Let Love Come Last

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “I want them to have the names of Dr. Cowlesbury,” said William. “Matthew and Thomas Cowlesbury Prescott. Your father’s name? August—good God! It is not an American name. I won’t consider it for a moment.”

  Ursula had no objection to Matthew and Thomas. Now she developed a habit of awakening alone in the night to fresh terror and apprehension. Sometimes she could not return to sleep. She would rise and wrap herself in a velvet peignoir and sit by the window, watching the moon pour down its white desolation on the broken land which lay about the house. She knew loneliness as she had never known loneliness before.

  On the 29th of March, while the last snows of the year swirled around the great dark pile of the house, the children were born. They arrived with surprising celerity and with only the briefest of suffering for their mother.

  As William had always predicted, they were boys. They were fraternal, but not identical, twins. This was obvious even from the first day. The one to be christened Matthew was long and delicately formed, with a light fluff of hair and a slender face. Thomas was of a sturdier frame, and shorter, with streaks of reddish hair and a square little face. Both were fine and healthy, and exceptionally large for twins.

  William’s pride reached a peak of stern frenzy, and Ursula, from her pillows, smiled weakly at him. She had begun to love her children. Now began for her, for a few weeks, a time of real happiness and sense of achievement. William approved of her enormously. The children were good, Lucy reported. They were lovely children.

  The christening was an important event in the city. Gifts heaped the tables everywhere. The soft April sun slowly turned the new lawns about the house green. Soft April rains rustled at the windows. The world flowered again. Ursula was happy.

  It was not until July that she suddenly became aware that William was not displaying his former interest in Oliver, and that he sometimes admonished the child harshly for playing too noisily in the hall outside the nursery where his sons lay. On these occasions, Oliver would become completely silent, looking up at William with a strange expression in his eyes, and following his foster father with a long slow glance as William would walk away.

  The knowledge came to Ursula with the sickening force of a savage blow. At first, she could not accept it. She began to observe William and Oliver acutely. When she was finally obliged to acknowledge the truth her grief was terrible. It was no use thinking of telling William that he was being both cruel and obtuse, that he owed a duty to this child as much as he owed it to his own sons. William would not believe that he had changed.

  Yet he had changed. His interest in Oliver as a person was declining surely if slowly. At times, he displayed an irrational irritation with the child, and called for Lucy to take him away when the babies were being nursed. There were days when he did not even inquire about him, or ask to see him.

  Now the old terror and dread returned to Ursula in stronger measure than ever before. She and Lucy knew so much which they could not discuss. Lucy had married her John in October, and they occupied two rooms on the third floor. There Oliver would play, and even sleep. The exile was becoming complete. Mrs. Templeton began to discern it. Her treatment of Oliver, formerly overly saccharine and sentimental, took on an overtone of thin impatience when the child showed himself.

  CHAPTER XX

  John opened the carriage door for Ursula and Oliver a street or two away from her old home. “Meet me here in about an hour, John,” said Ursula. The young man nodded. It was an old formula now, this monthly visit, on a Sunday afternoon. Did William know of it? Ursula had become certain he did, and that, in his obscure and twisted way of thinking, it pleased him.

  This Sunday, the last Sunday of October, was brilliant and cool. The copper and brown and scarlet and gold of the earth, the intense purple of the mountains against the gem-like aquamarine of the blazing sky, combined in an incredible medley of color. About every tree or building the shadows stood vivid, carved of shining jet. Strong scents of burning wood, of apples, of drying grass and spicy leaves, filled the cold sharp air. Ursula’s cloak blew about her; she had to bend her head against the skirling wind.

  Oliver, at six, considered himself almost a man, and sworn to protection of his mother. He held her elbow firmly; he was a tall boy, reaching almost to her shoulder. He walked with light grace and surety, guiding Ursula across rough or broken cobblestones as if she, and not himself, were the child. Solicitously, he watched every movement of her heavy body. Ursula, who, as usual, lacked all female “delicacy,” had already informed him that within another four months or so he would have a fourth brother or sister, besides Thomas and Matthew, and Julia. Oliver had accepted this with his customary gentle gravity, and had made no comment. He knew that Thomas and Matthew did not know of this as yet. After all, they were only four, while he was approaching seven. As for Julia, or Julie, she was hardly more than a baby, still toddling about in the imperious bad-temper of her twenty-four months of life. He, Oliver, was a man. He had already learned that men not only were informed of secrets, but that a man must learn to bear slights, injustices, heart-burnings, bewilderments and sadness with silence and fortitude, whether these things were inflicted upon him by parents, servants or governesses.

  It was Ursula, and Ursula alone, and Lucy and John, like himself also outside the family, who loved him now. It was not enough for Oliver, but no one but Ursula guessed this.

  The trees along the street were painted with light, just as they had been in all the autumns of Ursula’s youth. She looked at them, and they were not joy to her, but only mournfulness. She glanced down at Oliver, and said: “Is it not a lovely day, dear? And this street is always the same; it was like this when I was as young as you, and when I was a girl, with my father, and when I was a woman, and left it forever.”

  Oliver looked at the trees and the sky, and all the bright ghosts of the dying year. He said: “Yes, Mama,” and pressed her arm. Strangely, Ursula was comforted. It was no use for her common-sense to say: “He is only a child, and he can’t understand what autumn can mean when you are sad or wretched, how all its color is no comfort, but only a reminder that life is brightest when it is about to go, and that there is nothing anywhere, nothing at all.”

  Ursula paused a moment before her house, and looked up at its gray broad quiet and green shutters and shining windows. It gazed tranquilly, in its old wisdom, at the house opposite. She said: “Yes, it’s my home.”

  Alice Arnold, in her neat black bombazine, a trifle rusty at the seams, but always elegant, opened the door for them, and said in her gentle, playful fashion: “I have been watching for you, and hoping you would come.” She drew them into the tiny hall, bent, and kissed Ursula’s cheek. As always, she gave Ursula a quick if surreptitious glance, and then smiled tenderly at Oliver. “How is your throat, Oliver? I do hope it is better.”

  “Yes, Aunt Alice,” he replied, gravely, but smiling at her. “It is quite well now.”

  Alice took Ursula’s cloak, while Oliver unbuttoned and removed his coat. “I have made your favorite tarts, Ursula,” she said, “and Oliver’s. With new plums, just picked yesterday, from your own tree. Such delicious ones. I think they are the best ever.”

  Ursula, as always, drew in a deep breath in the parlor, detecting, with sad delight, the old odors of lavender, potpourri, wax, soap, hot fresh tea, newly baked pastry, sunshine on ancient leather and carpets, and burning firewood. The tenseness in her tired body relaxed, leaving a hardly perceptible aching behind. Oliver smiled about him happily. It was as if this were home to him, too. He helped Ursula to a chair, sat down near her on a footstool. He looked with pleasure at the shining tea-things glimmering in the firelight, and at the tray of tarts.

  “It is the nursemaid’s Sunday off, and the twins were a little obstreperous,” said Ursula, removing her gloves. “At least, Tommy was. Such a rowdy child.”

  Once or twice, during the past year, Ursula had brought her boys to this house. The last occasion had not been a pleasant one. Mat
thew had sat solemnly in a corner of the sofa, and had whimpered a little, drearily. Thomas had raced wildly about, climbing on furniture, demanding bric-a-brac out of his reach, shouting, behaving abominably, like the spoiled and demanding child he was.

  “How are the dear babies?” asked Alice, settling herself with a rustle behind Ursula’s cherished silver, and beginning to pour.

  “They are very well,” said Ursula, listlessly. “They are always well.” This was not quite true. Thomas and Julia usually burst with red health, but Matthew was less robust. He was too thin and pale, too quiet and solitary. She added: “Matthew has been a little feverish with a cold. He is better now, however.” A weariness, as of intense boredom, filled her. She asked: “And how are you, dear Alice? And Eugene?”

  “I am always well,” answered Alice, looking at her friend with her radiant pale eyes, and smiling. There was considerable gray weaving its way now through her fine light hair, and she was more slender than ever. She was worn as an old silver teaspoon is worn, thin and fragile, but pure to the last delicate edge. Nothing could obliterate that shining, that colorless but valiant lustre. “As for Eugene, he is the same. His schoolmasters are quite lyrical about him, and constantly assure me of his remarkable mind.” She smiled; it was not the smug smile of gratified motherhood. It was, for Alice, almost a wry smile. “He is working at his lessons today, though I have urged him to go out into this wonderful weather. He is quite relentless about his school work.”

  “But Eugene never cared about playing games with the other boys,” said Ursula, heavy with her boredom.

  Alice laughed again. “I would rather he were not quite so grim,” she said, giving Ursula one of the latter’s own teacups filled with steaming and fragrant tea. “Sometimes he almost frightens me, he is so coldly intense about his school work. I don’t think he really enjoys it; I think he regards it as a means to an end.” She paused. “He will be down shortly. He always enjoys seeing you, dear Ursula.”

  I doubt it, I seriously doubt it, thought Ursula. But she smiled falsely. Eugene filled her with uneasiness; he disconcerted her by his very presence. Yet, always, he was politeness and grace itself.

  “He finishes with his school in the spring, does he not?” asked Ursula, disturbed as always when Eugene was mentioned. “Will he then go on to a university?” Immediately, she accused herself of tactlessness. She did not know the extent of Alice’s small private fortune, but she suspected it was very small.

  Alice gave Oliver a glass of milk, and, as if he were an adult, she proffered him the tarts. She waited until the child had accepted both before she said quietly: “I have discussed a university with him. He says he prefers not to go. He has other plans. I don’t know what they are. But I know this is not just a childish whim.”

  She lifted her eyes to Ursula. She said nothing else. Ursula did not continue the subject. They never went beyond these superficial personalities. When she returned home, Ursula could never quite remember what conversation had passed between her and her friend. There was nothing much ever said. Quite often Ursula would leave this house, namelessly desolated, filled with nostalgia for she knew not what, still hungry, still unsatisfied.

  But there were other times when Ursula felt that the things they never discussed were really discussed between them, wordlessly, that there were matters they dared not speak of, and that under the friendly casualness of their meetings there pulsed a tragic meaning not to be expressed.

  Nor did they speak of those who had formerly been friends of Alice’s. She did not ask about them. If Ursula inadvertently spoke of them, Alice was silent. She conveyed, most gently, that she no longer was part of the old life, that she had completely discarded it, that it interested her no more. There was about Alice a kind of high and serene isolation, a disembodiment, a withdrawal, such as lives about the memory of the dead.

  The idle, agreeable conversation went on now between them. All at once, Ursula was again embittered, weighed down with weariness and yearning. But still she could not break through the kind and compassionate indifference which surrounded Alice.

  She glanced up, to see Alice watching her steadfastly. Alice’s expression, for all her slight and gentle smile, was moved and sad.

  Alice turned to Oliver with her tender air. “You are becoming so grown-up, dear,” she said. “I hardly know you when I see you.”

  Ursula turned too, and the women regarded Oliver with affection. He smiled at Alice fondly. Ursula felt a rush of pride for him. He was her love, her delight, her consolation, as her own children were not. She no longer pitied him that he did not know his parents, or his origin. There was no compassion in her attachment. It was something else and, again, it was something beyond words. As she had done a thousand times before, she speculated on his mother and father. Who had given him his tall, slender, well-knit young body, his cleanness of line, his graciously natural manners, his look of maturity? Had his mother had that dark brightness of skin, those tilted dark eyes, that sleek fine mass of black hair?

  My dear Oliver, thought Ursula. My darling.

  Why did she not feel this urge towards her own children, flesh of her flesh? Why were they strange and incomprehensible to her? Why did they weary and fatigue her? Why was it not possible to understand them, try as she unceasingly did? She had, in her desperate efforts to be a real mother, certainly given more attention to them than she had ever given Oliver.

  Alice stretched out her hand and softly brushed her fingers over Oliver’s hair. There was infinite sweetness in her eyes as she did so. “Would you like to see the garden, dear?” she asked. “It is so beautiful just now. Tomorrow, it might all be gone.”

  He went at once to Ursula, to help her rise. He was only a child, but he had the air of a solicitous man. Ursula could not help smiling; yet it was delightful to be cherished. They went through Ursula’s shining kitchen. Ursula looked about her with homesickness, longing for her house, for her kitchen. They stepped out into the garden, and her heart was heavy.

  She had hardly believed it when Alice had assured her, years ago, that Eugene was a devoted gardener. But she had been convinced. Never, even in her most industrious days, had her garden looked so beautiful, though it was somewhat too precise for her own taste. Everything was so disciplined, so implacably tidy. Not a weed marred the still-green smoothness of the grass; it was the time of falling leaves, yet hardly a leaf cluttered the hedge or the flagged walk.

  There, beyond, lay the hills, not purple, as they were from the windows of the great house on Schiller Road, but closer, and the color of bronze, burning here and there with a scarlet maple or a splash of gold. Clumps of dark-green evergreens stood out against the coppery background; in this clarified light, tiny white houses glimmered in the late sunshine on the sides of the mighty hills. At the end of the garden, the old gray wall had almost entirely disappeared under climbing ivy, brilliant as red fire.

  The ancient and mighty elms in the center of the garden were thin bright ghosts of their summery selves, yellow and tattered. A bed of zinnias and asters, cannas and salvias, flamed against the green grass; the old apple tree near the wall was rich with crimson fruit. There, near the bird-bath, empty now of the colorful creatures who swarmed about it in July and August, was the sundial, still marking the hours. Someone had taken away the swing of her childhood, which she had sentimentally allowed to remain. The plum trees which had sheltered it hung with purple globes. A late bee or two hummed through the air, which had warmed a trifle, and a few white butterflies hovered languidly over a clump of golden calendulas. Here, in a corner, pansies had not yet died; their tiny pert faces looked up at Ursula inquisitively. Between the stones of the flagged path the moss was the color of verdigris. A breeze blew through the garden, languorous with late sun and spice and the smell of burning leaves.

  The garden was haunted by a hundred Ursulas. So many summers she had sat on that white stone bench under the elms; she had filled that bird-bath thousands of times. From her earliest days
she had seen this clear autumn light on the trees; she had looked at these hills from the window of her room. Again she thought: Home. This is my home.

  She did not know, lost as she was in her dreams and her sadnesses and longing, that both Alice and Oliver were watching her. For all her rich clothing and the sparkling rings on her fingers and the fashionable expensiveness of her dark-blue velvet bonnet, there was a still weariness in her posture, a mournful loneliness. She stood apart, and to the woman and the child who watched her she appeared abandoned and inconsolable.

  A door opened and closed quietly in the Sunday quiet. Eugene entered the garden. Ursula and the others watched him come. He was almost a man now, just seventeen, tall, moving quickly yet without an appearance of haste, his straight fair hair falling across his forehead. It was Alice’s face under that hair, but a face become masculine, impenetrable and alertly still. He had Alice’s lean elegance, but it was a hard elegance. He might be thin and angular, like his mother, but his shoulders were broad under the black Sunday broadcloth, the outline of his legs and arms firm as stone, and as inflexible. And his eyes, though he smiled politely at the guests, expressed nothing at all. They were pale and shining, but without depth or warmth or any shared human feeling. He greeted Ursula with dignity; for an instant, she thought she saw in his eyes a gleam inimicable and contemptuous. But it was gone immediately, if it had ever been there, which she now doubted.

  He stood at ease and, after he had glanced briefly at Oliver, politely inquired about Ursula’s health. She answered him stiffly. Again, as always, she was uneasy in his presence; she was filled with discomfort and dislike. Why did she detest him so? Was it some quality of implacability in him, a mercilessness? What did he think, this young man, at whom his mother gazed with such tranquil affection? For what was he waiting?

  She wanted to go away. She could not endure Eugene. She took Oliver’s little hand; it was warm, and had a reassuring strength of its own. He, too, was looking at Eugene. His very young face was intent and absorbed and rather stern. It was ridiculous, certainly, but Ursula drew closer to Oliver, not to protect him, but to be protected. The movement was instinctive.