Dragonwyck (10 page)

The girl raised her eyes. 'Certainly, Cousin Nicholas.'

Sapristi, said the Count to himself, here is someone I've overlooked! He had accepted Johanna's offhand introduction, gathering that the girl was some sort of governess, and scarcely more than a child herself. She sat in the shadows at the far end of the table, and had not up to this point said a word. The three words diat she had now said were not revealing, but the unconscious expression of her eyes as she looked at Nicholas was. But she's really charming,
cette petite,
thought the Count, craning very discreetly so as to see over the massed centerpiece of roses, and she is well on the way to falling in love with Cousin Nicholas.

She does not know it yet, nor does anyone else. How bizarre these people are! The fat one had better look out. He chuckled inwardly, wiped his mouth, and said chattily: 'I am all on the
qui vive
to take part in your great Fourth of July celebration tomorrow. What is the day's program, monsieur?'

Nicholas turned to his guest with his instant polite attention. 'Why, in the morning we have a party for my tenants, and I fear you must endure listening to a speech from me since it's a tradition with us.'

He smiled, and the Count said: A patriotic speech? It will be a pleasure.'

Nicholas continued: 'In the late afternoon there will be a banquet, followed by a small ball. We've asked some of our neighbors to meet you.'

'Also a pleasure, monsieur, and I am
passionné
for dancing. I bounce about like a little gutta-percha ball, but I do my best. You also must be fond of dancing, mademoiselle.' He deliberately addressed Miranda, who started and changed color.

'I —I don't know,' she said, confused by the sudden notice. 'I'm afraid I can't dance well, I don't know the polka or the waltz. I don't believe I'll be at the ball.'

She looked uncertainly at Johanna, who said: 'I thought Miranda should stay with Katrine; the child will be upset with so much noise and people in the house.'

'One of the servants may sit with Katrine,' said Nicholas. 'Of course Miranda must be at the ball. She'll soon manage the steps.'

'Oh, well, it makes no difference,' answered Johanna, burying a spoon in her vanilla ice.

Aha! thought the Count. The fat one is not so stupid after all. She tries to suppress the little one, to keep her in her place. Cousin Nicholas then comes to the rescue and Mademoiselle's superb eyes caress him gratefully. All this, so far, is instinct. Madame is perhaps too lazy and too smug to realize what is happening. Monsieur is too much bound by the consciousness of his position to permit himself to realize it. As for the little one, she is not awake. Simply, as yet, a pretty little animal.

They all rose and the Count examined Miranda with a connoisseur's eye, admiring the long slender limbs, die high breasts outlined by her tight basque, the fairness of her skin. He liked that
blond-cendré
type; he particularly liked the tiny black mole which emphasized the right corner of her mouth, and the slightly retrousse nose. This type was often capable of great passion. He sighed, wishing momentarily that he might be the means of awakening her.

He watched her graceful body as she followed the other two ladies out of the dining-room, and its innocent carriage and youth-fulness touched him.
Pauvre petite!
He could teach her the arts of love with a tenderness that she would never get from this Nicholas for all his handsome face and exquisite manners. Then the Count's sense of humor returned.
Eh bien, c'est la vie!
The emotional complications of this household were none of his business.

He settled down to superlative port and conversation with his host, whom he found to have broad knowledge and well-expressed opinions on any subject. They touched on foreign affairs, France's Moroccan war, England's recent peace with China, the Foundation of the German Catholic Church. They passed quickly over the proposed annexation of Texas and the possibilities of James K. Polk's winning the Presidential election. Here the Count found himself out of his depth, so that Nicholas tactfully introduced the topic of science, in which the Frenchman was an amateur dabbler.

'What wonders we have seen in the last few years!' said Nicholas. 'The steam engine, the electric telegraph, the daguerreotype, this new illuminating gas, which I find harsh and hideous.'

'True,' said the Count, looking around the great dim room with its soft yellow points of candlelight. 'You have none here, and yet I should have thought that in a palace like this you would want all modern improvements.'

Nicholas shook his head. 'To me there is no beauty without mystery and shadow. There's a young American author, Edgar Allan Poe, whose writings express my feelings perfectly; do you know his work?'

The Count said no, and Nicholas continued, "I think you will some day. I believe he's a genius. Sometime I shall go to him and tell him so. Listen—' And Nicholas began to recite.

By a route obscure and lonely
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an eidolon named Night
On a black throne reigns upright
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime
Out of Space—out of Time.

Toward the end of the poem his voice took on a deeper vibration and he lingered over each musical word so that the Count, who detested sitting still and listening, was impressed in spite of himself. Who would have suspected here so much latent dramatic power, or for that matter so much appreciation of die mystically macabre?

'Tiens,'
he said, 'it creates an atmosphere certainly. Not too gay, but exquisite,
mon ami,
quite exquisite. What is it all about—these sad dead waters, melancholy nooks, and shrouded forms?'

Nicholas leaned back, crossed his legs, and offered his guest a cigar.

'Ne me demandez pas des énigmes,'
he quoted lightly. He regretted having exposed even a small portion of his inner emotions. He had been seduced into it because he seldom found an intellectual equal and had foolishly expected instinctive understanding from the Count.

'What do they think in France of these new experiments with ether?' he asked, changing the subject.

'Ah, that is a miracle indeed! If it works it will stop so much pain.'

'And it will provide a most easy death for those who deserve it.'

The Count looked startled. 'What the devil do you mean by that, "those who deserve it"?'

At that moment Tompkins came into the room, stepped softly around the table pouring more port. Nicholas waited until the butler had gone, then answered: 'I believe that death is inherent in our lives, that we get the kind of death which our natures attract. The mediocre die in bed where they began; the brave die advenrurously.'

'And those who are murdered deserve to be murdered?' asked the Count, amused.

Nicholas' eyes lingered a second on the other's face. 'Perhaps,' he said. 'There's a vast amount of twaddle and sentimentality in the commonplace mind about death. It would be far better for the race if the ugly and useless ones were eliminated.'

'But monsieur!' expostulated the Count, laughing. 'This is barbaric. Who is to decide which one is ugly or useless enough for death? Who would dare?'

Nicholas lifted his glass and took a delicate sip. 'I would dare—if die occasion arose.'

The Count swallowed. The candles had burned down and some of them were guttering. The corners of the room flickered in shadow, but such light as there was illumined his host's impassive face.

The Count made a secret sign of the cross and was immediately ashamed of himself. This was no more than the jejune atheistic talk one heard from many a young sophisticate in Paris salons. All the same he was uncomfortable.

There was a small silence. Through the shut door there came the distant tinkle of a gavotte from the music room. He recognized it. His wife must be playing the piano for those other two strangely assorted women. Poor Marie Louise, he thought, it must be very dull for her, imprisoned with people whose language she did not speak. He longed to go and join them. But Nicholas, for once negligent of a guest's wishes, showed no sign of moving. He sat quiet, abstractedly fingering one of the Madame Desprez roses which had fallen from the centerpiece.

The Count cleared his throat and brought out a topic which he thought would be pleasant. 'You have a magnificent estate to leave to your sons, monsieur.'

Nicholas put the rose down. 'I have no sons.'

'Eh bien,
they will come. There is much time yet,' said the Count hastily.

Nicholas slowly turned his head. You have seen my wife. Do you think she will bear me sons?'

Quelle question extraordinaire!
thought the unhappy Count. But apparently one must answer something.

'Madame Van Ryn has quite a bit of embonpoint, certainly, but that is nothing. Why, the Marquise de Laon weighs ninety kilos and she has had eight—all boys. One must not be discouraged, and if there is something a little wrong, some
petite maladie,
why, that is easily fixed; you have good doctors here, I think— 'He broke off, astounded at the expression that came and went so quickly on the other's face that almost he doubted that it was not a trick of the candlelight.

'Johanna will bear no more children,' said Nicholas, and rose at the same time, adding casually, 'You seemed interested in my Persian oleanders. I have a fine crimson specimen in the conservatory. Would you like to look at it on our way to join the ladies?'

While he dutifully admired the oleander, the Count was engaged in renewed conjecture, piecing together this last peculiar conversation. Did the man then find his wife so repugnant that he did not sleep with her? Was this his meaning? The fat one was unappetizing certainly, but when one wanted legitimate sons one must overlook such matters and do one's best. One can always find an outlet for romance elsewhere, after one has done one's duty. Perhaps as an older and more experienced man he would find an opportunity to point out this view to Monsieur Van Ryn. He would seize a chance tomorrow.

But the chance never came. Nicholas had allowed himself to be more personal with the Count than he had with anyone in years, and he was now annoyed at this momentary weakness.

The Countess having exhausted her repertoire, the ladies had retired to the Green Drawing-Room, where the men joined them, and after sitting down beside the Countess and while chatting with her in French, Nicholas did what he always avoided. He turned his eyes on his wife and deliberately looked at her.

He watched her attempt to respond to the little Frenchman's persiflage while she stifled the yawns which always assailed her after the evening meal. He noted how her scanty hair lay lank despite Magda's efforts with the curling iron, and how the pink scalp showed beneath die strands. He noted, too, the clumsy coquetry of her glaring rouge and that she had tried to darken her eyebrows with an unskillfully applied pencil.

His eyes descended to the pendulous bosom stuffed into the straining blue satin. It supported tonight the Van Ryn diamonds, a delicate necklace of the rose-cut gems which had been bought for Azilde by Pieter Van Ryn. They were fine stones, but they seemed lusterless, as everything, thought Nicholas, which touched Johanna, became by some malevolent alchemy tarnished and unkempt.

He no longer remembered or wished to remember that he had not always viewed her with this pitiless disgust.

She had been plump seven years ago at the time of their marriage, but passably pretty. Though she was two years older than he and of a stolid temperament, she had not been unattractive. She was placid and well bred, from Dutch stock as proud and long established as his own.

Upon his return from the Grand Tour to find himself an orphan, for his mother had died when he was twelve, Nicholas had discovered amongst his father's papers a letter designating Johanna Van Tappen as a suitable choice for Lady of the Manor. He had accordingly wooed her, without passion but without reluctance either. The change had come after the birth of Katrine. The child's sex had been a bitter blow then, but with the eventual certainty that Johanna was henceforth barren he had withdrawn into a cold and remote endurance which gradually crystallized into physical repulsion. For three years he had not shared her bed, and during those years she had become as she was now.

But she was his wife and the Mistress of Dragonwyck; to that position he had always given and would continue to give outward respect and punctilious courtesy.

He replied to the Countess, who had happily embarked on a long account of her children's beauty and
sagesse,
and seeing that for this fascinating topic she wanted only a listener, Nicholas turned his head a fraction of an inch. His eyelids drooped and his veiled gaze rested upon Miranda.

She sat across the room, her head bent over the embroidery hoops and the same lawn handkerchief on which Johanna had been working Nicholas' monogram. This transfer was at his suggestion, for upon seeing that Miranda was as skilled with the needle as Johanna was clumsy, he had remarked that he thought it foolish for his wife to waste her time, 'If Miranda will be kind enough to do them.' She had, of course, been delighted, and she took great pride in her exquisite stitches and the neatness of the letters which Johanna had bungled.

From the silver sconce on the wall above Miranda's head candlelight fell directly on her hair and burnished it to gold fire. The color and texture of this hair gave Nicholas yet again a sensation of pleasure which was deeper than admiration, a curious pleasure which had in it both voluptuousness and solace. But for the origin of this sensation he had never troubled to search. Introspection was alien to his nature.

He continued to watch the pure oval of the girl's averted cheek, the long white throat and the youthful shadows at her collarbones, while her nimble fingers continued to manipulate the embroidery silk, which had much the same sheen and whiteness as her skin. She had scarcely attended to the conversation, in which as befitted her youth and anomalous position in the household she had taken no part. Her thoughts ran on the anticipated excitements of the ball.