Selina felt that she had never been so “deared” and “darlinged” before (oh, Selina dear, are you really leaving tomorrow…But Miss Williams is too intelligent…Darling, don’t forget us way down here in the South…I want you to meet Miss Selina Williams; she’s going up north to teach this winter and I do think it’s too clever of her…), and all the while she had been smiling and shaking hands and letting unintelligible words come out of her mouth in answer to those she had heard, she had been conscious only of her linen dress wilting and clinging to her (and what is worse than a draggled linen dress, she thought), and her white shoes, which were too tight and had somehow gotten grass stains on them in spite of the care she had taken to walk only on the paths.
The afternoon had dragged on interminably, and Selina felt little drops of moisture trickling down her back, and watched the tight fingers of sun holding the day down so that she began to wonder if evening would ever come—or had she somehow been dropped into an air pocket of time where there would be nothing but tired shrill voices and thick heat? She had to hold her fingers tightly together to keep back impatient exclamations at the insincere and half-derisive superlatives on her cleverness that were marking the air like a fugue, that had somehow gotten started and could not stop—a wild mingling of discordant themes in which she had to join while the one voice that could resolve the chaos never came.
She whispered to her brother, “Bill, I’m going to scream in a minute—really yell.” A scream, high and sharp and long, would split the heat and noise like lightning. The heavy superlatives would be suspended in midair and the sun would lose its hold on the hot afternoon. There would be a moment of nothingness after the flash, and then the low rumble of voices again…“But really, my dear…” “But you know I always said she was…well, a little…” Selina almost chuckled and Bill had her by the elbow and was piloting her to their moist and shining hostess.
“Let me drive, Bill,” she had said when they finally reached the car, and he grinned and got in beside her as she tossed her hat on the back seat and ran her fingers through her damp hair. He let her drive much too quickly, breaking the silence only to say, “I didn’t see Peter.” And later, to ask abruptly, “Do you really want to go, Selina?”
“Of course I want to go,” she said almost savagely. “It’s stagnant and old and narrow-minded here and no one has survived the Civil War except Pe— except one or two people. You’ve got your hospital, but I haven’t anything and I want to get out.”
“That’s not really why you want to go,” Bill said, and Selina was vaguely thankful that he knew.
“Do you think I’m wrong?” she whispered at last as the sun became a molten ball behind the pines and a faint salt breeze reached them from the ocean.
“No,” said Bill. “No, I don’t think you’re wrong.”
“But I’ll come back…” Selina tried to steady the alarm in her voice as she watched Bill giving shape to her thoughts.
“Yes, this summer, perhaps—oh, I don’t mean that you’ll stay in the school or anything—but you won’t belong here anymore. You never have, really.”
“But Bill—it’s part of me—I feel as though I were tearing myself up—I’m breaking myself off at the roots—just going away for this year.” Selina gripped the wheel and stared at the road, trying to steady her voice, and out of the corner of her eye she saw tenseness in Bill’s form beside her and knew that it was hard for him to tell her this, to hurt her.
“You are part of this beauty, Selina, but it’s because it’s the only beauty you had. You clung to the ocean and all its moods because it’s really the only thing you have to cling to, except the family—and you don’t really fit with us, either. The only person, the only person in the world who could hold you here isn’t going to stay—I know that, Selina. And you know it, too.”
“How do you know, Bill? How do you know about all of this?”
“I’m not quite sure. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
“Why don’t I belong…” asked Selina, clenching her teeth together, and taking the worst curves on the road as wildly as she could so that she would be able to think of nothing but the car, so that Bill should not see her cry. But he was silent until he took the car from her at the gates to put it in the garage. She tried to shake off her mood and ran up the path, pausing only for a moment to greet the wildly barking dogs, to shout to the children battling tennis balls against the side of the garage. Inside the house it was damp and cool, and her heavy tiredness from the heat and nerves too tight fell away. Melly was singing deep down her throat in the kitchen, and there were glasses of iced pineapple juice on the table in the hall. Selina closed hands around the sharp coolness of one and ran upstairs to her room, bare, with all her books and papers gone from the desk and tables, and her suitcases on the chairs and about the floor. Almost before she reached the room she was pulling her wilted dress above her head, tossing it in a crumpled heap in the corner, flinging her shoes under the bed, her stockings in the middle of the floor. (“Oh, Lawd, who gwine help dis chile; who gwine help dis chile” floated Melly’s voice from the kitchen.) Selina ran her fingers through her hair and rumpled it until it stood on end. She heard the screen door slam and swift feet running up the stairs, and the children were at the door.
“Hi, Selina; you back?”
“Umm,” she mumbled, delving into an almost empty drawer.
“Where’s Bill? How was the tea? Was Peter there? Hi, Selina, was Peter there?” Their voices were shrill, unquenchable.
“Bill’s putting the car away. The tea was all right but it was too hot in town and I don’t like to have people make such a fuss over me. Peter—Peter wasn’t there.” (“Oh, Lawd, I’se gwine far away, Who gwine help dis chile” came Melly’s voice, and Bill’s feet thumped in rhythm as he climbed the stairs.) They were silent for a moment, and the cool sound of Bill’s shower splashed into their thoughts. “I’ll be back in time for dinner,” said Selina, and she ran down the corridor, past the rushing sound of Bill’s shower, past the low current of voices from her mother’s room, down the steps.
(Melly’s voice had come clearly, then. “Oh, Lawd. Help dis chile, bless dis chile what’s gwine far, far away. Oh, Lawd, who gwine help dis chile.” Her voice was deep, minor, monotonous as she beat up the cornbread.)
It would be a long time before she would hear Melly’s voice again, Selina thought, and tried to shake off her recurring homesickness for the things she had not yet left, sticking her fingers deep into the sand. The dogs climbed clumsily up the dune, slipping in the unsteady sand, and lay down beside her. She smiled, a little crookedly, to herself. The farewell walk—but how could one say goodbye to the ocean and the great stretch of silver beach, the white dunes and leaping wind?
No matter what Bill said, this was something that was part of her, something that she could never leave without leaving part of herself behind, and she knew now that it was part of her that she would have to leave forever, no matter how long it would take the wound to heal. And strangely she seemed to hear in the recurrence of the breakers a new note, to feel in the wind an adequacy of farewell that could never be attained by words. And somehow she felt that she had reached the height for a moment, that something more potent than words was speaking through her, that for a moment she was fused into the solitary splendor of wind and wave and sky. It was as though her soul was being branded with a talisman of the night, something that would always be with her wherever she was, something that would always be pulling her, pulling her, with a relentless and inevitable force. It was a feeling so wonderful and so vast that her human frailness was too small to hold it. She raised her head sharply, and a voice behind her said, “Selina.” She looked around and Peter was there. Dim and shadowy behind her, Peter was standing.
“Peter.” (Until this minute she had refused to admit to herself that she had been hurt because he had not come to the garden party that afternoon to say goodbye to her.)
“I wanted to sa
y goodbye to you, Selina,” he said. “If I’d been at the garden party, I wouldn’t have had any excuse to come now. One can’t say goodbyes at parties.”
“No.” A dim star began to flicker behind Peter’s head.
He sat down beside her, and she stared out across the ocean silently. “So you’re going tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes.” She began to trace Peter’s head in the sand.
“My wild Selina going to teach in a young ladies’ boarding school…” His finger was making little swirls and holes in the sand, circles and triangles, lines and squares.
Selina laughed. “It isn’t as bad as all that, Peter. Teachers don’t have to be as staid and solemn now as they used to. I was awfully fond of some of mine when I was at school.”
“Don’t let it narrow your horizon. It is broad, Selina; keep it. Don’t let it be squeezed in by the narrow walls of school,” he said, looking out over the ocean.
“That’s why I’m going—because of narrow horizons,” said Selina in a muffled voice.
“And the snows—” Peter’s voice was reflective. “I can’t see Selina in ice and sleet and fog. You belong down here in the sun, with the wind and the waves.”
“I shall probably love the snow,” said Selina staunchly (but she rubbed out Peter’s face in the sand and a stiff little palm tree with a round sun above it came in its place).
“It’s a long time till June,” said Peter.
Selina looked at him. “Haven’t I been trying not to think about it?” She pressed down upon the sand with her fist. “It’s eternities until June!” She shook the small grains of sand from her fingers. “I’m sorry, Peter.”
“You’re sorry, Selina?” Peter said. “I am the one to be sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He watched her toes digging in the sand. “I’ll miss you.”
She smiled at him; Selina smiled at him and his face once more appeared in the sand, and one of herself with large horn-rimmed spectacles and her hair pulled severely back. (The beam from the lightboat swung around, brighter with every turn as the last light faded and the stars came out, one by one, white and blue and yellow, throbbing above the ocean and the beach.) Peter jumped up. “Goodbye, Selina.” He bent down and kissed her quietly and disappeared behind the dunes.
For a moment Selina did not move; then she called, “Goodbye, Peter—” and her voice resounded against the silence. (His footsteps stretched behind the white dunes, filling in with the faintly glowing sand.) “Goodbye, Peter—” she whispered; and “Goodbye, Peter—” her finger traced in the sand.
The moon peered above the edge of the ocean, large and crooked. “The waxing moon—” Selina whispered and stood up, shaking the sand off her like a dog. She plucked a long, sharp strand of beach grass, held it, rough, pliant, to her lips, and whistled piercingly. The winds caught up the sound and it shivered along the beach. From far over the dunes came an answering echo. And “Goodbye, Peter—” Selina whispered again. The gleam from the lightship made a white arc across the sand, and the moon seemed to leap above the ocean’s edge.
“Goodbye, Selina—” she whispered, and watched the dim sand trickling through her toes. She bowed mockingly to her waiting shadow on the dune. “Introducing Miss Williams, instructress of history,” she said, and thought, incongruously, of rolling sand dunes and heavy breaks; sandpipers strutting up and down the beach in early morning, and the sleek black of the porpoises’ leap; the flowers of Spanish bayonets in early spring, and broken shells upon the beach after a storm. It’s a long time till June, Peter had said. (The narrow path on the ocean became broader and brighter as the moon climbed higher, growing smaller, more crooked.) A long time till June—a long road to travel alone, thought Selina, looking out over the white moon path to the horizon. Keep your horizon broad, Peter had told her, and she let the broad white horizon at the edge of the glistening path reach into her mind. She walked slowly down from the sand dune, pushing her feet deep into the sand until she got to the hard moistness of the water’s edge. Ahead of her, rolling over the edge of the horizon, the gleaming highway of water stretched wide and clear.
Madame, Or…
It was a perfect street for it, Walter thought as he walked along checking the numbers on the houses, a neighborhood that not too long ago had been highly select and that now was only slightly down at the heels. A few of the houses were still private, but most of them had been divided into small apartments, and at two of the street corners were two new apartment buildings. He paused at one of the brownstones, looking up, frowning and unexpectedly nervous, at the lace-curtained parlor windows. He thought he caught a glimpse of two girls’ faces peeping behind the curtains: Was one of them Nancy? From somewhere in the building came the unexpected sound of violin exercises meticulously executed. He drew back his shoulders bravely and bounded up the steps, pausing again before ringing the bell to the front door. To the right was a polished brass plaque: MADAME SEPTMONCEL’S RESIDENCE FOR YOUNG LADIES. Walter read it carefully and smiled sardonically, and his smile gave him courage to push the bell.
The heavy front door was opened almost immediately by a young girl with a mop of wavy black hair, unnaturally long eyelashes (though they were, indeed, all her own), and a figure blossoming tightly against a yellow cashmere sweater that was perhaps half a size too small. Her mouth was heavily lipsticked, her face otherwise free of cosmetics. She smiled radiantly at Walter.
“Won’t you come in, please?” she said. “Who is it you wish to see and whom shall I say is calling?” Her speech was very correct, almost a little too precise, as though she had been taking speech lessons: her voice was too husky for her accent. From upstairs the sound of the violin came more clearly now, a difficult passage of a cadenza exquisitely played.
“I would like to see Nancy Burton, please,” Walter said. “I am Walter Burton.”
“Oh, of course!” the girl said. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. Do come in and sit down and I’ll call Nancy.” She led the way into the parlor, her little bottom bouncing jauntily in the tight brown tweed skirt. Walter went over to a love seat upholstered in lemon-yellow satin, but he did not sit. “But you haven’t ever seen me before,” he said. “At least I’ve never seen you, and if I ever had I’m sure I could never have forgotten it.”
The girl laughed. “Well, aren’t you sweet! Nancy has a picture of you in her room. So you’re the famous Walter. Odd you both having the same last name, isn’t it?”
“Not especially, since—” Walter started, and then stopped, remembering Nancy’s proclivities.
“Since what?” the girl asked.
But Walter got out of it by asking, “Who’s the violinist?”
“Oh, that’s Natalia. Good, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know too much about it,” Walter said cautiously, “but she sounds all right.” He could not take his eyes off the girl’s obvious charms and she spoke too quickly to cover his embarrassment. “I’ve never in my life seen such long eyelashes. Do you put them on with spirit gum every morning?”
The girl laughed again. She had a slow laugh that started deep down her throat and rose to a gay chuckle. “You’re really as nice as Nancy said you were,” she said. She bent down to fondle a sleek grey cat that came slinking through the door. The cat moved lasciviously under her hand, turned, and moved back again.
“Are you a friend of Nancy’s?” Walter asked.
“I have the room next door. Oh, I’m Deirdre O’Hara, by the way. I know it’s a silly name, but it’s all mine. I’ll go call Nancy. Is she expecting you?”
“No,” Walter said. “I hope she’s here.”
“Oh, sure.” Deirdre moved away from the cat, blowing hair off the palms of her hands. The cat bounded onto an amber velvet cushion on a lemon satin chair and sat there, turning its head from side to side as if ready to participate in the conversation. “Look, are you planning to take Nancy out to dinner or anything?”
“Well—yes.”
“Then you’d better
see the madame first.”
“The madame?”
“Madame Septmoncel. I mean, you’ll have to get her permission before Nancy can leave in the evening.”
Walter frowned. Deirdre looked at him and laughed again. “What’s the matter? Scared? The madame won’t bite. Look, I’ll go tell her you are here, and see if she can see you right away. She rests in the afternoon but—what time is it?”
“Five thirty.”
“Oh, then she’ll be up. And then while you’re with the madame, I can tell Nancy to go put on her best bib and tucker.” She smiled disarmingly again. “I’m really not terribly good at this. The madame asked me if I’d mind answering the door this afternoon because Aggie’s sick.”
“Aggie?”
“She’s the maid. Now hold on a minute, Walter, and I’ll be right back.” She hurried off, with that provocative wiggling gait, Walter staring after her, the cat leaping off the chair and following her. The combination of bravery and timidity with which Walter had walked down the street and climbed the brownstone steps had both gone, leaving him with a simple sense of excitement. It might be a wild goose chase; he might be going to make a fool of himself; but you never could tell with Nancy and he owed it to her to come and find out what it was all about. He looked very carefully around the room. Coldly and exquisitely furnished. Lemon-yellow satin. Rosewood. Parquet floor. Aubusson rug. An Impressionist painting over the mantelpiece, an excellent one, though he could not place it, a young, voluptuous-looking woman in a green velvet dress. Maybe Renoir, though he did not think so. A green jade horse on the escritoire. Late afternoon sun coming palely through the curtains.
Deirdre returned. “Madame Septmoncel says that she will be delighted to see you, Walter. You don’t mind if I call you Walter, do you? I feel I know you so well from the picture and all the things Nancy’s said.”
The Moment of Tenderness Page 6