“You never sent it to me.”
“I had other things to write about. When we cabled you about little Henry Porcher being born we didn’t get a letter from you for over a month. That wasn’t nice of you, Brother.”
“I know it wasn’t.”
“But, Brother, it’s not good for you to go on being crazy about someone this way when there isn’t any point to it. It just makes you turn into a kind of nothing—a nobody! You never think of anything just yourself. You’re always wondering what she’d think. Everything you do is in relation to her. And she isn’t worth it. She simply isn’t good enough for you just in general, and for you to waste yourself on—”
This was a long and impassioned speech for Silver, and proved, if I needed any proof, how deeply she cared for me. But all I could feel then was anger. I cut in furiously, “You’re wasting your breath.”
“It’s not that I don’t like Ilsa, goosey,” she said. “After all, she’s my sister-in-law, and I’m fond of her. And if it’ll make you any happier I’ll admit she’s got a funny kind of thing that makes you enjoy being with her—she kind of seems more alive than other people, and she makes you seem more alive, too. But it’s nothing she does or says. You can’t put your finger on it. Sometimes I think it’s black magic. After all, Brother, I know her better than you do. I haven’t been away for the past eight years. I’ve seen her. I’ve seen the kind of wife she’s been to Monty.”
“Have you seen the kind of husband he’s been to her?”
“Oh, I might have known you’d say something like that!” she cried.
“What about the time she lost the baby? You were there.”
“I never should have talked to you about that. I don’t know what got into me. And she certainly shouldn’t have said anything about it—ever.”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, Sister, I told you it was because I asked her. She never accused Monty, but the fact remains that it was his fault. What if she’d died?”
“Maybe it would be better if she had.”
“Silver!”
“You always stick up for her,” she said defensively. “You’re sticking up for her now about this actor. I think you’re crazy. I should think it would make you furious.”
—But it does, you fool, it does—furious and jealous. I lay there on the cold white sand of the dune, and jealousy oozed out of me, hot and sticky, like blood from a wound.
“There’s no use arguing with you,” Silver said. “There’s no use saying it’s her fault about Monty because you wouldn’t believe it, you’re so infatuated with her.”
“No, I wouldn’t believe it. And if you want to talk about infatuations, what about you and Monty? What about the way you’ve always gone on about him?”
She sat up straight. “At least I know Monty, Brother. And you forget. I’m married to Eddie and I love him—when he’s here for me to love.” Her mouth twisted and she put her head down on her knees again.
I reached over and touched the nape of her neck where her sun-blanched hair was knotted. “I’m sorry, Sister. Let’s not quarrel.”
“No. Let’s not quarrel,” she said. She reached over and took my hand, and we sat there together until the phonograph music, that had been an unlistened-to background to our words, stopped, calling attention to itself by its cessation. I turned and looked back at the house.
38
After a moment the door opened and yellow light poured out onto the stone ramp and the dark night-green of palmettos and scrub. The Spanish bayonettes were in bloom, wonderful chimes of flowers, like carillons sounding on the sweet dark air.
Ilsa stood in the doorway, Werner and Monty behind her. She raised her hands to her mouth and called, “Hoo—oo! Henny! Silver!”
“Hoo—oo!” I called back. “We’re here!”
They left the house, shut the door behind them, came down the ramp, and clambered over the dunes toward us.
“What all you been doing?” Monty asked.
“Oh, talking,” Silver answered.
“What about?”
“Oh, you.”
“You come walk down the beach and tell me what you were saying about me.” He reached out a hand and pulled her up. She slipped her hand out of his and stood for a moment, stamping to get the stiffness out of her legs and the sand out of her skirts, before she followed him down to the water’s edge.
Ilsa flung herself onto the dune. She never sat down carefully, like Silver and Violetta and I suppose most other women, but threw herself with abandon into its impersonal (but somehow for her, personal) embrace. This was her home, and it was as like her as she was like it. Franz Werner stretched his agile and graceful body beside her, while I sat up stiffly because I no longer felt welcome or accepted. We didn’t say anything, and it seemed to me that a hundred words hung above us like a cloud, waiting to be spoken. And I thought that I was the thing that was keeping them from being spoken, so I got up and stood on the top of the dune, awkwardly. It was nearly morning. The stars were still bright, but the night and the ocean were no longer lost together in a dark embrace; they were separate, mutable, divided.
“What’s the matter, Henry?” Ilsa asked.
“I—I think I’ll go back to the house. I’m awfully sleepy.” I waited a moment for her to tell me not to go, to sit down again; but she didn’t say a word. Under the low breathing of the ocean I seemed to hear hers, a little too quick. I turned away, but before I had gone more than a few steps there came a shout from Monty, and then a scream from Silver. Ilsa sat up.
“Henry!” Silver called. “Ira!” Then, “Ilsa! Ilsa! Come quick!”
Swift as a gull Ilsa flung herself over the dune and across the sand to them. Werner and I followed as quickly as we could. Monty was sitting on the wet sand near a clump of salt-blackened water hyacinth, holding his ankle. Silver stood by him, her hands clasped in terror.
“Give me your handkerchief and a pencil, Franz,” Ilsa said sharply as we came up. He handed them to her; she tore a strip from the handkerchief and made a tourniquet below Monty’s knee, fastening it with the pencil. “Now your knife,” she said.
Werner reached into his pocket and handed her a penknife. As she unclasped the blade she turned to Silver and said, “For heaven’s sake, don’t agonize so, Silver. It isn’t a tragedy. He’ll be all right.” She knelt down beside Monty and pulled off his shoe and his sock. “Strike me a match, someone,” she said.
Before I could reach for mine Werner was kneeling beside her, holding a cigarette lighter. Just over Monty’s ankle I saw two tiny red dots, and knew what had happened. A moccasin had come in on the hyacinth; Monty had probably kicked the clump, and the snake had struck at him defensively. I looked at the hyacinth clusters, which looked like masses of snakes twined together, anyhow, but could see no sleek dark body moving.
“Did you see the snake, Silver? Where did it go?” Ilsa asked.
“I don’t know—it glided away so quickly—”
“It didn’t touch you?”
“No—” Silver’s voice was pale and wavery like a reflection in moving water.
Ilsa said, the blade of the knife poised just over Monty’s ankle, “Silver, go back to the house and get Father’s bed ready for him. Then put on a kettle of hot water.” As Silver hesitated, she said, “At once, please.”
As soon as Silver turned she bent very close over Monty’s ankle and cut two deep crosses, one over each red dot. For a moment she squeezed with her fingers; then, as the blood didn’t come freely enough to suit her, she bent down and put her lips to the cuts to suck the venom out. Werner and I stood watching her, useless, not offering to help. At the edge of the ocean a streak of light began to show.
What Ilsa sucked from the cuts she had made she spat out onto the sand. After a while, not looking at us, but still bending close over the cuts, she said, “Henny, have you a handkerchief? A clean one?”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s clean,” and gave it to her. She bound the place and said, “Now if the
two of you can make a chair we can get him back to the house.”
“I can walk,” Monty said. It was the first time he had spoken. He had sat there on the wet sand, watching Ilsa through the long fringes of his eyelashes, looking frightened and pitiable.
“Don’t be absurd,” Ilsa said. “Franz and Henry will carry you.”
We Stood together stupidly; she had to show us how to clasp our hands so that they made a chair for Monty to sit on; she half lifted him onto it, then stalked on ahead of us to the house. Monty was very heavy; it seemed an unhealthy weight. We carried him in silence, except for Werner’s saying quietly, “You have a wonderful woman for a wife, Woolf.”
In the bedroom Silver was walking nervously about. “Is he all right, is it all right?” she asked as we came in.
“Sure. Fine,” Monty said.
Ilsa came upstairs with a kettle of steaming water. Silver turned to her. “Where’s Ira? I couldn’t find him anywhere.”
“He’s gone off on his own business,” Ilsa answered sharply “After all, he’s not a servant.” Although she tried to hide it, the hand holding the kettle trembled a little from nervous reaction. “Go on out and I’ll undress him,” she said.
“Christ!” Monty yelled. “Beg your pardon, Silver, Ilsa. But what the hell do you think I am? Undress myself.”
“Do you mind going?” Ilsa said to us again.
We left.
39
After a while she came downstairs and ran up the flag for Ira, saying that Monty was asleep in her father’s bed. She took one look at Silver’s white tired face and sent her upstairs, then took out a book and sat down in her father’s big chair at the table. I could tell that she wasn’t reading, although from time to time she turned the pages. Franz Werner excused himself and went to walk on the beach. Standing at the window, I watched day come, the light over the horizon widen, the ocean turn from black to the gray on a gull’s wing to its own mordant shade of blue, as the stars dimmed and went out, and the sun rose in a sea of flame, spreading a deep flush over sand and sea and sky. Down by the ocean Werner was a small, dark silhouette, bending at the edge of the water and turning over the shells.
“Henny,” Ilsa said abruptly, “are Franz’s eyes brown? They are aren’t they? Very dark brown, almost black?”
“No,” I said. “They’re blue. Deep blue.”
“Oh. I forgot for a moment. Stupid.”
I thought that it was a strange thing for her to forget, and stranger for her to have asked, if she had forgotten.
“Is anything the matter?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Her voice and scowl were ferocious.
“Nothing—only I thought maybe you hadn’t been feeling well lately. Ira was wondering—”
“Ira had better mind his own business. And so had you.”
“I’m sorry. But is anything the matter?”
“No. Certainly not.… I wish Ira’d come back and look at Monty’s ankle. I want to go home to Brand—she’ll worry. She’s almost as bad a worry wart as you are.… I’m sure Monty’s all right. There’s no discoloring and it’s not swelling, but I want Ira to look at it and make sure, now that it’s daylight. I couldn’t see very well in the dark.”
As she could perfectly well go and look herself, now that day had come, I knew there was something not exactly right with that argument, but I was too tired to be able to put my finger on what was wrong and I wouldn’t have dared dispute her anyhow. She rose and stood listening. A moment later Ira came in.
“I seen the flag,” he said. “What you want? Something wrong?”
“Yes,” she said. “A moccasin bit my husband. I think I got all the venom out but I want you to look at it.”
“All right. Come on upstairs,” he said, and went up ahead of her. I waited by the window until they came down.
“He’s fine,” she said. “Ira said I did all right. We’ll stay over till tomorrow, I think, though. Franz says it’s all right with him. If you need to get back I can drive you to the bus.”
“I don’t need to get back.”
“Good. I’m going over to the nearest filling station to phone so Brand won’t be worried. I won’t tell her about her father—just say we’re staying over.” She went out to the car.
I noticed on the way back to town the next morning that she seemed to be driving more carefully than usual. It was, of course, necessary to drive very slowly and cautiously on the rut road that led up to the house, avoiding the soft shoulders of sand in which automobile wheels turned futilely as on a treadmill; but even when she got to the hard oyster-shell Beach Road she didn’t relax and drive with her usual swift abandon but held the steering wheel in a tense grip and sat leaning forward, staring through the windshield.
We dropped Silver off, crossed the river, took the actor downtown to his hotel, and then went back to the Woolfs’. I could walk home from there. But after she had taken Monty up to bed to sleep until his hounds came, after she had scolded and comforted Brand, who burst into frightened tears when she heard what had happened, Ilsa turned to me.
“Henry, will you do something for me?”
“Of course. What?”
“I have to go downtown again. Stay here with Brand, will you? The poor baby worried herself sick in spite of my phoning—had us all drowned or murdered or lying dead in a ditch with the car on top of us. I hate to leave her again, and I’ll probably be a couple of hours. I usually give her lessons in the morning. Would you mind having her read to you? Or whatever you like.”
“I should be delighted,” I said.
“Bless you, Henny. I shall feel much easier if I have to take longer than I expect. Mattie Belle is sweet and kind, but I’d feel happier if you were here—in case Monty should want anything, too.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll just go phone Papa and tell him I can’t be at the mill.”
While I was phoning Papa—who fumed and sputtered, but didn’t mean a thing by it, as I had learned to know, because in his own way Papa was almost as weak as I was—Ilsa ran upstairs to change. As she came down I saw her stuffing into her pocket the spectacles I had seen on her dressing table.
40
Papa was still pretty mad with me when I got home just before dinner that night, and I had to stick to the mill for the next few days. I heard from one of the men there that Werner had got into trouble by socking a barber downtown because he had cut his hair too short, and Monty had had to rescue him by taking them both to Togni’s. Luckily, the barber went there a lot and knew Monty well, and I guess for once Ilsa was grateful for Togni. I knew it must have made Monty pleased as punch to play the noble host and rescuer.
Some of the girls who worked in the mill office had gone to see Hamlet and they were all agog when they discovered that I knew Werner. During lunch hour they crowded around me, begging me to get his autograph and pictures for them. I couldn’t see what there was about him to get them so excited.
“He makes me think of a black panther,” one of the girls said. “You know, terribly frightening, and terribly exciting.” I didn’t see it. But, then, not everybody felt about Ilsa as I did.
It was Friday before I saw her again. On Wednesday I met Beulah Jackson’s mother in the drugstore. She lived next door to Monty and Ilsa and sometimes Beulah played with Brand. I hated the whole family. As usual, Mrs. Jackson cornered me and talked for an hour. The only important thing she said was that she had seen Ilsa at the theater.
“Oh, my, Henry,” she said, “she seemed to be enjoying the play so much! I just wish I’d liked it half as well. Didn’t understand a word of it, though that man with the foreign accent who took the part of Cardinal Wolsey was surely gorgeous. You ought to go see it, Henry; it’s the kind of thing you’d like, what with your having lived in Paris and everything. Isn’t Ilsa a striking-looking woman, though, Henry? With those big eyes and that bright dress, so pretty, and I hear Mrs. Silverton gave it to her, too. Mrs. Silverton sure has been good to her, treating her li
ke her own child, and her no kin at all.”
—So—I thought.
She was still going to the theater every night. I wanted to rush over; I was filled with insane jealousy. But what right had I, of all people, to be jealous of anything Ilsa did?
By Friday I couldn’t stand it any more. I left the mill after lunch and took the trolley over to Ilsa’s. She and Monty weren’t in the house; but Mattie Belle told me they were in the yard with the dogs. I went on out.
As I approached I saw Monty pull an envelope out of his pocket and hand it to Ilsa.
“What’s this?” I heard him say.
She snatched it out of his hand. “That’s mine!” she exclaimed furiously. “How dare you open my mail?”
“Opened it by mistake. Thought it was for me. What does it mean?”
“It’s my own business,” she said. “The old fool! The fat old fool!”
“Who’s a fool?” I asked.
She turned and saw me. “Oh. It’s you,” she said.
“Yes.… I’ve come to see the hounds.” I was momentarily crushed by the ungraciousness of her greeting, although I knew it was only the overflow of her anger at Monty’s opening her letter. “Hey, Monty,” I said.
“Hey, Henry.” He opened the door to the wire enclosure behind which the dogs had been jumping and barking. They came tumbling out now, leaping up at us and almost knocking us down. The two puppies bowled themselves over immediately, all long ears and great clumsy feet that were continually getting in their way. One minute they were chasing their tails around in circles, digging frantically on the way to China, bumping against our legs like battering rams; the next they were flinging themselves down on the ground, tongues lolling, cars dragging in the soft gray sand; a split second of rest, and then up and off again, the limpest, clumsiest, sweetest things I’d ever seen. The littlest one had long silky black ears and a tongue so long that it hung way out on one side of its mouth. I couldn’t help laughing as it galumphed about chasing little yellow butterflies and tie shadows of birds, falling over those huge feet and rolling limply over and over, then scrambling up and bouncing around again. A cuckoo puppy never looks as though it would grow up into a serious hunter.
Ilsa Page 20
