A kind of lambent darkness filled the dell. The roof was sky-proof, the branches interlacing so thickly that even the heaviest downpour was stayed from striking through; the methodical drip … drip … drip of the branch-captured rain only fell to the floor of needles several hours after the start of the heaviest storm. And yet a certain amount of reflected daylight filtered through into the clearing, mainly from the East, in which direction lay the shell of the library. Between the clearing and the path that ran in front of the ruin, the trees, although as thick, were not more than thirty to forty yards in depth.
‘How many shelves have you built for your father?’ said the Earl to his daughter with a ghastly smile.
‘Seven shelves, father,’ said Fuchsia. Her eyes were very wide and her hands trembled as they hung at her sides.
‘Three more shelves, my daughter – three more shelves, and then we will put the volumes back.’
‘Yes, father.’
Fuchsia, picking up a short branch, scored across the needled ground three long lines, adding them to the seven which already lay between her father and herself.
‘That’s it, that’s it,’ came the melancholy voice. ‘Now we have space for the Sonian Poets. Have you the books ready – little daughter?’
Fuchsia swung her head up, and her eyes fastened upon her father. He had never spoken to her in that way – she had never before heard that tone of love in his voice. Chilled by the horror of his growing madness, she had yet been filled with a compassion she had never known, but now there was more than compassion within her, there was released, of a sudden, a warm jet of love for the huddled figure whose long pale hand rested upon his knees, whose voice sounded so quiet and so thoughtful. ‘Yes, father, I’ve got the books ready,’ she replied; ‘do you want me to put them on the shelves?’
She turned to a heap of pine cones which had been gathered.
‘Yes, I am ready,’ he replied after a pause that was filled with the silence of the wood. ‘But one by one. One by one. We shall stock three shelves tonight. Three of my long, rare shelves.’
‘Yes, father.’
The silence of the high pines drugged the air.
‘Fuchsia.’
‘What, father?’
‘You are my daughter.’
‘Yes.’
‘And there is Titus. He will be the Earl of Gormenghast. Is that so?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘When I am dead. But do I know you, Fuchsia? Do I know you?’
‘I don’t know – very well,’ she replied; but her voice became more certain now that she perceived his weakness. ‘I suppose we don’t know each other very much.’
Again she was affected by an uprising of love. The mad smile making incongruous every remark which the Earl ventured, for he spoke with tenderness and moderation, had for the moment ceased to frighten her. In her short life she had been brought face to face with so many forms of weirdness that although the uncanny horror of the sliding smile distressed her, yet the sudden breaking of the barriers that had lain between them for so long as she could remember overpowered her fear. For the first time in her life she felt that she was a daughter – that she had a father – of her own. What did she care if he was going mad – saving for his own dear sake? He was hers.
‘My books …’ he said.
‘I have them here, father. Shall I fill up the first long shelf for you?’
‘With the Sonian Poets, Fuchsia.’
‘Yes.’
She picked up a cone from the heap at her side and placed it on the end of the line she had scored in the ground. The Earl watched her very carefully.
‘That is Andrema, the lyricist – the lover – he whose quill would pulse as he wrote and fill with a blush of blue, like a bruised nail. His verses, Fuchsia, his verses open out like flowers of glass, and at their centre, between the brittle petals lies a pool of indigo, translucent and as huge as doom. His voice is unmuffled – it is like a bell, clearly ringing in the night of our confusion; but the clarity is the clarity of imponderable depth – depth – so that his lines float on for ever more, Fuchsia – on and on and on, for ever more. That is Andrema … Andrema.’
The Earl, with his eyes on the cone which Fuchsia had placed at the end of the first line, opened his mouth more widely, and suddenly the pines vibrated with the echoes of a dreadful cry, half scream, half laughter.
Fuchsia stiffened, the blood draining from her face. Her father, his mouth still open, even after the scream had died out of the forest, was now upon his hands and knees. Fuchsia tried to force her voice from the dryness of her throat. Her father’s eyes were on her as she struggled, and at last his lips came together and his eyes recovered the melancholy sweetness that she had so lately discovered in them. She was able to say, as she picked up another cone and made as if to place it at the side of ‘Andrema’: ‘Shall I go on with the library, father?’
But the Earl could not hear her. His eyes had lost focus. Fuchsia dropped the cone from her hand and came to his side.
‘What is it,’ she said. ‘Oh father! father! what is it?’
