After that, be became a frequent visitor at the house. What with the production problems that were continually arising at the factory he was never wanting for an excuse, and after he made his intentions known to Elizabeth late in ’63, he did not need an excuse. He had never really needed one anyway, had he but known it; but Elizabeth, never demonstrative even in ordinary matters, had kept her love as deep and as dark a secret as she kept the poems she wrote in her room at finishing school. She graduated in the spring of ’64, and she and Matthew announced their engagement. The announcement appeared in the Sweet Clover Gazette on the same day Byron Dickenson ran his Ferrari into a bridge abutment, impaled himself on the steering column, and neatly sheared off the top of his head.
_____________
THE flowers were the worst. Elizabeth loved wild flowers, but she hated domesticated blooms. She hated the chrysanthemums most of all. There were mums in every bouquet, in every wreath. The floral piece which she had ordered over the phone and which said "DAUGHTER" in ugly gilt letters was thick with them. It should have been woven of violets and forget-me-nots; of gentians and hepaticas and wood-sorrels; of lupines, foxgloves, cinquefoils, and Queen Anne’s lace.How can I say how much I love thee when I have naught but stereotyped words at my command? I need the traceries of morning glories on a summer hill, or the gentle blueness of morning sun…
It was raining when the line of solemn cars filed into the cemetery, and the casket was set in place in the cement-block shelter which the modern-minded cemetery officials had had constructed in order that death could be consummated with a minimum of discomfort to its beholders. The shelter was painted grass-green, both inside and out, and had a damp, musty smell. People, some of whom had been Byron’s friends and some of whom had been his enemies, crowded in and lined up behind the two chairs that stood before the casket. In one of the chairs, Elizabeth sat, in the other, Matthew Pearson. Byron had left friends and enemies, but in addition to his daughter the only relatives he had left was a scattering of cousins who lived too far away to make attending the funeral practicable.
Elizabeth sat silently, listening to the minister intone his time-worn words. She had not known about the shelter; she had expected to stand beneath a dripping tent. She would have liked to stand in the rain itself, to have felt it on her face. There was poetry in the rain, solace. Here in the shelter there was only indifference and death.
“—dust to dust—”
No, not dust. My father will never be dust. My father will be the wind. When you drive in the hills at night you will hear his voice. He will speak to you through the rolled-down windows of your cars, and he will say a thousand wondrous things. My father will be the wind!...
The flower that the minister had handed her was a chrysanthemum. She stood up and laid it gently on the casket. This is a bluebell, father. I found it in the meadows south of town. I picked it because it made me think of your eyes—those gentle, understanding eyes that I shall never see again—
Matthew was standing beside her. ‘‘Elizabeth, are you all right?”
“Yes.” She looked up into his eyes. “Your eyes—they’re like bluebells, too.”
He took her arm. “Come, Elizabeth. It’s time to go.”
The House of Dickenson stood silently in the rain. Byron and Elizabeth had dispensed with the regular servants some time ago, and a cleaning woman came twice a week to do the rooms. Matthew helped Elizabeth out of the car and walked with her as far as the front door. “I hate to go running off to the city at a time like this,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be fair to the company if I didn’t attend the Schwartz and Burghardt auction.”
“Why can’t you send someone else?”
“Because there isn’t much money to play around with, and I’ve got to buy exactly what we need. Cheer up—it’ll only be for a couple of days.”
“Two days,” she said. “Two centuries.” She essayed a brave smile, almost brought it off. “Well, if you must, you must, I suppose.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll ask Mrs. Barton to come over and keep you company. It’s not her day to clean, but—”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort! If I want to hear banalities, I’ll turn on TV. Go now, quickly,— I’m not a little girl.”
“All right. I’ll be staying at the Wilton Hotel—if you need me, don’t hesitate to call.” He kissed her. “Bye”
“Good bye,” Elizabeth said.
The trouble was, she was a little girl . . .
She watched him drive away, then she entered the house and removed her coat and hat. Looking neither to left nor to right, she walked into the living room and climbed the stairs to her room. The windows were raised, and the curtains were wet with rain. The modern little desk on which she wrote her poems and in which she hid them stood forlornly by an antique spool bed that was older than the house itself. Opened on her pillow lay a slender volume that was older than the house, too—Sonnets by E.B.B. She sat down on the bed, reached out and touched the faded words—
I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
And looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
She could cry then. Afternoon darkened to dusk as she lay there on her silken coverlet, and presently night tiptoed into the room. Toward midnight, the rain stopped, and the stars came out. Lying on her back now, she could see them through the window by the bed. She counted the jewels of Orion’s belt. She traced the little dog’s tail. She marveled at the misted magic of Berenice’s hair. At long last, she slept.
_____________
THE answer lay in the warmth and the brightness of the morning sunlight; in the sweetness of the morning wind. She put yesterday from her mind.I will arise from my morning bed and go forth into the day. To the city will I go, to the canyons of the sun. Shower, spray and sparkle; needles on my skin. Rude awakenings are for those who gather dust in sad retreats and admit the myth of death.
Down the street she walked in the morning shade of maples that sang sweet songs in the morning wind. At the station she caught the 9:45, and early-afternoon found her in the city. However, she did not go directly to the Wilton as she had planned. She would go there later on, after he returned from the auction. That would be better than waiting for him in his room like a frightened little girl. After all, she knew her way around the city, didn’t she? Of course, quite well, thank you.
She stopped in a little restaurant and had a cheeseburger and a glass of milk, then she took in a double-feature matinee. The first feature was about a girl who found love on a south Pacific island. The second was about Moses. She liked them both very much. When she got outside, she found that it was night already. Well no, not really night; traces of daylight still lingered in the eastern sky. Just the same, she had no business being all alone in the big city at such an hour.
She remembered where the Wilton was, and hadn’t the least trouble finding it. She had been there with her father once before. For years, the Dickensons had patronized it whenever business brought them to the city, and it had become traditional for the executives of DGM to patronize it, too. She remembered the lobby as a dignified room with thick rugs and big velvet armchairs. Now, even though the rugs and the chairs were still there, it seemed dingy and cheap, and somehow out of date. It was as though many years instead of only a few had passed since she had last been there.
The lobby was empty. So was the space behind the counter where the clerk should have been. Well, no matter, she knew were the register was kept. She would peek, that was what she would do. The name puzzled her for a moment when she first found it. It didn’t seem quite right. And yet it must be. After it were the numerals 304.
An elevator bore her aloft, and soon she was walking down a carpeted hall. The carpet was frayed, and the walls were badly in need of paint. The door she wanted was at the very end. Just before she reached it, it opened, and a girl came o
ut.
She was a bright-haired girl who looked as though she had just come off a production line where girls like herself were turned out like new Fords and Chevrolets. Elizabeth felt gawky and out of place just looking at her, and shrank back against the wall. When she thought of the moment in later years, she invariably pictured herself as a sort of anachronistic Emily Dickenson taken unawares by a neatly packaged product she had not dreamed existed, and perhaps, in the back of her mind where her little-girl masquerade had not taken effect, she pictured herself that way then, because the pattern must have begun somewhere, and at what more logical place could it have begun than at the beginning?
The girl did not look at her. As a matter of fact, she did not even see her. Elizabeth might just as well have been a painting hanging on the wall, a painting of a tall, thin girl with deceptively strong features and blue eyes that had in them the look of a bewildered child. But if the bright-haired girl did not see her, the man standing in the doorway of 304 did—the man who was—and yet wasn’t—the man she had come to see. Gray-suited, concerned of countenance, the rouge-remnants of a kiss blazing brightly on his cheek, he stepped into the hall. “Elizabeth, I never dreamed you’d—” he began, and stopped. “Elizabeth, are you all right? You look strange.”
The painting of Elizabeth Dickenson did not move.
Matthew paused helplessly before it. “Liz, this is one of those crazy things that happen to people when they’re not looking,” he said. “I saw the Wilton letterhead on some old correspondence at the shop and automatically took it for granted that it was a respectable place. I didn’t find out that it had turned into a dive till after I’d registered and paid two days rent in advance. One of the bellboys told me then that no one from DGM has stayed here for years, but I decided to stick it out anyway. I—I never dreamed they’d send up a girl.”
Still, the painting did not move.
“Come in, and sit down, Liz. You’re as white as a ghost. This whole thing had no business happening to us—no business at all.”
The painting turned back into an animate girl then, and the girl whirled, and ran down the hall. Matthew followed her to the elevator, argued desperately while it rose to her summons; and all the while, the smear of lipstick burned more and more vividly. When the elevator arrived, Elizabeth stepped inside and watched the closing doors devour his anguished face. Boarding the train for Sweet Clover an hour later, she left the little girl she once had been forever behind her.
_____________
THE ship of the House of Dickenson, its doors closed tightly against the world, lay at anchor in the river of time.
Inside the house, young Elizabeth Dickenson sat in a wing-back chair before a fireless fireplace. For the dozenth time that day, the phone rang. For the dozenth time, she let it ring.
After a while, it stopped; then it began ringing again. She went on sitting where she was.
Before her on a small footstool, a tray rested. On it were the remnants of the piece of toast she had had for breakfast, and a cup half full of cold coffee. The hour was 4:16 P.M.; the day, the day after the day of the bright-haired girl.
Tires squealed in the driveway, the slam of a car door followed. The phone had finally fallen silent, and now, the doorbell commenced to ring. It rang and rang and rang. “I know it’s you, Matt,” Elizabeth whispered. “Go away—go away, please!”
Presently the ringing stopped, and the sound of the big brass knocker took over. Part of Elizabeth sprang to her feet, ran into the hall, and tried desperately to turn the knob that controlled the lock. But she was not strong enough. Help me, help me! she called to the rest of herself. In a moment he’ll be gone, and it’ll be too late!
The preponderance of herself did not move from the chair.
Are you going to let him go because what he did seemed twice as bad because you confused him with your father? Or are you going to let him go because deep down in yourself you were looking for an excuse all along to shut yourself away from the world and write poetry?
Elizabeth Georgina Dickinson did not answer.
Present the knocking stopped. A car door slammed. Once again, tires squealed.
Silence.
Elizabeth got up, went over to the Sheraton sofa table on which the phone stood, and dialed Curtis Hannock’s office number. “This is Elizabeth Dickenson,” she told the girl who answered. “Have you by any chance been trying to get in touch with me today?”
“Why yes, Miss Dickenson. All afternoon, as a matter of fact. Hold the line a moment, please— Mr. Hannock wants to speak with you.”
“Elizabeth? Where in blazes have you been, girl?”
“It—it doesn’t matter. What was it you wanted, Mr. Hannock?”
“To see you, of course, so that I can read you your father’s will. How will it be if I drop around at two-thirty tomorrow afternoon?”
“... All right. Should I get in touch with anyone else?”
“No. It concerns you, and you alone. Two-thirty then—right? Take care of yourself, girl.”
_____________
AFTER hanging up, she stood for a while, staring at the wall. It was time to fix dinner, she supposed. She went out into the big kitchen and fried herself bacon and eggs and made a pot of coffee. The kitchen, with its plethora of modern appliances, was like another world—a world she didn’t in the least appreciate. In remodeling it, Byron had gone all the way, but it could be said to his credit that he had junked none of the old equipment, some of which dated from Theodore Dickenson’s day. Instead, he had stored it in the basement along with the various other period-pieces which both necessity and common sense had forced him to replace.
Dinner over, she washed the dishes, dried them and put them away. Afterward, she watched TV in the library with all the lights out, ignoring the occasional ringing of the phone. Once, the doorbell rang. She ignored that, too. At ten-thirty, she went to bed and lay dully in the darkness of her room. Toward three o’clock in the morning, exhaustion at last caught up to her, and she fell asleep.
Curtis Hannock showed up promptly at 2:30 P.M. Thinning of hair, sharp of eye, he faced her across the big Chippendale table in the library. “Matt asked me to give you this,” he said, tossing sealed envelope toward her, “and to tell you that if he doesn’t get an answer, he won’t bother you anymore. Do you want to read it now, or would you rather wait till later?”
She let the envelope lie where it had fallen. “I’ll wait till later.”
“Very well.” Hannock opened his brief case, spread out several papers on the table, and proceeded to read one of them. “All of which means,” he said when he had finished, “that your father left you everything, or, to be more specific, the house and the factory. I’m sorry to say that his savings account is exhausted.” Hannock raised his eyes. “Now, as to the house, there are no outstanding taxes, no mortgages, and the title seems to be clear enough, so you’ve no worries on that score. The factory, however, is a horse of a different nature.”
“I want you to sell it,” Elizabeth said.
“Hold your fire, now, girl. Wait till you hear the rest, and then make up your mind. Now, as you probably know, the plant’s been in trouble for some time, and, as you probably also know, your father hired Matt in the hope of rejuvenating the place to a point where production would come somewhere near being on a par with other grain-machinery plants. But the trouble was, the company’s finances wouldn’t permit him to give Matt enough of a free hand, and although Matt’s done the best anyone could have done under the circumstances, it hasn’t been anywhere near enough. I advised your father to borrow the money that was needed for new equipment, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I’d advise you to do the same, Elizabeth, and without the Slightest hesitation; but fortunately I don’t need to. After funeral expenses, and even after the bite which inheritance tax is going to take, the total of your father’s life-insurance policies, of which you are the sole beneficiary and all of which contain double indemnity clauses, will be something like t
wenty thousand dollars. Sink every red cent of it into DGM girl—give Matt the free hand he needs. Take my word for it, it’s the soundest investment you can possibly make, and the best and the cheapest security you’ll ever be able to buy. It’s downright foolishness even to think of selling out!”
“That may be, Mr. Hannock, but I want to sell out just the same, and the sooner, the better. And I want whatever profit that accrues from the sale to be set up, along with the insurance money, in an annuity certain, and the payments credited to my checking account at the Sweet Clover National Bank.”
Hannock’s face grew red, and the nostrils of his thin nose quivered slightly, “Dammit, Elizabeth, you’re a bright and intelligent girl. You could even run DGM yourself, if you had to, and with Matt working for you, you couldn’t go wrong. Take my advice and hang on to the place and give him free rein. It’ll give you a healthy interest in life and take you out of yourself. You’re too withdrawn, girl—you’ve always been too withdrawn. And now you’re going to go whole hog and pull out of the picture altogether. I don’t know what Matt did to hurt you, but I’ll bet it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans and I’ll bet you’ve magnified that hill into a mountain. Take it from me girl—forgive him. Forget about what he did, and then go on from there.”
Elizabeth stood up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hannock. I can’t.”
Sweeping his papers into his brief case, he got to his feet. “Matt’ll probably quit, you know that, I suppose.” Abruptly, he shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll be in touch with you, girl.”
She accompanied him to the door. As he was about to depart, she touched his arm. “Will—will Matt be able to get another job all right?”
Hannock faced her. “It’s kind of late in the day to be worried about that, isn’t, it?” Suddenly, pity came into his eyes. “Yes, yes, of course he’ll be able to get another job.” He turned away. “Take care of yourself, girl.” “Good bye, Mr. Hannock.”
After he drove off, she returned to the library. The envelope still lay on the Chippendale table. She looked at it for some time; then, resolutely, she picked it up, tore it into bits, and flung the bits into a nearby wastebasket. For a moment she thought she smelled smoke. It was an olfactory hallucination, of course, but in a sense the smoke was real. It was the smoke thrown out from the bridges that were burning behind her.
The House That Time Forgot Page 2
