Conrad Aiken: The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

She heard footsteps on the veranda. She sprang up, switched off the light, leaving the sitting room in comparative darkness. She’d meet him in the hall—. She took two steps, and then, as the door slammed, stopped. No. She saw him standing, tall and indolent, just inside the door. He peered, wrinkling his forehead, in her direction, apparently not seeing her.

“Miss Rooker—are you there?”

“Yes.”

He came into the dark room, and she took an uncertain step toward him. He stopped, they faced each other, and there was a pause. He stood against the lighted doorway, huge and silhouetted.

“I wanted to speak to you”—his voice was embarrassed and gentle—“and I wanted to wait till Miss Lavery had gone to bed.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.… I wanted to apologize to you. It must have been very distressing for you.”

“Oh, not at all, I assure you.… Not in the least.” Her voice was a little faint—she put her hand against the edge of the table.

“I’m sure it was. Please forgive me.… Miss Lavery, you know—” He gave a queer uneasy laugh, as if there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t. What was it—was it that Miss Lavery was the one—? She felt, suddenly, extraordinarily happy.

“I think I’d better leave tomorrow,” she answered then, looking away. “I think it would be better.”

“Nonsense, my dear Miss Rooker! Don’t think of it.… Why should you?”

Her heart was beating so violently that she could hardly think. She heard him breathing heavily and quickly.

“Well,” she said, “I think it would be better.”

“Why? There’s no earthly reason.… No.” As she made no reply, he went on—“It won’t happen again—I can promise you that !” He again laughed, but this time as if he were thinking of something else, thinking of something funny that was going to happen.… Was he laughing at Miss Lavery?

Miss Rooker, unsteady, took a step to pass him, but he put out his hand. It closed upon her wrist. With his other hand he took slow possession of hers. She drew back, but only a little.

“Please,” she said.

“Please what?”

“Let me go.”

“Only when you’ve given me a promise.”

“What?”

“That you’ll stay here—with me .”

“Oh—you know I can’t!”

She was trembling, and was ashamed to know that his hands must feel her trembling.

“Promise!” he said. She looked up at him—his eyes were wide, dark, beautiful, full of intention.

“Very well, I promise.”

“Good! Good girl.…” He did not let go of her hand and wrist. “I’ll make it up to you.… Don’t mind Miss Lavery!”

“You are dreadful!” She gave a laugh, her self-possession coming back to her.

“ Am I?” He beamed. “Well, I am, sometimes!… But what about you?”

“Oh, I’m awful!” she answered. She drew away her hand, rather slowly, reluctantly. “Good night, then.”

“Good night.”

She turned on the landing to look down at him. He smiled, his humorous eyes twinkling, and she smiled in return.… Heavens! how extraordinary, how simply extraordinary, how perfectly extraordinary.… She stared at her reflection in the glass. “Naughty” eyes? No—they were beautiful. She had never looked so beautiful—never.… Perhaps he would knock at her door? She locked it.… She combed her hair, and as she did so, began humming, “And—when—I—told—them—” Then she remembered Mrs. Oldkirk in the next room, and stopped. Poor old thing!… She got into bed and lay still, smiling. The wind whispered in the screen, the crickets were singing louder than ever. They liked a hot night like this. Zeek—zeek. Mr. Oldkirk passed along the hall.… Ah, the nice tall man with nice eyes, the very, very nice man!…

I.

Marie Schley sat in the Watertown car by the open grilled window. It was a sunny afternoon, the first Saturday in October. Clouds of dust swooped over Mount Auburn Street, flew into the car, made the passengers cough. On the Charles River, an eight-oared crew was rowing round the blue turn, crawling like a centipede; the voice of the coxswain could be heard, the blades flashed irregularly. A subdued many-throated clamor came raggedly across the flat fields from the Stadium, suddenly rose intense, on a higher note, then died slowly. A football game must be going on there. Yes—there were the usual kites flying, flashing high over the Stadium. How familiar it all was! It made her feel slightly sad, and yet, also, she could not conceal from herself that she was much freer to enjoy its beauty, to enjoy it merely as a spectacle, than had ever been possible for her in the past.… It was familiar; but now that she lived so far away and came so seldom, it was also remote. It had now an “atmosphere”—she said almost aloud—an atmosphere. It was no longer so dreadfully a part of her own being. It was true there had been a time—the first year that she was in Boston, when she was twelve—a time when “going to Watertown to see Grandmother” was a positive delight. Even that, however, hadn’t been so much a fondness for Grandmother as a delight in the queer musty old furniture, the antimacassars, the tussocks, the rosy conch-shells on the gray carpet—of an extraordinary size, and used as door fenders—and above all, Grandmother’s passion for good food. The cherries, for which Marie with a pail used to climb the tree, the “plain apple pie,” the coffee cake so richly crusted with spiced sugar (Grandmother always called it “kooken”)—certainly these had been very important items. Even then she had been on her guard, reserved, with Grandmother—there had never been any question of an intimacy between them. Grandmother had always been hard and childlike, all her life had had that peculiar inaptitude for intimacy and sympathy which accompanies the child’s lack of “consciousness.” Visiting her during the school holidays, later, Marie had gradually, as she grew older, seen this hardness clearly enough. Grandmother’s hardness—oh, it was really almost a meanness—had called forth, or implanted, a meanness in herself. It had often seemed to her that Grandmother was cruel. How much these cruelties—which were wholly of a psychological sort—had been deliberate, or how much they had been simply the natural effect, unconscious, of a hard, callous, defeated old woman on a young and shy and sensitive one, she had never known. Nor had she ever known, to tell the truth, whether if she herself had been less of an egoist, she might not have discovered more sharply, in her Grandmother, the shy and affectionate girl, with remarkably nice blue eyes, who occasionally laughed there and then took flight. Later still, when she was going to college, she had in a measure “escaped” the antipathy, had been able to challenge it laughingly, and had worked a decided and delightful change in her relations with the old woman. Grandmother’s “meanness,” she had found, could often be undermined by laughter; her sense of humor, or at any rate, of the ridiculous, was delicious. She was the only woman Marie knew who often, and literally, “laughed till she cried.” Marie, ever since her college days, had used this discovery skillfully—she had been “free” to make the discovery and to use it, in some unaccountable way, just after her return from a trip to Europe. Was it simply that then at last she had forced Grandmother to accept her as “grown-up” and an equal? At all events it had led to a kindliness between them. Yes, they had had a few pleasant days together. If they had formerly hated one another, quarreled savagely,—ah, those frightful quarrels over nothing!—quarrels had passed. Grandmother had, growing older, grown gentler; she herself, feeling herself to be superior, had learned to tolerate the flashes of cruelty and meanness. And now it was all to be ended—Watertown was to be rolled away—the dusty ride along Mount Auburn Street was to become less familiar, forgotten—Grandmother was going to die. A month—two months—five—