"It would be marvellous just to have a look-"
"We should be very grateful."
"Well," said Sir George, "why not? Since it's all in the family. Follow me."
He gathered up a powerful modern storm-lantern and turned to his wife. "We'll bring you back any treasure we find, dear. If you wait."
They walked and walked, at first along tiled and bleakly lit corridors under electric lighting, and then along dusty carpets in dark shuttered places, and up a stone staircase and then further up a winding wooden stair, cloudy with dark dust. Maud and Roland neither looked nor spoke to each other. The little door was heavily panelled and had a heavy latch. They went in behind Sir George, who waved his huge cone of light around the dark, cramped, circular space, illuminating a semi-circular bay window, a roof carved with veined arches and mock-mediaeval ivy-leaves, felt-textured with dust, a box-bed with curtains still hanging, showing a dull red under their pall of particles, a fantastically carved black wooden desk, covered with beading and scrolls, and bunches of grapes and pomegranates and lilies, something that might have been either a low chair or a prie-dieu, heaps of cloth, an old trunk, two band boxes, a sudden row of staring tiny white faces, one, two, three, propped against a pillow. Roland drew his breath in minor shock; Maud said, "Oh, the dolls"-and Sir George brought his light back from a blank mirror entwined with gilded roses and focussed it on the three rigid figures, semi-recumbent under a dusty counterpane, in a substantial if miniature fourposter bed.
They had china faces, and little kid-leather arms. One had fine gold silken hair, faded and grey with the dust. One had a kind of bunched white nightcap, in white dimity edged with lace. One had black hair, pulled back in a circular bun. They all stared with blue glassy eyes, filled with dust, but still glittering.
"She wrote a series of poems about the dolls," said Maud, in a kind of dreadful whisper. "They were ostensibly for children, like the Tales for Innocents. But not really."
Roland turned his eyes back to the shadowy desk. He did not feel the presence of the dead poet in the room, but he did have a vague excited sense that any of these containers-the desk, the trunks, the hat-boxes-might contain some treasure like the faded letters in his own breast-pocket. Some clue, some scribbled note, some words of response. Only that was nonsense, they would not be here, they would be wherever Randolph Henry Ash had put them, if they had ever been written.
"Do you know," Roland said, turning to Sir George, "whether there were papers? Is there anything left in that desk? Anything of hers?"
"That was cleared, I suppose, at her death," said Sir George.
"May we at least look?" said Roland, imagining perhaps a hidden drawer, and at the same time uncomfortably aware of the laundry lists in NorthangerAbbey. Sir George obligingly moved the light across to the desk, restoring the little faces to the dark in which they had lain. Roland lifted the lid on a bare casket. There were empty arched pigeonholes at the back, fretted and carved, and two empty little drawers. He felt unable to tap and tug at the framework. He felt unable to urge the unbuckling of the trunk. He felt as though he was prying, and as though he was being uselessly urged on by some violent emotion of curiosity-not greed, curiosity, more fundamental even than sex, the desire for knowledge. He felt suddenly angry with Maud, who was standing stock still, in the dark, not moving a finger to help him, not urging, as she with her emotional advantage might well have done, further exploration of hidden treasures or pathetic dead caskets. Sir George said, "And what in particular might you expect to find?" Roland did not know the answer. Then, behind him, chill and clear, Maud spoke a kind of incantation.
"Dolly keeps a Secret
Safer than a Friend
Dolly's Silent Sympathy
Lasts without end.
"Friends may betray us
Love may Decay
Dolly's Discretion
Outlasts our Day.
"Could Dolly tell of us?
Her wax lips are sealed.
Much has she meditated
Much-ah-concealed.
"Dolly ever sleepless
Watches above
The shreds and relics
Of our lost Love
Which her small fingers
Never may move.
"Dolly is harmless.
We who did harm
Shall become chill as she
Who now are warm she mocks Eternity
With her sly charm."
Sir George swung the light back onto the dolls' cot.
"Very good," he said. "Fantastic memory you've got. Never could learn anything by heart myself. Barring Kipling and the Lincolnshire bits that amuse me, that is. What is it all about, though?"
"It sounds, in here, like a treasure-hunt clue," said Maud, still with a strained clarity. "As though Dolly is hiding something."
"What might she be hiding?" said Sir George.
"Almost anything," said Roland, suddenly wanting to put him off the trail. "Keepsakes." He could feel Maud calculating. "Somebody's children must have had those dolls out," said their owner plausibly, "since 1890."
Maud knelt down in the dust. "May I?" He turned the light down on her; there she was, her face bending into shadow, as though Latour had painted its waxiness. She reached into the cot and plucked out the blonde doll by the waist; her gown was pink silk, with little rosebuds round its neckline and tiny pearl buttons. She handed this creature to Roland, who took it as he might have done a kitten, cradling it in the crook of his elbow, and adding to it, in turn, the nightcapped one, in tiny white pleats and broderie anglaise, and the dark-headed one, severe in dark peacock. They lay along his arm, their tiny heads heavy, their tiny limbs trailing, rather horrid, a little deathly. Maud took out the pillow, untucked the counterpane, folded away three fine woollen blankets and a crocheted shawl, and then lifted out one feather mattress and another, and a straw palliasse. She reached in under this, into the wooden box beneath it, prised up a hinged board and brought out a package, wrapped in fine white linen, tied with tape, about and about and about, like a mummy.
There was a silence. Maud stood there, holding on. Roland took a step forward. He knew, he knew, what was wrapped away there.
"Probably dolls' clothes," said Maud.
"Have a look," said Sir George. "You seemed to know where to find it. I bet you've got a shrewd guess what's in it. Open up." Maud plucked with pale neat lamplit fingers at the old knots, which were, she discovered, faintly covered with sealing wax.
"Do you want a penknife?" said Sir George.
"We shouldn't-cut-" said Maud. Roland itched to help. She worked. The tapes fell away and the linen, many-layered, was turned back. Inside were two parcels, wrapped in oiled silk, and tied with black ribbon. Maud pulled at the ribbon too. The old silk squeaked and slipped. There they were, open letters, two bundles, neat as folded handkerchiefs. Roland did step forward. Maud picked up the top letter on each pile. Miss Christabel LaMotte, Bethany, Mount Ararat Road, Richmond, Surrey. Brown, spidery decisive, known, the hand. And, much smaller, more violet, Randolph Henry Ash Esqre, 29, Russell Square, London. Roland said, "So he did send it."
Maud said, "It's both sides. It's everything. It was always there…" Sir George said, "And what exactly have you got there? And how did you know to go for the dolls' bed?"