The Rose Garden Page 7

  “I couldn’t honestly say if I remember it or not, Vincent. You had so many escapades. There seemed to be no end to your ingenuity.”

  “Oh, I was a low rascal. Miss Ellis, I was a scoundrelly fellow in those days. But when I lectured, they listened. They listened to me. Isobel, you attended one or two of my lectures. I flatter myself now that I captivated even you with my masterly command of the language. Isobel, tell your splendid husband, and this gracious lady, and this gracious youth, that I was not always the clown they see before them now. Justify your old friend, Isobel.”

  “Vincent, you haven’t changed at all, have you?”

  “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, Isobel. For I have changed a great deal. Your father would see it. You were too young. You don’t remember. You’re all too young,” he finished discontentedly.

  Miss Ellis moved nervously and seemed about to speak, but she said nothing. Edwin asked her if she thought the vogue for mystery stories was as strong as ever, and Vincent looked as if he were about to laugh contemptuously—Isobel remembered him always laughing at everything anyone said—but he kept silent and allowed the discussion to go on.

  Isobel reflected that she had always known Vincent to be talky but surely he couldn’t have always been the windbag he was now. Again she wished she hadn’t invited him to dinner, but then she noticed how eagerly he was enjoying the food, and she relented. She was glad that he should see what a pleasant house she had, and that he should have a good meal.

  Isobel was listening dreamily to Vincent’s story about a book thief who stole only on Tuesdays, and only books with yellow covers, and she was trying to imagine what color Miss Ellis’s lank hair must originally have been, when she became aware of Delia, standing close at her side and rasping urgently into her ear about a man begging at the kitchen door.

  “Edwin,” Isobel interrupted gently, “there’s a man begging at the back door, and I think, since it’s Christmas, we should give him his dinner, don’t you?”

  “What did he ask you for, Delia?” Edwin asked.

  “He asked us would we give him a dollar, sir, and then he said that for a dollar and a half he’d sing us our favorite hymn,” Delia said, and began to giggle unbecomingly.

  “Ask him if he knows ‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’ ” Vincent said.

  “Poor man, wandering around homeless on Christmas Day!” Miss Ellis said.

  “Get an extra plate, so that Mr. Bailey can give the poor fellow some turkey, Delia!” Isobel cried excitedly. “I’m glad he came here! I’m glad we have the chance to see that he has a real Christmas dinner! Edwin, you’re glad, too, although you’re pretending to disapprove!”

  “All right, Isobel, have it your own way,” Edwin said, smiling.

  He filled the stranger’s plate, with Delia standing judiciously by his elbow. “Give him more dressing, Edwin,” Isobel said. “And Delia, see that he has plenty of hot rolls. I want him to have everything we have.”

  “Nothing to drink, Isobel,” Edwin said. “If he hasn’t been drinking already today, I’m not going to be responsible for starting him off. I hope you people don’t think I’m a mean man,” he added, smiling around the table.

  “Not at all, Mr. Bailey,” Miss Ellis said stoutly. “We all have our views on these matters. That’s what makes us different. What would the world be like if we were all the same?”

  “My mother says,” said Jonathan hoarsely, putting one hand into his trouser pocket, “that if a person is bad off enough to ask her for something, he’s worse off than she is.”

  “Your mother must be a very nice lady, Mr. Quin,” Miss Ellis said.

  “It’s a curious remark, of Mr. Quin’s mother,” Vincent said moodily.

  “Oh, of course you’d have him in at the table here and give him the house, Vincent!” Isobel cried in great amusement. “I remember your reputation for standing treat and giving, Vincent.”

  “Mr. Lace has the look of a generous man,” Miss Ellis said, with her thin, childlike smile. The heavy earrings hung like black weights against her thin jaw.

  Vincent stared at her. “Isobel remarks that I would bid the man in and give him the house,” he said bitterly. “But at the moment, dear lady, I am not in the position to give him the leg of a chair, so the question hardly arises. Do you know what I would do if I was in Mr. Bailey’s position, Miss Ellis? Now this is no reflection on you, Mr. Bailey. When I think of him, and what is going on in his mind at this moment, as he gazes into the heaped platter that you have so generously provided—”

  “Vincent, get back to the point. What would you do in Edwin’s place?” asked Isobel good-naturedly.

  Vincent closed his mouth and gazed at her. “You’re quite right, my dear,” he said. “I tend to sermonize. It’s the strangled professor in me, still writhing for an audience. Well, to put it briefly, if I were in your husband’s excellent black leather shoes, I would go out to the kitchen, and I would empty my wallet, which I trust for your sake is well filled, and I would tell that man to go in peace.”

  “And he would laugh at you for a fool,” Edwin said sharply.

  “And he would laugh at me for a fool,” Vincent said, “and I would know it, and I would curse him, but I would have done the only thing I could do.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jonathan said, with more self-assurance than before.

  “Oh, Mr. Quin, Vincent is an actor at heart,” Isobel said. “You should have come to our home when my father was alive. It was a one-man performance every time, Vincent’s performance.”

  “I used to make you laugh, Isobel.”

  “Of course you did,” Isobel said soothingly.

  She sat and watched them all eat their salad, wondering at the same time how the man in the kitchen must feel, to come from the cold and deserted winter street into her warm house. He must be speechless at his good fortune, she thought, and she had a wild impulse to go out into the kitchen and see him for herself. She stood up and said, “I want to see if our unexpected guest has enough of everything.”

  She hurried through the pantry and into the white glare of the kitchen, where it was very hot. She rigidly avoided looking at the table, but she was conscious of the strange man’s dark bulk against her white muslin window curtains, and of the harsh smell of his cigar. She wanted him to see her, in her red dress, with her flushed face and her sweet, expensive perfume. She owned the house. He had the right to feast his eyes on her. This was the stranger, the classical figure of the season, who had come unbidden to her feast.

  Fat-armed Alice was petting the round brown pudding where a part of it had broken away as she tumbled it out of its cloth into its silver dish. Delia stood watching intently, holding away to her side—as though it were a matador’s cape—the stained and steaming cloth.

  “Take your time, Alice,” Isobel said in her clear, nicely tempered voice. “Everything is going splendidly. It couldn’t be a more successful party.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, Ma’am,” Alice said, letting her eyes roll meaningfully in the direction of the stranger, as though she were tipping Isobel off.

  As she turned to leave the kitchen, Isobel saw the man at the table. She did not mean to see him. She had no intention of looking at him, but she did look. She saw that he had hair and hands, and she knew that he had sight, because she felt his eyes on her, but she could not have given a description of him, because in that rapid, silent glance all she really saw was the thick, filthy stub in his smiling mouth.

  His cigar, she thought, sitting down again in the dining room. She leaned forward and took a sip of wine. Miss Ellis’s arms, Vincent’s bow tie, this boy’s broken shoes, and now the beggar’s cigar.

  “How is our other guest getting along out there, Delia?” Isobel asked when the salad plates were being cleared away.

  “Ah, he’s all right, Ma’am. He’s sitting there and smiling to himself. He’s very quiet, so he is.”

  “Has he said nothing at all, Delia?”

/>   “Only when he took an old cigar butt he has out of his pocket. He said to Alice that he strained his back picking it up. He said he made a promise to his mother never to step down off the sidewalk to pick up a butt of a cigar or a cigarette, and he says this one was halfway out in the middle of the street.”

  “He must have hung on to a lamppost!” Jonathan cried, delighted.

  “Edwin, send a cigar to that poor fellow when Delia comes in again, will you?” Isobel said. “I’d like to feel he had something decent to smoke for once.”

  Delia came in, proudly bearing the flaming pudding, and Edwin told her to take a cigar for the man in the kitchen.

  “And don’t forget an extra plate for his pudding, Delia,” Isobel said happily.

  “Oh, your mother was a mighty woman, Isobel,” Vincent said, “even though we didn’t always see eye to eye.”

  “Well, I’m sure you agreed on the important things, Mr. Lace,” Miss Ellis said warmly.

  “I don’t like to disappoint or disillusion you, Miss Ellis, but it was on the important things we disagreed. She thought they were unimportant.”

  A screech of surprise and rage was heard from the kitchen, which up to that time had sent to their ears only the subdued and pleasant tinkling of glasses and dishes and silver. They were therefore prepared for—indeed, they compelled, by their paralyzed silence—the immediate appearance of Delia, who materialized without her cap, and with her eyes aglow, looking as though she had been taken by the hair and dropped from a great height.

  “That fellow out there in the kitchen!” she cried. “He’s gone!”

  “Did he take something?” asked Edwin keenly.

  “No, sir. At least, now, I don’t think he took anything. I’ll look and see this minute.”

  “Delia, calm yourself,” Isobel said. “What was all the noise about?”

  “He flew off when I was in here with the pudding, Ma’am. I went out to give him the cigar Mr. Bailey gave me for him, and he was gone, clean out of sight. I ran over to the window, thinking to call him back for his cigar, as long as I had it in my hand, and there wasn’t a sign of him anywhere. Alice didn’t even know he was out of the chair till she heard the outside door bang after him.”

  “Now, Delia. It was rude of him to run off like that when you and Alice and all of us have been at such pains to be nice to him, but I’m sure there’s no need for all this silly fuss,” Isobel said, with an exasperated grimace at Edwin.

  “But Mrs. Bailey, he didn’t just go!” Delia said wildly.

  “Well, what did he do, then?” Edwin asked.

  “Oh, sir, didn’t he go and leave his dirty old cigar butt stuck down in the hard sauce, sir!” Delia cried. She put her hands over her mouth and began to make rough noises of merriment and outrage while her eyes swooped incredulously around the table.

  Edwin started to rise, but Isobel stopped him with a look. “Delia,” she said, “tell Alice to whip up some kind of sauce for the pudding and bring it in at once.”

  “Oh dear, how could he do such a thing?” Miss Ellis whispered as the door swung to on Delia. “And after you’d been so kind to him.” She leaned forward impulsively to pat Isobel’s hand.

  “A shocking thing!” Vincent exclaimed. “Shocking! It’s a rotten class of fellow would do a thing like that.”

  “You mustn’t let him spoil your lovely dinner, Mrs. Bailey,” Miss Ellis said. Then she added, to Edwin, “Mrs. Bailey is such a person!”

  “I never cared much for hard sauce anyway,” Jonathan said.

  “I don’t know what you’re all talking about!” Isobel cried.

  “We wouldn’t blame you if you were upset,” Vincent said. “But just because some stupid clod insults you is no reason for you to feel insulted.”

  “I think that nasty man meant to spoil our nice day,” Miss Ellis said contentedly. “And he hasn’t at all, has he?”

  “Let’s all just forget about it,” Edwin said. “Isn’t that right, Miss Ellis?”

  “Are you people sympathizing with me?” Isobel said. “Because if you are, please stop it. I am not in the least upset, I assure you.” With hands that shook violently, she began to serve the pudding.

  When they had all been served, she pushed her chair back and said, “Edwin, I have to run upstairs a minute to check on the heat in Susan’s room before she goes for her nap. Delia will bring the coffee inside, and I’ll be down in a second.”

  Upstairs, in the bedroom, she cooled her beleaguered forehead with eau de cologne. She heard the chairs moving in the dining room, and then the happy voices chorusing across the hall. A moment later, she imagined she could hear the chink of their coffee cups. She wished bitterly that it was time to send them all home. She was tired of them. They talked too much. It seemed twenty years since Edwin had carved the turkey.

  The Stone Hot-Water Bottle

  Over the years, Leona Harkey had made many gifts to her friend and idol, Charles Runyon, the noted literary man and theater critic, but of all the things she had given him, he liked best an old-fashioned stone hot-water bottle she had found one day, quite by accident, in a junk shop. Leona had wandered into the shop on the chance of finding something odd and funny that might please Charles, whose tastes were so unpredictable and yet so rigidly formed, and there, on a rickety table heaped with unmatched bits of china, the hot-water bottle lay, looking as though it had been waiting for her to come and find it. The minute her eyes fell on it, Leona remembered the story Charles had told her of one particularly terrible year during his lonely childhood, when a hot-water bottle just like this one was his dearest possession and his only consolation, because it was his only link with a dearly loved grandmother who had died, leaving him to the mercies of a crowd of cruder, less understanding relatives. Triumphant and excited, Leona knew she had made a find.

  Charles was enraptured by his new possession, which before being presented to him had been purified and polished by Bridie, Leona’s massive Irish maid, and encased, by Leona’s dressmaker, in a tight, zippered jacket of olive-green quilted velvet. Furthermore—and this was another proof of Leona’s imaginativeness—attached to one end of the velvet case was a lengthy loop of twisted velvet ribbon, so that when the bottle was not in use, it could hang decoratively from a brass hook near the head of Charles’s bed. Charles had two beds. One belonged to the Murray Hill hotel where he had lived for over thirty years. The other belonged in Leona’s beautiful house at Herbert’s Retreat, thirty miles outside New York on the right bank of the Hudson River, where Charles spent his weekends. It was understood, of course, that the stone hot-water bottle was intended for his room at Leona’s.

  Another happy thing about the hot-water bottle was that it was found in early October, just as the nights were getting cold; Charles was able to start using it immediately. Every night thereafter during his weekend visits, Bridie took the hot-water bottle to the kitchen, where she stripped it naked and filled it with boiling water. Then, covered again, it was returned to Charles’s room and placed in his bed. Charles often claimed that the most blissful moment of his week came on Friday night, when his toes first touched the delicious velvety warmth of his hot-water bottle. After closing his book, but before turning out his bedside lamp, he hung his treasure back on its hook, where he could see it in the morning without being made aware of the chill that had come over it in the night. He couldn’t bear to face the fact that the hot-water bottle grew cold in the night.

  “One of the worst things about that terrible year when I was seven,” he told Leona one Friday evening in November, “was waking up in the morning to find that my darling grandmother’s hot-water bottle had died in the night. Because that is how it felt, you know—dead, cold and dead. Every morning, it was as though she had died again and left me. I used to cry myself to sleep with my arms wrapped around it—you know the way a child does. And then one of my aunts, Aunt Jane, the grimmest-faced one, decided I was making a fetish out of it (imagine, she used that word; where do you suppo
se she ever heard it?) and she took it away. She took it, Leona. Can you consider such cruelty? I never saw it again. Leona, darling, you know, this one looks exactly like it. Do you suppose it’s the same one? Could it be?”

  “Of course it could be. Of course it’s the same one, Charles. Why, Charles, if you could see the little hole in the wall where I found it! The sort of place that ordinarily I’d never dream of entering. But I felt drawn in, and there was your hot-water bottle, in plain view. It must be the same, Charles. And don’t you adore the little velvet coatee I had made for it?”

  “I do adore it, Leona,” Charles said, “and I adore you, my dear, sweet, romantic Leona. What ever would I do without you?”

  Leona’s eyes filled with tears, and she searched for an answer that would be pretty and responsive and yet light in its expression, because Charles detested any display of mawkishness, and Leona had suffered too many verbal trouncings to trust herself to speak impulsively.

  “Dear Charles,” she said cautiously, but for once she need not have feared. Charles was far away in memories she could not share except as a listener, and even then, although she did not know it, Charles edited himself carefully, because the truth of his background was too crowded and hearty to suit the slender, witty, cynical being he had become. They were in Leona’s living room, and Charles, in narrow black slacks and saffron velvet jacket, was sitting in his favorite armchair, which was covered in a pale-blue linen. His silky gray head was inclined toward the firelight, and his sharp gray eyes glinted with thought.

  Leona watched him respectfully from a chintz sofa. Charles must never be disturbed when he was musing, although he did not dislike having a witness to his silence, which was impressive, if studied. Leona, whose mind was uncomplicated, although her appearance was not, never ceased to be grateful that he allowed her the privilege of his friendship. Leona’s fear of Charles, which was real, went in two directions. She was afraid of offending or disappointing him, having many times been obliterated by his scathing and horribly accurate tongue. She was also afraid of losing his favor, because his presence in the house every weekend gave her an unquestioned position among the women who lived at the Retreat, and their admiration, or envy, was the foundation on which Leona built up her importance. From the homage of her friends, Leona drew all the pleasure she got from her pretty, well-ordered house, her gracious life, and her distinguished wardrobe. Charles chose all her clothes, and she knew that without him she would never have attained her present perfection of chic and assurance. She was a tall, slender, shapeless girl with a pale face, vague features, and a head of thick, dark hair that she had always worn in a chignon low on her neck, just as she had habitually worn tweed skirts with sweaters in the daytime, and surplice dresses of dark wool at night. Always before she knew Charles, that is. Charles had changed her. He had started by taking her, on his first weekend at Herbert’s Retreat, to the hairdresser, where under his intense supervision her present coiffure—a dark and cloudy halo that framed her face and shadowed it—came into being. Then he had insisted on a pale-mauve lipstick that defined her tiny mouth without emphasizing it, and, finally, he had taught her the several tricks that now gave her eyes their startled, yet languorous and enormously mysterious, gaze.