She heard the car horn, short and insistent above the sound of bees and a little brook and turned unwillingly back toward the house. Suddenly she felt hot and tired and the full baskets dragged her faintly freckled arms. The slopes of the meadow seemed deeper than they should. When she reached the top of the path she was breathless and the flowers she picked so lovingly looked limp and bedraggled and she was touched by a little wave of self-pity. Lucy was right, she thought, why should I waste my time fixing beautiful vases for blind eyes? Who cares if I work all day?
In her room, though, where François had left the green shutters bowed against the sun and all the colors were cool, she put water on her face and brushed back her hot hair and felt gay again.
I’m hungry, she suddenly decided. I, Nan Garton, the bird woman, the frail spirit who lives on one almond and a sliver of ripe peach, am starved! What will there be for lunch? Hurry. Run down fast, get past Lucy’s room and run to the kitchen to help Sara carve great pink hams, open jars of pâté from Strasbourg, bottles of black cured Greek olives, tins of herring, Polish chickens. To cut thick wedges of brown bread, slice through the smooth flesh of a mild cheese from the mountains, put butter in its tub upon the table! Pile up grapes and plums and the last four-season strawberries on a silver tray. Hurry!
But at the living room step Nan paused. People were talking in the kitchen, strangers. She all but growled. Would she ever be old enough to stop minding when she had to meet new people? A woman your age, she told herself severely, should be ashamed to be hovering out here like a timid school girl! What had Sara said about the visitors? Nan could not exactly remember. She took a deep breath and ran across the room and up the steps to the kitchen, thinking, Now! Quick! Let’s get this over with!
In the flash of time between her sight of them all standing there and her first words, she knew she would certainly never forget them. They were like a picture, stiff and strange, of some scene from a once-familiar play. The green and white squares they all stood upon, and the white walls with one vivid blue-green poster, and the wide window with its white curtains blowing and the single daisy in the jar: it was naïve and beautiful, like the setting for a village melodrama.
Sara stood at the left, quick and tall, with one brown hand laid lightly on a pile of lettuce leaves. Honor, in the background by the cellar stairs, leaned against Daniel, with her eyes dark and brooding above her small red mouth, and Daniel leaned against the wall. In front of him Timothy sagged like a clown against the younger man’s crooked knee, Nan’s brother’s face frozen into a wild leer, pretending to be Harpo Marx or, perhaps, a monkey. Half turned away from Timothy and grinning affectionately was a tall happy boy with dark hair and warm small brown eyes. And between them stood the tiny girl. Her hair gleamed almost white above her dark gold skin. She had gray eyes, the biggest eyes Nan had ever seen and seemingly the most startled.
All their eyes looked straight at Nan: Sara’s pale green and sardonic, Daniel’s their echo, Honor’s black and sad above the bright blue merriment of Timothy’s, and the new boy’s like a wise ape’s, but it was the enormous unblinking gaze of that wee woman that held Nan’s own.
Oh, she thought, instinctively dismayed, she’s littler than I! She is lovely and so young. Will Dan even look at me now? Will Timothy? Oh, I hate her! No, Nan, she told herself: Discipline, discipline! I must learn to see clearly.
“Oh!” the little girl gasped. She cried out huskily as if she had seen an archangel, “It’s Anne Garton Temple!”
The picture they all had made standing there with their eyes turned toward Nan was now broken to pieces as everybody laughed and Nan felt herself grow warm and pleased at Susan Harper’s excitement, and Joe Kelly’s flattery. She knew this was foolish but how strangely nice it was to be recognized so far from America, away from publicity pictures and her fan mail.
She was embarrassed to feel herself blush, then blush harder still. Timothy came across the kitchen and put his arm around her shoulder. Darling Timothy, knowing exactly how silly and how pleased she felt.
They scattered suddenly before Sara’s command directing the three men into the cellars, with Susan following after Honor like a bemused kitten. As the girl gave a last glance back at Nan, she almost tripped over the step into the terrace.
“Who are they, Sara darling?” Nan felt so amused and happy that she could hardly whisper. She leaned close to Sara as if to hear her secrets, and, as she hugged her elbows tightly against her waist, Nan’s eyes were dancing.
Sara was counting spoonfuls of olive oil into the big wooden bowl in front of her, her lips moving. “They just got in, friends of ours, I told you last night after Joe called from town, remember? I used to know them in the West. They’re staying up at the village.”
“I like them.”
Sara stuck one finger in the salad dressing and licked it and then ground more pepper into the bowl and abruptly she looked at Nan.
“Why?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re so funny, so sweet, like a . . .? Oh, they seem so young and innocent!” And Nan began to laugh again softly.
“Yes, I like them too,” Sara said warmly. Nan looked seriously at her from far behind her own gaiety and wondered if Sara meant it, or were those strange impersonal green eyes ever to be really warmed by any casual ordinary love? Would Sara really care if she never saw Susan or Joe again? Would she actually notice if Daniel, Honor, and Nan herself were to walk off the terrace into the blue air toward France? Even with Timothy, Sara’s eyes never seemed to be unveiled, and Nan wondered how it was when the two were alone.
Nan caught her breath for in that instant she suddenly knew that Sara loved her brother with all of herself, brain, bone, and ghost. How had she ever doubted?
“Oh, Sara!” She cried softly and laid her cheek for a second on the other woman’s thin brown arm. Then, laughing, Nan pushed all the piled green salad leaves roughly into a bowl and ran out into the sunshine with it.
She’ll think I’ve gone crazy, but I don’t care. I love her. Nan smiled, blinking at the glare from the hot lake and walked down the terrace toward the table.
When Susan rushed over—voice breaking, eyes wide with adoration—to help Nan carry the salad, the older woman beamed placidly, and when Lucy came swimming through the curtains onto the terrace Nan heard herself cry out affectionately, “How did it go today? Good work?” As if she had not seen the poor struggling woman and her foolish pictures only a while before.
Was it this morning, truly, that she had listened to Lucy’s harsh sobs? Was it this morning or a life ago that Lucy had snarled at her, “Go on! Get out! Go!”
“You don’t love anybody but your own brother,” Lucy had said. But it was not true. Nan smiled. She loved everyone and everyone loved her. She looked gaily around, at Lucy, at little Susan’s adoration, at Honor. And there coming across the terrace now were Dan, so thin and fine, and young Joe Kelly. They loved her. And Timothy! As he came into the sunlight, he looked straight at Nan with his eyes wide and winked faintly, first one eye and then the other, as he used to at dancing school. So she was happy. Dancing school! Do you remember, little brother?