by May Sarton
“I don’t think I should have liked Sarah,” Sally said decidedly, “she was righteous wasn’t she? She never doubted herself.”
Would she have felt this three weeks ago? Wouldn’t Sarah St. Leger three weeks ago have been the one person she was searching for in the past of the house? She after all had had a social conscience. The words came to Sally’s mind like curiosities from another world. I’m changing, she thought, with panic. I’m no longer the same.
“But,” she said turning to Charles, “she does add something to the history of the house, doesn’t she? I guess it’s big enough to contain all kinds of life—a cosmos.”
Charles smiled. “A cosmos sounds a bit exaggerated.”
“Americans like big words,” and Sally laughed at her former self. “You’re quite right, Charles. It’s just an old house lost in the green—that’s all it needs to be. Oh dear,” she sighed, “there I go again, no sense of proportion as Aunt Violet would say.”
“People with no sense of proportion get things done,” Charles answered, enjoying the argument and Sally’s quick response.
Sally met the amused regard in his eyes. It was nice to be admired. It made her feel set up, grown-up, not clumsy as she always did with Violet. She did not need or want to be one with Charles, so she was not afraid. Not even when he closed his strong warm hand over hers. It seemed natural, the pact that sealed a good day.
But to Charles this gesture had acted as an explosion of life. This was not love or anything like it, but only a way to recapture his sense of himself. Violet would receive the full impact, not Sally.
She felt it at once when he came in, the physical triumph in him. She felt it later in the return of a kind of violence, almost brutal in its self-absorption. He made love to her as if she weren’t there, as if he were battling some unknown antagonist, perhaps time. It was as if he were saying “Hurry, hurry, we’ll be dead before”—what? What he meant was that he had to prove himself again with a new person to be reassured, and that for a while Violet would have to be a lightning conductor. Violet knew this mood. It had always been the first warning of a love affair.
And now she was afraid for herself, for Charles (would he be hurt?), above all for Sally who probably had no idea what she was doing. She had never cared before about the other woman. Charles took what he wanted. He did it cleanly and well, she thought, with a kind of admiration. He cut out remorse, carried himself with an athletic balance like a swimmer in a strong tide. She had never been foolish enough to stand in his way, knowing always that the tide would eventually turn back to her and quite willing to accept a double standard. But now it was different; she was responsible; she was involved in two ways.
Violet dreamed that she was caught in weeds at the bottom of a pond, waking half strangled by the sheet, in a sweat of fear. All night the rain and wind poured down against the windows.
Violet woke to the knowledge that she would have to intervene, warn. This was so against her nature that she forced herself quickly to get up, still in a dressing gown, before she might weaken in her resolution of the night, and climb the narrow stairs to speak to Sally.
“I have to go to the village,” she said briskly, finding Sally smoking in bed, dropping ash into her saucer. “Why don’t you come too? It’s not a long walk and it will do us both good to get out into the air.”
“Alone?” Sally asked, with so much hope flowing into her face that Violet winced.
“Of course, darling.”
Sally felt wildly elated as they set out. She even loved the rain as they sloshed along, loved the feel of the big splashes of mud on her bare legs and the amazingly warm wet wind on her face.
“It’s so warm,” she said smelling the air. “Why haven’t we done this before?”
Charles was disgruntled at being left behind, but Violet had been superb. She had said, “No Charles, we want to go alone. This is a female expedition.”
Every now and then a gust of wind let fall a heavy shower from the trees overhead. Then they ducked and ran. They were quite breathless when they closed the gate and came out onto the main road, the dip and curve of it like a river, Sally thought, only a river that climbs hills. Walking beside Violet all her responses were heightened. There was no need to talk. Since two days before it seemed to Sally that communion had been established, not on her terms perhaps, but on Aunt Violet’s, and as a result of this her eyes and every sense were awake, alive. She would have liked to lay her cheek against the wet grass and breathe in the smell of earth. The rain which touched her more actually even than sunlight seemed like a caress. The whole world had become a receptacle for the reverberations of love. She was very happy.
Now there came a lull in the wind, Violet decided that the moment had come to speak.
“Charles,” she said, “is in one of his moods, I’m afraid.”
“He’s bored by the rain,” Sally said quickly comforting for she caught the anxiety in Violet’s tone, “but last night he seemed quite gay. Surely you’re not worried, Aunt Violet?”
“Yes—no…” Violet walked on fast as if she could leave behind her what she had to say and didn’t want to say. “Sally,” she plunged in, because now they would be in the village in a few minutes, “you’re a very attractive girl.”
“But?” Sally was frozen with fear. She sensed that her aunt was going to say something withering. The tone was severe.
“But nothing. That’s all.” Violet had been walking too fast and was out of breath. She felt disgustingly tired.
“Why are you worried about Charles? Does he go into tailspins?” Sally couldn’t believe it. Charles seemed so solid.
“In a way,” Violet smiled at Sally’s passionate directness. “This time it would not be a good idea. I thought I’d better warn you.”
Sally absorbed this entirely unexpected statement slowly. It was true that Charles had been rather excited, true that he had, she supposed, flirted with her last night. But it was unbelievable that Violet should make an issue of this. It had meant nothing to her beyond a happy feeling of being admired and accepted. Was her aunt jealous of such a little thing?
“But Aunt Violet…” She said miserably, and then could go no further into a statement, nor for that matter along the road. They stood in the rain, Sally searching her aunt’s face, but her aunt refused to lift her eyes. Violet was adjusting her raincoat nervously. She seemed absent.
“Sally, please understand,” she said then, as sharply as if she were a governess. “These things happen. I have never minded.”
“Why not?” Sally asked. “I should mind—dreadfully.”
“Didn’t you say something once about Ian and his women, his needing to be admired?”
“Ian’s not my husband,” said Sally shortly. In one second of violent revulsion she realized that she had really all the time been in love not only with Violet but with her marriage, with Charles and Violet as an entity. It was as if the atmosphere she had felt so powerfully, the thing she had resisted at first, the charm of these two people, the charm of their life together against which her relation with Ian was slowly disintegrating—as if all this now were breaking to pieces inside her. It was awful. What was left then? Life itself had become in a second cheap, sordid, not worth for a moment what it cost. Sally laughed a hard little laugh. She had never heard herself make such a sound before.
“Let’s go,” she said, “I want to see the village.”
Violet was appalled at what she had done. She could at this moment have wept all the tears she had never wept through all the years of her marriage. In one way or another the innocence in her keeping had been damaged. And she was responsible.
“It might have been different if we’d had children,” she said, trying to be reasonable, not to be sucked down into Sally’s violent mood.
“No, it wouldn’t have been different. Men are pigs, that’s all. I might have known.” Sally felt real horror that she had allowed Charles to touch her. What had he told Violet?
&nbs
p; “Darling, please don’t be so upset. Nothing will happen. It’s all to be just the same, that’s why I spoke at all, to keep it this way. Lately I’ve hoped, perhaps wrongly, that you were beginning to be happy here—”
“I wasn’t happy,” Sally said in her new hard voice. “But I was alive.” She sounded as if life were now over and Violet restrained the smile which this violence compelled.
“I expect I’ve been talking nonsense—these days have got on our nerves. Will you forgive me?” They were approaching the first grey stone houses of the village, the slate roofs almost black in the rain. Violet felt panic rising in her.
“One doesn’t forgive the truth,” Sally said. “It’s not a crime.” She had turned away and was walking along ahead, not looking back.
It had been hard for Violet to speak at all. It had been a violation of her deep will not to discuss Charles. Now she was completely silenced. She followed Sally, caught up with her, and talked of other things. She did not know what she had done, nor why Sally seemed so angry and upset. Sally herself hardly knew.
It was a relief to them both when they came to the wine merchant’s shop. Mrs. O’Connell, a woman with a kind plain face, greeted Violet warmly.
“Well, Mrs. Gordon. It’s a pleasure to see you out on a day like this. Come in, come in, you’d better have a cup of tea.”
“This is my American niece, Mrs. O’Connell, Sally Calvert.”
“Your sister’s daughter, is she? Well, Miss, I surely am glad to see you,” she said, shaking hands and looking at Sally with a beaming smile. “You don’t look like your mother, though,” she added, “more like her great-grannie, isn’t she?” she asked Aunt Violet. “She has her great-grannie’s dark eyes.”
She had led the way out of the rather dark shop into a small back parlor, with linoleum on the floor, three uncomfortable straight chairs in it, a vase with artificial flowers on the window sill, and two rather garish lithographs of the Holy Family. Sally looked around her with interest. Also she wanted to hear more about her great-grannie. She felt now that she must step behind Aunt Violet and Uncle Charles, further back into the past, to find some safety.
“Tell me about my great-grannie, Mrs. O’Connell,” Sally asked shyly when they had sat down in the three chairs.
“Oh your great-grannie was a love,” Mrs. O’Connell said, getting up again. “Now Mrs. Gordon, may I offer you a glass of sherry—since you’ve brought your niece, and since it’s such a wet morning?”
“Don’t trouble,” Violet said, but this Sally knew was one of the forms. Mrs. O’Connell came back with three glasses and a bottle. “It’s the dry you like,” she said.
“Well you’re spoiling us…” Violet smiled her lovely smile, her famous smile. “Now tell us about Tommy. Has he passed the examination?”
“Next week, Mrs. Gordon. He’s terribly nervous, you know. I can’t do anything with him at all.”
“Tommy is up for a scholarship at the University,” Violet explained. “He’s going to be a doctor, isn’t he, Mrs. O’Connell?”
“So he says,” Mrs. O’Connell beamed again. “I’m sure I don’t know where he gets it from. I never could do a sum myself, and his father was a dunce, God rest his soul, though the kindest man who ever lived.”
“Well here’s to Tommy,” Violet raised her glass.
“And how’s Mr. Gordon?” Mrs. O’Connell asked. “And how does your niece find it here. It’s your first visit, is it, Miss?” It was extraordinary Sally thought, what an atmosphere of friendship, of real interest and curiosity of the kindest nature flowed out from Mrs. O’Connell’s plain face. It was just the opposite of the gaucheness of the Desmonds, who from gaucheness perhaps, seemed to have no curiosity at all. They had not asked her even how she “found it here.”
“I’ve never been in Ireland before. But I think it’s lovely,” she said, suddenly glad to be here in the little back parlor where so many things were taken for granted. Her aunt, for instance. Mrs. O’Connell was not a shopkeeper from whom one bought liquor, she was a friend. And her aunt was not the lady of the Great House but one of the Denes who had always been here, who were part of everything like the trees and the hills. It was very restful.
“She really hates the house,” Aunt Violet said wickedly. But she couldn’t resist.
“Oh no, Mrs. Gordon, you’re teasing the poor child. Why her great-grannie used to say, every summer, she said it, right here in this very room, ‘If I can just manage to die here in Dene’s Court, Mrs. O’Connell, that’s all I ask now.’”
“Did she die here?” Sally asked.
“No, the poor soul. She did not. She was taken in London, far from us all.” Mrs. O’Connell thought about this with real feeling. Then, just as the skies did when the sudden bursts of sun broke through the massed clouds, she chuckled, “You may hate the old house,” she said, looking mischievously at Sally, “but you’ll come back, won’t she, Mrs. Gordon? The Denes all come back to the house, sooner or later. Now who would have thought you and Mr. Gordon would be coming after all, you so far away, and the strange stamps on the Christmas cards? Many’s the time I used to say to my husband, ‘We’ll never see Miss Violet,’ and indeed he did not,” she sighed. “But here you are. And a good thing it is too. We don’t like to see the house empty.” Then she asked again, “And how’s Mr. Gordon?”
“At the moment I think he’s cursing the weather,” Violet said. “And we really must get back and cheer him up.” She rose. They said good-bye and thank you. They waved at Mrs. O’Connell standing in the door.
“What a terribly nice woman,” Sally said.
They felt warmer and the black mood had passed, thanks to Mrs. O’Connell. They could afford to walk quickly without speaking, without thinking. As she turned to fasten the gate behind them at the entrance to the long avenue, Sally realized that it was the second time she was coming back to the house. And even this brief excursion into the village, sad-looking, all dark grey stone, low houses one beside another, the post office that looked like a jail, an ugly brick church—even this hour away made a difference.
“We’re nearly home,” she said. Home? She had said “home.” She had said it quite naturally, without thinking. It was strange.
Now they were coming round the bend from under the dripping trees, they saw the house from the side, buttressed at the back by the offices and stables, and from here, somewhat softened and sheltered by the high trees. It had stopped raining. There was only the sound of dripping from the leaves, from the gutters and a seeping crepitant sound of earth absorbing water, and the sound of their own steps loudly crunching the gravel.
Charles came out on the terrace, looked up at the sky, and waved a welcome to them and to the clearing weather. For a second the scene appeared to Sally like an engraving “The Return.” We have been on a long journey, she thought, and now we are coming home. But then she remembered (and it disgusted her like the sight of a large fat slug on the path) what Aunt Violet had said about Charles, about the marriage. All of this is false then, all of it, she thought, except—and she looked up at the steadying, implacable stone face of the house—except You. You, she thought, are real, steadfast, pure, all that we are not.
She walked up to the terrace alone and went in, hardly glancing at Charles. What she wanted was to find the portrait of her great-grandmother on the wall.
Then as if it was the only possible thing to do she went straight down the back stairs to the kitchen. Sally stood in the doorway and looked around for a moment before she was noticed. Annie was back to her at the stove pouring hot water onto tea. Maire was sitting at the table, polishing silver and so intent that she did not lift her head. It had the homeliness and beauty of a scene painted by one of the Flemish painters where the humblest occupations and objects are quietly exalted. Sally looked with amazement at the huge tureens and spiders hanging by the stove, at the shelves still filled with the oil lamps and candles of other days, and felt the peace, the continuity of all this, of the innu
merable cups of tea that had been sipped here, and the innumerable fires lit while upstairs personal relations wound and unwound themselves, feverish and unreal.
“Hello,” she said, “may I have a cup of tea?”
“Surely, Miss, and welcome,” Annie beamed upon her.
“I wondered how long it would take you to find your way down. I’ve been expecting you,” she said, laying out the cups and saucers, as Maire pushed aside her cloth and looked shyly at Sally.
“What a wonderful kitchen!” Sally said.
Annie laughed, “Wonderful it may be, but it’s dark and gloomy, and that’s a fact.”
“I like it,” Sally said, going over to the stove and warming her hands.
“And so did your mother,” Annie said nodding her approval. ‘your mother used to spend hours down here, baking her dolls’ food, you know, and crying in Annie’s lap too, the poor Little thing.”
“Why was she poor?” Sally asked, sitting down at the table and holding up her cup for Annie to pour into. She looked hard at Annie’s face which she had not really seen before. It gave one a feeling of security. It must have always looked exactly as it did now, except that the straggly topknot was flecked with white.
“Sure, it’s a long story and I’ll not be boring you with it.” This was clearly a prelude. Sally stirred her tea, adding more milk. It tasted wonderfully better than the tea upstairs.
“I guess she minded Aunt Violet,” Sally said, to lead Annie on, for she could guess what was coming.
“Mind is not the word. She suffered cruelly. And there was nothing Miss Violet could do about it, kind as she is and was. But she couldn’t have done more harm if she’d laid a curse, and that’s a fact,” Annie said, shaking her head. “So it was right and fair that your mother went faraway over the ocean to find her happiness, sad as it was to see her leave the house and not return.”