It might have been one of those - well, thought-transferences. I asked the same question the next evening."

"They didn't know any Vernon."

"I asked it a third time."

"And the question?"

"I asked if the fellow, sitting there beside me, was in on this."

"Yes, thank you," said William Morris, "the port is excellent."

"They spelt Vernon a third time."

"And the fellow?"

"Enjoys his port?"

William Morris put down his glass.

How mark time?

"No furlong farther for us to-night,
The Little Tower draweth in sight.

There are a lot of things I must ask you."

228.

"Not always disembodied, from what Rpland said, and did it matter if it were a form of dual-personality?"

"I don't quite follow."

"The question that you ask the table - the Lady answers - or as with the *belle-soeur*, the Knight or the preux chevalier."

"And - ah - Vernon?"

"My brother," said Godfrey Lushington.

V

229.

XII

"I seem to have been gone a long time," said William Morris, "but I wanted to think things over."

"You haven't been gone at all," said Godfrey, "that outside time is non-existent - well, I don't know. I've been busy myself."

"With other things?"

"Plenty of other things."

It didn't do to ask a chap like Godfrey, what his people expected him to do when he left Oxford; diplomatic, William Morris presumed.

Godfrey said, "It was like that, I mean, the shock of losing Roland after Vernon went off to Scotland. I thought, I was clamped back in time, forever. I thought, I had lost the table."

"I finished my *Little Tower*," said William Morris. "I tried to put rhyming away, until I got out of Street's office. Then after I last saw you, I found that I could do their beastly copy, and rhyme at the same time. She doesn't get burnt as a witch."

"The grim king fumes at the council-board; Three more days, and then the sword - "

"Go on shouting."

230.

"No. I only wanted to say that I know those seven
windows. They look out on lake, forest, field, sky, each
different. Don't tell me there is no lake there. But even
if you did, I wouldn't believe you. I go there."

Godfrey was sitting on the window-seat. He turned
and drew the curtain.

"I hear the wind. I know all your trees, Godfrey
sans peur et sans reproche."

Godfrey was lighting the candles.

"Wearily, wearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone,

but that was when I was in prison. You got me out."

"Rolando got you out. Or Rolando got you in, rather."

"In - "

"In the summer-house, the tower-room, the Tower."

"There were curtains?"

"Curtains?"

"The way you drew the curtains, put me back there. No,
don't say there are no curtains or that there are, or that the
place was once neatly shuttered but now some of the shutters
sag and here and there, there is a row of slats missing.

231.

Don't tell me you unbarred or unlatched only one shutter and
opened only one window - the one that brought the sandy
shelf of the lake (to the left) in focus. Don't tell me of
your precautions to keep the right side or the right sides
free from prying cottagers, your own gardeners or a stray poach-
er. Don't tell me that storm came up and you didn't get
back till morning. Don't tell me -"

"How the second gardener came in and said the table
would do nicely for the potting-shed?"

"That's an invention - but - what happened to the
table?"

"I should have thought it amiable on your part to ask
what happened to me."

"Well, you survived the - test, or whatever you call
it, you're here to tell the tale."

"I can see that you're wondering about the spiders."

"I hadn't given the spiders a thought."

"You should have thought about the spiders."

"It's too clear-cut for spiders. I'll wager spiders
don't like octagons."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that. What of their spinning?"

"You're ah observant fellow. There were blackberry
bushes?"

232.

"A few."

"The webs always seem to come clearer on a thorn-bush,
the dew of course, brings out the pattern."

"You're an early bird."

"You saw the silver threads, strung with brilliants,
when you came forth, staggering into the dawn - you saw them,
then, for the first time."

"Yes."

"I don't mean that you hadn't seen them before. I mean,
you saw them - "

"Differently."

"I don't know what charm or enchantment you used."

"It was very simple. Vernon went first. Roland re-
membered what he called his manners, at the end - he seemed
contrite, the **châtelaine**, my beautiful mother, what had she
thought of him? It was all right, I assured him, she approved
of my polishing off my French and working on old French in the
summer-house, all useful - well, you never know, you have to
show an intelligent interest, in my job. Roland was worried,
he said, he wanted to make the separation easier. 'It's so
painful breaking away suddenly,' he said, 'mon Godefroy, what
it was to find you and Vernon.' He entreated me, 'don't make

233.

it too hard - it will be easier for us both to give up the
table, if we don't go to the Tower, the last days. And if
the two of us were alone, it might prove disappointing. How
much better to leave it,' he argued, 'rather than be disappoint-
ed.' He must himself have experienced some bitter disappoint-
ment, 'Of course, we won't go back,' I said, 'I've never really
shown you to our neighbours. We must ride over to Quarles.'

"They brought Vernon's horse for Roland. 'I see,' he
said, 'this is a compliment. I am then, not so out of favour.
Your people consider me, after all, one of the family.' I
had not thought he realized that the servants had been talking.
He was wary and sensitive. 'But my mother loves you,' I said,
'and says you have improved my manners,' 'Your manners,' he
flung at me, 'mon Godefroy.' We turned off toward the Ayton
valley and followed the bridle-path. 'We'll cut across by
Barnfield and Bolton,' I said, 'and I'll show you the old
Carew Place before we reach Quarles.' But we didn't reach
Quarles."

"Where are we?" said William Morris.

"I have told you, on the bridle-path, along Ayton."

"You haven't told me what you saw and what you talked
about."

"I'm coming to what we talked about."

234.

"But I want to know everything."

"Well - then you tell the story."

William Morris said, "There is or there was a charming sister in the nursery. Roland loves her, he will wait till she grows up."

"You are wrong there - and if there had been, Roland was, as I told you, sensitive. Well, they were de Fontenelle, they had lost everything."

"There is the pretty cousin, rather distant, at Quarles."

No doubt, Morris thought, Godfrey like Ted, is thinking of getting married.

"Lavinia and Olive are both lovely creatures. They are not my cousins."

So Godfrey check-mated him.

"You thought the other one would do for Roland?"

Godfrey did not answer.

"Or does the other one belong to Vernon?"

"What an incorrigible match-maker you are. You want everyone to be happy - like yourself, eh?"

"I am not in that sense happy, but Ted is and I like to think that others may be."

"("So he was wary, the other chap, Rolando," thought William Morris, "and what of this one?")

235.

William Morris said, "I am happy, but in another sense."

"So was Roland happy."

"You just said he knew bitter disappointment."

"Well, to continue - or will you tell the story?"

With some vague feeling of insecurity, William Morris thought of Quarles and Carew - and of Roland. These crusader fellows!

"I don't know the story."

"_Mon ami, I think you do."

"You were on the bridle-path along Ayton?"

"We were. Roland seemed thoughtful. I ambled ahead through the ford. I thought I had found a rhyme that had eluded me for some days. I reached in my pocket for my notebook. When I looked up, I saw we had turned below Barnfield, but Roland wouldn't notice. This was where Vernon and I broke into a gallop. Sure enough, Vernon's horse was following after. The last time I had followed Ayton, I had been with Vernon, and the four or five times before that. The horses were cantering back, but to the King's Wood. We called it the King's Wood, there was the usual legend. Henry VIII had hunted there, stayed at the Hall and so on."

"And so on?"

"I said the usual legend - you are a romantic fellow, work that out for yourself. You did not ask what Vernon and

236.

I did with our mounts, when we rode over to the Tower. Didn't
you wonder where we stabled them?"

"I did wonder. I did not see them grazing."

"There were no spiders, the Tower was or had been by
way of a hunting-lodge. The forester kept it. The door
was merely bolted from outside. We had no poachers. There
was a row of bridle-rings in the old wall of what was once the
outriders' stables. Part of it was still roofed over, in old
tile. I see you did not look out of all the windows. We
had tethered our ponies there as children."

Children? How many had there been, Morris wondered, and
he thought of his own first pony.

"My sister was killed in the King's Wood," said Godfrey
Lushington.

William Morris cursed himself for the clumsy, tactless
fellow that they said he was.

"She would go her own way. We would meet in the Tower.
They blamed us, afterwards. She wasn't in the summer-house;
She must be playing the Bold Baron', said Vernon. That meant,
according to the old ritual, that we must collect our retinue
and seek out the Baron. It is a deer-park, really."

"You hunted there -" Morris couldn't think of anything
to say. He presumed the girl had been thrown. He must say

237.

something, "you - you found her?"

Godfrey said, "Vernon really was amoyal about it. Vernon said, 'we're better light the candles,' but we hadn't yet drawn the curtains and 'it's still light enough to see by,' I said. Vernon said, 'we're better light up anyway, you remember our old signal - just to show her that we give up and that she's won. Do you remember,' Vernon said, 'the time she almost got drowned on the lake and we thought she was cheating when she shouted?' I remembered. 'Maybe, she's lost now,' I said. But they had already found her. It was Giles - the forester."

It was something woven, it was tapestry. It was not true to life; it had no perspective; it was flat. The pony followed after, like the dead King's charger.

It was as if the wind fluttered the green and brown, the stitched blue of the lake, the carefully embroidered stone and sedge. The figures were not really moving.

"I - I'm sorry, Godfrey. I don't know how to say it. This - has shocked me profoundly."

"It didn't shock me at the time. It just hadn't happened. There was work to do, then the next holidays, work again and so on. Fortunately, the holidays were work, too, languages... It was a narrow path. It took all one's surplus thought and energy, just to keep one's feet from slipping. One could

238.

manage to keep on, provided one didn't stop and look over
the edge. There was the night of doubt, of depression, of
hope lost."

This was Godfrey Lushington, the charming rather super-
ficial fellow from Balliol.

"It - it came back - the memory?" asked Morris.

Godfrey said, "It was Roland brought it, talking about
his *belle-soeur*. He had told us of her group or circle
in Fontainbleau, when he first explained the table to us,
but he didn't talk about the *belle-soeur* personally, when
the three of us were together. He said Henri, his brother,
was worried; he didn't actually forbid the circle, *tables
parlants* were the rage of fashionable Paris, and as Faulkner
explained to Ted and Dixon, the Sorbonne and various scient-
ists were taking the matter seriously. It was coming through
the King's Wood, that I explained to Roland, that it was
absent-mindedness on my part; I had been thinking of one of
those translations, crossing the ford. I hadn't been any-
where for the past fortnight, except with Vernon when we had
made off, as for Quarles and turned back after the crossing.
Roland said he was glad to see the King's Wood, it was like
Fontainbleau where there was the rustic summer-house, a cottage
really in the Petit Trianon style, above the river. A cousin

239.

of Valerie's had it and they met there, for boating-parties
and for picnics. It was there they had their circle. Roland
said, 'Henri knew all about it, but he didn't know that I loved
Valerie.'

Godfrey went on, "Roland said, Valerie said that he had
betrayed them. Roland could not explain to her. 'How could
I betray my belle-soeur?' Roland had asked. And when he said
belle-soeur, by the first oak-ooppice, I knew that it had
happened.'

What had happened? William Morris tried to keep his
hands still. He remembered the hammocks he had woven at school.
His mind would be clearer if his hands were busy. No wonder
women seemed indifferent to controversy and to policy. Their
hands did the thinking for them.

Something had happened by the first oak-ooppice. Was
it there that Giles found her? What wonderful names they had,
Vernon, Vivien and now Valerie. Everything was commonplace
about him - William. But Godfrey's name was sociable and
familiar, it went with Geoffrey, old Chauner. He William, did
not go back to their crusaders, but as far as home was concerned,
he felt he went back further than they did. Giles might go
with him. They were not out of the King's Wood but the
wilderness.

240.

It was a wilderness. Fontainbleau and the King's Wood
had their keepers, their Little Trianon cottages and their
hunting-lodges. William Morris said, "It was by the first
oak-coppice that Giles found her?"

"It was there that I found her," said Godfrey.

"Godfrey said, "it was the way he said belle-soeur.
I said, 'if you don't mind, we'll dismount and walk part way
through the forest.'" But I sat down on an oak-log where
Vivien and I had often talked together. Roland stood with
the bridle over his arm. He seemed restless. 'We must
not do the table alone,' Roland said again. I seemed to
feel what he was thinking. He said, 'Valerie said she would
work alone, if I broke up their circle. It was not that she
did not love Henri, but she was getting exalté, more intense
each time we had the table. There were only three of us, at
the end. Valerie thought that I was getting fond of her
cousin, Aurelie. 'Henri thinks we are meeting here, because
of you and Aurelie,' Valerie said. Then she turned on me,
'Aurelie is almost as good a parti as I was.'" The marriage
had been arranged, as is usual with us in France. It is
true that Valerie's dot would help re-establish de Fontenelle,
if the rest of us agreed to give everything to Henri. 'All
Henri thinks of, is a son,' said Valerie. I said, 'Henri

941.

loves you." He loves de Fontenelle." But you are one of us, 'I said, "Valerie." I was thinking of her mother. Valerie was indeed one of us, frail as moonlight."

Godfrey said, "Roland was afraid Valerie would call him back to the table in Fontainbleau. She had not come to the table when the three of us were together. Roland said, 'if Valerie comes to the table, it means that she is dead or will soon die. It was not only Henri's son that the table was taking from us, it was Valerie. She was burning out like a white candle. You can not work alone,' said Aurelie had told me that the two of them together had had no answers."

Godfrey said, "I asked Roland 'why do you fear the summer-house now we have agreed about the table?' Roland said, 'it is surcharged with memories.'"

Godfrey repeated, "it was surcharged with memories. But we went back."

Now William Morris left the oak-coppice; oak was drug -
Druid, wasn't it? The forest had taken its sacrifice.

There was Valerie like a white candle or a camellia
with its petals folded round it. There was Vivien in green.

Godfrey said, "Roland and I sat talking in the tower-
room, till dusk. He had managed to break the circle before
Valerie burnt out. But Valerie turned on him, he was not a

242.

gentleman. He had used Aurelie badly. Even Henri blamed him. He could not tell Henri that he was fighting, not only for him but for Valerie and his son. Valerie was ill, she said it was all his fault. Aurelie with an older sister, went on with the boating-parties. Roland did not think that Aurelie continued with the table. Aurelie was, he said, ceillet, fragrant and - worldly. He had not disturbed her equanimity. She would find a new circle in the feuburg, if she wanted to go on with the work. Tables parlantes were all the fashion. If it had been just fashionable - but Valerie was different. Roland said he had left home, under a cloud. The table curiously (though the woods and the tower-room reminded him of Pontainbleau) had freed him. 'When we three were together,' Roland said, 'it was cool, it was comforting; it was England.'

Godfrey said, "I asked him, 'can we two not be England, in the tower-room?' 'We have talked too much,' said Roland, 'mon ami, that moonlight and the fleur-de-lis might claim you.' It was then," Godfrey said, "that I lighted the candles for the first time - remembering. I said to Roland, 'England has already claimed me.'"

Godfrey went on, "you know how unselfishness takes some people? Roland changed utterly, 'ah, mon ami, but you never told me.' 'How could I tell you what I have only just found

243.

out for myself,' I answered."

Godfrey had found out that the white rose was red.

He loved his sister.

Was sacrifice always necessary?

William Morris knew that it was.

The white rose was stained with the blood of the
pierced heart.

But the heart drained of blood, renewed its heart-beat,
and that throbbing was almost unbearable. So no doubt, Roland
had found it, after his sacrifice. But Roland, William knew,
embraced his thorns, he would not be without them. The
thorns, it had been long established, were part of the Rose.

William Morris said, "did Valerie - finally - "

"Love Henri? I don't know but the quarrel with Roland
led to their coming together on at least one issue - Roland
had behaved badly. It was Valerie's distress, Henri told
him, that had been responsible for her illness. Valerie had
thought of Aurelie as a sister, really a sister. Roland did
not of course, allude to it, but we may presume that Aurelie
would have strengthened the material position of the family.
Roland had given up everything to Henri on his marriage, but
he would not give up - "

"His thorns," said William Morris.

244.

"The final family verdict was that Roland's action toward Aurelie had been unpardonable. This verdict had shielded Valerie. Her reputation was irreproachable."

Godfrey went on, "now having spoken (and he said for the first time) about Valerie, Roland became distant. We blew out the candles and bolted the door. We rode back. 'What shall I tell them about Quarles?' said Roland, on the way home. It no longer mattered. 'Say that we turned round - say anything - it doesn't matter.' I knew that I spoke abruptly. I had been killed recently by the oak-coppice. I lived it. My forehead struck the stone. I was dead instantly. Then I was whispering to Godfrey, my beloved brother, 'I am here. It's Ven, Frey.' I heard, Frey-Ven, Ven-Frey - then, Venfrey. We were the same person."

What was there to say?

Godfrey said it, "I haven't a brain like - Faulkner. But I have a superficial way with people. It's chaps like me they want for ticklish situations. If I shouldn't come back -"

"From the East, you'll know where I've gone. You're the only one who knows this."

✓ It came from somewhere. The husky whisper found words for what could never be said.

VI

246.

XIII

He would come to me conclusion until he had heard more
from Godfrey. He kept away for a week. He ran across
Godfrey in the library but avoided strolling around with him
afterwards, as he usually did, if they met casually. He
drew in his horns and retired to his shell or rather, he
curled up on his bed of leaves and hibernated, when he could
get away from the mere routine of living. Dreaming was no
sharp sword, his withdrawal from life was as automatic and as
necessary as sleep. He had found that his hands could actually
continue the Gothic tracing and leave his mind free. He
would rather have done something useful, as he put it; note
for hammocks or fish. Perhaps this was old Shelton in him,
perhaps Henry Shelton was a weaver; Paul was a tent maker.
Yes, they could have their conquest, he had concluded, that
day in Street's office, when he had first (painfully awake in
daylight) gone over the Rosetti visit. Those hours, he had
considered, were a distillation, an essence, a drug to be doled
out carefully. But William Morris had found a new distilla-
tion, a new essence.

This white rose, stained red, was not like the others.
Lis was a snow-flower. In memory, he was again whirled with

247.

the stinging snow-dust round a corner into a little court-
yard. He tried the church door. It was fastened. But
the creature beside him was tangible, though a mist of fine
drifting snow veiled her occasionally. She was a white rose,
certainly.

But he had already found her, before he walked across
Blackfriars Bridge with her in the snow. She was Margaret,
Walter's sister in the Unknown Church. And she was Margaret
again, a cousin perhaps, the lover who had waited for him in
The Hollow Land.

His heaven characteristically, was no infinite vault;
it was the lap of earth, the bed of leaves, the beach-wood by
the stream, into which I let myself down carefully, by the
futting rocks and bushes and strange trailing flowers, and
there lay down and fell asleep.

But the strange flowers were really his familiars, he
knew the foam of meadow-sweet, the flat pads of the elder-
berry, the briar-blossom, the various low-growing pulse and the
blue bergamot, as the bee knows them. From these, there was
the sustenance of no heady dream. Rossetti had asked him,
by what sweat of the brow he wrote poetry. If this is poetry,
he had explained to the fellows from the beginning, it has no

248.

affiliation with the midnight oil or Shelley's *Skylark*. There were no whirling spirals lifting him to heaven. If this is poetry, it is easy to write, he had told Rossetti, and Rossetti had said, "you don't get into a fever, inspiration doesn't burn you out." But inspiration of some sort was burning out Godfrey; he was like the *bell-soeur* Roland loved, he was another white candle.

They were all of them in the same *impasse*. William Morris had re-read Rossetti's *Hand and Soul*. Himself, the modern Rossetti (the artist narrator of the story) had fallen in love with the picture which by inference, he had painted in a former life, in Pisa. The Image in the picture was his own soul. So he, William, had fallen in love with a picture but he knew the frail image to be a living woman. But as his way was, he abstracted her from the frame, even as he called to companion William the Englishman, Margaret or the Lady Alys from his own romances.

He had told Rossetti that he got the idea of going back in time, half in a dream, from *Hand and Soul*, but he had always lived in the dream. *Hand and Soul* had merely fortified his resolution not to let the dream go. There were others in that world. But to William the Englishman and to Gabriel

249.

Rossetti the Italian, there was no real danger. He had kept away from Godfrey. There was danger in Godfrey saying, "I was dead instantly. I had been killed recently by the oak-coppice." It is true that Florian watched his own death in _The Hollow Land_ and that he, William the Englishman had stood and looked down on himself within the chapel aisle, where

Naked to the waist was I,
And deep within my breast did lie,
Though no man any blood did spy,
The truncheon of a spear.

But something threatened Godfrey.

Roland had seen the same threat in the case of the _belle-soeur_ - but how could clumsy William deal with the so subtle and lovely wraith that might endanger Godfrey's reason?

*La Belle Dame sans Merci.*

But Godfrey forestalled him, "how's single-stick?"

"O, we hang round as usual, at Maclaren's."

"A pity he turned me out."

"Well, it was pleasant having you drop in occasionally, but old Archibald said it would give no good name to his gymnasium, if he allowed the best fencer from the school, to

250.

be bashed about by his chaps. I've been thinking a lot since
I was here last. It's about a lady - I've - seen."

William the Englishman, fearful as he had been lest he
should find Godfrey ecstatic and eager to go on with his story,
was now in a panic lest Godfrey withhold the story. No doubt,
Godfrey wondered why he hadn't come sooner. He'd better tell
his own story, as much of it as he could assemble.

"That - that *belle-soeur*. I was working round the
situation from de Fontenelle's point of view. I don't know
that this lady that I speak of, goes in for tables or anything
of that sort. (I call her Lis from the Margaret de Liliis of
my *Hollow Land*.) But she sees things."

He would have thought that Godfrey looked as usual, if
he hadn't now the clue to Godfrey's appearance and behaviour.
He was the same polished blade - but was the blade unbreakable?
Certainly, nothing in this world could break it. "This girl
is like the Valerie of Roland's story. Well, the fact is they
say she's not consumptive, but why say that if the question
had never come up? And thinking of this, I was reminded of
Robert Browning. He's a curious fellow. Lis knows Mrs.
Browning. I can't say that Mrs. Browning actually encouraged
her in her - her trances - I don't know actually how the

251.

dream takes her. But she saw herself, a queen in a coffin,
with a book in her hand, at Chartres. Is it possible that
old Robertus made a remunciation like de Fontenelle, to keep
Elizabeth Barrett out of it? Another candle, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, don't you think so? You were saying, I remember,
that old Browning couldn't keep vigil all night."

"I remember mentioning Browning, in connection with Ted
and Dixon."

"I think Ted and Dix are on a different level. Ted is
going to be married, and Dix has minor canon writ large already
on his bland, inexpressive countenance. Not that marriage
in itself -" but William Morris did not know what to say
of marriage.

"You mean, that you yourself want to keep out of - well,
the night of vigil - because of this lady and that you, like
Robert Browning with Elizabeth, want to save Lis?"

"I want to save Lis." Godfrey had unwittingly expressed
what he William, had only half-admitted. Lis was in danger.

"Well," Godfrey said, easy and affable, the Godfrey who
had looked in those few evenings, at Maclaren's, "then all you
have to do is to set about and save her. You're a substantial
fellow like old Browning, just whisk her off to Italy or the
South."

252.

"She is in the South."

Godfrey turned as if looking for something, "Ah - you
have your matches."

But William had not yet taken his pipe out of his pocket.

"Look, Godfrey - you've got this all wrong. The
lady - "

It was not like Godfrey to let a pause lie, painful and
patent for all to see, between them.

"Dash it, Godfrey - the lady's to be married to the
man I love best in the whole world - except - "

Tell Godfrey that you loved him?

Said William the Englishman, "with the single exception
of Godfrey - "

"Sans peur but not sans reproche, you're thinking."

"Godfrey sans peur et sans reproche is perhaps as I am,
in danger."

Godfrey said, "there is only one danger."

"Perhaps ultimately. You mean death?"

"I mean separation."

"From the Lady?"

"From the self."

"Well, if you look on it that way, It's what in a way,
I've been thinking, why (heroically) I stayed away, just as I've
stayed away from London."

253.

"You said, the lady was not in London."

"Dash it, Godfrey, have you no imagination? I could
talk about her with - with -"

"This other fellow? Can't you talk about her with me?"

"You don't know her, Godfrey."

"Then, you can explain her to me."

It was William the Englishman who had come, confident
and comparatively cool, to minister to Godfrey. But this
was a new Godfrey, detached as William never could be, in-
different almost.

"We walked across Blackfriars Bridge in the snow together. Her hands were cold. I offered her my gloves. She slipped one on. Of course, it wouldn't stay on. It fell in the snow. I picked it up. I put her hand in my greatcoat pocket. We got across the Bridge. She would stand staring. It might have been St. Bride's, a small church off a turning. The wind blew us down there. She is Margaret de Liliis. Rossetti called her Liz, a mispronunciation or his *quatrocento* for Lis. He read part of her letter to me. She was doing some manuscript illumination for his *Hand and Soul*. I read and re-read *Hand and Soul* when I got back to Oxford. Rossetti said, he burnt out people; what he said was 'I overtax people.' That was after he told me that Ruskin sent

254.

her to Doctor Ackland, Oxford's Ackland. I didn't even
know she'd been to Oxford. I know nothing at all about her.
I have never met her. I saw a picture, unfinished, in a
plain wood frame, set up on the floor. I was lifting the
curtain to look out at the snow. The face was the face of
Margaret de Liliis and of the Lady Alys, out of *My Golden
Wings*. I did not —

William the Englishman paused to draw breath.

He said, "I stayed away because I thought you would
burn out. Ackland said her ill-health was caused by mental
power long pent-up and lately overtaxed. I am that plain,
blunt man — is he out of Shakespeare? But I am nearer
Chaucer. I am clumsy. I never saw this lady, only a
picture of her. We never walked across Blackfriars Bridge
in the snow together.

"Here, values are reversed, or the situation. I thought
it all out. But I am no good with a set speech. This is
not what I meant to say. *Alone and palely loitering*, I said
to myself, but I was thinking of you. *And no birds sing*,
but how do I know what is singing in your reverie?

"And her eyes were wild, so I saw Vivien, *La Belle Dame sans Merci*."

Godfrey said, "she is all *merci*, merciful, pitiful."

255.

"Then, the sedge isn't withered from the lake and the
birds do sing? I felt that you, like Lis, had been pent up.
You did not tell me exactly when - it happened?"

Godfrey said, "it happened three years ago, That is,
but it was only last summer that
it was three years last summer, before I realized that it
had happened."

William said, "she saw a revenant, an artist, Rossetti
told me, who should have been an actor. She saw him in the
snow, he said. This Deverell was walking across Blackfriars
Bridge in the snow, and she saw him at the exact moment of his
death. Rossetti said, she said, this Walter Deverell had
come to say good-bye. My name is Walter in The Unknown Church.
So she became my sister, Walter's sister. But it was Walter
who died and she saw him - did you see your sister?"

"I imagined I saw my sister, but I really heard her talking."

"Outside? You mean a voice outside?"

"Inside myself. It was in the summer-house while Roland
was telling me about Valerie and Aurelie and the others."

"They must have found water-lilies in some of the reedy
inlets. Or doesn't the Seine have inlets? I seem to imagine
a sort of sandy island in wide shallow water, and some reedy
islets or eyots, I believe they are called. But that is

256.

de Fontenelle's story. I thought of de Fontenelle because
I was trying to think of you. How do you mean, that you
heard your sister talking?

"We went back to the tower-room or the Tower, as Rolando called it. We didn't talk about Valerie. I did not tell him about Vivien. We were working on translations. After he left, I used the Tower for my study. We had spread out our books and papers, on the centre table. But I did not go back to the centre table. I did not unfasten all the shutters. I left the door open. Half-sheltered or screened behind the door, I made a nook for myself. The round-table had been there the whole time. It is easy enough according to Faraday, to explain the table by unconscious or half-conscious muscular reactions. Of course, she spelt Ven. It is what I would have spelt if I had been in her place. Perhaps, I was in her place, perhaps she was a projection of myself; they say we have some sort of double. Well, so be it, I said. It wasn't alarming but I confess I was astonished. If it was myself tapping out the letters, then I was drawing on forgotten memories, and if I could make myself remember other memories, the shock of the most recent memory would be modified. Do I speak clearly?"

269

260.

is careless, slouching; he doesn't, he says, care for fresh
air. He hates the snow. She loves it. I feel that he has
drawn a magic-circle round her. I felt it about to enclose
me. That's why I stayed away from London. But I will go
back. I expect she will come back sometime - how could
she keep away from Gabriel Rossetti?

"Poor moth - she has seen the flame."

"Have you noticed? You can't really rescue a moth."

"I wonder," said Godfrey, "if there's only a - a sort
of pane of glass between us and them. When you leave the
window open and the light burning, do they singe their wings?"

"Coming in from outside? Oh, I see, you mean - Vivien."

"In a way - Vivien."

"You could blow out the candle."

"You can't, once it starts burning."

"Have you tried it?"

"Have you ever tried to stop breathing? You can't stop
it for long. She is such a comfort to me, Merci, la Belle
Dame."

"Now you make me see it. It isn't my illumination - I
mean, illuminations. I mean both, really. Mine are Canterbury,
yours are Persian. I don't know how you got there.

260

261

I was trying to find a colour for you and all I could think of was crystal. Mine is, I told you, clouded or cloud. You can't see through my window; you turn back indoors to the loom or you fling yourself right out, harvest or winter, into the fields. I see the East in you, not just the Paladin who gets there from England or from France, but I see the cypress-avenue, the flat painted plum-tree in flower. It is Merci, the Goddess of Mercy, you mean - perhaps she was Tibetan. I am out of my depth, really.

"But perhaps I think of Persia, because when I said his cordial - the Elixir of Life, he called it - was a stain of rose, he said, 'not attar of rose, that's Persian.' Every word he spoke, is there to draw on. I called it an attar or essence, rather, and doled myself out drops or grained."

"Can you use up memory?"

"You can overdo it, intoxicate yourself, drug yourself."

"You're a strange fellow - what do you know about it?"

"I only know a magic-circle when I see one. I stepped free of the <u>piege</u> in the case of Gabriel. I walked around it. He didn't put the picture there to trap me. He didn't know I saw it. Perhaps I shouldn't have dodged the entrance to his Aladdin's cave, if I hadn't seen the picture. I wanted to get

267.
pg. 862.

her out. Yours is another sort of circle. I've been walking
round it. Do you think it was easy to deny myself your story?
But you're not going out East. I had to see that first and
say it honestly, before I heard your story."

"But they want me to go to India."

"Who - these diplomatic fellows?"

"Yes, and I judge - the others."

William lifted his glass with assumed bonhomie, "well - to
the others." He had padded round the circle. It was no cave
entrance this time, but a sheet of crystal water that enticed
and warned him. Godfrey's story was about to take shape above
the mirror of the lake, but William Morris was no crystal-gazer.
He must meet the other, head on, bash at his gleam and glitter
with his single-stick. He must entice the crusader from the
Sepulchre, or lure him into his own wilderness.

He said, "I like shaggy things, block Canterbury missal-
script, ragged-robins or corn-flowers, flat common daisies,
untidy, uncleared forests. You and de Fontenelle go plunging
in such perfect form, to - death."

"You're thinking of the Brigade?"

"Who is not? But they'll soon forget the Brigade."

"That's what I want to prevent. I know some of the
fellows, they took disproportionate toll from the Ayton hunting

262

263.

families. I fenced with the last Ayton Carew, at St. James's."

I see, I see, mused William Morris, better leave that
port, for the moment. Better do something, say something.
"What became of those matches you were looking for?" This is
tactless, clumsy William, always put my foot in it. Well,
what of it? "Lancers?" "The Light." It would be.

William the Englishman had taken the charge of the Light,
as all England took it. But distinction, chivalry had no
chance in modern warfare. Why go blind or dazzled? "Wouldn't
it have been better if one of the chaps had mutinied? I don't
know the word for it - "

"There is no word for it," said Godfrey.

Steady William, don't lose your head, "there should be,"
said William Morris, "after all, isn't that why the new Victoria
Cross has been introduced - for independent thinking? Why
couldn't your Carew have shouted to the fellows that it was
all damned nonsense?"

"You didn't know Carew."

"I've seen certain of his sort, changing guard before
the palace. Don't think I wasn't dazzled."

"There's plenty of romantic fighting in your tales."

"That was before the Czar moved up his cannon. The
Brigade wrote finis."

263

264.

"That's what they tell me."

So they told him things? Go easy, William.

"Vivien was really too young to come out. But she had her first season. It wasn't merely that it was suitable, the two together - "

"I can see them. I can see them dancing." Don't listen to the music, William, it puts you off, and you don't like dancing, you're too clumsy. Music makes you dizzy, stick to plain-song. "But I don't like music," said William, "it distracts me."

So - candles - glitter - tinsel romance. Don't get dragged into their hypnotic circling, the new waltz, better a romp on the green round the maypole. Vivien should never have gone to London. "Did she meet him in the King's Wood?"

"Vernon and I would never have asked her."

More damned nonsense. "She rode with the groom usually?"

"Always."

So it went to her head, Vivien in a green habit, she was lost, she was exalté.

"You say it wasn't dark when she came back?"

"It was getting dark, but light enough to see by."

"Did she ride in the evening?"

"Never."

265.

She was blinded, dazzled. They never should have left him
"I know," said Godfrey, "I know that I killed Vivien."

"What nonsense - "

"It's what you're thinking. That's why you stayed away.
I said, I was Godfrey _sans peur_ but not _sans reproche_, you
remember."

"But you may remember that I contradicted you."

"You said I was in danger, I was, until Vivien brought Carew."

Carew, some damned Elizabethan or Lovelace fellow.
William claimed only superficial knowledge of the counties but
he wondered if this Ayton Carew was descended from the poet.
Better go easy - cup-bearer to King Charles, damned Royalist.

Circles upon circles of enchantment. I go back to
Chaucer.

"It was Byronic nonsense. We've got to be realistic.
We've got to face it."

"That's what I'm trying to do," said Godfrey.

Said Morris, "we've got tongo back to Chaucer. There's
about two hundred years between him and Shakespeare."
"What exactly," said Godfrey, "has that got to do with it?"
"For two hundred years, the country was wasted by -
Roses."

"The wars?"

263

266.

"The wars of the Roses."

"Historically, you're a bit out."

"I'm not speaking altogether historically. All wars are wars of Roses."

"My dear fellow - "

"For two hundred years, we had no poets. Then one William Shakespeare dug his roots in, dragged up the sap and stamina of the field, the orchard, the garden into his Tree of Life. He completed England forever. We've got to circle round his Prospero, go back to older magic, the magic of the Saxon sea, the Saxon wilderness. Into the breach, my friends but not -" go easy William, he loved Carew.

"It's got to stop, it's got to stop," said William Morris. "I didn't know your Carew, nor one of them. I'm thinking of the horses."

Was he being brutal? "Forgive me, Godfrey."

"There's nothing to forgive, really," the words sounded automatic, conventional, and William sensed through the sudden weariness of his friend's voice, Godfrey's solution. He had renounced pain and pleasure. He no longer felt the shock; "I was dead instantly," he had said, but he no longer remembered his death. He was removed like Prospero, apart on a magic island, shut up in his own crystal. William knew now that

566
267.

he dared not smash the crystal.

"Don't think that I don't feel it," said William Morris, "the beauty of their sacrifice. But there's two hundred years missing, the wars broke the continuity. You may say that Shakespeare more than made up, that he filled the gap with his Historical Plays, so he did, really, and then, late in life, he went back to early Britain and the Rome that made our civilization. But I tell you there are gaps somewhere, we're uneven, unbalanced. We haven't caught up to Shakespeare."

What was Godfrey thinking?

"You're thinking I'm an oaf, Godfrey. I glory in it. If I have a part in your play, I'm Giles the forester."

"My play?"

"Your story then. You said you wouldn't go East till you told me the whole story - so I would delay the telling and keep you here forever."

"It's not my story, really, it's Carew's."

William said, "I'm very angry about Carew and the others. My rage, the last years, threatened my sanity. My sanity was only saved by my dreams - my stories. They are the anodine that saved me. I might hope that they'll save others - I mean, if I go on writing. But it's too easy. I simply talk."

567

268

I simply tell a story - it's all improvised. I don't myself
know what will happen. I go on writing to see what will happen.
They don't shout at me, they crop up. You pass a field one
day, it's brown, the next, pale green, green, then gold. So
you know the seasons. It's that way with my stories. I won-
der why Shakespeare didn't have Chaucer walk into one of his
plays? Do you know why? Chaucer didn't."

"Chaucer didn't?"

"Don't you notice? I listen and wait for Chaucer.
The Tempest is an artificial storm, a device, an invention to
get Naples to Bermuda (was it Bermuda?) There is wind on the
moors, the heath, Lear and Macbeth. There is only one forest,
Arden. Don't you see, Godfrey, having Shakespeare makes us
too important. They didn't know, perhaps not one of them had
read through a whole play, but wish not a man from England was
the reason for it."

"But it wasn't Agincourt, and they'll go on making
Agincourt of it till the world's ruined."

"Do you think it was easy for me to keep away from that
flame? I don't know how I did it. But I'll tell you. I
faced England."

"I faced the glory with a single-stick."

"My eyes were not dazzled."

268

269.

"I remembered that first year, before you came up, how we dodged authority here in Oxford. We've got to dodge authority."

Godfrey said, "I don't remember."

"It was before you came up. We managed to get to London."

"But they let us go to London."

"Not to help with the cholera carts," said William Morris.

---

When Godfrey finished speaking, William said, "I knew you'd cut down all my arguments. But I will go on arguing. Your table and your voices are to you, what my romances are to me. I am afraid to name Florence Nightingale - that is, I have no power against my overwhelming feelings. If I were a devout Catholic, I would cross myself and be done with it. As to the others - I died with them. I met my death before the massed spears of The Hollow Land. That is why I say, all wars are wars of Roses. But perhaps I evaded the end. Red Harald did not get me with his axe. I was holding on to a tuft of yellow broom. The long spears had crowded me off the cliff edge. I had sheathed my sword and I heard their laughter. The broom gave before Red Harald's axe reached me. I fell down into The Hollow Land."

VII

270.

XIV.

He hadn't been altogether honest the last time, or he
had been too honest, he didn't know which. He had tried to
suggest that there was danger and had dragged in the Brownings,
to bolster up his argument. But would Robert Browning make
a remonciation if his curiosity were thoroughly roused?
William Morris didn't really think so. He wondered if
Browning had been clumsy, cruel, thoughtless in regard to
Elizabeth (her own name, Lis). He knew that now he himself
had kept faith with Godfrey. Godfrey had had the answer,
whether it was dictated by his dead sister or his unconscious
self, his "double" as he called it, didn't really matter.
The "double" might be the soul or conscience.

That is what Gabriel Rossetti had formulated in *Hand and Soul* - call the "double" the muse or inspiration, in his case. Gabriel Rossetti was apparently in sympathy with Elizabeth Siddall's dream or vision, though William so far, had taken the line that there was danger of Rossetti overtaxing her. Rossetti confessed it himself when he said, "that's what I do, overtax people."

But Robert Browning had really rescued Elizabeth Barrett
from semi-obscurity and possibly death. Was it the same with
Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddall? You could hardly

270
271.

compare the two men, though he admired them both unconditionally. But the two women seemed to have much in common.

In his own mind, that is - for what did he know of either?

He believed that Gabriel Rossetti was self-centred, indifferent to his surroundings. Browning was like a well-fed abbot or friar. "Materially, I am like Robert Browning," thought Morris, "though the dream is different." Browning might be unaware of the need for spiritual comfort, communion or "communication", as Godfrey called it. Rossetti was aware of the need, though he hadn't said so.

Godfrey had understood his reservations, William had gone back to Godfrey the evening after the talk about Shakespeare and the Roses.

It wasn't on the whole, much different from the work they had done with Faulkner, that is, the technique was the same, only Godfrey was working alone. William had asked Godfrey if de Fontenelle had worked alone, been disappointed or overdone the thing, and so tried to put him off. Godfrey didn't think so. He believed the inspiration or the impulse came when the time was ready; to force an issue was to court disappointment, but Godfrey was sure that Roland had not rushed in heedlessly; the time and place were ready. "Place is as

571
272.

important as time," Godfrey had said. "But once having established your time and place, can you work afterwards - anywhere?" William asked him. Godfrey didn't know. He believed these things were timed and to continue aimlessly, after the impact of the original contact was over, he thought was also to court trouble - as Roland had himself foreseen in the case of Valerie. Godfrey believed that his own contact was almost at an end, that is why he wanted to talk about it and to someone who might be to him, what he and Vernon had been to Roland. "Is it the same table?" William asked him. Yes, Godfrey had specified certain old pieces that he wanted sent on to him, he had said to furnish his man's room, though he only had the house valet; he wanted to be alone. They had sent the chairs and the table he had asked for. They had varnished and waxed the table. "I keep it in my bed-room," Godfrey told him.

William did not ask him what messages he and Vernon had had, when de Fontenelle was with them. He supposed they were routine, experimental as the work they had done with Faulkner. Godfrey believed if you held back the message, it died somehow. It reached out like a plant growing. You could lop off the awkward growth, but something in you would die with it. Not die entirely but perhaps wait for another hundred years or so, to put out a new shoot. William thought of the vine, its root

275.

and branches. Toward him, almost visibly, as from Godfrey,
the frail tendrils reached out; would they strangle him or
parasitically endanger his own strength? The vine and the
branches. Odd that the revelation should come from Godfrey
and in his comfortable arm-chair, not sweating with ecstacy
(as he phrased it to Ted and Fulford) kneeling on the stones
at Beauvais. Coming too, with no under-tone of tidal music,
incense and flaming banners. But there were candles on
Godfrey's table, and the decanter and the glasses. But the
table and the curtained room had, William knew, fulfilled his
need for communion more fully and more precisely, than High
Mass at Chartres or Beauvais. It was the literal revelation,
in time.

The frail tendril from Godfrey's Tree of Life reached
out to him, but the grapes had already been garnered, gathered
into the wine-press and the wine fulfilled him. Oxford had
been a hot bed of religious altercation, Christian Socialists,
humanitarians, Keble, Newman, Pusey and the rest of them.
But the fire of the combat was no longer heartening, by the
time he and Ted had settled at Exeter. They had their own
plan for a monastic foundation, the Order or Brotherhood of
Sir Galahad. They had talked endlessly, round the subject
but somehow, it had come to nothing. It was however, his
discovery of Malory that had first inspired them. William

273.

274.

had humbly chosen for himself, Sir Palomydes, the Knight
unloved.

Godfrey had said, in their first serious talk together,
after Ted and Dixon gave up Faulkner's table, that there was
always the tradition. Godfrey said he needed no proof of
this, but his own thoughts outran him. He could ask Vivien
or Carew questions. The answers were prompt, authoritative.

"Is this part of Arthurian legend?" Yes.

"Did Bacon experiment?" Yes.

"Did Newton?" Yes_no.

"How did they say yes-no?" William asked him. "There
was one tap," said Godfrey, "a distinct pause, then two taps.
We used the one-tap, two-tap signal with Roland, as we did
with Faulkner. There were some questions that I didn't care
to ask them, and occasionally, Carew wouldn't answer."

"Perhaps he couldn't," said William, but he did not
like to ask what questions were unanswered.

"It was mercy they were after; you were right about
Merci. And you were right about the East. Carew kept coming
back to it, e-a-s-t."

"Is that why you thought they wanted you to go there?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't follow. I went over some of the older

274
275.

Arthurian texts. There was one with Latin annotations. For once, I found my Latin useful. Didn't those paladin fellows pick up some mystery? There was a suggestion that when the fighting died down, they got together somehow, The Cross and Crescent."

"Do you think it likely?" Godfrey asked him. "I'm asking you to ask Carew," said William and when he said that, he knew that he had entered Godfrey's circle.

"We'll ask now," said Godfrey.

Godfrey brought out the table and said in a matter-of-fact way, "would you like to share it with me?" But William said, if the table talked alone to Godfrey, it was better if he sat back and let Godfrey do the asking. "But you can ask it mental questions," Godfrey told him, "if you want to."

¶ "I would rather ask out loud," said William. ¶ Godfrey laid his hands on the table. "Well, ask then," he said.

William laid down his pipe. "This is all very friendly," he said. "I confess, I was afraid of some transcendental business. It's warm here. I thought, I'd feel cold shivers. They're friendly people."

Said William Morris, "did the Cross and Crescent get together?"

"Yes," said the table.

276.

"All these mad new inventions," said William Morris,
"I suppose something will come of it, in time?"

"Yes," said the table.

Godfrey said, "they call it the telegraph de Dieu."
He took his hands off the table.

"I'll wait for your next question," said Godfrey.

William said, "thank you. I'll think this over." When
would these wars stop? He must formulate his question. But
why waste time, talking about war? He had already found the
answer in _The Hollow Land_. Harald was his enemy that time,
they met again after they were dead. That was after he met
Margaret, in Fytte the First. This would be Fytte the First,
for Vivien and Carew. But was it Carew answering? Better
leave that question, for the moment, thought William. In
Fytte the Second, Florian loses Margaret and finds desolation -
and his enemy. He could not go on to Fytte the Third and last,
until he (or until Florian) was reconciled with Harald. They
renew their quarrel, hand and fist as serfs do, then with
barbaric weapons, till Wulf kills Swerker, Florian and Red
Harald had lost their names with their identities, at least,
they had lost the names that they had died with. It was when
Wulf (or Florian) remembers and calls "Harald", that they regain
identity. Florian finds armour for himself and then for Harald,

277.

and Harald then (William remembered he had written) "looked
a good knight." Until you have unarmed your enemy and re-
armed him, you can not go on. Until you see that he looks
a good knight, you can not go on.

But that was afterwards.

Need we wait till afterwards?

Better not ask questions like that. "I must find the
right question, Godfrey," said William, "if I want the right
answer."

Godfrey had not seemed altogether sympathetic to the
Cross and Crescent idea, so that if there had been involuntary
muscular reaction on his part, it would be reasonable to suppose
that the table would have said no, to William's first question.
But perhaps Godfrey was sympathetic; "let's ask the question
again," said William Morris. Godfrey laid his hands back
on the table. "Were Cross and Crescent reconciled?" asked
William. The table spelt, t-e-m-p.

"Is that a whole word?" asked Godfrey.

"The table spelt l-u-m.

It stopped.

"Is there more?" asked Godfrey.

The table spelt, i-n.

The table spelt, t-e-m-p.

276
277.

But that was afterwards.

Need we wait till afterwards?

"The table spelt l-u-m.

It stopped.

The table spelt, i-n.

The table spelt, t-e-m-p.

22

"It's better write it down," said Godfrey.

"Good, listen, listen, listen," it's telegraph all right," said Miller. "What do you make of it?"

"It should say it's something about light coming in this," said Godfrey. "Good light, say? And keep for a minute. It was so to talk about it. It's good to have you here. This is a new department."

"It's Templates," said Miller.

Miller inserted some additional speaking of news in the "introduction" - "Hello, Templates, he had thought, what effect did it have?"

"I expect it's a really write of Doreen's."

"Doreen's write was all French," said Godfrey.

"Well, I'll agree it's about the Templates, the rights of skills, both according to that aneroid all her! were violations of the Board rules. Or all of them were violations of a law or a better write the bill."

Miller felt, in spite of himself, a serious relaxation. It brief to be right and hearty, "if it is a bill."

"Are you writing mental questions?"

"No, I am writing questions."

"Well, it's especially something, but I can't follow as I don't have your mental questions, but - now, wait. But it's stopped.

278
279.

O-m-n-u-m, it might be omnium. I think it's a mistake. Will you spell this again?" said Godfrey.

The table spelt o-m-n, paused and then spelt u-n. William wrote down the letters. "It's another telegraph, omn. un. for omnes unum. But why not ask?" said William.

"Is that right?" asked Godfrey. The table said, yes.

"It's almost too much," said William. He got out of his chair, presumably, to tap out his ashes on the fender.

William said, "I notice you said, it wants us to think about it. Hadn't we better think about it? And when you said 'it', I wondered. You said Vivien came, then Carew - don't they - ah - come any longer?"

"They're part of it. I don't understand it, myself. But after the first exultation, I'm afraid I overdid things. I lived with them. I was with them. I went over and over our life, our lives. Then, it seemed to me that if they had found each other - how shall I put it? It's what I mean by the candle burning by the open window - perhaps they singe their wings. This doesn't quite express it, but you see what I mean. After the proof, the fulfilment, surely they want to rest or go on? And I want on and on with them, asking ... of course, it wasn't your fault, how could it be? she answered. I was getting myself entangled."

280.

William knew that Godfrey had found _The Hollow Land_.

Godfrey said, "then, I understood Rolando. He had asked me not to go back to the table, not alone - and not the two of us together. He had said that the table was cool, it was comforting - our table, that is, as if he had been seared in the flame of some earlier experience. Later, I understood what he meant. He had wanted to spare me. He had over insisted that two people could not work together, therefore, by implication, how could one go on alone? It is the one alone who meets the flame. I know now that Rolando knew this, he wanted to spare me. He had said it was cool, it was comforting, it was England, the three of us together. He would have saved me. But as you said, it is impossible to rescue a moth."

"So your Rolando knew all about it. He knew that Valerie could and would go/alone, unless he stopped her. He knew that it would destroy her or drive her mad."

"I confess that I was worried about you, alone and palely loitering."

"I was not exactly worried about myself. I was determined to get out to the East -"

"And never come back? When did you stop working alone?"

"I stopped after Faulkner's table, spelt Vernon. Vernon knew nothing of Valerie nor of course, that I loved Vivien. I went back over our old meetings in the tower-room and again

250
281.

remembered Rolando saying, 'it was cool, it was comforting, it was England.' I asked a second time, a third time about you. You speak of your memories, your talks with Rossetti as being opiate or attar - "

"I had only one talk with Rossetti. I went in with Ted several times but that was different."

"I knew that I had tasted of Eternity or of Lethe. It might be Lethe. Not deadly night-shade, no not deadly night-shade -

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk -
but I would get out of England and I would work for England."

"You can work better for England by staying in England."

"You're a stout fellow, reliable, dependable and almost as mad as I am. This is the first time I've touched the table, since that night at Faulkner's when, after asking the mental question about you, I got Vernon for an answer. Of course, I don't write Rolando of these things, but I see now how he renewed faith or kept faith, by introducing Vernon and myself to his table parlant. We English chaps might so easily have shouted him down - "

"Dash it, Godfrey, you and Vernon are no English chaps."

587

282.

William the Englishman was surprised at his own intensity.

"You've been talking about England, about my staying in England - what do you mean by saying that Vernon and I aren't English?"

"Dashed if I know."

"You must mean something."

Godfrey pushed aside the table and deliberately sat down in the chair that William had just left.

"You've finished with the table?"

"Well, you just said, hadn't we better think about it? I asked too many questions, at the end. One word or part of a word sets up a ripple like a pebble thrown into a pool. That is, if one has a stout, reliable fellow like yourself about, to put the brakes on. It's that old Phaeton story - "

"Clipping the wings of inspiration? I would like to go on."

"To-morrow or any evening, you'll come in. This is to me, what we were to Roland - only, more so, I feel. I had no Latin."

"Do you call that Latin?"

"Sign-post Latin - I mean, I see it carved on old stones - "

"Tomb-stones?"

283.

"Mile-stones."

Godfrey sat down on the window-seat. "But before you go, you must answer my question, as my table or our table answered yours. What do you mean about Vernon and myself not being English?"

"Why does an Englishman take offence at being told he's not English?"

rather

"I wasn't offended; I'm afraid I was slightly flattered."

"Will it wait - the table?"

"It will wait forever."

"Perhaps I meant - well, I thought of you and Vernon, Roland, Vivien and Carew in some - damn it, you're out of Shakespeare, the house or the Tower is Belmont."

"Belmont?"

"The Merchant, you remember - and there it is. That's what I meant by saying we must go further back than Shakespeare. He mapped out all enchantment. I lose my clue - then, I say Belmont. It's the renaissance, we all know. Shakespeare re-oriented Italy. You're not English, that's the worst of it - you should be. Do you want to go home?"

"I don't want to tire you. I don't want you to get into the state that I did. There is time for it all, in time, in tempora, isn't that what they said? And we're all together, OMNES UNUM - so why rail at Shakespeare?"