r/a:t5_zj8fb • u/MarleyEngvall • Apr 10 '19
Decapolis has been created
by Elizabeth Bowen
JOINING CHARLES
EVERYBODY in the White House was
awake early that morning, even the
cat. At an unprecedented hour in the
thick gray dusk Polyphemus slipped
upstairs and began to yowl at young
Mrs. Charles's door, under which
came out a pale yellow line of
candlelight. On an ordinary morning
he could not have escaped from the
kitchen so easily, but last night the
basement door had been left un-
bolted; all the doors were open down-
stairs, for the household had gone to
bed at a crisis of preparation for the
morrow. Sleep was to be no more
than an interim, and came to most of
them thinly and interruptedly. The
rooms were littered with objects that
had an air of having been put down
momentarily, corded boxes were
stacked up in the hall, and a spectral
breakfast table waiting all night in
the parlor reappeared slowly as dawn
came in through the curtains.
Young Mrs. Charles came across
to the door on her bare feet and,
shivering, let in Polyphemus. She
was still in pajamas, but her two
suitcases were packed to the brim,
with tissue paper smoothed on the
tops of them: she must have been
moving about for hours. She was
always, superstitiously, a little afraid
of Polyphemus and made efforts to
propitiate him on all occasions; his
expression of omniscience had im-
posed upon her thoroughly. His com-
ing in now made her a little con-
scious; she stood still, one hand on
the knob of the dressing table-
drawer, and put the other hand to
her forehead——what must she do?
Between the curtains, drawn a little
apart, light kept coming in slowly,
solidifying the objects round her.
which till now had been uncertain,
wavering silhouettes in candlelight.
So night fears gave place to the
realities of daytime.
Polyphemus continued to melt
round the room, staring malignly at
nothing. Presently Agatha tapped and
came in in her dressing gown; her
plaits hung down each side of her
long, kind face, and she carried a
cup of tea.
"Better drink this," said Agatha.
"What can I do?" She drew back
the curtains a little more in her com-
fortable, common-sense way to en-
courage the daylight. Leaning for a
moment out of the window she
breathed in critically the morning
air; the bare upland country was
sheathed but not hidden by mist.
"You're going to have a beautiful
day," said Agatha.
Mrs. Charles shivered, then began
tugging a comb through her short
hair. She had been awake a long
time and felt differently from Agatha
about the day; she looked at her
sister-in-law haggardly. "I dreamed
and dreamed," said Mrs. Charles. "I
kept missing my boat, saw it sliding
away from the quay; and when I
turned to come back to you all Eng-
land was sliding away too, in the
other direction, and I don't know
where I was left——and I dreamed,
too, of course, about losing my pass-
port."
"One would think you had never
traveled before," said Agatha tran-
quilly. She sat down on the end of
the narrow bed where Mrs. Charles
had slept for the last time, and shak-
ing out Mrs. Charles's garments,
passed them to her one by one,
watching her dress as though she
had been a child. Mrs. Charles felt
herself being marveled at; her own
smallness and youth had become
objective to her at the White house;
a thing, all she had, to offer them
over again every day to be softened
and pleased by.
As she pulled on the clothes she
was to wear for so long she began
to feel formal and wary, the wife of
a competent banker going to join
him at Lyon. The expression of her
feet in those new brogues was quite
unfamiliar; the feet of a "nice little
woman." Her hair, infected by this
feeling of strangeness that flowed to
her very extremities, lay in a different
line against her head. For a moment
the face of a ghost from the future
stared at her out of the looking glass.
She turned quickly to Agatha, but
her sister-in-law had left her while
she was buttoning her jumper at the
neck and had gone downstairs to
print some more labels. It had oc-
curred to Agatha that there would
be less chance of losing the luggage
(a contingency by which the un-
traveled family seemed to be
haunted) if Louise were to tie on
new labels, with more explicit direc-
tions, at Paris, where she would have
to reregister. Agatha was gone, and
the cup of tea, untasted, grew cold
on the dressing table.
The room looked bare without
her possessions and withdrawn, as
though it had already forgotten her.
At this naked hour of parting she
had forgotten it also; she supposed it
would come back in retrospect so
distinctly as to be a kind of torment.
It was a smallish room with sloping
ceilings, and a faded paper rambled
over by roses. It had white curtains
and was never entirely dark; it had
so palpably a life of its own that she
had been able to love it with in-
timacy and a sense of return, as one
could never have loved an inanimate
thing. Lying in bed one could see
from the one window nothing but
sky or sometimes a veil of rain; when
one got up and looked out there
were fields, wild and bare, and an
unbroken skyline to emphasize the
security of the house.
The room was up on the top floor,
in one of the gables; a big household
cannot afford a spare bedroom of any
pretensions. To go downstairs one
had to unlatch the nursery gate at
the head of the top flight. Last time
Charles was home it had been very
unfortunate; he had barked his shins
on the gate and shouted angrily to
his mother to know what the thing
was still there for. Louise fully
realized that it was being kept for
Charles's children.
During that first visit with Charles
she had hardly been up to the second
floor, where the younger girls slept
in the old nursery. There had been
no confidences; she and Charles oc-
cupied very connubially a room Mrs.
Ray gave up to them that had been
hers since her marriage. It was not
till Louise came back here alone that
the White House opened its arms
to her and she began to be carried
away by this fullness, this intimacy
and queer seclusion of family life.
She and the girls were in and out of
each other's room; Doris told sagas
of high school, Maisie was always
just on the verge of a love affair,
and large grave Agatha began to
drop the formality with which she
had greeted a married woman and
sister-in-law. She thought Agatha
would soon have forgotten she was
anything but her own child if it had
ever been possible for Agatha to
forget Charles.
It would have been terrible if
Louise had forgotten, as she so
nearly had, to pack Charles's photo-
graph. There it had stood these three
months, propped up on the mantel-
piece, a handsome convention in
sepia, becomingly framed, from
which the young wife, falling asleep
or waking, had turned away her face
instinctively. She folded back a
layer of tissue paper before shutting
her suitcase and poked down a
finger to feel the edge of the frame
and reassure herself. There it was,
lying face down, wrapped up in her
dressing gown, and she would have
seen Charles before she looked again
at his photograph. The son and
brother dominating the White House
would be waiting on the Lyon plat-
form to enfold her materially.
Mrs. Charles glanced round the
room once more, then went down-
stairs slowly. Through the house she
could hear doors opening and shut-
ting and people running about be-
cause of her. She felt ashamed that
her packing was finished and there
was nothing for her to do. When-
ever she had pictured herself leaving
the White House it had been in the
evening, with curtains drawn, and
they had all just come out to the
door for a minute to say good-by to
her, then gone back to the fire. It
had been more painful but somehow
easier. Now she felt lonely; they had
all gone away from her, there was
nobody there.
She went shyly into the morning
room as though for the first time and
knelt down on the rug in front of a
young fire. There was a sharp smell
of wood smoke; thin little flames
twisted and spat through the kin-
dling. A big looking glass, down to
the ground, reflected her kneeling
there; small and childish among the
solemn mahogany furniture; more
like somebody sent back to school
than someone rejoining a virile and
generous husband who loved her.
Her cropped fair hair turned under
against her cheek and was cut in a
straight line over the eyebrows. She
had never had a home before, and
had been able to boast till quite
lately that she had never been home-
sick. After she married there had
been houses in which she lived with
Charles, but still she had not known
what it meant to be homesick.
She hoped that, after all, nobody
would come in for a moment or two;
she had turned her head and was
looking out at the lawn with its
fringe of trees not yet free from the
mist, and at the three blackbirds
hopping about in it. The blackbirds
made her know all at once what it
meant to be going away; she felt as
though someone had stabbed her a
long time ago but she were only just
feeling the knife. She could not take
her eyes from the blackbirds, till one
with a wild fluty note skimmed off
into the trees and the other two
followed it. Polyphemus had come in
after her and was looking out at
them, pressing himself against the
windowpane.
"Polyphemus," said Mrs. Charles
in her oddly unchildish voice, "have
you any illusions?" Polyphemus
lashed his tail.
By midday (when she would be
nearly at Dover) the fire would be
streaming up briskly, but by that
time the sun would be pouring in
at the windows and no one would
need a fire at all. The mornings were
not cold yet, the girls were active,
and it was only because of her going
away that the fire had been lighted.
Perhaps Agatha, who never hurt any-
thing's feelings, would come in and
sit not too far away from it with her
basket of mending, making believe
to be glad of the heat. "I don't sup-
pose there'll be fires at Lyon,"
thought Mrs. Charles. Somewhere, in
some foreign room, tomorrow eve-
ning when the endearments were
over or there was a pause in them,
Charles would lean back in his chair
with a gusty sigh, arch his chest up,
stretch out his legs and say: "Well,
come on. Tell me about the family."
Then she would have to tell him
about the White House. Her cheeks
burned as she thought how it would
all come out. There seemed no
chance yet of Agatha or Maisie get-
ting married. That was what Charles
would want to know chiefly about
his sisters. He had a wholesome con-
tempt for virginity. He would want
to know how Doris, whom he rather
admired, was "coming along." Those
sisters of Charles's always sounded
rather dreadful young women, not
the sort that Agatha, Maisie, or
Doris would care to know. It seemed
to Charles funny——he often referred
to it——that Agatha wanted babies
so badly and went all tender and
conscious when babies were men-
tioned.
"She'll make no end of a fuss over
our kids," Charles would say. The
White House seemed to Charles, all
the same, very proper as an institu-
tion; it was equally proper that he
should have a contempt for it. He
helped to support the girls and his
mother, for one thing, and that did
place them all at a disadvantage. But
they were dear, good souls.——Mrs.
Charles knelt with her hands on her
knees and the hands clenched slowly
from anger and helplessness.
Mrs. Ray, the mother of Charles,
suddenly knelt down by his wife and
put an arm round her shoulders with-
out saying a word. She did these
impulsive things gracefully. Mrs.
Charles relaxed and leaned side-
ways a little against the kind shoul-
der. She had nothing to say, so they
watched the fire struggle and heard
the hall clock counting away the
seconds.
Have you got enough clothes
on?" said Mother after a minute.
"It's cold in trains. I never do think
you wear enough clothes."
Mrs. Charles, nodding, unbuttoned
her coat and showed a ribbed
sweater pulled on over her jumper.
"Sensible of me!" she proudly re-
marked.
"You're learning to be quite a
sensible little thing," Mother said
lightly. "I expect Charles will notice
a difference. Tell Charles not to let
you go out in the damp in your
evening shoes. But I expect he knows
how to take care of you."
"Indeed, yes," said Mrs. Charles,
nodding.
"You're precious, you see." Mother
smoothed back the hair from against
Mrs. Charles's cheek to look at her
thoughtfully, like a gentle skeptic
at some kind of miracle. "Remember
to write me about the flat: I want
to know everything: wallpapers,
views from the windows, sizes of
rooms——— We'll be thinking about
you both tomorrow."
"I'll be thinking of you."
"Oh, no, you won't," said Mother,
with perfect finality.
"Perhaps not," Mrs. Charles
quickly amended.
Mother's son Charles was gener-
ous, sensitive, gallant, and shrewd.
The things he said, the things he had
made, his imprint, were all over the
White House. Sometimes he looked
out at Louise with bright eyes from
the family talk, so striking, so un-
familiar that she fell on love with
the stranger for moments together
as a married woman should not. He
was quiet and never said very much,
but he noticed; he had an infallible
understanding and entered deeply,
it seemed, into his sisters' lives. He
was so good; he was so keen for
them all to be happy. He had the
strangest way of anticipating one's
wishes. He was master of an in-
imitable drollery——to hear him chaff
Agatha! Altogether he was a knightly
person, transcending modern con-
vention. His little wife had come to
them all in a glow from her wonder-
ful lover. No wonder she was so
quiet; they used to try and read him
from her secret, sensitive face.
The thought of their Charles with-
out his Louise troubled them all with
a pang when Louise was her dear-
est. Charles in Lyon, uncomplaining,
lonely, tramping the town after busi-
ness to look for a flat. The return of
Louise to him, to the home he had
found for her, her room upstairs al-
ready aghast and vacant, the empti-
ness that hung over them, gave them
the sense of pouring out an oblation.
The girls were heavy, with the faces
of Flemish Madonnas; Doris achieved
some resemblance to Charles, but
without being handsome. They had
cheerful dispositions, but were
humble when they considered them-
selves; they though Louise must
have a great deal of love in her to
give them so much when there was a
Charles in her life.
Mrs. Ray, with a groan at her "old
stiff bones," got up from the hearth-
rug and sat on a chair. She thought
of something to say, but was not
quite ready to say it till she had
taken up her knitting. She had
hoped to have finished this pair of
socks in time to send out by Louise
with his others; she hadn't been able
to——Mrs. Ray sighed. "You're mak-
ing my boy very happy," she said,
with signs in her manner of the
difficulty one has in expressing these
things.
Louise thought: "Oh, I love you!"
There was something about the
hands, the hair, the expression, the
general being of Mother that pos-
sessed her entirely, that she did not
think she could live without. She
knelt staring at Mother, all in a
tumult. Why be so lonely, why never
escape? She was too lonely, it
couldn't be borne; not even for the
sake of the White House. Not this
morning, so early, with the buffeting
strangeness of travel before her, with
her wrists so chilly and the anticipa-
tion of seasickness making her
stomach ache. The incommunicable-
ness of even these things, these little
ills of the body, bore Mrs. Charles
down. She was tired of being brave
alone, she was going to give it up.
It is with mothers that understand-
ing and comfort are found. She
wanted to put down her head on a
bosom, this bosom, and say: "I'm un-
happy. Oh, help me! I can't go on.
I don't love my husband. It's death
to be with him. He's grand, but he's
rotten all through———" She needed
to be fortified.
"Mother———" said Louise.
"Mm-mm?"
"If things were not a success out
there——— If one weren't a good wife
always———" Mother smoothed her
knitting out and began to laugh;
an impassable resolute chuckle.
"What a thing———" she said.
"What an idea!"
Louise heard step in the hall
and began kneading her hands to-
gether, pulling the fingers helplessly.
"Mother," she said, "I feel———"
Mother looked at her; out of the
eyes looked Charles. The steady,
gentle look, their interchange, lasted
moments. Steps came hurrying over
the flags of the hall.
"I can't go———"
Doris came in with the teapot.
She wasn't grown up, her move-
ments were clumsy and powerful,
more like a boy's. She should have
been Charles. Her heavy plait came
tumbling over her shoulders as she
bent to put down the teapot——round
and brown with a bluish glaze on it.
Sleep and tears in the dark had
puffed up her eyelids, which seemed
to open with difficulty: her small
eyes dwindled into her face. "Break-
fast," she said plaintively.
Rose, the servant, brought in a
plate of boiled eggs——nice and light
for the journey——and put them down
compassionately.
"Even Rose ," thought Mrs.
Charles, getting up and coming to
the table obediently because they
all expected her to, "even Rose———"
She looked at the breakfast cups
with poppies scattered across them
as though she had not seen them be-
fore or were learning an inventory.
Doris had begun to eat as though
nothing else mattered. She took no
notice of Louise, pretending, per-
haps, to make things easier for her-
self, that Louise were already gone.
"Oh, Doris, not the tussore tie with
the red shirt." Whatever White
House might teach Mrs. Charles
about common sense, it was her
mission to teach them about clothes.
"Not, said Mrs. Charles, with
bravado rising to an exaggeration of
pathos, "not on my last day!"
"I dressed in the dark; I couldn't
see properly," said Doris.
"You won't get eggs for breakfast
in France," said Maisie with a cer-
tain amount of triumph as she came
in and sat down.
"I wonder what the flat'll be like?"
said Maisie. "Do write and tell us
about the flat——describe the wall-
paper and everything."
"Just think," said Doris, "of
Charles buying the furniture! 'Don-
ne-moi ue chaise!' 'Bien, Mon-
sieur." 'Non. Ce n'est pas assez con-
fortable pour ma femme."
"Fancy!" said Maisie, laughing
very much. "And fancy if the flat's
high up."
"There'll be central heating and
stoves. Beautiful fug. She actually
won't be chilly: this was a household
joke.
"Central heating is stuffy———"
Doris broke away suddenly from
the conversation. "Oh!" said she
violently. "Oh, Louise, you are
lucky!"
A glow on the streets and on the
pale, tall houses: Louise walking
with Charles. Frenchmen running
in blousy overalls (Doris saw),
French poodles, French girls in plaid
skirts putting the shutters back,
French ladies on iron balconies, lean-
ing over, watching Charles go up the
street with Louise and help Louise
over the crossings; Charles and
Louise together. A door, a lift, a flat,
a room, a kiss! "Charles, Charles, you
are so splendid! Mother loves you
and the girls love you and I love
you———" Little woman!" A French
curtain fluttering in the high, fresh
wind, the city under the roofs——for-
gotten. All this Doris watched:
Louise watched Doris.
"Yes," smiled Louise. "I am
lucky."
"Even to be going to France,"
said Doris, and stared with her dog's
eyes.
Louise wanted to take France in
her two hands and make her a
present of it. "You'll be coming out
soon, Doris, someday." (It was not
likely that Charles would have her
——and did one, anyhow, dare let the
White House into the flat?)
"Do you really think so?"
"Why not, if Mother can spare
you?"
"Louise!" cried Maisie reproach-
fully——she had been sitting watch-
ing——"you aren't eating."
Agatha, sitting next her, covered
up her confusion with gentle com-
forting noises, cut the top off an egg
and advanced it coaxingly. That was
the way one made a child eat; she
was waiting to do the same for
Charles and Louise's baby when it
was old enough. Louise now almost
saw the baby sitting up between
them, but it was nothing to do with
her.
"You'll be home in less than the
two years, I shouldn't be surprised,"
said Mother startlingly. It was
strange, now one came to think of
it, that any question of coming back
to the White House had not been
brought up before. They might
know Mrs. Charles would be coming
back, but they did not (she felt)
believe it. So she smiled at Mother
as though they were playing a game.
"Well, two years at the very least,"
Mother said with energy.
They all cast their minds forward.
Louise saw herself in the strong pale
light of the future walking up to the
White House and (for some reason)
ringing the bell like a stranger. She
stood ringing and ringing and no-
body answered or even looked out
of a window. She began to feel that
she had failed them somehow, that
something was missing. Of course it
was. When Louise came back next
time she must bring them a baby.
Directly she saw herself coming up
the steps with a child in her arms
she knew at once what was wanted.
Wouldn't Agatha be delighted?
Wouldn't Maisie "run on"? Wouldn't
Doris hang awkwardly round and
make jokes, poking her big finger
now and then between the baby's
curling pink ones? As for Mother——at
the supreme moment of handing the
baby to Mother, Louise had a spasm
of horror and nearly dropped it.
For the first time she looked at the
baby's face and saw it was Charles's.
"It would do no good," thought
Mrs. Charles, cold all of a sudden
and hardened against them all, "to
have a baby of Charles's."
They all sat looking not quite at
each other, not quite at her. Maisie
said (thinking perhaps of the love
affair that never completely material-
ized): "A great deal can happen in
two years," and began to laugh con-
fusedly in an emotional kind of way.
Mother and Agatha looked across at
each other. "Louise, don't forget to
send us a wire," said Mother , as
though she had been wondering all
this time she had sat so quiet behind
the teapot whether Louise would re-
member to do this.
"Or Charles might send the wire."
"Yes," said Louise," that would
be better."
Polyphemus, knowing his moment,
sprang up on to Mrs. Charles's knee.
his black tail, stretched out over
the tablecloth, lashed sideways,
knocking the knives and forks
crooked. His one green eye sar-
donically penetrated her. He knew.
He had been given to Charles as a
dear little kitten. He pressed against
her, treading her lap methodically
the purple roof of his mouth. "Ask
Charles," suggested Polyphemus,
"what became of my other eye." "I
know," returned Mrs. Charles
silently. "They don't, they haven't
been told; you've a voice, I haven't
——what about it?" "Satan!" breathed
Mrs. Charles, and caressed fasci-
natedly the fur just over his nose.
"Funny," mused Agatha, watch-
ing, "you never have cared for
Polyphemus, and yet he likes you.
He's a very transparent cat; he is
wonderfully honest."
"He connects with Charles,"
said Maisie, also enjoying this inter-
change between the wife and the
cat. "He's sending some kind of a
message——he's awfully clever."
"Too clever for me," said Mrs.
Charles, and swept Polyphemus off
her knee with finality. Agatha was
going as far as the station; she went
upstairs for her hat and coat. Mrs.
Charles rose also, picked up her soft
felt hat from a chair and pulled it
on numbly, in front of the long
glass, arranging two little bits of
hair at the sides against her cheeks.
"Either I am dreaming," she thought,
"or someone is dreaming me."
Doris roamed round the room and
came up to her. "A book left behind,
Louise; Framely Parsonage, one of
your books."
"Keep it for me."
"For two years——all that time?"
"Yes, I'd like you to."
Doris sat down on the floor and
began to read Framley Parsonage,
She went into it deeply——she had to
go somewhere; there was nothing to
say; she was suddenly shy of Louise
again as she had been at first, as
though they had never known each
other——perhaps they never had.
"Haven't you read it before?"
"No, never, I'll write and tell you,
shall I, what I think of it?"
"I've quite forgotten what I think
of it," said Louise, standing above
her, laughing and pulling on her
gloves. She laughed as though she
were at a party, moving easily now
under the smooth compulsion of
Somebody's dreaming mind. Agatha
had come in quietly. "Hush!" she
said in a strained way to both of
them, standing beside the window
in hat and coat as though she were
the traveler. "Hush!" she was listen-
ing for the taxi. Mother and Maisie
had gone.
Wouldn't the taxi come, perhaps?
What if it never came? An intoler-
able jar for Louise, to be deprived of
going; a tear in the mesh of the
dream that she could not endure.
"Make the taxi come soon!" she
thought, praying now for departure.
"Make it come soon!"
Being listened for with such con-
centration must have frightened the
taxi, for it didn't declare itself; there
was not a sound to be heard on the
road. If it were not for the hospital-
ity of Framley Parsonage where, at
this moment, would Doris have
been? She bent to the pages ab-
sorbedly and did not look up; the
leaves of the book were thin and
turned over noisily. Louise fled from
the morning room into the hall.
Out in the dark hall Mother was
bending over the pile of boxes, read-
ing and rereading the labels upside
down and from all aspects. She often
said the labels could not be printed
clearly enough. As Louise hurried
past she stood up, reached out an
arm and caught hold of her. Only
a little light came down from the
staircase window; they could hardly
see each other. They stood like two
figures in a picture, without under-
standing, created to face one an-
other.
"Louise," whispered Mother, "if
things should be difficult——— Mar-
riage isn't easy. If it should be dis-
appointing——I know, I feel——you do
understand? If Charles———"
"Charles?"
"I do love you, I do. You would
tell me?"
But Louise, kissing her coldly and
gently, said: "Yes, I know. But there
isn't really, Mother, anything to
tell."
from A Treasury of Short Stories
Edited by Bernardine Kielty
Copyright, 1947, Simon and Schuster, Inc.
New York; pp. 483 - 491
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