"Dear Randolph,
All is indeed at an end. And I am glad, yes,glad with all my heart.And you too, you are very sure, are you not? One last thing -I should like my letters to bereturned -all my letters withoutfail - not becauseI do not trust your honour, but because they are mine, now, because they are no longer yours. You understand me, in this at least, I know.
Christabel"
"My dear,
Here are your letters, as you requested. They are all accounted for. Two I have burned and there may be - indeed there are - others which should immediately meet the same fate. But, aslong as they are in my hands, Icannot bring myself to destroy any more, or anything written by you. These letters are the letters of a wonderful poet and that truth shines steady throughthe very shifting and alternating feelings with which I look at them in so far as they concern me, that is in so far as they are mine. Which within half an hour they will not be, for I have them packaged and ready to bedelivered into your handstodo with as you shall seejit. You should burn them, I think, and yet, if Abelard had destroyed Eloisa's marvellous constant words, if the Portuguese Nun had kept silent, how much the poorer should we not be, how much less wise? I think you will destroy them; you are a ruthless woman; how ruthlessI am yet to know and am just beginning to discern. Nevertheless if there is anything I can dofor you in the wayof friendship, now or in the future, I hope you will nothesitate to call upon me.
I shallforget nothing of what has passed. I have nota forgetting nature. (Forgiving is no longer the question, between us, is it?) You may rest assured I shall retain every least word, written or spoken, and all other things too, in the hard wax of my stubborn memory. Every little thing, do you mark, everything. Ifyou burn these, they shall have anafterlife in my memory, as long as I shall live, like the after-traceofa spent rocket on the gazing retina. I cannot believe that you will burn them. I cannot believe that you will not. I know you will not tell me what you have decided, and I must cease scribbling on, anticipating, despite myself, your never-to-be anticipatedanswer, always in the past, a shock, a change, most frequently a delight.
I had hoped we could befriends. My good sense knows you areright in your stark decision, and yet I regret my good friend. If you areever in trouble - but I have said that once already, and you know it. Go inpeace. Write well.
Yours to command in some things
R.H.A."
"You were wrong about the scandal," said Sir George to Roland, with a complicated mixture of satisfaction and accusation. Roland felt a huge irritability mounting inside himself, mild though he knew himself to be, compounded of distress at hearing Lady Bailey's faded voice stammer across Randolph Henry Ash's prose, which sang in his head, reconstituted, and also of frustration because he could not seize and explore these folded paper time-bombs.
"We don't know until we've read it all, do we?" he retorted, creaky with self-restraint.
"But it might put a cat among the pigeons."
"Not exactly. The importance is literary-" Analogies raced through Maud's mind and were rejected as too inflammatory. It's as though you'd found-Jane Austen's love letters?
"You know, if you read the collected letters of any writer-if you read her biography-you will always get a sense that there's something missing, something biographers don't have access to, the real thing, the crucial thing, the thing that really mattered to the poet herself. There are always letters that were destroyed. The letters, usually. These may be those letters, in Christabel's life. He-Ash-obviously thought they were. He says so."
"How exciting," said Joan Bailey. "How very exciting."
"I must take advice," said Sir George, stubborn and suspicious.
"So you shall, my dear," said his wife. "But you must remember that Miss Bailey was clever enough to find your treasure. And Mr Michell."
"If, at any time, sir-you would consider giving me-us-access to the correspondence-we could tell you what was there-what its significance to scholarship was-whether an edition might be possible. I have seen enough already to know that my work on Christabel must be seriously altered in the light of what you have in these letters-I wouldn't be happy going on without taking them into account-and that must be true of Dr Michell's work on Ash too, just as true."
"Oh yes," said Roland. "It might change the whole line of my thought."
Sir George looked from one to the other. "That may be so. That may well be so. But are you the best people-to trust with the reading?"
"Once it is generally known," said Roland, "that these letters exist, everyone will be at your door. Everyone."
Maud, who was afraid of exactly this possibility, glowered whitely at him. But Sir George, as Roland had calculated, was more alarmed at the thought of pilgrimages of Leonora Sterns than aware of the possibilities of Cropper and Blackadder.
"That won't do at all-"
"We could catalogue them for you. With a description. Tran scribe-with your permission-some-"
"Not so fast. I shall take advice. That's all I can say. That's fair."
"Please," said Maud, "let us know, at least, what conclusion you come to."
"Of course we will," said Joan Bailey. "Of course we will." Her capable hands stacked those dry leaves in her lap, ordering, squaring.
Driving back in the dark, Roland and Maud communicated in brief businesslike bursts, their imaginations hugely busy elsewhere.
"We both had the same instinct. To play it down." Maud.
"They must be worth a fortune." Roland. "If Mortimer Cropper knew they were there-"
"They'd be in Harmony City tomorrow.”
“Sir George would be a lot richer. He could mend that house."
"I've no idea how much richer. I don't know anything about money. Perhaps we should tell Blackadder. Perhaps they ought to be in the British Library. They must be some sort of national heritage."
"They're love letters."It seems so, certainly."Perhaps Sir George will get advised to see Blackadder. Or Cropper."
"We must pray not Cropper. Not yet."
"If he gets advised to come to the University, he may simply get sent to me."
"If he gets advised to go to Sotheby's, the letters'll vanish, into America or somewhere else, or Blackadder'll get them if we're lucky. I don't know why I think that'd be so bad. I don't know why I feel so possessive about the damned things. They're not mine."
"It's because we found them. And because-because they're private."
"But we don't want him just to put them into a cupboard?"
"How can we, now we know they're there?"
"Do you think we might agree-a kind of pact? That if one of us finds out any more, he or she tells the other and no one else? Because they concern both poets equally-and there are so many other possible interests involved…" Leonora- "If you tell her, it's halfway to Cropper and Blackadder-and they have much more punch than she has, I suppose."
"It makes sense. Let's hope he consults Lincoln University and they send him to me."
"I feel faint with curiosity."
"Let's hope he makes his mind up soon."
But it was to be some considerable time before any more was heard of the letters or of Sir George.
Chapter 6
His taste, that was his passion, brought him then
To bourgeois parlours, grey and grim back rooms,
All redolent of Patriarchal teas,