None of us at the university had heard from Julian for so long that if we had not forgotten him, we had pretty well stopped talking about him. The offer of his old chair in the physics department was still open, of course, and Arthur Wallace and I had occasionally talked over ways and means of persuading him to come back to it, until one day we realized that we no longer even knew where he was. That had been Julian’s fault, too, for he had never answered our letters. For a time I had felt that I ought to keep in touch with him merely in order to be sure that Anne was all right. But after her note telling me that she was going abroad to study, even that motive disappeared. The memory of Julian had retreated into the background of my mind.
In saying that I seldom thought of him I don’t mean to imply that I had forgotten him. There were too many ties between us for that. The earliest went back to the years when I had been struggling to earn my way through college, tending lawns, firing furnaces, even washing dishes for the education that I was so determined to get. Julian had somehow picked me from his entire sophomore physics course for special attention and, when he found out my circumstances, he made me give up all my outside jobs and work for him as a laboratory assistant. He did it without sentiment, merely as though he were arranging the apparatus for an experiment, but I think he saw something in me that pleased him. Our relationship was a curious one—utterly impersonal and yet intensely close by the very nature of the work together. He had a driving scientific passion for discovery and the apprehension of truth that stimulated me. I learned from him then that the universe was larger than man. I came, in time, to be fond of him, as well as grateful.
There was that past between us, and another. About it I shall have more to say later, but the fact that we had both loved the same woman kept us together even when I had gone into a different field of work and begun to teach. I thought of Helen often enough, and that meant thinking of Julian, too, at least indirectly. He and I had shared work, love, and grief in a curious pattern. I found myself half afraid to see him; the things that we had in common were strong and deep, and I did not know what they would do to me if they were to rise up again after the truce of years.
Well, there was no use speculating or opening up old unhappinesses. I paid for my breakfast and went out to the car. As I came through the door I saw that my driver was still sitting behind the wheel. Beside the car, with one foot on the running board, was a thin, sharp-faced man in blue jeans and a white shirt open at the neck. My driver and this fellow were two of a kind, I thought, a kind that I did not understand and felt ill at ease about, without knowing exactly why. When I came out of the Elite Lunch neither of them was talking, but I had a suspicion that they had been, a moment before, and about me.
Why it should be so disquieting to think that strangers have been discussing you I don’t exactly know, but it is. I crossed the sidewalk swiftly and got into the back of the car again. The stranger, with one foot on the running board, bent his body just enough to let me get in without my having actually to shoulder him out of the way.
“All set,” I informed the driver.
The thin man nodded to him and moved off down the street without a word. His gait was loose and bent-kneed. The way a man places his feet reveals whether he is accustomed to pavements or the ridges and furrows of ploughed fields.
At the end of the street we swung left and began to go north along a tree-lined road that followed the level of the river and sometimes ran along the very edge of the water. Within five minutes the houses of the town were behind us. In another five the farms at our left had given way to marshy pasture land. All at once we left this river road, angled abruptly right, and rattled across an unrailed wooden bridge spanning a sluggish creek. The Kennebec appeared to have swung to the east of us and I realized that for the last mile or two we had been skirting a bay in the lee of a promontory. Our new road bent constantly further to the right until I saw that we were running almost due south.
“This here’s the Point,” my driver remarked.
“I see,” I replied, wondering why he had suddenly decided to volunteer something for nothing.
“Talcott place’s down at the end.”
It was a lonely spot, I thought, about as far out of the world as you could get without going into a wilderness. “I imagined Mr. Blair would be closer to town, somehow,” I observed.
“Tain’t more’n a mile by water. You can see it right across from you at the end of River Street.”
“What is the place,” I asked, “a farm?”
“Used to be.” His tone was uninflected, but I got the impression that he thought it ought to be one still.
“Mr. Blair isn’t a farmer, exactly.”
“No?” He drove on for some time without adding to his question. The car, I noticed, was going slower and, even though the road was rough, I had an idea he wanted an opportunity to talk further. “Folks around here don’t exactly know what he is, anyhow,” he said finally.
“He’s an electrophysicist,” I remarked, hoping he wouldn’t know what the term meant.
“Do tell.” His tone gave me no indication whether he did or did not know what an electrophysicist was. “Reckon you’re right at that. Last summer, when he come here, he had the house wired fer e-lectricity. Edison people had to run poles in the better part of two miles.”
“Is that so?” I responded, but the information made me feel lighter at heart. Perhaps Julian was really working at something important, then. Anyhow, the fact that he had brought current in to this remote house of his was a hopeful sign.
The driver apparently thought the whole thing was a piece of folly. “Ayuh,” he went on, and there was satisfaction in his voice, “he did, and it cost him suthin’ I reckon.”
“It must have.”
There was another pause while we jolted along a road that became progressively worse. Then he cleared his throat again. “Who’s she? His wife?”
“No,” I said. “I expect you mean his sister-in-law.” Some impulse made me add, “His wife’s dead.”
“Hunh.” The sound might have meant anything. Then he declared, “I thought that was the girl.”
“Yes,” I said. “She must be about twenty by this time.”
He shook his head. “I don’t mean her. The other one.”
“What other one?”
“That woman.” His tone implied that he had said all he intended to.
“I didn’t know there was anyone else living with him.” For a time I said nothing, and then my curiosity got the better of me. “What does she look like?”
“She ain’t so much,” he declared dispassionately. “Mebbe she’s another of them electros.”
I started to grin at that, but something stopped me. My eye caught the rearview mirror immediately over the driver’s head. In it I could see his pale eyes, watching me intently; the glass was set at the exact angle to reveal everything in the back seat. The sight of those two cold eyes turned back upon me, appraising my least gesture, suddenly gave me pause. What business of his was it how I looked or what went on in this back seat? Did he retail the things he saw in that mirror to the whole town? Probably. This was not the city, I reminded myself.
In the next breath it occurred to me that this man was more than a simple countryman. He had a quality that made me realize suddenly how much of my life had been passed in universities, where people deal with each other according to special standards and codes, and where they conduct their lives with reference to reason and logic. Those eyes were not logical or reasonable. There was intelligence behind them—plenty of it, perhaps—but not the kind of intelligence to which I was accustomed. They had, too, their own kind of curiosity, a private brand which searched for the weakness in you and found satisfaction in it.
When my glance caught his eyes in the mirror I stared steadily into them until he dropped them again to the road. I had a feeling that the man was smiling faintly. At least, the skin at the outer corners of his eyelids had been creased into wrinkles that
suggested amusement. Evidently he was not abashed at being detected in his scrutiny of myself.
Our road was running almost due south still, and somewhat to the right of the middle of the promontory between the bay and the river. Toward the bay side the land was low, but on our left it pitched up toward the river so that the actual surface of the water on that side was out of sight. The fields we passed were mostly overgrown with harsh clumps of goldenrod, patches of scrub cedar, and the spindling stems of young tamaracks.
There was something forlorn about the Point even in the brilliance of early morning. The occasional patches of potatoes, squash, or pumpkins only emphasized the idleness of most of the fields. These scrub trees and bushes were the outposts of the wilderness, and I had the sharp feeling that winter and the wilderness were the true season and mode of this land, that man was already in retreat before them. The road, too, was viciously potholed. Whenever a wheel dropped into one of those pits that pocked its surface the whole frame of the car was wrenched.
The only other thing worth remarking was a row of raw, yellow poles running along beside us with a single strand of wire looping between them. The power line to Julian’s house, I thought. The cable looked thick.
We passed at least one farm shortly before we came to the end of that road. Perhaps there were more. Some things about the geography of Setauket Point will never leave my mind, but there are others about which I am not so clear. But however many places there were, Julian’s was the last, clear at the end of the Point. I was so busy looking out at the unfamiliar landscape that we had jolted to a halt before I saw the place, dead ahead of us.
“Here y’are,” the driver said. And then, “Fifty cents additional. Fer the wait.”
I paid him because it was simpler than to haggle, though I suspected he was secretly despising me for not protesting. He took the money with a yellow grin and put it in his pocket.
“Oh, say,” he added. “I got a telegram fer Blair. Come in yestiddy evenin’, but my cousin, he just couldn’t git round to deliverin’ it. Asked me to take it out this mornin’.” He handed me the envelope, watching me intently as I took it.
“So,” I said. “I know what this is. It’s my wire telling them I was coming. No wonder you were at the station. And maybe, no wonder the wire didn’t get delivered.”
“Asa’s been porely this week. He couldn’t make it. You didn’t git stuck at the station now, did you?” His tone was amused.
I put the envelope in my pocket. “I believe I’ll report this,” I said, and dragged my suitcase out of the back of the car.
“Folks round here are satisfied with Asa,” he observed, still grinning. “I reckon he won’t lose his job, exactly, mister.”
I said nothing for a minute, though there were plenty of words on the lips of my mind. Then I gave him a steady smile. “That’ll be all. You can go back now and tell them how I looked and what I said and how you and Asa worked it so you got a call clear out here.”
He met my smile with one of his own; it was plain that he was enjoying this situation. “We ain’t so int’rested as all that in city people,” he observed. “I wouldn’t mind a particle if I never seen another.”
“That mirror of yours tells a different story.”
The shot told. He pulled the car into gear. “Just got shooken out of true on these roads,” he said, but he did not look at me. “Wal, if you need a cab any time, the number’s 517-J. Marcys have a ’phone down the road a piece. First place on yer right.” He cut the wheel hard over, released the clutch so that the car spurted suddenly away from me, and was gone down the road.
The house which I found myself confronting was old and of a sort with which I was not familiar. I was surprised to see how large and high it stood. What appeared to be the main portion was a square, two-story clapboard building facing south. From the north wall a single-story ell extended perhaps thirty feet and linked the house proper to a barn considerably larger even than the residence part. The whole was made out of wood which the years had turned to a silver gray. The color would have delighted the eye of an artist; it was almost like that of old silver. The house was—had been—handsome, but to me it looked shabby and forsaken. Smoke was coming out of the chimney, but otherwise it looked abandoned; I could not even see curtains behind any of the windows.
In the corner of the ell, where it joined the house, was a door, but that was shut. I wondered whether I should go in there. It looked so unlike a front door that finally I carried my bag around to the south side. There was a fanlighted door there, in the middle of the wall, but it too was shut, and nothing ran to it except a beaten track through the tall weeds which skirted the baseboards of the house. Impatient with my own indecision, I finally walked along this path, my bag bumping my leg at every step, and went up three moldering wooden steps. There was no doorbell. I knocked once or twice. No answer, but when I put my hand on the knob it turned stiffly, and I walked in.
4.
INSIDE the door I found myself in a rather large hall and confronting a staircase which ran steeply up through a low ceiling. The light in the hall was dim, but I could see that the woodwork had once been very fine, the balusters beautifully turned, and the ceiling molding ornamented with dentils that looked hand cut. I put my bag down and said, “Hello, Julian,” into the shadows, aware as I spoke that my voice was almost too low to hear. There was no answer to it, anyhow, and rather than call again I tried a door to my left. This room was even dimmer than the hall; the shutters were closed and at first glance I thought the place was furnished. Then I realized that here was nothing but a sort of lumber room, stocked with a broken chair, heaps of excelsior, several packing cases with their sides or tops wrenched open, and a miscellaneous litter of trash.
This, I thought with some surprise, must be one of the best rooms in the house, and yet here it was full of old junk that belonged in the barn. Julian had never cared much for the niceties of housekeeping, and I would not have been surprised by mere untidiness, but it was somehow disturbing to find a room that must have been intended as a sitting room or parlor full of nothing but discarded boxes and packing materials. I went back to the hall with a feeling of discomfort in my mind.
The door to the right of the stairs opened on a room equally dim, but I saw at once that it must be where Julian lived when he was not working. In the mood that had begun to come over me, it was actually pleasant to discover that the house was really inhabited; there had been an uncomfortable emptiness in the hall. I looked round with interest. It was a long room but wide enough to seem well-proportioned except for the ceiling, which was only some seven feet high, or perhaps a few inches more. There were three windows in the wall facing me, and two more in the wall on my right, but all of them were shuttered. Suddenly I found myself oppressed by the dimnesses of this house, the way it was closed in upon itself, and I did something which under more conventional circumstances I should not have dreamed of. I went over to the nearest window, opened it, and threw back the shutters.
Light streamed in with the intensity of a magnesium flare. The river was acting like a great reflecting mirror; it hurled the morning sun through the breach I had made in the house’s defenses. The room leaped into view with a sudden sharpness that was cruel. The shabby furniture, the faded pattern of the wallpaper, the threadbare patches in the dull rug were exposed with bitter emphasis.
My first impression was that the place was dowdy beyond belief, and ill-cared for. Not that I have the tender sensibilities of an interior decorator, but I don’t like living in disorder, and this room was untidy in an unpleasant way. The fireplace at the far end was empty but it was littered with odds and ends of refuse. There was a vase of flowers on the mantel, still fresh and glowing with color, but they served only to underline the drab dullness of walls, chairs, and woodwork. Three or four books were lying on the floor in front of the sofa, one of them open and face down on the faded rug. Magazines and periodicals were heaped in unstable piles on the table. What few pieces o
f furniture there were looked as if they had been stationed around the room without regard to proportion or comfort. I noticed that the lamp on a table between two of the windows was greasy with kerosene and had a sooted chimney.
Then I saw beneath the superficial appearances of the room. Whoever had built the place—presumably the Talcotts—had known how to take advantage of a lordly site. As I went from window to window, throwing open the shutters, the whole sweep of the river came before my eyes. This was the tip of the promontory and the room seemed built almost over the water itself. The two south windows looked downstream and revealed the great sweep of the Kennebec’s course for miles. It almost seemed that in the clear sharpness of this morning I ought to make out the blue shimmer of the distant sea. The three windows along the eastern wall looked across water also—the width of the Kennebec itself. The river came down out of the northwest in a broad arc and leaned against the peninsula before it swung off toward Merrymeeting Bay and the ocean. Looking out of those windows, I half wondered why the pressure of that running water did not sweep the house away, but I was to learn that the eastern edge of Setauket Point was a natural dike of rock that was a match even for the river, and which lifted the house above spring floods and the winter ice.
Decidedly it was a seaman’s location. I felt as though I were in the charthouse of a vessel, and if the first Talcott had not been a sea captain I missed my guess. The very loneliness of the spot where he had chosen to put up his mansion must have reminded him of the space and desert of the sea. I stood in that faded, splendid room, looking out across water and half hypnotized by the dazzle of the sun, and thought that this was no less surprising, in its way, than the idea of Julian’s coming to Barsham Harbor. That he should have settled in such a house was beyond me then. In a way, it still is. And yet, there was a certain rightness about it, as I was to learn.
The Rim of Morning Page 26