Listening Valley (7 page)

Mr. Melville did not. He had not analyzed his daughter's character. He had realized that she was not quite like other girls—Ella always said she was queer—but he had never thought of her as having a beautiful nature or as being particularly sensitive.

He said, “Well, I must say…you've surprised me…I don't know what to say…”

“Of course,” agreed Norman. “Naturally you're surprised. I don't want you to say anything until you've thought it over. The whole thing rests with Antonia herself, doesn't it?”

“I suppose it does,” said Mr. Melville in a dazed manner. “And that being so, why did you—”

“Because she's so young,” interrupted Norman. “I thought I would speak to you first. That's all.”

“But, Norman, have you thought—”

“I've thought of everything. I may die and leave her a widow. Is that what you were going to say?”

“No,” said Mr. Melville hastily.

“The settlements shall be exactly as you wish.”

“It isn't that at all. I mean, I know that part of it will be all right.”

“Perhaps you're thinking that she may meet someone of her own age and fall in love. Well, in that case she can divorce me. I wouldn't stand in her way.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Melville. “You can't mean—”

“It would be only fair,” continued Norman in deliberate tones. “I've faced that—it's the worst snag, really.”

“I'm thinking of you,” declared Mr. Melville.

“Of me?”

“Yes, Tonia is just a child. She isn't like Lou, who has plenty to say for herself—Lou's an attractive minx.”

“Perhaps she wouldn't attract me.”

“Perhaps not, but—but I'm just wondering if Tonia would be able to—to—I mean, she isn't very capable.”

“I don't need a housekeeper,” said Norman somewhat grimly. “I have a very competent housekeeper, and I don't need a nurse either, thank heaven. All I need is a companion.”

“Well, there you are!” exclaimed Mr. Melville, who was beginning to lose his temper. “Could Tonia
ever
be a companion to a man like you? It's absurd.”

“I thought you might think it absurd,” was the reply.

There was silence, and the clock struck six. Norman remembered Cinderella, and the remembrance made him smile. He said in quite a different tone of voice, “I hope you will give me permission to pay my addresses to your daughter, Melville.”

Mr. Melville had regained control of his temper and he chuckled. “Sounds a bit old-fashioned, doesn't it? Things aren't done that way nowadays. Lou's young man walked off with her without so much as a by-your-leave.” He hesitated—it was most extraordinary to think that this was “Tonia's young man.”

“You haven't answered,” Norman reminded him.

“Supposing I said no?”

“Ah, I wonder. I'm afraid I shouldn't take it as final. Have another drink?”

“I shan't say a word to Ella,” said Mr. Melville, handing over his glass.

“Nor to Antonia.”

“Of course not.”

“You don't really…object?” inquired Norman somewhat diffidently. “I mean…I mean, you see my point. I shall take the very greatest care of her, you know.”

“She's devilish lucky,” declared Mr. Melville, looking around the comfortable room.

“And war is coming,” added Norman thoughtfully.

“War? Do you think so?”

“I'm perfectly certain of it.”

They talked about the prospects of war and of which nations were likely to stand up and fight. It was not until Mr. Melville was going away that Tonia was mentioned again.

“I suppose you'll want to—to take her out and all that?” said Mr. Melville doubtfully.

“Most certainly,” replied Norman with a smile.

“What would I like to do?” asked Tonia in a surprised voice. She had been called to speak to Mr. Norman on the telephone and had arrived, somewhat breathless, to be confronted with this extraordinary question.

“It's wet,” Mr. Norman pointed out. “If it hadn't been such a bad day we might have gone for a spin in the car to the country. Perhaps you would like to go to the pictures.”

“There's a concert,” Tonia said. “But perhaps you don't like concerts.”

Mr. Norman liked concerts and said so. He was a little surprised to find that the concert Tonia had chosen was one being given by a young pianist of rising fame and consisted of works by Brahms and Liszt, but if that was what she wanted she should have it. He sent his clerk to get tickets and fetched Tonia at half past two. They were early at the hall, for Tonia was determined not to miss a single note, and they settled down comfortably and chatted until it began.

“If I could play Liszt's Fourteenth Rhapsody I should die happy,” declared Tonia, looking at her companion with large dark blue serious eyes.

“It's a high ambition.”

“It isn't an ambition at all. I mean, I know I never could unless a miracle happened and I got new hands. An ambition is something you try for, something you hope for, isn't it?”

Mr. Norman's reply was drowned by the sound of clapping that greeted the appearance of the pianist. He was quite young and very dark with long hair and a foreign cut of countenance—not very prepossessing in appearance, but one forgot that the moment he began to play. He played like an angel with fire and tenderness. Liszt's most difficult passages flowed from the instrument with a glorious precision—each note clear and liquid as the song of a bird. Mr. Norman enjoyed it tremendously. He looked at his companion to see if she was enjoying it and noticed a very strange expression on her face. It was really a complete lack of expression, a complete and absolute blankness. Tonia's body was there but her soul was—somewhere else. He was slightly alarmed about her, and even more alarmed when the concert finished and Tonia did not return. He took her arm and piloted her through the crowd, found his car, and put her into it. He spoke to her several times during their walk, but she did not answer. It was not until he had started the engine and was moving off into the stream of traffic that Tonia awoke.

She heaved a long sigh. “Oh, it was lovely,” she said.

“You're all right?” asked Mr. Norman anxiously.

“Quite all right,” declared Tonia, smiling at him.

“Where were you, Antonia?”

“Was I silly?” she asked.

“You were just—not there.”

“I was in my listening valley,” she replied. “I used to call it my listening place until I read Blake's poem. Listening valley is better.”

“Much better,” agreed Mr. Norman.

“It isn't anywhere, really,” continued Tonia, who was aware that Mr. Norman was interested and would understand. “It's inside myself. But lately I've begun to see it as if it were a real place.”

“Perhaps it is a real place.”

“A real place that I've never seen,” said Tonia, thoughtfully. “That would be even queerer, wouldn't it?”

***

My darling Lou,
wrote Tonia.
I still miss you terribly much, but I am not quite so unhappy now because I have a friend. You remember I told you Mr. Norman had sent me tickets for the ball. I told you about it in my last letter and how I danced with him and Frank was angry. Since then I have seen him quite often. He asked me if he might call me Antonia, so of course I said yes. It would be ridiculous for him to go on calling me Miss Melville because he must be about Father's age, I should think. Somehow it makes me feel more grown up and important to be called Antonia. It's as if I were two people. When I am at home I am just Tonia and I do silly things, but when I am with Mr. Norman I am Antonia, and she is quite a sensible sort of person. We went to a concert one afternoon and another day we went to Queensferry in his car and had tea at the Hawes Inn. He has a marvelous car and drives very well—fast but carefully. Of course he is quite old, but he understands things almost as well as you do—which is rather wonderful, I think. I will tell you what he is like to look at: very tall and big with gray hair and blue eyes. He has lovely hands with long fingers. I like looking at them when he is driving the car. But all this does not really give you much idea of him. He is very distinguished looking. People look at him when he walks past and wonder who he is. Father says he is a brilliant financier. The other day Father said, “Are you going out with your friend, the brilliant financier?” It was a joke, of course. Father is quite different to me lately; he talks to me and asks questions and listens to the answers, as if I were important—if you know what I mean. He has given me fifty pounds to buy some new
clothes.

Tonia hesitated and stopped. What would Lou think when she read the letter? Would she think it queer? It
was
queer, really. Why does Mr. Norman bother with me, Tonia wondered.

“Frank has been here several times,” continued Tonia. “He asked me to go to a dance with him and Mother wanted me to go, but Father said I was to do as I liked, so I did not go. I was rather surprised at Frank asking me because I did not think he liked me much. He rang up again this morning and asked me to go with him to the zoo, but fortunately I had arranged to go to North Berwick with Mr. Norman…”

***

It was a glorious afternoon with a breeze from the east, keen and invigorating. The sea was a deep blue, the sky a lighter blue and cloudless; there was a hard line along the horizon as if it had been drawn with a ruler and a pencil. Against this line the islands stood out bold and rugged, so clear that you could see the bright green grass growing between the boulders. Mr. Norman and Tonia left the car at the harbor and walked along the East Bay toward a high escarpment of red rock. The tide was out. Small waves like snow-white frills broke upon the shore.

“Are you happy, Antonia?” asked Mr. Norman.

“Very happy,” she replied. “It would be funny if I were not happy, wouldn't it? All this…” said Tonia, who had learned that she could prattle to Mr. Norman without being pulled up with a jerk and made to feel a fool. “All this is so lovely—the sea and the sky and the wind and you being so kind to me.”

“You're kind to me,” he replied with unaccustomed gravity.

“I am?”

“Yes, of course. You make me happy.”

Tonia considered this. It was a new point of view. “But you could have anyone,” she said. “Anyone would like to come out in your car.”

“But only you could make me happy.”

“If you had met Lou,” said Tonia with a sigh. “Lou is so interesting and amusing, so full of life and…”

“I don't want Lou,” said Mr. Norman firmly.

Perhaps this was just as well, thought Tonia as they picked their way over a flat reef of slippery rocks. It was nice to feel that Mr. Norman was her own friend, her very own, not just a sort of overflow from someone else. “I hope you won't get bored with me,” said Tonia suddenly, following out her train of thought.

“You might get bored with me,” suggested her companion in a casual sort of tone.

“Never,” said Tonia confidently.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

“How much do you like me?” Mr. Norman wanted to know.

That was easy to answer. She smiled at him. “Oh, a lot,” she said.

“Enough to marry me?” he inquired.

At first Tonia was certain she had misunderstood the words—the wind was blowing and the seagulls were making a terrific noise—but when she looked at him she saw by his face that she had heard the words correctly and he really meant them. She was dumb with surprise. She was distressed and embarrassed and rather frightened.

“Supposing we sit down in the shelter of this rock and talk about it,” suggested Mr. Norman.

They sat down. Tonia stared at the seagulls with unseeing eyes. There was a lump of misery in her throat. She listened to Mr. Norman talking, but it was quite impossible to reply.

“Don't worry about it,” he was saying. “We'll never speak of it again if you would rather not. You have only to say no, but I hope you'll think about it seriously first. We like each other, don't we? We're happy when we're together and we understand each other so well. Of course I know I'm too old. I would give anything on earth to be the right age for you, Antonia.”

He hesitated. There was so much he could offer her, but he did not want to bribe her. He could offer her travel—he knew she wanted to see the world. He could offer her jewels and furs and pretty frocks. He could remind her that she was unhappy at home—unappreciated—and that her life was dull and purposeless. Mr. Norman said none of this. He just waited. It seemed a long time to him.

“I don't…know,” said Tonia at last, twisting her hands together. “I never thought…of getting married…to anyone.”

“Think of it now,” suggested her companion.

“I'm trying to think,” said Tonia miserably. “Perhaps I'm frightened or something. It isn't that I don't like you.”

“That's something, anyhow,” said Mr. Norman, rather grimly. “We'll leave it like that, shall we? You can think it over. There's no hurry at all. Meantime perhaps you could call me Robert—unless you'd rather not.”

Tonia felt it would be quite impossible to call him Robert, but she could not say so. She said nothing at all.

The day was spoiled, of course. The sky was just as blue, but it gave Tonia no pleasure at all; there was no pleasure in anything. They walked back to the car, and as they went, Mr. Norman—no, Robert—talked quite cheerfully of ordinary things. He told his companion about a bottle he had bought at a small shop in the Grassmarket…and presently Tonia made an effort and pulled herself together and answered him quite naturally; but it was not the same as before, and she couldn't, no, she simply couldn't call him Robert.

***

It was late when Tonia got home and Mr. and Mrs. Melville had started dinner without her. She smoothed her hair and washed her hands and appeared in the dining room quite breathless with haste, looking and feeling extremely guilty.

“You're late,” said Mrs. Melville. “Really, Tonia, I think you might make an effort to be on time for meals. We've finished our soup; you can have some fried sole. I wish—”

“I wish you would tell your cook to have the fat
boiling
,” interposed Mr. Melville. “The fat should be absolutely boiling, with a blue haze rising from the pan, before the fillets are put in. Then the fish would be crisp and tasty instead of greasy and flabby—I can't eat this stuff.”

“There's nothing the matter with the fish. You're too particular,” replied Mrs. Melville with asperity.

Mr. Melville laughed mirthlessly.

“Why are you laughing, Henry?”

“Because, like all women, you are illogical. If the fat was boiling and there's nothing the matter with the fish, why add that I'm too particular?”

“You're far too particular…”

“I only want plain food properly cooked. That's not much to ask.”

“Plain food is the most difficult to cook well.”

“Have elaborate food, then,” retorted Mr. Melville. “Have anything you like, only have it right. I'll eat anything.”

“You said just now that you couldn't eat this.”

“Anything if it's properly cooked,” cried Mr. Melville with violence. “
Anything.
We pay the woman enough in all conscience. Why can't she cook?”

“She
can
cook—”

“You don't bother to keep her up to the mark, that's what's the matter.”

“It's my fault, is it?”

“Of course. You do the housekeeping, don't you? If you can't spare the time, why don't you hand it over to Tonia?”

“Tonia!” cried Mrs. Melville. “I'd like to see the sort of hash Tonia would make of it.”

“She couldn't do much worse than you,” declared Mr. Melville. “You had better try her out. It would be good practice for her.”

“Practice for what?”

“For when she has a house of her own, of course.”

“Tonia isn't likely to be married.”

“Lou is married—”

“A hole-and-corner affair. I pity her husband,” cried Mrs. Melville wildly. “Neither Lou nor Tonia has ever taken the slightest interest in the house. Tonia is interested in nothing but books—
books!
She's cut out for an old maid.”

Tonia listened to all this in silence. She ought to have become used to rows by this time. She ought to have learned that they never led to anything but were just sound and fury and blew over like thunderclouds leaving a clear sky, but Tonia was too sensitive. She felt the blows upon her own person—felt them far more keenly than the antagonists. Tonight she was not only frightened, she was angry as well, for the mention of Lou's name had the power to rouse her. So she suddenly broke into the discussion, saying in a loud and rather unnatural voice, “But I'm going to be married quite soon.”

The remark certainly had the effect of stopping the fight. Tonia's parents were immediately silent, gazing at her. Her mother gazed at her with amazement and consternation, her father with a curious expression that was hard to read.

“To Robert,” said Tonia, taking up the carafe and pouring out some water with rather an unsteady hand. “He asked me today on the beach at North Berwick. That's why we were—a little late.”

“Are you sure you want to?” asked Mr. Melville. “I mean, Norman is an awfully good fellow, but he—he isn't young. You had better be quite sure, Tonia. I mean—”