by Willa Cather
We went to the theatre, but I remember very little of the performance except a dull heartache, and a conviction that I should never like Mrs. Myra so well again. That was on Saturday. On Monday Aunt Lydia and I were to start for home. We positively did not see the Henshawes again. Sunday morning the maid came with some flowers and a note from Myra, saying that her friend Anne Aylward was having a bad day and had sent for her.
On Monday we took an early boat across the ferry, in order to breakfast in the Jersey station before our train started. We had got settled in our places in the Pullman, the moment of departure was near, when we heard an amused laugh, and there was Myra Henshawe, coming into the car in her fur hat, followed by a porter who carried her bags.
“I didn’t plot anything so neat as this, Liddy,” she laughed, a little out of breath, “though I knew we’d be on the same train. But we won’t quarrel, will we? I’m only going as far as Pittsburgh. I’ve some old friends there. Oswald and I have had a disagreement, and I’ve left him to think it over. If he needs me, he can quite well come after me.”
All day Mrs. Myra was jolly and agreeable, though she treated us with light formality, as if we were new acquaintances. We lunched together, and I noticed, sitting opposite her, that when she was in this mood of high scorn, her mouth, which could be so tender—which cherished the names of her friends and spoke them delicately—was entirely different. It seemed to curl and twist about like a little snake. Letting herself think harm of anyone she loved seemed to change her nature, even her features.
It was dark when we got to Pittsburgh. The Pullman porter took Myra’s luggage to the end of the car. She bade us good-bye, started to leave us, then turned back with an icy little smile. “Oh, Liddy dear, you needn’t have perjured yourself for those yellow cuff-buttons. I was sure to find out, I always do. I don’t hold it against you, but it’s disgusting in a man to lie for personal decorations. A woman might do it, now,… for pearls!” With a bright nod she turned away and swept out of the car, her head high, the long garnet feather drooping behind.
Aunt Lydia was very angry. “I’m sick of Myra’s dramatics,” she declared. “I’ve done with them. A man never is justified, but if ever a man was …”
ONE
Ten years after that visit to New York I happened to be in a sprawling overgrown West-coast city which was in the throes of rapid development—it ran about the shore, stumbling all over itself and finally tumbled untidily into the sea. Every hotel and boarding-house was over-crowded, and I was very poor. Things had gone badly with my family and with me. I had come West in the middle of the year to take a position in a college—a college that was as experimental and unsubstantial as everything else in the place. I found lodgings in an apartment-hotel, wretchedly built and already falling to pieces, although it was new. I moved in on a Sunday morning, and while I was unpacking my trunk, I heard, through the thin walls, my neighbour stirring about; a man, and, from the huskiness of his cough and something measured in his movements, not a young man. The caution of his step, the guarded consideration of his activities, let me know that he did not wish to thrust the details of his housekeeping upon other people any more than he could help.
Presently I detected the ugly smell of gasolene in the air, heard a sound of silk being snapped and shaken, and then a voice humming very low an old German air—yes, Schubert’s Frühlingsglaube; ta ta te—ta | ta—ta ta—ta ta—ta | ta. In a moment I saw the ends of dark neckties fluttering out of the window next mine.
All this made me melancholy—more than the dreariness of my own case. I was young, and it didn’t matter so much about me; for youth there is always the hope, the certainty, of better things. But an old man, a gentleman, living in this shabby, comfortless place, cleaning his neckties of a Sunday morning and humming to himself … it depressed me unreasonably. I was glad when his outer door shut softly and I heard no more of him.
There was an indifferent restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel. As I was going down to my dinner that evening, I met, at the head of the stairs, a man coming up and carrying a large black tin tray. His head was bent, and his eyes were lowered. As he drew aside to let me pass, in spite of his thin white hair and stooped shoulders, I recognised Oswald Henshawe, whom I had not seen for so many years—not, indeed, since that afternoon when he took me to see Sarah Bernhardt play Hamlet.
When I called his name he started, looked at me, and rested the tray on the sill of the blindless window that lighted the naked stairway.
“Nellie! Nellie Birdseye! Can it be?”
His voice was quite uncertain. He seemed deeply shaken, and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead. “But, Nellie, you have grown up! I would not know you. What good fortune for Myra! She will hardly believe it when I tell her. She is ill, my poor Myra. Oh, very ill! But we must not speak of that, nor seem to know it. What it will mean to her to see you again! Her friends always were so much to her, you remember? Will you stop and see us as you come up? Her room is thirty-two; rap gently, and I’ll be waiting for you. Now I must take her dinner. Oh, I hope for her sake you are staying some time. She has no one here.”
He took up the tray and went softly along the uncarpeted hall. I felt little zest for the canned vegetables and hard meat the waitress put before me. I had known that the Henshawes had come on evil days, and were wandering about among the cities of the Pacific coast. But Myra had stopped writing to Aunt Lydia, beyond a word of greeting at Christmas and on her birthday. She had ceased to give us any information about their way of life. We knew that several years after my memorable visit in New York, the railroad to whose president Oswald had long been private secretary, was put into the hands of a receiver, and the retiring president went abroad to live. Henshawe had remained with the new management, but very soon the road was taken over by one of the great trunk lines, and the office staff was cut in two. In the reorganization Henshawe was offered a small position, which he indignantly refused—his wife wouldn’t let him think of accepting it. He went to San Francisco as manager of a commission house; the business failed, and what had happened to them since I did not know.
I lingered long over my dismal dinner. I had not the courage to go upstairs. Henshawe was not more than sixty, but he looked much older. He had the tired, tired face of one who has utterly lost hope.
Oswald had got his wife up out of bed to receive me. When I entered she was sitting in a wheel-chair by an open window, wrapped in a Chinese dressing-gown, with a bright shawl over her feet. She threw out both arms to me, and as she hugged me, flashed into her old gay laugh.
“Now wasn’t it clever of you to find us, Nellie? And we so safely hidden—in earth, like a pair of old foxes! But it was in the cards that we should meet again. Now I understand; a wise woman has been coming to read my fortune for me, and the queen of hearts has been coming up out of the pack when she had no business to; a beloved friend coming out of the past. Well, Nellie, dear, I couldn’t think of any old friends that weren’t better away, for one reason or another, while we are in temporary eclipse. I gain strength faster if I haven’t people on my mind. But you, Nellie … that’s different.” She put my two hands to her cheeks, making a frame for her face. “That’s different. Somebody young, and clear-eyed, chock-full of opinions, and without a past. But you may have a past, already? The darkest ones come early.”
I was delighted. She was … she was herself, Myra Henshawe! I hadn’t expected anything so good. The electric bulbs in the room were shrouded and muffled with coloured scarfs, and in that light she looked much less changed than Oswald. The corners of her mouth had relaxed a little, but they could still curl very scornfully upon occasion; her nose was the same sniffy little nose, with its restless, arched nostrils, and her double chin, though softer, was no fuller. A strong cable of grey-black hair was wound on the top of her head, which, as she once remarked, “was no head for a woman at all, but would have graced one of the wickedest of the Roman emperors.”
Her bed was in the alcove
behind her. In the shadowy dimness of the room I recognised some of the rugs from their New York apartment, some of the old pictures, with frames peeling and glass cracked. Here was Myra’s little inlaid tea-table, and the desk at which Oswald had been writing that day when I dropped in upon their quarrel. At the windows were the dear, plum-coloured curtains, their cream lining streaked and faded—but the sight of them rejoiced me more than I could tell the Henshawes.
“And where did you come from, Nellie? What are you doing here, in heaven’s name?”
While I explained myself she listened intently, holding my wrist with one of her beautiful little hands, which were so inexplicably mischievous in their outline, and which, I noticed, were still white and well cared for.
“Ah, but teaching, Nellie! I don’t like that, not even for a temporary expedient. It’s a cul-de-sac. Generous young people use themselves all up at it; they have no sense. Only the stupid and the phlegmatic should teach.”
“But won’t you allow me, too, a temporary eclipse?”
She laughed and squeezed my hand. “Ah, we wouldn’t be hiding in the shadow, if we were five-and-twenty! We were throwing off sparks like a pair of shooting stars, weren’t we, Oswald? No, I can’t bear teaching for you, Nellie. Why not journalism? You could always make your way easily there.”
“Because I hate journalism. I know what I want to do, and I’ll work my way out yet, if only you’ll give me time.”
“Very well, dear.” She sighed. “But I’m ambitious for you. I’ve no patience with young people when they drift. I wish I could live their lives for them; I’d know how! But there it is; by the time you’ve learned the short cuts, your feet puff up so that you can’t take the road at all. Now tell me about your mother and my Lydia.”
I had hardly begun when she lifted one finger and sniffed the air. “Do you get it? That bitter smell of the sea? It’s apt to come in on the night wind. I live on it. Sometimes I can still take a drive along the shore. Go on; you say that Lydia and your mother are at present in disputation about the possession of your late grandfather’s portrait. Why don’t you cut it in two for them, Nellie? I remember it perfectly, and half of it would be enough for anybody!”
While I told her any amusing gossip I could remember about my family, she sat crippled but powerful in her brilliant wrappings. She looked strong and broken, generous and tyrannical, a witty and rather wicked old woman, who hated life for its defeats, and loved it for its absurdities. I recalled her angry laugh, and how she had always greeted shock or sorrow with that dry, exultant chuckle which seemed to say: “Ah-ha, I have one more piece of evidence, one more, against the hideous injustice God permits in this world!”
While we were talking, the silence of the strangely balmy February evening was rudely disturbed by the sound of doors slamming and heavy tramping overhead. Mrs. Henshawe winced, a look of apprehension and helplessness, a tortured expression, came over her face. She turned sharply to her husband, who was resting peacefully in one of their old, deep chairs, over by the muffled light. “There they are, those animals!”
He sat up. “They have just come back from church,” he said in a troubled voice.
“Why should I have to know when they come back from church? Why should I have the details of their stupid, messy existence thrust upon me all day long, and half the night?” she broke out bitterly. Her features became tense, as from an attack of pain, and I realised how unable she was to bear things.
“We are unfortunate in the people who live over us,” Oswald explained. “They annoy us a great deal. These new houses are poorly built, and every sound carries.”
“Couldn’t you ask them to walk more quietly?” I suggested.
He smiled and shook his head. “We have, but it seems to make them worse. They are that kind of people.”
His wife broke in. “The palavery kind of Southerners; all that slushy gush on the surface, and no sensibilities whatever—a race without consonants and without delicacy. They tramp up there all day long like cattle. The stalled ox would have trod softer. Their energy isn’t worth anything, so they use it up gabbling and running about, beating my brains into a jelly.”
She had scarcely stopped for breath when I heard a telephone ring overhead, then shrieks of laughter, and two people ran across the floor as if they were running a foot-race.
“You hear?” Mrs. Henshawe looked at me triumphantly. “Those two silly old hens race each other to the telephone as if they had a sweetheart at the other end of it. While I could still climb stairs, I hobbled up to that woman and implored her, and she began gushing about ‘mah sistah’ and ‘mah son,’ and what ‘rah-fined’ people they were.… Oh, that’s the cruelty of being poor; it leaves you at the mercy of such pigs! Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.” She leaned back, exhausted, and shut her eyes.
“Come, Nellie,” said Oswald, softly. He walked down the hall to my door with me. “I’m sorry the disturbance began while you were there. Sometimes they go to the movies, and stay out later,” he said mournfully. “I’ve talked to that woman and to her son, but they are very unfeeling people.”
“But wouldn’t the management interfere in a case of sickness?”
Again he shook his head. “No, they pay a higher rent than we do—occupy more rooms. And we are somewhat under obligation to the management.”
TWO
I soon discovered the facts about the Henshawes’ present existence. Oswald had a humble position, poorly paid, with the city traction company. He had to be at his desk at nine o’clock every day except Sunday. He rose at five in the morning, put on an old duck suit (it happened to be a very smart one, with frogs and a military collar, left over from prosperous times), went to his wife’s room and gave her her bath, made her bed, arranged her things, and then got their breakfast. He made the coffee on a spirit lamp, the toast on an electric toaster. This was the only meal of the day they could have together, and as they had it long before the ruthless Poindexters overhead began to tramp, it was usually a cheerful occasion.
After breakfast Oswald washed the dishes. Their one luxury was a private bath, with a large cupboard, which he called his kitchen. Everything else done, he went back to his own room, put it in order, and then dressed for the office. He still dressed very neatly, though how he managed to do it with the few clothes he had, I could not see. He was the only man staying in that shabby hotel who looked well-groomed. As a special favour from his company he was allowed to take two hours at noon, on account of his sick wife. He came home, brought her her lunch from below, then hurried back to his office.
Myra made her own tea every afternoon, getting about in her wheel-chair or with the aid of a cane. I found that one of the kindest things I could do for her was to bring her some little sandwiches or cakes from the Swedish bakery to vary her tinned biscuit. She took great pains to get her tea nicely; it made her feel less shabby to use her own silver tea things and the three glossy English cups she had carried about with her in her trunk. I used often to go in and join her, and we spent some of our pleasantest hours at that time of the day, when the people overhead were usually out. When they were in, and active, it was too painful to witness Mrs. Henshawe’s suffering. She was acutely sensitive to sound and light, and the Poindexters did tramp like cattle—except that their brutal thumping hadn’t the measured dignity which the step of animals always has. Mrs. Henshawe got great pleasure from flowers, too, and during the late winter months my chief extravagance and my chief pleasure was in taking them to her.
One warm Saturday afternoon, early in April, we went for a drive along the shore. I had hired a low carriage with a kindly Negro driver. Supported on his arm and mine, Mrs. Henshawe managed to get downstairs. She looked much older and more ill in her black broadcloth coat and a black taffeta hat that had once been smart. We took with us her furs and an old steamer blanket. It was a beautiful, soft spring day. The road, unfortunately, kept winding away from the sea. At last we came out on
a bare headland, with only one old twisted tree upon it, and the sea beneath.
“Why, Nellie!” she exclaimed, “it’s like the cliff in Lear, Gloucester’s cliff, so it is! Can’t we stay here? I believe this nice darkey man would fix me up under the tree there and come back for us later.”
We wrapped her in the rug, and she declared that the trunk of the old cedar, bending away from the sea, made a comfortable back for her. The Negro drove away, and I went for a walk up the shore because I knew she wanted to be alone. From a distance I could see her leaning against her tree and looking off to sea, as if she were waiting for something. A few steamers passed below her, and the gulls dipped and darted about the headland, the soft shine of the sun on their wings. The afternoon light, at first wide and watery-pale, grew stronger and yellower, and when I went back to Myra it was beating from the west on her cliff as if thrown by a burning-glass.
She looked up at me with a soft smile—her face could still be very lovely in a tender moment. “I’ve had such a beautiful hour, dear; or has it been longer? Light and silence: they heal all one’s wounds—all but one, and that is healed by dark and silence. I find I don’t miss clever talk, the kind I always used to have about me, when I can have silence. It’s like cold water poured over fever.”
I sat down beside her, and we watched the sun dropping lower toward his final plunge into the Pacific. “I’d love to see this place at dawn,” Myra said suddenly. “That is always such a forgiving time. When that first cold, bright streak comes over the water, it’s as if all our sins were pardoned; as if the sky leaned over the earth and kissed it and gave it absolution. You know how the great sinners always came home to die in some religious house, and the abbot or the abbess went out and received them with a kiss?”
