He hurried out, locking the door behind him, and in the street Seymour whipped off his motoring cap with a bow. “Miss Lillian McCoy,” he said, with a courtly gesture at his companion. “Miss Marietta Pawling, whom of course you know.” He waved at the girl in back. “I have brought along your duster and cap, Randall.” He produced them. “Put them on and let’s be on our way.”
“But,” said Randall weakly.
” ‘But’ nothing. We are going out to Glen Island for dinner and you,” Seymour raised his goggles and gave Randall a sharp look, “are coming along.”
“Glen Island! Why, that’s way out on the Sound.”
“Yes!” cried Marietta Pawling. “Almost all the way out to New Rochelle. Isn’t it exciting?”
“Thrilling!” said Miss McCoy.
“Why it must be twenty miles,” said Randall incredulously.
“All of it,” said Seymour with pride. “It shouldn’t take much above two hours.” He looked at his watch. “Quarter to six now, we’ll arrive just in time to dine comfortably.”
“But it will be dark when we start back.”
“It usually is dark at night.”
“And you mean to drive in the dark?”
Miss Pawling said, “He’s got lamps on the car. Really, you know, it’s not dangerous, Mr. Holt. Quite a lot of people are doing it.”
Randall had no wish to seem ridiculous, so he opened the door of the tonneau and climbed in. The seats were comfortably barrel-upholstered in black leather, and he settled into the right-hand one behind Seymour, with Miss Pawling on his left. She greeted him enthusiastically and almost immediately he caught her stealing a glance from Seymour to himself and back again, a comparison that a child might have had more wit than to make. The result, however, was apparently favorable to Randall and once again he smothered the memory of Renata Tosi calmly remarking, “You are beautiful.”
Suppose it’s true, he thought, with queer detachment. If it is, I guess they all think the same thing. But only in Renata did he find such an attitude shocking. If anybody else thinks it, he decided coldly, I might as well give them their head. He put Renata Tosi resolutely out of mind, and threw himself into the spirit of the excursion. Seymour was in fine form. They proceeded up Madison Avenue, the motor proclaiming their progress with a solid but subdued roar of which Seymour appeared to approve. He drove very well, threading his way past horses and slowing down to watch for cross traffic at the corners. But there was not much; on a Sunday evening there were not many people out. “Week days,” said Seymour, “I see almost as many motor cars as carriages now.”
“Why, yes,” said Miss McCoy, “the other day I rode in a motor taxicab. Imagine!”
“Those have been around for quite a while.”
“I wonder if they’ll ever replace hansoms entirely.”
“Seems hard to imagine, doesn’t it?”
“Have you ridden in this automobile before?” Marietta Pawling asked Randall.
“Just short distances. I think this must be the first real trip Seymour has taken in it, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes. I’ve had it as far as Van Cortlandt Park. But I want to get out in the country where I can really see what it will do.” Seymour honked at a fat man who stood in the middle of the street waiting for a trolley-car, though none was in sight. The man shook his fist and yelled, “Get a horse!”
“Why, he’s way out of date!” giggled Miss McCoy. “They stopped yelling that two or three years ago.”
“How fast do you think it will go, Seymour?” Randall hoped his voice did not betray apprehension.
“Oh—maybe thirty-five. With four of us in it.”
“Goodness!” cried the girls. “You wouldn’t frighten us, would you?”
Seymour laughed proudly. They snorted along, through Harlem and over the One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street Bridge. There Seymour drew over carefully to the curb and stopped the car.
“What’s the trouble?” they all asked at once. “Is anything wrong?”
“Of course not! I just think it’s time to light the lamps.”
“Oh.” Randall jumped out to help Seymour. While they were lighting matches, opening the glass, adjusting the flames, and snapping shut the brass frames of the lamps, Randall said, “You aren’t really going to try to drive fast tonight, are you, Brother?”
“Why?” asked Seymour in a queer tone. “Are you scared?”
“No, I’m not.” Randall shut the red pane of the rear lantern and took off his goggles and looked Seymour in the eyes. “You know what’s on my mind. I guess you can see as well as anybody but sometimes I’m beginning to wonder about it. I just want you to be careful, that’s all.”
Seymour had shut his mouth with a hard grimace and for a moment stood flushed with anger. Then he twitched his shoulders and drew in his breath and said, “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”
“I know you will.” Randall closed his hand for an instant on Seymour’s forearm. “Please don’t mind what I said.”
“You’re all right. Come on now, here we go.” They climbed back to their seats and Seymour carefully let out the clutch and put the car into gear. “Isn’t she a beauty?” he gloated. “Didn’t stall while I had it stopped. I guess the mixture’s just right.”
It was a gay evening. They arrived in good time at the Glen Island restaurant and Seymour ordered a fine shore dinner, champagne, and afterwards sweet liqueurs for the ladies. Randall observed that Seymour drank very little, which proved his good sense, and he was skilful in entertaining the two girls. Whatever he had said or hinted to Marietta Pawling, it was clear that she knew she could only continue to see him on the contingent basis of accepting Randall at times as his substitute. But that, Seymour was relieved to see, was going to be no hardship for her. My God, he thought, while the orchestra played the current favorites from Mademoiselle Modiste, if that kid realized how attractive he is he could have them lined up in rows for the whistling. He studied his brother’s face, apparently absorbed in the girls’ chatter, but to Seymour’s shrewd judgment a partial mask which did not conceal immense wistfulness. Seymour sighed. Was it possible that the lad had really been hard hit by that Italian woman? From everything he knew, Seymour could think of her only as a thoroughly expert proposition, skilled in a realm where Randall Holt was helpless. No two episodes were ever alike, he knew well; the preposterous story of Vienna could not have been repeated. Whatever had happened, Randall’s evident distress evoked real concern from Seymour, and the resolve to do what he could to ease for his brother the lesson that it was useless to lay sincere emotion at the feet of such a woman. At the same time Seymour found himself inordinately curious to get a look at her. While he was talking with Marietta Pawling and she exclaiming, “My, I hadn’t realized your brother is such a stunner,” he said, “You be nice to him, Marietta. He’s better stuff than we are, either of us.”
“Oh, I’ll be nice,” she assured him.
“I mean what he thinks is nice. Never mind what you think.”
Seymour had scarcely been inside the opera house since his boyhood. He cared little for music and nothing for opera as such. But on Thursday evening when Renata Tosi was singing Musetta, he invited himself into the box of old Mrs. Waterworth, to whom he had not paid his respects in years. The dowager was flattered. Seymour had brought along the smallest of his pairs of binoculars, which had extremely powerful lenses. Standing in the back of the box he used them inconspicuously. He watched Renata Tosi’s entrance, and her bewitching acting, almost without listening to her sing. His face was a tableau of astonishment and knowing appraisal. He had expected nothing like this. During the curtain-calls he trained his glasses downwards on the house and in a moment saw what he expected: Randall among the standees at the rail, with everything there was to know plainly written on his face, there where he thought himself alone and unwatched and unknown.
The Stevens-Duryea meant that Seymour would be away over the week end. Even before the car was delivered h
e had begun to assemble maps and information about roads and places to stop. He was very systematic about it. He had bought a leather portfolio in which to keep these things and carry them in the automobile. He had spent much of the week equipping the car with extra luxuries like the windshield; also with an elaborate tire-patching kit and a newly-invented pneumatic pump which he hoped he would not too soon have to use. He was even considering a detachable folding carriage-top which could be set up quickly in case of rain, but that was too expensive, he decided; mackintoshes would have to do for the time being.
He was so absorbed in his new treasure that he forgot the prosaic details of time and place and work, his own and Randall’s. On Friday morning he asked Randall to come along on the week end trip he was planning, and simply stared when Randall answered, “But Brother, you know I can’t be away Saturday and Sunday. That’s when—”
“Oh,” said Seymour. He laughed ruefully. “You know, I really am acting like a ten-year-old about this machine.”
“Well, why not? It must be wonderful to know so exactly what you want and be able to have it.”
Seymour gave him a sidelong glance. He was much more concerned for Randall since his visit to the opera last night than he had been before. With Renata Tosi gone, after Monday, it would be easier to throw diversions in Randall’s way, and there might even be the natural reaction that he would begin to amuse himself with some other woman, once the thread of his intensity about the Italian was cut. It was just too bad about this gloomy week end looming up for him but there was nothing to be done about it. Seymour reminded him, though, of the many summer week ends to come. “You get busy and set up a decent vacation for yourself,” he advised. “You need to practise a little self-preservation. Don’t let Fitzhugh grab the best of the summer.”
Randall smiled a little sadly. “All right, Brother,” he said. “I’ll try. Seems to me you’re being awfully brotherly these days, aren’t you?” He looked hard at Seymour.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too un-brotherly most of the time. I’m a selfish pig, who should know better than you?”
Randall gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder as he went away to let in the new cleaning-woman, who was ringing the bell of the side door downstairs. Seymour had suggested not giving her a latchkey until they felt sure she was a person they wouldn’t mind letting walk in and out; not like that prying McBane woman. Randall agreed. It was a nuisance to have to deal with such people at all, but somebody had to clean the rooms where they lived.
Saturday and Sunday dragged by. Randall had accepted the invitation of the Rector and his wife to lunch after church on Sunday. It was stiff and boring in a way, but at the same time remotely consoling. The Rector was pompous and wonderfully conceited, his every word and every gesture a careful study; but a glimpse at his house, his elaborate plush-embellished drawing-room, his dark, ceremonial dining-room where they ate the traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and chocolate ice cream of classic Sunday memory, reminded Randall that there was a world and a way of life and a point of view more natural to him than the turmoil in which he had lately been floundering. He even found himself thinking, as they sat over a glass of port after lunch, that it would be a relief to have Renata Tosi gone after tomorrow, and every possibility of seeing her cut off for good. Next autumn seemed such ages away that it had no reality.
He went away from luncheon in a calmer, much improved frame of mind. He had succeeded pretty well in his stubborn effort not to think about Renata’s last evening in New York, and this was the more difficult because he had seen (after trying not to look at it) the announcement of the opera’s “Grand Gala Finale”, the last Sunday evening concert of the season. Renata Tosi was not billed, but Baldini was, since the programme consisted entirely of favorite concerted numbers from the repertoire and Baldini was one of the leading bassos. Randall propelled himself through the remaining hours of the afternoon and the early evening, concentrating hard on his work and grateful that Merion Fitzhugh had gone off and left him again to play Evensong. When he was through, he stood again at the window in the parish house as he had a week ago, contemplating a lonely evening. He counted off the ten long days since he had last seen Renata (except for his surreptitious visits to the opera when she was singing) and once more he told himself that if he was not to see her again, it was much better that she go away to Italy. Then he had a struggle to thrust aside the knowledge that it need not have been impossible to see her again, or to expect to do so in the future. He need only have accepted her on her terms and he could have been with her as much as trickery could contrive. “I don’t want that,” he said, half aloud; “I don’t want any part of it. I’m through. Through.”
He took his hat and walked away home through the quiet streets. He was not hungry enough to think of eating again today, after that huge unaccustomed midday dinner, and he decided to try to spend the evening putting his mind on something absorbing instead of letting it dwell where it would. He settled down in the library with a brandy and soda and Spitta’s Bach. Once or twice he found himself reading lines which bore no meaning; then he would sit up, shake his head hard, and drive his thoughts back from their wandering to the sturdy confines of the Cantor and his world. Several times he glanced unconsciously at the mantel where the old ormulu clock had ticked ever since he could remember, but it had broken down recently and Seymour had removed it to his workshop, saying he wanted to try the experiment of installing a new set of works in it. Seymour had bought for the purpose a cheap American clock of the same dimensions. Randall had laughed at him for thinking himself capable of clockmaking. Well, he thought now, he probably makes more sense than I do—and certainly gets more out of life.
He found himself with his watch in his hand, and Spitta sliding off his knee. He caught the book, scowled, and put his watch back in his pocket. It was five minutes past nine. If he went out and picked up a cab right now, he could drive past the opera house and if Renata Tosi was not there, he could go on up Broadway to the Ansonia where he would surely find her, finishing her packing. Her ship was to sail at noon tomorrow. Without doubt she would be up late tonight at a farewell party after the concert. The more he thought of it the more certain it appeared that she must be at her hotel now. Would she see him if he went there? He knew that she would, he knew also that if he had not taken her at her word ever since last Friday, she would have seen him at any time he had contrived. What would have happened? He sat struggling not to think; the heavy book slid from his knee with a thump; he ignored it and jumped to his feet and began to pace back and forth across the room. He heard again her lovely, rippling voice, her ridiculous English, the outrageous things she said which left him confounded by their unabashed truth.
“Oh, my God!” he exclaimed aloud, “how I wish I’d never seen her.”
He went to the door; he went back to his chair; he looked at his watch again; he sat down; presently he stood up. He left the room and started down the stairs. There he paused. What would happen if he should go to see her now? A quarrel? A surrender? A few moments of passion which would amuse her and shatter him? Whatever that hour might hold, her departure tomorrow would grieve him the more. He ran his fingers nervously through his hair, stood a little while on the stairs, then slowly turned and went back up to the library.
He got through Monday better than he had hoped, for he slept unusually late and had to hurry to get Seymour off to the office. Then he turned his attention to Mrs. Quinn, the new charwoman, who demanded coal for the seldom-used boiler so that she could have hot water for her scrubbing. He went out and attended to that and other domestic errands and when he reached home again it was past noon and he knew that Renata’s ship had sailed. He felt distinctly better; not happier, but less distraught. She was out of reach and this should help him once for all to put her out of mind.
Seymour came home early from the office, unable to resist his automobile, and they started off by themselves to cross the river on the Twenty-third Stre
et ferry and drive up the Jersey shore of the Hudson until they found some attractive place to dine. They never reached one because they spent most of the evening patching a punctured tire in a streaming April cloudburst, and when Seymour went round to crank the motor afterwards the car would not start because a spark plug had got wet. By the time Seymour had remedied all this and, to Randall’s vast admiration, proved himself the master of everything concerning the Stevens-Duryea, they had to take the ferry back again, and they wound up at Jack’s at eleven o’clock with a beefsteak and a quart of ale. They had laughed so much that Randall’s stomach ached. Cronies of Seymour’s kept coming over to their table to admire and discuss the Stevens-Duryea, which was parked outside in Sixth Avenue in care of the proud door-man who was busy shooing away young spawns and limbs of the devil who wanted the glory of having touched the wonderful red machine.
They went to bed in high spirits and Randall woke late on Tuesday morning in a better mood than for a long time past. There was no doubt about it, Seymour when things went right was the best company in the world. He was full of plans for the coming months, and taking Randall’s share in them for granted. Several times Randall had hesitated over the question which he could not bring himself to ask: how could Seymour possibly be away from his office as much as his talk seemed to suggest?
This morning, like yesterday, Seymour did get off to work, and Randall went to the drawing-room to shut himself up with his practising. I’m not much of a one to think Seymour is lazy, he thought; look at me. I haven’t clone any real work for weeks. He settled down and worked hard: an hour of scales and arpeggios and octave exercises, then he got out the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, and dug in for an hour at that. Though all his work at St. Timothy’s was satisfying, his great delight was the constantly widening study of Bach, and the fine organ on which he was playing it increasingly well.
My Brother's Keeper Page 24