by Anya Seton
She sat down in the bay window in the drawing room, where she could look out under the porte-cochere and watch the approaching curve of the drive as it mounted the steep little rise on which their tall mustard-colored mansion was situated.
Her eyes wandered and rested on the cast-iron stag in the center of the lawn. The stag was powdered now with fine snow along its back and antlers, and seemed very lifelike. Amos had paid nearly two hundred dollars for the stag and he was extremely proud of it.
Around the margin of the window there ran strips of colored glass, red, yellow, blue, and purple, and Hesper moved her head up and down so that she might see the stag reflected in shifting tinted worlds. A pink stag on rosy snow, and then a yellow, or a purple. A childish game invented for Henry who had shown no interest in it. “But Mama—” he had protested, “it’s only make-believe. The lawn isn’t really pink or blue, and it isn’t a real deer anyhow.”
Maybe the new baby—
Hesper started forward with a slight exclamation, and peered through the clear glass. Against the bare forsythia bushes behind the stag, she had caught sight of motion. As she stared a small man in a peaked cap stepped out onto the open snow, turning his head slowly from side to side as though he searched for something.
Her muscles tensed, ready to run to the front door and ask his business there, when he raised his head and looked straight up at the house.
Why, it’s Nat Cubby—she thought, her movement checked by astonishment. The snow had stopped, and a thin watery sunlight fell on his pallid face; the scar above his lip and three livid marks on his left cheek stood out sharply. She could see the breath vapor from his mouth and the yellowish glint of his puckered eyes.
What’s he doing here? What’s he looking for?—she thought in confusion, and for a moment she shrank back, hiding behind the portiere. Then her common sense returned. Lord, she said to herself, don’t be a fool. Go ask him!
She raised her chin and walking through the hall to the front door, flung it open. But Nat had disappeared, doubtless back through the bushes and down to the street, as he had come.
She returned to the drawing room. Probably he had just come from curiosity, wanted to see what the house looked like since they’d repainted and put the fretwork around the cupola. Maybe they’d been talking about it in the town. The most elegant mansion in Marblehead, that’s what it was, even if they wouldn’t admit it. Only why hadn’t he rung the bell? She would have been glad to have him come in—for old times’ sake. It had been a long while since she had talked to anybody from down-town, except of course Ma and Pa.
She walked restlessly about the drawing room, her earlier contented mood shattered, and conscious of a desire for companionship.
The large house seemed very still and empty. Bridget was inaudible in the basement kitchen, and Henry had gone out with Annie for his usual afternoon walk.
She tried to distract herself by a conscious appraisal of the drawing room’s elegant furnishings. The Gothic peaked walnut and mohair chairs Amos had bought in Portsmouth. The bouquet of wax roses under glass. The lithograph of a Spanish galleon sailing on a sea made of thin slabs of mother of pearl.
There was a red brocaded throw over the round center table, and in the exact middle there lay a plush and gilt album like the one in her mother’s parlor. But this was not really an album; the gilded leaves were made of china, and when the plush cover was lifted it disclosed a candy box.
“Make-believe?” Hesper said half in anger, half in question. What nonsense. Their possessions were new and fashionable and she was as proud of them as Amos was.
She heard the tinkle of the sleigh bells, and the swishing thud of the horses’ feet as the sleigh drew up under the porte-cochere, and she hurried to open the door. But the Hay-Bottses arrival did little to restore her tranquillity.
They followed Amos silently into the house. They were muffled in greatcoats, fur caps and tippets. They stood a moment before they both murmured, “How d’you do—” in tepid tones, then waited like twin cocoons, immobile by the hat rack.
George Hay-Botts was a round bullet of a man with a booming voice, and normally jovial. Emmeline Hay was the daughter of a Wiltshire squire who considered that she had lowered herself to marry George Botts, the son of a wine merchant. But George had agreeably repaid the condescension by making a fortune, first through the sale of the sherry called “Bristol Milk” and then by expansion into boot manufacturing and tanneries. The addition of his wife’s name to his own, the purchase of a country seat, and the probability of being returned for Parliament in the next elections, all contributed to Emmeline’s complacence with herself and her choice.
The trip to America, moderately entertaining at first, had long since degenerated into tedious discomfort. George had business interests to sustain him; Emmeline, after a disappointing visit to cousins in Toronto, had no interests. Nothing but a consuming desire to board the ship for England which was to sail from Boston on the sixth of January. It was this geographical nearness to Marblehead which had led George to take up the fervent invitation issued them last summer by the Portermans.
One did things like that in this excessive country, it appeared. Americans thought nothing of impounding strangers, and enthusiastically plying them with unconsidered hospitality.
Well, Emmeline thought, standing motionless in the front hall, the tip of her nose purple from the frigid drive, here we are.
“Do take off your things—” said Hesper, nervously plucking at Emmeline’s sealskin cape. “We can hang them in the closet.”
Emmeline stepped back, and carefully unfastened the hook and eye. Not even a parlor maid. One had thought the Portermans people of wealth and refinement last summer at that mountain hotel. But last summer, just after landing, one had been inclined to view Americans with a more charitable eye.
“Perishing cold, what!” said George, suddenly coming to life, and stamping his feet. The veins gleamed like red threads in his ruddy cheeks.
“Not in here—” said his wife, with a thin smile. “You Americans keep your houses extraordin’r’ly warm. It is, as I wrote my dear brother, the vicar of Whitchurch, a land of violent contrasts.”
She allowed Hesper to take the cape, and divested herself of her long furry tippet. She followed Hesper into the drawing room, and they sat down. Emmeline wore a shapeless gray wool dress, and her sealskin cap perched like a doughnut atop her faded blond hair. She folded her hands in her lap, thereby quite unconsciously exhibiting several magnificent diamond rings. She fixed a remote eye on the lithograph of the Spanish galleon, and waited.
The men sat down in two of the Gothic walnut chairs by the empty fireplace. Amos asked a question about the use of the American buffer in the Hay-Botts boot manufactury, and Hesper saw with relief that at least the men were talking.
“Would you like to go to your room, maybe?” said Hesper desperately. “Tim, the coachman, took the bags up.”
Emmeline detached her gaze from the galleon, and let it rest on Hesper’s flushed face. Extraordin’ry lookin’ woman, she thought. All that ginger-colored hair, and black eyebrows, rather poor form, overdressed like all Americans.
“Why, no—” she said. “I believe I’ll not retire to our rooms until after tea.”
Tea. Hesper swallowed. Tea was a meal in England, wasn’t it? And there was no tea in the house unless Bridget had some for herself.
Emmeline saw the consternation, and having met the situation before read its meaning. She waited, not maliciously but implacably. If one must endure overheated houses, outlandish hours and food, and in this case inadequate service, apparently, one must at least have tea.
Hesper rose, excused herself, and went down to the kitchen. Bridget had tea and further proffered the information that “them English” would probably want it at four o’clock, and it would raise the very devil with the dinner preparations, since Annie was needed in the kitchen. Hesper soothed her as best she could, ordered tea, and returned to the drawing
room.
Emmeline, appeased by the news, now thawed a trifle. She observed signs in George which meant he was interested in Mr. Porterman’s conversation, or to be explicit, a certain eagerness that meant George saw the gleam of still more money to be amassed.
She arranged herself more comfortably on the slippery mohair sofa and prepared to chat.
“Y’know, I’m quite hopeless about American geography, but I rather got the impression before we arrived that this town—uh—Marblehead, was on the seacoast.”
These chance and passionless words gave Hesper a shock.
“It is on the seacoast,” she answered hotly. “It’s—it was the foremost fishing port in New England. We have a very fine harbor.”
“Indeed? I don’t remember seeing the sea.”
“Well, of course you couldn’t from here. We’re two miles out of town. You get no idea of the town from here.”
“Indeed?” said Emmeline again, mildly astonished at the woman’s sudden vehemence.
“I was born right by the sea, in an old house, the oldest in Marblehead.”
“Ah, really?” said Emmeline, varying the formula. “How old would that be?” In Buffalo she had been urged to admire the antiquity of a preposterous frame shack built fifty years ago.
“It was started in 1630 and many rooms added on at different times.”
Emmeline was interested. Even for England that was a respectable date, and the phrase “many rooms” suggested a manorial spaciousness.
“Does your family still live there?” she asked.
“My mother and father, yes. You’ll meet them at dinner later.”
“Your father is in business here too, like Mr. Porterman?”
“Oh, no—” said Hesper, bored with this catechism and preoccupied with an inner disquiet. “He doesn’t do anything. He—he writes a little.”
Emmeline now readjusted all her ideas. Her mouth lost its condescension, and she looked upon Hesper as almost an equal, seeing here a marriage like her own, the daughter of gentry and a prospering business man—reduced, of course, to American terms, but still most reassuring.
“I should so much like to see your little town and your old home,” said Emmeline with what amounted to warmth.
“Well, I’ll drive you around tomorrow,” answered Hesper unenthusiastically and rose as Annie came bustling in with the tea tray. She found that she did not want to drive Mrs. Hay-Botts around Marblehead.
It was not that she feared to expose the town to critical eyes. Emmeline’s approval had during the last few minutes become unimportant. It was rather that she had had a sudden vision of the town as a hostile entity. She saw it crouching there two miles away, huddled beneath the snow, girdled by greenish-black water and black snow-capped rocks. She felt it accusing her, and central to it all, the nub of the accusation, she saw the shabby old, old house on the waterfront, from which she had been so glad to move with Amos. She saw it with the clarity and meaning it had had on Evan’s painted canvas, in the New York picture gallery, but now she felt an impact of warning, of brooding enmity.
What is the matter with me ? she thought, am I making all this to-do just from seeing Nat? It’s not like me to have fancies. There’s no reason for guilt. We’ve done our best by Ma and Pa, all they’d let us. I haven’t neglected them. And we improved the house, put gas in despite Pa. And as for the town, it’s nothing but a narrow-minded hard-bitten little village. If it wasn’t for the shoemen like Amos they’d all starve. I wonder if he couldn’t maybe sell the shoe factory and move away altogether. And she knew that this thought was the first sharp upthrust of what had long lain beneath the surface.
Emmeline, seeing her hostess grown grave and unresponsive, very different from the gauche eagerness to please she had shown upon the Hay-Bottses’ arrival, was still further reassured. She drank her tea, and felt that if the visit should progress along these lines of cool reserve, it might be quite endurable after all.
She said as much to her husband when they had gone upstairs to rest and dress for dinner. “Really quite decent for Americans.... Mrs. Porterman quite a lady, superior background. I freely admit, George, that I misjudged her. But one has met so many odd people while racketing around this extraord’n’ry country, one hardly knows how to judge any more. Their customs and their speech, so different from ours, but I quite realize one must be broad-minded.”
To these observations George replied with a grunt. “Porterman seems a sound enough feller. Sound business man. I’ll ’ave a look at ’is fact’ry tomorrow. Shouldn’t wonder if it wouldn’t be a good place to leave a spot of cash.”
In the Porterman bedroom across the hall, Amos and Hesper were also talking. As soon as the door was shut, he pulled her to him and gave her a hearty jubilant kiss. “It’s in the bag, Puss. I think.”
Hesper returned the kiss gently, emerging with an effort from her own depression.
“What’s in the bag, dear?”
“Hay-Botts and his pounds sterling, a couple of thousand of ’em I hope.”
She looked up at him wondering. He looked elated, almost boyish.
“Is it so important, Amos? You didn’t tell me. Isn’t the factory doing well?”
“Why, of course it is. Just a little temporary pinch, that’s all. Nothing for you to worry about. Just you keep on being nice to Emmeline, and we’ll try to make ’em enjoy their visit. George is a great one for what he calls ‘sound home life.’ Says he judges everything by a man’s home life.”
He smiled at her. “We’ve got a good home life, haven’t we, Hessie?” He reached in the humidor and pulled out a cigar.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ve been happy.”
Something in her intonation checked him. “Why’d you say it like that, like a question?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to.” She moved to the window, and parting the curtains, stared out. It was snowing again, snowing quite hard, but through the dusk and the softly falling flakes she could see the outline of the iron stag. She had no impulse to tell him of Nat’s appearance. There was nothing Amos could do about it and no use in worrying him.
Behind her in the room she could hear Amos slamming bureau drawers, opening the door of the wardrobe and whistling cheerfully through his teeth. Her answer had satisfied him, and his thought had reverted to the successful progress of negotiations with Hay-Botts. He looked forward to the dinner party. He enjoyed entertaining, and it was a pity they had so little opportunity.
Hesper still by the window watched their sleigh glide from the stable along the drive and disappear over the sharp rise down to Pleasant Street. That was Tim, following orders to fetch the Honeywoods from the Inn to the party. I wish Ma and Pa weren’t coming, she thought, not with the rueful amusement of that thought in the morning, but with violence.
She turned from the window and began to rearrange her hair. Her hands and feet seemed weighted with lethargy, but she took unusual pains. Everything must be right for Amos at the dinner party.
CHAPTER 14
EBEN DORCH arrived first at the Porterman mansion that New Year’s night. He came in a sleigh hired from the livery stable. He was a spruce little bachelor who lived on Washington Street above his drugstore. He was a town selectman, a member of the Samaritan Tent of the Rechabites, a Freemason, and just now campaigning for election to the state legislature on the temperance and reform ticket. Marblehead was in the grip of a great temperance revival, and Eben’s affiliation with it was dictated by policy rather than conviction.
So, indeed, was his acquaintance with the Portermans. Amos Porterman might be unpopular, but he was one of the town’s heaviest taxpayers. Besides, Eben went anywhere he was invited and enjoyed a good dinner.
As Hesper hurried down the stairs to greet him, Charity Trevercombe rang the bell, and was ushered in by a spruced-up and nervous Annie.
Charity had changed amazingly since her bitter disappointment in Amos. Some months after his marriage to Hesper, Charity’s mother died leav
ing more money than had been expected, and shortly after that Charity discovered Divine Healing and the joys of independence, simultaneously. She lived alone in her handsome house on Washington Square, except for an old German woman who was an expert cook. She kept a pug dog and three canaries, she was the leader of a Divine Healing group, which had members from as far away as Lynn. She was the rich Miss Trevercombe and she did as she pleased.
She was no longer jealous of Hesper; in fact she pitied her, poor thing, stuck in that dreadful house way outside of town, and of course nobody ever calls on her. So she thought thoughts of love and harmony for‹Hesper, and came to see her sometimes.
Tonight she kissed Hesper on the cheek, said, “How well you look, dear—such a pretty gown,” and tripped cheerily into the drawing room. Charity had grown very plump during these latter years of contentment, but she still wore her hair in clustered ringlets about her ears and dressed in the bright colors of her youth. Tonight she wore yellow satin, and several tinkling gold bracelets, but she no longer assumed the coquetries of dress from a desire to please anyone but herself.
She sat down by Eben Dorch, brushed oil his gallantries, and began to talk to him about the noise the workmen made in the construction of Abbot Hall, a municipal building which was being erected on the common in front of her house. “I wish you to take the matter up in town meeting—” said Charity in a tone of calm command. “There’s no excuse for the language the men use, the oaths and the shouting. I spoke to the foreman personally in the most loving spirit, but I got no results. Of course,” she added for bearingly, “he was a foreigner, from Boston, I believe.”
Eben nodded gravely and said he would take the matter up in town meeting.
Amos and the Hay-Bottses entered the drawing room together, and Charity was momentarily silenced by the English couple’s magnificence. They were in full evening dress, George in a black claw-hammer coat, wearing ruby studs and a watered-silk vest, and Emmeline in a dowdy gray cashmere, but it was cut far lower than the dresses of the two American women, disclosing a great deal of scrawny chest, and a necklace of large pendant diamonds.