The Unpossessed (27 page)

He moved nearer the edge of the wharf and his eyes were patiently searching for her. They skimmed her twice as though they were evading her; and suddenly, sliding along the deck-rail, they acknowledged her. She experienced a distinct physical shock; she was paralyzed, blood rushing down from her head and settling in legs grown numb and painful; for a tremendous second neither of them moved. Then their arms shot up in the family salute, straight and grave, from the temple out into the air with open palm, the same thing always used for greeting or farewell. Scarcely smiling he gave a series of stiff little confirming nods as much as to say ah there you are, so you are back are you, well hello. She ducked her head as though assenting. Slowly across the chasm they smiled their old familiar smile. A terrible joy burst open in her, a spasm of excitement too painful to be borne; her pulses pounded, the blood leaped back, as if it were the moment before her marriage, the one still moment left her before their raised hands would be joined. In embarrassment she lowered her shining eyes, her hand fell back on the rail. She leaned over and looked down the sheer shining side of the ship sliding steep to the moat of black water that still lay between them. The boat-side and the side of the pier made a tunnel. She could feel the weight of her head and shoulders suddenly over-balancing gravitation, she could feel her body hurtling down the deep black well; in passing she had time to witness Bruno's face asking her to stop it please, to come on back, to cut the melodrama—and she gave him a fleet wry smile in return; then as she would strike the water a surge of terror came and shook her so that she stepped back violently from the rail and stood clutching the suit-case and shaking, examining Bruno's face for signs of his grief and fear.

There was a quick and violent silence, the boat was wedded to the harbor. The gang-plank went out gravely.

The gang-plank is a thing that lends every man a moment's dignity, a second's distinction, as he moves slowly and majestically, passing from a super-world, pauses at the end in doubt as though he might turn back, and steps down giving up his chance irrevocably. Each as he takes the first step feels himself alone and responsible, deeply grave and joyous, as though he ushered in a personal New Year.

Elizabeth could feel her two suit-cases flanking her as importantly as bridesmaids by her side, as she modestly, with this strange sense of her own value, took the first steps. She stood straight, she walked proudly; she would never for the rest of her life huddle or shrink, she could conduct herself always with this sense of her own importance that she found on the gang-plank, marching austerely home to Bruno. He was waiting; now he revolved embarrassed through the crowd; and waited again, for her to come the rest. Down, down, she came; soft music playing; marching to the rhythm of her own calm modest senses. Her foot shrank from the commonplaceness of the dock; she stopped dead for the fraction of a second while her senses whirled, while nausea circled; stopped dead as she had on the landing twenty years ago and saw Bruno standing in his first long pants again, a mile between them, distance lined with strangers—
don't you know your cousin
BRUNO
, you funny, funny girl
—he came a step toward her apologetically, and then she saw that he had brought
the Davidson boy
again to guard him from her, she saw the prep-school stranger moving like a shadow by his side, a thin triumphant smile upon his face; she hurried forward sarcastically.

They stood together, Bruno and Elizabeth, smiling the same embarrassed smile; the strange lad lined with Bruno. Then they shook hands, vigorously, sarcastically, like visiting mayors at a baseball game. “Well fancy meeting you here,” he said as their hands suddenly withdrew and their smiles grew sharp. “This
is
a surprise,” she said lightly, brightly, harsh and false. “Meet Emmett Middleton, meet my kid cousin Emmett, doesn't she look like a baby lamb?” he said as he whacked her on the shoulder.
O Bruno for God's sake, I've come all this way, I've come all these years, I've come all my life
, she did not say, as she coldly pumped the hand of the stranger boy;
we're scared till the blood in our veins runs thin, oh Bruno, Bruno, come bravely through the fog
, she did not cry as she said instead, “You can't fool me, it's
the Davidson boy
grown up.”

“Cold for a landing isn't it,” she said merrily, warily, smartly and tartly; “it's always cold when cousins meet,” she said bitterly, brittley; “from an old Chinese adage,” she added tardily, hardily, neatly and sweetly, snappy and dead; and met the strange boy's hostile eyes with answering hostility as Bruno bent to lift her bags, his head going down before them both, apologetic and abject.

PERHAPS, thought Arturo Teresca of Art Terry's Prosperity Boys, perhaps if he had really had the “stuff” his gift would have pushed itself someway to the fore, drowned his need to earn more money, killed the fear of poverty—and he would be today (instead of the leader of a party-band) what his promise of twenty years before had hinted. Yes; that must be it; he was a second-rater, born a second-rater, born a minor artist in the field he passionately loved. A one-symphony man, he reflected (jogging his knee at the party raging behind him, indifferently conducting the semi-classic they had asked for as an opening number); and remembered with bitter pride his “Symphony of the Seasons” composed while he was still at the Music Academy. But the Boys would play it shortly, play the Rearrangement he had made for his wife's last birthday. Poor Mary. She had married him with reservations, fearing a marital continuation of the poverty to which they both were born; accepted him with hope that he might prove a musical exception and manage to grow rich. He was a tremendous success, outshining her farthest hopes. And Mary had bloomed and blossomed, wore fur coats like a queen, bore him three fine fat sons every one of whom sang like Caruso and roved the streets like petty gangsters—and never knew she was married to that greatest of all tragic figures, a frustrated artist. Arturo sighed and waved his head (a gesture caught from Toscanini); he stared somberly till he caught the eyes of all his band. “Anything the matter, maestro?” said the cellist from behind his smiling party-mask. Maestro! Arturo smiled his melancholy musician's smile; he was never certain whether the Boys were kidding him: the smile played safe. He jogged the well-known Prosperity knee and performed a minor Toscanini over his shoulder at the party.

For at ten o'clock (despite—as Merle was saying at the bottom of the stairs—all manner of confusion) March had raised a disapproving portière on Merle Middleton's Hunger March Party. For the first time in an honorable private life March was stationed at a door to
take in tickets
; to dig in the presence of company vulgarly into his pockets and bring forth change; to admit as guests persons obviously, even frankly, beneath his own gold standard. God knows what it did to his formal butler's soul; but it made no difference to his peculiar butler's stance which remained proud and indifferent by the portières like the monuments over a hero's grave. March resembled a Czarist Duke, a Hoover banker, a Wilsonian war-profiteer far more closely (so thought Al, pausing to salute a passing guest with a drumstick at his temple) than he resembled his step-brothers the ascetic or pugnacious, anaemic or bull-necked, Polish or hundred-percent-American Working Classes ranged (“I suppose because they couldn't come in person,” Al explained to anyone who listened) in life-size banners all about the ballroom. Service was March's motto; loyalty his slogan; let them station him at a door to take in tickets, let them crown him with a crown of thorns: March would stick his belly out and vote republican, feed beggars at the backdoor and throw away the rag with which he wiped their crumbs; “and if the revolution came,” said Al, “March would send it up the backstairs to wait while he announced it. Such is the kingdom of habit, Miss Powell honey,” he said to the Daughter of the Confederacy selling drinks for the benefit of the Hunger Marchers, “and a fine old kingdom it is.” He sighed, pointing his drumstick derisively at his heart. “Playing angel to a revolution, me, at my age. What
are
we coming to, Miss Powell honey.”

“I thought,” said Merle Middleton—light, charming, fluttering, at the bottom of the stairs—but significantly retaining Mrs. Stanhope's hand; “that at a party of this kind . . .” She pressed Mrs. Stanhope's hand intently, tested it as one might a barometer, tentative, deprecating (at the same time guiding her gently toward the ballroom to steal a look herself), not certain whether to line herself up on the side of her party or to go on condescending to it. For one never knew; one couldn't always judge ahead; what made a party smart or not smart depended so much on the unpredictable moods arising out of nowhere—and a party of one's own could be so cruel! “And Graham Hatcher is, well he is just
too
. . .” She lifted her shoulders crucified by ecstasy; but her eyes narrowed like a gauge, peering past March at the portières to the brilliant room beyond torn in many colors by the banners, by the incongruous garb of the early guests: her own friends correct and puzzled pushing in startled sequins or emphatic black-and-white through the motley ill-clothed younger set circling bar and buffet—or holding their heads decently to one side as they stared at the posters self-consciously, like cousins of the artist at his opening, forming no opinions because the critics, the Majority, had not arrived. “At a party of this kind,” she clasped Mrs. Stanhope's hand, “just
one
Negro,” she begged Mrs. Stanhope.

Mrs. Stanhope whinnied. “As many as you like, dear Merle. Wh-hy! don't be a fool Merle, you always think you're being a pioneer. It's been smart to have one Negro for over three years now. I must say your decorations are superb though—the banners—reminds me of the Stables on racing days.” And Mrs. Stanhope who spent all of her life that mattered on the back of a horse, whinnied again and entered the room past March. . . .

As though March were a hitching-post and she had broken loose, thought Al, who faintly liked her. “Look, Miss Powell honey, Black Beauty has checked in; easy canter across the old corral—my God!” he groaned, “the old mare's headed our way. Will she make it, no she's licked, by God she's coming on.” Mrs. Stanhope however, loped by them, shying perhaps at his drumstick; peered down a bridle-path that wound among the clumps of guests and spied her sidekick Mr. Merriwell; and started for him at a conscientious trot. “Now that the rodeo is settled,” Al sighed with relief, “how about shaking me up another glass of that altogether lousy charity punch—before your colored suitor makes his next advance?”

“What a stomach,” said Miss Powell rolling a pair of unbelievable violet eyes framed in Junior League eyelashes that must, Al decided now admiringly, have started life on one of Mrs. Stanhope's thoroughbreds—and pocketed his quarter aimlessly.

“What a
heart
,” corrected Al piously. “Remembah our stahving boys, Miss Powell honey.” He pointed to the banners behind the bar and crossed himself with the punchglass and the drumstick.

The buffet girls sneered classconsciously.

Merle scanned the room in haste, seeing (through March's injured eye) too many ill-dressed strangers; approved the laden buffet; looked in vain for Emmett (who surely ought to be here soon!) and located Graham Hatcher a little too stiff by the wall, his face a black pearl above impeccable evening dress, pausing (she observed with horror) directly beneath a banner in which Elizabeth Leonard had portrayed the evils of a colored chain-gang! God keep him, she prayed, from bearing down too often on Miss Bee Powell, Daughter of the Confederacy—but there was Al, bending solicitously above her naked back, who would too willingly serve as southern womanhood's protector. A wry little twist of pain inside her branched out into worry again about her party. Her friends were standing about the edges like a border of transplanted trees. If Jeffrey Blake would only come! She retreated, flinching, with an apologetic smile, past March's loyal pomp (she had not recovered from the hurt in March's eyes as with a dog-like questioning look at his mistress he had taken the colored gentleman's ticket, suffering him to pass in with the rest), and resumed her post at the bottom of the stairs.

The music quivered shyly. Bunched in a corner of the room it could command or be commanded by the party. But Arturo Teresca, thinking of his wasted life, deliberately pulled his shots. He knew that music should not talk without demanding answer; he could not bear to make music that would stand around the room ignored like decorations; and so he reserved his strength and muffled his sound and held the Boys in check—only remembering to jog the Prosperity knee every ten bars or so. He could feel the guests behind his back, their numbers growing, swimming without knowing it in harmony with his tentative rhythm; puzzled, unsettled, as he was.

A segment of the Hunger Marchers strained in menacing red paint along the wall behind the Brobdignagian refectory table, too well-bred to creak beneath its weight of six whole Virginia hams, two sliced turkeys, six platters of devilled eggs, sturgeon and salmon, a tray designed in canapés of caviar, cheese and anchovies, bowls of olives (the Hunger Marchers lifted angry feet above the plate of celery lined with cheese), and so on up to where ferns eked out the scantier fare of sweets and nuts and paper napkins, the fragile climax of the table as the tottering white-pastry Capitol was the fragile climax of the banner just above. Behind the buffet two thin young girls dressed alike in red turtle-neck sweaters popped olives into their mouths contemptuously and glanced with hatred at the bar and the Daughter of the Confederacy. Their own business was to slice ham and put paper napkins on plates for the eaters; but the eaters, beside being quantitatively more feminine than the drinkers, were perfectly able to slice ham for themselves and perfectly ready to do without paper napkins.