The way home was long, and I took my time. Whenever I saw a cafe opening up, I stepped in and ordered breakfast. The baskets of bread and the pots of coffee helped me to reconnect with Earth.
My head was whirling. I wanted to follow the creature into what the world would call madness. But I would never surrender the girls to her. But without the girls, would she be herself? Would she be real? And, whatever she was now, what would she become in another day, week, year?
It was midmorning before I turned up the street that led to my apartment.
Marianne, my maid, was furious with me. She could not say so, of course, but she let me know it in the way she sniffed at me and silently took a brush to my clothes.
I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. I lay there, electric with tension, fear, and desire. My thoughts followed one another in a circle like hungry wolves: fear of madness, desire for my love, determination to protect the girls. Finally, I got up again.
There was a note waiting for me on the Boits’ stationery. I was invited to resume the painting at my earliest convenience.
Immediately I sent back that I would be around at the usual time that day, and got ready.
When I arrived at the Boits’ home, it was the footman who let me in.
“I beg your pardon,” I asked him as he took my hat and coat, “have you had any news of Flint?”
“I am afraid I can give you no knowledge of that gentleman, sir,” the footman said.
The fellow was trying not to smirk. Had he wanted Flint’s post so badly?
“I shall miss Flint,” I said with emphasis.
“Yes, sir. We all miss Mr. Flint. Madame Boit is most distressed, if I may say so.”
Again that smirk, with a little duck of the head.
“Please wait here,” he said, and left me.
I had a moment not of overwhelming beauty but of profound shock. I felt sure that Flint had not been Miss Joseph’s lover after all. Flint had handled Iza so surely when she raged, picked her up as if she were an angry child. And she has let him do it. No servant—no mere servant—could do such a thing, he would be fired.
I felt sure that Flint had climbed into Iza’s bed.
And the servants must surely know it. Did the girls? And if they did, was the knowledge of it pushing them toward the Lady of Love?
But the footman was back.
“Madame will see you in the small salon, sir,” he said.
I followed him.
Iza Boit had posed herself for my coming. She had chosen a fainting couch on which to receive me; but she was brightly dressed, and her smile was broad. Her eyes, however, were the same bleak gray as the sky outside, and her flesh was pale.
“Ah. Friend Sargent,” she said.
“Mrs. Boit,” I said with a little bow.
“I have had a cable from Boity,” she said. “He will return home within two weeks. Do you suppose the painting might be finished by then?”
“That’s very little time for such a big canvas,” I said. “Especially since the girls sit only for brief periods. It might be done, but I doubt it.”
“I see,” said Iza Boit. “Well, we must do all we can, Sargent. I shall instruct the girls’ governess that you are to have all their time until it is finished.”
Instruct the girls’ governess? I thought. That poor woman was still lying on a slab in the Rue Morgue. What was Iza Boit on about?
“The butler will bring them to you,” she said.
The footman, she meant. I saw now what it was she was doing. Iza Boit was not mad—at least no madder than she had ever been. She was instructing me to pretend that nothing that had happened in the last few days had happened.
“Very well,” I said. “Shall I wait for them in the foyer?”
“Yes,” she said.
And I knew I was dismissed.
The painting still stood in the foyer. Julia and Popau semed to be emerging from a cloud. Or were they being drawn into it?
I turned my thoughts to the creature and to her growing power. I must do something quickly before the misery of the girls’ lives overwhelmed them.
When they appeared, they looked as if each of them had taken on one part of their mother’s mood and refracted it like a prism. Florence was withdrawn. Jane was arrogant. Mary was afraid. Julia, with Popau, was pretending that nothing was wrong.
I wondered then how I looked to them. How would someone who could see all five of us together paint our portrait? Where would I be positioned among the rest of us? What would my face show?
And there was another presence. Strong and invisible, and as real as any of us.
And not to be mentioned.
Without speaking to me, the girls arranged themselves loosely as I had positioned them for the painting.
I squeezed some colors onto my palette and began to paint. Tired and nervous as I felt, I decided to work only on the darkness at the top of the frame.This was a waste of time, since I didn’t need the girls to be there for it, but it was the most I could do.
As I worked, Florence began to rock from side to side, leaning against the vase.
It was as if her rhythm was summoning the creature. And I found my brushstrokes making a kind of counterpoint to the sound of the vase thumping against the floor. And the creature began to emerge from the darkness I was painting, coming in that fragmented way I had sketched weeks ago. But now I knew she was there.
“Oh,” said Jane. “Oh. Oh. Oh.”
I painted harder and harder, drawing the demon to us.
Then Julia said, “Look Uncle Sargent. P-paul is happy.”
I turned to see Popau dancing on the carpet next to her.
Was a dance like this the thing that had killed Miss Joseph?
I put down my brush and watched the damned thing on the floor, stumping through its ugly jig.
Ugly. What we were involved in was ugly. It was mad, and it was cruel. How could I ever have believed anything else?
I looked again at my painting. At the creature there and not there in the shadows,
She had drawn me to her again. She had been drawing me ever since I had met the Boits. And her bottomless need would destroy us all. Popau was dancing her joy. But now I thought I knew how to break the spell she was weaving.
She had said the doll was her way of touching us.
“Yes, he is happy, isn’t he?” I said.
I looked out of the window. There were still about two hours of light left.
“Popau is happy, but are we happy?” I said. “Any of us?”
“No, Uncle Sargent,” Mary said.
Jane shook her head.
Florence was stone-faced.
“No,” Julia said, agreeing with her sisters.
“I think we should all go out with Popau for the rest of the afternoon,” I said. “I think we have painted enough for one day, and the light is going to be bad soon anyway.”
“Where will we go?” Jane asked.
“On an educational outing,” I said. “To a very famous cemetery.”