My Brother's Keeper

by Marcia Davenport

  All the next day they laughed and bantered and bumped their way cross-country to Cold Spring and back. They chose Cold Spring because Seymour estimated that it would not make too long a trip; Randall had reminded him that Renata was not yet perfectly strong. They set off after breakfast with Tom Maynard’s assurance that the weather could not possibly change today. It did change, of course; they were caught in a thunderstorm which would have drenched them to the skin except for Seymour’s quickness in spotting an empty carriage-shed by the road and driving the car straight into it. They sat there listening to the rain pelt and rattle on the tin roof. It fell rhythmically in a certain pattern to which Renata was soon beating time, making a pompous, scowling face like a conductor. With her left hand she made florid gestures at imaginary instruments and when her pantomime introduction was unmistakable she made an equally unmistakable burlesque of the classic fat tenor and broke out, “Bella figlia dell’amore”, filling in the other voices as they came along and finally leaning towards Seymour to growl in a mock basso, “Taci, il piangere non vale.” She patted him on the shoulder, nodding wisely.

  She was so funny that she herself joined in the roars of laughter that drowned her out. Then they began asking her to sing this and that, and as she was recklessly in the mood she sat there singing like a bird in a tree. Anything, everything, snatches of The Barber and Faust and Sonnambula and Lucia and suddenly, fixing her eyes on Randall, she began to sing Vissi d’arte. She sang with a warm, pulsating urgency he had never known in her before, her head thrown back, her expression intent. In the cramped shed her delicate voice took on richness and volume. Seymour and Marietta Pawling in the front seat were turned to watch her, he with a fascinated glaze in his half-closed eyes, she frankly open-mouthed. She had never heard a fine singer before. Randall was tense and very stirred. He wished he were alone with her. The presence of the others was a rude intrusion. Her pleading, her phrasing even more poignant than the pitifully appealing words, went through him like a chill. Nobody spoke when she finished. The last perfect notes echoed in their ears. Then as Seymour and Marietta Pawling began to clamor their appreciation she said to Randall under her breath, “Hai capito? You have understood the words?”

  He only looked at her and said, “I thought you said you’d never learn Tosca.”

  “Vero!” she cried delightedly. “Non mi piace lavorare. Ecco!—I call you out the sun!”

  And she had—the sun was shining into the shed and every trace of the storm had vanished, leaving a washed, brilliant blue sky and the delicious pungency of wet earth and leaves and grass. Seymour set the spark and the hand throttle and switched the magneto and felt carefully to make certain that the gear was in neutral, and with a hearty, “Get set, everybody!” he jumped down and went round in front to crank. The motor turned over with a pop and a roar, and they all held their breaths while Seymour skilfully and carefully backed out of the narrow shed and manoeuvred round into the road again.

  “We’re off!” he cried, and they rolled and jounced and slithered away through the film of mud churned up by the rain on the dirt road. Renata was fascinated, she sat up very straight eagerly looking to this side and that, her charming face with its laughing brown eyes like a bright light between the folds of the chiffon veil tied under chin.

  “Is bello, no, Marietta?” she cried. She had already said there could be no such name as Poll-ling, it sounded like something to do with the poultry business and Marietta was a pretty, civilized name that anybody could pronounce. So this put them all on a first-name footing and at lunch in the hotel at Cold Spring, in a bay-window overlooking the splendid view of West Point down the river, Renata asked, “I cannot understand for what saints are such names like yours? Si-morr! Randalo! In America exist such saints?”

  The brothers shook with laughter. “We aren’t named for saints, Renata,” said Randall, and Seymour said, “We’d be a fine travesty of the poor chaps if we were.”

  “But what is? What mean such names?”

  “They are family names, last names—”

  “Cognomi?” she asked, frowning a little.

  “Yes,” said Seymour. “That’s it. Family names.”

  “You mean your own family is full of saints? Must be everybody saints to make enough names!”

  Marietta Pawling was giggling.

  “Look at her,” said Renata. “She has a name like a Christian, taken from the Santa Vergine. Is no nonsense about saints in her family!”

  Seymour guffawed into his napkin.

  After lunch they went out on the porch of the hotel and strolled up and down and Seymour, finding himself beside Renata, answered her questions about the turreted fortress across and down the river. When she learned what it was her eyes danced and she said, “Oh! che bello! So many beautiful young men! Must be wonderful.”

  She heard Randall sigh hopelessly behind her. “I like very much the beautiful young men,” she rattled on. “Like i nostri carabinieri—such a bellezza you cannot imagine.”

  Randall was explaining awkwardly to Marietta that Italian adjectives were very different from English ones.

  “Oh, I think she’s killing,” said Marietta. “I never saw anybody like her.”

  “Neither did I,” said Randall heavily.

  Renata turned and looked over her shoulder at Randall. Then she said in an undertone to Seymour, “I think Randalo he is the most beautiful man I have ever seen.”

  Seymour gave her a look. “I trust he knows you think so?” he murmured.

  “He is—” she moved her shoulders delicately. “Very young. Too serious.”

  “I would hate to see him hurt.” Seymour contrived to speak tonelessly.

  “I too. I have tell him so. I have try’ explain many things.”

  “I see.”

  “You understand, anche?”

  “Perfectly.” They were strolling round the corner of the wide veranda and he looked once into her eyes. They were not laughing now; they were also not serious; they were communicating in a direct and definite language. “I should say we understand one another very well.”

  They got back to the farm at nightfall, having been stopped twice on the way by punctured tires which Seymour had patched with skill, and what they all told him was remarkable good humor.

  “I would never have the pazienza for all that trouble,” said Renata; and Seymour, jacking up the car and looking coolly at the three figures standing in the muddy road, said, “Have you got much patience about anything?”

  Renata was yawning at supper, unaccustomed to such a long day and so much company. She appeared not to be listening while tomorrow’s plans were discussed, but she found herself surprised when Randall said, “No, thanks, Seymour, I can’t ride back to town with you and Marietta tomorrow because I always have to go over the music on Friday afternoons. You wouldn’t get there in time.”

  “Well, we’d have been glad to have you along.”

  Renata had forgotten that tomorrow was Friday and that Randall always took the morning train to New York. She looked up and said, “I think I go to New York with you tomorrow, Randalo.”

  “Why Renata! What for?”

  “I must buy some things to make me clothes, something for summer. I come from Italy not prepared.” She flipped her hand at the sleeve of her blouse. “I am tired of these few, I wear them too much.”

  Randall was surprised and also, he found, somewhat troubled. Why should she decide so suddenly that she needed summer clothes? She did need them, she had been makeshifting all this time, but she had not seemed to mind it before. He was apparently right in suspecting that she was beginning to be bored here.

  “Then you can ride in with us,” said Marietta. She said it only to please Seymour, which she was sure it would; she would much have preferred to be alone with him.

  Renata considered for a moment and then said, “No, is very gentile, thank you—also Simorr—” for he had seconded the invitation. “But I think is better I go in the train with Randalo.
Così I can make the shoppings in the afternoon, also on Saturday, and I do not grow too tired.”

  Seymour dropped them next morning at the railway station before starting the trip back to New York. Randall went inside to buy the tickets, and Seymour helped Renata down and escorted her to the platform, leaving Marietta in the car. “I’ll be right back,” he said to her.

  “Where will you be stopping in town?” he asked Renata, walking to the platform.

  She named the hotel that Randall had chosen for her when she left the hospital.

  “If I can do anything for you—” Seymour spoke gravely.

  “Oh, thank you. Only I may require some things from my trunks which Randalo sent to your house.”

  “I will come and fetch you after lunch tomorrow,” he said.

  “But where is your automobile?” she asked Seymour next day, emerging from her hotel. She pronounced the word in Italian.

  “I am having some work done on it.” He had thought it better not to drive up to the house with Renata in the car. They took a taxicab instead, and when they arrived at the Holt house, Seymour paused on the pavement as the cab drove away. He saw the whole place, the bleak blind-windowed house, the drab yard, the scaling paint, the rusty iron gratings, as they must appear to Renata’s surprised eyes.

  “I’m afraid it’s an ugly place,” he said. “And rather a queer one. We keep most of it shut up, you see, because Randall and I live here all alone and we couldn’t possibly use all the rooms.” They were walking up the front path, between the plots of sparse, weedy, gritty grass.

  “Naturally. But why you don’t rent many rooms? Never I have seen a house so large just for two people. In Italy is no such thing like this in a city.”

  Such a thought had never entered Seymour’s head. “Why—I don’t know,” he said. “It never occurred to us. But I don’t think we’d like to be all surrounded with roomers. Our house would be like all those others—” he gestured back at the rundown mansions on both sides of the street. “Anyway—” he took out his latchkey and opened the front door. “Please don’t mind how it looks. We’re hardly ever here.”

  “I told Randalo last night you have been so kind to offer to bring me here for my things today while he was working.”

  “Yes, he spoke about it this morning. He said he’d be home by five o’clock.” Seymour stepped aside and bowed her into the house. The dim, musty hall was a strange contrast to the brassy summer sun outside; Renata blinked, trying to adjust herself to the darkness and Seymour stood for a moment revelling in the relief to his eyes. He put his hat on the rack and turned to open the drawing-room door.

  “The trunks are here,” he said, and lied, “I had them brought here from the storage room to make it more convenient for you.”

  “Ah, thank you very much.” She advanced into the room, eyeing it curiously. In her sweeping black-and-white striped gown and her big hat trimmed with roses she was an incongruous sight against the streaked, ragged wallpaper, the dingy woodwork, the swagged plush curtains, the tufted magenta upholstery, the Brussels carpet, all threadbare. She was puzzled, Seymour could see. On the one hand she had concluded, between Randall’s generosity and Seymour’s automobile, that they must be millionaires. On the other, what could they be doing in a place like this? Real poverty would not confound her, nothing on earth was more familiar; but this was not poverty, real or simulated. This was something else, which she could not understand. It was also not like her to brood about anything. She turned cheerfully to Seymour and said, “It will not take me long to find the things I need.”

  “No,” he said, standing close to her and looking down, from his two inches of height greater than Randall’s, at her vivid face. At this moment it bore an expression of mischief; her lips were set in a remote smile and her slender, slanting nostrils flared faintly. She did not raise her eyes and look at him. But she did look at the hideous old tombstone clock on the mantel, which still ran, still timing Randall’s practice hours. Seymour said, “I told Randall I would bring you here about four o’clock.”

  It was not yet three. Renata laughed and walked lightly across the room and sat down on the high-backed Victorian divan, shabby like everything else in the room. Seymour stood with his elbow on the mantel, looking at her.

  “Of course you are an irresistibly fascinating woman,” he said.

  She made as if mockingly to pull her features into a serious expression and said, pointing to the piano in the corner, “This is where Randalo practise? This is his piano?”

  Seymour nodded. “I’m afraid he practises, or used to, too much.”

  “Is true. I tell you, he is too serious. It is not—” she changed her remark to a question. “Is good for a young man? I ask you!”

  “As I said, you are extraordinarily fascinating and I am afraid Randall doesn’t know how to—shall we say, appreciate it?”

  “Randalo is good like the God. But a child.”

  “And you are not quite the plaything for a child?” He strolled across the room and sat down beside her on the divan.

  “What you think?”

  “Oh,” he said, “I make a great point of never thinking.”

  She gave a small laugh and said, “Italian men do not think either. A man beautiful like Randalo in my country—!”

  “Such a man wouldn’t have Randall’s virtues, either. He would only want pleasure.”

  “And who does not?” Her eyes opened wide. “What kind of man is it you describe?—or what woman?”

  “Anyway—”

  “Anyway.” She looked at him with frank curiosity. “I wonder.”

  After a silence he said, “You are surely not wondering if I am like my brother?”

  “All Americans.”

  “You could try and see.”

  “I could?” Her eyebrows rose. Her hand lay on the divan and he picked it up and turned its palm to his lips. Presently she raised her other hand to the back of his head. They did not speak again, absorbed in the exchange of subtle pleasures. Light tentative caresses were followed by greater, and those by a graceful, melting motion which joined their figures prone on the divan. Half an hour passed. When they spoke again, Seymour was sitting in one of the low parlor chairs, smoking one of his Turkish cigarettes. Renata, casually making order of her hair and costume before the glass over the mantel, smiled at him with approval as he said, “You do know how to give pleasure.”

  “Is true,” she said, “and perchè no? Also I like to enjoy.”

  “Your frankness could be disconcerting, you know.”

  “But not to you!”

  “Oh, to me!” He took off his heavy glasses which he had only a moment ago put on, and polished them with his handkerchief. “I am hard to embarrass, Renata.”

  “I too. But I want no problem, this could very easy become one.”

  “Not,” said Seymour, tweaking his moustache, “if we chose to consider this episode forgotten. A moment, isolated, you know—”

  She turned from the mirror, pretty and dainty and very self-possessed.

  “Vediamo,” she said lightly. “What has nothing to do with nothing else—”

  “Naturally that is my own view too. But—” he made a gesture at the room and shook his head. She nodded and laughed shortly and tilted her chin, saying, “I am sure you are clever. Already you prove—” she broke off and took from her purse the keys to her trunks and went over to unlock them and begin to find the things she wanted.

  Randall came in a little before five o’clock. Renata was packing into a suitcase the things she had sorted out and Seymour was still sitting in the tufted chair smoking cigarettes. Renata turned to Randall with a delighted smile and seemed almost about to embrace him.

  “Ah, eccoti!” she cried. “How is, in your chiesa pagana?”

  “Cooler than anywhere else, thank goodness.” Randall looked at the things she had strewn about and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Oh no, caro, thank you is nearly finish’. What we do th
is evening?” she asked, including both brothers in her question which assumed that there was some plan to include them all. Seymour answered, “The car should be ready by now. I’ll go and get it and pick up Marietta and we’ll drive somewhere for dinner.”

  “Benissimo,” said Renata. “I like Marietta. She is your amante, no?—” she asked Seymour. Randall made a sign of despair for her lack of reticence. “Your mistress?”

  Seymour laughed noisily. “I must say,” he said to Randall, “your lady is a caution.”

  Renata seemed glad to return to the farm on Sunday night. Walt Maynard met them at the station and drove them home under a darkly starlit sky. The air was delicious after the steaming cauldron of New York, but Randall had already remarked how little that seemed to bother Renata. “Is like Milano,” she shrugged. She sat contentedly in the wagonette, her hand in Randall’s, like that of a child. She had been very sweet in the train, perhaps a little tired, he thought, but gentler and less flippant than usual. He wondered if she had really given any serious thought to his plea. Perhaps it was a good thing that she and Seymour appeared to have hit it off so well. Almost every word she said in his presence and Marietta’s kept them rocking with laughter. She adored the wonderful scarlet motor car and the excursions it made possible. Randall would have liked to keep her to himself all summer at the Maynards’ farm but he had never believed she would stay in retreat so long. If she must have gaiety and convivality, better they all have it together.