All Kneeling/Chapter 20
I wish Ellen and Nick would be married and get it over with, Christabel thought, turning her hot pillow, listening, to a distant clock strike three. I am sick of them both.
Curtis said Nick always acted as if he were giving the girls a treat, just by existing. She found balm in what he said; she resented it.
She pushed her hair up from her forehead; she turned over again. Her chest ached so that it was hard to breathe. Curtis is right, she thought. Nick is insufferably conceited. She saw in the dark the complacent corners of his beautiful mouth. Conceited, unintelligent, self-centered.
I have been pleasant to him all these weeks. I will go on being pleasant to him, simply because I am so indifferent to him that I can't admit him into the intimacy of rudeness.
She sat up in bed, turned on the light, and drank thirstily. She felt feverish and ill. That must be why she was so bored with everything and everybody—work, friends, Curtis, and the children. No one seemed real but Nick Portal, and she hated him.
Lying in the dark again, she thought incredulously that other people believed they were happy or unhappy, believed that what they were feeling mattered. She tried to call back feelings that had seemed intense once, before she knew Nick. Not even shadows answered. Yet he was everything she disliked, and she was filled with pity for Ellen, facing a lifetime with him. Nick and Ellen, together. "No!" she cried aloud, pressing her face into her pillow.
I won't think about him any more. He means nothing to me, except psychologically. As a person, he is a bore. As a study, he fascinates me, he amuses me.
He amuses me, she repeated to herself, and began to cry.
When the clock struck four, she got up, washed her hot wet face, put on her dressinggown, and wrote:
"My dear Nick Portal:
"Will you come to tea this afternoon, to talk over a business matter? My husband and I are most anxious to remodel the gardens of his old home in the country"
She finished the note, made changes, threw it away, and labored over another and another before she had one spontaneous enough to be copied out.
"Will you do something for me, darling?" she asked Curtis in the morning. "I long for a real country summer. Would you be willing to spend it on the Farm? I'm so sick of Southampton, and sitting on the sand in silk, with pearls and gloves. And Europe is worse—the Lido, and the horrible Lido young—well, men, I suppose. I've gone to these places for you, Curtis"
"Why, Christabel"
"Oh, I've gone gladly, dear. But this summer I'm not feeling very strong and I want to go back to quietness. I want to work a little in the garden, while the blessed babies tumble about underfoot and you practice putts into my flower-beds. I'm full of lovely plans. I'd even like to make a few little changes, if we could find just the right man. I'll have to think. You don't know how I've hungered and thirsted for the real country."
"Why, Christabel, I always liked the Farm, but I thought you didn't care anything about it."
"Curtis! Not care about the Farm? You don't know me very well, dearest, do you?"
"I'm so thankful! I really do believe Nick and Christabel are beginning to like each other," Ellen told Uncle Johnnie. "She agrees with him about lots of things that she never used to. It's awfully stimulating to listen to them. Of course they both have simply marvelous minds, and they argue like anything, and then suddenly Christabel will say, 'You're right and I'm wrong,' with that sort of starry look she gets, that makes you want to kiss her. And I can tell she thinks what he says amounts to something, because sometimes she'll speak to him about something he's said, oh, three or four days before, and that she hasn't apparently paid any attention to at the time."
"He must find that flattering."
"Oh, he does. He thinks now she's quite intelligent. Imagine, that description for Christabel—quite intelligent!" She laughed with loving mockery.
"Christabel isn't usually so patient, if there's not a mutual attraction at once."
"Well, of course, everyone usually worships her right from the start—but then, so do they Nick. I couldn't understand either of them. But it's all right now, and the most marvelous thing is going to happen! Nick is going to do over the gardens at the Farm! It was Curtis who suggested having him, but I think it was Christabel who put it into his head, somehow, so that Nick and I could be together, because, of course, he'll have to be there a lot. In fact, I practically made her admit that was the reason. I really do think she's an angel!"
Christabel and Nick had motored out to the Farm, to plan the new gardens. New old lead figures against new old box, a square pool with water dripping from a lifted shell, a stretch of turf where peacocks could promenade. Something must be done with the brook, which was now only a brook, running through ferns. Already Christabel saw herself and the twins and the dogs photographed all over the place, saw the photographs reproduced in magazines and Sunday papers.
She had decided it was better that she and Nick should be simple-hearted children and picnic in the sunshine, for Mrs. Johansen never rose above chops and string beans when one telephoned. So they had thermos bottles of frosty cocktails, hot soup, hot coffee, yellow cream; and sandwiches with foie gras, thick, not just scraped on, besides the chicken in aspic, dark with truffles, the small cream cheeses, and wild-strawberry jam. "Here on the grass," Nick had decreed. "I don't like your quaint, delightful dining room."
"Polite!"
"Thank God we're not that any more. Doesn't it seem funny, now, that we hated each other so at first that every word was the essence of politeness?"
"Cold, cold politeness. But I never hated you. I simply considered you a young man so handsome that you would probably bore me to death."
"You turn my head."
She gave him a glance. "You wound me by your dislike of my beautiful dining room."
"Yes, I do! What a joke on the people who don't realize that you did it with your tongue in your cheek. As a delicate burlesque, it's perfect—every detail. The ears of corn hung from the ceiling, the infant pugilist in pantalettes over the mantelpiece, ready to sock some one with a rose, and that supreme touch of satire, the shelves of colored glass across the windows, shutting out the view."
"You're a very penetrating person. Most people take that room perfectly seriously."
"And you let them, and laugh at them behind their backs. Christabel, you're a little devil!"
Christabel! He called me Christabel! First, Mrs. Carey. Then, for a long time, you. Now, at last, Christabel.
Nick! Nick!
And she suddenly flung out her arms, she cried, her voice enchanting in its sincerity: "I can hardly bear it! I can't bear it! I'm so happy!"
"Why?"
She couldn't say, because you called me Christabel. And although the breeze, bringing a drift of fragrance, the tender grass, a quivering butterfly, had a lot to do with it when she came to think, those were not the things she and Nick talked about together in their clear-eyed, ironic self-knowledge. The bitter amusement of life was their mutual preoccupation, not its sentimental prettiness. So she only smiled at him, lifting a cigarette with fingers that shook a little. His fingers touched hers as he lighted it.
"I envy you, Nick."
"Why?"
"Because you're in love in the spring."
"Like a beautiful ballad."
"Yes, like a beautiful ballad. You're a lucky man, and a wise one, to have seen how sweet Ellen is. She's such a shy little thing, like a little brown bird in a flutter, that most men would have hurried past without even hearing the brown bird's song."
"Naturally, I think Ellen is perfect."
"Oh, she is! Be very kind to your brown bird, Nick, be very patient. Men have such a way of trying to change the women they love, once they have won them. They expect one woman to be everything—beautiful, brilliant, magnetic, and at the same time faithful, and sweet, and unselfish. Most of us can't be everything, you know. Try to be understanding with little Ellen. Don't demand too much."
"She has a wonderful friend in you."
"Thank you, Nick. But who could help loving her, once they really know her? I envy you both. Love is—everything."
"Love's a grand state of affairs, but rather a general one. If we were Africans it would make us put on grass bustles and run bones through our noses; if we were roosters it would make us grow shinier tail feathers. After all, wonderful and beautiful and all that as it is, isn't it all rather a joke on us?"
Christabel's eyes were deep in his. Oh, my dear, I understand, she answered silently, and said aloud:
"Thank you for trying to console me, happy lover. But I know what all that, being translated, means."
He lit a cigarette, took a puff, and threw it away.
"Of course you do. All that, being translated, means, I adore my Ellen."
Christabel had asked Ellen to go to the Farm with Nick and herself, that day. She was careful to include Ellen when she and Nick did anything together. Even when they talked together she would break off to ask, smiling, "What does Ellen think?" And Ellen, lost in the sound of Nick's voice, the look of the sleek back of his head, that made the palm of her hand ache to stroke it, would feel herself blushing, would laugh and stammer, and have to admit that she didn't even know what they were talking about. It was funny, she thought, that Christabel's kindness in including her was the only thing that had ever made her feel separated from Nick.
She hadn't gone with them today, after all, because Talbot Emery Towne had sent word he was going to England unexpectedly, and, before he sailed, wanted to see as much of Tear Stains on Taffeta as Christabel had written. So Ellen had stayed to copy the finished chapters, smelling the spring in the country as she wrote, feeling the squish of the grass by the Farm pond, where clumps of paper-white narcissus would be unwrapping in today's hot—sunshine, almost seeing Nick and Christabel, almost hearing what they said to each other. At lunch, while her body sat with the children and Mademoiselle, while Alfred offered baked macaroni and stewed rhubarb, her spirit was with Nick and Christabel, picnicking under the deep blue velvet sky. Now she was with them, a shadow, unheard, unseen, as they drove home together through the cold spring dusk under the warm light robe. The band that had been about her chest all day tightened so that she could hardly breathe.
I'm crazy, she scolded herself. It's just because I'm tired. I'm not jealous. I'm glad they like each other. I hope they have a lovely day.
I am jealous
No, I'm not, I'm not!
She typed:
"A painted sky where rosy little loves rolled in clouds that cast no shadows on courtiers in mulberry and citron-yellow, pausing by a fountain's silver fronds, or on powdered ladies melancholy under green fountains of trees. Painted love, painted laughter, painted tears, covered the walls surrounding the vast central emptiness."
That ended what Christabel had done. Ellen arched her back to stop its aching, stretched out her arms and grasped handfuls of nothing.
She was starved for air. She would take the typescript the few blocks to Mr. Towne's. She pulled on her hat, not looking into the mirror. She knew she was a sight, but she was too tired even to powder her nose for anyone but Nick, who wouldn't see her.
But, coming down the shadowed stairs, she saw Nick and Christabel standing in a pool of light in the hall. Christabel was smiling, spring freshness about her like a radiance. Nick was almost frowning. They looked at each other silently, as motionless as if they held between them a brimming cup that must not be spilled.
Nothing told Ellen what to do. Feeling infinitely unwanted, infinitely alone, she stood there stupidly, not moving, until they lifted their faces to her, calling her down, telling her how they had missed her.
"Look! Nick picked all my narcissus for you!"
"Ellen, precious, you look tired to death!"
"I'll keep her in bed tomorrow morning, Nick."
She saw the white flowers with their vermilion-rimmed golden centers with crystal clearness, she heard Nick's voice and Christabel's as if she had never really heard before. Christabel's hand was through her arm, Nick's hand crushed her fingers. It is all right, she told herself, not believing. They love me and I love them. It's all right. Nick is here.
I'm all alone
No, no! Nick is here!
I'm alone.