Time Will Darken It (21 page)

The house was so still that it gave her the feeling that she
was being watched, that the sofas and chairs were keeping an eye on her to see that she didn’t touch anything that she shouldn’t; that she put back the alabaster model of the Taj Mahal and the little bearded grinning man (made out of ivory, with a pack on his back, a folded fan, and his toes turned inward) exactly the way she found them. The locusts warned her, but from too far away. The clocks all seemed preoccupied with their various and contradictory versions of the correct time. The glimpse that Nora caught of herself in the ebony pier glass was of a person slightly wary, involved in an action that carried with it an element of danger.

A glance into the guest-room, when Nora went upstairs, was enough. This room which might have held some clue on the day they arrived, now offered only an untidiness no different from the untidiness, year in and year out, of a familiar bedroom in the plantation house in Mississippi. Nora hesitated, standing in the upstairs hall, between Ab’s room and the room that belonged to Austin and Martha King. The door of this room (the one she wanted most to see when it was unoccupied) was closed. She went into Ab’s room, looked around, and came out again, no wiser in the ways of children than she had been before. She listened and heard no sound but the beating of her own heart, which grew louder when she put her hand on the knob of the closed door and turned it.

The bedroom was empty and in perfect order.

Nora stared at the mirror, drained of life and purposeless. She went over to the dressing-table and, careful not to upset the bottles of perfume, she pulled out drawer after drawer: face powder and hair-pins, enamelled ear-rings, a little blue leather box containing Martha King’s jewels, tortoiseshell combs, scented handkerchiefs, folded white kid gloves, stockings, ribboned sachets. Here too, Martha King, whom she liked and envied and couldn’t ever seem to know, eluded her. The paraphernalia of femininity, softness, sweetness, and illusion might have belonged to any beautiful woman.

Nora passed on to the bureau, pulled open the big drawers and discovered the little secret one, containing a velvet pincushion, odds and ends of ribbon, and a letter addressed to Austin King. Observing how it lay among the ribbons so she could restore it to the exact same position, Nora lifted the letter out of the drawer, examined the handwriting (feminine) and the postmark (Providence, R.I.). With the letter in her hand she went out into the upstairs hall, bent over the banister and listened, ready, if there was the slightest sound, to slip the letter back in the drawer and be in her own third-floor bedroom by the time anyone reached the landing. There was no sound. With her hands trembling, she drew the letter from the envelope and began to read slowly, for the writing offered certain difficulties.

Austin, my dearest, my precious, my most neglected:

You have sent me all the money there is in the world! I know there cannot be more. And I cannot say anything or even thank you at all. I wonder why we are so inadequately equipped with words that will express? Words are the tools of man and could not express what the spirit can feel
.

But if you only knew what a load is taken from me, right off my back, as it were, all because you love me. I’m just going to try with might and main
(
whatever that does mean!
)
not to feel obligated. That is the worst of me. I am such a poor receptacle. I want to do all the pouring, or so it seems, and do not get the joy out of great or small gifts because I so want to give those that are greater. That is not right, so I intend to enjoy my relief and forget what you gave me. Perhaps I can even go so far as believing that I gave it to you?

The carpenters are here. It has simply poured all day and to see them sitting about unable to shingle was just too much for all of us. But tonight the wind has shifted to the west and we believe we shall have a fine day tomorrow
.

And new shingles are on the south side of the house and the west side of the barn. Tomorrow if the day is fair the barn will be
all right and in order and that makes me glad. I have worried over the roof for so long that I shall miss it, the worry. There are no planks under the floor of the barn, in front, you know, where it was rotting, and the eaves are to be fixed too, and the barn is to have some paint, much needed. I think I shall freshen up the walls downstairs, in the dining-room. Did I tell you that Jessie gave me Aunt Evelyn’s table buffet? I have the most annoying time of it trying to remember what I have written you three children. I cannot for my life tell whether I told you, or Charles, or Maud, or each one of you several times. Well, anyhow, told or untold, she did—Jessie gave me the table. It came yesterday, is sixty inches across and solid mahogany. Enormous. It weighs a ton
.

That you weigh one hundred and sixty pounds is a great solace. Do you walk to work each day? Above all, you must get exercise and in fresh air. Last evening your Aunt Dorothy held forth about you and certainly she paid you the highest compliment one human can pay another. I’ll not tell you now. But sometime. She is so fine and level. And kind—and generous. But I’ll not start on her
.

About myself. You see I have been acting sort of uppish ever since last summer’s adventures in high finance and I have not responded to all the tests and various treatments according to my usual docility. Now don’t get the idea that I am seriously ill. I’m not, but I am also opposed to being ill if it can be avoided. Yesterday I went to see Dr. Stanton again, and that after a week away, and was told to return in two weeks. Meanwhile, I am loaded with pills and potions, and my leg is still lame and blue
.

I have not told all this to Maud because I felt certain she would get ideas, think I was worse off than I am and worry about it. Of course I shall say nary a word to her or to anybody about your generosities, but I cannot understand why your sister should feel as she does
.

Last Sunday I heard a wonderful sermon by my pet, Dr. Malcolm LeRoy Jones, which ended with a story about Voltaire
and Benjamin Franklin. It seems that Franklin took his son, a lad of seventeen, to see Voltaire who was very old. When they entered Voltaire’s room Franklin said, “I have brought my son to you and I want you to tell him something he will remember all his life.” Voltaire arose and said, “My son, remember two words, GOD & LIBERTY.”

Dearest and beloved Austin, take care of yourself. Remember that without health there is no happiness in success. I am very proud of you and no one loves you as I do
.

Mother
.

8

“Anybody home?” Austin King called, standing in the front hall at five o’clock that afternoon.

The answer came from the study, and it was not his wife’s voice but Nora’s that he heard. When she appeared, he thought for a moment she was ill, she looked so listless, so dejected, so unlike herself.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.

“Is that so?”

“Something I have to confess.”

“Very well.” Austin put his hat away and, as she started for the study, said, “Let’s go in here.” He sat down, crossed one knee over the other, and waited. He had been particularly careful about Nora all during the visit. He never manœuvred her into the front seat of the cart when they went driving—in fact, he occasionally manœuvred her out of it. And when he came home from the office and found her sitting alone on the porch, instead of following his natural inclination to be friendly, he stood with one hand on the screen door, asked her what kind of a day she had had, and went on into the house. When Nora was set upon by her family for expressing some
idea that seemed to him reasonable and just, he sometimes raised his voice in her defence, but what he said (“I agree with Nora.…” or “I think this is what Nora is trying to say.…”) was usually drowned out in the same clamour that did away with Nora’s opinions. If this cautious show of friendliness had been enough, and she was able to come to him when she had something on her mind, he was pleased. “Now tell me all about it,” he said encouragingly.

In the window seat, facing him, Nora was silent.

“Don’t worry,” Austin said. “Whatever it is, I promise I won’t be angry with you.”

“You ought to be angry,” Nora said. With her head bent, she examined her hands—the palms and then the backs—with a detachment that reminded him of Martha in front of her mirror.

“I’ve been through the house,” she said at last, and then waited, as if for him to understand from this vague preliminary what it was that she really had to confess, and so spare her the difficulty and pain and humiliation of telling it.

“That’s perfectly all right,” Austin said. “The house is just as much yours, Nora, while you are staying in it, as it is ours.”

“But that’s not all,” Nora said. “I did something I’ve never done before, and I don’t know what made me do it this time. They went off driving without me, and I found the letter and read it.”

“What letter, Nora?” He couldn’t think of any correspondence that was in the slightest degree incriminating, but even so, a chill passed through him.

“Upstairs. I don’t know what made me do such a thing. All I know is I feel dreadful because of it.”

“Upstairs?”

“In the little secret drawer in your bureau. I found the letter from your mother and read it.”

“Oh that!” Austin said, and then he nodded.

“It was a very nice letter but I had no right to read it. I felt terrible afterwards. I felt so ashamed.”

“You mustn’t take it so to heart,” Austin said. “There was no reason why you shouldn’t have read it if you wanted to.” Though it was odd, of course, that she had been going through his bureau.

“But I didn’t want to. Something made me. I didn’t even want to be alone in the house. I didn’t feel right about it. I kept thinking maybe someone would come. And it was so still—the way it is sometimes when there’s going to be a storm. And afterwards I wanted to hide so I wouldn’t have to face you and Cousin Martha ever again. Because you’ve been so kind to us all and that’s the way we repay kindness.”

“There was nothing in the letter that I didn’t want you to know. But for your own sake, I’m glad you told me. Because now you won’t ever have to think about it again.”

“I can’t help thinking about it. If you only knew how I——”

“I don’t remember ever reading someone else’s mail,” Austin said, “but I know I wanted to, lots of times, and I did other things—when I was a boy—that I was ashamed of afterwards.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” Nora said. “I won’t ever do such a thing again as long as I live.”

When people say
I have learned my lesson
, what they usually mean is that the lesson was expensive. This one had cost Nora the conversation she had been looking forward to, the conversation that was to have revealed what Austin King felt about life. Instead of talking to him as one grown person to another, she had to come to him now in a storm of childish repentance and like a child have her transgression forgiven.

“I don’t see how you really can forgive me!”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” Austin was hot and tired and he wanted to escape upstairs and put his face in a basin of
cold water. He could not escape because Nora did not allow him to. She sat with her mouth slightly open and her eyes had a sick look in them, as if in a moment of absent-mindedness she had allowed some beautiful and valuable object to slip through her fingers and was now staring at the jagged pieces on the floor.

Outside, a carriage stopped in front of the Kings’ house. Mr. Potter got down and handed Ab from her mother’s lap to the sidewalk. While the others were telling Bud Ellis how much they had enjoyed his company and the ride (which had been too long), Ab wandered up the sidewalk and into the house.

“Forget about it,” Austin said. “So far as I’m concerned, it never happened.”

The one person he didn’t care to have read this letter was Martha, whose name was nowhere mentioned in it and for whom the letter contained no affectionate messages. Certain parts of the letter he could explain. His brother Charles lived in Detroit and was in the real estate business—a simple, amiable man who loved his wife and children, and threw himself into whatever he happened to be doing with an enthusiasm and pleasure that were never complicated by introspection. “This is wonderful!” he was always saying, no matter whether he was swimming or riding or playing tennis or merely out for a Sunday-afternoon walk. “Gosh, I feel fine!” he would tell people, or “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything on earth!”—and mean it. Maud lived in Galesburg, was married to a professor at Knox College, and was a very different story. She had the measuring eye that waits to see how cakes and affection are going to be divided, and was not only jealous but also moody and implacable. If the letter had been from either his brother or his sister, he could have told Nora that he seldom saw or heard from Charles and that, although they liked each other, they had nothing to say when they met; or that his sister had certain terrible difficulties to
contend with, inside herself, and he had learned to get along with her by remaining always in a state of armed readiness to avoid trouble. In this way he would have aroused Nora’s interest and turned her mind away from the fact that she had had no reason (except curiosity) to read the letter in the first place. Since the letter was from his mother this was impossible. He knew far less about his mother than he knew about Nora. If he had tried to tell Nora about his mother, he would only have ended up telling her about himself, and he did not want any of the Mississippi people, so long as they were guests in his house, to know what he was really like. Otherwise, nowhere, neither in the attic nor in the basement nor behind closet doors would he have been safe from them. And so he said, “If I’d thought, Nora, I’d have told you that any letter you find in this house you can read. I give you my complete permission and approval, do you understand?”