Treasure Box Page 0,39

laughed and shook his head. "Why, when he's already locked up in a dream?"

"Oh, you put that so beautifully." She squeezed his arm. "I love you."

The library had only the windows to link it with the outdoors. They had to cross the entry hall and go into the official dining room in order to reach a door leading out onto the back portico. It was a broad expanse of flagstones with five wide steps leading down to the snow-covered lawn. The lawn itself, interrupted only by an occasional tree that was invariably surrounded by a circular bench, flowed on to the bluff overlooking the river. The river itself was, of course, below the level of the bluff, but in the clear, weary light of a winter afternoon, they could see the dark shadows of trees against stark and shining snow on the bluffs on the opposite side of the river. Miles and miles away, it seemed, though it could hardly be that far.

"It's a little bleak," he said.

"Imagine it with leaves," said Madeleine. "Imagine it filled with life. Imagine it when the country was still young and you might hear the tootle of a steamboat on the river below, and the sound of children laughing as they ran along the bluff."

As she spoke, the pictures she conjured in his mind delighted him, and he smiled. "All right," he said. "I'm willing to admit that winter has its own beauty, too."

"This house wasn't always filled with strange old people, you know," said Madeleine. "It was once alive and bright."

"When you were a little girl here?"

"I was a solitary child when I lived here," said Madeleine. "And Paul - he was no company for me."

Quentin wondered again whether Paul might have molested her, or tried to.

"But Mother told me what it was like when she was young. She and Paul were little here, and even though that was well after the age of the steamboats, of course, they knew the stories - Aunt Athena told them - and they'd play steamboat captain down by the river or up in their attic playroom."

"The idylls of childhood."

"Whatever that means. Exactly."

"But Aunt Athena can't be old enough to remember steamboats, either."

"Oh, of course not. Just a conduit for old stories. Family memories. She has to use her head for something. Keeping the old tales alive isn't a bad occupation for it."

"Mad, you're so nasty about them."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm always so frightened when I come here, I'm not at my best."

"What are you afraid of?"

She didn't answer and she didn't answer, and then they were at the bluff and the river scene unfolded below them. Even with patches of ice along the edges of the river, it was formidably wide. Quentin remembered paintings by the Hudson River School and tried to apply those magnificent pastorals and landscapes to the scene before him. It wasn't hard. Before the river was a highway, it was a habitat, and now that the traffic was gone, perhaps that old life was coming back. Some old docks still touched the icy river edge, but at other places the verge of the river had been given back to the woods. How many squirrels were living off stored nuts in those trees in the lee of the bluffs? How many coons and rabbits, field mice and weasels lived without the sight of man for months on end?

Her hand stole around his waist and she leaned into him. "Oh, Quentin, I do love this place, I do love it. This is what brings me back, even though I hate who I become when I'm here."

"So let's open the treasure box and go. I can buy you another place on the river with a view just like this. Or better."

"There is no place just like this."

"You don't want me to look for another Victorian mansion?"

"Pre-Victorian, dear," said Madeleine. "Victorian is so... nouveau."

They laughed.

They walked on the path along the edge of the bluff. In a few places the drop-off was rather steep, and the path did skirt rather close. He couldn't help remembering Uncle Paul's jocular warning: Maddy's a pusher. And he was walking on the side by the river. But she wasn't pushing, she was holding him, and he loved the feel of the way their bodies moved, not quite together, but rubbing against each other, hip to hip, his arm across her shoulders, her arm around his waist. The breeze was a little chilly, but the sun was warm.

They reached the