Time Will Darken It (15 page)

Since it is the nature of women to want to be loved, too great encouragement ought not to be derived from the fact that if you kiss one of them on a summer night, her arm rises and involuntarily comes to rest on your shoulder. Although so much time and effort have gone into denying it, the truth of the matter is that women are human, susceptible to physical excitement and the moon. This susceptibility is only skin-deep
. (Something would have to be done about the ugly seam that held the skirt and waist together, Martha King decided. She tried draping the sash in various ways, and then with a reckless gleam in her eyes, burned her bridges behind her. No dress with one long sleeve and one short has ever yet looked right. If the dress was short sleeved, wouldn’t the waist have to be higher? Or was it the embroidered panel that was causing all the difficulty?)
Every woman is a walled town, with ring after ring of armed reservations and hesitations. They can hold off an army for years, and they are not always to be trusted even when they open the gates of their own accord. The citadel has cells, secret places where resistance can survive long after the enemy is, to all appearances, in possession. The conqueror has to take all, the defeated lose everything before the natural balance and pride of either can be regained
.

What distinguished Austin King from the God-fearing, church-going people who attended Wednesday-night prayer meetings, was that he allowed her to be angry and unreasonable and unfair. He also revealed something of himself—not the effort to do right, but a simple falling into it, at times, as if there was no other choice open to him—which touched her heart. Even so she would not marry him
.

Nothing is accomplished in the way of courtship that does not first take place in the pursuer’s imagination. One evening, as he was crossing the street in front of her house, the words “I Austin do take thee, Martha” came unbidden into his mind. His life was quite changed and his chances were greatly improved when he reached the other side of the street and stepped up on the grass
between the kerbing and the sidewalk. He carried himself more confidently. There was a different look in his eyes. Martha Hastings, watching him cut across the lawn instead of coming up the walk, took fright. The enemy had got through the outer wall
.

The gentlest person has depths of cunning, resources of patience and persistence and strategy. Knowing that Martha Hastings was frightened, and wanting in so far as possible to be kind, Austin never again asked her to marry him. Instead he began to talk about the future as though it were now settled. He appeared to be happy and serene when he was with her. She was not taken in by this subterfuge, but on the other hand, there seemed to be no way to combat it. Austin brought to life, one by one, four imaginary children, each with a name and nature of its own. The oldest was a boy, a blond, white-faced dreamer, late to meals, moody, and frequently irritable. Then a girl, a passionate, unpredictable child, never saddened or elated by the same things that affected other children; now needing to be petted and loved, now fearlessly scaling roofs, climbing apple trees. Then a thoroughly conventional boy whose only concern was to be like other people and who disapproved of his family. The third boy was short and stocky and brave, a hero in the small size, all heart and no subtlety, always running to catch up with the others
.

The idea of marriage with Austin King, Martha Hastings could reject, but there was no denying that he was the father of these children who were so real to her. For a while in self-defence she spoke of them as his children, and when that failed her, she had to accept not only them but also the house that he conjured up one night in the porch swing—the house surrounded by very old apple trees, with the snow lying a foot deep outside, and the children asleep upstairs, and the two of them talking in low voices by their own fireside
.

Realizing, finally, that it was too late to send him away, that his will and his imagination were stronger and more persistent than hers, she did the one thing left for her to do. She packed a suitcase and ran away, leaving no word for him or even an
address where he could write to her. Her uncle and aunt, sworn to secrecy, put her on the train one damp November morning, and in a mood of wild and laughing elation she looked out of the train window and saw the town of Draperville slipping away from her
.

Between four and four-thirty, the locusts grew still. Martha King finished cutting the threads that held the waist and skirt together and then glanced at the clock. It was later than she thought. They ought to be coming home any time now. She folded the pieces of what had been Austin’s favourite dress and put them away in a chest where she kept sewing materials. When she went downstairs she opened the screen door and called “You’d better come in now,” to Ab, who was riding her tricycle up and down the walk.

“Just one more time,” Ab said.

The sky was clouded over with running clouds. Martha turned and went out to the kitchen. “There’s going to be a thunderstorm,” she said to Rachel. “It’ll cool the air, but I do wish they’d come.”

10

The clock face in the courthouse dome said five o’clock when Austin King drove around the square and down Lafayette Street with Nora on the front seat beside him and Randolph in back, between his mother and father, holding a bloody handkerchief to his forehead. The horse was in a lather. Austin had driven him harder than he would have under ordinary circumstances, on such a hot day, but it had not been fast enough for the Potters, who, by their anxious silence, had urged him to drive faster.

He stayed in the cart in front of Dr. Seymour’s office while the Potters went inside. When they came out, ten minutes later, Randolph had a neat bandage over his left eye, and
looked handsomer than ever, but the gravity had not left their faces.

The tops of the trees were swaying wildly in the wind and the first drops of rain were splashing on the pavement when the cart turned into Elm Street and drove up before the Kings’ house. The Potters got out and hurried into the house, with the hedge apple and several ears of corn. Austin drove the horse and cart around to the barn.

“What on earth happened?” Martha King asked, as the Potters burst in upon her.

“The man warned Randolph about the dog,” Mrs. Potter said, “but you can’t keep that boy from making friends with an animal.”

“Accidents will happen,” Mr. Potter said.

“Randolph, go on upstairs and lie down,” Mrs. Potter said. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

“We were about ready to leave,” Mr. Potter said, “and I was trying to round everybody up so we wouldn’t get caught in the storm when——”

“Randolph began running in circles,” Mrs. Potter interrupted her husband, “with the dog after him. They disappeared around the corner of the house, and when Randolph came back there was a gash in his forehead——”

“About two inches long,” Mr. Potter said, “down his forehead and through his eyebrow——”

“It was bleeding,” Mrs. Potter said.

“The dog wasn’t frothing at the mouth?” Martha asked.

Mr. Potter shook his head.

“Randolph isn’t used to these Northern dogs,” Mrs. Potter said. “He should have been more careful. Apparently the dog got excited and leapt at his face.”

“The doctor took eight stitches in it,” Mr. Potter said impressively.

“It hurt his feelings,” Mrs. Potter said as she turned towards the stairs, “but he’ll get over it. Cousin Martha, you
should have been with us. We had a very nice drive, in spite of the way it turned out.”

Austin unharnessed the horse, led him into the stall, threw a blanket over him, and gave him some oats. Then he stood in the doorway, looking out at the rain. The sky had turned from black to olive green, and the garden was illuminated by a flash of white lightning which was followed by a clap of thunder that made him thrust his neck forward involuntarily and hunch his shoulders, as if the thunderbolt had been intended for him. His face was relaxed and cheerful. The storm had released all the accumulated tension of the long hot day. He didn’t mind being marooned in the barn or the fact that the house was full of visitors. Something inside him, he did not know what, had broken loose, had swung free, leaving him utterly calm and at peace with the world.

Mrs. Danforth, looking out of her bedroom window, thought how deceptive appearances are. Austin King, usually so restrained and dignified beyond his years, was running through the rain with long leaping strides like a boy of twelve.

11

The bedroom lights were on because of the unnatural darkness outside, and Austin, all dressed and ready to go downstairs for dinner, was sitting on the edge of the bed. His hair was neatly combed, and his starched collar and Sunday suit imparted a kind of stiffness to his gesture of apology.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It never occurred to me.”

“That’s what I say,” Martha said calmly. “It never occurred to you.”

She was seated at her dressing-table in her petticoat and camisole. Her waist was tightly corseted, and her full bust and
shoulders had a curving elegance that was of a piece with the carved monogram on the silver brush and comb and hand-mirror on her dressing-table.

“I thought if you wanted to come, you’d say so,” Austin said.

“I did say so.”

“When?” he asked, in amazement.

“Before lunch,” Martha said, still looking in the mirror.

“I don’t remember your saying that you wanted to come driving with us. I must not have heard you.”

“I said I’d like to get out of the house for a while.”

“Is that what you meant?” Austin said. “I wasn’t sure at the time. I thought you were just tired and irritable and wished they’d never come.”

“If you weren’t sure, you might have asked me.”

“It was so hot and all, and I’d have given anything to have stayed home myself instead of taking a long drive, so naturally I——”

The rain had started coming in through the screens. Austin got up and closed both windows, and then went back and sat down on the bed. What does she see? he wondered. What on earth does she see when she holds her hand-mirror and looks sidewise into it?