Dragonwyck (23 page)

Before Miranda could answer, her mother leaned forward and said quickly: 'It's just for tonight, Ephraim. Ranny was tired from the traveling. She'll get into the hang of things tomorrow again.'

Ephraim grunted. 'She'd better. I'll have no idle, furbelowed, fiddle-dee-dee girls around here.' He picked up the carving knife, and said no more. The family, who were braced for a protracted lecture, settled in some surprise to their food.

Miranda's appearance discomfited her father. He could not help but see that the girl had grown extraordinarily pretty, and that in both her dress and her manner she now resembled the fine ladies he had seen at the Astor House. He was grudgingly impressed by her arrival this afternoon, the blazoned coach, the two servants, the sleek horses in their silver harness. Mr. Van Ryn must have thought a lot of the girl to provide her with such state. But now she was home again, any high-faluting nonsense she had learned must be knocked out of her. He helped himself to fried potatoes and shoved the dish toward Abigail.

Miranda toyed with her food. She was not hungry and the salty ham, greasy potatoes, and even Tabitha's fresh bread cut into thick slabs were unappetizing to a palate used to Dragonwyck's sophisticated cooking. She noticed things that had never bothered her before. Had the boys always gulped like that, and wiped their mouths on the back of their hands? And after Nicholas' chivalrous politeness, it was disconcerting to see that her mother and sister must wait for each dish until the hungry males had helped themselves.

Being at home again was like settling slowly down into the narrow end of a funnel. Everything oppressed her: the farm talk, the family prayers and Bible reading—in her absence Ephraim had finished the New Testament and was back into Deuteronomy—the eight o'clock bedtime, the sharing of her bed with Tabitha.

'It won't be for long,' snapped Tabitha, seeing the look of dismay which Miranda cast at the bed that seemed to her incredibly narrow. 'Soon you'll have it all to yourself.'

Miranda examined her sister's plump, triumphant face. 'Why—what do you mean, Tibby?'

'Ob and I are being married next month,' said the younger girl, thinking: and that's more than you'll be, for all your fancy clothes and that you're two years older.

Miranda sat down on the bed, remembering Obadiah's broad face, his little stutter, his thick hands. 'Are you in love with him, Tibby?' she asked gravely.

The other girl nodded, embarrassed. One didn't speak of love right out like that, but Ranny had always been queer.

'Then I hope you'll be very happy,' said Miranda, her voice not quite steady. Nicholas—she thought with a paroxysm of longing. The year now stretched forward an eon. Will it ever be 'next month' for me, too—She longed to tell Tabitha, just for the pleasure of speaking his name. But she knew that she must not. The ring was safely concealed beneath the high-necked nightgown.

'I have two silk dresses,' she went on quickly. 'Choose either one you want, Tibby, and I'll make it over to fit you.'

'Oh, Ranny, thank you!' cried her sister, overcome. 'That's real sweet of you. You always were much cleverer with the needle than me,' she added, determined to be generous too. She dropped most of her touchiness as she discovered that Miranda did not mean to patronize her. And that far from having to listen to long accounts of the glories and refinements of Dragcnwyck, Miranda did not want to talk about her visit at all. Instead she listened patiently to Tibby's description of Ob's virtues and the three-room cottage which was being built on a corner of the Brown farm for the young couple 'Parlor kitchen and bedroom—
and
the parlor
papered,
' whispered Tabitha exultantly to the quiet figure beside her in bed. Of course later—the house won't be big enough,' she added, blushing into the dark. 'Ob said—said he hoped we'd have to add more space every year Wasn't that awful of him!'

'Shocking,' agreed Miranda. She tried to picture Nicholas and herself in a three-room cottage. It was impossible. The image of Nicholas was inextricably mingled with magnificence, with brocades and gilt and invisible service, the somber and regal atmosphere of Dragonwyck.

She put her hand down the collar of her nightgown and felt for the ring. The heart-shaped carbuncle was warm from her body. She slipped her finger through the gold circle.

Long after Tabitha had gone to sleep she lay staring up at the low-raftered ceiling, making no sound, but slow tears trickled down her face onto the uncomfortable cornhusk mattress.

TABITHA WAS MARRIED ON SATURDAY THE THIRTY-FIRST of May in the Second Congregational Meeting House on the hill. The church was crammed with representative Greenwich families—Meads, Reynoldses, Pecks, Closes, and Husteds.

Ephraim and Abigail in a front pew nodded decorously at these friends and neighbors who had all turned out to honor the young couple. Ephraim's satisfaction was increased by the absence of the Reverend Noah Coe, whose eight years of unpopular ministry had culminated last week in his stormy dismissal by the Society.

Well, Coe's gone at last and good riddance, thought Ephraim, eyeing the Reverend Clark, the young substitute pastor, who had been brought in temporarily until the Consociation should decide on a permanent incumbent. A sound minister and a fine new stone church, that's what we need. I daresay I can squeeze out a couple of hundred, Bob Mead and Eliphalet Peck'll do considerably better—He started as Abigail nudged him.

'Hurry, Ephraim; they're waiting,' she whispered. Recalled to his duty, he hastened down the aisle and took Tabitha on his arm as the congregation cleared their throats and struck up 'Rock of Ages.'

Tibby looks lovely, thought Miranda with pride as she followed her sister and father up the aisle. Tabitha wore Miranda's watered gray silk trimmed with ruching. The difference in their heights had made it possible to cut enough from the bottom to piece out the bodice and waist, which were much too small. Miranda had also donated tiny green ostrich feathers to trim the poke bonnet. A white wedding dress would have been unthinkable extravagance for a farmer's wife, and without Miranda's generosity Tabitha would have been married in a serviceable cashmere or alpaca.

Obadiah waited beside the pulpit for bis bride, his broad face scrubbed and shining.

Ephraim handed over his younger daughter, and stepped aside with Miranda. The Reverend Clark opened the Bible and raised his hands. The congregation bowed their heads—all but Abigail. She clenched her worn fingers on the front of the pew and gazed at the group beneath the pulpit. Obadiah's mother glanced sideways at the tense figure beside her and whispered sympathetically, 'It's hard to have them leave us, Abby, but Ob'll be a good son to you, and they're not going far.'

Abigail nodded. It was not at Tabitha that she had been looking but at Miranda. For she had surprised on the girl's downcast face an expression of suffering, and a pain so obvious that the mother's heart was shocked.

I knew it, thought Abigail, deeply troubled; something has happened to the girl that she's not told me. While searching for the cause of Miranda's unhappiness, an unhappiness which Abigail had felt and tried to deny to herself during this past month, the marriage service was finished, and she realized with compunction that during Tabitha's supreme moment she had had no thoughts for her younger daughter at all.

Some thirty guests drove down the turnpike to Stanwich Road and then to the Wells farm for the spread: apple, dried peach and rhubarb pies, ham, doughnuts, coffee and cider. Abigail and her daughters had been cooking for days.

Ephraim would serve no intoxicating liquor, but some of Ob's young friends had fortified themselves with a jug of Connecticut rum, and before the afternoon shadows cast by the wineglass elms had even touched the east wall of the farmhouse, the merriment had grown rough and rowdy.

The older people sat apart beneath the trees and watched the young ones play kissing games. Even Ephraim saw no harm in that at a wedding, nor did any of the other farmers, who might enforce their blue laws, but enjoyed a strenuous and unrefined frolic just the same.

Miranda longed to go off by herself to the quiet of the little attic room which she would no longer have to share, but she dared not, knowing that her absence would annoy her father. She tried to keep out of the way, busying herself with carrying pies and plates back and forth from the kitchen, and the young people let her be. Some of the men made sheep's eyes at her, but they were afraid of her. She was tall and lovely and remote in her green silk dress.

'Stuck up, she is,' whispered little Phoebe Mead to Deborah Wilson in the corner of the barn where they had both run for refuge from Zach Wilson, who was 'it' at the moment and lurched blindfolded now this way, now that, trying to catch one of the girls in his outstretched arms.

Miranda shrank behind a tree as she saw her former admirer stumble in her direction, and would have escaped him except that Ob, her new brother-in-law, seized her around the waist and shoved her toward Zach's groping hands. Everyone stopped running to watch. There were titters. She stood stiff as a fencepole while the rough fingers pawed her dress, her hair.

''Tis Ranny!' shouted Zach, and tearing off the blindfold he gave her a wet smacking kiss on the mouth. Quick as thought, she slapped him hard across his fat cheek, and he stumbled backward.

There was a shocked silence. A kiss was the usual forfeit for being caught. If one didn't like the kisser one might giggle and duck, but this blaze of disgust and anger on the white face —and the mark of her fingers standing out livid on Zach's cheek! He rubbed at it, bewildered. 'What in creation's the matter with her!' he muttered.

'Catch yourself an iceberg next time, Zach,' shouted a male voice. 'Leastways they don't slap.'

Miranda turned slowly. She saw Tabitha's indignant look. Ranny making a scene, spoiling everybody's fun, and at the wedding too.

Color rushed to Miranda's cheeks. 'I'm sorry, Tibby,' she whispered; then catching up her skirts she ran into the house.

Abigail had seen the whole incident, though Ephraim fortunately had not. 'I'll just go look at the oven; it cools down mighty quick,' she murmured, and followed her daughter. She found Miranda upstairs, face down across the bed, and crying so hard that she did not hear her mother's light footstep. But she felt the touch on her hair and jumped up.

'Ranny, lass,' said Abigail gently. 'Tell me what ails you, I can see—' She stopped, staring. Against Miranda's bodice there hung a carved gold ring with a heart-shaped red stone. The girl covered it quickly with her hand, but her mother shook her head and pulled the ring from under the clutching fingers. What is this, Miranda?' she said sternly. And why are you hiding it?'

Shouts and laughter from the renewed game of Blind Man's Buff carried through the open window into the hot room. A fly circled lazily, buzzing against the rafters.

'I'm waiting, dearie.' She put her arm around the girl's shoulders, and Miranda with a choked sound hid her face on her mother's thin chest.

'It's the Van Ryn betrothal ring,' she whispered.

Abigail, completely bewildered, felt sharp dismay. Could it be that Ranny had taken the ring in some clandestine way, and afraid to admit her fault, therefore hid it? It was obviously of great value. Her protecting arm fell away.

'How do you come by it?' she snapped.

Miranda lifted her head. Now that it had been forced on her, it could be no breach of faith to tell. 'He gave it to me,' she said proudly. 'Nicholas.'

For an instant her mother was conscious only of relief. It was not surprising that Mr. Van Ryn should have made the girl a present at parting, since he had been most generous throughout Then her bewilderment returned.

'But why a betrothal ring? And why do you hide it? And—' she added with growing apprehension, 'You called him Nicholas; surely that's not respectful, Ranny.'

Miranda got up, she moved slowly from the bed to the little deal table on which she had arranged her toilet articles. The bottle of lustral water was misplaced; she shifted it, picked up her horn comb and laid it down again. 'I'm going to marry him, Ma,' she said.

'What!' cried Abigail. Miranda turned. Her chin was lifted a little, her long eyes were both frightened and defiant, but on her mouth there was a small smile. I am, Ma, next spring.'

'But Ranny, it's not possible! You must be mad, girl' Abigail laced her hands, all her usual decisiveness dissolved in confusion. 'He's too old for you—' From the many crowding objections, this was the first that came to her. Her picture of Nicholas as a settled, middle-aged gentleman.

Miranda gave a soft little laugh, remembering that her mother must still think of Nicholas as they had imagined him last summer. 'Oh Ma, he's only thirty-two, and the handsomest man in the world. He looks like—like—' If only she had a picture of him, how often she had wished it. 'Wait a minute!' she cried, and falling to her knees opened her horsehair trunk. Pinned to the lid was an illustration which she had cut from a gift book, 'A Garland of Roses for 1844.' She thrust it at her mother. 'This is something like him, though Nicholas is far better-looking.'

Abigail frowned at the picture of a tall, dark young man, leaning negligently against a balustrade. It was titled 'Lord Allingham awaits his bride.' She placed the illustration on the bed.

'I see that he is not as I thought him, Miranda,' she said gravely. 'But it makes no difference. How can it be that his wife died on Monday, and you left on the Friday, and yet he gave you a betrothal ring?'

Her voice fell like a cold stone through the little room. The girl made an involuntary gesture of defense. The eager, happy light which had shone in her eyes as her mother examined the picture was snuffed out.

'Yes,' she said, groping for words, 'I know it seems—I know it's hard to understand, it wasn't exactly that way—' She swallowed. Suddenly she flung herself down beside her mother, clasping the spare knees and looking up at Abigail with a desperate pleading.

'I love him so, Ma. I loved him from the beginning, I think. Oh, won't you try to understand, please? And he—he never was happy with Johanna.'