Goldsmith's Row (9 page)

Philadelphia expected an outburst from Grace after this harsh pronouncement, but Grace just sat there supine, staring towards Laurence in an unfocused way, like a bird spellbound by a snake. Then she asked, "May I go now?" scrambled to her feet and fled from the room.

"Was there any need to be so brutal?" asked Philadelphia, her voice stiff with disapproval.

"I hoped I might persuade her to admit her guilt openly, before she is found out."

"What makes you so sure she is guilty? Hasn't it occurred to you, Mr. Tabor, that the child cannot know for certain whether she is your cousin or not?"

"Yes, it has occurred to me. I think she knows more than you bargain for, but I am willing to hold my hand until I get some further proof."

He was strangely determined not to allow for the faintest possibility that Grace might be his cousin; Philadelphia wondered why. Perhaps one fortune wasn't enough for him? Having come into everything his uncle had to leave, he might regard himself as the proper person to inherit the fairly large slice of the estate which had been settled on his aunt. This suggested an ugly, insatiable greed, not quite in keeping with the young man who had gone off to live as a wandering painter on the Continent rather than submit to the tyranny of his rich uncle. She thought it possible that his chief grudge against Grace was the fact that she was sponsored by the Downes family.

While she was trying to take Laurence's measure, he had apparently been taking hers.

"Why are you so anxious to support this girl?" he demanded. "What's your interest in the matter?"

"I have none." This was not entirely true. She had several shadowy motives, strengthened by a desire to see him put in the wrong. However, she had no personal axe to grind, so it was easy to look virtuous, and say, "I simply wish for the truth to prevail."

"And I suppose you think that the conception of blind justice means walking around with your eyes shut?"

"No, I don't!" she snapped. "I fancy I can see as far as you and in any case, I'd sooner have blind justice than blind prejudice. It's no concern of mine, but I should say you would be very unwise to let your disagreements in the shop color your whole outlook."

Laurence studied her dispassionately. "You are right in one particular, Mrs. Whitethorn."

"I'm glad to hear you say so. Which one?"

"That it's no concern of yours."

11

Grace was frightened.

She loitered on the top floor, keeping out of everyone's way and trying to wrestle with her fears while she waited for Joel. Luckily it was quite easy to stay out of sight; the space and privacy at Goldsmiths' Row was one of the things that had astonished her most, after the continual public exposure of life at the Charity Hospital. Ownership and isolation had given her a separateness that she had never been able to acquire until now, and after a taste of this special kind of liberty, as well as the many other advantages it would be a dreadful fate to be banished from Goldsmiths' Row.

But this wasn't the reason she had kept her mouth shut when Mr. Laurence urged her to confess. She wasn't greedy or over-confident, she simply hadn't the courage to tell the truth. Mr. Laurence had said she wouldn't be punished if she spoke up at once, and she took this to mean that the Tabors themselves would not have her put in prison, but since she would no longer have any claim on them, she supposed they would send her back to the Charity Hospital. And Mr. Silas Tucker would have to be told why.

Grace sat on the top stair in the growing dusk, gazing down through a basketwork pattern of receding banister rails to a lighted triangle  of the  stone-flagged hall,  four flights below. It was very quiet up here, the maids were all in the kitchen. She had left a message for Joel with his brother Sam; she had found it easy to make friends with the apprentices, who reminded her of the boys at the Charity Hospital.

Presently there was the small tongue of a candle-flame climbing up towards her, and Joel's voice, grumbling but a little amused.

"What are you skulking up here in the dark for, you silly girl? There's nothing wrong, is there?"

"Oh yes, there is," she assured him earnestly. "Mr. Laurence has been questioning me for hours, the same things over and over again, and he doesn't believe a word I say, he told me I must confess my guilt at once or they'd show me no mercy, and I'm sure he means to go to the Charity Hospital and find out the truth. They'll give me back to Mr. Tucker, and he'll just about kill me for being so wicked. I can't bear to think of what he'll do to me."

The word poured out at a gathering speed and panic. Joe sat down on the stair beside her, and put an arm round her thin shoulders.

"Now stop making that abominable noise, do you hear me? I've been to Southwark this afternoon. Laurence'll get no satisfaction at the Charity Hospital."

"Joel! What did you do?"

"I saw Mrs. Bullace—who was glad to get such good reports of you, by the way. I asked her if there was not a book recording the names of all the orphans and the dates they came to the Hospital; she told me that the book they are using at present is no more than six years old; there was a previous book, with your name in it, but this was burnt in a fire you had at the Hospital last Michaelmas twelve-month."

"Was it?" said Grace, rather surprised. "I knew that some clothes and blankets were destroyed, but I didn't think any books—Oh! I see! You mean that Mrs. Bullace has got rid of the book, and she's told Mr. Tucker it went in the fire?"

"Yes, and providentially she had the wit to do so very soon after you came here. So if Laurence goes to Southwark and asks to see the records, Tucker will have no hesitation in telling him that they went up in smoke. And then you will be perfectly safe; they won't find a note of your admission as a babe in arms in 'seventy-four, and they won't find the date in 'seventy-nine when Frances Tabor ought to have arrived on the doorstep. Both those years are in the book that's vanished, and the only account of your coming to the Hospital is to be had from Mrs. Bullace. She won't fail us, never fear, and no one can gainsay her."

"Mrs. Bullace always knows what's best," said Grace, much more placidly.

"I'm sure she does. So why were you in such dire straits, carrying on as though you were bound for Tyburn?"

"I was very stupid. Only I can't understand why Mr. Laurence is so certain that I'm not his cousin. I must have done something to make him suspicious, and I wish I knew what it was."

"It's nothing to do with you, my dear. I'm the one he mistrusts; he'd be bound to suspect any heiress that I rescued out of a home for pauper foundlings. In fact I doubt if he believes you were ever inside the place at all, so he's going to get a rap on the knuckles for his evil-thinking when he meets Mrs. Bullace and Mr. Tucker."

"Doesn't think I was at the Charity Hospital!" echoed Grace. "Where else would I have come from?"

"He probably takes it for granted that you're my doxy."

Grace gave a small gasp of astonishment.

"You've no cause to look so scandalized," said Joel laughing at the perplexed face he could just see in the candlelight. "I wish it was true. I should enjoy having such a pretty companion in my bed."

He gave her a tentative, glancing kiss on the side of the mouth, while he began to caress her almost absent-mindedly, pinching her plump little breasts through the stuff of her dress.

She jerked herself away from him, outraged and protesting.

"Joel, you must not—I cannot—please, Joel, let me alone."

"Very well, I won't tease you." Quickly recognizing that he had made a false move, he released her and adopted the manner of an elder brother. "You must try not to be so fearful, always looking on the dark side at every shift of fortune. Let Laurence go to Southwark; it won't do you a mite of harm, you'll see."

And he was right. Laurence went over to the Charity Hospital, but had nothing to say on the subject when he got back, and showed no signs of wanting to ask Grace any more questions. He might not be satisfied that she was the rightful claimant—one day the following week he rode out to Enfield, which Joel found very amusing. As he pointed out to Grace, it didn't matter how much anyone searched for discrepancies in the early history of Frances Tabor's daughter. He himself would be vindicated at every stage.

12

Laurence still insisted that he wasn't yet able to use the heavy tools in the workshop. His right hand was still tender and there had been some festering under the scar.

"Did you ever meet such a glib fellow?" commented Joel. "He can certainly make excuses, if he can't make anything else."

In spite of his disability, Laurence applied to the Company for recognition as a master-goldsmith, and this was granted immediately. Joel, of course, was furious. He said it was monstrously unjust that members of important and wealthy families were allowed to advance in the Company without passing the tests which were set for ordinary mortals.

Laurence soon found that he was able to start painting again; the fine, thin brushes—pencils, he called them—with which he drew and colored his little pictures were much easier to hold than the goldsmith's mallets and chasers.

He went to call on Walter Brand, the young man whose miniature he had painted in Germany and brought home with him. Brand visited Goldsmiths' Row; he was a lively and entertaining young man with no starchy pride about him. Grace had never observed a proper gentleman at close quarters before and was slightly disappointed.

"Why he's no grander than Mr. Laurence!" she said.

This annoyed Joel and made Philadelphia laugh.

Mrs. Tabor had decided that she would like Laurence to paint Grace, and might have made an issue of it, if Grace had not been so extremely reluctant. She was sure he would not want to paint her and if he agreed, merely to please his aunt, it would be even worse, because in drawing her features he would be bound to penetrate her secret—she regarded his gifts with a superstitious awe. She begged so earnestly to be let off that Mrs. Tabor said he had better do a portrait of her niece Judith Beck instead.

After a shuffle of sleeping quarters, Laurence had acquired the second-best bedchamber which had once belonged to Mr. Zachary Downes. He kept his painting things up there. It was unthinkable that Laurence should be closeted in his bedchamber alone with Judith Beck, who was a very well brought-up girl, like all Hannah's daughters, and while she was with him it was arranged that Philadelphia should keep them company. Sometimes Grace went with her, a silent and wondering spectator.

Judith sat on a stool by the window, the light of an April morning falling on her good, calm face. Her corn-colored hair was not so fair as Grace's, but it was thick and heavy, falling to her waist. Laurence stood a few feet away from her, working meticulously at a small square of parchment that was propped on the table and surrounded by beakers of paint. He stared and squinted and measured with his thumb, occasionally inspecting Judith with such an unflattering scowl that Grace wondered how she could bear it But Judith seemed entirely self-possessed.

"Are you going to put in some kind of symbolic conceit?" she asked on one occasion.

"Mind what you are about, Mrs. Judith," said Walter Brand, who had looked in
to see how the
picture was progressing. "These limners are terrible fellows, they paint whatever comes into their heads, and the next thing you know you'll be sharing your portrait with a cabbage or a caterpillar!"

"You do talk the most unmitigated nonsense," said Laurence cheerfully. "Pay no attention to him, Judith. There won't be any caterpillars, I promise."

It was true that most of his portraits had some sort of mysterious addition. One of the finished pictures was leaning on the oak shelf above the chimney, as well as two others that were not yet complete. Laurence liked to arrange his people in sharp outline against a background of warm terracotta (just as Nicholas Hilliard always used blue, so Philadelphia said). Grace knew nothing about Nicholas Hilliard, but she was sure that nobody could make these little manikins more real, with their faces so still yet so lifelike, and their clothes so exquisitely copied that you could recognize the material, lawn or velvet or lace, and even guess what stitches had been used in the embroidery. The sitter's initials were generally inscribed, and then there were the fantastic conceits; one lady was holding a little rose-tree with a heart in the middle of it, and there was a young man with a sun and moon behind his head.

"What do such devices mean?" asked Philadelphia. "Are they a play on words, on the names of the sitters?"

"Names, or pet-names, references to the names of their lovers, or to the state of their feelings. I am often asked to convey a message which can be read only by the recipient, the person for whom the picture is painted. That's the whole purpose of the limner's art," said Laurence, thoughtfully contemplating the lady with the rose-tree. "Full-sized portraits are hung on the wall for everyone to see. But the little pictures that a limner makes are meant to be treasured and admired in private, or shown to a few chosen friends. Even when they are mounted in lockets, we are at pains to design a beautiful case, so that they can be worn with the reverse side outwards. A limner is like a sonnet-writer, they are both creating images for the delectation of an intimate circle, not trying to satisfy the curiosity of strangers." He paused. "Shall I give you an example, Mrs. Whitethorn? I know what device I should use if I was painting you."

Philadelphia flushed. "I can't imagine I should ever be fool enough to sit for you."

He seized on a fresh sheet of paper, brushed a few lines across it and handed it to her. She took one glance, screwed up the paper and threw it on to the hearth. Then she returned to her sewing, with a face of stone. Laurence said nothing and went on working at his portrait of Judith.

Grace was longing to know what he had put on the paper that Philadelphia found so offensive. Presently she managed to retrieve it from the brick floor of the unlit fire and surreptitiously smoothed out the creases.