he spoke again, it was to Vincent. “I thought I’d have a surprise for you to-
night—Buxton agreed to come to dinner. But at the last minute he’s had to
call it off. But I’ve arranged for you to go over to-morrow morning.”
“Oh but of course, that’s much the better way, Harold,” Garda cried.
“It’s right that Vincent should see him first alone.”
Outram took the high ground. “I’m sorry, Garda, if I’ve acted with-
out due sensibility,” he said.
“Sensibility—pooh. What a word. Make me another drink and ask
me to dinner,” she said, perfectly indifferent to his irony.
chapter 14
But the next morning did not, after all, bring the meeting with Buxton.
Vincent was sitting at breakfast with the Outrams when the mes-
sage came. It had been a rather silent meal. Vincent instructed himself
that in his long visit there would of course be many occasions of family
silence which he must not find uncomfortable. But the telephone rang
and when Harold Outram came back from answering it, he had news
which seemed to be worth talking about. Apparently it was not so much
that he had been told that Jorris Buxton wished to postpone his appoint-
ment with Mr. Hammell as that his information had been conveyed by
someone named Claudine Post.
At this name May Outram’s eyebrows went up very high and she
[said] with a grievance, “Really now!—that Claudine Post.”
“Nasty, possessive bitch,” Outram said. “She ought to be hanged, she
ought to be burned.”
Someone named Claudine Post could apparently assert a claim
upon Jorris Buxton which had the power of enraging Outram. Such a
person was clearly of importance to Buxton’s biographer and Vincent
sat alert for the enlightenment Outram would give him. But Outram,
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after his outburst, only stirred his coffee with a fierce and silent abstrac-
tion and all that May Outram had to add was another exasperated “Re-
ally.” Vincent was on the point of asking for the explanation that seemed
his due when Garda Thorne came into the dining-room and brought the
table to attention.
“Dear Claudine!” she said when she received the news. “Dear, dear
Claudine! She was perfectly bound to make some little demonstration
for the occasion. Have they told you about Claudine Post, Vincent? Your
arrival is of course the occasion. Have you told him, Harold?”
“He’ll learn fast enough,” Outram said drily.
“He should be told. You should know that Claudine Post is a witch,
Vincent, our local witch.”
“Bitch,” said Outram in stubborn correction, although he himself
had only a moment before prescribed a witch’s punishment.
“All witches are bitches,” Garda said, “but not all bitches are witches.”
She laughed with pleasure at the sound of her own logical proposition.
“This bitch, Vincent, is an enchantress. Not that she is enchanting, but
she knows how to enchant. She has enchanted your subject, Vincent—
poor Buxton is under her spell. Or should I say ‘in her power’—for she is
a dragon, Vincent, a perfect dragon, and you will have to deal with her as
such. And she has a little attendant sprite, a familiar spirit, a little ancil-
lary devil—”
May Outram said, “Oh, now Perdy isn’t so bad.”
“Bad? I never said she was bad. Enchanted too—dragonned—drag-
onned—what is the verb for what happens when a dragon has you? Poor
darling—poor damsel, poor damnèd damosel.”
Under the little spate of words May Outram sank back.
“What was the name?” said Vincent. “‘Perdy’?”
“Yes, Perdy—pretty Perdy,” said Garda. “From Perdita,” she explained.
Her respect for the beautiful Shakespearean name made her speak with
sudden gravity. “Poor lost Perdita!”
That Claudine Post was a bitch, a witch and a dragon, that Perdy
was Perdita, this was all the explanation that Vincent got, for now the
telephone rang again. Outram came back from answering it and said,
“That was Buxton himself. He says he will come to dinner tonight.” He
grinned, boyishly triumphant at the reversal.
“Oh good!” Garda cried. “The darling has made a stand. I’ll bet there
was a scene, a perfect rumpus. Oh good for him.”
She rose from the table as if her emotion were very great, and she
strode rapidly up and. down the room. Her comic manner had left her,
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but her manner of exultation was not so very different. Vincent was
struck with how alive and finely shaped was the body that expressed her
high spirit, how lithe and alert was her step. When she tossed back a
lock of hair that had fallen over her clear forehead, he remembered that
a month or two ago he himself had found two or three anomalous gray
hairs in his own dark head.
“Oh that dreadful, dreadful woman,” Garda said. “He must get rid of
her, he must. What an atmosphere for him to live in now, so late.”
She turned suddenly to Vincent and pointed a finger straight at him.
“It is you who are going to have all the trouble with her. Watch out! You
must be crafty and you must be strong!”
Then, having come to use the Outrams’ telephone, for she had none
of her own, she turned abruptly and left to do her errand.
Garda’s pointed finger and passionate tone as well as her very ex-
plicit words gave Vincent a stake in the situation which was now per-
fectly clear. Even so, he could not bring himself to ask a question about
it. Harold Outram seemed to have some intention of not informing him
of what seemed so relevant to his situation, and this hurt and confused
him. But Outram said, “Of course Garda’s right—you’ll have to know
about this business.”
He broke off and took counsel with himself. “I wanted you to find out
for yourself, without preparation and prejudice. And even now I wonder
if that wouldn’t be the best way. I still think that the less you know about
it the better. I mean for your sake, for the sake of the job. You already
know, at any rate, that there is a Claudine Post and that we, Garda and
I, have a strong feeling about her and about her relations with Buxton.
And you can guess that in our opinion she can make trouble for the job
we want done. In a way I’m sorry you know even that much. It would re-
ally be best if you could start with no knowledge at all, if your mind were
perfectly free from all feelings about the matter. As a matter of fact, I’m
going to say nothing more to you about it, after all. I suggest that you try
to forget all about our feelings—even assume that our feelings are mis-
taken and prejudiced. You be perfectly objective and meet Mrs. Post as if
she were simply a respectable lady of the town, which she is. You know
how around any great man little factions are likely to form. Set down
our feelings to that and you remain quite above the battle. And so, if you
don’t mind, I’m going to give you no more information for a while.”
And Outram ended with a smile to his young friend, a frank smile
that made him seem very young himself. Vincent could not but respond.
Nevertheless, he felt that this was an occasion for anger, and a speech that
5
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would begin, “Look here!” presented itself to him. It was not Outram’s
place, he felt, to manipulate the degree of his knowledge or ignorance, to
contrive for him a state of innocence which should have some advantage
in a situation which Outram saw but which Vincent knew nothing of.
But he did not say “Look here!” or anything else. For he suddenly
saw that this occasion for anger was but part of a much larger occasion.
He had wondered before, but only with delight and self-congratulation,
why he, so young and inexperienced, had been invited to an undertaking
which would have gratified a much older and much more established
man. But the vanity of his youth had not allowed the question to be a
real one. But it was real now. And an answer, an all too likely answer, was
beginning to appear. The answer seemed to be that Outram—and Garda
Thorne—had chosen him not merely for what talent they saw in him,
perhaps not for his talent at all, but exactly for his youth and inexperi-
ence.
“Crafty,” Garda Thorne had said, and “strong”—but what craft and
strength could they expect of him at twenty-three when they themselves,
surely crafty and strong enough in their maturity, gave every sign of be-
ing baffled by a situation which they could not explain to him? He had
thought that in his conversation of yesterday with Garda Thorne he had
comported himself with firmness and clarity and a right sense of his
own position. Yet as he looked back at it now it seemed to him that Garda
had been acting with a motive that all her frankness had not disclosed,
that she had involved him in some commitment the terms for which she
had not really stipulated. And this new view of that conversation sup-
ported the idea that his youth and inexperience had not been elements to
be overlooked for the sake of his talent. They had been the very parts of
his equipment that had determined his invitation. He had been chosen
not for his strength but for his very weakness, for his usefulness as an
instrument rather than for his power as a mind. As he thought of this
possibility he felt a childlike ache of having been fooled and betrayed.
The disintegrating, the almost tearful sense of wrong was more immedi-
ate than any possible anger.
When Outram said, “Will you have some more coffee?” and May
Outram immediately said, “Take another blueberry muffin,” he accepted
both offers and let the matter slide in cream, sugar, butter and jam. He
postponed his anger until he could better consider its justice.
chapter 15
He did not consider its justice that day. It was Saturday. One could feel
it in the air. It was a day for tennis, for swimming, for lying in the shade
watching the children at play. The two men played tennis. May Outram
murmured vaguely at their madness, the heat being what it was, while
Garda Thorne mocked Harold Outram’s infrequent errors—he was a re-
markably good player—in a tone which led Vincent to wonder whether
it was merely as friends that these two knew each other. And so in sport,
felicity and the sensation of heightened life which Garda Thorne gave
him, in speculation about the true realities of this new existence, Vincent
quite neglected to consider his anger and the justice of it.
If anything else were needed to make him neglect that unwanted
task, the evening brought the approach of the dinner party with its large
compliment to him. It was to be quite his own occasion. The three guests,
he learned, had been invited before his arrival for the particular purpose
of meeting him, and now the addition of Buxton himself was making it
more than ever the young man’s event.
Garda and Vincent sat alone together at the edge of the pool. Their
feet dangled side by side in the water. She moved her toes, watching the
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strong articulation of the big tendon of the thumb-toe. In an emulation
that was aware of its childishness, Vincent wiggled his own toes. With the
same awareness, she replied to his response, then he answered hers again.
In their play there was a primitive intimacy. Like children, they were pre-
tending to abdicate all their personality to these feet of theirs. They sat and
gravely watched the play of these self-willed and beautiful animals that, in
their far-off aquatic life, had the same mind and habits and were distin-
guished from each other only by the sexual difference of size.
To Vincent, the odd nervous grace of Garda’s body as he had seen it
in motion all day made it impossible that her years added up to the sum
they really made. The sum was a barrier, but over the barrier he had a
glimpse of the truth that her high spirit and charming legs were as quick
and gay as when in girlhood she had stepped into the tub of wine. Her
feet were as white and delicate, as curved in the instep and as brilliantly
flexible in the toes as her art had ever suggested. Garda’s eyes turned
from watching their four feet at play and looked at him, smiling and
happy. It was impossible to suppose that they had seen, only yesterday,
the horrid vision which had made her cry out in his presence. Now she
was kicking her feet up and down in the water, almost hiding them in
the white churn she made, and her eyes, darker now, almost gray, were
full of peace and gratitude. Their gaze was gentle, expectant, almost pas-
sive. He was frightened and said, “Who are those people who are com-
ing to dinner?”
“Find out for yourself!” Garda said, with no more brusqueness than
she had a right to.
She saw the shadow cross his face. With how many starts and stops,
with what a superabundance of doubts and false imaginings and search-
es for hidden significances, with how many attempts to master its own
inchoateness would this young mind of his move toward such an idea as
her mind had just so simply conceived. In clearness and distinctness, in
muscularity and stamina, his mind was far behind his body. He would
never expect of his mind the stamina he would demand of his body, he
would allow it to succumb all too easily to hardship and he would even
think of his quick surrenders as coming from a virtue which he would
call sensitivity.
She put out her hand to touch his in apology for her brusqueness.
“I mean,” she said, “that I know them so very well that I’d give you
only a rather weary picture of them. They are nice people—there is Philip
Dyas who is headmaster of the school here, and there are the Hollowells
who are so very rich.”
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For a moment they sat silent. Then Vincent said, “Which way is
your house?”
She did not point. She was sitting with her hands on the smooth
coping of the pool, resting her weight on them, her body leaning forward
and her shoulders high, and at his question she turned her head slowly
and looke
d at him again. “Over there,” she said with a small inadequate
movement of her head backward. “Through that little piece of woods.”
Her high voice, usually turbulent with overtones and echoes, was flat and
still. Her eyes were again grave, wholly without their usual brilliant chal-
lenge, as receptive as the pool itself. And as Vincent looked into them,
he knew the meaning of the question which he thought he had asked
idly. His heart beat wildly. He could not at that moment have spoken and
his next communication would have had to have been made by touch,
but in dismay Garda cried, “Oh, Jorris is here. He’s come too soon,” and
Vincent saw across the lawn, on the terrace, the figure of a man. Evan at
the distance the paleness of his face was notable. It was not so much the
absence of color but almost a glow of colorlessness, a phosphorescence
against his black jacket. Garda scrambled to her feet and began to gather
up her belongings, a bag, a swimming-cap, a cigarette case, a pair of
bright sandals.
The man, after having waved to Garda and received a negligent wave
in reply, had gone back into the house.
“That isn’t—?” said Vincent in dismay, for at the distance the pale man
might have been of almost any age, and his appearance was ignoble.
“That’s Brooks Barrett—he’s brought Jorris. Oh, what a nuisance.”
Her paraphernalia all collected, Garda suddenly put them all down
again and looked about her almost distractedly. She saw what she
wanted and slipped into the robe that May Outram had left lying on a
chair by the pool. She was tying it close about her when the door to the
terrace opened and Brooks Barrett came out in company with Jorris
Buxton.
“Come!” said Garda and took Vincent decisively by the arm. “Come
and have your introduction.”
The two men were walking to meet them, Buxton moving, as it
seemed, with a far more vigorous step than his younger companion. But
it was not the old man’s vigor that gave Vincent his quick sense of relief.
It was that Buxton wore a beard. It was the best kind of beard that a man
can wear, it was short and firm and jutted a little forward. It gave a base
to the head and did not mask the face. It suggested fortitude and the pos-
sibility of just anger.
The Journey Abandoned_The Unfinished Novel Page 21
