Allan looked only at Rufus. “I am happy,” he answered. He smiled with gratitude. “I am still here, and there is DeWitt.”
Tony, in the upstairs living room, was not happy. He was afraid of the young Peales, even though Miles showed him interest and respect. Fielding was awed by Tony’s proficiency in sports, and constantly consulted him, and admired him for these talents, at least Mary was open in her preference and fondness for him, and could make him laugh even when he was the most grave. Yet in the moments he was most entertained by these young relatives, his fear was the strongest. He sat near his sister today, and his fear was more insistent than ever. It made him reach out his hand involuntarily to Dolores and hold her hand tightly. The gray storm and the dark night pressed against the windows and the sound of it filled the chintz-bright “children’s sitting room,” and the imminent presence of it seemed to dim the lamplight and threaten the fire.
Miles had been discussing their instructors at Harvard, and Tony had been listening with interested attention, as if the subject were important to him and as if he would return to Harvard after the Christmas holidays. Miles was witty and charming; he could pinion some hapless teacher with a few words; he could, with a word or two, a gesture of his eloquent hands, paint a hilarious and vivid picture of some timid and learned professor. DeWitt, who rarely laughed, laughed now. Mary shrieked with mirth. Dolores smiled in spite of herself. Tony, though inwardly distressed, also smiled.
Mary sat on the hearthrug, petite and very fetching in her scarlet-velvet dress with its lace collar, her black hair tumbling in fire-crested waves down her back. Next year, she would “put up her hair,” but she was not in a particular hurry for this sign of adulthood. She knew that her dusky curls added to her winsome prettiness, and as she was not young in heart, they gave her a look of false innocence which she shrewdly suspected disarmed others, to her advantage. Her large black eyes were full of light, and her mouth was a ripe plum in her pointed face. When she glanced at Tony, sitting in almost complete silence next to his sister, her expression would soften, yet grow even more animated.
As she covertly watched Tony, so did her brother Miles watch Dolores’s angel’s face topped with its waving mound and escaping tendrils of pale but shining hair. He thought he had never seen so exquisite a girl, or one so happily quiet, or so dignified. Her dark blue silk, cunningly fashioned to enhance her purity of character, was like a postulant’s uniform with its small white silk collar. To the superficial, Dolores had no “personality.” But Miles was not superficial; his love and longing for this girl made him intuitive about her. When she glanced at him reluctantly, as he spoke, he saw the crystalline glimmer of her light blue eyes, and he would think, in the very midst of some clever remark, that there would never be any other woman in all the world for him. As much as was possible for the worldly and intellectual Miles, he reverenced her. Her smiles at some of his sallies were genuine, and not forced as were Tony’s, and Miles was quite aware of this. He was careful to keep any hint of salaciousness out of his word-pictures and ridicule of his teachers, even though gay lewdness usually distinguished his speech when with others.
As she was so much under the influence of her brother, Miles was respectful with Tony, while he secretly hated him for that influence which stood in his way. He knew that Tony would urgently and sternly object to any marriage between Miles Peale and his sister, and Tony’s opinion was important to Rufus deWitt and Allan Marshall. Cornelia, who disliked Miles, as she disliked all the Peales except Mary, was determined on an international marriage for her daughter. She would stand with her father and husband against him, for her own reasons. Miles, the realist, never discounted the odds operating in his disfavor, nor was he of a particularly optimistic nature. The way to Dolores appeared almost impregnable.
DeWitt watched everyone, as he sat, so small and dark, by the fire with his cane beside him. He was coldly diverted by all the currents in the room, and relished, in advance, the coming frustrations of his companions. He had already dismissed Tony, who was no longer a rival in love or in ambition. Miles, married to that silly Dolores, would be halfdisarmed in a war. Mary could flirt her curls at Tony, and tilt her head and look at him through those thick eyelashes, and it would come to nothing. In the meantime, he, DeWitt, could enjoy her prettiness and think of a future marriage with her. He was the only one really at ease in the room.
Fielding had been coached in skiing by the obliging and good-tempered Tony, and when Miles had delivered himself of a last sally about his instructors, Fielding eagerly began to discuss his favorite sport with Tony. Tony stirred a little in his uneasy apathy and fear, and suggested a new Alpine wax for skis, about which he had learned a few weeks ago. Then his interest dwindled. He was thinking again of his uncle, Jon deWitt, and the look on Jon’s face in the dusk at the foot of the stairs. I should have gone back, he thought I shouldn’t have given in to my dread of him, and my disgust for him. These are not emotions a future priest should have; it is like a doctor wincing away from sores and pustulating ulcers instead of treating them. Something had happened to Jon. Perhaps if I had gone back I could have helped.
Miles, who ridiculed his brother’s ardent preoccupation with sports, pretended to listen with attention to the conversation between Fielding and Tony. He yawned inside. Children’s jabberings. It was incredible to him that Tony Marshall, who topped him in honors at college, should actually be interested in attempts to break his neck on steep and snowy hills. Miles, smiling with fixed politeness, passed his hand over his mahogany ringlets, and drifted off again into thoughts of Dolores. Mary yawned like a kitten, showing all her small white teeth. She stretched, lay back on an elbow on the hearthrug, and listened to Tony’s voice if not to his words.
Fielding, who was no fool, quickly guessed that Tony had lost interest in skiing. His long and yellowish face became affronted. He said, “How about skiing with me, tomorrow?”
Tony hesitated.
It would be exhilarating to fly down a white and shining slope, with the sun hurling your shadow after you and the pines throwing up a spume of snow as you hissed by like the wind. The brilliant loneliness of the mountains, the scent of resin, and the wild purity of the cold air! It was best to be alone when you skied, even if dangerous. But the danger of loneliness was its own intoxicant. Tony looked at Fielding, who was waiting eagerly. He was just a “kid.” It wasn’t good to let him ski alone. Tony said, “Well, all right. But first I’ll have to see if the snow has packed down enough. I’ll call you.” He asked, curiously: “Why do you like to ski, Field?”
Fielding raised his yellow eyebrows. “Why, it feels good. A kind of power. You go fast; nobody can catch you. And there they are down there, in the valley, on the roads, in their silly sleighs, and there you are up there, going ten times as fast, and laughing at them.”
Tony made no comment, but Miles quickly turned to his brother and studied him thoughtfully. He rubbed a knuckle over his chin as he reflected. Slowly, he took out a packet of cigarettes, put one in his mouth and lit it. “A kind of power.” It was disquieting to have to reckon with Fielding in the future, Fielding of the ridiculous skis and boats and balls and rackets and punching bags and golf clubs. One either reckoned with a man as a competitor or one got him to join forces with you. The latter course was the most astute and profitable.
“What’s the matter, Miles?” asked DeWitt mildly. He rubbed the head of his cane in his hand and something like secret amusement glinted for an instant over his dark face.
“I think,” said Tony, “that I’ll go in to see Jon.”
Miles, ignoring DeWitt, turned his attention to Tony. “Why? He usually gets peevish when the family is all together. Detracts attention from him, and his ideas, and he can’t monopolize the conversation. He’s just sulking in his room, wait ing for Mama to come to him.” He puffed at his cigarette. “Loathsome kind of a creature—Jon.” He glanced at Tony out of the corner of his eye, and the firelight made a vivid blue flash of that gl
ance.
The young people stood up, Mary rising in one quick swirl of scarlet, DeWitt concentrating on his cane. The top of Miles’s head reached only to Dolores’s eyebrows; yet he did not appear small beside her. He touched the back of her hanging hand, and she did not recoil. He smiled up into her face. “I’ll take you down,” he said, and his voice was very gentle. “I’ll wait for Tony,” said Mary, “in the hall.”
The ladies waited for the gentlemen and the children to join them. This is the most dismal family gathering we have had to date, Cornelia thought. Thank God for the storm; they’ll be going soon. A maid stood at her elbow while she poured coffee into the little gold cups. “Sugar, Mama? I always forget.” Fresh logs had been thrown on the fire. The softly beautiful room danced with light, and the lamps defied the primordial howling at the windows.
Lydia, all gray and black and white, accepted her cup from the maid. She found it almost insupportable to have to speak at all, and tried to substitute faint smiles for conversation. Ruth was sitting in Jim’s usual chair near the hearth, drooping and pale. But she only knew him for twenty-seven years, thought Lydia. I knew him forever; the whole world has become empty for me and there are no voices left anywhere. The snow was drifting high and steep over Jim Purcell’s grave. The gales were screaming over it. My dearest, thought Lydia, wait for me.
Cornelia thought: Mama looks so old, and yet she still seems as serene and elliptic as always. She is smiling to herself, the first real smile since Uncle Jim died. What is she thinking? Of Uncle Jim, of course. It must be frightful to lose your husband. Cornelia glanced at the doorway and wondered impatiently why the men had not yet joined them. She poured a cup for Laura, her cousin, and forgot to ask about cream or sugar. Laura sat in her own silences, but, to Cornelia’s vexation, the firelight was giving her face a bloom and radiance. She, too, was glancing at the doorway, and now Cornelia’s hard-colored face became ugly. “Have you forgotten me, Cornelia?” asked Estelle sweetly.
Damn you, you’d never let anyone forget, said Cornelia to herself. “Sugar?” she demanded contemptuously. Estelle sighed and smiled. “Oh, my dear, you know I don’t.”
Cornelia poured her own cup half-full and deftly added brandy to fill it. She leaned back in her chair and began to sip with enjoyment. But one of her crossed legs swung back and forth. Her red hair was a blaze against the green velvet of her chair. She reached for a gilt box on the table beside her, took out a cigarette and lit it. Lydia watched her fondly, and smiled again. But she was also afraid. The strong profile was more predatory than ever, and the red lips were hard as colored plaster. We are what we are, thought Lydia. From the moment of our conception we are what we shall be. Free will? I do not know. If we struggle, however glimmeringly, however faintly, is that enough? Is the struggle, no matter how brief, the only importance? I should like to believe that Cornelia has those lightninglike pauses. I doubt it. She is aware of neither good nor evil.
How trivial, or coarse, they all are, thought Estelle, smiling brightly at nothing. She said, “You must really see our new Picasso! It is hung in the first drawing room in New York. Such color, such meaning. …”
Cornelia made a rude sound. Estelle blushed, shocked. But Lydia, for the first time since her husband’s deah, laughed a little, and Laura smiled. Cornelia described the painting with more than a hint of obscenity, and Estelle listened with horror. “We met the man in France,” Cornelia concluded in her loud and domineering voice. “Utterly impossible. He maunders about something he calls the ‘Coming Peoples’ Revolution.’ I tried to get him to become more specific, but he merely looked mysterious.”
Estelle’s wide brown eyes glittered with cunning, and she thought with pleasure of her sons. Lydia said, “I agree with Allan that something evil is stirring in the world. I could feel it in Europe last year before—before. …” She paused, to swallow painfully.
Ruth, in silence, looked timidly from one face to the other. She always tried not to think exclusively of her father, for her mother’s sake. Her golden hair was a crown of light and her lovely face, though so pinched now, was like the very shadow of innocence. She faltered: “I should like to work with the Quakers, in Europe. At The Hague. I had thought. …”
“If you want to, darling, you must do so,” said Lydia. “Next summer? I’ll go with you.” She smiled at her daughter, and the pain caught at her throat. Then she gave her attention to Laura, Laura who was Alice’s daughter. Laura had not spoken in this room. Her gray eyes studied her cup, which she held in the palms of her hands. “I heard you and Patrick were going to Europe next summer,” said Lydia. Laura started, put the cup on a table. “Oh, no, I don’t think so,” she murmured. She brushed at her cloud of dark hair vaguely with the back of her hand, and averted her face. The women waited, but she said nothing more. Cornelia’s eyes glinted. She had once been fond of her cousin; she had hated her for years now. Cornelia’s long leg swung a little faster.
The men came into the room, Allan’s hand under Rufus’s elbow. “Well,” said Rufus cheerily, “I hope we weren’t too long. Such an interesting discussion.” Cornelia looked at them alertly. Allan was in one of his “solitary” moods, she observed with anxious impatience. Patrick walked a little apart, a walking corpse, thought Cornelia disgustedly. Norman was smiling his wide and meaningless smile, and he went to his mother at once and perched on a foot stool near her knee. Allan assisted Rufus into a chair, and the maid entered with fresh coffee and cups. Rufus picked up the brandy bottle and studied it critically. “Glad you left some for us, Cornelia,” he said. “I can’t get that Napoleon in any quantity these days.”
Cornelia poured coffee for the men. Allan, who had been hovering uneasily near his wife, waited until the maid had gone on her rounds. Then he bent over Cornelia and said in a low voice, “I’m sorry we are late. We had something to discuss.” She looked up at him, and then her face softened. But he did not smile in return, and she saw that he was extremely nervous. “Well?” she said. Rufus had stimulated some conversation, and husband and wife were covered by voices.
“It’s about Tony,” said Allan.
Cornelia lifted her cup to her lips and drank a little. “Well?” she repeated at last. “Has Tony been annoying you, or worrying you, in any way?”
“No.” Allan hesitated. He wished Cornelia would not look at him so directly. “You know he’s never caused us a minute’s trouble.” He hesitated again. “No, he isn’t worrying me. It is something he wants to do. My only worry is about how you will take it. …”
“I can ‘take’ anything,” said Cornelia. She lifted her large white hand, glittering with jewels, and touched Allan’s cheek briefly. Why couldn’t the dear idiot understand that her children were nothing to her compared with him? “If he wanted to become a butcher or a trapeze performer or a sword swallower or a traveling preacher it wouldn’t matter to me, so long as it didn’t matter to you.”
Allan’s hand clenched on the back of Cornelia’s chair. He said, “Tony wants to be a priest.”
Cornelia's hazel eyes moved, the corners hardening. She stared at Allan; he was wretched, she saw, and almost undone with dread. “A priest?” she muttered. She stared at Allan again. “Absurd, of course.” Allan did not reply, and her lips curved in a sardonic smile. “What about the road?”
“He doesn’t want to be part of it.” He moved restlessly, still watching her. “It’s very hard to explain—to you. …”
“Granting the foolish premise for a moment, if he should be—a priest—what would you think of it, Allan?”
He leaned against her chair as if exhausted. “I—I think I should like it, Cornelia.” How could he make her understand? How could he prevent her from assaulting Tony with furious and contemptuous words? And Tony. … Allan started, for Cornelia was rumbling with laughter. He could not believe it. Her eyes jumped with mirth, and her teeth shone in the firelight. She was reaching up, and now she had taken his hand and was pressing it.
“Dear, dear foo
l,” she was actually saying. “What does it matter? You are happy about the ridiculous idea. Haven’t you learned yet that what makes you happy makes me happy, no matter how silly or incredible? What is Tony to me, or Dolores, or DeWitt, when it comes to you?”
Rufus was laughing with the others over a joke he had just told. But never for an instant had he been unaware of his daughter and Allan by the fire. He knew the subject of their conversation, and had deliberately withdrawn the attention of the others from them. When he saw Allan suddenly bending over his wife and kissing her full on her mouth, and when he heard her laughter, he smiled with ruddy content.
Then he saw that Allan was apparently distressed again. He was whispering in Cornelia’s ear, and she was looking both astonished and wildly amused.
“You won’t understand, darling,” he was saying, “but for Tony’s sake you and I will have to go somewhere, very quietly, in some out-of-the-way place, and be remarried by a priest.” “No!” exclaimed Cornelia with high delight, and she was laughing again. “All right; don’t look so—I’d do anything for you.”
Estelle asked, “Where are the children?” She stroked Norman’s hair and told herself that this had been the dreariest holiday ever.
“They’ll be down soon, I’m sure,” said Laura. She did not glance at her husband, sitting apart in his white silence, as if the others did not exist for him. Then, as always, her eyes were drawn helplessly to Allan Marshall. He was still bending over his wife, and he was holding her hand, and they were chuckling gently together. Laura’s heart constricted, and she turned her head aside.
Tony was entering the room alone. Allan, seeing his son, beckoned to him, and Tony came at once. When he reached his parents they were struck by his pallor. He stood beside them and could not speak. Cornelia lifted her eyebrows at him and said, “Don’t look like death, Tony. Your father has told me, and it is perfectly all right, if you want to make a fool of yourself.”
Never Victorious, Never Defeated Page 58
