Today's Reading
"Curiously, neither has said a word about it. One would think that since I am such a disappointment to Father, he would be anxious for me to marry so that he may influence the next in line for his precious earldom." Father's silence on the matter, especially as the years ticked by, was very strange, but Effie considered it a blessing, so he didn't question it.
"Here we are." Effie held the door to his bedchamber and gestured the others in ahead of him.
"I thought you said you'd nearly finished packing," Archie said, looking stern, or as stern as Archie was capable of looking, which wasn't very.
"Why don't we have some more tea sent up? Or some port—we can get started early," Simon said. "We shall repose while you pack."
"Repose!" Archie protested. "He needs to pack, and we need to go!"
"Go!" called Leander from his cage by the window, drawing the attention of all three men. "Go!"
"I thought he didn't talk," Archie said.
"Yes, well, he's found his voice," Effie said with exasperated affection. His new macaw was quite a bit more talkative than his predecessor, Sally, but at the same time he managed to say a great deal less of import.
"But he only says random words, single-syllable ones, at that. He will hear a short word he fancies, and that's all he'll say for days. He's done 'No' and 'Tell,' and now he's added—"
"Go!" shrieked the bird.
"You see? One word at a time. You can't have a proper conversation with him like you could with Sally."
"I wouldn't say I ever had a proper conversation with Sally," Simon said, leaning over and peering into Leander's cage. "The most that ever happened is she said 'Hello'—grudgingly—in response to a greeting."
"That was only because Sally didn't like you," Effie said.
"Hmm." Simon, apparently unbothered by the knowledge that Effie's dear departed pet had thought poorly of him, pulled out his timepiece. "What about that port?"
"What has happened to this room?" Archie, seemingly having forgotten that he was in a hurry, was looking around as if he'd never seen the place.
"How do you mean?" Effie asked.
"It looks as if a rainbow fell from the sky and took up residence."
Effie's bedchamber was rather in disarray. The dressing table at which he had made his toilette last night was littered with ribbons and tinctures. He had been trying on different waistcoats, and he'd left the rejects strewn about.
Simon, from over near the mantel, pointed to the flowers bedecking Effie's ormolu clock. "What are these? They're as big as a man's fist."
"Dried peonies. Aren't they magnificent?"
"Where are the black roses that used to be here?"
"I felt a change was in order."
"And where is the painting that used to hang here?" Archie had made his way to Effie's dressing area at the far end of the room. "It was an odd image—a monkey sitting on a dead woman's chest."
"She wasn't dead; she was dreaming. And it wasn't a monkey; it was a demon. That was a reproduction of a Fuseli entitled The Nightmare. And to answer your question, I took it down."
How to explain why, though, which was what Archie was actually asking. When Effie had first seen the image, years ago in a book his mother brought home from Italy, he'd recognized it. Not because he'd seen the painting before, but in the way one recognizes that which is familiar. That was the magical, horrible-wonderful potential of art, to show us what we already know. To be a mirror.
But then one day last spring, he'd thought: Art can show us the familiar, yes, but can it also wear a groove in our souls, turning the familiar into the' expected'? If one has nightmares, need one remind oneself visually of that fact every time one enters one's bedchamber? Might doing so even prime one to have nightmares?
The nights had been getting so much worse. He had been desperate to try anything to get the nightmares—if one could even call them that—to stop.
But like the printing press, the nightmares were difficult to explain. He might be able to do it in Brighton, after a drink or four, but now, here, he didn't know how to tell the boys about any of it.
Happily, he didn't have to. Archie moved down his line of questions. "What have you replaced it with? And isn't this a rather unusual color for sky?" He tapped the painting's gilt frame. "Who painted it?"
"I did."
...
