“No,” she said.
He looked at everything without touching anything. He breathed in slowly the smells of his former life.
He was terribly aware of the framed pictures and the canvases stacked against the far wall, face-in.
“Perhaps,” he said, “it is as well to leave it all in the past.”
She closed the door behind her back and he noticed that the window too was clean and was letting in a great deal of light from the sunny day outside.
“But then,” he said, “I will be haunted by it forever. I think perhaps I spoke the truth yesterday. And they are just paintings, when all is said and done.”
He walked forward, touched one of the picture frames, hesitated, drew in a breath, and lifted and turned it to set against the wall to one side.
It had been his mother’s favorite-it had hung in her boudoir. It was of the small humpbacked bridge that spanned the stream at the foot of the formal gardens to the east of the house and depicted bridge and water and overhanging trees. He turned another and set it beside the first. It was of the old gamekeeper’s hut in the woods south of the Palladian bridge, showing the weathered wood of the building, the worn path to its door, the shining, smooth old stone that formed its door sill, the trees surrounding it. He turned another.
By the time he had finished he had them all turned over, the heavier pictures in their frames at the back, the canvases propped in front of them in such a way that he could see all of them. There were the temple folly painted from across the water, one of the boats moored in the reeds, the rose arbor, and numerous other scenes, almost all of them within the park of Alvesley. There were watercolors and oils.
He had no idea how much time had passed since he began. But he became aware suddenly that Anne had not moved from her position against the door and that she had not spoken a word. He drew a deep breath and looked at her.
“They really were quite good,” he said.
“Were?” She gazed steadily at him.
“I could see,” he said, “the essential oneness of all things. I could see that the bridge connected the cultivated park and the wilder wilderness walk but that really they were all one. I could see that people had walked across the bridge, that water flowed beneath it, essential to all. I could see that the boat in this other picture had been rowed by people but that it was only a part of everything, not in any way making the people superior. That old hut was part of the woods and would return to them eventually when people were done with it. The roses were carefully cultivated, but their power was stronger than the hand that planted and pruned them-and yet that hand was a part of it all too, creating order and beauty out of wildness, which is what human nature impels us to do. Am I babbling? Am I making sense?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I know that this was your vision, Sydnam. I can see it in the paintings. They throb with something greater than themselves.”
“They were really quite good,” he said with a sigh.
“You have said it again,” she said. “They were quite good. Are they not good in the present tense? They amaze me. They smite me here.” She touched her hand to her heart.
“They are the work of a boy,” he said. “What amazes me is that they are not nearly as good as I remember them.”
“Sydnam-” she said, but he held up his hand.
“People change,” he said. “I have changed. I am not this boy any longer. I had not realized that about artistic vision. I have thought it a static thing. What was it you said yesterday? Something about the vision adapting?”
Perhaps you have allowed the vision to master you instead of bending it to your will. He could remember her exact words.
“Yes,” she said. “I thought perhaps it would if you gave it a chance.”
“You were talking about my physical condition,” he said. “But it applies to age and time too. My age and experience would have exerted an influence over the vision.”
“How would you paint differently now?” she asked.
“This boy,” he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arm, “was a romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beauty’s opposite.”
“Are you more cynical now, then?” she asked him.
“Cynical?” He frowned. “No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful. God, perhaps, though I hesitate to use that word to describe what it is that holds all together since the mind immediately creates a picture of a superhuman being. That is not what I mean.”
“Love?” she suggested.
“Love?” He frowned in thought.
“I remember something Lady Rosthorn said that day she and David were out painting on the cliffs when you came by,” she said. “It struck me powerfully at the time and I committed it to memory. Let me see.” She closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “Yes, this is it. The real meaning of things lies deep down and the real meaning of things is always beautiful because it is simply love.”
“Simply love,” he said. “Morgan said that? I’ll have to think about it. Perhaps she is right. Love. It is terribly tough, is it not? I could not have lived through all those days in the Peninsula had it not been for love. Hatred would not do it. I came very close to crumbling when I concentrated upon my hatred for my captors. I thought of Kit instead and the rest of my family. And in the end I thought of the mothers and wives and children of the men who did those things to me. We are in the habit, I think, of believing that love is one of the weakest of human emotions. But it is not weak at all. Perhaps it is the force that runs through everything and binds everything. Simply love. I like it.”
“And what will you do about it?” she asked Sydnam now.
He turned his head to look at her.
“I certainly am not satisfied with these paintings,” he said. “I cannot leave them as my sole artistic legacy. I am going to have to paint, I suppose.”
“How?” she asked.
Terror gripped him for a moment and a terrible frustration. With his left fist and his mouth?
Perhaps you have allowed the vision to master you instead of bending it to your will.
“With a great deal of willpower,” he replied, and moved to stand against her. He leaned forward so that all his weight was against her. “I do not know how. Somehow. What fate brought you into my life, Anne?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and he could see that there were tears in her eyes.
“You were there and waiting,” he said, “even before all this happened to me, your own experiences preparing you to come to my rescue. And even before all this happened to me I was being prepared to come to yours. Tell me I am right. Tell me we can help each other.” He set his mouth lightly to hers.
“You are right,” she said. “All the experiences of our lives have brought us to this moment. How strange! Lauren said something very similar just yesterday.”
He pressed his mouth hard against hers.
But the greatest miracle, he knew, was not that he was going to paint again-mad and insane as the idea sounded-but that he had met this woman, whose own experiences had equipped her to understand his pain and give him the courage to face it instead of suppressing it as he had not really realized he had done in all the years since the Peninsula. And his own experiences had equipped him to understand her pain. Ah, let him find some way of helping her to healing. Let him find some way.
“Let’s go down and walk outside, shall we?” he suggested. “It is such a lovely day despite the chill.”
He opened the door and stepped out of the room with her, lacing their fingers together again after he had closed the door. He left his paintings and his former self and vision behind him, still spread out against the walls, where dust motes danced against them in the light of the sun streaming through the window.
Strangely, now that he had decided to paint again, he understood that painting could never be the single-minded, all-consuming passion of his life that it had once been. There were so many more important things.
There was his wife. There was his stepson. There was the unborn child.
His family.
Simply love.
Trust Morgan to think of a phrase like that.