Under the Wide and Starry Sky

CHAPTER 14

Fanny,

Might I pull you away from the riverbank later this morning for a walk in the woods?
Bob


Fanny had found the invitation slipped under her door as she went down to breakfast. If there were a more enticing way to spend a sunny September morning, she could not think of it. In the past couple of days, since Louis returned to Edinburgh, the friendly intimacy Fanny enjoyed with Bob had revived. She contemplated the prospect that he might speak his feelings at last.

Around eleven, Bob was waiting downstairs for her, wearing a battered plaited-straw hat. They set o? into the forest, where streaks of sunlight shot through oak and pine branches, splashing the ferns with a quivering glow.

“I have a question for you,” Fanny said finally. “I hope it is not too personal.” “Ask it.”

“Are you serious about all that suicide talk?”

Bob took o? his hat, scratched his head glumly.  “My money’s going to be gone soon enough.”

“Perhaps it’s time to start earning some of your own.” “Perhaps.”

“No one will hold you to that talk. You have too many people who love you.” “Louis wouldn’t allow it, anyway,” Bob said. “Say, how do you like Louis?” “He’s charming. Nearly as clever as you,” Fanny said.  “But my word, one minute he’s
weeping, and the next, he’s so hysterical he can’t stop laughing. I don’t know whether to give him a handkerchief or look out the window. Does he have some condition?”
Bob’s laughter pealed through the clearing where they stood.  “A variety of them,” he said. “Being a Lighthouse Stevenson is one.”

“What is that?”

“He’s an artist in a family of proper engineers—my father was one of them. They’re quite famous for the lighthouses they build, by the way. But his main condition is being giddy with life.” Bob laughed. “He’s su?ered, you see, with his lungs—been near to death a few

times. But that’s made Louis who he is; a bit of a bedlamite, you might say. Hungry for living life and oblivious to caution sometimes. Never, never has he let his illnesses cripple his spirit. He’s always got a zany story or joke saved up for me. And the laughing? Well, haven’t you ever laughed so hard that you lost control, as he did last night? When you were simply gasping for air and thought you would never stop?”

“Possibly as a child. Not lately.”

“I’m sorry, Fanny. You haven’t had much reason to laugh.” “Frankly, I found your cousin a little frightening.”

“Oh, he’s perfectly all right. The thing is, once you’ve laughed that hard you will want to do it again. It feels so grand. Lou and I spent a good part of our youth laughing our heads off. He would look at me, and I was doomed.”

They were walking along a path overhung by branches of a great-trunked beech tree. “Do you suppose Monet came to this spot to paint?” Fanny said.

“When he was about nine … “

“Monet?”

“Louis. And I was twelve, we would set up lead soldiers and wage huge battles in his bedroom. Not just maneuvers; we would give the wee men grudges, bad habits, valor— whole histories, not only military ranks. I could play at his bedside as happily as if I were outdoors.” Bob laughed to  himself.  “A huge  imagination  he  has;  that’s  why  he’s  never bored. “

“I can see you love him, Bob.”

“He’s got his foibles, don’t get me wrong. He may have abandoned the church, but he’s a moralist of the ?rst water. I remember one time we came upon a man on the road who was beating his dog. Louis was horri?ed and told him to stop. The man growled at him and said, ‘I’ll do what I  want.  It’s my  dog.’ Louis,  mind you,  was a  mere boy,  but he said indignantly, ‘He’s not your dog. He’s God’s dog.’ That pretty well sums up Louis’s attitude about unfairness. Can’t bear it. He’s going to be famous someday, mark my words. If he can keep his health.”

“He appears to be perfectly fine.”

“I think the canoeing, being out in the country air, is good for him.” Bob caught her eye as they continued on. “He’s awfully fond of you, Fanny.”

“I do not need another child.”

“Fanny,” Bob said gently, “I am a lazy, vulgar cad. I haven’t any ideas about what I can really do. I don’t think I will ever be a ?rst-rate painter. I may be older than Lou, but he is far more mature.”

They walked on for a few minutes. Up ahead, Fanny could see the path that led back to the garden. Disgusted, she stopped and turned to him. “Were you assigned this task, Bob, or have you undertaken it on your own?”

Bob’s eyes passed over her face. “You are a beautiful woman, an accomplished woman. A man would be blind not to see that.” He paused.  “I would not make the case for anyone except Louis. He has a soul like that of no one else I know. And I am not what you imagine, Fanny.”

In the garden, Bob put his hand at the small of her back and walked quietly with her to the dining room, where the midday dinner was in progress. Fanny saw at once the knowing glances darting among the people gathered there. She knew what they were thinking: that something deeply intimate had happened on the forest walk. Her whole head was burning. She tipped up her chin and looked neither left nor right. Let them think they have caught us in a tryst.

What she knew by the time they had reached the inn was something else entirely. In a fashion  that only  a  man  of  Bob’s genteel breeding  could have managed,  she had been passed like a slab of cheese on a plate from one diner to the next.