Time Will Darken It (7 page)

The next victim, Randolph Potter, had to stand before Mary Caroline Link, bow from the waist, and ask her to dance with him. Under the spell of the music, Alice Beach (whose sister had sung for Geraldine Farrar’s teacher, though she herself, being the younger one, had had no such opportunity) took a copy of
Janice Meredith
out of the bookcase in
the study, returned to the living-room, sat down in the wing chair, and commenced to read aloud.

Since Austin couldn’t see into the study, this required assistance, and so did the next stunt, when Dr. Danforth went all the way upstairs. The piano was moved so that Austin could see into the front hall, and confederates were stationed on the landing and at the head of the stairs. By prearranged signals they conveyed to the pianist whether Dr. Danforth was getting warmer or colder. A false move on his part produced an abrupt fortissimo chord, which was sometimes succeeded by others even louder, because of Dr. Danforth’s infirmity. At last he came down the stairs wearing a white coat of Martha King’s and a black hat with ostrich feathers on it. This feat was regarded by the Mississippi relatives as a triumph of the human mind.

After Dr. Danforth, it was Ab’s turn. She had not expected to have any. But little girls can be seen and not heard and still be the centre of attention. Now, with all eyes upon her, she was obliged to leave the room. She sat with her legs tucked under her in a wicker chair in the study, and listened to the low murmur in the next room. It threatened to become intelligible but didn’t quite, and finally they called to her.

As Ab came into the living-room she saw and started towards her mother. The music stopped her in her tracks. She blushed. She would have liked to escape but the music held her fast. She moved tentatively towards the fireplace. The music grew softer. There were three people confronting her—Mrs. Potter, Dr. Danforth, and Miss Lucy Beach. Ab knew she was supposed to do something to one of them, but which one? And what was it that she was supposed to do? She advanced towards Dr. Danforth. Once when she had an earache, he blew smoke in her ear and the pain went away. The music grew louder, obliterating him.

Through the music her father was saying something to her which she couldn’t understand, but which was nevertheless
insistent and left her no choice except the right one. She stepped back and would have walked in the opposite direction but the
DEE dum dum dum
grew loud and frightening. Lucy Beach sat there smiling at her, but some instinct—what the music was saying seemed clearer to the child now, though it was not yet plain—made her move instead towards her great-aunt from Mississippi. The music grew soft and caressing. The music suggested love to the little girl. She saw an invitation in her great-aunt’s eyes and, forgetting that this was part of a game, leaned towards her and kissed her on the cheek. To Ab’s surprise, the music stopped and the room was full of the sound of clapping.

“You sweet child!” Mrs. Potter exclaimed, and drew Ab into her arms. While Ab was enjoying her moment of triumph, she heard her mother’s voice announcing that it was way past time for little girls to be in bed. A moment later she was led off, having gone around the circle of the company and said good night to everyone.

The sense of triumph was still with her on the stairs, and it lasted even after she had been tucked in bed. She was pleased with her first excursion into society, and she realized drowsily that the grown people were, beyond all doubt or question, pleased with her. The sudden impulse which had seemed to arise from inside her, the impulse towards love, was, as it turned out, exactly what they had meant for her to feel all along.

7

The sounds of an evening party breaking up are nearly always the same and nearly always beautiful. For over an hour the only excitement on Elm Street had been provided by the insects striking at the arc light. Now it was suddenly replaced
by human voices, by the voice of Mrs. Beach saying, “Feel that breeze.… Good night Martha … Austin, good night. Such a nice party.… No, you mustn’t come with us, Mr. Potter. We left a light burning and we’re not afraid.”

The light could not protect Mrs. Beach and her daughters from death by violence, or old age, or from the terrible hold they had on one another, but at least it would enable them to enter their own house without being afraid of the dark, and it is the dark most people fear, anyway—not being murdered or robbed.

Good night … good night
.

Mrs. Danforth had left no light on, but then her husband was with her.

Good night, Martha … good night, my boy
.

Good night, Austin … good night, Martha … good night, Mrs. Potter.… Here, Grampaw, take hold of my arm
.

I don’t need any help. I can see perfectly … good night, Miss Potter … good night
.

Old Mr. Ellis had been listened to, and at his time of life he asked for nothing more. All the Draperville people had been so complimented, so smiled at and enjoyed that they felt a kind of lightness, as if a weight had been lifted from their backs. They tried to convey this in their parting words.

Good night, Mrs. King. I don’t know when I’ve had such a lovely time
.

You must come again, Mrs. Ellis
.

Good night, Mr. King
.

Though Mary Caroline lived next door to the Ellises, everyone expected Randolph Potter to take her home and she found him now (so firmly and relentlessly does the world push young people at one another) by her side.

No, you don’t have to take me home, Randolph, really. It’s only a step.… Well, all right then, if you insist
.

If it had been twenty miles, the distance from the Kings’ front porch to the Links’ front walk would have been too
short for Mary Caroline. The summer night was barely large enough to enclose a wandering sanity, a heart that must—somewhere on the way home—sigh or break. Such a pressure around her heart the girl had never felt before. Randolph did not touch her or even take hold of her elbow as they crossed the street, but his voice was music, the night insects were violins.

Faced with a sea of empty chairs, Austin and Martha and the Potters sat down to appreciate the quiet, recover their ordinary selves, and exchange impressions of the evening.

“Your friends are just charming,” Mrs. Potter said. “I can’t get over how nice they were to us.”

“There was salt in the ice cream,” Martha said.

“It tasted like nectar and ambrosia to me,” Mrs. Potter said. “Austin, towards the end of the evening, I couldn’t help thinking of your father. You look like him, you know. And he would have been so proud of you.”

The expression on Austin King’s face did not change, but he was pleased, nevertheless. Mrs. Potter had found the only compliment that could touch him, that he would allow himself to accept.

“I always like a mixed party,” Mr. Potter said. “You get all kinds of people together, young and old, and they’re bound to have a good time.”

Nora smothered a yawn. It had been a long evening, and now she wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again. She kept her head from falling forward.

“Rich and poor,” Mr. Potter said.

“There was nobody here who was very rich
or
very poor,” Austin said.

“Well, people like the Danforths and the old lady with the two daughters—Mrs. Beach. They’re people of culture and refinement. They’ve travelled all over Europe, she told me. You can see they’ve always lived well. And poor old Mr. Ellis. We had a little conversation after dinner. I always feel sorry when a man gets that old and has to worry about money.”

“The Ellises don’t have to worry about money,” Martha said, tucking a loose hairpin into place.

“Old Mr. Ellis likes to give the impression that he’s hard up,” Austin said, “but actually he owns four hundred acres of the best farmland around here.”

“You don’t say!”

“It’s Mrs. Beach who has a difficult time,” Martha said. “They used to be well off—not rich exactly but comfortable—and then Mr. Beach died and left them barely enough to get along. But of course you’d never know from talking to her. She’s terribly proud.”

“Always has been,” Austin said, nodding.

“Nora, go to bed,” Mrs. Potter said. “You’re so sleepy you can hardly keep your eyes open. Cousin Martha will excuse you.”

“I’ll wait up till Randolph comes.”

“What time do you have breakfast?” Mrs. Potter asked, turning to Martha.

“Don’t worry about breakfast,” Austin said. “Sleep till noon if you feel like it.”

The two men withdrew to the study for a nightcap, leaving the women to straighten the rugs and put back the chairs, to discover that Mrs. Danforth had forgotten her palm-leaf fan and Alice Beach a small, lace-bordered handkerchief with a smudge in one corner. Randolph’s step on the front porch broke up the exchange of confidences in the living-room and the matter-of-fact conversation about farming in the study. Amid a second round of good nights, the Potters went upstairs to bed.

“You go on up,” Martha said to Austin. “I want to see if Rachel has put everything away.”

“I’ll wait,” he said, yawning.

The kitchen was all in order, the remains of the ham in the covered roasting pan on the table in the larder, the sink white and gleaming, the icebox crammed with leftovers.
Martha started back, turning out lights as she went. Finding no one in the study or the living-room she called to him.

“Out here,” he answered.

He was on the porch, looking up at the sky. She came and leaned her head against his shoulder. Without speaking, they went down the steps and out into the yard where the grass, wet with dew, ruined Martha King’s bronze evening slippers. The moon was high in the sky, so bright that they could see the shapes of the flower beds and here and there, dimly, the colour of a flower. When they came to the sundial, they stopped. The mingled odour of stock and flowering tobacco Austin had smelled before, but he had never realized until now how like the natural perfume of a woman’s hair it was. A foot away from him, Martha stood as still as a statue.

Tonight after the party we’ll have it all out, he had told her, hours before. Everything, he had said. But if it was that she was waiting for, she wouldn’t be standing there with her face raised to the sky. She’d be looking either at or away from him. The small flicker of resentment that had persisted all through the evening—she needn’t have put him through so much when there were guests in the house and people coming—he laid aside.

“You must be dead tired,” he said.

There was no answer from the moonlit statue. Every rustle, every movement in nature had withdrawn, leaving them in the secret centre of the summer night.
There will be other summer nights
, the sundial said,
nights almost like this, but this night won’t ever come again. Take it while you have it
.

“We’d better go in,” he said after a moment or two. “Tomorrow we both have to be up early.”

Taking her arm, he led her gently back through the garden to the lighted house.

Part Two
A Long Hot Day