Rosemarie winked openly at Agnes, and continued to sing more raucously than ever. Phyllis sweated with her efforts to make the piano crash more deafeningly.
Estelle’s florid face suddenly turned quite white. Her eyes flashed. She strode towards the piano. Reaching Rosemarie, she snatched the cigarette from the girl’s painted lips. She seized Phyllise by the shoulder and swung her from the instrument. Amazed, they stared at her, affronted.
She was breathing quickly. “Go to your rooms at once,” she said. “Now, I mean it. And don’t come downstairs again.”
The girls did not move. Old Ann quavered protestingly from her chair: “Estelle, what is the matter with you? The children are only enjoying themselves.”
Estelle swung on her. “Why should they enjoy themselves at the expense of their elders, Mother? Did you enjoy yourself like that?”
Ann was taken aback, and then said angrily: “No, I didn’t. And I grew up with half a dozen complexes, too! You and I are old, Estelle. But the world is made for youth, and not for us, now.”
Estelle was infuriated. She was only thirty-seven, after all. The audacity of this old fool speaking to her as though she were her contemporary! This, more than anything else, overcame her last scruples about the state of her children’s psyches. She turned upon the girls, hardly able to keep from striking them. She might have struck them, indeed, enraged at their insolent staring eyes and contemptuous smiles, if a maid had not entered just then with a tray of coffee. So, she contained herself and said again: “I’ve told you for the last time. Go to your rooms. And to bed. In ten minutes I’m coming up, and it’ll be all the worse for you if you’re not there.”
They saw she meant it. Phyllise, grumbling surlily, stood up. Rosemarie said: “I’ll ask Dad.”
Then Estelle lost her temper completely. Her Irish temper was not to be controlled. She slapped the pert Rosemarie fully in the face, not once, but three times. The girl staggered, caught herself, burst into tears. Adelaide, shocked, found herself on her feet, sick with disgust at this display of bad manners. But Celeste, at the window, did not turn. She had heard nothing.
“I say, you’re being rough, Estelle,” admonished Agnes. But she was smiling. She thought how good her palm would feel against the cheek of her spoiled son, Robert, who, at the last minute, had refused to accompany his parents to this dinner.
The girls simultaneously raised their voices in a howl, and then, terrified, ran from the room. Estelle followed them, and saw that they went upstairs. Rosemarie, reaching the second floor, began to curse hysterically. Her mother heard this. Her anger dissolved. She was filled with horror and dread. She stood at the foot of the stairs, motionless, staring.
When she returned to the drawing-room, old Ann was pouring coffee. Agnes was laughing. Adelaide was silent. Celeste had not moved.
Agnes, seeing Estelle, started on a humorous remark, but stopped, startled at the other woman’s hard intense expression. Estelle came to the fire, accepted a cup of coffee, began to drink it. Her hand shook. Her mother-in-law regarded her accusingly.
“The trouble with you, Estelle, is that you are not modern,” she said. “No really modern woman would insult the dignity of her children like that.”
Estelle put her cup into her saucer with a hard clatter. She said with cold passion: “I’ve just learned something. There’s something wrong. With us. With our children. We let them grow up without values and without restraint. I’m just as bad as the rest of you, I suppose. I’m just as stupid. I’ve done nothing to make my daughters realize responsibility, and the fact that they are not born merely to gratify themselves. I’ve never taught them that they owe a civilized duty to other human beings.” She regarded old Ann bitterly. “Yes, Mother, you are right. I’ve insulted the dignity of my children ever since they were born!”
Ann gaped, not comprehending. Her puckered lips twitched. The rouge had dissolved from them, showing the livid skin beneath. Adelaide regarded Estelle earnestly, without speaking. Agnes smiled wryly.
“What do you want of the brats, Estelle? Do you want them to be pious prigs, believing in voodoo?”
Estelle was already sick with reaction, but she said quietly and with bitterness: “I would rather they were prigs than lawless idiots.”
She looked at them with stern anger. None of them had ever seen her like this.
“I tell you, there is something wrong with us. With society. I never realized it until now. There is no health in our children. No discipline. We’ve got to do something about it—” After a moment she added somberly: “Or maybe others will do it for us.”
Then Adelaide spoke for the first time. “Life,” she said gently, “administers its own discipline, Estelle.”
The younger woman exclaimed impatiently: “But we shelter our children from life. We give them false pictures, all in the name of freedom! We pamper their ‘personalities,’ instead of thrashing them into reason and decency. We forget that the outside world won’t pamper them that way.”
“Oh, yes, it will,” said Agnes. “You see, they’ll have such a lot of money!”
There was a silence. Estelle looked at Agnes’ cynical smiling face with its crimson thread-like lips. Agnes began to nod. She smiled more than ever. Her lips writhed.
Then Estelle turned away. She stood before the fire. Her hands locked behind her back. Her broad shoulders were bent.
Adelaide regarded her with sad compassion, then slowly regarded the others. She thought to herself how there was no more peace in this rich and lofty room than there was in the drabbest room of poverty. How much passion and weariness and hatred and bitterness and grief and hopelessness there was. There was Agnes, with a faithless husband and a lover, and a spoiled young son, who, at thirteen, had been expelled from three schools for brutality and even for suspected theft and immature vice.—Agnes, who was frankly selfish, and did nothing but dress, sit in beauty salons, shop, play golf, drive and flirt and drink. And there was old Ann Richmond, who had found nothing precious in life but youth. She had not loved good Honore, and so had robbed both herself and him. She was nothing but a miserable old harpy, a vampire, living off the youth and gaiety and heedlessness of others, content with the rags of carnival, grateful for discarded foolscaps and broken bells. There was no dignity in her, no fortitude, no tranquillity. She was old, close to death, and she had nothing at all, not even sadness.
And then there was Estelle, the strong, who had suddenly realized both her folly, and the impotence she had evoked by her folly—Estelle who tried to find surcease from uneasiness in her hounds and clubs and tweeds.
None of them, thought Adelaide compassionately, had a real and vital struggle; none of them truly suffered. None of them had ever experienced real agony, or had known real despair or sorrow. And this was the saddest of all.
Estelle was moving away from the suffocating fire. She was moving towards Celeste, who still sat, motionless, looking out at the dark moonlit gardens. The laden night wind came through the opened windows. Estelle breathed loudly, restlessly.
Old Ann had called for a bridge-table. The maid had come in, and was arranging cards and ashtrays and glasses. Ann picked up a glittering new pack and riffled them in her knotted and jeweled fingers. “Bridge!” she called gaily. She put down the cards, put a cigarette into a platinum holder, held it to the light the maid struck for her. She tapped the holder imperatively on the table. “Bridge!” No one moved. Adelaide sat quietly in her chair, Agnes stared at the logs, and Estelle breathed in the night air.
Ann pouted. She motioned to the maid, who prepared her a drink. “What is the matter with everyone? I said, bridge!”
Estelle turned from the window and made an exasperated gesture. “O God,” she said. “Let’s not play bridge tonight. Let’s go out for a walk or something. Or a drive.”
Ann was offended. “I like bridge,” she said. She assumed a childish attitude. Agnes yawned. “No, thanks, no bridge. I move we second Estelle’s motion. How about you, Adel
aide?”
Adelaide hesitated. She glanced at Ann, whose face had grown empty and disappointed under its paint and powder. The old jeweled hands had fallen on the table, and lay there, impotent and faintly tremulous. There was something painfully moving in the sight of this old woman who had nothing in all the world.
Then Celeste moved and spoke for the first time. “Yes,” she said, and there was a passionate undertone to her voice, “let us go out.”
CHAPTER XIII
They went out into the gardens. The wind had fallen. The moon was floating behind silver gauze. Everything, the trees, the grass, the flower beds, the shrubbery, stood still, as though waiting. A dim spectral light mingled with the darkness, and the earth smelled curiously pungent, as if it breathed out, deeply and silently. They walked away from the great house; its windows, behind the Venetian blinds, were ribbed and yellow. A few steps more, and the house had disappeared, and only the rectangles were visible through the trees.
They passed the greenhouses, dark and deserted. The grass felt dry under their feet, and bruised, gave up its strong hot odor. The shadows under the trees were caves of darkness in a ghostly sea of nebulous moonlight. All at once the last coolness was swept away; a gigantic oven had opened, had flooded the earth. The gauze about the moon thickened. From the west came a faint rumble of distant thunder.
“A storm is coming up,” said Adelaide. Old Ann had not come with them. There were only four of them, herself, Agnes, Estelle and Celeste.
“I don’t think so,” replied Estelle. The air became suffocating, all in a few moments. “Look, the moon is coming out again,” and in fact, the gauze about the moon was suddenly torn away and she rose up triumphantly, blazing over the trees. But the clouds that raced across her face at short intervals were like black rags blown in a hurricane. It was strange to see that unearthly blowing of the garments of the storm, when down here it was so still, so motionless. Crickets had been shrilling loudly only a few minutes ago; tree-toads had been piping. Now, everything was darkly silent and hot.
The house stood some distance from the river. All at once they became aware of its voice, like the rush of a far-distant cataract. There was nothing, now, but the hot darkness, the blazing spinning moon, the rising mutter of water.
“Let’s go for a ride,” said Estelle.
“But there is a storm coming,” insisted Adelaide in her low gentle voice. “I can smell it. The earth smells it, too.”
“And what about the men? They’ll miss us,” said Agnes.
Estelle laughed shortly. “They’ll not miss us! I know the signs. They have already forgotten us. If we call ourselves to their attention within three hours they’ll be annoyed.”
Then, thought Adelaide wearily, Christopher is plotting something again. She was filled with dull fear.
They walked back towards the house and the garages. A chauffeur, sitting in one of them and smoking and reading by a sharp electric light, stood up and saluted respectfully. “We want a car, Clifford,” said Estelle. “The open Rolls. It is so hot. No, thank you, I’ll drive, myself.”
“It looks like a storm, Mrs. Bouchard,’’ said the young man doubtfully.
“Nonsense,” replied Estelle crossly. “There is no wind. And look at that moon. Please, Clifford, get the car out at once.”
Estelle drove out towards the river. Even above the deep purr of the motor, they could hear the rapidly approaching voice of the lightless water. The brilliant lights of the car whittled out a vivid path in the darkness. The hot air rushed across the faces of the occupants of the car, seeming to burn their flesh. Now they were on the river road, and could see the flickering lights across the river. Through masses of trees and shrubbery they could see the river, also, restlessly speaking, running invisibly. The air was cooler here. Adelaide glanced apprehensively at the sky. The moon still spun in her own blazing aura, though the mutter of thunder was deeper and more hollow now.
Adelaide sat with her daughter in the rear seat. She could just see the vague white shadow of the girl’s face. Her hair was blowing, back from it strongly, and again Adelaide could glimpse the pure, almost stern, modelling of cheek and chin. Her heart lightened a little. Perhaps there was nothing to be afraid of, after all. Celeste was not a weakling. She had given in to Christopher tonight, not because he was stronger than she, but that, for a few moments, she had been stronger than himself. Perhaps only the weak were stubborn; perhaps most of the yielding in the world was inevitably done by the strong.
If so, it was sad, but not terrifying. The compromise of the strong ennobled them. Those who accepted the compromise were doubly injured.
There were few cars on the black smooth road, for this road led almost without exception to the great estates in the neighborhood. At times it seemed to those in the car that they were the only moving thing in the universe, for the water could be heard rather than seen.
No one spoke. Estelle was an expert driver. Her big hands were firm on the wheel, and she had the strength of a man. She increased the speed until the speedometer registered sixty-five miles an hour. She seemed to gain some surcrease from this bludgeoning into the night.
The road was becoming more frequented; they passed more and more cars as they skirted along the watery flank of the city. The air, for all its rushing, had a fetid and dank smell, full of the smoke of the day and the exhalations of thousands of human beings. To the left, the city was a tangle of restless lights. Now, just ahead, they saw a huge plume of dull smoky light blowing against the black heavens, and another, and another. They were approaching the tremendous sprawling buildings of Bouchard and Sons.
Estelle abruptly applied the brakes. “How did I get here?” she demanded, helplessly laughing, as the car came to a stop and the burning air stood over them like water. “I wasn’t thinking. Imagine coming out here to this nest of ugliness and smoke and furnaces! Well, business must be good. Night shifts again. I suppose that is some comfort.”
Agnes made a wry face to herself. An acrid stench rose from the distant buildings near the river. The great stretches of lighted windows showed pigmy black figures leaping about with almost aimless activity. It was like a sudden picture of hell. Adelaide looked at the mighty plants from which flowed the Bouchard wealth, and the death of the world. But Celeste was turning her face to the river, just as her grandmother’s brother, Martin Barbour, had turned his, with the same somber wistfulness and inarticulate pain. She left the others standing about the car, and went quickly and lightly down the slopes. They were littered with debris and stones, the grass gone, the trees long rooted up and dead. Her feet struck gravel and pieces of rusted metal. Here her own grandmother, Florabelle, had played as a child with her brother. But surely in those days there was not this barren hideousness, this scarred and ruined earth. Surely there must have been grass here, and flat sun-warmed stones and trees. Surely the air had been clean and fresh, full of the breath of the river and the breath of the brown ground, and pouring sunlight.
Celeste stood on the old towpath by the river. She could see its iron shadow now, moving. Suddenly, from the opposite shore, raw and savage light leaped into the dark sky, from which the moon had gone. A moment or two later the earth under Celeste’s feet vibrated with hoarse sound. And after that the hot black air was twisted, spun, torn, with whips of wind.
Celeste ran back up the slopes. Her mother was calling her. They were all in the car. Estelle was still dismissing Adelaide’s assertion that a storm was coming. “Heat lightning; heat thunder,” she said.
They turned away from the river. Mean narrow streets ran into the road. They could see the endless rows of workmen’s houses. Depression hung heavily on Celeste’s heart. She had often heard Christopher malevolently speak of the silk shirts of the workmen, and their multitudinous cars, and their two-hundred-dollar radios. Perhaps all these things were true. But perhaps they were gestures of despair, the momentary delirium of the slave. Perhaps, after centuries of living in houses and on streets like these, a
nd working in steaming infernos like these monstrous factories and plants, they could be forgiven for going temporarily mad. “They save nothing,” said Christopher. But why should they save? For a bleak tomorrow? Better a starving tomorrow and gaiety today, than an endless procession of bleakness, however guaranteed. Even the slave might love life and want to feel it for a moment.
Adelaide had thought that Celeste acquiesced unthinkingly to Christopher. But Celeste had always had her thoughts. It was because she loved him that she kept silent.
They turned away from the river. They skirted the southern edge of the city. They could see the flashes of lightning through the trees, but the air seemed cooler and fresher, and there was no thunder, or very little. They were out in the country again, and again this road was almost deserted. Estelle increased speed. “We’re in Roseville,” she called out to Adelaide and Celeste in the rear.
Roseville. It had not been a fashionable suburb for many, many years. Some of the tremendous and beautiful houses had not been occupied for a decade or more, but stood in the midst of ruined gardens and strangled trees, with placards advertising the estates for sale nailed on gates and trunks. They saw empty and lightless walls through tangled foliage. They saw overgrown drives and abandoned greenhouses and stables. There is nothing so pathetic, so sorrowful, as ruined grandeur, thought Adelaide. Stone fountains, dry and full of dust, waited mutely. New young ivy rustled on stone and wall. But everything else was silent.
All at once, without any warning at all, the earth was dissolved in a vortex of ferocious light, and scattered into fragments by the sledgehammers of stunning thunder. Even Estelle was unnerved. She brought the car to a stop. It stood panting in the shaking silence that had followed the thunder, surrounded with a shell of uncertain light. Everything beyond it was deserted and threatening night. The wind had increased to tempest proportions in a moment. A moment before there had been hot silence; now the trees, the grass, the air, bent and screamed and twisted about, and flew upwards. Everywhere was the faint smell of brimstone, the stronger odors of aroused dust and storm.