Twilight Sleep (Wharton)/Chapter 28
XXVIII
WHEN Nona came down the next morning it was raining—a cold blustery rain, lashing the branches about and driving the startled spring back into its secret recesses.
It was the first rain since their arrival at Cedarledge, and it seemed to thrust them back also—back into the wintry world of town, of dripping streets, early lamplight and crowded places of amusement.
Mrs. Manford had already breakfasted and left the dining-room, but her husband's plate was still untouched. He came in as Nona was finishing, and after an absent-minded nod and smile dropped silently into his place. He sat opposite the tall rainstriped windows, and as he stared out into the grayness it seemed as if some of it, penetrating into the room in spite of the red sparkle of the fire, had tinged his face and hair. Lately Nona had been struck by his ruddiness, and the vigour of the dark waves crisping about his yellow-brown temples; but now he had turned sallow and autumnal. "What people call looking one's age, I suppose—as if we didn't have a dozen or a hundred ages, all of us!"
Her father had withdrawn his stare from the outer world and turned it toward the morning paper on the book-stand beside his plate. With lids lowered and fixed lips he looked strangely different again—rather like his own memorial hust in bronze. She shivered a little. . .
"Father! Your coffee's getting cold."
He pushed aside the paper, glanced at the letters piled by his plate, and lifted his eyes to Nona's. The twinkle she always woke seemed to struggle up to her from a long way off.
"I missed my early tramp and don't feel particularly enthusiastic about breakfast."
"It's not enthusiastic weather."
"No." He had grown absent-minded again. "Pity; when we've so few days left."
"It may clear, though."
What stupid things they were saying! Much either he or she cared about the weather, when they were in the country and had the prospect of a good tramp or a hard gallop together. Not that they had had many such lately; but then she had been busy with her mother, trying to make up for Maisie's absence; and there had been the interruption caused by the week-end party; and he had been helping to keep Lita amused—with success, apparently.
"Yes. . . I shouldn't wonder if it cleared." He frowned out toward the sky again. "Round about midday." He paused, and added: "I thought of running Lita over to Greystock."
She nodded. They would no doubt stay and dine, and Lita would get her dance. Probably Mrs. Manford wouldn't mind, though she was beginning to show signs of wearying of tête-à-tête dinners with her daughter. But they could go over the reception list again; and Pauline could talk about her new Messiah.
Nona glanced down at her own letters. She often forgot to look at them till the day was nearly over, now that she knew the one writing her eyes thirsted for would not be on any of the envelopes. Stanley Heuston had made no sign since they had parted that night on the doorstep. . .
The door opened, and Lita came in. It was the first time since their arrival that she had appeared at breakfast. She faced Manford as she entered, and Nona saw her father's expression change. It was like those funny old portraits in the picture-restorers' windows, with a veil of age and dust removed from one half to show the real surface underneath. Lita's entrance did not make him look either younger or happier; it simply removed from his face the soul-disguising veil which life interposes between a man's daily world and himself. He looked stripped—exposed . . . exposed . . . that was it. Nona glanced at Lita, not to surprise her off her guard, but simply to look away from her father.
Lita's face was what it always was: something so complete and accomplished that one could not imagine its being altered by any interior disturbance. It was like a delicate porcelain vase, or a smooth heavy flower, that a shifting of light might affect, but nothing from within would alter. She smiled in her round-eyed unseeing way, as a little gold-and- ivory goddess might smile down on her worshippers, and said: "I got up early because there wasn't any need to."
The reason was one completely satisfying to herself, but its effect on her hearers was perhaps disappointing. Nona made no comment, and Manford merely laughed—a vague laugh addressed, one could see, less to her words, which he appeared not to have noticed, than to the mere luminous fact of her presence; the kind of laugh evoked by the sight of a dazzling fringed fish or flower suddenly offered to one's admiration.
"I think the rain will hold off before lunch," he said, communicating the fact impartially to the room.
"Oh, what a pity—I wanted to get my hair thoroughly drenched. It's beginning to uncurl with the long drought," Lita said, her hand wavering uncertainly between the dishes Powder had placed in front of her. "Grape-fruit, I think—though it's so awfully ocean-voyagy. Promise me, Nona—!" She turned to her sister-in-law.
"Promise you what?"
"Not to send me a basket of grape-fruit when I sail."
Manford looked up at her impenetrable porcelain face. His lips half parted on an unspoken word; then he pushed back his chair and got up.
"I'll order the car at eleven," he said, in a tone of aimless severity.
Lita was scooping a spoonful of juice out of the golden bowl of the grape-fruit. She seemed neither to heed nor to hear. Manford laid down his napkin and walked out of the room.
Lita threw back her head to let the liquid slip slowly down between her lips. Her gold-fringed lids fluttered a little, as if the fruit-juice were a kiss.
"When are you sailing?" Nona asked, reaching for the cigarette-lighter.
"Don't know. Next week, I shouldn't wonder."
"For any particular part of the globe?"
Lita's head descended, and she turned her chestnut-coloured eyes softly on her sister-in-law. "Yes; but I can't remember what it's called."
Nona was looking at her in silence. It was simply that she was so beautiful. A vase? No—a lamp now: there was a glow from the interior. As if her red corpuscles had turned into millions of fairy lamps. . .
Her glance left Nona's and returned to her plate. "Letters. What a bore! Why on earth don't people telephone?"
She did not often receive letters, her congenital inability to answer them having gradually cooled the zeal of her correspondents; of all, that is, excepting her husband. Almost every day Nona saw one of Jim's gray-blue envelopes on the hall table. That particular colour had come to symbolize to her a state of patient expectancy.
Lita was turning over some impersonal looking bills and advertisements. From beneath them the faithful gray-blue envelope emerged. Nona thought: "If only he wouldn't—!" and her eyes filled.
Lita looked pensively at the post-mark and then laid the envelope down unopened.
"Aren't you going to read your letter?"
She raised her brows. "Jim's? I did—yesterday. One just like it."
"Lita! You're—you're perfectly beastly!"
Lita's languid mouth rounded into a smile. "Not to you, darling. Do you want me to read it?" She slipped a polished finger-tip under the flap.
"Oh, no; no! Don't—not like that!" It made Nona wince. "I wish she hated Jim—I wish she wanted to kill him! I could bear it better than this," the girl stormed inwardly. She got up and turned toward the door.
"Nona—wait! What's the matter? Don't you really want to hear what he says?" Lita stood up also, her eyes still on the open letter. "He—oh. . ." She turned toward her sister-in-law a face from which the inner glow had vanished.
"What is it? Is he ill? What's wrong?"
"He's coming home. He wants me to go back the day after tomorrow." She stood staring in front of her, her eyes fixed on something invisible to Nona, and beyond her.
"Does he say why?"
"He doesn't say anything but that."
"When did you expect him?"
"I don't know. Not for ages. I never can remember about dates. But I thought he liked it down there. And your father said he'd arranged—"
"Arranged what?" Nona interrupted.
Lita seemed to become aware of her again, and turned on her a smooth inaccessible face. "I don't know: arranged with the bank, I suppose."
"To keep him there?"
"To let him have a good long holiday. You all thought he needed it so awfully, didn't you?"
Nona stood motionless, staring out of the window. She saw her father drive up in the Buick. The rain had diminished to a silver drizzle shot with bursts of sun, and through the open window she heard him call: "It's going to clear after all. We'd better start."
Lita went out of the door, humming a tune.
"Lita!" Nona called out, moved by some impulse to arrest, to warn—she didn't know what. But the door had closed, and Lita was already out of hearing.
All through the day it kept on raining at uncomfortable intervals. Uncomfortable, that is, for Pauline and Nona. Whenever they tried to get out for a walk a deluge descended; then, as soon as they had splashed back to the house with the dripping dogs, the clouds broke and mocked them with a blaze of sunshine. But by that time they were either revising the list again, or had settled down to Mah-jongg in the library.
"Really, I can't go up and change into my walking shoes again!" Pauline remonstrated to the weather; and a few minutes later the streaming window-panes had justified her.
"April showers," she remarked with a slightly rigid smile. She looked deprecatingly at her daughter. "It was selfish of me to keep you here, dear. You ought to have gone with your father and Lita."
"But there were all those notes to do, mother. And really I'm rather fed-up with Greystock."
Pauline executed a repetition of her smile. "Well, I fancy we shall have them back for tea. No golf this afternoon, I'm afraid," she said, glancing with a certain furtive satisfaction at the increasing downpour.
"No; but Lita may want to stay and dance."
Pauline made no comment, but once more addressed her disciplined attention to the game.
The fire, punctually replenished, continued to crackle and drowse. The warmth drew out the strong scent of the carnations and rose-geraniums, and made the room as languid as a summer garden. Dusk fell from the cloud-laden skies, and in due course the hand which tended the fire drew the curtains on their noiseless rings and lit the lamps. Lastly Powder appeared, heading the processional entrance of the tea-table.
Pauline roused herself from a languishing Mahjongg to take her expected part in the performance. She and Nona grouped themselves about the hearth, and Pauline lifted the lids of the little covered dishes with a critical air.
"I ordered those muffins your father likes so much," she said, in a tone of unwonted wistfulness. "Perhaps we'd better send them out to be kept hot."
Nona agreed that it would be better; but as she had her hand on the bell the sound of an approaching motor checked her. The dogs woke with a happy growling and bustled out. "There they are after all" Pauline said.
There was a minute or two of silence, unmarked by the usual yaps of welcome; then a sound like the depositing of wraps and an umbrella; then Powder on the threshold, for once embarrassed and at a loss.
"Mr. Wyant, madam."
"Mr. Wyant?"
"Mr. Arthur Wyant. He seemed to think you were probably expecting him," Powder continued, as if lengthening the communication in order to give her time.
Mrs. Manford, seizing it, rose to the occasion with one of her heroic wing-beats. "Yes—I was. Please show him in," she said, without risking a glance at her daughter.
Arthur Wyant came in, tall and stooping in his shabby well-cut clothes, a nervous flush on his cheek-bones. He paused, and sent a half-bewildered stare about the room—a look which seemed to say that when he had made up his mind that he must see Pauline he had failed to allow for the familiarity of the setting in which he was to find her.
"You've hardly changed anything here," he said abruptly, in the far-off tone of a man slowly coming back to consciousness.
"How are you, Arthur? I'm sorry you've had such a rainy day for your trip," Mrs. Manford responded, with an easy intonation intended to reach the retreating Powder.
Her former husband took no notice. His eyes continued to travel about the room in the same uncertain searching way.
"Hardly anything," he repeated, still seemingly unaware of any presence in the room but his own. "That Raeburn, though—yes. That used to be in the dining-room, didn't it?" He passed his hand over his forehead, as if to brush away some haze of oblivion, and walked up to the picture.
"Wait a bit. It's in the place where the Sargent of Jim as a youngster used to hang—Jim on his pony. Just over my writing-table, so that I saw it whenever I looked up. . ." He turned to Pauline. "Jolly picture. What have you done with it? Why did you take it away?"
Pauline coloured, but a smile of conciliation rode gallantly over her blush. "I didn't. That is—Dexter wanted it. It's in his room; it's been there for years." She paused, and then added: "You know how devoted Dexter is to Jim."
Wyant had turned abruptly from the contemplation of the Raeburn. The colour in Pauline's cheek was faintly reflected in his own. "Stupid of me . . . of course. . . Fact is, I was rather rattled when I came in, seeing everything so much the same. . . You must excuse my turning up in this way; I had to see you about something important. . . Hullo, Nona—"
"Of course I excuse you, Arthur. Do sit down—here by the fire. You must be cold after your wet journey . . . so unseasonable, after the weather we've been having. Nona will ring for tea," Pauline said, with her accent of indomitable hospitality.