‘But if that’s all you want him for!’ – Pearl refused to be won – ‘why, he’ll smell out your plan. He’ll see you’re only showing him what he can never hope to buy or have.’
A look of deep disappointment tinged with spleen crossed Mrs Owens’s still-beautiful face.
‘Let him smell out our plan, then, as you put it,’ Mrs Owens chided in the wake of her sister’s opposition, ‘we won’t care! If he can’t talk, don’t you see, so much the better. We’ll have a session of “looking” from him, and his “appreciation” will perk us up. We’ll see him taking in everything, dear love, and it will review our own lifelong success . . . Don’t be so down on it now . . . And mind you, we won’t be here quite forever,’ she ended, and a certain hard majestical note in her voice was not lost on the younger woman. ‘The fact,’ Mrs Owens summed it all up, ‘that we’ve nothing to give him needn’t spoil for us the probability he’s got something to give us.’
Pearl said no more then, and Mrs Owens spoke under her breath: ‘I haven’t a particle of a doubt that I’m in the right about him, and if it should turn out I’m wrong, I’ll shoulder all the blame.’
Whatever particle of a doubt there may have been in Mrs Owens’s own mind, there was considerably more of doubt and apprehension in Mr Evening’s as he weighed, in his rooming house, the rash decision he had made to visit formidable Mrs Owens in – one could not say her business establishment, since she had none – but her background of accumulation of heirlooms, which vague world was, he could only admit, also his own. Because he had never known or understood people well, and he was the most insignificant of ‘collectors’, he was at a loss as to why Mrs Owens should feel he had anything to give her, and since her ‘legend’ was too well known to him, he knew she, likewise, had nothing at all to give him, except, and this was why he was going, the ‘look-in’ which his visit would give him. Whatever risk there was in going to see her, and there appeared to be some, he felt, from ‘warnings’ of a queer kind from those who had dealt with her, it was worth something just to get inside, even though again he had been informed by those in the business it would be doubtful if he would be allowed to mention ‘purchase’ and in the end it was also doubtful he would be allowed even a close peek.
On the other hand, if Mrs Owens wanted him to tell her something – this crossed his mind as he went toward her huge pillared house, though he could not imagine even vaguely what he could have to tell her, and if she was mad enough to think him capable of entertaining her, for after all she was a lonely ancient lady on the threshold of death, he would disabuse her of all such expectations almost as soon as they had met. He was uneasy with old women, he supposed, though in his work he spent more time with them than with other people, and he wanted, he finally said out loud to himself, that hand-painted china cup, 1910, no matter what it might cost him. He fancied she might yield it to him at some atrocious illegal price. It was no more improbable, after all, than that she had invited him in the first place. Mrs Owens never invited anybody, that is, from the outside, and the inside people in her life had all died or were incapacitated from paying calls. Yes, he had been summoned, and he could hope at least therefore that what everybody else told him was at least thinkable – purchase, and if that was not in store for him, then the other improbable thing, ‘viewing.’
But Mr Evening could not pretend. If his getting the piece of china or even more improbably other larger heirlooms, kept from daylight as well as human eyes, locked away in the floors above her living room, if possession meant long hours of currying favor, talking and laughing and dining and killing the evening, then no thank you, never. His inability to pretend, he supposed, had kept him from rising in the antique trade, for although he had a kind of business of his own here in Brooklyn, his own private income was what kept him afloat, and what he owned in heirlooms, though remarkable for a young dealer, did not make him a figure in the trade. His inconspicuous position in the business made his being summoned by Mrs Owens all the more inexplicable and even astonishing. Mr Evening was, however, too unversed both in people and the niceties of his own profession to be either sufficiently impressed or frightened.
Meanwhile Pearl, moments before Mr Evening’s arrival gazing out of the corner of her eye at her sister, saw with final and uncomfortable consternation the telltale look of anticipation on the older woman’s face which demonstrated that she ‘wanted’ Mr Evening with almost the same inexplicable maniacal whim which she had once long ago demonstrated toward a certain impossible-to-find Spanish medieval chair, and how she had got hold of the latter still remained a mystery to the world of dealers.
‘Shall we without further ado, then, strike a bargain?’ Mrs Owens intoned, looking past Mr Evening, who had arrived on a bad snowy January night.
He had been reduced to more than his customary kind of silent social incommunicativeness by finally seeing Mrs Owens in the flesh, a woman who while reputed to be so old, looked unaccountably beautiful, whose clothes were floral in their charm, wafting sachets of woody scent to his nostrils, and whose voice sounded like fine chimes.
‘Of course I don’t mean there’s to be a sale! Even youthful you couldn’t have come here thinking that.’ She dismissed at once any business with a pronounced flourish of white hands. ‘Nothing’s for sale, and won’t be even should we die.’ She faced him with a lessening of defiance, but he stirred uncomfortably.
‘Whatever you may think, whatever you may have been told’ – she went now to deal with the improbable fact of their meeting, – ‘let me say that I can’t resist their being admired’ (she meant the heirlooms, of course). She unfolded the piece of newsprint of his ‘notice’. ‘I could tell immediately by your way of putting things’ – she touched the paper – ‘that you knew all about them. Or better, I knew you knew all about them by the way you left things undescribed. I knew you could admire, without stint or reservation.’ She finished with a kind of low bow.
‘I’m relieved’ – he began to look about the large high room – ‘that you’re not curious then to know who I am, to know about me, that is, as I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to satisfy your curiosity on that score. That is to say, there’s almost nothing to tell about me, and you already know what my vocation is.’
She allowed this speech to die in silence, as she did with an occasional intruding sound of traffic which unaccountably reached her parlor, but then at his helpless sinking look, she said in an attempt, perhaps, to comfort, ‘I don’t have to be curious about anything that holds me, Mr Evening. It always unfolds itself, in any case.
‘For instance,’ she went on, her face taking on a mock-wrathful look, ‘people sometimes try to remind me that I was once a famous actress, which though being a fact, is irrelevant, and, more, now meaningless, for even in those remote days, when let’s say I was on the stage, even then, Mr Evening, these’ – and she indicated with a flourish of those commanding white hands the munificent surroundings – ‘these were everything!’
‘One is really only strictly curious about people one never intends to meet, I think, Mr Evening,’ Mrs Owens said.
She now rose and stood for a moment, so that the imposition of her height over him, seated in his low easy chair, was emphasized, then walking over to a tiny beautiful peachwood table, she looked at something on it. His own attention, still occupied with her presence, did not move for a moment to what she was bestowing a long, calm glance on. She made no motion to touch the object on the table before her. Though his vision clouded a bit, he looked directly at it now, and saw what it was, and saw there could be no mistake about it. It was the pale rose shell-like 1910 hand-painted china cup.
‘You don’t need to bring it to me!’ he cried, and even she was startled by such an outburst. Mr Evening had gone as white as chalk.
He searched in vain in his pockets for a handkerchief, and noting his distress, Mrs Owens handed him one from the folds of her own dress.
‘I won’t ever beg of you,’ he said, wiping his
brow with the handkerchief. ‘I would offer anything for the cup, of course, but I can’t beg.’
‘What will you do then, Mr Evening?’ She came to within a few inches of him.
He sat before her, his head slightly tilted forward, his palms upturned like one who wishes to determine if rain is beginning.
‘Don’t answer’ – she spoke in loud, gay tones – ‘for nobody expects you to do anything, beg, bargain, implore, steal. Whatever you are, or were, Mr Evening – I catch from your accent you are Southern – you were never an actor, thank fortune. It’s one of the reasons you’re here, you are so much yourself.’
‘Now, mark me.’ Mrs Owens strode past his chair to a heavy gold-brocaded curtain, her voice almost menacing in its depth of resonance. ‘I’ve not allowed you to look at this cup in order to tempt you. I merely wanted you to know I’d read your “notice”, which you wrote, in any case, only for me. Furthermore, as you know, I’m not bargaining with you in any received sense of the word. You and I are beyond bargaining with one another. Money will never be mentioned between us, papers, or signatures – all that goes without saying. But I do want something,’ and she turned from the curtain and directed her luminous gray eyes to his face. ‘You’re not like anybody else, Mr Evening, and it’s this quality of yours which has, I won’t say won me, you’re beyond winning anybody, but which has brought an essential part of myself back to me by your being just what you are and wanting so deeply what you want!’
Holding her handkerchief entirely over his face now so that he spoke to her as from under a sheet, he mumbled, ‘I don’t like company, Mrs Owens.’ His interruption had the effect of freezing her to the curtain before her. ‘And company, I’m afraid, includes you and your sister. I can’t come and talk, and I don’t like supper parties. If I did, if I liked them, that is, I’d prefer you.’
‘What extraordinary candor!’ Mrs Owens was at a loss where to walk, at what to look. ‘And how gloriously rude!’ She considered everything quickly. ‘Good, very good, Mr Evening . . . But good won’t carry us far enough!’ she cried, and her voice rose in a great swell of volume until she saw with satisfaction that he moved under her strength. The handkerchief fell away, and his face, very flushed, but with the eyes closed, bent in her direction.
‘You don’t have to talk’ – Mrs Owens dismissed this as if with loathing of that idea that he might – ‘and you don’t have to listen. You can snore in your chair if you like. But if you come, say, once a week, that will more than do for a start. You could consider this house as a kind of waiting room, let’s say, for a day that’s sure and bound to come for all, and especially us . . . You’d wait here, say, on Thursday, and we could offer you the room where you are now, and food, which you would be entitled to spurn, and all you would need do is let time pass. I could allow you to see, very gradually’ – she looked hurriedly in the direction of the cup – ‘a few things here and there, not many at a visit, of course, it might easily unhinge you in your expectant state’ – she laughed – ‘and certainly I could show you nothing for quite a while from up there,’ and she moved her head toward the floors above. ‘But in the end, if you kept it up, the visits, I mean, I can assure you your waiting would “pay off”, as they say out there . . . I can’t be any more specific.’ She brought her explanation of the bargain to an abrupt close, and indicated with a sweeping gesture he might stand and depart.
Thursday, then, set aside by Mrs Owens for Mr Evening to begin attendance on the heirlooms, loomed up for the two of them as a kind of fateful, even direful, mark on the calendar; in fact, both the mistress of the heirlooms and her viewer were ill with anticipation. Mr Evening’s dislike of company and being entertained vied with his passion for ‘viewing’. On the other hand, Mrs Owens, watched over by a saddened and anguished Pearl, felt the hours and days speed precipitously to an encounter which she now could not understand her ever having arranged or wanted. Never had she lived through such a week, and her fingers, usually white and still as they rested on her satin cushions, were almost raw from a violent pulling on and off of her rings.
At last Thursday, 8:30 p.m., came, finding Mrs Owens with one glass of wine – all she ever allowed herself, with barely a teaspoon of it tasted. Nine-thirty struck, ten, no Mr Evening. Her lips, barely touched with an uncommon kind of rouge, moved in a bitter self-deprecatory smile. She rose and walked deliberately to a small ebony cabinet, and took out her smelling bottle, which she had not touched for months. Opening it, she found it had considerably weakened in strength, but she took it with her back to her chair, sniffing its dilute fumes from time to time.
Then about a quarter past eleven, when she had finished with hope, having struck the silk and mohair of her chair several castigating blows, the miracle, Mr Evening, ushered in by Giles (who rare for him showed some animation), appeared in his heavy black country coat. Mrs Owens, not so much frosty from his lateness as incredulous that she was seeing him, barely nodded. Having refused her supper, she had opened a large gilt book of Flaxman etchings, and was occupying herself with these, while Pearl, seated at a little table of her own in the furthest reaches of the room, was dining on some tender bits of fish soaked in a sauce into which she dipped a muffin.
Mr Evening, ignored by both ladies, had sat down. He had not been drinking, Mrs Owens’s first impression, but his cheeks were beet-red from cold, and he looked, she saw with uneasy observation, more handsome and much younger than on his first call.
‘I hate snow intensely.’ Mrs Owens studied his pants cuffs heavy with flakes. ‘Yet going south somewhere’ – it was not clear to whom she was speaking from this time on – ‘that would be now too much in the way of preparation merely to avoid winter wet . . . At one time traveling itself was home to me, of course,’ she continued, and her hands fell on a massive yellowed ivory paper-opener with a larger than customary blade. ‘One was put up in those days, not hurled over landscape like an electric particle. One wore clothes, one “appeared” at dinner, which was an occasion, one conversed, listened, or merely sat with eyes averted, one rose, was looked after, watched over, if you will, one was often more at home going in those days than when one remained home, or reached one’s destination.’
Mrs Owens stopped, mortified by a yawn from Mr Evening. Reduced to a kind of quivering dumbness, Mrs Owens could only restrain herself, remembering the ‘agreement’.
A butler appeared wearing green goggles and at a nearly imperceptible nod from Mrs Owens picked up a minuscule marble-topped gold inlaid table, and placed it within a comfortable arm’s reach of Mr Evening. Later, another servant brought something steaming under silver receptacles from the kitchen.
‘Unlike the flock of crows in flight today’ – Mrs Owens’s voice seemed to come across footlights – ‘I can remember all my traveling.’ She turned the pages of Flaxman with critical quickness. ‘And that means in my case the globe, all of it, when it was largely inaccessible, and certainly infrequently commented or written upon by tradespeople and typists.’ She concentrated a moment in silence as if remembering perhaps how old she was and how far off her travel had been. ‘I didn’t miss a country, however unrecommended or unlisted by some guide or hotel bursar. There’s no point in going now or leaving one’s front door when every dot on the map has been ground to dust by somebody’s heavy foot. When everybody is en route, stay home! . . . Pearl, my dear, you’re not looking at your plate!’
Pearl, who had finished her fish, was touching with nearsighted uncertainty the linen tablecloth with a gleaming fork. ‘Wear your glasses, dear child, for heaven’s sweet sake, or you’ll stab yourself!’
Mr Evening had closed his eyes. He appeared like one who must impress upon himself not to touch food in a strange house. But the china on his table was stunning, though obviously brand-new and therefore not ‘anything’. At last, however, against his better judgment, he lifted one of the cups, then set it down noiselessly. Immediately the butler poured him coffee. Against his will, he drank a tablespoon or so, f
or after the wet and cold he needed at least a taste of something hot. It was an unbelievable brew, heady, clear, fresh. Mrs Owens immediately noted the pleasure on his face, and a kind of shiver ran through her. Her table, ever nonpareil, might win him, she saw, where nothing in her other ‘offerings’ tonight had reached him.
‘After travel was lost to me,’ Mrs Owens went on in the manner of someone who is dictating memoirs to a machine, ‘the church failed likewise to hold me. Even then’ (one felt she referred to the early years of another century), ‘they had let in every kind of speaker. The church had begun to offer thought and problems instead of merging and repose . . . So it went out of my life along with going abroad . . . Then my eyes are not, well, not so bad as Pearl’s, who is blind without glasses, but reading tires me more and more, though I see the natural world of objects better perhaps now than ever before. Besides, I’ve read more than most, for I’ve had nothing in life but time. I’ve read, in sum, everything, and if there’s a real author, I’ve been through him often more than twice.’
Mr Evening now tried a slice of baked Alaska, and it won him. His beginning the meal backwards was hardly intentional, but he had looked so snowy the butler had poured the coffee first, and the coffee had suggested to the kitchen the dessert course instead of the entrée.
Noting that Mr Evening did not touch his wine, Mrs Owens thought a moment, then began again, ‘Drinking has never been a consolation to me either. Life might have been more endurable, perhaps, especially in this epoch,’ and she looked at her glass, down scarcely two ounces. ‘Therefore spirits hardly needed to join travel in the things I’ve eliminated . . .’ Gazing upwards, she brought out, ‘The human face, perhaps strangely enough, is really all that has been left to me,’ and after a moment’s consultation with herself, she looked obliquely at Mr Evening, who halted conveying his fork, full of meringue, to his mouth. ‘I need the human face, let’s say.’ She talked into the thick pages of the Flaxman drawings. ‘I can’t stare at my servants, though outsiders have praised their fetching appeal. (I can’t look at what I’ve acquired, I’ve memorized it too well.) No, I’m talking about the unnegotiable human face. Somebody,’ she said, looking nowhere now in particular, ‘has that, of course, while, on the other hand, I have what he wants badly, and so shall we say we are, if not a match, confederates of a sort.’
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Page 15
