"I thought he was going to die of a stroke right there-"
"He must have been seventy."
"Seventy? He was a hundred if he was a day-"
"What? You didn"t recognize him? Methuselah"s grandfather?"
Laughter and applause.
"Let me tell you, if he was the only unregenerate male standing between us and the vote I would blow him over myself, just like this-poof!"
More laughter, percolating round the delicate china cups of beef tea and orange pekoe blend. The fire leapt and snapped, women sank into armchairs in a sisterhood of splayed limbs and neatly balanced cups and saucers, a faint scent of woodsmoke charged the air and everything seemed laminated with the intensity of a waking dream, the cut flowers glowing with an aniline light, the oil paintings hanging above their heads like halos, and as the kitchen staff piled a table high with cold cuts, toast points and caviar, plums and raspberries from the orchard, the storm beat deliciously at the windows and shook the floorboards beneath their feet. Katherine, the hair hanging wet in her face as she rubbed at it with a towel that smelled like sunshine on the gra.s.s, felt like a girl again-she might have been in the gymnasium at Miss Hershey"s School after calisthenics, the sweet aching odor of girls" sweat in the air, hard-earned sweat, sweat that was the equal of any boy"s or man"s. She was glowing, melting. She was made of india rubber, mola.s.ses, pure maple syrup settling into a mold.
"Yes, yes, yes!" came a shriek from Maybelle Harrison, wife of the textile manufacturer, caught with a piece of toast arrested halfway to her parted lips. She was standing in front of the fire, tall as any Amazon, her hair wrapped in a great white terrycloth turban. "The crowning moment for me was during Katherine"s speech, and a stirring speech it was, Katherine, really first-rate "-cheers and applause-"because that was when Maude Park suddenly disappeared beneath one of these enormous breakers and came up spouting like a porpoise-"
They were sisters, all of them, Maybelle Harrison cheek by jowl with Lettie Strang, governess to Mrs. Littlejohn"s granddaughters, Jane Roessing exchanging pleasantries with Delia b.u.mpus, late of the boardinghouse, and not a thought of cla.s.s or social position. This was the spirit of the Movement, the spirit of women without men, the spirit of Lysistrata and Sappho, the very scene Katherine had dreamed of when she"d joined the nascent women"s club at MIT, striding through the door and into the embrace of three trembling doelike creatures as bewildered and uncertain as she and yet no less determined. She stretched luxuriously and cradled the hot cup in her hands, rain tapping at the windows, the flow of laughter and conversation ebbing and flooding round her, and thought, This is the way the world should be.
But it wasn"t, and no one knew that better than she.
There was no sanctuary, no enchanted castle, no safe haven full of fine things and exulting women, not unless you built it yourself. And you didn"t build it yourself, you couldn"t, not when you were fourteen and as dependent on your father as he was on his capricious G.o.d in His capricious heavens. Because that was how old she was, fourteen, when the world of men came crashing down on her, pillars, b.u.t.tresses, scaffolding and all.
It was in the spring, a month or so after the chess club fiasco, and the carriage had just brought her home from school (there was no reason to stay late anymore, and Mr. Gregson couldn"t seem to look her in the face no matter what she did to please him, as if she were the one in the wrong). Her mother was out-at a tea someplace, or maybe it was a charity function-and her brother Samuel was away at Harvard. The house was unnaturally quiet, the servants in the kitchen, the cats asleep in the window. She was reading-Middlemarch, and she remembered the book to this day-puzzling over Dorothea Brooke and her thirst for learning that was so all-consuming as to allow her to throw herself away on a crabbed s.e.xless old mummy like Casaubon, when there was a thump in the front hallway, as if someone had thrown open the door and tossed a sack of meal on the carpet. The cats raised their heads. Katherine set down her book. And there is was again, louder now, more distinct, as if a second sack had been flung against the wall and then rebounded off the first. Curious more than anything-all she could think of was her mother and a pair of s...o...b..ys with a new purchase that was too bulky to bring up the back stairway-she eased into her slippers and went to the door to investigate. and she remembered the book to this day-puzzling over Dorothea Brooke and her thirst for learning that was so all-consuming as to allow her to throw herself away on a crabbed s.e.xless old mummy like Casaubon, when there was a thump in the front hallway, as if someone had thrown open the door and tossed a sack of meal on the carpet. The cats raised their heads. Katherine set down her book. And there is was again, louder now, more distinct, as if a second sack had been flung against the wall and then rebounded off the first. Curious more than anything-all she could think of was her mother and a pair of s...o...b..ys with a new purchase that was too bulky to bring up the back stairway-she eased into her slippers and went to the door to investigate.
It wasn"t her mother. There were no s...o...b..ys, no sacks of meal, no china cabinets or ottomans wrapped in brown paper. When she pulled open the door to the hallway she saw her father there, leaning into the wall and clenching his teeth in a grimace of almost maniacal concentration, as if he were trying to push his way through the wainscoting; behind him, the outer door stood open to the soft haze of the sun and the branches of the budding trees along the street. "Father?" she said, more puzzled than alarmed-she"d never in her life known him to come home from the office before six. "Are you all right?"
He turned his face from the wall then and fastened his eyes on her, and it was the strangest thing but she couldn"t hear anything in that moment, not the noise of the traffic in the street or the shouts of the children on the lawn next door-it was as if she"d gone deaf. But then a single noise began to intrude on her consciousness, the harsh abrasive grinding of his teeth, bone on bone, as loud suddenly as the rumble of a gristmill. She started toward him, no time for thought or wonder or even fear, her arms outstretched to receive him, bundle him, protect him, and all at once the wall heaved and threw him out into the center of the hallway on legs that had gone dead, and he was lurching past her in a blind stagger, already reaching out with his useless hands for the door to the library.
This was her father, Wirt Dexter, one of the great jurisprudential minds of his time, son of the founder of Dexter, Michigan, grandson of John Adams"s secretary of the treasury, fifty-nine years old and never sick a day in his life, Daddy, Papa, Pater, the man around whom Katherine had molded her existence like a barnacle attached to a piling sunk deep in the seabed. He was fearless, unwavering, a defender of unpopular causes, the wide-shouldered softly smiling man who would tenderly cut up her meat with a few magical strokes when she was too little to chew and who sat up with her and a storybook when she couldn"t sleep. And now, drained of color, unable to speak, his teeth grinding like two stones and his legs locked at the knee, he staggered right past her as if she"d never existed.
How he managed to twist that door handle and slip inside the door and lock it against her, she would never know, but it was one of the bravest things she"d ever seen, an act of will so monumental it awed her to this day even as the hurt of it rose like bile in her throat. The door slammed. She found her voice. "Father!" she cried, pounding at the door. "Daddy, Daddy!"
"Go away! " he growled, "d.a.m.n you, get away! " And then she heard him on the carpet, thrashing across the floor like a dog shot between the shoulders, the lamp crashing over and the servants there in the hallway with their frightened faces, Mrs. Muldoon and Nora and Olga, and no hope in all the world because he was dying, dying behind that locked door so as to spare her, his daughter, his Katherine.
They buried him, and a month later her mother informed her they"d be leaving Chicago as soon as she could make the arrangements. And where were they going? To Boston, to be near Samuel, who was the hope of the family now. And he was, Samuel, a great hope, a great man ab ovo, his father in miniature, hard-working, right-thinking, serious, magnetic, older and wiser at twenty-one than most men at thirty or even forty, as sure of his career in the public weal as any Dexter before him. Katherine was bereft. She didn"t know what to do. She was fourteen years old. She went to Boston with her mother-a provincial place, pinched and fastidious, choked in the stranglehold of society-and clung to the pillar of her handsome and accomplished older brother while the tide rose and the sea rushed in. And that was all right, the best she could do, until one afternoon four years later Samuel developed a sudden fever, broke out in a purple rash that made him look as if he"d been pounded all over with a hammer, and died before morning.
"Katherine? Are you with us?"
She looked up from her tea and the room was there in all its solidity and permanence, the smell of wet hair, women"s hair, and of cake and woodsmoke and beef broth, and she was back in the present and flashing Jane Roessing a triumphal smile. "Just tired," she said. "Or not tired exactly-more the way I feel after a long walk in the woods. Relaxed. Calm. And yet exhilarated too."
"Wordsworthian?"
Katherine laughed. "Sure, emotion recollected in tranquility and all that. But I feel more like Lucy Stone or Alice Paul at the moment." She slid over on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her.
Jane folded her skirts under her and sat lightly in the spot indicated. She was from Philadelphia, about Katherine"s age, and had married a man considerably older, a manufacturer of some sort who"d been a champion of women"s rights-when he died, eight years ago, he left her everything. Ever since, she"d put all her energy and resources into the Movement, traveling around the country and helping to organize local chapters, and in the spring she"d been in Washington with Inez Milholland for the great protest march. They had dozens of friends in common, but for one reason or another Katherine had never met her till the previous evening at Mrs. Littlejohn"s dinner reception. She"d liked her right away. Jane was a dynamo, one of those bustling energetic women who seem to be so much taller than they actually are, always alert, always amused, bobbing and weaving through Mrs. Littlejohn"s parlor under a ma.s.s of rust-colored hair that stood up buoyantly from her scalp no matter the pressure of hat, comb or pin. Her eyes were the faintest palest most delicate shade of green, like a Song dynasty vase, and she always managed to look self-possessed and wise-not in the way of acc.u.mulated wisdom, not necessarily, but in the way of the prankster, the cla.s.s clown, the girl with the sharpest tongue in school.
"Carrie showed me the newspaper piece," she said, reaching for her hair with both hands as if to gather it all in, section by section, as if she were winnowing a bush for berries. "It was really quite touching, I thought-the parts about you, I mean." She paused. Let her green gaze sweep the room and then come back again. "You must have suffered."
Katherine bowed her head. It was the first expression of sympathy she"d heard in years and it made her want to weep aloud, beat her breast, lay her head in the lap of the woman beside her and sob till all the hurt and antipathy of the McCormicks and their minions was drained from her, all the fierceness of the struggle with Stanley and his keepers and the burden of Riven Rock, the desolation of being a wife without a husband, forever the odd one out at this gathering or that. (Mrs. McCormick, they called her, they called her, Mrs. McCormick, shall I haila cab for you? Mrs. McCormick, shall I haila cab for you? and what a joke that was.) She couldn"t respond. She tried, but nothing came out. and what a joke that was.) She couldn"t respond. She tried, but nothing came out.
Jane was sitting right beside her now and she could smell the exotic rich dampness of the roots of her hair and feel the warmth of the thigh pressed to hers and somehow Jane"s arm was resting on her shoulder and Jane was rocking her, ever so gently, till all she could think of was the skiff she"d had as a girl on Lake Michigan and the softest of breezes that would come all the way from Minnesota or Canada just to set it atremble, just to rock her.
"Listen," Jane murmured, turning her face to her, and all the other women in that room might as well have been on another planet for all Katherine was aware of them, "I know what you"re going through, I do. When Fred died I was only twenty-five, with no children and both my parents gone, and his family treated me like some sort of criminal, like I was the one who"d given him heart disease and no matter that he was nearly sixty and had had two heart attacks already. To them I was an outsider and nothing more, and when the will was read that room was like a pot boiling over, and if looks could kill-"
Jane gave her a final pat, shifted away from her and bent forward to dig through her purse. Katherine was stunned. It was as if this woman beside her had read her deepest thoughts, as if they"d inherited the same set of unfeeling moneygrubbing in-laws, as if... but that was enough. Her husband was alive still, and there would come a day when he recovered and they were perfectly happy, like any other couple.
"Sorry to get so maudlin." Jane had straightened up and eased back into the chair and she held something now in her hand, something that glittered in the light of the fire. It was a cigarette case, Katherine saw, silver, with Jane"s initials-J.B.R.-inlaid in gold across the facing. "Do you smoke?" Jane asked in the most casual voice in the world.
"Smoke?" Katherine had barely recovered herself. "You must be joking."
"No, not at all," and Katherine watched the unfolding ritual with fascination, the neatly sprung case, the tamped cigarette, the flare of the match and finally the long slow inhalation that drew tight the flesh of Jane"s throat as if she were taking in the very breath of life itself. "How is it," Jane began, the blue vapor escaping her lips and nostrils in pale wisps, its odor sweet and harsh at the same time, like the smell of leaves burning in the gutter, "how is it that men can smoke in public and women can"t?"
"Well," and Katherine looked round to see that every woman in the room was making an effort not to stare, "it"s just not done, not in our set anyway. Maybe among seamstresses and such-"
Jane lifted her eyebrows. "And in Paris?"
"That"s entirely different."
"Oh?" And there was that sly look, the look of the girl who circ.u.mvented all the rules and sent clever notes up and down the aisles when the teacher"s back was turned. "You know"-exhaling again-"I think the thing that most irritates me about the whole little dominion of men and their precious vote and their property rights and all the rest is how illogical it is, how smug and self-serving, using our s.e.x against us-"Oh, it"s not ladylike to smoke." Well, is it ladylike to vote, wear trousers, mount a bicycle? Is it ladylike to pay property taxes like any other citizen and stand by at election time and watch some illiterate from Ballyshannon step up to the ballot box-or worse, sell his vote for two shots of rye whiskey? Hm?"
The buzz of conversation had died momentarily in the wake of Jane"s putting fire to that little tube of compacted leaves and bringing it to her lips, but now it started up again, a whole clamor of voices.
"Look, it"s clearing," someone observed.
"Oh, is it?"
"Yes, look over there, out over the water."
"Just in time for fireworks-we will have fireworks, won"t we, Lavinia?"
Katherine tried to compose herself. Why was she so upset? She"d been in the presence of woman smokers more times than she could count-in Paris, Geneva, Vienna. "I couldn"t agree more," she said finally, focusing on those mocking green eyes, "but the vote is one thing-even the issue of trousers or bicycles or the ridiculous practice of riding sidesaddle-and yet a personal habit that many, male and and female, might find objectionable-" female, might find objectionable-"
"Have you ever tried one?"
Was she blushing? Thirty-eight years old and blushing like a schoolgirl? She was remembering those summers in Switzerland, at Prangins, and Lisette. "Well, to tell the truth," and suddenly she was giggling, "yes, yes I have."
Without a word, Jane snapped open the silver case and held it out to her, and Katherine accepted it, chose a cigarette and leaned forward for the flare of the match and the first harsh-sweet insuck of smoke. She inhaled. Looked into Jane"s eyes. And almost immediately she coughed, smoke everywhere, spewing from her like a chimney, and she coughed and coughed again. And then they were both giggling and fanning and ducking their heads against a roil of smoke, Jane adding hers to the mix, a whole tornado of smoke, a Vesuvius, and some of the others were crowding round the sofa, their eyes bright with the triumph of the day and the sense of recklessness that came with it, of knocking down the barriers, throwing open the floodgates and no turning back. "May I have one?" Carrie asked, and they all laughed at that, but then Carrie did take one, the ritual reenacted, the silver case and the white orderly row of cigarettes, the two women"s heads coming together as one over the gift of the sacramental fire, and Maybelle Harrison had one and pretty soon everybody in the room was coughing and laughing and laughing and coughing.
It was then that the first rocket went off at the end of the Littlejohn pier, a flash of light against the silhouette of a quick hunched-over skeleton of a man who might have been the gardener or the chauffeur or the rumored Mr. Littlejohn himself. Up it went, trailing sparks, to burst in a bloom of fire over the churning somber waters as everyone rushed to the window and applauded. "You know," Jane said, catching Katherine by the elbow as the next rocket hurtled straight up into the air with a crash of artificial thunder, "it"s really not as bad as you might think."
Katherine was puzzled. "What?"
The smirk, the eyes, the beautiful unconquerable snaking tendrils of hair. "Being widowed so young."
And then another rocket went up, and another.
In December, Katherine returned to California. It had been a busy year-hectic-what with the women"s parade in March, the summer"s rallies, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance meeting in Budapest (which Carrie had asked her to chair), and she hadn"t been to Riven Rock since last year at this time, for Christmas. She felt bad about that, awful really, and there were nights when she awoke in her anonymous hotel room in Washington or Cleveland or San Francisco, not even sure of what city she was in, and she could have sworn she heard Stanley"s voice calling out to her. She wasn"t one to neglect her duties. And as long as Stanley was alive, he was her duty, her first duty, in sickness and in health.
And he"d improved, he had, in this year of 1913, in a way the annual reports Hamilton prepared for the guardians and the court couldn"t begin to do justice to. The reports were always so terse-"There occurred some mental clearness, then delirious excitement, after which he became dull"-no more than a line or two to justify a whole year in a man"s life. But she wrote Stanley once a week, unfailingly, no matter where she was or how pressing the demands on her time, and he"d been able to write back on several occasions-and that alone told her more than any sterile report. Of course, his penmanship was still a bit convoluted, little curlicues and all sorts of baroque decorations adorning his consonants and what appeared to be miniature faces peering out from the confines of his vowels, and his subjects-the weather, the garden, the food-were rather more limited than she"d care to see, but at least he was writing. He was taking his meals at table now too, and though he was restricted to a single spoon, he was eating with some sense of decorum, or so Hamilton had informed her in his most recent letter, and he was taking an interest in the newspaper, sometimes even reading it aloud to his nurses. The sinking of the t.i.tanic t.i.tanic the previous year had especially excited his imagination and for some months after the tragedy all he could apparently talk of was the death of John Jacob Astor after he"d so gallantly secured his young wife in the last remaining lifeboat. the previous year had especially excited his imagination and for some months after the tragedy all he could apparently talk of was the death of John Jacob Astor after he"d so gallantly secured his young wife in the last remaining lifeboat.
On her first day back, she took the car out to Riven Rock as soon as she"d breakfasted. She was alone this time, her mother unable to join her for another two weeks yet ("I"ve got a hundred loose ends to tie up here, Katherine, for heaven"s sake, presents to buy yet for your uncle, the servants, all the Moores and Mrs. Belknap too, and I just don"t know when I"ll ever get my head above water even for a minute-"). She tried to keep her feelings under control as the car came up the long winding drive under the canopy of overarching branches, thinking of Stanley, poor sweet misunderstood Stanley, and knowing there was still no chance at all of getting to see him, even for a minute-it was too disturbing for him, Hamilton said. Far too disturbing. After Stanley"s near-disastrous escape, all women had been banished from the house, even the maids, who"d been replaced by a rotating team of local men, including two Chinese Sam Wah had recruited as sous-chef and dishwasher respectively. Dr. Hamilton felt it too dangerous to have any woman in the house, both for them and Stanley, even if he never saw them. The knowledge that they were there was enough to set him off, the faintest echo of a feminine voice, even a scent-and yes, victims of mental disorders did have extraordinary sensory perceptions, keen as an animal"s in some cases. Or so the doctor claimed.
In any case, Katherine entered that womanless fortress at nine A.M. on a day as soft as a hand on your cheek, the third of December and it might as well have been June. She was met at the door by Torkelson, the new butler, a man who seemed utterly undistinguished, as bland and unprepossessing as a sentient doormat, and then she was in the library with Mr. O"Kane, the first woman to enter that room since she"d left it a year ago. Dr. Hamilton, she was promised, would arrive shortly from his house on lower Hot Springs Road-she hadn"t been expected quite so early.
"So, Mr. O"Kane," she said, glancing round to take inventory of the room with an eye to further improvements, and already she was shuffling through a stack of papers left out on the secretary for her. "And how have you been?"
"Oh, I"ve been well, ma"am," he replied, "very well indeed," and when she glanced up he looked down at his shoes. He was certainly a good-looking man, what with his rugged build and fair hair, the way he held himself, and now that he was into his thirties-or was he twenty-nine? -he had a finish about him that was very pleasing. And he was bright too, for a nurse, but of course that was part of the problem with this whole unfortunate situation-bright and presentable as he might have been, he was no sort of companion for her husband, who was a gentleman and used to the company and stimulus of other gentlemen. Dr. Hamilton was acceptable, to a degree-at least he was educated-but the Thompsons, good-hearted and well-meaning through they were, couldn"t have been Stanley"s mental equals when he was six. And how could he hope to improve if this was the only company he kept?
"I"m very gratified to hear that," she said, leaning into the corner of the desk now and working through the papers a second time-bills, receipts, a report from Mr. Stribling on the various improvement projects going forward on the grounds. "And how"s your wife?"
A silence. She looked up.
"Still back in Ma.s.sachusetts, ma"am-nursing her sick mother. And father. And her brother, poor man, who"s got cancer of the brain."
Katherine pursed her lips and then couldn"t suppress a cold little smile. "That"s a lot of nursing."
"It is, yes."
"Four years" worth, by my count."
O"Kane said nothing. Outside the sun was brightening in gradual increments, like a gas lamp slowly screwed up till the room was filled with light.
"And your son?" Katherine asked.
"I haven"t seen him, devoting all my time to Mr. McCormick, as I"m sure you"re aware, but I"m told he"s doing well, a regular little tiger, he is."
"Oh?" Katherine was irritated. The man was a womanizer, a Lothario, as insensitive to a woman"s thoughts and feelings as he might have been to a trained seal"s, thinking of one thing only, as if s.e.xual attraction were the end rather than the beginning of a relationship, and it was shameful the way he"d deserted his wife and child and then had the gall to lie about it. Nursing her mother, indeed.
O"Kane was standing at the door, waiting to be dismissed. He hadn"t moved an inch since she"d entered the room. "Well, Mrs. McCormick, I"ll tell you," he said, looking up now to engage her eyes, bold as bra.s.s, "to be truthful, sometimes you enter a matrimonial state with the best of intentions all round, and things just don"t seem to work out." He paused. "You know what I mean?"
That stung-and she was in no mood-and she might have said something she would later regret, was right on the verge of it, when there was a rap at the door and they both turned, expecting Hamilton. The door pushed slowly open, and it wasn"t the doctor standing there in the doorway, not at all-it was Julius, the big orange ape. Katherine was so surprised she let out a gasp, and in the next moment she was laughing, as much at herself as at this gangling pouchy hunched-over thing shuffling into the room like an animated bedspread. Julius. She"d forgotten all about him.
He crossed the room on his knuckles, skittering lightly over the carpet without seeming to touch it, using his feet less for locomotion than as a sort of rudder. Ignoring O"Kane, he came straight to Katherine, gazing up at her out of eyes the color of sunlit mud and tugging gently at her skirts with one long leathery hand. He made a soft cooing or grunting sound and announced his presence olfactorily as well, bringing with him his own little pocket of redolence. He stood nearly five feet tall, weighed one hundred eighty pounds and had an armspan of seven and a half feet, and if he"d wanted to he could have traversed Montecito without ever touching ground, relying on brachiation alone. And right now he had hold of her hand and was sniffing it as if it were the rarest of treasures, a look of simian transport on his face.
"He"s a nasty stinking smelly beast," O"Kane observed, "and I for one wouldn"t be giving him the run of the place, that"s for sure-but then it"s not for me to say, is it?"
Katherine paid him no mind. Julius was amusing, he was delightful, and now he was kissing her hand like some country swain, a tickle of whiskers, the warmth of his lips, and she was thinking how much she liked animals, dogs, cats, horses, apes, even snakes and bats and such, the whole reason she"d gone into biology in the first place. And when was the last time she"d had a pet?
"Julius!" she cried, utterly charmed, "you"re tickling me!" And then she looked at O"Kane, trying to keep a straight face. "Dr. Hamilton writes that my husband and Julius are quite inseparable-"
O"Kane winced as if he"d bitten down on something rotten. He shuffled his feet and addressed a point just over her left shoulder. "That"s Dr. Hamilton"s doing, not mine, and as I say, I don"t think it"s a healthy or even a decent thing-"
"But why? He seems quite tame. And if he helps my husband show an interest in things, if he stimulates him in any way, that"s got to be positive. Surely you wouldn"t object to a dog or a cat or some more conventional pet, would you, Mr. O"Kane? And an ape is so much more intelligent-"
Julius dropped her hand and mounted the swivel chair in a single fluid motion, spinning once, all the way round, and then, as if resisting the temptation to twirl himself as a child would, he tucked his legs under the desk and made a pretense of looking through the papers, for all the world like some jowly potbellied old banker at his desk.
O"Kane seemed on edge, and she remembered the day Hamilton had got his first two rhesus monkeys from the ship"s captain and the look on O"Kane"s face when they came flying out of the trees. He was afraid, that was all, frightened of a creature as placid and harmless as poor Julius-but of course, being typically male, he would never admit it. Even now, she noticed, he kept his distance-and you didn"t see Julius going up to kiss his hand. "No," he said, "it"s not that," and he was fumbling for his words. "A pet would be fine, and I"ve seen improvement in patients of all types with a little dog, for instance, but... Julius is ... he seems to be a bad influence on Mr. McCormick-"
"A bad influence?"
"He-well, Mr. McCormick sometimes apes Julius"s behavior, if you"ll forgive the expression, and not the other way round."
Katherine lifted her eyebrows. Julius was playing with the paper-weight, a gla.s.s ball the size of a fist, balancing it on the tip of his flattened nose and then inserting it in his mouth like some petrified fruit.
"I mean, for instance, when we take Mr. McCormick for a drive in one of the cars, to calm him, you know, and provide the stimulus of a change of scene, Julius always comes along, and if Julius, say, presses his face to the gla.s.s, well then so does Mr. McCormick, and it"s just not-"
"Dignified?"
"Yes, that"s what I mean-it"s not dignified."
Julius had c.o.c.ked his head and begun to make a series of muted lip-smacking noises and soft disembodied cooings that sounded like a ventriloquist"s rendition of a flock of doves taking sudden flight, and he fixed his eyes apprehensively on the door, which stood open still. Katherine turned to look, and so did O"Kane. She heard footsteps in the hall then and in the next moment Dr. Hamilton appeared in the doorway, spectacles flashing and a wide welcoming grin on his face, but when she turned round again, Julius had vanished.
Over the course of the next two weeks, Katherine made the trip out to the estate every day, seeing to the multifarious issues, large and small, that had acc.u.mulated in her absence, and every day, at three, she secreted herself in the bushes on the knoll to the west of the house and watched as O"Kane and Mart led Stanley out onto the sunporch for a bit of air and exercise. She felt faintly ridiculous about the whole business-a woman of her age and position crouching in the shrubbery like a bird-watcher or a Peeping Susan-and depressed too, the misery of her situation brought home to her every time a wasp settled on her hat or the voices of the gardeners rose from below. What was she doing? What was wrong with her? Other women went to the theater on their husband"s arm, chatted with him over meals, felt his solid presence in bed beside them, had children and grandchildren and a house full of warmth, and the closest she could get to Stanley was through a pair of ground lenses magnified to a power of 460 feet at 1,000 yards.
But there he was now, wandering round the sunporch like a refugee, dragging his right leg behind him and hunching his shoulders as if carrying some great weight there. She twisted the focus on the binoculars and was struck anew by how old Stanley looked-he would be forty next year, and you wouldn"t have guessed he was a day under fifty. And how thin. Certainly some of that was attributable to the long period during which he"d had to be tube-fed and the tasteless mush he"d been forced to consume, but now that he was eating on his own she would have thought he"d put some weight back on. Of course, it was difficult to tell at this distance, but it seemed he"d got some of his color back, and that was something anyway. And the look in his eyes-it was so much more like the old Stanley, the Stanley she"d fallen in love with, the man who had such an irresistible presence, so forceful and pa.s.sionate, and yet shy and vulnerable too.
There-that look-that was how she remembered him, that was it exactly. He was saying something to O"Kane, waving his arms in his excitement, his eyes tightly focused, marshaling arguments, making his point. All in an instant he"d come to life, as if some hidden key had been turned inside him. That was how he was that first year, the year when he"d swept her off her feet, the year when she went to bed each night whispering "Stanley Robert McCormick" over and over, like a prayer, until she fell into the chasm of sleep.
He"d come to Beverly like an apparition, like a winged G.o.d sent to combat the twin forces of boredom and Butler Ames, who"d been pursuing her so singlemindedly over the course of the past month you would have thought he"d forfeit his inheritance if he wasn"t married by the fifteenth of September. It was a gay party, and she welcomed that because it was the ant.i.thesis of her life at the Inst.i.tute and the senior paper ("Fatigue of the Cardiac Muscles in Reptiles") she"d be returning to in all too short a time, but it was frivolous too, and after the first week, deadly dull. Every day was a lithograph of the one before. There was tennis in the morning, swimming and rowing in the afternoon, dejeuner sur l"herbe, croquet, word games, dancing and music in the evening, and Butler Ames straining to be witty the whole time, quoting the same tired lines from Swinburne or Wilde night after night while Pamela Huff and Betty Johnston and Ambler and Patricia Tretonne sat there and grinned as if they"d never heard them before. It was a rest, yes, but there was a whole seething world out there, a world of child labor, disenfranchised women, tenements and factories, and there wasn"t a person in that whole resort, from the overfed guests to the women who scrubbed the floors and the men who boiled up the lobsters, who"d ever even heard of Ida Tarbell, Jacob Riis or Frank Norris. Except Stanley. And when he glided across that sunlit lawn with his great loping strides, leather helmet and goggles dangling from one bright scissoring hand, she was ready for him.
They were out in front of the hotel, the whole party, drinking champagne from an iced bucket and playing an endlessly dilatory game of croquet, and they looked up as one at the solemn figure cutting across the lawn on his way from the stable where he"d garaged his motorcar.
"Good G.o.d, what was that?" that?" Ambler Tretonne cried after Stanley had pa.s.sed from hearing. Ambler was thirty-two, with a broad bland face and puckered lips that gave him the look of one of those fishes that puffs itself up when it"s hauled from the water, and he stood a full three inches shorter than Katherine. When he"d married Patricia five years earlier, his father"s paper mills came into happy conjunction with her father"s chain of daily newspapers. Ambler Tretonne cried after Stanley had pa.s.sed from hearing. Ambler was thirty-two, with a broad bland face and puckered lips that gave him the look of one of those fishes that puffs itself up when it"s hauled from the water, and he stood a full three inches shorter than Katherine. When he"d married Patricia five years earlier, his father"s paper mills came into happy conjunction with her father"s chain of daily newspapers.
"An intrepid motorist, no doubt," Butler Ames returned, hanging over a bright varnished ball and lifting his witty face to the group. "Back from a hard day of scaring cows out of their hoofs."
And Katherine? She didn"t recognize him, not then, not at first, but how could she? She was twelve when she"d seen Stanley last, a child, and now she was twenty-eight years old, fully grown and mature, the only graduate of Miss Hershey"s School who wasn"t married, widowed or dead.
But Stanley recognized her. He entered the dining room at 7:00 P.M. sharp, dressed in evening clothes, his face tanned and teeth flashing, a head taller than anyone in the room, and when he looked up from the menu he caught her eye where she was sitting in the far corner with Butler Ames and the rest, and every time she glanced up after that his pale blue eyes were fixed on her. After dinner, when everyone under the age of seventy had retired to the ballroom for ices, dessert, drinks and dancing, he tracked her down with the aid of Morris Johnston, Betty"s brother. She"d just danced a rag with Bulter Ames and was catching her breath, a little giddy with the gla.s.s of wine he"d persuaded her to take, when something in Butler"s face made her look up.
Morris was standing there with this hulking tall man, a man matched to her own height, which Butler Ames, at five foot six, most emphatically was not, and the man-Stanley-was smiling a secret, mysterious sort of smile, as if he"d just solved an intricate puzzle. "I know you," he said, even before Morris made the introductions. "Didn"t you used to live in Chicago?"
Stanley joined their party, and though Butler Ames bl.u.s.tered, cajoled and wisecracked without pause as the band played on, took a breather and played on again, it was as if he didn"t exist except as a minor irritation on the periphery of her consciousness, like an insect, Culex pipiens pipiens. pipiens pipiens. She was lost in reminiscence, transported all the way back to her girlhood in Chicago, when her father was alive, and her brother, and there was nothing at all the matter with the world that a good grade on an exam or a few dancing lessons wouldn"t cure. Stanley"s mind was astonishing. He remembered every detail of those lessons, right down to the names and addresses of nearly all the boys and half the girls, and he remembered the day Monsieur LaBonte had paired them all off according to height, the day they"d first met. She was lost in reminiscence, transported all the way back to her girlhood in Chicago, when her father was alive, and her brother, and there was nothing at all the matter with the world that a good grade on an exam or a few dancing lessons wouldn"t cure. Stanley"s mind was astonishing. He remembered every detail of those lessons, right down to the names and addresses of nearly all the boys and half the girls, and he remembered the day Monsieur LaBonte had paired them all off according to height, the day they"d first met.
"My G.o.d," she said, "that was sixteen years ago. Can you believe it?"
"It snowed that afternoon," he said. "Six inches."
"I"m amazed at your memory, I really am."
He smiled, that was all, and here was the shy Stanley revealed, self-deprecating, self-effacing, never one to advertise himself. He might have said, "Yes, and I graduated with honors from Princeton and now I run the Reaper Works along with my brothers," or "I have every reason to remember-how could I forget you?" you?" That was the line Butler Ames would have taken. Or any of the other heavy-breathing young bachelors who seemed to close in on her like a swarm of gnats whenever she left her books and went out into society. But Stanley was different. With Stanley there was no pretense, no pressure, no aggression. And he listened, he listened to her rather than himself, and the more they talked the more she felt the tug of memory pulling her down link by link into a shifting pool of nostalgia, her father"s face there before her, the lake at twilight, Prairie Avenue piled high with drifts, a big gray carthorse collapsing in its traces while her father tried to hurry her past. That was the line Butler Ames would have taken. Or any of the other heavy-breathing young bachelors who seemed to close in on her like a swarm of gnats whenever she left her books and went out into society. But Stanley was different. With Stanley there was no pretense, no pressure, no aggression. And he listened, he listened to her rather than himself, and the more they talked the more she felt the tug of memory pulling her down link by link into a shifting pool of nostalgia, her father"s face there before her, the lake at twilight, Prairie Avenue piled high with drifts, a big gray carthorse collapsing in its traces while her father tried to hurry her past.
Before long, she and Stanley were huddled by themselves, the width of the table between them and the rest of the party, all of whom, excluded from reminiscences of the LaBonte Dancing Academy, b.u.mpy Swift and George Pullman, picked up the general conversation and carried it elsewhere. "And what do you make of the Beaneaters this season?" she heard Morris ask at one point, and Butler"s answer, "Give me the American League any day." And then, out of nowhere, "Have you read Debs"s Unionism and Socialism?" Unionism and Socialism?" Stanley asked, and the rest of the night fell away into some hidden crevice in the smooth continuum of time. When she looked up again, the band had vanished, the ballroom was empty and all the others had gone off to bed. Stanley asked, and the rest of the night fell away into some hidden crevice in the smooth continuum of time. When she looked up again, the band had vanished, the ballroom was empty and all the others had gone off to bed.