“And go up to the enchanted Castle together, to the music and the dancing,” said Clare. “Ah, but you would have to lead. You already know part of the way.”
“And would you follow?”
“Happily. Oh! so happily. I couldn't choose but go. All my happiness now is in doing what delights you. The very air I breathe is full of your enchantment. Only keep me bound by your spell. Let nothing break it.”
He caressed her ear very tenderly, touching the place where he had pricked it.
“You shall go to the Castle beyond the wood,” he murmured before he kissed her. “I do know the way and you shall ride there prouder and happier than any of those you envied tonight.”
They parted at the foot of the wall by his rough ladder. He touched her ear once more before she climbed
up.
“Does it hurt now?” he asked.
“I can't feel it at all,” she admitted. “What did you do? Did you put something on it out of that little tube?” “That's a secret,” he grinned. “I might have put something on it. I might have taken something from it.”
She rubbed it. “It seems to be all there, anyway. You couldn't have taken anything much except a drop of blood, and you're welcome to that. You won't work much of a spell with just one drop!”
She climbed to the wall−top and paused for a moment there before dropping down on the Paston Hall side. “Who knows?” he answered softly. “One drop may be habitation enough for the whole spirit.”
6
It was so delightful a thing to be in love. The symbols Clare used to herself and to Niall to describe her feelings, the fictions she played with for her pleasure and his, came to be a little more real to her than the bricks and mortar of Paston Hall and the people they housed. What she called the spell within which she lived was indeed a real thing: it made much that had been hidden before visible to her, and at the same time it clad her with a cloak, not perhaps of invisibility, but of unremarkability. She ceased even to be surprised that her connection with Brackenbine aroused so little interest in the school. The Sixth Form knew of it, but they appeared to accept it as something settled; she had no prying questions to counter. Miss Geary recovered from her cold, but she did not resume her walks to escort Clare back from Brackenbine gates in the afternoons, and Miss Sperrod seemed not to give the perils of that half−mile of lonely walk another thought. No one mentioned Niall's return to her: it seemed not to have become known. Clare would never have thought it possible before that she should enjoy such freedom at Paston Hall, but now it seemed a natural and inevitable part of the immensely greater freedom on which she had entered with Niall.
It moved her profoundly to see that he also had the same need to be near her. She found, to her delight, that in the weeks following the puppet−show very often Mrs. Sterne would have made a fire in the great drawing−room instead of in the dining−room in the afternoons; and Niall would be there, deep in a chair, pretending to read, but in reality listening to her and watching her, and heightening for her all the sweet enjoyment of those afternoons. Sometimes his mother would vainly urge him to go away and not distract Clare, and Clare knew from the meaning mock−seriousness of her tone then that his mother was aware of what was between them. Sometimes now, too, she caught Mrs. Sterne looking at Niall with a kind of warning watchfulness, and she herself would occasionally look up to meet eyes full of a sad compassion. There were little manoeuvrings, too, to prevent Niall and Clare being very long alone together—small acts and hints that told Clare plainly that Mrs. Sterne was discreetly chaperoning her. Clare laughed to herself. She knew Niall far better now, she was convinced, than his mother did. She felt boundlessly safe with him.
One result of Niall's presence at their lessons was that less Latin was done than formerly. But Clare's education advanced in other ways. Niall would often have his sketchbook with him, and Clare, stealing a glance at him, would see his pencil busy. By and by, at tea−time, she would ask to see what he had done and would find a page or two covered with little studies of herself. To her they seemed works of high professional skill and her exclamations of admiration would lead on to protests from him and comments from his mother until the afternoon became an artclass, or at least a lecture on drawing by Mrs. Sterne.
With what seemed to Clare a curious touch of jealousy she would dismiss Niall's sketches and show her own paintings. Sometimes the Latin lesson would frankly go by the board. Mrs. Sterne would interrupt Niall with a disparaging criticism before he had well begun to sketch Clare; an argument would develop and they would all go up to the studio and turn over books of reproductions and bring out old canvases of Mrs. Sterne's. “You mustn't admire our work too much,” Mrs. Sterne said. “Niall's stuff is bad. He merely does what a ten−and−sixpenny camera can do better. Study the great painters—the good painters. I am no real artist either,
I think. Perhaps my bent was for decoration: I should have painted flowers on china and designed patterns for fabrics.”
But Clare was not convinced. Mrs. Sterne had painted Anne Otterel and discovered a beauty in her that Clare, well as she had known the living woman, had missed. The loveliness of that eager and awakened face moved Clare with such strange emotions now that she could not bear to look upon it long.
There were other paintings of Mrs. Sterne's that the now recognised at once: the original designs of Niall's puppets. There were many studies of horses that he must have used, and there were paintings of handsome gentlemen in cocked−hats and full−skirted coats, and young ladies in elaborate rich gowns or luxurious furs, with jewels on their bosoms and in their hair; girls, too, in boyish riding costumes, and boys splendidly attired in the satins and velvets and gold lace of royal courts of former ages. There were many studies and sketches for historical costumes—a whole theatrical wardrobe for the puppet company; and Clare, even with her small knowledge, could see how much that was rich and gorgeous had been extracted from the great painters to robe Niall's little figures.
Niall, looking over Clare's shoulder at these drawings, sighed.
“My mother does her part perfectly. But in my department, how mockingly execution still parodies design!”
Clare stopped herself just in time from reminding him how perfectly he had created an illusion the other night. Instead she said she would like to see some more of his puppets.
He smiled. “All in good time. I've been lazy. I must make some more. Mother, you must design apparel more splendid yet to dress the best of all my puppets—the one I'm going to make for Clare.”
His mother did not answer. Niall showed Clare drawers full of scraps of rich and pretty materials that his mother had collected and many tiny costumes begun and left unfinished. Mrs. Sterne seemed less interested than he.
“You'll have to make the next yourself,” she said to Niall brusquely and with a note of rebuff that Clare would not have expected from her. “It's such fine work,” she explained to Clare. “It tires me now. Perhaps one loses enthusiasm and wonders whether the result is worth the labour—or whether that kind of result ought to be achieved at all.”
“Oh, but surely, to make something so beautiful and original...” Clare began.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Sterne. “If beauty were the only law and the passion to create were not in some sense a sin of pride, it might be so.” Her smile puzzled Clare by seeming too sad for the toys they were discussing, and her tone too grave. “If beauty were right as well as truth it might be all we need to know. The pity of it is, we understand our errors, or our sins, only when it's too late to rectify them.” She had turned to Niall. “But at least we can cease. We can go our ways and sin no more. I don't think I shall make anything ever again.”