Winterking (1987)

by Paul Hazel

  was a cold, little town by the edge of the sea.”

  She hesitated.

  “Truly, it was a wonderful gift,” she had said. “But I will

  never go again to Bodp.”

  “One day you may have need of it.”

  She had told him then how she had slept in the wood

  and, meeting Plum, the thing she had given her to mail back

  to the steamship agent.

  He had taken her arm.

  The house stood above the great sweep of the lawn.

  Seeing it for the first time, she had held her breath. But he

  had been with her and she had not dared, had not wanted to

  loosen the touch of his hand. He had moved her up the steps,

  past the tangle of junipers and the thorns, into darkness.

  When he had closed the wide doors, she had stood perfectly

  still. She had made herself smile because her hopes had been

  so much greater than the worst of her dread.

  The house was enormous. For a few hours she had been

  alone in it with him. From the start she had been aware of

  the quiet. She had gone carefully from room to room, knowing that whenever she heard a board creak or a door pull to,

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  WINTERKING

  it had been Wykeham. He had said no other word to her and

  when he had gone into the village, she had simply waited.

  The room he had given her had a close, sweetish smell.

  Nora guessed it had been ages since anyone had slept there.

  Steeling herself, she poked into corners and knocked on the

  plaster. There were only cobwebs and silences. But there was

  slut’s wool under the bed and grime on the windows. She had

  let in the air. A little breeze (here there was always a breeze,

  she had noticed, either blowing or just about to) made the

  dusty shutters creak. She discovered bed linen folded on one

  of the shelves in the closet. In a trunk there were blankets.

  Nonetheless she did not set to work. Instead she stood at the

  open window. The trees along the drive obscured the approach to the house. Yet, if she stood there, he would be able to see her when he came up from the gate. The window

  would shine like a beacon. She need show no sign of her

  presence. The lamps lit her face. In the light her skin had a

  gentle radiance. Although she was tired, she held her head

  proudly. Turned to the proper angle, the line of her neck, she

  knew, was inviting. That much had not changed.

  She felt a strange giddiness. She thought of the long,

  glowing evenings when she had strolled through the streets

  of her village. After the bleakness of winter the world then

  had seemed unbelievably light. The brightness had touched

  the golden hairs on her neck. Boldly, she had walked under

  the eyes of the sailors. “Let us come with you,” they had

  called to her. But though her heart pounded, she had looked

  ahead steadily. When they are old men, she had thought

  joyfully, and I myself am an old woman, they will remember

  this moment. Yet, when she had come to the end of the pier,

  she had realized that her beauty must vanish if flushed and

  out of breath she were forced to climb the street again past

  them. Gravely she had loosened her dress from her shoulders. When she leapt, it must have appeared to the sailors that she had plunged to her death in the sea.

  While they had searched for her, she had scrambled up

  on the rocks. She had tied a kerchief over her hair and, when

  the last of the men had gone, had returned by another village

  to her mother’s house. Seeing her, the quiet old woman,

  abandoned herself by a sailor, had said nothing. When Nora

  slept she would mend the tears where the dress had caught

  and torn on the rocks.

  The Hill and the Tower

  87

  Her mother had clear dark eyes, like her own. Once a

  year, on her birthday, a man from the town would ride out to

  deliver a letter. Nora would stand by her chair as the old

  woman tried to decide whether she would open it. The

  letters from other years lay sealed on a table beside her cot.

  But always her mother would shake her head. For the

  briefest moment her eyes would flash with defiance. “No,

  child,” she would say this time as she had said the last, “you

  are gift enough.”

  A door slammed. But there was no tread on the stair.

  Just the wind.

  Nora gathered the bedding. When she had finished,

  because he had still not come, she climbed up and propped

  her elbows on the pillow. Staring down at herself, she saw

  how ludicrously little there was of her and, even beyond the

  kick of her feet, how much bed. I am as small as this beside

  him, she thought as if she were the child, passing lightly over

  the fact that while he had money to give away steamship

  tickets, he was a boy really and still in school. To her mind he

  simply did not seem so. He was taller, for one thing, than any

  man she had known; the directness of his look matched his

  bearing. Abruptly, without a young man’s shyness, presuming

  an intimacy as though by right, he had reached out his hand

  to her.

  Toward midnight she woke.

  She had wriggled out of her skirt. Having no other

  clothing, she had not switched on the lamp but had found the

  stair to the upper story by tracing her fingers carefully along

  the wall. The air was cool on her skin. Somewhere other

  windows must have been open. She took the steps two at a

  time. She was excited by the prospect of his finding her, this

  time deliberately, naked. More immediately, she thought of

  his bed. She would be warm there, warm, safe and high

  under the eaves of his house. It was surely the best place to

  wait for him, the one place he was certain to come. She

  wondered whether he would be tired or if tramping about in

  the night would leave him restless. Either would be agreeable, provided he slipped in beside her. She could content herself with touching his hand or, should it please hi m. . . Nora

  smiled at the darkness. The door to his room opened with a

  reassuring sigh.

  *

  *

  *

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  WINTERKING

  Wykeham cut across the dark meadow. He took the

  shortest path, passing quickly among the caretakers’ sheds.

  The roofs had fallen. Vines and tendrils obscured the stones

  just as thick tufts of grass now grew in the best garden beds.

  Wykeham grunted without truly noticing. Long ago the roses

  had turned into lawn. Unconcerned, he vaulted over a wall.

  There was an open stretch for a hundred yards and then more

  trees. He ducked under the branches. At last, against the

  blackness of the hill, he saw the stables. He remembered he

  had not met the hostler Longford had hired. He knew he

  ought to check on the mare. He did not permit himself

  another glance at the house. She would be waiting in any

  case. He entered the tackroom hurriedly and took a brush

  from the shelf, disturbed that there was so little time now

  that he had need of it.

  It did not matter that he had other lives. In each he

  seldom had the use of more than a do
zen years. Too soon

  friends with whom he had no hope of lingering began to

  notice the remarkable preservation of his changeless face.

  Sometimes, unwilling to renounce affection, he had stayed.

  But there is no welcome for an ageless man among grown

  children and enfeebled wives. Now and then he had invented

  his own death. More often he had simply turned his back.

  The longest voyages, to Maui and around the Horn, even

  under sail, were short to him. Afterward there were other

  years on land, at Heidelberg, at Oxford twice, at Yale, nights

  in the crowded libraries and peaceful mornings in the empty

  lecture halls, brief years among young men who themselves

  were swiftly gone to other lives. He was well aware such

  moments were a dream, crammed with the kind of promise

  which came, by rights, to nothing. He turned aside advice,

  declined— kindly when he could— offers from old men who,

  startled by his learning, saw him as the heir to labors that had

  cost them, without conclusion, half their lives. He knew he

  was no scholar. He had merely read the books before. Under

  their tutelage he had begun a thousand things and finished

  little. When he came back to the old university towns, those

  men were dead. He went back less often. But the shallow

  trough of the Housetenuc drew him. Now, after barely fifty

  years away, still haunted by its miles of squalid woods and low

  gray hills, he had reentered the valley. I must get on to

  Devon, he had thought when he had finally set foot again in

  The Hill and the Tower

  8 9

  the harbor. And although for the better part of three years,

  kept to his studies, he had not gone, it had been the reason

  he had settled on the college. From his rooms, looking out

  over the court, there had been a perfect view of the river.

  Certainly, there had been other reasons. Callaghan, for one,

  had been getting old and would need to be replaced. Duties

  had lain ahead of him, as they had each time he moved the

  trust from one hand to the next. Yet he had waited for this

  moment, indeed had welcomed it and in much the same way

  he had welcomed the sight of the unkempt and empty

  house. It was not a matter of choice. Houseman was dead.

  Longford, though a fool, was proving less a fool than he

  should have been. His wife was dangerous. Charon Hunt,

  despite'its evident impossibility, was killing Indians. Wykeham

  let out a puzzled sigh. He gave a perfunctory pat to the

  mare’s dry rump and wondered, this time, how he would

  manage.

  He closed the door on the stalls and set the latch.

  Tomorrow he must introduce himself to the hostler. Then too,

  the roof of John Chance’s cottage needed patching. That at

  least was no great trouble. In the morning he would send

  George Tennison down with fresh pitch and shingles, a

  reward for keeping Nora from the wood while Hunt was in it.

  Wykeham smiled speculatively. He wondered what the old

  lame bachelor thought of her. It had not been something he

  would have asked with Nora standing, half unclothed, between them. In his own kitchen he had asked the crow. But he had got no useful answer. He hoped she was pretty. It

  made no difference that he found her so. His own tastes had

  been set too long ago. In the markets of Maracaibo or in the

  streets of Lyme he had too often turned back to stare at

  women whom the men walking with him, captains of her

  Majesty’s ships and London merchants, found common or, at

  the very least, unworthy of the effort of looking back. It had

  helped, of course, that he had seen that face before. In

  profile there had been no mistaking it. He had not been more

  than a few moments in her husband’s shop when he recognized the tilt of the head, the exquisite line of the neck. He had had no need to ask why she was so far from home. His

  idea of justice was clear and literal: given sufficient opportunity, all things returned. Life especially came back, even across cold tides and oceans.

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  WINTERKING

  He had come up onto the porch and through the massive

  front doors. It was late; the house was quiet. On the first

  landing he looked in at Nora’s room. The breeze, still pouring

  in through the small window, had driven off some of the dust

  and dampness. Even in the shadows he saw that the bed was

  made and that she had gone from it. He unbuttoned his coat.

  Knowing more or less what to expect, he climbed the last

  stairs to his room. She was asleep on his pillow, the edge of

  her tangled hair curled around her throat. He tried to

  imagine how she had looked at fifteen or twenty. It did not

  matter. He was not disappointed.

  For a moment he stood silently, unwilling to wake her.

  Her face had turned toward him, dreaming. Her dark eyes

  were open. He supposed there was sadness in those eyes but,

  although there was every right to be, there was no despair.

  Nora moved suddenly, driving her mouth against the pillow.

  He knew she could only add to his troubles, now when he

  had troubles enough. Yet he was comforted. He would protect her if he could.

  When she had quieted, he retraced his steps. Reluctantly,

  the hour pressing him, with too many matters demanding his

  attention and too little time, Wykeham closed the door

  noiselessly, letting his daughter sleep.

  III.

  Faces in the Earth

  1.

  Dr. Holmes spread the photographs along the examination

  table in his surgery. The emulsion was still wet and he

  handled each print with a pair of small forceps. He had drawn

  up the lamp as he had when he had examined the corpse.

  Not that he saw much improvement. In the print’s glossy

  surface he could make out little more than his own disappointed reflection. At one com er of the print, caught at the edge, there was a slender filament. Because of the magnification it might have been an eyelash or no more than the grain in the negative. There was honestly no way of knowing. He

  lay aside his pipe. Smoke no longer curled from the bowl.

  Muttering, he pushed another photograph under the lamp.

  He had had such hopes. When he had set up his camera,

  Houseman’s body had only just begun to stiffen. Such opportunities were in fact rare. He had attended a hundred deaths during the course of his practice. But nearly always there had

  been family. He had seen to the living. At such times they

  could not be expected to view his investigations with the

  detachment of science. Normally, hours later, he had had to

  prop open the taut lids in the narrow back rooms of morticians’ chambers, had to focus his lenses on pupils that had already hardened. By then the image of whatever had held

  the sight at life’s last moments had gone. But there had been

  no one to mourn Houseman, merely his employer, who,

  although he had shown a delicate interest, had not interrupted

  his journey. Peering crossly over his spectacles, Dr. Holmes

  edged the lamp nearer.

  He was the same Dr. Holmes who wrote verses and

  sketches for T he A tlantic, the same whimsical sketches and

  doggerel which in a u
niverse not too far distant had earned

  9 3

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  WINTERKING

  him a minor but respected place in American letters. But

  here (having been bom merely a decade, not a century,

  before the Great War) his writings seemed only quaint, the

  easy Latinity of his prose an impediment to popular acceptance. Instead he had made his mark as a physician and would be longer remembered as an anatomist.

  Nonetheless, the outline of his early life was here not

  substantially altered. He had been bom on the outskirts of

  Boston and had spent the first years of his manhood on

  Montgomery Place. After a dozen years of marriage, he

  removed to Bristol and the house inherited from his maternal

  great-grandfather. He knew Cornelius Mathews and James T.

  Fields but not Melville or Hawthorne, although assuredly

  their places were taken by others. (For in one form or

  another both are indispensable. A New World cannot be

  made without them.) Only his later years pulled atom by

  atom away from his other existence. In this world he would

  not die in his own bed and his oldest son, with whom he

  shared his name and many of his sympathies, would never

  become a supreme court justice. I will not judge which life

  better suited the man. In either world there had always been

  some who suspected that beneath the gentle satire of the

  poems, the strained didactism of the novels, there was a pure

  vein of venom. It is certain that here that same bitterness had

  quietly deepened, had given him an added astringency and,

  when at last it was required of him, a sterner, more courageous imagination. Whatever the cause, something was changed in him. Perhaps there is no defense against doubt. At least it

  is not as unusual as it may seem that a man who felt himself

  nourished by the regard of an intelligent woman, buoyed and

  uplifted by the affection of able, caring children, devoted his

  private hours to the study of the possibility that all life, his

  own included, was without meaning. In any event, he did not

  dismiss the next photograph although at first glance it appeared

  much the same as the rest.

  He was sitting still, deep in thought. After a while, with

  a weary swipe of his hand, he pulled the lamp nearer.