by Anya Seton
Hesper’s mouth dropped open. “Evan?” she whispered. She reached out and gripped the rim of the Windsor chair. Her throat closed down on a choking desire to laugh.
He shrugged and made the old semi-derisive sound through his nostrils. “Museum dragged me down to Boston for a fool banquet. I thought long as I was near I’d take another look at Marblehead, seeing that the canvas they’ve just acquired was done from memory.” He sat down, leaning on his blackthorn stick. “Where’s your husband?” Hesper sat down; the moment of hysteria passed leaving a sardonic amusement, not apparently unlike his own. “Amos has been dead over twenty-five years. And for all you knew so might I have been?”
She put it as a question, wondering if he had ever bothered to find out anything about her since her brief note to England telling him that the divorce was final and that she was marrying Amos.
He crossed his legs, and she noted that his right dragged, he moved it painfully. “Never occurred to me you weren’t right here at the Hearth and Eagle, same as ever. You can put me up for the night, can’t you? I want to get over to that rock on the Neck in the morning. I remember a certain shade of greenstone across the porphyry, I’d like to check it.” So he didn’t come to see me, she thought. Inside, under the gray hair, the sharpened face, the stooping shoulders and dragging leg, he was unchanged. But people didn’t change much inside, while their bodies did. The only thing that really vanished was passion. It was a pity other emotions did not vanish with it. Yearning and regret and the capacity for humiliation.
“Well, I’m alone here,” she said with crispness. “But I guess you can use the Yellow Room. The one you had before.”
She shut her mouth tight, annoyed at having added that. Something ridiculous and slightly shameful about popping out with a reminder of—of forty-four years back.
He nodded without interest. He leaned over and began to rub his knee. “I’ve been sick—” he said querulously. “First time in my life. Had a dizzy spell last month and fell down. Did something to my leg.”
“I’m sorry—” she said. “What does the doctor say?”
“Oh, stupid young know-it-all. Says to keep off it. I’ll give it a rest when I get home to Thursday Cove, peace and quiet.” He looked up at her suddenly. “Don’t you tell anybody I’m here. I can’t stand being pestered.” His voice rose in vicious imitation. “‘Ooh—Mr. Redlake, would you please give me your autograph?’ ‘Ooh—Mr. Redlake, wouldn’t you let me have just one little tiny peek into your studio?’ Blithering idiots.”
There was a silence. Evan rubbed his knee.
“Yes. You’re a famous man, now,” said Hesper quietly. “I suppose you’d like something to eat, or drink, before you go to bed.”
“I would,” said Evan. “Couldn’t eat at that banquet. They kept at me and at me for a speech. Seems I’m Dean of American painting. What do you think of that?” He tugged at his beard and cocked his head, looking up at her.
“I think you’ve accomplished what you set out to.”
The twinkle left his eyes. He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. You never do, you know.”
“Don’t you?” said Hesper. What more had Evan wanted than painting and recognition—and freedom?
He frowned into the red embers of the fire, not answering. She went out to the other kitchen and fixed a tray. She brought it to him, and threw a log on the fire.
He ate and drank in silence. She sat in her rocker and watched him. Here they sat, two old people in an old room, bound by no tie except memory. Memory of brief passion and long grievance.
Why did he come? she thought; why did he have to push into my life again with his selfishness and his painting? stirring up a lot of pain I’d thoroughly buried. Why did I say he could stay here ?
He finished everything, wiped his mustache on the damask napkin. She got up and took the tray. Her face was hostile.
“Thanks,” he said suddenly. “Tasted good.” And he smiled. Despite the beard and the mustache the quick smile still startled by its ironic sweetness. The flash of a searchlight across a brooding cliff.
“You’ve still got beauty, Hesper,” he said. “You had good bones. That’s why. They never let you down. Good proportions stay, unless one gets fat. But why must you swaddle yourself in muddy gray and black? You never did have the slightest feel for color.”
She glanced at her gray percale housedress, the knitted black shawl. “I’m a widow,” she said coldly. “And I’m an old woman. Are you ready to go up to your room?”
He struggled up from his chair, leaning on his stick. She picked up his square valise preparing to show him the way.
“Don’t touch it!” he snapped. “I always carry that myself. Can’t bear people touching my things.”
She shrugged her shoulders and put the bag down.
That night in her bedroom above the old kitchen, she lay awake for a long time staring into the darkness.
The next morning the fog had blown away and a clear rich sunshine sparkled on the ripples in the Great Harbor. A southwest breeze gentle as the May fragrance it spread over the town—the fragrance of lilacs and chestnut blossoms—blew through the open windows of the Hearth and Eagle.
Hesper awoke to the feel of Maytime, and though the derisive inner voice jeered at her, she took pains with her hair. And she put on her only colored dress, a lavender dimity, crossbarred in white. It was quite warm enough for a summer dress.
She started breakfast, and promptly at eight, Evan appeared. She greeted him and set a chair at the big oak table in the old kitchen. She was shocked by his looks. Perhaps it was natural that during the night when she thought of him lying there in the Yellow Room, she had seen the Evan who had once lain there on a bridal eve. And the readjustment was difficult. No, it’s not only that, she thought. It’s because he looks sick. His color was bad, the grayish skin drawn tight over his cheekbones and forehead. He ate with effort, frowning as he slowly propelled the fork towards his mouth.
“Did you sleep all right?” she asked.
He put his fork down and smiled at her. “Pretty fair, except for the hauntings. Ghosts, you know.”
“Ghosts?” she repeated uncertainly. The boarders sometimes reported ghosts, shadowy figures in Puritan costume, pirates, a Revolutionary soldier. But these manifestations always appeared to those who had learned something of the house’s history and who believed that every old house must have a ghost. Hesper never argued with them.
“Memories,” said Evan, pushing back his plate. “What’s the best way for me to get across to the Neck?”
Hesper stood up and began to stack dishes. Ah yes, you sentimental fool, she said to herself, did you think the memories were of you? He came here to check on the shade of the greenstone as it runs through the porphyry at Castle Rock.
“I’ll get a message to Walt, my son,” she said. “He can take you there in his lobster boat at high water, right to the beach by the rock. You’d never walk across the Neck with that leg.”
“Very well,” said Evan. “But you come along, Hesper.”
“Whatever for? I know what the Rock looks like though I’ve not gone there in years. And I’m too old for junkets.”
Evan sighed. “Maybe I am too. I don’t want to trouble you, but do come. I detest being alone with a stranger.”
Oh, so that’s it. But why not go ? The sea and the sun and the joy of motion on the water were not restricted to the young.
Walt was impressed by his passenger. Maria had a calendar decorated with a picture by Redlake, called “Breakers Ahead,” and Walt had read a story about him in the Sunday supplement called the “Hermit of Thursday Cove.” It had smeary photographs of his Maine cottage, perched on a cliff over the sea, and told how he lived alone and wouldn’t let anybody in, and how he particularly hated women, though there was a photograph of a painting of a naked girl lying on a beach. This, of course, had made Walt read the article in the first place. It said this painting was hanging in a museum in Paris.
So Walt greeted his mother and the painter with considerable curiosity. The tide was in and he had brought his boat up alongside one of the Little Harbor wharves. His mother scrambled in and sat down by the tiller. She was pretty spry for her years, but Redlake had a bad leg and needed help. He sat down forward of the housing on a stack of lobster pots.
Walt started up the engine. “Handsome old coot,” he muttered to his mother. “What in hell’s he doing at our place?”
Hesper looked at Evan. He sat erect, one hand on his blackthorn stick. He had folded his arms into the brown cape to keep it from fluttering. He reminded her of a dimly remembered picture of an Italian duke. The narrow dark face, the haughty nobility of bearing.
“Oh, he was here once long ago,” she said. “I guess he didn’t know about the other hotels.”
Walt was satisfied. His thoughts reverted somberly to Maria, her avid, passionate beauty and her sulkiness. The boat chugged along between Gerry’s Island and the ruins of Fort Sewall, heading toward the lighthouse on the Neck. Already the Great Harbor was filling with summer craft. Yawls, schooners, and ketches rocked at their freshly painted moorings off the two Yacht Clubs, the Eastern and the newer Corinthian. And the smaller boats, the sloops and cats and an occasional cruiser, were sprinkled thickly on the turquoise water.
“Going to be a good season,” said Walt. “Sell all the lobsters I can trap.” His face darkened. “Been having trouble with that bastard Ratty Dawson again. He’s swiping from my pots.”
“Well, you better not beat him up this time,” said Hesper grimly. “Let the harbor police handle it—”
“Codshit!” said Walt, and he jerked the tiller. “They want witnesses, and they want proof, and they want papers filled out, and then they don’t do anything. I can handle Ratty myself.”
Evan suddenly turned his head and his amused gaze rested on Walt’s scowling face. “I’m afraid you’re an anachronism, Mr. Porterman. Our civilization seldom does anything direct any more.”
Walt looked blank and Evan continued, “By the look of that harbor, Marbleheaders don’t even take their sailing direct any more. Many townsfolk own those boats?”
Walt shook his head and shrugged. “But I don’t know as it matters. They spend a lot of money in the town. And you can bet your last dollar we don’t let ’em swindle us.”
They rounded the lighthouse and passed over Lasque’s Ledge. The little boat rocked on the long swells of the open ocean. Evan stared at the shoreline, the smooth green lawns, the turrets and gables and battlements of the period mansions. “I had no idea it was so built up,” he said, “and why must they build so colossally ugly?” He raised his stick and pointed at the largest of the houses, an improbable mixture of the Alhambra and Balmoral Castle.
Walt grinned, glancing at his mother. “That one happens to belong to my sister-in-law. Mrs. Henry Porterman. She thinks it’s mighty elegant.”
Evan looked startled. Hesper felt his frowning gaze pass over her. He said nothing.
Walt anchored in the cove just south of Castle Rock, the cove where Evan had pulled Hesper out of the waves on the day they met. But neither of them mentioned this. Walt rowed them to shore in his dinghy. “I’ll wait in the boat,” he said. “Got a couple of nets to mend.” He was mildly amused at the expedition, but he assumed that his mother was accompanying Mr. Redlake to make herself useful. He watched them move over the shingle and start up the rise of ground that led to the rock. Two tall figures, thin and erect, except for Redlake’s limp. Ma always did know how to handle queer people, Walt reflected, and whistling through his teeth, he went to work on a lobster pot, splicing together the meshes of string torn by a powerful claw.
Evan toiled up the slope until they reached the beach grass and cluttered piles of rose rock that had split off from the main mass. She heard his breathing sharpen, and saw that his skin had suffused with a dark red. He staggered and caught himself on his stick.
“Here—” she said. “Sit down, Evan.”
He obeyed, slumping onto the nearest rock. He leaned forward, resting his forehead on his hands as they clasped the stick.
“What is it?” she said. “Dizzy?”
He raised his head and beneath the drooping lids, his eyes rested on the lavender haze that shimmered along the far horizon.
“I’m going to die, Hesper.”
She put her hand on his knee and drew it back. “Nonsense. Everyone gets faint spells.”
He jerked his head. “My dear—spare me the rubber-stamp conventions. I didn’t come here for that.”
The sun shone down on them. Two little boys with fishing rods ran down the path and disappeared on the other side of the massive rock. Near Hesper’s foot under a clump of grass there was an empty beer bottle and a fragment of white paper. Below on the beach low waves creamed over the rattling shingle.
“What did you come for?” said Hesper.
He was silent so long that she was frightened, but she saw that he had lost the dusky color and his nostrils no longer flared in the struggle for breath. When he spoke he did not look at her, and his musing voice drifted out toward the water.
“All my life I’ve tried to capture something. An essence of reality. Many times I’ve thought I had it. Now I don’t know. Of late years I’ve been repeating myself. Painting over old canvases. That “Fisher Girl” that Boston’s got...”
She waited. A sandpiper hopped along the beach. Faintly from the anchored boat she heard Walt’s whistle.
“That was you, Hesper. I’ve been painting you in some phase ever since I left you. You were in the gentle English meadows, and the plodding, French peasants, you were in the pine mountains of the Adirondacks, and you are in the storms and the calms of the ocean that I paint now. I never was sure of it until today.”
Her heart trembled and paused. Soft, healing water flowed over the barrenness in her soul. The soft water rose to her eyes. She shut them and turned away.
“Have you seen any of my work?” he asked. She shook her head and he gave a mordant chuckle. “Ah well, you never did understand it anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to die very soon. But first I want to go home and paint one more picture. I think I can now. I needed to see you and Marblehead again.”
“Thank you—” she whispered. “Thank you for telling me that our marriage was not all a terrible mistake, and that somehow I did help you become a great artist.”
He heard the poignancy in her voice through the naive little words and understood her need as he could never have done in the past. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I told you once, Hesper, that what love I had was for you. It was true. It still is.”
Stay here with me, Evan—she cried to him silently, as once she would have cried it aloud. We’re two lonely old people. I’ll take care of you. Stay with me—But the cry never reached her lips. Even now, without the turmoil of passion, she knew there could never be sustained closeness between them. I always wanted more from him than he could give. Learn, learn, learn at last, stupid heart.
He studied her face. “What the years have given you of serenity and inner strength!” he cried with wonder. “More than I ever would have dreamed.”
“Strength and serenity?” she repeated sadly. “Oh no, Evan, I haven’t found either of them.”
He smiled at her and struggled to his feet. “Perhaps you’ve never known very much about yourself, my dear. Let’s go back across the Harbor. This place is no longer part of us.” He glanced at the surrounding mansions, and the smooth velvet lawns.
They called Walt and went back to the town, and as they approached her home from the Little Harbor side, Evan became silent. Nor did he speak again except to say good-bye during the remaining minutes of his visit. They parted very simply, and she stood quiet as he had left her, watching at the door as he limped down the path to the buggy which was to convey him to the depot. She turned back into her home, deeply grateful to him for having released her at last from a long humiliation.
But Evan was in the end to give her far deeper cause for gratitude.
Two months after his visit, she read of his death in the Boston Transcript. And she was unprepared for the violent shock of pain and loss it gave her. Even the boarders noticed that Mrs. Porterman’s usual brisk cheerfulness was replaced by heavy-eyed silences, and wondered a little. And Carla, who escaped from Eleanor’s supervision at “Braeburn” and ferried across to the town whenever she dared, was troubled by the sadness she felt in her grandmother.
But some days later the sadness lightened, though Carla never knew why.
Hesper received a small shallow crate by express, and a terse covering letter from a Maine lawyer stating that Mr. Evan Redlake’s will directed that the accompanying package be sent to her at once upon his death. She carried the wooden crate to her room and locked the door. When she had pried up one of the slats she saw a letter pasted to the back of a canvas. It was addressed to her, and she sat down on the bed and opened it with shaking fingers.
It began without salutation.
I leave you no money, my dear, since your son Henry has plenty, judging from that monstrosity on the Neck. Instead I send you this, my last picture, which is of and for you. It’s the best thing I ever did, and I hope that it, at least, will have meaning for you.
Evan
She sat a long time looking down at the letter. Then she released the canvas from its wrappings, and when she saw what it was she gave a faint cry. For Evan had painted the Hearth and Eagle much as he had painted it long ago in the picture she had stared at in the New York gallery, but there were differences in the painting, and in her.
Again as in the earlier painting the house was bathed in light, but in this picture the shadows were not violent. They blended in exquisite harmony with the earth and the chestnut tree and the limitless blue ocean behind the house. And here a dim figure stood in the doorway, the arms held out in offering and welcome. The figure was that of a woman, ageless, and the features barely sketched, yet in the reflected light the upturned face shone with a quiet strength.
