Time Will Darken It

by William Maxwell

  “That was nice of her,” Martha said.

  Part Four

  The Cruel Chances of Life

  Baffle Both the Sexes

  1

  If I live to be a thousand years old, Nora said to herself as she rearranged her ivory toilet articles on the dresser scarf, I’ll never get used to these curtains.

  Neither will we ever get used to you, the faded black and red and green curtains said. We may learn to tolerate each other but no more. That bed you slept so badly in, last night, is Mr. Beach’s bed. He died in it. This was his room. And even though your comb and brush are on the bureau and your dresses are hanging in the clothes-press, it all belongs to him.

  The black walnut bed was enormous, a bed that was meant for husband and wife, for marriage and childbirth. No single person could possibly feel comfortable in it, or anything but lost to the world. Lying between the high, crenellated headboard and footboard, she had dreamed about Randolph; she was in trouble and he saved her. In real life, of course, he never did save her. He was only harsh and impatient with her for getting into trouble when he, for some reason or other, never did. She could be drowning and as she came up for the last time he would look down at her from the bank and say I told you it wasn’t safe to swim into a waterfall.…

  When Nora had made the bed Mr. Beach died in, she looked around timidly for something else to do, some household chore that would justify her being there, and discovered that neither Alice nor Lucy had straightened their rooms that morning. Though there were no cotillion programmes tucked in the dressing-table mirror, no invitations to parties or football games, no letters beginning:

  My dear Miss Beach,

  So delightfully urged I succeeded in getting an invitation to the Draperville Academy dance next Friday. I write to ask permission to take you and to have the supper dance with you. I will call tomorrow evening and then learn whether or not I may have the pleasure of … both rooms seemed to say that it is not kind to pry into the secrets of young people. Lucy’s room was larger, with a window seat and a view of the mulberry tree in the back yard. The prevailing colour was a pink so inappropriate to Lucy’s age that Nora decided Mrs. Beach must have chosen it for her. Alice’s room, directly across the hall, was in blue and white. The two brass beds were undoubtedly the same ones Alice and Lucy had slept in when they were thirteen or fourteen years old. A stranger to the family, passing down the hall and glancing in at these two doors, would have thought to herself the girls’ rooms, never suspecting that two mature women came here each night, undressed, took the combs and pins out of their greying hair, and lay down to sleep in the midst of so many frills and ruffles.

  Feeling like an intruder, Nora put the two rooms in order and escaped to the downstairs part of the house, where she sat in the parlour and looked at a large souvenir book of photographs of the Columbian Exposition, and waited for Martha King to call.

  If the Kings had asked Nora to stay on with them, she would have refused, even though their house was so much more cheerful and comfortable than the Beaches’. But they hadn’t asked her. And furthermore, Martha had let two whole days go by without coming across the yard to see whether she was settled and happy in her new surroundings.

  The telephone rang several times during the morning, and each time Nora hurried into the dining-room, ready to be pleasant and natural, to keep her hurt feelings from betraying themselves, to make water run uphill. While one part of her said into the mouthpiece of the telephone, “This is Nora Potter, Miss Purinton.… Yes … for a while, anyway.… Just a moment, I’ll see if she can come to the phone.…” another part of her cried out: How can she not call when she knows I’m waiting to hear from her?

  Answers to this question came and crowded around Nora. Cousin Martha had meant to call and then someone had dropped in and was gossiping and keeping her from the telephone; or perhaps she had tried to call and the line was busy. It might be that, out of nervousness (they had never been altogether easy with one another), she had put off calling as long as she could, without being rude; or that the telephone was out of order and she was waiting for a man from the telephone company to come out and fix it. In which case, she could have come over unless she was sick. And if she was sick, wouldn’t Austin have called and told them?

  It was possible—just barely possible—that Cousin Martha (though she didn’t seem that kind of a person) had taken this way of showing Nora that she didn’t like her and didn’t want her here. Down home, people would never act that way. Whether they liked you or not, they called and pretended that.… Or it might be that she was annoyed because …

  Like the early systems of astronomy, the answers were all based on the assumption that the sun goes around the earth. By lunchtime Nora had considered and exhausted every explanation except the right one—that she was not as important to Martha King as Martha King was to her.

  It would be difficult, she decided, living right next door to them and never seeing or speaking to Cousin Martha, but if she didn’t call, that must be what she intended Nora to do. She would walk past the Kings’ house without looking at it, and if they were on the porch and didn’t speak.… This image, involving a third person, was too painful and had to be put aside in favour of another.… If Nora were, say, with Lucy and Alice and they called Good evening, Martha, then Nora would have to pretend that she didn’t hear or wasn’t aware that anyone was being spoken to. She would have to be ready, when Cousin Martha came over to see Mrs. Beach, to step aside into some room, to be always busy in some remote part of the house. She couldn’t take the children to kindergarten, as Lucy wanted her to do, because that meant turning up the Kings’ front walk, ringing the doorbell, and standing there in front of the door until Cousin Martha opened it. But everything else she could manage, and maybe even that. If she sent some child and she herself remained on the sidewalk, turned slightly away, looking after the other children.… Whatever lay in her power to do, for Austin’s sake, she would do. If she couldn’t be friends with Cousin Martha, she would do the next best thing. She would keep out of her way. Though it would be difficult and not at all the way it was when her family was here, no one would ever know. People would think it was an accident that she and Cousin Martha were never seen together. And her mother, who was very fond of Cousin Martha, need never find out how badly Nora had been treated.

  Having prepared herself again and again all morning for the call that didn’t come, Nora had no strength left to fight the idea that recurred to her at quarter to two—that perhaps Martha King was waiting for her to call; that it was, in fact, her duty to call, after having been a guest in the Kings’ house for over a month. Pride counselled her to wait in the parlour, but Fear said What if Cousin Martha never calls? By that time, Nora was too nervous to trust her own voice over the telephone.

  “I’m going over to the Kings,” she called out to the silent house. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and ran across the yard to get at the little white-throated, whisking animal of uncertainty.

  2

  After dinner, Martha King took her coffee cup and went into the living-room. Austin followed her and built a fire. The living-room fireplace smoked a little until the flue was warm, and as he stood holding the evening paper across the upper part of the opening, he said, “Did you call Nora or go over to see her today?”

  “I meant to,” Martha said, “but before I got around to it, she came over here.” She was silent for such a long time that he finally looked at her over his shoulder.

  “I’m worried about her,” Martha said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, she’s up here among strangers, and she’s young and impulsive, and with nobody to keep any kind of check on her——”

  “The Beaches aren’t strangers,” Austin objected.

  “They aren’t like her own family. They don’t have any control over her. I wouldn’t want anything to happen, for Aunt Ione’s sake. I feel that she trusts us to look after Nora as much as we can, even though Nora isn�
��t staying with us.”

  The flue was now drawing properly and the newspaper no longer needed, but Austin continued to stand facing the brick fireplace, keeping the paper from being sucked up the chimney.

  “I have a feeling that Nora is in trouble and that she needs——”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Oh, Austin, you make me so impatient sometimes. You know perfectly well that Nora is in love with you and that that’s why she didn’t go home when they did.”

  “Did she say so?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how do you——”

  “I saw it on her face when she walked in. She wanted to know if I thought she’d done right in staying, and we talked about that and about her family. And then we talked about you.”

  Austin crumpled the newspaper into a ball and threw it into the fire.

  “I offered to introduce her to some young people,” Martha said, as he sat down, “but it turned out that she likes being with older people. She finds them more stimulating. Besides, she doesn’t think of us—of you and me—as being old.”

  “We’re not as young as we once were. That’s no reason to smile at her.”

  “Very well,” Martha said. “I won’t smile at her. You have a way, Austin—you’ve never done it with me but I’ve seen it happen with other people——”

  The creaking of the front stairs made her turn her head for a second. The Kings’ house, being old, was subject to unexplained noises, most of which came from the cellar and the pantry, and from the front stairs when there was no one on them. This creaking of the stairs, so like the sound of someone trying not to make a sound, often caused Abbey King’s heart to stop beating for several seconds. The footsteps did not, like those in ghost stories, continue down the stairs and stop just outside the library door. There was only one, and then a long agonized waiting for the next step, which never came.

  “You have a way,” Martha went on, “of being very kind and gentle sometimes, and of seeming to offer more than you really do. If you act that way with Nora——”

  “What am I supposed to do? Tell her that she’s got no business to be in love with me?”

  Martha shook her head. “I didn’t say that. But if you tell her—or even allow her to guess that you know, it’ll be all over with her. She’s got as much as she can manage now to keep from telling you or me or anybody that she thinks will listen sympathetically. The only thing that makes it possible for her to pretend that she isn’t in love with you is that she doesn’t know how you might take it. You might laugh at her or think she was just being very young and she can’t bear that. She has that much pride still. As long as she doesn’t know how you feel, she’ll go on trying to pull the wool over my eyes and waiting for a sign from you. At least I think she will. If she breaks down and starts to confide in you, you can refuse to listen.”

  Austin sighed.

  “If you can’t stop her any other way, you can always turn your back and walk off. I may be wrong but I don’t think Nora has ever been in love before. And for that reason——”

  “I don’t see how she can be interested in a man of my age,” Austin said. “But whatever feeling she has for me now, she’ll get over, as I told her.”

  “Do you mean to say she came right out and told you she was in love with you?”

  “More or less.”

  “When?”

  “The day before they left,” Austin said, and then recounted briefly what had happened between Nora and him in his office. When he had finished, he sat staring at the cortège of nymphs that followed the car of Apollo, over the mantelpiece, and thinking how strange it was that Martha showed no signs of being jealous. So many times before when her jealousy had no grounds whatever, she had been very difficult and unreasonable. Apparently, even though she made scenes and accused him of things he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing, she didn’t really believe or mean what she said. Otherwise, how could she sit, considering the design of the coffee cup so calmly and dispassionately.

  “She seemed very upset because she had to go back to Mississippi with them, and so I told her that she could write to me—which there won’t be any occasion for her to do now. And also that I’d do anything I could to help her.”

  Martha King picked up her coffee cup, and started for the dining-room. As she reached the doorway she turned and asked, “You’re not in love with her, are you?”

  He saw that she was looking at him, waiting for his answer with no fear and no anger because she felt it necessary to ask such a question, but in a way that was more serious for both of them, if his answer were yes, than either fear or anger.

  “No,” he said soberly, “I’m not in love with her.”

  3

  When Nora had finished drying the supper dishes for Lucy, she went upstairs to the room that she shared with Mr. Beach, and, standing in front of the dresser, she brushed and braided her hair. From the room at the end of the hall, she heard an old voice complaining.

  In a way that was hardly noticeable to anyone but herself, Mrs. Beach was failing. She had difficulty remembering names. Her handwriting began to take on certain of the shaky characteristics of the handwriting on old envelopes in the attic. Her glasses had to be changed. She had to stop and rest on the stairs. All her life she had been busy pointing out the difference between black and white. Now, as a result of these new symptoms, she had to attend to the various shades of grey. This necessary task was instructive; it forced her to reconsider her marriage and rearrange her girlhood; but she was not grateful for it, any more than the woman who has occupied the prize room of a summer boarding-house until a declining income forces her to move into cramped quarters at the head of the back stairs is grateful for the opportunity to acquaint herself with the kitchen odours and the angry voice of the cook. The complaining was bewildered, as if Mrs. Beach had not yet discovered the proper authorities to complain to, and realized that there was no point in laying her grievance before Alice.

  Nora daubed cologne on her neck and throat, and after one last quick look at herself in the mirror, she opened a dresser drawer, took out a soft bundle wrapped in a hand-towel, turned out the light, and went down the hall to the head of the stairs.

  Nora settled herself on the plush sofa in the parlour, where Lucy was waiting for her, and unpinned the towel, which contained a ball of grey wool and a pair of knitting needles. With Lucy’s help, Nora was learning to cast on. Listening for the sound of footsteps on the front porch, Nora sometimes lost the thread of Lucy’s conversation, but then she picked it up again, and nodding said, “I know just what you mean.” A mistake in her knitting was more serious. She had to unravel back to the point where her mind had wandered. There was no reason to think that Austin would come tonight, any more than any other night, and if he didn’t come, she still had every reason to be happy that she was here. In Mississippi, she could wait a hundred years, for all the good it would do her.

  “You’re doing your hair a new way,” Nora observed.

  “I changed the parting,” Lucy said.

  “It’s very becoming the way you have it now. I’ve tried dozens of ways of doing my hair and this is the only way that doesn’t make me look like somebody in a sideshow. Mama has such beautiful hair—or at least it was beautiful before it turned grey. But I don’t know why we sit here talking about hair when there are so many more interesting things to talk about. What would you like to have, Lucy, if you could have anything in the world you asked for?”

  “If I could have anything in the world? Why I’d like to——”

  “Once you’ve declared your wish, you have to stand by it. You can’t change your mind and have something else instead. So before you——” Nora turned her head to listen.

  If the Dresden shepherd with his crook and saffron knee-breeches and violets painted on his waistcoat, and the shepherdess with her petrified ribbons, tiny waist, and sweet expression are sometimes separated by the whole width of the mantelpiece, it may be
that the shepherdess is an ardent, trusting, young girl, inexperienced in the ways of the world, the shepherd a married man, years older than she, with a china wife and child to think about and scruples that have survived the firing and glazing. Or perhaps the hand that put them there was more interested in ideas of order and balance than in images of philandering.

  At quarter to nine Lucy yawned and said, “I rather expected Austin King to drop in.” She got up from her chair, picked up the souvenir book of the Columbian Exposition, which Nora had left out on the parlour table, and put it away on the bottom shelf of the glassed-in bookcase where it belonged. “Don’t feel you have to go to bed when we do, Nora. We’ve got into the habit of retiring with the chickens.”

  “If you don’t mind,” Nora said, “I think I will wait up a little longer. I’m not a bit sleepy.”

  Once or twice she got up and went into the dining-room, where she could see the lights in the Kings’ house, and at one point she wandered out into the hall and stood looking at the door chime which needed only a human hand to make it reverberate through the quiet house. At ten o’clock the lights went out downstairs in the house next door and the upstairs lights went on, shortly afterward.

  When Nora went upstairs, no one said (as they would have if she had been at home): Is that you, Nora? From the room at the end of the hall came the sound of Mrs. Beach’s breathing, as regular and mournful as a buoy bell. Nora tiptoed past the two open doors that offered absolute silence and turned the light on in her room.

  When she was ready for bed, she turned the light off and raised the shade so that, lying in bed, she could still see the thin slice of light upstairs in the house next door. After a time the window was raised a few inches, but the light stayed on. Turning and tossing, lying now on her right side, now on her heart, Nora invited and prevented sleep. The light went out, the clock in the downstairs hall struck twelve, and then one, and finally two. After Nora had given up all hope of ever dropping off, she realized that she had been somewhere, that something had happened to her, that she had been dreaming.