He pushed the general’s chair into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator rose slowly and the cables gave off a very mournful sound, but filled again with stubborn joy Moses was insensitive to the premonitory power of such lifts and elevators—the elevators in loft buildings, castles, hospitals and warehouses—that, infirm and dolorous to hear, seem to touch on our concepts of damnation. “Thank you, Mr. Wapshot,” the old man said when Moses had wheeled his chair to the door. “I’ll be all right now. We’re very glad to have you with us. Melissa has been very unhappy, very unhappy and unsettled. Good night.” Back in his own room Moses shucked his clothes, brushed his teeth and stepped out onto the balcony of his room, where the rain still fell, making in the grass and the leaves a mealy sound. He smiled broadly with a great love of the world and everything in it and then, in his skin, started the climb over the roofs.
This seemed to be the greatest of the improbabilities at Clear Haven but considering what it was that he sought, to be a naked man scrambling over the leads presented nothing that was actually very irregular or perplexing. The rain on his skin and hair felt fresh and soft and the chaos of wet roofs fitted easily into the picture of love; and it was the roofs of Clear Haven, to be seen only by the birds or a stray airplane, where the architect had left bare the complexity of his task—in a sense his defeat—for here all the random majesty of the place appeared spatchcocked, rectified and jumbled; here, hidden in the rain, were the architect’s secrets and most of his failures. Peaked roofs, flat roofs, pyramidal roofs, roofs inset with stained-glass skylights and chimneys and bizarre systems of drainage stretched for a quarter of a mile or more, shining here and there in the light from a distant dormer window like the roofs of a city.
As far as he could see in the rainy dark the only way to get to the other side of the house lay past this distant row of dormers and he had started for them when a length of wire, stretched knee-high across a part of the roof, tripped him up. It was an old radio aerial, he guessed charitably, since he was not hurt, and started off again. A few minutes later he passed a rain-soaked towel and a bottle of sun-tan lotion and still further along there was an empty bottle of vermouth, making the roof seem like a beach on which someone, unknown he felt sure to Justina, had stretched out his bones in the sun. As he approached the ledge to the first lighted dormer he saw straight into a small room, decked with religious pictures, where an old servant was ironing. The lights in the next window were pink, and glancing in briefly he was surprised to see the Count D’Alba standing in front of a full-length mirror without any clothes on. The next window was Mrs. Enderby’s and she sat at a desk, dressed as she had been at dinner, writing in a book. He had gone out of the range of her desk light when his right foot, seeking a hold, moved off into nothing but the rainy dark and only by swinging and throwing his weight onto the slates did he keep from falling. What he had missed was an airshaft that cut straight through the three stories of the hall and that would have been the end of him. He peered down at this, waiting for the chemistry of his alarmed body to quiet and listening then to see if Mrs. Enderby or the others had heard the noise he made when he threw himself down. Everything was quiet and he made the rest of his climb more slowly, swinging down at last onto the balcony of Melissa’s room where he stood outside her window, watching her brush her hair. She sat at a table by a mirror and her nightgown was transparent so that even in the dim light of the room he could see the fullness of her breasts, parting a little as she leaned toward the mirror.
“You’re drenched, my darling, you’re drenched,” she said. Her look was opaque and wanton; she raised her mouth to be kissed and he unknotted the ribbons of her gown so that it fell to her waist and she drew his head down from her lips to salute her breasts. Then, naked and unshy, she crossed the floor and went into the bathroom to finish her toilet and Moses listened to the noises of running water and the sounds of opening and closing drawers, knowing that it was sensible for a lover to be able to estimate these particular delays. She came back, walking he thought in glory and turning out the lights that she passed on her way, and at dawn, stroking her soft buttocks and listening to the singing of the crows, she told him that he would have to go and he climbed in his skin back over the chaos of roofs.
It was daybreak then and Moses, unable to sleep, dressed and went out. Coming down the stairs, he saw in the strong light of morning that everything sumptuous was dirty and worn. The velvet padding on the banister was patched, there were cigar ashes on the stair carpet and the needlepoint bench at the turning was missing a leg. Coming down into the rotunda Moses saw a large gray rat. They exchanged a look and then the rat—too fat or arrogant to run—moved into the library. Crystals were missing from the chandelier, bits of marble from the floor were gone and the hall seemed like an old hotel where expensiveness and elegance had been abandoned by its company to old men, old women and the near poor. The air was stale and the chests that stood at regular intervals along the wall were ringed white from glasses. Most of the chests were missing a claw or a piece of hardware. Continuing along the hall Moses realized that he had never seen so many chests and he wondered what they contained. He wondered if the Scaddons had bought them by mail, ordered them from some dealer or succumbed to a greed for these massive, ornate and, so far as he knew, useless things. He wondered again what they contained but he did not open one and let himself out a glass door onto a broad lawn.
The women that Moses loved seemed to be in the morning sky, gorged with lights, in the river, the mountains and the trees, and with lust in his trousers and peace in his heart he walked happily over the grass. Below the house there was an old-fashioned Roman plunge with a marble curb and water spouting out of lions’ mouths and, having nothing better to do, Moses took a swim. A day that had begun brilliantly darkened suddenly and it began to rain, and Moses went back to the house to get some breakfast and talk with Justina.
Moses had written to Leander about Justina and Leander had replied without a salutation and with this title: “The Rise of a Mercenary B——ch.” Under the heading he had written: “Justina; daughter of Amos and Elizabeth Molesworth. Only child. Father was sporting gent. Good-looker but unable or unwilling to meet domestic obligations. Deserted wife & child. Was never heard from. Elizabeth supported self and daughter as dressmaker. Worked day & night. Ruined eyesight. Mouth always full of pins. Little Justina was changeling from onset or so it appeared to me. Marked taste for queenly things. Scraps of velvet. Peacock feathers, etc. Only childhood game ever indulged in was to play queen in topshelf finery. Out of place in such a town as St. Botolphs. Subject to much ridicule. Was taken on as apprentice dancing mistress by Gracie Tolland. Held sway in Eastern Star Hall above drugstore; feed store also. Place smelled of floor oil. Later played piano for movies in old Masonic Temple and J. P. Scaddon five & dime store. Waltz me around again Willie. Piano always badly out of tune.
“J. P. Scaddon then competing with Woolworth and Kresge. Millionaire but not above visiting backwoods stores. Beheld Justina tickling the ivories. Love at first sight! Transported same to New York. Amy Atkinson served as duenna. Later married Justina. Newspaper accounts omitted any mention of St. Botolphs, dressmaking mother, dancing mistress. Appeared to have sprung full-grown into high society. Justina well equipped to scrap for social position in New York bear pit. Became benefactress of Dog & Cat Hospital. Often photographed in newspaper, surrounded by grateful bow-wows. Was once asked to contribute small sum of money to local Sailor’s Home. Refused. Anxious to keep severance of ties with home-place in good condition. No children. Hobnobbed with dukes and earls. Entertained royalty. Opened big house on Fifth Avenue. Also country place. Clear Haven. All dreams come true.”