Twilight Sleep (21 page)

What a time of year it was—the freed earth suddenly breaking into
life from every frozen seam! Manford wondered if he had ever
before had time to feel the impetuous loveliness of the American
spring.

In spite of his drive home in the small hours he had started out
early the next morning for a long tramp. Sleep—how could a man
sleep with that April moonlight in his veins? The moon that was
everywhere—caught in pearly puffs on the shadbush branches,
scattered in ivory drifts of wild plum bloom, tipping the grasses
of the wayside with pale pencillings, sheeting the recesses of the
woodland with pools of icy silver. A freezing burning magic, into
which a man plunged, and came out cold and aglow, to find
everything about him as unreal and incredible as himself…

After the blatant club restaurant, noise, jazz, revolving couples,
Japanese lanterns, screaming laughter, tumultuous good–byes, this
white silence, the long road unwinding and twisting itself up
again, blind faces of shuttered farmhouses, black forests, misty
lakes—a cut through a world in sleep, all dumb and moon–bemused…

The contrast was beautiful, intolerable…

Sleep? He hadn't even gone to bed. Just plunged into a bath, and
stretched out on his lounge to see the dawn come. A mysterious
sight that, too; the cold fingers of the light remaking a new
world, while men slept, unheeding, and imagined they would wake to
some familiar yesterday. Fools!

He breakfasted—ravenously—before his wife was down, and swung off
with a couple of dogs on a long tramp, he didn't care where.

Even the daylight world seemed unimaginably strange: as if he had
never really looked at it before. He walked on slowly for three or
four miles, vaguely directing himself toward Greystock. His long
tramps as a boy, in his farming days, had given him the habit of
deliberate steady walking, and the unwonted movement refreshed
rather than tired him—or at least, while it tired his muscles, it
seemed to invigorate his brain. Excited? No—just pleasantly
stimulated…

He stretched himself out under a walnut tree on a sunny slope, lit
his pipe and gazed abroad over fields and woods. All the land was
hazy with incipient life. The dogs hunted and burrowed, and then
came back to doze at his feet with pleasant dreamings. The sun on
his face felt warm and human, and gradually life began to settle
back into its old ruts—a comfortable routine, diversified by
pleasant episodes. Could it ever be more, to a man past fifty?

But after a while a chill sank on his spirit. He began to feel
cold and hungry, and set out to walk again.

Presently he found it was half–past eleven—time to be heading for
home. Home; and the lunch–table; Pauline; and Nona; and Lita. Oh,
God, no—not yet… He trudged on, slowly and sullenly, deciding
to pick up a mouthful of lunch somewhere by the way.

At a turn of the road he caught sight of a woman's figure strolling
across a green slope above him. Strong and erect in her trim
golfing skirt, she came down in his direction swinging a club in
her hand. Why, sure enough, he was actually on the edge of the
Greystock course! The woman was alone, without companions or
caddies—going around for a trial spin, or perhaps simply taking a
stroll, as he was, drinking in the intoxicating air…

"Hul–LO!" she called, and he found himself advancing toward Gladys
Toy.

Was this active erect woman in her nut–brown sweater and plaited
skirt the same as the bejewelled and redundant beauty of so many
wearisome dinners? Something of his old interest—the short–lived
fancy of a week or two—revived in him as she swung along, treading
firmly but lightly on her broad easy shoes.

"Hul–LO!" he responded. "Didn't know you were here."

"I wasn't. I only came last night. Isn't it glorious?" Even her
slow–dripping voice moved faster and had a livelier ring.
Decidedly, he admired a well–made woman, a woman with curves and
volume—all the more after the stripped skeletons he had dined
among the night before. Mrs. Toy had height enough to carry off
her pounds, and didn't look ashamed of them, either.

"Glorious? Yes, YOU are!" he said.

"Oh, ME?"

"What else did you mean, then?"

"Don't be silly! How did you get here?"

"On my feet."

"Gracious! From Cedarledge? You must be dead."

"Don't you believe it. I walked over to lunch with you."

"You've just said you didn't know I was here."

"You mustn't believe everything I say."

"All right. Then I won't believe you walked over to lunch with
me."

"Will you believe me when I tell you you're awfully beautiful?"

"Yes!" she challenged him.

"And that I want to kiss you?"

She smiled with the eyes of a tired swimmer, and he saw that her
slender stock of repartee was exhausted. "Herman'll be here
tonight," she said.

"Then let's make the most of today."

"But I've asked some people to lunch at the club."

"Then you'll chuck them, and come off and lunch with me somewhere
else."

"Oh, will I—shall I?" She laughed, and he saw her breast rise on
her shortened breath. He caught her to him and planted a kiss in
the middle of her laughter.

"Now will you?"

She was a rich armful, and he remembered how splendid he had
thought plump rosy women in his youth, before money and fashion
imposed their artificial standards.

When he reëntered the doors of Cedarledge the cold spring sunset
was slanting in through the library windows on the tea–table at
which his wife and Nona sat. Of Lita there was no sign; Manford
heard with indolent amusement that she was reported to be just
getting up. His sentiment about Lita had settled into fatherly
indulgence; he no longer thought the epithet inappropriate. But
underneath the superficial kindliness he felt for her, as for all
the world, he was aware of a fundamental indifference to most
things but his own comfort and convenience. Such was the salutary
result of fresh air and recovered leisure. How absurd to work
one's self into a state of fluster about this or that—money or
business or women! Especially women. As he looked back on the
last weeks he saw what a fever of fatigue he must have been in to
take such an exaggerated view of his own emotions. After three
days at Cedarledge serenity had descended on him like a
benediction. Gladys Toy's cheeks were as smooth as nectarines; and
the keen morning light had shown him that she wasn't in the least
made up. He recalled the fact with a certain pleasure, and then
dismissed her from his mind—or rather she dropped out of herself.
He wasn't in the humour to think long about anybody or anything …
he revelled in his own laziness and indifference.

"Tea? Yes; and a buttered muffin by all means. Several of them.
I'm as hungry as the devil. Went for a long tramp this morning
before any of you were up. Mrs. Toy ran across me, and brought me
back in her new two–seater. A regular beauty—the car, I mean—
you'll have to have one like it, Nona… Jove, how good the fire
feels … and what is it that smells so sweet? Carnations—why,
they're giants! We must go over the green–houses tomorrow,
Pauline; and all the rest of it. I want to take stock of all your
innovations."

At that moment he felt able to face even the tour of inspection,
and all the facts and calculations it would evoke. Everything
seemed easy now that he had found he could shake off his moonlight
obsession by spending a few hours with a pretty woman who didn't
mind being kissed. He was to meet Mrs. Toy again the day after
tomorrow; and in the interval she would suffice to occupy his mind
when he had nothing more interesting to think of.

As he was putting a match to his pipe Lita came into the room with
her long glide. Her boy was perched on her shoulder, and she
looked like one of Crivelli's enigmatic Madonnas carrying a little
red–haired Jesus.

"Gracious! Is this breakfast or tea? I seem to have overslept
myself after our joy–ride," she said, addressing a lazy smile to
Manford.

She dropped to her knees before the fire and held up the boy to
Pauline. "Kiss his granny," she commanded in her faintly derisive
voice.

It was very pretty, very cleverly staged; but Manford said to
himself that she was too self–conscious, and that her lips were too
much painted. Besides, he had always hated women with prominent
cheekbones and hollows under them. He settled back comfortably
into the afternoon's reminiscences.

Decidedly, there was a different time–measure for life in town and
in the country.

The dinner for Amalasuntha organized (and the Toys secured for it),
there were still two days left in that endless inside of a week
which was to have passed so rapidly. Yet everything had gone
according to Pauline's wishes. Dexter had really made the promised
round of house and grounds, and had extended his inspection to
dairy, poultry yard and engine–house. And he had approved of
everything—approved almost too promptly and uncritically. Was it
because he had not been sufficiently interested to note defects, or
at any rate to point them out? The suspicion, which stirred in his
wife when she observed that he walked through the cow–stables
without making any comment on the defective working of the new
ventilating system, became a certainty when, on their return to the
house, she suggested their going over the accounts together. "Oh,
as long as the architect has o.k'd them! Besides, it's too late
now to do anything, isn't it? And your results are so splendid
that I don't see how they could be overpaid. Everything seems to
be perfect—"

"Not the ventilating system in the Alderneys' stable, Dexter."

"Oh, well; can't that be arranged? If it can't, put it down to
profit and loss. I never enjoyed anything more than my swim this
morning in the pool. You've managed to get the water warmed to
exactly the right temperature."

He slipped out to join Nona on the putting green below the terrace.

Yes; everything was all right; he was evidently determined that
everything should be. It had been the same about Michelangelo's
debts. At first he had resisted his wife's suggestion that they
should help to pay them off, in order to escape the young man's
presence in New York; then he had suddenly promised the Marchesa to
settle the whole amount, without so much as a word to Pauline. It
was as if he were engrossed in some deep and secret purpose, and
resolved to clear away whatever threatened to block his obstinate
advance. She had seen him thus absorbed when a "big case"
possessed him. But there were no signs now of professional
preoccupation; no telephoning, wiring, hurried arrivals of junior
members or confidential clerks. He seemed to have shaken off "the
office" with all his other cares. There was something about his
serene good humour that obscurely frightened her.

Once she might have ascribed it to an interest—an exaggerated
interest—in his step–son's wife. That idea had already crossed
Pauline's mind: she remembered its cold brush on the evening when
her husband had come home unexpectedly to see her, and had talked
so earnestly and sensibly about bringing Lita and her boy to
Cedarledge. The mere flit of a doubt—no more; and even then
Pauline had felt its preposterousness, and banished it in disgust
and fear.

Now she smiled at the fear. Her husband's manner to Lita was
perfect—easy, good humoured but slightly ironic. At the time of
Jim's marriage Dexter had had that same smile. He had thought the
bride silly and pretentious, he had even questioned her good looks.
And now the first week at Cedarledge showed that, if his attitude
had grown kindlier, it was for Jim's sake, not Lita's. Nona and
Lita were together all day long; when Manford joined them he
treated both in the same way, as a man treats two indulged and
amusing daughters.

What was he thinking of, then? Gladys Toy again, perhaps? Pauline
had imagined that was over. Even if it were not, it no longer
worried her. Dexter had had similar "flare–ups" before, and they
hadn't lasted. Besides, Pauline had gradually acquired a certain
wifely philosophy, and was prepared to be more lenient to her
second husband than to the first. As wives grew older they had to
realize that husbands didn't always keep pace with them…

Not that she felt herself too old for Manford's love; all her early
illusions had rushed back to her the night he had made her give up
the Rivington dinner. But her dream had not survived that evening.
She had understood then that he meant they should be "only
friends"; that was all the future was to hold for her. Well; for a
grandmother it ought to be enough. She had no patience with the
silly old women who expected "that sort of nonsense" to last.
Still, she meant, on her return to town, to consult a new Russian
who had invented a radium treatment which absolutely wiped out
wrinkles. He called himself a Scientific Initiate … the name
fascinated her.

From these perplexities she was luckily distracted by the urgent
business of the Cardinal's reception. Even without Maisie she
could do a good deal of preparatory writing and telephoning; but
she was mortified to find how much her handwriting had suffered
from the long habit of dictation. She never wrote a note in her
own hand nowadays—except to distinguished foreigners, since
Amalasuntha had explained that they thought typed communications
ill–bred. And her unpractised script was so stiff and yet slovenly
that she decided she must have her hands "treated" as she did her
other unemployed muscles. But how find time for this new and
indispensable cure? Her spirits rose with the invigorating sense
of being once more in a hurry.

Nona sat on the south terrace in the sun. The Cedarledge
experiment had lasted eight days now, and she had to own that it
had turned out better than she would have thought possible.

Lita was giving them wonderfully little trouble. After the first
flight to Greenwich she had shown no desire for cabarets and night–
clubs, but had plunged into the alternative excitement of violent
outdoor sports; relapsing, after hours of hard exercise, into a
dreamy lassitude unruffled by outward events. She never spoke of
her husband, and Nona did not know if Jim's frequent—too frequent—
letters, were answered, or even read. Lita smiled vaguely when he
was mentioned, and merely remarked, when her mother–in–law once
risked an allusion to the future: "I thought we were here to be
cured of plans." And Pauline effaced her blunder with a smile.

Nona herself felt more and more like one of the trench–watchers
pictured in the war–time papers. There she sat in the darkness on
her narrow perch, her eyes glued to the observation–slit which
looked out over seeming emptiness. She had often wondered what
those men thought about during the endless hours of watching, the
days and weeks when nothing happened, when no faintest shadow of a
skulking enemy crossed their span of no–man's land. What kept them
from falling asleep, or from losing themselves in waking dreams,
and failing to give warning when the attack impended? She could
imagine a man led out to be shot in the Flanders mud because, at
such a moment, he had believed himself to be dozing on a daisy bank
at home…

Since her talk with Aggie Heuston a sort of curare had entered into
her veins. She was sharply aware of everything that was going on
about her, but she felt unable to rouse herself. Even if anything
that mattered ever did happen again, she questioned if she would be
able to shake off the weight of her indifference. Was it really
ten days now since that talk with Aggie? And had everything of
which she had then been warned fulfilled itself without her lifting
a finger? She dimly remembered having acted in what seemed a mood
of heroic self–denial; now she felt only as if she had been numb.
What was the use of fine motives if, once the ardour fallen, even
they left one in the lurch?

She thought: "I feel like the oldest person in the world, and yet
with the longest life ahead of me … " and a shiver of loneliness
ran over her.

Should she go and hunt up the others? What difference would that
make? She might offer to write notes for her mother, who was
upstairs plunged in her visiting–list; or look in on Lita, who was
probably asleep after her hard gallop of the morning; or find her
father, and suggest going for a walk. She had not seen her father
since lunch; but she seemed to remember that he had ordered his new
Buick brought round. Off again—he was as restless as the others.
All of them were restless nowadays. Had he taken Lita with him,
perhaps? Well—why not? Wasn't he here to look after Lita? A
sudden twitch of curiosity drew Nona to her feet, and sent her
slowly upstairs to her sister–in–law's room. Why did she have to
drag one foot after the other, as if some hidden influence held her
back, signalled a mute warning not to go? What nonsense! Better
make a clean breast of it to herself once for all, and admit—

"I beg pardon, Miss." It was the ubiquitous Powder at her heels.
"If you're going up to Mrs. Manford's sitting–room would you kindly
tell her that Mr. Manford has telephoned he won't be back from
Greystock till late, and she's please not to wait dinner?" Powder
looked a little as if he would rather not give that particular
message himself.

"Greystock? Oh, all right. I'll tell her."

Golf again—golf and Gladys Toy. Nona gave her clinging
preoccupations a last shake. This was really a lesson to her! To
be imagining horrible morbid things about her father while he was
engaged in a perfectly normal elderly man's flirtation with a
stupid woman he would forget as soon as he got back to town! A
real Easter holiday diversion. "After all, he gave up his tarpon–
fishing to come here, and Gladys isn't a bad substitute—as far as
weight goes. But a good deal less exciting as sport." A dreary
gleam of amusement crossed her mind.

Softly she pushed open the door of one of the perfectly appointed
spare–rooms: a room so studiously equipped with every practical
convenience—from the smoothly–hung window–ventilators to the
jointed dressing–table lights, from the little portable telephone,
and the bed–table with folding legs, to the tall threefold mirror
which lost no curve of the beauty it reflected—that even Lita's
careless ways seemed subdued to the prevailing order.

Lita was on the lounge, one long arm drooping, the other folded
behind her in the immemorial attitude of sleeping beauty. Sleep
lay on her lightly, as it does on those who summon it at will. It
was her habitual escape from the boredom between thrills, and in
such intervals of existence as she was now traversing she plunged
back into it after every bout of outdoor activity.

Nona tiptoed forward and looked down on her. Who said that sleep
revealed people's true natures? It only made them the more
enigmatic by the added veil of its own mystery. Lita's head was
nested in the angle of a thin arm, her lids rounded heavily above
the sharp cheek–bones just swept by their golden fringe, the pale
bow of the mouth relaxed, the slight steel–strong body half shown
in the parting of a flowered dressing–gown. Thus exposed, with
gaze extinct and loosened muscles, she seemed a mere bundle of
contradictory whims tied together by a frail thread of beauty. The
hand of the downward arm hung open, palm up. In its little hollow
lay the fate of three lives. What would she do with them? How
could one conceive of her knowing, or planning, or imagining—
conceive of her in any sort of durable human relations to any one
or anything?

Her eyes opened and a languid curiosity floated up through them.

"That you? I must have fallen asleep. I was trying to count up
the number of months we've been here, and numbers always make me go
to sleep."

Nona laughed and sat down at the foot of the lounge. "Dear me—
just as I thought you were beginning to be happy!"

"Well, isn't this what you call being happy—in the country?"

"Lying on your back, and wondering how many months there are in a
week?"

"A week? Is it only a week? How on earth can you be sure, when
one day's so exactly like another?"

"Tomorrow won't be. There's the blow–out for Amalasuntha, and
dancing afterward. Mother's idea of the simple life."

"Well, all your mother's ideas ARE simple." Lita yawned, her pale
pink mouth drooping like a faded flower. "Besides, it's ages till
tomorrow. Where's your father? He was going to take me for a spin
in the new Buick."

"He's broken his promise, then. Deserted us all and sneaked off to
Greystock on his lone."

A faint redness rose to Lita's cheek–bones. "Greystock and Gladys
Toy? Is that HIS idea of the simple life? About on a par with
your mother's… Did you ever notice the Toy ankles?"

Nona smiled. "They're not unnoticeable. But you forget that
father's getting to be an old gentleman… Fathers mustn't be
choosers…"

Lita made a slight grimace. "Oh, he could do better than that.
There's old Cosby, who looks heaps older—didn't he want to marry
you? … Nona, you darling, let's take the Ford and run over to
Greenwich for dinner. Would your mother so very much mind? Does
she want us here the whole blessed time?"

"I'll go and ask her. But on a Friday night the Country Club will
be as dead as the moon. Only a few old ladies playing bridge."

"Well, then we'll have the floor to ourselves. I want a good
practice, and it's a ripping floor. We can dance with the waiters.
It'll be fun to shock the old ladies. I noticed one of the waiters
the other day—must be an Italian—built rather like Tommy
Ardwin… I'm sure he dances…"

That was all life meant to Lita—would ever mean. Good floors to
practise new dance–steps on, men—any men—to dance with and be
flattered by, women—any women—to stare and envy one, dull people
to startle, stupid people to shock—but never any one, Nona
questioned, whom one wanted neither to startle nor shock, neither
to be envied nor flattered by, but just to lose one's self in for
good and all? Lita lose herself—? Why, all she wanted was to
keep on finding herself, immeasurably magnified, in every pair of
eyes she met!

And here were Nona and her father and mother fighting to preserve
this brittle plaything for Jim, when somewhere in the world there
might be a real human woman for him… What was the sense of it
all?