He lingered for a while on familiar ground, rehearsing the slow decline of the importing house founded by his grandfather, and the growth of the friendship between himself, his sister (Una was two years younger than Theodore), and Imogen Ward.
"Imogen and I were so slow to realise that we were in love-it was mutual-that I couldn't tell you when it began. We must have been eighteen or nineteen before anything was declared between us. But once we had spoken, we were quite certain-that is to say I was quite certain-that we would be married as soon as she had turned twenty-one.
"We knew that her father wouldn't like it. Horace Ward didn't approve of me, for a start; he thought, quite rightly, that I lacked ambition; and then, aside from the difference in wealth, he was violently opposed to marriage between cousins. We were second cousins, not first, and the relation was on our mothers' side, not his, but it made no difference. Any degree of relation was too much for him. From the day she first sounded him out, I was banned from their house, and she from ours, under threat of disinheritance. To do him justice, he was very fond of her; I think he genuinely believed that if he'd consented, he would have been making a sort of human sacrifice of his only daughter, for whom some princes mightn't have been good enough-quite apart from their habit of marrying their cousins. Anything she wanted was hers for the asking; anything except me."
Theodore was still speaking as if to the portrait of Imogen de Vere.
"Why must you be so reasonable, uncle?" said Cordelia tenderly. "He sounds absolutely horrible."
"It's a sort of failing, I suppose, always to see the other side. There are times when you should simply act… If I had known what I know now, I'd have waited, and asked her to run away with me on her twenty-first birthday. We went on meeting in secret, but inevitably, word got back to him; there were more scenes, and more threats… it was a terrible strain for her… until I began to fear that I really was ruining her life. In the end we agreed, Imogen and I, that I would go out to Calcutta as my father had hoped, to look after the business there, and stay two years, and then, if our feelings hadn't altered
… She had just turned twenty when I left.
"Her letter telling me that she was engaged to a forty-year-old banker named Ruthven de Vere arrived about three months before I was due to come home. I stayed for fifteen years."
He turned away from the portrait, towards the window at the head of the staircase, studying the wintry fields. Traces of last weeks snow still clung to the highest of the hilltops beyond.
"But uncle, I don't understand. How could she come to live with you, after all that?"
"Do you mean, because of the impropriety?"
"No, no, I mean, how could she accept, after what she'd done to you?"
"You mustn't be angry with her, my dear. Not on my account. She was seriously ill; both her parents were dead; de Vere had charge of all her money, what was left of it; she had nowhere else to turn. We'd kept in touch, you see. Another excess of reasonableness on my part; doubtless many would call it lack of spirit."
"I wouldn't. She was very lucky, to have such a generous spirit to turn to," said Cordelia, taking his arm. "But why did she leave her husband, just when she became ill? Did Papa ever see his father again? Why would Papa never speak of him? Or Aunt Una? Even you? Did you ever meet him? Ruthven de Vere, I mean?"
"No, my dear. You must remember, I was away in India until the year before-it happened; if my mother had lived longer, I wouldn't have been here at all. And Imogen's letters had been mostly about Arthur. I had heard that they had a grand house in Belgrave Square-it was one of the first in the square to be equipped with electric light-and entertained very elaborately, but she hardly mentioned any of that. Or her husband. I wrote, of course, to let her know I was back, and she replied that she would love to bring Arthur to see us, and how sorry she was to hear about my mother.
"That was the last I heard from her, until I got her wire…"
He turned back to the portrait, wincing at some painful memory.
"Why on earth did she marry him in the first place?" cried Cordelia angrily.
"Because she was in love with him, I presume. He was handsome, and cultivated, and charming, as even Una-who attended the wedding only at my insistence-was forced to concede. And a most attentive husband-everybody agreed about that-"
"Uncle, will you please stop trying to defend him? You don't believe a word you're saying. The way you said attentive' made my flesh crawl; you're only making me loathe him even more."
"My dear, you misunderstand me. I'm not defending him, I assure you, not in the least; only trying to show you how the marriage must have appeared in the eyes of the world. Even at the end."
"I don't care what the world thought, I want to know what really happened. Why he never saw Papa again. Why Papa never once mentioned him. Uncle, have you all been hiding something you think is too horrible for me to hear? I'm twenty-one now, I'm a grown woman. Besides, it couldn't be worse than some of the things I've imagined."
"Are you quite sure of that?" he asked quietly, his eyes still fixed upon the portrait. Something in his tone set her skin crawling again, though she tried not to show it, and for a little while neither of them spoke.
Struggling to reconcile her anger at the woman who had betrayed a true and faithful lover to marry for money (for surely she wouldn't have accepted de Vere if he'd been poor?) with the familiar face before her, Cordelia found that she simply could not do it. This woman-the Imogen the painter had seen and rendered with such compelling subtlety-was surely incapable of deceit, cruelty, or greed. She looked so… untouched, that was it… so entirely self-possessed
… that calm, accepting gaze that gave you the impression she understood exactly what was in your heart… a perfect stillness, yes, but living, vibrant, trembling on the edge of speech. "Thou still unravished bride of quietness": the words came to her unbidden; and with them the awareness that her anger had melted away.
"I see why you could not be angry with her," she said at last.
"I am glad you see that, my dear. It is a true likeness. His name was Henry St Clair-the painter, I mean."
"But you've always told me, uncle, that you didn't know who painted it."
"I said it was by an unknown artist, which was, and remains, true. But yes, I equivocated. When your dear father died, I resolved not to burden you with anything of-of which we must now speak-until it became necessary to do so. But now you are indeed twenty-one, and a grown woman, the necessity is upon us."
Once more he took counsel from the portrait.
"She met him-Henry St Clair-in a gallery in Bloomsbury. At a small exhibition of landscapes, including one of his, which she happened to be admiring while he was there. This is what she told me, you understand, on the one day we spoke of it. She described him very vividly: freckled and wind-burnt from a recent sketching tour-on foot, sleeping under trees; he couldn't afford so much as a bed in a village inn-slender, with one of those fresh, boyish faces that makes a man look years younger than he really is, brown eyes, curly brown hair which he wore quite long-a sort of animated brown study, she said, because he was wearing a brown velveteen jacket, somewhat paint-stained, and brown corduroy trousers.
"She bought the picture; they left the gallery together, and walked all the way up to the Heath, where they sat and talked for hours. That first afternoon, she said, was like emerging from a dark cavern into sunlight; there was a radiance about his personality… you needn't frown for my sake, my dear; I encouraged her to speak freely. He warned her that he was constitutionally vulnerable to melancholia, but throughout the time she knew him, he remained in this sunny, upland mood. And if it hadn't ended so appallingly, I would have been simply glad, I assure you… but I must not run ahead of myself.