CHAPTER XIX. ‑Crome yellow

It’s longer, but safer. And now good­bye!” They embraced. “Good­bye!” In anoth­er minute he had dis­ap­peared through the trap door; she heard
his feet descend­ing with­in the house. Mary was alone. She looked at the feath­er in her hand, twirled it, gaz­ing at its chang­ing lus­ters in the grow­ing light. The day was broad­en­ing, the clouds lift­ing, flushed with the morn­ing’s youth. She looked out towards Ivor’s tow­er. The flag was stir­ring slight­ly. A breeze was blow­ing, fresh­en­ing. She looked back at the feath­er, spin­ning it faster between her fin­gers.
Below, the world was wak­ing. Cocks crowed; from the farm­yard came the sound of voic­es, of doors open­ing and shut­ting; dogs barked;
wheels began to rum­ble. But here above the world, on her high tow­er, Mary stood apart, feel­ing the first cool breaths of the morn­ing stir­ring her blood, touch­ing her cheeks. The feath­er spun and glit­tered. She breathed deeply, the feath­er poised light­ly between her fin­gers, look­ing east­ward to the sun, feel­ing as though this moment held with­in its frame of cool air and ris­ing light some­thing of enor­mous poten­tial, a begin­ning, a birth.

Ivor’s exper­i­ment with dan­ger, his mid­night walk along the roof-ridge, had brought to light the hid­den inten­si­ty in George’s vis­it to Crome, and seen through the antics of the mid­night feast, the deep­er veins of life surg­ing into light. Under­neath the con­ver­sa­tions, the rou­tines, lay the pulse of liv­ing hearts, the inar­tic­u­late desires, the unful­filled quests. George’s long­ing for Geor­giana, her covert hunger for life beneath a guise of ethe­re­al­i­ty, and the far­ci­cal rev­e­la­tion of their flesh­ly appetites in secre­cy, jux­ta­posed the human com­e­dy and tragedy. The nar­ra­tive wove through the absurd, the com­ic, and glimpses into the ten­der vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties
of its char­ac­ters.

With the dawn, a clar­i­ty set­tled on Mary, buf­fet­ed by the night’s rev­e­la­tions, by the tan­gi­ble proof of wings in her hand, and the fleet­ing
close­ness with Ivor. In the par­al­lel awak­en­ing of the day and her own sens­es, there lin­gered a promise, an inkling of the pro­found, couched in the sim­plic­i­ty of a feath­er, of day­light, and a shared soli­tude that did not call for words, for even in silence, every­thing was spo­ken.