The Hearth and Eagle (59 page)

I must get Henry to have it printed, she thought. Not for the public, she added to an echo of her father’s lifelong fear of ridicule. But there must be some who would not laugh.

The light in the attic grew dim and she closed the “Memorabilia,” laying it tenderly back in the trunk. She walked down the stairs to the kitchen. Though it was May a penetrating chill had begun to drift in across the water on a fog bank. The lighthouse on the Point o’ Neck began to honk its hoarse, mournful bray.

The fog and the cold made Hesper’s joints ache a little. She threw a knitted shawl over her shoulders and hesitated by the great fireplace. The fire had been laid in readiness for the fall. Suddenly she scratched a match and lit it. Who’s to care? she thought in answer to the guilt born of years of thrift and her mother’s spartan rule.

She watched the driftwood spurt into iridescent flame. The orange and blue and green tongues darted up into the chimney’s black throat. She sat down in the rocker. It was nearly seven but she had no interest in getting supper. Who’s to care? she thought again. She reached around to the work bag which dangled from one of the rocker posts and fished out her crocheting. She was making an afghan for Carla, who would probably never use it since her bedrooms at Brookline and the Neck were superabundantly furnished. But it brought Carla closer.

She sighed and began to rock, listening to the purr and crackle of the flames. The hearth fire gilded the old kitchen, and it lessened the loneliness.

The foghorn blared and died away across the harbor, and in the silence she heard a small scuffling noise outside the east window. She looked around to see two plump bespectacled faces peering at her through the window panes, two round mouths slightly ajar.

Lord a mercy, thought Hesper, exasperated, they’re starting early this season! She walked across the room and whipped the curtains over the window, and the vacant, faintly aggrieved faces.

This happened often now, since the Historical Society had put a tablet on the house wall. “Honeywood House. Earliest part built in 1630 by Mark Honeywood, one of town’s first settlers. Later parts added about 1750.”

Sometimes tourists rang the bell and demanded to be taken through the house. Sometimes they just goggled through the windows.

Walt always used to give his raucous chuckle. “Oh, let ’em be, Ma. They get pleasure out of gawking like they were at the zoo.”

But Hesper never got used to it. The Marblehead Historical Society was refurbishing the old Lee Mansion on Washington Street. Let the tourists go there if they craved to gape at the relics of a past in which they had had no part.

Hesper sat down again in the rocker. She thought of making some coffee, but lately coffee bothered her at night.

She finished the brown stripe on the afghan, pulled a tight pink ball from the bag, and began a new stripe. Might move in to the parlor and listen to some music—liven me up. Henry and Eleanor had given her a gramaphone for Christmas, and some new records. But it took too much effort to move into the chilly parlor away from the fire.

I should get out more, see more people. Maybe take the next meeting of the Arbutus Club here. But the Arbutus Club, under the capable leadership of Mrs. Orne, was deep in Browning.

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:......
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me.......

Bah! thought Hesper violently. Doesn’t comfort me any. She finished several more rows. The banjo clock struck eight, cracking on the last notes as it always did now. If Charity had a telephone, I’d call and ask her to come over and sit a spell till bedtime. Queer how old friends came closer to you through the years even though they weren’t very congenial to begin with. But it was Wednesday night and Charity would be running a Divine Healing meeting. That’s where I ought to be, at our own Prayer Meeting. But she had never been able to get the comfort out of churchgoing that her mother had, though of late years she had seldom missed a Sunday at the Old North. The hymns were always moving, and sometimes there was a sermon that gave you a glow of determination. But it was hard to believe in a gold-paved Heaven. Hard to believe that Jesus kept a loving, helpful eye on every discouraged lamb.

I guess I’ll hot up some milk, she thought, should be something in the stomach before going to bed.

She went into the new kitchen and lit the gas ring. Almost right away the milk bubbled up around the edges of the pan. That would have taken a lot longer on Ma’s little old stove. Gas saved time. Automobiles saved time, telephones and steam ships saved time. Time for what?

She carried the glass of hot milk back to her rocker by the fire. There were some new novels on the shelves over what used to be the old stone sink, boxed in now to make a cabinet. Henry was thoughtful. He’d left a standing order at the Corner Book Store in Boston. They sent all the new books. She glanced up at the titles that had arrived last Monday.
The Rosary
by Mrs. Barclay.
Bella Donna
by Robert Hichens. Maybe I’ll start one of them tomorrow. She sipped the milk slowly. A big log burned through and fell to charred embers between the andirons. A spark flew out and expired on the wide hearthstone.

She heard a crunch on the gravel, slow footsteps coming up the path. If it’s another one of those prying tourists ... Her mouth tightened and she listened for the thud of the brass knocker. But the footsteps paused, then came around the corner and up the kitchen path. There was one sharp tap.

She walked to the entry and opened the back door. She saw a tall caped figure under a wide, slouch hat. She had an immediate impression of shabbiness and eccentricity. Tramp, she thought with some disquiet, conscious of the great empty house behind her.

“Yes, what do you want?” she said, holding the door.

“Mrs. Porterman?” muttered the man, not moving. His voice was low and harsh. She saw that he rested one hand on a gnarled blackthorn stick, and in the other hand he carried a square black bag.

“Yes?” she said again. “What do you want?”

The man raised the stick and poked the door open from under her hand. “Let me in—” he said peevishly. “I’m tired.” He came up the steps and walked into the kitchen. She retreated uncertainly.

He stood in the middle of the floor in the full light of the gas jet. The wide hat shadowed his face, but she saw a thin, jutting nose and a gray mustache and pointed beard. He wore a voluminous brown cape with a velvet collar, and a tiny red ribbon gleamed in the buttonhole of his suit coat.

Her heart beat fast and she watched him, puzzled; though her fear was subsiding she edged toward the telephone. He stared around him in a leisurely way, his eyes under the wrinkled lids passing over Hesper with neither more nor less apparent interest than they did the furniture.

“Place hasn’t changed much,” he said. “Though we have. Why in the name of God did you paint the floorboards? Looks like hell.”

He took off his hat and cape and put them on the table. He had thick iron-gray hair, and one lock fell over his forehead.

Hesper’s mouth dropped open. “Evan?” she whispered. She reached out and gripped the rim of the Windsor chair. Her throat closed down on a choking desire to laugh.

He shrugged and made the old semi-derisive sound through his nostrils. “Museum dragged me down to Boston for a fool banquet. I thought long as I was near I’d take another look at Marblehead, seeing that the canvas they’ve just acquired was done from memory.” He sat down, leaning on his blackthorn stick. “Where’s your husband?” Hesper sat down; the moment of hysteria passed leaving a sardonic amusement, not apparently unlike his own. “Amos has been dead over twenty-five years. And for all you knew so might I have been?”

She put it as a question, wondering if he had ever bothered to find out anything about her since her brief note to England telling him that the divorce was final and that she was marrying Amos.

He crossed his legs, and she noted that his right dragged, he moved it painfully. “Never occurred to me you weren’t right here at the Hearth and Eagle, same as ever. You can put me up for the night, can’t you? I want to get over to that rock on the Neck in the morning. I remember a certain shade of greenstone across the porphyry, I’d like to check it.” So he didn’t come to see me, she thought. Inside, under the gray hair, the sharpened face, the stooping shoulders and dragging leg, he was unchanged. But people didn’t change much inside, while their bodies did. The only thing that really vanished was passion. It was a pity other emotions did not vanish with it. Yearning and regret and the capacity for humiliation.

“Well, I’m alone here,” she said with crispness. “But I guess you can use the Yellow Room. The one you had before.”

She shut her mouth tight, annoyed at having added that. Something ridiculous and slightly shameful about popping out with a reminder of—of forty-four years back.

He nodded without interest. He leaned over and began to rub his knee. “I’ve been sick—” he said querulously. “First time in my life. Had a dizzy spell last month and fell down. Did something to my leg.”

“I’m sorry—” she said. “What does the doctor say?”

“Oh, stupid young know-it-all. Says to keep off it. I’ll give it a rest when I get home to Thursday Cove, peace and quiet.” He looked up at her suddenly. “Don’t you tell anybody I’m here. I can’t stand being pestered.” His voice rose in vicious imitation. “‘Ooh—Mr. Redlake, would you please give me your autograph?’ ‘Ooh—Mr. Redlake, wouldn’t you let me have just one little tiny peek into your studio?’ Blithering idiots.”

There was a silence. Evan rubbed his knee.

“Yes. You’re a famous man, now,” said Hesper quietly. “I suppose you’d like something to eat, or drink, before you go to bed.”

“I would,” said Evan. “Couldn’t eat at that banquet. They kept at me and at me for a speech. Seems I’m Dean of American painting. What do you think of that?” He tugged at his beard and cocked his head, looking up at her.

“I think you’ve accomplished what you set out to.”

The twinkle left his eyes. He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. You never do, you know.”

“Don’t you?” said Hesper. What more had Evan wanted than painting and recognition—and freedom?

He frowned into the red embers of the fire, not answering. She went out to the other kitchen and fixed a tray. She brought it to him, and threw a log on the fire.

He ate and drank in silence. She sat in her rocker and watched him. Here they sat, two old people in an old room, bound by no tie except memory. Memory of brief passion and long grievance.

Why did he come? she thought; why did he have to push into my life again with his selfishness and his painting? stirring up a lot of pain I’d thoroughly buried. Why did I say he could stay here ?

He finished everything, wiped his mustache on the damask napkin. She got up and took the tray. Her face was hostile.

“Thanks,” he said suddenly. “Tasted good.” And he smiled. Despite the beard and the mustache the quick smile still startled by its ironic sweetness. The flash of a searchlight across a brooding cliff.

“You’ve still got beauty, Hesper,” he said. “You had good bones. That’s why. They never let you down. Good proportions stay, unless one gets fat. But why must you swaddle yourself in muddy gray and black? You never did have the slightest feel for color.”

She glanced at her gray percale housedress, the knitted black shawl. “I’m a widow,” she said coldly. “And I’m an old woman. Are you ready to go up to your room?”

He struggled up from his chair, leaning on his stick. She picked up his square valise preparing to show him the way.

“Don’t touch it!” he snapped. “I always carry that myself. Can’t bear people touching my things.”

She shrugged her shoulders and put the bag down.

That night in her bedroom above the old kitchen, she lay awake for a long time staring into the darkness.

The next morning the fog had blown away and a clear rich sunshine sparkled on the ripples in the Great Harbor. A southwest breeze gentle as the May fragrance it spread over the town—the fragrance of lilacs and chestnut blossoms—blew through the open windows of the Hearth and Eagle.

Hesper awoke to the feel of Maytime, and though the derisive inner voice jeered at her, she took pains with her hair. And she put on her only colored dress, a lavender dimity, crossbarred in white. It was quite warm enough for a summer dress.

She started breakfast, and promptly at eight, Evan appeared. She greeted him and set a chair at the big oak table in the old kitchen. She was shocked by his looks. Perhaps it was natural that during the night when she thought of him lying there in the Yellow Room, she had seen the Evan who had once lain there on a bridal eve. And the readjustment was difficult. No, it’s not only that, she thought. It’s because he looks sick. His color was bad, the grayish skin drawn tight over his cheekbones and forehead. He ate with effort, frowning as he slowly propelled the fork towards his mouth.

“Did you sleep all right?” she asked.

He put his fork down and smiled at her. “Pretty fair, except for the hauntings. Ghosts, you know.”

“Ghosts?” she repeated uncertainly. The boarders sometimes reported ghosts, shadowy figures in Puritan costume, pirates, a Revolutionary soldier. But these manifestations always appeared to those who had learned something of the house’s history and who believed that every old house must have a ghost. Hesper never argued with them.

“Memories,” said Evan, pushing back his plate. “What’s the best way for me to get across to the Neck?”

Hesper stood up and began to stack dishes. Ah yes, you sentimental fool, she said to herself, did you think the memories were of you? He came here to check on the shade of the greenstone as it runs through the porphyry at Castle Rock.

“I’ll get a message to Walt, my son,” she said. “He can take you there in his lobster boat at high water, right to the beach by the rock. You’d never walk across the Neck with that leg.”

“Very well,” said Evan. “But you come along, Hesper.”