He laughed. “He has a little trouble with accurate shooting,” he said. “Though I believe it is the matter of concentration that is his main problem. He is a game one, however. He competes regardless.”
“Concentration,” she said. “Is that your secret to success?”
“That and a great deal of practice,” he said. “Hours and days and weeks and months of it.”
She tipped her head to one side. “Where did you find the time for it?” she asked him. “And what made you try it in the first place? I do not remember your ever picking up a bow when you were a boy.”
“It is a long story,” he said, bending to take up his bow and checking to see that it was tautly strung. “I will tell you sometime.”
He had never told anyone else. He would be looked upon as some sort of freak if he did. Not that he would be particularly bothered by that, but why describe something he knew no one else would understand?
“I had no idea a bow could be so large,” she said. “It is huge compared with others I have seen at home. Did you make it yourself? But of course you would have. How did you bend it into such a perfect arc? It must have taken a great deal of strength as well as skill and patience. And how did you manage to string it?”
He laughed. She was reminding him very much of the eager girl she had been.
“Rule number one of asking questions,” she said, looking from the bow to his face, amusement in her own. “Wait for the answer to each one before moving on to the next.”
“I will show you how it is done one day,” he said. “Have you ever shot an arrow?”
“No,” she said. “And no woman has ever entered the contests here, if I remember accurately. It is a shame. I know there are some quite renowned women archers, though I would defy any of them to handle that particular bow. Matthew, will you pretend for the next while that I am not even here? I know you covet your practice time, and I will leave you to concentrate. I will prop myself against this tree to watch and not open my mouth until you are finished.”
She suited action to words, though he could sense that she had the same sudden thought he did—Clarissa leaning back against a tree. Not to end his world on this occasion, however, but merely to watch him shoot arrows at a distant target.
He had wondered if he would be able to do it today, if it had been wise to suggest she join him here of all places. He still wondered. He was not sure it would be possible to get to that spaceinside himself—though it was not actually a space, was it, or inside him?—that enabled him to ignore all else except sending his arrows unerringly into one small ring a seemingly impossible distance away. He hoisted his quiver onto one shoulder, took up his position, and raised his bow. He drew and released a few breaths, listening to the quiet rhythm of them, feeling the freshness of the air as it came in, the warmth as it left, and he was there. It was not a conscious thought. That would have been intrusive. Rather, it was an awareness. All else had receded. The world had faded away.
He shot one experimental arrow, drawing it from his quiver, fitting it to the bow, and letting it loose, all as one fluid motion. It caught the outer edge of the bull’s-eye and stuck.
She neither applauded nor said anything. He was unaware of any sign of her in his peripheral vision. But she had flickered into his consciousness, and he had to bring himself back to full concentration before releasing a barrage of arrows, one after the other. He went to fetch them, returned without looking at her, shot them again, and fetched them once more. Usually he continued for an hour or more, not because he needed the practice, as most people interpreted that word, but because he craved, even needed, the feeling he got from doing it. Thoughfeelingwas a poor choice of word. Words were terribly inadequate to explain the deeper meanings of life.Feelingwould imply that he was inside his body and his mind. He was in neither place while he practiced, though he had never tried to explain that apparent absurdity to anyone who did not know and understand it for themselves. He had once lived among people who did.
He shot and collected one more round of arrows and reluctantly gave up the idea of continuing today, though it had been a very brief practice. It would be unfair to Clarissa, who had stayed stilland silent against the tree. He went to stand in front of her as he had done on another, far different occasion.
“I am sorry, Clarissa,” he said. “I am not good company when I shoot.”
“I have been trying to work out in my mind what it is about watching you that has so caught at my breath,” she said. “It is not just the incredible speed and accuracy with which you shoot your arrows. It is something about…you. About the way you and your bow and arrows seem all…one. I do not know quite what I am trying to say. But I can understand now why everyone stands in awe of you as an archer, when one might expect some of them at least to be annoyed with you, even jealous. I believe everyone else competes for the pure prestige of being able to tell others that they came second to you.”
“I suppose,” he said, “I ought to sit out some of the contests.”
“Never do that,” she said. “Everyone would be terribly disappointed, Matthew.”
He shrugged, a little embarrassed, and propped his quiver and bow beside the tree next to the one against which she leaned.
“I have had some freshly squeezed lemonade and newly baked currant cakes taken to the summerhouse,” she said. “Will you join me there?”
“Are the cakes as tasty as the biscuits were a few mornings ago?” he asked her.
She smiled. “We have an excellent cook,” she said. “I have to exercise an extraordinary amount of self-discipline in order not to overindulge.”
They made their way along the alley, and it struck Matthew as it never had before how the straight line of trees on either side of the long, grassy walkway gave a marvelous sense of seclusion in contrastto the wide-open spaces of the rest of the park. He had never been inside the summerhouse, but he had often thought how perfectly it had been positioned for maximum beauty and privacy despite its walls having been constructed almost entirely of glass.
He opened the door—it was unlocked—and held it for her to precede him inside. The glass windows had trapped warm air in there and made it a pleasant place to sit. It was furnished with comfortable-looking sofas dotted with a number of cushions and a few woolly blankets. Two side tables held books, whose creased spines suggested they were not there just for show. On a longer table before one of the sofas a pitcher of lemonade stood on a tray with two glasses and a plate of currant cakes arranged in a pyramid. There were tea plates upon which to serve them.
“Do have a seat,” she told him as she poured them each a glass and placed three of the cakes on a plate before handing it to him. She put one cake on her own plate and sat beside him on the sofa he had chosen, though there was one empty place between them.
“I hope,” he said, “you are still enjoying your time alone at Ravenswood.”
“I am,” she said, “though I keep receiving invitations to tea or dinner—and to one young lady’s birthday party. They have been sent in the belief, I suppose, that I must be very lonely here on my own. So far I have been able to refuse every invitation without, I hope, giving offense. I have called upon each sender for the obligatory half hour. People really are very kind. Mrs. Danver made a brief call here the day before yesterday. She apologized that the Reverend Danver had not come with her. It was his afternoon for visiting the sick. Lady Rhys called on me yesterday afternoon. She had received a letter from Gwyneth and was kind enough to share it with me. She and Sir Ifor are leaving for Wales next Tuesday. Hewill play the organ for Sunday service one more time, and then there will be a long dearth until he returns. So I have not been alone for long stretches of time since my return, Matthew. But I never did intend to make a hermit of myself for the whole summer. I just hope to keep a balance between solitude and company.”
Just as he always did.
