Lucy cleared her throat and said, “How do you like your new relatives, Ab?”
“Fine,” Ab said, “but I don’t think my mother does.”
Glances were exchanged again.
“And where is your mother?” Mrs. Beach asked.
“Upstairs,” Ab said. “My father dressed me. He told me to stay clean till people arrived.”
“Well you didn’t quite make it,” Mrs. Beach said. “You’ve got a smudge on your nose, from the screen door.”
“Come here and let me give you a spit bath,” Alice said. Ab got down from the chair obediently and came and stood before her, while she moistened one corner of a small lace-bordered handkerchief with her tongue and removed the smudge. “There,” she said. “Now you’re as good as new.”
“Fix her sash while you’re at it,” Mrs. Beach said. “Anybody can see that it was tied by a man.… I’m sure there’s some mistake.”
“Perhaps it’s the wrong day,” Lucy said.
“Oh no,” Ab said. “It’s the right day.”
No longer confident of her appearance she withdrew to the front window as soon as Alice released her, and began to finger the curtains.
The clock in the castle of St. Angelo said twenty minutes past six as Mrs. Beach rose and motioned to her daughters to do likewise. Fortunately there was a step on the stairs. It was not the quick step of Martha King but careful and deliberate—the step of a person farther along in years and well aware of the danger of falling. The woman who entered the room a moment later was so small, so slight, her dress so elaborately embroidered and beaded, her hair so intricately held in place by pins and rhinestone-studded combs that she seemed, though alive, to be hardly flesh and blood but more like a middle-aged fairy.
“Well isn’t this nice!” she exclaimed.
“I’m Mrs. Beach,” the old woman said. “This is my daughter Lucy——”
“Happy to make your acquaintance.”
“—and my daughter Alice.”
“I’m Mrs. Potter. Do sit down, all of you. This reminds me of home.” Mrs. Potter saw that the wing chair was vacant and settled herself in it. “Nobody is ever on time in Mississippi, but I thought Northerners were more prompt. Austin and Martha will be down directly. Won’t you try this chair, Mrs. Beach? I’m sure you’d find it more——What about you, Miss Lucy?”
Though the old lady and her daughters sat stiffly on the edge of their chairs as if they might get up at any moment, they assured Mrs. Potter that they were comfortable.
“I expect you think this is hot,” she said, fanning herself with a painted sandalwood fan, “but I give you my word it’s nothing to the weather we’ve been having down home. People are always saying that Southerners are lazy and they are, but there’s a reason. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been laid up with heat prostration but——Do you live close by?”
“Right next door,” Alice Beach said.
“Then it must have been your house I heard that delightful music coming from, while I was getting dressed. Just delightful. Do you play and sing, Mrs. Beach?”
“No,” the old lady said solemnly, “but both my daughters are accomplished musicians. My daughter Lucy took lessons of Geraldine Farrar’s singing teacher for a short while. Alice didn’t have that privilege but we’ve been told there is a blood blend in their voices which is quite unusual.”
“My husband is very fond of music,” Mrs. Potter said. “His older brother was a drummer boy in the War Between the States, and we’ve always hoped that our children would turn out to be musical but neither one of them can sing a note. I hope you’ll favour us with a concert while we’re here,” she added, turning from Mrs. Beach to her daughters. “Both of you.”
“We’re rather out of practice,” Alice Beach said.
“They’ll be glad to sing for you,” Mrs. Beach said. “They both have very fine voices. My daughter Lucy could have had a career on the concert stage in Europe but I wouldn’t allow her to. I didn’t want her to be subjected to unpleasant experiences.”
“I’ve never been able to keep either of my children from doing anything they set their minds on,” Mrs. Potter said amiably. “I wish you’d tell me how you manage it.”
Mrs. Beach did not feel that this remark called for an answer. Her daughters sat with their hands clasped nervously in their laps, and the clock threatened once more to take possession of the room. Before Mrs. Potter could start off on a new track there was a mixed trampling on the stairs and she called out, “Come in and meet these charming folks.” And then, “This is my husband, Mrs. Beach … and my son Randolph … my daughter Nora.… Was that the doorbell?… Randolph, go see who’s at the door.”
Secure in the knowledge that this was going to be a party after all, that they had come on the right day and at the right time, even if there was nobody to receive them, Mrs. Beach and her daughters sat back in their chairs.
Ab slipped unnoticed out of the room and wandered out to the kitchen, where there were wonderful smells and an activity that she was familiar with and could understand. Though Rachel cried out at the sight of her, “Now you scat! We got no time for young ones,” Ab was not in the least intimidated. She went straight for the kitchen stool, placed it in front of the cupboard, climbed on it and, balancing carefully, helped herself to a cracker.
5
The fear that always haunted Martha King before a party—that people would sit racking their brains for something to say—once more proved groundless. She came downstairs and found the living-room full of her guests, all talking easily to one another. As she slipped into the empty place on the sofa, Mrs. Potter turned and smiled at her. The smile said Here is your party, my dear. I’ve started it off right for you. Now I’ll sit back and be a guest. After that it was possible for Martha to look around quite calmly and see who was there. Austin was watching her and ready to come to her rescue, but she didn’t need rescuing. She moved the pillow to one side, and then, deciding that Nora Potter was dressed in an unbecoming shade of old rose, Martha King sat back, as passive as the room itself.
“It’s a feeling like … well, it’s not possible for me to put it into words,” Nora Potter said to Lucy Beach. “It’s something you have to see in someone’s face or hear in their voice.” Her hair was a curious cinnamon colour, parted in the middle and with bangs covering a forehead that went up and up. Her eyes were a blue-violet and seemed even larger and more vivid than they were because the rest of her face had no colour in it. Her wide smile revealed two upper front teeth separated by a little gap that gave her a childlike appearance, as if she were seven or eight years old and just committing herself to the gangly stage. Though not at all beautiful, the Southern girl’s face had a charming, touching quality that the women in the room failed to notice (or if they did, to care about); the men all saw it immediately. The blue-violet eyes were searching gravely for something that was not to be found in this living-room or this town or perhaps anywhere, but that nevertheless might exist somewhere, if you had the courage and the patience and the time to go on looking for it. The same sincerity, the same impossibly high-minded principles, the refusal to compromise in a middle-aged or even a married woman would not have appealed to them. These qualities had to be combined with the sweetness of inexperience. Glancing at Nora the men were reminded of certain idealistic plans they had once had for themselves, plans that for practical reasons had had to be put aside. You must be careful, they longed to say to her. You are young and inexperienced. You may think you know how to take care of yourself but life is hard and there are pitfalls. However, you don’t have to be afraid with me. I can be trusted.…
The little coloured girl broke up the conversation in the living-room by opening the dining-room doors and saying “Dinner is served.” Every face was turned towards her. The idea that had been, off and on for the last half hour, in all their minds—food—was now a shining fact. Martha King rose and led the way into the dining-room. The other women followed, according to age: Mr
s. Beach, Mrs. Danforth, Mrs. Potter, Lucy and Alice Beach, young Mrs. Ellis, who had recently come to town as a bride, Nora Potter, and Mary Caroline Link. Mary Caroline had been asked so that young Randolph Potter would have someone of his own age to talk to.
In the centre of the dining-room table there were two tall lighted white candles. Presiding at the head was Rachel’s ham on a big blue platter. At the foot of the table was a platter of fried chicken. Between these two major centres of interest were any number of minor ones—the baked macaroni, the stuffed potatoes, the tomato aspic, the devilled eggs, the watercress, the hot rolls covered with a napkin, the jellies and the preserves, the stack of dinner plates, the rows of gleaming silver, the napkins that matched the big damask cloth. Like a tropical flower, the dinner party had opened its petals and revealed the purpose and prodigality of nature.
“Well, Martha,” Mrs. Beach said, without bothering to hide her astonishment, “I must say this looks very nice. I won’t have any of the ham. I can see it’s delicious by the way it cuts, but ham always gives me heartburn.” She glanced at the plate Martha King was fixing for her and was reassured; the chicken was white meat. “And a stuffed potato and a roll, thank you … no, that’s plenty. I’m an old woman and I don’t need as much to keep me going as you young people. Pshaw! you’ve given me too much of everything, my dear … Alice … Lucy … come help yourselves. This is a buffet supper and you’re not supposed to hang back in the doorway.”
“Aunt Ione, let me give you a better piece of chicken,” Martha said to Mrs. Potter. “You’ve got the part that goes over the fence last.”
“It’s the piece I like,” Mrs. Potter protested. “I never get it at home because it’s Mr. Potter’s favourite. I wouldn’t dare take it if we weren’t visiting.”
“Well, here’s the wishbone to go with it.”
“If this keeps up I’ll go home stuffed out like a toad,” Mrs. Potter said, helping herself to celery and then a ripe olive and crabapple jelly. “You must give me your receipt for pocket-book rolls. Mine never turn out like this.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way to get the men to continue their conversation in here,” Martha said. “Alice, you haven’t anything on your plate at all. Here, let me help you.… Now then, don’t forget the roll.… There’s no onion in the salad, Mrs. Danforth. I remembered that you don’t eat it.… Mrs. Ellis, what will you have? A wishbone? The wing?”
“When I was a girl,” Mrs. Beach said, “young women of good family were taught to cook as a matter of course, even though there often wasn’t any need for them to, after they were married. Unless you know how food should be prepared, you can’t tell someone else how to do it.” (And even if you tell your daughters how to act at a party, there is nothing you can do about the look of sadness that returns after every effort at animation.) “I used to entertain a great deal when we lived in St. Paul. Mr. Beach was in the wholesale grocery business there, and he loved to invite people to our home. I often spent days getting ready beforehand. Now the young women just slap something together and call it a dinner party.”
“Cousin Martha,” Mrs. Potter said slyly, “if you just slapped this together——”
“Martha is an exception,” Mrs. Beach said, and passed on down the table.
The men appeared to be in no hurry to get into the dining-room. While they stood in a little group outside discussing the price of hogs, Austin King went to the hall closet and got out the card-tables for Thelma. When these were set up, one in the study and three in the living-room, he stood with his back to the fireplace enjoying a moment of pride in the house and in his wife. He had watched her come down the stairs in a white dress with a large silk rose at her waist, looking as lovely (the dress was his favourite and she had worn it to please him) as any woman ever looked. The roomful of people had stopped talking for a few seconds, and then unable to remember what they had been about to say, they went on talking about something else.
In the dining-room Nora Potter said, “I don’t know what will happen to me if I ever get married. I can’t cook and I hate sewing. Brother says if I never learn to keep house, somebody will always have to do it for me. But just the same, I do envy and admire you, Cousin Martha.”
“You haven’t any salad,” Martha King said. “Here … let me help you to it.”
Immediately afterwards Nora plunged back into the conversation with Lucy Beach, a conversation that had nothing to do with housekeeping. “Do you think people are happiest,” Martha heard her say as they moved out of the dining-room, “when they don’t even know that they’re happy?”
At that moment the men, who had merely been biding their time, closed around the table and with no pretence of a poor or finicky appetite, helped themselves to everything within reach.
Old Mr. Ellis, returning to the living-room with his plate in his hand, provided a moment of suspense for everybody. He was frail and uncertain in his movements but no one dared to take the plate from him, and the catastrophe they were all expecting did not occur. Avoiding the table where Mrs. Beach had established herself, he sat down between Nora Potter and Alice Beach.
“I’ve been meaning to call on you,” the old man said as he tucked one corner of his napkin into his shirt collar. “And I will, one of these days.” He turned to Nora. “You’d never think it, but this young lady I used to dandle on my knee.”
“You used to give me peppermint candy,” Alice told him.
“I was always partial to you,” the old man said.
“How do you like it up North?” Alice asked. Nora had already been asked this question four times, but she answered with enthusiasm.
“You could’ve come at a better time of year,” Mr. Ellis said. “It’s too hot in July and August. Spring or fall is best.”
“I’d like to come some time in winter,” Nora said. “I’ve only seen snow once in my whole life.”
“We get plenty of it,” old Mr. Ellis said, “but nothing like what we used to get when I was a boy. I don’t know what’s happened, but the weather isn’t the same.”
“Mr. Ellis is full of wonderful stories about the old times,” Alice said, turning to Nora. And then turning back, “Tell Miss Potter about The Sudden Change.”
“Oh you don’t want to hear me tell that story again,” the old man said, smiling at her. “You’ve heard me tell it a hundred times.”
“Miss Potter hasn’t heard it. And besides, I always enjoy your stories.”
“I’ve forgotten most of them,” Mr. Ellis said. Ten years before, he had been an imposing representative of the world sensitive little boys are afraid of—the loud, ample, bald-headed, cigar-smoking, cigar-smelling men. And then suddenly, before anyone realized what was happening, Mr. Ellis’ hair had turned white and with it his bushy eyebrows and the long black hairs growing out of his nose and ears. He was now a little old man with a tired mind and the violent emotions of second childhood. He discovered the plate in front of him and made a futile effort to cut his fried chicken.
“Can’t I do that for you?” Alice asked.
“I can manage it,” the old man said. “I’m still able to feed myself.” Then he put down his knife and fork and began: “The Sudden Change occurred on the afternoon of December 20, 1836. It was one of the most remarkable phenomena ever recorded. There were several inches of snow on the ground that day and it had been raining long enough to turn the snow to slush. In the middle of the afternoon it suddenly stopped raining and a dark cloud appeared out of the north-west, travelling very rapidly and accompanied by a roaring sound that …”
With her plate in her hand, Martha King stood looking around the living-room. The only vacant place was next to Nora Potter, who glanced up as Martha approached and said, “Mr. Ellis is telling us the most wonderful story. It’s a privilege to hear him.”
“You’re very sweet, my dear,” the old man said, taking advantage of his great age to pat her hand.
“Please go on,” Martha said. “I came to this table especi
ally to hear you.”
“There were two brothers in Douglas County overtaken by this same cold wave I was speaking about,” Mr. Ellis continued. “They were out cutting down a bee-tree and they froze to death before they could reach their cabin. Their bodies were found about ten days afterwards. But the most remarkable case of suffering happened to a man named Hildreth. My father knew him well and heard the story from his own lips. He left home in the company of a young man named Frame, both intending to go to Chicago on horseback. They had entered a large prairie and were out of sight of human habitation when the cold came over them in all its fury. Fifteen minutes from that time their overcoats were like sheet iron. The water and slush was turned to solid ice. Their horses drifted with the wind or across it until night closed in. Finally they dismounted, and Hildreth killed Frame’s horse, and then they took out the entrails and crawled into the cavity and lay there, as near as Mr. Hildreth could judge, until about midnight. By this time the animal heat was out of the carcass, so they crawled out, and somehow the one that had the knife dropped it.…”
A few minutes before, while Martha King was serving her guests, she had been ravenously hungry. Now that she could eat and had a plate piled high with food in front of her, she discovered that she had no appetite. She raised her fork halfway to her mouth and then put it down.
“I wish Pa could hear this,” Nora said, turning around in her chair. “He’d be very interested.”
But Mr. Potter had discovered that the woman who sat next to him was interested in singing. He was now telling her about all the great singers—Nordica and Melba and Alma Gluck and John McCormack—who had sung at the French Opera in New Orleans, and about the time he happened to be standing on the platform of the railway station in Birmingham when Paderewski’s private car passed through. Mr. Potter had heard none of these artists and his own taste in music did not rise above Sousa’s marches, but he managed nevertheless, out of scraps and hearsay, to make Lucy Beach’s face bloom suddenly, and to place her beyond all doubt in the company from which Geraldine Farrar’s teacher, after a few lessons, had dismissed her.
Time Will Darken It Page 3