“I don’t think Ilsa knows anything about it,” I said. “She doesn’t think we’re as high and mighty as we make everybody think we are, that’s all.”
“I don’t like her. She’s a stuck-up pig. And her hair’s cut short. I’ve never seen a girl with her hair short like that, unless she’d been sick or something.”
“Well, maybe she has.”
“She didn’t look to me as though she’d been sick.”
“Well, I like her. She’s my best friend.”
“Pooh. You’re only ten and a half. You’re too young. She wouldn’t be friends with anybody three whole years younger than she was.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “We are friends. You heard her say we’d see each other when we got back from Charleston. The minute we get back I’m going to ride—” and all of a sudden I felt an empty feeling in my stomach, as though everything had dropped out and left me. I had remembered little old Billy. How I could have forgotten him for that long I don’t know.
“What’s the matter?” Silver asked.
“Billy,” I said, and stood up as the doorbell rang. “Mamma and Papa’re back,” I shouted, and started downstairs as the houseboy came out into the hall and went to the door.
When the houseboy opened the door we saw Papa and the coachman supporting Mamma, who was half fainting, and moaning slightly. Papa looked grimmer than I had ever seen him. Silver and I scuttled off the stairway as Papa carried Mamma up without paying any attention to us.
“She just done fainted,” the coachman explained to us as he went down the steps.
Dinner was late, and we ate it in oppressed silence. Papa said that Mamma had been seized with a fainting attack in church. In the middle of dinner he sent for his prayer book, and sat staring at it with a stern expression.
After dinner we went into the parlor. Papa told Silver to play; so she sat down obediently at the piano, and, with her precise cool touch, played a Handel minuet. Just as she finished one of the servants came in and said that Mamma wanted her in the bedroom. After she had left I sat perched on a hard wing chair covered with mustard-colored velvet and stared at Papa, who was still studying his prayer book, not turning the pages, but looking fixedly at one particular place. After a time he got up and I heard him, too, going upstairs. I wandered out into the garden, which was kept cool and fresh-looking in spite of the scorching end-of-summer heat, by hoses and sprinklers set in various places about the lawn and around the flower beds. Since my suit was already as ruined as possible by the events of the past few days, I stood under one of the sprinklers and cooled off, while I tried to figure things out. I was irritated with Mamma for having a fainting fit, because if everybody was attending to her it would make it even more difficult for me to find out anything about Ilsa; and I was determined to see Ilsa again no matter what dreadful thing Dr. Brandes had done, how many banks he had robbed, how many men he had killed, how many carriages he had galloped up to on Calypso, a handkerchief over his mouth, a pistol in his hand, adventure in his heart. I swayed slowly back and forth in the comforting spray of water that threw its quiet drops over me and the Louis Phillipes and Cape jessamines indiscriminately.
Silver’s voice came from behind me. “You’re getting your clothes wet.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning around and blinking at her as she stood in the full glare of the sun. “They’re ruined anyhow. What’ve you got there?”
“Papa’s prayer book.”
“What for?”
“Brother,” Silver said mysteriously, “I’ve got something to tell you. Where can we go?”
“I don’t know.” I looked vaguely around the strange garden.
Silver took me by the elbow and led me to a small arbor covered with moon vine. Then she opened the prayer book.
“Are you going to read to me out of the prayer book?” I asked disgustedly, thinking that she was trying to make up to God for the fact that we hadn’t gone to church.
“Oh, very well, Henry,” Silver said. “If you don’t want to hear what Papa read to Mamma up in the bedroom, and what made her have the fainting spell in church, I don’t care. Mamma said it was all Dr. Brandes’ fault, too.”
“I want to hear.” I turned back quickly.
“I’m not sure you’re old enough,” she said.
“Oh, please, Sister!”
“I don’t think Papa hardly knew I was in the room,” she said, then. “He just stalked in and stood by Mamma. It was awful dark in the room. Mamma had the blinds drawn, and I was sitting by her in the corner, where I could keep putting cologne on her head. I don’t think Papa even knew I was there at first, and then it was too late.”
“What did he say?”
“He went over to the window where the light came in at the edge of the blind and he read her this thing out of the prayer book.”
“What thing?”
“I’ve got to find the place. Don’t hurry me.” With her usual I cool and maddening deliberation she turned the pages of the Episcopal prayer book. At last she said, “Oh, here it is. I had it before, but I lost the place when you said you didn’t want to listen.”
“I never said that! I do want to listen.”
“All right. Well, listen, then.” She began to read. “It’s from ‘The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion.’”
“Go on,” I said.
“I will, if you don’t try to rush me. It’s the part in the smallest print before it really begins.”
“Yes, go on,” I said.
“‘If, among those who come to be partakers of the Holy Communion,’” Silver read, “‘the Minister shall know any to be an open and notorious evil liver, or to have done any wrong to his neighbors by word or deed, so that the congregation be thereby offended; he shall advertise him, that he presume not to come to the Lord’s Table, until he have openly declared himself to have truly repented and amended his former evil life, that the Congregation may thereby be satisfied; and that he hath recompensed the parties to whom he hath done wrong; or at least declare himself to be in full purpose so to do, as soon as he conveniently may.’”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means”—Silver lowered her voice and looked around, then put her head very close to mine and whispered—“the minister wouldn’t let Mamma take communion.”
I felt a strange secret shiver go all through me. “Why?” I asked, peering over her shoulder at the prayer book. “He didn’t think Mamma was ‘an open and notorious evil liver,’ did he?”
“Of course not, goosey,” she said. “It’s this part here that I haven’t read yet.”
“Which part?”
“Listen. ‘The same order shall the Minister use with those, betwixt whom he perceiveth malice and hatred to reign; not suffering them to be partakers of the Lord’s Table, until he know them to be reconciled.’” Her voice was an aweful whisper.
“Oh—”
“Yes,” Silver said, “it’s awful, isn’t it? Mamma said she was disgraced for ever. She wanted Papa to have the minister run out of town and tarred and feathered and all sorts of things, but after Papa read her this thing he said she couldn’t.”
“Is it because of the way she feels about Dr. Brandes and Ilsa?”
Silver nodded. “Papa said the minister would have to tell all about it to the Ordinary.”
“What’s the Ordinary?”
“I don’t know. But the minister has to tell the Ordinary all about Mamma and not letting her have communion because when he asked her if there was still hate in her heart toward a man and an innocent child, she couldn’t say before God that there wasn’t. Papa says that the minister’ll lose his church because of it. Papa said he didn’t do it because of God and Jesus, but because of his own personal feelings, and he’ll have to tell the whole story to the Ordinary. When Mamma said, ‘Does the whole thing have to be raked up again?’ Papa said she ought to have known better than to have gone to that church when she
knew he was there, and if she was that stubborn she ought to have read her prayer book more carefully before trying to take communion. Papa said that Mamma was just as willful and headstrong as her sister Elizabeth—you know, Aunt Elizabeth—in her own way, and Mamma got very white and started to faint again even if she was already lying down, and then Papa saw me and he shouted at me so loud I’m surprised you didn’t hear it out here, and then he sent me away. He dropped the prayer book when Mamma got all funny again, so I picked it up and came to look for you.”
We were called just then, and we didn’t have another chance to get away and talk. My clothes had dried out, so I didn’t get scolded for standing under the sprinkler. We were given an early supper of milk toast and sent to bed.
9
It must have been about midnight when Mamma woke us and dressed us in our bedraggled clothes. Her voice was angry and nervous. She shook us roughly. “Hurry, Henry; hurry, Anna Silverton; get out of bed quickly and into your clothes,” she said sharply, and pulled the covers off us. At home Nursie woke us by singing in her midnight voice:
Wake up,
Jacob,
Day’s a-breaking,
Peas’ in the pot
And hoe cake’s
A-baking.
We were both so heavy with sleep that we hardly knew what was going on. We didn’t say good-bye to Cousin Eustacia. I remember leaning against the firmness of Papa in the carriage and suddenly sitting up, wide awake for a moment, demanding to be told where Billy was. Reassured of his safety, I sank against Papa again, the jouncing of the carriage wheels over cobblestones muffled against his well-padded body. Then I remember standing outside the railroad station waiting for the northern train to come round the bend. Light spilled out of the station windows and lay in patches on the ground and glinted on the tracks. A car pulled up and left its headlights on, the light pouring from them like two streams of water across the darkness. I remember the roar of the train and its red glow as it came under the bridge and heaved to a stop. I remember the porter boosting me up onto the train, and then sitting in an empty seat with Silver while the porter made up our berths. The next clear memory is arriving some place just at dawn and driving out to a hotel with a big yellow veranda all the way around it.
We lived in that hotel for the next five years.
[PART TWO]
10
The Woolfs and the Silvertons came up to the hotel early in July, partly so that the family could be together for the summer and partly to try to persuade Mamma to come home in the autumn to the now-completed house.
When I look back at the five years I lived in that hotel, I always see it as it was that summer—rocking chairs moving lazily like the swells of the ocean, bright summer skirts spreading over the dark green wooden chairs with the woven seats and high backs, the sun warm on the yellow veranda. From the summerhouse you could always hear the heartbroken calling of the doves on the roof. And you could always smell food from the big kitchen and the cream-colored dining room with the round tables covered with white tablecloths, full and spotless, reaching nearly to the ground. When there was watermelon for dessert we children were allowed to take it outside to eat, where we would bend almost double to keep it from dripping down our fronts, and plunge our faces into the cool, fragrant pith, coming up smeared with juice and little black seeds and ecstasy.
During the day the shutters were half pulled at all the windows, so that the light filtered through, losing some of its cruel potency, and lay in dusty lines on the polished parquet floor, on the potted plants, and on the tables stacked with magazines and papers.
In the afternoon we were sent upstairs for an hour to rest. Edwin Woolf and I had a room together next to the one shared by Monty Woolf and Dolph Silverton. Silver and Violetta Woolf were across the hall. All the rooms had tall brass bedsteads, huge mahogany wardrobes, a lowboy, and a washstand with a flowered china pitcher and basin. The windows had screens and the beds no mosquito netting. Edwin and the girls and I were sent to bed in the evening before Monty and Dolph. It wouldn’t be dark for quite some time after we were supposed to be asleep, and I always lay restless and wide awake until the small orchestra, that came for eight weeks every summer, started playing dance music and light classics in the summerhouse. I would lie in bed and listen to the music, gradually growing drowsy. When I looked over at Edwin sleeping peacefully on the next bed, lying on the very edge, the covers tumbled off him, one arm and leg flung over the side of the bed, I was grateful that I was sharing the room with him instead of with Monty.
Often, before we went to sleep, Eddie and I used to amuse ourselves by trying to count the family—the Silvertons, the Porchers, and the Woolfs, all the great-aunts and great-uncles, the aunts and uncles, all the cousins; but there were so many that we could never remember them all, land never during the entire summer did we get the same number twice.
Monty and Violetta Woolf were very grownup at sixteen. Violetta had her hair up and her skirts down, and Monty had a new man-of-the-world expression when he looked at Silver. He was wonderful to behold, with his dark red hair and pale complexion, his regular, clear-cut features, and his long, languid limbs. His eyelashes were thick and dark and longer than most girls’, but there was nothing effeminate about him. In his dark trousers and white shirt, open at the throat, he caught the adoring attention of all the old ladies at the hotel, and all the young ones worshiped him. When Monty was around, no one paid any attention to me or little Eddie, or to Dolph Silverton, though he was a very nice-looking boy. I remembered that Cousin Eustacia had called me handsome, and I hated Monty for being such a sensation.
I could never talk with Monty or Violetta, they acted so grown-up. Eddie, just a few weeks older than Silver, and Dolph Silverton, though he was almost seventeen, seemed much less changed, and I wasn’t shy and uncomfortable with them as I was with the twins, whom I disliked, if possible, more than ever.
Cousin Anna, Dolph’s mother, was the one who was truly different. The tragedy of the second fire seemed to have taken away her intense awareness, that had been so important a part of her. She spent most of the time sitting on the veranda, a novel in her lap, rocking back and forth. At the table, or after meals, when the family gathered on the veranda, if she didn’t want to talk she would sit in complete silence, ignoring any conversation that was directed toward her. Or, if she felt like talking, she didn’t care what she said, and blandly ignored Cousin Randolph’s furiously shaking head and raised eyebrows. She was the first person in the family who openly dared say that it was silly of Mamma to wear those white kid gloves all the time.
“It’s plain silly, that’s all it is,” Cousin Anna said one day at dinner. “And just you stop kicking me under the table, Randolph Silverton, because it’s not going to do you a piece of good. The trouble with you, Cecilia-Jane, is that you may be a wife and mother but you’re a prissy old spinster at heart, and why you didn’t go the way of your husband’s overly sainted sister Violetta is more than I can see. Why is it you’re such an old maid, Cecilia?”
Mamma said nothing, but continued angrily to eat her soup.
“If you persist in wearing the gloves,” Cousin Anna said, “why on earth wear so many rings under them? They look so ungainly. You have very pretty little hands, Cecilia. I’ve noticed when you’re out of doors and take the gloves off. If it weren’t for your frustrated expression, you’d be a very beautiful woman. What are you frustrated about, Cecilia? God has given you everything most women pray for beside their barren beds at night.”
And then, to everyone’s infinite relief, she decided that she had done enough talking for one meal and lapsed into silence. I could see that Papa had been about to send us children from the table.
The next day Papa decided that we were to go off for a picnic, instead of coming into the dining room with the grownups. As we gathered on the veranda, ready to leave, each clutching a packet of sandwiches, a hard-boiled egg, and an orange, I went and stood beside Cousin Anna, who was roc
king slowly back and forth and pretending to read. She had always been my favorite among all my kin. I knew that for some reason the others scorned her for the way she had rushed into the servants’ quarters the first time her house burned down, and dragged out the fear-crazed darky. I admired her for it with an admiration so intense that when I thought about it I felt as though something had kicked like iron into my stomach.
I liked Dolph, too, although he was the oldest of all my cousins and didn’t play with us often. He was gentle with his mother, and at table, when he saw that she wasn’t eating, simply because she was too apathetic to cut her meat, he would reach over quietly and do it for her. She would accept his attention, smiling slightly at him, patting his hand, and eating her meat obediently. I felt unhappy when I saw the way he looked at Violetta’s glossy auburn hair and creamy complexion.
“Hello, Henry boy,” Cousin Anna said, as she saw me detach myself from the others and stand by her. She looked at me through half-closed brown eyes.
“Hello, Cousin Anna,” I said.
“Henry”—she turned to me suddenly, speaking with the old concise energy that seemed to have vanished the night of the fire—“don’t you be upset by what I say. At the table or put here. I won’t say anything that isn’t good for you to know.”
“I’m not upset,” I answered.
“Hey, Henry, come on,” Monty called.
“Good-bye, Cousin Anna,” I said.
“Good-bye, Henry boy. Bless you. Don’t let that Montgomery Woolf bully you.”
Dolph came over to kiss his mother good-bye, and we started off.
We climbed until we came to a flat piece of ground among the huge pines that stretched upward high above our heads. There was no grass. No rocks. Only a soft, rust-colored carpet of pine needles. We lay on this, panting and hot, and ate our lunch.
“Monty’s hair is just the color of the pine needles,” Silver said, “only it’s alive.”
Ilsa Page 6
