The Unpossessed (31 page)

“Children,” said Al, surprisingly touched, “aren't you forgetting something? You're treating me like a human being. . . .” “Oh we're celebrating tonight,” they shouted boisterously, “we're breaking all the rules.” “Don't be idiots,” said Cornelia curtly, “Mr. Middleton's a good guy, we'll like him until we have to shoot him.” He humbly bowed his thanks. “Have you any idea where my son . . .” “Oh yes, we spoke to Doctor Leonard on the telephone” “they'll be here soon” “they're going over Doctor Leonard's speech” “we told him” “Say, don't you kids even telephone singly?” Al asked. “United front,” they shouted, roaring laughter; “but Firman's the only one that married Corny.” This pleased them so that they broke into peals of laughter which made him sad because he knew his son had never laughed like that. “Well, move on, kids, and celebrate. Wait. May I kiss the bride?” They were no more surprised than he as he bent and kissed the blushing Cornelia chastely on the cheek.

The wedding-party proceeded, a little shy; settled near some palms, grazing close for mutual protection. “The music's pretty,” said Cornelia.

Arturo swayed and thought of Mary, Mary in the late summer of her life. Everything, at this moment which was the high point in his life, while he lived and played his music, mild and certain again with the promise of his youth, was worth his Mary, worth her dark and healthy beauty, her lush late-summer limbs, the little black kids that sprang out of her every few years. His summer music ran like liquid down the hollow of his legs, became the same as his desire for Mary; this was the poignant moment, the moment before his summer ended, when he knew with every drop of his blood that he was a man who lived and who loved.

“We want cav-iar!” the wedding-party chanted. “Oh let's not,” said Firman; “I think I'd rather starve than eat their food—look how they've got it lined up, like dangling grapes just out of the Hunger Marchers' reach.” “I'll faint again,” Cornelia threatened him; “no reason why we can't have a wedding supper, Arnold—that's sentimental pride in you.” “I've got plenty of room, God wot,” said Kate. “Why not?” said the Maxwell brothers: “we want
cav
-iar, we want
cav
iar.” “Go ahead, Little,” Cornelia urged Dixon, “go steal us all a sandwich. And none of your God damn fripperies, my good man, get something a bride can sink her teeth in.”

“Maybe you'd like to be alone with your husband,” Kate said, giggling; “come along, you tactless lads—hey, wait for me, Little, give me a hand across the ice.” Little Dixon crooked an elaborate elbow and Kate minced off like Eliza with the blood-hounds after her; the Maxwells scrambled to their feet and followed. “And bring some caviar,” Cornelia called, “I've never tasted caviar.” “Jesus, honey,” whispered Firman brokenly, “I'm cockeyed crazy about you, I think you're swell.” “I'm cockeyed crazy about
us
,” she whispered back; “I think we're the best thing going.” Their hands shot out and clasped secretly between their chairs. “I wish I could take you on a swell honeymoon,” said Firman, “a trip to Russia for instance.” “I don't want to make pilgrimages to the holy land,” Cornelia whispered back; “America's big enough for me, and I love you terribly.” “I love you so much it hurts,” said Firman bluntly. The music swelled with a fine sense of its own power.

“But I am not, I assure you,” said Mr. Hatcher in his unhappy Harvard voice, “representing anything at all.” “No, why should you be,” said Margaret easily, “we're not accusing you of that. We just stopped by to rescue you, we'd like you to meet some friends of ours.” “But I have been most distressed all evening,” said Mr. Hatcher, mollified, “because everyone expects something of me that I am not. . . .” “It's that kind of a party,” Miles said grimly; “everybody expects something of everybody else so nobody does anything but sit back and wait . . . if they manage to come at all; here it is nearly half-past eleven and Jeffrey with the opening speech to make, and Bruno probably lying drunk in a ditch somewhere.” “Oh come, darling,” Margaret said, “there are the Sheep; and they look as if they could run a party or fight a revolution without Bruno. I'm sure Mr. Hatcher would enjoy them.” “I will enjoy them,” said Mr. Hatcher firmly, “only if they do not expect me to be something I am not. Because I, really . . .” Margaret piloted her two disgruntled boys, one white, one black, across the floor. “And there is Norah!” she exclaimed; “and so you see, my dear!”

“
It's his wife, Lydia
.”

“His wife, Fish!” Lydia scarcely breathed. “You never told me he was married!”

“All the best men,” said Fisher grimly, “were either killed in the war or are married.”

“His wife!” repeated Lydia happily. “Does she—
know
?”

Ruthie Fisher tried to calm her beating heart. She didn't understand, quite, about Norah. She was used to men with wives; but she was not used to wives who cooked in blissful ignorance for three—or
was
it ignorance? Ruthie didn't know. She was not certain of anything about Norah; but she knew she lost all composure in her presence. Norah was again the girls in high school, the girls who had beaux, who went to all the basketball games; while Ruthie Fisher who was as bright as any of them, who liked boys as wildly as the most attractive of them, who could (but only practicing in the privacy of her room or flirting with her father) look as arch, as soft, as aloof, as any of them—while Ruthie Fisher broke her handsome father's heart by sitting at home and developing a love for study that ended in passionate hate: because she wasn't pretty.

“Oh what a silly question,” she snapped at Lydia. “I don't know if she knows and I don't care either.”

She had learned long ago to be sharp when she felt like crying. Now she hardened her mouth and balanced her cigarette in the corner, pulling her red jersey stoically tighter round her waist. She felt miserable and sick (the students looting her buffet table seemed to glance her way contemptuously). Never since William Turner had she loved a man as she loved Jeffrey. And William was her first; from one strike to another they had gone, to prison they had gone together; and then, as Ruthie put it, they had “busted up.” For even William, and perhaps now even Jeffrey . . . oh Ruthie had cleared out from home when she was twenty; the pitiful look in her father's eyes who could do nothing for his only daughter drove her out: but leaving home had never made her pretty. . . . But where was Jeffrey?

“I left my husband,” Norah said in her gentle voice, nodding and beaming like a pot of acquiescent honey on his arm.

“Fine,” said Al.

“No, I left him with Mrs. Middleton,” she explained.

“Then that makes everything perfectly lovely,” Al said dryly.

“I mean,” said Norah laughing, “I don't want to get completely out of sight, he might come back and want me. What a grand lovely party, Mr. Middleton,” she sighed with pleasure; “reminds me of the movies, I never get enough of the movies.”

“And you,” he said, surprised gently out of his wooing instinct, “remind me forcibly of something I faintly remember, life I think it was called.” She laughed warmly; and settling beside him patted her hair with modesty and joy, waved to her friends, and looked frankly past his shoulder for her husband.

“There's Norah,” said Firman; “well thank God for that.” “It's no assurance,” Miles said, gloomy, “that Jeffrey's anywhere about.” “But he goes on at midnight—isn't he to start the speeches?” “We've got to get hold of him,” Cornelia said excitedly, “before he starts to speak.” “Have you heard yet, Flinders, about Fisher?” “But that's terrible,” said Miles desolated; “that's simply terrible—whom is one to trust?” “You say you've been to Spain?” said Margaret absently to Mr. Hatcher. “No, I said my grandfather was born there,” said Mr. Hatcher shortly. “But it doesn't mean she's necessarily dishonest,” Margaret said, “perhaps she really believes in the fellow-traveller idea.” “Effect's the same,” said Firman; “see, she belongs to a group that roots for Lenin but is thumbs down forever on Stalin” “and Lenin was a great man in his day” Cornelia said “but he's dead” said Firman indifferently. “Whoops, is
that
caviar, Dixon my good man?” cried Cornelia as four more Sheep skidded to their group.

“I am worried,” to his continued surprise Al found himself letting his conquest slip, “I am worried no end about my boy, Miss Norah.” For Emmett hadn't come; nor was there any sign of Bruno Leonard. “What do you think of this Bruno Leonard, is he a great friend of yours?” he said.

“Oh yes,” said Norah vaguely, and her eyes looked frankly round the room for Jeffrey. But had she ever thought him funny? Al softly asked her. Oh yes, Norah said, very funny, very, very funny indeed, the funniest man she had ever seen, kept them all in stitches. He didn't mean quite that, Al said; what he meant was—you know, “funny.”

Norah burst out laughing. “ ‘Funny'—oh good heavens no! Oh good heavens, Mr. Middleton, everybody goes around thinking everybody else is funny and really I wonder sometimes if anybody really
is
. But Bruno—Emmett could tell you about Bruno, Mr. Middleton, I do wonder where my husband is.” Relieved, he bent a little closer and told her she had been deserted, told her of the excellent non-charity whiskey upstairs—but mildly, from a sense of habit; all he wanted was to sit with her and rest; and no thank you, really, was all she would say, and that she preferred to wait right here till Jeffrey came and fetched her.

“And take out Jeffrey's line about economic fate,” said Bruno; “because that's slop, it's poetry, and poetry, as young Firman rightly says, is dangerously ambiguous. . . . Now, it should read: The world is up a tree; fundamentally there are but two sides . . .”

“Bruno!” How shrill Elizabeth had been all day! Twenty times her voice had run across his nerves like a knife; twenty times today had he told her, if there was anything she wished to tell him, save it for after the party. “
Bruno! please come here!
” Lent distance by the door which closed her room, her voice wailed, pleading, like a child's; it held the quality for him that the cablegram two months ago had held, weeping across a sea. “I'm coming, Elizabeth,” he called in the teeth of Emmett's hurt distress. “Listen Emmett,” he said conciliatingly, “we won't go over it any more, I'm nervous enough as it is. Besides, my chief job, coming after Jeffrey, will be to refute his speech. . . . Just put it in the envelope and finish dressing, we'll have to hurry anyway.”

He caught the look on Emmett's face, pitiful as Betsey's voice. Damn these children! “You've been a great help kid,” he said perfunctorily and paused to tousle Emmett's hair. And then he crossed to Elizabeth, afraid to look back at the brooding child he left behind him. He opened her door; and finding her standing dejected, her party dress drooping off her shoulder, he closed it rapidly having some baseless sense that it must be wrong for Emmett to see her so.

“What is it, Elizabeth?” He was really frightened. She was cowering, peering at him from behind her naked shoulder; her eyes large and fearful—terribly like the child at Longview. If she had been the child she looked he would have gone and put his arms about her, comforted her. But he couldn't touch her now unless she dropped a word of needing him; and she wouldn't utter that word unless he took a step in her direction; and he couldn't take a step unless first by some special look. . . . So he remained against the door, embarrassed, troubled, looking at her, the space between them impenetrable as fog. It was like this always: when he thought of her, when he couldn't see her, she touched him unbearably; but face to face with her she somehow put him on his mettle, on his guard, made him feel guilty and therefore defensive, so that
in
his sight she was farther from him than when an ocean stretched between them. “What is it, Betsey,” he said again.

Her lips quivered, her eyes filled with tears. It occurred to Bruno coldly that his little cousin must be drunk again; but it made no difference—so was he; and her distress was genuine. For two pins (if she said the word) he would have sent Emmett on ahead to the party and stayed to talk things out; for two pins (if she said the word). . . . But she would never say the word if she wanted to; and torture would not have made him take the step alone. “What
is
it, Betsey?”

“My dress,” she said, suddenly grinning like an imp. “My Paul Poiret dress, I can't hook the God damn thing.”

“My good Elizabeth! is
that
all? have you ever heard of the boy who cried wolf once too often?” He did not altogether believe that that was all; but their time-honored code was to consider the unsaid things unheard. And his relief at having nothing spoken to deal with was so great that he approached her and put out his hands good-naturedly to be placed on the difficult hooks. “And if there's anything more you want to say,” he added, gay, a little uneasy too, guilt dictating that he recognize at least the existence of something she might anyhow never say, “it will have to wait until after the party.” She turned her back and flirted with him over the shoulder of her Paris dress, pouting, smiling, through her actress tears. “That won't go down with me,” he threatened her, “you've got no sex appeal for me, spoiled baby, too thin,” he said, washed with pity for her transparent shoulder-blades.

“Dear me, these Poiret gowns,” she said, satirical; “made for ladies with lovers—no consideration at all for the deserted damsel who is also not double-jointed.” He struggled with the hooks. “I miss Denny,” she mocked him over her shoulder; “
Denny
could have done it better.”