Strange Yesterday (29 page)

He nodded. He was moving her fingers back and forth in his. A lock of hair had fallen across her face, and now he took it and laid it upon the pillow. For a while he let his hand lie there in the mass of her hair. A little later she closed her eyes, and thinking she slept, he left her.

She did not go from her bed again, and at the end of the month the baby was born. Dr. Harthes came in the early afternoon. Perhaps three in the morning, his sleeves rolled high, his eyes incredibly tired, his face older than ever, he emerged from the room and went down the stairs to the parlor, where John Preswick was sitting. As he entered, John Preswick rose slowly to his feet.

“Let me have a drink first,” the doctor said. And he added: “One simply does not get used to those things. Now in a hospital—it would have been different. But I've been doctor to this house for thirty years, and in that time no one of it has ever been to a hospital. Not, mind you, that I wouldn't have taken her to Charleston had I thought the thing needed it. But it all went splendidly.” He drained his glass. “A boy. A brute of a thing. Seven pounds if an ounce. She is resting easily now, and, if I were you, I shouldn't disturb her until the morning. There's her nurse, and the one I brought along. Now, if you will give me a bed—”

And in the morning, when John Preswick came in to see her, she looked at him, smiled, and bent back the covers in the best traditional manner. But he had known from the first that this would be the way of it, that she would not die, that the boy would not. Flocking in through the window, the sun's light sprawled across the coverlet, making her smile alive and electric. The child was a wrinkled, reddish old man.

“I suppose,” he ventured, thinking somehow that he had said all of this before, “we will call him John Preswick.”

She nodded.

“Proud of him?”

“So much.”

He sat by her side, allowing his hand to reach out until it rested upon her hair. From the covers, the sunlight leaped across and over him. She thought that he was handsome—in a lean, dark sort of way. She was not sorry now that she had done this thing for him, in spite of all the pain.

And when he went out, and she was alone, she lay there, staring up at the ceiling, wondering, the name John Preswick coursing uneasily through her mind.

Soon she was strong enough to walk a bit, to sit in the garden. If anything, she was thinner, and more frail; and as a distinct shock it came to John Preswick that she was no longer beautiful. With the child, her beauty had gone; but there were times, when the evening shadow crept over the place, when she sat silent and staring off to something he did not and could not see, that she mocked at beauty. For then her face would be a pale, violet-white thing, framed in the dark of her hair, and her eyes would bite out, like bits of cool, sea-blue fire. But that was another thing. Her beauty was gone.

And what did it matter? Had he not seen himself in the mirror—yellowed, lean and shambling, one arm hanging grotesquely—?

In the manner of old, days began to slide by, and it seemed no time at all until the child was balancing himself and attempting to walk. He was rather good-looking, John Preswick thought, dark of skin, dark of hair and dark of eye, solid, with good lips and a good straight nose. And his growth was outrageously quick.

How many years had it been? When the child was five, John Preswick looked back, wondering whether it was not an illusion, whether he had not been here through all time. When the child was five, they went to Europe, leaving him with a governess. And when again they returned, John Preswick knew that it was the last, and that now the place was claiming them permanently.

The years crept by; like the slow, eternal ticking of a clock, the years crept by, scarcely noticed, scarcely regretted. There were things to be done, things they did; but these were so few. They knew people, the very right sort of people; but they did not entertain frequently. Somehow, the very right sort of people could not approve John Preswick; and so their isolation increased and intensified itself. And the bluff pride of the house seemed to grow with that.

He took to gardening, and Inez to sewing, to embroidery. He worked most of the time with Frank, seeing to the blooms in the garden, watching them grow and finding a strangely complete pleasure in it. It was as though he were old, far older than he actually was; and it' was as though he had forgotten. There was a comfort in Frank. Frank was of the earth, definitely and openly of the earth, and the earth was the one thing he could understand.

And so the years passed, and the other John Preswick was seven, and eight, and then ten: a large, sturdy boy with dark, flashing eyes, with a narrow, sloping face, and flat cheeks. And the older John Preswick looked at him and found himself bewildered, for do what he might, the boy was always a stranger. The boy took over the place, dashed about it, plagued his governess, and wondered, sometimes, who those two people were, so old and so curiously connected to him.

And then John Preswick thought he had the answer. He had been walking towards the Steer's Head when he noticed the boy ahead of him, already beginning to climb the hill. Stopping, he watched him. Now he would be in sight, and now, again, he would disappear. The trail wound up and around. At last he stood at the top, a small, slim figure under the oak. A moment he paused there, and the man below could almost feel the taut strain of his body; then he turned and began the descent. A spasm of pain crossed the man's face; he seemed very tired as he walked back.

So still it was as he came toward the house! The wind, blowing to him, brought with it the fragrance of flowers: heavy, sweet, sticky. There was a hum of insects, faint but penetrating. Before he entered, he paused in the garden.

Then he went in, went to the room with the portraits, and sat there. The portieres were drawn, and it was quite dark, but he did not mind that. In the darkness he sat, and he thought—perhaps he dreamed a bit. He was saying to himself:

“Now it is fifteen years.”

Rising, he walked over to the windows and drew back the drapes. The soft, filling light of the afternoon sun flooded in. He went over, and he sat in the little Chippendalish sofa before the mantelpiece. There were three portraits now, for they had hung hers between the other two.

As he looked at them, he considered that she appeared very much as Inez had—once. She was slim, dark of hair, with the same blue eyes. And she had, about her lips, the faintest flicker of a smile. It might have meant anything.

From her his eyes turned to the man—the tired man in the Continental uniform, his sleeve pinned up to his shoulder. Lifting his hand, he passed it over his face. He knew how much he resembled him. She had known it, too, for she had told him before she died. But there was much she had not known.

Rising, he went out of the room. He sent the butler to find Inez, and when she appeared from upstairs, he said: “Come out to the garden, Inez. I want to speak with you.”

Following after her, he motioned to one of the concretecast benches, waiting until she had seated herself, and then sitting by her side.

“Inez—” he said, trying to speak as evenly as he might—“Inez, to-morrow I am going.”

“Where are you going?” she asked of him. As she turned, the side of her face caught the sun, filling the hollows of her skin with faint pink fire.

“I am going away, Inez. I must go. I must go back. I thought I never would.”

But she did not seem either surprised or disturbed. She said, smiling so that the pink fire flowed over her small white teeth: “I thought you would, Johnny. It is so long—that sometimes I wonder why it had not come sooner. But I knew you would.”

“You knew?” Not only doubtful, he began to appear definitely ill at ease. “You could not have known, though, for it has just come to me.” (What was it the old lady had said about her being a witch?)

“I knew that too, Johnny.”

“But you do not understand. I am not jesting. I must go away.”

“For always, Johnny?”

“I do not know. I think that I will return—”

“If you go, Johnny, you will never return.”

Yes, that was true; if he went, then he would never return. She knew. Even of Lucille Croyden, of his mother. But how did she know? And why should she know? He found himself looking sidewise at her profile, but she was not aware of that. She was gazing away to the Steer's Head, bluff and rounded. Her chin was tilted; her thin face seemed almost to quiver; her eyes were wide. He glanced down to her neck, to the small bend of her body, to her hardly perceptible breasts. How old she was—and how young! How worn, and how small!

“You do not care, Inez?” he asked her.

“If you must go, Johnny—then you must.”

“You do not understand.”

“And yet I think that I do, Johnny.”

“I would stay”—he was musing, almost to himself—“but I cannot stay. I must go. It did not happen now, Inez, but many years ago when I stood with you upon the Steer's Head and saw the sea. And all these years—I will tell you. There is that picture of the Continental officer; there is the look in his eyes. He sees something, Inez, and today I saw what he sees, and I knew that I must go. I have been here for fifteen years, Inez, and your husband for more than ten of them, but that does not matter. Now I must go.”

(How she loved the fool, Inez thought!)

“Yes,” she agreed, “now you must go.”

She asked of him: “To-morrow?” and he nodded. Then she shrugged her shoulders, almost imperceptibly, fixing her eyes again upon the Steer's Head. Apropos of nothing, she remarked: “You know, this place was once an inn. They called it the Steer's Horn.”

“I did know,” he replied; but how he had come by the knowledge, he did not say.

“After Granny died,” she went on, “I looked through all the records and papers. The name of the innkeeper was John Preswick. Is that not strange?”

“It is strange,” he answered without interest. “But why do you speak of it?” He resented the fact of her taking the announcement of his impending departure with such calmness and utter unconcern. He resented the manner in which she kept her gaze from him. She should, rightly, have wept; she should have questioned him and desired all sorts of explanations. She should have spoken of the child and reminded him of his obligations. But nothing of that she did.

“Why?—I do not know just why, John Preswick. But tell me, where will you go?”

(By God, she was mocking at him!)

“It does not matter. Anywhere.”

After a moment's hesitation she said: “John Preswick, if I were to ask you, would you climb the Steer's Head with me—only once again?”

Following her eyes, he saw that the sun was beginning the diagonal descent which would take it, in a long slant, behind the hill. In a little while the color upon the face of the hill would dull and vanish; and after that it would form itself into a blurred silhouette throwing a great shadow almost to the house.

And as reading his thoughts, she said: “Do you see?—that is why they called this place the Steer's Horn, because when the sun is low enough, the shadow will almost touch it, as it were.”

She rose, and he rose with her; and they went through the break in the hedge, walking in the direction of the hill. Slowly they walked, side by side, her hair blown forward over her shoulders by the wind. The wind carried the scent of the garden after them.

As he went, he looked at her frequently, noticing how thick and heavy her hair was, still about her shoulders. It was her one touch of girlishness, that she would not put up her hair. She loved it, and, in a way, he loved it too. His own was half gray and very thin. Now he ran a hand through it.

They walked on. Presently they were opposite the stone wall. Beyond it was the pasture, and beyond that, the hedge. They would follow the wall around the field to the hedge, and then they would walk with the hedge until it curved out to encircle the hill. When they came to the hill, they stopped and looked back.

“But we must hurry,” she said, “if we would reach the top before the sun sets.”

They found the path, and they began the ascent.

He walked behind her, as they went up, and he saw the way her frock held itself against her, the way her hair laughed forward. He could not keep his eyes from her as he walked. Through the underbrush they passed, coming out at last at the slope. Leaving the path here, they waded forward through the waist-high grass, ascending the last hillock, and coming abruptly to the top, where they paused, the oak towering over them.

“Look, John Preswick,” she said to him.

There it was, losing the last rays of a fading sun, a thin strip of blue that might, and then again might not, have been the sea, so faint was the line of demarcation that separated it from the horizon.

Turning, he saw the sun: a fire-balloon, wavering at the earth's brink before it made the final plunge. The night breezes were rustling about, sighing, sighing.

She sank to the grass and motioned for him to do the same. Side by side they could, by a slight movement of their heads, command anything beneath them. There was the house, shaped like an overbalanced H, green tracery blotting out the red of its walls, four chimneys poking up impertinent heads; and there was the garden, all a-shadow; and there were the apple trees, and the pears, and the peaches; and there was the little old graveyard; and there was the narrow strip of woods; and there were the fields; and there was the pasture; and there the long hedge; and there the road, snake-like, losing itself. And all that was not in shadow was burnished by the last light of the sun.

“See,” she said, “how the sky over the water reflects the sun.

“Can you leave this—easily, John Preswick?” she added.

“Not easily,” he muttered.

“And yet you must,” she insisted soothingly, nodding her head, looking, strangely enough, like an elf.

“John Preswick—” she said contemplatively, having her eyes not upon him, but away off to the sea—“John Preswick, has it never struck you as curious that out of all the world, you should have come to this one place?”