by Anya Seton
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Hesper hung up the tea towel and fitted the slender pink luster cup handles over their hooks. “There’s the wall built now and all those rocks. Anyway the house would stand.”
Ma said that too, she thought. “The house’ll stand.” Things change, people change, but it seems like the pattern doesn’t change much. But there’ve been many storms I’ve not even noticed. And my son isn’t a thousand miles away off the Grand Banks. There’s no excuse for getting into a swivet. Still the uneasiness persisted. The wind whined and whistled past the windows, the rain came and lapped in gusts against the panes. And whenever there was a lull, she heard the heavy muffled booming of the waves as they hurled themselves against the sea wall.
Eleanor pushed open the back passage door and entered the kitchen from Moses’s wing. “What a night!” she said. “I guess we can’t get to the Rockmere after all. Sorry to trouble you, Mother Porterman, and you know Henry’s so fussy about his food.”
“I ought to know,” said Hesper grimly. “But he used to relish clam fritters, and baked beans and gingerbread with sauce. I guess they won’t hurt him any now.”
“Well, it sounds very good,” said Eleanor with a vague smile. She rustled over to the Windsor armchair, emitting a faint odor of French carnation. Her dark pompadour was sleekly shining, pearls glowed at the lobes of her large ears, diamonds and sapphires formed the crown brooch and tiny watch which were pinned to her Irish lace blouse. “Can I help you?” she murmured, looking at the fire.
“No. I’ve got everything ready, and Carla’ll set the table. She knows how. Company dishes, dear—” Hesper said to the child, nodding toward the oak-leaf Staffordshire set in the china closet. When they were alone they still ate off the pewter.
Carla obeyed earnestly. She loved the great blue platters with their pictures in the middle, of the frigate Constitution, of President Washington on a horse.
The door opened again and Henry came in. “The Packard won’t fit in the barn,” he said to his wife. “I’ve had to send Briggs up-town to try and find a decent place to put it in. He wasn’t any too pleased.”
Eleanor’s pretty face creased in a worried frown. “I do hope he isn’t too upset. We don’t want him giving notice just as we’re sailing.”
“Shall I set for Uncle Walt?” asked Carla, pausing by the table with a handful of thin rat-tailed spoons.
Hesper put the china sugar bowl down with a plop. “Of course, he’s sure to be in soon.”
“Bad weather, all right—” said Henry unexpectedly, looking out of the window, “but Walt’s a regular sea dog. He could sail through the Ledges blindfold in a pickling kench.”
Quick warmth flooded Hesper. She gave Henry a startled smile. So he hadn’t completely forgotten his boyhood, and he was not as far from her in spirit as she had thought. He was half Honeywood after all despite that he resembled Amos, a big, blond man not quite so big as his father, but sharper cut and with a channeled self-assurance that Amos had never quite attained. She touched her son’s arm as she hurried into the new kitchen to turn the clam fritters.
“Have you some oilskins around someplace, Mother?” asked Henry, following her. “I might go down to Little Harbor and take a look, see if there’s any news.”
She nodded. “I wish you would.” She felt her mouth tremble and averted her face.
Eleanor watched her husband struggle into the spare oilskins with stark disapproval. “For heaven’s sakes, Henry, Mother Porterman’s got supper on the table. You just said Walter could take care of himself, and what on earth could you do, except get soaked and start up your asthma? Anyway, he’s probably sitting happily in some fishwife’s cottage.”
“I doubt it,” said Henry. “If Wait’d been forced in somewhere, he’d find a way to telephone. He’d know Mother’d be worried.” He went out the back door to the garden path that led to Little Harbor.
Eleanor looked puzzled, staring at the door. “I wish Henry wouldn’t—he’s not quite over that bronchitis. It’s just an ordinary storm—isn’t it? Why, I’ve been out in some myself here, and nobody ever got excited.”
Maybe not in a two-hundred-foot steam yacht, Hesper thought, but she smiled. “That’s true,” she said.
Carla crouched on her stool, her intent gaze traveling from her mother to her grandmother. They waited.
The fire flared up and died down. The wind had worked loose the shutter on the borning-room window and it banged monotonously. Hesper listened for the sound of the sea. Thank God the tide was nearly on the turn. Mostly the wind changed then.
Henry came back. He stood on the mat in the back entry, shaking water off the oilskins, and stamping the high rubber boots.
“No news,” he said. “All the boats are in but Walt’s.”
Cold went through Hesper’s stomach. “Thank you, Henry. We’d better eat.” She dished up the clam fritters, put the brown crockery beanpot on the table.
They sat down. Hesper filled the plates and left her own empty. Henry and Carla did not eat much. Eleanor started by picking at the clam fritters which she cut into tiny pieces, but she finished everything. “Well, I’m sure there’s no use worrying,” she said, accepting another spoonful of the crisp golden-brown beans, “there’s sure to be some reasonable explanation.”
Hesper gave her daughter-in-law a quick look that held something of pity. Eleanor lived in a world of reasonable explanations. In her sheltered haven there were no surprises. She had never yet had to pit her reasonable explanations against the rocks and the sea and the tempest. She hadn’t learned how vulnerable we all are. She had never seen the sudden black face of death.
Eleanor sipped up the applesauce and ate her gingerbread. She reproved Carla for large mouthfuls, and finally with the effect of coaxing ■difficult children, she gave her silent husband and mother-in-law a heartening smile. “This gingerbread is delicious, Mother Porterman. Don’t you think so, Henry? Do give me the recipe, and I’ll get Marie Louise to try it.”
“I’ll copy it for you,” said Hesper. “Mind she puts just a dash of coffee in. Brings out the flavor.”
The banjo clock whirred and struck eight. The shutter banged faster, and loose window panes rattled. Outside there was rushing roar and movement in the unquiet night. Even the stalwart house, accustomed to so many assaults on its endurance, shook under the blasts.
Eleanor shivered suddenly. “There’s a terrible draught. Carla, run upstairs and get my little fur cape. Oh no, I guess you’d better go, Henry. I forget there’s no lights on.”
Henry nodded and went, seeming glad of action.
Dear Lord, Hesper thought, why doesn’t Walt get back!
Eleanor, bored by the storm and her mother-in-law’s silence, cast around for a topic. After all if the poor thing was worried it was only kind to try to distract her. Even Carla, who was usually such a chatterbox to her grandmother, crept about the room like a scared mouse, putting the silver away.
“I’ve got the new Century Magazine with me,” said Eleanor. “It has several charming reproductions of paintings by Evan Redlake. The great American artist, you know. Some of them reminded me of Marblehead, and the article said he once did some painting here.”
Really, I wonder if she isn’t beginning to fail, Eleanor thought, seeing a curious blankness settle on her mother-in-law’s face, and the wide firm lips twitch into a mirthless smile.
“Did you ever hear of him?” pursued Eleanor gently but without expectation.
“Yes,” said Hesper. “He stayed here at the Inn once, when I—when I was a girl.”
“Oh? That’s interesting. Though I don’t suppose you remember much about him, if it was so long ago ? Last month Henry and I were invited to a dinner at the Gardeners to meet him. I was quite pleased. But you know he never showed up. Dreadfully rude. It seems he’s a regular hermit. Has a cottage somewhere on the Maine coast and hardly ever leaves it.”
“Indeed,” said Hesper, rising from the table and sweeping into her
hand some crumbs overlooked by Carla.
That’s the trouble with her, thought Eleanor, pitying. She isn’t interested in anything outside of this narrow-minded little town. But she persisted with the topic. Now that they had a Sargent for the Brookline library, it would be nice to own a Redlake marine, for the drawing room at “Braeburn.”
“Did he stay here long?” she asked. There might be some anecdote that would amuse the Art Society. “My husband’s family, the Honeywoods at Marblehead, you know. Well, Evan Redlake used to stay with them ... and...”
“No,” said Hesper. “Not long.” For a moment she almost yielded to impulse. What would happen to that pretty, well-bred tranquillity if she said baldly, “I was married to Evan Redlake once. I bore him a child.” Disbelief? Shock? Gratification? The silence of forty years was not worth shattering for those. And it wasn’t I, this old woman, torn with anxiety for her son, who knew Evan Redlake.
Eleanor abandoned hope of any reminiscence. “Of course—” she said, entirely for her own pleasure at having assimilated the conversation at the Gardeners, “though he was the American pioneer in Impressionism, some people consider him a trifle old-fashioned. Still, the Museum of Fine Arts just paid ten thousand dollars for his “Fisher Girl at Great Head.” The highest they’ve ever paid to a living American artist.”
Henry came back with the mink cape and put it around his wife’s shoulders. Eleanor thanked him and looked over at Carla on her stool. “Darling—it’s way past your—”
Hesper interrupted, “Is that painting you just spoke about pictured in the Century too?”
Eleanor was surprised. “Yes, I believe it is. Henry, that copy of the Century, I put it in my dressing case—will you—”
“Never mind,” Hesper interrupted again. “I can see it some other time.”
She spoke with sharp decision, and turning her back on them she pushed aside the curtains at the window and stared out into the night. The storm was passing, and the rain had nearly stopped. She strained her eyes, peering through the darkness along the path to Little Harbor.
“Fisher Girl at Great Head.” Great Head was the chart name for Castle Rock. But there were other Great Heads along the coast, and many fisher girls for Evan, no doubt. What did it matter?
Why don’t I pray? she thought, pray for Walt out there. But she could find no words with which to dull the piercing fear. God up there in the darkening sky, was he ever a God of tenderness or balm? Was he not rather as inexorable as the sea, and as indifferent to human desires?
I’m tired of standing things, and standing them and living through them and going on somehow. Tired of it. She leaned her forehead against the window, and the weight of all the separate losses through the years pressed past this new pain. Johnnie, Evan, Amos all gone from me. And Ma and Pa too. Each time I lived through it and found some content. I can’t do it again if Walt—
“Mother, please come back and sit down by the fire. I’m sure there’ll be word soon.”
Hesper let the curtains drop. She stiffened her thin body, and walked back to them. “Sure to be. How’d you like a mite of the ’72 port, Henry?”
Carla jumped up from the stool. Marnie was acting so worried and strange, and her face was pulled down at the corners and showed a lot of wrinkles it didn’t usually. “Can I get it for you, Marnie—Grandma—it’s in the decanter in the pantry, isn’t it?”
Hesper looked down at the eager child, the little heart-shaped face between its bunches of curls and bows, the soft blue eyes full of instinctive sympathy. Yes. There was Carla, too.
“We’ll get it together.” She took the plump hand in hers.
“And then really the child must go to bed—” said Eleanor. “I do hope you won’t let her stay up till all hours, Mother Porterman, will you? Mademoiselle keeps her on a strict régime.”
It was while she and Carla were in the dark pantry, searching the back shelf with a candle, that they heard noise outside on the path from Little Harbor. Footsteps and voices, light from a lantern flickered into the pantry. Hesper put the candlestick down on the shelf. She stood listening. More than one person. Were they then carrying something? Thunder beat in her ears.
Carla had run to the window. “Marnie—” she cried, “there’s three people coming up the path. And one of ’em’s Uncle Walt! I reckeririze him.”
Hesper moistened her lips. “Are you sure?” Even as she asked she heard the sound of Walt’s deep voice.
She jerked her head, wet a dish towel at the tap and slapped the cold! wetness to her face.
She hurried to the kitchen entry and flung the door open. Walt came up the steps. She realized that he was supporting someone, and followed by someone else, but she saw only his big dark face, and the-hazel eyes like her own looking tired but triumphant. In his stiff yellow oilskins and sou’wester he blocked the doorway.
He shook his head when he saw Hesper’s face. “You’ve been fretting,. Ma. You ought to know by now you can’t sink a lobsterman.” He reached out his left hand and gave her an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder. She saw now that his right arm was around a girl. The invisible face drooped against Walt’s crackling yellow sleeve, but there was a mat of black hair, long and glistening.
Walt pulled his burden into the kitchen, while the others crowded around, exclaiming. And a boy followed behind him.
“Ma, get a blanket and some brandy,” said Walt. “These kids ’re half drowned.” He deposited the girl on the hearth rug before the fire. She slid down into a wet heap, giving a little sighing moan. The boy sat down on the settle. His teeth were chattering.
“Fished ’em out of the South Channel,” said Walt, flinging his oilskins and sou’wester into a corner, and shaking himself vigorously. “Fool kids thought it’d be fun to go boating in a line storm, I guess. They yere somewheres off Cat Island when their skiff swamped.”
“Poor little things—” cried Eleanor, shaking her head. “I knew there was some reasonable explanation for your being late. Poor Mother Porterman was so upset.”
Walt gave his sister-in-law a look of speculative amusement. “I had a hell of a time getting back,” he said. “God-damn bitch of an engine failed twice.”
Eleanor winced. “Walter—please—at least think of the children—” She indicated Carla, and the sighing heap on the hearth rug.
But it developed after Hesper had administered brisk treatment to the girl, rubbed her down, and changed her clothes in the kitchen bedroom, that she was not a child. Eighteen at least, and a voluptuous, rounded little body. When she was covered by Hesper’s old green-sprigged wrapper and a blanket and brought back to the fire, still silentand dazed but walking without support, they all made a further discovery. She was exceedingly pretty, with huge sleepy dark eyes, and her drying hair curling on her shoulders in a black cloud. The dark eyes rested on Walt and stayed there, following his movements as he poured out brandy for the boy, who was now also dried and regaining color. The girl accepted her share of brandy with the same gravity, her somber gaze still on Walt’s face.
Nobody seemed inclined to say anything, and Eleanor, whose social code did not admit the silences which never seemed to bother the Portermans, leaned forward and said gently, “Now that’s better. You certainly must have been thankful when Mr. Porterman found you. It must have been a dreadful experience.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the boy. He was rather nice looking, curly brown hair, tall, and with a pleasing clean-cut leanness. He looked about sixteen. The girl said nothing.
“Where do you—uh—young people come from? What are your names?” Eleanor addressed the boy.
He answered courteously. “We both live over in Devereux. My name’s Tony Gatchell. My father’s boss mechanic at Burgess’s new aeroplane factory on Gregory Street. Her name,” he pointed, and the girl looked at him briefly then returned her gaze to Walt, “is Maria Sylva. Her father’s a Portugee.”
“Oh—” said Eleanor. The Portuguese who had during the last quarter-centu
ry infiltrated all the Massachusetts coast were considered by the summer people to be several cuts below the Italians and Irish.
Walt poured himself another large drink of brandy and swallowed it in two gulps. He settled himself in the massive chair his father had used, lit his pipe, stretched his long legs, and gave a gusty relaxed sigh. His eyes met the girl’s steady gaze, and he grinned. “You feeling better, kid?”
Maria lowered her magnificent lashes, her red lips parted in a slow smile. “Yes. Much better.” Her voice was low, a trifle sibilant. She raised her lashes and added with an intimacy that excluded all the others in the room. “You are wonderful.”
A dull red ran up through Walt’s weather-tanned cheeks. Hesper, watching her son and still glowing inside with the ecstasy of relief, felt a shock. She had never seen Walt look like that, startled and aware. In in his teens and twenties he had had many girls, but they had been brief, lusty affairs—soon forgotten. She had thought once or twice that there might be marriage. But nothing ever came of it and for years now no thought of an outsider had disturbed their relationship.
“You two better let your folks know you’re all right,” said Hesper. “Anybody got a telephone near your home?”
The boy nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I was thinking of that. Bartlett’s drugstore’ll be open. They’ll deliver a message.”
“You’ll stay here the night, I’ve plenty of room,” Hesper continued, nor did she miss the flicker of delight in the girl’s eyes.
The boy looked doubtful. “That’d be a lot of trouble for you, ma’am. I reckon the cars’ll be still running. We can get back.”
Maria turned her head; all her motions were soft and graceful. “No, Tony,” she said. “I am very tired.”
“Of course, she is! The poor kid,” cried Walt. “And Ma—you must have some vittles someplace? Looks like she needs feeding.”
“Yes. I’ll fix up something,” said Hesper, and to the boy she said, “The telephone’s over there behind the pantry door. D’you want meto work it for you?”