“So you ran away?” Adam Hume said.
She hid her feeling of distress because her retreat had been discovered. “How did you know?” she countered.
“I was in the dining room stealing tidbits from the hors-d’oeuvres trays. I saw you. Here—have a bite of caviar.”
He held out a tiny round of bread without apology for his fingers. She had never tasted caviar and she bit into it daintily.
“Look,” she said. “Down there on the water. A ship is coming in.”
He reached past her and unhooked a latch, pushed the window ajar. An icy thrust of wind cut through Lora’s shawl and she drew back hastily, but Adam made no move to close the window.
“Listen—sometimes you can hear them. Be very still.”
At first nothing came to her but the rattle of icy boughs on the hill below, where snow had blown away and left dry winter bones to clatter. Then, faint from the water, came a faraway singing, now full, now dim with the breathing of the wind. It was no Christmas carol they sang on the homeward-bound ship, but another tune—“Home Sweet Home.”
Adam closed the window and the sound was shut away. Now the music inside drowned out all other music and dancers went whirling about the floor again.
“A waltz!” Adam cried. “As I’ve told you, I learned to waltz most beautifully in Libby. Will you honor me with this dance, Mrs. Tyler?”
Plainly he meant here and now, on this dark veranda. She drew away from him quickly.
“Oh no—please! I must go back inside.”
“How fearful you are,” he said, and put his hand firmly at her waist. “See—you’re cold. This will warm you quickly. And we have the floor to ourselves.”
She was light on her feet and once she had loved to dance. With a last worried look toward the lighted window, she gave herself up to the lilt of the music. This was a reckless thing to do. Suppose someone should find them here? Suppose Wade should turn about and peer through the window behind him into the darkness, or wonder where she was and come to find her. But the music sang and the chilled blood tingled to warmth in her veins.
“How could you learn to waltz in Libby?” she whispered.
He did not trouble to lower his tone, and it was probably true that the music hid their voices safely.
“There are times when it’s better to invent things to do than to sit around and go mad with idleness. So we held balls on occasion. Those of us who weren’t too weak or listless participated. Some of the men wore blanket shirts and shaving curls over their ears, and we pretended we were in a house like this, forgetting about the war as those people in there have forgotten.”
His hand was hard at her waist and his fingers hurt her side. She drew stiffly away from him in the dance.
“They haven’t forgotten,” she told him. “I thought that too, but they’re only pretending. The war is there, near the surface.”
He made a sound of derision. “The men perhaps, yes—those who wear uniform. The others, and some of those ninnies of women—it has never touched them at all.”
“Let’s hope it never does,” said Lora gently. “Why should you want it to?”
He looked at her in the dim light. “I suppose I do want it to reach them and hurt them.”
“But why? Why should you be angry because they haven’t been touched?”
The music ended and he let her go abruptly. She was warm enough now, not minding the chill of the veranda.
“I suppose when you’ve been in the thick of it,” he mused as if he were anxious to find a valid answer to her challenge, “and have known how little your own people care at home, how ready they are to talk treason, even in their letters to camp—well, maybe that’s why I want to wake them up. Until they do wake up we’ll never win this war.”
She could not answer him. She knew too little about the North, and she did not believe in this fighting anyway. As a new waltz started she moved toward the door, but his hand touched her arm.
“You’re not running away?”
“I must go back now,” she said.
“What are you afraid of? Why do women always scuttle like scared rabbits when they step out of the accepted pattern?”
His scorn pricked her again, but she would not let it anger her this time. “I’m not afraid. It’s simply that this is not what I want to do. I think you rather enjoy danger, Mr. Hume, even to the point of drawing others into danger with you. Does it give you some sort of satisfaction, perhaps?”
He let her arm go and opened the doors to the hall, looking first to see if anyone was there.
“Go back then, little rabbit,” he said, and she saw that he was laughing at her. “You’re dangerous yourself. You see through a man as no lady ever should.”
She hurried back inside and flung off the shawl before anyone should guess where she had been. When she turned back to him his laughter had stilled and she saw that he was staring at her dress.
“You should never wear green,” he said shortly.
So he too remembered. She almost ran back to the lighted room, slipping between the dancers to find her way to the safety of Wade’s side. She wanted nothing to do with danger. She wanted only peace and safety and a healing of old wounds.
A short time later Serena Lord, buxom and shining with happiness on the arm of her husband, came to invite their guests to refreshments. Ladies and gentlemen began to file into the dining room where a lavish repast was spread upon table and sideboard. A maid in white uniform and a houseman in white coat stood ready to serve, but Serena hovered about to see that everything went smoothly, and Edgar took up his post near the bottles of wine and champagne.
Lora waited while Wade, never liking to be thought helpless because of his crutch, filled her plate. She drew back into a corner of the dining room where she could watch the bright crowd and wonder about these people. How happy Serena Lord looked tonight, for all that she wore the normal concern of a hostess. Envying her a little, Lora saw Serena glance the length of the room to meet her husband’s eyes. A look of such affection and respect flashed between them that there was about it an almost physical touching. It was the way a husband and wife should be able to look at each other across a room, with secret recognition and deep love.
Lora dropped her gaze hastily because she had no right to spy, but her interception of that look made loneliness rush through her. In spite of herself, her eyes sought Wade’s at the far end of the table. Not with hope, or for reassurance, but only because there was no one else she could look to. He saw her glance and raised the plate, smiling, as if food were her only interest. To him she was hardly more than a casual dinner companion, and there was an aching in her throat for something she would never know.
Wade came toward her on his crutch, her plate held in his other hand. She turned half away, knowing he would not want her to watch his awkward approach, and her eye was caught by the handsomely arranged tray on a stand nearby. Along the studiously scalloped edge of the pattern two small rounds were missing. Rounds of caviar, undoubtedly. She smiled in amusement and managed to recover herself before Wade reached her.
Adam was nowhere in sight, so probably he had made some further raid on the dining room and was off eating alone. Once during the evening Lora had heard Serena explaining that her brother was not very well—the fever, you know. But Lora thought him surly and inconsiderate. Regardless of his own dislike for society, he might have sought to please his sister.
“Here you are, my dear,” Wade said, handing her the plate. “Let me settle you somewhere while I take care of my own.”
“I don’t mind waiting for you here,” Lora assured him. “Don’t hurry.”
Morgan Channing and her blond companion came into the room just then and Lora’s interest quickened as if she were attending a play. Wade could not escape these two now, and she wondered what the unpredictable Morgan would do if she came face to face with him.
The encounter followed almost at once. Wade had not seen the two step into line behind him. Re
aching toward a bowl of potato salad, he jostled Murray Norwood’s arm, and turned at once in apology. The flare of color to his face when he saw Morgan so near at hand was more than Lora had expected. She watched him, startled now, for the first time putting some belief in the things his mother had said.
Morgan spoke before Wade had completed his apology to Mr. Norwood. Her manner was as easy as that of a lady who meets an old friend whom she has seen no longer ago than yesterday, but Lora found the look she turned upon Wade less casual.
“Good evening, Wade. May I present Mr. Norwood? I think you and he may have a number of interests in common.”
Wade set down his plate and took the other man’s hand. He looked as if he wanted to ignore Morgan but could not do so without being conspicuous. He spoke to her restrainedly, managing an exchange of pleasantries with Norwood before they started on about the table. Morgan had veiled the quick intensity of her first look and now seemed a little contemptuous and amused. This belied Mother Tyler’s belief that she still wanted Wade, Lora thought. Surely a woman could not love a man and look at him so scornfully. At least she—Lora—could not.
That was one reason, she thought as she went back to the drawing room with Wade, that she was glad to see him tonight in this gathering of clever, well-to-do people. She liked the affection with which they seemed to regard him. Even if she could not love, she wanted their respect and admiration for Wade to grow.
They found their former places in the drawing room empty and took them again. Soon the room buzzed with the voices of returning couples and there was the clink of silverware against china, the high laughter of women, the deeper voices of men.
Strangely, Lora found herself trying to pretend that her own position was similar to Serena’s, to imagine that she and Wade, just for these hours, were drawn together in the closeness of a true marriage relationship. It was as if by playing this role she could shut away all doubt, forget the mockery that had looked out at her from Adam Hume’s eyes.
But the fragile web of pretense collapsed when Wade reached out with his napkin to wipe at a spot on her billowing green skirt.
“I’m afraid you’ve dropped a bit of mayonnaise on your gown,” he said regretfully.
She wiped at the spot with her own napkin and his hand fell back to finger the green brocade almost caressingly. After that Lora could no longer pretend. As the evening wore on and Wade’s still-lagging strength began to fade, she sensed his own withdrawal from the gaiety about him. For him too the tinsel had fallen away.
In the dark early hours of the morning, when they drove home through falling snow, they had little to say. Obviously Wade was lost in memories of his own and wanted no breaking through on her part.
Lora went up to her room and lighted a candle. There, where she had left it in the middle of the floor, the garnet-hued gown burned like a dark flame. She picked it up and hung it away in the wardrobe sadly. The green dress she carried back to Virginia’s room to replace in the wardrobe there.
In the light from the candle she carried she saw with a start that Wade lay across the bed. When he heard her he sat up.
“I must ask you not to come in here again,” he said, and his tone was colder than she had ever heard it.
She did not speak to him at all. She drew her robe close about her and hung the green gown away as quickly as she could. She did not look at him again as she turned and went out of the room, her shadow swaying up the wall as she moved. There was nothing in her now of pity or gentleness. She felt only a despairing impatience for the man on the bed, and she did not in the least care whether or not he knew it.
XIII
In spite of her few hours of sleep, Lora awoke while it was still dark on Christmas morning. For a few moments she lay quiet and warm beneath her quilts, feeling the weight of unhappiness pressing her down. She could not recall in the fog of sleep why she must feel unhappy, but knew only that despair lay waiting to engulf her as soon as she could remember.
Then recollection of the party and the ending last night swept back. But now she put the memory aside. Today was Jemmy’s day and neither she nor Wade mattered. That was why she had set herself to waken early.
She knew very well what little boys were like. This was Christmas and surprises had been prepared. No weight could hold a small boy down on such a morning, and she must be ready for him. Jemmy might have no belief in Santa Claus, but he believed in the coming of presents, since she had prepared him, and he would not be disappointed. She had not seen Ambrose again since the day she had arranged for the puppy to be brought here Christmas morning, but she felt sure she could count on Jemmy’s grandfather.
Yesterday she had found time to wrap the presents she had bought for him in town, including those which should come from Wade. There were other packages to go under the tree as well; the writing case for Wade, the cap and shawls for his mother. And of course Jemmy had been busy making and wrapping things he meant to give.
Lora gathered up her packages and stole softly downstairs through the still, cold house. It wouldn’t hurt to start a fire even though it was early. She set her parcels down and knelt before the hearth in the parlor. The kindling responded with a lively snapping and when she was sure the blaze had caught she returned to distributing packages beneath the tree.
Before long she heard a creaking on the stairs and a moment later the door opened a crack and Jemmy looked in uncertainly.
“Come in by the fire and get warm,” said Lora cheerfully, as though he had never stormed at her last night because of the green dress.
Relieved, he sidled into the room in his nightshirt, his own arms filled with tissue-wrapped packages. Over one arm hung a long red and white striped stocking. He distributed the parcels beneath the tree and then turned to her doubtfully.
“I didn’t know if I was supposed to hang up a stocking. Of course I don’t believe in all that chimney stuff, but I thought—”
“Of course you’re supposed to,” Lora said. “But it should have been hung up on Christmas Eve. Don’t make such a mistake next year. Now you’ll have to scoot back to bed while somebody fills it. It’s much too early to be up for good anyway. Your papa will be tired after the party last night. We must let him sleep.”
“Tell me about the party,” he said shyly. “Tell me what you did and how everybody looked. Was Uncle Adam there? Did you dance with him?”
She shook her head. “You’re not going to wheedle me like that. I’ll tell you later, not now. If you really want that stocking filled, you’ll have to go back to bed right away.”
“You are a tyrant,” he said. “You are a queen tyrant.”
“And you,” she told him, “are my faithful slave. Depart, slave.”
The slave actually giggled, sounding younger than she had ever hear him sound. He made her a low salaam at the door and “departed.”
When she heard the stairs creak agan she busied herself stuffing his brightly colored stocking with the small gifts she had prepared for just this purpose. The little paperweight with its snow scene went into the toe and on top of it went an orange with a green ribbon tied about its plump sides. Next a loose handful of nuts to fill up the cracks, another orange and a small packet of sweets, a little calendar with a bright angel pictured on it, and right at the top, hooked over the stocking edge, the wishbone she had saved, graced with a big red bow.
By the time she had done the unhappy weight with which she had awakened had lifted a little and she hummed to herself as she stood back to examine the effect of her work. The packages looked gay and inviting, and by spreading them out to the best effect she had accomplished an illusion of plenty. There should have been more, if only others beside herself and Jemmy had taken an interest. But with the arrival of the puppy everything else would dwindle to unimportance, so quantity would not matter.
As she thought of the puppy her heart began to thump, both in anticipation of Jemmy’s joy, and in uneasiness over what his grandmother might do. But this morning she felt
strong, even ruthless. She would face up to this whole household if necessary. Jemmy should have his puppy and he should keep his puppy, if Lora Tyler had anything to say about it.
A tormenting voice in her mind inquired whether she would have anything to say about it, but she thrust it away quickly. This morning she had all the natural optimism and courage of her youth. She would even fight Wade for Jemmy’s sake today. She no longer felt angry with Wade, but she did not feel particularly pitying either. She was beginning to think that perhaps pity was not good for him. Perhaps Virginia herself had not been altogether good for him—not when she had made him so dependent that he thought he was nothing without her.
She went back up the stairs with her long braid swinging against her back, her spine stiff with determination. One thing at a time. This morning—Jemmy.
She knew she could not go back to sleep, so she lighted a fire in her room and dressed in her old brown wool. She wished she might have had something new and festive to wear on Christmas Day. She had a bit of holly, however, to pin at the white collar of her dress, and that gave her a more festive air.
Jemmy had not gone back to sleep either, and when he had dressed, he came tapping at her door for company. She let him in gladly and they sat before the fire while she told him about the party—weaving the details out in storybook fashion. But she did not tell him about the reckless moment when she had danced with Adam Hume on the dark veranda. That was something she wanted to forget. Nor did either of them mention Virginia’s green gown.
At breakfast Mrs. Tyler too wanted to hear about the party. Who had attended? What had been served? Wade did not come to the table until rather late and he looked so white and drawn that his presence dampened the Christmas enthusiasm which Lora and Jemmy had been building between them. Again, in her account to Mrs. Tyler, Lora made certain omissions. She did not, for instance, indicate that Morgan Channing had been at the party. A little to her surprise, Wade was less careful.
The Quicksilver Pool Page 14