The Hearth and Eagle (60 page)

“Whatever for? I know what the Rock looks like though I’ve not gone there in years. And I’m too old for junkets.”

Evan sighed. “Maybe I am too. I don’t want to trouble you, but do come. I detest being alone with a stranger.”

Oh, so that’s it. But why
not go
? The sea and the sun and the joy of motion on the water were not restricted to the young.

Walt was impressed by his passenger. Maria had a calendar decorated with a picture by Redlake, called “Breakers Ahead,” and Walt had read a story about him in the Sunday supplement called the “Hermit of Thursday Cove.” It had smeary photographs of his Maine cottage, perched on a cliff over the sea, and told how he lived alone and wouldn’t let anybody in, and how he particularly hated women, though there was a photograph of a painting of a naked girl lying on a beach. This, of course, had made Walt read the article in the first place. It said this painting was hanging in a museum in Paris.

So Walt greeted his mother and the painter with considerable curiosity. The tide was in and he had brought his boat up alongside one of the Little Harbor wharves. His mother scrambled in and sat down by the tiller. She was pretty spry for her years, but Redlake had a bad leg and needed help. He sat down forward of the housing on a stack of lobster pots.

Walt started up the engine. “Handsome old coot,” he muttered to his mother. “What in hell’s he doing at our place?”

Hesper looked at Evan. He sat erect, one hand on his blackthorn stick. He had folded his arms into the brown cape to keep it from fluttering. He reminded her of a dimly remembered picture of an Italian duke. The narrow dark face, the haughty nobility of bearing.

“Oh, he was here once long ago,” she said. “I guess he didn’t know about the other hotels.”

Walt was satisfied. His thoughts reverted somberly to Maria, her avid, passionate beauty and her sulkiness. The boat chugged along between Gerry’s Island and the ruins of Fort Sewall, heading toward the lighthouse on the Neck. Already the Great Harbor was filling with summer craft. Yawls, schooners, and ketches rocked at their freshly painted moorings off the two Yacht Clubs, the Eastern and the newer Corinthian. And the smaller boats, the sloops and cats and an occasional cruiser, were sprinkled thickly on the turquoise water.

“Going to be a good season,” said Walt. “Sell all the lobsters I can trap.” His face darkened. “Been having trouble with that bastard Ratty Dawson again. He’s swiping from my pots.”

“Well, you better not beat him up this time,” said Hesper grimly. “Let the harbor police handle it—”

“Codshit!” said Walt, and he jerked the tiller. “They want witnesses, and they want proof, and they want papers filled out, and then they don’t do anything. I can handle Ratty myself.”

Evan suddenly turned his head and his amused gaze rested on Walt’s scowling face. “I’m afraid you’re an anachronism, Mr. Porterman. Our civilization seldom does anything direct any more.”

Walt looked blank and Evan continued, “By the look of that harbor, Marbleheaders don’t even take their sailing direct any more. Many townsfolk own those boats?”

Walt shook his head and shrugged. “But I don’t know as it matters. They spend a lot of money in the town. And you can bet your last dollar we don’t let ’em swindle us.”

They rounded the lighthouse and passed over Lasque’s Ledge. The little boat rocked on the long swells of the open ocean. Evan stared at the shoreline, the smooth green lawns, the turrets and gables and battlements of the period mansions. “I had no idea it was so built up,” he said, “and why must they build so colossally ugly?” He raised his stick and pointed at the largest of the houses, an improbable mixture of the Alhambra and Balmoral Castle.

Walt grinned, glancing at his mother. “That one happens to belong to my sister-in-law. Mrs. Henry Porterman. She thinks it’s mighty elegant.”

Evan looked startled. Hesper felt his frowning gaze pass over her. He said nothing.

Walt anchored in the cove just south of Castle Rock, the cove where Evan had pulled Hesper out of the waves on the day they met. But neither of them mentioned this. Walt rowed them to shore in his dinghy. “I’ll wait in the boat,” he said. “Got a couple of nets to mend.” He was mildly amused at the expedition, but he assumed that his mother was accompanying Mr. Redlake to make herself useful. He watched them move over the shingle and start up the rise of ground that led to the rock. Two tall figures, thin and erect, except for Redlake’s limp. Ma always did know how to handle queer people, Walt reflected, and whistling through his teeth, he went to work on a lobster pot, splicing together the meshes of string torn by a powerful claw.

Evan toiled up the slope until they reached the beach grass and cluttered piles of rose rock that had split off from the main mass. She heard his breathing sharpen, and saw that his skin had suffused with a dark red. He staggered and caught himself on his stick.

“Here—” she said. “Sit down, Evan.”

He obeyed, slumping onto the nearest rock. He leaned forward, resting his forehead on his hands as they clasped the stick.

“What is it?” she said. “Dizzy?”

He raised his head and beneath the drooping lids, his eyes rested on the lavender haze that shimmered along the far horizon.

“I’m going to die, Hesper.”

She put her hand on his knee and drew it back. “Nonsense. Everyone gets faint spells.”

He jerked his head. “My dear—spare me the rubber-stamp conventions. I didn’t come here for that.”

The sun shone down on them. Two little boys with fishing rods ran down the path and disappeared on the other side of the massive rock. Near Hesper’s foot under a clump of grass there was an empty beer bottle and a fragment of white paper. Below on the beach low waves creamed over the rattling shingle.

“What did you come for?” said Hesper.

He was silent so long that she was frightened, but she saw that he had lost the dusky color and his nostrils no longer flared in the struggle for breath. When he spoke he did not look at her, and his musing voice drifted out toward the water.

“All my life I’ve tried to capture something. An essence of reality. Many times I’ve thought I had it. Now I don’t know. Of late years I’ve been repeating myself. Painting over old canvases. That “Fisher Girl” that Boston’s got...”

She waited. A sandpiper hopped along the beach. Faintly from the anchored boat she heard Walt’s whistle.

“That was you, Hesper. I’ve been painting you in some phase ever since I left you. You were in the gentle English meadows, and the plodding, French peasants, you were in the pine mountains of the Adirondacks, and you are in the storms and the calms of the ocean that I paint now. I never was sure of it until today.”

Her heart trembled and paused. Soft, healing water flowed over the barrenness in her soul. The soft water rose to her eyes. She shut them and turned away.

“Have you seen any of my work?” he asked. She shook her head and he gave a mordant chuckle. “Ah well, you never did understand it anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to die very soon. But first I want to go home and paint one more picture. I think I can now. I needed to see you and Marblehead again.”

“Thank you—” she whispered. “Thank you for telling me that our marriage was not all a terrible mistake, and that somehow I did help you become a great artist.”

He heard the poignancy in her voice through the naive little words and understood her need as he could never have done in the past. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I told you once, Hesper, that what love I had was for you. It was true. It still is.”

Stay here with me, Evan—she cried to him silently, as once she would have cried it aloud. We’re two lonely old people. I’ll take care of you. Stay with me—But the cry never reached her lips. Even now, without the turmoil of passion, she knew there could never be sustained closeness between them. I always wanted more from him than he could give. Learn, learn, learn at last, stupid heart.

He studied her face. “What the years have given you of serenity and inner strength!” he cried with wonder. “More than I ever would have dreamed.”

“Strength and serenity?” she repeated sadly. “Oh no, Evan, I haven’t found either of them.”

He smiled at her and struggled to his feet. “Perhaps you’ve never known very much about yourself, my dear. Let’s go back across the Harbor. This place is no longer part of us.” He glanced at the surrounding mansions, and the smooth velvet lawns.

They called Walt and went back to the town, and as they approached her home from the Little Harbor side, Evan became silent. Nor did he speak again except to say good-bye during the remaining minutes of his visit. They parted very simply, and she stood quiet as he had left her, watching at the door as he limped down the path to the buggy which was to convey him to the depot. She turned back into her home, deeply grateful to him for having released her at last from a long humiliation. But Evan was in the end to give her far deeper cause for gratitude.

Two months after his visit, she read of his death in the
Boston Transcript.
And she was unprepared for the violent shock of pain and loss it gave her. Even the boarders noticed that Mrs. Porterman’s usual brisk cheerfulness was replaced by heavy-eyed silences, and wondered a little. And Carla, who escaped from Eleanor’s supervision at “Braeburn” and ferried across to the town whenever she dared, was troubled by the sadness she felt in her grandmother.

But some days later the sadness lightened, though Carla never knew why.

Hesper received a small shallow crate by express, and a terse covering letter from a Maine lawyer stating that Mr. Evan Redlake’s will directed that the accompanying package be sent to her at once upon his death. She carried the wooden crate to her room and locked the door. When she had pried up one of the slats she saw a letter pasted to the back of a canvas. It was addressed to her, and she sat down on the bed and opened it with shaking fingers.

It began without salutation.

I leave you no money, my dear, since your son Henry has plenty, judging from that monstrosity on the Neck. Instead I send you this, my last picture, which is of and for you. It’s the best thing I ever did, and I hope that it, at least, will have meaning for you.

Evan

She sat a long time looking down at the letter. Then she released the canvas from its wrappings, and when she saw what it was she gave a faint cry. For Evan had painted the Hearth and Eagle much as he had painted it long ago in the picture she had stared at in the New York gallery, but there were differences in the painting, and in her.

Again as in the earlier painting the house was bathed in light, but in this picture the shadows were not violent. They blended in exquisite harmony with the earth and the chestnut tree and the limitless blue ocean behind the house. And here a dim figure stood in the doorway, the arms held out in offering and welcome. The figure was that of a woman, ageless, and the features barely sketched, yet in the reflected light the upturned face shone with a quiet strength.

But it was the house itself behind the figure that drew Hesper’s startled gaze, and as she looked, its meaning for her grew and expanded. It seemed that the silver clapboards became transparent as gauze and behind them there was moving life. It was peopled with gentle spirits not imprisoned but forever slipping through the house on an endless journey. They were all there and alive, the familiar names, and they slipped through her mind as they slipped through the house, like vivid jewels on an everlasting chain. Phebe and Mark and little Isaac; Lot and Bethia; Moses and Melissa and Zilpah; Richard, and Sarah, who was Gran; Roger and Susan.

And all the children. She saw them clustered around the great fireplace, yearning for life, their hands outstretched both to joy and suffering. And she saw the baby Hesper sitting on her stool amongst them, neither more nor less embodied than the rest.

Timeless minutes flowed by as she looked at the picture, and she understood at last what Evan meant by the essence of reality he had striven all his life to interpret. For here was more than a masterly portrait of an enduring old house, as the picture so long ago had been. Here, far more beautiful and grander than actuality, he had evoked the matrix of human experience—the ideal image of home, rooted in the earth and rocks and trees, washed by the sea.

She turned at last from the picture and looked again at Evan’s note, rereading it with a tender smile. Yes, my dear, she thought, this at least has meaning for me, and I thank you.

And it seemed to her that he heard and understood, and that through the medium of his art they had at last found true communication.

O
N A WARM
Indian summer day of early November in 1916, Hesper sat in the sunlight in a deck chair Walt had put out in the garden for her, under a gnarled old apple tree. It was good to sit and rest. The dull pain up her left arm was gone for the moment, eased by the pills the doctor had given her.

Little Harbor was quiet this afternoon. The summer people had gone home and the town had become itself again. It lit its kitchen and parlor fires, smoked or chatted peacefully with blinds undrawn, free for eight months of admiring artists and sightseers. The Great Harbor, too, was nearly deserted. The yacht clubs were closed now. The graceful pleasure craft that had made Marblehead the country’s foremost yachting center were all put to rest in various boat yards for the winter.

Hesper listened to the diminishing put-put of a lobster boat, and thought how beautiful the foliage still was on Peach’s Point. Clumps of fading gold amongst the somber green of the pines. And the water a crisp, diamonding blue that you only saw at this time of the year. She listened to the music of the ripples on the beach, and the plantive mewing of the seagulls, and thought what quiet treasures of the senses age brought in return for the passion it removed. Mauve smoke drifted toward her on the northwest breeze, perfuming the salt air with the smell of burning leaves. She had never realized what a lovely smell that was before. Perhaps there was nothing in the world so rewarding as tranquil awareness.