Beauty (17 page)

“Yes, oh I know, I know. It’s probably just as well, because if we could talk to her it would be just too tempting, and then even the last hope would be gone.... Good night, dear heart. It doesn’t hurt to wish her good night,” the voice added, a little defensively. “Maybe she can feel it, somehow.”

“Maybe she can,” said the first voice. “Good night then, child, and sleep well.”

I found myself straining to say, But I can hear you, I can, please talk to me—what is it I can’t understand? What is impossible? What last hope? But I couldn’t open my mouth, and with the effort I suddenly woke up, to find a moon half full staring in through the tall window at me; the fringe of the bed-curtains made a filigree pattern of the light that fell on my bed. I stared back at the serene white half

circle and its attendant constellations for a little while, and then fell into a dreamless sleep.

3

Spring grew slowly into summer. I no longer needed a cloak on the long afternoon rides, and the daisies in the meadows grew up to Greatheart’s knees. I finished rereading the
Iliad
and started the
Odyssey^
I still loved Homer, but Cicero, whom I read in a spirit of penance, I liked no better than I had several years ago. I read the
Bacchae
and
Medea
over and over again so many times that I knew them by heart. I also found my way back to the great library at the end of the hall of paintings, and read the Browning that the Beast had recommended. On the whole I liked the poems, even if they were a little obscure in places. Emboldened, I tried

The Ad-ventures of Sherlock Holmes,
but I had to give that up in a few pages, because I could make nothing of it. Then quite by accident, or at least it seemed so, I discovered a long shelf of wonderful

stories and verses by a Sir Walter Scott; and I read a book called
The Once and Future King
twice, although I still liked Malory better. I stayed away from the hall of paintings. The castle, as usual, ordered itself to the convenience of my comings and goings, and the library was now regularly to be found down one short corridor and up a flight of stairs from my room.

After that day when I introduced the Beast and Great-heart to each other, the Beast occasionally joined us on our morning walks. At first Greatheart was uneasy, although he gave me no more trouble; but after a few weeks Greatheart was nearly as comfortable as I was in the Beast’s company. I let the big horse wander free, without halter or rope, as I had done at home; and I noticed that he kept me between himself and the Beast, and the Beast never offered to touch him.

Sometimes too the Beast would find me in the library, where I was sitting on my feet in a huge wing chair reading
The Bride of Lammermoor
or
The Ring and the Book.
Once he found me smiling foolishly over “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” and asked me to read it aloud. I hesitated. I was sitting by the window, where my favourite chair had obligingly arranged itself, my elbow on the ivy-edged stone sill. The Beast turned away from me long enough to call a chair up to him, which was joined a moment later by a footstool with four ivory legs, bowed like the forelegs of a bulldog. He sat down and looked at me expectantly, There didn’t seem to be any opportunity for nervousness on my part, so I put my hesitations aside and read it, “Now it’s your turn,” I said, and passed the book to him.

He held it as if it were a butterfly for a moment, then leaned back and began to turn the pages—with dexterity, I noticed—and then made me laugh with his sly reading of “Soliloquy in the Spanish Cloister.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of a tradition; most days after that we took turns reading to each other. Once after several weeks of a daily chapter of
Bleak House,
he did not come one day, and I missed him sadly. I scolded him for his neglect when I saw him at sunset that evening. He looked pleased and said, “Very well. I shan’t miss again.”

This brief exchange made me think, whether I would or no, I wondered that we didn’t tire of each other’s company; perhaps even more I wondered that I
sought
his. We saw each other several hours of every day; yet I at least always looked forwards to the next meeting, and his visits never seemed long.

Part of it, I supposed, was that we were each other’s only alternative to solitude; but I could admit that this wasn’t all. I tried not to wonder too much, and to be grateful. This idyll was not at all what I had imagined during that last month at home with a red rose keeping secret silent watch over the parlour.

There were only two flaws in my enjoyment of this new life. The worst was my longing for home, for the sight of my family; and I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of them at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself. The other was that every evening after supper, when I

stood up from the long table in the dining hall and prepared to go upstairs to my room, the Beast asked:

“Beauty, will you marry me?” Every evening, I answered, “No,” and left the room at once. The first few weeks I looked over my shoulder as I hastened upstairs, fearing that he would be angry, and would follow me to put his question more forcefully. But he never did. The weeks passed, and with them my fear, which was replaced by friendship and even a timid affection. I came to dread that nightly question for quite a different reason. I did not like to refuse him the only thing he ever asked of me. My “No”

grew

no less certain, but I said it quietly and walked upstairs feeling as if I had just done something shameful.

We had such good times together, and yet they always came to this, at every day’s final parting. I knew I was fond of him, but the thought of marrying him remained horrible.

After the Beast had told me, at the beginning of my stay, that I should not allow myself to be bullied by the invisible servants, and specifically by the bowls and platters that served me at dinner, I began to enjoy occasionally expressing a preference. That wonderful table would never have offered me the same

dish twice; but while I reveled in the variety, I also sometimes demanded a repetition. There was a dark treacly spice cake that I liked very much, and asked for several times. Sometimes it burst into being like a

small exploding star, several feet above my head, and settled magnificently to my plate; sometimes a small

silver tray with a leg at each of five or six corners would leap up and hurry towards me from a point far down the table.

One evening near mid-summer I asked for my favourite cake again. The Beast sat, as usual, to my right as I headed the immense table. There was a wine-glass in front of him, and a bottle of white wine the colour of moonlight we were sharing. After many weeks of my asking him if there wasn’t something he would eat or drink with me, he had admitted that he enjoyed a glass of wine now and then. Most nights after that he had at least a few sips of whatever I was drinking, although I noticed that he never touched his glass when I was looking at him.

“You should try this,” I said, cutting the cake with a silver knife.

“Thank you,” said the Beast, “but as I have told you, I cannot wield knife and fork.”

“You don’t need to,” I said. “Here, stop that,” I said to the cake. I had cut a piece from the tray but when I laid the knife down it promptly sprang up again and was lifting the piece onto my plate. “I’ll do that.” I picked up the slice of cake and bit into it. “Like this,” I said to the Beast around a mouthful.

“Don’t tease me,” said the Beast. “I cannot. Besides, my—er—mouth isn’t set up for chewing.”

“Neither is Honey’s,” I said. I had told him about Melinda’s ugly mastiff. “And she will
inhale
cakes and pies and cookies by the hundredweight if they are left unguarded. This is really very good. Open your mouth.” I stood up, cake in hand, and walked around the corner of the table. The Beast looked at me warily. I felt like the mouse confronted by the lion in the fable, and grinned. “Come; it won’t hurt.”

“I—” began the Beast, and I pushed the morsel of cake between his teeth. I turned away and went back to my chair and busied myself cutting another piece without looking at him, remembering that he would not drink if I watched. After a moment I thought I heard him swallow. I gave him another minute, and looked up. There was the most extraordinary expression in his eyes. “Well?” ! said briskly.

“Yes, it is good,” said the Beast.

“Then have a little more,” I said, and whisked around the table to stand by his chair again before he could say anything. He hesitated a moment, his eyes searching my face; then he opened his mouth obediently. After a minute he said dolefully, “It will probably disagree with me .”

“It will do nothing—” I began indignantly, and realized he was laughing silently at me. We both laughed aloud, till the table danced in sympathy, and as I put my head back I saw the chandelier turning on its chain, winking and tinkling its crystal pendants.

“Oh my,” I sighed at last. The teapot approached and poured me a cupful; tonight it was sweetened with orange peel, spiced with ginger. I drank in silence, enjoying the friendly warmth of tea and laughter. I

set my cup down empty, and said: “It is time I went upstairs. What with one thing and another—Browning and Kipling, you know—I’m getting nowhere with Catullus.”

“Beauty, will you marry me?” said the Beast.

The world was as still as autumn after winter’s first snowfall, and as cold as three o’clock in the morning beside a deathbed. I pressed myself back in my chair and closed my eyes, my fingers clenching on the carved arms till the smooth scrolled edges pinched my skin. “No, Beast,” I said, without opening my eyes. “Please—I am—very fond of you. I wish you wouldn’t ask me this, for I cannot, cannot, marry you, and I don’t like telling you no, and no, and no, again and again.” I looked at him.

“I cannot help asking,” he said, and there was an undertone to his voice that frightened and saddened me. He made a brusque gesture, and the wine-bottle toppled under his arm. He turned and caught it in mid-air with a grace that seemed inhuman to my troubled senses. He paused, looking at the bottle as if it

were the future, hi; head and back bent.

“You—you are very strong, aren’t you,” I whispered

“Strong?” he said in a queer, detached voice that did not sound like his own. “Yes, I am strong.” He lingered on the last word as if he detested it. He straightened up in his chair and held the bottle at arm’s length. His hand tightened on the bottle, and it snapped and shattered, the shards cascading to the table

and splintering against silver and gold, and falling to the floor.

“Oh, you have hurt yourself!” I cried, jumping up. His hand was still closed, and mixed with the pale wine stair spreading across the tablecloth like the battle-ranks of an advancing army, darker drops were welling up from the tender web of flesh between thumb and index finger and running down his wrist, and

spotting the white lace; and dripping to the table between the dark clenched fingers He stood up, and I checked my vague impulse to go to him, and stood shivering by my chair. He opened hi: hand, and a few more bits of glass fell to the table. Ht turned the hand palm up and looked at it. “It is nothing,’

he said. “Only that I am a fool.” He strode off down the long table without looking at me; a door opened in a gloomy corner, and he was gone.

After a moment I left the dining hall and went upstairs. My long stiff embroidered skirts seemed heavier than usual, the sleeves and shoulders more binding. There was no sign of the Beast.

My evening was ruined. I liked reading by an open fire, so my room arranged to be cool enough that a fire on the hearth was pleasant to sit beside. But tonight I couldn’t concentrate on Catullus, who seemed dull and petulant; I couldn’t find a comfortable position in my chair; even me fire seemed sullen and brooding. The first flaw in my happiness here, always the stronger of the two, struck me with particular force. I thought of my family. Richard and Mercy were over a year old by now; they were probably walking, and might have said their first words. They would have no recollection of the aunt who

had left over four months ago, I could see Hope, smiling, playing with the babies, tickling their faces and bare feet with daisies. I thought of Ger, black to the elbows, with smudges on his face, holding a horse’s hoof balanced between his knees in his leather apron. I thought of Grace in the kitchen, her face delicately flushed with the heat, and a golden curl or two escaping from its net. Then I saw my father, whistling between his teeth, whit-ding a long pole so that the chips flew. My eyes filled with tears; but they didn’t spill over till I suddenly saw the house covered with roses, huge, beautiful roses of many colours; somehow that was the worst of all. I laid my face in my arms and sobbed.

I woke up the next morning still tired; a headache pricked behind my eyes, and the fresh sunlight pouring through my window tike a golden gift looked fiat and sour. The mood refused to lift. I ate, and walked in the gardens, and read, and talked to the Beast, and galloped Greatheart through the green meadows; but the picture of a small dun-coloured house, covered with hundreds of climbing roses, drummed in my head and let me see nothing else.

At supper I was silent, as I had been for most of the day. The Beast had asked me several times if I was unwell, if there was something troubling me; I had put him off each time with a few brusque or impertinent words. Each time he looked away and forbore to press me. I felt guilty for the way I treated him; but how could I tell him what was hurting me? I had agreed to come and live in his castle to save my

father’s life, and I must abide by my promise. The Beast’s subsequent kindness to me led me to hope that one day he might set me free; but I did not think I could rightfully ask. At least not yet, after only four

months. But I longed so much to see my family that I could only remember to hold to my promise; I could not always do it cheerfully.

I was staring into my teacup when the Beast asked me once more: “Beauty. Please. Tell me what is wrong. Perhaps I can help.”