The Sundial (3 page)

The sundial was set into place with as much care as the books had been put into the library, and properly engineered and timed, and anyone who cared to ignore the little jade clock in the drawing room or the grandfather clock in the library or the marble clock in the dining room could go out onto the lawn and see the time by the sun. From any of the windows on that side of the house, which was the garden front looking out over the ornamental lake, the people in the house could see the sundial in the middle distance, set to one side of the long sweep of the lawn. Mr. Halloran had been a methodical man. There were twenty windows to the left wing of the house, and twenty windows to the right; because the great door in the center was double, on the second floor there were forty-two windows across and forty-two on the third floor, lodged directly under the elaborate carvings on the roof edge; Mr. Halloran had directed that the carvings on the roof be flowers and horns of plenty, and there is no doubt that they were done as he said.

On either side of the door the terrace went to the right for eighty-six black tiles and eighty-six white tiles, and equally to the left. There were a hundred and six thin pillars holding up the marble balustrade on the left, and a hundred and six on the right; on the left eight wide shallow marble steps led down to the lawn, and eight on the right. The lawn swept precisely around the blue pool—which was square—and up in a vastly long lovely movement to a summer house built like a temple to some minor mathematical god; the temple was open, with six slim pillars on either side. Although no attempt had actually been made to match leaf for leaf and branch for branch the tended trees which bordered the lawn on either side, there were four poplars, neatly spaced, around the summer house; inside, the summer house was painted in green and gold, and vines had been trained over its roof and along the pillars supporting it.

Intruding purposefully upon the entire scene, an inevitable focus, was the sundial, set badly off center and reading WHAT IS THIS WORLD?

After the first Mr. Halloran had his house, painted and paneled and brocaded and jeweled and carpeted, with sheets of silk on the beds and water colored blue in the pool, he brought his wife, the first Mrs. Halloran, and his two small children to live there. Mrs. Halloran died there within three months, without ever having seen more of the sundial than the view from her bedroom window; she did not go to the center of the maze nor visit the secret garden, she never walked into the orchard to pick herself an apricot, although fresh fruit was brought her every morning in a translucent blue bowl; roses were brought her from the rose garden and orchids and gardenias from the hothouses, and in the evenings she was carried downstairs to sit in a chair before the great fire in what Mr. Halloran was by now frankly calling the drawing room. Mrs. Halloran had been born in a two-family house on the outskirts of a far-off city where most of the year seemed wintry, and she felt that she had never been warm in her life until she sat before the great fire in her drawing room. She could not bring herself to believe that in this house she would never see winter again, and even the eternal summer in her room, of roses and gardenias and apricots, did not reassure her; she died believing that snow was falling outside the window.

The second Mrs. Halloran was Orianna, Richard’s wife, who had made a particular point of behaving with appreciation and docility while her father-in-law was alive. “I believe,” she told Richard once, after they had returned from their honeymoon in the Orient and settled down in the big house, “I believe that it is our duty to make your father’s last years happy ones. After all, he is your one living relative.”

“He is not at all my one living relative,” Richard pointed out, puzzled. “There is my sister Frances, and my Uncle Harvey and his wife in New York and their children. And I am sure I have other second and third cousins.”

“But none of them has any control over your father’s money.”

“Did you marry me for my father’s money?”

“Well, that, and the house.”

_____

“Tell me again,” Mrs. Halloran said, looking down at the sundial in the warm evening darkness.

“‘What is this world?’” Essex said quietly, “‘What asketh man to have? Now with his love, now in his colde grave, Allone, with-outen any companye.’”

“I dislike it.” Standing in silence, Mrs. Halloran reached out and touched a finger to the sundial; there were faint noises of leaves stirring and a movement in the water of the pool. In the darkness the house seemed very far away, its lights small, and Mrs. Halloran, touching the sundial, moved her finger along a W, and thought: without it the lawn would be empty. It is a point of human wickedness; it is a statement that the human eye is unable to look unblinded upon mathematical perfection. I am earthly, Mrs. Halloran reminded herself conscientiously, I must look at the sundial like anyone else. I am not inhuman; if the sundial were taken away I, too, would have to avert my eyes until I saw imperfection, a substitute sundial—perhaps a star.

“Are you warm enough?” Essex asked. “You shivered.”

“No,” said Mrs. Halloran. “I think it has turned quite chilly. We had better go back to the house.”

Walking, Mrs. Halloran caressed with her soft steps the fine unyielding property she walked upon; she was not unable to perceive the similar firmness of Essex’ arm under his sleeve, and she felt the very small tensing of his muscles as equally a response to her perfection and a little gesture of protection; this is all mine, she thought, savoring the sweet quiet stone and earth and leaf and blade of her holding. She remembered then that she had decided to send Essex away and thought, smiling a little, poor Essex, unable to comprehend that the essence of the good courtier must be insecurity. Now I own the house, she thought, and could not speak, for love of it.

_____

In the big drawing room Richard Halloran sat by the fire in his wheel chair, and Miss Ogilvie sat, pointedly remote, at a table far away with Aunt Fanny. Miss Ogilvie was holding a book and Aunt Fanny was playing solitaire; she had clearly not felt herself entitled to turn on an adequate light, and both she and Miss Ogilvie bent, squinting.

“Orianna,” said her husband, when Mrs. Halloran and Essex came in through the tall doors from the terrace, “I was thinking about Lionel.”

“Of course you were, Richard.” Mrs. Halloran gave her scarf to Essex, and went to stand behind her husband’s wheel chair. “Try not to think about it,” she said. “You’ll have trouble sleeping.”

“He was my son,” Richard Halloran said, patiently explaining.

Mrs. Halloran leaned forward. “Shall I move you away from the fire, Richard? Are you too warm?”

“Don’t badger him,” Aunt Fanny said. She lifted a card to hold it pointedly toward the light and look at it. “Richard was always perfectly capable of making his own decisions, Orianna, even about his own comfort.”

“Mr. Halloran has always been such a forceful man,” Miss Ogilvie added fondly.

“We rang the bells over the carriage house for his first birthday,” Mr. Halloran explained across the room to Aunt Fanny and Miss Ogilvie. “My wife thought we might ring the bells again today—as a sort of farewell, you know—but I thought not. What do you think, Fanny?”

“By no means,” Aunt Fanny said firmly. “In deplorable taste. Naturally.” She looked at Mrs. Halloran, and said “Naturally,” again.

“Essex,” said Mrs. Halloran, not moving. “I wonder if we should have them ring the bells, after all.” Essex, crossing the room with the soundless step of a cat, stood beside her attentively, and Mr. Halloran nodded and said, “Thoughtful. He would have liked it. We rang the bells over the carriage house,” he told Miss Ogilvie, “for his first birthday, and then every birthday after that, until he asked us not to do it any more.”

“I am afraid, however, that it is too late to ring the bells tonight,” Mrs. Halloran told her husband gravely.

“You are right, my dear, as always, Poor Lionel would not hear them, in any case. Perhaps tomorrow will not be too late.”

“Lionel was a fine man,” Miss Ogilvie said, drooping mournfully. “We will miss him.”

“Yes, you must get someone to cut down the hedges,” Mr. Halloran said to his wife.

“His father was always everything a boy could desire,” said Aunt Fanny. “Richard, are you too warm by the fire? You always disliked being overheated. Although,” she added, “the fire is not very high, apparently. At least, it gives almost no light.”

“Essex,” said Mrs. Halloran, “go and turn on the lamp for Aunt Fanny.”

“Thank you, no,” Aunt Fanny said. “It is never necessary to consult
my
comfort, Orianna. You are perfectly aware that I ask for nothing at your hands. Or,” she added, glancing at Essex, who stood by her, “at the hands of a hired—”

“Young man to catalogue the library,” Essex supplied.

“Mr. Halloran,” Miss Ogilvie asked, “may I get you a shawl to throw over your shoulders? Perhaps your back is cold? I know one’s back so often is, even when the fire is warming one’s . . .” she hesitated, “extremities,” she said.

“Do you mean feet, Miss Ogilvie?” Mrs. Halloran asked. “Because I assure you that Richard still has his, although they are not often visible. Miss Ogilvie is concerned about your feet,” she said down to her husband.

“My feet?” He smiled. “Don’t do much walking any more,” he explained gallantly to Miss Ogilvie, who blushed.

“Aunt Fanny,” Mrs. Halloran said, and they all turned to her, wondering at her voice, “I am happy to hear that you ask for nothing at my hands, because there is something I am going to tell all of you, and Aunt Fanny reassures me.”

“I?” said Aunt Fanny, astonished.

“The essence of life,” said Mrs. Halloran gently, “is change, you will all, being intelligent people, agree. Our one recent change—I refer, of course, to the departure of Lionel—”

“It
was
Lionel, then,” Mr. Halloran said, nodding to himself before the fire.

“—has been both refreshing and agreeable. We could very well do without Lionel. I am now convinced that a thorough housecleaning is necessary. Richard will stay, of course.” She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and he nodded again, gratified. “Essex,” said Mrs. Halloran. “I wonder if we have not detained you past your time?”

“The library—” said Essex, putting his fingers against his mouth and staring.

“I think I shall let the library go for a while,” Mrs. Halloran said, “and get someone to paint murals in my dressing-room. You will, of course, receive a small settlement to start you on some small scholarly pursuit.”

“The path,” Essex said tightly, “gets narrower all the time.”

“So wise of you,” Mrs. Halloran said.

“I would have hoped—” Essex tried. “I would hope that after—”

“Essex, you are thirty-two years old. It is not too late for you to find a career in life. You might work with your hands. You may of course take a day or so to plan. Miss Ogilvie,” and Miss Ogilvie put out her hand blindly and took hold of her chair arm. “I am pleased with you,” Mrs. Halloran said. “This is not criticism, Miss Ogilvie. You are a gentlewoman, of a sort too rarely found in the world today; you have been sheltered—you came, I think, just shortly before Fancy was born?—you have been sheltered from the world all your life, and I would not thoughtlessly put you out to live exposed. I think we shall put you into a little boarding house, genteel, of course—you may be positive that it will be genteel, and altogether suitable for your condition of life and your breeding; some watering place? A spot by the sea? In the off season you will play cribbage with other ladies of similar station in life. Perhaps during some warm autumn month you will fall into the hands of an adventurer, carried away by the sound of the sea and the fading merriment on the pier; perhaps even Essex, in his trackless scholarly wanderings, will find you and take your money away from you. You would of course be perfectly safe in the hands of an ordinary adventurer, since the little nest egg I will give you will be absolutely out of your control; I feel that it is only wise.”

“This is heartless.” Miss Ogilvie sank back in her chair. “I have not deserved this.”

“Perhaps not. But you must allow me my impulse of generosity. I insist upon the nest egg.”

“And I? Am I to be turned out, too?”

“Dear Aunt Fanny, this is your home. Do you suppose me ungrateful enough to turn you away from the home of your childhood? You have lived here with your mother, with your father—a fine man; I remember your father.”

“My mother and father have nothing to do with
you
. My brother—”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Halloran. “You went to your first, and only, dance, in the ballroom here; Miss Halloran, you were then; we must not lose sight of Miss Halloran in Aunt Fanny. Equally, however, your brother and I are alone now; we have not been alone in this house since our marriage. There is room enough for you and me in the house, Fanny,” Mrs. Halloran said indulgently.

“I have never thought so,” Aunt Fanny said.

“Do you recall the tower, Fanny? Your father built it; it was to have been an observatory, was it not? I remember workmen there during my early days in the house. The tower could be made extremely comfortable. You may even take some of my furniture up there; I have no objection to your choosing anything in the house, except, of course, those objects of particular sentimental value; the blue cloisonné vase in the hall will go with Miss Ogilvie.”

“I will take my mother’s jewelry.”

“I daresay that people in this house years from now will begin to talk of the haunted tower.” Mrs. Halloran laughed. “Well,” she said, “who is left now? It will be lonely here for Maryjane, I know; I am positive that she had a genuine feeling for Lionel, although I would not care to define it any further than that. I think I shall send Maryjane home again. Lionel found her in a public library in the city, so that is where she is going. She had a little apartment at the time, and I shall arrange for her to have her little apartment back again. She will not absolutely have to go back to work in the library, because of course I will be generous. She may even take up again with her old friends as though no time had passed; I am afraid, however, that she must not hope to find a second Lionel. One Lionel in a lifetime is, I believe, quite enough for anyone.”