Читать книгу The Mandrake Root - Martha Ostenso - Страница 18

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The mail, in the late afternoon, brought a letter from Natalie. Eric left it in his coat pocket while he shaved and changed his clothes before supper. A certain feeling of resentment toward it abode with him. He had wanted no intrusion on this fresh beginning, this experiment in which he hoped to derive from the old tired elements a new compound within himself. Natalie should have known as much. In all likelihood she had known, and had written purely in a mood of trivial mischief. He was too well acquainted with her to over-or underestimate her sensibilities. If she were to seek him out here, for instance, it would be because of—rather than in spite of—the intuitive perspicacity which would warn her that he desired above all to be left alone.

While he buttoned up his light flannel shirt, he pondered upon what arrangement he should make about his laundry. Perhaps Mrs. Clarence would be glad to take care of it for the odd dollar or two every week—these country women had a frugal eye, even if they did prefer Chopin to Turkey in the Straw. His tweed suit, he observed, could stand sponging and pressing. Tomorrow, Saturday, he would go into town, get some supplies, and have the suit cleaned, if old Belden’s shop was still there at the corner where the hitching post used to be. Even now he thought with a pang of that old hitching post, which had been removed when he was fourteen.

He studied himself briefly in the mirror. Pneumonia could certainly leave its mark! He still had something of a honed-down look, his cheekbones were still unnaturally prominent, but a brisk tinge of health was flowing satisfactorily through his somewhat too delicate skin.

He sat down and opened Natalie’s letter. It contained nothing but an exclamation mark and a raggedly scrawled “N.” Eric made a grimace and tossed the large square envelope and the note into the wastebasket. Then he laid a small bet with himself that Natalie would pay him a visit before Christmas.

Downstairs, Andrew Clarence was preparing supper. A savory-smelling stew was bubbling on the range. Eric leaned over the pot, sniffed appreciatively and said, “You’re wasting your time farming, Andrew. You could get a job as chef.”

With earnest precision Andrew had been laying knives and forks at each place on the table, and napkins neatly rolled within bone rings on each of which was a different floral design.

“Even a beef stew is worth doing well,” he replied.

Such humorless solemnity in anyone else would have been trying. Yet here it came as a recovered truth, not at all absurd. To whatever Andrew did, he brought a devout, quiet zeal that gave dignity to the task.

“I want the recipe for this concoction,” Eric said. “I can boil water and a few things like that, but—”

“My wife would be only too pleased to have you take your meals with us,” Andrew interrupted.

“No, no!” Eric said hastily. “That would be an imposition. Thank you, just the same. But I’ll get along all right over there in the orchard house, just as soon as I get into the swing of things. Besides, my hours would be entirely too irregular for you.”

Andrew nodded. “Just as you wish, of course. By the way, I had a letter this afternoon. My wife’s mother has passed away. It was expected, and yet—you never know how you’ll feel until those things really happen. She—Mrs. Wheeler—disliked me from the beginning, for no reason that I was ever able to find out.” He cleared his throat as if in labored apology. “The point is, we shall be alone here probably for another three days. The—the arrangements had not been made when my wife wrote.”

Eric loathed being exposed to any confessed problem of a person he did not know. Once, in a dining car, a man opposite him had announced to Eric that he couldn’t endure artichokes because his wife always craved them when she was pregnant. By the time the artichoke on Eric’s order had arrived, he had had no further relish for it. But this spontaneous utterance of Andrew’s was not in the class of easy confidence.

“Those difficulties seem common in families,” Eric said.

“Yes.” Andrew smiled slightly. “Families require a great deal of toleration. Or would you say ‘tolerance’? You see—I have difficulty with words. I never got farther than the eighth grade—in a country school. Lydie had a year of college before she married me. I’ve learned a good deal from her.”

Eric would naturally have felt either pity or irritation at such unabashed modesty. What he did feel was an unprompted, trusting glow of affection for Andrew Clarence such as he had never before conceded to any but old and tried friends. This might be, he reasoned, because over a period of five years Andrew Clarence had diligently and faithfully sustained the ideals of honest labor in this house where Edvard and Johannes Stene had established them. But, no—it was more than that. If he had met Andrew in some sordidly conventional den of vice, or some equally sordid and conventional drawing room, the result would have been the same. The man’s appeal had nothing to do with this house; it lay rather in the fact that he was Eric’s direct opposite—he had in him the antique and hopeless fire of the poet, the wordless poet, the inarticulate and unthanked savior of a world that laughed at being saved.