All Kneeling/Chapter 19
Loneliness, loneliness, Christabel thought, going downstairs, her heavy silver train sliding from step to step with a flat slapping sound. Who cares whether I live or die? Curtis thinks of nothing but his golf, Ellen cares for no one but her Nick Portal, Michael and Marigold are shut away in the bright selfishness of childhood. Loneliness
She paused before the mirror half-way down the stairs—not that she cared how she looked to anyone who was coming tonight. Her shining bronze hair lay close as feathers to her head, silver clung close to her ivory body. A statue made of bronze, ivory, and silver. I am beautiful, she thought, feeling cold and sad. And what difference does it make? She tried to comfort herself by repeating things that Maurice had said, and Austin. They brought no glow. No one will know how sad I am tonight, she thought, going into the drawing room, answering welcoming cries, giving a hand here, there, comforted by her sadness.
Her guests were all there, for, like royalty, she preferred to be the last to appear at her own parties. The Treasure Seekers. She had gathered them together in the first place, men and women whose preoccupation was to seek the treasures of beauty hidden away in the heart of life. Tonight she could see why Curtis and Smedley were unenthusiastic about them. Hair a little too long, and either dusty or oily, too many barbaric ear-rings and touches of batik. One man among them was startlingly good-looking, taller than the rest. His eyes met hers as she entered the room; she felt a tingling warmth flow through her. Then he looked away, and down. Ellen, in the starry gown, had joined him.
Ellen's Nick Portal. Christabel was conscious of him all through dinner, her voice, low and clear, called words clever and yet compassionate down the table, for him to hear, her hand lay, a spray of frosty fern across her silver breast, for him to see. But Ellen wasn't giving him a chance to notice anyone but herself. "Nick! Nick!" she called him back, whenever his attention wandered. Didn't she realize how tiresome that became to a man?
Christabel was conscious of the two of them through everything; through talking to her beautiful East Indian with his white turban, gold clothes, and dark purple mantle edged with a tracery of dark dim gold; or to her Irish poet; through noticing that Gobby, as usual, wasn't knowing when to stop on the salted nuts; through avoiding Elliott's meaning glances—idiot!—through saying, "Movies, saxophones, and bright magenta, seem to me perhaps the only real things in a shadowy world," and hearing the expected, "What was that she said?" Something was making Ellen look radiant tonight—the blue gown, or, possibly, love. But certainly she was making a fool of herself, languishing all over him, gazing at him, obviously adoring. And he is graciously allowing himself to be adored, Christabel thought, but if I'm not mistaken he's getting just a little bit fed up.
He looked in her direction. She lifted a shoulder, letting silver slide from it, and turned her lovely head. In her imagination she could see her hair gleam in the light from the tall candles.
"I needn't ask if you arranged those blossoms," her poet was saying with his mouth full. "Some ladies let their servants do it, I'm told, but I look at these, and I look at you, and I know."
Smedley was at the other end of the table, filling Curtis's champagne glass. "I never can understand people who let the servants do it," Christabel said. "That seems to me like letting the servants say your prayers for you."
Because, she thought, I did come in and give them that one touch that makes all the difference.
She turned her head slowly back, letting her eyes rest indifferently on Nick Portal. His were turned toward Ellen.
She had told everybody that she might possibly—just possibly—be able to get her Irish poet to recite some of his poems after dinner, and she had a hard time to keep him from starting before she had drawn him out. A wee wizened man like a monkey, bent in the monkey's attitude just before the jerk of the chain makes it begin to dance, he stood there, chanting his poems in Gaelic, chanting away with his eyes shut.
The East Indian sang, too, translating for them.
"Sing on! The birds in the forest sing, nor care whether anyone hears them. The flowers in the woodland bloom, nor care that there is no one to inhale their fragrance. Give all of thyself, no matter if thou perish"
Oh, that is true, Christabel thought, looking towards Nick Portal. That is true!
Sitting in the great Venetian chair in which she never crossed her knees, hearing, "Hush! What is she saying?" when she spoke, she imagined herself going across the room to him, coming to him like a breeze from the sea, after Ellen's cloying sweetness. He will not come to me because he has pride and humility, she told herself. And she really rose and went across the room and sat down beside him.
Elliott and Gobby and Marvin Marcy-Jones rose, too, and came with her. And Nick Portal, after a politely indifferent sentence or two, got up and walked away.
The rope of pearls in which Christabel's fingers had been twisted snapped, pearls showered to the floor. All her guests were on their knees, hunting them, except Ellen and Nick, who had disappeared.
Uncle Johnnie was in a private hospital in New York, and Ellen Beach was on her way to see him, for Christabel, who had meant to go, was again too busy.
No one seemed to know exactly what was the matter with him, himself least of all. He apparently took only the mildest interest in the affair. "The trouble with Uncle Johnnie is that he never will face facts," Christabel had said to Ellen. She had been wonderful about going to see him at first, but he had such a way of dropping off to sleep every time she went, that she had given it up, although she still sent him potted apple trees in frail bloom, and bowls of Mrs. Britton's calves' foot jelly. "Poor Uncle Johnnie, he's aged terribly," she told Ellen. "This pathetic way of falling asleep"
The first time Ellen had gone to see him, she had thought, I will try to make up to him a little for grandmother's having broken his heart long ago. All the way to the hospital she had imagined the poor old man thinking of her as his Little Dream Granddaughter—no, Little Dream Daughter, for he would still be young enough for that in a dream. But now she knew him, she had to imagine other things.
She imagined telling Nick about her visit to the hospital. My little Ellen, my little shining angel—how do you hide your white wings when you walk through the streets? Not that Nick ever said things like that, but she hoped he felt them.
She knew, for he had told her, that Nick loved her more than any man had ever loved any woman, and yet she wanted to do things to make him love her even more—to make him love her as much as she loved him. Nick—Nick. She printed his smile, his head thrown back, his eyes looking at her, on the sidewalk, on the sky. Ellen, darling—Ellen, you are so sweet—Ellen, I love you.
I mustn't think about Nick when I'm crossing the street. It makes my knees tremble so.
If only he and Christabel would like each other! That's the only thing that makes me miserable, she thought, singing a song inside herself.
"I try so hard to make Nick realize what a marvelous person Christabel is," she told Uncle Johnnie. "He's awful! I just have to work to make him be nice to her!" She couldn't help glowing, for it was usually Christabel who had to do that. She had heard it over and over again. She felt her mouth twitching into a smile, and said, firmly, "It makes me terribly unhappy."
"It seems to," said Uncle Johnnie.
"No, but it really does! What's the matter with Nick? When you think how wonderful she is, and yet she's so unspoiled! She treats us all as if we were just as wonderful!"
"She does still permit us to turn our backs when we leave the presence chamber."
Ellen was horrified, and yet he made her laugh. "Oh, you don't understand her, either," she said. But she couldn't help liking him.
I hate him, Christabel thought, going to her workroom after talking to Nick Portal. No, I don't, I don't waste that much emotion on him—it's simply that he bores me excruciatingly. Poor foolish little Ellen! What does she see in him?
He had come just after Christabel had sent Ellen to see Uncle Johnnie. Christabel, going through the hall, had heard him tell Smedley he would wait, and had asked him into the library, with what she now realized was mistaken kindness. From where they sat she had seen their reflections in the glass of the bookcase doors. His dark good looks, her delicate beauty, side by side, had made her catch her breath. Too bad such looks as his had nothing behind them. No response, not a spark, except when she had said what a sweet little thing Ellen was. He had bored her so that she ached all over.
I must pull myself together, she thought. I must not let his emptiness drain me. I must get to work.
But how futile it seems to go on offering my gift to a world so indifferent that in spite of all its praise it does not even see what I offer.
And yet, because I am an artist, I must go on. There is no rest for me, no comforting.
She felt a sudden longing to be with some one who really understood. She picked up the telephone.
Maurice du Sanglier was evidently out. The unanswered burring went on until she put down the receiver. A squeaky Japanese voice answered for Marvin Marcy-Jones, "Not home, please!" Austin Weeks was broken-hearted, but was awaiting a fat female who was coming to beg him to paint her portrait. Elliott had no telephone.
Well, I really wanted to work, she thought, sitting down at her table, before the crystal that she always looked into first, to empty her mind of its tumult. Gazing at the tiny reflected Christabel, she bent her hot forehead to the cool smooth ball.
Stillness. Stillness. I am silent and empty. Well up within me, living water.
No ink in her fountain pen. Being in love was all very well, but Ellen was really getting inexcusable.
My work is the only thing that matters, she said to herself. Happiness, love, peace—I have relinquished them all for my work. I would go on writing if I knew no one would ever read a word that I had written.
Ellen, in her simplicity, had revealed that Nick had never read any of Christabel's books. Or was it simplicity?
I must get to work, Christabel thought.
There had been something in his eyes—a look of discontent. Perhaps already he was disillusioned, but too gallant a gentleman to let Ellen know. Perhaps that was the reason for his aloofness. When he had returned her dropped handkerchief, he had been careful not to let their fingers touch. He hardly looked at me, she thought. Was that the reason? What else? What other reason could there be?
Oh, if that is it, how well I understand, she told him in her mind. Happiness—loyalty—one makes one's choice.
She went to the mirror and looked deep into her own sad eyes. Child of sorrow, she thought, her fingers automatically pushing wings of bright hair forward. Then she rang for Alfred, who reported that Miss Beach had not yet returned and the gentleman was still waiting.
"Tea for two—no, for three, at once, in the library, Alfred," she said. "And whisky and soda. And if anyone else calls, I'm not at home."