… and perhaps, one day soon, they would find Henry St Clair and bring him here, and show him that his work had not, after all, been lost. If only Imogen were still alive, everything would be perfect. It was a pity, too, that Henry St Clair had not painted a self-portrait; but she could picture him so vividly, it scarcely mattered. He would have looked very like Harry… who was once again absorbed in contemplating "The Drowned Man", moving his head in the way that caused the face to metamorphose from youth to age and back again.
"What is it that fascinates you so?" Cordelia asked.
For a second or two, when he looked up, he seemed not to know who she was.
"I don't know… it draws me, that's all. The way it changes… it's like being reminded of something, and not being able to remember what it reminds you of…"
He folded away the panel and closed the cover, and seemed to come fully awake again.
"Shall we go for that walk now?" he asked. "There's still plenty of time before the evening train."
"Oh, yes," she said eagerly, and the uneasy moment was forgotten.
Beatrice came home the next day. Though Cordelia strongly suspected Uncle Theodore of taking her aside and enjoining her to be on her best behaviour, Beatrice betrayed no awareness that anything out of the ordinary was afoot; she did not even ask what had become of Grandmama's portrait. Walking back from the station with Harry the following Saturday morning (now with her arm in his; the lane was obligingly slippery after several days of rain), Cordelia warned him that her sister was inclined to be cool and distant, so that he must not be hurt if she seemed aloof, or even hostile. But on this occasion, Beatrice behaved quite out of character; her normal self-possession vanished when she was introduced to Harry, and she became quite bashful and tongue-tied. At lunch, Cordelia noticed that her sister was very pale; she ate almost nothing, and spoke even less than usual, but followed the conversation intently, her eyes darting constantly between Harry and Cordelia. And then, as she helped clear the table, Beatrice surprised her sister still more by asking, quite humbly, whether she might be allowed to come up to the studio with them to see the pictures.
Not wanting to appear ungenerous in front of Harry, Cordelia agreed, hoping she would have seen all she wanted in fifteen minutes. But Beatrice stayed nearly two hours. She asked so many questions, and listened so attentively to the answers, that before she left she had elicited much of what Uncle Theodore had revealed two months before. Yet she did not seem to be making a set at Harry. Her behaviour throughout was that of a young girl grateful for the attention of an admired older sister and her accepted suitor. She praised Cordelia's arrangement of the studio, and admired the pictures one by one, displaying every appearance of genuine curiosity, until, despite her suspicions, Cordelia began to wonder if perhaps she did not know her sister nearly as well as she had imagined.
Beatrice seemed especially interested in "The Drowned Man", at whose face she gazed intently for some time before asking Harry to explain how the strange metamorphosis between youth and age might have been achieved. While they were talking, Cordelia, who was standing a little way behind them, found herself glancing from Beatrice to the portrait-as Harry had done that first afternoon with her. It was not a likeness in the ordinary sense-Beatrice's face was narrower, her eyes differently shaped, her hair a smoky brown rather than copper-coloured-rather, something in the carriage of her head, an aura, an atmosphere. Cordelia felt as if a veil had been lifted, not from the portrait but from Beatrice, who was listening with her whole attention to what Harry was saying, intent, receptive, with no trace of her usual watchful self-awareness. But for the most part, she addressed her questions to Cordelia while Harry watched and listened, becoming visibly more perplexed as he saw how much of the family's history was new to Beatrice. As he said to Cordelia later, when she had finally got him away for a walk in Hurst Wood, if he had not known otherwise, he would have sworn that she and her sister were the best of friends.
That evening, Beatrice (who usually preferred them to take turns at the cooking) offered to help Cordelia prepare the meal, and did so with perfect amiability. But then she came down in a striking dark blue gown which Cordelia had not seen before. Perhaps she was simply obeying her uncle's instruction to be on her best behaviour-but it seemed to Cordelia that Harry's eyes were straying rather too often in her sister's direction, and she lay awake most of the night, alternately fearing the worst and hating herself for giving way to jealousy and suspicion. On Sunday morning during another walk in the wood (Harry insisted that exercise was good for his injured leg, and refused to coddle it), she fought down the impulse to tell him just how uncharacteristically Beatrice was behaving, observing instead, "My sister is very beautiful, don't you think?"
"Indeed she is," he replied, "almost as beautiful as you", and with that he kissed her-or perhaps she had kissed him, she was not quite certain, afterwards-in a way that left her in no doubt as to his feelings for her.
A casual observer would have concluded, as the week went by, that Beatrice was reverting to her usual manner. The hoped-for reconciliation did not eventuate; each day she seemed a little more withdrawn, but it was a different sort of retreat: preoccupied, abstracted, self-forgetful. It was as if the wall between them had finally collapsed, only to reveal that there was no one on the other side. Her demeanour throughout Harry's next visit was so much more constrained that he asked Cordelia several times if he had done anything to offend Beatrice. Cordelia could only assure him he had not; her intuition of the cause was not something she wished to confide to anybody, least of all him.
Beatrice remained, so far as Cordelia could tell, in this melancholy frame of mind for the next few weeks, as summer approached and Harry's weekend visits became a settled thing. Then, early in June, Beatrice went up to London to spend a few days with her friend Claudia in Bayswater. On the evening of her return to Ashbourn, she announced to her uncle and Cordelia (Aunt Una had already retired to bed) that she wanted to learn type-writing, with a view to earning her living in London.
"Miss Harringay's academy in Marylebone will take me, and Claudia's mother has said I am welcome to stay with them. I can go up to town on Monday morning and come back each Friday. I wish to earn my living, especially now that Cordelia will soon be married-"
"He hasn't asked me yet."
"I'm sure he will, very soon. And then you will need the money from the pictures-"
"No I shan't," said Cordelia sharply. "Uncle knows that the income will stay with him; he has cared for us all our lives, and I shouldn't dream of taking a penny of it."
Cordelia and her uncle had already spoken of this. He wanted her to take at least her share of the income when (as everyone now assumed) she and Harry were married, but she had declined absolutely. The securities in which the trust's capital was invested had declined in value, reducing the income to less than four hundred a year, only just enough to maintain her uncle and aunt at Ashbourn with the extra help they would need if she and Beatrice were to leave. She loved Ashbourn, and did not want to see it sold, any more than her uncle did. Of course now that Beatrice would be leaving… it came to her suddenly that her ideal would be to live here with Harry, and that when, as must eventually happen, Ashbourn descended to her and Beatrice, she might be able to use the income to buy out Beatrice's share of the house. But then Harry was very much attached to London, and if, as she hoped, he were to give up the law, and seek a position in one of the galleries or auction houses, it would be even less practical for him to leave.