Chapter II: Part 2

He waited politely for her to finish, ignoring for the moment the Italian woman, her uncovered dark hair in a loose knot in the plump ridge of her neck, who was shaking a banana at him and saying how mucha, how mucha; he was a nice young man, thought Margaret, as she stepped crisply out of the store.

She walked to the garage, to leave word for Sam. Tomorrow was his regular day, he might have come anyway, but leaving word was one more errand. Bill, in boots and rubber apron, had a car on the washing stand. He held the hose away from Margaret, touched his green eye shade with wet fingers. “You don’t want a taxi yet, Miss Turner?”

“Not just yet.” Bill made it sound like a friendly joke; he drove her to the station with her trunk and bags, when she left in the fall, he drove her home again in the spring, but he always mentioned the taxi, quite as if she might recklessly order one out at any time. She explained about Sam, and Bill thought he’d probably see the kid, he hung around a lot.

She could see the mouth of the river through the rear door of the garage, with a coal barge drawn up along the dock. “Nice to see the sun again,” said Bill, as she walked away. She thought of Susan’s shining car standing near the red gasoline pump, and Bill beside it, his shrewd, homely, grimy face puckered with that expression she had seen in Sam’s eyes. If Susan didn’t know how they—yes, leer was the word for it!—how they all leered at her very name, it was high time someone told her.

Still an hour to wait before the bus came. Margaret went slowly along the narrow street which edged the river, the old docks and piers on one side, a row of one-story wooden buildings on the other, half of them closed, tattered advertisements of beer or tobacco tacked on the boards nailed over the old windows. When she was a child, this was the busiest street in town, with saloons, The Sailors’ Snug Harbor, The Oasis, with lunch places, shops smelling of tarred rope and metal; no nice girl ever walked down it alone, even to look at the lumber schooners, the fishing sloops, which lay along the wharves, the girls who did walk there didn’t go to look at the ships. Behind one dusty window was a pile of slickers, straddled by a pair of black fisherman’s boots, farther along a sign above a door said BEER, but for the most part the street was abandoned, as were the docks. Almost, thought Margaret, as if the sea had retired from business. Motor vans boomed along highways with the freight now, the sons and grandsons of the sailors and fishermen worked in the factories back from the waterfront, or didn’t work on W.P.A. projects. She walked, placing her white shoes with caution on worn planks, out to the end of the longest pier, the one from which the excursion steamer used to run. When they’d opened Grady’s Amusement Park, they had painted the little steamer shining white, and advertised moonlight sails to the Park. But who wanted a slow boat, a crowd of people? Margaret had heard stories of what went on in the cars parked along the beaches. She looked at the ticket office, the locked turnstile, the blank window, and then seated herself on the wooden bench.

Her father had taken them on a Sunday excursion once; she must have been very young, for she could remember her brother Robby in a round straw hat and a sailor collar. She had been seasick, she could smell now the dust-stuffy, pricky smell of the green plush on the seat in the ladies’ cabin where she had lain miserably, her mother sitting beside her. Why, that was the real reason—She stared at the water, dark, an oily iridescence in the eddies it made around the end piles of the pier—That time Lester Field had asked her to go—if she had gone, her whole life would have been different. She couldn’t exactly see his face, not as he had been then; superimposed upon the young face was the face of the older Lester as she had seen him just once, twenty years later, a face of heavy whitish flesh, like wax, with irresolute mouth and dull eyes, the underlids sagging. He had been killed hunting, that fall. Drunk, they said. Well, he married Susan for her money and she gave him a run for it. The village talked thus about Susan even then, almost thirty years ago.

All Margaret could catch now of the young face was the heavy stroke the eyebrows made, the imperious stare of the dark eyes, the assurance of his smile. He had finished law school, he had come back to town to spend the summer in his father’s office, he had come out to the farm with some papers for her father to sign, he had seen Margaret, he had come back, often. “He’s hanging around too much,” her mother had said. “I don’t like it. I wouldn’t like him anyway, and you have to face the fact he’s not the same class, and that just means trouble.” Margaret couldn’t listen to her. (What a sweet baby you are, Margie! Kiss me! What’s the harm?) Where, in her staid, neat body lingered the echo of that ecstasy? Lester had planned the whole thing. A friend of his, and his girl. Margaret could tell her mother she was spending the night with her—and now she couldn’t remember the girl’s name! There was a full moon. Lots of good places on the old boat where no one can see us, just you and me, Margie, and the moon and the water! Margaret had refused. I couldn’t, Lester. It wouldn’t be right. She had been faint with longing to go, she had consoled herself in bitter days afterwards that at least she had resisted temptation, she had lived up to her standards. A gull circled over her, so near she saw its round bright eye, and its cry as it swooped away was like a derisive laugh. _Aorr_, he screamed, that’s how you kept your virtue, afraid you would be seasick! Had that been the reason, or was this only an ironic trick of her nerves, this lonely afternoon? Lester had been angry; before Margaret saw him again, Susan had come home from abroad. If I had gone with him that night, he was angry because he thought I did not care enough for him—He had begun to love me—I could have held him, in spite of Susan.

Margaret got to her feet, her paper bag crackled against her knee, she set her mouth firmly, what possessed her, harking back to all these old, long-lived-past moments? She was like those gulls, walking with their stiff ungraceful balance at the edge of the receding tide, under the shored-up bank from which the pier ran out, pecking over the marginal debris. The odor of the water was strong in her nostrils, brackish, fishy, town-tainted, unlike the clean salt pungency of her own shore. She wouldn’t come in town again unless she had to; she didn’t like it.

Nor did she care much for the bus ride to her door. She stared out of the rattling, half-opened window, trying not to be in any way a part of the company in which she rode, women in flowered beach pajamas, in slacks, their rotundities bulging comfortably, bandanas, not too clean, tied under their chins, the ends wagging with gum-chewing and shrill talk, grubby children scrabbling all over the seats, half naked, scratches on their sunburned legs. Too early for the night crowd at Grady’s, these were part of the colony this side of Grady’s Park, summer cottages to rent by week or month, they rode in to the village movies as often as the bill changed. Riff-raff. Margaret hadn’t been along the shore as far as the cottages since they were first built; she’d heard they were run down, rents had been reduced, the owner couldn’t half fill the places, families didn’t take vacations any more. A shame they’d let people like that in, lowering the tone of the place. That was the first property Susan’s agent had sold, Susan had pocketed the money without the least concern what happened to the land. There was distance enough between Margaret’s house and the cottages so that she seldom saw the inhabitants, except on such a bus ride. But she thought how nice it would have been to have two or three pleasant summer homes along the shore, with what she called desirable people; she could have called on them, they could have dropped in to see her. One of the children stopped beside her seat, a scrawny little girl, the scanty front of her playsuit sagging away from her flounder-flat front. She was working on an ice-cream cone, boring a hole with her tongue in the melting chocolaty mound, she stared with shrewd, pale eyes under wisps of sun-bleached hair at Margaret. The bus bounced off the edge of the pavement, passing a car, and back again, the child fell in against Margaret’s knee, Margaret’s quick hand pushed child and dripping cone away, they were a heap at her feet, sticky cone planted on her ankle, a startled _awk_ from the child. Margaret contracted, a violent physical withdrawal, at this violation of her privacy, her isolation, her very cleanliness. “Look what you’ve done, you bad little girl!” she said, fiercely. The child was hoisting her pointed stern, a gurgle of despair coming from near the dirty bus floor. She couldn’t make it, what with the narrow space, the jerking of the bus. Margaret leaned forward, she had to do something, she slid her hands along the thin, smooth back, she pulled the child up. Amazingly, the child settled on the seat beside her, leaning against Margaret’s arm, wedging what was left of the ice cream into the cone again with dirty fingers, proceeding solemnly to lap it with her pointed tongue. I had forgotten how small a child’s arm feels, how small and hard a child’s body, light, warm, like a little unfeathered bird—

“Ardelia, you come here, stop bothering the lady, you come here, I say!”

Ardelia slid to the floor, her eyes holding to Margaret’s face for a moment, with that shrewd, unblinking stare, almost as if she measured the confusion Margaret felt. What nonsense, thought Margaret, dabbing with a Kleenex at the smudge on her ankle, then jerking at the bell cord. The bus driver watched her in his mirror, he pulled to a stop, and she climbed stiffly down, not looking once at anyone in the bus as she left. She was a dirty little thing, thought Margaret, angrily. Her arm still kept that pressure, warm, light, those small, smooth bones. Lucky that mess didn’t land on my dress, I’ll have to change my stockings. What was the matter today, that loneliness should take so many forms to trip her? Her house waited for her, charming, quiet, its own shadow from the low sun stretching dark across the lawn almost to her feet. The tin flag on her postbox was down, she opened the front and took out not only the daily paper, but two letters. One had the school address smartly printed on the flap. She didn’t recognize the writing on the other. As she fitted her key into the lock, she told herself firmly, your holiday is almost over, you should be enjoying it instead of having such megrims. She had heard somewhere that these summer colds left you depressed, a kind of poison in the system. Maybe she should get a tonic. She put away her purchases methodically, she set her hat on the padded hat-tree in the hall closet, and then she went into the living room with paper and letters. Her reading glasses were in a drawer of the desk; she seated herself in the armchair near a window, and waited a moment, hoping for the surge of comfort which homecoming should bring, a moment to feel that warm recognition that she, Margaret Turner, had done this for herself, gained for herself this setting, this position. But today she was uneasy. She turned the letter from the school in her fingers, she found it lightly sealed, and ran her thumb under the flap. Just a note, she thought, about which day she should appear for conferences with parents.

She read the letter twice, with no shock, rather with feeling that she had read it before, that she had known all day, all summer, that it would lie in her postbox, awaiting her. The Head Mistress of the school knew that Margaret would understand, she was sorry to write so late, but probably Margaret would be relieved that she could now stay in her charming home, in the spring she had thought the budget for salaries was properly balanced, but one or two bad investments, if any investments nowadays were anything but bad, and so forth. The point being, at the end of the third page, that Lucy Alder, the assistant, could handle all the classes in mathematics, and Margaret needn’t come back. Be sure to keep in touch with us, with deep appreciation of your splendid service.

Margaret folded the letter along the creases, but she couldn’t get it to slide into the envelope, it crackled and would not go in. She laid it beside her on the table, moving her hand cautiously, as if something slept here in the house which a sudden movement, a noise, might waken. Still quietly she opened the second letter, and looked at the printed circular which the non-revealing envelope contained, her face creasing wrily. Strictly confidential, to teachers, loans arranged, no other security required, no signatures except your own, absolute privacy. Teachers were all hard up, then. Or they were easy marks. But she wasn’t a teacher any more, didn’t they understand? Then she unfolded the newspaper, spread it on her knees. The words were there under her eyes, but they were only marks, signifying nothing. So she sat still, her hands lying on the paper, open, empty, inert. The light in the room changed, as the sun dropped under the horizon. A soft afterglow made amber highlights on polished surfaces of wood, tinted the pale ground of the chintz curtains, lay for a moment across Margaret’s hands.

I might as well get my supper, she said, presently. I can’t do anything about it, not tonight, anyway. If she moved softly, she wouldn’t rouse the thing that slept, she knew its shape, but she could pretend she didn’t know it was there at all. It stirred as she went into the kitchen, with her thought: I can make the payment on the mortgage this fall, the tax bill at the end of September, but then what do I eat, what do I burn for warmth? Oh, not tonight! I have time enough to plan, to figure out a way—Time? She stumbled, and her hand clung against the paneling of the door.

* * * * *

By the middle of September Margaret had reached a cessation of worry. At least, the part of her mind that tried to look ahead, to plan, had stopped its endless fumbling search for a way out, after it had worn smooth the walls of the dark and narrow shaft into which she had been plunged, and found no crack. She had tried several things. She had made a package of the few bits of jewelry she owned, an old watch of her father’s in a hunting case, earrings of her mother’s, a diamond stick-pin that had come with the letters and photograph from Robert’s landlady; she had taken the train one wet day early in September to the city, and after walking past the doorway three times, had forced herself into the pawnbroker’s shop, past the counters of revolvers, musical instruments, clocks and candlesticks, to the dusty, railed office at the rear. The proprietor, like a queer beetle with his magnifying lens for an eye, offered her four dollars for the lot, and that’s more than they’re worth. Without a word she had wrapped them again in tissue paper and walked out. She had then written to Martha Miller, the plump ex-teacher who had wanted to visit her in the summer, suggesting that if Martha hadn’t found a place to spend the winter, she might like to stay with Margaret. If I furnish the house, and you pay for the food—She sent the letter in care of the school, and two days later it came back, with a note from the secretary. Dear Miss Turner, No one seems to have Miss Miller’s address, if I hear I’ll let you know.

She had thought she might get some teaching to do in the village schools. Not full time, she’d retired because she didn’t wish to go back to the city, but a class in algebra, perhaps, or tutoring, a few hours a week. She was sorry she had made the inquiry, she dwindled and aged so under the apathetic stare of the superintendent, a youngish man with large hands from which the coat sleeves rode up. “Just a sort of bus man’s holiday,” she had said, brightly. “After so many years—” They had a waiting list, girls from Normal School; he didn’t know whether they could even keep the schools open all winter, he’d heard rumors—

She had finally, with a fluttering desperation which made her talk too fast and give breathless little laughs, gone to the real estate office in the village. She had retired, she explained, to the portly man with ashes on his vest, who had laid down his cigar, taken off his hat, and tipped his chair forward at her entrance. She thought she might like to spend the winter in town, at a good boarding house, did he think he could rent her house, he knew it, very desirable, of course she wouldn’t want a family, a large family—He had picked up his unlighted cigar, poked it into a corner of his mouth, and tipped his chair back. How much did she expect? Nobody would want to go out there for the winter, he didn’t know as they would even in the summer, he’d put it on the list, property out that way wasn’t worth much, folks just wanted a bed and a bath-house. He chewed reflectively, rubbing a finger over the crease in his bald forehead. “I tell you, Mrs. Turner,” he said, “the trouble is, they ain’t no money now, folks haven’t found what to use _for_ money.”

When Margaret opened the door of her house that evening, she felt apologetic; she had offered it to vandals, and even that had been of no use. When she wrote the check for the mortgage payment, she folded the checkbook hastily and shut it away in a drawer, before her eye, so used to figures, could give her the balance left.

The Labor Day week end ended the season for Grady’s Park. The fireworks woke Margaret from a light, uneasy sleep, she heard cars passing all night. After that, the families moved away from the shore, driving past in laden sedans, mattresses rolled and tied on top, baby carriages and chairs wobbling at the side. School had opened, summer was over, everyone had a place to go, had to go, except Margaret. She was restless, the thin, high, valiant call of migrant birds flying under the night sky, which she heard in her wakeful hours, was like the voice of her own need to be off, to be fitted again into the routine of work. She told herself she was glad she didn’t have to walk through those chattering crowds of girls, to try to keep order in study period, to explain the square of _a_ plus _b_, or what _x_ equals to young things for whom _x_ equalled only swing music and a movie hero and love. If she could remember how wretched she had always been just at this time in September, when she had set the house in order and closed it for the winter! For a day or so she waited eagerly for the postman. Perhaps the Head Mistress would write saying that after all she needed Margaret, Lucy Alder had been taken sick, or married, or registration was so heavy. But never did Margaret think of writing to the school, Look, I’ve worked all these years for you, I don’t know where to turn—She couldn’t destroy the pleasant picture of Margaret Turner, gentlewoman, with background, home, enviable, independent. She was detached now, floating in unreality, but if she destroyed that picture she had allowed them to construct of her, what would she be? She knew exactly how they would shove her into oblivion. No one could afford sympathy in these days; if you seemed an object for—not even sympathy, just reasonable assistance—the technique was to turn upon you, accusingly. You should have known better, you should have made provision; they tied the guilt about your neck like a flat-iron, and pushed you out of sight. That way you no longer troubled them. Look at Martha Miller, they didn’t even know where she was! And Simmsy, and the others. At least, thought Margaret, I can keep my pride.

She found it hard to keep the picture of herself clear. She missed the casual inquiries, did you have a pleasant summer, you must have, of course, in that sweet house of yours, I suppose you just hated to come away, back to the same old grind. She said, I’m just restless because I’ve had to get to work so many years, when I get used to it—Sometimes her head felt curiously light, as if indeed she floated, the pull of gravity gone, as if she were in fact detached from the earth. Perhaps she wasn’t eating enough, although she thought, I must keep up my strength, I mustn’t get sick. She told Sam he needn’t come again, grass didn’t have to be cut in September, and then the persistent rains made the lawns as lush and green as in June. She pushed the lawn mower herself, leaning against the wooden handle, her heart whirring like the blades. The thick foliage of the wet summer still clung green to all the trees, almost as if the change of season had failed for them as well as for Margaret. No use worrying, she thought, woman or tree; there is nothing to be done about it. Nothing.

Her subscription to the newspaper expired on the eighteenth and she didn’t renew it. Extraordinary, how many things she had spent money for which she didn’t need. With no paper, she could omit that trip to the postbox, trailing through the incessant rain, feeling the sodden ground suck at her feet, the gusty wind pluck at her umbrella. They should have a spell of bright, warm weather after the deluge. She didn’t like to start making fires yet, if she was careful, she could get along for weeks and weeks on the wood stacked in the wood-shed. She could bring up driftwood for the fireplace, if ever it dried out.

She hadn’t thought of Susan Lathrop Field since the letter from the school. For one thing, the rain had kept her from walking past the old house to the shore; for another, the letter had for a time wrenched her out of the past, even out of the present, had knocked her flat against the solid, crackless future. But when she woke Wednesday morning, she knew she had been dreaming again of Susan. A young Susan, saying, “You’re so smart, Margaret, only you’re scared of things.” Had she ever said that, or had the dream only remembered some impatient moment when Susan tried to urge the child Maggie into action? I’m not scared any more, thought Margaret, surprised. She could move her mind into the place where fear had dwelt, and feel its emptiness, much as she might run her tongue into the gap where an aching tooth had been drawn. I wish I could see Susan, before—She stopped again, not defining that _before_. There was no rain against the windows, but the light within the room had an irregular pulsing change, from dull shadow to a quick pearl-gray, almost a hint of sun, and then to shadow again. Margaret stood at a window, tying her bathrobe cord. The vault of the sky had an uneasy counterpoint, high, thin dark clouds sweeping northward, like strokes from a fine brush, lower, cottony masses of clouds drifting more lazily toward the south, and from the rocky shore the pounding of waves. Perhaps the rainy spell was breaking up, she thought, she might walk down to see the surf.

She bathed and dressed quickly; she couldn’t dally in the morning, she’d had too many years of training. It seemed warm enough for a summer frock, recklessly she took from her neat closet a white linen dress, recklessly because she would have to launder it herself. But she liked to iron; there was a simple pleasure in subduing wrinkled cloth to perfect smoothness. The whiff of heated cotton, of starch, of bees-wax in the scorched pad, was in her nostrils, she remembered it as the smell of pride itself, the day she had been promoted from sheets and towels, her mother had allowed her to iron one of Father’s shirts, white, with tucked bosom, she had stood on a box beside the ironing board, she could hear the _szz_ with which the iron spat at her moistened finger-tip. Later moments of achievement had never surpassed that one.

The green belt was loose about her waist; that was good. She’d always put on weight in the fall, eating those elaborate luncheons in the school dining room. The final glimpse of herself in the mirror—even her hair looked better this morning, shining-white, the ends tucked under and pinned, she was getting so she did it pretty well herself—gave her an unexplained feeling of anticipation. There’s nothing that can happen, she thought. Nothing left to happen to me. But she moved more lightly than she had for days, setting her bedroom in order, turning back sheets and blankets over a chair to air, preparing tea and toast for her breakfast. Whenever she listened, she could hear the waves down on the shore, but she postponed the walk she had promised herself, saying, first I will do this, and that. Be a good girl and finish your work first, then you can go and play. She smiled, hearing the words from her childhood. She had neglected her house lately, running around on footless errands. Not that anything was dusty; the rains had prevented that. But this morning every polished surface had a dulling over it, as if the day had laid a warm mouth close and blown upon it. Margaret rubbed tables and chairs and floors bright again, she wiped off the inside of the small-paned windows. Once or twice the sun shone out, several times the rain started again, an onslaught of long, slanting lines which stopped abruptly. When Margaret had finished the stint she had set herself, well past noon, the rain seemed to have ceased, and as she stood at her front door, the raincoat over her arm beating in the wind, she saw how shadows of torn clouds moved swiftly over the sun-lit landscape, like waves of an advancing tide of night. She hesitated a moment, because the wind was strong, but the surf pounded loud, and she thought, I ought to see it, I don’t remember ever hearing it so loud.

She had to step back inside the hall to get her arms into the sleeves of the raincoat, she tied a scarf over her head, she locked her door and hid the key under one of the stones that bordered the row of tattered perennial stalks, glancing first up and down the deserted highway to make sure no one watched. Then she pushed herself into the wind, she leaned against it, she climbed against it, breathing hurt, it was a great hand laid against her chest, pressing it back against her spine. She reached the shelter of the old barn, and stopped, gasping. She could breathe there, and the air tingled to the tips of her fingers. She wouldn’t be beaten by a few gusts, she meant to look at the water. The ground was littered with leaves, they ran on the wind, not single and brown as in the fall, but torn clumps, branches of green leaves. Behind her the wind scooped at the barn roof, and old gray shingles flew off, no noisier than the leaves. Presently she went on, turning sidewise, ducking her head. The house afforded another lee, as she passed it, she walked close to it, liking the space of silence under the walls, the noise and the wind came over the roof like a wave, not touching her, breaking farther out in the great trees. She ducked her head again, wading through the long wet grass toward the shore, and suddenly, although the sun shone now, her face was wet, her lashes were beaded. She tasted salt on her lips, and saw the spray break above the rocks. Queer, because the tide was low now, she had looked it up in her almanac that morning, she had thought the rain had stopped as the tide ebbed. Instead, even on the sheltered shore where the bath-house stood, the waves broke higher than the top step, the air was full of salt spray, stinging her eyelids so that she could scarcely see the craziness of the water beyond the point. That’s very queer, she thought. I must have made a mistake, it’s high tide now. She rubbed her eyelids dry. The reef which made the extension of the rocky shore beyond the point, and protected the harbor side, was now so submerged it had no line of breakers, and as Margaret stared, one wave—a seventh wave, she thought, remembering a bit of child lore—rushed up, a splendid smooth wall of green, over the rocks, broke into white over the grass, and crawled back as if discomfited at that strange contact. Then, without a sound above the wind and water, the old bath-house rose slowly, a foot or two, and lurched forward, flattening like a cardboard box, sliding out uncertainly as the beach was sucked bare between waves. A huge cloud shadow moved over the water, dimming the brilliant green and white to gray, almost to black, it covered the land, too, and Margaret turned inland. If it meant to rain again, she had better hurry back to her house. It would be less lonely inside a house; the curious excitement of anticipation which had carried her since waking, like a wave, had broken all about her feet into complete solitude. She had just taxed herself too much, fighting the wind. It was behind her now, she went quickly with it, head down, she felt flat as paper, the wind carrying her along. When she reached the old house, she would stop for a moment on the kitchen porch, to rest.

She saw, not believing, that the long weathered green shutters of the drawing room at the corner of the house were open. Had the wind—Then she saw that the inner blinds were folded back, a figure moved within the room. The wind swept her on, in spite of her desire to stand there, staring, around the corner of the house. The side door, under the porte-cochere, was open, a man stood there, poised in haste to be off, a youngish stocky man with a brimmed cap pushed back on his head. Margaret had a good look at him, square forehead, handsome eyes under full lids, a young mouth twisted impatiently, a short, round chin that jutted well forward.

“What do you want to stay here for?” he was saying. “Come along with me now, and save me the trip back.”

“It won’t take you ten minutes to drive out for me.” The voice came from within the hall, and at its sound, full, rich, amused, Margaret lifted her head, moved a step nearer, leaning stiffly against the push of the wind. “Run along, darling?”

“You’re crazy! A day like this—”

“It’s a nice day, Eddie. Exciting, here at the shore. I won’t go sit in that garage while you tinker over the car. I’ll look for that box I told you about. Why, maybe I won’t go with you when you come back!”

Eddie’s face changed, it was impudent and cajoling. “You promised!”

“Before I came back here, came—home. I had forgotten—” The voice drew Margaret to the edge of the steps. Eddie shrugged, he flung up one hand as the elm behind him bent in the wind and straightened again, with a noise through all its wet leaves like the tearing of paper.

“Listen to that! I don’t like it!” he cried out, “I don’t like leaving you!” Then he saw Margaret. As he stared, a figure moved through the doorway to stand on the narrow porch, a plump figure stepping briskly on small feet in high-heeled wine-colored sandals, a wine-colored coat fluttering as the wind caught it, the long bands of golden lynx flattening in the wind, the chiffon veil which tied on the brimmed hat moving, and there, above the fur, under the hat, a small face, pointed, wrinkled, with an astonishing russet rim of curled hair, with eyes green and alive and laughing under penciled brows and darkened lashes, there stood Susan herself.

“You’re just a poor little city fellow,” she was saying. “Any weather makes you nervous as a kite. Who’s that?” One hand, with a flash of maroon-lacquered cusps, dove into the softly moving lynx over the deep, full bosom, came out with a sparkling lorgnette, and through it Susan looked at Margaret. “No, don’t tell me! Let me guess!” She came forward, stepping like a pigeon on her stilted sandals, peering down, and Margaret braced herself, her hands hard against the rough surface of the granite step, her heart beating in her palms. “It is—” (How had she forgotten that voice of Susan’s, the way it made each word round and separate and charged with meaning, not the dull words that other people spoke, but sound made of feeling itself, like notes plucked softly on a violin, or like the speech of birds.) “It’s Maggie! Those eyes! It is Maggie!” She made a gay, grasping gesture with her hands, the lorgnette swinging on its chain. “Come up here where I can see you!”

Margaret moved up the steps, past the young man, who eyed her without curiosity, chewing his lip, impatient at the interruption; she was pinned for a moment against lynx and soft bosom, scent of perfume and powder pricking through the warm salt wet odor of the wind, Susan was kissing her with lips powdery and dry under the lipstick, her mouth had changed, the upper lip was thin and fine in spite of paint, the under lip had transverse creases in its fullness. “Darling little Maggie! This is perfect!” Susan had Margaret’s cold fingers between the soft palms of her two hands. “You can stay with me while Eddie mends the car. This is an old friend, Eddie. When I was a little girl—” Susan stopped, her head a little at an angle, her lively eyes inspecting Margaret, her smile quick and sly. “Maggie was very good to me, she was lots older, but she let me tag her around, didn’t you? Run along, Eddie, darling! I don’t care if you never come back!”

“You’ll get your fill of this before I’m back,” said Eddie, firmly, and Margaret pulled her fingers out of Susan’s grasp, she stood stiff, her knees quivering, she opened her mouth to speak. But Eddie, with a quick salute, was running along the driveway, the two women watching him, through the brandishing branches of trees there was a glimpse of the car, long and cream-colored and shining, pointed in from the highway. “He didn’t dare drive in, this old lane is soft,” said Susan. The wind carried away all sound, they saw the car back away, vanish, silent as a dream. Susan sighed. “He’s crazy about that car, we practically drowned it this morning, where was it, I don’t remember, the roads were rivers, just rivers, Maggie! You’d never believe it. So we turned back, to try this route, and the motor began to spit. There we were, at Eastbourne. I said, Eddie, you better drive straight on to New York, I warn you! But would Eddie? No. I tell him if he’d treat a woman as he does that car!” Susan laughed. “So then I came here.” Something fey leaped in her green eyes, drifted across her pointed face. “The wind shouted at me, come home, Susan, before it is too late! And here you are!”

Margaret held her hands down against the flutter of her raincoat, she said, stiffly, “I’m not older than you!”

Susan blinked at her, and then laughed. “I just said that, you know how men are! I thought you were, I really did! You _have_ kept your figger, but you’ve let your hair go white. Um-um. Let’s go inside, I can’t hear in this wind, I don’t like standing around, my feet are too small.” She slid her hand under Margaret’s arm, she trotted her along into the house, it was a dive into stillness, into an absence of buffeting which bewildered Margaret, she was a child, following Susan’s bidding, all her protests, her planned upbraiding whisked away like the leaves which filled the air around the house. The hall was dim, but the drawing room had light from the long windows where the shutters had been opened, dust covers shrouded the chairs, the divan, even the crystal chandelier, everything was muted to gray, a gray film of dust over the squares of the parquetry floor, beyond the windows a film of gray, not dust, over the sky. Green-gray mildew made queer patterns, a geography of decay, over the wall paper with its gold and satin stripes. The cool, fusty air within the house was sucked out through the opened door, the warm breath of the wind flowed in around them.

“It’s a good deal like a tomb,” said Susan. “But Eddie had to close the windows again, that wind would blow the paper off the wall! Maggie, it’s wonderful to see you! Take that thing off your head. Your hair is pretty, just as heavy as ever, isn’t it? Do you think white hair softens a face? I’ve wondered sometimes—but a man never likes white hair, you know, he sees that first—Ah, you’re really the same Maggie, I always liked white on you, proud and quiet—You sit here by the window, I have to find something, a box of trinkets. I think I can lay my hand right on it. Then you must tell me everything you’ve done—”

Margaret stood there in the middle of the room where Susan left her, listening to the quick tap of heels across the hall. On the wide stairs the velvet-padded stair-runner absorbed the sound, but presently it came again overhead, little flurries of taps, like a Morse code of a search for a box of trinkets. She thought, now is my chance to say the things I’ve wanted to, so long; but she thought it doubtfully and in confusion, her heart beat too rapid. So long—since anyone had called her Maggie, had, in a glance, looked past her neat and formal outer self, had—oh, however lightly, gaily!—looked at her with human warmth. It’s just her voice, thought Margaret, sounding as if she cared more than she does. Look at her, decked out like a girl, traipsing about with that—that Eddie, shameless—She listened to the faint sounds overhead, she thought, I don’t have to stay here, I can go on to my own house, and she wished, instead, to follow Susan upstairs, because the drawing room without her was high and gray and empty, and the air that blew in warm puffs through the open door was the breath of restlessness.

The footsteps overhead had stopped, and Margaret moved to one of the long windows. She didn’t want Susan thinking she’d been struck dumb and immovable by her! The window was recessed, the blinds folded back on each side, and from the narrow, closed slats there rose a fine dust, flecks of dried enamel, circling in spirals up the window edges. I never saw wind do that, thought Margaret. Holding her hands out toward the glass, she felt it, a strong suction against the palms. A branch struck the window, startling her, leaves crumpled and torn, clung to the glass as the branch fell away. Rain had started again, fine slanting rain, which obscured the water, she was not sure whether she really saw gray waves running over the grass, well in beyond the rocky shore, as if the ocean were moving inland, or whether she saw only the rain. Even within the house now she could hear the water, loudly enough so that she was again not sure what she had heard in the hall. But she went quickly across the room. Something small and hard slid under the ball of her foot as she stepped into the hall, on the bottom step of the wide stairs was a heap of lynx fur and wine-colored coat, the hat knocked forward, hiding the face.

“Don’t step on them, they’re all over the place!” Susan pushed back her hat, thrust her feet out straight in front. “Damn that stair carpet!”

“Did you fall? Have you hurt yourself?” Margaret ran across to the stairs on tiptoe, skirting the small red velvet box which lay there, its cover bent open, its contents scattered. “Susan!”

“I damned near took a header.” Susan hitched herself upright, she wriggled first one toe, then the other. “Don’t you pull me up, not yet. Pick up that stuff for me while I get my breath.” She threw aside her hat, her hair, an astonishing brick color in the dim hall, stood up over her small head in wisps and curls.

“Those heels are enough to kill anybody,” said Margaret, as she bent to gather up the box and its contents.

“Nonsense.” Susan drew in her feet, her skirts sliding above her knees, she laid a hand around each slim ankle. “I was hurrying, that’s all. I wanted to see you before Eddie gets back.”

“This is the box you had—” Margaret drew a finger over the velvet. “I remember it.” White satin lining, yellowed with age, gold clasp, the cover dangling by one hinge. Most of the contents lay where the box had fallen, rings, a child’s bracelet of gold, a brooch of garnets, a gold necklace with a locket, a pearl in the center of a blue enameled flower. Margaret stood erect, her temples throbbing, the necklace hanging from her finger.

“It was my first jewel case,” said Susan. “I had forgotten it, it was in the little wall safe in the bedroom, the one I open with my initials. I thought there were some pearls in it. I told Eddie I’d have them made into studs.” She giggled. “He’s never had a dress suit, he’s going to get one.”

“You gave me this, once,” said Margaret.

“What is it?” Susan squinted toward her. “Oh, that. How’d it get in the box, then?”

Margaret set the box on Susan’s knee, she let the necklace fall into the satin bed. “You forgot to give it back.”

“Did I! Oh, Maggie! And you felt bad! Oh, darling, do you want it now?”

“No.” Margaret went on with her search. A string of amber had broken, the beads had rolled everywhere, at the threshold they gleamed like eyes of a cat, elsewhere they were hard to find, she gathered them cool and hard in her fingers. She found a small irregular nugget of gold, and laid it in Susan’s hand. Susan turned it in her painted finger-tips.

“Why, that’s the very nugget Rob sent me.” She looked up at Margaret, her eyes like the amber. “Your brother! His first gold, he said.”

“And his last,” said Margaret. Ah, it was coming, now, her chance to tell Susan—

But Susan said, softly, “If he hadn’t gone away!” The nugget dropped from her fingers into the box. “That always happens when I come back to this house!” She raised her voice against a gust of wind, the rain blew in across the hall. “I go soft as jelly—like an old woman! Shut the door, Maggie, we don’t want to drown! And give me a hand.”

Margaret tugged at the door, she edged behind it and pushed, both hands laid against the wooden panels, it seemed almost to bend, as if it would fold over her head, and then, so abruptly that she staggered and followed it for an awkward step, it was snatched away from her and whanged shut. She righted herself indignantly, disliking the large and impersonal rudeness of the day. “It must be blowing harder,” she said. “I should think it had blown long enough!”

Susan laughed, a low, delighted laugh, extending her hands to Margaret.

“You never did like storms.” She heaved her soft flesh up, dragging hard on Margaret’s hands. “I remember. They blew up your skirts and ruffled your hair and you couldn’t manage them. Pick up the box, Maggie, it’s on the step there. I don’t see where those pearls are, they were earrings, three little dangling pearls for each ear. Maybe I lost them.”

“You did hurt yourself! When you fell—” Margaret felt Susan’s weight pull at her shoulder, she saw the stiff dragging forward of one foot.

“I just sat down too hard. I’ll be all right in a minute. Help me across to a chair, that’s a good Maggie. That divan’s nearer—”

Margaret got her to the divan, stood above her in dismay. But Susan leaned back, her wry mouth changing into a quick smile. “I’m too fat, I might as well admit it!”

“Where is it, Susan? Your foot? Ankle? Let me take off your shoe—”

Susan crossed one ankle over the other. “No, you don’t! I’d never get it back on. Leave it alone. In ten minutes I’ll be all right, I always am.”

“I could run over to my house and get you something—”

“All you’d get would be a soaking! Why, look—” The two women looked, at one window and then at the other. Outside the house the rain made a solid wall, over the inner surface of the glass the rain poured, falling against the wide sill, falling against the floor, it was as if the glass had lost its essential quality and was no longer impermeable, as if the rain drove through it, piercing it like light. Margaret stared, bewilderment tasted dry in her mouth, not the sharp taste of fear.

“It must be getting in around the edges of the panes,” said Susan, slowly. “That old putty—”

“I ought to wipe it up,” said Margaret. “I haven’t anything to wipe it up with—”

“What harm can it do?” Susan turned away from the windows, she threw her coat back from her shoulders, her throat, above the low V of the dull red frock, was white and full. “Unless it gets our feet wet. Sit down, Maggie, there are so many things to say. Eddie’ll be back any moment, he hates this, he’ll want to get on to New York.”

Margaret looked again at the windows; if she watched, she would be frightened. The dust cover on the divan stretched taut from Susan’s bulk to the arms, there wasn’t room there. She brought one of the hooded small chairs and set it with its back toward the windows, rather near Susan, and seated herself.

“Where’s your house?” asked Susan. “Near here?”

“It’s the farmhouse. I bought it.”

“You did?” Susan’s face was alert, admiring.

“We should have gone there, instead of staying here. I’ve made a charming place of it, it’s not like this.” She glanced toward that appalling wetness. “I ought to be there now! Something might happen.”

“It will be all right. Nothing can happen to your house, Maggie. You always could worry. I noticed someone lived there, someone—It’s funny, your coming back here! You know, I’ve always thought someday I would come back. To stay. When we drive anywhere near here, I have to come. But I didn’t want to stay—yet. I—I’m not happy when I’m here.”

Margaret laid her hands together in her lap, her cold fingers hooked, she hugged her elbows against her sides, she felt herself spare, hard, her white dress limp now, drabbled, and anger began to shrill in her head, like the highest note in which the wind now spoke, anger at the difference between herself and this soft woman on the couch, a heap of silk and furs and jewels, her painted mouth beguiling Margaret with her Maggie this and that.

“You see”—again that fey look, a shadow over Susan’s gaiety—“I’ll tell you—it was strange, my landing here just today. Yes, I’ll tell you. Did you wonder why we were so crazy, driving to New York in such weather? You’d never guess. Eddie’s going to school, he’s going to be an engineer, he’s not really a chauffeur. But he’s very proud, he didn’t want me to help him at first. And I thought I’d like to settle down, I’d like to be sure I had somebody. We were going to get married. I haven’t been married for a long time. He’s younger, but he’s quite old for his years, he’s always had to look out for himself.” She lifted her lorgnette, it shimmered in unsteady fingers as she held it to her eyes. “Aren’t you ever afraid of being alone? When you get older, you don’t want to be alone. But the minute I stepped in this house, I knew. I’d be lonelier with him—Who lives in your house with you?”

“I am alone,” said Margaret. Her anger was a rod now, stiffening her back. “But thank God, I’m respectable!”

Susan blinked through her lorgnette, she let it fly down against her full bosom, she tipped back her head with its ragged petals of hair, and laughed. “Oh, Maggie! Maggie, darling!” Her laughter was warm and round in the strange gray room. “What good does that do you?”

“You wouldn’t understand, you’re shameless and dreadful, your name is a byword, men leer after you—” Margaret had to stop, her anger was a tight band around her chest, her heart strained madly against it.

Susan stopped laughing, she leaned forward a little, holding out her hands, fingers spread, soft white palms with deep creases turned up, as if she held Margaret’s words away from her ears. “Why, Maggie, you—you don’t like me?” Her eyes were incredulous, her mouth sagged a trifle.

Margaret stumbled to her feet, she pushed away the chair, and before she could make a word in her parched throat the hall door crashed open, wind tore into the house, bellying the covers on the furniture, and with it the boy Sam, water running from his cap, from his yellow slicker, so that he stood in a pool there at the entrance to the drawing room.

“Geeze!” His voice was faint, a gasp, and gathered force as he caught his breath. “Hurry up! Eddie sent me—I had to leave the car—they’s a tree down—you’ll have to walk out to it—Come along, I say! We ain’t got a minute!”

Susan looked at him, she tucked her feet farther under the edge of the couch. “Where’s Eddie?” she asked.

“Working on your car, him and Bill. Water in the base.” His sandy face was blanched with rain and excitement, he wriggled inside his slicker, wanting to be off. “You gotta hustle, I tell you! Geeze, I never seen nothing like it! The tide didn’t go down, Bill says when it’s high tide again, the road’ll be under water, we got an hour to make it.”

“Where’s the car?” asked Margaret. “Can’t you bring it—”

“I can’t climb over a tree with it!” Sam shrieked above the wind, he swung his arms. “Can’t you get a move on you? You can walk a few steps, can’t you?”

Margaret listened. There was a new note in the wind, one she had never heard before in all her life, a strange, shrill, high note: it hurt her eardrums, it went spinning into hollow places under her skull, almost obscenely, a note beyond the range of hearing. She scurried across the room toward Sam, picking up her raincoat, thrusting her arms into the sleeves.

“Come on, you!” yelled Sam, jerking his hand at Susan.