by S T Joshi
“I don’t mind the rain,” the old lady said. “It wouldn’t be the first time it’s rained around the tower.”
“I don’t mind it,” Margaret said hastily, drawing away from the window. She realized that she was staring back at the cat, and added nervously, “Although, of course, getting wet is—” She hesitated and the cat stared back at her without expression. “I mean,” she said apologetically, “some people don’t like getting wet.”
The cat deliberately turned its back on her and put its face closer to the window.
“What were you saying about Paul?” Margaret asked the old lady, feeling somehow that there might be a thin thread of reason tangling the old lady and the cat and the tower and the rain, and even, with abrupt clarity, defining Margaret herself and the strange hesitation which had caught at her here in the tower. “He’s going away soon, you know.”
“It would have been better if it were over with by now,” the old lady said. “These things don’t take really long, you know, and the sooner the better, I say.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Margaret said intelligently.
“After all,” said the old lady dreamily, with raindrops in her hair, “we don’t always see ahead, into things that are going to happen.”
Margaret was wondering how soon she might politely go back downstairs and dry herself off, and she meant to stay politely only so long as the old lady seemed to be talking, however remotely, about Paul. Also, the rain and the wind were coming through the window onto Margaret in great driving gusts, as though Margaret and the old lady and the books and the cat would be washed away, and the top of the tower cleaned of them.
“I would help you if I could,” the old lady said earnestly to Margaret, raising her voice almost to a scream to be heard over the wind and the rain. She stood up to approach Margaret, and Margaret, thinking she was about to fall, reached out a hand to catch her. The cat stood up and spat, the rain came through the window in a great sweep, and Margaret, holding the old lady’s hands, heard through the sounds of the wind the equal sounds of all the voices in the world, and they called to her saying, “Goodbye, goodbye,” and “All is lost” and another voice saying, “I will always remember you,” and still another called, “It is so dark.” And, far away from the others, she could hear a voice calling, “Come back, come back.” Then the old lady pulled her hands away from Margaret and the voices were gone. The cat shrank back and the old lady looked coldly at Margaret and said, “As I was saying, I would help you if I could.”
“I’m so sorry,” Margaret said weakly. “I thought you were going to fall.”
“Goodbye,” said the old lady.
III
At the ball Margaret wore a gown of thin blue lace that belonged to Carla, and yellow roses in her hair, and she carried one of the fans from the fan room, a daintily painted ivory thing which seemed indestructible, since she dropped it twice, and which had a tiny picture of the house painted on its ivory sticks, so that when the fan was closed the house was gone. Mrs. Montague had given it to her to carry, and had given Carla another, so that when Margaret and Carla passed one another dancing, or met by the punch bowl or in the halls, they said happily to one another, “Have you still got your fan? I gave mine to someone to hold for a minute; I showed mine to everyone. Are you still carrying your fan? I’ve got mine.”
Margaret danced with strangers and with Paul, and when she danced with Paul they danced away from the others, up and down the long gallery hung with pictures, in and out between the pillars which led to the great hall opening into the room of the tiles. Near them danced ladies in scarlet silk, and green satin, and white velvet, and Mrs. Montague, in black with diamonds at her throat and on her hands, stood at the top of the room and smiled at the dancers, or went on Mr. Montague’s arm to greet guests who came laughingly in between the pillars looking eagerly and already moving in time to the music as they walked. One lady wore white feathers in her hair, curling down against her shoulder; another had a pink scarf over her arms, and it floated behind her as she danced. Paul was in his haughty uniform, and Carla wore red roses in her hair and danced with the captain.
“Are you really going tomorrow?” Margaret asked Paul once during the evening; she knew that he was, but somehow asking the question—which she had done several times before—established a communication between them, of his right to go and her right to wonder, which was sadly sweet to her.
“I said you might meet the great-aunt,” said Paul, as though in answer; Margaret followed his glance, and saw the old lady of the tower. She was dressed in yellow satin, and looked very regal and proud as she moved through the crowd of dancers, drawing her skirt aside if any of them came too close to her. She was coming toward Margaret and Paul where they sat on small chairs against the wall, and when she came close enough she smiled, looking at Paul, and said to him, holding out her hands, “I am very glad to see you, my dear.”
Then she smiled at Margaret and Margaret smiled back, thankful that the old lady held out no hands to her.
“Margaret told me you were here,” the old lady said to Paul, “and I came down to see you once more.”
“I’m happy that you did,” Paul said. “I wanted to see you so much that I almost came to the tower.”
They both laughed and Margaret, looking from one to the other of them, wondered at the strong resemblance between them. Margaret sat very straight and stiff on her narrow chair, with her blue lace skirt falling charmingly around her and her hands folded neatly in her lap, and listened to their talk. Paul had found the old lady a chair and they sat with their heads near together, looking at one another as they talked, and smiling.
“You look very fit,” the old lady said. “Very fit indeed.” She sighed.
“You look wonderfully well,” Paul said.
“Oh, well,” said the old lady. “I’ve aged. I’ve aged, I know it.”
“So have I,” said Paul.
“Not noticeably,” said the old lady, shaking her head and regarding him soberly for a minute. “You never will, I suppose.”
At that moment the captain came up and bowed in front of Margaret, and Margaret, hoping that Paul might notice, got up to dance with him.
“I saw you sitting there alone,” said the captain, “and I seized the precise opportunity I have been awaiting all evening.”
“Excellent military tactics,” said Margaret, wondering if these remarks had not been made a thousand times before, at a thousand different balls.
“I could be a splendid tactician,” said the captain gallantly, as though carrying on his share of the echoing conversation, the words spoken under so many glittering chandeliers, “if my objective were always so agreeable to me.”
“I saw you dancing with Carla,” said Margaret.
“Carla,” he said, and made a small gesture that somehow showed Carla as infinitely less than Margaret. Margaret knew that she had seen him make the same gesture to Carla, probably with reference to Margaret. She laughed.
“I forget what I’m supposed to say now,” she told him.
“You’re supposed to say,” he told her seriously, “‘And do you really leave us so soon?’”
“And do you really leave us so soon?” said Margaret obediently.
“The sooner to return,” he said, and tightened his arm around her waist. Margaret said, it being her turn, “We shall miss you very much.”
“I shall miss you,” he said, with a manly air of resignation.
They danced two waltzes, after which the captain escorted her handsomely back to the chair from which he had taken her, next to which Paul and the old lady continued in conversation, laughing and gesturing. The captain bowed to Margaret deeply, clicking his heels.
“May I leave you alone for a minute or so?” he asked. “I believe Carla is looking for me.”
“I’m perfectly all right here,” Margaret said. As the captain hurried away she turned to hear what Paul and the old lady were saying.
“I
remember, I remember,” said the old lady laughing, and she tapped Paul on the wrist with her fan. “I never imagined there would be a time when I should find it funny.”
“But it was funny,” said Paul.
“We were so young,” the old lady said. “I can hardly remember.”
She stood up abruptly, bowed to Margaret, and started back across the room among the dancers. Paul followed her as far as the doorway and then left her to come back to Margaret. When he sat down next to her he said, “So you met the old lady?”
“I went to the tower,” Margaret said.
“She told me,” he said absently, looking down at his gloves. “Well,” he said finally, looking up with an air of cheerfulness. “Are they never going to play a waltz?”
* * *
Shortly before the sun came up over the river the next morning they sat at breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Montague at the ends of the table, Carla and the captain, Margaret and Paul. The red roses in Carla’s hair had faded and been thrown away, as had Margaret’s yellow roses, but both Carla and Margaret still wore their ball gowns, which they had been wearing for so long that the soft richness of them seemed natural, as though they were to wear nothing else for an eternity in the house, and the gay confusion of helping one another dress, and admiring one another, and straightening the last folds to hang more gracefully, seemed all to have happened longer ago than memory, to be perhaps a dream that might never have happened at all, as perhaps the figures in the tapestries on the walls of the dining room might remember, secretly, an imagined process of dressing themselves and coming with laughter and light voices to sit on the lawn where they were woven. Margaret, looking at Carla, thought that she had never seen Carla so familiarly as in this soft white gown, with her hair dressed high on her head—had it really been curled and pinned that way? Or had it always, forever, been so?—and the fan in her hand—had she not always had that fan, held just so?—and when Carla turned her head slightly on her long neck she captured the air of one of the portraits in the long gallery. Paul and the captain were still somehow trim in their uniforms; they were leaving at sunrise.
“Must you really leave this morning?” Margaret whispered to Paul.
“You are all kind to stay up and say goodbye,” said the captain, and he leaned forward to look down the table at Margaret, as though it were particularly kind of her.
“Every time my son leaves me,” said Mrs. Montague, “it is as though it were the first time.”
Abruptly, the captain turned to Mrs. Montague and said, “I noticed this morning that there was a bare patch on the grass before the door. Can it be restored?”
“I had not known,” Mrs. Montague said, and she looked nervously at Mr. Montague, who put his hand quietly on the table and said, “We hope to keep the house in good repair so long as we are able.”
“But the broken statue by the lake?” said the captain. “And the tear in the tapestry behind your head?”
“It is wrong of you to notice these things,” Mrs. Montague said, gently.
“What can I do?” he said to her. “It is impossible not to notice these things. The fish are dying, for instance. There are no grapes in the arbor this year. The carpet is worn to thread near your embroidery frame,” he bowed to Mrs. Montague, “and in the house itself—” bowing to Mr. Montague, “—there is a noticeable crack over the window of the conservatory, a crack in the solid stone. Can you repair that?”
Mr. Montague said weakly, “It is very wrong of you to notice these things. Have you neglected the sun, and the bright perfection of the drawing room? Have you been recently to the gallery of portraits? Have you walked on the green portions of the lawn, or only watched for the bare places?”
“The drawing room is shabby,” said the captain softly. “The green brocade sofa is torn a little near the arm. The carpet has lost its luster. The gilt is chipped on four of the small chairs in the gold room, the silver paint scratched in the silver room. A tile is missing from the face of Margaret, who died for love, and in the great gallery the paint has faded slightly on the portrait of—” bowing to Mr. Montague, “—your great-great-great-grandfather, sir.”
Mr. Montague and Mrs. Montague looked at one another, and then Mrs. Montague said, “Surely it is not necessary to reproach us for these things?”
The captain reddened and shook his head.
“My embroidery is very nearly finished,” Mrs. Montague said. “I have only to put the figures into the foreground.”
“I shall mend the brocade sofa,” said Carla.
The captain glanced once around the table, and sighed. “I must pack,” he said. “We cannot delay our duties even though we have offended lovely women.” Mrs. Montague, turning coldly away from him, rose and left the table, with Carla and Margaret following.
Margaret went quickly to the tile room, where the white face of Margaret who died for love stared eternally into the sky beyond the broad window. There was indeed a tile missing from the wide white cheek, and the broken spot looked like a tear, Margaret thought; she kneeled down and touched the tile face quickly to be sure that it was not a tear.
Then she went slowly back through the lovely rooms, across the broad rose and white tiled hall, and into the drawing room, and stopped to close the tall doors behind her.
“There really is a tile missing,” she said.
Paul turned and frowned; he was standing alone in the drawing room, tall and bright in his uniform, ready to leave. “You are mistaken,” he said. “It is not possible that anything should be missing.”
“I saw it.”
“It is not true, you know,” he said. He was walking quickly up and down the room, slapping his gloves on his wrist, glancing nervously, now and then, at the door, at the tall windows opening out onto the marble stairway. “The house is the same as ever,” he said. “It does not change.”
“But the worn carpet . . .” It was under his feet as he walked.
“Nonsense,” he said violently. “Don’t you think I’d know my own house? I care for it constantly, even when they forget; without this house I could not exist; do you think it would begin to crack while I am here?”
“How can you keep it from aging? Carpets will wear, you know, and unless they are replaced . . .”
“Replaced?” He stared as though she had said something evil. “What could replace anything in this house?” He touched Mrs. Montague’s embroidery frame, softly. “All we can do is add to it.”
There was a sound outside; it was the family coming down the great stairway to say goodbye. He turned quickly and listened, and it seemed to be the sound he had been expecting. “I will always remember you,” he said to Margaret, hastily, and turned again toward the tall windows. “Goodbye.”
“It is so dark,” Margaret said, going beside him. “You will come back?”
“I will come back,” he said sharply. “Goodbye.” He stepped across the sill of the window onto the marble stairway outside; he was black for a moment against the white marble, and Margaret stood still at the window watching him go down the steps and away through the gardens. “Lost, lost,” she heard faintly, and, from far away, “all is lost.”
She turned back to the room, and, avoiding the worn spot in the carpet and moving widely around Mrs. Montague’s embroidery frame, she went to the great doors and opened them. Outside, in the hall with the rose and white tiled floor, Mr. and Mrs. Montague and Carla were standing with the captain.
“Son,” Mrs. Montague was saying. “When will you be back?”
“Don’t fuss at me,” the captain said. “I’ll be back when I can.”
Carla stood silently, a little away. “Please be careful,” she said, and, “Here’s Margaret, come to say goodbye to you, brother.”
“Don’t linger, m’boy,” said Mr. Montague. “Hard on the women.”
“There are so many things Margaret and I planned for you while you were here,” Carla said to her brother. “The time has been so short.”
Margare
t, standing beside Mrs. Montague, turned to Carla’s brother (and Paul; who was Paul?) and said “Goodbye.” He bowed to her and moved to go to the door with his father.
“It is hard to see him go,” Mrs. Montague said. “And we do not know when he will come back.” She put her hand gently on Margaret’s shoulder. “We must show you more of the house,” she said. “I saw you one day try the door of the ruined tower; have you seen the hall of flowers? Or the fountain room?”
“When my brother comes again,” Carla said, “we shall have a musical evening, and perhaps he will take us boating on the river.”
“And my visit?” asked Margaret smiling. “Surely there will be an end to my visit?”
Mrs. Montague, with one last look at the door from which Mr. Montague and the captain had gone, dropped her hand from Margaret’s shoulder and said, “I must go to my embroidery. I have neglected it while my son was with us.”
“You will not leave us before my brother comes again?” Carla asked Margaret.
“I have only to put the figures into the foreground,” Mrs. Montague said, hesitating on her way to the drawing room. “I shall have you exactly if you sit on the lawn near the river.”
“We shall be models of stillness,” said Carla, laughing. “Margaret, will you come and sit beside me on the lawn?”
RICHARD MATHESON
Richard Burton Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, in 1926. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and subsequently gained a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He married Ruth Ann Woodson in 1952; one of their sons is the noted contemporary horror and science fiction writer Richard Christian Matheson. Matheson burst onto the horror scene in 1954 with two volumes, the novel I Am Legend and the story collection Born of Man and Woman. I Am Legend is one of the most inventive elaborations of the vampire myth since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, portraying a future society in which a virus has transformed every human being, with one exception, into a vampire; it was filmed as The Omega Man. Matheson subsequently wrote The Shrinking Man (1956), filmed the next year as The Incredible Shrinking Man with his screenplay. Matheson did much work in film and television, writing many scripts for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and also for Thriller and other series. A Stir of Echoes (1958) is an effective novel about psychic powers.