“We’re going to play bridge.”
“We’re going swimming.” Moses said.
“The pool lights are broken,” Justina said. “You can’t swim in the dark. I’ll have Giacomo fix the lights tomorrow. Tonight we’ll play bridge.”
They played bridge until after eleven and, in the company of the old general, the count and Mrs. Enderby, it was a stifling evening. When Moses and Melissa excused themselves on the next night Justina was ready. “The pool lights aren’t fixed yet,” she said, “and I feel like some more bridge.” Playing bridge that night and the night after, Moses felt restless, and it appeared to him to be significant that he was the only one who left Clear Haven; that since his wedding he had not seen a strange or a new face in the house and that, so far as he knew, not even Giacomo ever left the grounds. He complained to Melissa and she said that she would ask some people for drinks on Saturday and she asked Justina’s permission on the next night at dinner. “Of course, of course,” Justina said, “of course you want to have some young people in, but I can’t let you entertain guests until I’ve had the rugs cleaned. I’m having estimates made and they ought to be cleaned in a week or two and you can have your little party.” On Saturday morning Justina announced through Mrs. Enderby that she was tired and would spend the week end in her room, and Melissa, encouraged by Moses, telephoned three couples who lived in the neighborhood and asked them for drinks on Sunday. Late Sunday afternoon Moses laid a fire in the hall and brought the bottles out of their hiding place. Melissa made something to eat and they sat on the only comfortable sofa in the room and waited for their guests.
It was a rainy afternoon and the rain played on the complicated roofs of the old monument a pleasant air. Melissa turned on a lamp when she heard a car come up the drive and she went down the hall and through the rotunda. Moses heard her voice in the distance, greeting the Trenholmes, and he gave the fire a poke and stood as a couple, who were made by their youthfulness and their pleasant manners to seem innocuous, came into the room. Melissa passed the crackers and when the Howes and the Van Bibbers joined them the vapid music of their voices mingled pleasantly with the sounds of the rain. Then Moses heard from the doorway the horse, strong notes of Justina’s voice.
“What is the meaning of this, Melissa?”
“Oh, Justina,” Melissa said gallantly. “I think you know all these people.”
“I may know them,” Justina said, “but what are they doing here?”
“I’ve asked them for cocktails,” Melissa said.
“Well, that’s very inconvenient,” Justina said. “This day of all days. I told Giacomo he could take up the rugs and clean them.”
“We can go into the winter garden,” Melissa said timidly.
“How many times have I told you, Melissa, that I don’t want you to take guests into the winter garden?”
“I’ll call Giacomo,” Moses said to Justina. “Here, let me get you some whisky.”
Moses gave Justina her whisky and she sat on the sofa and regarded the dumb-struck company with a charming smile. “If you insist on inviting people here, Melissa,” she said, “I wish you ask my advice. If we’re not careful the house will be full of pickpockets and hoboes.” The guests retreated toward the door and Melissa walked them out to the rotunda. When she returned to the hall she sat down in a chair, not beside Moses, but opposite her guardian. Moses had never seen her face so dark.
The rain had let up. Close to the horizon the heavy clouds had split as if they had been lanced and a liquid brilliance gorged through the cut, spread up the lawn and came through the glass doors, lighting the hall and the old woman’s face. The hundred windows of the house would glitter for miles. Ursuline nuns, bird watchers, motorists and fishermen would admire the illusion of a house bathed in flame. Feeling the light on her face and feeling that it became her, Justina smiled her most narcissistic smile—that patrician gaze that made it seem as if all the world were hung with minors. “I only do this because I love you so, Melissa,” she said, and she worked her fingers loaded with diamonds, emeralds and glass in the light that was fading.
Then the stillness of a trout pool seemed to settle over the room. Justina seemed to make a lure of false promises and Melissa to watch her shadow as it fell through the water to the sand, trying to find in her guardian’s larcenous words some truth. Justina’s face gleamed with rouge and her eyebrows shone with black dye and it seemed to Moses that somewhere in the maquillage must be the image of an old woman. Her face would be seamed, her clothes would be black, her voice would be cracked and she would knit blankets and sweaters for her grandchildren, take in her roses before the frost and speak mostly of friends and relations who had departed this life.
“This house is a great burden,” Justina said, “and I have no one to help me bear it. I would love to give it all to you, Melissa, but I know that if you should predecease Moses he would sell it to the first bidder.”
“I promise not to,” Moses said cheerfully.
“Oh, I wish I could be sure,” she sighed. Then she rose, still beaming, and went to her ward. “But don’t let there be any hard feeling between us, sweet love, even if I have broken up your little party. I warned you about the rugs, but you’ve never had much sense. I’ve always been able to wrap you around my fingers.”
“I won’t have this, Justina,” Moses said.
“Keep out of this, Moses.”
“Melissa is my wife.”
“You’re not her first husband and you won’t be her last and she’s had a hundred lovers.”
“You’re wicked, Justina.”
“I’m wicked, as you say, and I’m rude and I’m boorish and I discovered, after marrying Mr. Scaddon, that I could be all these things and worse and that there would still be plenty of people to lick my boots.” Then she turned to him again her best smile and he saw for once how truly powerful this old dancing mistress had been in her heyday and how she was like an old Rhine princess, an exile from the abandoned duchies of upper Fifth Avenue and the dusty kingdoms of Riverside Drive. Then she bent and kissed Melissa and removed herself gracefully from the room.
Melissa’s lips were drawn as if to check her tears. Moses went to her eagerly, thinking that he could take her out of the atmosphere of breakage that the old woman had left in the room, but when he put his hands on her shoulders she twisted out of his reach.
“Would you like another drink?”
“Yes.”
He put some whisky and ice in her glass.
“Shall we go up?”
“All right.”
She walked ahead of him; she didn’t want him at her side. The encounter had damaged her grace and she sighed as she walked. She held her whisky glass in both hands before her like a grail. She seemed to emanate weariness and pain. It was her charming custom to undress where she could be seen but this evening she went instead to the bathroom and slammed the door. When she returned she was wearing a drab gray dress that Moses had never seen before. It was shapeless and very old; he could tell because there were moth holes in it. A row of steel buttons, pressed to look like ships in full sail, ran from the tight neck to the sagging hem, and the shape of her waist and her breasts was lost in the folds of gray cloth. She sat at the dressing table and removed her earrings, her bracelets and pearls, and began to brush the curl out of her hair.