Time Will Darken It (4 page)

Martha shook her head.

“Sweetheart, Nora is like a cousin. She doesn’t mean anything more to me than that. You don’t have any cousins or you’d understand.”

“I saw you when you helped her out of the carriage. You were smiling at her, and I knew you liked her better than you do me. I knew it would happen, before ever they came, and I don’t know why I let it upset me. I just couldn’t bear it.” Now that she had at last accused him, she took his handkerchief and sat up and blew her nose.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with a guilty smile, though he had never in his life been more innocent. “Nothing happened. I don’t remember smiling at her, or if I did—look, they invited themselves. I didn’t ask them to come, and if I’d known they would give you a moment’s unhappiness I’d never have allowed them to set foot in this house. You know that, don’t you? Now that they’re here, we might as well make the best of it. They won’t stay long, probably, and we’ll never have to have them again. We’ll just go on living the way we have been, the three of us, and be happy.”

So deeply did he mean and believe in this promise that the barricade of suspicion, the whole elaborate structure of jealousy and doubt that his wife had erected to keep him from
reaching her, gave way before his eyes. The flesh gave up trying to make a new face and was content with the old one. Lightly, with the tips of her fingers, she stroked the fabric of his shirt. He took her in his arms again and rocked her.

Neither of them heard the steps on the front porch or the doorbell ringing in the pantry. With no sense of the passing of time, no anxiety because the guests had begun to arrive and there was no one downstairs to introduce the people from Mississippi, they held each other and lost themselves in the opening, unmasking tenderness that always comes after a satisfactory quarrel. At last, feeling utterly secure and able to cope with anything, Austin got up from the bed and finished dressing.

“I’ll go right down,” he said, “and tell them you were having trouble in the kitchen. Nobody will think anything about it.”

“Do I look as if I had been crying?” she asked.

“Hardly at all. Put a cold cloth on your eyes.”

At the door he took her in his arms once more and felt her cling to him. If he had held her a moment longer he would have given her all the reassurance she needed for some time to come, but he remembered the people downstairs, and let go. It was not his failure entirely. Women are never ready to let go of love at the point where men are satisfied and able to turn to something else. It is a fault of timing that affects the whole human race. There is no telling how much harm it has caused.

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Rachel, the Kings’ coloured cook, heard the doorbell but Martha King had told her that she would be downstairs to let people in, and so, instead of hurrying through the front part
of the house to answer it, she stood still and listened. Rachel never hurried, in any case, but set her course and let wind, wave, and tide take her where she had to go. Her daughter Thelma, who was twelve years old and had been got in to help, said, “They’re beginning to come.”

“All of them with big appetites,” Rachel said, and opened the oven door and basted the ham.

On the front porch, old Mrs. Beach and her two daughters waited. At this hour of the day Elm Street was deserted, its inhabitants drawn to the supper table like nails to a magnet.

“Do you think we should call out?” Alice Beach asked, after what began to seem rather a long time.

“If they’re downstairs they’ll come,” Mrs. Beach said. “And if they’re upstairs they wouldn’t hear us. Are we early?”

Lucy Beach glanced at the little gold watch that was attached to her shirtwaist by a fleur-de-lis pin, and said, “It’s five minutes after.”

“Perhaps we ought to go home,” Alice Beach said, “and come back later.” Though she was in her early forties, she looked to her mother to settle the matter.

“When I was a young married woman,” Mrs. Beach said, “and asked people for a certain hour, I was always ready to receive them. I hope when you girls marry that you’ll remember to do the same. Not to receive your guests when they arrive is a mark of rudeness.” She turned majestically and started for the steps.

Reluctantly her daughters followed. They had looked forward to this evening and there was reason to fear that, once they got home, even though it was only next door, their mother would refuse to stir out of the house.

“Are you coming to the party?” a small voice asked, and the three women, startled, turned around and saw Ab peering at them through the screen door.

“We are if there’s going to
be
a party,” Mrs. Beach said.

“Oh yes,” Ab said.

“Well then, you’d better ask us in.”

They trailed into the house, left their crocheted bags and their white kid gloves on the hall table, and seated themselves in an alcove of the long living-room, which by its extreme order and high polish and glittering candlesticks and bouquets of white phlox seemed to support Ab’s statement. The little girl sat in a big wing chair facing Mrs. Beach.

“How are your dolls?” Alice Beach asked.

“They’re fine, all but Gwendolyn,” Ab said, after considering whether or not this interest was genuine, and deciding that it was.

“What’s the matter with Gwendolyn? She looked remarkably well the last time I saw her.”

“Oh, she broke,” Ab said vaguely.

“You must have played too roughly with her,” Mrs. Beach said. “I still have every doll that was ever given to me.”

“Could I see them some time?” Ab asked.

“They’re in the attic,” Mrs. Beach said with discouraging finality.

A considerable stretch of silence followed. The guests looked around expectantly and then at each other. Ab, with no basis of social comparison, found nothing strange either in the silence or in the expectancy. All the windows were open and also the French doors leading out onto the side porch, but even so, it was very warm in the living-room. Above the upright piano, in a heavy gilt frame, was an oil painting of the castle of St. Angelo. The clock in the clock tower was real, and its thin tick gradually dominated the silence and filled the room with tension.

Lucy cleared her throat and said, “How do you like your new relatives, Ab?”

“Fine,” Ab said, “but I don’t think my mother does.”

Glances were exchanged again.

“And where
is
your mother?” Mrs. Beach asked.

“Upstairs,” Ab said. “My father dressed me. He told me to stay clean till people arrived.”

“Well you didn’t quite make it,” Mrs. Beach said. “You’ve got a smudge on your nose, from the screen door.”

“Come here and let me give you a spit bath,” Alice said. Ab got down from the chair obediently and came and stood before her, while she moistened one corner of a small lace-bordered handkerchief with her tongue and removed the smudge. “There,” she said. “Now you’re as good as new.”

“Fix her sash while you’re at it,” Mrs. Beach said. “Anybody can see that it was tied by a man.… I’m sure there’s some mistake.”

“Perhaps it’s the wrong day,” Lucy said.

“Oh no,” Ab said. “It’s the right day.”

No longer confident of her appearance she withdrew to the front window as soon as Alice released her, and began to finger the curtains.

The clock in the castle of St. Angelo said twenty minutes past six as Mrs. Beach rose and motioned to her daughters to do likewise. Fortunately there was a step on the stairs. It was not the quick step of Martha King but careful and deliberate—the step of a person farther along in years and well aware of the danger of falling. The woman who entered the room a moment later was so small, so slight, her dress so elaborately embroidered and beaded, her hair so intricately held in place by pins and rhinestone-studded combs that she seemed, though alive, to be hardly flesh and blood but more like a middle-aged fairy.

“Well isn’t this nice!” she exclaimed.

“I’m Mrs. Beach,” the old woman said. “This is my daughter Lucy——”

“Happy to make your acquaintance.”

“—and my daughter Alice.”

“I’m Mrs. Potter. Do sit down, all of you. This reminds me of home.” Mrs. Potter saw that the wing chair was vacant
and settled herself in it. “Nobody is ever on time in Mississippi, but I thought Northerners were more prompt. Austin and Martha will be down directly. Won’t you try this chair, Mrs. Beach? I’m sure you’d find it more——What about you, Miss Lucy?”

Though the old lady and her daughters sat stiffly on the edge of their chairs as if they might get up at any moment, they assured Mrs. Potter that they were comfortable.

“I expect you think this is hot,” she said, fanning herself with a painted sandalwood fan, “but I give you my word it’s nothing to the weather we’ve been having down home. People are always saying that Southerners are lazy and they are, but there’s a reason. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been laid up with heat prostration but——Do you live close by?”

“Right next door,” Alice Beach said.

“Then it must have been your house I heard that delightful music coming from, while I was getting dressed. Just delightful. Do you play and sing, Mrs. Beach?”

“No,” the old lady said solemnly, “but both my daughters are accomplished musicians. My daughter Lucy took lessons of Geraldine Farrar’s singing teacher for a short while. Alice didn’t have that privilege but we’ve been told there is a blood blend in their voices which is quite unusual.”

“My husband is very fond of music,” Mrs. Potter said. “His older brother was a drummer boy in the War Between the States, and we’ve always hoped that our children would turn out to be musical but neither one of them can sing a note. I hope you’ll favour us with a concert while we’re here,” she added, turning from Mrs. Beach to her daughters. “Both of you.”

“We’re rather out of practice,” Alice Beach said.

“They’ll be glad to sing for you,” Mrs. Beach said. “They both have very fine voices. My daughter Lucy could have had a career on the concert stage in Europe but I wouldn’t allow
her to. I didn’t want her to be subjected to unpleasant experiences.”

“I’ve never been able to keep either of my children from doing anything they set their minds on,” Mrs. Potter said amiably. “I wish you’d tell me how you manage it.”

Mrs. Beach did not feel that this remark called for an answer. Her daughters sat with their hands clasped nervously in their laps, and the clock threatened once more to take possession of the room. Before Mrs. Potter could start off on a new track there was a mixed trampling on the stairs and she called out, “Come in and meet these charming folks.” And then, “This is my husband, Mrs. Beach … and my son Randolph … my daughter Nora.… Was that the doorbell?… Randolph, go see who’s at the door.”

Secure in the knowledge that this was going to be a party after all, that they had come on the right day and at the right time, even if there was nobody to receive them, Mrs. Beach and her daughters sat back in their chairs.

Ab slipped unnoticed out of the room and wandered out to the kitchen, where there were wonderful smells and an activity that she was familiar with and could understand. Though Rachel cried out at the sight of her, “Now you scat! We got no time for young ones,” Ab was not in the least intimidated. She went straight for the kitchen stool, placed it in front of the cupboard, climbed on it and, balancing carefully, helped herself to a cracker.

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