The Sundial (8 page)

“I will not have eggs again,” Richard Halloran said. “Orianna, tell them in the kitchen that I will not have eggs again.”

“Certainly you will not. And Aunt Fanny will be with you; I believe that they have made you a chocolate pudding.”

“Orianna,” said Aunt Fanny in sudden apprehension, “where are you putting Mrs. Willow and her daughters? Naturally, in the left wing with Maryjane?”

“We must not intrude upon Maryjane’s grief, Aunt Fanny. They will be at the end of the long hall near the stairway, and on the floor above you. You cannot possibly hear them.”

“I
will
hear them, Orianna,” Aunt Fanny said tautly. “You know perfectly well. I will hear them; my rest will be constantly disturbed.”

“Then don’t tell anyone what goes on.” Mrs. Willow gave a huge wink and Aunt Fanny put her hand to her throat, and closed her eyes.

“Will you say goodnight, Richard?” Mrs. Halloran asked, turning the wheel chair, and Mr. Halloran bowed his head graciously and said, “Goodnight to all of you.”

“Sweet dreams to you,” Mrs. Willow said, and Miss Ogilvie said, “Goodnight, Mr. Halloran,” and Julia and Arabella glanced up, and down again. Mrs. Halloran took the wheel chair slowly out of the room and across the hall and Aunt Fanny gave one last malevolent glance at Mrs. Willow and followed her.

“
That
was sweet of you,” Julia said spitefully to her sister, “hanging around and whispering around her, and that big innocent stare.”

“We’re supposed to get along,” Arabella said, touching her blond curls lazily.

“Trying to cut me out with her the first five minutes we’re here.”

“We could
see
how she fell in love with
you.
”

“Shut up, both of you,” Mrs. Willow said. “You’re not here to squabble, my pretties. Belle, tomorrow I want you to offer to read to her, or hold her knitting, or some such—just stay around her. Admire the gardens, and get her to show them to you, and you can put in some good work
there—you
know, flatter her a little; we all like
that
. Julia, you’ve got more patience—you take up with—what’s the little one’s name?” she asked Essex.

“Fancy,” said Essex, enchanted.

“Fancy. Julia, you get after the little girl. Play with her. Tell her stories, comb her hair, look at her toys. Romp.”

“If you please,” Miss Ogilvie said stiffly, “Fancy is my pupil. She will be engaged at her schoolwork for the greater part of the day.”

“She will?” Mrs. Willow looked at Miss Ogilvie. “No one’s going to cut you out,” she said at last. “There’s plenty for all of us, honey.”

Miss Ogilvie laughed shortly. “Aunt Fanny’s father might not think so.”

Mrs. Willow frowned. “What have I got to do with Aunt Fanny’s father?” she asked. “The old boy’s dead fifteen years.”

Miss Ogilvie laughed again, glanced at Essex, and then leaned forward. “I suppose
I
had better be the one to tell you,” she said.

_____

“Good
morning
, Aunt Fanny,” Mrs. Willow said; the sun was shining goldenly on the terrace where Aunt Fanny and Maryjane were sitting after breakfast, “good morning to you. And to
you
,” she said, to Maryjane. “Are you the mother of that delightful child? My gels are both in love with her already.”

“You won’t get any breakfast,” Aunt Fanny said with satisfaction. “The table was cleared an hour ago.”

“I’ll run along down the kitchen in a minute. They will be sure to have something for a starving old woman. How well your brother is looking, Aunt Fanny. I am quite surprised to see how well he looks.”

“He has had a blow recently, ma’am; he could scarcely look
very
well.”

“A blow indeed,” Maryjane said darkly. “Unmotherly monster.”

“I?”

“A mother,” Maryjane explained, “who pushes her only son down the stairs and leaves his devoted wife a widow.”

“Maryjane,” Aunt Fanny said. “Not before this lady, please.”

“A widow,” Maryjane said. “A fatherless orphan.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it,” Mrs. Willow said inadequately, and then, in a rush to Aunt Fanny, “I think you were away when I visited here long ago; I have always remembered the magnificence of this house, and the kindness of your father.”

“My father was an upright, courteous man.”

Mrs. Willow’s voice was saddened. “You will certainly not believe this, but his passing was a deep personal loss to me. I valued him more than I can say; a truly upright man, as you say.”

“You are right,” Aunt Fanny said. “I certainly do not believe that.”

“Aunt Fanny,” said Mrs. Willow, “I do not want to keep on offending you. I have the greatest admiration and fondness for every member of your family, and so do my two daughters.”

“And well you should,” Aunt Fanny said. “I was not brought up to make friends out of my own class, Mrs. Willow.”

“But there are to be no more differing classes, are there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Miss Ogilvie told us last night of the joyful message you had from your father; Aunt Fanny, you have been very much favored.”

“Good heavens,” said Aunt Fanny. “She actually
told
you?”

“I thought your father instructed specifically that all within the house were among the . . . ah . . . blessed. We have come, my daughters and I, in very good time.”

“Good heavens,” Aunt Fanny said again. “Good heavens.”

“Yes,” Maryjane said, “it is quite true. I am to have no more asthma. Aunt Fanny’s father said clearly that sickness, like my asthma, would vanish from the earth. I will never have asthma again, after the world has been cleansed.”

After a minute Aunt Fanny spoke faintly. “I have never disobeyed my father,” she said. “His instructions were quite clear; perhaps I was wrong in not telling you myself. Mrs. Willow, you and your daughters are—” Aunt Fanny gasped, and nearly choked “—welcome here,” she finished at last.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Willow said gravely. “We will try to deserve your kindness. And now,” she said, “I think I will dig up a little breakfast, and then drop in on old Orianna and pass the time of day.”

_____

Mrs. Willow settled herself dubiously into a delicate flowered armchair and relaxed slowly, listening for cracks in the wood. “Orianna,” she said, “you know perfectly well you ought to do something for me, me and my gels.”

“Girls,” Mrs. Halloran said. She had been working at the household accounts when Mrs. Willow interrupted her, and she kept one hand protectively on her pen, but without optimism. “Girls, if you please.”

“My little affectations,” Mrs. Willow said. “You know
perfectly
well you will have to do something for me.”

“And your daughters. Gels.”

“My big hope is getting rid of them, naturally. I always thought that bringing up children was a matter of telling them what to do, but they certainly make it hard for me. There’s no denying, for instance, that my clever Julia is a fool and my lovely Arabella is a—”

“Flirt,” Mrs. Halloran said.

“Well, I was going to say tart, but it’s your house, after all. Anyway, it’s money we need, as if there was ever anything else. I don’t figure there’s any way you can come right out and
give
us some, but people as rich as you are must know other people as rich as you are and somewhere along the line there must be someone you can help us get a dime out of. Marriage would be best, of course; we might as well aim high while we’re about it. It better be Belle, though; she’s prettier and if you tell her anything enough times she’ll do it eventually. Besides if Belle married money the chances are good I could ease a little of it out of her; with Julia, I could whistle. Who’s this young character with the little kid?”

“She’s what my son Lionel married.”

“God almighty.” Mrs. Willow was wistful. “All his money. Even so, though, I don’t think I would have wished it on either of my girls, even Julia. On account of you, I mean; there’s no sense taking
you
on just to get our hands on enough money to try and live. I think,” Mrs. Willow said, “I’d rather die, actually. No offense intended, of course. She talks a lot, doesn’t she?”

“Maryjane?”

“Haven’t you heard the kind of things she says?”

Mrs. Halloran laughed, and Mrs. Willow nodded, and sighed. “Now
that
’s no way to go about it,” she said sadly, “you imagine
me
in a soft spot like that? What does she think it’s going to get her?”

“Perhaps it helps her asthma.”

“If it was one of
my
gels,” Mrs. Willow said with feeling, “I’d see that she managed it altogether different; she’s got the kid, after all, and there’s no one else, you’ve
got
to leave it to the kid unless she fouls it up somehow. She could be talking the kid right out of everything; what she wants to do is keep her mouth shut until it
counts
. Well.” She sighed. “You always see other people getting the good chances.”

“You might tell your daughter Arabella that Essex is penniless.”

“What?” Mrs. Willow glanced up sharply. “Yes? Well, I’ll tell her. You know,” she went on slowly, “they’re not bad girls. That is,” she said unwillingly, “they’re probably bad girls the way we understood it when you and I were bad girls . . . I mean,
bad
. But they’re not dishonest, or unkind. Not bad girls.”

“Just
bad
.” Mrs. Halloran smiled.

“You remember, do you? Then you see they do deserve some kind of help? After all . . .” Mrs. Willow shrugged, and was silent. After a minute or so, during which Mrs. Halloran regained her pen hopefully, Mrs. Willow went on, “I tell you, Orianna, I’ve
got
to get rid of those girls; every time some young fellow looks twice at Belle or dances with Julia my hands start to shake and I get so anxious my teeth chatter. I just can’t afford them much longer, and you can see as well as I do that they’re not up to most of the competition they meet; Belle’s past twenty-five and even her hairdresser—”

“I suppose it’s too late for them to learn shorthand?”

“It’s almost too late for them to learn new dances,” Mrs. Willow said sullenly. In a fever of irritation she put out her cigarette and got up to pace furiously up and down the satin room. “For God’s sake,” she said, “I’d take
any
body. Even somebody penniless. If he had rich friends.”

There was a long silence. Mrs. Willow walked back and forth, eyeing the draperies, the jade cigarette box, the fine thin legs of the furniture. Mrs. Halloran stared down at her desk, at her unfinished accounts. Then Mrs. Willow said abruptly, “What a
hell
of a thing to do,” and Mrs. Halloran raised her head. “Orianna,” Mrs. Willow said, “what is this?”

Mrs. Halloran turned curiously, and Mrs. Willow said, “Look at this thing. It’s disgusting. What’s the idea?”

“Augusta,” Mrs. Halloran said, “I can generally follow your conversation, since it rarely departs from one or two favorite subjects. But I confess that at present—”

“Look, then, damn it. If you don’t want people to see it why do you leave it standing there?” Mrs. Willow brought it over; it was a framed photograph of Mrs. Halloran with a hatpin pushed through the tinted throat so that the pin stood out, wickedly behind the photograph and the rhinestone head of the pin sparkled like a huge diamond against the throat of Mrs. Halloran in the photograph.

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Halloran. She took the photograph in her hand and looked at it thoughtfully. Then, “No,” she said, handing it back, “I have no idea how it got there.”

“Hell of a practical joke,” said Mrs. Willow, pulling at the hatpin. “Hardly get it out.”

“Then leave it in,” Mrs. Halloran said indifferently.

“It gives me the creeps. There.” Mrs. Willow set the picture down and the hatpin on the low table beside it. “Well,” she said, running her finger carefully along the picture frame, “do you think you can?”

“Can what, Augusta?”

“Do a little something for my gels—girls? Not much, just something?”

“I believe there may be an opening here for a housemaid.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Mrs. Willow said slowly, “at least not idiot enough to threaten you. I didn’t go sticking a hatpin through your picture—”

“That was probably Fancy; she’s been told not to come in here.”

“—and yet it seems to me that you could use a friend or so, and particularly someone who’s known you a long time and doesn’t have anything to lose by you, only something to gain. But you might as well know that your sister Fanny—”

“Who hasn’t a cent.”

“—has bidden us welcome to this house; we may stay as long as we like.”

Mrs. Halloran turned, staring. “Did she
tell
you?”

“Put it,” Mrs. Willow said carefully, “that either we hustle off with a little check in our hands, or we stay, and—” she grinned, “—get born again with all of you.”

“I will not pay you to go, certainly.” Mrs. Halloran’s voice was quiet. “And I will not go against Aunt Fanny, although I believe she is sadly mistaken here. Yet,” she said sadly, “you and I have so little else to hope for.”

4

Mrs. Halloran, who was a tired and sometimes lonely person, sat by herself in her room before the thin-legged desk; it was late evening, her accounts still undone, and distantly she could hear the voices of the other people in the house, and sometimes laughter. Only human beings and rabid animals turn on their own kind, she was thinking; gratuitous pain is unknown in nature. At what point, she wondered, could I have been brought to deny myself all this? Lose the house? How could I have turned aside? And could I bear to lose it now?

She told them over softly. Richard, Fanny, Maryjane, Fancy, Augusta Willow, Julia, Arabella. Essex. Miss Ogilvie. Could I really die? she wondered, and then, resolute, turned to her accounts. All things must be neat and shipshape at her hands; even if the world outside withered and dissolved Mrs. Halloran would face a new world, herself in order, and balanced, relinquishing nothing of what was her own.

_____

Downstairs, they were in the library. In his room Mr. Halloran slept, his nurse nodding beside him, but in the library, Aunt Fanny and Mrs. Willow were playing bridge against Miss Ogilvie and Julia, while Maryjane told Arabella the plot of a movie she had recently seen, and Essex, constrained by Aunt Fanny, advised the play.