The secrets of a marriage are most scrupulously guarded. Coverly might speak freely of his infidelities; it was his passion for fidelity that he would hide. It didn’t matter that she had accused him wrongly and cut the buttons off his shirt. It wouldn’t matter if she burned holes in his underpants and served him arsenate of lead. If she locked the door against him he would climb in at the window. If she locked the bedroom door he would break the lock. If she met him with a tirade, a shower of bitter tears, an ax or a meat cleaver it didn’t matter. She was his millstone, his ball and chain, his angel, his fate, and she held in her hands the raw material of his most illustrious dreams. He called her then and said he was coming home. “That’s all right,” Betsey said. “That’s all right.”
He had some trouble making connections for the return trip and it was not until ten that he got back the next night. Betsey was in bed, filing her nails. “Hi, sugar,” he said and sat on the bed, making a groaning sound. “Well, all right,” Betsey said, but she flung her nail file onto the table, preserving this much of her sovereignty. She went into the bathroom, closing the door, and Coverly heard the various sounds of running water, diverse and cheerful as the fountains in Tivoli. But she did not return. What had happened? Had she hurt herself? Had she climbed out the window? He threw open the bathroom door and found her sitting naked on the edge of the tub, reading an old copy of Newsweek. “What’s the matter, sugar?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Betsey said. “I was just reading.”
“But that’s an old copy,” Coverly said. “That’s about a year old.”
“Well, it’s very interesting,” Betsey said. “I find it very interesting.”
“But you’re not interested in current events,” Coverly said. “I mean you don’t even know the name of the vice president, do you?”
“That’s none of your business,” said Betsey.
“But do you know the name of the vice president?”
“That’s just none of your business,” Betsey said.
“Oh, sugar,” groaned Coverly, his feeling swamped with love, and he raised her up in his arms. Then the verdure of venery, that thickest of foliage, filled the room. Sounds of running water. Flights of wild canaries. Lightly, lightly, assisting one another at every turn they began their effortless ascent up the rockwall, the chimney, the flume, the long traverse, up and up and up until over the last ridge one had a view of the whole, wide world and Coverly was the happiest man in it. But according to him none of this had happened. How could it have?
Chapter VIII
Judge Beasely’s offices were on the second floor of the Trowbridge Block. Enid Moulton, Mabel’s sister, let Honora into the farther room where the judge sat examining or pretending to examine papers. Honora guessed that he had been asleep and she looked at him gloomily. Time, that she had seen turn so many things and men into their opposites, had forced him into the image of a hawk. She did not mean that he seemed predatory—only that the thinness of his face made what had always been a sharp nose hooked like a beak and that his thin gray hair lay on his scalp like moulting feathers. He humped his shoulders like a roosted bird. His voice was cracked but then it always had been. The skin of his nose had peeled here and there, showing a violet-colored underskin. He had been a lady-killer—she remembered that—and at eighty he still seemed proud of his prowess. Above his desk was a large, varnished painting of some antlered deer, leaving a gloomy wood to drink at a pond. The frame of the picture was festooned with Christmas tinsel. Honora gave this a glance. “I see you’re all ready for Christmas,” she said meanly.
“Hmmm,” he said, uncomprehending.
Honora told him her problem, trying to estimate its magnitude by the degrees of consternation on his thin face. His memory, his reason, seemed not impaired but retarded. When she was done he made a temple of his fingers. “County court won’t convene for another five weeks,” he said, “so they can’t indict you until then. Have they put a lien on your accounts?”
“I don’t believe so,” Honora said.
“Well, my advice, Honora, is that you go directly to the bank, withdraw a substantial sum of money and leave the country. Extradition proceedings are complicated and prolonged and the tax authorities are not altogether pitiless. They will invite you to return, of course, but I don’t think a lady as venerable as you will be subjected to any unpleasantness.”
“I am too old to travel,” Honora said.
“You are too old to go to the poor farm,” he said. The light in his eye seemed as uncomprehending as a bird and he seemed, like a drake, to have to turn his head from side to side to bring her into his vision. She said nothing more, neither thank you nor good-bye, and left the office. She stopped at the hardware store and bought a length of clothesline. When she got back to her own house she climbed directly to the attic.
Honora admired all sorts of freshness: rain and the cold morning light, all winds, all sounds of running water in which she thought she heard the chain of being, high seas but especially the rain. Liking all of this she felt, stepping into the airless attic holding a length of clothesline with which she meant to hang herself, an alien. The air was so close it would make your head swim; spicy as an oven. Flies and hornets at the single window made the only sounds of life. Calcutta trunks, hatboxes, a helm inlaid with mother-of-pearl (hers), a torn mainsail and a pair of oars stood by the window. She looped the clothesline she carried over a rafter on which was printed: PEREZ WAPSHOT’S GRAND MENAGERIE AND ANIMAL CIRCUS. Red curtains hung from the rafter marking the stage where they had performed on wet days, rain gentling that small, small world. Rodney Townsend had waked her as the sleeping beauty with a kiss. It was her favorite part. She went to the window to see the twilight, wondering why the last light of day demanded from her similes and resolutions. Why, all the days of her life, had she compared its colors to apples, to the sere pages of old books, to lighted tents, to sapphires and ashes? Why had she always stood up to the evening light as if it could instruct her in decency and courage?
The day was gray, it had been gray since morning. It would be gray at sea, gray at the ferry slip where the crowds waited, gray in the cities, gray at the isthmus, gray at the prison and the poor farm. It was a harsh and an ugly light, stretched like some upholstery webbing beneath the damask of the year. Responsive to all lights, the dark left her feeling vague and sad. The rewards of virtue, she knew, are puerile, odorless and mean, but they are none the less rewards and she could not seem to find enough virtue in her conduct to reflect upon. She had meant to bring Mrs. Potter chicken broth when Mrs. Potter was dying. She had meant to attend her funeral when she died. She had meant to spread the fireplace ashes on the lawn. She had meant to return Mrs. Bretaigne’s copy of The Bitter Tea of General Yen. She had counted every stud, nail, pew, light and organ pipe in Christ Church while Mr. Applegate, year after year, had unfolded the word of God. Patroness, Benefactor, Virgin and Saint!
She had been proud of her ankles, proud of her hair, proud of her hands, proud of her power over men and women although she knew enough about love to know that this impulse has no reflection. Pridefully she had given toys to the poor on Christmas. Pridefully she had smiled at this image of her magnanimity. Pridefully she had invented a whispering chorus of admiration. Glorious Honora, Generous Honora, Peerless Honora Wapshot. One brought energy to life, there was nothing to equal its velocity, its discernment, but could the spirit of an old woman take wing on the rain wind? She had no boisterousness left. Her usefulness was over. She tied a noose in the clothesline and dragged a trunk to beneath the rafter. This would be a trap for her gallows. The trunk lid was ajar and she saw that the papers inside had been rifled. They were family papers, private things. Who would have done this? Maggie. She was into everything: Honora’s desk, Honora’s pockets. She pieced together the torn letters in the fireplace. Why? Was it like the magic that an empty house works on a child? The King and Queen are dead. She roots through Daddy’s stud box, puts on Mummy’s beads, stirs up the humble contents of every drawer. Honora put on her glasses and looked at the disordered papers. “The President and the Board of Trustees of the Hutchins Institute for the Blind request . . .” Beneath this was a letter in faded ink: “Dear Honora, I shall be in Boston for perching cloathing for summer and fawl but will return thursday. I thinch its plaine enof now that Lorenzo wold like to have bought my land when he was theare. I am ankshus to sell. I know thears no prospect of getting a faire prise from him, jidging from the past. Dishonesty is his polesy but if you spoke with him it might affect a saile. . . .” Below this she read: “He who reads me when I am ashes is my son in wishes.”