Lost Ecstasy/Chapter 37
KAY had not telegraphed. She simply walked up the steps of the city house and rang the bell; the taxi driver had carried up her bag and left it beside her, and so she stood when James opened the door.
He stared at her, holding to the doorknob.
"Don't you know me, James?"
"Yes, Miss, I"
Suddenly Rutherford pushed him aside and threw the door open.
"He's just surprised, Miss Kay," he said. "Come in. Get that bag, James."
She held out her hand, her eyes full of tears. "I've come home, Rutherford," she said pitifully.
He had been there as long as she could remember, tall, immaculate, impassive! "Yes, Miss Kay." "No, Miss Kay." But he was a human being. He was moved; he was glad to see her, and he was frightened for her. She held out her hand.
"Maybe they won't want me, Rutherford."
"It's your home, Miss Kay."
"I know, but"
James had brought in her bag, shabby and worn. She caught a glimpse of herself in the old Italian mirror over the console beside her. She looked shabby and worn too, like the bag, out of place. No wonder James had hesitated.
She went into the drawing room, like any caller. Rutherford had suggested that. Her old rooms were closed, and anyhow her mother was not to have any excitement. He would see the housekeeper. Yes, they had a housekeeper now; a Mrs. Manly, quite a capable person.
She stood by the fireplace, under the Sargent painting of her in her presentation dress. Nothing was changed, save for a hard formality in the arrangement of the room, as if it were not much used now. There was a sickening hush over everything. It was as silent as the little house on the ranch.
Rutherford brought in Mrs. Manly. She was a thin little woman, neat and capable, with small inquisitive black eyes. If Mrs. McNair would make herself comfortable for a few minutes she would have her rooms opened and made up. Perhaps she would like tea. Nora came, dour and repressed as ever, faintly embarrassed at Kay's shaking hands, but glad to see her nevertheless. Afterwards she was to remember that her only real welcome home was by the servants.
Mrs. Manly went out. Nora stood by the door.
"How is she?"
"Up and down. They have a nurse now."
"What do the doctors say?"
"You know your father, Miss Kay. We don't hear anything. But she wants you. I've seen it in her face over and over. That's why I wrote to you."
All at once Nora's face began to twist. She fumbled in the pocket of her black silk apron and found a handkerchief.
"I think she's dying, Miss Kay."
Kay felt faint and cold. The tea tray came in, Nora still standing there weeping. She looked up. Rutherford stood by the tray, James behind him with the curate stand, and Nora by the door. There they were, all four of them, grieving together, and yet with that terrible artificial barrier of class between them.
"Lemon or cream, madam?"
Oh, my God, and her mother dying upstairs alone, surrounded by this barrier, cut off by this gulf. Lonely. Horribly, terribly lonely.
"Lemon, please, Rutherford."
But she could not hold the cup. For the first time in her strong young life she fainted quietly away in her chair.
When she came to there was another person in the room, a white-clad young woman, cold, efficient, capable. Kay sat up in her chair and said, strangely, "That makes five." She felt very dizzy, but her mind was quite clear.
Later on they took her upstairs as quietly as possible, Mrs. Manly and the nurse, with Nora trailing behind. Her mother's door was closed. There was a new housemaid making up her bed, and the parlor maid was taking the covers off the furniture. They put her carefully on the chaise longue and went away. All but Nora. Nora was unpacking the shabby bag, with its shabbier contents. She laid out the things on the bed, the underwear Kay had made for herself, the cheap cotton dresses, the aprons, and as she worked she wept softly. Once she came and stood over Kay, her wet eyes burning.
"When your father comes I'll get out some clothes for you. Your mother and I wanted to send them to you, so he locked them up."
"I didn't need many clothes, Nora dear."
Nora glanced at the bed, and suddenly went out of the room.
Reluctantly Kay dragged her thoughts from her mother to her father. What if he would not let her stay? If he turned her out? She had never thought of that contingency; his anger and resentment she had prepared herself for. All that nightmare trip East she had known she would have to face them. But a hostility which would lock away her clothes and shut up her rooms might go further, might close his door to her. And there were other complications. Nora, calmer now, and coming back to draw her bath, asked her not to say that she had written the letter.
"He'd put me out, quick as not," she said. "And I want to stay, Miss Kay. I've been with her a long time. I'm not leaving her now."
She had to promise, but it left her own position anomalous. Was she to say she had left Tom? Would she have to say she had left him, in order to stay with her mother? But hadn't she left Tom? The battle which had raged within her on the train renewed itself now. She knew Tom himself thought so, had considered their parting final. Lying there, the water running into the tub in her bathroom, the scent of the bath salts rising with the steam, she saw him again as she had left him in that hideous room at the Mallorys', tall, anxious, grim.
"I'll never ask you to come back, so help me God."
When her bath was ready she undressed. No word had come from that quiet room along the hall. She dropped her clothing and stood in her single plain undergarment while Nora threw her worn dressing gown around her. Suddenly she felt Nora's cheek against hers.
"My poor lamb!" she said. "My poor thin little lamb."
She put her arms around Nora. For the first time since she entered the house she felt love and a welcome.
Later on she put on the same frock again—she had no other—and brushed her short hair. Her watch said five o'clock, and at any moment now her father would be coming in. She braced herself, for her hands were shaking. But when he finally arrived he did not come upstairs; she imagined that Rutherford had told him, and that in his library below he was considering the situation, turning it over, this way and that. The waiting was terrible. Nora had gone. She took to pacing the floor, to operting her door and listening, but there was nothing to break the dreadful hush of the house. It was not until she was ready to scream that James tapped and said her father wished to see her in the library. It was poor preparation for her; it placed her at a disadvantage. Perhaps he knew that; maybe that was why he had kept her waiting.
She had expected to find him hard and pompous. Always in her mind he had been unchangeable, florid, heavy, immactlately dressed, a little cold. Now she was shocked to find him perceptibly aged, his face no longer ruddy, his clothing hanging loose on him. He was an old man! But he had not softened with age; he was standing, erect and stern, behind the barrier of his great desk.
"Come in," he said. "And close the door."
She did so, turned and faced him again.
"First of all, I must ask the nature of this—visit. Am I to understand that it is temporary? Or permanent?"
She hesitated.
"I don't know, father."
"What do you mean by that?"
"It's a rather long story." She tried to smile. "I'm tired. Do you mind if I sit down?"
It was characteristic of him, of his type and his breeding, that he came around and drew up a chair for her! But he did not touch her. He was still coldly, acidly polite. He went back behind the desk again.
"Have you left this fellow McNair?"
"I haven't decided."
"Decided! Good God, you're old enough to know your own mind."
"It isn't as simple as that, father."
"Are you going to have a child?"
"No." She colored.
"Have you quarreled?"
She hesitated.
"No. Not exactly that. We differed about some things, but—" She looked up at him with the eyes that were like his father's—"I still care for him. I think you have a right to know that. Only"
"You couldn't get along," he finished for her. "If you hadn't been a headstrong stubborn little fool you'd have realized that before you married him. A cowboy! A ranch hand! What in God's name got into you? And Tulloss! The man's senile; he's losing his mind."
But he controlled himself.
"Before we go any further," he went on coldly, "I'd better make my own position clear. Your mother is ill, critically ill." He stopped, cleared his throat, went on. "I do not believe she will be with us for very long. And I think she needs you. She has needed you badly for some months. At the same time I shall make no pretensions about myself. Your marriage hurt me; it was selfish, reckless and outrageous. For a piece of romantic nonsense you have spoiled Herbert Forrest's life and you have very nearly wrecked my own. You think you have a grievance now, because that marriage has gone wrong. You have no grievance. It was wrong from the start. Some day you will learn that you cannot build happiness on the misery of other people."
"If I had married Herbert"
He raised his hand.
"Just a moment. Under the conditions I have named I have a right to make certain stipulations. You have come back. You came without request from me, but this is your home. I could not refuse you shelter if I wanted to, and I do not want to. At the same time, I shall require certain assurances from you. I shall ask you, if you stay at all, to stay until—until your mother no longer needs you. And I will not have McNair in the house."
She sat very still. After all he was right, in a way. And Tom had said She moved a little, put her hands on the back of a chair to steady them.
"May I see mother before I decide?"
He was not brutal; her face, her thin figure, her shabby dress, all had shocked him profoundly. But they had angered him too. She was never to go back to that man; over his dead body would she go back.
"I have told you your mother's condition. If in the face of that you insist on bargaining!"
"The bargain was your suggestion, father."
He had unlocked a drawer of his desk and taken out a bunch of keys, but now he put them back again and closed the drawer.
"When you have made up your mind, I shall give Nora your keys."
And it was then that she said something that roused his pity for the first time. "Do you think she should see me, like this?"
He looked at her. She was thin, shabby, profoundly disillusioned. He got the keys again, and going around the desk, stooped and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
After she had gone he sat down heavily. Through the open door he could see the hall, and beyond it the drawing room. The lamps shone on his tapestries, his paintings, his fine old furniture, his rugs. More than fifty years of his life gone, and that was all he had! He was losing his wife, he had already lost his daughter. Soon he would be alone.
When Rutherford brought in the tray with his whisky and soda he found him still motionless at his desk, staring through the opened doors at what life had given him. Things.
Later on Kay saw her mother. She went in, with the nurse standing guard; fortunately she had been warned in advance, so she bore herself well, but even the rose lights in the room could not conceal the change in Katherine. Her small face had fallen in, there were deep livid circles under her eyes. Her white hair, however, was as carefully waved as ever, her hands, the left with its enormous square cut diamond, were as carefully manicured. She was wrapped in lace and soft silk.
She held out her arms and Kay went into them, determinedly smiling but sick at heart.
"My little girl!"
"Mother darling!"
And after a pause, each holding the other: "Did they send for you?"
"No, indeed. I just came."
No, Henry wouldn't have sent for her; she ought to have known that. She stroked Kay's head.
"I was afraid" she said, and stopped.
"Afraid of what?"
But she lied gently.
"Afraid you hadn't got your clothes. But I see you have. You look so pretty, Kay. I think I had forgotten how pretty you are!"
And then, before anything real had been said between them, the nurse signaled for Kay to go.
But Katherine knew; had known from the moment she had learned that Kay was in the house, was certain of it when she saw her. She had left her husband. Tragedy was written all over her, smile as she might.
She lay very still that night, for fear the nurse would report her sleepless to Henry, and Kay would get the blame. She seemed to be seeing very clearly a great many things; for instance, one could choose security, as she had, and be left always to wonder where the other path would have led. Or one could compromise, as had Bessie, for instance; holding to security but making her small tentative explorations into more or less shady by-paths. Or—again—like Kay, one could take the hard road to life and adventure, suffer, stumble, but somehow have lived. Like old Lucius, too.
Toward morning Henry tiptoed into the room. She closed her eyes immediately, but she was touched. Perhaps after all, security; a strong hand to hold to at the end. He looked at her, turned and crept out again.