The coffee had cooled in Clarissa’s cup, but she did not even notice.
“The skill and design of the sculpture were beyond perfect,” he said. “It would be a masterpiece based on those alone. But it was not those things that held me in a sort of trance for so long. It was the sheer raw passion coming through it that enthralled me. And the wordthroughis the right one. There was no emotion in the material of which it was made. It was cold white marble. The passion was in the sculpting of it. Michelangelo is long dead, but he left an essential part of himself in that work, and probably in others too. He had left himself, his whole being, in it, in fact. You will think my words impossibly extravagant, Clarissa, and I have never spoken thus to anyone else. But that sculpture changed my life. I would never work with either stone or marble. Wood was my medium. But I knew that skill was not enough. A true artist puts everything that is himself and beyond himself into every serious work he creates. And I believed I was a true artist.”
Clarissa was taken with the magic of speaking to an old friend again, and how quickly they had both fallen back into their openness and familiarity. She scarcely breathed lest he stop talkingbefore he had finished his story. But a few words struck her with more force than all the rest—I have never spoken thus to anyone else.
It was as it had been between them all those years ago.
It was almost as though he had the same thought. “You were always too good a listener, Clarissa,” he said, turning his head to look at her again. “And I was always too much of a talker. You must be thinking me very self-absorbed indeed. What of you? You have a lovely family. Have they brought you happiness? Has this brought you happiness?” He indicated the park and the house behind them with one sweeping gesture of his arm.
“Happiness, unhappiness, and every feeling between the two extremes,” she said. “In fifty years of living it would be strange indeed if I had not experienced them all numerous times. One thing age has taught me, however, is that one ought not to be deceived when one is at an extreme into believing that it is permanent. The worst unhappiness fades, as does the brightest happiness. One learns to flow with life’s ups and downs if one is to know a pervading contentment. On the whole I have done my best, especially in my dealings with other people. I have made most of the right choices, with one or two exceptions, a few of them huge. But I would not go back to change them even if the chance were offered me.” She did not speak unkindly, but she did look directly at him.
“You would not go back, then, to the age of seventeen and make a different choice?” he asked.
“No, of course not,” she said.
“Well, there is a slap in the face to me,” he said.
She looked sharply at him, but that suggestion of a smile was back in his eyes.
“What nonsense,” she said. “There is no way on earth I could have chosen you or you me.”
“You might have lived in abject poverty if you had,” he said. “No one knew at the time that my grandmother would take pity on me and leave me everything.”
“That was the very least of the reasons, Matthew,” she said, frowning. “As you know very well. We were friends. Any closer connection would not have worked even if you had known about your grandmother’s will. We would have been wretchedly unhappy within a year. Less.”
“Would we? Because I was so addled in the head that sometimes I did not know up from down?” He grinned unexpectedly. “Do you remember when we always used to talk like this, Clarissa? About our feelings and frustrations and triumphs? No subject was barred, was it? Except perhaps the weather and the state of our health in order to keep the silence at bay.”
“It is rare, that sort of friendship,” she said. “I have known it with only one other person, though most of our ramblings down the years have been shared in long letters to each other more than in person. We met when we were both new brides. Coincidentally, we were married on the same day at the same hour, though in different parts of the country. Kitty was widowed before I was. She married George last year.”
“Your brother?” He raised his eyebrows. “The former Lady Catherine Emmett, then?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m surprised you remember. But let me ask you something else. Do you feel like climbing the hill to the temple folly, Matthew? The view from up there is worth the climb.”
He hesitated a moment before getting to his feet. “I am a workingman,” he said. “I scheduled one hour for my appointment here and have already exceeded that. However…” He gestured with one hand toward the hill.
“Thank you. Now, you asked about my family,” she said as they stepped off the terrace onto the grass. “But we went off on a conversational tangent, as we always used to do. Let me answer your question. They have been and still are a constant source of delight to me. I have been very fortunate. Perhaps it was sheer luck on my part that I learned early that children of the same parents and home and upbringing are nevertheless all completely different from one another. To expect or to try to demand that they all behave in a similar manner is pointless and can only cause a fractious relationship and a frustrated parent and child.”
Too late she realized that she might have been describing Matthew himself and his brother. He did not say anything in the short silence that followed as they began to climb the steep slope to the temple. He offered his hand to help her climb.
It was a strong hand, she discovered when she took it. A workman’s hand. There was a roughness to it, perhaps even some calluses on his palm.
“Devlin was always fated to be the next Earl of Stratton, of course,” she said. “Tentative plans were made for Nicholas, as the second son, to have a military career and Owen, as the third son, to have a career in the church. We never pressed the point, but Nicholas embraced the idea. He never wanted anything else for his future but to be a cavalry officer. Owen, on the other hand…Well, we soon gave up on the idea of his being a clergyman. He was full of mischief from his infancy on. He lived for the pleasure of playing practical jokes on all of us, especially poor Stephanie, as the one sibling younger than he. Though I must not describe her as ‘poor Stephanie.’ She always gave as good as she got. She used to merely roll her eyes when she discovered long-legged spiders in her bed or frogs in her rain boots and would transfer the creatures to his bedand his boots. I do not believe I have ever heard Steph scream. Owen still does not know what he wants to do when he grows up, though he already is grown up.”
“How old is he now?” he asked.
“Twenty-two,” she said. “He told me a few weeks ago when we were both in London that he sometimes thinks he would be quite happy devoting his life to the church if it were not for the religious part of it.”
“He is mildly muddleheaded?” he said, releasing her hand as they reached the top of the hill and turned together to look at the wide view over parkland and farmland and river and village.
“He told me that if being a clergyman required only love and service, which after all are at the very heart of our religion,” she said, “he would be at the front of the queue to sign up.”
They both laughed.
“He would have a congregation of at least one,” he said. “I believe I might attend his church.”
He did not attend the church in Boscombe.
They went to sit on the sofa inside the temple. The view was somehow enhanced from in there by the fact that it was framed by tall stone pillars, which held up the pedimented roof.
