“Simply love,” he said. “Morgan said that? I’ll have to think about it. Perhaps she is right. Love. Itisterribly tough, is it not? I could not have lived through all those days in the Peninsula had it not been for love. Hatred would not do it. I came very close to crumbling when I concentrated upon my hatred for my captors. I thought of Kit instead and the rest of my family. And in the end I thought of the mothers and wives and children of the men who did those things to me. We are in the habit, I think, of believing that love is one of the weakest of human emotions. But it is not weak at all. Perhaps itisthe force that runs through everything and binds everything.Simply love.I like it.”
“And what will you do about it?” she asked Sydnam now.
He turned his head to look at her.
“I certainly am not satisfied with these paintings,” he said. “I cannot leave them as my sole artistic legacy. I am going to have to paint, I suppose.”
“How?” she asked.
Terror gripped him for a moment and a terrible frustration. With his left fist and his mouth?
Perhaps you have allowed the vision to master you instead of bending it to your will.
“With a great deal of willpower,” he replied, and moved to stand against her. He leaned forward so that all his weight was against her. “I do not know how.Somehow.What fate brought you into my life, Anne?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and he could see that there were tears in her eyes.
“You were there and waiting,” he said, “even before all this happened to me, your own experiences preparing you to come to my rescue. And even before all this happened to me I was being prepared to come to yours. Tell me I am right. Tell me we can help each other.” He set his mouth lightly to hers.
“You are right,” she said. “All the experiences of our lives have brought us to this moment. How strange! Lauren said something very similar just yesterday.”
He pressed his mouth hard against hers.
But the greatest miracle, he knew, was not that he was going to paint again—mad and insane as the idea sounded—but that he had met this woman, whose own experiences had equipped her to understand his pain and give him the courage to face it instead of suppressing it as he had not really realized he had done in all the years since the Peninsula. And his own experiences had equipped him to understand her pain. Ah, let him find some way of helping her to healing. Let him find some way.
“Let’s go down and walk outside, shall we?” he suggested. “It is such a lovely day despite the chill.”
He opened the door and stepped out of the room with her, lacing their fingers together again after he had closed the door. He left his paintings and his former self and vision behind him, still spread out against the walls, where dust motes danced against them in the light of the sun streaming through the window.
Strangely, now that he had decided to paint again, he understood that painting could never be the single-minded, all-consuming passion of his life that it had once been. There were so many more important things.
There was his wife. There was his stepson. There was the unborn child.
His family.
Simply love.
Trust Morgan to think of a phrase like that.
There was still an autumn chill in the air the next day, but Annecould feel some heat from the sun. She lifted her face to it and gave up all pretense of reading. She had brought a book outside with her only so that neither David nor Sydnam would feel self-conscious about her being there. But neither of them even knew she existed. She set the book down on the blanket she had spread on the grass to absorb any lingering dampness from the night dew and clasped her arms about her knees beneath the warm cloak she wore.
David and Sydnam were painting—both of them.
Painting with oils outdoors was not the most convenient of activities, since so many supplies were needed. But David had wanted to come outside—and so had Sydnam.
Anne had also buried her nose in her book earlier, she admitted now, because she was almost afraid to look at Sydnam. His easel was set up on the northern bank of the lake, but far distant from the house. She recognized the place from one of the paintings she had seen yesterday. There were reeds in the water. An old rowing boat was moored to a short wooden jetty. There was a small island in the middle of the lake, not far away.
The sun was shining on the water, as it had been in that old painting. But there was also a breeze blowing today, and it ruffled the surface of the lake into little waves. It had been glassy calm in the painting she had seen.
David had asked for help several times, and each time Sydnam had offered it without complaint at the interruption to his own work. But for most of the time—all of an hour—he had been laboring at his own easel, his brush clenched in his left fist like a dagger, its end steadied in his mouth as he painted.
Anne could not see the results from where she sat. But whereas at first she had half expected signs and sounds of frustration and even worse, she was now able to entertain the hope that she had not made a terrible mistake in urging him to try what might well be impossible.
She tried to relax, afraid that any tension or doubt she felt might convey itself to Sydnam. But she knew he was unaware of her existence.
She wondered what was happening right now at school. Was Lila Walton doing well enough with the geography and mathematics classes to be permanently promoted to senior teacher? But she was still so young! Had Agnes Ryde settled into life at school and realized that she belonged there without having to fight for acceptance? Who was going to produce the Christmas play this year? Was Susanna missing her? Was Claudia?
She was missing them. For a few moments she rested her forehead against her knees and felt a wave of homesickness for the familiar surroundings and smells and atmosphere of the school. Did all new wives, no matter how basically happy, feel somewhat bereft at first from having been snatched from their families?
