“Yeah. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.” He didn’t want to go into it anymore, but Sweeney couldn’t stop herself.
“Her accent sounds South African. Did you tell me she only moved here recently?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of an amazing story, actually. Her parents had this big falling out with Electra and Marcus and took her to England when she was pretty young. Then they moved to South Africa and she never saw her grandparents again. She said she always knew they existed, but was afraid of asking her parents about them. Then she was working in London and her parents died in a car accident. She got in touch with Electra last summer, and suggested that she come to visit. It turned out that Electra was getting older and needed someone to live with her and look after things. I think it’s worked out well for both of them.”
“Well, she seems nice. I look forward to getting to know her.” The words sounded false, even to Sweeney’s ears, and Toby gave her an odd look.
The cemetery, when they reached it, was roped off, the orange police tape girding the iron fence like a Christmas package. But there weren’t any policemen around, so they slid under the tape, standing against the fence for a moment. It was very quiet—the wind had died down—and Sweeney feel suddenly, deeply alone.
As she’d deduced from the photographs, it was a typical New England burial ground, with most of the thirty or so stones dating to the late 1700s and early-to-mid-1800s. The earlier stones were typical for the period, slate carved with willow boughs or hourglasses at the top, and the name of the deceased and dates of birth and death. The later ones had more Victorian flourishes: garlands of flowers or fruit; cherubic, flying figures. There seemed to be a number of stones with the names Denholm and Perkins on them.
Sweeney, who had spent an inordinate percentage of her twenty-eight years in cemeteries, wasn’t much affected by their atmosphere. But there was a feeling in this one that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Perhaps it was the low light and the way the mist rose above the snow. Maybe it was her knowledge of what had happened amongst these stones. But Sweeney found herself looking over her shoulder as she wandered around the burial ground.
“Hey, look at this one,” Toby said, calling her over to a small, slate stone. “She was only a year old. ‘Come little children see the place/Where infant dust must lie/There is no age that’s free from this/Both young and old must die.’ ”
“That’s a classic epitaph. More for the living than the dead.”
Sweeney wandered around and found some other stones with the name Denholm on them. Elizabeth Denholm, who she assumed was Mary’s mother from the dates on the stone, was buried beneath a simple marble headstone inscribed with the words “O’ Artful Death.” There was something sad about the stone, Sweeney thought, feeling suddenly sorry for this woman who had lost her daughter so young.
Next to it was a stone marking the grave of Louis Denholm, who was the right age to be Mary’s father. It was also a simple headstone, though five times the size of his wife’s. The epitaph read,
Think my friends when this you see
How Death’s dark deed hath slayed me
He is a thief and taketh flight
Beneath the cover of the night
She stared at the stone for a few minutes and then said, “Come on. Let’s go look at Mary’s before it gets too dark.”
In the low afternoon light, the lines of the life-sized monument stood out in stark relief. The marble was darkened with age, a thin layer of moss covering the surface so that the woman’s eyes looked real, flecked with brown and green. The coiling strands of her hair looked almost like seaweed.
What hadn’t come across in the photographs, Sweeney decided, was how deeply troubling the stone was. The woman was both more beautiful and more disturbing than she’d been in the pictures. It was very clear she was meant to be dead, and with the strange, stylized skeleton peeking over her shoulder like a lecherous imp, there was a palpable sense of violence about the work. After a few minutes of clearing snow from the base of the monument with a mittened hand, she had convinced herself that there was no signature of any kind.
“This is so weird,” she said to Toby. “It didn’t strike me when I saw the photographs, but it’s very Pre-Raphaelite.”
“Rossetti and Ruskin?”
“Right, though it’s not by any of the major Pre-Raphaelites. I’d be willing to put a lot of money on that. And I don’t think any of them ever came to Byzantium.” She walked around the monument again, mesmerized by its strangeness.
“Were there any American Pre-Raphaelites? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that there were.”
“There were a couple of painters and journalists who knew the Pre-Raphaelites in England. Thomas Buchanan Read and a guy named Stillman. It’s interesting to trace the ideas, you know, how they bounced back and forth across the Atlantic. Rossetti loved Poe, was completely obsessed with him and Poe’s writing absolutely influenced his work.”
She thought for a moment.
“And I think there was even a group of them who called themselves the American Pre-Raphaelites or something. Thomas Farrar comes to mind. They liked to make fun of Copley and Bierstadt. But I don’t think they were ever as famous as the real ones.
“There were well-known American artists like John La Farge and even Morgan who were influenced by them. And the arts and crafts movement in America came out of some of those Pre-Raphaelite sentiments, you know.”
Toby said, “You’ll have to ask Patch, but I think Morgan and my grandfather knew La Farge and some of the others you mentioned, in New York. I remember reading something once. That might be the connection.”
“Yeah, although, I don’t know of any American sculptors who were this directly influenced by them. And the subject isn’t right, you know. I don’t actually think the Pre-Raphaelites would have approved. The girl is typical, but the figure of Death behind her? Very strange.”
She leaned over and examined the girl’s face, her cheek brushing against the cold stone. “There’s been a lot written about the Pre-Raphaelites and their depictions of women. The women were either saintly goddesses of domestic tranquillity or prostitutes being lured away by evil men in the streets of London. But she looks so . . . in control. Even though she’s dead. Do you know what I mean? God, it’s so interesting, Toby. There’s got to be a great story behind this.” She paused to catch her breath. “What do you think about the poem?”
He read it again. “It’s funny. I’d say the author wasn’t a very accomplished poet, yet he demonstrates a knowledge of Victorian poetry in his use of symbolism. Of course, as poetry it’s not very good. The language is kind of clichéd and the shift in point of view is jarring. I’m not surprised we haven’t heard of the poet.”
“It’s weird to have a poem like that on a stone anyway. It’s not exactly an epitaph. And it’s not a religious verse.” She thought for a moment. “You know what the main poem sort of reminds me of? Swinburne. The Garden of Proserpine.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. ‘Here life has death for a neighbor, And far from eye or ear/Wan waves and wet winds labor, Weak ships and spirits steer.’ ”
“I don’t know much about Swinburne. What’s his story?”
“Well, he was one of the better-known Victorian poets. Wrote in the 1850s and ‘60s. Proserpine was part of a larger work called Poems and Ballads and he defended it against charges that it was a low work of sensuality or something like that. The whole point of the thing was that he wanted to show how oppressive Victorian morality had stamped out natural sexuality. But Proserpine is kind of weird. It’s about the saturation of love, I think, and the senses being overloaded by sensuality and lust—the fetid garden—and the narrator just wants to sleep. There’s some line like ‘I am weary of days and hours and buds of flowers,’ or something like that, and then he says he’s tired of desire and ‘everything but sleep.’ That’s my take on it.”
He looked around the cemetery. It was almost dark now
, though the expanse of snow-covered fields gave off a moony glow in the twilight.
“Where do you think she died?”
Sweeney had spotted a phalanx of spikes decorated with orange flags against the railing on one side of the cemetery and she pointed it out to him. Above the suggested shape of a body was a bush with waxy green leaves and from a distance, there appeared to be splashes of red blood on the snow. But as she wandered closer, she saw it was an illusion. The color came from scattered holly berries.
“I’ve had enough for now,” she said, turning away. “Let’s get out of here.”
EIGHT
The lubricants on the wheel that was Byzantium’s social life were the guests. In singles, doubles or triples, they came from the cities, breathlessly happy they’d been asked to stay, determined to respect the artists’ space and not to ask too many questions. Most stayed with whomever had invited them, though on the occasion someone had filled their house up, the guests were boarded at Upper Pastures or Birch Lane, where there was always extra room.
Many of the artists who eventually came to live at Byzantium started out as weekend guests. One of those was Myra Benton, who went on to spend five summers as Morgan’s studio assistant and to become a talented and well-known sculptor in her own right.
Years after her fateful first visit, Benton wrote in her journal about how she came to see the guests after she was an “official Byzantine”:
“At some point, I began to have the feeling that the guests were a kind of mirror for the colonists, that life in Byzantium was somehow produced for them. ‘Look at how we live,’ we all seemed to say. ‘Look at how gay we are, how much fun we have.’ But when the visitors were gone, we sometimes forgot who we were, and the fun just ran out of everything as though you’d punctured an auto tire.”
—Muse of the Hills: The Byzantium Colony, 1860–1956
BY BENNETT DAMMERS
SWEENEY WASN’T SURE whether it was the sense of death being uncomfortably near, their pleasure in being indoors on a cold and wintry evening or the Wentworths’ gratefulness in having new guests to relieve their own family dynamics, but they entered the warm dining room that night a strangely jovial and cheerful group, the children charming and helpful, the adults pleasantly tipsy from their cocktails before dinner.
“What shall we drink to?” Patch asked as they sat down at the big dining room table, lifting his wine glass and dipping it in Sweeney’s direction. “To new friends?”
“To new friends,” everyone intoned, lifting their glasses. As they drank, Britta and Gwinny brought in bowls of steaming linguine drenched with tomato vodka sauce and tender veal, and sprinkled with herbs. Sweeney realized that she hadn’t had anything to eat all day and she was ravenous. The smell of food was as intoxicating as the wine.
“And to old ones,” Patch added as they dug into the pasta. “We should also drink to old ones.”
“To old friends,” they said, and Patch winked at Ian.
Toby lifted his own glass. “And while we’re at it, here’s to acquaintances of a medium length of time who one says hello to on the street but would never invite over for dinner.”
“We haven’t drunk to people we don’t really like at all but have to be nice to because they’re family,” said Patch. “And boring distant relatives who you only see at weddings and funerals.”
“Yes,” said Ian Ball. “And please let’s drink to work chums who you see once a year at the Christmas party and whose wives you secretly fancy!”
They all laughed and Sweeney turned to look at Toby. He was grinning, his glass raised, his hair flopping over his forehead. Earlier, they had come back from their walk and stretched out on the sofa in the living room, warming their feet by the fire. He had rubbed her back and let her think out loud about Mary’s gravestone and she had felt peace overtake her. He had felt it, too, she knew he had, a simple, happy peace. Now, looking at him, she flushed deeply. Could it be that she and Toby . . .? That after all this time, she was finally ready for Toby, to find out what there might be between them besides the friendship? She looked away quickly, embarrassed.
“We saw everyone on our walk down to the cemetery,” Toby was telling them. “Sabina made them all go down and collect tree limbs to decorate her house with.”
“What did you think of them, Sweeney?” Britta asked her. “They can be overwhelming. The first time Patch brought me here, I felt like I’d been bowled over by a pack of dogs.”
“I liked them,” Sweeney said simply.
Patch said, “We’re lucky to have such good friends here,” and got up to pour the wine.
“Toby says you’re a painter,” Sweeney said to Patch. “I’ve always wished I could paint. Those who can’t do, teach, and all that.”
“I don’t paint much anymore,” Patch said. “But that’s one of my efforts up there.” He pointed to a landscape hanging on a wall of the dining room. “I realized early on that my talent didn’t hold a candle to my grandfather’s, but I did inherit his love for it.”
Sweeney studied the painting and saw that he was right. The landscape was technically correct, everything in proportion, the rolling hills and small farm almost photographically perfect. But there was something missing. It wasn’t the oft-mentioned passion—for Sweeney loved some paintings that she considered coolly dispassionate—but rather a sense of imaginative flight. The painting was no more than what it was, an exact likeness of a scene. It didn’t strive to make the viewer feel or imagine anything beyond it. It didn’t go for peace or loneliness or joy. It was uninformed by emotion and in that sense, it was an utter failure.
She wondered what to say that wouldn’t let on that she agreed with him, and settled on “I like the way you’ve done the farmer,” because she did.
Ian had been quiet during most of the evening, but now he said, “I’ve grown fascinated by the history of the colony since I’ve been here, Patch. Tell me about your grandfather. What was he like as a person?”
Patch didn’t say much about his grandfather, but for the next hour, he told stories—oft-told stories, Sweeney suspected—about the artists, about the parties and the famous visitors who had come, about local scandals—a visitor who fell in love with someone’s gardener and an adulterous painter who was blackmailed for thirty dollars a week by the local minister—about picnics and outdoor teas and grand Christmas parties, and the colony began to take shape before Sweeney’s eyes. It took on life and glittering reality and she started to see what it was that they were all so passionately connected to, what it was that had drawn them here and kept them here.
She said so, when he was finished.
“That’s why we felt it was so important not to have these condos,” he said, still excited from his monologue. “I sympathized with Ruth, I really did, but it isn’t worth any amount of money to ruin this. That’s why we felt we had to fight it.”
She was curious about something. “What do you mean by fighting it? Was there some kind of review process for the neighbors.”
“Not exactly,” Patch said. “Vermont has a law called Act 250. It’s an environmentally focused law and the idea is that any major development has to be vetted. There’s a board that looks at how the development would affect a whole bunch of things, traffic, the water supply, the aesthetics of the area. Neighbors and people in the community can weigh in when the board is considering a possible development. We were fighting it on the basis that this area has historical value and that they couldn’t compromise it by changing the landscape. Then, as the process went on, it became clear that the only place to put the right of way was partly over the line onto our property. We refused to give permission, and it looked like it might end there, but then the Kimballs claimed that in fact the land was theirs. When our lawyers started looking into it, they found that a deed hadn’t ever been recorded. Something like that. My father always told me that his father told him he’d bought the land off of Louis Denholm. I still don’t know how it will turn out.”
&n
bsp; “Anyway.” He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s not talk about all this awful stuff now. We’re so pleased to have you all with us.” He smiled around at them. “Things can’t be easy for Sherry Kimball tonight. I feel very lucky to have my family and friends safe and sound and all around me.”
When they had finished eating, Britta and the kids cleared the table and brought out dessert of stewed fruit and crème fraîche. Patch opened a bottle of champagne and raised his glass to them all, saying, “I think we should drink to our friends from generations past who provided us with so much beauty and so many good stories.”
“Here, here,” Toby said. Sweeney turned to smile at him and found that he was smiling at her.
“And what about flighty friends who are terribly late to dinner?” They all looked up to find Rosemary standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry I’m late. Granny wasn’t feeling well and I wanted to wait until she fell asleep before I left.”
“That’s all right,” Britta said, kissing her and going to get her some dessert. “I hope Electra’s okay.”
“Yes, I think so. Just a bit tired from our walk today, I think.”
Rosemary sat down on Toby’s other side and he leaned over to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek, leaving her looking embarrassed and delighted, and Sweeney just embarrassed.
Seeking a distraction, she looked up to find Gally staring at her. She met his eyes and he looked down, flushing wildly. She still hadn’t gotten a handle on Toby’s twin cousins. Before dinner, Trip, dressed in an oxford shirt and wool sweater, had leaned over and told her in a confidential voice that he liked her earrings. “They match your eyes,” he’d said, winking at her and reaching out to roll a sparkling drop pendant between his thumb and forefinger. She’d blushed, surprised at his boldness.
Gally, on the other hand, seemed almost pathologically shy. She had caught him staring at her a few times, and when she’d asked him about his interest in archaeology, he had seemed unable to come up with so much as a sentence in reply.
O’ artful death Page 6
