Dragonwyck (31 page)

She accepted the hamper gratefully without false pride, just as she accepted the Van Ryns' visit. A good many people found their way out to Fordham—literary critics, editors, and feminine admirers—and it was on their occasional contributions of food and delicacies that the family largely subsisted. For poor Eddie never seemed to make any money, and somehow or other he always seemed to get at odds with the men who could help him.

Mrs. Clemm ushered the visitors through a tiny whitewashed passage onto which opened a cubbyhole of a bedroom. There were but two other downstairs rooms, the kitchen and the parlor, both meagerly furnished and small, but all was scrubbed and shining with cleanliness, the checked matting on the sitting-room floor, the whitewashed walls, even the low raftered ceiling.

Virginia lay on a makeshift sofa by the window; her little wasted body hardly raised the covering quilt. Her face, of an unearthly pearly white, was framed by black hair, glossy and neat from her mother's careful tending. Her eyes, brilliant with fever, were upturned to the elderly physician who sat beside her holding her wrist.

As Mrs. Clemm motioned the others into the room, Poe rose from the rickety writing table where he had been hunched in apathetic despair. How short he is! thought Miranda, surprised, for she and Mrs. Clemm both topped him by inches, and Nicholas' height completely dwarfed the poet.

She had come to judge all masculine appearance by the standard of Nicholas' classically etched features, and though many women had found Poe attractive, Miranda did not. His high forehead bulged beneath straggling dark locks and seemed to overwhelm his mouth and chin so that his sallow face was pear-shaped. His mustache was unkempt; ill-health and misery had lined his skin, which was slack beneath his eyes, gray eyes which could be magnetically piercing and alert, but were now dulled by a recent dose of laudanum. He looked much older than his thirty-seven years.

His greeting of Mrs. Ellet was unenthusiastic, for he knew her to be a malignant gossip whose tongue was largely responsible for the blackening of his platonic relationship with Mrs. Osgood. Miranda, seeing this coldness, wished more than ever that they had not intruded themselves on the distressed family, but Poe's dullness lightened and his tone warmed when he turned to the Van Ryns.

'It's good of you to make the long drive from the city,' he said, bowing to Miranda, and shaking Nicholas' hand. 'I'm sorry that we are at some disadvantage in welcoming you.' He indicated Virginia's couch.

'I admire your work immoderately, Mr. Poe,' answered Nicholas at his most charming, 'and I couldn't leave the city without giving myself the pleasure of meeting you and telling you so.'

Poe was at all times susceptible to flattery, and he brightened still further at the sincerity in Nicholas' voice.

'You've read some of my stuff?' he asked eagerly, adding with bitterness, ' "The Raven," I suppose. Such fame as I have appears to rest entirely on the plumage of that gloomy bird.'

'I've read everything you've ever published,' replied Nicholas, obeying the other's motion to seat himself on one of the stiff-caned chairs, 'both fiction and poetry. I find your stories provocative and fascinating, although I confess that I prefer the verse. There it seems to me that your genius reaches its highest peak.'

Poe thought so too, and when he found that Nicholas actually knew most of his poems by heart and could quote even from the obscurer ones, those which the public had long since forgotten, 'Tamerlane' or 'The Sleeper,' the gratified poet pulled his chair over and conversed animatedly.

While the two men talked and Mrs. Ellet hovered beside them trying to interject literary appraisals and daintily turned appreciations of her own, Mrs. Clemm drew Miranda to the couch, where the doctor had finished his examination.

The sick girl looked up at Miranda. 'So nice of you to come and see Eddie—' she whispered. 'How pretty you are—' she added, with naive sweetness.

Miranda smiled, and clasped the transparent little hand. She was touched by the patience and gentleness of the childish face. For though Virginia was actually older than Miranda, neither poverty nor illness had aged her: she was the same docile child who had married her cousin Eddie ten years ago.

'I'm sure you'll be better soon,' said Miranda, and knew immediately how hollow was that conventional phrase, for the red spots of the consumptive rushed to Virginia's pale cheeks, a paroxysm of coughing shook the small body, while the handkerchief she pressed to her mouth was flecked with scarlet.

'Come away, ma'am,' said the doctor brusquely to Miranda. 'She mustn't talk just now.' He took the girl's arm and propelled her toward the kitchen.

'No room to sit in here,' the doctor explained in answer to Miranda's look of surprise. Too many people already.'

It was true, the sitting-room's three chairs were occupied by Mrs. Ellet, Poe, and Nicholas, while on the far side Mrs. Clemm bent over her daughter, whose eyelids were drooping with exhaustion.

'Well, well—' said the old man as they entered the kitchen, and his eyes twinkled. 'That poor creature in there's right. You're a well-shaped piece of woman-flesh, m' dear. Glad to meet you. My name's Francis. John Wakefield Francis. Expect you've heard of me, hey?' And he chucked her under the chin.

Miranda drew herself up, but it was impossible to resent Doctor Francis. His bonhomie, his genial appreciation of pretty women, and his vigor were only equaled by his generosity. His professional skill and purse were always at the command of the needy.

'I don't think—' she began. 'I've been in New York such a short time—' And yet his name did have a reminiscent ring, though she was positive she hadn't heard it recently.

'Sad household here,' said the doctor, shaking his gray head. 'Sorry for all of 'em. Poor worms. Nothing but failure and trouble and sickness. Guess you don't know much about those things—hey?' He peered at her rose moire dress, her lace-covered bonnet, the pearl earrings and brooch.

'No,' she answered with a little inward shudder. 'I guess I don't.'

'Never be worth a damn till you do meet trouble and lick it,' said the doctor, suddenly thumping the table with a stubby and not very clean hand. 'Can't live soft all the time or you turn to mush. You don't want to be mush, do you?'

'No,' she said, laughing. She saw that the doctor thought her to be a pampered society girl, and this delighted her.

She had then eliminated all taint of the potato farm, the drudgery of manual labor. And it was Nicholas who had translated her, she thought with gratitude.

'I'd sell my soul for a cup of tea,' muttered Doctor Francis, seizing a poker and rattling the stove's grate. 'Long drive back, lot of patients to see tonight. Don't suppose you know one end of a teakettle from the other?'

She hesitated. A girl brought up as he thought she had been would never have been able to handle that balky stove. It would be easy to say no, to settle back with her hands folded and wait for Mrs. Clemm to come to the kitchen after finishing with Virginia.

But the old man looked tired, and also he reminded her of someone; somewhere below the surface of her mind there was a quiver of recognition, though as yet it sent up no conscious certainty. But the quiver was pleasant.

'Give it me,' she said, and took the poker away from him. She tied a clean cloth around her waist to protect the swelling rose skirts from the stove. In a very short time the kettle was boiling.

'You're not so useless as you look, my beauty,' said the doctor. 'Here's the tea.' He pulled a packet from his sagging pocket. 'Wouldn't do to use any of their tea—doubt they have enough for themselves.'

At the precise moment in which she poured his tea for him, Miranda recovered the buried memory. Last fall in the farm kitchen at home, she had poured like this for Jeff on the night of his arrival when he had bored her with talk of cholera—and Doctor—surely it was Doctor Francis!

She sat down on the other chair, startled—not by the coincidence, nor by the fact that despite the difference in age there was some resemblance between the two physicians, but by her own emotion at thinking of Jeff.

'Do you know a Doctor Jefferson Turner of Hudson?' she asked eagerly.

'To be sure I do!' the old man answered. 'But how do you—aye, I forgot, you Van Ryns live up-river there. Jeff Turner came to see me last year. I dunno as I ever took to anyone right off as I did to him. He's a splendid boy and a damn good doctor. I offered to set him up in New York, like to've kept him near me, but he's got some bee in his bonnet about caring for the community where he grew up. And he don't give a hang for money.'

'No,' she agreed, half-impatiently. From the beginning, Jeff's frank contempt for the Dragonwyck luxury in which she had reveled had caused friction between them.

Doctor Francis pushed his cup back with sudden explosiveness. 'This plagued war! Don't suppose you know, Turner's gone down to Mexico. Don't blame him, 'd go myself if they'd have me. But it's foul waste to let a boy like that get killed.'

'Oh, I guess he won't get killed,' she said, smiling.

A gust of anger swept the old man. He glared at her. 'What do you know of war, ma'am? Come to that, what d'ye know of life? You and your kind 're wrapped a foot thick in cotton wool; because your own precious hides are safe, you dunk there's no such thing as danger, or blood and death.—Of course he can get killed, and likely will be because he's got guts. He'll not only be out on the battlefield tending to the wounded, but he won't rest until he gets a crack at the enemy himself.' He stopped and said in a quieter voice. What's Jeff Turner to you, ma'am, anyway?'

Miranda averted her eyes. She had been staring at the angry old man with startled dismay. I don't know, she thought, what Jeff is to me.

'A friend,' she answered, at last.

His image rose before her now, the sandy hair, the gray eyes which quickly kindled into humor, the powerful hands that could be so gentle in touching a sick child, and with this image the feeling of confidence and the unsentimental sympathy which were as much part of him as his body.

'Yes, a friend, I think,' she repeated slowly. 'He made a lot of trouble for my husband on the Manor, but he also saved the life of my baby sister.'

The old doctor snorted. 'Both just like him!—Well, ma'am, I must be going. Likely you're dying to join that metaphysical-poetical confab that's going on in there.' He pointed a stumpy thumb toward the sitting-room. 'Sorry I bellowed at you. Pretty young things like you aren't really required to face unpleasantness. Might spoil that Dresden-china complexion.' He pinched her cheek, picked up his pill bag, and went out the kitchen door.

Miranda got up and washed the teacup, put another stick of wood on the fire, and straightened the tidy kitchen. She was anything but anxious to join the 'confab' in the other room. The familiar tasks which she had despised, this homely little room, seemed to her a momentary resting place in which to gather strength before plunging again into the tempest of dark emotions which whirled her around Nicholas.

Knowing him, as she was beginning to know some aspects of his nature, it was amazing that he had permitted her to be out of his sight so long. It could only mean that his interview with Poe was proving exceptionally interesting.

When she finally opened the low door into the other room, she saw that this must be so. Nicholas motioned her with his eyes to sit down, but paid no further attention to her. The two men had moved their chairs around the table, and in the middle of it stood the brandy bottle, half-empty, and two glasses. Mrs. Clemm had taken Virginia to the bedroom and stayed there with her. Mrs. Ellet, ignored by the two men, had moved to the vacated couch, where she sat fanning herself with irritated little flaps. Her malicious gaze missed nothing of the scene at the table, and she was mentally arranging its recounting. 'Poe was positively intoxicated my dear! You never saw anything more shocking. Even after the first glass. I could see that poor Mr. Van Ryn—a gentleman to his finger-tips of course—was as embarrassed as I.'

Miranda quietly sat down on the third chair. Little light came through the small windows now, for the sun had dipped below the hemlocks which bordered the Kingsbridge Road. Shadows had gathered thick in the corners of the room, but there was still light enough to see the deplorable change in Poe, the constant tremor of his sensitive hands, the twitch which pulled at his slack lips and the glitter of his staring eyes.

Miranda turned her head away in horrified pity. Inexperienced as she was, she knew that this was more than simple drunkenness. The very smallest amount of alcohol acted as a violent poison on the poet's precariously balanced system, disintegrating all control.

And Nicholas sat there at his ease, his arms folded, gazing at the spectacle before him with sardonic interest. He had himself taken but a quarter-glass of the brandy.

Poe raised the shaking glass to his mouth. 'Fame!' he cried thickly. 'I said I despised it. 'Twas a lie! I dote on it.' He lurched forward, the glass fell from his hand and shattered on the floor.

At the crash Mrs. Clemm hurried in, took in the situation at a glance. 'Oh, Eddie dear, how could you again, when you promised!' she cried, catching up the bottle. She gave the guests a look of mortified apology.

'Don't take it away, Muddie!' Poe clutched the substantial arm feverishly. 'It's anodyne—the liquid Nepenthe. Give it back. Fool woman—give it back. Don't you see that with that golden liquid I become a king—a god? It points me the path to the skies, to the Lethean peace of the skies!'

'Yes, Eddie dear,' said the old woman, stroking his forehead. 'That's from your new poem, isn't it. Why don't you read it to them?' She hid the bottle behind her, pulled out the table drawer and extracted a quantity of foolscap.

'Pray do, sir,' said Nicholas, crossing his legs. 'We should be greatly honored.'

The poet scowled, shaking his head from side to side, his hand still clawing at Mrs. Clemm's restraining arm. Then from the bedroom came the sound of Virginia's agonized coughing.

A spasm of terror passed over Poe's face. His head jerked and was still, but his wild, unfocused gaze gradually sobered.