Читать книгу Sir - Mildred Cram - Страница 4

Edward always knew when Eithne was about to come downstairs. There was first a rustle along the upstairs hall, then a pause and finally the descent. The taffeta slips she wore accounted for the hissing rustle, but she moved like a snake, not stepping from step to step but coiling down, soundlessly.

“Edward!”

He rejected the unpleasant image and forced himself to see her as a handsome woman of forty, his half-sister. The two halves . . . if that was the genetic composition . . . bore no remote resemblance to one another. Brother and sister belonged to the human race, but there the similarities ended.

“I was just going out,” he said.

“Where?”

“I thought of taking a walk.”

“A walk?”

“I’m quite up to it.”

“The doctor said you were not to go anywhere alone. Not for a week at least.”

“I’m quite all right.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“Please, no.”

She made a gesture that meant: “I give up! You’re impossible.” And turning away, went smoothly, effortlessly, upstairs again.

Edward saw the backs of her legs in seamless beige, her long body patted and steamed and starved into fashionable grace. “Expensive snake,” he thought. And the image took over again.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” she called down from the landing. “I suppose I’ve got to get used to your being alone here.”

Edward didn’t answer. He tried not to leap at the door, but to open it calmly and to step outside as if he were doing the most natural . . . the safest . . . thing in the world.

The wide verandah was in full sunlight. It was warm for an afternoon in March, windless, and not a cloud in the sky. During the summer the lawn would be a lush green, the clover machine-mowed and fragrant, but now it was brown, save where patches of crusty snow melted morosely in the hollows.

Edward followed a bricked path through the rose garden. The bushes wore their winter overcoats; straw and burlap cones were wrapped around the barren stalks. The tool-house was boarded up; it was still too early to spade the frozen earth. No birds. Not a living thing in sight, anywhere.

Edward walked slowly, conscious of a certain lack of balance, a sense of physical confusion, as if nothing worked as it should. The veins in his hands felt full. His heart betrayed him unless he took great care to head off its sudden bursts of speed. He had been ill, exiled to a room in a hospital for six weeks, submitting to the faintly contemptuous attention of doctors who seemed convinced that whatever it was that ailed him their science had no way to get at it. None of these highly paid fellows dared to tell him what they really thought: that his sickness was psychosomatic. Had he been a penniless nobody sweating it out in a ward, they would have made short shrift of his symptoms. Did he hurt here, or there? No. Well, then! We’ll test this and that: examine this and that: the brain, the spine, the spleen, the liver. We’ll push and prod and photograph and guess . . . Edward could afford it; he was a rich man.

The Press was determined to get at the truth of his condition, and newsmen surged through the hospital, clogging the corridors, monopolizing the phone booths. Could they see him? They could not. Was it true that he was paralyzed? No comment. Was he dying? No comment. Could Mr. Reasoner speak to him for a moment? No one could speak to him.

Finally the pressure was relieved. An official statement was released: the illustrious patient was suffering from a minor concussion, that was all. No injuries: no fractures or burns. A period of complete rest was indicated. Nothing more.

The path frayed out once it had fulfilled its purpose; the neatly spaced bricks gave way to gravel, then wandered into the pine woods that bordered the estate. Here, centuries of fallen needles had made a tawny carpet so thick that neither man nor beast could dent its surface.

Edward hesitated and looked back at the house. From where he stood, the windows were like brass shields flashing in the sun; a thread of smoke rose from one of the tall chimneys. Edward had been born here, in a second-story bedroom, on just such a day as this; he could remember his mother’s telling him so: “A warm day . . . there was spring in the air. When you were safely born, I asked to look at you. Oh, Edward, what an ugly baby you were! Who would have believed that you would grow up to be the handsome creature you are!”

He was not handsome, but he had been called “the young Lincoln” too often not to believe that there was some truth in the comparison: the height, the square shoulders, the blackness of hair and the aggressive nose. With the mouth any resemblance ended, and the attraction for women began. Of this, however, Edward was unaware. If he thought of his appearance at all it was with a sort of futile annoyance at being recognized wherever he went. Even those who had no idea who he was stared at him, but those who did recognize him swung in their tracks to have another look. It was like seeing a character step out from the T.V. screen . . . a strange duality . . . Lincoln wearing Welby’s tunic or Marshal Dillon’s hat.

For this reason, to escape the probing public eye, he had hoped he could hide from the consuming attention of the crowd and in decent privacy arrive at his own conclusions. He had left Washington at night, and abjuring the black limousine that was the symbol of his office, had driven a small, inconspicuous car to New York and had gone immediately to Eithne’s house. No one saw him leave and no one saw him arrive; it was a novel experience to stand on Eithne’s doorstep at three o’clock in the morning, pressing the doorbell until a cautious man-servant demanded from inside: “Who’s there? What do you want?”

Eithne, clutching a wool robe, her eyes blurred with sleep, came from her bedroom to confront him. She was a woman who knew well how to confront.

“Where on earth did you come from? I thought you were in the hospital.”

“I was,” he said. And with a faint smile he added: “I’m not. As you see.”

“Is anything wrong? Are you worse?”

“I’m quite well.”

“Don’t be silly. Must you pretend with me?” She made a quick gesture toward a telephone. “I’ll call Dr. Brandt.”

“You won’t. Now, or ever. I’m through with Brandt and he with me. We have washed our hands of each other’s failures. I’m on my way to Easterly.”

“At this time of year?”

“The first robin . . . a little ahead of schedule! I want you to come with me. You can help me open the house. And then I’ll let you go.”

“How sweet of you!”

She stared at him with critical eyes, searching for some sign of defection, of mental wavering. He returned the stare, his own eyes steady and kind . . . he could always feel sorry for anyone who tried to trip him; if they succeeded, he could retaliate, and this was perhaps the secret of his strength. He knew what Eithne was thinking and with one of his gentle smiles led her on to saying it: “I should think this was the worst possible time to go off by yourself. You need distraction. People.” She broke off and went in search of a cigarette. “Is it too soon to speak to you of having fun? In a quiet way, of course? No one expects you to mourn forever. Or to blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was,” Edward said.

He looked back once more at the house. Perhaps because Easterly belonged neither to the past nor to the present there was something strangely reassuring about the place. Built by Edward’s grandfather in the nineties, it had escaped the swollen bay windows and baroque ornamentation of its period. The green and white awnings were already in place, and it had the look of a Newport “cottage.” It stood on the crest of a hill, high enough to afford a view of the lake, yet protected by the circling stand of pines. The greenhouses and stables were at the bottom of the farther slope; once there had been orchids and horses to be cared for, and stablemen and gardeners to care for them. Nowadays, the stalls were empty and the damp sweetness of the greenhouses no longer misted the glass roofs. For many years a gigantic Rolls, black as sin, had stood on jacks in the garage. Edward could not bear to part with it. Once he tried it out on the country roads, but for all its watch-like perfection, it seemed too heavy and he felt vaguely absurd, sitting in high, solitary splendor behind the unfamiliar wheel. Twice a year this mastodon was oiled and waxed, its fierce headlights polished, its upholstery whisked. But Edward drove the caretaker’s pick-up truck if he drove at all. Whenever he came to Easterly, he made a quick tour of the estate and was off again.

This time he returned with a definite purpose: like the old Rolls in the garage he meant to jack himself up and wait for a healing. If he could straighten out the confusions in his mind and get his future into focus again . . .

Suddenly, doubt blew across his spirit like a windswept fog. A sense of unreality was coming at him again, blurring and erasing. He took a few steps back toward the house, his heart beating much too fast, his breathing shallow. The retreat was cowardly and he knew it. Eithne would know it, too. He must keep up the pretense of good mental health as he had in the hospital . . . none of the medics had spotted the real reason for his weakness, his sweats, his dry-eyed weeping. Damn! What ailed him, that he couldn’t face walking alone through a shadowy grove? He had never feared anything . . . except perhaps the sting of a yellow-jacket! War hadn’t scared him. But by God he was scared now! Only Eithne mustn’t guess. No one must guess. Whatever it was, he must fight it alone. And win. Or lose . . . Well. First things first. He’d go through the wood and down to the lake, even if his knees buckled and he had to crawl. He’d go.

Beneath the pines, the silence was absolute. Only once, faraway somewhere, a crow cawed. Edward thought that men must have heard that sound since the beginning of time. Great civilizations built up and lasted a while and were spent, but the crows went on forever. He wondered whether the bulldozer would destroy them, too, and whether the day would come, and soon, when the crows would be heard no more except in the memories of a few old men?

Once during the war when he was on leave in England, Edward wrote his friend Ricardo and mentioned that he had spent a week in Cornwall and hadn’t seen or heard a crow. Plenty of small birds in the hedgerows, but no crows? Why?

Ricardo replied after a month or so . . . correspondence had no continuity in those days . . . and advised Edward to look up an old phonograph record that would very likely help him over his crow-less years! “An aspirin for nostalgia,” he wrote. “Somehow it captures the feeling of an English garden just before dawn . . . mist, moonlight, nightingales, the distant barking of a farm dog, and then with dawn the crow sound. Find it, Edward, and play it when you’re lonely for Easterly and youth. If this doesn’t work, I’ll ask Robert Frost to write a poem . . . I wonder, has he ever celebrated the immortal crow? He should. He will, if it’s for you. You know, he thinks a lot of you. He thinks you may have something big to do for America . . .”

Edward’s property was wire-fenced all the way around except for the lake frontage. The main highway turned inland beyond the village, and from there only an unpaved road, rough and weed-grown, skirted the lake. A sign, “Private Property” may have prevented a few timid souls from trespassing, but in summer, campers and picnic-parties made use of the beach. The entrance to Easterly itself was kept barred by an iron gate between tall fieldstone posts. A caller could give his name and state his business over the telephone from the village; if he was welcome, someone would come down from the house and admit him with a fine clanking of chains and bars. There was no other way to keep the place clear of those who consider the home of any public character their own to enjoy and deface. Edward never knew how these people found him out, but they did. And they would again if the press discovered his whereabouts; the reprieve from a pitiless publicity might not last much longer.

Here in the shadowy silence of the wood, he was more than ever aware of how tense he was, every nerve and muscle braced against thinking of the accident. He made a deliberate effort to relax, stretching his spine and thrusting his chin out, then letting go, only to build up the painful rigidity again. The medics had prescribed sedatives but these Edward had refused. He had always fought against surrendering any part of consciousness; for this reason, perhaps, he was never flagged down by liquor and disliked sleep if it carried him too far away from awareness; four hours were enough to recharge a battery that was never wholly spent no matter how hard he worked. He had learned this by observing certain men under fire, one in particular who could black out in the midst of chaos, bolt upright, eyes open, but for a split-second sound asleep. And so, restored.

Edward did this now, or tried to do it; leaning against a tree, pressing his back against the rough, cold bark, he gazed up into the motionless boughs and summoned forgetfulness. But he couldn’t escape the threat that stalked him; the terrifying threat of a compulsive move upon self-destruction.

Eithne was not a woman given to hen-clucking domestic anxieties, but when the sun disappeared behind the pines she began a restless tour of the rooms; Edward had gone out for this “walk” of his two hours ago. He should be back by now. And yet she hesitated to alarm the caretaker and his wife. A glance at the clock on the mantel in the hall did nothing to reassure her; it said seven. Then she realized that it hadn’t been wound; the pendulum was motionless and the gilt figures supporting the face seemed exhausted by the futility of their service. With lifted arms they upheld years of lost time.

Eithne slipped her fingers under the clock and found the key. After a few turns a gritty ticking announced a return to life and the clock struck seven . . . never before with such a furious, ear-shattering clang.

“Damn it, you frightened me,” Eithne said. “Who do you think you are? Big Ben?”

She hoped that Mrs. Littlefield hadn’t heard her swear . . . she never did unless she lost her temper.

The caretaker’s wife came in from the kitchen. “What on earth was that?”

Eithne pointed to the clock, too shaken to answer.

“It’s ten to five,” Mrs. Littlefield said. With the tip of an arthritic finger she turned back the hands. “He said supper at five. I’m fixing apple turnovers for him. They don’t wait, once they’ve risen. Isn’t he coming?”

Eithne went to the window, and Mrs. Littlefield followed her. The two women stood side by side looking out across the cold dry brownness of the lawn into the last rays of the sun. There was no sign of Edward and Eithne recalled what Dr. Brandt had said about the possibility of suicide. “Watch for any signs of a total withdrawal from reality. He has had a severe shock and will try to escape from something that shouldn’t have happened, but did happen. There’s a sort of psychic wound; healing may be slow, but it needn’t leave a scar. It won’t, unless he finds the suffering unendurable. In that case he might take his own way out.”

“I don’t think he looks very well,” Mrs. Littlefield said. “Mr. Littlefield and I both remarked on it. Of course he’s grieving. But we can’t grieve forever. It’s not natural.”

“No,” Eithne said.

“When the young President was shot, the whole world grieved. But after awhile people put it out of mind . . . not that they forgot. They just pushed it down and covered it up. It was over. It was history.”

“Yes,” Eithne said again.

Mrs. Littlefield went back toward the kitchen, but Eithne stopped her.

“You’ll stay here and take care of him, won’t you?”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Littlefield said after a pause. “But I thought he’d send for his own help. Mr. Littlefield and I don’t care for being in service. We’re not young enough any more . . .”

“Just for a few days! You’ll stay here in the house, of course? He shouldn’t be alone at night.”

“We couldn’t do that. We have our own house in the village, and a cat and nursing kittens we can’t leave. We’ll come first thing in the morning and do what we can for him. But no, once the sun’s down, we go home. I’m sorry, but that’s that. Fond as we are of him and grateful for all he’s done for us.”

Eithne said nothing; she recognized the New Englander’s stubborn resistance to discipline . . . it would be useless to insist. As for Edward’s sending for the half-dozen servants who had followed him from post to post for years, it wasn’t likely that they’d stay long in the Victorian country-house. Well, coming here was Edward’s own idea. Eithne had no intention of giving up her own pursuits to make her brother’s stupid flight from heartache comfortable.

Restless again, really apprehensive now, she rustled from room to room, lighting lamps against the deepening twilight. She had never liked Easterly, except in mid-summer when the cottages and hotels along the lake-shore were occupied and the roads hummed with traffic. And of course, when Edward was governor the old mansion had served as a summer Statehouse and the constant coming and going of people, the colorful garden, the sweep of fragrant lawn, the receptions and dinners erased the sense of remoteness — and for a few months Easterly was at the center of important happenings.

But then Edward began his service in Europe. As ambassador he was useful, but he disliked the devious devices and subterfuges of diplomacy and was never quite adjusted to life in the formal embassies; he was too American, physically and mentally, to blend with the decor. Eithne responded to his call for help and flew over to act as hostess for her bachelor brother. She was determined to rescue him from ambitious women who saw themselves lifted to the heights he was certain to scale. Eithne knew how to detach their predatory fingers. She made enemies, but she also made herself indispensable to Edward. Until he married Valerie.

Eithne paused in the library, a room that reflected the tastes and pursuits of her father and grandfather. The portrait of a great-grandfather wearing the uniform of an officer of the Revolution hung above the white marble mantel, but most of the wall-space was given over to cabinets and bookshelves. The cabinets contained trophies and a display of rifles and hunting knives; the books, well bound, mellow, were beautiful in themselves. Like the worn velvet arm chairs and sofas, the room was vaguely shabby in spite of an air of luxury, something modern designers can’t achieve for all their access to old furniture and fabrics. The ornaments . . . oversized crackled jars and bronze candlesticks with flat crystal pendants . . . were probably valuable. Eithne wondered what would happen to them in case Easterly were ever sold . . . There would be no place for them either in the Georgetown house, which Edward owned, or in the modern setting she had contrived for herself in New York. Everything belonging to Easterly . . . even the paintings . . . would probably be put up at auction. The small Burne-Jones, the Watts, the more recent Childe Hassam, the portrait of Edward’s mother, painted by Shinn in the Forties, just before she died . . . Easterly would die, too, if Edward did.

Once more the word “suicide” attacked Eithne’s consciousness like a vicious-toothed bat. It was all she could do not to strike out with both hands in panic-stricken revulsion. Edward a suicide? Surely, that fine, sound mind of his hadn’t been weakened by the tragedy . . . he was still grief-stricken, of course, and that was what she had felt — not a breaking down of his will to live. He had seemed calm enough during the long drive from New York, had handled the car with his usual skill, driving too fast as he always did, but with hands firm on the wheel, and eyes steady. Sitting beside him, wrapped in her furs, Eithne had relaxed, had even dozed. Was this a man who would sacrifice a lifetime of effort and accomplishment? Yet there had been something . . . something deep in him, out of reach, a difference . . . Why in God’s name had she let him come here? Why hadn’t she sent for Ricardo . . . some friend strong enough to help? She couldn’t do it, herself; she hadn’t the pity or the knowledge or the selfless love. And she thought that perhaps it would have been better had the war snuffed him out years ago. Better than a cowardly death now, with all the ugliness to follow: inquests, headlines, questionings, a hurried, shamefaced funeral, a flag for a hero but no wreath, no laurel, for an immortal.

Besides, what would happen to her, to Eithne? She had planned to step back into his need of her now that Valerie and the boys were gone. He would never again live in the Georgetown house, but she would; she could be a great help to him there, entertaining the right people, the “important” people. A nod from Eithne meant that you were “in,” and while she wasn’t particularly political-minded, she knew everything there was to know about protocol. She had considerable power of her own, but it would mean nothing if she were to lose Edward. Particularly now that he was only a few short steps from the summit. She had always sensed this, but losing him had seemed an unlikely disaster, until today.

Edward stayed in the grove for a long time. Once, noticing a small white object thrusting through the matted carpet of pine needles, he knelt and uncovered an Indian Pipe, freed it, and for a long time contemplated the miracle of its growth. The stem, blanched from a winter beneath the snow, curved like a swan’s neck. Edward realized the plant’s beauty but there was no response in his heart; his recognition of it began in the intellect and ended there. This was frightening enough . . . to remember an emotion but to be unable to feel it . . . and Edward, getting to his feet, hurried away from the spot as if the Indian Pipe were a poisonous viper. He was not yet at the bottom of despair, but he was close to it. So far . . . and he was certain of this . . . he hadn’t behaved like a madman, hadn’t worn his coat backwards or switched his shoes from right to left or slipped into babbling incoherencies. Some inner voice kept right on dictating what gestures he should make, what words he should speak to appear normal. Only the horrible thing about it was that he heard himself speaking and saw himself behaving as if he were on the outside of himself . . . a solipsist in reverse? Sitting in judgment upon himself he took great care to censor any indication of self-pity, or to admit, ever, that a rug had been pulled out from under him and that he had fallen flat on his face at the foot of the throne. A stranger had said to him once: “You’ve had it too easy. All the breaks. If you ever come up against it . . . really up against it . . . boy, it’ll go hard with you!” At the time, he had put the outburst down to that curious resentment aroused in certain men by handsewn shoes and well-cut jackets . . . as if filthy overalls were a guarantee of noble purposes and a stained necktie meant you were a good fellow. He wondered, now, if perhaps his critic had been right: at his birth all the ingredients of well-being had been shaken out of the cornucopia: inherited wealth, physical stamina, solid forbears, an ingrained, deep-rooted belief in the essential Tightness of his country. Well. None of these gifts made him sacrosanct. He had been spit upon by mobs, splattered with eggs, hissed at. Woven into the popular applause, like steel wire in a braid of hemp, there had been hatred enough to cut his hands to the bone as he climbed. But climb he had. And might again. If only he could find a reason to!

He had come to the edge of the wood and could now see the lake, calm save close in shore where little waves broke with monotonous regularity against the beach. Across the silvery water, a chain of hills, heavily wooded, were nowadays a sanctuary for small game . . . too many gun-happy hunters had all but exterminated the wildlife there. Edward had hunted as a youngster, accepting it as a sport because his father and grandfather did. But he was responsible for the bill that ruled slaughter out of the district for fifty years to come. There were deer there now . . . the beavers were at work again, the skunks and squirrels and porcupines had ventured back . . . there were even a few red foxes and small bear . . .

Edward slid down a bank, crossed the beach and went out to the end of the Easterly dock. He stood there for a long time, unaware that the sun was almost gone, and that a chill current of air had begun to drift along the shore, trailing with it shreds of night mist. He heard the chuckle of water around the piles beneath him but didn’t look down. It was deep this far out and would be cold. He began involuntarily to imagine drowning . . . the plunge, the struggle, the final letting go.

Then he saw that someone had come along the beach and was trying to attract his attention. It was a girl wearing slacks and a bulky red sweater. She was dripping wet, as if she had just stepped out of the lake. Even from where he stood he could hear the slush of water in her rubber-soled sneakers.

She called up to him: “Will you help me? A man’s hurt, His car turned over. He’s trapped. He’ll drown if we don’t get him out!”

“Drown?”

“The car rolled into the lake. Please come. Please hurry!”

Edward ran back along the dock and jumped off into the sand beside her. She ran ahead and there was nothing to do but to follow her. Apparently she hadn’t recognized him and for this he was grateful; he hated being pinned like a specimen to some stranger’s collection of celebrities. This girl was intent not on him but on the car which had righted itself and now stood half-submerged about fifty feet off shore. The driver was under the wheel, his left arm across the door, a bloody hand trailing in the water.

The nausea of shock was at the pit of Edward’s stomach again, and he hesitated at the water’s edge, debating whether to go to the injured man’s rescue or to turn and run for help.

“I tried,” the girl said. “I couldn’t! But I tried . . .”

So. There was no help for it. Edward peeled off his coat, removed his shoes. The first step into the icy water made him recoil and stooping to conceal his reaction he tugged at his socks. Then, barefoot, he waded out, the girl splashing, half-swimming beside him.

“Go back!” he shouted.

She shook her head and kept right on.

The man in the car was only half-conscious, but he attempted a jaunty grin when he saw Edward.

“Fancy meeting you here!” he said. Then, with a wash of pallor, he fainted.

As Edward struggled to release and lift the heavy body, he thought that if anyone were trapped it was he, himself. He got the man back to the beach and put him down where a bank of sand offered some protection and support. The girl followed. Her teeth were chattering, her lips blue beneath the smeared-on crimson of her lipstick. She brought Edward’s coat and he covered the unconscious fellow as well as he could. Then she went back for the shoes and socks and handed them to Edward.

“What were you doing on this road?” he demanded. “Didn’t you see the sign back there?”

“Yes. We saw it.”

“Then why didn’t you turn around? What were you after?”

“A story,” she said. “You, of course! We’re reporters.”

“I see,” he said, “very well. There’s a doctor in the village. I’ll call him from the house. It won’t take long. Wait here.”

He turned abruptly and hurried back toward Easterly along an old shortcut he knew that by-passed the pines. Almost obliterated by a tangle of frozen weeds and thorny bushes, the path was steep and rough. Edward crashed through, taking long strides. It was almost dark now and the lake mist was drifting up, clinging, breaking loose again, leaving torn shreds as if a company of tattered ghosts had passed. A castanet-rattling of frogs in a damp hollow ceased abruptly, then began again. Of course those two on the beach were scout ants staking out a lump of sugar for their colony! No use to ask them for a few days’ grace; the rest of the horde would arrive tomorrow and the public flaying would begin again: that pitiless exposure which was like being skinned alive . . . a laying bare of lungs, heart, viscera, veins, nerves. And he recalled a statue he had seen somewhere of a martyred saint neatly and expertly deprived of his flesh which he held like a toga, and with a certain elegance, over his arm.

Edward had reached the top of the slope when he heard the girl behind him. He didn’t look back or speak, since he had expected this to happen: she would try to get into the house. Let the man on the beach bleed to death; this was a scoop . . . she’d get in, or else! Edward heard again the sloshing sneakers, her quick panting breath. “My dog’s in this thicket somewhere,” she gasped. “He was frightened. He swam ashore and ran off . . . His name’s Murphy.”

Edward made a contemptuous sound, a sort of snort of disbelief. He heard her calling: “Murphy! Murphy!” And hoped that she had turned back. Cutting across the rose garden to the brick walk, he saw Easterly glowing with lights. As he hurried up the steps and across the verandah to the door, the girl caught up with him again.

Eithne was warming herself at the fire in the hallway. She held a cup of coffee which she stirred slowly, the gesture expressing annoyance, indignation and resolve. She was wearing her furs. A pillbox the size of a cake of Pear’s Soap was poised behind the silver upsurge of her pompadour.

“I’m driving back to New York tonight,” she said before Edward could explain. “I can’t take the responsibility . . .”

She broke off, suddenly aware of her brother’s extra-ordinary appearance and of the girl who had come in with him.

“Edward! Where on earth . . .?”

Edward veered away from the word “accident.” He used a strangely dated substitute: “There’s been a . . . mishap. A car overturned on the lake road. A man’s hurt. Badly, I’m afraid.”

He made an awkward gesture, glancing quickly at the shivering girl.

“My sister, Mrs. Wade.”

The girl would have offered her hand but the coffee cup presented an obstacle. She smiled at Eithne instead. She had very white teeth and Edward was aware of a flash of mischief and good humor.

“My name’s Megan,” she said. “Megan Donahue. I wonder could I stand in front of the fire? I’m frozen.”

Eithne moved quickly.

“Of course. Edward . . .?”

It was a cry for help, but Edward had no intention of coming to his sister’s rescue. He snatched up the telephone and while he struggled with the mysteries of area codes and information the two women watched him, Eithne with amazement as if he had changed character, the girl with shining eyes as if she were looking at an archangel.

It was after midnight when he finally went to bed. Eithne had gone taking the girl with her, the village doctor had transferred the wounded man to the nearest hospital and now Easterly was silent, the long wings dark. The lake mist had thickened; a muffling fog shrouded the house, dripped from the branches of trees, drenched the walks. Edward was alone.

This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? Well, wasn’t it the whole purpose of his flight from Washington? To be alone? In the hospital, there was always a coming and going of doctors and nurses, someone to watch him, quick to spring at him with the everlasting query: “Are you feeling better, sir?” Better! Hah! Their real concern was with the window six stories above the sidewalk where he had been found leaning on the sill staring down with what might have been a purpose. There had been panic in the corridors, an urgent clamor of voices paging Dr. Brandt over the loud speakers.

“Dr. Brandt, please. Emergency!”

“Surely, Edward,” the startled physician said, “you weren’t thinking of jumping out? You know, you aren’t the only man to have lost his wife and children tragically. Better face up to it at once, before it sinks its fangs into your mind.” And Edward had said: “I’ll deal with it in my own way, in my own good time. Right now, I want very much to go home to Easterly.”

And here he was.

Halfway upstairs he noticed that he had left the library lamp lighted. He went back and turned it off, remembering that when he was a child he had been afraid of the dark. His father was contemptuous of such cowardice and ignored it, but his mother used to tiptoe down as soon as her husband was asleep and switch on the library lamp. A faint wedge of light would appear on the ceiling of Edward’s room at the top of the stairs and the terrified boy would come out from under the bedclothes.

When he was seven his father said to him: “I know your mother gives in to you. Perhaps she doesn’t care if you grow up to be a coward. But I do. You can’t expect me to be your friend until you’ve conquered this fear of the dark. When you have, tell me. I’ll believe you. One thing I’m sure of: you’re honest.” And that night, as soon as his mother had performed her merciful deed, Edward slipped down and turned off the lamp.

This was the way it had been ever since; whenever he feared anything he forced himself to grope for courage in the total dark. Courage. If you could kindle even a pinpoint of that light you could swing it ahead of you like an electric flash and so keep to the path. This was why he had left the hospital and the starched guardians of his safety, talking his way out with such disarming logic and cheerful charm that the entire staff agreed that it was the thing to do. A week’s rest in the country, then back to his desk! It remained for the Press to accept this. There had been rumors of a mental breakdown. Suspicious members of the Opposition bayed like hunting dogs across the fields of conjecture . . . And already a pair of reporters was at his heels! The rest couldn’t be far behind . . .

He climbed the stairs slowly, seeing well enough by the last ruddy flicker of the fire in the hallway. A log broke in two and collapsed in a shower of sparks. Then there was only the rustle of hot ashes on the hearth.

His bedroom had been furnished for the heir to millions, and Edward had always disliked it . . . the heavy mahogany bed with its plump, dark red coverlets, the vast bureau, the velvet curtains . . . all of it stuffy and melancholy. There was a scent of camphor and in the adjoining bathroom a lingering trace of lavender. Mrs. Littlefield had filled the racks with linen hand-towels and over-sized bath-towels. But she hadn’t turned back the bedclothes or unpacked Edward’s suitcase; these were menial duties once the privilege of a proud dynasty of family servants. Nor had Mr. Littlefield laid a fire; he had dumped an armload of kindling and a few pine logs on the hearth and left it at that.

Edward made ready for bed, ignoring his reflection in the bathroom mirror. This was a habit of his. He disliked being reminded that his face was a sort of Party trademark, like the elephant and the donkey. Someone had said of him that he was larger than life and twice as real . . . a cartoonist’s delight. He scrubbed and splashed now as if to rid himself of the lake water that somehow seemed unclean because that fellow had bled into it.

He lay for a long time testing and disciplining his thoughts. The urge to kill himself hadn’t recurred since that moment in the wood and his flight to the end of the dock. He had been startled out of his almost-realized intention by the girl’s voice, and ever since had been relieved of the agony.

Eithne had decided that he was past the danger of cracking up, and that she could relax. Only first she must see to it that this girl didn’t try to spend the night . . . she was obviously the sort who would, at the drop of a hat. And to Edward’s surprise, his sister had suddenly switched to cordiality: “I’ll drive you back to New York, Miss Donahue. You can wear one of my coats. And Edward will let you have a shirt and a pair of socks. Mrs. Littlefield will show you where you can change. Only don’t be too long. It’s quite late.”

“Thank you,” the girl said, and followed the caretaker’s wife.

“She can’t stay here, of course,” Eithne said.

“Why not?”

Eithne shrugged. “She’s very pretty.”

“Is she?”

“Besides, dear Edward, she’d make capital of the situation. I know her kind. They’re a dime a dozen in Washington. Little nymphs with an eye out for important men.”

Edward smiled.

“Yes. I mean you! Now more than ever!” Eithne broke off, aware that she had crossed into forbidden territory: Dr. Brandt had warned her not to remind Edward of his loss. “Don’t worry,” she said quickly, with an executive smile, “I’ll get rid of her.”

When the girl reappeared, wearing Eithne’s coat, Edward realized that she was indeed very pretty. He had seen girls like her in Ireland, with smudged-in, black-lashed gray eyes and flushed cheeks. Halfway down the stairs she paused to look at a painting . . . a misty river and a blurred moon . . . one of half a dozen small canvases banked on the stair wall. It was the briefest pause but it served to steady her for Eithne’s inspection.

“If you’re ready, Miss Donahue? Shall we go?”

Eithne kissed Edward’s cheek. “Goodbye, dear. Take care of yourself. And let me know if you change your mind about staying here. You will! I give you a week at most!”

The girl hung back long enough to take Edward’s outstretched hand. “Goodbye. Look for my dog, won’t you? I’ll call tomorrow. And if you find him, I’ll come back for him. Remember, his name’s Murphy.”

“Murphy,” Edward repeated.

For a moment, clasping hands, they regarded each other. There were things the girl might have said . . . the usual, expected things. She didn’t say any of them, yet Edward had the impression that she was sorry for what had happened.

“I hope your friend’s going to be all right,” he said politely.

“He’s not my friend,” she said. “I met him in a bar day before yesterday. But Murphy is my friend! He’s big and silly and brave and full of love . . . Find him, please!”

It was probably a trick. A way of getting back to Easterly. And yet Edward lay awake listening for the barking of a dog. He found himself wondering whether there had been something sinister about the girl and her companion; they certainly weren’t reporters of the trench coat variety . . . Whatever their purpose, they had failed so far to hurt anyone but themselves. The village doctor had called back to say that the wounded man would recover but that he had had a close call. Who would be responsible for the expenses? And Edward had said promptly: “I will, of course. The accident happened on my property. They hit a rut as deep as an Alpine crevasse.” The doctor snorted and asked what they were doing that far off the highway and at that hour? “Were they after you, Edward? Ever since Kennedy’s death I’ve been concerned about you.” It was Edward’s turn to snort. “Me? Nonsense. No one wants to kill me.” The doctor remarked that this was perhaps so. “Not yet, perhaps. But in a year or so . . . Well, we’ll search the car in the morning. We might find evidence. I understand Eithne drove the girl back to New York. I hope she was smart enough to notify the police. This whole thing smells, Edward!”

“Did you?” Edward asked.

“Did I what?”

“Notify the police?”

“No. I confess I didn’t.”

“Then don’t. I came up here to get some peace.”

“Peace,” the doctor said, “isn’t likely. Not for you. A man who deliberately chooses to live the life of a public servant is grist for the mob’s mill. You should have known this when you entered politics.”

The doctor’s voice suggested that he was smiling a reluctant Down-East smile.

“I’ve known you since the day you were born, Edward. I slapped your bottom and swung you by your heels and started you on your way. At times I wish I hadn’t. At other times I’m glad I did. Once in a while you show signs of being the sort of timber we need.”

“Thanks,” Edward said. He was about to add that he no longer cared what timber was used or what was built . . . if anything! The habit of reticence persisted, however, and he said instead: “Let’s keep the police out of this, shall we?”

“Very well. If I can . . .”

The doctor broke off. And then, embarrassed by his own profound sympathy, he said awkwardly how sorry he had been to hear of Edward’s loss. “Call me if I can be of help. Are you alone out there?”

“Quite alone.”

“You were right to come to Easterly. The gale is strong, but here your roots go deep. Let’s hope they’ll serve to hold you steady.”

“Your roots go deep.” Edward thought that this might be true, although he had pulled his own roots free of Easterly easily enough when he was ready to explore the rest of the world. He thought now of the innumerable rooms along the wings, all of them kept as clean and polished as they were when the family lived here, and filled with inherited treasures . . . nothing ever to be discarded, sold, given away. To walk from room to room was like visiting a museum stocked with family treasures: relics of the early settlement, the Revolution, the Civil War and on through the Victorian to the hideous splendor of the Nineties. A Tiffany glass chandelier swung above a Chippendale dining-room table and a silver service said to have been designed by Paul Revere shared the sideboard with an array of L’Art Nouveau platters and candlesticks. Someone . . . Edward’s grandmother, perhaps . . . had had a passion for pincushions and these were still displayed in her bedroom, bristling like velvet and satin porcupines. Some member of the family had lived for a long time in Italy and had brought back a fine Venetian screen, pale silver-gold and green, and a set of Florentine chairs upholstered in worn ruby velvet. Books and paintings were everywhere. Bronzes and altar-lamps. Oriental rugs and brass fire screens and two magnificent Steinways standing back to back in the music room . . .

All of these things reflected a way of life, now as obsolete as the vast pantries where sets of Sevres and Haviland were stored behind glass, and crystal glittered obscurely on shelves that reached to the ceiling. Edward could remember the kitchen when two cooks ruled there . . . absolute sovereigns of their own territory. He could remember dinner-parties given by his grandmother, and served with a ritualistic formality that would seem wasted nowadays . . . so much effort to create a mood as impermanent as smoke! Where were the lace covers and doilies and gigantic embroidered napkins now? Stored away in drawers, turning faintly yellow with lack of use . . . And upstairs there were closets and cupboards filled with linen sheets, blankets, cases, stack upon stack, all neatly folded and tied with satin ribbons, never to know sunlight or fresh air again . . .

Edward had inherited all of these things; they belonged to him and not to Eithne, who had exchanged her interest in the estate for the greater security of a trust. Tax-wise, Easterly had eaten into Edward’s fortune, but for some reason . . . sentimental perhaps . . . he hadn’t sold it. He wondered, now, whether he ever would, or whether he’d settle down here “in the tradition.” The phrase made him smile in the dark. As a tradition, Easterly belonged to a past already remote. It projected a musty image in spite of its order and shine and elegance. A contemporary tradition was in the making. What would Easterly appear to be to those destined to look back at it fifty years from now? It had seemed beautiful to those who built and furnished it, and they themselves had seemed impressive, important, enviable. Would today’s cubes of steel and glass come to mean “home” to the next generation? Or would they be bulldozed out of existence before they had had time to take on the patina of this century? Edward had gone along with the modern; he was not a carper given to indiscriminate criticism of anything new. Things happening today had always stimulated him because they were unfamiliar. Why, then, had he returned to Easterly? It must have been his conviction that he could no longer cope with the pressures of his position. Too many problems. Too much responsibility. Too much expected of him. The duties and obligations had accumulated over the years until he was enmeshed in them like that trapped lion of the fables. And where was the mouse to gnaw him free? It could be Easterly, retirement, a deliberate indifference to what elder statesmen speak of as the call to duty. It could be that he must turn away from the things to be dealt with: a decline of standards, a loss of direction . . . the machine . . . war . . . the surge of violence, drink, drugs, sex . . . the mounting human tide . . . restlessness, rebellion and racial hatreds . . . He turned on his side and pounded the pillows making a hollow for his head. But he could find no comfortable spot; it was coming again, the memory he must erase from consciousness . . . it began as a physical tension in his arms, then caught at the back of his neck. He felt a throbbing weight behind his eyes. He sat up kicking off the coverlets and, clasping his knees with both arms, put his head down on them. He mustn’t remember! He mustn’t remember!

But then he seemed to be standing beside the plane on the airfield at Charleston, and, once surrendered to the vision, had to go on with it.

He had flown down from Washington in his twin-engined Cessna to pick up Valerie and the boys. They had been spending a fortnight with Valerie’s grandmother in her house on Legare Street, and were being driven out to the field to meet him. He saw the car, coming very fast, and with the usual leap of his heart waved a greeting. Valerie got out and ran toward him, the boys at her side. She was dressed in white, her shining hair loose. She motioned to the driver to wait, and when Edward leaned down to kiss her, pushed him away with a strong thrust of both hands.

“We mustn’t fly,” she said, her breath coming in short gasps. “Haven’t you heard? Everyone’s been warned to stay indoors . . .”

“I know,” Edward said quietly.

“Listen to me!” she cried. “This is a hurricane! Or didn’t you know?”

“I’ll fly ahead of it,” Edward interrupted. “Get in. All three of you! And hurry.”

Valerie shook her head. She gave Edward a strange look, almost as if she hated him. He had seen that look only once before, when he lifted her veil at the altar the day of their marriage. Something in her eyes that seemed to say: “You won’t control me, now or ever. I belong to myself and always will.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “The boys, no! They stay here with their grandmother.”

“Where’s your luggage?”

“I left it at the house.”

She turned and gathered the boys close, her arms around them. The sky had darkened. Small spirals of wind put down, twisted, raced across the field. Two men tumbled out of a transport plane and ran toward the hangar. No one else was in sight.

“Please trust me, Valerie,” Edward said. “It’s a lot safer to fly. Your grandmother’s house is more likely to fall apart than this plane.” He put his hand on the Cessna’s flank, as a rider might touch his mount; he felt the powerful vibrations of the metal along his arm and knew the confidence of a flier who had never cracked up . . . not in fifty wartime missions, nor since.

He turned abruptly and signaled to the driver of the waiting car: “Go on back!” The car turned, the tires squeaking. It sped away toward the city.

Valerie let her arms fall from her sons’ shoulders. She watched them scramble into the plane, as perhaps the mothers of the Innocents surrendered their young to the slicing swords of the assassins. Edward slapped their hard little behinds to boost them up. They were tall boys for their age . . . only six and eight . . . and sturdy. They settled into their places, their eyes bright, their cheeks flushed. But when Edward turned to offer Valerie his hand, he saw that she was very pale, and the hand she gave him was cold. The sky had darkened suddenly and drops of rain began to fall like lead pellets; there was a smell of dust and sulphur in the air, and a distant thrumming sound seemed to roll around the horizon and to encircle the field. At that moment Edward might have turned back. A sort of jerk ran through his body as if a string had been pulled by an unseen hand. He started to speak, to say that he was sorry . . . if she was frightened, of course they’d try to get back to the city . . . But then he realized that this was something between Valerie and himself; it had nothing to do with the onrushing hurricane or with the danger ahead: she must believe in him and trust him and go with him, unquestioning, as women who love go with the men they love.

“Please trust me, Valerie.”

“Very well. I will.”

That was all. She took her place beside him. Now they were together, mother, father, sons. The take-off was smooth except for a shudder as a gust of wind struck like a slap against the Cessna’s side. Then they were clear and lifting easily. As always Edward responded to the plane’s obedience to his will. He had discovered that he could love a mechanical thing if he could animate and control it. A feeling of exultation overcame any doubt he may have had.

“Don’t worry,” he said, turning his head briefly to glance at Valerie, “we’ll make it. And then you’ll be glad. Charleston’s going to take a beating, but Washington’s in the clear.”

The boys were staring out through the suddenly drenched and streaming window into a blackness that was blacker than night . . . and only a moment ago the sun had been shining in a blur of vapour! The plane wavered, lurched, dropped, climbed again, shuddering, fighting for altitude.

“So soon,” Edward heard himself say. “Where did it come from? How did this happen?”

He knew when she reached over and put her hand out to the boys. He knew when she told them it was going to be all right . . . their father would get them safely home.

Then they were driving through a wall of ice, encased in a sound like the splintering and crackling of broken glass, and out again into a fraction of calm when the plane steadied and balanced. At that moment Edward realized that he had no control whatever; the hurricane had taken over and was playing with this floating object as if it were a leaf whirled and tossed and driven along a gutter. A jagged flash of lightning cut through the dark: tangles and loops of fire, worm-like, writhed on the wings. The Cessna tilted again, slid sideways into a void, dropping endlessly down and down and down . . .

Did Valerie scream? Did he, himself, cry out? Probably not. It was too quick, that last plunge, that plummet drop into chaos and silence.