Ever After (43 page)

Fitz was lying as she had left him, relaxed and listless, a book open on the coverlet which he was not reading. The lamplight from the bedside table threw sharp shadows on his thin face, with its broad cheek-bones and narrow chin. He turned his head towards her as she came in, and the look in his eyes, patient, tethered, expectant,
somehow
humble, cramped her heart. She went straight over to the bed and put her arms around his shoulders and her cheek against his.

“Fitz, listen. If I didn’t have to sing every night we could go to
Williamsburg and you’d get well faster. Would your parents let us stay there—for a while, anyway? I’ve got money in the bank, we could pay a little something each week.”

“Let us—? What on earth are you talkin’ about? It’s
home
! Like this is home for Bracken, only I expect you’d like this better. Maybe you should have married Bracken instead of me, have you ever thought of that?”

“Oh, Fitz,
don’t,
I’m so tired of pretending!” And while it was the last thing she had ever meant to do, Gwen began to cry, her face hidden in his neck.

Instantly his arms tightened round her in concern.

“Tired of
what
?” he demanded. “Talk sense, honey, what are you gettin’ at, anyway?”

So it all came out, between sobs which had got beyond her control at last—how tired she was of singing every night when she could have been with him—how tired she was of show business and the people in it, so if it weren’t for keeping Pa she’d never go near a theatre again except maybe to buy tickets to watch somebody else work—how tired she was anyway of standing on her own feet and holding up her head and not asking quarter from anybody—and how ever since she had first seen Williamsburg heaven had looked just like that to her, a place to live like other people, in a house with a garden, where your children could grow up right, with grandparents and Christmas and birthdays—

Then her tears stopped suddenly with a wrench, for she was horrified at having broken down before him when he was so ill, and she dreaded that she might have made him worse. But instead she had given him what he needed—a sense of responsibility—a job to do—incentive to get well. Because if Gwen left the show and wasn’t earning, it would be up to him. He would have to write some more songs, he would have to start that new musical comedy he had thought of during the long, idle days on the dispatch boat, and they would have to look into this gramophone business. He could write some new songs in Williamsburg, while he was getting well, with Gwen
to sing them as he worked. The mere idea of working out a new song with Gwen was a tonic—

“Oh, Fitz, I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me, please don’t take any notice—”

“You need a holiday,” he said, and his arms held her close where she was when she tried to sit up. “I reckon what you really need is a honeymoon. Shall we go down home and start our honeymoon all over again?”

“You mean—you wouldn’t mind if I quit the show?”

“Give ’em your notice tonight. They can find somebody else.”

“Are you
sure
it’s all right?” she asked wistfully, as she had when
he bought her the trousseau at Lord and Taylor’s. “Can we
really
afford it?”

“Gwen, honey—will you do something for me from now on? When there’s something you want—like going down to Williamsburg to live—will you for the love of God let me in on it? I’m your husband, honey—I’m here to make you happy if I can, but I haven’t learned to read your mind yet. I have to have a little help now and then.”

“Well, so long as your folks won’t think we’re sponging—”

“My folks aren’t so hard up as you seem to think. We raise everything we eat, almost, right on the place, in the garden.”

“And you won’t think I’m a piker about Pa? I’ve got quite a lot saved up for him—”

“There’ll be more when you need it.”

Gwen drew a long breath, where she lay against him.

“Fitz.”

“Mm-hm?”

“For the first time in my life I feel—I—”

“How do you feel, honey?”

“I feel
free.
And that’s funny, because now I’m married, and before I wasn’t.”

“You aren’t half as married as you’re goin’ to be,” he promised her serenely.

B
ECAUSE
Cabot had died suddenly at Tampa, when it had never occurred to anybody that such a thing could happen, the
readjustment
always necessary at such times was even a little grimmer than usual. His clothes, his papers, his small personal belongings were all where he had left them, awaiting his return to New York with the pathetic confidence and helplessness of inanimate things.

Eden and Virginia had spent the time since his death at
Williamsburg
, and now with Bracken in New York they set about the
heartbreaking
business of putting away and tidying up all those
possessions
which Cabot would never want again. Eden would have been the first to admit that she was a wife before she was a mother and the loss of the man who had been to the end of his life her devoted lover was a stunning blow. She rallied very slowly, and was thin and white and piteous in her soft black gowns. She showed no
inclination
to cling round Bracken’s neck, and if she leaned on anyone it was Sue, for they had always been very close. She spent hours alone
in her room, emerging at meal-times calm and unravaged by grief, a little withdrawn and absent-minded, but willing to smile and join in the usual family conversation and quiet diversions. Sparkle and zest were gone from her, and a new passiveness and patience had set in. Nothing mattered to her very much.

During the first day he spent at the Shop, Bracken discovered that his father, at least, had foreseen the thing which had happened and prepared for it in scrupulous detail. His Will and private papers were in order. There were substantial bequests to each of his
children
, and the rest went to Eden during her lifetime, after which it would pass in full to Bracken. But there were small, mute evidences everywhere that he had not known he was leaving his office for the last time, and Bracken sat alone at the big desk with his head in his hands, striving for strength to face them, while the portrait of Lincoln above the mantelpiece looked down with the same
compassionate
eyes which had rested on Cabot day after day as he sat in the same chair.

The strings of proofs and stacks of marked exchanges and the
overflowing
wastepaper-basket were naturally tidied away. But the shears and the paste-pot, the pearl push-bells in a row—unmarked because he knew so well whom each would summon—the coloured inks and pencils, a pile of new books in bright jackets awaiting
review
, pipes in a rack, an over-size ash-tray, a full stamp-box—they might all have been still warm from his hand. When Bracken raised his head he looked down through a floor-length window at Park Row and the City Hall. On the wall beside the window was Cabot’s framed diploma from Princeton. Should his own come down now to hang beside it….

He returned to Madison Avenue at twilight, white-faced and
unnerved
, and was pouring himself a stiff whisky at the sideboard in the dining room when his mother looked in at the door and smiled at him faintly. Eden had been so happy and so blessed that she was far from looking anything like her fifty-five years, and even now above the sheer black dress her face looked pinched and girlish rather than widowed, and her reddish hair still gleamed in the dusky room.

“Oh, God, you always did look so beautiful in black,” said Bracken ruefully, and gulped half his drink, and came to put an arm around her waist, moving her towards the drawing room. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. There doesn’t seem to be anything one can say safely at a time like this. Shall we go on talking about the weather?”

“No,” she said gravely. “I want to talk about your father, Bracken.” She sat down on a sofa, and he followed, the glass still in his hand.

“Yes, I suppose we must,” he agreed. “So far, I’ve been dreading it. There’s something wrong about that. He wouldn’t have put up with that at all. Tell me.”

“It was entirely unexpected,” she said steadily. “We all thought he had taken a turn for the better, and everything was quite cheerful the last night. He died without waking. I was sitting by the bed, reading—suddenly the room was empty. That was all.”

Bracken drew a long sigh. He had been imagining things, and he felt a great relief.

“We talked a lot about you when he was ill,” Eden’s low voice went on beside him. “And he left you a message. That was before we thought the worst was over. There were two messages, in fact.”

“All right,” said Bracken, gripping the tumbler. “Let’s have them.”

“First, there was something he wanted you to write. He tried to do it himself, but he wasn’t strong enough. I have his notes for you. He wanted you to make people see that this war with Spain has made us one nation again, healing the old wounds left from fighting each other. He felt it very deeply—that the army in Cuba is made up of men from nearly every state in the Union, North and South, shoulder to shoulder, all brothers in arms, no matter which side their fathers fought on in the ’60’s, with officers from both sides too, all under one flag again.”

“Yes, I can do that!” Bracken nodded. “Look at Fighting Joe Wheeler, the wildest Rebel of them all, and at Guasimas when the Spanish finally lit out for the rear he clean forgot which war it was and yelled, ‘Come on, boys, we’ve got the damn’ Yankees on the run!’”

“Your father would have liked that!” she smiled.

“Well, the first one is easy enough. What next?”

“He said you were to go back to England for Dinah, however long it took.”

Everything in Bracken relaxed at once. He had had no idea how he had been braced for the opposite until then. He wanted to cry. He set down the glass arid rose and walked about the room, his hands in his pockets, fighting the tightness in his throat. Eden went on talking softly, giving him leeway.

“He said that Temple could run things here for a while and that anyway you would have to go over and put the Fleet Street office under a permanent deputy. He said, ‘If I should peg out before he can marry Dinah and bring her back here, I don’t want my empty chair to be a millstone round his neck.’ And he said, ‘Tell him not to rush her—it’s asking a good deal of her to leave England with him as she’ll have to.’ And he said, ‘Tell him what you went through with me.’”

Bracken turned to look at her.

“Was it bad?” he said. “I never thought. Was it?”

“I’d do it all over again,” she said, and her chin came up.

He went and knelt beside the sofa, his arms around her.

“It
was
worth it, wasn’t it?” he entreated her. “It won’t be asking too much of her?”

“Your father was worth it,” she said. “Tell Dinah that from me.”

“Come and tell her yourself,” he said urgently. “Come with me to England, Mother, and see the house and get a breath of air, after all this. Do you good, hm?”

“Well, do you think it would appeal to Virginia? Of course we can’t go out much now, wherever we are.”

“Leave Virginia to me. I think I can talk her into it. Anyway, I can’t start for a few weeks—months, maybe. There’s a lot to do here first, he knew that as well as anybody.”

“Well, perhaps—after Christmas?” she said doubtfully, and while it seemed like a century to him he saw that she was interested, and it was the first interest she had shown in anything since his father died. But—“We wouldn’t have to miss Christmas with Sue, would we?” she asked anxiously.

“No, of course we wouldn’t,” he reassured her, thinking of the letter he must write to Dinah. “We could go over early in the year. Think how lovely England is in the spring! There’s nothing to keep you here, is there?”

“N-no, if you can persuade Virginia. I’m worried about her, Bracken, I begin to wonder if she’s ever going to marry.”

“Are you so anxious to get her off your hands?”

“Heavens, no, but I had quite made up my mind before I was seventeen—”

“Virginia isn’t twenty yet!”

“I suppose it’s her attitude, more than anything else,” she said thoughtfully. “She makes fun of everything. She’s too bright and flippant and—well, heartless. Do you think it’s just a phase?”

“She’s a spoilt brat,” he said affectionately, knowing quite well what was the matter with Virginia. “She’ll grow out of it. A few months in England might improve her manners. Now, look here, if I promise to wait for Christmas in Williamsburg, will you promise to spend Easter in England with me?”

“I promise,” she said, and there was something live and quickened in her face that had not been there since his return. “I had almost forgotten about Farthingale. What will you do with it now that you—well, now that you and Dinah will have to think about coming back here to live?”

“I shall hang on to it for a while, at least, because of the divorce.
I must show intention of residing in England for that, you see. After all, we’d be spending quite a lot of time in England. Father always did.” He suppressed the solution which nearly slipped out—Virginia and Archie could have Farthingale as a wedding present. But first, Virginia had to catch Archie.

“Does Dinah know about Lisl?” Eden asked delicately.

“No. Neither does she know that I’m in love with her. I’m going to tell her as soon as I get back. Lisl first, of course.”

“Will it take long—the divorce?”

“I don’t know. I’ve written Partridge, but I won’t really know anything till I get back there. Anyway, you’ve taken the most tremendous load off my mind. I was afraid—”

She smiled at him reproachfully.

“After all these years,” she said, “don’t you know him better than that?”

And so once more he sat down to write to Dinah—