The Opening Door

by Helen Reilly

  The tension was in her father and Natalie as well as in her aunt. She tried to track it to its source and failed. But it was there, oh, very distinctly, in Hugh’s absent pleasantries to his guests, in the tightness of his mouth, in the restless straying of his shapely hands. It was in Natalie, behind surface brightness, in her dutiful circling around the room, her fair head shining above brown wool.

  Eve frowned. Natalie was volatile and flew off the handle easily, but their father wasn’t like that. The only thing that moved him deeply was a threat to his own comfort. Eve reflected, watching her young half-sister, that Charlotte had done her best to spoil her, but there was one quality in Natalie Charlotte hadn’t been able to touch, and that was her generosity. The purse strings of the fortune left to Natalie by her mother were never drawn. She was always wide open, foolishly so sometimes, to an appeal for help. She had given a pension to Pussy, their old nurse, for life; she had sent the furnace mans son through college; she was godmother to a half dozen local war relief organizations, and Alicia was always running to her with “cases,” not to speak of Gerald’s demands or the demands of her long list of friends and acquaintances.

  Eve tossed her cigarette into the flames. If she was watching the others, Charlotte was watching her. Eve’s spine stiffened. She turned toward the hearth, sipped a highball and answered Hugh’s polite questions. The shop was doing very well, much better than she had expected. She had had a run on stockings...

  Her father didn’t flinch. His small keen eyes were cold but his manner remained bland, as if what she did were no longer of any importance. Yet he had objected furiously to her going into business, had wanted her to remain on and to marry, well, under the aegis of Natalie’s wealth and position, which would have added to the Flavell prestige. The book shop he might have been able to swallow, books were cultural and not undignified, but when she had added stockings and gloves he had thrown up his hands.

  “A female haberdasher, after four years of college—my dear girl. What an achievement! You must be proud of yourself.”

  That was on the day she had refused to live an hour longer in Natalie’s house, on Natalie’s money. She had been very young and very stupid and crude in the way she went about it, accusing the others by indirection—her father and Charlotte, her brother Gerald and Alicia—of doing just that. No wonder they had resented her attitude. They had said she was pig-headed and ungrateful and eaten up by jealousy. This last at least was untrue. She was very fond of her young half-sister, but Natalie’s wealth, her friends, her amusements, pursuits and outlook were not Eve’s and never could be.

  She had made the break as complete as possible. It had been difficult at times but on the whole exhilarating. The only one she had had any real trouble with was Natalie. With a large income at her disposal she couldn’t understand why Eve wouldn’t use her charge accounts or have her apartment furnished, and at first, anyhow, she had been hurt and unhappy at the division between them. But if their daily association had been curtailed their affection for each other was as strong as ever.

  Eve looked at Natalie’s bent head, pale against a fall of green brocade, where she stood at a desk writing a check for some charity or other for a stout woman in elegant beige and sables, and warmth stirred in her around a core of central deadness. She had been right. She had done the only thing there was to do...

  The room was beginning to empty. Departing guests kept coming up to say goodbye to Hugh and Charlotte. Eve smoked and waited, holding taut nerves in check. It wouldn’t be long now. “How’s the book coming, Father?” she asked during a lull.

  Hugh was writing a book on Economic Victorianism. He had been engaged on it for a long while. The first volume, published nine years earlier, had been well received. The notices, all good, were pasted neatly in a scrap book that occupied a lectern of its own in his study.

  Her father nodded without removing the cigarette from his lips. His aloof gaze said, “Don’t try to come over me with that. You haven’t the slightest interest in my work, or in me. You never had.”

  Eve flushed and persevered. “There must be a tremendous amount of research to do.”

  “There is.”

  He was, definitely, thinking of other things. The conversation withered. Charlotte made no effort to keep it alive. Her labors at the tea table over, she had taken up her knitting. Her silence was disagreeable, menacing. It gave her the air of a judge—which was what she always had been to Eve, condemning her unheard, in advance, of the gravest crimes. But when she got up and went to speak to someone, it was no relief. Eve had always hated to be alone with her father. She never knew what to say to him. Now, in his absorption in whatever engrossed his thoughts, he was doubly formidable.

  Fortunately Alicia dropped into Charlotte’s vacant place. Hugh was fond of the daughter-in-law whose social background was excellent, who was decorative, whom he considered a good wife and mother and who knew how to flatter him. Talk flowed between them easily.

  “You’re not looking too well, Dad.” Alicia put her dark madonna-smooth head on one side. “Your eyes, yes, I think it’s your eyes—they have no light in them. Have you been doing what Doctor Hendricks ordered?”

  Hugh relaxed insensibly. “I can’t be bothered with all that nonsense.”

  “Oh, but you must. Exercise—have you been taking your walks?”

  “That I do do. Five times around the Square after breakfast, five times after dinner.”

  “And something to eat before you go to bed?”

  “I generally have a banana and a glass of milk. But bananas, decent ones, are hard to get.”

  “You’ve positively got to have them. It’s about the only fruit you care for.”

  Alicia was in good form. Natalie threw Eve an amused glance over the shoulder of a man she was talking to and made a face and they smiled imperceptibly at each other. Natalie had grown, Eve decided. She wasn’t a child any more. She was out of Charlotte’s leading strings. Freedom, marriage, a new deal, were going to be splendid for her. She would lose her flashing restlessness and flower like a plant in the sun. Presently Charlotte came back. “How many for dinner?” she wanted to know, lighting a cigarette. Eve shook her head. “Not me, either,” Alicia said. “I’d love it, but we’re dining with the Beauferts. Gerald’s calling for me at...There he is now.”

  Eve thought, with an inner flicker of irony, I’m going to have a full house, and watched her brother advance toward the fire, tall and erect and graceful in a well-cut gray suit. Gerald was always impeccably turned out. His bills used to cause riots when he was at college. He was much too attractive for his own good, she thought. Things had always been made too easy for him. He had their father’s face but their mother’s eyes, gray, thick-lashed, appealing, smoky eyes. There were new sets of lines at the corners of them, little crow’s-feet of strain. As Alicia had said, he was probably worried about business. He had an expensive establishment to keep up—but it was the way he wanted to live.

  Gerald greeted Hugh and Charlotte affectionately, pecked at Alicia’s cheek, showed surprise at seeing Eve—and pleasure. “The return of the prodigal, a nice prodigal. That hat’s good on you, my lass. What brings you to the old manse? Business folded?”

  It was her cue, Eve thought. But she wanted to wait for Natalie, who was saying goodbye to a man and a girl near the archway. “The shop? Thanks, no, it’s flourishing, Gerald,” Eve said aloud.

  Natalie joined them then, and Hugh and Gerald both got up. Her father hadn’t risen for her, Eve reflected. He wouldn’t. That was part of the unstudied discourtesy with which he had always treated her. Natalie did look tired. Her thin cheeks were pale and the dust of freckles across her nose stood out more prominently than ever.

  “Here,” Gerald took her by the shoulders and pushed her into a chair. “You’re all in, chicken.”

  Natalie smiled at him. “I am, rather.”

  “What you need is a drink,” Gerald said. “I’m going to mix us all one. This is going to be
good. I got it from a fellow who used to be at the old Hoffman House.” He went to the eighteenth-century liquor cabinet against the wall and opened squat doors.

  Alicia peered at him through the low light. “How many have you had already?”

  Her tone was sharp. Charlotte looked at her and then, quickly, at Gerald. Hugh gazed at the fire, his mouth compressed. He was a practicing Aristotelian and believed in moderation in all things. Two cocktails, and only two, were permissible before dinner.

  “Drink deep or touch not the Pierian Spring,” Gerald said, turning around and grinning amiably. “Alicia’s my pet prohibitionist, did you know?”

  It was family stuff, trivial, unimportant—or so Eve considered at the time. Nevertheless she registered with a sudden sharp flash and a pang of apprehension that it was in Gerald and Alicia too, a brittle unease, as though they were deeply stirred about something but didn’t want it to show, wanted it, very determinedly, not to.

  She gave herself a mental shake. She was probably imagining the whole business. She took the glass Gerald handed her. The stem was cool between her fingers and smooth and firm; you could hold on to it. Alicia and her father on the low armchair between the sofas, with Gerald on a hassock in front of her, his shoulders against her knees; beyond the warm circle of fire and lamplight the rest of the room was dim, shadowy and empty at last. Now, she thought, now, and leaned forward a little.

  “I’ve got news for you, Nat.”

  In spite of herself her voice wasn’t entirely level. Charlotte’s knitting needles came to a halt; Alicia’s cigarette paused in mid-air; her father adjusted his pince-nez. Gerald said lazily, “Ah-ha, a nigger in the woodpile—I thought so when I saw you here. Out with it, my girl.”

  Natalie was looking at her with all her eyes. “News, Eve? Good news?”

  Eve thought, with a bitter pang of self-reproach, She’s afraid. How terrible! I have hurt her in the past—but never again. Aloud she said, “I hope you’ll think it’s good. Jim Holland and I are going to be married.”

  It wasn’t what her father or Alicia or Gerald had expected to hear. She didn’t glance at Charlotte. Natalie jumped up and gave her a quick kiss. “Oh, Eve, I’m so glad,” she cried. “This is wonderful. I do like Jim and he’s been crazy about you for ages. When did you decide? When’s it to be?”

  “Almost immediately,” Eve answered. “Probably in a couple of days. We’ve gotten the license, taken our tests. You see, Jim’s...”

  Her voice stopped. She sat very still. Blackness was swimming up around her. She had waited too long. The man who shouldn’t have been there had entered the house unheard while she was talking.

  Bruce Cunningham was back from Washington. He stood on the top step looking toward the group around the fire, looking past Natalie, at Eve. The gold buttons on his uniform winked. Nothing else about him moved.

  Eve thought despairingly, Why did he have to come now? Why couldn’t he have stayed away until it was over and I was gone? And then like a warning bell close in fog—Charlotte.

  Charlotte was beside her on the couch. The others hadn’t seen Bruce yet, their backs were to the hall and to the archway leading into it, but Bruce was within Charlotte’s field of vision.

  Eve tried to fight clear of destroying panic. They had noticed her pause. She must make the best of it. She raised her head, said in a clear light voice, “It’s Lieutenant Cunningham, just in time to hear my news,” and wondered, desperately, what was going to happen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nothing happened, absolutely nothing, eve had stumbled up a whole flight of steps that wasn’t there. Natalie got up and went toward Bruce, her face radiant—she hadn’t expected him for another twenty-four hours, and they kissed and the rest called greetings and Bruce strolled up to the hearth, an arm around Natalie’s shoulders. He felicitated Eve.

  “I hope you’ll be very happy, Miss Flavell. I have no doubt that Holland will. Lucky fellow.”

  His lean dark face, with which his light eyes were in such contrast, was quiet. His smile was pleasant, agreeable, not sardonic or bitter. He looked as he usually did when he wasn’t particularly interested, except that the line of his angled jaw was a ridge, which might have been an effect of light. The others added their good wishes to his. Charlotte’s eyes expressed a grudging approval. Hugh was openly pleased. He had known Jim for years, had tutored him for his entrance exams at Yale and evidently considered him an excellent husband for, if not a black sheep, at any rate one of a very dark shade of brown.

  Eve settled back in her corner and drank the cocktail Gerald had mixed and listened to voices that were far away. She felt like a spent swimmer fighting tumultuous seas who suddenly finds himself floating in a land-locked lagoon without knowing or caring how he got there. Her work was done. It was all over. She was empty, drained and in pain, yet content. She could go in peace.

  She was mistaken. Before she could begin her leave-taking, Jim Holland arrived in search of her and, a little later, Charlotte was summoned to the phone to answer a long-distance call.

  When Eve was interrogated afterwards as to precisely what took place in the house on that bleak December afternoon, where people were at given intervals, what was said and done, it was hard to be exact. There was a good deal of confusion and stir and moving about. Jim had known the family since he was a boy and they were all fond of him and interested in his new job as production engineer at a factory in Bridgeport. He was very pleased about it himself. His bad knee, injured in a car smash when he was thirty, had kept him out of the Army, and he had raged like a tiger deprived of its kill.

  Talk, laughter, questions, a drink for Jim—Perhaps five minutes after he got there, one of the maids came in and said that Charlotte was wanted on the telephone. It was while Charlotte was out of the room that Eve had her brief and dreadful encounter with Bruce. She made no mention of that to the police, until the time came when she didn’t have to, when it was too late, when they already knew.

  Then, at the moment, her blood ran cold at the chance he took. The others were standing in a knot near the piano, at which Gerald was seated plucking idly at the keys; she had gone to get the purse she had left on a coffee table at the hearth. She was picking up her purse when Bruce spoke. His voice was almost at her ear. She hadn’t heard him follow her and her heart hammered, furiously.

  What he said, musingly, almost indifferently, was: “You couldn’t wait, could you, Eve? Perhaps it was asking too much. Are you in love with Holland? He’s too old for you—and too fat.”

  Eve was indignant and angry and frightened and wildly amused. Jim wasn’t any older, in relation to her, than Bruce was to Natalie, or not much—and Jim wasn’t fat. He was a big man naturally; it was simply that he couldn’t get enough exercise with his stiff knee. As for waiting—what good would it have done? Bruce was engaged to Natalie, had been engaged to her for more than a year, and she was passionately in love with him; you had only to see them together to realize that. There wasn’t the slightest chance of her terminating the engagement of her own accord—which was the only way it would matter.

  Bruce was mad to talk to her like this, here. She said in a voice as low as his own, “Don’t, Bruce. I’ve made up my mind and nothing can change it. I’m going to marry Jim. It isn’t any sacrifice. I’m very fond of him. Besides, we’ve had all this out before. We’re in perfect agreement on one thing: Natalie mustn’t be hurt. And Charlotte suspects.”

  “Charlotte—what does she suspect?”

  The need for reticence had vanished. “That you...That I...”

  “How do you know?”

  “She came to see me at the shop the day before yesterday. She told me so.”

  “Then it was Charlotte who made you do this?”

  Her “No,” wasn’t emphatic enough. She added hurriedly: “I would have done it anyhow. Jim’s a swell guy.” She turned her head. No one was looking at them. The others were listening to Jim telling a story, gesticulating with his stick. He told a sto
ry well. His voice was big, sure. The boom of it was reassuring, like the rest of him. She glanced up sideways at Bruce and a wave of sickness went through her. His mouth was clamped tight and his eyes were narrow and intent and smolderingly bright on nothing. He was unhappy, tortured—and in a dangerous mood.

  She had seen him like that only once before, on the night he came to the shop to get some books for Natalie, and they found out suddenly and without words what had grown up between them, unbidden, almost unrecognized, until it was too late. There was nothing they could do about it. They both realized that, or seemed to. They, or she rather, for Bruce had been strangely silent, had stamped on the sudden and terrible knowledge, denying its existence, pretending it wasn’t there. A week later Bruce had thrown up his job and gone into the Air Force.

  If only his wound hadn’t sent him home three weeks ago, if only they had met when he was free. Well, they hadn’t, and wishful thinking was stupid and purposeless and a waste of time. She had cut the knot of an impossible situation by engaging herself to Jim. Her announcement had effectually squashed Charlotte’s suspicion. It mustn’t be reawakened. Charlotte mustn’t find them together like this, apart from the others. She was at the telephone in the booth under the stairs but she would be back at any moment...

  Fear unlocked Eve’s weary paralysis. She tucked her purse under her arm, started pulling on her gloves. “I’m going now, Bruce,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t pay any attention. He remained as he was, staring down into the fire. “Charlotte,” he murmured thinly.

  He had never liked her aunt. Eve was afraid of his tone, his expression; she was more afraid of their isolation, of the shadowy corners, the unseen eyes that might be raking them speculatively.

  She said, “Don’t, Bruce. Think of Natalie. She’s the one we’ve got to think of,” and on that, without waiting for a response, she walked away, arranging her face, buttoning her glove, putting on a smile.