Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

He got off the sofa and went softly down the stairs to the turn of the railing. He peered over the banisters with infinite caution, and what he saw filled him with horror. His mother was sitting on his father’s knee, with her arms about his neck. She was kissing him. How awful!… He couldn’t look at it. What on earth, he wondered as he climbed back into bed, was it all about? There was something curious in the way they were talking, something not at all like fathers and mothers, but more like children, though he couldn’t in the least understand it. At the same time, it was offensive.

He began to make up a conversation with Caroline Lee. She was sitting under the peach tree with him, reading her book. What beautiful hands she had! They were transparent, somehow, like her forehead, and her dark hair and large pale eyes delighted him. Perhaps she was an Egyptian!

“It must be nice to live in your house,” he said.

“Yes, it’s very nice. And you haven’t seen half of it, either.”

“No, I haven’t. I’d like to see it all. I liked the hairy wallpaper and the pink statue of the lady on the table. Are there any others like it?”

“Oh, yes, lots and lots! In the secret room downstairs, where you heard the silver clock striking, there are fifty other statues, all more beautiful than that one, and a collection of clocks of every kind.”

“Is your father very rich?”

“Yes, he’s richer than anybody. He has a special carved ivory box to keep his collars in.”

“What does it feel like to die—were you sorry?”

“Very sorry! But it’s really quite easy—you just hold your breath and shut your eyes.”

“Oh!”

“And when you’re lying there, after you’ve died, you’re really just pretending. You keep very still, and you have your eyes almost shut, but really you know everything! You watch the people and listen to them.”

“But don’t you want to talk to them, or get out of bed, or out of your coffin?”

“Well, yes, at first you do—but it’s nicer than being alive.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know! You understand everything so easily!”

“How nice that must be!”

“It is.”

“But after they’ve shut you up in a coffin and sung songs over you and carried you to Bonaventure and buried you in the ground, and you’re down there in the dark with all that earth above you—isn’t that horrible?”

“Oh, no!.… As soon as nobody is looking, when they’ve all gone home to tea, you just get up and walk away. You climb out of the earth just as easily as you’d climb out of bed.”

“That’s how you’re here now, I suppose.”

“Of course!”

“Well, it’s very nice.”

“It’s lovely.… Don’t I look just as well as ever?”

“Yes, you do.”

There was a pause, and then Caroline said:

“I know you wanted to steal my goldpiece—I was awfully glad when you put it back. If you had asked me for it, I’d have given it to you.”

“I like you very much, Caroline. Can I come to Bonaventure and play with you?”

“I’m afraid not. You’d have to come in the dark.”

“But I could bring a lantern.”

“Yes, you could do that.”

… It seemed to him that they were no longer sitting under the peach tree, but walking along the white shell-road to Bonaventure. He held the lantern up beside a chinquapin tree, and Caroline reached up with her pale, small hands and picked two chinquapins. Then they crossed the little bridge, walking carefully between the rails on the sleepers. Mossy trees were all about them; the moss, in long festoons, hung lower and lower, and thicker and thicker, and the wind made a soft, seething sound as it sought a way through the gray ancient forest.

IV.

It had been his intention to explore, the next morning, the vault under the mulberry tree in the park—his friend Harry had mentioned that it was open, and that one could go down very dusty steps and see, on the dark floor, a few rotted boards and a bone or two. At breakfast he enlisted Mary and John for the expedition; but then there were unexpected developments. His father and mother had abruptly decided that the whole family would spend the day at Tybee Beach. This was festive and magnificent beyond belief. The kitchen became a turmoil. Selena ran to and fro with sugar sandwiches, pots of deviled ham, cookies, hard-boiled eggs, and a hundred other things; piles of beautiful sandwiches were exquisitely folded up in shining, clean napkins, and the wicker basket was elaborately packed. John and Mary decided to take their pails with them, and stamped up and downstairs, banging the pails with the shovels. He himself was a little uncertain what to take. He stood by his desk wondering. He would like to take Poe’s tales, but that was out of the question, for he wasn’t supposed to have the book at all. Marbles, also, were dismissed as unsuitable. He finally took his gold medal out of its drawer and put it in his pocket. He would keep it a secret, of course.

All the way to the station he was conscious of the medal burning in his pocket. He closed his fingers over it, and again felt it to be a live thing, as if it were buzzing, beating invisible wings. Would his fingers have a waxy smell, as they did after they’d been holding a June bug, or tying a thread to one of its legs?… Father carried the basket, Mary and John clanked their pails, everybody was talking and laughing. They climbed into the funny, undignified little train, which almost immediately was lurching over the wide, green marshes, rattling over red-iron bridges enormously complicated with girders and trusses. Great excitement when they passed the gray stone fort, Fort Pulaski. They’d seen it once from the river, when they were on the steamer going to the cotton islands. His father leaned down beside Mary to tell her about Fort Pulaski, just as a cloud shadow, crossing it, made it somber. How nice his father’s smile was! He had never noticed it before. It made him feel warm and shy. He looked out at the interminable green marshes, the flying clouds of rice-birds, the channels of red water lined with red mud, and listened intently to the strange complex rhythm of the wheels on the rails and the prolonged melancholy wail of the whistle. How curious it all was! His mother was sitting opposite him, very quiet, her gray eyes turned absently toward the window. She wasn’t looking at things—she was thinking. If she had been looking at things, her eyes would have moved to and fro, as Mary’s were doing.

“Mother,” he said, “did you bring our bathing suits?”

“Yes, dear.”

The train was rounding a curve and slowing down. They had suddenly left the marshes and were among low sand dunes covered with tall grass. He saw a man, very red-faced, just staggering over the top of one of the dunes and waving a stick.… It was hot. They filed slowly off the train and one by one jumped down into the burning sand. How strange it was to walk in! They laughed and shrieked, feeling themselves helpless, ran and jumped, straddled up the steep root-laced sides of dunes and slid down again in slow, warm avalanches of lazy sand. Mother and father, picking their way between the dunes, walked slowly ahead, carrying the basket between them—his father pointed at something. The sunlight came down heavily like sheets of solid brass and they could feel the heat of the sand on their cheeks. Then at last they came out on the enormous white dazzling beach with its millions of shells, it black-and-white-striped lighthouse, and the long, long sea, indolently blue, spreading out slow, soft lines of foam, and making an interminable rushing murmur like trees in a wind.

He felt instantly a desire, in all this space and light, to run for miles and miles. His mother and father sat under a striped parasol. Mary and John, now barefooted, had begun laborious and intense operations in the sand at the water’s edge, making occasional sallies into the sliding water. He began walking away along the beach close to the waves, keeping his eye out for any particularly beautiful shell, and taking great care not to step on jellyfish. Suppose a school of flying fish, such as he had seen from the ship, should swim in close to the beach and then, by mistake, fly straight up onto the sand? How delightful that would be! It would be almost as exciting as finding buried treasure, a rotten chest full of goldpieces and seaweed and sand. He had often dreamt of thrusting his hand into such a sea-chest and feeling the small, hard, beautiful coins mixed with sand and weed. Some people said that Captain Kidd had buried treasure on Tybee Beach. Perhaps he’d better walk a little closer to the dunes, where it was certainly more likely that treasure would have been hidden.… He climbed a hot dune, taking hold of the feathery grass, scraping his bare legs on the coarse leaves, and filling his shoes with warm sand. The dune was scooped at the top like a volcano, the hollow all ringed with tall, whistling grass, a natural hiding place, snug and secret. He lay down, made excessively smooth a hand’s breadth of sand, then took the medal out of his pocket and placed it there. It blazed beautifully. Was it as nice as the five-dollar goldpiece would have been? He liked especially the tiny links of the little gold chains by which the shield hung from the pin-bar. If only Caroline could see it! Perhaps if he stayed here, hidden from the family, and waited till they had gone back home, Caroline would somehow know where he was and come to him as soon as it was dark. He wasn’t quite sure what would be the shortest way from Bonaventure, but Caroline would know—certainly. Then they would spend the night here, talking. He would exchange his medal for the five-dollar goldpiece, and perhaps she would bring, folded in a square of silk, the little pink statue.… Thus equipped, their house would be perfect.… He would tell her about the goldfinch interrupting the Battle of Gettysburg.