A Town of Masks

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  She returned to the armchair, “Dennis, I’m not criticizing you. My own life has been filled with dreams, sublimations, and I’ve rarely managed to do anything with them—as you have.”

  Again he apologized, this time for his belligerency. How young he was, really. And now, sitting at ease in his discomfort, she felt a maturity beyond what she thought she deserved from her experience.

  “Are you afraid of the truth?” she asked, more to her own thoughts than his.

  “I don’t think so, but I guess I am sometimes. I suppose everybody is. Are you?”

  “Mortally.”

  He grinned a little, studying the ash on the end of his cigarette. “I’d never have guessed it.”

  How she would have liked to pursue that, to ask him what he had thought of her, with that beginning. But not yet, not until she had managed to communicate something of her hopes for him, of her own dreams of giving.

  “Use the vase there as an ash tray,” she said.

  “It’s too nice for that,” he said, looking about for something else.

  “It’s as ugly as sin and you know it.”

  He glanced at her and away in some confusion. “I thought maybe it was an heirloom.”

  “What mortal worth if it’s put to no use?” she said, feeling some familiarity in the conversation, as though she had been over the self-same words before. Recognition of them burst upon her—Maria Verlaine commenting on her inheritance. She thrust it from her mind. “Am I to be pardoned for my snooping?”

  “Did you like what you read?”

  “I found it—very exciting.”

  He smiled, his eyes alive with glee. “Funny, I’d have thought it would shock hell out of you—Excuse me, Miss Blake.”

  She lifted her head. “It did shock hell out of me. All my Presbyterian qualms—qualmed. I have no doubt you will find the same response in other provincials, and some of them may not care for excitement. Personally, I love it. And as long as I live, I shall take it where I find it.” The words escaped rather more melodramatic than she intended. “You will give something to the library contest?” she added quickly.

  “I don’t know, Miss Blake.”

  It had not occurred to her that he might hesitate. Well it was that she had brought on this occasion. “You have heard about it?”

  “Yes. Miss Merritt told me.”

  “And encouraged you to enter something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you show them to Miss Merritt?”

  “I haven’t shown them to anyone,” he said.

  “If they were mine,” said Hannah, “I should soon make the world aware of them. This should be a good start. Nor, I dare say, would you object to a thousand dollars?”

  “No. But then I might not win it.”

  She got up and went over to him, putting her hand lightly on his shoulder. “Do you believe that, Dennis?”

  “No.”

  “Good. There are enough things to be timid about, but not your heart’s work. I’m going to make a pot of coffee. Will you have some with me?”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “There are books enough here to distract you, I think. I won’t be long.”

  What a difference to her this walk from the study to the kitchen from that which she had taken when he was at the door! Oh, that it should not again be a tunnel of clacking heels and the sound of her own fears—that a stranger at the door might indeed be a stranger, and a friend someone to whom she might say, “Welcome home.”

  When she returned with the coffee tray, he was sitting on the arm of a chair beneath the book shelves near her father’s desk. He brought a book with him, coming to help her. Her pleasure in that little gesture, his bringing the book and speaking of it presently, was consummate.

  “Yeats,” he said. “There’s something here I love, this image: ‘How love fled, and paced upon the mountains overhead, and hid his face amid a crowd of stars.’”

  “Lovely,” she murmured.

  “May I read you the whole poem?”

  “I should like that,” she said. She sat quite still and very erect and tried to listen. Certain of the words did break through her own heart’s song. When he was done, she said, “Thank you,” and poured the coffee, feeling a measure of dignity about her in this little work of hospitality.

  He was watching her, she knew, the book now closed in his hand. Finally he said, “Thank you,” the emphasis on “you,” and fled with the book to its place on the shelf.

  And glad she was to have the moment, for she could not have met his eyes without tears in her own. It was too much, she thought, to place on him the burden of her need, the knowledge of her hunger. Nor did she want to place them, having a quick courage sufficient to their containment. And she was desperately grateful now that he had not understood the ruse she had made of Sophie’s dotage on him. God was sometimes good in His limiting of one man’s knowledge of another’s mind and heart.

  “The tea cakes are Sophie’s,” she said when he returned. It was the best of retribution she could make at the moment. “She cooks and bakes so well. What a little housekeeper she will make one day.”

  He took the cup she handed him, and sipped. “The coffee, I presume, is yours. It’s delicious.”

  “You’re very kind,” she said.

  He told her then of why he had come to Campbell’s Cove, his love of boats, especially sailing boats and why he was most content among the rough and hardy Irish fishermen. “I know the feeling about them in the rest of the town, Miss Blake, that if they’d bring themselves up to date, they’d have a going business, a good living. But what’s a good living? A fancy car? A television set?”

  “To some people.”

  “Did you ever hear them talk?”

  “Sometimes. They’re not an island down there. They come into the bank now and then.”

  “I mean really talk—of where they came from, of storms, catches of fish, heroes. They’ve a language of their own and it’s like singing.”

  And telling of it, his was like singing, she thought.

  “And I don’t blame them at all for sticking with their old-fashioned boats and shaking their fists at the hot rods on water. Everybody seems to have a hot rod inside of him today. I say to hell with them. Let them go and shoot up the world and to hell with them.”

  “And if a part of the world shows every intention of shooting them up, what then, Dennis?”

  He looked at her. “I say you can’t die any faster at home.”

  She studied the residue in her cup, a dark crescent. “I’m afraid that’s more poetry than truth.”

  “So many people have died for truth. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if they could live for poetry?”

  “You are a pacifist,” she mused.

  “I guess I am now.”

  “Interesting for an Irishman.”

  “The Irish is far back in me,” he said. “It’s just—you called it an affinity, I think. I’ve got an affinity for a lot of things, Miss Blake.” He set his cup on the tray and leaned back in the chair, his legs stretched the length of the coffee table. He told her then of the boats he had sailed, of one which he had rescued from the bottom of a sound in Florida, of his travels and his hopes as a poet, but nothing of himself before she had known him. And she did not really care about that now.

  “I’m staying too long,” he said finally.

  “You are always welcome,” she said, getting up with him, wishing that he would stay on, but content, too, in his going that she might contemplate all that had passed between them. She led the way to the side door. “This is an old house and it has many charms—but none equal of its guests. Next time you will come as such, Dennis.”

  “Thank you, Miss Blake.”

  She extended her hand as was her custom on the departure of guests. He took it and lifted it briefly to his lips.

  10

  THESE WERE SINGING DAYS. No amount of work was too much for Hannah, and no amount of leisure more than she
could bear of it. Dennis had not come again, and when she passed him in the garden, he was as remote as ever, perhaps even a bit more formal. But that was shyness, she knew, self-consciousness that might have come over him on rereading his poetry with a view to what she had taken from it—from his tortured dreams of a woman whom, he had said in effect, he had never known that intimately.

  At home evenings, Hannah kept a sort of vigil, pleasant enough in itself, for she had found, much to her satisfaction, that she did indeed like poetry, whether it was Keogh or Yeats, Byron, or even the early works of Andrew Sykes. And she had made a fine selection considering the random way she had gone about it in Chicago. Even the arrangement on the shelves pleased her. She had crowded her father’s bird books with the poets she thought he might have liked—Burns and Donnie, Blake, and too much of Tennyson. She herself had had enough of him with the first Idyl in high school, and yet there was a phrase of his she had memorized to some purpose once, and which often since had run through her mind: His honor rooted in dishonor stood, and faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. Learned, no doubt in the throes of self-recrimination over a deception practiced on some love of the moment. She had had many loves in those days, many heartaches, which, as she thought back on the mood of them now, seemed to have had deeper pleasure in the ache than in the promise.

  She had observed, sitting evenings in the study, that Dennis took his supper early and returned to his room by six-thirty most nights. He would be working, she decided, for as the twilight deepened, his light went on, and sometimes, watching from a darkened window, she could see him move about, pacing in thought. At nine or thereabouts, his light would go out, and he would stride down the path, often whistling a tune. At other times, his muse faring poorly, he walked slowly, silent, his head thrust ahead of him. She was a well of sympathy if he would not stop at it. But he was sufficient to his own distress, as she thought great minds must be.

  Within an hour he would return, and his light would burn until well after midnight. That he would come to her with this new work was a hope she tried not to cherish, having no defense against its failure. Only the actual did she now permit herself to dwell upon. She tried to remember how his room looked. She had been frugal in furnishing it, bed, table, two chairs and a dresser, with one floor lamp. He should have a desk lamp. How she would do that room were she given the chance now! That kind of favor she must not try to bestow! She thumped her hand on the table in determination against the constant, nagging impulse. Never again was she to try the purchase of affection. Her life was strewn with such purchases. She could see them lying about, abandoned, a shattered nursery in the wake of spoiled children.

  She paged the volume of Andrew Sykes in her hand and read an occasional passage. His early things, she had to admit, were heroic, with a fine sweep and a rich sense of pageantry. But of late, he had taken to belittling as though he were ashamed of his first bold songs. No one sang bold songs any more, she thought. Poets were constricted with introspection, self-fears, disillusion. A whole section of the book in her hand was devoted to a hymnist Sykes had discovered to have been a slave trader. What earthly matter, Hannah thought, two hundred years later? Were his hymns less of a prayer as sung today? What possessed such men that they must bedevil legendary heroes? Fear to bedevil the leaders of their own time? Sykes had no right to that fear, his fame secure, his pocketbook ample. And Dennis Keogh had no authority.

  One day she would like to take issue with the excellent Mr. Sykes and she could do it, too, she thought, if Dennis were beside her. And it was not beyond propriety for Hannah Blake to invite the master poet to her house—in the company perhaps of Mrs. Verlaine. Nor could Maria refuse, with Sykes coming. And this is Dennis Keogh, Mr. Sykes. Some day he will wear your crown—She got a pencil and composed a tentative invitation to dinner.

  In the morning, on the way to the bank, she stopped at the library. Elizabeth Merritt was at the desk, the sun shining down on her from the domed skylight.

  “You’re wearing a halo,” Hannah said aloud, seeing no one in the reading rooms. “The sunlight.” She nodded upward.

  “And carrying a pitchfork,” said Elizabeth. “I’ve got Mr. Sykes in the study room.”

  Hannah leaned across the desk. “I have the distinct impression that he mistakes himself for George Bernard Shaw.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “He gets more devastating every year. That’s certain. I have a new mystery for you, Miss Blake.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll have time for it. Did he consent to judge the contest?”

  “He did. I wrote you last night on it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he expected sooner or later to be kicked out of the Cove, and that this year was as good as the next.”

  “I was just thinking last night, someone should take him down a notch. That’s going to happen, you know. He’s not the only poet in the country.”

  “He might surprise us and be very generous. He enjoys his own venom, perhaps for want of criticism.”

  “Obviously,” Hannah said. “Has anything come in?”

  “A couple of things.”

  “Did you read them?”

  “I don’t feel that I should read the entries, Miss Blake.”

  “You’re right, of course. I still feel that you would be the better judge, Andrew Sykes or no.”

  “I’d get all wrapped up emotionally,” Elizabeth said. “Besides, librarians aren’t supposed to read books—just titles and jacket blurbs.”

  “Why emotionally?” Hannah demanded.

  Elizabeth looked at her. “I know most everyone in the Cove.”

  “Oh,” Hannah said. “I must get on to work. I hope—” Her sentence was lost in the appearance of Sykes, his white hair tossing like scud, as he charged into the room. She retreated to the rack of new books.

  “A monkey couldn’t find a louse by the light in that room, Miss Merritt.”

  “Miss Blake, there’s a complaint for the next board meeting,” Elizabeth said, throwing the words at Hannah. “You know Miss Blake, Mr. Sykes?”

  Oh, what a piece of mischief, Hannah thought, and yet she was pleased.

  “We met at the Christians’ festival last year,” Sykes said after a moment’s scrutiny so intense that Hannah squared her shoulders should there be insult in it. “You wore a silvery cloud thing, several of them in fact.” He gestured grotesquely with his hands as though he were describing an explosion. “I think you remarked that you felt like Brunhilde.”

  “I said I felt that I looked like Brunhilde,” Hannah said, proving to herself by the amendment that she would not be cowed by the old wasp.

  “Mmm,” he agreed. “How terrible to feel like her among the Christians. Nice to see you, Miss Blake.” He returned to Elizabeth. “Am I to hold a candle in there until the next board meeting?”

  “No, but you can hold the ladder for me while I go up with a larger bulb, if you want it now.”

  “Under those circumstances, I certainly want it now.” He winked at Hannah as she departed.

  The old reprobate, Hannah thought. No wonder he had a way with Maria. For all her wish to do it, however, she could not bring herself by word or letter to extend the invitation. She would just have to wait on the contest, that was all. She was forever overrunning the goal.

  The unfortunate thing was that having permitted herself the distraction of the plan to entertain Andrew Sykes, she was no longer content in leisure. She turned her energies toward civil defense work, which, in the Cove, lagged or accelerated with her interest. John Copithorne, as president of the town council, was nominal head of it, but Hannah the working power. During the school year, she had not failed once a week to inspect the preparedness drills. Now she studied the map of the town, but even as she ran her fingers over the designated shelters, she knew that the map was only a ritual, a pretense in fact. A hitherto neglected area of the Cove was about to get her attention: Front Street.

  11

  HANNAH WATCHED THE P
REPARATIONS on the dock, the rolling of barrels, each to an appointed mooring, the names or initials lettered on them in black paint: Mulroy, O’G., Fitz, Shean. The hands waiting here for the fishermen’s return were for the most part old men no longer equal to the long day’s work or boys who might stray from their fathers’ trade in the daytime, so long as they were on the docks at night to make fast the boats, to weigh in the catch with the commissionmen, to stretch and repair the nets, to clean the boats.

  There was poetry here, she thought, watching the curls of smoke from the old men’s pipes, as they sat hunched and almost immobile, their faces to the sun, their eyes trained to it near to blindness, the poetry of a way of life that was dying slowly. Strange that so few people in the Cove saw it that way. But, she realized, it had taken a poet’s association to bring it home to her.

  “O’Gorman, ho!” the cry went up.

  Looking to the mouth of the Cove, she saw one and then another of the laden boats humping slowly across the gold-rippled water. Even the sound of their motors was like phlegm in an old man’s throat. A flight of gulls pursued them, whooping and scolding.

  O’Gorman was first out in the morning, and signaled the time of return. Nicknamed “the mayor” of Front Street, he was the arbitrator of disputes, the judge of weather, and the father of eleven children, one of whom was on the dock to catch the rope which the big man flung to him.

  O’Gorman climbed from the boat and rocked a moment on his feet as though he were steadier on water. His greeting to his son, the boy his height if not his bulk, was a sound thump on the forearm with his doubled fist. Hannah thrilled to the show of strength in it and to something more that she no doubt brought to it in her romantic fashion—a defiance of a new order which dared to say men like him were obsolete. She left the car where she had parked it next to a refrigerated truck and waited for O’Gorman at the end of the dock.

  He frowned when he first saw her, knowing her from the bank where last year for the first time in his life he had been obliged to go for a loan. His greeting was friendly, but without enthusiasm.