Creatures of Will and Temper Page 8

  Evadne sniffed, too—out of disgust. Her sister looked as distraught as Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott, with her mouth hanging open slightly, and her hands braced on either side of her on the seat.

  Dorina kept back a sigh only with effort. It pained her to see Evadne so unhappy. She had hoped that once they arrived in London and all the journeying was over her sister would relax and let herself have a good time. So far, that had not been the case. It was vexing, especially when Lady Henry was clearly doing everything she could to make their trip pleasant and more exciting than it would have been if Uncle Basil had been in charge of them. Dorina loved and admired her uncle, but he was a bit of a homebody—which made sense, him being a working artist and all.

  True, she needed to watch him work to write her monograph . . . But she had plenty of time for that. She needed experience and context before she could say anything worthwhile about her uncle’s place in the canon, and that’s exactly what she was getting. Being shown around London by an expert would only help.

  Help her, at least . . . Dorina looked back to her unhappy sister. Perhaps Evadne just needed more time. It was only their first full day, after all. Surely the glories of the National Gallery would make Evadne see that spending time in London was worthwhile, even if she wasn’t sweating all over herself in a lonely garden.

  “And here we are!” said Lady Henry. They had, at last, arrived, and once the driver opened the door, the older woman hopped out to hand Dorina down, gallant as any beau in an Andreotti painting. Though they connected but for a moment, her touch made Dorina’s stomach flutter a second time, but with a different sort of anticipation.

  Lady Henry was the most fascinating person Dorina had ever met in her life. Her manners were so free and easy, and she was so intelligent—so unaffected. She was utterly unlike the simple country girls Dorina had wooed back in Swadlincote, or the older women she had watched and admired as they drank tea and verbally dissected everything from the news of the day to one another. Lady Henry was an aesthete, a sensualist who appreciated everything from the feeling of dirt between her fingers to the art of the masters.

  Not only that, but she was breathtakingly handsome, with her pale hair and ageless face. Dorina had never been involved with anyone more than a few months older than herself, and she had already contemplated what it would be like to kiss Lady Henry’s mouth, which was only distinguished by the fine wrinkles around it, to unbutton her outrageous waistcoats and men’s shirts and see what the body beneath them was like. Was all her hair going gray?

  And yet, Dorina had no idea if she would ever get to find out. Lady Henry seemed like she should be game for a tumble, but Dorina had no idea how to suggest such a thing. Not to someone with a title, at least.

  Evadne declined Lady Henry’s assistance when disembarking from the coach, and stood on the curb, looking awkward and out of place while the people cutting through Trafalgar Square surged around her. Dorina walked over to her, threaded her arm through her sister’s, and squeezed the impressive bicep there.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered in Evadne’s ear.

  Evadne looked genuinely astonished. “Are you?” Her eyes flickered to where Lady Henry was giving instructions to her driver.

  Dorina squeezed again, which redirected Evadne’s attention. “Of course! You’ve had to endure listening to me talk in the abstract about all these great works of art—and now we shall experience them together! Isn’t that fun?”

  “I suppose that depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Whether you’ll keep talking about them while we’re experiencing them.”

  Evadne was almost smiling when she said this.

  “You made a joke!” exclaimed Dorina, delighted.

  “A joke!” Lady Henry was there, Jonas hovering just behind her. “Can I hear it?”

  Evadne snapped shut like an oyster. “It wasn’t really a joke,” she said, to Dorina’s dismay.

  “Oh,” said Lady Henry. “Well, I’m sorry to have missed the moment! Shall we go in?”

  Evadne nodded once, brusquely, like one of those comical counting horses, and took off for the entrance. The somewhat portly Jonas trotted to catch up with her, puffing a bit. Dorina watched them intently, curious to see if this young man might succeed where the lady had failed, and indeed, Evadne slowed her pace when he called to her.

  That was good. Dorina suspected Jonas might have taken a liking to her sister, which was adorable, but it also meant it was Lady Henry who was devastating her sister’s mood. Why that was, Dorina couldn’t begin to conceive. All she had done was be pleasant and personable! Evadne usually took her time warming up to everyone, but still . . .

  “They seem to get on well.” To Lady Henry’s credit, she did not mention Evadne’s coldness toward her.

  “Jonas is delightful,” said Dorina. “But I’m curious. Is he . . .”

  Lady Henry seemed to understand. “Jonas was my brother’s valet,” she said. “Now, he is mine, when I have need of one. It’s awful of me, retaining him I mean, being a woman and all. As far as I’m concerned he’s the best valet in the world, so I know I’m depriving some worthy person of his skill. But Jonas is also my friend, and keeping him to myself means I can be certain he’s as well taken care of as he takes care of others.”

  In spite of herself, Dorina was surprised. Living with a man, even one who was in part a servant, was rather more louche than she’d expected even from Lady Henry. Evadne would be scandalized when she found out. If she found out . . .

  “Well, my dear, what are you most eager to see?” said Lady Henry, distracting her from such thoughts. “Foreign masters, or domestic geniuses?”

  “Don’t force me to choose!” cried Dorina, clasping her hands to her breast. “It is like asking me which of your delightful plants I was most excited to meet.”

  “If you want to be a critic, you’ll have to start choosing,” said Lady Henry as they ascended the stone steps. “You must declare some pieces better than others; you must decide what is good and what is rubbish, just like as a gardener I must decide which growing things are weeds to be pulled out and discarded, and which are shoots to be nurtured and encouraged until they blossom. But this is an imperfect analogy, for your job does not stop with recognition, nor does it begin with nurturing. No, it is your task to help those with less discernment develop some, and you must do that by taking a stance and declaring why you’re correct in a way everyone can understand. Your job is to wield a pen like a meat cleaver.”

  “A meat cleaver!” Doubt crept into Dorina’s heart for the first time. A cleaver was as much a weapon as a tool, and all Dorina wanted to do was draw with words what painters did with brushes and oil, to carve with ink as sculptors did with chisels. “How can that be?”

  “A butcher knows what ought to be trimmed—and what’s a choice cut. Critics cannot love uncritically.”

  “Of course.” Dorina fell silent, a bit in awe of her companion. She had never in her life thought about art criticism that way, though of course she had read plenty of scathing reviews of gallery exhibitions. She, however, had always wanted to share her love, not her disdain, with the world. Perhaps that was childish . . .

  “You seem troubled,” said Lady Henry, pausing before the grand doors, in the cooler shade behind the grand Corinthian columns. People were everywhere around them, but Dorina saw only Lady Henry.

  “Perhaps I am,” said Dorina, happy to hesitate before stepping inside the National Gallery, even if the reason was an awkward conversation. She’d anticipated this moment for so long that to charge right in like a dog after a squirrel seemed anticlimactic. “It’s just, I have never been to a gallery or museum. I’m more eager to see and absorb than judge and dismiss . . . but what, then, does that make me? Not a critic . . .”

  “Forgive me,” said Lady Henry, tenderly sweeping an escaped lock of Dorina’s hair away from her eyes. “You know so much about art I completely forgot it was all theoretical.
How important a moment this must be for you! It was rude of me to lecture you on what you ought to be, when you are trying to find out who you are. One cannot train a plant until it has sprouted—I of all people should know that. Let us go in, then, and see and feel and breathe and be. How does that sound?”

  Dorina fought the urge to grab the lady’s hand and kiss the palm; the impulse, or the resisting of it perhaps, gave her strength. “I’d like to go in,” she said, conquering her nerves. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  Under any other circumstances Dorina would have been perfectly content to remain where she was, gazing at Lady Henry, taking in every part of her. But they were standing before the National Gallery, and people of all sorts were going in and coming out, and Dorina could scarcely remember a time when she hadn’t wanted to be one of them. She looked in past the doors, and saw the shadowed interior full of . . . everything. She wanted to say yes, but her throat had closed up tight, and her tears had risen again. Lady Henry seemed to understand. She took Dorina’s hand, and like Saint Peter at the gates, led her inside.

  Dorina had yielded to Lady Henry’s wisdom regarding visiting the National Gallery first because she respected the woman’s knowledge, but also because she knew it was often a good idea to give in to those one had a mind to win over. But she hadn’t expected to enjoy the paintings of the old masters as much as those modern artists she idolized.

  Almost immediately she realized her error. Standing before the rich pigments and elegant brushstrokes of so many Italian, Dutch, and English painters humbled her . . . It felt like an awakening, as arousing as a lover’s touch, but as soothing as a cup of tea.

  The four of them made their way slowly from room to room. They didn’t always look at the same paintings at the same time, but when they came together, their conversations were always interesting—at least, they were to Dorina, who had never had the pleasure of hearing what other people felt about art. Critics she could quote, but as for those who had no pretension to expertise, their observations were wholly new to her, and therefore fascinating.

  Evadne was one who had no such pretensions, and perhaps because of that she had been having a difficult time. At first, Dorina had thought her sister might be a good sport about the visit, as she had bought them all museum guides out of her pocket money, but several rather acid remarks had escaped her mouth as they wandered, the most amusing of which had been her dismissal of what she deemed “an entire art movement dedicated to painting cow-eyed Dutch women standing beside breadboards.” Neither was she impressed by the narrative-heavy, classical scenes of the Renaissance, such as Titian’s astonishing Bacchus and Ariadne, but Dorina could not tear herself away from the enormous painting, glorying in the deep blue of the heavens, the rose-pink of the god’s mantle, the rich browns and golds.

  Evadne stood beside her, her arms folded over her chest, lips pursed, guide crinkled up in her hand.

  “What do you think?” asked Dorina.

  “It’s very beautiful.”

  “You like it?”

  “I’m not sure if I like it. I didn’t say that.” She squinted at it. “I know who Bacchus is, but what is he supposed to be doing here, exactly?”

  Dorina was only too delighted to have this conversation with her sister. “That woman is the abandoned princess Ariadne, left on Naxos by Theseus—the fellow who defeated the minotaur.”

  “Why did he abandon her?”

  “Accounts vary,” said Dorina. “But, it’s agreed upon that she was discovered by Bacchus, who fell in love with her, and made her his queen. She gave him many sons, and her wedding crown was set into the heavens to honor her—that’s her constellation up there, you see?”

  “He’s in love with her? It looks like he’s attacking her.” Evadne’s head was canted to the side rather like a dog puzzling out an unfamiliar command. “She looks terrified.”

  “Ariadne is terrified by Bacchus’s approach with his followers, but he’s not attacking her. He’s leaping from his chariot to reassure her that he means her no harm.”

  “I can see why she’d need reassuring!” Evadne wasn’t convinced by Dorina’s interpretation—Dorina could see that plain as day. “If he doesn’t mean to be terrifying, why on earth is he showing her his . . . affair . . . and gadding about with two leopards, a man covered in snakes, and loose women with tambourines?”

  “Well, male nudity was more common in ancient Greece, and Bacchus is typically depicted with an entourage,” said Dorina, trying not to let her amusement show—her sister was extremely sensitive about being taken seriously. “They flock to him rather like children to the Pied Piper. His followers, the satyrs and maenads, adore him and help him spread his message.”

  “One has a torn-off cow’s leg in his hand.”

  “Bacchus’s rites imbue his followers, male and female alike, with great strength as well as great joy,” said Dorina. “In some stories about Bacchus, women become so enthralled that they gain the power to tear a man to pieces with their bare hands.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Well, their most famous victim really was a bit of a clot,” said Lady Henry, who had come up behind them. She was by herself; Jonas was off somewhere. “And the others who were spying on the maenads were doing it to gawk at them, thinking they’d catch a peek of a bunch of women off in the woods together being drunk and wanton.”

  “And they weren’t?” Evadne still looked skeptical as she eyed Titian’s sultry, half-clothed females.

  “Bacchus is the god of wine and religious ecstasy,” said Dorina, “but also, in a more general sense, the uncontrollable—he represents that which exists outside of societal norms, but cannot be denied. Sexual ecstasy isn’t necessarily a part of it, though it can be. That said, the maenads were possessed by the spirit of the god, so their activities were legitimately holy.”

  “Why, Dorina, I’m impressed,” said Lady Henry, to Dorina’s pleasure. “It’s rare for young ladies to be so knowledgeable about the rites of the Bacchae.”

  “Possessed . . .” said Evadne, who did not look particularly impressed. “That’s an interesting word, isn’t it.”

  “How so?” asked Dorina.

  “It makes you wonder . . . perhaps these so-called gods of the old world did exist. They might have been something akin to demons, preying on the weakness of man.”

  “Demons!” exclaimed Lady Henry. Her surprise seemed genuine.

  “What?” snapped Evadne, already red-faced and defensive.

  “I just never imagined both of Baz’s nieces turning out to be amateur scholars. You’re not the first to suggest such a theory.”

  Now Evadne looked surprised. “All I mean is that our village priest used to talk about demons, and temptation. Bacchus is certainly tempting her in every possible way.”

  “Only if she likes cats,” said Lady Henry lightly. “If Ariadne had proven allergic, theirs might not have been a particularly enjoyable alliance, demonic or otherwise.”

  “I don’t care to speculate on whether demonic possession might be enjoyable,” said Evadne, prim again.

  “Why else would anyone agree to traffic with such a being?” asked Lady Henry. “Surely no one would if it were boring, or annoying, or unpleasant.”

  “This conversation is unseemly, and I regret beginning it,” said Evadne. “I was simply trying to think of something to say about the picture, as the two of you always seem to have some quip or pithy remark at hand.” And after throwing a very sharp look at Lady Henry, she stalked off.

  “Oh, Evadne,” murmured Dorina, not sure if she was more appalled by her sister’s behavior, or that she might believe in poppycock like demons. Of the two of them, Evadne was certainly the more devout, but still.

  “You don’t believe?”

  Dorina startled at the question. “Believe? Believe in what?”

  “Demons.”

  She laughed. “Of course not!”

  “Is it an ‘of course’?” Lady Henry’s
smile was a challenge. “Your sister just said you’ve heard—or at least endured—sermons about resisting demonic temptation . . .”

  “And eschewing those who use witchcraft. Our vicar might well be the oldest man in England.” She shrugged. “Demons are just a supernatural excuse for that which we cannot yet explain with science.”

  This was not at all a conversation she’d expected to have—not in front of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, not in the National Gallery, not at all. But even more surprising was Lady Henry’s response.

  “They might be the latter without being the former,” she said, her eyes upon Bacchus as he sprang from his chariot.

  As someone who scarcely ever even prayed—why, when she never got an answer?—the idea that demons might really be out there, scheming and corrupting the souls of the innocent, was too bizarre. Yet even more bizarre was that Lady Henry would be the one defending their existence, when that morning, while showing Dorina her Scripture Garden, she had confessed it had been three years since she’d set foot in a church, even for Christmas or Easter service!

  “Ah, but this is hardly the place for such a conversation. Your sister has wandered off, and I see dear Jonas looking for her. Shall we go searching?”

  “All right,” said Dorina, still uneasy.

  They found Evadne looking even more skeptical of Peter Paul Rubens’s The Judgement of Paris than the Titian they had just admired.

  “Rubens has never been quite to my taste,” said Dorina as they joined her sister, “but I must say, the original is exquisite in person.”

  “If you like bare bodies,” said Evadne. “I suppose the benefit of being an artist with a classical education is that you always have an excuse to paint bottoms.”

  Dorina felt a surge of affection for her sister at this remark, but it was Jonas who laughed the hardest.

  “He’s given Paris a tough job, to be sure,” opined the young man, with a sly look at Evadne that cemented Dorina’s suspicion that he fancied her. That, and he’d scarcely opened his museum guide—he was holding it like it was the most precious thing in the entire gallery. “Three goddesses, all so beautiful! Why, I have three women here, none of which could smite me if I displeased them, and I doubt I could choose among them.” He looked from Dorina to Lady Henry to Evadne, on whom he noticeably lingered the longest—until she flushed and turned away. “Then again, perhaps I’m wrong . . . I do have three goddesses here, though I rather doubt any of you three would be silly enough to be turned against one another by an apple, golden or otherwise.”