THE TREASURE HOUSE

The Hansom Cab from Paddington Terminus had deposited Jane first in Tite Street, where Emmeline’s maid, Nancy had aired and warmed the room Jane had occupied during her long stay in London. And it was here that Jane had intended to return after she was cast out of the hospital in the early evening, but now the thought of being alone in Emmeline’s house as the night came on was inimical to her. She wanted to talk, even to be allowed to cry, if that was what she found herself doing. And she knew where she had to go.

Relieved as she now felt that she had not sent her letter of renunciation to Julietta, she nevertheless told herself that she was not seeking out her lover, to be embraced again by her; she was seeking out Julietta and Ashton – her friends and Emmeline’s, and with them she would find the comfort she needed.

As she approached the tall house in Tedworth Square, she caught a brief glimpse of a well-dressed young woman, who ran quickly down the steps and climbed into a waiting carriage.

Jane paused in the street, watching the carriage being driven away. And she felt, in that instant, that she knew what had just happened: Julietta was alone in the house and had been visited by one of her ‘beauties’.

If Jane believed for a moment or two that she should turn round and go straight back to Tite Street, she also knew that she was unable to do this. The thought of Julietta in her bed, damp and somnolent after the passionate attentions of the young woman, woke in her such mixed feelings of jealousy and longing that all else disappeared from her mind except the need to see the lover she had almost sworn never to meet again.

She went up the steps of the house and rang the bell. The maid who answered the door, bobbing a little curtsey to Jane as she went in, was no older than seventeen and extremely pretty and Jane glancingly wondered whether this innocent girl was now and then invited into her mistress’s bed. She was led into a large drawing room, where a fire was burning. Told that Mr Sims was abroad and that Mrs Sims had retired early, she asked the girl to fetch pen and paper.

The maid went out to find this and Jane sat down on a Louis XVI chair upholstered in pale blue brocade. She looked about her at the treasures acquired by Ashton Sims and his wife: the Ormolu clock on the marble mantelpiece, the China blackamoor holding aloft a gas lamp, the exquisitely covered sofas and chairs, the Georgian tables, the Turkey carpet, the Dutch paintings, the palms in huge ceramic pots, the silver candelabra, the oak bookcases filled with leather-bound editions of Ashton’s authors’ works, the dog basket lined with sheepskin … And she thought, all this is right for Julietta. She belongs to this world of expensive, perfectly arranged things, for she is Beauty Itself. She could imagine the palms longing to caress her with their leaves, the Dutch pitcher-bearer in one of the paintings gazing mournfully down upon her, wishing she could escape from the picture to hold Julietta against her bosom. If these thoughts were childlike and foolish, Jane didn’t care. She felt herself to be seated, now, in some inner sanctum of human pulchritude. She could almost hear music rising from the floor or whispering from the walls.