Nothing That Meets the Eye (24 page)

“Please!” He struck his forehead distractedly. “I must think!”

“I will leave you, my love,” she said, proud of her restraint, and went back to her room.

She drew the covers up over her flat waist and pulled the dimmer light until it was almost out. To her surprise she was quite sleepy. She dozed awhile, half asleep, half awake, until a sudden idea, fresh and strong, awakened her completely. She would call Klett and Margaret into her room and all three of them would determine what was to be done. Klett would declare once more his love for her, would state firmly his intention to stay on in the house. Then Margaret would again acknowledge her defeat and prepare to leave them forever. Her mother, too, would be present and would of course side with her and Klett. Beneath her reserve she knew her mother possessed a strong romantic streak. It thrilled Agnes to imagine her mother's joy when she heard of their love.

By the gilt-faced clock always just barely legible in semidarkness from her bed, Agnes saw it was ten past one. Everyone of course was in bed and asleep now. She had a feeling of disappointment, as though she had come too late for some pleasant social event. The silence of sleep in the house first annoyed, then frightened her. She pictured Klett, Margaret, her mother with soft smiles on their reposeful faces. She felt the balance had tipped in her disfavor, that Klett had decided to leave in the morning. He had thought it over after she had left him, then had gone to bed on his decision. Margaret, too, was sleeping on her resolution to depart. Had she and Klett spoken again after she had come to bed? Her hands pulled nervously at the counterpane. Then suddenly she knew what she should do, to tip the balance back, to make sure that Klett would not leave in the morning. Margaret would leave, of course, because she hated her, but not Klett. And after a day or so, she would be surer of their love. It was so young now, how could he, so young himself, be sure? It fell therefore upon her to furnish proof. If she died, she thought, why, love was still stronger than death. Klett would still love her. But she did not believe that she would die, for love itself would preserve her.

She got up from her bed, looked a few seconds at her old pink wrap and finally went in nothing but her pale nightgown out into the hall. Now there was no light at all except that which came from the moon through the window in the door at the end. She opened it and went onto the little terrace of smooth flagstones that sent a chill from her bare feet up to the roots of her hair. She stood tall, lifting her face up.

The night sky looked rich as a painting. A round yellow-white moon floated fast, though not advancing beyond just left of the top of the chinaberry tree, through clouds of electric blue and royal blue shot with white. The sky itself was dark blue streaked with black in which the star groups—Orion, Auriga, Cassiopeia, part of Perseus, Agnes knew them all—could be seen twinkling with the dense blown clouds of the rain that had not come that evening at dusk.

“I have never,” she whispered proudly, “cared so little for myself. Klett is all I care for, all that matters.”

She stood on the low parapet of bricks that bordered the terrace. The bricks felt crumblike and still somewhat warm from the afternoon sun. From below, the song of the crickets came louder, and she heard the more human whisper of the garden faucet that had always leaked, that was fairly close, she knew exactly where. This was not Rebecca now, nor even Saxon Ulrica on the burning battlements of Torquilstone. This was Agnes, fair Agnes, at the most glorious moment she had ever experienced. Now all was perfect, like Klett, the exhilarating sharpness of the night, the purity of her intention, the slender whiteness of her body beneath the gown, as she poised herself like a diver on the edge of the parapet she gripped with her long toes.

And the air received her like cool water. Though it was much more agreeable than water, before a quick pain gave way to numbness she could not think or move against and did not really care to, before a blankness without moon or stars. Silence. And nothing.

She awakened in a strange room, on a harder bed. Her left arm lay across a stiff thick something over her abdomen. With a prickle of terror that almost immediately subsided, she realized she was in a hospital.

“Agnie?”

She turned toward Margaret's voice. Margaret stood there in hat and coat, with a compassionate expression that even then Agnes could find energy to hate.

“Darling, what happened?” Margaret asked. “Did you . . . fall?”

Agnes debated what to say, and decided the question was beneath reply. She was still exalted by a feeling that she cared nothing for herself, what happened or had happened to her body, so she could still wonder whether to say, “What does it matter?” or as she did:

“Where is Klett?”

“He's here. Shall I ask him to come in?”

Her mother entered with Dr. Reese, both rigid of face, soft of step. Agnes saw them in strange perspective, and realized suddenly she was seeing out of only one eye. Was the other destroyed or merely bandaged?

“Any pain?” Dr. Reese bent over her and she half expected the thermometer to slip into her mouth as it always had.

“Yes,” Agnes said.

“Where?”

“All over.”

Klett came in then with Margaret. He was in his jacket and plaid muffler and carried a briefcase he had had with him when he came to the house.

“Klett—you are staying? You are staying, aren't you?” She wanted to get up, and of all times, she thought, when she really could not, when the bed was no longer a coign of vantage.

“Rest yourself, Agnes,” said her mother.

Agnes knew that his bent head was a nod as he stood with his hands folded in front of him, as she had seen him stand in her room, the epitome of knightly comportment, behind and to one side of her mother. But now was the time for him to step forward, to make her some declaration, some sign. She tried to sit up, Dr. Reese grasped her arm, but to sit up was impossible anyway. And now Klett's face was round and frightened, plumper and pinker even than she had thought.

“Please!” Dr. Reese exclaimed. “Your back is broken!”

She lay back, looking at Klett with parted lips, getting back her breath. He took a step toward her with a twisted, tragic face. But in the step she saw the urgency of outdoors, of the other world he was about to enter. He looked flat, like something cut from cardboard, and she saw him now backgrounded by the school in New York, the shell shape of an amphitheater above his head, surrounded by strange, earnest musicians' faces.

“I cannot tell you how sorry I am, Miss Steinach,” he said, and it did not even sound like his voice.

“The doctors say you'll be quite all right, Agnie,” Margaret told her. “And we'll talk to you from New York. They're going to put a phone right here by the bed.” Margaret bent to kiss her.

Klett glanced at his wristwatch quickly. “We do have to leave,” he said, “unless we catch another train.”

“Good-bye, Agnie. Good-bye,” Margaret said.

Dr. Reese lowered the shades and told her it would be best if she could sleep. Her mother pressed her toes with tremulous affection beneath the covers, but she knew her mother, too, was quite far from tears. Then she was all alone. She looked toward the shaded window and the tattered Ivanhoe on the new bedtable caught her eye. She smiled a little at it. It was like an old friend. And all the friends she had in it! The Templar, Ivanhoe, Rebecca and the Lady Rowena, Front-de-Boeuf and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, king of them all! They were somehow more substantial than Klett, than her sister, or Dr. Reese or her mother. Ivanhoe spread balm over her shocked mind and body.

“My back is broken,” she whispered, savoring the words. And she knew it was what she had wanted all these years.

A MIGHTY NICE MAN

T
he child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on it. Then she sighed and threw away the stick.

“Em'lie,” she said.

Emilie, age nine, was standing behind her, with her back against the sun-warm wooden post, her toes braced on the edge of the sidewalk.

“Huh?” Emilie breathed.

“Play like I've got a store. Play like I've got a grocer store an' you've gotta buy stuff. . . . Huh, Em'lie?”

Emilie was so bored and sleepy she did not reply. Her gray sullen eyes looked out across the road and the whole scene was yellow to her, the dirt of the road, the squatting house just beyond, the dry fields: yellow pulsing heat and silence.

“Em'lie! You crazy? . . . Answer me!” Charlotte turned around on the curb and glowered at her.

“Wha'?” said Emilie, and pushed herself away from the post.

“I've gotta store an' you must buy stuff.” She reached for the tiny red truck that was their common property and began filling it with pebbles. “An' then I must deliver it. You gotta go home first an' then you must telephone.” She clutched the truck in one dirty hand as she scowled at Emilie.

They heard footsteps in the grit of the road. Charlotte forgot her game and they both looked up the slope. Emilie brushed the mottled blond hair out of her eyes and squinted. Her left eye was cast, and she twisted up that side of her face whenever she looked at anything.

“I betcha it's a boarder from Mrs. Osterman's,” Charlotte said. “I betcha he's from New York, too.”

He turned onto the sidewalk that began half a block from Charlotte's house. Emilie could see him now, a short figure in unpressed white trousers. He saw them, too, and began whistling a tune.

“Hello,” he said, taking in both of them.

“H'lo,” they replied in unison.

He stopped a minute, looked about him. “Gonna be here when I get back?” He spoke quietly, smiling. “I'll bring you some candy.”

Charlotte and Emilie surveyed him silently.

“I like . . . I like any kind of candy,” Charlotte told him.

He laughed, winked at them and walked on down the sidewalk. Once he turned and waved, but only Charlotte saw that. They were both motionless a long time, watching.

“Reckon he'll come back, Em'lie?”

“Huh?”

“Reckon he'll come back this way?”

“Huh?”

“I sed . . . reckon he'll come back?”

But Emilie moved off without a word toward her house and Charlotte sat on the curb, resting her face against one knee as she traced in the dust. Soon the screen door to Emilie's house screeched, closed with a double slap, and Emilie's bare heels thudded across the porch.

“Huh,” said Emilie, and handed Charlotte a small pale peach. Charlotte took it silently, bit into the fruit with darkish baby teeth.

“Betcha that man's got a car.”

“Huh?”

“I sed”—she took a deep breath—”I betcha that man's got a ca-ar.”

“Wha' man?”

“That ma-an . . . what just passed.”

Emilie licked her peach-stained fingers. “He ain't comin' back.” She sighed, looked across the hot road to the blurry yellowish fields. The bugs in the grass, in the trees, were singing rhythmically. Two clicks and a long buzz. Down the road where it met the street that led into town they heard Mr. Wynecoop's station wagon. They knew it from all the other cars in the neighborhood. Charlotte and Emilie sat on the edge of the curb and looked.

As he passed, Mr. Wynecoop waved a stiff-fingered hand at them, and they chanted, “H'lo, ol' man Wynecoop.”

The car pulled up the hill, reached the top, sighed as it hit level ground. Charlotte kept watching for the man in white. She stood up once and looked toward town, but the view was mostly shut out by the trees along the sidewalk.

Emilie smirked and grunted contemptuously.

Charlotte held the empty truck in one hand and stared down the walk. “You cou'nt see him if he was comin'.” Suddenly she drew in her breath. “He's comin', all right,” she whispered, and ran stooping over to Emilie by the curb. She began stabbing in the dust, her heart beating fast.

Then Emilie heard his footsteps and twisted around and peered into the yellowness. He was whistling again. The blur of white came closer.

“He's got candy!” Charlotte said.

The man took his cigarette out of his mouth and threw it down.

“Hello,” he said quietly, then glanced at the houses and back at the two little girls on the curb. He handed the bag to Charlotte. Two licorice sticks stuck out of the top, and she was disappointed to see that it was all penny candy, unwrapped caramels and sugar hearts that sell five for a cent. Once an old man from Mrs. Osterman's had brought her five-cent candy bars.

Slowly she put one end of a licorice stick into her mouth. The man shuffled uneasily, leaned against a tree and lighted another cigarette. “You didn't tell me your name,” he said finally.

She told him, and he said his name was Robbie.

“I've got a car. . . . Want to go riding sometime?” He kept shifting and taking his hands in and out of his pockets. “I bet you like riding, Charlotte.”

“I sure do,” she said, and a dark stream of licorice juice ran down her chin.

The man leaning against the tree sprang toward her, drew a wadded handkerchief out of his hip pocket. He put one hand back of her head and wiped her face hard. “You're . . . pretty messy.” Then he stood up again and put the handkerchief back. Emilie was watching him steadily, curiously. He felt the hostility in her twisted mouth.

He drew viciously on his cigarette. “How'd you like to go riding this evening?” he whispered. “After dinner.”

“I'd like that,” Charlotte said.

Then he went off quietly, looking back at them, smiling and friendly.

Charlotte was proud of herself. She leaned back on her hands and the thin muscles in her thighs showed under the dirt-streaked skin.

“He didn't ask you to go.”

Emilie sighed. “He ain't comin'. You wait an' see.”

So Charlotte waited. She finished the candy alone, picked at her noon meal, and brooded happily in the shade of the house, humming to herself. Then she lay in the patched-up hammock on her front porch and looked at the pictures in a frayed funny paper book. The afternoon was hot and long and silent.

After supper Charlotte went out to the road and stood by the tree. Her mother had given her a sponge bath, and she had a cotton dress on instead of the thin romper suit she wore all day. She had told her mother nothing about the man from Mrs. Osterman's. The fast-setting sun sent hot horizontal rays into her face. She was sure he would come. She tried to picture the car, like the ones she had seen in the movies. That was the kind of car he would have. And she would step into the big front seat and they would drive away with hardly a sound. They would drive fast.

But after a while she got tired and came in to the front porch. The wood was hot to her bare feet. She leaned on one side of the hammock, pushed herself into it. Still she listened and there was no sound of a car. Then the screen door to Emilie's house shrieked, stopped and shrieked again. Emilie appeared, unwashed and tousled, eating the remains of a slice of bread and butter. She came deliberately onto Charlotte's porch, stood chewing reflectively as she stared at her in the hammock. Charlotte disdained to look at her.

“Oh . . . he ain't comin',” she said, and turned around and walked to the steps. She heard something down the walk. “That your mother comin'? She don't know, I betcha.”

Charlotte bounced out of the hammock. “Listen, Em'lie . . .” She frowned furiously. “If you . . . if you say to her . . .” She clenched her fists at her sides and Emilie gazed at her solemnly.

“Huh!”

But Charlotte had won.

There was no more sun, but it was still light. Charlotte's mother came back from the store. None of them said a word. The woman went into the house and Charlotte could hear her drawing water for the baby. Finally Emilie went hop-skipping across the front yard, into her house.

Charlotte lay in the hammock and listened for him. Someone was walking, whistling. She ran down to the sidewalk and saw him coming. He was dressed in white again with his jacket unbuttoned. He stopped when he saw her, smiled and beckoned. And she glanced once at her house, then ran up the warm pavement to where he stood.

“Where's your car?”

He looked about him, grinned and jerked his head. “Up the road. . . . We don't want nobody to know. You didn't tell nobody, did you?”

“No.”

They walked together. She could hardly keep up with him, so he took her hand. The fields opened up on either side after the pavement stopped. Charlotte strained up to see the car, and then the road turned suddenly and they came upon it parked by the roadside. It was big, but not so bright as those in the movies. He opened the door and lifted her in, her feet dangling over the edge of the seat. Then he came in from the other side.

“All set?”

“Uh-huh.” Charlotte was looking at the car inside.

“Like it?” he asked, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

They didn't drive off immediately. Charlotte was examining the gaudily colored dashboard, its clock with green numbers and silver hands. The other circles she did not understand, but they were all beautiful, colored and shining. The man caught her hand suddenly and she felt his fingers warm and moist, felt her mouth twist up as though she were about to cry. Then she wished that she had not come, wished that she were back on the front porch with Emilie. But he was smiling, laughing, even, as he started the car.

“You like to go fast?”

Charlotte tried to answer, but her lips were stiff. He squeezed her hand again.

“I like a lot of speed.”

Then through the engine's noise she heard someone calling her name. The man heard it, too, and released her hand. But the car was moving on toward her house.

“Charlotte! Charlo-otte!”

“That's my mother,” Charlotte said quietly.

Charlotte noticed that he frowned and that his hands tightened on the steering wheel. She felt the cool breeze in her face and she wanted to go on riding, but they were not going fast and she wanted to go fast. As they came near the house, she pressed herself against the seat, hoping her mother would not see her.

The woman stood with one foot on the curb, her apron hanging almost to the ground. She waved at them and he slowed the car. She came nearer, hiding her hands under her apron.

“Charlotte.” She grinned, but she looked at the man almost flirtatiously. “Em'lie said you were out ridin'. I just wanted to make sure where you was . . . an' I need you to help with the baby now.” She pushed some strands of hair behind her ear.

The man at the wheel smiled broadly and said, “How d'you do?”

Charlotte's mother nodded to him. “I allus have Charlotte help me with the baby 'bout this time after supper. . . . It's awful nice o' you to take her out ridin', mister, but she didn't say nothin' to me about it.” She laughed nervously.

“Sure, I know,” he said. He stretched one arm across and opened the door gallantly. “Maybe tomorrow, then. I'll be around for a few days.”

The woman looked in awe at the shiny dials and knobs, the upholstered seats. “Why . . . I'd like you to take her ridin' . . . most anytime.”

Then Charlotte and her mother walked hand in hand down the sidewalk. Once the woman cast a timid glance back at the car. “He's a mighty nice man for a city fellah, Charlotte. Where'd you meet up with him? . . . An' say, ain't that a pretty car?”

Charlotte watched the ground pass below her bare feet. Her free hand brushed along the coarse grass that grew high.

“Maybe he'll be around tomorrow,” her mother said.

One blade of grass Charlotte caught convulsively and the edges jerked through her fingers. As she looked at her thumb, two thin red lines came out of the flesh.