To Look and Pass

by Taylor Caldwell

  Though a fire burned in the little parlor, it seemed no longer gay and full of joy. A chill gloom had descended upon it; even the lamps looked cold, and the snow that was heaped on the window ledges sent their chill breath into the room. Before the fireplace, crouched in a chair, sat Mortimer Rugby, rubbing his hands. His head was sunken between the shabby folds of his coat, and his hair, white and thin though still long, looked like wisps of dead hair on the head of a skull. He turned his long and sunken face to me as I entered, blinked behind his glasses, and nodded. I could hear the dry whisper of his palms as he kept on rubbing them together. I had not shivered outside in the bitter cold of the February night, but I shivered now. I sat down opposite the old man, and Livy sat down between us. She had been knitting, apparently, and now resumed it. The small coals in the fireplace crackled, but they gave out no warmth, and I started involuntarily when a sudden wind rose and rattled the half-frozen windowpanes.

  “Cold night,” I said. Livy’s needles clicked and she did not answer, but Mortimer nodded again. I remembered the room vividly as it had been in my childhood, bright and sunny and warm, with pots of geraniums burning red and bravely against the snow, and Sarah’s happy voice. It was like a nightmare to me now. There was a faint odor of decay over everything, and I saw that the white paint on the gay little table was peeling off, showing patches of dull gray under it. I stood up, restlessly.

  “You didn’t go to Bee’s party, I see, Mr. Rugby,” I said. He shook his head without looking at me, then said dryly: “I don’t like funerals, even if the corpse is set out pretty and natural and there are lots of flowers.”

  “I don’t understand it,” I said gloomily. “I don’t know why Dan moved into town. He liked his farm out there; he seemed happy, for once. I thought nothing in the world would tear him away from it.”

  “Bee didn’t like the farm, I suppose,” said Livy quietly, without looking at me.

  “Oh, it’s impossible!” I burst out violently. “It’s—it’s like an Alice in Wonderland thing. Grotesque. I can’t believe it’s really Dan. I know him; he’s not changed underneath. What has she done to him?” No one answered this; it was as if I had not spoken, and I went on dully, “She’s poisonous. She’s a—a sort of upas tree!”

  Mortimer glanced across at me with a sudden wrinkling of his face into a smile. There was something wryly humorous in his voice as he remarked casually: “Upas tree. That’s strong language. We three here don’t like Bee. But I wouldn’t make her so dramatic, if I were you, Jim. Too dramatic. I’ve done with drama; it only makes you ridiculous. Life isn’t dramatic. It’s just long, dull misery. No, I never liked Bee. You make her out to be some sort of a bloodsucker, sort of heroic or something, splendid, like Lucifer. She isn’t. She’s just a nasty, mean girl, selfish, sly, suspicious and cruel. But nothing so magnificent as a upas tree, which I hear bears very lovely flowers. There’s nothing lovely about Bee.” He paused. “I used to think Bee was a very bright girl, but it’s only the brightness of cunning and self-seeking and greed. Like a weasel. Yes, there’s something very much like a weasel about her,” he added thoughtfully.

  “And Dan’s the poor rabbit,” I exclaimed bitterly.

  I expected him to smile again, but he merely looked at me oddly. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know. I’m afraid not.”

  His remarked puzzled me then, but a long time later I remembered it, and marvelled at his penetration and the fear that seemed to hang on his words.

  “I still don’t understand it,” I fumed. “It’s beyond me. I can’t see Dan being the perfect young husband around South Kenton, with a girl like Bee. It’s like a bad dream. At any rate, I’m not going near their damn house.”

  Neither answered me. I looked restlessly from Livy, pale and silent in her chair, and Mortimer leaning toward the fire. Mortimer’s legs were like mere sticks in his trousers, which fell over them in greenish folds. I thought involuntarily of the thickness of my father’s thighs, straining against the cloth, held apart to give comfortable room to his great round belly. Mortimer was drawing his thin and trembling hand, knotted and corded, over his face, and I thought of my father’s glistening white teeth which he picked daintily with a gold toothpick. The involuntary thought occurred to me that my father represented lusty and bellicose life, splendid at the table, loud and hearty of laugh, shrewd of mind though not very intelligent. And here was Mortimer who had thought much and suffered much, who had bruised his poor knees on the rough slopes of Parnassus without arriving at the summit, and now lay exhausted at the foot, defeated but understanding. My father had never seen the distant, incandescent peak of that mountain, and life in its littleness and meanness had satisfied him. He squeezed the last drop of milk from its udders. Nevertheless, I thought that he was the happier of the two. It was very puzzling to a young idealist. Must understanding of life bring decay and death and chill hopelessness? Is the only happiness in gusty animal enjoyments, in sitting back on fat haunches and tearing at red fragments with a strong teeth?

  I wanted to go up to see Sarah, but Livy, with some agitation, asked me not to. Sarah was not really ill, she explained, but very tired. She did not add “queer,” but I knew that was what she was holding back. We all sank into a cold depression. At last Mortimer rose and said he must go. I wondered with some resentment what he had been saying before I came, and why he did not say it to me. Livy asked him to remain for some hot coffee, but he refused. She helped him on with his galoshes with an almost daughterly tenderness. Just before leaving he put his hand on her shoulder, and pressed it, looking down into her eyes sorrowfully and understandingly. She averted her head quickly, and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. Grudgingly, I offered to drive him home, though I was annoyed at leaving Livy. But she asked me eagerly to return after taking Mortimer home, and I was mollified.

  The parlor seemed even more gloomy and dim when I returned than before. Livy had put a small black shawl over her shoulders, and I was alarmed at her pallor. She looked tired and stricken as she gave me a wan smile. I sat down near her and took her hand.

  “Livy, you look sick,” I said. “Think of me as a doctor and not a friend. What is wrong?”

  She smiled at me suddenly with such an utterly amused smile that I felt foolish and pompous and young. She did not withdraw her hand.

  “Oh, don’t, Jim,” she said, and her voice was full of her old cheeriness. “There’s nothing wrong. Don’t be prosy like your father. I’m just tired, I expect, dragging out every morning in the snow, and everything. And I don’t believe I like children very much,” she added frankly. “In fact sometimes I hate them. I don’t see how their parents bear them. I said something like that to Mrs. King once, and she was very indignant, and asked me significantly if I had ever said that to anyone else. She seemed to imply that it wouldn’t be good for my job. She also added that I was a born old maid; old maids, it appears, always hate children, and long to murder them in secret.” She laughed lightly.

  I looked at her with grave longing, and chaffed her hand between mine. The fingertips were cold and tremulous. I noticed that she did not look at me, but at the fire, and that the smile on her face was a little fixed.

  “Livy, why don’t you marry me soon, now?” I asked gently.

  I expected her to remove her hand. I expected evasion, again. But to my joyful amazement, she turned her face to me. It had become quiet and a little frightened; her eyes were slightly distended, and there was a wrinkling of pain in the clear brows above them.

  “Are you sure, Jim?” she whispered. I was so surprised and overjoyed that I could not speak, but I must have looked very eloquent, for she smiled, and put her free hand to her cheek. I knelt beside her, drew her tired head down to my shoulder, and held her tightly. It seemed all at once to me that my depression and all my puzzling thoughts of problems retreated to a dreamy distance as I held her. I felt her slow tears against my neck, and I kissed them away. They continued to roll down her cheeks, but under
them she was smiling with a heartbroken quietness.

  “Just all worn out,” I thought sympathetically. “My poor little Livy.”

  I forgot everything as I sat beside her, planning eagerly for our future together. She listened, nodding, her eyes fixed intently on my face as though she was trying to make it real. When I kissed her goodnight at last, her lips were cold but very gentle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  South Kenton’s exclusive little circle was all agog over the housewarming of Bee and Dan Hendricks. Extravagant praise was expressed about their house, with its black marble fireplaces, thick rugs, rich red draperies and rosewood and mahogany furniture, glistening silver, fine linens, new lamps and beautiful grand piano. A dozen times or more I heard about the high ceilings, the circular staircase with its heavy carpeting, its paneled dining room and fine library. It was only after insistence that I heard much of Dan and Bee.

  Bee? Oh, yes, she had been very dear, very gentle and submissive, and girlishly pleased at her guests’ praises. She had worn, said my mother, a beautiful black velvet dress with old lace, and had looked exceptionally pretty. She was a perfect hostess, and did credit to her mother. Everyone had been enormously delighted with her and had petted her lavishly. It was just a little harsh of Sarah that she had not been there. No one could understand her.

  Dan? This question always brought a blank though puzzled expression to their faces. Oh, Dan had been all right. Very quiet, but gentlemanly, and a little too aloof. He had been caught several times in the background, smiling to himself. No one seemed to like that smile. But he would “do.” There was an improvement in him already. In time, she would make a man of him. He was not antagonistic at all, though, had not said one outrageous thing. He had seemed just a little too silent for general pleasure, however. The gentlemen had made dignified overtures to him, with a little something in their manner that suggested they were willing to be convinced and conciliated, but he had responded only courteously. He had been somewhat dense.

  There had been a marvelous supper, extravagantly served. People smacked their lips happily, remembering it. In short, the whole thing had been a success, and South Kenton received the young couple to its matronly bosom.

  When we heard that Sarah had refused admission to Bee and Dan a few days later when they had called upon her, public opinion became very sharp against her. After all, this was carrying the thing too far. Haven’t we forgiven, South Kenton asked with virtuous surprise? What is the matter with Sarah? But Sarah shut herself into her house in silence, and would say nothing.

  I did not see Dan, but I saw Beatrice at a distance, elegantly attired and elegantly mannered. I did not speak to her; I avoided her pointedly. When she and Dan called upon my parents, I made my escape before they arrived. My parents could not understand me. My father jeered at me for being a Pharisee and recalled my boyhood friendship with Dan. I remained stubbornly silent. I could not explain.

  And Sarah remained silent. On the few times I saw her, when I called on Livy, she spoke to me listlessly, though with her old affection. She seemed to have aged very much. She never spoke of Dan and Beatrice.

  Then my curiosity about Dan was swallowed up in my great anxiety over Livy. Towards the end of March she became ill, having caught cold in a sleet storm. It developed into pneumonia, and for a time life became a hot nightmare, dim and hideous, while my father and myself fought for her survival. Sarah nursed her with passionate absorption, relieved for short intervals by my mother and other elderly ladies. Finally the poor girl won through, and the fever subsided leaving her beaten and haggard, with all her bones painfully visible.

  I breathed easier. Livy would live. For the first time I was conscious of total exhaustion. I had devoted all my time to Livy, and my father looked tired, also. When Livy was stronger, we decided that we would be married about June fifth. She seemed content. I had the impression that she had been to a far and dreadful place and was now resigned. I could not shake off this impression, and it depressed me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My parents were outraged and aghast when Livy and I pleaded for a quiet wedding. Their only son, to be married furtively, like a farm boy and a farm girl! They would not hear of it for some time, and my mother actually made preparations for a big wedding. At the last moment, however, Livy had a sort of relapse, a sinking back into a sick lethargy which alarmed both me and my father. This alarm convinced my mother that any excitement would be bad for the girl, of whom she was sincerely fond.

  My father said to me quietly, and with some hesitation: “You don’t think, son, that Livy’s a sickly girl, do you? Her parents weren’t what you call husky. A man might as well cut his throat as marry an unhealthy woman. She’ll make his life hell, fill up all his days with pills and whinings and self-pity, and won’t show up with any disposition to warm his bed.” He grinned at me sheepishly. “And there’ll always be bills unpaid, and the house run by hired help, and no children that’ll be worth having.”

  “You know Livy,” I said angrily. “She doesn’t seem sickly to you, does she? Well, then. Anyway, she suits me.”

  My father spent a week apologizing to his friends, and my mother to hers. So on June fifth Livy and I were married by the Reverend Mr. Pringle in the parlor of our new home. My uncle and aunt from Warburton were there, as were Livy’s two sisters, stout, contented young matrons who talked constantly of how bad Livy looked, and gave her copious advice. There seemed little of the old Livy in the pale, quiet girl in dove-gray who stood beside me, except for the straight and resolute look in her eyes and somewhat pugnaciously lifted chin. After the ceremony and the rich dinner, we went away on our honeymoon to New York.

  When we returned in July, Livy had gained weight, and there was a slight color in her cheeks. She liked New York; once she said that she wished we did not have to return to South Kenton, which astounded and hurt me. But she seemed delighted with our new apartment, in my parents’ house, and directed our hired girl feverishly. We were soon settling down to a pleasant routine, for Livy was a good wife.

  The usual course of events in those days was that a bride returned home already pregnant from her honeymoon. But Livy was not pregnant, and I was still satisfied, for I was very happy and wanted her to myself for a while.

  We had not yet seen Bee and Dan Hendricks since our return as we sat out in the garden one hot August afternoon, the locusts shrilling in the trees and the yellow sunlight burning in the open places, making the eyes hurt with the dazzle of colors in the flowerbeds and around the white picket fence. There was a breathless and shining silence over the town, and Livy sat in her chair in a thin muslin dress, fanning herself, and occasionally pushing back her dark hair from her forehead. She was rapidly recovering her health, and there was quite a glow in her cheeks.

  The garden gate clicked sharply in the hot stillness, and we looked up to see Dan and Bee approaching us smilingly across the grass. Livy sat upright, rigidly, her face paling; she stared at them without expression. I stood up, embarrassed, my own face becoming warm.

  Bee lifted her gloved hand to us gaily, and tipped her ruffled parasol in greeting. Dan lumbered at her side, grinning. I shook hands with him awkwardly, and then dragged two chairs forward, making a circle. Bee had begun to talk to Livy in a sprightly fashion, her pretty face beaming, her hair a tangled mass of red gold under her rose-trimmed hat. I remember distinctly that she wore white lace with a pink sash, and all at once Livy looked drained and dowdy beside her. All the life seemed to have gone out of the poor girl.

  We all sat down, chattering uneasily, except for Dan. He sat in silence, his long legs crossed. I had to admit that he looked more civilized than I had ever seen him, well shaven, his hair trimmed neatly, his high collar immaculate, his clothes tailored and neat. I kept glancing at him as I talked nervously about nothing in particular. I began to wonder if it was my imagination, or whether he did indeed look grim and tense under his faint grin, and if his eyes were indeed sultry and bitter. But his
voice was careless enough when he began to speak; he told me of the new roses he had imported, the improvements he was putting in his house. About him was his old reserve, repulsing intimacy and curiosity. When he fell silent again at intervals, his face settled into heavy and sullen lines, and he stared stubbornly at his polished boots. He had developed a habit of flexing and unflexing his long brown fingers, and I soon found myself unwillingly unable to take my stare from them. Once he glanced at his wife while she was laughing and talking gaily to Livy, and an odd expression fixed itself for a moment on his face. When he found me looking at him, he stared at me coldly, beating down my eyes. I felt that I did not know him at all. I wished he had never come.

  Bee seemed agreeable enough. She expressed much solicitude for Livy, rallying her on her pale face, her thin throat and arms. She glanced quickly from me and then more slowly from Dan to Livy and back again. Her rather narrow eyes danced with malicious mirth, for all her sympathetic voice.

  “She looks as though she’s got a secret sorrow, doesn’t she, Jim?”

  I felt irritated. She always had the ability to irritate me, to goad me. I felt that under her most casual words was an unclean meaning, a double innuendo.