“Don’t you think this discussion is very premature?” he asked. “After all, the man has been in his grave only a week.”
Laura’s eyes became even larger and darker. “‘The man,’ as you call him, Patrick, was my dear Uncle Jim. You never liked him, did you? You thought I didn’t know. But I always did.”
“I disliked his lack of morals, his expediency, his heartlessness,” said Patrick coldly. “How emotional you are, Laura. I remember many things about Jim Purcell of which you are unaware. No matter. I don’t pretend to attachments if I do not feel them.”
Pedantic, pompous, thought Laura, and allowed herself the first unrestrained bitterness against her husband. She smiled suddenly. “You are so right, Patrick, you never feel attachments.”
How like the poor creature to catch only part of anything I say, Patrick commented to himself. He sat up straighter in his chair, like a schoolmaster. He began to speak, but Laura interrupted softly: “Once, you were so different, Patrick, I remember. I adored you, as a child, as a young girl, as a young wife. But something changed you, somewhere, some time, or, perhaps, somebody.”
His thin cheeks reddened. He said with dignity, “Don’t be so flighty, Laura. We were discussing your untenable idea of asking your Aunt Lydia, and Ruth, to come and live with us. It would be impossible for many reasons. One, for instance, that she would not consider it.”
“We can at least offer, Patrick.” Laura’s voice remained mild. “I think Aunt Lydia would appreciate that.”
“I never make offers about which I am not sincere, Laura.”
She did not answer, but looked contemplatively at her folded hands. “Besides,” he added with irritation, “I find Ruth repugnant. She is twenty-seven years old, and has never married. Her limp would not have kept away eligible suitors, for she is rich. An heiress. And she has considerable stock in the railroad, now. …” He paused, and the muscles of his face quickened. “Four per cent.”
“And I have sixteen,” said Laura. He turned to her. But no, he thought, she is not intelligent enough to have made a subtle or derisive remark. He said, “I have five.” He waited, but she made no further comment. “It is not that I object to Ruth, per se. A charming woman, for all her disability. Strange, is it not, that DeWitt has a similar crippling? The susceptibility must run in the family. If Miles were twenty-seven instead of seventeen I should even consider. …”
Laura said very quickly, “Then I must not make the suggestion to Aunt Lydia?” There was a white circle about her lips.
Patrick judiciously folded his right index finger over his mouth and frowned. “She has a very fine home of her own, and she has her daughter. She would not consider coming here, not for a moment. Your aunt and I have not had much in common. But I once thought her a woman of honor—in spite of many things.”
Laura’s face became bright as if touched by the reflection of steel. “You did believe in the brief scandal about her and Uncle Jim, didn’t you?”
“I don’t like your tone of voice, Laura. It sounds very strange.”
Laura stood up with an impulsiveness unusual with her. It came to Patrick, not for the first time, how much she resembled her aunt. Laura was speaking again, in that “strange” voice: “You want to believe it. You’d believe it even with full evidence against it. Why, Patrick, why?”
“You go off into the most ridiculous tangents, Laura,” he said, affronted. “Why should I ‘want’ to believe anything so repulsive about my wife’s aunt? You insult me.” He waved his hand forbiddingly. “I refuse to discuss it further. I think we were speaking of your aunt and Ruth coming to live with us. I cannot make the offer with sincerity. But, if you wish, you may do so, and I promise to look pleasant.”
“Aunt Lydia never changed. She is what she always has been, Patrick.” Laura was somewhat breathless. “The finest person I have ever known. Uncle Rufus still loves her; even Cornelia is fond of her. And Allan. …”
She bent her head. Now she was overcome with pain so intense that she was overwhelmed and astounded. She grasped the mantelpiece and her lips whitened to complete invisibility. Patrick, flooded with the red hatred he had never felt for anyone else but Allan Marshall, was preoccupied with controlling himself. He said faintly, “You know we don’t mention that man in this house unless absolutely necessary. We don’t have contact with him, except on occasions when the whole family meets, or I am compelled to talk with him at board meetings.”
“I know!” exclaimed Laura. “You’ve always hated him; I never knew why. But he frustrated you at one time, didn’t he? He stood in your way when you wanted something. That is something you can’t ever forgive. You’ll never be satisfied until you’ve revenged yourself.” She gazed at him with that curious, almost elated, scorn.
Patrick got to his feet, slowly. “We don’t discuss Allan Marshall. …”
But Laura, for the first time in her married life, laughed in his face, a high and shaking laugh. “We do, this time. You and I—we’ve never been honest with each other; we’ve pretended from the first day. I should never have married you, Patrick. I had fallen out of love with the illusion I thought was you even before our wedding day. …”
“You’re hysterical, Laura,” said Patrick, sharply. He winced at the blow to his ego. “I can overlook it, for you were much attached to Jim Purcell, and you’ve been brooding since he died. And at your age. …”
But Laura was laughing again. There were tears in her eyes. She clasped her hands against her breast in a convulsive gesture. “I should never have married you; I should never have married you. It was wrong from the beginning. You can see it in our children. They despise both of us. They laugh at us; I’ve heard them! And why not? Aren’t they justified?”
He grasped her shoulder, and shook her with a fury that had in it something demented. “Stop! This hysteria—it’s shameful. Haven’t you any pride? Even if you have no intelligence, ordinary decency. …”
Laura was sobered by the rageful hand on her flesh, by the awful expression on her husband’s face. She had seen that expression before, but never had it been so terrifying. It was compounded of anguish, despair, and hatred, and she felt them in herself with appalled sympathy. She thought with a clarity like a stunning light: He hates himself above everyone else. He has never done anything wrong, but still he is loathsome to himself.
She began to speak quietly, compassionately, as he still grasped her shoulder: “Patrick. Patrick. We must be out of our minds. The strain, perhaps. We must forget we ever spoke like this. We must forgive each other. Forgive me, Patrick.”
His hand dropped like lead from her shoulder. Now the frenzied expression drained from his features. He turned away, looked about him as though he were a bewildered stranger in a house he had never seen before and which he had not been aware of entering. Then, not speaking again, he walked out of the room.
Laura put her hands over her eyes and wept without sound.
Laughing silently and gleefully to himself, Fielding Peale tiptoed down the misty upper hall, his ski boots as quiet as velvet. He knocked discreetly at his sister’s door, opened it, and popped in his head with what Cornelia Marshall often called his “jack-in-the-box way.” Mary was yawning over a book near a lighted lamp in the dusk. She looked at her brother eagerly; he was waving his long arm at her, beckoning. She jumped to her feet with the swift bound of a kitten, and followed him further down the hall to Miles’s room. She did not know what was making him laugh so widely and soundlessly, but she was certain it would be worth hearing. With an air of conspiracy, Fielding opened Miles’s door, his sister at his heels.
Miles was smoking and reading. He quickly snuffed out his cigarette. His father, who detested anyone’s smoking, had “exploded” when he had discovered that his son “indulged in the dirty habit”; so Miles’s rapid gesture was an irritated reflex. However, when he saw his visitors, he relaxed in his chair and put down his book on the neat pile beside him on the table. “You’ve got to stop bouncing arou
nd on those cat feet of yours, Field,” he said in his light voice. “How you manage it with your big clodhoppers I don’t know. Skiing again? You’ll break that giraffe neck of yours. Hello, Mary.” He gave his sister his most charming smile.
Though all three of the Peale children had a close affinity for each other, they seldom met for friendly conversations, except for those inspired by malice. So Miles looked expectant. As Fielding was sixteen, his giggle was somewhat falsetto still. He could not control his giggling now; he gave in to it, threw his long and awkward body in a chair, and slapped his bony knees. He was the only definitely ugly member of the family, and in spite of his great height he gave no promise of ultimate dignity. Cornelia had once described him as “all of one color—tan.” There was considerable truth in the description; his mop of straight hair was of the lightest brown, his small eyes of the same hue, his skin rough and yellowish, his angular lips without the slightest hint of youthful rosiness. He had a large and crooked nose, light brown and straggling eyebrows and lashes, and a knobby forehead. “Lantern-jawed,” Allan had once remarked, also with truth, for the boy’s chin was long and jutted out below his mouth.
He sat and laughed with a whinny, clad in what Miles considered the most repulsive garments in the world: tightest trousers thrust into enormous boots, brown wool shirt, and woolen jacket. He had “picked up” skiing on a visit to the Austrian Tyrol last spring, a sport which Miles derided as he derided all strenuous and vigorous exercise. Fielding had even added a knitted woolen cap with a tassel, another monstrosity, according to Miles.
“The old man and lady just had a mad dust-up in the library,” he informed his brother and sister with delight. “I heard them; I listened at the door, and then had to duck into the second drawing room as the old man jumped out, tearing wild. I’d just come in and heard it all. It was good! Not one of their usual refined, genteel fights. But a humdinger. Maybe the old man slapped her or something,” he added, relishing his tale.
“Oh, no!” cried Mary, clapping her hands and rocking on the window seat. “I don’t believe a word! Tell us more. What was it about?”
Miles, who was sometimes patronizing with his brother, lit a cigarette, waited with interest. “Well,” Fielding went on with enjoyment, “I didn’t get all the first part. There was something about old Aunt Purcell and that horrible Ruth coming to live with us, and I can tell you, it made me sick at my stomach. But Pa wasn’t for it. And then, somehow he was.” Fielding frowned, trying to remember it all. “Ma got kind of hysterical when he said he would be ‘pleasant,’ and talked about Ruth and her stock in the railroad. I don’t know why.” Suddenly he was overcome and laughed and laughed, slapping his knees again. “Do you know what? Pa said if you were older, Miles, he would consider your marrying old Ruth! Wouldn’t that kill you?”
“No doubt,” said Miles without indignation. “But it sounds like Pa. All nobility and piousness—until it comes to the railroad. What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on it. Even something insane like my marrying a woman old enough to be my mother.”
“Hardly; just almost ten years older, that’s all,” said Mary with happiness. “But do go on, Field.”
“And then the row burst out, with Ma screaming something about Uncle Allan doing something to Pa. She shrieked; honest she did. And making a mistake about marrying Pa, and laughing out loud, over and over. But things got really exciting when she said we kids laughed at them.”
“Well, don’t we?” cried Mary. “But how did she ever guess? Maybe she isn’t as stupid as we think she is.”
“I never thought her stupid,” said Miles.
He shook off some ash from his cigarette. “I’ve never told you kids, but she’s always been infatuated with that furious Irish madman, our dear ‘Uncle Allan.’”
“No!” breathed Mary, fascinated.
“Well, maybe Miles is right,” said Fielding, awed by his brother’s insight. “Uncle Allan’s name seemed to set him off. Look, is Uncle Allan returning the compliment?”
“Of course. You can see him doing it, if you watch.”
“What a perfectly delicious scandal!” said Mary, hugging her rounded knees. “I wonder if anyone else knows.”
“Aunt Cornelia does. That’s why she’d love to cut Ma’s throat. But you kids mustn’t hint a word of it, I warn you.”
“Delicious!” exclaimed Mary again. “But such old people. They ought to be ashamed.”
Miles smiled at this childishness. He waved to his brother to continue. But Fielding was staring into space, with gleeful pleasure. “Does Pa know?” asked Mary. “It would be just too exciting if he did.”
“He hasn’t the sense,” replied Miles disdainfully.
Fielding went on: “And there was something about a scandal and old Aunt Liddie; and Ma accused Pa of believing in it, and wanting to believe in it.”
“I shouldn’t doubt it,” said Miles. “I’ve noticed that these ‘lovers of mankind’ are always ready to think the worst of it. And to exploit it, too, in a fashion normal men haven’t learned as yet. Ma was crushing our father’s toes, apparently, when she accused him.” Miles smiled his exceedingly beguiling smile again. “We can’t keep help around here, though Pa pays more than anyone else, as a kind of bribe. He’s too demanding, too autocratic, and while he talks to us about ‘labor,’ as if it were some kind of ineffable species, he treats our help like dogs. Ma tried to explain it to me a couple of years ago; Pa, she said, in that foolish, gentle way of hers, wasn’t always this ridiculous. He used to believe in what he spouted; he used to put his own words into action. Something changed him; something left him with the oratory and paralyzed the rest of his body. It’s my belief,” said the astute Miles, “that nothing ‘changes’ anybody, intrinsically.”
His brother and sister listened to him with respect. He sat in his chair, at ease, and spoke with that authority which comes solely from never-wavering contact with reality. Unlike the gawky Fielding, he was small, relieved only from daintiness by an aura of dominant masculinity, implicit for all the delicate formation of his body, his hands, and his feet. He was elegant and graceful; an exquisite. He possessed what is called in women “style” and distinction.
It was all this, and his face, which made him practically irresistible to ladies of any age. When dour and disgruntled maids gave their notice to Patrick in outraged indignation, Miles, when at home, could invariably soothe them and persuade them to remain. They murmured in the kitchen that he had the character and the face of a “holy cherub.” He had a small and ethereal face, a rounded chin with a dimple, a perfect nose, and, to quote the ladies, a “rosebud” mouth. His eyes were an absolute blue in all lights and under all conditions, and were unusually large and brilliant, shaded by astonishingly long dark lashes. His forehead was wide and high, and crowned by dark auburn hair which curled all over his round head in silky ringlets.
He had used his own lavish pocket money to refurnish his rooms at home. Tasteful and artistic, he had, over a period of five years, thrown out the gloomy furniture his father had bought and had replaced it with either original French furniture, or admirable copies. Everything in his rooms was light and airy, yet strong, like himself, and perfect, from the blue and gilded chairs to the soft draperies at the windows. Patrick, offended, had declared the rooms full of “frippery.”
Miles had determined to marry his kinswoman, Dolores Marshall. This, too, was his secret. At seventeen, he was not youthful; he was a man. Dolores’s coldness to him did not discourage him in the slightest. For he had acquired for this girl, since he was fifteen, an authentic passion and desire and love which sometimes astonished him. There was no reasoning with it, no explanation. She was beautiful, but he had seen girls as lovely. She did not parade her sex, nor was she a coquette, a fact which made many of her masculine acquaintances indifferent to her.
It was his opinion that his sister, who adored him, was a wanton at heart. There she sat now, regarding him with adoration, a petite girl with a del
ightfully rounded figure and his own grace and daintiness of movement and gesture. The rosevelvet frock set off the hanging masses of her curling black hair, her huge black eyes, so animated and full of sauciness, her broad white cheekbones and pointed white chin, her fleshy pink mouth with its malicious expression. Everything about her was piquant and suggested a forgotten strain of Latin blood. Like Miles, she gave an “air” to everything she wore, everything she did.
“Coming back to old Aunt Liddie,” said Miles. “She’s a very rich old girl, and she won’t forget us, I hope. Mary, I’ve often wondered why Uncle Jim didn’t leave any of us money, except you. Have you any idea?”
She shook her curls and grinned at him as if keeping a secret, though, in fact, there was no secret at all. Jim Purcell had found her amusing, and Ruth was fond of her for some unknown reason. “You must have played up to him,” said Miles knowingly. But Mary merely shook her head again. Miles began to muse. “Ma is very rich, herself. She has stock in the company, and she’ll leave it to us. Our grandfather was Stephen deWitt, and he was once president of the company. By the way, would you kids mind getting out now? I’m studying.”
“Always studying about railroads,” said Fielding, trying for disdain but glancing at his brother with admiration. He stood up to his full and awkward length, and yawned. “Want to be president some day? And how are you going to manage it, with Tony and DeWitt, not to mention Uncle Allan and Aunt Cornelia, and Uncle Rufus, who’s still on the premises?”
“Did I say anything about being president, or anything?” asked Miles. Fielding lounged to the pile of books by his brother’s chair and picked up one of them. He scratched his yellowish cheek and frowned. “Patents. Uncle Allan’s got three in here, all by himself. He must’ve been a bright boy when he was young. I mentioned it to Pa once, and he got mad.”
“Pa doesn’t like plebes, or people without background or family, or men who get where they want to go by their own efforts,” said Miles languidly. “It offends his ingrown sense of what is ‘proper.’ Once I heard him say that he despised men who tried to ‘rise above their station.’ He forgot himself that time, and then tried to explain, and it came out gibberish. Just another symptom of his. ‘idealism.’ Now, will you get out?”