The Towers of Love (31 page)

“What did you say to her, Edrita?”

“I laughed at her. I laughed in her face! I called her a fool, because she was a fool. I told her to save her silly threats because I had no such plans and no such intentions. Because I'd known for a long time that it was going to be impossible for you and me. And it was impossible—at the time.”

“I've got to get away from here,” he said.

“Of course you do. You've got to get away very quickly, my darling.”

“Perhaps—perhaps I'll go back to Joe Wallace.”

“Not to Joe Wallace,” Edrita said. “It's got to be some place else.”

“Yes,” he said. “Some place else.”

“And this time you can take me with you,” she said.

“What about your husband?” he asked. “What about Bob?”

“I don't love my husband,” she said. “I love you.”

“Didn't you ever love him, Edrita?”

“I don't know. Perhaps I did. But I'm not at all sure I ever really did. I always loved you, you see.”

“Will you divorce him?”

“I'll get the quickest divorce it's possible to get!”

“And what about your little girl?”

“Patty can come with us, if you like. Or else—”

“Or else what?”

“Or else whatever you think, whatever you want. Patty's a happy child. She adores her father—”

“You could really do all this—so easily?”

“I'm an Eastern girl,” she said. “My roots haven't taken very well to Middle Western soil. Chicago and I are like oil and water. I don't like their voices. Have you ever noticed that about Middle Western voices—how
loud
they are? Both the men and women. It must be something to do with the climate. I like the nice, tight sound of Eastern voices.”

“You want to marry me for my nice, tight Eastern voice?”

She laughed softly. “I want to marry you for
you
,” she said.

“What about the thing you said the other day? How you wouldn't want to marry me because I couldn't give you security?”

“Darling,” she said, “you can give me all the security I can possibly ever need in life—once you escape from your mother.”

“Well,” he said, “I know I've got to get away.”

“Let's go now,” she said. “Let's go right now! Nothing needs to be complicated if you do it swiftly and simply.”

“I can't go until after the funeral,” he said. “Not until after that.”

“Then
right
after that! Right after that!”

“All right. Right after that.”

“Promise me!”

“I promise you.”

“Hugh, thank God we're alive!” she said. She tumbled upon him, the shadow of her face blocking the sun's rays, and covered his body with hers. “Oh, make love to me now, Hugh,” she said. “Oh, please make love to me again now! Make love to me.”

The funeral was for eleven o'clock, Tuesday morning, and was to be private—only family and a few close friends, But there were enough of these. There were all the Pryors from Massachusetts, and they were a crowd in themselves. Though Ogden Pryor had been an only child, there were five first cousins still living: the William R. Pryors; the Sanford Pryors; old Alexander Pryor, who was ninety-three; Richard Pond Pryor; and Mrs. Edith Pryor Wilson, who lived in Boston. Then, added to these, were their children—Ogden Pryor's nieces and nephews who were named Pryor and Wilson and Renshaw and Robinson—and their children, the Pryor grandnieces and grandnephews, a number of whom were married and brought with them a few Pryor great-grandnieces and great-grandnephews and, in first names, there was a great preponderance of Ogdens and Williams and Alexanders and Janes and Ediths and Elizabeths—names the Pryors had always favoured. There was even another Hugh—young Hugh Pryor Renshaw, who was fifteen and whose voice was changing. Then there were the Careys, a more scattered family, whose homes were in Connecticut, New York, and Montclair, New Jersey—Hugh's father's two brothers, Paul and Edward, and their wives and children; and his father's sister, Mrs. Curtis Dabney, and her children and grandchildren; and there were Carey cousins, nieces and nephews.

They were the family, and though many of them had not seen each other for a number of years, they had the ability, which many large families have, to pick up immediately the skeins of their relationships, when they met again, at exactly the point where they had let them drop before, and to create instantly the tender fabric of family that had always bound them all together, no matter how far apart from each other they happened to live. “Doesn't Jane look well?” they said. “She looks exactly the same.” “Ah, Edith. You look so well. Did you bring little Edith with you? Oh. Is she enjoying Wellesley?” “Dear Alex. How are you, Alex? Oh, don't say you're getting old, Alex. You're looking so well.” And then they said, “Isn't it terrible that it takes something like this to bring us together? Isn't it a shame that it seems to have to be a wedding or a funeral?” But of course they did not mean this, that it was a shame, because the weddings and the funerals were what tightened the fibres of the family and, without them, they might all have long ago spun apart. So they were actually grateful for the marriages and the deaths; only this one—“Poor little Pansy … so young … so unnecessary … so awful … too awful even to think about.” They had all gathered at the house by ten o'clock and, for the little buffet lunch that they were going to have after the services, there would be fifty-three of them—just the family. And with so many automobiles parked in the long driveway leading up to the house, Pappy found himself answering the door to a pair of strange faces, a man and a woman who, holding a copy of the
Connecticut Guide
, said, “Pardon me, but is the castle open to the public?”

Reba came into Hugh's room, dressed for the funeral in a black, severely cut dress upon which the only touch of white was the pearls at her throat, her orange hair tucked as best as possible beneath a simple black cloche hat. “They're all here,” she said. “All the family. You'd better get ready and come down.”

“I've got to get dressed, Reba,” he said. “Run along and let me get dressed.”

“Oh, I don't mind,” she said. “Go ahead and get dressed. I've seen you often enough, ever since you were a baby. Go right ahead. I want to talk to somebody.”

He had hesitated, and then shrugged and said, “All right.” And he had stepped out of his pyjamas and gone into the bathroom and run the shower, and came out, towelling himself, going to his dresser for a pair of undershorts—dressing quickly not because he was diffident about being naked in front of her as much as because walking was always a little harder for him when he was not wearing the corrected shoes. And she had not seemed to mind his nakedness, or even to notice it. She had talked on through it, her voice rising and falling, standing and going to the window, returning to the chair, talking about whatever came into her mind. Only once, when he was sitting on the edge of the bed in his shirt and shorts, putting on his dark socks, did she look at him directly and say, “You were always a beautiful child, Hugh. A beautiful child. Do you remember how you used to exercise in front of this big mirror?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

“Are you going to take that nice job you've been offered in New Haven?” she asked him.

“I don't know,” he said. “I haven't decided yet, Reba.”

“Oh, please do. I hope you do.”

“Well, I'll see,” he said. He stood up and went to the closet and took his dark blue suit from its hanger. “Do you think this suit will do?” he asked her.

“Yes, it's perfect, Hugh,” she said. “It would make Sandy so happy if you did,” she said.

“If I did what?”

“If you took that job. The one in New Haven.”

“Well—” he said.

“It would make your father happy, too. It would make them both so happy.”

He pulled on the trousers to his suit. “Do you really think anything could make them happy?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “
That
could.” Then she said, “They're really not unhappy people, Hugh. Essentially, they're a happy couple.”

“
Were
,” he said. “I think that perhaps they
were
happy. But long ago.”

“Why do you feel that?”

“I sensed something the other night,” he said. “After dinner we went into the library, and he began to play the piano, and she began to sing. Remember? The way they used to do at parties together? And there was something, some little flicker, a spark between them that happened there. And I remembered how they used to be.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I know.”

“But that little spark only lasted for a couple of minutes. And it ended, then, with her screaming at him, saying that he was drunk. And with him stalking off into the night.”

“To—to
her
, you mean?”

“I don't know where he went. But he didn't come home. He was gone all night.”

“Yes,” she said. “Then it was probably to her.”

“The only thing I know,” he said, “is that there have been damn' few of those little sparks in the last few years—damn' few. In fact, I wonder really if there have been any others at all? Do you call that a happy marriage, Reba?”

“Oh, happy, happy, happy. Everybody talks about happy,” she said.

“But you're the one who mentioned happiness,” he said. He sat on the bed again, put on his shoes, and laced them.

“But happiness is—it's such a relative thing,” she said. “And I keep feeling so sure that this Schiller business will soon blow over.”

“Do you really think it will?”

“I do. Yes. And do you know something? I think that this awful thing, this thing that's just happened, will
help
it blow over, Hugh. I really think it will help—that this tragedy will somehow help bring them closer together. Together in their grief. I feel very sure of that.”

“Reba, how long has the Schiller thing been going on?”

She hesitated. “Oh, three or four—perhaps five years.”

“And do you really think that after three or four or perhaps five years it's going to blow over?”

“I hope so, yes. I hope so.”

“I wish I could be that optimistic,” he said. He selected a tie from the rack and crossed the room to the mirror, and began winding the tie into its knot.

“And you could help, too, Hugh. You could help bring them together, too.”

“I wish I believed that, also,” he said. “I wonder why they married each other.”

“You wonder why they
married
each other? Hugh, what a thing to say!”

“But I really do wonder, Reba.”

“Why, they were—I really think they were genuinely in love with each other. They were a beautiful couple, Hugh. They used to ride together and hunt together. They used to play marvellous tennis together. You should have seen them, on the tennis courts. They were beautifully matched—in their looks, all in white, Allen in white flannels, Sandy in a white skirt—and they were matched in their game, too. Beautifully matched! You should have seen them. Half the time, exactly half the time, he won the matches; the other half of the time,
she
won. It was actually championship tennis that they used to play together, and they were lovely to watch. And of course, when it came to marriage, he was the logical choice.”

“What do you mean—the logical choice?”

“The logical one, the perfect one. Papa had always liked Allen—liked him the best of all the men Sandy knew. And. Allen was older than Sandy, and Papa wanted someone older for Sandy because she was—well, she was sort of wild. And Papa had Allen Carey sort of picked out for Sandy and so, when they seemed to be in love, it was logical that they should marry. It was perfect.”

“I see,” Hugh said.

“You see, Sandy always did the perfect thing. She always did absolutely the right thing. Papa always had the greatest admiration for Sandy, and he was so pleased that the marriage had worked out, and that Sandy had married perfectly. Allen Carey was a brilliant young lawyer—successful—from a fine family. And Sandy chose him, and that delighted Papa. You see, Hugh, neither of us were what you might call
pretty
girls. Papa used to say that Sandy and I must have stepped out of line when looks were being passed out! That was why it made him so happy when Sandy did the perfect thing, and married Allen Carey. Whereas I—”

He looked at her sharply and suddenly, with a swift chill of memory, remembering the story. How, he thought, feeling all at once dizzy and ill and looking quickly back at his reflection in the big mirror, could he have forgotten that? Especially now, after what had happened to Pansy, how could he have forgotten it? The beads. That was why Reba always wore the high beads at her throat. The beads were to hide the thin chalk-lines of the scars. Because of course Reba had tried it once. It had been long ago, and no one ever talked about it any more, but he had been told about it, and how could he have forgotten it until just now? No wonder she was here, in his room, wanting to talk to him while he dressed. No wonder she didn't want to be downstairs, where all the family was. Because what would the family be saying to each other now, or at least thinking now, except how—wasn't it curious, wasn't it strange, wasn't it awful, the comparison between the two: Reba and Pansy? How they had both … Downstairs, where the family was gathered, the air must be full of those thoughts, of that queer and frightening parallel. No wonder Reba wanted to be here.

“Whereas you—” he said softly, looking at the mirror.

In the mirror he saw her hand go gently to her beads. “I know what you're thinking, Hugh,” she said. “I can almost hear your thoughts.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. Well, I was very young. And it wasn't really like Pansy. I thought I was in love, and I thought the man loved me. I wanted to do the perfect thing too—just like Sandy. I wanted to please Papa too. You didn't know Papa well, Hugh, but Papa was our world. We'd do anything for him, Sandy and I. We loved Mama too, of course, but Mama was—Mama was never any help to us. She was just a dear little lady who always did everything Papa said. The sun rose and set on Papa for us, and I wanted to marry the man he wanted me to marry. But I was never as good at doing things as Sandy, and I was sadly mistaken. The man didn't love me at all. He didn't want me at all, and he ran away. I was jilted, and the man ran away. So it really wasn't at all like Pansy.”