Lost Ecstasy/Chapter 18
IT was in February that Kay finally accepted Herbert. She was honest with him.
"You know," she said, "that I cared for Tom McNair, I think it is all over, and anyhow I always knew it couldn't be. I would have been unhappy with him, and he would have made me wretched."
"I won't force myself on you, Kay. If ever you feel"
"I know that. I shall feel safe with you, Herbert."
She told her father and mother that night, in her mother's bedroom. Katherine was lying back on her chaise longue—she seemed to lie down a great deal those days—and Kay felt slightly comforted by the relief in Henry's face.
"Herbert will talk to you tomorrow," she told him. "But I wanted to tell you myself, so you will know"
To his credit he understood.
But when she looked at Katherine she saw, to her amazement, that there were tears in her eyes.
"I thought it would please you, mother dear."
"Is that why you did it, Kay?"
It was the nearest to an attempt at her confidence that Katherine had ever come, and Kay looked down at her ring.
"No," she said slowly. "I'm fond of Herbert, mother. I'll do my best to make him happy. I—we, that is" She stopped suddenly; already she was saying "we!" "We have no plans yet," she went on painfully. "We are not in a hurry. But I wanted you to know as soon as possible."
After that she went into her own room, and closed and locked the door. And late that night she opened the wall safe where she kept her grandmother's pearls, and took out the snap-shot of Tom McNair. But she did not look at it. She took a match and set fire to a corner, and then held it while it burned. When the flame got too close to her fingers she dropped it into a cigarette tray—she was still smoking more than was good for her—and watched it until it was a heap of fine ash.
But for some curious reason she did not say her prayers that night. She had always done it, even at boarding school, kneeling on the bare cold floor.
"Sh! Kay's at her ablutions!" the girls would say.
Perhaps she felt that night that having taken her life into her own hands, there was not much use appealing to God. Perhaps it was because she had prayed for certain things recently, and they had not been granted. There was no particular revolt in her, if there was no particular hope. And another curious thing; she slept better that night than for months. It rather puzzled her the next morning. It did not occur to her that sleep as well as fainting may be an escape from the unbearable.
The engagement was announced as soon as Herbert had seen her father. She was entirely acquiescent. But she had a new Herbert to deal with after that, a debonair, self-assured Herbert, filled with plans. Henry was giving him a partnership in one of his subsidiary companies, and was setting aside a definite sum for Kay, the income to be paid annually. Herbert took to wearing a gardenia in his buttonhole, and was looking at houses.
"What we need," he said oracularly, "is a good dining room, Kay. We'll be giving dinners, and if we can seat eighteen or twenty it makes it easier."
He found one to his liking one day, and came to take her to see it. But she was not at home. As a matter of fact, it was the anniversary of old Lucius's death, and she had asked to take the flowers. She stayed there for quite a long time, staring at the shaft where Katherine had wanted to put "He has followed the trail into the sunset" and had been voted down. But she was very apologetic when she got home, and quite gay at dinner that night.
On the surface, then, she fooled everybody. But she wakened sometimes to find that she had been crying in the night; that some forgotten dream had dampened her pillow and swollen her eyes. She would get up and bathe them in cold water before she rang her bell, and then the day would begin and she could forget. Boxes would arrive, people would be coming and going. There were notes to write and clothes to be fitted.
Even Bessie was deceived for a time. Then one morning when Kay had been out late the night before, she arrived before she had wakened. She fidgeted about for a while and then walked into Kay's room. She was still asleep, but her pillow was wet with tears.
Bessie stood looking down at her, her long cigarette holder in her hand, and Kay stirred and roused. She felt the damp pillow and tried to turn it, but it was too late.
"Kay darling," Bessie said, "maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut, but—do you think you'd better go through with this?"
"I'm all right in the daytime, Aunt Bessie. It's only at night"
"At night! Good heavens, Kay, you'll have to sleep with the man you marry! If you're going to cry about somebody else in your sleep it isn't fair to Herbert. It's—it's not decent."
"But I don't know who or what it's about. Honestly. I never remember."
Bessie sniffed and went out. The child never remembered! Then it must be a regular thing. She was breaking her heart about something, and she—Bessie—knew well enough what it was.
Henry had started making invitation lists. He would pore over the Social Register, and he took to making small memoranda of his own in the car, using the backs of old envelopes for the purpose and then mislaying them.
"Now where the mischief did I put that? I thought of two or three people today that I don't want to forget."
In time the wedding clothes began to come in; boxes from French shops containing sets of chemise, abbreviated little bloomers and nightdress to match, in palest shades of chiffon; tea gowns and négligées over which Nora folded her hands and turned up her eyes in ecstasy; evening wraps, sport frocks, dinner gowns, ball dresses.
"How soon?" Herbert had asked.
"Whenever you like."
The date was finally set for May, and after some argument, a country wedding was decided on. Now it was the country house which engrossed Henry and Katherine's interest. All through March and into April they made small chilly pilgrimages out to the country. Each opening bud had significance. As early as the ground could be worked men were digging and sowing. Borders were planted and replanted. And if Katherine now and then looked at Kay with furtively anxious eyes, the excitement seemed to be doing her good.
There ought to be new hangings in the long drawing room, and perhaps in the hall. And there were some old French chairs at Morley's still in the original brocade. However, since most of the furniture would be moved out anyhow, perhaps not the chairs. But the curtains. Yes. Certainly the curtains.
Kay seemed hardly to have finished writing the notes for her engagement presents when the wedding gifts started to come in. Herbert was frightfully excited about them, although he strove to conceal it. He would call up from town—they had moved out again to the country—and ask her about them.
"What's come in this morning?"
"I really don't know. A lot of boxes; they haven't been opened yet."
That was always a small grievance to him.
"But great scott, darling! There are about fifteen men around the place. Can't some of them get to work?"
In the evenings he spent most of his time in the three upper rooms where, on long tables and minus their cards, of course, the gifts lay in glittering rows; and one evening he brought out a book, a sort of ledger, and began to enter them for insurance.
"But we have a book already," she said, somewhat exasperated. "Everything is in it; who sent them, the shop they came from"
"This is a different matter," he told her, in a voice so exactly like Henry's that she started. "There is a very large sum of money invested here, and it requires protection."
Even at that, she liked him better with a book in his hands than with herself in his arms. There must have been times when Herbert felt her recoil, and knew, for a moment anyhow, that what she wanted from him was not love at all, but relief from pain and security against some weakness in herself. If he did, he undoubtedly comforted himself with the fallacy of most males, that when he owned her he could win her. Indeed, he said as much to Bessie Osborne one day. There was little or no beating about the bush with Bessie.
"Kay's looking thin, don't you think?"
"She's doing too much. All these parties before a wedding are ridiculous."
"You think that's it?"
"Don't you?"
"I'm wondering. Does she ever speak of that cowboy of hers?"
He flushed with annoyance.
"I do Kay the common justice of believing," he said stiffly, "that if that were not over she would not be marrying me."
"I'm sure that's very fine of you," said Bessie cryptically.
"As for the inference you have drawn, it is unfair to Kay and unfair to me. Even if it were true, once we are married all that nonsense will be cured."
Bessie yawned slightly.
"I daresay," she agreed. "There is certainly nu nonsense about you, Herbert."
The presents continued to pour in. The station wagon met every train, and came back loaded; the delivery truck from the express office made three trips daily. Silver. Glass. Paintings. Antiques. Mirrors. Kay writing notes: "My dear Mrs. Smith: I want to thank you, for Herbert and myself, for the exquisite old Chelsea tea set. It was dear of you to remember us so beautifully, and we"
The wedding was still two weeks off, but already her wedding gown of rose point over white satin lay on a bed in an empty room, covered with a sheet, her veil of old lace beside it. Now and then the bridesmaids wandered in and lifting a corner of the sheet burst into little ohs and ahs of admiration. The gown was more than a gown to them. It was a symbol. They had an eager half-neurotic curiosity about Kay and Herbert. It was impossible to believe that these two self-contained people were soon to be one flesh, to share the same room, to enter into each other's most private lives.
Once, to please them, Kay put on her veil, with its bandeau of seed pearls, and Nora coming in whipped it off quickly.
"That's bad luck, Miss Kay! And you know it."
"What bad luck can touch her?" one of the girls drawled. "She's got everything, including—Herbert."
If there was malice in that Kay ignored it.
She meant to make Herbert a good wife. She did not believe in dutiful wives; she knew there must be more than that, so she meant to make him a loving wife. In a way she did care for Herbert; if she had not known the other thing she might even have called it love. He was consistently kind, and he took care not to ask of her more than she could give. And perhaps like Herbert she too believed in marriage as a sort of cure-all.
She was already saying "we" as well as writing it in her notes of thanks. And one night, when Herbert had kissed her and was about to go, she almost said a dreadful thing. He had got as far as the door.
"Well, good night, Kay."
"Good night, Herbert. Be sure" She caught herself then, but Herbert had turned.
"Be sure what, darling?"
"I've forgotten now. It wasn't important."
But it gave him an excuse to come back and kiss her again. After that she was more careful.