Fifteen

So much happens when one is very young that one doesn’t understand at all, or that one never takes the trouble to understand. Flowers bloom, parents quarrel, storms come and pass, the seasons change. Through it all runs a single thread of self, giving an illusion of continuity to all that happens. Seen through one’s own eyes, when one is very young, the misadventures of life are merely pauses in the pattern, interruptions in the harmony, and one is sure that, in time, the trouble—the storm, the quarrel, whatever it is—will blow over and that, as Hugh Carey’s father had put it, everything would be all right. It is with a certain shock of adjustment that one realises that there are some things which will never blow over, and will never be all right.

There is the inevitability and unalterability of death, for one thing, which is not a pause at all, but a final thing, and comes followed by the knowledge that the person who has died simply will never appear again and that the world of people one has known now possesses an empty space. Hugh could remember his grandfather’s death, even though he had been barely five years old at the time, and he could remember sitting in the old swing behind the house, thinking about his grandfather who had died yesterday, and feeling very lucky to be part of an event that was causing so much consternation and activity in the family, feeling very proud, because none of the children he played with had ever known anyone who was now dead. He had watched everyone’s behaviour very closely—the friends who came and went with little gifts, the men bringing flowers, the Carey cousins and the Pryor cousins who came from different parts of the East to participate in what was happening. And he had enjoyed the particular attention that all these people paid to him. As he swung, back and forth in the little swing, people in dark clothes had walked out into the back garden just to see him, to pat him gravely on the head and to kneel, holding the swing ropes, and kiss him on the cheek and say kindly, “Dear little Hugh. You will be a good little boy for your mother and daddy, won’t you?” And he had promised them, smiling, that he would. One always promised to be good.

They had paid some attention to Billy too, but they had paid more attention to Hugh because he was the older and Billy was still a baby who could not even talk, and, of course, this was all before Pansy was born, so there was no Pansy for them to pay attention to. He could remember, later, running through the house while everyone had gone off to the church, crying, “I’m dead! I’m dead!” with the servants running after him, trying to make him be quiet, to show respect, trying to get him to sit in his room with a colouring book, to do anything that would preserve the house’s hush. But he had been too excited and happy about everything that had gone on to be quiet, to do anything but run wildly through the house. Only later, much later—perhaps it was a week, perhaps a month later—did the thundering knowledge come to him that what had happened simply meant that his grandfather’s stooping figure would never again come towards him, to offer him a ginger snap or a copper penny if he had been good, or to slap his wrist if he had misbehaved.

“When you press your face very close to the grass …” Edrita had said. He was sitting on the grass beside Edrita now, in the wood-enclosed field far behind the house—the field that once, on a walk together long ago, his father had said was like an enchanted valley. He had spread out his old Army field jacket on the grass, and they were sitting on that. They had walked most of the way saying nothing, and now they were sitting in the same kind of poised silence. Hugh hunched forward, putting his elbows on his knees, and looked at the lighted cigarette between his fingers.

“How are they all taking it?” Edrita asked finally.

“Oh, can’t you imagine how?” he said. “They’re taking it just beautifully. The Pryor women are strong. The Pryor women are brave.”

“It’s just so cruel and senseless,” she said. “It just doesn’t bear thinking about at all.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“And your father—how is he?”

“He’s—well, he’s a man. Men like Dad never cry. They just bottle it all up somewhere.”

“Your nice father. He’s such a very nice man.”

“Yes.”

She shuddered.

“Are you cold?”

“No. No, I’m just thinking of that poor little girl. Poor, lost little girl.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“She was always very proud and fond of you,” Edrita said. “I’ll always remember that—how she always admired you. Her big brother. I used to think, watching Pansy, how much fun it must be—how lucky a girl must be—to have a big brother.”

He nodded.

“She felt very close to you, I know,” Edrita said.

“It’s funny,” he said after a moment, “but I don’t remember that we were really ever very close. There was always that gap in our ages. I used to think of her as just a little kid, just a baby sister, and I hated to have her tagging along. I wish—”

“I know, I know,” she said.

“But at least, last night when I talked to her, it did seem as though we were really quite close. And that’s a nice thing.”

“Yes.”

“Last night she said I was the only one she wanted to talk to.”

“Of course. Of course you’re the only one she would have wanted to talk to,” Edrita said.

“Yes, last night, for a while, we were very close.”

“Who—who found her, Hugh?”

“Reba. Reba went into her room a little after midnight, and she was—it was already too late.”

“If only someone could have got there in time!”

“Ah, what’s the point of saying something like that?” he said. “If only—if only. If only a lot of things that happened hadn’t happened.”

“I know.”

“Look,” he said. “I suppose I could take the blame for no one getting there in time! I really could. When Dad got home he wanted to go up and say hallo to her, and if he had—well, it might have been in time. But I wouldn’t let him go up. It was what she’d asked me to do, of course—but still. Still, someone could blame me. Or Pappy. Poor Pappy, he’s all upset because he thinks he’s to blame. He went into her room with a tray and didn’t notice anything wrong, so he just left the tray and went out. Now he thinks he should have noticed something—he’s convinced that he’s to blame. No one’s to blame.”

“No one except—”

“Except who?”

“Except—what is it? Is it Fate? Fate, I guess, was what I was going to say.”

He stubbed out his cigarette slowly in the grass. “Yes,” he said.

“Is he still coming?”

“You mean Jimmy Lord? No. I finally convinced him that he really shouldn’t. He wanted to come, of course. When I finally got him on the phone again, he already had a reservation on a plane. But I told him not to—that there was nothing for him to come for now. And he’d been going to go A.W.O.L. to come. And I knew how difficult and unpleasant everybody could make it for him if he came. I told him it was too late for his coming to do any good, and he seemed to understand—finally. I didn’t want him to go A.W.O.L. The poor guy’s going to be in enough trouble already.”

“Why? What other trouble is he in?”

He was silent for a few seconds, looking across the valley at the trees. Then he said, “Sandy wrote a letter to his commanding officer.”

“What sort of letter?”

“Just—a letter. Saying, or asking rather, if this was the calibre of man our country wanted for an officer in its armed services—the sort of man who would take a young girl out, get her pregnant, and make her elope with him against regulations—that sort of letter, Edrita.”

“But why? Why would she do a thing like that? She had Pansy back!”

“She just wanted to get rid of him permanently,” he said.

“Oh, that bitch!” she said.

“Now, look,” he said. “She thought she was doing the right thing for Pansy.”

“No!” she said, and her voice was suddenly angry. “No, she did not! I won’t listen to that stupid drivel about her! She did not think she was doing the right thing for Pansy. She knew she was doing the wrong thing for Pansy, and she knew it damn’ well!”

He felt all at once very tired. The right thing. The wrong thing. The difference between the two seemed now very tenuous and indistinct, the line that divided them so fine, so thin. “It turned out to be the wrong thing,” he said, feeling as though he were reciting some pedantic and unimportant lesson. “But she thought it was the right thing—at the time. She wants what she thinks is the best thing for her children.”

“No!” she cried again, and suddenly she jumped to her feet and ran a little distance away from him across the grass. And when she turned and faced him she was weeping. “No!” she said again. “No, she wants what she thinks is the worst thing! Oh, how can you be so stupid and blind? Stupid and blind! What does it take to open your stupid eyes and make you stop making excuses for her? What does it take to make you grow up just a little bit? For God’s sake, what does it take? I’m so sick—so sick and tired—of hearing you make excuses for her! You said you were trying to reappraise yourself. Why don’t you try to reappraise her while you’re at it? I’m sick and tired of holding my own tongue and being polite about her and not saying what I know is true! She’s a cruel and destructive woman. She destroys everything she touches. She—”

“Sandy’s a hard person to understand,” he said.

“Sandy! Sandy is not a hard person to understand. She’s the easiest thing in the world to understand!”

“She loves her children.”

“That’s a lie. She hates her children!”

“It isn’t that simple,” he said.

“It is that simple! Look at what she’s done to them. Look at what she’s done to you. Look at what she’s done to Pansy. She’s a monster! Look,” she said again, stepping closer, her fists clenched at her sides. “Do you want to know the truth about her?”

“Yes. What is the truth about her?”

“Then listen to me. You’ve told me about that movie she watches all the time—that movie of Billy. Do you want to know why she watches that? Do you? It’s because if she loves anybody, she loves Billy. And do you know why she loves Billy?”

“Why?”

“Two reasons! The first is because Billy was her happy, healthy son. And you were her sick, lame son. And do you know what the second reason is?”

“What is the second reason?”

“Because he’s dead! That’s the second reason. She loves him because he’s dead. She’ll begin to love Pansy now, perhaps. Because she’s dead. And she’ll probably drag out some old home movie of Pansy, and watch that, now that Pansy’s dead. And you? When you’re dead, she’ll have a movie of you, and she’ll watch that. She’ll sit and watch all three movies of her dead children, and she’ll love you all then. She’ll love you then, Hugh. But until you’re dead, she hates you. She hates you.”

“But she’s my mother …”

He lay back quickly on the grass and looked up at the bright disc of the sun overhead. For a moment or two it seemed to him such a new thought—that his mother hated him. Lying there, he wondered how long it would be before he became accustomed to its presence in his head. The thought stood there now, unmoving, a sullen shape that refused to march away. In a way it was like what happened when someone that you love very much has died; you had to prepare yourself for the looming vacancy ahead, to the finality of the absence of that person from all the rooms of your life from now on. It would take him a while to get used to the idea that his mother had died from him, just disappeared from his existence and yet, of course, hadn’t he really known it before Edrita had put it into words? Hadn’t he known it last night, with Pansy, or even before last night? Hadn’t he begun to know it when he first came home, or hadn’t he known it really a long, long time before that? And hadn’t he, knowing the inevitability of it, hadn’t he for a long time kept it a secret from himself, kept its truth buried from his consciousness, hoping that perhaps—perhaps—

“I love my children with a love that borders on passion,” she had said.…

“You hate me! You hate me!” he could remember screaming at her. How old had he been then? Ten, perhaps. Nine or ten. It was when Pansy was a baby, anyway, and what had that quarrel been about? Something of Pansy’s, he remembered. A doll, a toy—something of Pansy’s. He had taken it and had refused to give it back. Yes, it was a stuffed lion. Pansy’s stuffed lion that she’d carried about with her, and he had taken it. Out of meanness, out of jealousy. And Miss Miles, the nurse, had tried to make him give it back, and he remembered Pansy’s shrill screams and Miss Miles trying to make him give the lion back, and when he would not give it back she had called his mother.

“It belongs to Pansy, dear,” his mother had said. “Give it back to her.”

“I won’t!”

“Give it back to her this minute, darling,” she had said.

“I won’t! I won’t!”

And from her great height over him she had reached down, seized his arm, and wrenched the lion away from him, and tossed it to Miss Miles. “Don’t ever say ‘I won’t’ to me, dear,” she had said.

That was when he had screamed, sobbing. “You hate me! You hate me.”

She had taken him by the arm then, into her bedroom, and closed the door. She had sat him down on the bed beside her. “Never say a thing like that,” she had said. “That I hate you.”

“You do! You hate me.”

“I want to tell you a little story,” she had said, patting his knee. “Would you like me to tell you a little story?”

“All right,” he had said.

“This is the story of the Queen who could have no children,” she had said. “Once upon a time there was a Queen who lived in a beautiful fairy castle, and the thing she wanted more than anything in the world was children,” she said. “She wanted them more than golden crowns or thrones or ruby sceptres. But the doctors, the Royal Physicians, told her that she should never have children. They told her that something was wrong with her body, some tiny thing wrong with the way her bones were put together, that meant that if she ever gave birth to a child, she might die. But she wanted children more than the stars, and the King, her husband, was very strong and powerful, and he wanted her to have children. So she had a child.”

“And what happened?” he asked her.

“She was very sick. The doctors had been right, you see. She was very sick, and she nearly died.…”

He remembered her smiling at him with a calm intensity. “You know how children are born, don’t you?”

“Yes. From their mothers’ tummies.”

“Yes, but this particular Queen could not have her children the way most mothers can. She was very sick, for hours and hours, and finally the doctors had to make a long slit in her stomach to take her baby out, and after that she almost died.”

“Did the doctors sew her up again?”

“Yes, of course they did. And eventually she got better. She knew there were a lot of women who had to have their babies like that. Little Julius Cæsar was born the same way, from his mother. So the Queen wasn’t the only one, and eventually she got better.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then she had two more children because she and her husband the King wanted more children—children to play with their first child. But each time she had a child, of course, she was very sick, and the doctors had to do the same thing. The second two times weren’t as bad as the first, to be sure, but they were bad and painful enough. And so do you know what the point of the story is?”

“What is it?” he had asked her.

“The point is that when a woman has been tortured that way and hurt that way and has nearly died to have the children she wanted, she loves those children more—much more—than any ordinary mother. Because she feels she has given up a little bit of her own life to give her children life. She has sacrificed more for them, right from the beginning. So she loves them more. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” he said.

“Do you know who that Queen was?” she had asked him, smiling.

“Was it you?”

“Yes,” she had said. “It was me, Hugh. So don’t ever say that I hate you. Because I love you all—you and Billy and Pansy—a great, great deal more than other mothers love their children. I worked harder to bring you into the world than most. And shall I tell you another secret?”

“Yes.”

“Promise never to tell Billy, never to tell Pansy?”

“I promise.”

“Because you were the hardest one for me to have, because I came closest to dying when I had you, I love you the most of all.”

He had sat very quietly on the bed beside her, thinking about it.

“Don’t ever say I hate you,” she said. “I love you the most of all—my little Julius Cæsar!” She had kissed him then, and said, “Now run along and play.”

He had run along and played. But he had thought about the Queen, and her three children, for a long time after that. He could see why she loved them. But for several months afterwards, he had had a recurrent nightmare and a fantasy in which he saw the Queen, his mother—and sometimes it was neither a queen nor his mother, really, but an indistinguishable person. Her long body was spread out on a table in a white room, alone. He was the only spectator, the only witness to the ritual of mutilation that was being, or had already been, performed. Her whole body had been slashed down the very centre of its length, and the skin had been pulled apart and was stretched open and pinioned to the table. And from her open body were spouting great bubbles of blood, and huge dark gobbets and pieces of her flesh were pouring out, all about the table.

And remembering this fantasy now, and how, for a while, it had wakened him in terror in the night with its fierce explicitness and how, later on, it had become blurred and jumbled with his own hospital dream, he wondered—looking up at the sun’s pulsing shape overhead—which she had hated first: him or his father, who had placed the seed of him within her.

Edrita came and knelt beside him. “Hugh, I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s true. It’s true.”

“Caught in a trap, Pansy said.”

“She was right. And shall I tell you another thing? A thing I’ve never told you before?”

“What is it?”

“She tried to buy me off once. To keep us apart.”

“What do you mean? You mean she offered you money?”

“No, she wasn’t that stupid. She wasn’t that obvious. But she tried to bribe me, just the same. It was blackmail—a very genteel sort of blackmail.”

“What did she do?”

“It was the summer after you graduated from college. She came to me and asked me what my intentions were—whether I planned to try to marry you. And she said—”

“What did she say?”

“She said that if I did, if I had any such plans or intentions, I had better abandon them right away. Because, she said, if I didn’t—if I didn’t stop seeing you—there were certain things, things about my father, that she knew. Things that she said he had done when he was on Wall Street, right before the crash, and right after—things that she said she would see to it got spread all over this town, all over the state, if I didn’t give you up then and there.”

“What did you say to her, Edrita?”

“I laughed at her. I laughed in her face! I called her a fool, because she was a fool. I told her to save her silly threats because I had no such plans and no such intentions. Because I’d known for a long time that it was going to be impossible for you and me. And it was impossible—at the time.”

“I’ve got to get away from here,” he said.

“Of course you do. You’ve got to get away very quickly, my darling.”

“Perhaps—perhaps I’ll go back to Joe Wallace.”

“Not to Joe Wallace,” Edrita said. “It’s got to be some place else.”

“Yes,” he said. “Some place else.”

“And this time you can take me with you,” she said.

“What about your husband?” he asked. “What about Bob?”

“I don’t love my husband,” she said. “I love you.”

“Didn’t you ever love him, Edrita?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I did. But I’m not at all sure I ever really did. I always loved you, you see.”

“Will you divorce him?”

“I’ll get the quickest divorce it’s possible to get!”

“And what about your little girl?”

“Patty can come with us, if you like. Or else—”

“Or else what?”

“Or else whatever you think, whatever you want. Patty’s a happy child. She adores her father—”

“You could really do all this—so easily?”

“I’m an Eastern girl,” she said. “My roots haven’t taken very well to Middle Western soil. Chicago and I are like oil and water. I don’t like their voices. Have you ever noticed that about Middle Western voices—how loud they are? Both the men and women. It must be something to do with the climate. I like the nice, tight sound of Eastern voices.”

“You want to marry me for my nice, tight Eastern voice?”

She laughed softly. “I want to marry you for you,” she said.

“What about the thing you said the other day? How you wouldn’t want to marry me because I couldn’t give you security?”

“Darling,” she said, “you can give me all the security I can possibly ever need in life—once you escape from your mother.”

“Well,” he said, “I know I’ve got to get away.”

“Let’s go now,” she said. “Let’s go right now! Nothing needs to be complicated if you do it swiftly and simply.”

“I can’t go until after the funeral,” he said. “Not until after that.”

“Then right after that! Right after that!”

“All right. Right after that.”

“Promise me!”

“I promise you.”

“Hugh, thank God we’re alive!” she said. She tumbled upon him, the shadow of her face blocking the sun’s rays, and covered his body with hers. “Oh, make love to me now, Hugh,” she said. “Oh, please make love to me again now! Make love to me.”

The funeral was for eleven o’clock, Tuesday morning, and was to be private—only family and a few close friends, But there were enough of these. There were all the Pryors from Massachusetts, and they were a crowd in themselves. Though Ogden Pryor had been an only child, there were five first cousins still living: the William R. Pryors; the Sanford Pryors; old Alexander Pryor, who was ninety-three; Richard Pond Pryor; and Mrs. Edith Pryor Wilson, who lived in Boston. Then, added to these, were their children—Ogden Pryor’s nieces and nephews who were named Pryor and Wilson and Renshaw and Robinson—and their children, the Pryor grandnieces and grandnephews, a number of whom were married and brought with them a few Pryor great-grandnieces and great-grandnephews and, in first names, there was a great preponderance of Ogdens and Williams and Alexanders and Janes and Ediths and Elizabeths—names the Pryors had always favoured. There was even another Hugh—young Hugh Pryor Renshaw, who was fifteen and whose voice was changing. Then there were the Careys, a more scattered family, whose homes were in Connecticut, New York, and Montclair, New Jersey—Hugh’s father’s two brothers, Paul and Edward, and their wives and children; and his father’s sister, Mrs. Curtis Dabney, and her children and grandchildren; and there were Carey cousins, nieces and nephews.

They were the family, and though many of them had not seen each other for a number of years, they had the ability, which many large families have, to pick up immediately the skeins of their relationships, when they met again, at exactly the point where they had let them drop before, and to create instantly the tender fabric of family that had always bound them all together, no matter how far apart from each other they happened to live. “Doesn’t Jane look well?” they said. “She looks exactly the same.” “Ah, Edith. You look so well. Did you bring little Edith with you? Oh. Is she enjoying Wellesley?” “Dear Alex. How are you, Alex? Oh, don’t say you’re getting old, Alex. You’re looking so well.” And then they said, “Isn’t it terrible that it takes something like this to bring us together? Isn’t it a shame that it seems to have to be a wedding or a funeral?” But of course they did not mean this, that it was a shame, because the weddings and the funerals were what tightened the fibres of the family and, without them, they might all have long ago spun apart. So they were actually grateful for the marriages and the deaths; only this one—“Poor little Pansy … so young … so unnecessary … so awful … too awful even to think about.” They had all gathered at the house by ten o’clock and, for the little buffet lunch that they were going to have after the services, there would be fifty-three of them—just the family. And with so many automobiles parked in the long driveway leading up to the house, Pappy found himself answering the door to a pair of strange faces, a man and a woman who, holding a copy of the Connecticut Guide, said, “Pardon me, but is the castle open to the public?”

Reba came into Hugh’s room, dressed for the funeral in a black, severely cut dress upon which the only touch of white was the pearls at her throat, her orange hair tucked as best as possible beneath a simple black cloche hat. “They’re all here,” she said. “All the family. You’d better get ready and come down.”

“I’ve got to get dressed, Reba,” he said. “Run along and let me get dressed.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “Go ahead and get dressed. I’ve seen you often enough, ever since you were a baby. Go right ahead. I want to talk to somebody.”

He had hesitated, and then shrugged and said, “All right.” And he had stepped out of his pyjamas and gone into the bathroom and run the shower, and came out, towelling himself, going to his dresser for a pair of undershorts—dressing quickly not because he was diffident about being naked in front of her as much as because walking was always a little harder for him when he was not wearing the corrected shoes. And she had not seemed to mind his nakedness, or even to notice it. She had talked on through it, her voice rising and falling, standing and going to the window, returning to the chair, talking about whatever came into her mind. Only once, when he was sitting on the edge of the bed in his shirt and shorts, putting on his dark socks, did she look at him directly and say, “You were always a beautiful child, Hugh. A beautiful child. Do you remember how you used to exercise in front of this big mirror?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

“Are you going to take that nice job you’ve been offered in New Haven?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t decided yet, Reba.”

“Oh, please do. I hope you do.”

“Well, I’ll see,” he said. He stood up and went to the closet and took his dark blue suit from its hanger. “Do you think this suit will do?” he asked her.

“Yes, it’s perfect, Hugh,” she said. “It would make Sandy so happy if you did,” she said.

“If I did what?”

“If you took that job. The one in New Haven.”

“Well—” he said.

“It would make your father happy, too. It would make them both so happy.”

He pulled on the trousers to his suit. “Do you really think anything could make them happy?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “That could.” Then she said, “They’re really not unhappy people, Hugh. Essentially, they’re a happy couple.”

“Were,” he said. “I think that perhaps they were happy. But long ago.”

“Why do you feel that?”

“I sensed something the other night,” he said. “After dinner we went into the library, and he began to play the piano, and she began to sing. Remember? The way they used to do at parties together? And there was something, some little flicker, a spark between them that happened there. And I remembered how they used to be.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I know.”

“But that little spark only lasted for a couple of minutes. And it ended, then, with her screaming at him, saying that he was drunk. And with him stalking off into the night.”

“To—to her, you mean?”

“I don’t know where he went. But he didn’t come home. He was gone all night.”

“Yes,” she said. “Then it was probably to her.”

“The only thing I know,” he said, “is that there have been damn’ few of those little sparks in the last few years—damn’ few. In fact, I wonder really if there have been any others at all? Do you call that a happy marriage, Reba?”

“Oh, happy, happy, happy. Everybody talks about happy,” she said.

“But you’re the one who mentioned happiness,” he said. He sat on the bed again, put on his shoes, and laced them.

“But happiness is—it’s such a relative thing,” she said. “And I keep feeling so sure that this Schiller business will soon blow over.”

“Do you really think it will?”

“I do. Yes. And do you know something? I think that this awful thing, this thing that’s just happened, will help it blow over, Hugh. I really think it will help—that this tragedy will somehow help bring them closer together. Together in their grief. I feel very sure of that.”

“Reba, how long has the Schiller thing been going on?”

She hesitated. “Oh, three or four—perhaps five years.”

“And do you really think that after three or four or perhaps five years it’s going to blow over?”

“I hope so, yes. I hope so.”

“I wish I could be that optimistic,” he said. He selected a tie from the rack and crossed the room to the mirror, and began winding the tie into its knot.

“And you could help, too, Hugh. You could help bring them together, too.”

“I wish I believed that, also,” he said. “I wonder why they married each other.”

“You wonder why they married each other? Hugh, what a thing to say!”

“But I really do wonder, Reba.”

“Why, they were—I really think they were genuinely in love with each other. They were a beautiful couple, Hugh. They used to ride together and hunt together. They used to play marvellous tennis together. You should have seen them, on the tennis courts. They were beautifully matched—in their looks, all in white, Allen in white flannels, Sandy in a white skirt—and they were matched in their game, too. Beautifully matched! You should have seen them. Half the time, exactly half the time, he won the matches; the other half of the time, she won. It was actually championship tennis that they used to play together, and they were lovely to watch. And of course, when it came to marriage, he was the logical choice.”

“What do you mean—the logical choice?”

“The logical one, the perfect one. Papa had always liked Allen—liked him the best of all the men Sandy knew. And. Allen was older than Sandy, and Papa wanted someone older for Sandy because she was—well, she was sort of wild. And Papa had Allen Carey sort of picked out for Sandy and so, when they seemed to be in love, it was logical that they should marry. It was perfect.”

“I see,” Hugh said.

“You see, Sandy always did the perfect thing. She always did absolutely the right thing. Papa always had the greatest admiration for Sandy, and he was so pleased that the marriage had worked out, and that Sandy had married perfectly. Allen Carey was a brilliant young lawyer—successful—from a fine family. And Sandy chose him, and that delighted Papa. You see, Hugh, neither of us were what you might call pretty girls. Papa used to say that Sandy and I must have stepped out of line when looks were being passed out! That was why it made him so happy when Sandy did the perfect thing, and married Allen Carey. Whereas I—”

He looked at her sharply and suddenly, with a swift chill of memory, remembering the story. How, he thought, feeling all at once dizzy and ill and looking quickly back at his reflection in the big mirror, could he have forgotten that? Especially now, after what had happened to Pansy, how could he have forgotten it? The beads. That was why Reba always wore the high beads at her throat. The beads were to hide the thin chalk-lines of the scars. Because of course Reba had tried it once. It had been long ago, and no one ever talked about it any more, but he had been told about it, and how could he have forgotten it until just now? No wonder she was here, in his room, wanting to talk to him while he dressed. No wonder she didn’t want to be downstairs, where all the family was. Because what would the family be saying to each other now, or at least thinking now, except how—wasn’t it curious, wasn’t it strange, wasn’t it awful, the comparison between the two: Reba and Pansy? How they had both … Downstairs, where the family was gathered, the air must be full of those thoughts, of that queer and frightening parallel. No wonder Reba wanted to be here.

“Whereas you—” he said softly, looking at the mirror.

In the mirror he saw her hand go gently to her beads. “I know what you’re thinking, Hugh,” she said. “I can almost hear your thoughts.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. Well, I was very young. And it wasn’t really like Pansy. I thought I was in love, and I thought the man loved me. I wanted to do the perfect thing too—just like Sandy. I wanted to please Papa too. You didn’t know Papa well, Hugh, but Papa was our world. We’d do anything for him, Sandy and I. We loved Mama too, of course, but Mama was—Mama was never any help to us. She was just a dear little lady who always did everything Papa said. The sun rose and set on Papa for us, and I wanted to marry the man he wanted me to marry. But I was never as good at doing things as Sandy, and I was sadly mistaken. The man didn’t love me at all. He didn’t want me at all, and he ran away. I was jilted, and the man ran away. So it really wasn’t at all like Pansy.”

“No,” he said.

“And I did a very foolish and hysterical thing. I was very young, younger than Pansy. I thought—I guess I thought that I was going to show him, just show him that he couldn’t run away from me free and clear! I thought—I was very young—I thought, wherever he goes he’ll have Reba Pryor’s death on his poor conscience. Well, that isn’t much of a reason for doing what I did. And maybe that’s why I made such a botchy, unsuccessful job of it!” She laughed softly. “I didn’t really want to die. Because I didn’t really love him that much. I realise that now. My reasons were just—simply pique at being jilted. And that isn’t reason enough.”

“But Pansy had reason enough, didn’t she?” he asked her.

“Oh!” she said. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“I think she did,” he said.

“Oh, Sandy is so much like Papa, I sometimes think. So—so strong-willed. Like Papa—”

“Yes, isn’t it funny?” he said. “That from one generation to another generation—”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about generations!” Reba said. “I don’t understand generations. I have no generations. I’m an old maid.”

“But Papa and Sandy—”

“I just wish,” she began. “Oh, sometimes I just wish Sandy weren’t so strong-willed! Sometimes I think she’s too good at doing things. Sometimes I think she wants too much to be perfect. Oh, I know that sounds disloyal to poor Sandy. And I don’t mean to be disloyal. But she sets such high standards for herself, and she sets such high standards for everybody else. I—even I, who understand them, have trouble meeting those standards. I disappoint her, let her down, often enough. But sometimes I think—sometimes I think that it just isn’t possible for anyone to ever meet such high standards as she sets!”

“And this,” he said, “is what has resulted from the high standards that she sets for everybody.”

“Oh, don’t say that. Don’t say that, Hugh! She didn’t want this to happen. She’s had so much tragedy in her life. She didn’t want this to happen. Don’t ever say that, Hugh. Don’t ever blame her—it’s enough for her to bear, that she blames herself.”

“Does she blame herself?” he asked her. “Does Sandy Carey say to herself, ‘Gosh, but this is really all my fault, and I shouldn’t have done what I did, and gosh but I’m sorry—’”

“Oh, you haven’t been with her these last few days as I have, Hugh! Of course she blames herself. She says she killed Pansy, she says she killed her daughter. I’ve been with her while she’s simply been crazy with guilt. She knows she did the wrong thing, she knows she broke her promise, she knows she never should have written that letter. She knows it, and it’s enough that she knows it. Don’t ever accuse her, Hugh. Don’t ever put your thoughts into words, because she knows what your thoughts are, anyway. She knows, and her own knowledge is terrible enough to live with, Hugh. Don’t ever accuse her, because no amount of accusations will ever bring Pansy back.”

“I’m glad she knows,” he said. “She deserves to know, she deserves to suffer.”

“Oh, Hugh!” she said. “It’s your mother you’re speaking of. Don’t say such cold and hurting things. Your mother doesn’t deserve to suffer. No one deserves to suffer. Don’t say such a terrible thing about your mother—ever. Don’t forget. Don’t forget this room—and this mirror—and the exercises she made you do here. Don’t forget—don’t forget Warm Springs and all she did, how she worked with you, how she—”

“I know all that, Reba,” he said. “My God, I’ve been reminded of it for half my life!”

“Well, it’s true! Don’t forget it. The doctors—all the doctors, even Zimmerman, who said that you might never walk again, that you might have to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. Don’t forget how she refused to listen to them, how she refused to even listen to their predictions. And how she took over, and all she did, and how if she hadn’t done what she did—”

“I’m not forgetting any of that, Reba!”

“Then don’t say she should suffer! Remember—remember the good things that her strong will has done. For you, for me. A strong will like hers can’t always do the right thing, can it? There have to be mistakes, and things that go wrong. But don’t think about those things—think of the good things, and the selfless things. And don’t blame her for this one—this terrible miscalculation.”

“Yes,” he said. “Miscalculation is the right word, isn’t it? So let’s just chalk it up to miscalculation.”

She turned away from him and walked slowly towards the mirror. In front of it, she stopped. “Hugh,” she said, “may I share an awful secret with you?”

“Of course,” he said. “What is it?”

“Hugh—there was a note.”

“A note? What sort of note?”

“On Pansy’s writing-table. It was there—when I found her, the other night. It was addressed to him—to James Lord.”

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

“Yes! Oh, I know I should have given it to Sandy—or to someone—right away! But I didn’t.”

“Why?” he asked her. “Why should you have given it to Sandy?”

“Because she would have wanted me to. But I didn’t—I kept it. I’ve carried it with me for two days, not knowing—”

“Where is it now?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to—to break the seal—to read it. And then, this morning—it was very simple—it was all addressed—I put a stamp on it and mailed it to him.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You did the right thing, Reba.”

“Oh, did I? Did I?” she asked, turning to him again. “It’s the first disloyal thing I’ve ever done to Sandy—to keep that from her. But I felt, somehow, that whatever words Pansy had to say to him he should read, and know, and keep—whatever those words were!”

“Yes,” he said. “And if you’d given it to Sandy, you know what she’d have done with it.”

“I know. She’d have ripped it open, read it—and touched a match to it.”

“Yes,” he said. And then, “Reba, I’m going to go away.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve been in terror you might say that. I was afraid that might be what you were planning.”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But I’m going.”

“Don’t let it be far away, Hugh.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be, Reba—far away from here.”

“Hugh, I know how you must feel. I know you think you want to get away. But don’t go far and don’t go—permanently. She needs you too much.”

“I’m afraid I’m planning to go both far and permanently, Reba.” He smiled at her. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t!” she said. “Think it over. Don’t do something in anger. Don’t do it that way, Hugh. Don’t do it the wrong way.”

“I’m going to do it the only way I can do it,” he said.

“But don’t go yet!” she cried. “Don’t go for a while. Don’t go soon, Hugh.”

“It will be soon,” he said.

“Oh, please! Please don’t do a hasty thing, Hugh. Think it over for a little while—for a few weeks at least. Please promise me you’ll do that. Please—for me. Please, for Reba, for your Aunt Reba!”

He reached for the jacket of his suit. “Let’s go down,” he said. “Let’s go down and face the mob.”

“Please, before we go, promise me that.”

He put on his jacket, squared his shoulders in it before the mirror, and pulled down the white cuffs of his shirt. He buttoned the centre button. He reached in his pocket for a comb and ran it quickly through his hair. From his dresser drawer he took a clean white handkerchief and arranged it in his breast pocket.

“Promise me!”

He turned to her. “Come on, Reba,” he said. “Down we go.” He took her gently by the arm.

At the door, she stopped him. “You smell so nice,” she said. “Won’t you please promise me?”

“Come on, Reba,” he said.

And, taking her arm, he went with her out of the room and down the hall, and down the stairs to where the family waited.

At exactly ten minutes to eleven, Alexandra Carey started down the stairs, and the family talk hushed and faces turned to watch her as she came. She was all in black and, under her black hat, a black chiffon veil hung about her shoulders, gathered at her throat, concealing all but the barest gleam of her yellow hair. She was pulling on her long black gloves as she descended the staircase, pushing the fingers of the gloves, finger by finger, over the rings on her hands.

At the landing, she paused, pushing at the fingers of her gloves, and said, “These damn’ rings. You know, I always said that my children were the only children I knew of who had emeralds in their diapers. I said that to one of the nurses I used to have—that I expected my children were probably the only children in the world who had emeralds in their diapers. Whenever I changed the children’s diapers, the damned emeralds kept falling out of my rings!”

She finished the gloves, and then said, “Well, I’m ready. Let’s get this thing over with, shall we?” And she came the rest of the way down the stairs.