It was a mob of children shrieking by that made her say: "Quickly!"
And she all but lifted and carried the wicker man in the wake of the boys and girls.
"No," cried the old pa.s.senger. "The noise!"
"It"s special!" The nurse hustled him through a door. "A medicine! Here!"
The old man stared around.
"Why," he murmured. "This is-a playroom."
And she steered him into the midst of all the screams and running.
"Children!" she called.
The children froze.
"Story-telling time!"
They were about to run again when she added, "Ghost story-telling time!"
She pointed casually to the ghastly pa.s.senger, whose pale moth fingers grasped the scarf about his icy throat.
"All fall down!" said the nurse.
The children plummeted with squeals to the floor. All about the Orient traveler, like Indians around a tepee, they stared up along his body to where blizzards ran odd temperatures in his gaping mouth.
He wavered. She quickly said: "You do believe in ghosts, yes?"
"Oh, yes!" was the shout. "Yes!"
It was as if a ramrod had shot up his spine. The Orient traveler stiffened. The most brittle of tiny flinty sparks fired his eyes. Winter roses budded in his cheeks. And the more the children leaned, the taller he grew, and the warmer his complexion. With one icicle finger he pointed at their faces.
"I," he whispered, "I," a pause. "Shall tell you a frightful tale. About a real ghost!"
"Oh, yes!" cried the children.
And he began to talk and as the fever of his tongue conjured fogs, lured mists and invited rains, the children hugged and crowded close, a bed of charcoals on which he happily baked. And as he talked Nurse Halliday, backed off near the door, saw what he saw across the haunted sea, the ghost cliffs, the chalk cliffs, the safe cliffs of Dover and not so far beyond, waiting, the whispering towers, the murmuring castle-keeps, where phantoms were as they had always been, with the still attics waiting. And staring, the old nurse felt her hand creep up her lapel toward her thermometer. She felt her own pulse. A brief darkness touched her eyes.
And then one child said: "Who are you?"
And gathering his gossamer shroud, the ghastly pa.s.senger whetted his imagination, and replied.
It was only the sound of the ferry landing whistle that cut short the long telling of midnight tales. And the parents poured in to seize their lost children, away from the Orient gentleman with the ghastly eyes whose gently raving mouth shivered their marrows as he whispered and whispered until the ferry nudged the dock and the last boy was dragged, protesting, away, leaving the old man and his nurse alone in the children"s playroom as the ferry stopped shuddering its delicious shudders, as if it had listened, heard, and deliriously enjoyed the long-before-dawn tales.
At the gangplank, the Orient traveler said, with a touch of briskness, "No. I"ll need no help going down. Watch!"
And he strode down the plank. And even as the children had been tonic for his color, height and vocal cords, so the closer he came to England, pacing, the firmer his stride, and when he actually touched the dock, a small happy burst of sound erupted from his thin lips and the nurse, behind him, stopped frowning, and let him run toward the train.
And seeing him dash, like a child before her, she could only stand, riven with delight and something more than delight. And he ran and her heart ran with him and suddenly knew a stab of amazing pain, and a lid of darkness struck her, and she swooned.
Hurrying, the ghastly pa.s.senger did not notice that the old nurse was not beside or behind him, so eagerly did he go.
At the train he gasped, "There!" safely grasping the compartment handle. Only then did he sense a loss, and turned.
Minerva Halliday was not there.
And yet, an instant later, she arrived, looking paler than before, but with an incredibly radiant smile. She wavered and almost fell. This time it was he who reached out.
"Dear lady," he said, "you have been so kind."
"But," she said, quietly, looking at him, waiting for him to truly see her, "I am not leaving."
"You . . .?"
"I am going with you," she said.
"But your plans?"
"Have changed. Now, I have nowhere else to go."
She half-turned to look over her shoulder.
At the dock, a swiftly gathering crowd peered down at someone lying on the planks. Voices murmured and cried out. The word "doctor" was called several times.
The ghastly pa.s.senger looked at Minerva Halliday. Then he looked at the crowd and the object of the crowd"s alarm lying on the dock: a medical thermometer lay broken under their feet. He looked back at Minerva Halliday, who still stared at the broken thermometer.
"Oh, my dear kind lady," he said, at last. "Come."
She looked into his face. "Larks?" she said.
He nodded and said, "Larks!"
And he helped her up into the train, which soon jolted and then dinned and whistled away along the tracks toward London and Edinburgh and moors and castles and dark nights and long years.
"I wonder who she was?" said the ghastly pa.s.senger looking back at the crowd on the dock.
"Oh, Lord," said the old nurse. "I never really knew."
And the train was gone.
It took a full twenty seconds for the tracks to stop trembling.
THE SMILING PEOPLE.
IT WAS THE SENSATION OF SILENCE that was the most notable aspect of the house. As Mr. Greppin came through the front door the oiled silence of it opening and swinging closed behind him was like an opening and shutting dream, a thing accomplished on rubber pads, bathed in lubricant, slow and unmaterialistic. The double carpet in the hall, which he himself had so recently laid, gave off no sound from his movements. And when the wind shook the house late of nights there was not a rattle of eave or tremor of loose sash. He had himself checked the storm windows. The screen doors were securely hooked with bright new, firm hooks, and the furnace did not knock but sent a silent whisper of warm wind up the throats of the heating system that sighed ever so quietly, moving the cuffs of his trousers as he stood, now, warming himself from the bitter afternoon.
Weighing the silence with the remarkable instruments of pitch and balance in his small ears, he nodded with satisfaction that the silence was so unified and finished. Because there had been nights when rats had walked between wall-layers and it had taken baited traps and poisoned food before the walls were mute. Even the grandfather clock had been stilled, its bra.s.s pendulum hung frozen and gleaming in its long cedar, gla.s.s-fronted coffin.
They were waiting for him in the dining room.
He listened. They made no sound. Good. Excellent, in fact. They had learned, then, to be silent. You had to teach people, but it was worthwhile-there was not a rattle of knife or fork from the dining table. He worked off his thick gray gloves, hung up his cold armor of overcoat and stood there with an expression of urgency yet indecisiveness . . . thinking of what had to be done.
Mr. Greppin proceeded with familiar certainty and economy of motion into the dining room, where the four individuals seated at the waiting table did not move or speak a word. The only sound was the merest allowable pad of his shoes on the deep carpet.
His eyes, as usual, instinctively, fastened upon the lady heading the table. Pa.s.sing, he waved a finger near her cheek. She did not blink.
Aunt Rose sat firmly at the head of the table and if a mote of dust floated lightly down out of the ceiling s.p.a.ces, did her eye trace its...o...b..t? Did the eye revolve in its sh.e.l.lacked socket, with gla.s.sy cold precision? And if the dust mote happened upon the sh.e.l.l of her wet eye did the eye batten? Did the muscles clinch, the lashes close?
No.
Aunt Rose"s hand lay on the table like cutlery, rare and fine and old; tarnished. Her bosom was hidden in a salad of fluffy linen.
Beneath the table her stick legs in high-b.u.t.toned shoes went up into a pipe of dress. You felt that the legs terminated at the skirt line and from there on she was a department store dummy, all wax and nothingness responding, probably, with much the same chill waxen movements, with as much enthusiasm and response as a mannequin.
So here was Aunt Rose, staring straight at Greppin-he choked out a laugh and clapped hands derisively shut-there were the first hints of a dust mustache gathering across her upper lip!
"Good evening, Aunt Rose," he said, bowing. "Good evening, Uncle Dimity," he said, graciously. "No, not a word," he held up his hand. "Not a word from any of you." He bowed again. "Ah, good evening, cousin Lila, and you, cousin Sam."
Lila sat upon his left, her hair like golden shavings from a tube of lathed bra.s.s. Sam, opposite her, told all directions with his hair.
They were both young, he fourteen, she sixteen. Uncle Dimity, their father (but "father" was a nasty word!) sat next to Lila, placed in this secondary niche long, long ago because Aunt Rose said the window draft might get his neck if he sat at the head of the table. Ah, Aunt Rose!
Mr. Greppin drew the chair under his tight-clothed little rump and put a casual elbow to the linen.
"I"ve something to say," he said. "IT"s very important. This has gone on for weeks now. It can"t go any further. I"m in love. Oh, but I"ve told you that long ago. On the day I made you all smile, remember?"
The eyes of the four seated people did not blink, the hands did not move. Greppin became introspective. The day he had made them smile. Two weeks ago it was. He had come home, walked in, looked at them and said, "I"m to be married!"
They had all whirled with expressions as if someone had just smashed the window.
"You"re WHAT?" cried Aunt Rose.
"To Alice Jane Ballard!" he had said, stiffening somewhat.
"Congratulations," said Uncle Dimity. "I guess," he added, looking at his wife. He cleared his throat. "But isn"t it a little early, son?" He looked at his wife again. "Yes. Yes, I think it"s a little early. I wouldn"t advise it yet, not just yet, no."
"The house is in a terrible way," said Aunt Rose. "We won"t have it fixed for a year yet."
"That"s what you said last year and the year before," said Mr. Greppin. "And anyway," he said bluntly, "this is my house."
Aunt Rose"s jaw had clamped at that. "After all these years for us to be bodily thrown out, why I-"
"You won"t be thrown out, don"t be idiotic," said Greppin, furiously.
"Now, Rose-" said Uncle Dimity in a pale tone.
Aunt Rose dropped her hands. "After all I"ve done-"
In that instant Greppin had known they would have to go, all of them. First he would make them silent, then he would make them smile, then, later, he would move them out like luggage. He couldn"t bring Alice Jane into a house full of grims such as these, where Aunt Rose followed you wherever you went even when she wasn"t following you, and the children performed indignities upon you at a glance from their maternal parent, and the father, no better than a third child, carefully rearranged his advice to you on being a bachelor. Greppin stared at them. It was their fault that his loving and living was all wrong. If he did something about them-then his warm bright dreams of soft bodies glowing with an anxious perspiration of love might become tangible and near. Then he would have the house all to himself and-and Alice Jane. Yes, Alice Jane.
They would have to go. Quickly. If he told them to go, as he had often done, twenty years might pa.s.s as Aunt Rose gathered sunbleached sachets and Edison phonographs. Long before then Alice Jane herself would be moved and gone.
Greppin looked at them as he picked up the carving knife.
Greppin"s head snapped with tiredness.
He flicked his eyes open. Eh? Oh, he had been drowsing, thinking.
All that had occurred two weeks ago. Two weeks ago this very night that conversation about marriage, moving, Alice Jane, had come about. Two weeks ago it had been. Two weeks ago he had made them smile.
Now, recovering from his reverie, he smiled around at the silent and motionless figures. They smiled back in peculiarly pleasing fashion.
"I hate you, old woman," he said to Aunt Rose, directly. "Two weeks ago I wouldn"t have dared say that. Tonight, ah, well-" he lazed his voice, turning. "Uncle Dimity, let me give you a little advice, old man-"
He talked small talk, picked up a spoon, pretended to eat peaches from an empty dish. He had already eaten downtown in a tray cafeteria; pork, potatoes, apple pie, string beans, beets, potato salad. But now he made dessert-eating motions because he enjoyed this little act. He made as if he were chewing.
"So-tonight you are finally, once and for all, moving out. I"ve waited two weeks, thinking it all over. In a way I guess I"ve kept you here this long because I wanted to keep an eye on you. Once you"re gone, I can"t be sure-" And here his eyes gleamed with fear. "You might come prowling around, making noises at night, and I couldn"t stand that. I can"t ever have noises in this house, not even when Alice moves in. . . ."
The double carpet was thick and soundless underfoot, rea.s.suring.
"Alice wants to move in day after tomorrow. We"re getting married."
Aunt Rose winked evilly, doubtfully at him.
"Ah!" he cried, leaping up, then, staring, he sank down, mouth convulsing. He released the tension in him, laughing. "Oh, I see. It was a fly." He watched the fly crawl with slow precision on the ivory cheek of Aunt Rose and dart away. Why did it have to pick that instant to make her eye appear to blink, to doubt. "Do you doubt I ever will marry, Aunt Rose? Do you think me incapable of marriage, of love and love"s duties? Do you think me immature, unable to cope with a woman and her ways of living? Do you think me a child, only daydreaming? Well!" He calmed himself with an effort, shaking his head. "Man, man," he argued to himself. "It was only a fly, and does a fly make doubt of love, or did you make it into a fly and a wink? d.a.m.n it!" He pointed at the four of them.
"I"m going to fix the furnace hotter. In an hour I"ll be moving you out of the house once and for all. You comprehend? Good. I see you do."
Outside, it was beginning to rain, a cold drizzling downpour that drenched the house. A look of irritation came to Greppin"s face. The sound of the rain was the one thing he couldn"t stop, couldn"t be helped. No way to buy new hinges or lubricants or hooks for that. You might tent the house-top with lengths of cloth to soften the sound, mightn"t you? That"s going a bit far. No. No way of preventing the rain sounds.
He wanted silence now, where he had never wanted it before in his life so much. Each sound was a fear. So each sound had to be m.u.f.fled, gotten to and eliminated.
The drum of rain was like the knuckles of an impatient man on a surface. He lapsed again into remembering.
He remembered the rest of it. The rest of that hour on that day two weeks ago when he had made them smile. . . .
He had taken up the carving knife and prepared to cut the bird upon the table. As usual the family had been gathered, all wearing their solemn, puritanical masks. If the children smiled the smiles were stepped on like nasty bugs by Aunt Rose.
Aunt Rose criticized the angle of Greppin"s elbows as he cut the bird. The knife, she made him understand also, was not sharp enough. Oh, yes, the sharpness of the knife. At this point in his memory he stopped, rolled-tilted his eyes, and laughed. Dutifully, then, he had crisped the knife on the sharpening rod and again set upon the fowl.