The house was richly furnished and was as hideous to Jonathan Ferrier as the exterior, and all the tables and sofas and chairs were big and heavy and upholstered in dark velvets or horsehair or somber silks, and the fireplaces were thickly cluttered with masses of ornamental china, elks' horns, vases, clocks, little gilt boxes, shells, Staffordshire ware and containers for artificial flowers (waxed or fashioned of crepe paper, even when gardens were exploding with color). And, of course, at each side of the fireplaces stood immense Chinese jars filled with gilded bulrushes or ostrich plumes or any other exotica the lady of the house fancied, such as pussywillows in the spring, the only sign of any particular season.
Only the broad gardens, with their conservatory, were absolutely beautiful, though even here there was a gazebo of latticework painted brilliant white and filled with wicker furniture with velvet cushions, where the ladies took their tea on hot summer days, or their ices. The gardens were formal and had been designed by an artist who was now long dead. His successor was a genius of his kind, and managed, on two acres, to hint of forests of tall pines, grottoes, little wayward paths, hidden cool nooks and silent recesses. The lawns cunningly appeared immense and endless, for there were no definite boundaries, and the trees, which included an oak or two, several maples and a cluster of elms and one pointed poplar, seemed about to advance at any moment on that stretch of incredibly green grass, meticulously cut and totally without a single weed. Gardens of flowers, always in bloom, gave the impression that they had simply dropped from the cerulean heavens at a gesture of grace, for they were not formal and were idly shaped. All this was artful, of course, but it was also charming, and Jonathan loved the Eaton gardens almost as much as his mother's. "Artistry," he would say, "can be so superb, sometimes, that it exalts nature."
Invariably, every summer, Mrs. Eaton received the first prize of the Garden Club, though her labors in her gardens often consisted of inspecting the work of the gardeners every morning and speaking to them sharply, and strolling, in a light frothy dress, every evening to permit the scented rising wind to play with her thick masses of bright dark hair. She
was a thin woman, too slender for fashion, but her wardrobe was superb, she purchasing all her dresses in New York, and these expensive treasures drew attention away from her dark and predatory face with its big lean nose, her tight and colorless mouth and her small penetrating black eyes. She had great style, everyone said, and marvelous taste, and she had also inherited a great deal of money, which covered many malicious little sins of character and a truly awesome stupidity, not to mention very black and very thick eyebrows that were a single bar over her eyes.
Dr. Martin Eaton, in contrast with his wife, was big, lumbering, awkward and clumsy, except in the operating rooms, where his deftness and delicacy were famous. He had a fat face, almost square, small kind blue eyes, a nose like a peeled potato and heavy nearly Negroid lips, which could give a smile singularly tender, steadfast and sweet, inspiring courage and trust in anyone who was favored by it. Even when he had been thirty, he had been nearly totally bald, and now his head was a vast dome of which he pretended to be very proud. "Houses an enormous brain, Flora says," he would say with a wink. "My friends, however, remark that the feller —-what was his name?—who immediately preceded Homo sapiens had a brain cage about twice the size of a normal man's these days."
As he had inherited a considerable fortune, a few who did not admire Flora would often wonder why he had married her. It would have surprised these to know that the two had a remarkably compatible marriage, even a serene one, for Flora fully believed that her husband was not only the handsomest of men but a tremendous genius, and Martin Eaton loved his wife for her deference to him, her devotion to his smallest need and comfort, her admiration, her absolute loyalty to her household, and her love for his niece. Unlike other wives, she never suspected that her husband was sometimes foolish and childish and unreasonable and illogical, and so he could relax in his house at night, confident that no wifely comment would be made concerning his appearance, the people he was treating, his particular friends, or his behavior at the last dinner they had given, or the amount of "spirits"—very copious—he had drunk yesterday or was drinking to night. "Gentlemen must have their relaxations," she would say in tones of absolute authority, "and doctors more than most."
This, then, was Mavis Eaton's background, she who had inherited quite a fortune herself and was to know no suffering whatsoever in her life until the final days of her last agony, when she was nearly twenty-four years old. To some that death appeared more tragic than ordinarily, for Mavis had lived in eternal sunshine, adored, admired, courted, pampered, petted, rich, beautiful and totally fascinating. Still others bitterly remarked that into that "Eden of a lovely life had come the snake of Jonathan Ferrier to destroy it."
"She never said a word, never a word," her broken uncle muttered on his stroke-tortured bed after her tragic death, "never a word against him, ever. Always smiling, always saying everything was wonderful and how dearly she loved him. Until the hour before she died. Then she told me."
"Everything was 'Jon this' and 'Jon that,' and what could she do to make Jon even happier than he was with her, and would Jon like this or that, or she must hurry home for tea for Jon always wanted to see her face first when she opened the door for him. It was her greatest sadness that she had no children, my dear, dear darling!" That was Flora Eaton, weeping. "But Jon never wanted any children, she said."
It was on a hot August day that Jonathan Ferrier, twenty-three years old, became aware of Mavis in her twelfth year. In fact, as he never forgot, it was August 12, 1888.
He had ridden his bicycle over to Dr. Eaton's house, for his horse was being treated for some vague disorder. He was a tall, exceptionally thin, dark young man, still quite lanky, though with a peculiar grace and elegance about him, and a clever, reticent face which could still become open and lively among friends. His dark eyes were restless but kind and the corners were wrinkled with the marks of laughter. No one could quite decide whether or not he was handsome, or perhaps even ugly. A very few had seen the thick white ridges spring out about his mouth, so the general consensus, after some time, was that he was "attractive in a sort of aristocratic way."
Of course, it was said, he could not compare with the rising brother, Harald, who was as gloriously beautiful as a matinee idol, and who already had the girls mad with love for him, and had the "nicest" disposition.
He wore, on that August day, a suit of light gray wool, a stiff straw hat with a gay red ribbon on it, polished black shoes and a shirt striped in pale blue. His collar was stiff, high and brilliant, and his tie was a devilish scarlet, bought at the university and somewhat shocking to Hambledon. He wore no gloves, and this was unpardonable, and his face and hands were burned dark with the sun, which was vulgar.
He leaned his bicycle against the steps of the high deep veranda of the Eaton house, and was whistling some lively tune whose lyrics would not have been admired in Hambledon. He took off his coarse-straw hat and fanned himself briskly and danced a step or two out of sheer youthful exuberance. His movements were fluid and almost professional in their precision as he swung about on the broad flags of the walk. He appeared to float at high moments. His mother considered him too grave and severe at twenty-three, but today, for some reason, he was lighthearted and practically ready to believe that the world might be an enjoyable place sometimes if one had a sharp eye out for it.
He concluded his dance with a flourish, waved his hat high and was about to clap it back on his thick dark hair when he heard a light laugh, so fragile and pure that he thought it was the tinkling of one of the many Chinese glass prisms which hung in clusters from the roof of the veranda. Then he saw a young girl moving on a cushioned swing. Seeing that she had attracted his attention, she laughed a little louder and mockingly clapped her hands.
Jonathan colored with annoyance and dislike, then saw that it was "only that damned kid, Mavis." He put his hat on; sh
e was too young for gallantries, and he jumped up the broad brown steps of the veranda. "Hello," he said. "Doctor home? Almost five, you know."
"He's home," said Mavis. "Hello, Jon. I haven't seen you for a couple of years." She paused and smiled. "You've grown up."
He stopped at this impertinence from a child, and turned his head and stared at her. "You haven't," he said with shortness, then was still. For it was most evident that Mavis had, indeed, approached an astonishing measure of maturity, more even than her twelve years should have shown. And she had a look of deep animal happiness.
She leaned back in her swing, smiling, and he was struck by her smile, for it was utterly beguiling. He thought at once: The Laughing Girl, and it pleased him that he had reached, in only a moment or two, a perfect miniature evaluation of Mavis. She was born to laughter, and to laugh, as others are born to grieve or to work or to be intelligent or to be geniuses. It would not be a contrived laughter or a laughter solely for effect—though it could be that, also, nor a false or artificial mirth, nor a grudging one. Mavis was laughter. It was an integral part of her nature, and she laughed as others merely smiled or did not smile at all. She had lost the little irritabilities of young childhood, for they had been merely superficial. Now all the innate capacity for finding almost everything amusing and everything provocative of laughter was the strongest characteristic of her nature. And it was a husky and gleeful laugh, evoking laughter in anyone she encountered.
Jonathan, staring, thought of something Keats had written. This was very strange, for Jonathan did not admire the delicate and tragic if somewhat flowery Keats, though he was much attached to the more sinewy poets. He said to himself, as he looked at Marvis smiling at him from her swing:
"Surely I dreamt today, or did I see The winged Psyche with awakened eyes?"
Jonathan had seen many beautiful young blondes in his twenty-three years, each one prettier than the last. So, the round and perfect young face confronting him, with its apricot and milky coloring, would not have made him stand there so long, gazing with what he long later called "disgusting ox-like enchantment." He had seen eyes as blue and lucid before, and gilt lashes as profuse and all of a sweet tangle. He Was not startled by such a faintly rosy mouth, full and just barely pouting and excellently curved and carved, and he had encountered even prettier noses, though this was admittedly entrancing, tilted and translucent about the nostrils. The thick golden hair that fell in a heavy fall far below the shoulders was, of course, rare in its quality of luminosity and total yellowness, like a buttercup, but he had seen as beautiful before, natural and dyed. Her teeth were exquisite, somewhat large but white, and he had seen teeth like this many times.
He had seen riper figures, for all her precociousness of adorable body and tiny waist and small and dimpled white arms, Mavis was still only twelve. She was still a child, though she had reached physical maturity. Her hair was tied with a blue ribbon and she wore a blue voile dress with a pink sash, and blue slippers. Childish attire.
It was something else, mysterious and bewitching, that held him there, gawking. It was a quality of absolute bright assurance, of magnificent soft confidence, of healthy amiability and endearing seduction, of enormous vitality, perhaps, of poise. Like many others, Jonathan had tried to describe and understand charm, and had been as defeated as everyone else. Mavis possessed it in overwhelming measure, like a fairy cloak, like a blessing, like the gift it was. It did not lie in any particular feature, nor was it caught in her golden mist of hair or in her smallish blue eyes, shining and glowing. There was not the slightest flaw to be seen in Mavis, but Jonathan had seen flawless girls before and had found them intensely dull. He had a confused thought: Was Mavis stupid? He remembered the shrill and grubby child he had avoided through the years, and it seemed incredible to him that that untidy little hoyden had birthed so gorgeous a young girl. But was she stupid?
Jonathan, above all things, hated stupidity, and beauty never excused it. He found it the matrix for the abominable vices and the explanation for what was most bestial in humanity.
Mavis, never looking away from him, laughed again that entirely captivating laugh, which was not now fragile nor pure, but rollicking with humor and—this was irresistible— verve and joy in living. It was a laugh that invited the whole world to an expression of mirth, and Jonathan found himself smiling. He forgot to wonder if Mavis were stupid. He saw that she loved to be alive and expected others to have that love, also. She rejoiced in life as a bird rejoiced in it, or some small creature of the field, or as a dancing sapling, rosy with blossoms, fluttered in the spring. To Mavis, it was evident, life was to be taken joyously in both hands and eaten like a particularly large and spicy and fragrant fruit. She would rarely find the worm. She would generously proffer the fruit to be shared, and laugh with pleasure.
She was not overly tall and she was not frail, nor did she have the look of raw immaturity. She might have been seventeen instead of twelve, for the breast of the blue dress was daintily rounded above the narrow waist, and though the dress flowed, it intimated nubile curves beneath it and the lace petticoat. The legs, though mostly concealed, were beautifully formed, and the ankles like thin china in their white silk stockings.
She was born to laugh, to sing, to dance, to play in the sun, thought Jonathan Ferrier. She was born never to grow old, no matter how many years she will have. She is the Laughing Girl.
She approached him nearer, her head a little tilted as she studied him, her squinted eyes a little puzzled at his prolonged stare. Then the puzzled look disappeared, and Mavis understood. Jonathan might be an old man—but he was exactly like the boys she knew and so she was not shy with him. Mavis, in her way, was a very wise girl.
The dress was ugly in the fashion of that year, though it was expertly and deftly made. It bunched in a very pronounced bustle just above and slightly over Mavis' hips, for all it was a schoolgirl's dress. But the dress could not detract from Mavis. It did not distort her beauty, which had the baffling quality of illuminating her pervasive and formidable charm as even the finest beauty often cannot if it is the possession of another sort of female. In short, her beauty was only the net in which something more iridescent, something, perhaps, more deadly, and something far more powerful, was caught—the captive yet the possessor. Mavis possessed what many ugly women have possessed, and which has driven kings from thrones and has devastated empires, and was possessed by it. It is beyond explanation, as Jonathan now knew. The only safety is flight. Jonathan did not fly.
Mavis was smiling now and not laughing. Yet the aura of laughter was about her, deeper than the aura of her intense beauty. It was there, a permanent anticipation, waiting to break upwards like a leaping wave in a calm sea, at the brightest breeze.
Jonathan did not even suspect he was maudlin when he thought: "She is Psyche." He did not even smile at himself when he thought: "She is a golden rose."
"You've grown up, Mavis," he said, and did not think he was banal. It was a marvel to him that this was Mavis, and it was Mavis who was the marvel.
"Girls usually do," she said. She had a husky speaking voice also, which trembled always as if the impatient laughter was swelling beneath it and was demanding to be heard. She stood so near him that he could have touched her. And then, a little to his helpless horror, he had the most profound and urgent desire to touch her, indeed. He was appalled, for he was a mature man of twenty-three and the girl before him was still almost a child, and he knew that what he was feeling now was a most powerful sexual urge toward her, stronger than any he had known before in his life. She stood before him on the quiet porch, looking up into his eyes and he could not believe that what he saw in hers was complete knowl- edge and that she was amused. Years younger than he, she was incalculably older and more aware.
"I hope you like what you see, Jon," she said, and chuckled, and he was again fascinated, for the chuckle was deep, warm and rich, the knowing mirth of a woman.
"You've improved," he said, and he fo
ught down his desperate desire for her with loathing for himself. He tried for lightness. "My last memory of you was of a dirty little kid with a runny nose and tousled hair."
"Really?" she said. "And do you know what I've always thought about you, Jon? You're dippy." And again she chuckled, but it was not a taunting, for, as Jon was later to discover about the Laughing Girls, they never taunt idly except when they are bored with a lover or a husband and wish him forever out of sight.
He found himself chuckling with her, but he still wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her with a man's passion and desire. He tipped his hat a little mockingly, then went to the door and pulled the bell. The day was hot and there was the raucous shrilling of cicadas in the sun and quiet, and the distant rattle of a wagon's wheels on cobblestones, and the heated swish of trees. They seemed to roar in Jon's ears like a confused cacophony, and for the moments he stood there, resolutely facing the door with its stained-glass windows, he felt the smiling eyes of the girl fixed directly between his shoulders.