To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 27
EACH June Mrs. Green sent Mr. Driggs one Kil larney rose, or he sent one to her. These were not tender tokens, but flaunting boasts, the one whose bush bloomed first putting on airs of insufferable superiority. This morning Kate went to the door with a dustcloth in her hand, for Effa was busy baking, to find Mrs. Driggs, mauve with heat, holding the rose.
"Mr. Driggs made me promise to bring it right over, for fear the sun would open yours. Whew! Hot enough for you?"
"Oh, so he's beaten me! And I was just ready to burst! Come in. It's cooler inside."
"Hoagland says Joe's bringing Hope home this afternoon. Whew!"
"Here's a fan. Yes, isn't it an awful day for them to be traveling?"
Mrs. Driggs flapped the palm-leaf fan slowly, and panted.
"I guess it's because it's the first real hot spell we feel it so. You wait; there'll be a storm before night. What smells so good?"
"The honeysuckle on the side porch. The bees are just thick around it."
"No, I mean something baking."
"Oh, Effa's making gingerbread animals for Hope. Let's have a few! And I have some root beer on ice. We've just made it."
"Oh, now, don't bother"
"No bother. I feel empty myself; I've been rushing round so hard, getting ready for them."
"Well, that certainly goes to the right spot!" Mrs. Driggs wiped away a mustache of creamy foam. "You'll be glad to have Hope back, I guess."
"Indeed I will. You know she's been with her mother seven months. I guess she'll seem quite grown up to me. Effa and IJ are just as excited as anything."
"Her mother'll miss her."
"Yes, she will, dreadfully. She's at such a darling age now. I remember when Joe was her age; there was something new all the time. I don't believe I could have stood it to miss a day."
"Joe glad she's coming home?"
"Why, of course, Mrs. Driggs! Only, you know it's a funny thing," said Kate in a burst of confidence: "last summer I thought Hope would be all the comfort in the world to him, because he certainly does adore his little girl, but somehow it seemed sometimes as if she was making him feel worse. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, and perhaps I was just imagining"
"Maybe it's because he loves the mother too much, and Hope keeps reminding him." Mrs. Driggs flipped the gingerbread crumbs from her bosom, her eyes staring at the empty fireplace as if she were seeing something else. "I guess you can't love more than one person best."
"But where's Hope?" Kate cried, plunging downstairs to fling her arms around Joe. "Darling, you look so hot and tired! Where's Hope?"
"I'm going to let Evelyn keep her."
"Joe!"
"Mother, I can't talk about it yet. Evelyn needs Hope, and Hope needs Evelyn. Evelyn—Evelyn's more— I want them to be together"
"But, Joe! Won't she ever let you see her again?"
"Why, of course, mother! Evelyn's still Evelyn."
"I"
"And there's something else. I'm going to let Evelyn divorce me. Don't say anything—don't say anything!"
She could not look at his despairing face, that he was trying to control. She kissed him, her arms tight around him, and said with unnatural briskness:
"You go and have a nice bath—you're all hot and dirty—and then lie down till supper time. Joe!"
He looked down over the banisters. His mouth was stretched into a smile, but his eyes were so big, so shining that she was afraid they would well with tears, that tears would overflow, streaking the dust of travel.
"Lie down in my room; it's the coolest."
The world was breathless, still as glass; the sky grew dark and blind. Kate tiptoed to the door of her room once or twice, but Joe lay motionless, and at last she sent Effa home. The street was empty; the world was empty. Her nerves were quivering; she was caught in the stillness as if she were caught in the water at the edge of a great waterfall, sliding glass-smooth toward plunging chaos.
Thunder spoke far away, drew nearer. Then rain fell loudly, beating the leaves, drumming on the roof. The white glare of lightning showed a writhing world; the thunder crackled lightly. That means it's near, Kate thought.
Joe opened his eyes. He was cool and clean; his head was steady. It had been months since he had slept so. Night after night he had read in bed until his head was swimming and his eyes smarting, to keep away thoughts that came with the dark. But now that he could no longer say, "Perhaps—some day" he was like a drowning man who, fighting the sea a long time, at last gives up.
"Joe? Are you awake?"
"Yes, just."
"Don't tell me you slept through that storm! Here's a candle; the lights are all out. Aren't you hungry? It's after nine o'clock."
They spoke to each other quietly now and then as they ate their supper—quivering jellied soup, a big bowl of chicken salad, a frosty pitcher of iced coffee, flaky hot crescent rolls from the Vienna Bakery, with curls of butter that Kate had made according to Charlotte's description of the way they had butter in Italy, the kind of cheese that Joe liked and that made her hold her nose, and the raspberry water ice she had ordered from Goff's to celebrate his return and Hope's. He had not eaten anything since lunch the day before, and he found he was half starved. The food and drink, the cool quiet, gave him strength again.
"I sent Effa home. I'll just pile the things up in the sink. She said to leave them. I'll be in in a minute."
But he followed her into the kitchen, as he used to when he was a little boy, back into the dining room, out into the kitchen.
"There go the lights on again. Don't you want to look at the paper?"
He took it, and sat down by the lamp. She got out her drawing board, her paint box and glass of water, and began to work, stealing glances at him, aching for him. His head was bent over the paper, but he hadn't turned a page in half an hour.
"I'm trying to design some scenery. Don't you ever feel like doing any more? You used to do such wonderful things"
"I'll try some, sometime," he said, not because he meant to, but to comfort her, so the air would not be heavy with the intense emotion of her suffering for him, so that he could be still.
"I'm having the awfulest time. They asked me to plan a scene for 'The Steadfast Lead Soldier'—you know, that Hans Andersen fairy-tale. The children are going to do it. Nancy Lou's going to be the little dancer, though she's too fat, I think—a regular little butter ball. I just can't get anything decent."
"Let's see."
"No—it's awful!" She crumpled her sketch into a wad. "You try, Joe."
"I haven't any ideas."
But he fastened a fresh sheet of paper to the drawing board and began making a pool of color in the paint-box lid.
"There was a castle, wasn't there?"
"Wait. I'll read that part to you." She squatted on the floor by the bookcase and pulled out the stout little blue-and-gold volume with the broken back.
"'There were once five-and-twenty leaden soldiers' Wait a minute—here: 'A pretty little paper castle. . . . In front of the castle stood little trees, round a small piece of looking-glass that was meant to represent a transparent lake. Wax swans were swimming on its surface, that reflected back their image. . . . A diminutive lady . . . stood at the castle's open door. She, too, was cut out of paper; but she wore a dress of the clearest muslin, and a narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders, like a scarf; and in the middle of this was placed a tinsel rose, as big as her whole face. The little lady stretched out both her arms' Oh, well, that hasn't anything to do with the scenery."
But she went on reading to herself, squatting there, reading to the end.
"The lead soldier was now lighted up by the flames, and felt a tremendous degree of heat; but whether it proceeded from the real fire, or from the fire of love, he could not exactly tell. . . . He looked at the little lady, and she looked at him, and he felt himself melting away; still he stood firm with his gun on his shoulder. The door now happened to open, and the wind caught up the dancer, who fluttered . . . right into the stove beside the lead soldier, and was instantly consumed by the flame. The lead soldier melted down to a lump . . . in the shape of a little leaden heart. Of the dancer nothing remained but the tinsel rose, and that was as black as a cinder."
Joe's head, with its cowlick, was bent close to the—board; his legs were twined around each other. A tip of tongue stuck out between his lips as it had when he was an absorbed little boy. He's really interested, Kate thought, so relieved that she could have wept for joy. And the cowlick made her love him so that it was all she could do not to jump up and kiss the top of his head.
It was raining again, quietly now. The scent of wet honeysuckle came in at the windows. She picked up the sweater she had been knitting for Hope, and went on with it, not thinking of what she was doing, but soothed by the slipping of blue loop after loop and the dropping of the rain. Every minute was precious to her. Now he is more at peace—now—now
I know what I'll do, she thought. I'll get his things down from the attic, the old theater and all his materials, and I'll fix up the studio so he can have it every bit for himself. If only I can get him really interested in his scenery it will help him more than anything else in the world. That's the work he's always loved. And he is interested now; he has forgotten everything else—I can tell from his face.
What did it matter that she had a still life started, a jar of creamy peonies against a background of the old kimona embroidered with sea turtles, in careless folds it had taken her half a morning to arrange? She could finish it in her own room, or, if she couldn't, what she really needed was out-of-door sketching.
I'm going to fix it for him to-night, she thought. I can't wait! As soon as he goes to bed I'll get to work. He's never had a real place all of his own here. His room's the size of a match box, anyway, and then I have a lot of my things under his bed—the piece box and the cutting table and my patterns. I'll have it all done to surprise him to-morrow!
When the crack under his door was dark she carried the stepladder up from the cellar and began taking down her paintings—Nellie Verlaine in Grecian costume, fish, onions, the apple blossoms in a stoneware crock she had really finished last month. She pulled pictures out from under the couch, from behind the screen. The unfinished portrait of her husband. "Oh, Joe, I wish you were here to help Jodie," she whispered.
What heaps of forgotten things were hidden by the divan's denim skirts—the box of Christmas-tree ornaments, the old Art Interchanges, Jodie's Dormouse costume for the scenes from "Alice in Wonderland" at school. She had put it away, thinking he could use it again some day—had he ever been as small as that?
Each person who had lived in the house seemed to have left something in the studio, as one tide brings glass-brown seaweed to a pool in the rocks, another a fluted shell, another a crab scuttling sideways on fragile blue claws, stirring up a white cloud of sand. Joe and Jodie, Lizzie Kelley—here was the awful sofa pillow Lizzie had embroidered with poppies for a Christmas surprise—Charlotte's Gibson pictures behind the screen, Aunt Sarah's big chair, humble forgotten treasures of Carrie's, Effa's lost whisk broom, Hope's blackboard and colored chalks. Only Evelyn had left no trace behind her.
Kate piled the things up in her own room, pushed them under her bed. Plenty of time to put them away properly later. Up in the attic she found Joe's old toy theater, his tool chest, and the boxes of scenery he had made, and carried them down.
Her hot wet face was dust streaked; she had broken two finger nails. She would not admit to herself that she was tired, but things began to leap from her hands; she was twitching and throbbing. Her mind seethed with confused thoughts—these torn tissue-paper wings that she had veined and spotted with gold paint for that solid fairy, Charlotte; the gingerbread animals Hope would never eat; the little trickles down the sides of Mrs. Driggs' face this morning, like the rivers marked on a lilac map; the thing Mrs. Driggs had said about loving one person best, so surprising from her.
I love Joe best; Joe loves Evelyn best; Evelyn loves Hope best.
Of course Joe would let Evelyn have Hope if he thought it would make her happier. He still thinks Evelyn's perfect. . . . How can he?
Joe a divorced man
Perhaps she and Joe could go abroad sometime now—not to the France she longed for—that would remind him too much—but Switzerland, maybe. She saw them eating crescent rolls like the ones from the Vienna Bakery, and flower-scented honey, in a chalet like her little old stamp box, or hanging from snowy mountains into the bright blue air, reaching over juting ledges to gather that homely but exciting winter-woolen-underwear flower, the edelweiss.
She could paint, and he could get material for his scenery. She saw herself, gracious in black velvet, sitting in a stage box beside him as a curtain rose. She heard the gasp of delight from the great audience at the beauty of the stage setting. "Whose work is that?" "A new scenic artist—young, but he's already a power. Joseph Montgomery Green. See, there he is with his mother"
The steadfast lead soldier—the little dancer stretching out her arms to him—but the fire was too much for her; just the tinsel rose was left, and that was as black as a cinder
Mercy! Here was her old wine-red Tennyson, down behind the divan, and as dusty as could be, bulging over a wad of dead flowers. She shook them out and saw a penciled line and a date along the margin:
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
What did the date mean, and why had she marked it, so long ago? She couldn't remember.
Then as her hands pulled out, folded, put away, her mind took on the clairvoyance that sometimes comes with physical exhaustion. The confused thoughts became clear, like the clear crystal a glass blower blows from the boiling mass.
Perhaps Joe is blessed among men, because there is bitter grief in his heart, she thought. Perhaps only those who know grief are truly blessed, are truly alive, kept quick by their pain. Perhaps a heart must be broken before life can wash through it.
She thought of pedple she knew, contented, complacent, men and women who had died long ago, and yet still moved about, eating, talking.
Yet I feel alive, and I have been a happy woman, she thought, as she worked on, alone in the sleeping world. I have had so much happiness. Of course now I'm wretched for my poor Joe
But the feeling that flowed beneath the thought was happy. He is mine again, for me to comfort, for me to take care of.
If he could have Evelyn, if they could be together as they used to be, I would give anything, even if it meant never seeing him again. But under the unselfishness lay the ancient depths of self, happy because he needed her.
The bravest thing about Joe is that he never acts as if he were being brave, she told herself with her new clarity of vision. I wouldn't be big enough for that. I'd have to let people see how brave I was being. I'd have to be able to admire myself as the heroine of a tragedy, but Joe's big enough for grief. Joe is blessed among men.
Cocks crowed outside, and day began to dim the electric light. The studio was ready for him. She had been so interested she had never thought of the time. "I'm so tired—I'm so tired—" she murmured, leaning against the window, at peace.
The sky was flooded with living pink, each cloud was rimmed with glory. How she would love to make just a quick sketch of it. Joe's old paint box, lying by her hand, almost tempted her to try then and there. But she was too sleepy. She must go to bed now. Perhaps she would set her alarm clock and get up to paint the dawn to-morrow morning.
The end