* * * *
Laura Hinde stood by the lectern and listlessly turned over the pages of a portrait album, which Bronwen Caspian had opened for her inspection. It was bound in morocco, with gilt lettering on the cover to identify it as the property of The Powys Photographing and Enlarging Studio. Each page of heavy card had a gilt border, framing cartes-de-visite of sitters viewed from different angles and with different backgrounds. Some sat stiffly upright and stared vacantly ahead; others stood with one fist gripping the back of a chair, their gaze on some distant star. Clients usually arrived with little idea of the pose in which they wished to see themselves immortalized, and it helped to present them with a few samples.
Bronwen edged the mahogany tripod of her camera into position, and through the glass screen established a rough focus on the dais with its lyre-backed chair and potted palm.
‘If you care to try sitting beside the small table,’ she suggested, ‘or standing behind the chair, perhaps leaning forward—whichever you find most comfortable....’
Miss Hinde turned another page. She gave the impression of expecting no comfort.
‘I promise it’ll be painless.’ It was one of Bronwen’s stock remarks, usually arousing at least a wan smile.
The girl shrugged and turned towards the low dais. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. Bronwen smiled encouragingly and rolled a tall cheval-glass on casters round so that the sitter could study herself. For a moment their two heads were caught in the mirror: Bronwen’s in the foreground, Laura’s remote and elusive, her eyes downcast. Not until some form of registering natural colours was perfected could such a contrast ever be satisfactorily captured. Hand tinting would blur and falsify their two contrasting heads: Bronwen’s auburn hair and wide, gently slanting green eyes; Laura Hinde’s flaxen tresses bound up too severely for her long, melancholy, beautifully moulded features, but still glowing with life in each fine silken strand.
‘We’ll have to see you more cheerful than that,’ Bronwen persevered. ‘I understand this is a present from your father. I’m sure he’d prefer it to be a happy one.’
Laura made an effort. ‘You and your husband work together, Mrs. Powys?’
‘Mrs. Caspian.’
‘I’m sorry. Of course my father told me the name was Caspian, but seeing Powys on that album, and over the studio door....’
‘It perpetuates my father’s name, and my own earlier work with him. My husband indulges me—allows me to carry on the work, and to keep the Powys name alive.’
The girl looked a trifle more animated. ‘What a fine thought.’ She raised her head, and the touch of a smile showed how ravishingly her features would be transformed if she smiled more readily, more often.
Bronwen stepped forward to indicate how the line of her arm across the pale blue dress would give balance to the picture, A tilt of the head to the left—‘And if you will just let yourself relax, just go slightly back against the chair’—and if only, she thought, she could be sure of catching the essence of that yearning, half-tranced expression. But even her slight intervention had turned the expression sullen and uncommunicative again.
‘Let’s try a couple of exposures, shall we?’ She took a couple of normal poses, then looped some drapery across a screen behind the sitter. ‘If you could lean back and look across at the far corner of the window....’
She tried to listen to the girl’s mind, but sensations were faint. A few shifting images faded and escaped. In her head Laura was as reserved as in her outward manner. But somewhere within the chill defences of her mind something fluttered: something fearful, like a timid animal peeping out of its burrow and then scuttling back to burrow even deeper.
The sensation intensified. For an instant Bronwen felt herself a hunter, strong and shrewd enough to draw the truth squealing and terrified out of the girl’s mind. The awareness was so strong that she knew Alex must be in the building. His mind had joined hers.
She removed a frame from the camera, suggested her sitter might care to consider some of the other poses in the album, and hurried into the darkroom.
He was perched on a high stool in the corner.
Quietly she said: ‘You can hear well enough?’
‘You know I can. I was with you. Try now. Listen with me.’
They were silent. Across Laura’s mind flitted a brief vision of a woman stooping, predatory, her head darkly veiled, two fingers of one hand jabbing an accusation. Then it was gone.
‘lt’s you!’ Caspian chuckled. ‘The wicked witch of the magic box!’ His lips brushed Bronwen’s cheek, and he said: ‘Do a few more studies, and we’ll both concentrate.’
‘Are you sure this is right? If she won’t confide in anyone, even her father or their own family doctor, of her own volition, ought we to eavesdrop?’
‘She’s crying out for help.’
‘If she won’t put it into words even to herself—’
‘Crying out for help,’ he repeated. His voice was no more than a whisper. At rare moments like this they talked as much with their thoughts as with speech. ‘But not knowing what help she seeks, she won’t tell all the truth. Even if she did try to confide in the family physician, she would tell him only what she could persuade herself to admit—which has nothing to do with her real ailment. We can’t refuse to listen—as much to what she’s not saying as to what she’s saying.’
Bronwen went back to the studio. The graceful head turned on its long, lovely neck.
‘You have some delightful pictures in this album. I’m sure the results of my visit won’t compare. Let’s not risk any further attempts.’
‘Your father’s not due for another twenty minutes. We really must do our best for him.’ Bronwen moved the camera into a new position. ‘Now, can we think of something cheerful? Or someone very dear to you? Or,’ she chattered on, ‘something that especially interests you? Now,’ she said sharply: ‘today.’
Caspian’s mind was in tune with hers. Both resonated to the conflict in the girl’s head. Through the thick mesh of the mental barrier she had erected they got a sudden clear picture of a newspaper advertisement. Then Laura Hinde rejected it again, virtually crumpling it up and hurling it away as if to cancel out anything it had said.
There was a dying whisper of words in that soft tone of hers, although she had not moved her lips.
Yes, I shall be there. To the end. I shall not fail.
The barrier closed again.
Bronwen felt her husband detach himself from her mind, like a lover withdrawing gently from her body. As ever, there was that pang of loss, even though at the moment he was only in the next room.
She took two more plates, and then said: ‘There, now.’
A carriage drew up close to the kerb, darkening the long window of the studio. As Mr. Hinde came in from the street, the back door slammed, and Alexander Caspian came along the corridor as if newly arrived. The two men shook hands. Laura stepped down from the dais and was introduced.
‘Doctor
