Herbert’s Retreat is a snug community of forty or so houses that cluster together on the east bank of the Hudson thirty miles above New York City. Some of the houses are small and some are middle-sized. No two are alike, and because they are separated by trees, hedges, wooden fences, or untidy vestiges of ancient woods, and because of the vagaries of the terrain, they all seem to be on different levels. Some of the houses certainly reach much higher into the air than others, because a few roofs can be glimpsed from the highway, and in wintertime, when the trees are bare, an occasional stretch of wall is disclosed to passing motorists, but otherwise the community is secluded. One characteristic all the houses have in common: They all eye the river. This does not mean that they all face the river. Some of them face vaguely toward the highway, as though they were not sure exactly where it was. Some face the private roadway, hardly more than a path, that strings them all together. Some face each other, while keeping their distance, and a few seem to stand sideways to everything. But in every house the residents have contrived and plotted and schemed and paid to bring the river as intimately as possible into their lives. The people with houses directly on the river are in luck, of course. The most any of them had to do was to knock out a side wall, widen a window, or build a porch. Those fortunate enough to have houses facing directly on the river had no problem, since the view was theirs for the taking. It is among the people with houses set back from the river that the competition for its favors is keenest. The tallest of these houses have had square wooden balconies balanced on their roofs, where the host and hostess and their guests may perch and drink and admire the view. Occupants of the smaller houses have been very ingenious in devising ways to trap and hold their own particular glimpse of the water. Some have centipede-like porches creeping sideways from their houses to the nearest break in the wall of trees and buildings that cuts them off from the river, so that the vantage point gained, while not exactly natural to the house, is still part of the establishment. It is of no advantage to repair to a neighbor’s house in order to see the water and show it off to visitors; each householder feels he must have a view of his own to offer. Several tree houses have been built. One man went so far as to erect a slender round tower of brick in his garden. Only one person can squeeze up the steep spiral staircase of the tower, and only one can stand in the tiny room that tops it, but sooner or later each guest, glass in hand, makes the solitary, claustrophobic ascent and returns to report on the merits of the view from the tower, and to compare it favorably with all other points of survey around.
All the people who live at Herbert’s Retreat own their own houses. Newcomers can seldom get a foot in, except in the summertime, when a few residents let their places for two or three months. The tone and welfare of the community are guarded by a board of trustees. There are almost no restrictions on the behavior of children and animals belonging to the community, but there are iron restrictions against strange children and strange animals. The general atmosphere of the place is one of benevolent freedom. The life there is casual and informal, but gracious. A good deal of quiet entertaining is done. All the residents know each other very well or fairly well. There are no strangers. Living there is rather like living in a club.
Late one November afternoon, a splendid dinner for three was in the first stages of preparation in the kitchen of one of the houses at the Retreat. This house was long, low, and white. It was not large, but it was charming. It was the property of Mrs. George Harkey, who was generally said to be a very romantic-looking young woman, although her face was not pretty. In her kitchen, Bridie and Agnes, the maids, were taking their time about getting the dinner. They knew that the guest of the evening had only just arrived, that drinks had only started, and that they had plenty of time before they need bother with the dining room, where the table was already set with silver and glass and linen, and with candles ready for lighting.
Bridie belonged to the house. She lived in. Agnes worked and lived at the Gieglers’, up the road, and had come to help out for the evening. Bridie, who liked heat, had planted her broad self on a chair beside the stove. Agnes, hovering inquisitively around the strange kitchen, was at a double disadvantage. Not only was she relegated, for the time being, to the position of helper but she was new to the community, having come out from New York City only the week before. She longed to stand at the kitchen window, to watch the antics of Mr. and Mrs. Harkey and their guest, whose voices she could hear outside, but the balance of amiability was still uncertain between her and Bridie, and she feared to put herself in a position that might prove embarrassing if Bridie chose to make it so. However, Bridie’s unwavering, ironic stare finally drove her to drift with a show of unconcern to the window, where she saw enough to give her courage to make a remark.
“They’re at the statue!” she cried.
Bridie rose from the chair as though it had burnt her, and made for the window.
“Don’t let them see you looking,” she said, and the two of them crowded together at the side of the window, behind the curtain, and stared out.
They could see the river, separated from them by a long, descending sweep of lawn as wide as the house and guarded on either side by a dense barricade of trees and hedges. The grass on the lawn had only recently been planted. It was still thin and tender, but the earth had been rigorously plowed, raked, dug, and rolled to receive it, and there was no doubt that eventually it would present a carpet of emerald-green velvet leading precisely to the edge of the river. A naked woman in white marble, her limbs modestly disposed, stood to the right of the lawn, not far from the house. Farther from the house, and on the left, a gray stone clown, dwarf-sized, bowed his head dejectedly. The clown wore baggy pants, a flowing tie, and a jacket too small for him. His gray stone wig hung dead from one of his hands, and his face, with its despairing grin, had just been freshly powdered, and painted with purple lipstick. It was the guest of the evening, Mr. Charles Runyon, who had decorated the clown, using tools from the handbag of his hostess, Leona Harkey. Now Charles stood with his arm around Leona, and they laughed together at his handiwork. A little apart from them, George Harkey stood alone, joining uncertainly in their amusement, which was exaggerated and intimate and hard to live up to. It was evident he could think of nothing to say. At the start of the jest, Charles had handed him the handbag, asking him to hold it open for him. The handbag still dangled from his hand, and he glanced awkwardly down at it from time to time, and sipped uneasily from the glass he had carried out with him.
“That’s the new husband?” Agnes whispered.
“That’s him, all right,” said Bridie. “Mr. Harkey. George, his name is.”
“He’s not bad-looking.”
“Oh, he looks all right. How old would you say he was?”
“About thirty, I’d say, looking at him from here.”
“That’s what I thought. The same age as herself, then.”
“The other fellow is older. Mr. Runyon.”
“Mr. God Runyon,” said Bridie emphatically. “Yes, he’s a good bit older. He must be past fifty, that fellow.”
“Why do you call him Mr. God?”
“Ah, the airs he puts on him, lording it around. And the way she kowtows to him. She’ll make the new husband kowtow to him, too.”
“How long are they married?”
“A month, it is.”
“And how long was she a widow?”
“Four months,” said Bridie, smiling grimly at Agnes’s astonished face. “Finch, her name used to be.”
“And he was killed in a car?”
“He was dead drunk and ran himself into a young tree. Destroyed the tree and killed himself. She had to get a new car. He was all over the windshield when they found him, and the front seat, and bits of him on the hood—blood, hair, everything. Ugh. I often wonder did they get both his eyes to bury him. His face was just pulp, that’s all—all mashed. The police were mystified, that he could do himself so much damage against such a small tree. He must have been going awful fast. She never turned a hair. I was here when she got the call. Not a feather out of her.”
“She’s hard.”
“That rip hasn’t got a nerve in her body. And there she is now, laughing away the same as ever with Mr. God, and Mr. Harkey standing there in place of Mr. Finch. You’d hardly know the difference, except that Mr. Finch was fair-headed and this fellow is black.”
“Where does Mr. God come in?”
“He’s her admirer. He admires her, and she admires him. They admire each other. Oh, they talk a lot about their admiring, but you should have seen the way he hotfooted it out of the picture when Mr. Finch was killed. She was all up and ready to marry him, of course. She thought sure she was going to be Mrs. God. But Mr. God was a match for her. All of a sudden didn’t he discover there were people all over the country he had to visit, Arizona and everywhere, and he ended up going to Italy. This is his first night back. This is the first time she’s seen him since the summer. That’s what all the fuss is about, getting you in to help with the dinner, and all. This is the first Mr. Harkey has seen of him, either. You can imagine what’s going on in his mind. He never laid eyes on him before tonight.”
“He has a great look of a greyhound. Mr. God, I mean.”
“Oh, he’s a very elegant gentleman. Did you notice the pointy shoes he’s wearing. And the waistcoat with the little buttons on it. And the way he shapes around, imagining everybody is looking at him. He’d make you sick.”
“They’re coming in now. They’ll be looking for more drinks, I suppose?”
“That crowd takes care of their own drinks. Out of shame, if nothing else, so we won’t see how much they put down. As if I didn’t have to carry the empty bottles out. It’s a scandal. He makes the drinks. He stands up in front of the bar in there like a priest saying Mass, God forgive me, and mixes a martini for himself, and one for her, and maybe an odd one for the husband. Mr. Finch used to like to make his own. He had a special big glass he used to drink out of. He had a little song he used to sing when he’d had a few. He used to go off by himself in a corner of the living room, and he’d sing, very low—it wouldn’t bother you, except that he kept it up—he’d sing
“You’re too nice, you’re too nice,
You’re too nice for me.”
“Is that all the words there was to it?”
“That’s all. Then he’d get up and make himself another drink in his big glass, and he’d stand and look at the two of them, and sing it all over again, and laugh and laugh.”
“And wouldn’t they say anything?”
“No, because if they paid any attention to him, he’d point his finger at Mr. God and sing the same thing, over and over, except he’d say ‘He’s too nice, he’s too nice.’ It used to get on their nerves.”
“Look at them now.”
“What did I tell you. That’s the way it always is.”
Leona and Charles were strolling arm in arm toward the house, carrying their almost finished martinis in their free hands. George, with the handbag, brought up the rear. George liked sweet Manhattans, and his glass was empty. Charles glanced over his shoulder at the river, and George stopped dead and looked over his shoulder, too.
“Leona, darling, it’s exactly what I dreamed of for you,” Charles said. “And of course you’ve done exactly what I would have done. Do you remember how we used to talk and talk about it? Who would ever have thought it would all come true?”
“Charles, darling, I hope it won’t ever rain again,” Leona cried in her dark, husky voice. “I want that poor dismal face to stay just as you painted it, to remind me that you are back at last, and to commemorate our first evening all three together.”
Charles’s reply was unheard in the kitchen, because the three celebrants had disappeared around the side of the house, and would by now be arranging themselves before the living-room fire.
Bridie turned away from the window. “I don’t know where she thinks she’s going to get the lawn from,” she said, “if she’s not going to let it rain. Would you ever think that only a month ago you couldn’t see hardly an inch beyond that kitchen window there? The kitchen here was as dark as a cellar, even in the middle of the day. There was a hedge out there almost as high as the house.”
“They cut the hedge?” Agnes said politely.
“Cut the hedge. God almighty, she couldn’t get it down soon enough. I thought she was going to go after it with her nail scissors, the way she was carrying on. I tell you, Agnes, the poor fellow was hardly out of bed the first morning after they got back from the honeymoon when she started screaming about the hedge. ‘The hedge must go!’ she kept yelling. ‘Down with the accursed hedge! I must have my view. Where is my wonderful, my promised view!’ Did you ever hear the like of that?”
“Them and their view. You’d think it was a diamond necklace, the way they carry on about their view. Mrs. Giegler is just the same. The minute a person walks into the house, it’s me view this and me view that, and come and look at me view, and dragging them over to the window and out on to the porch in every sort of weather. Damp, that’s all I have to say about it. Damp.”
“Oh, this one is a terror on the view. She’s had her eye on that view ever since I’ve been here. She was bound and determined to get that view.”
“Well, and now she has it.”
“Two people had to die before she could get it. First the poor old daisy who owned the cottage that used to be down there died in her sleep one night, and then, not two weeks later, doesn’t poor Mr. Finch go and smash himself up.”
“And then she bought the cottage?”
“Not at all,” said Bridie, rudely. “She couldn’t afford to buy the cottage. There were dozens of them around here after it, but she got herself on the inside first. Mr. Harkey inherited the cottage from his aunt. That was the old one who died. Miss Harkey. An old maid. They were all after that cottage. That’s why she married him in such a hurry, apart from the fact that she knew Mr. God would never show his face in the house till she had a new husband.”
“Mr. Harkey got the cottage from his aunt, and then this one married him and made him pull it down.”
“Pulled it down and carted it away as fast as I’m saying the words. Oh, she was in a terrible hurry about it. She had them out there marking the place for the lawn and planting the grass and putting up the statues before you could turn around. He never said a word, but I think he was sorry to see the cottage go. He said to her that it was the only thing he’d ever owned in his life.”
“I would’ve thought he had money, from the looks of him.”
“Not that fellow. Oh, he likes to look as if he was somebody, but he hasn’t a penny except what he gets from his job. The old aunt didn’t leave him any money, only the cottage. I don’t think she had much else to leave. She kept very much to herself. She hadn’t much patience with the crowd around here. Well, Mr. Harkey was all pleased. He came down here, just weekends, and began settling in, cooking little meals for himself and all, and the next thing you knew, there she was, charging down the road with little housewarming presents for him—little pots of patty de fwa, and raspberry jam I’d made, and a tin of green-turtle soup she paid a fortune for. She thought he might like the unusual flavor of it, she said. Oh, she’d never have looked at him, only for his view. It would have matched him better to have sold up the place and taken his money and run. She just took it out from under him. He never had a chance, once she took after him.”
“The poor fellow.”
“Oh, I’d waste no sympathy on that fellow, Agnes. Do you know what his job is? Well, now, I’ll let you guess. The lowest thing, about the lowest thing you can think of. Go on, guess. I’ll give you three guesses.”
“An undertaker?”
“No.”
“A pawnbroker?”
“No, but you’re close.”
“A summons server?”
“No. He’s a credit manager.”
Agnes emitted a low, prolonged shriek and sat down on Bridie’s chair by the stove. Bridie smiled her satisfaction.
“A credit manager!” cried Agnes. “A credit manager. Oh, my God, the lowest of the low. A credit manager. And to think I’m going to have to put his dinner in front of him. Oh, the dirty thing.”
“At Clancyhanger’s,” Bridie said.
“Clancyhanger’s. The worst bunch of thieves and knaves in the country. The persecutors of the poor. Oh, the way they hop off you when you haven’t got the money. Bridie, I’ve heard enough. I hope she cuts him up and eats him.”
“Of course, she doesn’t say he’s a credit manager. That’s not good enough for her. She makes out he’s a junior vice president, if you don’t mind. But I heard him talking to her the first time he came in here for a drink, and that’s what he told her. He’s a credit manager, and that’s all he is.”
“One of the ones that does the dirty work. When our Blessed Lord was crucified, he was standing there holding the box of nails.”
“That’s the sort he is. No real good in him. Although to look at him you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Oh, he was all full of himself that first day he came in here. He had a girl he brought with him.”
“A girl?”
“She was staying with him in the cottage. And there was only the one bed in the place, because I saw the furniture when it was carted out. She was staying with him all right, in the full sense of the word.”
“Imagine doing the like of that, and probably not engaged or married or anything. Isn’t it disgusting?” Agnes said enviously.
“This one may not have been married, Agnes, but she had the experience of being married, I’ll guarantee you that much. Oh, I think she thought he was going to marry her. She was all busy, making curtains and cushion covers and all, and cleaning up the weeds in the garden down there where the old one had let it go. She was a nice enough girl, too, I’ll say that much for her. All excited about the cottage. But she didn’t last long after the Madam got to work.”
“Tell us, Bridie, what did she do to her?”
“She didn’t have to do anything. Not that one. She was all nice to the girl. All advice on how this should go in the cottage, and how that should go, all over her, she was, sweet and nice as you please. But then one night he came up by himself, and the first thing you know, she was on the phone asking him over for a drink. ‘I love your girl,’ she says to him, ‘a dear girl. What does she do?’ she says—as if she didn’t know, I heard her questioning the girl myself. ‘She works in the advertising department in the store,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that interesting,’ she says. ‘But isn’t it a pity she’s not more at ease here,’ she says. ‘We’re such a select little group, you know. A lot of artists and writers, creative people. We see each other all the time,’ she says. ‘It’s so important to fit in, as you do,’ she says. ‘I want to give a little party for you, and introduce you to everybody. And there’s my friend Charles Runyon, the critic—you know his name, of course.’ That’s Mr. God. ‘You must meet him the minute he gets back from Europe. He’s so charming,’ she says. ‘I know you’ll adore him, as we all do.’ And then she invited him to a dinner party she was giving, not mentioning the girl, and he didn’t mention the girl, either, and he never brought her near the place again. Of course, he didn’t know what he was getting in for, with this one. He thought she was all interested in his cottage. And all she was thinking about was how fast she could get it out of the way so she could have her precious view.”
“And now I suppose all she’s thinking about is how fast she can get him out of the way.”
“Ah, no, she doesn’t mind him, as long as he behaves himself and doesn’t cause her any trouble. He’s not a bad-looking young fellow, you know. And now she has Mr. God coming around again, paying her compliments and inviting her in to New York to see the new plays, and all. You’ll see—he’ll be out here every weekend, just the way he used to be. He has his own room here, even. He told her the way he wanted it, and she had it all done up for him. He hasn’t even got his own car, but they fall over themselves around here to see which one of them will give him a lift out from the city. They think it’s an honor, having him around. He’s supposed to be very witty. A wit, he is. He never opens that narrow little mouth of his but they all collapse laughing.”
“The way they carry on, it’s not decent.”
“Oh, the things I could tell you about their carrying-on,” Bridie said ominously. “It would curl your hair.”
“You mean her and Mr. God.”
“No, no, nothing like that there. He’s the sort that just pays compliments. I heard him telling her she has a face on her that belongs to the ages. What do you make of that?”
“Is that a compliment? What sort of a compliment is that? Isn’t that a queer thing to say to a woman!”
“She liked it. She says she’s in love with his mind.”
“In love with Mr. God’s mind?”
“She’s in love with Mr. God’s mind.”
“In love with his mind. Well, that’s a new one. I never heard that one before.”
“Neither did Mr. Harkey, by the look of him.”
“There he is now,” said Agnes, who had resumed her stand by the window. Bridie came to look over her shoulder.
Flashlight in hand, George was making his way timorously over the darkened lawn. He passed the naked woman, at whom he did not glance. Passing the clown, he turned the light briefly on the painted face, and proceeded on. He walked slowly over the place where his cottage had raised its walls, and reached at last the edge of the river, where he stood stabbing convulsively with the flashlight out into the blackness. The path he lighted across and around and over and above the water was ragged and wavering. His hand seemed to be shaking.
“What’s he up to now, I wonder,” said Bridie.
“Maybe he’s looking for his view,” Agnes said, and grimaced nervously at her own smartness.
“Well, he’s not going to find much down there,” Bridie said, and gave her a companionable nudge in the ribs.
Emboldened, Agnes thumbed her nose at the window, and immediately collapsed on the table in a heap of shuddering, feeble giggles, with her hands covering her face. After a second, she moved one finger aside and peered up to see how Bridie was taking this demonstration.
Bridie winked at her.