All Kneeling/Chapter 12

by Anne Parrish

Chapter Twelve

"Oh, Lovely Day! Oh, Day of Shining Hours!" Christabel wrote in her Secret Journal. "For this day My Man and I came home to

Our house

And the sun shone, and the winds blew, and the very sparrows in the gutter put on a glory.

"Curtis carried me in over the doorstep, according to the old Gaelic custom of Bringing Home the Bride——"

She paused, remembering how embarrassed Curtis had been, with Smedley opening the door, and Bates following with their bags. He had carried her in, as she suggested—he, dear boy, had never heard of the old custom—but his face had been scarlet. It had hurt her deeply that he could care, at such a time, for what servants might be thinking, but now she could smile as she sighed. That was the very fabric of a woman's love for a man—understanding, forgiveness, and always that hidden, half-sad laughter at the little boy who would never grow up.

"And inside was all Beauty and Blessedness, and Himself and I sat by Our Own Fireside and Broke Bread together before going up Our Very Own Stairs (another old custom, Journal)——"

She pulled a piece of paper toward her, and wrote, while she thought of it, "Tell Mrs. What's-her-name must get some other kind of tea," and then went on in the Journal.

"And now it is going, this Bright and Blessed Day—how can I bear to let it go? God Bless the Days to Come, and Our Home, and Us, and our Living and our Loving, our Work and our Play, and let Peace and Happiness dwell in this House Forever!"

She had happiness at first. She loved each morning, her room fresh from just-closed windows, warm from the just-lit fire, her soft bed, her breakfast tray with thin porcelain, hot coffee, mail full of invitations. She loved putting on her new clothes and going out in her bottle-green town car to buy something for the house—a Coromandel screen, a rose-quartz Kwan-Yin, Goddess of Mercy. It made her happy to feel that through her Curtis's money, that might have been just so many sordid dollars, was being transmuted into beauty, into food for the spirit. And her new preoccupations did not make her thoughtless of others. She bought souvenirs for all the people she had not had time to remember when she was abroad—bags and scarfs for the aunts, an English pipe for Uncle Johnnie, a collar that probably really had come from Paris, for Katie Sullivan. They would never know the difference.

The dinners given in her honor by the Careys' friends were pleasant, but most of the luncheons bored her. Self-centered women, full of their own affairs. And what affairs! What shallow, surface lives they seemed to lead! It wasn't that she minded that they only thought of her as Mrs. Curtis Carey, that most of them didn't know she was Christabel Caine, and, if they had known, wouldn't have cared. It was just that it made her sad for them to feel how empty their lives were of beauty, poetry, the things of the spirit. "And they exhaust me," she explained to Curtis when he tried to convince her that they were all "nice girls." "They make me long to be either alone or really with some one—the way I am really with you, darling."

But sometimes she wondered, were she and Curtis really together? He adored her, yes, but did he understand her? Or was she doomed to loneliness forever? "Tragedy, real tragedy, comes to the rare soul capable of it," she wrote in her Journal, thinking of past days when she had been really with Boyd, Gobby—Elliott. And on another day she wrote:

"To suffer! Not to dodge! To go through all pain, all sorrow! The Blessèd Angela of Foligno——"

Was it the Blessèd Angela? She couldn't quite remember, but never mind, no one would be apt to know the difference. "The Blessèd Angela of Foligno said that if pain were for sale in the market place she would run to buy it. Saint Catherine of Siena said, 'I have chosen suffering for my consolation.' 'Suffering is the ancient law of love,' said the Eternal Wisdom to Suso. 'There is no quest without pain, there is no lover who is not also a martyr.'"

With the sense of loneliness came a longing to see Elliott again, and for a time she let her imagination play with the idea. Perhaps at the theater she would glance up from her program and find him in the seat beside her, and they would look at each other with a long tranced look. Or she would step from her motor, almost in his arms. "Christabel!" And he would stand gazing at her, oblivious of passersby, until, in spite of the pain in her heart, she would have to laugh, to put her hand through his arm in the old way. Or, walking in the Park in the first snow—they had loved the first snow; they had always called it theirs—she would meet him, alone with his memories, as she was alone with hers.

But none of these dreams came true, so on a day when she had nothing that she wanted to do, and was so lonely that tears kept stinging into her eyes, she wrote asking him to tea.

As she dressed for him she paused to look deeply into the mirror, to see herself as he would see her. Head up, with gallant courage—a brave little smile. How should she greet him? What should her first words be? Perhaps a wordless welcome would be best. She went toward the mirror, both hands out. Her chiffon sleeves floated back, then fluttered down, folding wings. Gray bird, wounded bird, home in your nest again.

Her hands trembled, touching powder box and lipstick, as she remembered, shaken and glowing, that he had tried to kill himself for her. She drew a deep sobbing breath, a white hand went to her throat. Had she the courage to see him, after all? And, leaving herself out of it, was it going to be too hard for him?

But he hadn't any telephone and it was nearly tea time. And, anyway, one must not dodge life.

Oh, my dear, don't look so! Forgive you? Oh, Elliott, what is there to forgive? You have given me the greatest bliss that has entered my life, and the greatest pain, which is the same thing—how could I feel anything but love and gratitude toward you?

She opened the safe set into her blue wall, near the prie-dieu under an ivory Christ on an ebony cross, took out her diamond and sapphire bracelets, tried them on, then put them back again. No jewels this afternoon, except, perhaps, the triple string of pearls. Pearls are for tears.

 

She can't throw me over and then think all she has to do is to whistle and I'll come running, Elliott told himself, putting Christabel's note into its envelope and going back to his painting. "Oh, shut up, damn you!" he shouted at his model, a sulphur-crested cockatoo he had borrowed from Mrs. O'Reilly on the ground floor, that was screeching hoarsely. I'm not going to be one of her tame young men. He painted fiercely, biting his lower lip to keep it from twitching. But he hardly saw what he was painting, and the cuckatoo, still screeching, had begun to dance from one claw to the other, to lift a yellow crest and spread a yellow-lined wing, the quills separated, to bite with a black beak into yellow down. It made Elliott nervous when it behaved that way, and Christabel's note had upset him, too. The day was ruined as far as painting went.

If he didn't go she'd think he didn't dare, or that she had broken his heart, or something, he told himself, pulling on a pair of thick gloves before he offered the cockatoo a piece of banana. "Here, pretty Cocky! Hey! You will, will you, you devil? Nice birdie, have a banana, and then we'll go down to Mrs. O'Reilly."

Coming back to peace and quiet, he reread her note. "Elliott—please come—" she had written after her signature, and the letters looked not quite steady.

Was he or was he not a man of the world? That was the question, he decided. After all, one evolved a philosophy of life that kept one from taking oneself or anyone else too seriously. He wrote, saying that he would come, and then went out to buy a necktie.

The next afternoon he dressed with fingers that trembled, in spite of the cynical smile reflected in his mirror. Perhaps it was all for the best—one evolves a philosophy of life. He retied his tie—worse than the last time!

Pulling at it, a sudden panic seized him. He would have given anything not to go. He could telephone from the drug store—but what could he say? Suppose he just stayed here, and sent her a note tomorrow saying he had been taken ill or suddenly called out of town?

She was expecting him. He couldn't disappoint her.

Gobby had reported her as bitterly unhappy in Paris. Suppose seeing him was too much for her? Had he any right to expose her to such an emotional strain?

And yet, if he could comfort her——

What, crying? Silly little Christabel!

Damn! A hole in his heel. Maybe it wouldn't show over the top of his shoe.

He began to feel forgiving, protective. Christabel, dearest—girl, what is there to forgive?

Some one had told him about a man who had killed himself for Christabel, taking poison on the day of her wedding. There were not many girls for whom men would kill themselves. And this girl, who, in the world's eyes, had everything, needed him—had sent for him.

He wondered who the poor fellow had been.

Her house, washed pink, with twisted columns, and a noseless saint in a niche above the door, was so Venetian that a gondola should have been before it instead of the delivery motor of The Superior Market, Third Avenue. He gave his name scornfully, with drooping mouth and eyelids, throwing away his hat and stick. The butler caught them, and led him through thick fog to the drawing room, leaving him there to wait for Christabel.

He waited.

The fog began to lift. He looked about him. Things, material possessions! Only a bird in a gilded cage, he sang in his mind with bitter mirth, for he and Donatia and Boyd and Gobby were finding old songs rather amusing that autumn. A butler, tapestries, silver and lace on the table before the fire—what an absurd scale of values they implied. And yet there were people who were impressed by such things.

Poor Christabel. So she has come to this, he thought, contrasting the huge sheaves of chrysanthemums like helpings of crab salad, the Madonna drenched in brown gravy, with that other firelit room of hers, exquisite and simple—one perfect rose, his portrait of her alone on the wall.

Was she coming? No, not yet. But his heart began to thud. What should his first words be? He adjusted his tie in the glass over the dark Madonna.

Footsteps outside the door. Heavens! He hoped he wasn't going to be sick!

She came toward him with both hands out. Her chiffon sleeves floated behind her. How lovely she was! They looked at each other deeply, until they were interrupted by the footman bringing in tea.

"So good of you to suggest my coming."

"So good of you to come. Cigarette?" And, as the footman left the room, "Now tell me—everything."

"What is there to tell that you don't already know?"

"Sometimes I feel as if I didn't know anything, Elliott—or at least that I hadn't known anything until it was too late to be of any use. Do you ever feel that way?"

"All I've learned is that nothing's worth being unhappy about," said Elliott, with a laugh so scornful and explosive that it startled himself.

"Oh, my dear, not that, not that! Don't let it make you bitter!"

The footman brought in crumpets, and Christabel began to pour Elliott's tea. He watched her put in lemon, and said nothing, though he always took cream. Their hands shook so as she gave him the cup that tea splashed out and scalded him. How sad her face was! He asked, for the footman's ears:

"Did you have a wonderful trip?"

"Did I? Why, yes—yes, of course we did."

"Where did you go?"

"Oh, the usual places. London and Paris and motoring through the château country."

The footman went out.

"Christabel, are you happy? Forgive me, I have to know!"

"Is anyone happy, Elliott? Well, I suppose a good many are, really—at least, they aren't sensitive enough for anything but cowlike content—but that isn't what you and I mean by happiness, is it?"

"Oh, Christabel, why——?"

The footman brought in cakes.

"Are you writing anything now?"

"I'm just getting back to it. There have been so many interruptions. Are you painting?"

The footman put another log on the fire.

"That will do, Alfred, thank you. And I'm not at home to anyone."

Now that the man was gone, Elliott wasn't sure what to say. Everything he could think of seemed too much or too little. They drank their tea in silence, gazing into the fire. And he was horrified to realize that he had absent-mindedly eaten all his crumpet. He hoped Christabel wouldn't notice or would think he hadn't taken one. It looked so unfeeling. And yet, after all, why should he worry about seeming unfeeling to her, who had been so unfeeling herself? He took another crumpet defiantly.

"Elliott—I must say something to you—quickly, now, while I have the courage. I must tell you that I think I must have been mad when I did what I did. I don't understand why I did it—it wasn't love, unless compassion is love, and pity—he seemed to need me so! And you only seemed to need your work—— No, no, don't speak. Let me finish before my courage fails me! A woman wants so terribly to be needed, Elliott."

Her hand lay white on the dark velvet between them. He lifted it to his lips. How good it smelled!

"You asked me if I were happy, but I don't believe you, being you, need to have me tell you. But what does that matter? One learns how unimportant one's own happiness is."

"Yes, the important thing is accepting life."

"Isn't it? Oh, how true that is! If only we didn't have to suffer so to learn it!"

She pressed a lace-bordered cobweb to her eyes, and then smiled at him.

"More tea? I'm not a very good hostess, am I? A little pink cake, specialty of the house? Oh, Elliott, do you remember going to the pâtisserie to get cakes for tea?"

"Do I! And our discussions in front of the fire? You and I settling life and death, while Gobby finished up the pastry?"

"Oh, Elliott, teach me to be brave like you! Because I do know how brave you are—I don't mean just in being able to laugh, dear, I mean—I—I just want you to know—I know!"

Know what? he wondered, holding her hands in his, while he wondered, too, what time Mr. Carey got home. It would be just as well to be gone by then.

"And I do realize the courage it takes—just to live. I do understand, because on the ship—I wouldn't tell this to anyone else in the world, but I owe it to you—the water seemed to call me. I was so tired, it would have been so easy! But I had to tell you, so that you would know I understand, and know how I thank you and how proud I am of you, and how grateful I am that what happened happened!"

She's overwrought, he thought. Seeing me has been too much for her. "I'd better go," he said, struggling up from the soft low sofa.

"Yes, perhaps it would be better."

"Good-by."

"Good-by, my dear."

Her hand fluttered to her throat, her fingers twisted nervously through strands of pearls.

"Elliott—I must say one thing more to you before you go. Never blame yourself for anything that has happened. You have given me the greatest bliss that I have ever known, and the greatest pain, which is the same thing—how can I ever feel anything but love and gratitude toward you?"

"Oh, Christabel——

"You must go now, Elliott."

He was thrilled, his whole body tingled as he lifted a floating sleeve to his lips. Courage and love and sorrow. Elliott and Christabel.

"And do one thing for me, my dear. Forget what I have told you, and when you think of me—if you think of me—think that I am happy——"