She looked at him with chill, reproving distaste, while he put the empty plate on the seat of a chair, wiped his mouth, and seemed to consider for a moment, joining the herd of children getting drinks of water out of the porcelain fountain. Mr. Getchell came by then and all the way across the room Mrs. Banning could hear Doctor Bull booming: "Good show, Getchell. You ought to send Molly Ordway down to the Follies."
"Thanks for lunch," Virginia said. "I'll pay you back."
"Forget it," Guy nodded. "Where do you want to go?"
"Not home. We don't have to go home, do we?"
"Well, I don't want to drive all over the map. I have to get back to New Haven to-night, anyway."
The car was parked last in a line, almost in front of the Congregational church. Said to have been built from the same plans first used in New Winton, here in Litchfield greater skill or more liberal funds had been available. The four white pillars of the porch were a lofty, elaborated Corinthian, high enough for serenity which was lost in mere squat quaintness at New Winton. Perfectly restored, painstakingly cared for, it stood to best advantage, half against the north valley, at the fall-away of the Torrington road. Virginia looked at the sunlight slanting on it with, distracted pleasure.
"We could swing around Torrington and Winsted to Canaan and come down US7," Guy said generously. He sank into his racoon skins. "I'll bet you're cold. You ought to have worn your fur coat. This isn't spring."
"Why, it's hot, Guy. I'm not cold. I'm not a bit cold."
"Anyway, that's the lousiest-looking thing —" He indicated the leather jacket. "You ought to throw it away."
"It's all right," she said, subdued and flushing a little. "I don't care how I look. What difference does it make around here?" She turned her blue eyes on him desperately. "Guy, couldn't I —"
"Listen, I said I wouldn't let you drive. If you're going to make a fuss, we'll go home."
"All right," she sighed.
At Canaan, when it was at least as far back one way as the other and Guy had stopped for gasolene, she risked it again. "Guy," she besought him, "just a little, please?"
"Lord!" he groaned. "I suppose you won't be happy till you kill yourself. All right."
Headed south, she drove with zeal reluctantly curbed while Guy watched her as though she were going to meet head-on every approaching car or, if that failed, smash into the next telegraph-pole. Through the wide fields beyond the South Canaan church, she turned down into the Housatonic river valley. Here, between the hills, there was no wind and the sun was warm, glittering off the shallow, ice-free river. She was doing a carefully gained fifty miles an hour when they passed West Cornwall, but Guy did not protest. From the high viaduct and great white arch lifting US7 across the river, they could look down on the railroad tracks, the roof of the station, the bare tree-tops and shingled back of the original small covered Cornwall bridge far underneath. Virginia, reassured now, sat at alert, unstrained ease, her gloved hands over the lower spokes of the big wheel. She was attuned to the car, as a practised rider may be to a horse. Knowing nothing of a time when there were no motors, unable to remember when those there were could not be wholly loved and trusted, she shared Guy's special sympathetic feeling for fine machinery. Such cruelties as improper lubrication or careless adjustment would move her with almost the same compunction as the wanton ill-treatment of an animal.
Moved grudgingly by the obviousness of this right attitude, and by Virginia's resulting competence, to be seen well enough through her calm heavenly pleasure, not in going anywhere nor in the hills and the river valley, but in the perfect performance of a motor as fine as could possibly be built, Guy said: "As a matter of fact, you drive pretty well for a girl. Some women do drive all right if they can keep their minds on it and nothing happens they don't expect —"
"Just a little longer, Guy —"
They swept down under the great bare maples in long alignment through Kent. Virginia crossed the railroad tracks faster than she should have, but after all, somewhat slower than Guy would have crossed them, so he didn't point it out to her. Reaching New Milford, sprawled on the eastern slope in unpicturesque array across the river, he said: "Cut over here and back through Southbury. It's getting late."
Indifferent, or moved to pity by the intensity of her small pleasure, Guy still did not suggest that he should drive. Silent, he occupied himself with a pipe which he did not like, but which happened to be a fad among his friends, a revolt against the cigarettes so incessantly smoked by people they did not care to know. He was occupied, too, with the crowded world of his college: how much tutoring he was going to have to invest in to get through his Economics; how much whisky he had better provide for Friday night; whether he could spare a chapel cut to go to a Friday night (the next Friday) dance in New York, and whether, if he could, he could afford to stay the weekend; and if he could afford it, whether Marjorie Pitkin were worth the trouble and expense. Or would he do better to call up the DeFoe girl? He had almost decided, along with several punctilious friends, to drop her after her tipsy behaviour caused almost a scandal at the Junior Prom. However, being seen with her in New York was not the same as being seen with her in New Haven, and she would probably let him sleep with her.
He was surprised to find them in New Winton, with the twilight over the green. Virginia relaxed, slumping as though at last tired, at the wheel. "Thanks a lot," she startled him by saying, "I've had a swell time, Guy."
She looked at him, a little tremulous; and so, rather ridiculously, resolved his last difficulty; for he did not care to think of his sister, whose purity or innocence he didn't exaggerate, but who none the less had, it in the senses he considered important, in connection with the shamefully attractive and obscenely available DeFoe girl—after all, nothing but a slut of good family. Righteousness thus triumphed, probably definitely; and he resolved to call up Marjorie as soon as he got back to New Haven.
Virginia, unconscious of her service to him, wheeled precisely through the gate. Another car was standing on the loop the drive made approaching the side door. "Hoyts'," she said. "They must have been down to that lousy play."
Behind the cedars and the chestnut sapling fence, she stopped the car. The dogs, muzzles down, had been bolting their suppers; and though they both turned, barking and wagging their tails, they did not trust each other enough to. leave their separate feeding-pans. Larry, smoking a cigarette, perched on the doorstep of his stable quarters. He waved a hand.
Virginia sat still a moment while Guy got out. A white moon, approaching the first quarter, hung half a foot above the long summit of the western hill, and she sighed again, aware of the wonderful stillness of the night air and the calm vacancy of the impending clear night. She breathed deep then, trying to get together the remnants of a day almost entirely happy to protect herself. Larry had got up and come over negligently. "Val Hoyt's inside with her father looking for you, Virginia," he remarked. "She came down to see if you were around the stables. Told me she was going away some place."
"I know," said Virginia, her tone flattening. "She's going to Paris."
"Nope," said Larry with calm positiveness. "They had some changed plans. Somewhere west. With her father. Somewhere in New Mexico. They were going to be gone two months and they were fixing it up for you to go with them."
Virginia snapped open the car door. "Larry!" she gasped, "they haven't left, have they?"
"Car's still there. But I guess you better hurry. Val said she thought your father was going to let you, if you wanted —"
She started away, running towards the house; and this was too much for the dogs. They left what they hadn't eaten, eagerly overtaking her, bounding and barking.
"Just look at her!" invited Larry, shaking his head. "She don't want to stay home much, I guess. She's sure funny when she gets excited."
Guy automatically gave him one of the freezing blank stares used effectively to annihilate impertinent inferiors at college. Here, it, passed harmlessly over Larry's thick-ski
nned amiability. "Going to go down to college to-night, Guy?" he asked.
"I am."
"Might as well leave your car out, then. Not much chance of freezing to-night, I guess. Yeah, the Hoyts want to drive down there. He's got a ranch there, or something, hasn't he? I always heard —"
"If you haven't anything else to do," said Guy, "get a rag and wipe this off, will you?"
"Thou turnest man to destruction: again thou sayest,
Come again, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight —"
Doctor Wyck naturally knew it by heart. Against the fresh lawn of his surplice, the rector held in his left hand, forefinger marking the Burial of the Dead, a black leather-bound book, but that was purely formal. Every word out of his mouth had the perfection of familiarity and practice. To Virginia, disinterested, his voice differed not at all from the clean even print in the Prayer Book—an unnecessarily exquisite one given her on the occasion of her confirmation—which she held idly open. Doctor Wyck even supplied the punctuation. Here, in a psalm, he held over on the caesural colon. His voice surged, paused dryly, returned, like a calm sea on a beach: —thy wrathful indignation—the light of thy countenance —the days of our age—apply our hearts unto wisdom —
To bury Mamie to such a strain really seemed absurd.
Virginia, in the prodding pleasure of her own constantly recalled happiness, noticed it at once, with the solemn pronouncement of the preliminary sentences. It was part of her feeling so acutely and joyfully stimulated. Everything had an edge and an interest; every detail was cause enough for some sort of joy. Even perceiving how wrong all this was gave her pleasure. Who could imagine Mamie doing anything so resolute as, though she were dead, yet living? Where on earth would she get the nerve to see God for herself, her eyes beholding, and not another? Mamie, stretched out, shut up in the shrouded coffin, would probably think that they were making fun of her. As it is to the wise, a word to the weak is sufficient. . Unless you were proud, strong, well up in life, you had no need to be reminded at such length that you were nothing and went down like grass. Who could doubt it?
Doctor Wyck had launched now on the long, resounding muddle following 1 Corinthians xv. Virginia, looking at it in print, felt invulnerable even to that awful boredom. She did not want to think about Santa Fé too much, for he had learned that anything thought about eagerly would be bound to disappoint her; but she could at least think of not being in New Winten, or not being in any rotten school. Even that night be risky, however, so she turned back, began to read at random: Here is to be noted that the office ensuing is not to be used for any unbaptized adults, any who die excommunicate, or who have laid violent hands upon themselves.
She thought: "If I killed myself, would Doctor Wyck make a fuss about having a nice service for me? I'll bet he wouldn't." Exhilarated by her own cynicism regarding Doctor Wyck's attitude, she let her eyes slide away to the atrocious coloured glass of the window at the beginning of the nave. It commemorated her great-great-grandparents, who, in 1823, had been largely responsible for erecting the church. A plump, vacant-faced Gabriel seemed to be fanning the Blessed Virgin with an object perhaps visible to the eye of faith as a lily. The Virgin Herself sat absorbed in a patch of dirt with two stones and thirteen—such were the desperate resources of long ago Sunday mornings— blades of grass painted on in superficial black. The mantle, Virginia noted now, was of precisely the blue used for medicine bottles whose contents may be injured by natural light.
The next window—Virginia felt strong enough to bear the boredom of a quick look at it—showed the ox-eyed, curly-bearded apostles giving forth the lots which fell upon Matthias. It stood to the Glory of God and in loving Memory of Paul Banning, twenty-one years Senior Warden of this Church; and of Mathilda, his wife. Virginia had an early, uncertain memory of Mathilda, his wife—by that time, his relict; a small, sedentary figure with a black shawl and a distinctive odour, much like a linen closet, which she associated with the phrase—"a very old lady."
By the third window, Doctor Hall, a former rector, was remembered; but that, Virginia felt, she could not look at. To mix with the pleasures of impending departure, the coloured glass brought back the old ache of time slowing to a stop within these walls. The watch on her left wrist, half hidden by her glove, seemed for a dreadful moment to be measuring again the world-without-end minutes of a child's Sunday morning. Made up of them, the mere hour of a service could seem worship as everlasting as the awful reiteration of the six-winged beasts, the repetitious falling down of the four-and-twenty elders. Doctor Wyck's voice reached her ears, proceeding urgently: "Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterwards that which is spiritual —"
Virginia shook herself a little, pronouncing: "I am going away from this damn hole. I am going to Santa Fé a week from Monday. It doesn't matter because whatever happens I'm going away a week from Monday."
This was a success, but she felt, almost as bad as boredom, the insupportable compulsion of her desire, the impatience for what would be then to be now, forthwith. Her throat constricted in the agony of having to put off; there was a nervous congestion in her breast; her veins were cloyed with lukewarm blood; her very bones itched through her flesh and she found herself actually praying: God, make it a week from Monday —
Howard Upjohn was uncomfortably clad in the clothes he reserved for funerals, complete to dreadful black gloves covering his prominently large hands. When he was younger he had kept also a silk hat. Whether time had finally ruined it, or Howard had simply decided that its shape made him look too much like the symbolic figure of Prohibition in hostile cartoons, he had some time changed to a derby. This he felt for on the pew seat beside him now. Inconspicuously turning, he worked along until he could step into the side aisle and go briskly back, motioning up his four pall-bearers. To each he presented a pair of dark grey gloves, and waited while they put them on. Apparently the church part of it was over. May Tupping, not quite certain what was to happen next, wished that she knew the time. She had explained to Doris Clark that she might be a little late relieving her; but she didn't want to be. The Divisional Superintendent was supposed to be coming through to-day. If he happened to come before she got there, he would do nothing about it, but he would naturally notice that she wasn't very punctual. She turned her head a little to see the pall-bearers, who, after several tries, had got stiffly into step, tramping down the aisle. Harry Weems had on a good and expensive blue serge suit. He was paired with Lester Dunn, whose suit, though cut with remarkable jauntiness, was appropriately dark, too. Eric Cadbury, who must have been picked up and pressed into service by Howard directly before the ceremony began, was dressed with much less elegance, but being older than any of the others, he could contribute a certain gravity. The fourth man was Ed Darrow, son of Mrs. Talbot's sister-in-law at Banning's Bridge. Doubtless he only had one good suit, and it happened to be a very light pepper-and-salt tweed. Sympathetic, May guessed that it was the cause for his face getting redder and redder as he came down.
Mrs. Darrow, sitting on the other side of Mrs. Talbot, looked at Ed with a trusting approval, however; at least, until Howard had got the wheeled conveyance into motion, and the bearers fell in behind, to escort the coffin with its low heap of flowers—all rather shoddy except the sheaf of lilies which had come up from Waterbury, professionally packed and expedited, with the Bannings' card—uncertainly towards the door. Mrs. Darrow then began to weep and lament with annoying facility, causing Mrs. Talbot, heretofore contented with occasional sniffs, to break out, too.
May got them both to their feet and into the aisle with the handful of the congregation. From the far side, Mrs. Banning said quietly, "May," and May stopped. "Larry has the car outside," Mrs. Banning whispered. "You take Mrs. Talbot and Mrs. Darrow down to the cemetery in it, will you? We'll see you there."
They came into the warm sunlight on the steps of the church. Doctor Wyck, who had gone to the sacristy fo
r a cloak and biretta, was waiting for them. Howard and his assistants had just eased the flower-topped coffin into the half-ton truck which served him now that he no longer kept horses, and business did not warrant buying a motor-hearse. Mat Small was driving the truck. He was in working clothes, for he had spent the morning with Albert Foster digging the grave and would afterwards fill it in.
May said to Mrs. Talbot: "Mrs. Banning has been kind enough to offer us her car to go down in —"
Larry Ward, sitting bored at the wheel, in a cap and old chauffeur's uniform, got out reluctantly, waving rather than helping them in. From the clock on the dashboard May could see that it was quarter to twelve; and, glancing across the green to the telephone office, she was dismayed to find that the coupé with the telephone company's round bell-marked seals on the doors was already parked there. The superintendent would undoubtedly wait until twelve and observe her tardiness.
The others had formed a straggling group following Doctor Wyck around the stone side of the church to walk the few hundred yards. Harry Weems and Lester brought up the rear, with Doctor Bull, whose presence had been severely ignored by everyone else. There would be no satisfying people on that point, May recognized. If he hadn't come, there would have been a general outraged criticism of his callousness. When he did come, the criticism was to the effect that one wondered how he had the face, considering that he'd done everything he could to kill Mamie. Doctor Bull, however, didn't need her sympathy. Standing well above, and twice as big as, Lester or Harry, he moved with an assurance which was almost blithe. He blinked cheerfully in the warm sunlight; he stared with obvious robust contempt now at Doctor Wyck's wind-stirred vestments and the biretta, now at the roll of fine silver fox fur draped over Mrs. Banning's erect shoulders, concealing her neck, piling high as the lower edge of her neat black hat.
The Last Adam Page 12