Wonders of the Invisible World (8 page)

“Mr. Wilding, I wish you wouldn’t. She has offered me a place to paint. I want to go there.”

He only smiled cheerfully. “I’m sure you will be welcome in any case, Miss Slade.”

There was a step behind Bram. She lifted the lamp higher and caught Ned Bonham’s face in her light. She gazed at him a moment, smiling upon him and wondering how his face, which she had never seen before that night, could give her so much pleasure.

“Miss Slade,” he said, smiling back.

“Mr. Bonham.”

“I see you found the monkey.”

Bram Wilding, who must have felt invisible, moved abruptly. His face, which until then seemed genial and imperturbable, had grown masklike; Emma could not guess at his thoughts.

“You might say it found me.”

“We are all found,” Bram said lightly, moving ahead of them into shadow. “I suppose we must go and hear Coombe read. What is the subject this time?”

“A mortal straying into the realm of Faery and how he gets himself out again—something like that.”

“I didn’t think you could,” Emma said. “Aren’t you lost forever if you wander out of the world?”

“It depends, I think, on how you actually got there. If you’re taken by a water sprite, an undine, or by La Belle Dame Sans Merci, you’re sunk. But others have found a way to freedom—Thomas the Rhymer, for instance, and Tam Lin.”

They were walking more and more slowly, Emma realized. Bram Wilding had already vanished back into the party. Light and Linley Coombe’s sonorous voice spilled through the studio doors Wilding had left open.

Through mists and reeds he ran,

Through water gray as cloud

And air that grasped him with

unseen hands,

And clung closer than a shroud.

They stopped before they reached the doors. Their eyes met above the lamp in Emma’s hand. She searched, curious, hoping to find the reflection of her strange feelings in his eyes.

He said softly, huskily, “Miss Slade, I don’t mean to offend, but I’ve never—I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. As though all my life I have been on my way to meet you.”

A smile seemed to shine through her as though she had swallowed the lamplight. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Yes. I feel it, too.”

“Do you?” he whispered back with an amazed laugh. “Isn’t it strange? We hardly know each other.”

“I suppose that’s what comes next.”

“What?”

“Getting to know one another,” she answered. “For example, you should know that my second name is Sophronia.”

“Really? Emma Sophronia?”

“After my mother’s great aunt.”

“Well,” he said, drawing breath. “It won’t be easy, but I think I can bear it. Mine’s Eustace.”

“Edward Eustace Bonham. How terribly respectable.”

“I try to live above it.”

Until at last he saw the day

Green and gold around him spread,

The timeless, changeless

land of Fay,

And he was seized with

mortal dread.

“Would I were with the

dead instead,”

he cried, then saw the Fairy Queen.

“Any other dreadful secrets?” he asked.

“I once threw an aspidistra at Adrian.”

“Did you hit him?”

“Yes.”

“Good shot. I’m sure he deserved it.”

“And you?”

“I suppose you should know,” he said reluctantly, “that I can never be that romantic figure, the struggling artist in the garret, much as I wish I could deceive you. I was an only child, and my father died several years ago, leaving me more money than is good for anyone, a house in the city, and another on a lake in the north country.”

“Oh,” she said, amazed. “Mr. Bonham, how have you managed to stay unattached?”

“How have you?” he countered, “looking the way you do, like a young goddess who got stranded among mortals?”

She felt her cheeks warm. “Really? I always see myself as such a hobbledehoy of a girl. Fashionable young women are supposed to look delicate and spiritual. That’s hard to do when you’re nearly as tall as most men. In the country, I have a reputation for being eccentric. I wander around in a pair of big rubber boots and a huge hat, carrying my easel and paints. I bribed the milkmaid to pose for me dressed in ribbons and lace among the sheep, and the old gardener to wear a cloak and a tunic and pose as a druid on top of a ruined tower. He never heard the end of that.”

And oh, she was as fair as fair

Can be, with hair spun out of gold

And emerald eyes without a cloud or care,

Just a smile to make the mortal bold

And walk into her lair. She said,

“Come into my bower and tarry with me...”

“Miss Slade.”

“Yes, Mr. Bonham?”

“Should I ask you to marry me now, or would you like me to wait a bit?”

She felt no great surprise, only a deepening of the strange peace she felt upon first looking into his eyes. “I suppose,” she said reluctantly, “you should wait, otherwise people will think we are completely frivolous. Perhaps you should invite me for a walk in the park instead. Tomorrow afternoon when I finish posing for Miss Cameron. There should be time before dark.”

“Do you think I am frivolous?”

“No,” she said quickly, surprised. “How can you ask that? You must know that my heart has already answered you.”

He started to speak, did not, only held her eyes and she felt the warmth of the smile on his lips like a phantom kiss.

She scarcely slept after the party had broken up in the early hours of the morning, and the house finally quieted. It was difficult, she discovered, to smile and sleep at the same time. When she heard the housekeeper stirring, she rose and dressed, went into the kitchen to ask for a cup of tea.

“You’re up early, Miss,” Nelly said.

“I thought I would do some unpacking, rid our lives of a few more crates.”

“It will be nice not to have to walk around them. I’ll give you a hand as soon as I tidy up from the party.”

Mrs. Dyce produced Scotch eggs and cold ham and toast; after breakfast they worked so hard that when Marianne Cameron rang the bell at noon, most of the books had been unpacked and shelved, and Adrian’s collection of oddities and props had found places to reside that were not the floor or his bed. He had come out of his room at midmorning, helped them pile empty crates and hang paintings. By the time Miss Bunce came to pose and he began to paint, there was an empty island of polished floorboards around his easel.

“I’ll get the door,” Emma told Nelly, whose arms were full of costumes out of a crate that needed to be folded and put away. “It’ll be Miss Cameron, come for me.”

But, opening the door, she found Bram Wilding instead.

Surprised, she glanced behind him down the hall, hearing bells striking noon all through the city.

“Good day, Miss Slade,” he said. “I have good news. I was able to persuade Miss Cameron to let me paint you first.”

She stared at him, still bewildered by the unwelcome sight of his face instead of the one she expected.

“How?” she asked incredulously.

“I offered to speak to a gallery owner who exhibits my work about doing an exhibit of work by the women’s studio. Miss Cameron found my suggestion irresistible.”

Emma found his suggestion awoke a childish impulse in her to stamp her foot at him. “I wished,” she said coldly, “to pose for her.”

“And I wish you to pose for me.”

“Do you always get your wishes, Mr. Wilding?”

“In this case, I believe I do. I don’t see why I should bother to persuade the gallery owner to hang an exhibit of little-known, though possibly talented, women painters if you do not pose for me.”

She opened her mouth, stood wordless a moment, too astonished to speak. Then her eyes narrowed. “Mr. Wilding,” she said softly, “I believe this is what they call blackmail.”

“Do they?” he said indifferently. “Well, no matter, as long as I can have my Boudicca. I’ll just step in and let Adrian know where you’re going. Join me when you’re ready.”

Ned painted feverishly all day in his own comfortable studio on the top floor of his house. He had enlarged and added windows on all sides of the studio; he could see the river to the east, city to the north and south, and the park to the west, where, when the sun came to roost like a great genial bird on the top branches of the trees, he intended to be strolling with Miss Emma Sophronia Slade. Or, as would be as soon as respectably possible, Mrs. Emma Bonham.

He whistled while he tinkered with a painting that he never seemed to get right. He had been working on it for several years, shutting it away in exasperation when he got tired of reaching his limitations. The subject was along the lines of Linley Coombe’s poem: a man lost in a wood and glimpsing in a fall of sunlight the Fairy Queen and her court riding toward him. The figures emerging through the light could barely be seen; some of them he conceived as only half human, figures of twig and bark on horseback, with faces of animals, perhaps, or exotic birds. The look on the man’s face, of astonishment tinged with dawning horror as he realized he had walked out of the world, never seemed convincing. Most of the time he looked simply pained, as though berries he had eaten earlier were beginning to make themselves known. The fairy figures were no less difficult; color had to be suggested rather than shown, and the strange faces, part human, part fox or bluebird, were extraordinarily elusive.

A good thing, he reminded himself, I’m not doing this for a living.

At last the sun sank within an inch of the trees in the park. Shafts of lovely, dusty-gold fairy light fell between the branches, gilded the grass below. It was one of those spring days that revealed how much more ease and warmth and loveliness there was to come. A perfect mellow dusk for a first walk into the future. He cleaned and put things away quickly, slipped on his coat and went around the block to Adrian’s apartment.

Adrian, who was in the midst of paying Euphemia Bunce, received Ned with pleasure and without surprise.

“Come at the same time tomorrow, Buncie,” he requested. “Maybe I can finish those veils and we can start on the platter you’re holding. Ned, I don’t suppose you would let me borrow your head. You’ve got exactly that combination of innocence and strength in your face that I need.”

“Doesn’t sound like it helped me much if my head winds up on a platter.”

“You can bask in the company of Miss Bunce and me for a couple of weeks. And Mrs. Dyce’s cooking.”

“Might Miss Slade be basking with us?” He glanced around. “Has she returned from the women’s studio? We had plans to walk.”

“Oh.” Adrian’s amiable smile diminished slightly. “I’m afraid she’s been snared by Wilding.”

“What?”

“He apparently talked Miss Cameron into letting my sister pose for him first. That’s what he told me, at any rate. I doubt that’s the full story. But we’ll have to wait for Emma to tell us the rest. She should be here soon.” He folded Miss Bunce into her shawl. “Tomorrow morning, then, Buncie.”

“That Mr. Wilding is a mischief-maker,” she said tersely. “I’d keep your eye on him.”

“I will do just that with both eyes,” Adrian promised, opening the door for her.

“Thank you, Mr. Slade. Goodnight, Mr.—Bonham, was it?” She flashed him a smile. “I hope your head will join us.”

“So that’s what she was doing in those veils,” Ned murmured. “Salome dancing about with the severed head. I wondered. Do you suppose the public will appreciate it?”

“They will appreciate Miss Bunce. And your guileless and saintly head, cut so tragically short from its body, will affect them deeply, I’m sure. There won’t be a dry eye at the exhibit.” He was cleaning his brushes with a great deal of energy, glancing down at the street now and then.

Ned paced a step or two, then stopped and said simply, “Where is Wilding’s studio? I’ll go and meet her there.”

“Yes,” Adrian said emphatically. “Good idea. It’s straight down Summer Street beside the river, a yellowish villa-ish sort of thing with red tiles on the roof. You can’t miss it.”

Even if he had missed the eye-catching villa at the corner of Summer Street and River Road, the monkey chattering at him on the wall beside the gate would have alerted him to Wilding’s domain. The monkey wore a thin gold chain around its neck, long enough for it to reach the ground, but too short for it to do more than climb back up. Ned opened the gate cautiously, wondering what other wildlife roamed Wilding’s garden.