The Hearth and Eagle (30 page)

Whatever impulse had caused Nat to want her there tonight seemed to have vanished. And she felt herself an intruder. Soon she had the disagreeable sensation of not being there at all, so tangible was their preoccupation with each other. Nothing very definite. Only once did Nat look at his mother, but during that brief glance his eyes held a hungry, brooding intentness—and Leah, meeting the glance obliquely, turned her head away and lowered her lids.

“It was cold out today—” said Hesper, nervously at random. “Maybe the harbor’ll freeze over again.”    .

Leah turned her dark head, seeming to come back from a great distance. “Why yes, it was cold out,” she said. “Very cold.”

Nat’s body jerked upright from the table, his fork clattered on his plate. “You didn’t go out! I told you not to!”

A tremor and a delicate flush passed over the lovely face. “Only to the wharf—” she said. “Just for some air—dear.”

“Anywhere else?” He spoke with the same controlled violence Hesper had heard earlier. “You didn’t go up Pleasant Street?”

There was a pause, and Hesper, uncomprehending, yet felt a swirl of dark emotions sweep like wind through the kitchen.

Leah shook her head. “I wouldn’t do what you didn’t want.”

“You’re not to leave the house unless I’m with you! If I can’t be sure, you know what I must do.”

Leah bowed her white neck, her dark eyes stared at the tablecloth. “Cruel—” she whispered, her lips barely moving—“Ah, Nat, let me go—” Her head bent lower, and then she added in a loud voice as though she spoke of someone else. “Let Leah go! She can be cruel too!” and she smiled a strange, secret smile.

Hesper felt a creep of primitive terror. She jumped up from the table, scraping her chair and stammering—“I must get back.”

The two who had forgotten her turned their heads and looked at the girl. Leah emerged again from the fringes of that other scarlet-shadowed world into which she was being once more driven by the intolerable pain of longing and of shame.

She rose from the table, and held her hand out with so much naturalness that Hesper was abashed. “Good-bye—” Leah said. “It was kind of you to come. Nat and I are much—alone.”

Nat had risen too, and moved close beside Leah. He did not touch her, and yet it seemed to Hesper that the two were meshed together by a mysterious bond, and that they stood alone together on the other side of a chasm looking across at her.

Oh, I wish I hadn’t gone, Hesper thought, hurrying out into the cold. The moments in the Cubby kitchen held the eeriness of half-conscious fantasy—not devoid of pity or shock, but incomprehensible as a nightmare. The dark words and emotions, sliding past her furtively, only half apprehended. “You didn’t go up Pleasant Street—” I shall forget the whole thing, she thought in sudden disgust. They have nothing to do with me. I needn’t ever see them again—ever. And she hurried faster, beginning to run along the dim street.

Ahead of her she saw looming the outline of her home, dark in the wintry sky, though there was a light in the kitchen window. And her footsteps slowed. She stood in the darkness and looked out across the water. The black waves dappled with ice heaved and sighed amongst the rocks, and she felt for them a fascinated revulsion, continuance of the fear which she had denied. My life is like that—she thought with panic—back and forth like the waves, trapped here amongst the rocks, never really changing. She shivered but she did not know it. She stared into the blackness, and for the first time in years she had a vision of old Aunt ’Crese, long since dead. “Heartbreak, fire—the bitter taste of death. Three men—three kinds of love—always a hankering too hard. But at the end you’ll know....”

Hesper raised her arm in a savage gesture—and let it fall. “At the end—when there isn’t even a beginning! God...” she whispered in prayer and in hatred. She turned and walked up the path and into the house.

I
T WAS NOT UNTIL
the June of 1866, when Hesper had at last achieved a sort of resignation towards what she believed to be her drab destiny, that she was suddenly released from it. But before release came there had been minor changes.

The year before, a month after Lee’s surrender, Susan obtained the loan of a thousand dollars from Amos, who had asked no security but her written promise to pay. This was not from sentiment, though he was conscious of unusual warmth towards Mrs. Honeywood which he did not analyze. He thought the Inn was a good investment. In business matters he was usually right, and he was right in this.

The Hearth and Eagle reopened that August, and the taproom under Susan’s competent management quickly regained most of its old standing.

And at the same time Hesper left the factory. In quitting she denied herself the scene with Mr. Porterman which she had pictured so pleasurably. Her mother’s loan had squashed that indulgence. You couldn’t be rude to a benefactor. So she informed only Miss Simpkins and Mr. Johnson who were equally indifferent. She had been a good stitcher but now that the war was over, there were plenty to replace her. Yet she did see Amos after all, for on her last Saturday as she went to collect her pay, Johnson told her she was to report to Mr. Porterman’s office.

Hesper raised her eyebrows, and knocked on Amos’s door. He rose from his mahogany roll-top desk as she entered, and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Honeywood,” in a formal voice.

The office was large and comfortable. It was carpeted in red lozenges. The two armchairs were of mohair and walnut veneer, and there were three framed chromos hanging against the green and yellow roses of the wallpaper. The windows were draped in brown plush fringed with woolly brown balls and excluded much daylight. So the lamps were lit— female draped figures made of plaster of Paris whose raised arms supported the frosted lamp globes.

He
does himself well, Hesper thought, and said “Good afternoon.”

Amos indicated a chair and sat down. He wasn’t very sure why he had summoned her, nor did he know what to say, now that she was here.

“Johnson tells me you’re leaving us—” he said abruptly. “Too bad, you’ve made quite a good record.” He hadn’t meant to strike that tone at all—condescending, owner to factory hand. But it was her own attitude that embarrassed him. Always remote, when it wasn’t actually hostile.

“Yes. I’m going home to help Ma with the Inn,” she said. “We’re grateful for the loan.” Her hazel eyes passed over his face and rested on a snow-scene paper weight on his desk.

“Purely a matter of business—” he said, more ungraciously than he meant to.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt of that—” she answered with faint sarcasm. “But thanks anyhow.”

She wasn’t as handsome as he had sometimes thought, and he had been very conscious of her during his inspections of the stitching room. She sat awkwardly in the armchair, she was too pale, and thin, her cheekbones and jaw too prominent. And yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

I didn’t ask her here to be thanked, damn it, he thought, annoyed. He crossed his legs, and leaned back in the swivel chair. “Factory work wasn’t as bad as you expected, was it!” he said on a hearty, rallying note.

Hesper turned her head. Her mouth curved. “Quite as bad,” she said. “There’s never been a moment of these ten months when I haven’t loathed it.”

Amos’s chair squeaked stridently. He jumped to his feet, flushing—“My dear Miss Honeywood! What d’you mean by that! My factory’s as well run as any in the country! I do a great deal for my hands. You can’t say you haven’t had fair treatment.”

Hesper got up too. “I didn’t mean to make you angry, Mr. Porterman. You asked me and I told you. It’s doubtless that I’m not suited to the work.” And not another word will I say. I’m quit of the place, thank heaven. I never thought he had such a sharp temper, he doesn’t look it, being so fair and big. She waited coolly.

Amos controlled himself, ashamed that she had roused him to a disproportionate fury. She was under no compulsion to like his factory, yet for a second he had wanted to slap her.

“Good-bye—” she said, as he didn’t speak. She smiled again. She had the strange and pleasant sensation of having the upper hand. I wonder if Charity knows how to manage him, she thought. Everyone knew that Charity and Mr. Porterman were keeping company, though there’d been no announcement.

“Well, good-bye,” he said through stiff lips, suddenly wishing that she wouldn’t go, that she would look at him with friendliness. “I daresay you’ll be happier at home. I—” he had meant to give her a bonus, with a few cordial words of commendation. He had the five-dollar gold piece all ready in an envelope on his desk, but the gift was unthinkable now. “I may run down some day, and see how your mother’s getting on—” he said. “Unless, of course, I’d be unwelcome.”

“Oh no—Mr. Porterman. Ma’d admire to see you, I’m sure.”

After she left, Amos sat on in his office, brooding. The girl disliked him, and he disliked her; at least she aroused in him feelings of embarrassment and inadequacy. Too trivial to think about except that her attitude seemed to typify the general one of Marblehead. He’d tried to be kind to her, as he’d been generous toward his adopted town. Both accepted his generosity, expressed tepid thanks, and continued to exclude him. Except Charity, of course. He slipped his bulbous gold watch out of his vest pocket. Due right now at the Trevercombes for supper. He’d be late again, and she’d be archly reproving—“Naughty man—working so hard at that horrid old factory—forgetting all about poor little Charity—” fluttering, tense and anxious underneath. Her mother too, watching—waiting as Charity was, for him really to declare himself. Poor little devil, he thought. I’ll do it tonight. He had used respect for the memory of Lily Rose as long as he decently could.

He sighed and got up, going behind the fretwork screen to fetch his gloves and beaver hat. Well, at any rate, he thought, the Trevercombes would make him comfortable and give him a good supper, much better than the Marblehead Hotel.

He walked along School Street from his factory and crossed Pleasant Street, passing rival shoe factories, but none as big as his, he thought complacently, except Harris & Sons with their new plant on Elm Street, and he had every intention of surpassing them soon.

He turned down Washington and his pleasant thoughts were cut short by a dark shadow that moved behind a maple tree. He smothered an exclamation and stopped, but it was not a woman. It was only a trick of the waning light.

Besides, Leah had not been out of her house since January, he knew through the discreet inquiries he had had Johnson make. They said in the town she had had a recurrence of the madness she once suffered from, and her son was caring for her, as he had before.

But I didn’t know she wasn’t—wasn’t normal—and even if I had—His face and neck grew hot, and he tried not to think of what had happened, but the scene took shape inexorably in his mind. This thing had happened before supper. He had come home early to attend to some personal correspondence, and Nat wasn’t due for a couple of hours yet. He had been sitting at the table in his bedroom, when Leah walked in dressed again in that white nightgown, or whatever it was. He had jumped up—and suddenly before he knew what was happening, she had twined her arms around his neck, and was pressing the length of her body against him, murmuring “Love Leah—love Leah—you know you want to—” her head thrown back and her great dark eyes burning. He had felt her full breasts pressing against his chest, from the warmth of her body there rose a compelling perfume, and her face seemed to shimmer in a flame. And he had lost his head. There had been strange unreal moments, gilded with a bizarre beauty, and then he had returned to himself, appalled. He had shoved her away, shouting at her, telling her to hurry out of there lest Nat should come back. She had stared at him piteously, seeming not to understand—“Don’t tell Nat—” she whispered. “You must never tell him, love—oh, you don’t know...”

“No. No—” he’d said more gently. “We’ll both forget this forever. I’ll leave here in the morning, of course.”

“Leave—?” she said in a small bewildered voice like a child. “You want to leave Leah, alone?”

“I must. Be reasonable. I can’t stay now.” He spoke very sharply, because he felt a quiver of fear. And he took her arm and led her across the threshold. She went quietly, but as she stood by the door of her own room, she raised her head and looked at him with a clouded and poignant yearning. “Leah’Il be watching and waiting for you always—” she whispered.

She had stayed in her room the rest of that evening, locking her door, and not answering Nat when he knocked and tried to find out what was the matter. The two men ate their cold supper in silence, both conscious of faint, stifled sobbing upstairs from Leah’s room. After supper Amos had made the bald announcement that he was leaving the next day, and had seen the lightning flash of relief in Nat’s eyes. Nat might connect this with his mother’s distress, but thank God he could guess nothing of what had happened.

The next morning, Leah had seemed to be her normal self again, though her motions and the few words she spoke were very slow, as though they proceeded from conscious effort. When his luggage was all piled in the van, the awkward moment of farewell had not been difficult. She had stood beside Nat in her doorway, and said “Good-bye” quite naturally, though her great dark eyes had not looked at Amos.

He had seen her but once since then, about a month later, when she had suddenly emerged from the shadow of a porch on Pleasant Street as he walked home from the factory. Her hands were outstretched toward him, her eyes alight, and there was a joyous beseeching smile on her lips. He had seen at once that she was in the other phase, the one in which she spoke of herself in the third person, in strange disassociation from the passionate and tortured beauty which possessed her. There were many passers-by on Pleasant Street, and he had been seized with a furious embarrassment. “Go home!” he shouted at her and turning his back had crossed to the other side of the street. He had not seen her again.

What else could I have done? thought Amos walking faster up the hill on Washington Street towards the Trevercombes. Her son knows how to take care of her. This damn town. Lots of them are queer, it seems to me. Inbred. Never leaving the place for as much as an hour. Moss-backs, die-hards, got to do everything the way their “grandsir” did it. Got to use words the rest of the world never heard of—show how exclusive they are, I guess. Planchment, grouty, froach, crimmy, gormy, clitch, cautch—lot of gibberish. Some of the old-timers you couldn’t understand at all, and they were proud of it, he thought with sharpening irritation. He stumbled against an abutment of rocky ledge and looked down at his boots. Their sleek, polished blackness was gray with clinging dust. Look at that—wouldn’t you think they’d pave their streets, at least! He entered Charity’s house in a lowering mood.