Beauty
She left without a word to me and I knew it was a reproach. I had thought myself forgiven, but now knew it was not forgotten and I would never see her again. Between us Elizabeth, Father and I had made that quite certain.
And I had come home alone, without Simon. We had been taking of setting a date for the summer and suddenly I had realised that I could not marry him. Not yet, maybe not at all. It isn't that I don't love him, but more that I don't know. If I was sure, then I'd agree, but I'm not.
I'm not even sure that he loves me, or at least that he loves me more than he loves Hob and my beauty and the idea of our family. I think we both need to learn who we are. I know I am not ready for any of this yet. But it may be that he will not ask me again in future, although he would not yet consider the engagement broken. He is angry with me; I have spoiled our happy ever after.
They would all have been disappointed over Simon, but we were still crushed by Hob's disappearance. Nothing was right between us and I don't think either Elizabeth or I had ever realised how much we had needed an intermediary.
"What will you do if Simon asks you again," Elizabeth asked me. We were in the library, desperately trying to fill the silence with two voices where three had been used to speak, to argue, to quarrel and make up again.
"I don't know," I said. "But I know I was right to say no. H-Hob loves her beast, her prince so much that she has left us like this for him. I don't feel that way about Simon."
"I'm not sure I could feel that way about anyone," Elizabeth said. "No, I don't mean that I don't love David, but it is an easy love. We know each other so well and always have and there was no one to disapprove, nothing to part us. How can I understand what she has done to us, for love?"
I still clung to the hope that she would return. It had been so quiet in the house since I had return. David and Elizabeth spoke in whispers and Father not at all. I had done the same, but I wanted to scream. I was so angry with her for leaving us with this gaping hole in our lives. I knew one day it might mend, but did not want it to. I kept faith that she would return so I could tell her exactly what I thought of her and she could persuade me that she had known exactly what she was doing all along, that everything would work out in the end.
We lapsed into silence again. Elizabeth took up a book and turned the pages from time to time, though I don't think she can have taken a word in. She had been reading the same part of the same book all day. Father came in and sat silently in the chair nearest the fire; soon he was sleeping. I had taken Hob's old place, in the library window, where I could watch the forest and the empty garden.
And then…there was a swirl of snow against the window and when it had cleared, there they were, on the edge of the garden. They came out of the forest hand in hand, walking out from under the trees as though they had left another world behind. They stood at rest for a moment and I stared still – I could not yet move or speak.
I drank in the sight of them greedily: I had seen them first. Hob was Hob, but stranger, stronger, more herself. She was smiling, free of any consciousness of her self, and she seemed to me to have grown, in the best possible way. He – I had seen this face only once before, and it was changed, in the same way, but I knew him instantly – he was dressed in the worst rags I had ever seen, and yet he made them look at one and the same time both regal and entirely ordinary. He was smiling too. They were holding hands, and together – I do not know enough words to describe how they looked. It was something I shall never forget.
They were looking up at the house and I thought they saw me. I quickly drew back. Only a second passed before I looked out again, but they had already come into the gardens and were walking under the trellis. Elizabeth had been talking about planting roses there. I thought she should.
“What is it?” Elizabeth asked. She had looked up at my movement.
“It’s them,” I said, a breathless smile on my face.
“Them?” she said. “Hob – and him?” I nodded. “It isn’t possible. It isn’t…” For a moment she just stared at me, then an expression of utter delight flooded her face. “Father!” she exclaimed. “Hob’s back, Hob’s back!”
Father started from his chair, but Elizabeth had already run from the room. I started to run after her, but Father grabbed my arm.
“Is it really her?” he asked urgently.
“I saw her, I did,” I said, hardly sure whether to laugh or to cry. He looked as though he was having similar trouble.
We rushed out of the room together. Elizabeth was standing in the stairwell, shouting at the top of her voice, “David! David! Hob’s back! She’s back!” over and over again. Just as we ran towards her, David came pelting down, asking a hundred questions. Elizabeth and my father both answered him at once, making the hall echo with the noise.
I walked down all of the stairs and across the hallway. The others were following slowly, exclaiming and babbling all the way. I opened the door, and there they were. I looked at them as they stood on the threshold and saw again everything I had noticed from the window upstairs. Elizabeth glanced at them once, and saw, I am sure, the same things that I had, but also one thing I had missed.
“You must be so cold!” she said and reached out to pull them both inside. I saw him look at Hob once, quickly, and she nodded a little reassurance at him. Then they were inside, the door was shut, and they were being towed amidst the general family hubbub to the library.
I hung back a little in the doorway, not sure what I could possibly say to either of them. Hob was wrapped in Father’s embrace, then David and Elizabeth took their turns, and then she stood in front of me. I didn’t know what to do, but she reached out to me, and I found myself being held in her arms, and suddenly I was crying and so was she.
“It’s alright, Beauty,” she said, and soothed a hand down my hair. “Everything is alright now.”
I pulled away from her. “I-“ I started, then I didn’t know what to say.
“I know,” she said. “Me too.” She hugged me again, and then somehow we were settled in front of the fire, almost the way we used to be. Elizabeth and David were squeezed into Mother’s old red chair, Father had his usual chair and I knelt , leaning against his chair. Hob sat curled up against him on the rug before the fire, where the flickering light cast shivering shadows over her face, so it was impossible to tell which side was marked, and which side was clear.
We talked a lot that evening, but I can’t think that we talked of very much. I knew that there were things I would have to say to Hob, and many more things she would need to say to me. I knew that things would never be quite the same between us. I had done something unforgivable and she had forgiven me, but it would not be the same as if I had never done it. Nor would I ever be able to forget that she had left without saying goodbye.
I knew that there were many things we weren’t saying. Nothing about the difficulties and the challenges that would face us, nothing about the castle, or the forest, or the magic - what Elizabeth called the one world and the other. Father, Elizabeth and I had set the iron road into motion across the forest and it could not be stopped now, but perhaps it would not prove to be an evil. It would be a change.
At one point in the night, the conversation had dropped down and the fire was low. I saw Hob turn and look in the fire and I saw a face in the flames. It was there only a moment, but I saw it clearly – not Mother’s face, nor mine, nor Hob’s, nor Elizabeth’s, but in some way like all of ours.
Hob nudged him and he met the gaze of the face in the fire. He said something, so quietly that I could not hear it, and a look of peace passed over her face, then she was gone.
I opened my mouth to ask about it, but they had already turned away from the fire and back towards us. A little draught ran through the room and I curled up against Father and he hugged me as though I were still a little girl. The breeze passed over the strings of the glass harp Elizabeth had set on the mantelpiece; it played a tune no one had ever heard before, nor has ever since.
