The End of All Songs

"I shall settle down, sir — if I do — in my own way and in my own time, without help from you!"

"Amelia," Jherek implored, "there is no need for this!"

"You will calm me, will you!" Her eyes were blazing on them all. All stepped back. "Will you?"

Lord Jagged of Canaria began to glide towards the door, followed by his wife and his guest.

"Machiavelli!" she cried after him. "Meddler! Oh, monstrous, dandified Prince of Darkness!"

He had reached the door and he looked back, his eyes serious for a fraction of a moment. "You honour me too much, madam. I seek only to correct an imbalance where one exists."

"You'll admit your part in this?"

Already his shoulder had turned and the collar hid his face. He was outside, floating to where his great swan awaited him. She watched from the window. She was breathing heavily, was reluctant, even, to let Jherek take her hand.

He tried to excuse his father. "It is Jagged's way. He means only good…"

"He can judge?"

"I think you have hurt his feelings, Amelia."

"I hurt his? Oho!" She removed the hand from his grasp and folded both under her heaving breast. "He makes fools of all!"

"Why should he wish to? Why should he, as you say, play God?"

She watched the swan as it disappeared in the pale blue sky. "Perhaps he does not know, himself," she said softly.

"Harold can be stopped. Jagged said so."

She shook her head and moved back into the room. Automatically, she began to gather up the cups and place them on the tray. "He will be happier in 1896, without question. Now, at any rate. The damage is done. And he has a mission. He has a duty to perform, as he sees it. I envy him."

He followed her reasoning. "We shall go to seek for seeds today. As we pla

She shrugged. "Harold believes he saves the world. Jagged believes the same. I fear that growing flowers will not satisfy my impulses. I ca

"I love you," was all he could answer.

"But you do not need me, my dear." She put down the tray and came to him. He embraced her.

"Need?" he said. "In what respect?"

"It is the woman that I am. I tried to change, but with poor success. I merely disguised myself and you saw through that disguise at once. Harold needed me. My world needed me. I did a great deal of charitable work, you know. Missionary work, of sorts, too. I was not inactive in Bromley, Jherek."

"I am sure that you were not, Amelia, dearest…"

"Unless I have something more important than myself to justify —"

"There is nothing more important than yourself, Amelia."

"Oh, I understand the philosophy which states that, Jherek —"

"I was not speaking philosophically, Amelia. I was stating fact. You are all that is important in my life."

"You are very kind."

"Kind? It is the truth!"

"I feel the same for you, as you know, my dear. I did not love Harold. I can see that I did not. But he had certain weaknesses which could be balanced by my strengths. Something in me was satisfied that is satisfied no longer. In your own way, in your very confidence, your i

"You have — what is it? — character? — which I lack."

"You are free. You have a conception of freedom so great that I can barely begin to sense it. You have been brought up to believe that nothing is impossible, and your experience proves it. I was brought up to believe that almost everything was impossible, that life must be suffered, not enjoyed."

"But if I have freedom, Amelia, you have conscience. I give you my freedom. In exchange, you give me your conscience." He spoke soberly. "Is that not so?"

She looked up into his face. "Perhaps, my dear."

"It is what I originally sought in you, you'll recall."

She smiled. "True."

"In combination, then, we give something to the world."

"Possibly." She returned to her tea-cups, lifting the tray. He sprang to open the door. "But does this world want what, together, we can give it?"

"It might need us more than it knows."

She darted him an intelligent look as he followed her into the kitchen. "Sometimes, Jherek Carnelian, I come close to suspecting that you have inherited your father's cu

"I do not understand you."

"You are capable of concocting the most convincing of arguments, on occasion. Do you deliberately seek to mollify me?"

"I stated only what was in my mind."

She put on a pinafore. She was thoughtful as she washed the tea-cups, handing them to him as each one was cleaned. Unsure what to do with them, he made them weightless so that they drifted up to the ceiling and bobbed against it.

"No," she said at last, "this world does not need me. Why should it?"

"To give it texture."

"You speak only in artistic terms."

"I know no others. Texture is important. Without it a surface quickly loses interest."

"You see morality only as texture?" She looked about for the cups, noted them on the ceiling, sighed, removed her pinafore.

"The texture of a painting is its meaning."

"Not the subject?"

"I think not. Morality gives meaning to life. Shape at any rate."

"Texture is not shape."

"Without texture the shape is barren."

"You lose me. I am not used to arguing in such terms."

"I am scarcely used to arguing at all, Amelia!"

They returned to the sitting room, but she would advance into the garden. He went with her. Many flowers sweetened the air. She had recently added insects, a variety of birds to sing in the trees and hedges. It was warm; the sun relaxed them both. They went hand-in-hand along a path between rose trellises, much as they had wandered once in their earliest days together. He recalled how she had been snatched from him, as he had been about to kiss her. A hint of foreboding was pushed from his mind. "What if these hedges were bare," he said, "if there was no smell to the roses, no colour to the insects, they would be unsatisfying, eh?"

"They would be unfinished. Yet there is a modern school of painting — was such a school, in my time — that made a virtue of it. Whistlerites, I believe they were called. I am not too certain."

"Perhaps the leaving out was meant to tell us something too, Amelia? What was important was what was absent."

"I don't think these painters said anything to that effect, Jherek. I believe they claimed to paint only what the eye saw. Oh, a neurotic theory of art, I am sure…"

"There! Would you deny this world your common sense? Would you let it be neurotic?"

"I thought it so, when first I came. Now I realize that what is neurotic in sophisticated society can be absolutely wholesome in a primitive one. And in many respects, I must say, your society shares much in common with some of those our travellers experienced when first landing upon South Sea islands. To be sinful, one must have a sense of sin. That is my burden, Jherek, and not yours. Yet, it seems, you ask me to place that burden on you, too. You see, I am not entirely selfish. I do you little good."

"You give meaning to my life. It would have none without you." They stood by a fountain, watching her goldfish swimming. There were even insects upon the surface of the water, to feed them.

She chuckled. "You can argue splendidly, when you wish, but you shall not change my feelings so quickly. I have already tried to change them myself for you. I failed. I must think carefully about my intentions."

"You consider me bold, for declaring myself while your husband is still in our world?"

"I had not quite considered it in those terms." She frowned. She drew away from him, moving around the pool, her dress dappled with bright spots of water from the fountain. "I believe you to be serious, I suppose. As serious as it is possible for you to be."