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Title: It all begins again
Author: Helen R. Hull
Illustrator: David Robinson
Release date: November 6, 2026 [eBook #79931]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: McCall, 1941
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79931
Credits: Jens Sadowski. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT ALL BEGINS AGAIN ***
[Illustration: “They are blind and empty.... I must tell them this....
It may not be too late.”]
It All Begins Again
The story of the three generations that found no peace.
Helen R. Hull
Illustrations by David Robinson
Redbook Magazine, vol. 76, Mar. 1941, pp. 40-43, 69-74.
Mary Briscoll had intended never to live with any one of her children.
The decision had been automatic, full-formed even as she had sent the
telegrams telling them their father had died suddenly. That had been
fifteen years ago, when she had been just past sixty; and her income
(arranged cannily by Will in annuities so that no one would look
hopefully for her death!) had been enough for independence and even for
assistance to one or another of the children. Except for an appropriate
and swiftly abandoned gesture from Vera, the children hadn’t suggested
that she live with them. Hugh, the youngest, ran through wives and jobs
too rapidly to offer sanctuary to anything. She might have enjoyed an
occasional visit with Tom, the middle child, but his domestic life was
irregular. And Tom had died, a few years after his father’s death—the
neat surgery job done on his interior after Verdun being inadequate for
many years of service.
After Mary’s serious illness in the late winter of 1940, Vera insisted
that she must not stay alone. In the discussion, Vera let drop that if
her mother would stay with them instead of going alone to some expensive
summer hotel, they could open the Westchester house, Vera could take out
a cook and second maid, Clement would stop his talk about selling the
house, and the children would give up their ridiculous proposals for the
summer—dude ranches, heaven knew what! “Why not say you need the money,
instead of going on about my health?” Mary had asked. Vera’s answer had
been: “When I’m so distressed about you—how would it look if you had a
stroke or something all alone?—must you be carping?” Vera was like that,
insistent and unsubtle in projecting upon someone else the necessity for
doing what she herself wished. Mary liked showing her up; and perhaps
one reason she didn’t want to live with her daughter was that she knew
she’d have to hold her tongue. It was one thing to catch Vera up in an
afternoon call, when Vera could take her injured feelings home and
forget them in some new scheme. But under one roof—
If Mary had been stronger, she might have given Vera a check for her
summer and rejected the plan. But the pneumonia germ had been vicious,
and the climb back to health seemed scarcely worth the effort when the
years left were of necessity so few. In a way Mary regretted her
recovery; she felt rather silly about it, having been sure that she was
through with life. Much like the state of mind of one who has stripped
her house and packed her trunks for a long journey, only to find herself
sitting on top of a locked trunk in an empty house with no place to go
and no reason for going. Perhaps if she didn’t unpack—all her concern
about the family, all her interest in their affairs, all her amused,
sardonic contemplation of them; perhaps if she perched on a locked
trunk, aloof, ready for departure—she wouldn’t have to wait too long.
She had agreed to Vera’s suggestions, so compliantly that Vera asked:
“You aren’t feeling worse today, are you?”
(“Maybe I am,” thought Mary, “to let you bully me.”)
Vera had gone on in her high-pitched, quick voice, with talk of her
problems. Clement was impossible; he was such a grouch; surely the
market was better than he thought; in war times steel and wheat always
shot sky-high. She would write at once to that woman who’d worked for
them three years ago. Hilda, Vera’s daughter, would have to drop her
notion of getting a job for the summer; it was just an excuse to stay
downtown where she could meet that boy; if he had any pride at all he
would stop chasing Hilda—not a penny to his name. Mary had looked at
Vera, smartly slender, well groomed, her silvery hair (she still called
it prematurely gray) in soft curls under the thimble of cornflowers she
perched over one eyebrow for a hat, her mobile face marked with sharp
lines. She exaggerates everything, thought Mary; she uses her face too
much; she has more wrinkles than I have. “Is Hilda in love with this
boy? What’s his name?” Mary was fond of her granddaughter; she liked the
girl’s looks, fine-skinned, small-boned, intense.
“Oh, love!” snapped Vera. “At her age? But she doesn’t tell me anything.
You simply can’t imagine what modern children are like.”
“I seem to remember saying just that when you were young.”
“Things were simpler then.” Vera sighed. “And you never had to worry
about money.”
“We didn’t have much to begin with,” said Mary. “I haven’t seen you
starving or taking in washing.”
“It’s much worse, having to give up what you’re used to, than it is not
to have it ever!” Vera’s hasty kiss buzzed against Mary’s cheek, and she
whisked herself away....
For the next few weeks Vera was so busy closing the apartment in town
and opening the country house that she had little time for her mother.
During those weeks Mary grew steadily stronger. She could walk about her
rooms with her heart quiet in her breast instead of acting like a
frightened caged squirrel. She looked, she thought, like an elderly
_Alice in Wonderland_, with a ribbon tied around her white hair to keep
it back of her ears. No, more like the _White Queen_, the way her body
had sagged and thickened. Her face had kept its structure, the dry skin
taut over the fine, high brow, the eye-sockets deep and cleanly modeled,
for all the worn lids drooped over the dark eyes. She couldn’t read
long, but she began to look at headlines, with an amazed anger at what
was going on, as if Hitler had taken advantage of her illness to wreck
the world she had known. “Oh, my,” she thought, “I’m too old to reckon
with another war!” Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Calais. Yet no one seemed
to pay much attention to it.
When Vera telephoned, Mary said: “What does Clem think about the war?”
“It’s simply ruined the market,” said Vera. “I don’t even mention it to
him any more. I’m calling from the country, Mother. I’m not coming in
again this week; if I turn my back something goes wrong. Clem says he’ll
drive you out Saturday. You can get a maid to help you pack, can’t you?”
“I’m not helpless yet,” Mary had replied tartly. She didn’t like to have
Vera pawing over her personal belongings, exclaiming: “At your age,
Mother, some quieter color!” Will Briscoll had always liked her in
bright colors, deep, dark red, yellow. As long as her public costumes
were decorous enough, white in the summer, black with white in
winter—But she tired quickly, so it was the chambermaid who packed for
her. “I don’t want that—nor that—” Mary discarded recklessly; she might
need nothing when fall came again. “You can have them. Only, they won’t
fit you.”
The woman gathered up the pile of clothes, looking at Mary with bleak
eyes. “There are some who can use them,” she said. “If they still live.
I do not know. I have not heard.”
“Your people?” asked Mary. “Where are they?”
“Farmers in Norway. For many weeks I do not hear. It is a great
blackness not to hear.”
* * * * *
In Mary’s mind the words sounded like a deep bell far under water. As
she waited for Clem, she kept hearing them. _A great blackness not to
hear._ If she sat very still, scarcely breathing, the sound might come
more clearly, floating up and up through the waters of time.... She must
have been a child—she could feel herself spraddled over the edge of a
high feather bed, trying to reach the floor with her bare toes, afraid
of the darkness, compelled by the sound which had wakened her—a low
moaning, broken by sobbing breaths—to extricate herself from the safe
warmth of her bed and brave her way across the black room to the other
bed where her mother lay. “Is it another baby, Ma?” Her hand had found
the heavy rope of hair, had moved up it, had touched the clammy wetness
of the pillow. Just a year earlier her brother had been born, right in
this very bed. He whimpered in his crib.
The moaning had ceased; her mother had said: “Go back to bed. What are
you doing up?” Then she had laughed—at least, the sound was not crying.
“A baby? How would I get a baby?” She had reached out in the night and
pulled Mary’s head against her thin neck. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.
You aren’t old enough to know.... Oh, God, if only I could hear from
him! It is death not even to hear!” She had led Mary back to her own
bed, had lifted her into the hollow of the feathers.
That was another war, thought Mary, and her mother wept for her husband.
When he came back, he was a gaunt, bearded stranger Mary had never seen.
He had been in a Southern prison; he must have been sick for a long time
after he came home. They had given up the farm and moved into a village.
Her father had a cobbler’s bench in the shed off the kitchen; Mary could
hear the tap of a mallet driving in wooden pegs, and the dry rasp of his
cough. He had done other odd jobs; she remembered clocks with their
wooden wheels strewn over a table, and the hot smell of soldering. She
and Tom, the next younger child, had gone to the village school, and
then she’d taken Jimmy when he was so little she had to carry him part
of the way, because her mother went out by the day, nursing, cooking,
sewing.
“If I had died, I would have been a hero! And now look at me!” When had
her father cried that out in a terrible voice? Mary could feel herself
running away from the house, dragging Jimmy with her, out of reach of
the voices, her mother’s sharp with flailing impatience, her father’s
like white torment. They were still young—her mother had been seventeen
when they married—but Mary could not see them; her effort evoked only
the image of an old tintype: her father in a stiff hat standing with his
hand on the shoulder of her mother, long dark ringlets over the tightly
fitted basque of the young girl who stared soberly out of the faded
square. “Well,” she thought, “I can’t remember how I looked when I was
twenty.” Queer, as if time destroyed the image with the prototype.
She did remember that she had grown to share her mother’s irritation
with that increasingly silent, useless, ailing man. She had meant to get
ahead, to make something of herself, to escape poverty and ignominy.
Because she was the oldest, she would pull Tom and Jimmy up with her.
Well, she had helped them; it was a long time ago, and they were all
dead now, all but her. Other women now were saying of their men: “It is
a great blackness not to hear, it is death not even to hear.”
Odd, how vividly she could see her father, dying. Her mother had sent
for her—she was the principal in a high school in Northern Michigan that
year. Will Briscoll had driven to the station with her. He was a mining
engineer who ate his meals at the boarding-house where Mary lived.
“Don’t be gone long,” he had said. Tom, summoned from college, had met
her. “He’s going,” he had said. “Had another hemorrhage.” She must have
sat beside her father’s bed that night; she remembered the acrid odor of
a kerosene lamp, the faint rale, the only sound of life in the figure
propped on pillows. He had lifted papery eyelids, disclosing eyes
brilliant with fever, and the line of his sunken, colorless mouth had
altered into gentleness. “Why, Mother!” he had said.
“It’s me, Mary,” she had told him. But he had not heard her; he had
pushed himself up, talking in a high, shrill voice, like a boy’s.
She had not heeded his words, but now they sounded again: “Don’t cry!
It’s a grand new land where a man can be free, and his children after
him! I’ll be coming back to visit you, driving high-stepping black
horses and bringing you the grand gifts!”
* * * * *
The telephone jangled; it was like silver trappings on black horses. The
sound scattered the images of the past, just before she might have found
out what they meant. What had set her digging into those old years? She
hoisted herself stiffly to her feet; the desk clerk said that Mr.
Clement Lawmen was on his way up.
Then Clement was at the door, an artificial brightness in voice and
manner. Well, well, how was Mother? Fine that she could spend the summer
with them! Were the bags ready? He seemed to turn on his manner and
retreat behind it into protective coloration: gray hair, eyebrows, eyes,
suit, skin. He had been an amiable fellow who wished to please, but
having failed to do so, he now wished chiefly to avoid unpleasantness.
“Vera’s worn him to the bone,” thought Mary, and then forgot him in an
exasperating last-minute search for purse, gloves, spectacles.
“Just stop and think,” advised Clem, blinking. “Just stop—”
“If you’d stand still,” cried Mary, “maybe I could think!” The
ineptitude of age irritated her; it made a husk between herself and the
small affairs with which she had to deal. The porter shook out her coat,
and there lay the missing articles. “I knew I’d put them somewhere!” She
gathered them triumphantly, and headed the procession toward the
elevator.
She was sorry there were not more people in the lobby to witness her
departure. Going away was, after all, exciting, once you surmounted the
inertia of staying where you were. Clement helped her into the front
seat of the elderly family car and sat beside her, clearing his throat
anxiously as the starter hummed twice before the motor caught. “It’s
really a good car yet,” he said. “A very good engine.” Mary thought,
Clem really drove well when Vera wasn’t telling him how; and then she
looked contentedly out at other cars, at the curve of ramp up to the
highway, at the river wide and ruffled in the hazy sunlight. An airplane
sounded overhead, and she saw its shadow over the water; she thought:
“We don’t have to scurry for shelter.” After a moment Clem said: “Lord,
if they’d only get it over with and let a man go about his business in a
normal world!”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” said Mary dryly.
Clement peered at her, his eyelids twitching. “I mean, look at us;
nothing’s happened here; business ought to be good. Ought to start big
production, factories running double shifts. Do they?” The car rolled on
in spurts, fast, slow, fast, slow, as if Clement beat time with his
foot. “No. Everyone’s scared; everyone’s waiting.”
They had reached the toll-bridge; and Clem, fumbling for a coin, let the
motor die. By the time he had it started, his ears were scarlet and he
had forgotten larger issues. “It’s the mixture,” he muttered.
Mary’s hat slid backward on her spun-glass hair; she moved a little from
the window, and Clem smiled at her, inquiringly. “You all right?”
“Yes, I am.” She wouldn’t be like Vera, wanting windows open and then
shut and then half open. “Clem, what is a normal world, anyway?”
“Why, you know! The kind I grew up in, the kind you grew up in!”
“We grew up quite a while apart.”
“You know what I mean. A world where you knew what to expect, where you
could make a living for your family. Why, look at Father Briscoll—that’s
what I mean, climbing straight up. He had a good life; he made a lot of
money. The kind of world we’ve tried to get back to, ever since 1918.
Instead of this—this headache.”
“Perhaps headaches are normal.” Mary spoke testily. “Just because you
can’t make a fortune!”
“A fortune? _I_ can’t make a cent!” The words rasped. “But I—I didn’t
mean to get on that subject.”
“The trouble was, you made too much too easily to begin with,” said
Mary. “Put notions in Vera’s head.”
“She’s ambitious—for the children,” said Clement hastily. “You mustn’t
blame her. She’s had a difficult time.”
“Pooh!” said Mary. “Pooh! If she is my own daughter, I know her. You
never should have let her bully you out of your own profession. Why
didn’t you go on being an architect?”
“I’d be no better off if I had. They’ve had a bad time too.”
“You might have enjoyed it.”
“You know how it was, after those years in the army. I didn’t want Vera
to go on working; we wanted to settle down, raise a family.”
“You were very handsome in your uniform.” Mary chuckled. “Too bad you
couldn’t go on wearing it; you might have managed Vera.”
Clement’s teeth worried at the lower lip. Like a rabbit, thought Mary;
she’d like to shake some spunk into him!
“No,” he said. “You’d have to have all the bands playing, for a uniform
to count. Weren’t we the idealistic young fools? Making the world safe
for democracy. Sounds pretty silly now, doesn’t it? They’ll have to
think up better slogans for this generation. They know all the answers.
Or worse, they know there aren’t any answers.” Clement slowed for
construction signs; a laborer with a flag waved him into a bumpy detour.
“Half slave and half free,” said Mary, as she jounced.
“What? I’m sorry—be out of this in a minute.”
(A slogan good enough for her father. She’d never thought of it quite
that way; her father as a boy, seeking a land where a man could be free,
finding a slogan.... And his children after him.)
“There.” Clement relaxed a little, having reached smooth pavement. “What
was I saying? Oh, slogans. Well, this isn’t our war. Let them have it
out. Look, back in the seventies, when the Prussians got to Paris, you
didn’t worry about it, did you? It’s this damned radio stuff, calling
off the scores as if it was a game in the Yankee Stadium. Keeps us in a
state of nerves.”
Mary’s head jerked forward; she slid down in her seat, her hands folded
over her wide, soft body. When Clem got started in that light,
monotonous voice, quotation marks humming like bees among his words—She
would have said she did not sleep, but her mind dropped a few stitches,
and picked up its knitting again as the car stopped.
“Here we are,” said Clem, gently. “Feel tired?”
“He’s nice,” Mary thought, warmly. He meant well. His shoulder was a
fulcrum, to pry herself out of the car; but as she stood up, her feet
firmly on the grass, she brushed him away. “I can walk,” she said. “I’m
just stiff.”
“Sitting so long.” Clement was anxiously animated. “Good trip—not much
over an hour. Old bus comes right along. Now where’s Vera?”
Mary went slowly along the flagged walk to the front door, a gracious
door with fanlights. The house, which represented Vera’s successful
attempt to spend a great deal of money (in the late twenties), now
looked down at the heel. The shrubbery massed against the gray stone of
the first story needed clipping; the white clapboards above had rain
stains from the faded shutters. But the shadow of trees lay crisp on the
cropped lawn, and there was pleasant color in the garden around the
small pool down the slope of the hill. Clem followed her with some of
the luggage. “Ring the bell, will you, Mother? Where’s everybody?”
* * * * *
A plump, elderly woman opened the door. “How do you do, Mr. Lawmen—and
Mrs. Briscoll. Mrs. Lawmen is out. She left word she had to go to this
bridge tournament—it’s for the Red Cross. No, Mr. Lawmen, the young
people are out; I couldn’t say where they are.”
“That’s a nice note,” said Clem mildly. “Walking out on us! Where’s the
girl, what’s her name—Anna?”
“It’s her afternoon out, Mr. Lawmen. That is, Thursday is her afternoon;
but with the plumbers and all, she couldn’t take it. We did have quite a
time with the plumbers.”
“So I heard. A nice kind of welcome for you, Mother.” Clem’s eyelids
twitched. “Everybody gone but the cook.”
“That’s good,” said Mary. “I don’t have to talk to anybody. Good as a
hotel.” It wasn’t, really. At a hotel, as weary as she was, she’d go to
bed and no one would disturb her until she rang. A long sigh for
independence lost lifted her breast. Clem said: “Which room, Effie? You
take those bags, will you? I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”
“Mind your step,” said Effie. “It’s Mr. William’s things from college.
He said he’d be back to see to them; I wasn’t to touch them.” She
started up the wide stairs, and Mary stood for a moment, hand on the
mahogany rail, gathering determination for the ascent and looking over
her grandson’s college deposit. Tennis-rackets in a press, a musical
instrument in a black case on the carved Italian chest; skiis, boots, a
radio, a pile of records, leather coat, bulging laundry bag, suitcases.
Bill, home from college. Mary hadn’t seen much of her grandson since he
had been a little boy. Preparatory school, summer camps, college. He’d
been a funny little boy. She began to climb, her heart creaking as she
lifted her weight from step to step. When she got up, she’d stay!
“Did you see all that junk?” Clem was at her heels. “That’s what my
money goes for. If I say a word, I’m a brute. When I was his age, I knew
what I wanted to do!”
“Well,” said Mary shortly, “you didn’t do it, did you?” She was sorry
she had said it, Clem looked so suddenly deflated.
“At least I did something,” he said with dignity. “Effie!” He raised his
voice. “Which room is it?”
“It’s here, Mr. Lawmen.” And Effie appeared at a doorway. “Right here.”
Mary looked about with the experienced eye of a traveler. “This used to
be the nursery,” she said.
“Did it, Mrs. Briscoll? Mrs. Lawmen thought it would be the quietest
room for you, with the young people running in and out the way they do.”
“Don’t you like it, Mother?” Clem peered at chintz curtains and
silver-striped wall-paper. “If you don’t, speak up. Plenty of others.”
“It’s all right.” Mary settled into an armchair. Vera knew she liked a
double bed, but probably there wasn’t one in the house. That shade of
lavender in bedspread and rugs was one she despised. Vera had no doubt
picked it especially for her, something appropriate to age.
“What would you like? A spot of sherry? Tea? That’s it! Effie, bring
Mrs. Briscoll some tea.” Clem balanced uneasily in the doorway. “Want a
paper to read?”
“No,” said Mary. “I have to unpack.”
“Well, I can’t help you with that.” Clem teetered a moment. “Take it
easy. Vera ought to be home any minute.” He turned to go.
“Clem!” Mary’s voice halted him. “I needn’t have said that.”
“Oh, I know. I ought to do something—take steps—instead of grousing.” He
glanced at her. “I don’t know how anything’s coming out. I wake up at
night in a cold sweat. I thought if I could give them a start—the
children—But what are they to start _at_, in a world like this? And you
know, they aren’t even happy! You’ll see.” His newspapers slipped from
his elbow and crackled about his feet. He stooped for them, and as he
straightened, automatically read the leaders across the sheets. “Look at
that! If Paris falls, that’ll fix the market all right.” On the stairs
sounded Effie’s deliberate step. “Here comes your tea. Do you more good
than my ranting.” His quick smile was apologetic. “You know what Vera
thinks? She thinks if she ignores the war long enough, it will come to
an end from chagrin. Little boys showing off, and no one looking at
them.”
“Known as the ostrich technique,” said Mary. “Have some tea?”
Clem didn’t drink tea, or coffee either. He had this pain in his
stomach; the doctor couldn’t find anything; he thought he’d worry less
if they could find something definite, no matter what.
“Ticker-tape-worm,” said Mary. “That’s what ails you.”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes.” Clem’s lips jerked into a smile.
“Go read your market reports. Tea would do you less harm.”
Clem edged away. “I’ll be on the terrace, in case you want me.”
* * * * *
Mary drank her tea.... “When I was his age,” Clem had said, and Mary had
jumped on him because it might have been Will Briscoll talking about
Tom, their son. Only, Will bellowed when he was angry. “When I was your
age,” he had roared, “I had to work my way through college. I tended
furnaces for a corner of a cellar to sleep in, and I cooked my own food,
what I had.” Mary had tried to defend her son: he was just a boy; Will
didn’t want him working himself to death the way he had—Not skiis and
radios and cars in those days; what had it been? Girls, even as early as
that. Frat parties. Liquor. The same words, “When I was your age.” How
we repeat ourselves, she thought! There must be an archetype for all we
say; the pattern repeats itself endlessly. Tom had gone back to college
on probation, his senior year; and before Christmas he had enlisted.
Perhaps, after he finally came home, he had used his wounds as an
excuse—Will always thought so, and Will had died before Tom, so he
hadn’t known. “Such a pity they sewed me together again. A gold star
would be much less annoying.” Dear God, the same thing her father had
said! “If I had died, I would have been a hero.”
She wished Tom hadn’t died. She would like to talk to him. He always
made her laugh. Her eyelids lifted in long folds; she felt a mild
astonishment to see this unfamiliar room around her. She ought to unpack
some of her dresses, instead of prowling through the past. Queer the way
the past kept pushing aside the present, and dead voices sounded louder
in her mind than those that spoke today. Almost as if she were searching
for something, knowing neither its shape nor color. “But when I find it,
I’ll know,” she thought, nodding softly; “I’ll know.”
* * * * *
Vera’s voice preceded her as she hurried along the hall. “Oh, Mother,
I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you came.” At the door she stopped.
“Mother! You aren’t sick again?”
Mary cocked her head forward from the pillows. “No. I’m not. I’m just
comfortable.” Vera leaned over the bed, investigatory fingers on Mary’s
forehead before she kissed her cheek, the brim of the wide hat clipping
Mary on the head.
“You don’t feel feverish,” said Vera.
“I’m not. You look very smart.”
“I picked it up at a sale at the city.” Vera’s fingers brushed the heavy
white silk. “Good, isn’t it? But why are you in bed if—”
“Well, I’ll tell you. It was accidental.” Mary pushed the full, fine
lawn sleeves of her nightgown up from her hands. “I started to unpack. I
laid out my toilet-case. I thought I’d take off my dress so I could rest
a little; and first thing I knew, here I was, all ready for bed.” She
chuckled. “So I just went to bed.”
“I suppose the trip tired you.”
“I was thinking about something else,” said Mary.
“Heaven knows, I’m dead!” Vera drew a chair near the bed. “What an
afternoon! Really, some of the women I played with! Bridge, you know.
For the Red Cross. Anyone could come, just by paying, and _anyone_
certainly did! You know, women who don’t belong to the Country Club.
They wanted to see the inside of it, I suppose, and the members. Awful
people!”
“What’s wrong with them?” Mary’s tone was innocent enough.
“Why, you know! Simply common. Why, at one table—” Vera stopped, at a
sniff from her mother. “Of course,” she went on hastily, “we did clear
quite a nice sum. And Mrs. Poole—you know, _the_ Pooles—asked me to
serve on her committee to organize a stronger chapter. We’ve got to get
women knitting again, and rolling bandages—”
“It’s awful,” said Mary, “to think what common folks may wear them.”
Vera made a startled grimace and then laughed uneasily. “Now, don’t be
difficult, Mother. You know perfectly well what I mean.” She got to her
feet. “You’re sure you won’t come down for dinner? Peter Willowford’s
coming in, quite informally. I wanted you to meet him; I thought you
might help me with Hilda. She’s beginning to be reasonable, I think.
He’s just enough older and more experienced. As I told Hilda, after all
the advantages we’ve given her, she’s not going to be content—”
“Willowford?” asked Mary. “Is he the divorced one?”
“Just incompatibility. After all, he’d know better what he wanted the
next time, wouldn’t he?” Vera stopped and listened. From the lower hall
rose the sound of discussion, Clem’s voice, and another voice like
Clem’s, but more impassioned. “Bill’s home. He simply must clear away
that litter from the hall; it looks like an annex to a sporting-goods
store.” Vera moved with determined haste from the room, pulling the door
shut after her.
“Now, she did that on purpose,” thought Mary, “so I couldn’t hear.” Vera
had got around Hilda and her poor little love-affair. Talked her down.
“Oh, my,” thought Mary, “I can’t be bothered with them! I’m too old. All
I want is a little peace.” Peace? _I came not to send peace, but a
sword._ And a man’s foes shall be those of his own household. She
couldn’t remember how the sonorous phrases continued. _His terrible
swift sword._ Transformed now into bombers and tanks. Vera tired her
with her jittery talk. After all, Hilda was old enough to decide for
herself. Or was she? Certainly no one could have pried Mary away from
Will Briscoll. She couldn’t remember why she had been so sure; the
beginning of love was overlaid with all their years together; did a tree
remember the seed from which it grew? If Will were here today, he would
be troubled too. Perhaps he would know what she was searching for. He
might give her the word to set in order the kaleidoscopic jumble of
thoughts and recollections which had beset her all day.
She reached impatiently for a book, face down under the scarlet afghan
across her knees, and looked at the corpse that sprawled on the bright
jacket of the book. “The Case of the Missing Surplice.” A waste of time,
when she had so little left, reading mysteries. Let’s see, she had
decided the minister hadn’t committed the murder; the author was too
obvious about him. She was so absorbed that a knock on the door, and
Hilda’s entrance, left her not a second to hide the book.
* * * * *
“Hello, Grand-Mary,” said Hilda, darting toward her, the skirt of her
evening frock swinging around her slim waist. “Aren’t you the lazy one?”
She touched her finger-tips to her scarlet lips and brushed them over
Mary’s cheek. “Promise of a kiss. Don’t want to smear you all up.” She
perched on the edge of the bed, arms locked around a knee. “Look at the
gore!”
“At my age, too!” Mary mimicked Vera’s reproachful voice. “How nice you
look.” She’d forgotten how beautiful young bodies were! Skin with a
tinge of gold, like pollen over the smooth surface, fitting so perfectly
over fine bones, exquisite in their articulation; that hollow at the
base of the throat, the spring of shoulder-blades like hints of wings;
delicate flow of young, firm muscles down to the elbows, down to the
narrow wrists. “That dress is a starched petticoat and not much else!”
“Um.” Hilda looked at her arms against the stiff whiteness. “I ought to
be a darker shade of tan, to be effective. But the sun-lamp blew out all
the fuses, and the man hasn’t come to fix it.”
“Even your sunlight isn’t real,” said Mary. “Synthetic sunburn.”
“Why not?” Hilda looked at her grandmother, a wary restiveness in her
face. “You can turn it on and off yourself. At least, you can after the
electrician comes. And what do you mean, _even_?”
“Figure it out,” Mary said. She could feel resistance in the girl’s
body, a harder thrust of foot on the floor.
* * * * *
“You mean me, I suppose. Mother’s been talking, hasn’t she? Did she tell
you about the wonderful Peter Willowford?” Hilda crossed the room to a
window, and one hand swished the long curtain against the floor. “You
know what he’s like, Grand-Mary? A ripe banana, soft and plump and just
that color; and his clothes fit him elegantly, like the peel. Rich as
mud. Squashy.” She jerked at the curtain. “Here I had my mind all made
up—You have to be practical, don’t you? What’s unreal about that? Oh, I
didn’t want to come in to see you; you always find out about things.”
“My goodness,” said Mary, “why did that get under your skin?”
Hilda turned, her slight body held rigid. “Because it’s true. It’s what
he said—John.”
“John who?” asked Mary. “I never heard of any John.”
“He said I was selfish and spoiled and afraid of reality. I wish you’d
tell me why, when it’s something unpleasant, like being poor, people
call it real; but having money or position isn’t real at all. After all,
Peter Willowford’s quite important. He’s in a bank, and everything.”
(“She’s not talking to me,” thought Mary. “She’s wrestling with herself.
All I need to do is keep still.”)
“It will be years before John gets anywhere. He’s a doctor—that is, he’s
an interne now. He’s perfectly unreasonable; he says if I got a job and
helped support us now, he’d take care of me when I got to be an old
lady. That’s not when I want things; I want them now. It’s much better,
anyway, if you aren’t too crazy about a man, isn’t it? You can manage
him better. Peter’s mad about me, and so he does everything I want him
to. But John—” Her face had sharpened; it was like the face of a girl
drowning, seen through still clear water, thought Mary. “Oh, well, I’ll
get over him. I won’t go on feeling this way. Anyway, look at the people
who fall in love and get married, and what happens to them? Look at
Mother; she was in love, wasn’t she? I mean, she’s fond of Father, of
course, but—”
[Illustration: “It’s much better, isn’t it, if you aren’t too crazy
about a man. You can manage him better.”]
“The trouble with your mother is that Clem never asked enough of her.
She managed him, the way you think you’ll manage this Peter. You’re
setting out to be just like her, a taker and not a giver. That’s death
for a woman, dry rot. He who would save his life must first lose it. In
love, above all else! Love of a man, or a country.” (A land where a man
can be free, and his children after him!) “You’re afraid you’ll lose
yourself, your hard little comfort-loving pinpoint of a self!”
Hilda looked at her grandmother with strangely expressionless eyes.
Through the window burst the notes of a French horn.
“Peter,” said Hilda. “In his chariot. Coming for to carry me home.” She
stood beside the bed, digging a finger into the soft wool of the afghan,
twisting it round and round. “You and John ought to get together. You’d
have a wonderful time. If that’s the way I am, why, that’s the way I am,
isn’t it?”
“Not quite,” said Mary quietly. “Not quite. You’re scared, but you’re
still breathing.”
“Just a mess!” Hilda drew herself erect with a shiver as something
crashed against the door. “Maybe we all are in this house! That’s my
darling little brother you hear! He’s another.” She moved quickly to
fling open the door. Skiis tumbled in past her, and Bill on his knees
frowned up and went on picking up bits of phonograph records. “What
_are_ you doing?”
“What the heck d’you open that door for, just when I leaned my skiis
there? Smashing my best pieces, lugging my traps out of your way, and
why? Because that louse of a Peter—”
“You make it delightful for Grand-Mary,” said Hilda sharply.
* * * * *
“Gee, I didn’t know you were in this room!” Bill brushed Hilda aside and
strolled in, dropping the broken disks on a chair. His face was
surprisingly young, looking down from his tall, loose body; his grin was
ingenuous and ingratiating. “Hi, Gramma, what’d they put you to bed for?
I was just going to stow my gear in here. Changing things around like
this! How are you, Gramma?”
“She was all right,” said Hilda, “till you knocked down her door.”
“Say, beat it, woman! Your boyfriend’s champing around below!”
“You can’t come to dinner looking like that!” And Hilda disappeared.
“The fuss they make about this droop Willowford!” said Bill. “I thought
Christmas-time Hilda’d ditched him. You can’t tell about women, can you?
Of course he’s lined with money. But Hilda’s a good kid—I dunno—Well, we
all could use a little. Money, I mean.”
“Sit down,” said Mary. “You’re up so high I can’t see your face.” He was
restless, in a hurry to be off. He had to speak to her, but he really
didn’t see her; she was just an old woman, labeled Grand-Mary. There
might be traces in his face of the child who had liked her, in the shape
of the head, the long dark lashes over the blue eyes; but his affection
now was nothing but a recollected form.
“Well, I can’t stay, see? I got a lot of things to do.” He drew a chair
near her and folded himself down upon it, hands dangling. “You—you
staying long?”
“I don’t know.”
“I just noticed you hadn’t unpacked.”
“I just came this afternoon.” What was he leading up to, meeting her
eyes with quick, speculative glances?
“You haven’t got a radio, have you? How about me setting mine up in
here? I could get along without it.”
“I don’t want it.” Mary smiled. “What is it you want, Bill?”
“Gee, I was just thinking it’s lucky for me you’re here. You’d
understand if a fellow asked a favor, wouldn’t you?” He dropped his
voice into husky confidence. “Here I come home, no kick at all. Do I get
any credit? Dad lands on me the minute he sees me. Why, half the fellows
flunked the same courses I did! But while he’s sore like that is no time
to be trying to collect a bill, now, is it? This guy says he won’t wait
any longer; tonight’s the dead-line. I wouldn’t speak of it, only it’s
an emergency, see? I was driving this other fellow’s father’s car—” Bill
rolled his eyes toward the door, his furrowed forehead flushed; even the
parting of his crisp brown hair was scarlet.
“Whose father’s car?” Vera frowned at the clasp of a bracelet she was
fastening. “What car?”
“I was just telling Grand-Mary a little story.” Bill scrambled to his
feet. “See you later, gotta rush now.”
“You might hurry,” Vera called after him. “Your father’s cross enough
already.” She vibrated a moment in the doorway. “Was he asking you for
money? You mustn’t give him any. He’s so cute, the way he tries to get
around you.” She sighed. “Clem’s furious at him; I told him he was just
a boy. The trouble is just that Clem is upset. You’d think Paris was his
home town, the way he’s taking it. Of course it’s the market that
worries him. He got it on the radio.”
“Got what?” asked Mary. “The way you jump around!”
“I said very plainly that they were evacuating Paris.” Vera spoke with
dignity. “I don’t jump, although I might, the way everything piles up. I
don’t know where Hilda’s gone. I heard her on the telephone, but I can’t
find her. If she’s going to be difficult again about Peter! Goodness, I
envy you! I’ll have Anna bring up a tray; do you eat a heavy dinner at
night?”
“Yes, I do,” said Mary with emphasis. “I’m hungry.”
Vera sighed, slid her bracelets up her thin arms with a nervous gesture,
and went quickly away, trailing gray chiffon.
* * * * *
Mary settled into the pillows, her eyes closed. Her heart seemed to have
slipped down so that it was beating in her stomach, each thud loud and
disturbing. The trip had tired her; the family had tired her; she was
glad the twilight was deep enough now so that her eyelids could shut her
into darkness. Her heartbeats seemed very far apart, and in between them
was silence and darkness, and all the recollections, the impressions,
the images of the long day rolling at last together into the meaning she
had sought.
“A land where a man can be free, and his children after him,” she
thought. “Free? We have thought the world was run for us, that we could
go on turning always in these narrow, petty, selfish cells. We are
losing them again, peace, freedom. We had them only as a promise. My
father, my sons, and now these children. They have lost them, having no
dream to hold them safe, to strive to keep them. They are blind and
empty, passionless—I must tell them this. Perhaps Hilda heard me; it may
not be too late.” She thought: “It all begins again, the old struggle.”
She could not lift her eyelids; her heart climbed up into her throat; it
floated away like a bright and burning word. When you have the word, it
is too late to speak. It all begins again.
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcribed from Redbook Magazine, vol. 76, Mar. 1941, pp. 40-43, 69-74.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved.
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