Hannah reached over, and her hand rested for an instant on Sharon’s, but, when she spoke, she was characteristically unemotional. “How long can you take it? The waiting?”
“Indefinitely,” Sharon said steadily.
Hannah, watching her, knowing the control she was setting upon herself, said slowly, “Mightn’t it help to talk to someone now and then? Someone who was in no way personally involved in this?”
“Heaven knows I talk to enough detectives.”
“No, I didn’t mean anything like that. I meant talk simply as a release. Say what you feel occasionally without restraint. You and Dwight protect each other, and you have too much pride to have hysterics in front of me. I met a man at dinner last week. A brain surgeon really, but he does a lot of psychiatry. His name’s gone for the moment. Extraordinary eyes, but the most impersonal man I ever met.”
Sharon shook bright, loosely waving hair back from her face. “No, thank you, darling. If you run across an obstetrician who makes a specialty of producing lost daughters out of his black bag, you might let me know. But I don’t need anyone to tell me what to think, or how to think it. Not now —or any time.”
4
AFTER ten days in the scarlettis’ house, psyche knew that the fragile thread that the doctor was attempting to reconstruct between the past and the present was all that kept her from running as far as she could get, not only from the house itself but from everything it represented.
From the moment when she had stepped into the car on leaving the hospital, she had felt as if she were enclosed in a glass case heavily insulated against contamination from any outside source. A glass case, furnished with treasures which must not be breathed upon by the infidel, and inhabited by individuals who questioned neither their own superiority nor the inferiority of the masses with whom they communicated as little as possible. If there had been any joy in this self-imposed segregation, she could have understood it better. But, standing of a morning in the embrasure of the drawing-room windows, partially concealed by heavy damask curtains, it seemed to her that a Lithuanian family publicly sprawled on their front steps knew more of joy than the length and breadth of the street she now looked at would experience in decades.
The quietness of the tree-lined street, its great houses set well back from the sidewalk, should have been restful; instead, she found it peculiarly oppressive. On windless days the tar-paper shack had been imprisoned in a basin of almost unearthly quiet, had stood removed from the world in an unmoving, static isolation. And Nick’s barn, visited only by nesting swallows and an occasional contemplative cow, had been enfolded in a timeless, pastoral lethargy. But both these conditions had owed their lack of stress and strain largely to physical factors. Their quiet had been a natural quiet. This residential quiet was unnatural, was the forced result of man-made strictures that forbade all outward evidence of normal, every-day life.
No children played on this street. No dogs frisked on lawns as lacking in interest as unused squares of green velvet. No laundry desecrated back gardens where even the colours of the flowers seemed suppressed. Delivery vans came and went, but they did so quickly and unobtrusively, as though obscurely ashamed of the prosaic functions they serviced. Sometimes a servant, in a black-and-white uniform, would emerge to polish a brass number plate, to sweep steps and walks with the prim decorum befitting her negligible station in life. Or a fashionably slim lady, made ageless at a distance by her rigid conformity to style, would come out to walk as far as a waiting car. But, more often than not, the street lay deserted and empty under the morning sun, as if a sudden plague had struck down all its occupants, nothing remaining of them but the massive brick and stone shells in which they had hidden their manifold fears and uncertainties while still they lived.
That both fear and uncertainty existed in this milieu. Psyche saw quite clearly, and yet it was knowledge which her conscious mind had the greatest difficulty in accepting. Without ever examining the thesis for flaws, she had automatically assumed that the really privileged, the wealthy and well-educated, would be free from petty competition, would be generous and contented in their security. The cocktail hour in Nora’s rose-and-gold drawingroom was enough in itself to disabuse her of this conception, for there she overheard remarks and conversations that, for polished, deliberate malice, shocked her as nothing had ever shocked her before. That those who talked, and those who were talked about, should be interchangeable, should willingly mingle day after day, was beyond her comprehension.
If she had come across failings in another level of society, she would have written them off, ignored them much as she had ignored the practices at Bel’s place. Here, she could do no such thing, for here to all outward intents and purposes was the goal toward which most people, herself included, strove. Deeply troubled, experiencing an increasing confusion of mind and spirit, she knew that, rootless and alone though she was, she would not exchange places with any of the people she met here for anything in the world.
Only in the mornings when the doctor had left the house, and Nora was still in bed, did she achieve anything that approached tranquillity, and even this was marred by servants who appeared to find her constantly in the way. The huge drawing-room, the austerely beautiful dining-room, the delicate French morning-room, the library, even the conservatory, were all invaded by duster, mop, waxer, and vacuum-cleaner; for Nora, when she came down at noon, expected to find the lower floor in perfect order. The best thing. Psyche knew, would have been to stay in her own room, but she fled from its impossible purity as soon as she was dressed, feeling that even the rumpled bed was a profanity she should somehow have managed to avoid.
Metaphorically chained to the house by Dr. Scarletti who, contrary to her own opinion, did not consider her well enough as yet to go out, she would wander from room to room, picking up a book or a magazine, and then putting it down again, unable to concentrate on any one thing. And unconsciously, as the morning wore on, she would become more and more tense as she waited for the first sound of a light, well-bred voice that always greeted her in the same way.
“Maggie darling, where are you hiding?”
Immediately gauche, feeling as if she actually had been hiding, Psyche would go to the foot of the stairs to meet Nora, too quickly, obviously uncertain of herself. And even as she went, she would be thinking with near panic, “This is not me—this uneasy creature so often at fault, with two left hands and several left feet. Something is all wrong, terribly wrong. It can’t be me— or can it?”
And seeing Nora, fresh and cool in a simple linen dress, she would find it, temporarily at least, impossible to believe that there could be anything to criticize adversely in any life Nora elected to lead.
Nora did not say quite the same thing every morning, but it usually added up to the same thing. She was always warmly solicitous. “Darling, didn’t you sleep well? It worries me to see you looking so tired?”
Joint victim of a growing disillusion that she recognized, and of a war of nerves that she had not the slightest idea was being waged against her, Psyche, who had slept very well, would feel fatigue wash over her in heavy waves.
Or it might be, “Darling, you must be terribly pretty when you are well.” And Psyche would have a sensation of deep lines imprinting themselves across the clear contours of her face.
Admiring Nora for her chic, her beautiful sophistication, and her adroit social sense, she was yet perpetually ill at ease in her presence. Nora never seemed to find her lacking in any way, was always swift to cover up her blunders, but things constantly went wrong when they were together. Even though Psyche applied all her quick intelligence to the task of not falling into the same error more than once, fresh pitfalls continued to open up before her.
When Nora had suggested that she be introduced to the people who came to the house as a distant connection of the doctor’s, rather than as a patient, she had seen this as simply further evidence of Nora’s at times overwhelming thoughtfulness on her account, without under
standing that the status of “poor relation” was the lowest category into which she could possibly have been put. If she had been presented as a raving lunatic her social rating would have been considerably improved.
Nora, who might have been excused for forgetting her when there were guests, never did. Nora constantly drew her toward a group, or an individual, and Psyche saw it as entirely her own fault that she would almost at once find herself staring at casually turned backs. What she did not realize was that she wore a mask as cool and composed as those who found her wanting, and that she was rejected not only for failing to belong, but for the unforgivable sin of appearing not to care. Consistently snubbed, she withdrew into the role of observer, as she had done at school, liking what she saw as little as she had then. Given any choice, she would have withdrawn altogether, and taken herself out of range of some of the contradictions that perturbed her. But Nora would not allow this.
“It would be so much easier for you if I weren’t around,” she told Nora.
Nora’s laugh was gently chiding, softly amused. “What would my friends think of me if I were to hide a relation of John’s in the attic when they dropped in?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Psyche said. “I’m sorry.” And thought to herself despairingly, “I am in the wrong again. How did it happen this time?”
One afternoon when a correct, impassive maid had closed the door behind the last of several guests, she turned impulsively to Nora, and said, “Do they really mean all the dreadful things they say?”
Nora, regarding overflowing ash-trays and empty cocktail glasses with distaste, replied, apparently without thinking, “About you, darling? Of course not. How could they? They don’t really know you at all.”
Psyche stared at her. “Do they talk—about me, too?”
“How clumsy of me, Maggie dear! I misunderstood. They only say nice things about you, of course.”
Putting a still too thin hand to her forehead, Psyche pushed back a wave of hair which felt damp and heavy to the touch, and realized as she did so that her head ached. “Of course,” she said levelly.
Nora looked thoroughly upset. “Darling, you simply mustn’t think—look, this is a horrid conversation. Let’s go out and sit by the fountain. The sun is down, and it won’t be too hot for you. You can tell me how you and John are getting on with your experiment. I hear so little about it, and I am so interested.”
Psyche very much disliked talking about herself to Nora. Seen through Nora’s eyes, her life to date appeared as a series of irreparable misfortunes. Although tactful, Nora was so very sympathetic that Psyche sometimes had the unpleasant impression that she was attending her own wake, having in some curious way failed to notice the ultimate disaster that had made such a thing necessary. She even went so far as to wonder once or twice if some part of her had not in truth died under the wheels of a heavy truck—the part that had really cared about living, that had once dreamed dreams of a bright future.
That Psyche should begin to adapt herself in less than a month to an environment previously so foreign to her was something that Nora had not anticipated, but the steadily diminishing number of small, barbed darts with which she could safely prick her was undeniable proof that this was the case.
Psyche, although her original liking for Nora had become considerably tempered, nevertheless believed implicitly in her goodwill, and sought to please her by conforming. She had always held a cigarette between thumb and first finger; she now used her first and second fingers. She learned to conduct herself with assurance at a table as elegant as any at which she could ever imagine sitting. She accepted what the servants did for her with a slight inclination of the head, refraining, at first with the greatest difficulty, from any spoken recognition of service rendered. She left her purse in her bedroom, rather than carrying it wherever she went as the girls at Bel’s had done. She sat, even when relaxed, with her feet crossed neatly under her chair. She no longer shook hands with people when introduced, and no longer said she was pleased to meet them; instead, she smiled, and said ‘How do you do’. She wore her clothes well and they were basically simple, but she increased their simplicity by removing all trimming that was not functional. No revision of her vocabulary seemed necessary because Nora and her friends, when the occasion demanded, swore easily and fluently.
If she had attempted to ape manners to which she was unaccustomed simply because she was self-conscious and ill at ease, she would in all probability have failed, or, at best, succeeded only in part. Motivated by a desire to please, and building on a firm basis of natural grace and poise, she was extraordinarily successful. Satisfied though she was with this success, it yet contained in itself some component of conditions which she found daily more oppressive.
Only in the evenings did the suffocating atmosphere within the glass cage lighten a little. Shut up in the library, partially mesmerized by Scarletti’s forceful personality, she nevertheless regained a foothold on what to her was solid ground. The doctor’s interest, because it was not sympathetic, because it was entirely clinical, steadied her, allowed her to see people and events outside the cage without distortion.
During dinner, the intensity of his regard, rarely releasing her for more than a minute at a time, was very close to unbearable. But as soon as they were alone together, like a judge retiring into the vested anonymity of wig and gown, the man as such became subservient to his purpose. And since that purpose was that she walk, with all the ease and naturalness possible, the familiar paths of her own yesterdays, she renewed herself in the course of increasingly long evening sessions. Like Penelope unraveling each day’s work between sunset and the next sunrise, she was able to untangle the web of uncertainty and distress which Nora’s subtle malice wove around her in the daytime, shaking herself free of invisible strands which, if they had been allowed to accumulate, would have dragged her down as they were intended to do.
Nora, on the other hand, found no relief for the suspicion, jealousy, and outraged vanity that, seeded together, were blossoming in her like some evil, hybrid fungus. If she had thought Psyche unattractive, she would still have fiercely resented her presence in the house. Sensing in her an attraction far more potent than that of mere good looks, her original objective animosity had turned into a vicious dislike that she had more and more difficulty in concealing. The seeking of amusement where and as she pleased, if done discreetly, was one of the rights she had wrested from a marital bargain heavily weighted in her favour. To have freedom thrust upon her, however, was not what she wanted at all, and the soft click of the library door closed against her evening after evening was a fan for fires that scarcely needed fanning. A small, slim cat, its long nails symbolically bloodied, she held a wicked temper on the fraying leash of her own best interests.
It was a leash that snapped on the night when Dr. Scarletti, without thinking, not only closed but locked the library door.
5
THE last friday in august was one of sultry heat that flowed across the day into an oppressive blue-purple twilight.
Sitting deep in a red leather arm-chair to whose contours she now adjusted herself automatically, Psyche looked beyond the desk and its pool of light, beyond the doctor’s handsome mediaeval head, and out through open windows to the fountain, a pale wraith dying slowly, unevenly, in the silent grasp of evening. Listening intently, she sought to catch the echo of falling water, but it was a cool whisper too faint to reach her.
“I believe there is going to be a storm,” the doctor remarked.
Perversity claimed Psyche. “Do you? I don’t.”
A long, spatulate finger placed on the book in front of him, Dr. Scarlatti continued as if she had not spoken. “It will break before midnight. And now, I think we are ready to begin.”
When you say it will storm, a storm is to be expected. Psyche thought with silent irony. When you are ready, we are ready. Odd that I should be of such importance to you in one respect, and so completely unimportant in all others.
I wonder what you would do if I were to get up, say I was weary of this, that as far as I could see it was leading me nowhere, and that what you were getting out of it was of as little interest to me as my concerns appear to be to you.
Looking up, she found Scarletti’s brilliant eyes fixed on her, and, a little taken aback, knew by his next words that he had in this instance read her mind with extreme accuracy.
“You would perhaps like to know one of my most recent deductions,” he said smoothly. “It will undoubtedly please and startle you. Yours is, or was, a wealthy family.”
“That must be guesswork!”
“Conjecture, if you like. I do not indulge in guesswork.”
Neither her face nor her voice betraying how little this idea pleased her, Psyche asked evenly, “What makes you think so?”
“If you don’t mind, we will not go into it in detail at present.”
And if I do mind? We will still not go into it. He must be guessing. I have told him nothing which could have led him to such a conclusion. Or have I? I cannot see the fountain any more. It must be night. And tomorrow will be another day, and then another night, and a day, and a night and—and I don’t think I can stand much more of this.
The doctor, regarding her as he might have regarded a specimen on a dissecting table, knew now that if his conclusions were correct, she could only have been separated from her family in one of two ways, loss or kidnapping. He inclined toward the latter theory because loss without recovery would have been possible only if travelling had been involved, and nothing had turned up to indicate any gap between her hitherto subconscious memories, now shaping into a credible whole, and her known beginnings. He was even prepared to wager that her birthplace was in the same country in which she had been brought up, rather than across the nearby border as it might quite easily have been. With cold exultation, he realized that when his hypothesis was complete, he would in all probability be able to put his hand on immediate, tangible proof of its essential correctness. Another ten days at most and he would be ready to put his theories to the test. A lesser man might have been tempted to jump the gun, but not Scarletti. As a student he had been contemptuous of those who looked up the answers in order to work both ends toward the middle, and he had not changed. To him a solution he could not produce himself was not worth having.
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