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  ‘How strangely hurtful.’

  Edith was silent for a moment. ‘So much to do with men and women is hurtful, don’t you think?’ she asked eventually. ‘Mr Talisman says that most men want to be looked up to by women, to be flattered by them, but not to have to see them as they really are, which results in everyone being unhappy, because no one is really being truthful about their situation, or their feelings.’

  At that moment Sheridan was too preoccupied with his own feelings to really hear Edith, most particularly the discomfort he felt about the success that Celandine was enjoying locally with her portraits, and the fact that the money that was coming in, although paid to him, was earned by his wife.

  ‘I’m sorry? Who did you say said what?’

  ‘Alfred Talisman, your friend. Napier’s friend. He says that men want to be flattered by women, but not to have to see them as they really are.’

  ‘Alfred has been staying with you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Napier asked him, and then he suggested that I sit to him for a painting. He has finished it, I believe, and is submitting it for the Summer Exhibition.’

  Sheridan frowned as the memory of just how jealous he had felt of Alfred when they had been at the summer school in Brittany came to him. ‘I am sure if you are his subject his painting will be delightful, but I have to tell you that if I had known Alfred was staying at Helmscote I would have told Napier to throw straw in front of the door!’

  Since Sheridan was careful to keep his tone light, Edith assumed that he must be teasing her, so she smiled; but when he had left her to her own thoughts, waving to her gaily from the pony carriage before it set off back to Newbourne, she found herself worrying about his reference to the still current custom of throwing straw in front of the front door to warn of disease or death.

  Nor would she have been comforted if she had been able to follow Sheridan back to Newbourne and overhear the subsequent conversation between him and Celandine.

  ‘No wonder there has been trouble at Helmscote, if Alfred has been staying.’

  ‘But, Sherry, I told you that Alfred was there—’

  ‘I understood that he was just passing through, not that Edith was sitting to him.’

  ‘Such silly nonsense,’ Celandine said, turning quickly away to cover her embarrassment as she remembered how she had encouraged Alfred to flirt with Edith to make Napier jealous. ‘As if Edith, who is after all a married woman, would not be able to cope with Alfred.’

  Sheridan frowned at his wife’s back. ‘Your voice sounds tired, dearest. Why not go and change?’

  Celandine knew this was his way of getting rid of her. ‘I will go and change, Sherry, but I am not tired, I promise you.’

  When she came back down again, nevertheless feeling refreshed, Sheridan had obviously come to a decision, because he was looking both masterful and excited, as if he had been wrestling with a problem for some time but finally solved it.

  ‘I am going to go up to London, Celandine. I think I should. I can sort out a few things at the gallery, and better to do it face to face. I have written to Napier at Helmscote hoping that he might be in town at the same time. I shan’t tell him I have been seeing Edith, or talk of her condition, but I believe I may find out more about the situation if I go to London.’

  Celandine would have liked to talk Sherry out of sending his letter, and out of going to London, but the memory of her mischievous dealings with Alfred and Edith held her silent. She realised with a sickening intensity that she might have made the great mistake of making mischief with an arch mischief-maker.

  ‘Never take on the devil at his own game,’ her beloved mother would have said.

  Celandine looked across at Sherry, who was still talking of his plans for his journey to London, how he would go to such and such exhibition, how he would visit Devigne at the gallery and show him some of his new canvases. Unable to unravel the tangle of her confused thoughts, she hurried out of the room, leaving Sheridan to sip his pre-dinner drink in solitary splendour. It was only with the best intentions that she had sought to make Napier love his wife, who so loved him. She had really only wanted to make him see how selfish he had been in neglecting Edith in pursuit of his art.

  ‘Anything the matter, dearest?’

  ‘No, not at all, Sherry. Of course not. Why should there be?’

  They had gone through to dinner and were seated opposite each other in the window of Mrs Molesworth’s dining room overlooking the cobbled street outside. People were hurrying by in the winter darkness, stooped shapes of different sizes and colours lit by the street lamp, but all bent double against the weather. Suddenly it seemed to Celandine that it was not just the winter that was dark, it was the future. Unable to bear the guilt of what she had done any longer, she turned to Sheridan.

  ‘Sherry, I have to tell you, I think I might have done something rather foolish.’

  Sheridan stared across at Celandine, silenced, which was unusual for him. ‘Well?’ he asked at last. ‘What have you done, Celandine, that you think is foolish?’ He was now looking rather serious and much older, which made it more difficult to confess.

  ‘I encouraged poor little Edith to flirt with other men, at our celebration party at Aunt Biddy’s, because Napier was so neglecting her, you know? I felt so sorry for her, so young and so innocent really, and Napier not really appreciating how much she loves him, in my opinion, not appreciating it at all, as a matter of fact, but at least he did after that.’

  Sheridan was silent for a few moments longer, considering this. ‘I have heard of worse things, dearest.’ He paused, his expression one of tempered relief. ‘As a matter of fact I think if you had not done so, I would have!’

  Celandine sighed with relief as the guilt slid off her. ‘You are a saint, Sherry, do you know that? A real and golden saint, and I shall paint you as one, see if I don’t.’

  Sheridan smiled. He had only spoken the truth, but if it made him even more lovable in Celandine’s eyes, who was he to quarrel with that?

  Chapter Twelve

  Despite his usual reluctance to leave home and Celandine, Sheridan could not help feeling excited as the train steamed into the station. The journey had been long, but anything but tedious, his mind preoccupied by the constant twists and turns of his confused thoughts.

  He had always been more than happy for women to be allowed to practise their art, indeed he had actively encouraged their presence at the summer school in Brittany, but now that Celandine was enjoying a certain success with her portraits, and bringing home much-needed money, he realised that his principles had run up against his masculine pride.

  Worse than that, Mrs Molesworth had been so pleased with her portrait that she had persuaded him to bring it up for possible admission to the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy. It was even now, framed and varnished and safely packaged, sitting in the guard’s van under the supervision of the good guard who had taken it under his wing. However, what Mrs Molesworth had not noticed, but Sheridan had, was that Celandine had not signed it – yet.

  ‘I will leave that to you, Sherry,’ she finally said, half mockingly, half serious. ‘We need to have someone exhibit, if we can, and the London public are not yet ready for your hard-worn sailors or your fisherwomen striding across the sands with baskets on their hips.’

  Sheridan had loved Celandine for not signing the painting, which was, he now had to admit, superb, but at the same time he had felt shamed both by her practicality and by her modesty. They both knew that the painting would have a better chance of being chosen by the hanging committee if Sheridan signed it – and yet, if he signed it would he not be conducting some kind of fraud? Worse than that, would he not be conceding to some kind of prejudice, a prejudice to which he had thought himself immune?

  ‘My dear fellow, how perfectly delightful to see you.’

  Sam Devigne, Sheridan’s London art dealer, stood in front of Sherry, smiling broadly. Sheridan, who had made his way to his premises with his usual mixe
d feelings of suppressed excitement and dread, shook his hand.

  ‘How long since we had the pleasure of seeing Sheridan Montague Robertson in London?’

  ‘Cornwall is not an easy place to leave, Sam, you must know that.’

  ‘I take your word for it, my dear Sherry, I take your word for it.’ Sam laughed with good humour. ‘More than that I delight in taking your word for it. I believe you too. But as you know I am famous for rarely having been caught without my gallery.’

  Sheridan laughed. It was true. Everyone in the art world knew that Sam Devigne was his gallery, and his gallery was Sam Devigne; so much so that it was a running joke among artists that even if his own mother passed Sam in the street, without his gallery, he would go unrecognised by her.

  ‘So.’ Sam ran expert eyes over the packages that the hackney-cab driver had deposited inside the gallery room for Sheridan. ‘So, Sherry, my dear fellow, what have you for us today? The hanging committee sits pretty soon, but I think nevertheless that I will be able to forget the niceties if you have something special for me.’

  He nodded to his assistant to sally forth with scissors and carefully begin to unwrap Sheridan’s small collection of canvases.

  ‘I think I will leave you to it, Sam. I am feeling the journey a little and I would dearly love to go in search of some lunch. Besides, I have a horror of seeing the expression on your face when you view. You either look as if you have just swallowed a rat, or you look as if you have just met your future wife. Neither expression is conducive to my comfort.’

  Sherry turned to go, but as he did so his eye was caught by a large painting leaning against the wall behind him. It was of a young red-haired girl sitting in a Grecian robe, holding a harp. Pre-Raphaelite in the execution, Pre-Raphaelite in the subject, he knew at once that it would become a talking point at the Summer Exhibition. He also knew the artist without even looking at the signature.

  ‘Napier is in fine form, wouldn’t you say?’ Sam’s voice came from behind him.

  Sheridan turned back briefly to the art dealer. ‘He certainly is, and so is his painting,’ he agreed. ‘It should cause quite a stir . . . quite a stir. Sure to be picked, don’t you think?’

  ‘Certainly it should be picked,’ Sam agreed, looking critically at it. ‘It will sell for a fortune.’ He snapped his fingers lightly, and then gave Sheridan a quizzical look. ‘You have no liking for the style any more, Sherry, have you?’

  ‘Art reflecting nature, it is not, Sam. Art reflecting art, it most certainly is! And of course it is perfect.’

  They both laughed, and with some affection Sam watched Sheridan bounding happily out of his gallery. Sheridan was one of those painters who was at ease with his talent. Determined to follow his star, he would never make the living that artists such as Napier Todd would make, but perhaps for that very reason he was finally, to his dealer at least, infinitely more endearing.

  Outside the gallery Sheridan stepped into the path of an immaculately dressed figure.

  ‘Napier!’

  ‘Sherry, my dear fellow. I never thought to see you here, and in London?’ Napier stood back, holding up his hand to his face in mock horror. ‘Never did I think to see you within walking distance of Piccadilly, not ever again, really I didn’t.’

  ‘You are a shocking tease, Napier, really you are.’

  Seeing Napier in London was a shock for Sheridan too, since Napier had not responded to his letter, and Sherry himself had, of late, been spending a great deal of time with his poor pregnant wife, and been a reluctant witness to her suffering. He knew Celandine would expect him to distance himself from the fellow, but Sheridan being Sheridan he decided to try to hear Napier’s side of the story – and preferably over a slap-up luncheon.

  As they walked along together it seemed to him more and more that he should give Napier a fair hearing. After all, as he understood it, women, particularly if they were in an interesting condition, could get themselves into the most terrible twist over the most trivial incidents. There might well be a good and hearty explanation for Napier’s turning his wife out of his house.

  As the waiter pulled out his chair and he sat down Sheridan made up his mind to grasp the emotional nettle and get straight to the heart of the matter, with no shilly-shallying, but only once they had been good to their inner men. No sense in trying to say anything on an empty stomach.

  ‘I am so terribly sorry about Edith, Napier.’

  They had lunched off mutton and puddings, and cheese and fruit, and were agreeably wined, or despite his firmest resolve Sheridan would never have had the courage to bring up the subject of poor Edith.

  Napier held up his hand. ‘I am sure you are quite right to be sorry, Sherry my dear friend. But believe me, I am not sorry. You must agree, surely, that it is better to discover that a wife has deceived you before it is too late. I certainly feel grateful to Alfred. But for him I might have brought up someone else’s child, left Helmscote to someone else’s offspring, and never known the truth. That might have been my fate. Whereas now, as it is, I know that I can never, will never, set eyes on Edith again.’ He stopped speaking, lighting a cigar and staring across the table at the astonished Sheridan.

  ‘Is that the cause of your behaviour, Napier?’ Sheridan found himself spluttering, after a considerable pause. ‘You think that Edith’s condition is not caused by you, but by another? And you believed Talisman when he told you that this was so?’

  Sheridan’s expression spoke of so many mixed emotions that Napier found himself staring at him. It was not like the easy-going Sherry to look both indignant and appalled – worse than that, repelled by his old friend.

  ‘Why, Napier, if I was half a man, the first thing I should do is call you outside. I should call you outside so I can hit you.’

  ‘That is usually why people call each other outside, Sherry,’ Napier told him, attempting a soothing voice.

  ‘Second,’ Sheridan continued, determined not to be soothed, ‘I think I should have you sent to the lunatic asylum. Do you really, truly and honestly believe that dear, beautiful little Edith is anyway anything but the most innocent of women?’

  ‘I know that Alfred must have been telling me the truth. I am sure that after sitting to him – as she did for days on end – Edith must have confided in him. Alfred is not such a good actor that he could fake the information confided to him.’

  ‘Alfred Talisman is the most awful meddler. When we were in Brittany he kept going for long and purposeful walks with Celandine. I tell you, it nearly drove me mad with jealousy. He went about everything so quietly too, always pretending that he was talking about art, holding intelligent conversations, when all the time I knew he was secretly lusting after my girl, and not even Celandine could see it.’

  Napier shook his head. ‘While I am sure you are right that Alfred is a womaniser, he is also one of my oldest friends. He was good enough to confirm Edith’s condition. He need not have done so, but since she was sitting to him she felt quite able to confide in him.’

  ‘You are such a duffer, Napier,’ Sheridan stated, after a short pause during which he yet again tried to control his fury, finally allowing a humiliating amount of pity to enter his voice. ‘Like so many of our sex you don’t know when you have found a pearl.’ He stopped, his voice changing. ‘I know this because I too am a duffer, I too have not appreciated the pearl in the oyster of my life.’

  ‘You cannot be guilty of that, Sherry. Why, your devotion to Celandine is already legendary. And look how you are devoting your talent to the life of the working men and women of Cornwall when you could be enjoying a glorious income from painting for the rich and the famous. No, you are a dear sentimentalist, wanting only to follow your heart.’

  ‘I may be sentimental, Napier, but I am also a realist. If you have done your poor young wife a wretched harm, if you have suspected someone who is innocent, you will not forgive yourself.’

  Napier paused, pulling on his cigar. ‘If Edith was not guilty w
hy has she not tried to plead her case with me?’

  ‘Can you not see that Edith is so innocent she would not think it necessary? Besides, Celandine would not let her. Celandine knows the truth of your relationship. The truth is, and she assured me of this, the truth is that she knew of your using Edith’s beauty as your muse, of your, let us say, neglect of her, in favour of your painting.’

  Now Sheridan fully expected Napier to take him outside and hit him for his effrontery. Instead he only looked mortified.

  ‘It is true, I did marry Edith more as a springer to my art than as a potential wife. That is true.’ He looked reflective, trying to search for the right words to explain his lack of feeling. ‘I had been moribund for months. The moment I saw Edith’s face that morning, the way was cleared. I knew I could paint “Temptation” – and everything was going brilliantly with the work, until we had made love.’ Napier sighed. ‘After that I could no longer paint her. I had fallen in love with her. She was Edith, and I could no longer see her as anything else.’

  ‘She still is Edith. Damn the painting, Napier, truly, damn it. Edith is your wife, she is expecting your child and no one else’s. I have hesitated to interfere in this painful matter, but I have been spending some time with Edith – and believe me I know her to be as innocent as the day. Truly, she is. She talks of nothing but you, thinks of nothing but you.’

  Napier stood up and flung down his napkin. ‘I think you should have told me that you knew of Edith’s whereabouts,’ he said tightly.

  ‘How could I?’ Sheridan also stood up. ‘To do so would be to betray her, and Celandine. However, if you want to hit me, I will follow you outside.’

  Napier sighed. They both knew that he was incapable of doing such a thing. ‘I am as incapable of hitting you, Sherry my dear fellow, as – as—’