482.

"Orsini. <u>Orsa</u> - Lady Bear. Ha, ha - rosa. I spell everything upside down. I can't help it. Not that the estimable Orsini ever heard of Dante. You mean what advantage for her to be in - in the conspiracy? It wasn't her idea. She never heard of the plot. It was Gus who was the blackamoor, blackmailer. He had (or would have) their comings and their goings - or he would bluff her. Not that she cared for what people thought or might think. She was desperate, I tell you. But if Gus could put a spoke in her wheel, Rota, Amor, involve her in a pseudo-circle or even in a so-called private-sitting with some other blackamoors, she-bears or blackmailers, he could cut her adrift from any hope of ever seeing Roland. Unless she promised to rope him in too. They would be watched everywhere. What they really wanted was to involve Rolando."

"All too - too compli-cated - don't care for politics."

"No heel-taps, you said politics, you're getting sober.
Rota, a wheel, to wheel, to go around. What Dante says - the
She-bear Orsa goes round the pole - the heaven, the north-
pole that is - rosa, a rose."

"What Godfrey said, the rose was the round, the table."

"Shouldn't think Godfrey could spell - "

483.

"But it was his table."

"You said it was Rolando's _télégraph._"

"Mechanical inventions, I asked if inventions would go further. I remember my very question, 'all these new mad inventions', I said, 'I suppose something will come of it, in time?'"

"You said you only had that one message, or two - _templum in templo._"

"I had a few answers to some questions, yes and no. Those were the only words I had spelled out. It was your message, not mine, I told you mine was TEMP. LUM. IN. TEMP."

"That's just what I was saying, TEMPLUM IN TEMPLO, the temple in the temple. It's the same message."

"I asked if TEMP, was for Templars, they said yes. But I told you all this. I told you - or you told me - it's the same thing. It was only about religion, it's being all one, OMN. UN."

"I said it was the dative. Have you got a Latin grammar? I said it was, _templum in templo_ to the Omnipotent One - dative Omnip - Omnip - _Uno_, anyhow, is one."

"Well, anyhow, Godfrey didn't agree about the Cross and Crescent."

484.

"Maybe he's right, for him, right. Those were Credentes by the altar, not Illuminati."

"But it was Godfrey's table - "

"You said it was Roland's - "

"We've said all this. But Roland tried to stop him - "

"What I said was a foot-note to a foot-note or bust.

What it asked was, what walks on four legs, then on three, then on two? No, I mixed it. What walks on four legs, then on two, then on three? Anyhow it's a damn silly question. If you asked for the question and didn't have the answer, your forfeit was death. A silly question, I always thought, an anti-climax, and the answer was as silly. 'Why Man,' says Oedipus, 'does that.' Do you see the reason? Now I'll be blasted if I give away the secret - I mean a thunder-bolt will dash me to perdition.
Can you stand the answer?"

"Answer - to - "

"I told you, Egypt. It was the Sphinx in Egypt. Oedipus asked the question but it wasn't Egypt. I mean, IT asked it. If you couldn't give the answer, the forfeit was death."

William Morris pulled himself to his feet. He jerked open the window and stood with his forehead, resting on the frame. From the shadowed garden, there was the cool scent of summer. Here, in Red Lion Square, with the distant traffic

485.

silenced, they might almost be in the country. He could clown
it with the best of them on these occasions. Gabriel was
superb, really. But he would cut the rest of the brown loaf
now, and get Gabriel some coffee.

"Statesmanship and authority," said Gabriel, "doing
things across chess-boards - Credentes maybe. They believe
in it, anyway some of them believe in it. The Illuminati
ain't always better people. They just know."

"But what they fetch in the lottery of knowing, ain't
anybody's business. It's got to last their life out. Once they
get the answer. But you go on getting answers, like that rose-
spray on the window. But didn't you say Lizzie recalled how
Mrs. Howitt had those messages - I remember those lingering
evenings - from the Gold Coast? Why couldn't the - watcher
call it? - double do the dealing? You had the answer -
lumen, you call it, LUM anyway. It was the last part of my
TEMPLUM but you can have it. Lume is light, lamp anyway.
Is that Latin or Italian? Have you got a dictionary? Words,
words, words. That's the devil of it. You go on getting
answers but you can't share them. Only sometimes, perhaps once
in a lifetime, you find another fellow going not so slowly crazy.

486.

He wears a blue shirt. He makes a clothes-line of his white ties and hangs his brushes in the window.

"But why bother about reincarnation? I don't say you do. We go on reincarnating backward in time, ordinary time, one's own childhood. I found my own delirium in Dante, in the *Vita*, though he presumably was grown-up when he had his.

"Then remembering ... you remember the clock ticking ...

"I didn't need any proof of Norton Ely's good faith. It was genius really. Then why do I get this - *grace* as the Church would call it. It's true, I said in the beginning that I wanted confirmation or comfort but I couldn't ask for confirmation of the - the greater from the lesser oracle. Do you notice how people fall off when you've had your great experience? When your knowing is - what shall I say now? - concentrated, crystallized, concentric - O damn, as I said, where's your dictionary? What I mean is, there's something about that in his *Rota*, his circle - he puts it in Latin in the *Vita*, a sort of spiritual geometry, all points of the circumference equi-distant from the centre - then you have your - final - answer."

"Is any answer final, ever?"

"You've got to believe it or you get out of your own circumference. You're kept in it by - affinity."

487.

"Some people have - or seem to have more than one affinity." William Morris wished he hadn't said it. "I mean -"

"Never mind what you mean. There is our Lis. Does it make any difference to the picture that there's Lillith? Lizzie swep¹ out. She would never understand, though in Paris when we saw Madame de Fontenelle she confessed, she shared her with me. It's the old pattern; there were three ladies in Folquet's amoros pensamens and in Dante's Vita."

William Morris was back at the beginning. Now he thought wistfully, of that last scene in the Palace. He was sure of himself then, at least sure in so far as - as the _Bocca Baciata_, the Kissed Mouth was concerned. "Does it make any difference to the picture?" Gabriel had just asked. There was Miss Herbert, too, but she was widely admired and an artist. "Ted said there was to be a benefit performance of some sort, with Miss Herbert appearing, in Oxford," he said.

"I'll do some sketches from the stalls," said Gabriel. "She promised to sit to me for the triptych. I'll finish that too, sometime. In the meanwhile, I can only sketch her across the footlights."

Thought Morris, "was it after all, delirium, fantasy on my part?" He had not seen the picture, he did not want to see it.

488.

Gold at her head and gold at her feet, but that was his poem
Crecy, not Gabriel's picture, Ah, qu'elle est belle la
Marguerite. And he had had it all out with himself, going
over and over every minute of their time together. Just
twelve meetings. He called it twelve anyway, to go with her
twelve castles, her star-signs, most poignantly remembering,
we wouldn't know - at least, I wouldn't know, not knowing
my birthday, not even the month. It would help to know one's
birthday.

"Ah, yes - her beautiful face. I believe Ruskin admires
her vastly." The candles were sputtering again, double candles
reflected in double mirrors, did Gabriel say she said in Paris?
Had he seen her across the footlights? Lyddy used to say I
ought to go on the stage, after my doing Aunt Day for her.

"You'll - you'll remember me to Miss Siddall when you
write her."

"Miss Siddall? I thought we were talking of Miss Herbert.
And why suddenly so - so stiffish, as Liz once reminded me I
called Wykeham Deverell. Liz had an uncanny way sometimes, of
remembering. She could repeat whole conversations. Lord knows,
what she and Dev talked of. He told her her voice wasn't
strong enough for the stage. Whoever thought it would be?

489.

She's too tall, anyway. Did Liz talk to you of acting?

"Only in connection with a story about her sister - entertaining her sister when neither of them could sleep."

"It isn't such a bad crib. I went over there. Lydia's another stunner but she's getting married to some newspaper fellow. Lydia would do for Oxford; I used her for a Queen of Cyprus, but I didn't see the Roman after her engagement - not brown unlike Lizzie but with dark hair."

"Candles reflecting double candles, did you say she said?"

"She said, 'and each set of candles lights a separate room, and you can't prove it but you can see it.' Is that what you mean?"

"There's something so - so human about her."

"Inhuman, you mean. Bill says she's fey."

"Fey - faery. She used the same word, only she called it wayy."

"How way - the Faery Queene? I'll have to do Guenevere from memory."

"It's w-a-y-y, a word out of a Herald Book I gave her. She sent it back, it's around somewhere. It's wayy or undy, curved like sea-waves. She's like Undine."

490.

"Even Ted said something of the sort."

"Even Ted?"

"Not that it matters. Our Liz swep' out. But Ted could
have brought Lady Greensleeves in to meet Lizzie, while she
was still around at Chatham."

"I never thought of - I mean, wouldn't Lis find - "

"Greensleeves boring? No, she's a pet, the only thing
I have against her is that she won't do for my pictures. No
doubt, Ted will find Maid Marianne in her or a faery Goosegirl.
He wants to do the Beggar-maid and Copetua - he'll get there
in time - and a Mermaid, dragging a man down to the depth.
Do you think he thinks Lizzie is a Mermaid?"

"I never talk to Ted of - of Lis."

"Nor I, neither. But Ted will be on the line before
we know it. I told Dev it was a rotten picture, his first,
*Entracte* or *At the Ball* or something of that sort, he called it,
and the one after that was Lizzie. Lizzie and me and Dev
himself, as Orsino - my God, what a coincidence. I mean
Orsino is the Duke, you remember in *Twelfth Night*. Dev did his
own portrait for it. Lizzie was Viola."

"I - I remember."

"Did you see the picture? Hanged if I know where it's
got to. I finished *The Marriage* after - after - "

491.

"The marriage?"

"Of Rosalind and Orlando. Fancy Dev, Orsino and Gus in
this Orsin? business. Could anyone have invented that? Did
she ever tell you how she met Dev?"

"Someone, perhaps Ted, said it was his mother going to
a bonnet-shop."

"I don't mean that. Everyone knows that story. I mean,
did she tell you *she* put Dev onto his mother/ buying
in the first place?"

She was standing on the estrade. It was in this very
room. He had come in that door. Dev immediately suggested,
as he had done that first time in Kew, that they go out together.
He unrolled his drawing-paper. "I can work and talk at the
same time, if you can't," he had said. Now he said, "Deverell
would have kicked me out, the first time I came in."

"In?"

"In that door. I dropped my kit in the corridor - what
was left of what I had then. They'd sold up my books but they
were Bill's mostly, and some sticks of furniture, I had at the
last place. I'd been staying at Brown's. When I got back, I
had no place to go to - no place to work in, I mean; I
could always sleep in Bill's room, at home.

492.

"She was standing on the estrade. Dev lifted his hand. His gestures were always perfect. He wanted her to clear out. The same thing had happened the first time, when I saw her in Dev's old studio at Kew. He said he had promised a friend - I remember how he said it, 'the lady is not a model, I promised a friend, when she consented to sit for Viola, that she was not to be approached by any other artist.' What I want to know and never found out is - who was this friend?"

"I confess, I wondered myself. We were talking about that - that Gregor - "

"Call him Godfrey."

"She didn't know Godfrey. She said, could you be in love with someone you'd never seen? She volunteered, it wasn't Allingham."

"I wonder."

"She said it wasn't a fellow called Garth, a stunning name - I don't remember - "

"Garth Wilkinson. Damme, it might be old Wilkinson. He was somewhat struck with Lizzie, I thought, when we went to see him. It would be someone upstanding and conventional, I'll bet."

"She said, someone said he was tall and upright as a spear."

493.

"As to falling in love with someone you've never seen,
what of butterflies?"

(He had said, "is there anything so white as a white
tropic-flower?")

"You mean - "

"They sense each other with their whiskers, don't they?
Antennae, I suppose you'd call them. Thousands of miles off - "

William Morris thought, "I felt them come together in a
new dimension - the white flowers."

O Gabriel - Gabriel!

"I told you, didn't I, that we live in our affinities,"
said Gabriel Rossetti.

494.

V.

It was the same sort of room that she had had at the
pension with Mrs. Kincaid, above the stone steps by the olive
orchard. Perhaps that's why her thoughts went back to that
time, the last time she had been alone. It was spring but the
rain was sweeping across the olives; it was spring that is,
for the South, but the almond-blossom was drowned out. She had
drawn back into her room thinking, "I might better be back in
England, I'd have a way of getting a fire, Mrs. Tozer had a
fender even in the office. There's no way of getting a fire,
fancy not even a fire-place, I don't believe in the whole house
and the stove only in the downstairs room, where you can't
breathe for stuffiness." Not that she would have put a match
to a fire if it was laid there. She would huddle in Weymouth
Street in the basket-chair with the bed-quilt wrapped around
her, sometimes even, with the window open, to the horror of
Ellie passing; Ellie said she could feel through the crack
under the door when the fire wasn't going proper. They let her
fetch the small kindlings herself, from under the stairs at any
time, not even counting what she took, until she recalled it to
them, "well, say eighteenpence for the week's sticks," Mrs. Bailey
would say, and Elizabeth would protest "but you didn't count

495.

the coal in, I told Ellie to keep count, she laid the fire at least three times anyway without my telling." Not that she would light the fire, when laid. Ellie would creep in when she heard her on the stairs or lingering maybe, in the hall, saying good-bye to Gabriel. They were always very pleasant to her at Weymouth Street and understanding about Gabriel.

She didn't want the fire lit and it was summer anyway, well "the days are drawing in", they remarked now, at the shop where she got her pencils, a corner-shop, shaped somewhat like Aunt Day's, but stationery, chiefly, though it wouldn't seem out of the way to ask for candles or even matches; Aunt Day's was chandler's, really. There was the chemist too, obliging with the laudanum.

The days were drawing in. She had conscientiously explored the neighbourhood and then taken Lyddy over the ground again, when she was with her. She had stayed in Sheffield before she came to Matlock, with the Ibbitts, relations of Dad's auctioneer cousin. She had done Antique twice a week, at the School of Art and gone about, visiting the various sites, the chasm, the shale hill, getting almost to Hope one day, on an excursion with a group of students. Lyddy wrote home that Lizzie had never looked better.

496.

It was getting away from Gabriel and all of them that made her look better. For a time, she played her small part in a small town - or rather her large part. She was important. They listened to her. She had been to Paris.

She was not unusual looking, not for Sheffield, and she adopted herself to the fashions, with just those artful, almost unnoticable touches that made all the difference. She was one person, Elizabeth Siddall, connection of the Ibbitts; Sara taught drawing and was impressed with her, her brother worked at music when out of the factory. She was a student with other students, none of whom were particularly gifted.

Not that she needed the laudanum, the pain wasn't that bad. It was being reminded - funny! While Lyddy was here, she was too occupied taking Lyddy about, to be reminded. Not that there was much to do compared to London, even compared to Sheffield. She was glad that she would no longer be forced to take an interest in what they called in Sheffield, the development. She could keep out of what was fast growing to a resort, and fashionable, mostly for rich invalids. Perhaps, that's why she felt she could rest now, it wouldn't be thought out of the way, if she made no effort, now Lyddy had gone home. Some of the Sheffield acquaintances had been on holiday and helped make

497.

things bright for Lyddy with excursions. There was Mr.Sykes
and Mr. Green from the School and Annie Drury, friend of Sara,
staying with friends. It was the Wheelers actually, who had
suggested the Derbyshire hills in the first place, and Lyddy had
settled her in this same lodging-rooms or pension, not so unlike
the one above Nice, as she was only just now thinking. This
was her second visit, really.

It was cold when Lyddy brought her and it was quiet, but
she didn't like what they called "the waters", and then Mrs.
Ibbitt heard of it and said she better come to Sheffield and be
with company, in the winter. Perhaps it had been better. It
left her free now.

Or did it drag her back, now? She couldn't rightly say
which, yet. It was their being interested in her for herself,
like a person who had never heard of Gabriel Rossetti. She
had asked Lyddy not to talk about him, but briefly, "yes, Lizzie
is engaged but doesn't want it talked of." It was the little
stone-houses with gardens at the back with rows of hollyhocks,
old-fashioned, that reminded her of Hastings. It was the sea
at Hastings, this was mountains, well, rightly speaking, hills
really. What would have happened if she had, as he put it,
accepted his gentians? It was how he said it that came back,

498.

"I was born to mourn over what I can not save." Well, she had told Mr. Ruskin she was not worth saving, the last time she wrote him, insistent on not taking the money again, having done nothing really properly to show for it. But the cheque came back, she had to get away, she thought she would have died, even in Hampstead where Mary found the rooms for her, in Spring Cottage. She had to see Gabriel sometimes, even if she kept away from Chatham Place, and she couldn't help thinking what was going on there. It was his talking of them all taking a house together - though he said afterwards, it was an idea really of the Oxford fellows, as he called them - that sent her right off. She couldn't speak for stammering.

What if she had gone to Switzerland that winter? It was now, the comet-year as they called it, but the comet hadn't come to much, though it was an excuse for staying out on the river and having midnight picnics, with some of the older ladies along for chaperone. It was what she had called "next year", when she did the cards for Mr. Morris in the tea-shop. She just hadn't thought of Mr. Morris. She answered his first two letters, as she was explaining how she was sending the book back and some of the papers he had sent to her. They were relative to the story *Gold Chord*, that he had had ideas for. Well, he better finish that story. She didn't want to recall it.

499.

In Sheffield, once she started the art-classes and got acquainted with the students, it might never have happened, hardly any of it, that is. Hastings came back, in the beginning, because of these lodgings and the pension at Nice. Nice was of course different, but there was something reminiscent in the up-hill stone steps at the back. There, she first began on her story and was serious enough to argue a date with Gabriel, that he got wrong. As if it mattered!

Hand and Soul, he called his story and it was beautiful and no one could compete with Gabriel, not even Mr. Morris and Mr. Jones. She didn't count Hunt and Millais and Ruskin, they were already set, you might say. It was Gabriel who was flaming with inspiration.

And what did inspiration do? It got inside you, even thinking of Gabriel and how she saw Halberd snatch at the green-jacket of that twin, her equal, they threw stones at, with red hair - Algernon, they called him.

Not that she liked Mrs. Ruskin from the beginning, though it was reported back that their Annie or their Jennie, the girl in the white apron, said Miss Siddall was lady-like in her deportment. Mrs. Ruskin meant to be kind, really and they were so mad at Effie, though they never named her, that they would

500.

accept anybody and she was with Gabriel anyway, and there was
no question, but old Mr. Ruskin (he wasn't so old really) said
he wished he'd had a daughter like her. Mrs. Ruskin sent around
some bone-powder afterwards, funny, with directions how to use
it. She meant to be kind really but she had harsh manners,
though she took her through the house and as good as said, she
should be free of it, to walk there if wanted to come out at any
time. They had some old trees and one Lebanon cedar, but
Gabriel didn't like Denmark Hill, nor anything about it. Mr.
Ruskin showed her rock-crystals and those pictures he did in
Switzerland, but she didn't go back.

Maybe, she was putting it all on to Ruskin (Dr. Wilkinson
said you invented or put one thing on another), relative to her
terror of Mr. Greenacre, that is, relative to the person who would
take away her terror. Maybe, she had put it all on Mr. Ruskin
or even on Dr. Wilkinson - that person, standing by the altar.

When it came to that, you might put it on anybody. They
worshipped heroes, Mr. Morris had told her that last time in the
tea-shop. Well, it was the last time, anyway. Whatever she got
over, she would never get over his turning on her that way in the
Palace. Of course, she'd read the poem and memorized some lines,
like she did with his poems, but she thought nothing much about
it, one way or another, nothing personal that is, seeing with her

501.

mind always that it wasn't her that he was thinking of - till
he turned on her, making it obvious, as Gabriel had shown him
sketches of her as Guenevere (so he told her the time before)
that he wanted, since she wouldn't give him that first picture
that he asked for. She had told him that Mr. Ruskin had the
sketches, he might get them from Mr. Ruskin, but he said he
couldn't do that. Putting that together with the fact that she
saw he had been listening to gossip, had struck her like it was
the knife of Mr. Greenacre; though she said she wouldn't talk
about it, she came back to its opposite in the tea-room, his
friend who he had told her was a fencer and associate, in some
way, with the Brigade. Then getting that associated in her mind,
with death, because his friend's friend was killed out in the
Crimea and thinking of Godfrey as dead.

Thinking he was dead even that first rainy day, when she
did the cards for him ... why did she have to put all that unto
a stranger, someone she had never met and even were he living,
that she hardly cared to meet now. It might be anybody, she
herself said Gregor was a sort of Saint George. So would anyone
be, like Dad talking about Wellington, having made a God of him,
Dad being only fifteen for Waterloo. But she couldn't think
somehow, of the Duke of Wellington nor any corresponding to him,

502.

being in the story. It would be more like Nelson, taking away
that period-uniform, like that portrait she saw with Gabriel
at the National Gallery, a loan collection, she remembered, for
she went back, something striking her in the way his eyes looked
out, but the portrait was gone with the others of the period.
Dad and James had never talked much of Nelson. Perhaps that's
why she could claim for herself her personal discovery of him.
Dad was only five when Lord Nelson died on the Victory at
Trafalgar. She remembered the date that way, subtracting ten
from Waterloo.

Waterloo meant nothing to her but talk of the new station.
She didn't know who did the portrait, his right arm was gone
that he lost at Santa Cruz, but both eyes blazed out. Perhaps it
was an ideal portrait made up, but it looked real. There were
decorations (she wouldn't know what) and what looked like a
cut-steel cockade on his admiral's hat that fitted on his grey
hair, a wig, she supposed, being that late eighteenth century,
but it was the way his grey hair and the steely decoration on
his hat, seemed to bring out the light in his eyes. She couldn't
say what colour his eyes were, they would have to be steel-blue.

It was a steel aigrette, comparable to that hawk-feather
her out-rider wore in the forest, but this was the sea. It was

503.

making someone the opposite of the terror of that knife strik-
ing, it would have to be a soldier and she didn't know any
soldiers. But she was always watching the ships at Wapping,
looking (as she had told Mr.Morris when she tried to get his
thoughts away from India) for the Prince out of her story.
It was just a story and it might as well be Nelson for it
(whose portrait at any rate, she had seen), as Godfrey Lushington.

Why go back so far as something before Dante? She remembered
those dates, having caught Gabriel out on quoting Dante, in
*Hand and Soul*, before Dante was born. Not that it mattered, really.
But there was something about numbers, you could work wonders
with them. Well, wasn't it numbers, her doing accounts for Dad,
that had really recommended her to Mrs.Tozer? There were plenty
of girls about, for bonnets. But she got preference, as Mum
explained how she had helped Dad in the shop with the accounts,
and besides, there was Mr.Tozer, as Mum for a joke, reminded
Mrs.Tozer (an old friend from Mum's Euston Road days) inviting
Lizzie to work in the shop when she was only *that* high.

Maybe it familiarized her with the period, working it out,
wondering long after Mr.Tozer was dead, if she got the dates
right. Yes, she had worked it back, he could have been a boy
who just remembered. Well, perhaps later, she imagined what he

504.

might have seen, getting the guillotine mixed up with thoughts
of - but she was done thinking of Mr. Greenacre. Gabriel
and she had made up a story there in Paris, but it was music
that she thought of, making out that Lady was a Princess.

Mr. Tozer was a little old gentleman when she was a child.
He had talked of Paris, though she must have made some of it up,
out of terror herself, afterwards. Say Mr. Tozer was twenty years
older than Dad, he would be nine for 1789, a date anybody could
remember.

It was like *The Tale of Two Cities*, though she would never
read a word of Dickens, after what he wrote of Mr. Millais'
*Carpenter Shop*, for all Dad used to read the instalments out
aloud to them, gathered in the sitting-room under the lamp.
The hideous red-haired boy, Dickens had said, and his common-looking
mother would have disgraced a gin-shop. It was how they had
thought of the Pre-Raphaelites, in the beginning.

And now she was back at her own beginning, and that last
talk she had had alone with her father. Wasn't it just like
her? It was what Dickens called the "loathsome minuteness" of
their paintings. She was, for all her talk, siding with them -
who could help it, after what someone called Mr. Dickens writing
superior about art? Charles Dickens - it was Dad's name and

505/506.

Charlie's, and maybe it all came back to an older brother who she lost before she saw him, being there to protect her, a red-headed child, "wry-necked" (Dickens even called Him), what they were always talking about in Gabriel's pictures of her, that is, what they had talked about before Mr. Hunt had his big success with *The Light* and Annie Miller in *The Awakened Conscience*.

Maybe, it was her conscience that was awakened, with Mr. Morris drawing attention to a lady maligned by vicious gossip. Yes, now she saw it, "wry-necked", peering around, why, even Mr. Morris spoke of Guenevere being twisted or walking away like one lame, an impression she got anyway, from the poem. She sent back the *Defence of Guenevere* with the others. And now she saw what she didn't dare see before. It was Dad gave her that blow, suggesting somehow that honour in their family was something inherited, along with those *Three Birds* on the 'scutcheon, as Mr. Morris called the coat. It was on her like an icy-finger, like Mr. Morris said something touched him in the Palace. It was Death touched her, Dad suggesting her being dishonourable and with Gabriel. It was being alone, standing there by the table with the music-folder on it, and for all her blind infatuation of him, when she was *that* high, and him playing the violin and reading aloud to them, and speaking as anyone

507.

could see, like a gentleman, she knew that she must walk out
of that room with her head high, because it wasn't only
Gabriel but Mr. Ruskin, Professor Ruskin of Oxford, thought well
enough of her to offer her like it might be almost seven times
what Mrs. Tozer offered her, what Dad was about to offer her to
go back to the shop.

And "wry-necked", like Charles Dickens called the Christ
Child in John Everett Millais' *The Carpenter Shop*, she had
looked back, only with not enough "loathsome minuteness". It
wouldn't make any difference anyway, whether she wrote Mr.
Morris or not, she wasn't writing anyone but Lyddy and Gabriel
just to quiet his conscience, and keep him from rushing up, on
an impulse, to Matlock. But she could think things out here,
and what did it matter if she got into a fever? It was worth
it.

508.

VI

She stood frozen there, by the table and it was like
she said in Paris of those mirrors, you were in different
rooms or reflected in different mirrors, and you could see
it but you couldn't prove it. But it was almost a relief
to see it, to feel it, rather. It was Dad, it wasn't Mr.
Morris, though she was there too, in the royal bed-room,
herself struck cold, in a brocade chair she couldn't get out
of, though (she remembered) a moment since, she had planned
drifting to the door-way, through the narrow corridor with
the windows looking out on the Dutch garden, and across the
grass through the brick-walled rose-garden, to the little
door at the far end - or through the wide court-yard under
the clock tower, out of the Lion gates. It was like it was
yesterday.

But yesterday too, she was standing by that round
table in their sitting-room at Kent Place, and it was summer,
the summer before she went to Paris. It was last year, the
Peace Year that Mr. Morris struck her, and now she blessed
him like she had blessed Harry, way back in the beginning
when she first fancied she might be something other than the
ginger-cat, he called her. Mr. Morris was right. She had
seen things through a distorting mirror, that flawed two-piece

509.

mirror in the little ante-room, off the glassed-in section
where the vine was (planted, it was said, by Henry), where
they sat the first time they were caught in the rain.

You could see it but you couldn't prove it, she had
said to Gabriel of the mirrors reflecting candles while
there was music playing. But you could prove the flawed
surface of the two-piece grey-green glass, "don't look in it,"
Mr. Morris had said. Right across her memories now, if she
looked close with that minuteness Dickens carped at in them,
there was that dividing line, now she came to see it, where
the mirror was divided. What would she be but frozen for-
ever, standing by the three-feet round-table in their sitting-
room, if it hadn't been for Gabriel?

You might say if it hadn't been for Gabriel, she would-
not have been struck down by her own father talking about
hohour, as if it was a word belonging to them, in some set
way, because of that shield. But she had been struck down
long before that, though it wasn't Gabriel struck her and
it wasn't Mr. Morris, but it hadn't (that first time) di-
vided her life in half, she was still at Kent Place for all
the terror stalking her round the tan-yards. She still had
Lyddy to talk to nights, before Lyddy quitsted, sitting

510.

propped upright in bed. But when Dad spoke of honour and
"my favourite daughter", she knew that she must walk away
from that table and get to the door somehow, away from him
who had always till now, stood between her and the terror.
She walked away in her sleep - her nightmare, she had called
it to Mr. Morris in the royal bed-room.

Dad was no longer there between her and the terror, so
she worked herself into a story - it was the very night
she came back, sitting alone in the basket-chair in Chatham
Place, thinking of the cholera.

She had made up stories for herself and sometimes for
Lyddy. But for the first time, the story was outside her,
she had only to watch it happening. O, it wasn't so clear,
it didn't go on like a proper page in a book, more like a
dream it was, but she thought she was awake when he came out
of the forest with her hawk-feather in his cap. There was that
coat too, with Eagle displayed as well as Three Birds and the
word Honour.

She thought of Walter Deverell and that picture he
hadn't even begun, but talked much of, The Flight of an
Egyptian Ibis. Why should she think of that now? Was
it thinking of Lord Nelson and his aigarette, or maybe, the
Battle of the Nile? But in what Mr. Dickens had called

511.

"loathsome minuteness", little things stood out and she never seemed to get on with the story proper. She could never get over Mr. Dickens calling Him (for the Carpenter's Child was the Christ Child to her) hideous, and Mr. Dickens with Tiny Tim and Little Nell, who seemed so fond of children. If it had been anyone else, she might have thought no more of it than of their ~~beginning to speak~~ of Gabriel and his school, as decadent; Gabriel had first spoken the word to her, there in Paris, though she didn't know rightly what it meant, ~~décède~~ in her little dictionary, meant dead. It didn't seem they were dead, if anything, they were too much living.

She had her choice now, Dr. Wilkinson had as good as told her of it. He was Swedenborgian really, but even people who weren't of the new faith, spoke highly of him, considering him a very clever doctor. He had new ideas, correspondence of the mind and body and of dreams even. Mrs. Howitt had taken her, in the first place, and Gabriel had escorted her to the house, on several occasions. It was Garth Wilkinson first said, she would burn out.

She hadn't then properly left home, but she could live walking across the river, in some way, so that she could imagine lilac-bushes where the decayed wood-steps were and the old barge, drawn up at low tide. It wasn't always pleasant and

512.

she would hurry past the wharves, boys sometimes shouted at her, but there was no use wasting time, anyhow making herself conspicuous, she was on a secret errand. She was walking across the river to Mrs. Tozer's but that wasn't the secret errand.

Dr. Wilkinson seemed to know somehow, that she was somewhere else, when she was about her business. She must give up her work. She had already almost as good as given it up. She did not tell him that the fever burnt her out more well, she never blamed John Everett Millais for the floating draperies.

"In proportion," Garth Wilkinson had said, "as your mind over-clarifies with acute, cerebral perception, your body weakens." He explained exactly what he meant by cerebral perception. It was a special sort of thinking, he said, but it wasn't the consumption. She knew they thought she had consumption, when they took her to him.

Yes, it might have been Garth Wilkinson in the forest, but it just wasn't. He wasn't in his way so unlike Mr. Ruskin, both of them tall men with those eyes, set like glass-agates.

But Mr. Ruskin wasn't satisfied and sent her to Dr. Ackland. That was some time after, but Dr. Ackland said

513.

more or less, the same thing. She couldn't see herself then,
staying on at Oxford, but now that she realised that she could
have a place in Sheffield, she could even think again of Oxford.
Gabriel had written to her, telling her of the wall painting
they were doing for the Oxford Society or the Oxford Union,
as he called it. He and Mr. Morris and Mr. Jones had rooms
together in the High. He had, he wrote, regretted her at
first. He was doing the Guenevere from memory, though they
had found a model. Her father kept a livery-stable, at least,
Gabriel called him a _palfrenier_ and in her little dictionary
_palfrenier_ meant groom. Gabriel wrote that this girl rode
her father's horses, but it would hardly be a girl from one
of the big houses who would sit for them, and an ordinary
groom wouldn't have use of the horses, she didn't imagine, to
lend out to his family, so it must be that he kept stables.
The name Gabriel said, was Burden.

They would be on their painting, the whole summer and on
into the winter, he thought. Should he come up to see her?
This is just what she was trying to avoid. She wrote more
cordially to tell him she was quite happy, and as if eager for
news, who was there and what else did he plan painting? There
was quite a group of them, he wrote back, they were being much
talked about, he sent her a page from one of the Oxford papers.

514.

Some of the names were unfamiliar to her. He was sending two of her pictures, *Clerk Saunders* and *The London Magdalene* to an exhibition in America. He was still wearing his plum-coloured coat. They had seen Miss Herbert in a benefit. There was a new fellow turned up, called Swinburne. Tops had read them a stunning poem, *Peter Harndon*.

Of course, she might know if she asked for news, she might expect to get it. She had tried to keep cordial, if she was what he called stiff or shrewish, he might think she was having one of her old attacks, like Mary Howitt wrote him that summer when she was at Hastings, and he might think he ought to come up to see her. It was before Lyddy left that she last wrote him, so she could say Lyddy was with her, and Lyddy wrote at the end of the page, "I have never seen Lizzie looking better." That was while she was still half-living, though physically, she was more "natural looking", as they told her. It was only half a life, she felt now, talking of ordinary things with kindly people, perhaps her body was more living, but her mind was dimmed out. What could you do if your mind ate up what reserve of strength you had? "I mean," thought Elizabeth Siddall, "could I for long, really live like I thought I might live when I first went to Sheffield? Was it really living? But who can decide that for me? But

515.

it needn't be decided. In any case, they are all away from
London."

For the first time since she left London, now almost nine
months ago, Elizabeth Siddall had a sudden pang of longing.
Perhaps she had thought of London, but if she had, it was
always with a prayer under her breath, "Dear God, you let
me get free." Her prayer went further back than nine months
ago. She was loyal and she always asked Lyddy for news.
Yes, James was taking over the customers, it gave Dad time
now for his new department. Funny, Dad at his time of life,
taking up new interests. It was lenses, Lyddy explained,
until he got his papers they weren't speaking of it, optical.
It was for glasses and he was interested in working up the
profession. Funny, he never that she remembered, spoke of
outside interests. But she had been gone a long time.
Perhaps that's what he was asking her back to the shop for,
that last time she saw him, really alone, so that he could be
more free for - whatever it was. "Papers?" "Like a chemist,
you might say," Lyddy told her. "Not ordinary glasses, fit-
ting and giving tests in far and near sights, with charts and
alphabets." So Dad was optical, almost like a doctor.

Well, she needn't have worried, they had got along

516.

without her. But - had she been sitting here all this time,
and the light going? Mrs. Cartlidge was calling from the
stair-head, "don't let me disturb you, Miss Siddall, but
the kettle's boiling."

517.

VII

It came back. She couldn't remember how many times she
had had that same dream. It was always of course, different
and she forgot the details, or the dream altogether, till it
came back. This time, she would try to remember it; perhaps
if you remembered it and didn't let it go for very terror, you
might rid yourself of it. It might never come back. She
didn't want to write it down - could she? A dream vanished
when you tried to recollect it, or you let it go, if it was the
nightmare.

It would be better to go out, with the sun shining.
They brought her breakfast on a tray, she only had the tea and
toast and a boiled egg that Mrs. Cartlidge insisted on. She
had set the tray on the dresser in the hall and now she sat,
half-dressed, with her house-robe wrapped around her. It would
be better to go out. She was really stronger and she liked
the old town and looking in the windows of the new row of shops,
too, on the promenade. The old town wasn't changed much, so
Mrs. Cartlidge told her.

She needn't actually write it. Dr. Wilkinson had said
that one thing reminded you of another, and he could diagnose
even from dreams. It was a new idea, but Garth Wilkinson was
Swedenborgian. It appears, some can live real situations in

518.

dreams, repeat old memories and go back in time. But that was
at the Howitts, someone asking him if he believed in lives
repeated. It wasn't a consultation.

"We repeat in this life, what we have lived, or haven't
lived out, in another," she remembered him or someone saying.
Well, she was repeating what she had lived already. There was
Mum coming along behind them, and she and Lyddy would rush on,
for the stones that began, like shingle on a beach, seemed to
have spread. There were small stones, clean as if sea-washed,
but they were far from the sea. Maybe, that was recollection
of stumbling along, the last part of the excursion to the Peak.
There was no mountain in sight, but endless clean stones, on
the up-hill slope.

They went on, she and Lyddy; they would find a way down.
She looked over the edge where the shale stopped suddenly, and
it was a sheer ledge, but below, was a shelf, a small valley,
trees growing and a path to somewhere.

She and Lyddy went along, and then she lost Lyddy. It
was a throng of people, young ladies, no one elderly. What
surprised her, they were all in green but different stuffs and
patterns. She wondered at the elegance of the costumes, they
were all cut different, different sleeves and neck-lines, not
one design repeated, nor one whole length of plain colour, but

519.

a jacket maybe of dull contrasting velvet to what might be a skirt of taffeta. One had wings inset of another material, round her hat - not the rim - the - the - she couldn't think of the word for it, the *bowl* of the hat. It was like *appliqué*, not embroidered wings. But every variety of green, no one whole costume of unrelieved plain colour; one had wide sleeves of half-transparent chiffon, contrasting with the basque jacket. They were none exaggerated, but of a quiet elegance and distinction no one could imagine. She was caught in with them. There was no crowding, though there were so many, all ladies and young-ladies. They were in a town, as if going to a reception, but it struck her, it was more like expectancy before a theatre, the *matinée*; they were not evening dresses. For the theatre, *matinée* is afternoon, but the word means morning, and it was morning when she woke up, after the dream, with the sun making a ladder from the shutter-slats, on the wall opposite her bed. And she sat up, wondering if this time, she would really die of terror.

It started with her getting separated from the ladies. Yes, it must have been a theatre, but she had got in the wrong door. There were curtains hanging, as it might be before rooms, three sets of hanging curtains, like stage-curtains but it wasn't a stage. The wind blew out the heaving hanging of the middle

520.

curtain. It was a long, dim hall, pleasant enough, though she was alone and somehow implicated. In what? She might look behind the middle curtain that was anyhow, lifted at the edge, with the wind. This idea took hold of her, but frightened her. She lifted the curtain, the wind had blown it, anyway. There was nothing in the middle room, furnished if at all, sparsely. As she dropped the curtain, a voice came from somewhere far off, maybe from a distant stage or maybe from the next division or partition, behind the closed curtains. She did not look behind the other curtains. It was a man's voice, singing.

Lyddy wasn't with her but Lyddy cropped up, outside. There was no division. They were in the country. From the elegant entrance and the crowds, she had gone through the side-wings, and straight from - Paris, it might have been, only it was home; the ladies were more elegant than Paris, but they were her own people. She jotted down the sequence of the dream in her note-book. She would fill in the details, afterwards.

There was Lyddy, and they must get somewhere, find a house where they could all stay. They came across a cottage, straight from Paris or the heart of London. It might do. Well, it was more of a loft, the room they got to; they looked out of the window. There was a large comfortable manor-house or farm-house, outside, low-lying with elm trees. But cattle were coming home,

521.

she was afraid of the long-horned, shaggy cattle, so Lyddy
would jump out of the window and ask at the house, if they
could stay there. All the same, she began to undress and
standing in her bare feet, she saw the door sway inward. It
was not a very strong door. There was only a small catch-
bolt. She rushed to the door and pushed herself against it,
her weight seemed to have no value but the bolt held. The
catch was two-thirds up the door and the lower door was pushed in,
so the crack there widened and showed the shaggy pelt of the
bull. The animal seemed far wider than the door, his great
hairy shoulders must push through. Now, had she time to bundle
her clothes together and jump out? She looked down, but there
was a bull-calf lying stretched below. He might have been just
born, he might be dead.

It was then, she woke, but the terror didn't leave her.

....

Maybe, she got green sleeves from hearing Gabriel speak
of the girl that Mr. Jones was going to marry, a Miss Macdonald.
They called her, Lady Greensleeves. She wasn't thinking of
Miss Macdonald when she turned on Gabriel. She couldn't speak
for stammering. No, their choice of ladies all together, wasn't
possible. What she meant was, you couldn't call Annie Miller

522.

(not that her being a model was against her) a lady. How could
anyone imagine they could live in security, together? She
could imagine Effie of them, but Mr. Millais wasn't now of their
company; they had first called it their Brotherhood. That was
the comfort of that dream, you could see how they were all
ladies, they wouldn't crowd out one another. She was perhaps
the tallest of them. She did not even know what she wore,
being so interested in detail of the other dresses, how they
could be so different, all harmonious. Perhaps she hadn't even
worn a green dress, she was separated from them. Lyddy might
have been there, only she had lost Lyddy. Gabriel called Lyddy,
"the patrician" and "the Roman". Lyddy wasn't as tall as she
was, her features were more regular. She was quiet in her
manner and retiring. "I wonder what that green would be, those
green sleeves," thought Elizabeth Siddall. She wrote down, in
her note-book, "green sleeves, Lady Greensleeves." Were the
sleeves olive-green? No, it was contrasting grey-green, with
a hint of blue in it, like clouded aquamarines, it was love-in-
the-mist green, she decided, but that was a mist-blue flower.
Maybe, it was Miss Macdonald herself.

You might meet other people in dreams; well, there was
Mum and Lyddy. Lyddy was almost herself, having the same date
given, 1832, and no day nor month. Funny, it seemed. They might

523.

even be twins, though she was taller than Lyddy, and Lyddy had
brown hair. Their eyes were the same, only hers, Clara called
cat-eyes. Well, cats had pretty eyes and they could see in the
dark. She knew what Clara meant, not meaning to be unfriendly.

Seeing dreams and remembering them or trying to remember
them, is a way of seeing in the dark. Was it Nile-green, that
inset of wings on the crown of the hat? It was a contrasting
shade; "all the costumes," she wrote down in her note-book,
"were contrasting colours, shades and textures." One might be
olive-green, the full skirt to the close-fitting bodice that
Lady Greensleeves wore. She had been too busy noting the effect
of the sleeves, to remark on the skirt. Nile-green - that
reminded her of the _Ibis_, having those wings. She wrote down,
"Flight of an Egyptian Ibis", and followed it with, "Battle of
the Nile, insert description of the Nelson portrait."

That reminded her that there were contrasting or compensa-
ting dreams, as Garth Wilkinson had told her. She had indicated
to him the effect of the nightmare, and she had told him of -
but she couldn't write it, it startled her so much, and she
didn't want that name in her book. It was _Greenacre_ - the
nightmare.

There was the voice singing. Dad's father or grand-father -

524.

was it? - sang in the Cathedral at Sheffield, but this song wasn't Church music. It was as if something held them, held her, while she was with them, a tension, an excitement, like before going to a play. Gabriel had written her of Miss Herbert's benefit at Oxford. Miss Herbert was a lady, you would feel it in every word that she spoke.

"Ladies who have intelligence in love", she wrote down in her note-book. It was a line that Gabriel had translated from one of the Dante poems in the *Vita Nuova*. It was life, *New Life*, those ladies and she was, for the moment, one of them, in complete harmony and excited, but she lost them. There could be ladies like that, but it wouldn't be Annie Miller or Miss Cornforth, as Fanny Hughes called herself now.

Old-fashioned people called a churchyard, God's acre, sometimes.

The Devil was an old-fashioned concept, Dr. Wilkinson had said. But children are frightened by what some way, they always hear of - the Devil with horns. There was that voice singing, God - "Godfrey", she wrote down. He was silver and a fencer. That contrasting dream, she had had, some weeks back, was of a silver apparition. It might be even, it was Godfrey; "Gregor", she wrote after Godfrey, in her note-book, and "finish that story," she printed in block-capitals.

525.

There was a saint in that book that Mr. Ruskin gave her,
called Florian and one called Valerie. That Lady Valerie could
be of them, only perhaps of another - "sleeves", she wrote -
that's funny. She was Spanish looking, what Gabriel called
Velasquez, maybe she was Catholic. High Church Oxford took
over the saints, at least certain ones, suitable. George was
difficult, being such a common name, and then being National.
She was thinking of a defender and from what Mr. Morris said,
Godfrey had made a quixotic gesture. But she knew nothing of
it nor of him, only what Mr. Morris had told her. It was William
Morris gave Godfrey to her. She had to have a Captain or a
Commander for the Credentes.

There was Nelson looking out, and not blinded. She could
remember details of pictures, like those Calendar Hours she
discussed with William Morris. It was consoling to find bee-
stocks - but not stocks, they used some such word but another
name for the thatched houses, in a row, in that first farm,
after they turned back from Eldon. The Vale, now she thought
of it, was like the painted-in small scene to the edge of a
Castle picture, that ledge and path she saw in her dream.

Not that being help in the college, would or would not
make a lady of her and of her sister. Mum had been in service
in Sheffield, when Dad met her. She felt that Gabriel was

526.

trying to bait her - his word - suggesting that she and Miss Burden were in danger of being rivals. "She is as tall as you, Liz," he had written, "maybe taller. The fellows have arguments about it." There it was, they were talking about her, but it didn't matter. It was said Miss Burden was timid and didn't commit herself to much talk. Well, she lived in Oxford.

That William Morris was interested in Miss Burden, was not to be wondered at. It was fitting that he should let go that shock and association with Lis, thrown and killed riding. Miss Burden rode magnificently, wrote Gabriel.

Of course, there was Margaret in the Saint Book. But particularly, she noted Gereon. Gregor didn't quite appeal as a name, now. She would follow back the association, like remembering a dream, but "Gereon", as she wrote it, opened a new vista. The old story would be incorporated, but fitted to her *New Life*.

Gereon. The book was on the table at her elbow. Gereon, she read, was one of the commanders of the Theban Legion of the Roman army, "which numbered 6666 soldiers, all Christians." It was back in Roman times, but it was the same story.

She did not know how many ladies there were of the Greensleeves. Men got together in regiments and even, like Gabriel and his friends, in a sort of Brotherhood. Even if

527.

they quarrelled with one another, they somehow stuck together
and new ones came in, like the group joining them from Oxford.
You could imagine different forms of Brotherhood, like the old
Guilds that Mr. Ruskin described in his *Nature of Gothic*. But
you couldn't imagine a Sisterhood, except muns or maybe nursing
Sisters. She had wanted some such thing, that is why she was
so stricken, seeing how that Abbey of Thelema idea, as they
called it, might work out. But it couldn't, not the way they
saw it. She did not quite yet know how she saw it, but she saw
it. The dreams of Greensleeves had been the second part of the
sequence - were those three curtained rooms, three circles?
Yes, it might be a sort of Greensleeves circle; she was caught
in the midst of them, standing, she remembered, not going on
with them, against the wall, watching.

The Greensleeves more than tempered the last horror. Was
it death, simply?

The Greensleeves came between the horror and high vision.

What did she mean by that?

The apparition was a dream; waking, she recalled nothing
before or after, only the silver of him, standing. She had
never had a dream experience so refined - by refined, she
meant that text from Scripture, like gold refined in the furnace,
only this was silver.

528.

It would do, if she were a nun or in a nun-story, for a Saint. Someone appearing, whose apparition would suggest a sanctuary or a chapel, built to record the vision. But it was personal, as if she had known the Saint or soldier.

But it might be, as she had said to herself, after hearing of Godfrey Lushington from William Morris, the idea of a fencer, a soldier, a defender standing between her and terror. She had walked away from her defender, walking in her sleep, out of the door of number 8, Kent Place, that summer day, three years ago now, saying she had a commission and paid for by Mr. Ruskin.

What could she do about the soldier? It was a thing that Gabriel abhored, utterly. Not that she could condone it, but there were ladies, Miss Nightingale, who helped now.

She hadn't the temperament to do proper mursing, but Dr. Wilkinson had given her an idea. If the terror struck her so that her heart weakened, it might be the same with other people, and not heart only, but other afflictions as well. She had only partly confessed to Dr. Wilkinson and hid from Dr. Ackland how her heart took her.

They wouldn't notice, for she took care to go to them for consultation, only when she was well. It would go on for days sometimes, after the terror, and for the most part, it was dream-terror. She was certain you could die of a dream, but she felt

530.

VIII

She needn't make an effort, not yet. She could sit there,
in the morning, in her house-gown and felt slippers, after
finishing her breakfast. They didn't disturb her, only Mrs.
Cartlidge when she brought in the letters, Gabriel, it seemed,
had never written her so often. It was odd, if he was, as he
said he was, so busy. And now, it was all Algernon, she must
meet him. She did not tell Gabriel that she knew Algernon, at
least knew him through the story and those talks with William
Morris. But she tried to see Algernon now, as Gabriel and as
others would see him, not compensating for the pain she had felt
and the grief of William Morris at his friend's affliction. Her
idea of the golden page was just imagination but it was compensa-
ting, to use Garth Wilkinson's word for those real dreams. But
you might say the nightmare was more real, for the effect that
it had on her heart, though she wasn't going to let it go now.
She could even see its likeness to one of those stories of
Greek Heroes that Mr. Kingsley had sent to the Howitts, at one
time. That bull-beast, devouring the chosen and dedicated young
men and girls.

She didn't want to make a fancy of it, or a fairy-tale.
She wanted to take what was true, that is, what really happened.

531.

Though it happened in a dream, still, it was in its effect on
her, at any rate, more frightening in the one case, and more
of a miracle in the other, than could ever happen in life.
It was to her, as she had said, *New Life*; though restricted
and limited, it was after all, what Dante had in his Heaven
and Hell. Purgatory might be the ordinary life here.

She tried to see Algernon here and now, in this limited
existence and with the wrong body. The effort made her feel
weak. But no, she wasn't going to let go this reality, not now,
no matter how it took her. What she had was a solution, it was
an answer, it was that thing - well, call it religion and you
got nowhere. It was, as she remembered saying to Gabriel in
Paris, "he kissed her and it was God and she walked." She was
thinking of Elizabeth Barrett Browning when she said that,
but beyond that, she was thinking of - No, she couldn't
fancy Robert Browning.

What she meant was, she had something. She had not written
very much in her note-book but the jottings served as reminder
and she would go on. She sat for the most part, indoors, in the
morning; she would feel better in a few days. Now she was going
out regularly, every afternoon to take tea. It made a change,
though it was extravagant. There was *The Gate* and *The Treasure*,
both moderate. *The Treasure* was combined, a new departure, it was

532.

tea-shop and curiosity-shop. Old candlesticks and pewter were tastefully set out on old farm-dressers, but for sale. It was pleasant sitting just off the bow-window, at the single table against the wall; she was inconspicuous and the ladies already inquired (if she didn't turn up) if she had been kept in yesterday, and did the climate suit her? One of them even volunteered that she had known relatives, to the north, of Miss Bronte.

There wasn't a Godfrey in her Saint book. Funny, there being Florian. She had worked out that Algernon was Florence, the name of the Italian city where Dante was born. William Morris said he was more gifted than Gabriel, or than any living. Well, Algernon was troubadour in that story, and he was now, a gifted, rare poet. The mind was more real than the body, but she wanted to get them in relation to each other. There was the "double" that Gabriel had talked of. That "double" might do the dreaming or be the person in the dream. Then go on, after.

She had exchanged her _Gold Chord_ with the wing-clasp, with Algernon for his dagger. Maybe, she had a dagger, could do her own defending. William Morris had sent her suggestions for the story, which she glanced at before returning to him. They would be of a height, he had written, and she would crop off her hair and it would be as from _Twelfth Night_, only one was later, captured. Confusion would come on, as to which was which, but he

533.

said, that same sequence was in other stories of old France.

He had confused two of the stories at the Palace; Florence was
out of a *King Florus* story, not the *Amis* one of two friends.

Well, it was, as he had said, all written, the stories were the
same stories out of old legends. Then, why write this one again?
But there was something she didn't think was written, the Real
Dream.

Perhaps you might find, if you knew Italian, that Dante
wrote it, but Dante was a classic and far off, and she didn't
know Italian.

The *New Life* would be the *Real Dream*.

Purgatory, this life here, was not all unpleasant. She
had been happy, though it had been an effort, stumbling over the
stones, in the first part of her dream, with Mum and Lyddy.
Then, she had been without them, and wholly wrapt up in the
Ladies. They had *intelligence in love*, and that was Heaven.
The last part of the dream was remarkable for the likeness of
that long-horned bull to the Devil.

She would do without the laudanum. Did the dream bring
on the pain? Or did the pain bring on the dream? Could she
find out which? She wrote down, "three - the dream sequence -
Purgatory, Heaven, Hell." They could be explained somehow, even
if you didn't know Italian. There were influences that brought

534.

the dream, but it need not be Astrology. You did not need to know anything about the stars, nor even your own birthday.

You could follow it out.

You might find your dream was suggested by day-happenings or remembering. She had associated the Greensleeves with Gabriel speaking of Miss Macdonald. Miss Burden might not have had the advantages of Miss Macdonald, but no doubt, she had other qualities. Gabriel speaking of her, as considered timid, meant that she was retiring and perhaps not unlike Lyddy.

Yes, she was beautiful. Elizabeth was not one to take Gabriel's word for it, but it was the way he went on about their being the same type, but Miss Burden with dark hair. Gabriel had made a sort of fashion of her - fashion? But unfashionable. Those Greensleeves - how was it they could appear so - so worldly, but worldly wasn't the word for it. That is, though they were spiritual and dedicated, any one single one of them alone, might appear at an assembly and not be remarked on, except perhaps for the very modest elegance. But modern. They were living in our time. Yet, they were out of time, eternal.

It was not ambition that had brought them all together. She had been ambitious. Scribbling in her stitched-together note-book, she had thought herself a poet. It would make her outstanding, different from Annie and the others. She had been

535.

But her difference had led nowhere, that is her ambition.
It was due to outside influence, that she became <u>Ophelia</u> and
<u>Sylvia</u>. <u>Viola</u> was not so good, but Walter Deverell was still
very young and he was painting an Academy piece for exhibition.

She had wanted to be different from the others, until the
dream of Greensleeves.

They had that Voice, that is why they were all together.
In that, she was like them, but the Voice in her case was the
Vision. It was the soldier standing there, not in shining ar-
mour, but perhaps soldier suggested silver, their constant talk
of Knights and Malory.

They were living Malory, Gabriel wrote, and she had talked
to William Morris of Sir Galahad. <u>The Order of Sir Galahad</u> was
the name of their original Oxford Brotherhood.

She wasn't sure of the legend. Was it Galahad found the
Grail? There was the poem; William Morris called it <u>Sir Galahad,
A Christmas Mystery</u>. There was that Christmas message she had
had at Sloane Street, when she remembered afterwards, the French
name, D'Evrolles.

Walter Deverell was more like Galahad; Galahad was not
Godfrey (or the Knight she called Godfrey) in her vision.

It wasn't a vision, in the sense of making up a story,

536.

awake, like the scene after leaving home, that evening in the
basket-chair, alone in Chatham Place. That was her first
waking-dream; she wrote down, "assemble first waking-dream -
forest/hawk-feather." The character in the vision or the Real
Dream, was from the Round Table; though she couldn't describe
what he wore, she did know that he was in no way "in costume",
nor was he in the uniform of to-day or of the last-war (that is,
the war before the last) of the Nelson period.

Deverell was one of the Round Table, as well as of
Gabriel's first group, their Brotherhood. But her dream wasn't
Deverell, D'Evrolles. One of the Greensleeves might well com-
panion D'Evrolles.

Who was her knight? She knew him as her knight, whatever
happened.

That "questing beast" was always a mystery. They were al-
ways out to slay it. She wrote "questing beast" - symbolical?"
She could not bring herself to write, long-horned cattle and
the Devil.

You didn't need the mediums. It was a long time ago that
she had last been to Sloane Street. She wrote down, "Mary
Howitt and William Allingham."

Perhaps outside events might have something to do with
the dream sequence; she remembered how she had spoken of the

537.

comet to William Morris and how he had started when she said "next year". She didn't mean the comet really, by outside events but the general news and worry about the future. The comet had a name but she couldn't spell it, so she couldn't write it. And now, she couldn't even remember it. But she argued, if a name stops you, or a word like the _crown_ of that hat, she had first called _bowl_, there was a reason for it. But why name the comet? Just wondering why she couldn't name it, stopped her. They spoke of it in Sheffield.

Not that she felt superior to the Ibbitts, and they were well-informed at the Art School. And not that she had ever really felt superior, only different.

The people here too, were pleasant, but they brought her breakfast early, and Mrs. Cartlidge understood her not wanting to sit about with the house-guests after dinner. The Cartlidge boy sketched. The guests in the beginning, had invited her to join in, on their excursions, but she explained that her sister had tired her out and she was resting after a visit in Sheffield. She had relatives there, her father's people; she had stayed with Mrs. Ibbitt, Durham Road. Mrs. Ibbitt was a second cousin, only distantly related, through her first husband. People like to know things. They were not unfriendly.

Edward Jones or Edward Burne-Jones, as he called himself now,

538.

would come in. There had not been much sympathy between them,
but she saw things differently and from a distance, having been
away for so long, and there was Lady Greensleeves. William
Morris had sat to Gabriel for Launcelot, but she did not alto-
gether think of him as Launcelot, and still less as Palomydes.
He had brought Palomydes into his Christmas Mystery. Palomydes
was the knight unloved, not William Morris.

She was glad she had had occasion to mention him to
Gabriel, Gabriel having written so fully of his attachment to
Miss Burden. If he could, she wrote Gabriel, would he speak to
Mr. Morris, conveying as he best could, her pleasure in his
happiness. Gabriel had written that she had done the first
Guenevere from memory, but now they had her father's consent
and Miss Burden could sit to them. "It is fortunate," Gabriel
wrote, "that your property dresses fit her."

They were property dresses and Elizabeth Siddall would
like to have gone on the stage. It started with *Twelfth Night*,
but now in some unexpected way, she was very happy. William
Morris was not wasteful of affection. He had been long devoted.
He would not turn nor be swayed easily. It was rumoured, Gabriel
had written, that Morris (when the group of them gathered around
the new Guenevere) wrote on his canvas, "I cannot paint you but
I love you", and handed the canvas to her.

539.

He was, now she thought of it, a kingly person. Gabriel had written, he seemed much older and had grown a beard. He might even be, for the sake of her sequence, the King; it was he who had gathered the group together. She wrote down, "Arthur - " and hesitated. Not that she resented this constant insinuation of Gabriel's last letters, that Miss Burden was younger and more beautiful than she was. There were re-adjustments, but she had her idea. She would follow the Dream.

But she put aside her note-book. She was later than usual, but she had had a short walk this morning. She could go on with her thought, her reverie, in *The Treasure*. She slipped into her light mantle. She opened her hand-bag to be sure of the silver. She turned back at the door-way, remembering her letters on the table. There were voices in the sitting-room, the door was half-open; could she slide past? Her hand was on the latch of the front-door when Mrs. Cartlidge called, "Miss Siddall". She had come into the hall from the dining-room. Mrs. Cartlidge closed the door of the sitting-room.

"It's the doctor," Mrs. Cartlidge whispered. "Mrs. Weatherall has been taken - by the news."

"I - I'm sorry - " said Elizabeth. She added automatically, "is there anything I can do?"

540.

"No; only talk, if you could spare a minute, to our boy, about his sketches."

"His sketches?" She tried not to seem surprised, but she felt her words showed her bewilderment.

"There's no use giving in to him," said Mrs. Cartlidge, "he's too young to go out. He went off, by the last afternoon coach, to enlist in Sheffield."

She had hung her bonnet, by its strings, over her arm. She unclasped her bag and slipped the letters in it, keeping an eye on the door.

"I mustn't keep you. But I thought I'd just ask, if you had heard any details from your sister, Mr. Wheeler being a city-journalist."

"Lyddy said, they were keeping the news back." It was a long time ago that Lyddy had said that. "I'm sorry - it was confidential, whatever Mr. Wheeler told my sister."

"I'm glad for your sake," said Mrs. Cartlidge, "that it's not been the shock to you that we've had. Mrs. Weatherall having her married daughter out there - "

Elizabeth Siddall could only think, "I'm thankful that I didn't let that door swing to." She must get out quickly.

" - as well as our men, the ladies being cut down in the compound," said Mrs. Cartlidge, "the Indian Mutiny".