by Willa Cather
“Perhaps you would like me to go now?” he asked her.
She opened her eyes. “Oh, no! Don’t leave me, please. I am so much safer with you here.” She put her hand, still cold, on his for a moment, then closed her eyes and went back into that languor of exhaustion.
Perhaps half an hour went by. She did not stir, but he knew she was not asleep: an occasional trembling of the eyelids, tears stealing out from under her black lashes and glistening unregarded on her cheeks; like pearls he thought they were, transparent shimmers on velvet cheeks gone very white.
When suddenly she sat up, she spoke in her natural voice.
“But, my dear boy, you have gone dinnerless all this while! Won’t you stay with me and have just a bit of something up here? Do ring for Hopkins, please.”
The young man caught at the suggestion. If once he could get her mind on the duties of caring for a guest, that might lead to something. He must try to be very hungry.
The kitchen maid was in and, under Hopkins’s direction, got together a creditable supper and brought it up to the drawing-room. Gabrielle took nothing but the hot soup and a little sherry. Young Seabury, once he tasted food, found he had no difficulty in doing away with cold pheasant and salad.
Gabrielle had quite recovered her self-control. She talked very little, but that was not unusual with her. He told her about Hardwick’s approaching marriage. For him, the evening went by very pleasantly. He felt with her a closer intimacy than ever before.
When at midnight he rose to take his leave, she detained him beside her chair, holding his hand. “At some other time I shall explain what you saw here tonight. How could such a thing happen in one’s own house, in an English-speaking city …?”
“But that was not an English-speaking man who went out from here. He is an immigrant who has made a lot of money. He does not belong.”
“Yes, that is true. I wish you weren’t going out to China. Not for long, I hope. It’s a bad thing to be away from one’s own people.” Her voice broke, and tears came again. He kissed her hand softly, devotedly, and went downstairs.
He had not seen her again until his arrival at this hotel some weeks ago, when he did not recognize her.
XI
One evening when Mrs. Allison and Madame de Couçy had been dining with Seabury at the Maison des Fleurs, they went into the tea room to have their coffee and watch the dancing. It was now September, and almost everyone would be leaving next week. The floor was full of young people, English, American, French, moving monotonously to monotonous rhythms,—some of them scarcely moving at all. Gabrielle watched them through her lorgnette, with a look of resigned boredom.
Mrs. Allison frowned at her playfully. “Of course it’s all very different,” she observed, “but then, so is everything.” She turned to Seabury: “You know we used to have to put so much drive into a dance act, or it didn’t go at all. Lottie Collins was the only lazy dancer who could get anything over. But the truth was, the dear thing couldn’t dance at all; got on by swinging her foot! There must be something in all this new manner, if only one could get it. That couple down by the bar now, the girl with the very low back: they are doing it beautifully; she dips and rises like a bird in the air … a tired bird, though. That’s the disconcerting thing. It all seems so tired.”
Seabury agreed with her cheerfully that it was charming, though tired. He felt a gathering chill in the lady on his right. Presently she said impatiently: “Haven’t you had enough of this, Chetty?”
Mrs. Allison sighed. “You never see anything in it, do you, dear?”
“I see wriggling. They look to me like lizards dancing—or reptiles coupling.”
“Oh, no, dear! No! They are such sweet young things. But they are dancing in a dream. I want to go and wake them up. They are missing so much fun. Dancing ought to be open and free, with the lungs full; not mysterious and breathless. I wish I could see a spirited waltz again.”
Gabrielle shrugged and gave a dry laugh. “I wish I could dance one! I think I should try, if by any chance I should ever hear a waltz played again.”
Seabury rose from his chair. “May I take you up on that? Will you?”
She seemed amused and incredulous, but nodded.
“Excuse me for a moment.” He strolled toward the orchestra. When the tango was over he spoke to the conductor, handing him something from his vest pocket. The conductor smiled and bowed, then spoke to his men, who smiled in turn. The saxophone put down his instrument and grinned. The strings sat up in their chairs, pulled themselves up, as it were, tuned for a moment, and sat at attention. At the lift of the leader’s hand they began the “Blue Danube.”
Gabrielle took Mr. Seabury’s arm. They passed a dozen couples who were making a sleepy effort and swung into the open square where the line of tables stopped. Seabury had never danced with Gabrielle Longstreet, and he was astonished. She had attack and style, the grand style, slightly military, quite right for her tall, straight figure. He held her hand very high, accordingly. The conductor caught the idea; smartened the tempo slightly, made the accents sharper. One by one the young couples dropped out and sat down to smoke. The two old waltzers were left alone on the floor. There was a stir of curiosity about the room; who were those two, and why were they doing it? Cherry Beamish heard remarks from the adjoining tables.
“She’s rather stunning, the old dear!”
“Aren’t they funny?”
“It’s so quaint and theatrical. Quite effective in its way.”
Seabury had not danced for some time. He thought the musicians drew the middle part out interminably; rather suspected they were playing a joke on him. But his partner lost none of her brilliance and nerve. He tried to live up to her. He was grateful when those fiddlers snapped out the last phrase. As he took Gabrielle to her seat, a little breeze of applause broke out from the girls about the room.
“Dear young things!” murmured Chetty, who was flushed with pleasure and excitement. A group of older men who had come in from the dining-room were applauding.
“Let us go now, Seabury. I am afraid we have been making rather an exhibition,” murmured Madame de Couçy. As they got into the car awaiting them outside, she laughed good-humouredly. “Do you know, Chetty, I quite enjoyed it!’
XII
The next morning Mrs. Allison telephoned Seabury that Gabrielle had slept well after an amusing evening: felt so fit that she thought they might seize upon this glorious morning for a drive to the Grande-Chartreuse. The drive, by the route they preferred, was a long one, and hitherto she had not felt quite equal to it. Accordingly, the three left the hotel at eleven o’clock with Seabury’s trusty young Savoyard driver, and were soon in the mountains.
It was one of those high-heavenly days that often come among the mountains of Savoie in autumn. In the valleys the hillsides were pink with autumn crocuses thrusting up out of the short sunburned grass. The beech trees still held their satiny green. As the road wound higher and higher toward the heights, Seabury and his companions grew more and more silent. The lightness and purity of the air gave one a sense of detachment from everything one had left behind “down there, back yonder.” Mere breathing was a delicate physical pleasure. One had the feeling that life would go on thus forever in high places, among naked peaks cut sharp against a stainless sky.
Ever afterward Seabury remembered that drive as strangely impersonal. He and the two ladies were each lost in a companionship much closer than any they could share with one another. The clean-cut mountain boy who drove them seemed lost in thoughts of his own. His eyes were on the road: he never spoke. Once, when the gold tones of an alpine horn floated down from some hidden pasture far overhead, he stopped the car of his own accord and shut off the engine. He threw a smiling glance back at Seabury and then sat still, while the simple, melancholy song floated down through the blue air. When it ceased, he waited a little, looking up. As the horn did not sing again, he drove on without comment.
At last, beyond a sharp turn
in the road, the monastery came into view; acres of slate roof, of many heights and pitches, turrets and steep slopes. The terrifying white mountain crags overhung it from behind, and the green beech wood lay all about its walls. The sunlight blazing down upon that mothering roof showed ruined patches: the Government could not afford to keep such a wilderness of leading in repair.
The monastery, superb and solitary among the lonely mountains, was after all a destination: brought Seabury’s party down into man’s world again, though it was the world of the past. They began to chatter foolishly, after hours of silent reflection. Mrs. Allison wished to see the kitchen of the Carthusians, and the chapel, but she thought Gabrielle should stay in the car. Madame de Couçy insisted that she was not tired: she would walk about the stone courtyard while the other two went into the monastery.
Except for a one-armed guard in uniform, the great court was empty. Herbs and little creeping plants grew between the cobblestones. The three walked toward the great open well and leaned against the stone wall that encircled it, looking down into its wide mouth. The hewn blocks of the coping were moss-grown, and there was water at the bottom. Madame de Couçy slipped a little mirror from her handbag and threw a sunbeam down into the stone-lined well. That yellow ray seemed to waken the black water at the bottom: little ripples stirred over the surface. She said nothing, but she smiled as she threw the gold plaque over the water and the wet moss of the lower coping. Chetty and Seabury left her there. When he glanced back, just before they disappeared into the labyrinth of buildings, she was still looking down into the well and playing with her little reflector, a faintly contemptuous smile on her lips.
After nearly two hours at the monastery the party started homeward. Seabury told the driver to regulate his speed so that they would see the last light on the mountains before they reached the hotel.
The return trip was ill-starred: they narrowly escaped a serious accident. As they rounded one of those sharp curves, with a steep wall on their right and an open gulf on the left, the chauffeur was confronted by a small car with two women, crossing the road just in front of him. To avoid throwing them over the precipice he ran sharply to the right, grazing the rock wall until he could bring his car to a stop. His passengers were thrown violently forward over the driver’s seat. The light car had been on the wrong side of the road, and had attempted to cross on hearing the Savoyard’s horn. His nerve and quickness had brought every one off alive, at least.
Immediately the two women from the other car sprang out and ran up to Seabury with shrill protestations; they were very careful drivers, had run this car twelve thousand miles and never had an accident, etc. They were Americans; bobbed, hatless, clad in dirty white knickers and sweaters. They addressed each other as “Marge” and “Jim.” Seabury’s forehead was bleeding: they repeatedly offered to plaster it up for him.
The Savoyard was in the road, working with his mudguard and his front wheel. Madame de Couçy was lying back in her seat, pale, her eyes closed, something very wrong with her breathing. Mrs. Allison was fanning her with Seabury’s hat. The two girls who had caused all the trouble had lit cigarettes and were swaggering about with their hands in their trousers pockets, giving advice to the driver about his wheel. The Savoyard never lifted his eyes. He had not spoken since he ran his car into the wall. The sharp voices, knowingly ordering him to “regardez, attendez,” did not pierce his silence or his contempt. Seabury paid no attention to them because he was alarmed about Madame de Couçy, who looked desperately ill. She ought to lie down, he felt sure, but there was no place to put her—the road was cut along the face of a cliff for a long way back. Chetty had aromatic ammonia in her handbag; she persuaded Gabrielle to take it from the bottle, as they had no cup. While Seabury was leaning over her she opened her eyes and said distinctly:
“I think I am not hurt … faintness, a little palpitation. If you could get those creatures away …”
He sprang off the running-board and drew the two intruders aside. He addressed them; first politely, then forcibly. Their reply was impertinent, but they got into their dirty little car and went. The Savoyard was left in peace; the situation was simplified. Three elderly people had been badly shaken up and bruised, but the brief submersion in frightfulness was over. At last the driver said he could get his car home safely.
During the rest of the drive Madame de Couçy seemed quite restored. Her colour was not good, but her self-control was admirable.
“You must let me give that boy something on my own account, Seabury. Oh, I know you will be generous with him! But I feel a personal interest. He took a risk, and he took the right one. He couldn’t run the chance of knocking two women over a precipice. They happened to be worth nobody’s consideration, but that doesn’t alter the code.”
“Such an afternoon to put you through!” Seabury groaned.
“It was natural, wasn’t it, after such a morning? After one has been exaltée, there usually comes a shock. Oh, I don’t mean the bruises we got! I mean the white breeches.” Gabrielle laughed, her good laugh, with no malice in it. She put her hand on his shoulder. “How ever did you manage to dispose of them so quickly?”
When the car stopped before the hotel, Madame de Couçy put a tiny card case into the driver’s hand with a smile and a word. But when she tried to rise from the seat, she sank back. Seabury and the Savoyard lifted her out, carried her into the hotel and up the lift, into her own chamber. As they placed her on the bed, Seabury said he would call a doctor. Madame de Couçy opened her eyes and spoke firmly:
“That is not necessary. Chetty knows what to do for me. I shall be myself tomorrow. Thank you both, thank you.”
Outside the chamber door Seabury asked Mrs. Allison whether he should telephone for Doctor Françon.
“I think not. A new person would only disturb her. I have all the remedies her own doctor gave me for these attacks. Quiet is the most important thing, really.”
The next morning Seabury was awakened very early, something before six o’clock, by the buzz of his telephone. Mrs. Allison spoke, asking in a low voice if he would come to their apartment as soon as possible. He dressed rapidly. The lift was not yet running, so he went up two flights of stairs and rang at their door. Cherry Beamish, in her dressing-gown, admitted him. From her face he knew, at once,—though her smile was almost radiant as she took his hand.
“Yes, it is over for her, poor dear,” she said softly. “It must have happened in her sleep. I was with her until after midnight. When I went in again, a little after five, I found her just as I want you to see her now; before her maid comes, before anyone has been informed.”
She led him on tiptoe into Gabrielle’s chamber. The first shafts of the morning sunlight slanted through the Venetian blinds. A blue dressing-gown hung on a tall chair beside the bed, blue slippers beneath it. Gabrielle lay on her back, her eyes closed. The face that had outfaced so many changes of fortune had no longer need to muffle itself in furs, to shrink away from curious eyes, or harden itself into scorn. It lay on the pillow regal, calm, victorious,—like an open confession.
Seabury stood for a moment looking down at her. Then he went to the window and peered out through the open slats at the sun, come at last over the mountains into a sky that had long been blue: the same mountains they were driving among yesterday.
Presently Cherry Beamish spoke to him. She pointed to the hand that lay on the turned-back sheet. “See how changed her hands are; like those of a young woman. She forgot to take off her rings last night, or she was too tired. Yes, dear, you needed a long rest. And now you are with your own kind.”
“I feel that, too, Chetty. She is with them. All is well. Thank you for letting me come.” He stooped for a moment over the hand that had been gracious to his youth. They went out into the salon, carefully closing the door behind them.
“Now, my dear, stay here, with her. I will go to the management, and I will arrange all that must be done.”
Some hours later, after he had gone th
rough the formalities required by French law, Seabury encountered the three journalists in front of the hotel.
Next morning the great man from the Riviera to whom Seabury had telegraphed came in person, his car laden with flowers from his conservatories. He stood on the platform at the railway station, his white head uncovered, all the while that the box containing Gabrielle Longstreet’s coffin was being carried across and put on the express. Then he shook Seabury’s hand in farewell, and bent gallantly over Chetty’s. Seabury and Chetty were going to Paris on that same express.
After her illness two years ago Gabrielle de Couçy had bought a lot à perpétuité in Père-Lachaise. That was rather a fashion then: Adelina Patti, Sarah Bernhardt, and other ladies who had once held a place in the world made the same choice.
The Best Years
I
On a bright September morning in the year 1899 Miss Evangeline Knightly was driving through the beautiful Nebraska land which lies between the Platte River and the Kansas line. She drove slowly, for she loved the country, and she held the reins loosely in her gloved hand. She drove about a great deal and always wore leather gauntlets. Her hands were small, well shaped and very white, but they freckled in hot sunlight.
Miss Knightly was a charming person to meet—and an unusual type in a new country: oval face, small head delicately set (the oval chin tilting inward instead of the square chin thrust out), hazel eyes, a little blue, a little green, tiny dots of brown.… Somehow these splashes of colour made light—and warmth. When she laughed, her eyes positively glowed with humour, and in each oval cheek a roguish dimple came magically to the surface. Her laugh was delightful because it was intelligent, discriminating, not the physical spasm which seizes children when they are tickled, and growing boys and girls when they are embarrassed. When Miss Knightly laughed, it was apt to be because of some happy coincidence or droll mistake. The farmers along the road always felt flattered if they could make Miss Knightly laugh. Her voice had as many colours as her eyes—nearly always on the bright side, though it had a beautiful gravity for people who were in trouble.