Wild Heart (17 page)

The aunt said, "Reverend Graves sent a note, Harley, thanking us for our generous contribution to the church restoration fund."

"Hmm? That's nice, Estie."

Philip laughed. "You didn't tell him Papa's an atheist, did you, Aunt E?"

"I certainly did not." She looked down her long nose at Philip, giving him the look that always made Michael feel like sliding under the table.

"Know what an atheist is?" Sam asked him.

"No."

"It's somebody who doesn't believe in God."

Sydney said, "Papa believes in evolution instead of God."

The aunt made a disgusted sound.

Michael, who had been wondering about God lately, looked at Dr. Winter with interest. The family went to church every Sunday, to "worship" God—all except Dr. Winter, who stayed home. "Who is God, exactly?" he got up the courage to ask.

Everybody stared at him. It was almost like the time he gave Sydney the fish.

"God," the aunt said firmly, "is the Father of us all and the Creator of the universe."

Dr. Winter cleared his throat. "God," he said less firmly, "is a mental construct, the natural product of the collective yearning for meaning and immortality."

Across the table, Sydney snickered. "Aren't you glad you asked?"

Dessert was a cooked apple with a sweet sauce and whipped cream. Michael cleaned his plate and hoped for seconds, but the maid never came back.

"May I please be excused?" asked Sam. The aunt said yes, and he scrambled out of his chair and ran off to play.

Soon after that everybody got up. Michael wanted to talk to Sydney, but West got to her first. He pretended to listen to what Philip was saying to him, something about changing into white trousers for their tennis lesson, while he watched West put his hand on Sydney's back and make her walk out to the terrace. Were they arguing? Sydney was smiling with her mouth but not her eyes; when she turned toward the door, West moved to block the way and wrapped his hand around her arm.

Philip was still talking, but Michael walked away, not even saying excuse me, and went to Sydney.

"I can't, Charles. It's just not possible."

"Why not? You could if you—" West saw Michael and frowned. "Did you want something?"

"I want to talk to Sydney."

"Well,
I'm
talking to her."

"I don't think she wants to talk to you. I don't think she wants you to touch her."

West had a wet, pink mouth behind his reddish beard. It made an O shape, and his small black eyes went big with surprise, then narrow with anger. Nobody moved or said anything. Michael glanced at Sydney. He thought she looked embarrassed, but also alert and interested, not mad. He wanted West to do something, hit him or shove him, so they could fight.

"Sydney?" It was the aunt, calling from the dining room. "Come inside, please, I need to speak with you."

"Will you excuse me?" Sydney was trying to sound natural. Michael said nothing; West said nothing. She moved away carefully, watching them until the last second, and then she disappeared through the door.

West was weak,- white, puny; there was no point in fighting him—he would lose. But he didn't seem to
know
he would lose. So Michael told him with words, "Don't touch her again or I'll fight you."

A vein in West's forehead began to throb. He moved two steps back and hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself taller. The dislike that had always been between them finally showed its face. "Lay a finger on me, and I'll have you put right back in a cage."

"I'll kill you first," Michael said calmly, and it was the truth, not a threat. He'd been in a cage. Metal bars and a wire mesh, a box too small to stand up straight in. They hadn't kept him there long, only about two weeks. Any longer and he would have died.

The longest minute passed.

"Tennis, anyone?"

West jumped and then turned pale from relief. Philip was leaning in the doorway with his ankles crossed and his arms crossed. His face looked like Sydney's—very interested.

Michael backed up, not taking his eyes off West until Philip threw an arm over his shoulders and gave him a little shake. That broke the tension. "Let's play," Michael said. He turned his back on his enemy and went off with his friend.

* * * * *

Aunt Estelle preceded Sydney into her sitting room and sat down in her favorite chair, a padded rocker conveniently stationed between the window and the fireplace. It was a lovely room, maybe the house's prettiest, beautifully proportioned and charmingly furnished; it even had a view of the lake through a distant break in the trees. The thought had crossed Sydney's mind a subversive time or two that it would make a far better drawing room for guests than the larger, darker, colder "blue room" they had always used. But it was an idle notion. This was Aunt Estelle's room—they even called it that—and it would be forever. She met with Mrs. Harp here every morning on housekeeping matters; she spoke on the telephone to her acquaintances, staging her social sallies and coups; she kept up her prodigious correspondence. And she sewed.

Beautifully, exquisitely. Of late Sydney thought Aunt Estelle had grown slightly ashamed of the occupation, uncomfortably aware that it smacked just a bit too much of the
middle class.
Real ladies, meaning the idle rich, didn't sew because, of course, they didn't have to. But she couldn't give it up; she loved it too much. She got too much satisfaction from the precision and discipline fine needlework demanded.

She patted her lap, and Wanda the cat instantly jumped up onto it. Wanda lived in Aunt Estelle's sitting room, having yielded the rest of the house to Hector in a not entirely bloodless coup. She was a skinny, nervous, high-strung animal, all white, very proud, and stingy with her favors. She liked Aunt Estelle, who doted on her, but barely tolerated anyone else.

Aunt Estelle's sewing basket sat on the table at her right hand, but she didn't reach for it. She had that look about her, her stiff posture more correct than ever, lips pursed, brows raised: it meant she was preparing to do her duty. Sydney had an inkling of what their little chat was going to be about. She'd been half expecting it. The only reason it hadn't happened sooner was because she'd been avoiding her.

"Mr. West seems very attentive," the older woman opened mildly. "I believe he's quite taken with you."

Sydney drifted away from the window and sat down on the violet plush loveseat opposite her aunt's chair. This wasn't at all the subject she'd been girding herself for. "Charles? Oh, I don't know. He's fond of me, I suppose. Nothing stronger than that, though, I don't think." She fingered the grosgrain ribbon trim on her skirt casually, keeping her eyes down.

"Are you sure? I had an idea his regard might go a little deeper than fondness."

"Oh, no. Oh, I should be very surprised if that were the case."

"Well, I daresay you know best. At any rate, I hope it goes without saying that an attachment of
that
sort would be completely out of the question. I'm sure Mr. West is a fine young man, and your father seems fond of him—for what that's worth. But a relationship with a gentleman of his class that went beyond the most casual friendship would, of course, be quite unsuitable. I'm sure you agree."

She did, in this case, although for different reasons. "There's no need to concern yourself about Mr. West, Aunt. Really, I don't think of him at all."

"I'm glad." She sat back, unbending a little.

Sydney couldn't help wondering what her aunt's reaction would be if she were to say right now, "Actually, I'm involved with someone else these days—it's Mr. Mac-Neil. When he looks at me in a certain way I can't breathe, and when he touches me I'm completely lost." She lowered her head and went back to worrying the ribbons on her skirt, half afraid the flush on her cheeks would give her away. "Is that what you wanted to speak to me about?" she asked hopefully.

"No, something else. Something I expect you won't care to hear."

Immediately Sydney felt sixteen years old again—the age she had been when her mother died and Aunt Estelle had taken responsibility for her and her brothers. When would she outgrow this childishness? When she was forty? Fifty? "What have I done this time?" she muttered, trying not to sound truculent.

Aunt Estelle clicked her tongue. "Nothing, of course, don't be silly. I'm concerned about you, that's all. We've been home for nearly two months, but the changes I'd hoped for haven't occurred. In fact, as far as I can see, we might as well have stayed here."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Europe was supposed to be a turning point for you, Sydney. A new start. I thought you understood this; I thought we'd agreed on it."

"But it
was.
I
have
changed."

Aunt Estelle had a way of narrowing her eyes into slits when anyone said something she regarded as nonsense. Words weren't necessary; the look itself could reduce the nonsense-speaker to squirming embarrassment. "Come now. If anything, you've declined more invitations since you've been home than before you left." Methodically, she ticked examples off on her fingers. "The Renfrews' house party. Margaret Ellen Wilkes's birthday tea. The Fourth of July weekend at the Swazeys'. Edward Bertrams's perfectly nice invitation to the theater. Even Camille Darrow complains that you're neglecting her."

Sydney couldn't deny any of it, so she decided to defend herself with the truth, although not all of it. "Yes, but it's been wonderful spending time with Philip and Sam. I'd missed them so much. And now that Papa's had to abandon his lost man project, the responsibility for Mr. MacNeil has fallen, naturally, to—to the rest of us. I must admit, I find it all fascinating. His development, I mean, the way he's adapted to the family, his growth as a—"

"Yes, yes." She shook her head once dismissively. "Those are excuses, Sydney. Now, listen to me. Spencer has been dead for a year and a half, and the time has come for you to think about remarriage.
Think
about it," she stressed when Sydney opened her mouth to protest. "It may be unfortunate, but society has certain expectations of a woman in your position. Widowhood past a certain point in one so young is suspect."

"Suspect?"

"Like it or not, a single woman can't remain single
and
respectable indefinitely."

"But that's absurd! You've never been married, and society's certainly never questioned
your
respectability."

"Don't be obtuse. One thing has nothing to do with the other."

"Why not?"

"For heaven's sake, Sydney. Because no one questions the virtue of a plain-faced old maid, not in the way they do that of a young and attractive widow." She closed her lips and tightened the muscles of her face, tapping her toe on the carpet in a show of impatience. Or was it distress?

Sydney watched her, a little unnerved by the implication in her words, and even more in her manner, that she wasn't as satisfied with her lot in life as Sydney had always assumed she was. What if—remarkably, the thought had never occurred to her—what if Aunt Estelle had once had different hopes for her life? Girlish dreams of a lover, a husband, a home and children of her own? With any other woman, such a speculation would come naturally, automatically; with Aunt Estelle, because of her reserve and her seeming lack of sympathy for the bulk of humanity, the thought had simply never entered Sydney's head.

"You're not plain," she said tentatively. Insincerely. "You're not old, either."

It was almost a relief when Aunt Estelle slitted her eyes and thinned her lips, as if to say,
Stop wasting my time with your foolishness.
Sydney was on surer ground with
this
Aunt Estelle, the no-nonsense one, for whom sentiment was only another name for vanity. "This is all beside the point I'm trying to make," she said, picking up Wanda and gently setting her on the floor—a sure sign that she was getting down to business. "I was speaking to Mrs. Turnbull on the telephone this morning."

Sydney slumped a little in the loveseat. "Oh?"

"She mentioned how very busy you've been lately. Too busy, evidently, to accept any of her son Lincoln's three—
three
—invitations to accompany him, with his family, to the World's Fair. And so I must ask you. Do you know of some blight on the character of this young man of which every other unattached lady in the city is unaware? Some stain on the reputation of this upright, churchgoing, charming, and agreeable paragon, who will one day inherit his father's considerable banking and financial interests? Because if you do, I would be most-—"

"Of course I have nothing against Lincoln," Sydney said crossly, goaded into interrupting. "How could I? He's everything you say he is. He's
perfect."

Aunt Estelle permitted herself half a smile. "I'm so glad you think so. Then you won't mind that I've invited the Turnbulls to dinner on Friday."

Sydney sighed, feeling tired, and wavering between exasperation and amusement. "How enterprising of you," she said dryly.

"My dear, I had thought your return from Europe would mark your new coming-out. But since that hasn't happened, something new is needed now to signal your debut. I think it should be the charity supper dance we're hosting next month."