Conrad Aiken: The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“You want to know too much.”

Mr. Oldkirk opened his eyes. “Oh!” he said—then again, in a lower tone, “Oh.” He frowned at his plate, breathed densely through his grayish mustache.… Then, to Miss Lavery, who had suddenly become rather frigid, and was looking at Miss Rooker just a little impudently:

“Any more coffee, Helen?…”

“Not a drop.”

“Damn.” He got up, slow and tall.

“Berty! You shouldn’t swear before Miss Rooker.” Miss Lavery’s words tinkled as coldly and sharply as ice in a pitcher of lemonade. Hateful woman! Were they trying to make her feel like a servant?

“Oh, I’m quite used to it, Miss Lavery. Doctors, you know!”

Miss Lavery, leaning plump, bare elbows on the mahogany table, clasping long, white fingers lightly before her chin, examined Miss Rooker attentively. “Oh, yes, you’re used to doctors, of course. They’re very immoral, aren’t they?”

Miss Rooker turned scarlet, gulped her coffee, while Miss Lavery just perceptibly smiled.

“How’s the patient this morning?” Mr. Oldkirk turned around from the long window, where he had been looking out at the bay. “Any change?”

“No. She’s the picture of health, as she always is.” Miss Rooker was downright. “I think she ought to be up.”

“That’s not my opinion, Miss Rooker, nor the doctor’s either.”

“Well—”

“She’s been ordered a long rest.”

“A rest, do you call it! With—” Miss Rooker broke off, angry and helpless.

“With what?” Mr. Oldkirk’s tone was inquisitively sharp.

“Oh, well,” Miss Rooker sighed, “I don’t understand these nervous cases; I suppose I don’t. If I had my way, though, I’d have her up and out before you could say Jack Robinson.”

Mr. Oldkirk was dry and decisive.

“That’s your opinion, Miss Rooker. You would probably admit that Dr. Hedgley knows a little more about it than you do.”

He sauntered out of the dining room, hands in pockets, lazy and powerful.

“Another slice of toast, Miss Rooker?…” Miss Lavery asked the question sweetly, touching with one finger the electric toaster.…

“No, thank you, Miss Lavery. Not any more.”

II.

“Don’t read, Miss Rooker, it’s too hot, I can’t listen. And I’m so tired of all those he saids and she saids and said he with a wicked smile! It’s a tiresome story. Talk to me instead. And bring me a glass of lemonade.”

Mrs. Oldkirk turned on her side and smiled lazily. Indolent gray eyes.

“It is hot.”

“I suppose you enjoy nursing, Miss Rooker?”

“Oh, yes, it has its ups and downs. Like everything else.”

“You get good pay, and massaging keeps your hands soft. You must see lots of interesting things, too.”

“Very. You see some very queer things, sometimes. Queer cases. Living as one of the family, you know, in all sorts of out-of-the-way places—”

“I suppose my case seems queer to you.” Mrs. Oldkirk’s eyes were still and candid, profound.

“Well—it does—a little!…”

The two women looked at each other, smiling. The brass traveling clock struck eleven. Mary could be heard sweeping the floor in Miss Rooker’s room: swish, swish .

“It’s not so queer when you know about it.” She turned her head away, somber.

“No, nothing is, I suppose. Things are only queer seen from the outside.”

“Ah, you’re unusually wise for a young girl, Miss Rooker! I daresay you’ve had lots of experience.”

Miss Rooker blushed, flattered.

“Do you know a good deal about men?”

“Well—I don’t know—it all depends what you mean.”

Mrs. Oldkirk yawned, throwing her head back on the pillow. She folded her hands beneath her head, and smiled curiously at the ceiling.

“I mean what damned scoundrels they are … though I guess there are a few exceptions.… You’d better go for your swim, if you’re going.… Bring me some hot milk at twelve-thirty.… No lunch.… And I think I’ll sit on the balcony for an hour at three. You can ask them to join me there for tea. Iced tea.”

“You’d better try a nap.”

“Nap! Not much. Bring me that rotten book. I’ll read a little.”

Miss Rooker, going into her room for the towel, met Mary coming out: a dark sensual face. “Oh, you dancing girl!” she murmured, and Mary giggled. The hot sea-wind sang through the screen, salt-smelling. She threw the towel over her shoulder and stood for a moment at the window, melancholy, looking past the railed end of the balcony, and over the roof of the veranda. The cherries in the wild cherry tree were dark red and black, nearly ripe. The bay itself looked hot—the lazy small waves flashed hotly and brilliantly, a wide lazy glare of light all the way from the monument hill to the outer beach, of which the white dunes seemed positively to be burning up. Marblehead was better, the sea was colder there, rocks were better than all this horrible mud—the nights were cooler; and there was more life in the harbor. The good old Falcon ! “Them was happy days”—that was what Dr. Fish was always saying. And Mr. Oldkirk was extraordinarily like him, the same lazy vigorous way of moving about, slow heavy limbs, a kind of slothful grace. She heard his voice. He and Miss Lavery were coming out, the screen door banged, they emerged bare-headed into the heat, going down the shell path to the bathhouse. “Hell infernal,” he was saying, opening one hand under the sunlight as one might do to feel a rain—“which reminds me of the girl whose name was Helen Fernald … that’s what you are: hell infernal.” Miss Lavery opened her pongee parasol, and her words were lost under it. She was very graceful—provocatively graceful, and her gait had about it a light inviting freedom, something virginal and at the same time sensuous. She gave a sudden screech of laughter as they went round the corner of the bathhouse.

“It’s not a nursing case at all,” she thought, standing before her mirror—“they pay me to amuse her, that’s all—or she pays me—which is it?” She leaned close to the mirror, regarding her white almost transparent-seeming temples, the full red mouth (she disliked her lower lip, which she had always thought too heavy—pendulous) and the really beautiful dark hair, parted, and turned away from her brow in heavy wings. “ And when I told them —” Did Mr. Oldkirk like her eyes? That awful word—oh, really dreadful, but so true—Dr. Fish had used about her eyes! But Mr. Oldkirk seemed to like Chinese eyes better.… Ought she to stay—just being a kind of lady’s maid like this? And it wasn’t right. No; it wasn’t decent. She would like to say so to their faces. “I think you’d better get another nurse at the end of the week, Mr. Oldkirk—I don’t approve of the way things are going on here—no, I don’t approve at all. Shameful, that’s what it is!—you and Miss Lavery—” But what did she know about him and Miss Lavery?… A pang. Misery. They were just cousins. A filthy mind she had, imagining such things. She had heard them talking, talking on the veranda, they went out late at night in the green dory; once, three nights ago, she had thought she heard soft footsteps in the upstairs hall, and a murmur, a long sleepy murmur.… “How beautiful you wer-r-r-r-r-re.”

The bathhouse was frightfully hot—like an oven. It smelt of salt wood and seaweed. She took her clothes off slowly, feeling sand on the boards under her feet. She could hear Miss Lavery moving in the next “cell,” occasionally brushing her clothes against the partition or thumping an elbow. Helen Lavery. Probably about thirty—maybe twenty-eight. A social service worker, they said—she’d be a fine social service worker! Going round and pretending to be a fashionable lady. Sly, tricky, disgusting creature!… And that one-piece bathing suit—! She was too clever to miss any chance like that. Of course, she had a beautiful figure, though her legs were just a shade too heavy. And she used it for all it was worth.