The Hearth and Eagle (44 page)

“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to.” She moved to the window, and parting the curtains, stared out. It was snowing again, snowing quite hard, but through the dusk and the softly falling flakes she could see the outline of the iron stag. She had no impulse to tell him of Nat’s appearance. There was nothing Amos could do about it and no use in worrying him.

Behind her in the room she could hear Amos slamming bureau drawers, opening the door of the wardrobe and whistling cheerfully through his teeth. Her answer had satisfied him, and his thought had reverted to the successful progress of negotiations with Hay-Botts. He looked forward to the dinner party. He enjoyed entertaining, and it was a pity they had so little opportunity.

Hesper still by the window watched their sleigh glide from the stable along the drive and disappear over the sharp rise down to Pleasant Street. That was Tim, following orders to fetch the Honeywoods from the Inn to the party. I wish Ma and Pa weren’t coming, she thought, not with the rueful amusement of that thought in the morning, but with violence.

She turned from the window and began to rearrange her hair. Her hands and feet seemed weighted with lethargy, but she took unusual pains. Everything must be right for Amos at the dinner party.

E
BEN DORCH
arrived first at the Porterman mansion that New Year’s night. He came in a sleigh hired from the livery stable. He was a spruce little bachelor who lived on Washington Street above his drugstore. He was a town selectman, a member of the Samaritan Tent of the Rechabites, a Freemason, and just now campaigning for election to the state legislature on the temperance and reform ticket. Marblehead was in the grip of a great temperance revival, and Eben’s affiliation with it was dictated by policy rather than conviction.

So, indeed, was his acquaintance with the Portermans. Amos Porterman might be unpopular, but he was one of the town’s heaviest taxpayers. Besides, Eben went anywhere he was invited and enjoyed a good dinner.

As Hesper hurried down the stairs to greet him, Charity Trevercombe rang the bell, and was ushered in by a spruced-up and nervous Annie.

Charity had changed amazingly since her bitter disappointment in Amos. Some months after his marriage to Hesper, Charity’s mother died leaving more money than had been expected, and shortly after that Charity discovered Divine Healing and the joys of independence, simultaneously. She lived alone in her handsome house on Washington Square, except for an old German woman who was an expert cook. She kept a pug dog and three canaries, she was the leader of a Divine Healing group, which had members from as far away as Lynn. She was the rich Miss Trevercombe and she did as she pleased.

She was no longer jealous of Hesper; in fact she pitied her, poor thing, stuck in that dreadful house way outside of town, and of course nobody ever calls on her. So she thought thoughts of love and harmony for‹Hesper, and came to see her sometimes.

Tonight she kissed Hesper on the cheek, said, “How well you look, dear—such a pretty gown,” and tripped cheerily into the drawing room. Charity had grown very plump during these latter years of contentment, but she still wore her hair in clustered ringlets about her ears and dressed in the bright colors of her youth. Tonight she wore yellow satin, and several tinkling gold bracelets, but she no longer assumed the coquetries of dress from a desire to please anyone but herself.

She sat down by Eben Dorch, brushed oil his gallantries, and began to talk to him about the noise the workmen made in the construction of Abbot Hall, a municipal building which was being erected on the common in front of her house. “I wish you to take the matter up in town meeting—” said Charity in a tone of calm command. “There’s no excuse for the language the men use, the oaths and the shouting. I spoke to the foreman personally in the most loving spirit, but I got no results. Of course,” she added for bearingly, “he was a foreigner, from Boston, I believe.”

Eben nodded gravely and said he would take the matter up in town meeting.

Amos and the Hay-Bottses entered the drawing room together, and Charity was momentarily silenced by the English couple’s magnificence. They were in full evening dress, George in a black claw-hammer coat, wearing ruby studs and a watered-silk vest, and Emmeline in a dowdy gray cashmere, but it was cut far lower than the dresses of the two American women, disclosing a great deal of scrawny chest, and a necklace of large pendant diamonds.

Oh dear, thought Hesper, they must expect a very grand dinner party. She hurriedly introduced them to Charity and Eben. Emmeline cast an astonished glance over Charity’s yellow satin and ringlets, but she was determined to be tolerant. They all sat down.

Hesper said, “I wonder what can be keeping Ma and Pa—Tim left for them ages ago. I hope nothing’s wrong.”

Charity withdrew her gaze from the Englishwoman’s decollete and diamonds. “Naughty Hesper—” she said shaking her head and smiling. “Never give reality to evil, by voicing fear. Of course nothing’s wrong. God constantly works for good.”

“Well, I guess so—” said Hesper absently. She was accustomed to Charity’s spiritual interpretations, and her ears heard the approaching jingle of sleigh bells. “Here they are.” She rose to greet her parents.

Emmeline turned to Charity and murmured, “Do you do much church work, Miss Trevercombe? At least—ah—do you have a Church of England here? Americans seem to have so many denominations.”

“Yes,” said Charity complacently. “Saint Michael’s is Episcopalian and there are half a dozen other churches in Marblehead. But I no longer attend any of them. I find no need. Truth flows direct from the Divine Soul into my heart.”

“Oh, really,” said Emmeline faintly.

Charity continued to expound her doctrine.

“Yes, I see what you mean—” murmured Emmeline, and got up with relief. Mrs. Porterman’s parents at last.

The relief was short-lived. Mr. and Mrs. Honeywood were not at all what she had been led to expect. His appearance was gentlemanly enough, though his old-fashioned coat was shabby, his sparse hair much too long, and his fingers ink-stained.

Still, he had a sweet smile and a pleasant voice and one might forgive the rest in a gentleman scholar. Not, however, by any stretch of imagination could one consider Mrs. Honeywood a lady. A heavy frecklefaced old woman in cheap black alpaca too tight under the arms. Black laced boots like a man’s. And her speech! A thick, heavy burr, and really most uneducated. She cut through all the polite trickles of greeting.

“Domn dirty weather out,” she said, acknowledging her introduction to the Hay-Bottses with a nod. “We’d a time getting here. There’s a drift across Franklin Street high as the horse. And more snow to come. Wind’s backing in again up the harbor.”

“Oh dear—” said Hesper, “I should have sent for you earlier, I didn’t know.”

Her mother regarded her with a certain calm amusement. “You don’t know much about what’s going on in town, Hes—”

It was a statement and not a criticism, but Hesper flushed. I wish Ma wouldn’t speak so loud and rough, she thought. She threw a nervous glance toward Amos, but he and Dorch and George Hay-Botts had drawn together by the empty fireplace and were talking volubly of business conditions.

Roger did not join the other men; he pulled a chair up close to Emmeline, and said with a rather touching shyness—“It’s a privilege to meet English people, ma’am. We’re proud of our English ancestry, you know. The first Honeywoods to come to Marblehead, they came from Dorset, they weren’t Pilgrims, of course, they were Puritans and landed with Winthrop’s fleet. Their flagship was the
Arbella,
as, of course, you know?...” He had grown very deaf in the last years, and he leaned forward eagerly cupping his hand behind his ear for Emmeline’s response.

She stared at him blankly, drawing back a little, and Susan gave her characteristic snort.

“Good God, Roger!” she cried. “Don’t start that rigmarole now. Your precious Honeywoods left England because they wanted something different, I guess, and what’s there in that to interest Mrs. Botts!”

“Hay-Botts,” said Emmeline coldly. Her broadmindedness and feeling of kinship with Hesper were slipping.

During the first course at dinner—a fish soup, of all extraordinary things—they slipped further. Mr. Honeywood on her right bored her with exploits which had taken place in Marblehead, while Mr. Porterman on her left treated her to a spasmodic geniality, but obviously preferred talking across his mother-in-law at George.

The wine was poor and half the company did not touch it. That little Mr. Dorch was “temperance,” it seemed, and felt it necessary to say so. And this brought out a further revelation. Mrs. Honeywood kept an inn. Emmeline asked a startled question, and from the answer discovered her earlier mistake. The large old house referred to by Mrs. Porterman was nothing but a country inn. Emmeline froze into unhappy silence, genuinely shocked. Her hostess was the daughter of a tavern keeper. Her mother ran a pub. She cast an appealing look at her husband. Had he also heard? Apparently not. He was eating.steadily, and drinking the indifferent wine. George was not perceptive, except in business matters.

Hesper, sitting at the other end of the table, saw the sudden cloud settle over Emmeline and was troubled, though she had not the slightest clue to its appearance, except for a vague suspicion that it had something to do with Ma, or Pa.

I must try harder, she thought, be a good hostess for Amos’s sake. She smiled at Hay-Botts and asked him a question about their coming voyage. She turned to Eben and mentioned the disputed election. Did he think Tilden or Rutherford B. Hayes would eventually win out? Eben, like most Marbleheaders, was a Democrat and hoped for Tilden. He laid down his fork and launched into speech. Hesper tried to listen and could not. She had the sensation of pushing a tremendous burden uphill before her, a dream sensation of futile effort. The fumed-oak dining room, the table damask swathed and laden with dozens of small dishes and platters containing half-eaten food, the faces of her guests, were all blurred and diminished by opaque malaise. She could eat nothing.

The heavy dinner progressed and finished at last in a welter of melting ice cream.

The women got up and left the dining room. Hesper murmured the conventional question. Charity did not wish to go upstairs, she would wait for them in the drawing room. Emmeline said, “Yes. I shall retire to my room for a few minutes,” in a pinched voice.

Susan followed her daughter up to the Porterman bedroom. “What’s the matter, Hes?” she said as soon as the door had closed. “You in the family way again?”

Hesper made a distracted motion with her hand, and sank down on the pink ruffled ottoman by her bureau. “I don’t know. I think so. It isn’t that.”

Susan planted herself in the middle of the rug, and folded her arms; her shrewd eyes appraised the drooping figure. The dense skin was too white, not its normal ivory tone—but greenish. And Hesper’s lips were trembling.

“You ought to get out more, house too hot anyway,” said Susan briskly—“and take a good dose of salts. You wasn’t built to be a niminy-piminy fine lady.”

Hesper’s head jerked up. “Oh, Ma—for the Lord’s sake—” she cried. “There’s nothing wrong with my health! You always make everything seem so—”

“What
is
wrong, then?” cut in Susan.

Leave me alone, thought Hesper. I don’t know what’s wrong, except nobody fits here tonight. I don’t fit. Go back to your tumbledown old house by the sea. You and Pa. You don’t belong here.

“Answer me, Hes, Stop acting moon-struck.”

Hesper’s mouth tightened. “Amos is worried about the factory,” she said sulkily. “He’s counting on Mr. Hay-Botts to invest some money.”

Susan gave a grim nod. “Aye—things a’nt going so well for Amos, I know. But I’m surprised you do. If ever a woman was coddled and kept clear of worry—you’re her. You put me in mind of those wax flowers under glass.”

“Ma, that’s mean! It’s not true. Amos loves me and cherishes—I had so much trouble before with Evan, he wants to make up...”

“Oh, quit babbling, child.” Susan put her fat mottled hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I didn’t say it was your fault exactly. Or that it
was
a fault. You’ve a good marriage, I guess. Now—you better go down to your company, or that long-nosed Englishwoman’ll get even groutier than she is.”

They all gathered again in the drawing room, sitting along the edges of the wall on the mohair sofa and the Gothic chairs. Annie had turned the gas up, and the gasolier shed on them a bleak white light from its seven hissing mantles.

Outside the snow had stopped falling and a watery moon cast a glow over the Porterman mansion, on the snow piled on the mansard roof, the fretwork curlicues that edged the porch, and on the high cupola, shaped a little like a Chinese pagoda, to which no stairs led. A thin strip of light from the drawing room filtered through the heavy portieres onto the snow. In the basement kitchen where Annie and Bridget were washing dishes, they had not bothered to draw the blinds.

“Moon’s out—” said Annie, slopping a rag around the soup tureen and glancing idly at the window. “Funny—” she said, peering closer. “I thought I saw a shadow-like, over by the stable. But it’s gone.”

“You ’ad a nip too much o’ the master’s cookin’ brandy, that’s wot yer shadow is—” answered Bridget, crossly. She was very tired, mountains of dishes still to be washed, and that Englishwoman hadn’t hardly touched all the good food. Acted like it was poisoned, Annie said.

“I’ve a mind to give notice, I have, lessen they’ll get me a kitchen maid. Too much work, and the madam bone lazy—if ye ax me.”

“Not so much lazy as indifferent-like,” said Annie, judicially. “She don’t notice things.”

The bell above the kitchen door jangled. “That’ll be her wanting Master Henry to say his piece,” said Annie, putting down the soup tureen. She went up the back stairs to the nursery, found Henry cutting out pieces of lead foil to use for money, in a game of store he played incessantly by himself. He needed no slicking up, his sausage curls, velveteen jacket, and kilts were all as tidy as they had been in the morning. He accompanied Annie downstairs, entered the drawing room, and walked toward his mother.