O' Artful Death Part 4

"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 G.o.ddesses of domestic tranquillity or prost.i.tutes 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? G.o.d, 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 cliched 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 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 Proserpine was part of a larger work called was part of a larger work called Poems and Ballads 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 s.e.xuality. But 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 s.e.xuality. But Proserpine Proserpine is kind of weird. It's about the saturation of love, I think, and the senses being overloaded by sensuality and l.u.s.t-the fetid garden-and the narrator just wants to sleep. There's some line like is kind of weird. It's about the saturation of love, I think, and the senses being overloaded by sensuality and l.u.s.t-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,' '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 or something like that, and then he says he's tired of desire and 'everything but sleep.' 'everything but sleep.' That's my take on it." 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' s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sistant 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, 18601956 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 c.o.c.ktails before dinner. 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 c.o.c.ktails before dinner.

"What shall we drink to?" Patch asked as they sat down at the big dining room table, lifting his wine gla.s.s and dipping it in Sweeney's direction. "To new friends?"

"To new friends," everyone intoned, lifting their gla.s.ses. 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 gla.s.s. "And while we're at it, here's to acquaintances of a medium length of time who one says h.e.l.lo 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 gla.s.s 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, embarra.s.sed.

"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 pa.s.sion-for Sweeney loved some paintings that she considered coolly dispa.s.sionate-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 pa.s.sionately 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 Kimb.a.l.l.s 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."

"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 creme fraiche. Patch opened a bottle of champagne and raised his gla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed and delighted, and Sweeney just embarra.s.sed.

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.

"So how long have you been teaching, Sweeney?" Rosemary asked her, leaning across Toby, who put an arm around her shoulder.

Sweeney took a deep breath. "Well, I was a teaching a.s.sistant when I was in graduate school. But I've been an a.s.sistant professor for just a year. I like it, though it's a bit uncertain. I think my department chairman hates me. And they'll never give tenure to anyone from the department. Did I mention my chairman hates me?"

"How could he?" Rosemary said sincerely. "He must be jealous."

"That's what I keep telling her," Toby said.

"Jealous or not, he's decided to supplement his non-existent course load with a couple of semesters of torturing me. If you know any voodoo, let me know. I'd love to make a little doll of him and stick pins in it or something."

"Actually," Rosemary said, smiling, "when we lived in South Africa, we were out in the bush for a while and there was this local tribal chief my father knew a little. He used to curse people. It was really weird. One day he'd say something about how he didn't like so and so, or that they had crossed him, and then sure enough, a couple of days later the fellow's gun would misfire or he'd fall off a horse or something. I couldn't tell you how he did it, though."

"Isn't she amazing?" Toby said to them. "Do you know anyone else who knows about voodoo and curses?"

Sweeney felt herself flush again. The conversation went on, but she hardly heard what they were saying. This time she looked up to find Ian Ball watching her across the table. She did not like what she saw in his face and as soon as she felt she could, she said she was tired and went up to bed.

Climbing the stairs to the third floor, she recalled it with anger and shame. He had looked at her with sympathy.

AS A CHILD, Sweeney had been terrified by the idea of sleep, the feeling of gradually surrendering her place in the earthly world. It felt like a kind of dying, and even as an adult, she often jerked awake three or four times as she fell asleep before finally giving in. Some nights, she could not give in at all and she had tried all the usual remedies, warm baths and milk and pills. Warm baths got her creative juices flowing, she hated milk, and pills made her jittery the next day. The only thing she'd found that worked was alcohol.

That night, helped along by the five gla.s.ses of wine she'd had at dinner, she had no trouble nodding off, but she awoke with a start early the next morning, conscious that something had startled her from sleep. She looked at the glowing clock on her bedside table. It was 4:30, and outside the window of her third floor bedroom, it was not quite dark, the waxing moon casting a washed-out light on the snow-covered fields.

She turned on her bedside light, awake as if she'd downed a cup of coffee. What had it been? She was almost certain that something specific had drawn her back from sleep, the sound of a voice, a presence in her room. Footsteps. That was it. She'd heard footsteps somewhere. Someone going to the bathroom, probably. But no, it hadn't been inside the house, she realized as the sound came back to her. The sound had been someone or something's footsteps on the roof. Strangely this made her feel better. It had probably been a rat or a squirrel.

That was it. All was well. But she knew with the certainty of a lifelong insomniac that further rest was impossible. She got out of bed and went to look for a book to read.

The bedroom to which she had been a.s.signed was a cozy little chamber tucked under the eaves of the third floor and decorated in leafy green. A stenciled vine wound its way around the room, dipping and twining itself around the wall behind a four-poster bed and echoed in a vine-print throw rug and the canopy draped over the bed. The selection of books about the colony she'd borrowed from the Wentworths' library were piled promisingly on the mirrored dressing table.

She chose the one that appeared the most comprehensive, a hardback history by Bennett Dammers, the expert on Byzantium whom her colleague Jamie Benedetto had recommended she consult. She got back in bed, opening the book to the faded back jacket flap where she found a picture of a dapper-looking man with light hair styled in formidable '70s sideburns. The collar of his shirt reached almost to his shoulders, but still he managed to look preppy and formal. "Bennett Dammers was for many years the chairman of the Art History Department at Williams College," the jacket copy read. "He was born and raised in Byzantium, Vermont, where he continues to live in a house once owned by the painter Gerard Fierman. His other books include biographies of the Byzantium sculptor Bryn Davies Morgan and a history of American painters abroad."

She spent the next hour reading about the history of the colony, about how Morgan had come up from New York and seen the hills of Byzantium and bought a piece of land for his house, about how his friends and their friends had followed him here, for the natural beauty, for the solitude, for the companionship. In their rustic Byzantium studios, some of the best American artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had found inspiration and fame.

Next Sweeney read about Toby's great-grandfather. "Herrick Gilmartin built his studio in the woods behind Birch Lane soon after the house was finished, complete with a small kitchen, woodburning stove and overhead sleeping loft, so that he could sleep there when artistic inspiration struck him, as it often did, at odd hours."

There was a photograph of the artist at his easel, the cluttered interior of the little studio filled with canvases and jars of paint, books and smocks.

It was now 5:30 and the sky seemed even darker outside her window. She wasn't going to get any more sleep so she decided she might as well get up and make some coffee.

"Shhh," she told the dogs as they clattered ahead of her down the stairs, their nails clicking on the wood floors. "You'll wake everyone up."

But someone was already up. From the foyer, she caught sight of Patch's blond head bowed over the coffee table in the living room.

He was working on his jigsaw puzzle.

The puzzle had progressed a bit toward completion. There was now a red-haired woman dressed in a flowing pink gown and seated on a black horse in the center of the puzzle.

"I do puzzles when I can't sleep, too," Sweeney said, standing over him and scanning the pieces. "Try that one." She pointed to a piece printed with gra.s.s and flowers. "I think that goes under the horse's front foot. Yes, like that."

Sure enough, it fit.

"Thanks." He stared at it for a few minutes, then picked up another green piece and fit it in next to the one Sweeney had spotted. "I don't think I slept at all. I kept imagining someone was breaking in down here, going through our stuff. You had trouble, too?"

"Yeah. I've been up getting some reading done about the history of the colony. I was looking at Bennett Dammers's book. I was hoping to talk to him about the gravestone and the colony."

"Well, he's the guy to talk to." He went back to the puzzle, picking out a small piece printed with pink and adding it to the flowing skirt of the woman's dress.

"Can I see it?" she asked. He handed her the cardboard box and she turned it over to find a print of Sir Frank d.i.c.ksee's La Belle Dame Sans Merci La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the print, the woman looked condescendingly down on a helmetless knight, one arm holding the harness of her horse, the other outstretched in a kind of supplication. In the background were a lake and a sunset and rolling hills, a typical Pre-Raphaelite landscape. She was trying to remember what she knew about Sir Frank d.i.c.ksee when she saw there was a small note at the bottom of the box.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci. d.i.c.ksee (18531928) was not a true member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he adopted many of their themes and techniques, as in this undated painting. The familiar Keatsian subject matter was popular with many of the Pre-Raphaelites."

d.i.c.ksee. An artist who wasn't a Pre-Raphaelite, but had adopted some of their themes and techniques. It gave her an idea.

"Would it be all right to look through some of your grandfather's papers now? I don't think I'll be going back to sleep, so I might as well get some work done."

Patch turned around and studied her for a moment. "As I said, I've been all through it." His blue eyes were hard. "But you're welcome to look again, of course. A lot of it has gone to various museums and libraries, but what's left is in storage up in the attic. Here, I'll show you." He got up and led the way up the main staircase, then up the narrower pa.s.sage to the third floor. Sweeney had noticed the door at the end of the hallway, but a.s.sumed it led to another bedroom.

The attic, Sweeney saw, when she reached the top stair, was not the cramped overhead crawl s.p.a.ce she had always a.s.sociated with the word, but rather a full fourth floor with room for even her to stand up and walk around. Along the walls were stacked boxes and steamer trunks and file cabinets. One wall was almost entirely obscured by a large cabinet.

Patch lifted a small panel on the front and she saw that it had humidity and temperature controls. "That's for the good stuff. Not many papers in there, though. I think you'd be most interested in what's in here." He opened the top file drawer on a tall wooden storage tower. "We hired a librarian to come up and organize everything a couple of years ago. Here's the index. See, there's stuff related to Morgan, Marcus Granger. There's even a Pica.s.so card. I don't know what that could possibly be, but you're welcome to look through all this stuff."

Sweeney flipped through the neatly organized cards. There were entries for almost any topic she could think of, "Byzantium," "Dogs," "Tax Problems." The hired librarian had been extremely thorough.

"Did he keep a journal?" She had discovered long ago that a well-kept journal offered endless possibilities for authenticating works of art or confirming biographical information.

"Not that I've ever found, though he had a secretary toward the end of his life and she kept his appointments, I think. Anyway, feel free to root around as much as you like. I'll leave you to it."

He turned to go, the floorboards groaning under his feet, but when he reached the stairs, he waited there for a moment as though he was going to say something.

"Was there anything else?"

"No, sorry. Good luck." She watched him go down the stairs, but his hesitation seemed to hover there in the little hallway, thickening the chilly air.

For the next hour and a half, Sweeney looked through the file cabinet, finding lots that was of interest-including a letter to Herrick Gilmartin from Teddy Roosevelt-but absolutely nothing of any use.