“I suppose,” said Mrs. Severance speaking with sardonic benevolence, “that you thought that once out of that house on Capitol Hill, once away from Edward Vardoe, once out into the fresh air, everything would be easy. My dear sap, it never is. Don’t you know that, Maggie?”
“I do know it.”
“Escape to a desert island if you like, but I tell you that the island mentality is a trouble factory. And look at St. Anthony what happened to him.”
“I’m not escaping … now.”
“I don’t care for fresh air myself except for the purpose of breathing. I exist here … and here …” Mrs. Severance touched her heart and her head. “Everything of any importance happens indoors …”
“Oh it does not!” said Maggie.
“… including eating and sleeping. Life is the damndest thing what it can think up for people,” continued Mrs. Severance, “but I wouldn’t have missed it … the places you do contrive to get yourself into, Maggie … are you going to stay there and spend your life drying off fools who get wet on purpose? Really.”
“It won’t happen again,” said Maggie mildly, “and no one knows about Vera – except you. They just think she had pneumonia, and of course she did. She’s better.”
“You know nothing about it. You don’t know what will happen,” said Mrs. Severance behind a cloud of smoke. “Look at Philip’s family. They all started life as infants and that guaranteed them nothing. Take the eldest brother Monty. He was a gentle anarchist. When he was staying with us, the evil of the world had become too much for him and he started one night to throw himself off a cliff. What a night! Then he found that he had forgotten his false teeth so he came back to the house to get them. When he got his teeth in he reconsidered. Later he became very respectable and dropped us. He married a millionaire biscuit manufacturer’s daughter and died a year or two ago of old age and in affluence, surrounded by a gaggle of grandchildren who never would have existed if it hadn’t been for Monty’s false teeth. Percy went to jail. Margaret was an angel and her life was one long committee meeting on prison reform. Henry was a stuffed shirt. My Philip had a passion for the circus and for archaeology and no sense of public responsibility at all. He ran away to a circus and that, of course, was when he saw me…. Do you know what love is, Maggie? Somehow I think you do.”
Maggie did not interrupt Mrs. Severance who was thinking out loud and telling her the things that Maggie had not known and that she had long wanted to know. Mrs. Severance reached across the table for a package, opened it and, squinting a little, lighted a cigarette from her stub. She looked up into the smoke.
“Philip had ideas about marriage. He had a lot of ideas and I learned about ideas. He was a singularly monogamous man but did not approve of what he thought were the ‘bonds’ of matrimony so we did not marry. I have never regretted anything in my life with Philip, not even that – I don’t suppose Hilda knows it. At the time I should like to have been married because I believe in marriage and for my father and mother’s sake who were respectable people though they did not go to church except in theory. It’s difficult in the circus. It hurt them a lot and it really upset Philip’s parents. Frankly I found it hard. I think they never got over the feeling that I had seduced Philip and I don’t wonder – ‘a girl from the circus!’ Well, look at all those children – issuing from the same womb, all different and all dead, and you sit there and tell me that something will or will not happen again! Everything happens again and it’s never the same. Let us go out. You should take the air.”
They walked slowly together, Mrs. Severance leaning her great weight on her stick. Yes, she has aged, thought Maggie.
“I sit on top of my little mound of years,” said Mrs. Severance, “and it is natural and reasonable that I should look back, and I look back and round and I see the miraculous interweaving of creation … the everlasting web … and I see a stone and a word and this stub,” and she threw down the stub of her cigarette, “and the man who made it, joined to the bounds of creation, and I see God everywhere. And Edward Vardoe (Albert says he seems to be married or something – did you know?) and your little Chinese boy and the other little boy and you and me and who knows what. We are all in it together. ‘No Man is an Island, I am involved in Mankinde,’ and we have no immunity and we may as well realize it. You won’t be immune ever at that lake Maggie” (nor anywhere else, thought Maggie. No one is). “I have just a few convictions left and I hope to die before I lose them. But when Albert says What do you believe and I say I believe in faith and Albert says Faith in what, I can’t tell him. Because when you try to put faith into words, the words are hollow. Faith in God is my support, and it makes old age bearable and happy and fearless I think. But that is not why I believe. It’s funny, Maggie,” (the old woman, walking slowly, was very happy in her communications to Maggie who listened with affection) “but Albert comes to see his mother-in-law and Hilda goes to see her mother-in-law for choice. Being pregnant suits Hilda. She looks happy. She will bring up her children by rule. She has bought a book on psychology – she’s too damn serious – but Albert will leaven the lump of parenthood for their children … perhaps if I’d had some books on psychology Hilda would have been happier. But, with me, it was Philip or Hilda, Philip or Hilda, I knew I was in the web, I did the best I could in the web, and it takes God himself to be fair to two different people at once.”
Maggie almost jumped at these words which had risen so often in her own mind.
“Let’s go in now,” said Mrs. Severance. “It’s nice being together, isn’t it. Three more days. You’re good to me Maggie.”
“Nell … ! Does Alberto really look after you? He’s not too much of a care?”
“Alberto? No no. I like him and his absurdness. He comes and goes regardless and that suits me. He does what he can. He comes and bursts into song. I must say I usually dislike the human voice raised in song, especially in opera, but Alberto with his hand on his heart, pouring it out to the ceiling, pleases me. With him it seems the natural function of a voice. Like birds … yes?” she said, turning.
A young woman was at the door “Would one of you ladies be Mrs. Lloyd?” she asked.
“I would,” said Maggie.
“Wanted on long distance,” said the young woman and vanished.
“Nell,” she said, “I have to go back. At once. That was Henry Corder. In a state. It’s Vera.”
A look that was a smile, comprehending, skeptical, came over Mrs. Severance’s face. She raised her hands, her shoulders.
“You see!” she said.
“Will you be all right, how’ll you manage?” said Maggie, pausing. (What was it Vera. What happened – what did you do?)
“Me? My good woman! How’ll I manage? I managed in Troy.”
“Troy? What has Troy to do with it,” said Maggie gently, looking at her old friend. She did not wish to say to her But now, you’re old.
“What has this Vera done now?” asked Mrs. Severance.
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a relapse, perhaps not. Henry’s only got one cover-all word for everything from a headache to a hemorrhage, she’s ‘sick.’ And he hates long-distance telephoning.”
“Why, Why … Maggie,” said Mrs. Severance vehemently, looking intently at Maggie’s face, “do you stay with these people? You’re absurd. You’ll always carry their load. Go to that Cunningham place!”
“Alan’s my joy and will be,” said Maggie equably, “and you’d like Henry Corder.”
“I don’t like any one of the whole lot of them. Oh go and pack your things,” said the old woman testily. She pulled a package of cigarettes from her pocket, drew out a cigarette slowly, and lighted it. She was annoyed with Vera. Illness was inopportune. Soon the fresh prevailing wind in her mind arose and blew away irrelevancies. Sitting still, inhaling too deeply and looking through the smoke, hearing Maggie in the next room getting ready to leave her, she thought The unhappy Vera; housebound without an opening window; hellbound, I think. Poor Vera. Poor people.