He had to leave his father now. It was impossible to speak any longer. He almost cried: “Thank you. Good night.” He ran as if a great danger were behind him.
William watched him go. He lay back in his chair, his arms dangling over the sides. A whirlwind of thoughts rushed back to torment him.
I have given my children what I believe, and know, every child should have, because it is his birthright; security, love, the satisfaction of all desires, a beautiful environment, sympathy.
All that I am, all that I had, I gave to my children. It was not enough. I had no more to give, but it was not enough. Why am I so tired? Why do my thoughts clot together in clumps of words without beginning or end? My sons are no longer children. They are making their own decisions, as I always taught them to do. Tom has made his decision; Matt has made his. It is only right. Why should they consider me? I am only their father, and I owe them everything.
But why are they so unhappy, so wretched? William opened his closed eyes on the terrible thought, which had struck him out of the darkness. Never bound, why are they slaves? “Lies, lies!” he cried aloud, furiously, as if answering a challenger. “They are happy. They aren’t slaves. They have a right to choose, even if it hurts me.”
He saw Thomas’ face, big, coarse, sly, full of ribald laughter. That face did not warm him, now. He felt the vague, large movement of terror in himself. He saw Matthew, and the terror loomed larger. He saw Julia, so pale these days, so irritable, so silent. He saw Barbara, intense and quiet. O, my God, he thought.
“My God,” he said in a loud dull voice. God. There was no God. Ursula had sometimes been successful in getting the children to go to church, to Sunday school. But he had always laughed at them, affectionately. Then, when they were old enough to oppose their mother, they never went. I was right, he said to himself. I was right—But I have no one to talk to, no one. I have no one to help me.
Ursula. For the first time in many years he thought clearly of his wife, saw her face. In a few moments, when he was rested, he would go to Ursula.
The great clock in the hall boomed the hour, the quarter hour, the half hour, and then the hour again. Once more, it went its rounds; the snow battered against the windows. The house was silent as death itself.
William opened his eyes. He must have slept. He felt no refreshment. There was a weighty paralysis upon him. The enormous room was warm, but he was icily cold. Someone was standing beside him. It was Ursula. She was standing there, looking down at him, and from her attitude he knew that she had been there a long time. There were tears in her eyes.
He pulled himself up in his chair. She had been watching him, while he slept, vulnerable and broken and full of anguish. He forgot that he had wanted to see her. He saw only that she was old, like himself, and that she knew what he had been thinking of here all alone. It enraged him. He made a gesture of weak anger and dismissal.
“What do you want?” he asked. “Why can’t you let me rest in peace?”
“Oh, William,” she murmured. Her skirts rustled. She went away from him. He watched her until she had gone.
CHAPTER XLV
Barbara liked silence. But she did not like the silences that filled her home. They were not like the silences of nature, a kind of harmony; they were the silences of those who lived alone, thought alone, plotted alone, slept alone. They were foreboding and dangerous.
The silence of the house, tonight, became more than she could bear. She thought of the dance tomorrow night, the celebration of the New Year, all the gaiety which money could buy, all the laughter which youth could evoke, and she turned away from the thought with distaste. After the guests would be gone, and the musicians, too, there would be silence again, and little cells where each member of the family would live, walled up in himself because he cared for no one else.
She went to the window. The snow fell faster now, swirling about in long white scarves, heaping itself upon spruce and weighted bush, blotting out the earth and the sky. Far away, the street lamps were blurs of misty gold, sometimes hidden, sometimes struggling clear of the pervading blizzard. The snow was like the silence of this house, absorbing everything, covering everything with motionlessness.
I must talk with someone, she thought desperately. Oliver. Where was Oliver? She had not seen him since dinner, and then he had hardly spoken to anyone. He had appeared unusually abstracted. Her brothers had disappeared, as usual, each to his own “den,” and Julia had murmured something about preparations for tomorrow and had gone upstairs. Barbara had followed. For a long time, now, Barbara had been sitting here in her own room. Even Julia was someone to talk to, and she decided to find her sister. There was something she ought to say to Julia, who was becoming paler and thinner these days, and very quiet, her liveliness faded and dimmed. How was it possible for Papa not to see this? But surely, he was seeing. Very often, he looked at Julia distressedly, seemed about to ask her a question, and then did not speak.
But what could she, Barbara, say to Julia? She, herself, had never been taught gentle words, consoling words, or phrases of sympathy. The capacity was in her, but its outlet was filled with stones. Barbara let the draperies fall from her hands. She cared nothing, really, for her sister, just as no one else in this house cared for any other member. She had waited, for several months, to discover just how Julia would solve the problem of herself and Eugene Arnold. Apparently, in spite of what she had said so exultantly to Eugene, she had not truly found any solution.
I don’t love Julia, thought Barbara. But I pity her. She thought about this for a few moments. In this house, pity was an alien thing. She shook her dark head impatiently. Yet something forced her now to want to go to Julia. How could she help her sister? Help. Again, this was an alien thing, this desire to help even where there was no love.
Barbara, to her own wonder, found herself knocking on Julia’s door. She opened it. Julia was sitting on her bed, surrounded by a half-dozen or more beautiful new gowns, blue, pink, white, silver and gold. They lay heaped about her, in brilliant lengths, embroidered in seed pearls or shimmering silk. Huddled among them sat Julia, staring sightlessly before her, her fingers twisted on the gray flannel skirt which covered her knees, the firelight making her face very white in the dusk of the room. She had not lighted a single lamp.
She stared at Barbara with sullen distaste. “What do you want?” she asked, rudely. “Why didn’t you knock?”
“I did. You didn’t hear me, I suppose,” replied Barbara. She closed the door behind her. Julia did not ask her to sit down. She continued to stare at her sister, repellingly.
“What do you want?” she repeated.
Barbara hesitated. She took a few slow steps into the room. Awkwardness brought a slight flush to her cheeks. She glanced down at the gowns on the bed. “Are you trying to decide what you are going to wear tomorrow night?” she asked. There was a slight stammer in her young voice. “I think the silver is very pretty.”
Very suddenly, Julia stood up. She went to the fire, moved a fallen ember with the toe of her buttoned shoe.
“I’m not interested,” she said at last. “I don’t care.” She looked sideways at her sister. “What does it matter to you, anyway? You didn’t come here to ask about my clothes, did you?”
“No,” said Barbara, seriously. “No, I didn’t.” The flush on her face deepened.
“Well, then, why did you come?”
Barbara stood in the center of the room, hopelessly. She had no proper words. At last she blurted out: “I came because I wanted to help you!”
Julia swung about quickly. Her back was to the fire. The darkness hid her face, but there was a nimbus about her hair. “Help me?” she repeated, incredulously. “And what makes you think I need help?” Now there was something tense about her, something almost fierce. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Barbie! Why are you annoying me, coming here, sneaking into my room?”
Barbara’s quick temper flared. “I’m not ‘annoying’ you. I’m
not ‘sneaking’.” She stopped. Her sister was watching her with alert wariness and suspicion. Barbara detected fear in the other girl. “Julie, you’re not well, are you? I’ve seen that for a long time. And—and that’s why I thought—I really did think—that I might be able to help you.”
“You!” cried Julia. She burst out laughing. “How concerned you are, all of a sudden. This is very funny, very funny, indeed.”
“Yes,” said Barbara, gravely. “It is very funny. It’s terribly funny when anyone in this house thinks about anyone else, or wants to help. That’s what’s so wrong here.”
Julia lifted a hand in an abrupt gesture. She let it fall again. She said, with almost her father’s own brutality: “If I needed help, which I don’t, I’d never go to you, Barbie.”
Barbara considered this somberly, for a few moments. She nodded. “I shouldn’t blame you,” she said, in a low tone. “I couldn’t expect anything else.”
Julia watched her. But though she waited, Barbara had nothing to add to this. Julia sighed in an exaggerated manner: “Really, Barbie, you are so mysterious tonight. And I must ask you to go. We’ll all be up very late tomorrow, and I was just about to go to bed.”
The sensible thing would be to go, thought Barbara. Julia was being even more unpleasant than usual.
But all this no longer mattered. There was an urge in Barbara, a desperate pity. “Please, Julie, listen. I’m awfully sorry, but I saw you and Gene Arnold, last May, up on the mountain. I didn’t intend to listen. I didn’t want to listen. I heard everything you said. I couldn’t help it.”
Julia, on the hearth, was very still.
Barbara took another step towards her. She said, pleadingly: “Julie, you are so afraid, aren’t you? You are afraid of me. Don’t be, please. I’d never tell anyone. I’d never have spoken about it, even now, if you had found some way, as you said you would. But you didn’t find it, did you? And that’s why I wanted to help.”
Julia spoke chokingly, in the hushed voice of terror and hatred: “You sneak! You spy! What do you want?” Then, when Barbara, shocked, did not answer, Julia cried frenziedly: “Why don’t you go and tell—him, or Mama? Why don’t you go and ruin Gene, and ruin me? What are you waiting for? Did you just come here to gloat, before you told everyone? Well, go and tell,” she continued wildly: “I don’t care any longer. I can’t go on like this. But when you tell, I’ll leave this house and I’ll never come back. Never, never!”
Barbara tried to speak, but it was useless. She could only think: This is the way we are, in this house. We know only hating and hurting and greed and cruelty. Because we were taught that we alone mattered, and that we owed nothing to anyone.
She held out her hands to her sister. She could speak now, haltingly. “Julie, please. Julie—dear. Do try to understand. I want to help you.”
Julia put her hands over her face. She spoke from behind them, moaningly: “Go away. Please go away. I don’t know why you came here. You don’t want to ‘help’ me. You couldn’t help, anyway, except by not telling, by letting me alone.”
“I won’t ever tell,” said Barbara, wretched. “Please believe that. I’ll go out of this room and I’ll forget I ever knew anything about you and Gene. Can’t you trust me, Julie?”
Julia dropped her hands. She moved aside a step, leaned against the side of the fireplace as if completely stricken and exhausted. “How could I ever trust you, Barbie?”
“I know,” said Barbara. “It’s almost impossible to believe that you could, isn’t it? We haven’t been sisters to each other. It’s too late for that, for either of us. But you can trust me, Julie. Please don’t hate me.”
Something in the young girl’s voice must finally have reached Julia. She opened the eyes she had closed so abruptly as if to shut out the sight of her sister. She stared at Barbara in the firelight.
“I’ve been sitting alone tonight,” Barbara went on. “And I began to think of you, and I thought: ‘I might be able to help Julie.’ And that’s why I came.”
Julia continued to lean against the fireplace, without answering.
Barbara said, falteringly: “It’s a very silly idea I have, but I must tell you. Papa is always trying to get you to notice some young man or other. Julie, why don’t you say to him soon: ‘Papa, you’ve brought Gene Arnold here so many times, and I don’t know anyone like him. I think I could care for someone like Gene. Gene never looks at me. He doesn’t know I exist. But I like Gene, Papa.’”
Even to herself, her words sounded childish and foolish. Yet Julia was listening. She was listening with deep acuteness. Now she laughed again, a hoarse, rough laugh.
“How silly you are, Barbie. If I said that idiotic thing to him, do you know what Papa would do? He’d ruin Gene. And Gene would never look at me again.”
Barbara said, resolutely: “Papa loves you. He cares more for you than for all of us put together. You are diplomatic, Julie. Impress it upon Papa that Gene isn’t in the slightest degree interested in you, or even that he avoids you. That will enrage Papa, that any man might not be interested in a daughter of his. Then, if he says he will transfer or discharge Gene, you can tell him what you’ve just told me, that you’ll go away and he’ll never see you again. You meant that, didn’t you, Julie? Yes, you meant it. And Papa will know that you mean it.”
Julia’s hand gripped the corner of the mantelpiece. It was impossible to know whether she was giving this preposterous idea any thought, but Barbara was encouraged by her sister’s silence.
Julia clasped her fingers tightly together. She whispered: “He hates Gene.”
Barbara looked at her eagerly. “Yes, I know. But not so much, now. You’ve already done something to Papa, Julie. It’s—it’s tenuous. But you can manage it, Julie. I know you can.”
Julia walked carefully away from the mantelpiece. She went to a distant corner and sat down. She rested her chin on her hand. She sat like that for a long time, while Barbara waited.
Then Julia said softly but piercingly: “I don’t know why you came here to give me this ‘idea’. And I’m not going to say whether I’ll think about it or not.”
“Julie!” exclaimed Barbara, impulsively, starting towards her sister.
But Julia raised her pretty delicate hand, as if warning her off, and Barbara stopped.
“It’s nothing to you, Barbie. It’s none of your affair. You’ve asked me to trust you. I can’t. But I can say this, if you ever mention Gene to Papa I’ll tell him how you moon over Oliver.” She moved slightly in her chair, and now her soft voice was full of detestation: “Oliver! Who knows who or what he is? Don’t you know that Papa hates him, hates him more than he does Gene? Don’t you know what he’d say if I told him you were gone on Oliver? Oliver—who might be anybody?”
Barbara was stunned. She could only stand there, and look at her sister. Julia began to laugh gently. “You didn’t know, did you, that I’ve watched you, too? But I did, Barbie, I did. And I know.”
She turned about in her chair and looked directly at Barbara. Her eyes glittered in the firelight. She chuckled gently. “Silence for silence, Barbie. That is how we must trust each other.”
Barbara said, brokenly: “Oh, Julie. Oh, Julie, how terrible this is.”
Something in the young girl’s attitude, the droop of her shoulders, the bend of her head, the helpless falling of her hands, touched Julia’s conscience. Something made her, if only briefly, ashamed and aghast.
“Yes,” she muttered, “it’s terrible. But that’s the way we are, isn’t it?”
Barbara lifted her head. She looked about her. She drew a deep breath. “No, it’s not ‘the way we are’, Julie. It isn’t the way I am, anymore.”
She walked out of the room, her knees trembling. She opened the door, closed it, then leaned against it.
CHAPTER XLVI
Oliver stood near a great spruce heavy with snow and smoked quietly. His shoulders were already white, and the brim of his hat was filled. He had had to leave the house
, that house where it was impossible to think clearly, so permeated was it with the solitary hostilities and enmities that dwelt in it.
He had believed that if he could be by himself for a while some clarity might come to his mind, so that the fantasy in which he and Ursula had indulged early that evening would be dispersed by the cold wind of common-sense. It was not possible that he was really brother to Eugene Arnold. There had been, between himself and Ursula, an atmosphere of hysteria, a kind of hypnotic and mutual hallucination, born of uncertainty and the mystery of his beginnings. He had wanted to be assured that he was free to love Barbara.
The bitter white storm had not done what he had desired it to do. He had stood by this spruce for a long time, thinking and smoking, and the fantasy had become surety. Now, a dozen forgotten voices of friends of William returned to him over the years. “That boy of yours, Oliver, reminds me of someone. Who is it?” William had always replied: “I don’t know. He doesn’t remind me of anyone.” Yet William had looked at the young boy, frowning. He, too, had seen a resemblance. To whom? William had, apparently, never suspected but he had, on those occasions, been colder than usual to Oliver, and there had been a gleam of aversion in his eyes. What am I thinking? said Oliver to himself, with detestation. It is all illusion. But he knew it was not.
There had been very few occasions when he and Eugene had been alone, even for a few moments. Suddenly Oliver remembered those occasions acutely. Eugene had barely spoken to him, but he had stared at him with those pale hard eyes, and there had been in them a sharp curiosity, the slightest trace of perplexity. He had been trying to discover why something about Oliver puzzled and annoyed him.
My brother, thought Oliver and threw his cigarette into the snow with a gesture of disgust and repudiation. Since Oliver had become a man, there had always been this antipathy between the two. Then it deepened, became more intense, as if something hidden in each of them had recognized itself in the other.