A VISIT
The house in itself was, even before anything had happened there, as lovely a thing as she had ever seen. Set among its lavish grounds, with a park and a river and a wooded hill surrounding it, and carefully planned and tended gardens close upon all sides, it lay upon the hills as though it were something too precious to be seen by everyone; Margaret’s very coming there had been a product of such elaborate arrangement, and such letters to and fro, and such meetings and hopings and wishings, that when she alighted with Carla Montague at the doorway of Carla’s home, she felt that she too had come home, to a place striven for and earned. Carla stopped before the doorway and stood for a minute, looking first behind her, at the vast reaching gardens and the green lawn going down to the river, and the soft hills beyond, and then at the perfect grace of the house, showing so clearly the long-boned structure within, the curving staircases and the arched doorways and the tall thin lines of steadying beams, all of it resting back against the hills, and up, past rows of windows and the flying lines of the roof, on, to the tower—Carla stopped, and looked, and smiled, and then turned and said, “Welcome, Margaret.”
“It’s a lovely house,” Margaret said, and felt that she had much better have said nothing.
The doors were opened and Margaret, touching as she went the warm head of a stone faun beside her, passed inside. Carla, following, greeted the servants by name, and was welcomed with reserved pleasure; they stood for a minute on the rose and white tiled floor. “Again, welcome, Margaret,” Carla said.
Far ahead of them the great stairway soared upward, held to the hall where they stood by only the slimmest of carved balustrades; on Margaret’s left hand a tapestry moved softly as the door behind was closed. She could see the fine threads of the weave, and the light colors, but she could not have told the picture unless she went far away, perhaps as far away as the staircase, and looked at it from there; perhaps, she thought, from halfway up the stairway this great hall, and perhaps the whole house, is visible, as a complete body of story together, all joined and in sequence. Or perhaps I shall be allowed to move slowly from one thing to another, observing each, or would that take all the time of my visit?
“I never saw anything so lovely,” she said to Carla, and Carla smiled.
“Come and meet my mama,” Carla said.
They went through doors at the right, and Margaret, before she could see the light room she went into, was stricken with fear at meeting the owners of the house and the park and the river, and as she went beside Carla she kept her eyes down.
“Mama,” said Carla, “this is Margaret, from school.”
“Margaret,” said Carla’s mother, and smiled at Margaret kindly. “We are very glad you were able to come.”
She was a tall lady wearing pale green and pale blue, and Margaret said as gracefully as she could, “Thank you, Mrs. Montague; I am very grateful for having been invited.”
“Surely,” said Mrs. Montague softly, “surely my daughter’s friend Margaret from school should be welcome here; surely we should be grateful that she has come.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Montague,” Margaret said, not knowing how she was answering, but knowing that she was grateful.
When Mrs. Montague turned her kind eyes on her daughter, Margaret was at last able to look at the room where she stood next to her friend; it was a pale green and a pale blue long room with tall windows that looked out onto the lawn and the sky, and thin colored china ornaments on the mantel. Mrs. Montague had left her needlepoint when they came in and from where Margaret stood she could see the pale sweet pattern from the underside; all soft colors it was, melting into one another endlessly, and not finished. On the table nearby were books, and one large book of sketches that were most certainly Carla’s; Carla’s harp stood next to the windows, and beyond one window were marble steps outside, going shallowly down to a fountain, where water moved in the sunlight. Margaret thought of her own embroidery—a pair of slippers she was working for her friend—and knew that she should never be able to bring it into this room, where Mrs. Montague’s long white hands rested on the needlepoint frame, soft as dust on the pale colors.
“Come,” said Carla, taking Margaret’s hand in her own. “Mama has said that I might show you some of the house.”
They went out again into the hall, across the rose and white tiles which made a pattern too large to be seen from the floor, and through a doorway where tiny bronze fauns grinned at them from the carving. The first room that they went into was all gold, with gilt on the window frames and on the legs of the chairs and tables, and the small chairs standing on the yellow carpet were made of gold brocade with small gilded backs, and on the wall were more tapestries showing the house as it looked in the sunlight with even the trees around it shining, and these tapestries were let into the wall and edged with thin gilded frames.
“There is so much tapestry,” Margaret said.
“In every room,” Carla agreed. “Mama has embroidered all the hangings for her own room, the room where she writes her letters. The other tapestries were done by my grandmamas and my great-grandmamas and my great-great-grandmamas.”
The next room was silver, and the small chairs were of silver brocade with narrow silvered backs, and the tapestries on the walls of this room were edged with silver frames and showed the house in moonlight, with the white light shining on the stones and the windows glittering.
“Who uses these rooms?” Margaret asked.
“No one,” Carla said.
They passed then into a room where everything grew smaller as they looked at it: the mirrors on both sides of the room showed the door opening and Margaret and Carla coming through, and then, reflected, a smaller door opening and a small Margaret and a smaller Carla coming through, and then, reflected again, a still smaller door and Margaret and Carla, and so on, endlessly, Margaret and Carla diminishing and reflecting. There was a table here and nesting under it another lesser table, and under that another one, and another under that one, and on the greatest table lay a carved wooden bowl holding within it another carved wooden bowl, and another within that, and another within that one. The tapestries in this room were of the house reflected in the lake, and the tapestries themselves were reflected, in and out, among the mirrors on the wall, with the house in the tapestries reflected in the lake.
This room frightened Margaret rather, because it was so difficult for her to tell what was in it and what was not, and how far in any direction she might easily move, and she backed out hastily, pushing Carla behind her. They turned from here into another doorway which led them out again into the great hall under the soaring staircase, and Carla said, “We had better go upstairs and see your room; we can see more of the house another time. We have plenty of time, after all,” and she squeezed Margaret’s hand joyfully.
They climbed the great staircase, and passed, in the hall upstairs, Carla’s room, which was like the inside of a shell in pale colors, with lilacs on the table, and the fragrance of the lilacs followed them as they went down the halls.
The sound of their shoes on the polished floor was like rain, but the sun came in on them wherever they went. “Here,” Carla said, opening a door, “is where we have breakfast when it is warm; here,” opening another door, “is the passage to the room where Mama does her letters. And that—” nodding, “—is the stairway to the tower, and here is where we shall have dances when my brother comes home.”
“A real tower?” Margaret said.
“And here,” Carla said, “is the old schoolroom, and my brother and I studied here before he went away, and I stayed on alone studying here until it was time for me to come to school and meet you.”
“Can we go up into the tower?” Margaret asked.
“Down here, at the end of the hall,” Carla said, “is where all my grandpapas and my grandmamas and my great-great-grandpapas and grandmamas live.” She opened the door to the long gallery, where pictures of tall old people in lace and pale waistcoats leaned down to stare at Margaret and Carla. And then, to a walk at the top of the house, where they leaned over and looked at the ground below and the tower above, and Margaret looked at the gray stone of the tower and wondered who lived there, and Carla pointed out where the river ran far below, far away, and said they should walk there tomorrow.
“When my brother comes,” she said, “he will take us boating on the river.”
In her room, unpacking her clothes, Margaret realized that her white dress was the only one possible for dinner, and thought that she would have to send home for more things; she had intended to wear her ordinary gray downstairs most evenings before Carla’s brother came, but knew she could not when she saw Carla in light blue, with pearls around her neck. When Margaret and Carla came into the drawing room before dinner Mrs. Montague greeted them very kindly, and asked had Margaret seen the painted room, or the room with the tiles?
“We had no time to go near that part of the house at all,” Carla said.
“After dinner, then,” Mrs. Montague said, putting her arm affectionately around Margaret’s shoulders, “we will go and see the painted room and the room with the tiles, because they are particular favorites of mine.”
“Come and meet my papa,” Carla said.
The door was just opening for Mr. Montague, and Margaret, who felt almost at ease now with Mrs. Montague, was frightened again of Mr. Montague, who spoke loudly and said, “So this is m’girl’s friend from school? Lift up your head, girl, and let’s have a look at you.” When Margaret looked up blindly, and smiled weakly, he patted her cheek and said, “We shall have to make you look bolder before you leave us,” and then he tapped his daughter on the shoulder and said she had grown to a monstrous fine girl.
They went in to dinner, and on the walls of the dining room were tapestries of the house in the seasons of the year, and the dinner service was white china with veins of gold running through it, as though it had been mined and not molded. The fish was one Margaret did not recognize, and Mr. Montague very generously insisted upon serving her himself without smiling at her ignorance. Carla and Margaret were each given a glassful of pale spicy wine.
“When my brother comes,” Carla said to Margaret, “we will not dare be so quiet at table.” She looked across the white cloth to Margaret, and then to her father at the head, to her mother at the foot, with the long table between them, and said, “My brother can make us laugh all the time.”
“Your mother will not miss you for these summer months?” Mrs. Montague said to Margaret.
“She has my sisters, ma’am,” Margaret said, “and I have been away at school for so long that she has learned to do without me.”
“We mothers never learn to do without our daughters,” Mrs. Montague said, and looked fondly at Carla. “Or our sons,” she added with a sigh.
“When my brother comes,” Carla said, “you will see what this house can be like with life in it.”
“When does he come?” Margaret asked.
“One week,” Mr. Montague said, “three days, and four hours.”
When Mrs. Montague rose, Margaret and Carla followed her, and Mr. Montague rose gallantly to hold the door for them all.
That evening Carla and Margaret played and sang duets, although Carla said that their voices together were too thin to be appealing without a deeper voice accompanying, and that when her brother came they should have some splendid trios. Mrs. Montague complimented their singing, and Mr. Montague fell asleep in his chair.
Before they went upstairs Mrs. Montague reminded herself of her promise to show Margaret the painted room and the room with the tiles, and so she and Margaret and Carla, holding their long dresses up away from the floor in front so that their skirts whispered behind them, went down a hall and through a passage and down another hall, and through a room filled with books and then through a painted door into a tiny octagonal room where each of the sides were paneled and painted, with pink and blue and green and gold small pictures of shepherds and nymphs, lambs and fauns, playing on the broad green lawns by the river, with the house standing lovely behind them. There was nothing else in the little room, because seemingly the paintings were furniture enough for one room, and Margaret felt surely that she could stay happily and watch the small painted people playing, without ever seeing anything more of the house. But Mrs. Montague led her on, into the room of the tiles, which was not exactly a room at all, but had one side all glass window looking out onto the same lawn of the pictures in the octagonal room. The tiles were set into the floor of this room, in tiny bright spots of color which showed, when you stood back and looked at them, that they were again a picture of the house, only now the same materials that made the house made the tiles, so that the tiny windows were tiles of glass, and the stones of the tower were chips of gray stone, and the bricks of the chimneys were chips of brick.
Beyond the tiles of the house Margaret, lifting her long skirt as she walked, so that she should not brush a chip of the tower out of place, stopped and said, “What is this?” And stood back to see, and then knelt down and said, “What is this?”
“Isn’t she enchanting?” said Mrs. Montague, smiling at Margaret, “I’ve always loved her.”
“I was wondering what Margaret would say when she saw it,” said Carla, smiling also.
It was a curiously made picture of a girl’s face, with blue chip eyes and a red chip mouth, staring blindly from the floor, with long light braids made of yellow stone chips going down evenly on either side of her round cheeks.
“She is pretty,” said Margaret, stepping back to see her better. “What does it say underneath?”
She stepped back again, holding her head up and back to read the letters, pieced together with stone chips and set unevenly in the floor. “Here was Margaret,” it said, “who died for love.”
II
There was, of course, not time to do everything. Before Margaret had seen half the house, Carla’s brother came home. Carla came running up the great staircase one afternoon calling, “Margaret, Margaret, he’s come,” and Margaret, running down to meet her, hugged her and said, “I’m so glad.”
He had certainly come, and Margaret, entering the drawing room shyly behind Carla, saw Mrs. Montague with tears in her eyes and Mr. Montague standing straighter and prouder than before, and Carla said, “Brother, here is Margaret.”
He was tall and haughty in uniform, and Margaret wished she had met him a little later, when she had perhaps been to her room again, and perhaps tucked up her hair. Next to him stood his friend, a captain, small and dark and bitter, and smiling bleakly upon the family assembled. Margaret smiled back timidly at them both, and stood behind Carla.
Everyone then spoke at once. Mrs. Montague said “We’ve missed you so,” and Mr. Montague said “Glad to have you back, m’boy,” and Carla said “We shall have such times—I’ve promised Margaret—” and Carla’s brother said “So this is Margaret?” and the dark captain said “I’ve been wanting to come.”
It seemed that they all spoke at once, every time; there would be a long waiting silence while all of them looked around with joy at being together, and then suddenly everyone would have found something to say. It was so at dinner. Mrs. Montague said “You’re not eating enough,” and “You used to be more fond of pomegranates,” and Carla said “We’re to go boating,” and “We’ll have a dance, won’t we?” and “Margaret and I insist upon a picnic,” and “I saved the river for my brother to show to Margaret.” Mr. Montague puffed and laughed and passed the wine, and Margaret hardly dared lift her eyes. The black captain said “Never realized what an attractive old place it could be, after all,” and Carla’s brother said “There’s much about the house I’d like to show Margaret.”
After dinner they played charades, and even Mrs. Montague did Achilles with Mr. Montague, holding his heel and both of them laughing and glancing at Carla and Margaret and the captain. Carla’s brother leaned on the back of Margaret’s chair and once she looked up at him and said, “No one ever calls you by name. Do you actually have a name?”
“Paul,” he said.
The next morning they walked on the lawn, Carla with the captain and Margaret with Paul. They stood by the lake, and Margaret looked at the pure reflection of the house and said, “It almost seems as though we could open a door and go in.”
“There,” said Paul, and he pointed with his stick at the front entrance, “there is where we shall enter, and it will swing open for us with an underwater crash.”
“Margaret,” said Carla, laughing, “you say odd things, sometimes. If you tried to go into that house, you’d be in the lake.”
“Indeed, and not like it much, at all,” the captain added.
“Or would you have the side door?” asked Paul, pointing with his stick.
“I think I prefer the front door,” said Margaret.
“But you’d be drowned,” Carla said. She took Margaret’s arm as they started back toward the house, and said, “We’d make a scene for a tapestry right now, on the lawn before the house.”
“Another tapestry?” said the captain, and grimaced.
They played croquet, and Paul hit Margaret’s ball toward a wicket, and the captain accused her of cheating prettily. And they played word games in the evening, and Margaret and Paul won, and everyone said Margaret was so clever. And they walked endlessly on the lawns before the house, and looked into the still lake, and watched the reflection of the house in the water, and Margaret chose a room in the reflected house for her own, and Paul said she should have it.
“That’s the room where Mama writes her letters,” said Carla, looking strangely at Margaret.
“Not in our house in the lake,” said Paul.
“And I suppose if you like it she would lend it to you while you stay,” Carla said.
“Not at all,” said Margaret amiably. “I think I should prefer the tower anyway.”
“Have you seen the rose garden?” Carla asked.
“Let me take you there,” said Paul.
Margaret started across the lawn with him, and Carla called to her, “Where are you off to now, Margaret?”
“Why, to the rose garden,” Margaret called back, and Carla said, staring, “You are really very odd, sometimes, Margaret. And it’s growing colder, far too cold to linger among the roses,” and so Margaret and Paul turned back.
Mrs. Montague’s needlepoint was coming on well. She had filled in most of the outlines of the house, and was setting in the windows. After the first small shock of surprise, Margaret no longer wondered that Mrs. Montague was able to set out the house so well without a pattern or a plan; she did it from memory and Margaret, realizing this for the first time, thought “How amazing,” and then “But of course how else would she do it?”
To see a picture of the house, Mrs. Montague needed only to lift her eyes in any direction, but, more than that, she had of course never used any other model for her embroidery; she had of course learned the faces of the house better than the faces of her children. The dreamy life of the Montagues in the house was most clearly shown Margaret as she watched Mrs. Montague surely and capably building doors and windows, carvings and cornices, in her embroidered house, smiling tenderly across the room to where Carla and the captain bent over a book together, while her fingers almost of themselves turned the edge of a carving Margaret had forgotten or never known about until, leaning over the back of Mrs. Montague’s chair, she saw it form itself under Mrs. Montague’s hands.
The small thread of days and sunlight, then, that bound Margaret to the house, was woven here as she watched. And Carla, lifting her head to look over, might say, “Margaret, do come and look, here. Mother is always at her work, but my brother is rarely home.”
They went for a picnic, Carla and the captain and Paul and Margaret, and Mrs. Montague waved to them from the doorway as they left, and Mr. Montague came to his study window and lifted his hand to them. They chose to go to the wooded hill beyond the house, although Carla was timid about going too far away—“I always like to be where I can see the roofs, at least,” she said—and sat among the trees, on moss greener than Margaret had ever seen before, and spread out a white cloth and drank red wine.
It was a very proper forest, with neat trees and the green moss, and an occasional purple or yellow flower growing discreetly away from the path. There was no sense of brooding silence, as there sometimes is with trees about, and Margaret realized, looking up to see the sky clearly between the branches, that she had seen this forest in the tapestries in the breakfast room, with the house shining in the sunlight beyond.
“Doesn’t the river come through here somewhere?” she asked, hearing, she thought, the sound of it through the trees. “I feel so comfortable here among these trees, so at home.”
“It is possible,” said Paul, “to take a boat from the lawn in front of the house and move without sound down the river, through the trees, past the fields and then, for some reason, around past the house again. The river, you see, goes almost around the house in a great circle. We are very proud of that.”
“The river is nearby,” said Carla. “It goes almost completely around the house.”
“Margaret,” said the captain. “You must not look rapt on a picnic unless you are contemplating nature.”
“I was, as a matter of fact,” said Margaret. “I was contemplating a caterpillar approaching Carla’s foot.”
“Will you come and look at the river?” said Paul, rising and holding his hand out to Margaret. “I think we can see much of its great circle from near here.”
“Margaret,” said Carla as Margaret stood up, “you are always wandering off.”
“I’m coming right back,” Margaret said, with a laugh. “It’s only to look at the river.”
“Don’t be away long,” Carla said. “We must be getting back before dark.”
The river as it went through the trees was shadowed and cool, broadening out into pools where only the barest movement disturbed the ferns along its edge, and where small stones made it possible to step out and see the water all around, from a precarious island, and where without sound a leaf might be carried from the limits of sight to the limits of sight, moving swiftly but imperceptibly and turning a little as it went.
“Who lives in the tower, Paul?” asked Margaret, holding a fern and running it softly over the back of her hand. “I know someone lives there, because I saw someone moving at the window once.”
“Not lives there,” said Paul, amused. “Did you think we kept a political prisoner locked away?”
“I thought it might be the birds, at first,” Margaret said, glad to be describing this to someone.
“No,” said Paul, still amused. “There’s an aunt, or a great-aunt, or perhaps even a great-great-great-aunt. She doesn’t live there, at all, but goes there because she says she cannot endure the sight of tapestry.” He laughed. “She has filled the tower with books, and a huge old cat, and she may practice alchemy there, for all anyone knows. The reason you’ve never seen her would be that she has one of her spells of hiding away. Sometimes she is downstairs daily.”
“Will I ever meet her?” Margaret asked wonderingly.
“Perhaps,” Paul said. “She might take it into her head to come down formally one night to dinner. Or she might wander carelessly up to you where you sat on the lawn, and introduce herself. Or you might never see her, at that.”
“Suppose I went up to the tower?”
Paul glanced at her strangely. “I suppose you could, if you wanted to,” he said. “I’ve been there.”
“Margaret,” Carla called through the woods. “Margaret, we shall be late if you do not give up brooding by the river.”
All this time, almost daily, Margaret was seeing new places in the house: the fan room, where the most delicate filigree fans had been set into the walls with their fine ivory sticks painted in exquisite miniature; the small room where incredibly perfect wooden and glass and metal fruits and flowers and trees stood on glittering glass shelves, lined up against the windows. And daily she passed and repassed the door behind which lay the stairway to the tower, and almost daily she stepped carefully around the tiles on the floor which read “Here was Margaret, who died for love.”
It was no longer possible, however, to put off going to the tower. It was no longer possible to pass the doorway several times a day and do no more than touch her hand secretly to the panels, or perhaps set her head against them and listen, to hear if there were footsteps up or down, or a voice calling her. It was not possible to pass the doorway once more, and so in the early morning Margaret set her hand firmly to the door and pulled it open, and it came easily, as though relieved that at last, after so many hints and insinuations, and so much waiting and such helpless despair, Margaret had finally come to open it.
The stairs beyond, gray stone and rough, were, Margaret thought, steep for an old lady’s feet, but Margaret went up effortlessly, though timidly. The stairway turned around and around, going up to the tower, and Margaret followed, setting her feet carefully upon one step after another, and holding her hands against the warm stone wall on either side, looking forward and up, expecting to be seen or spoken to before she reached the top; perhaps, she thought once, the walls of the tower were transparent and she was clearly, ridiculously visible from the outside, and Mrs. Montague and Carla, on the lawn—if indeed they ever looked upward to the tower—might watch her and turn to one another with smiles, saying, “There is Margaret, going up to the tower at last,” and, smiling, nod to one another.
The stairway ended, as she had not expected it would, in a heavy wooden door, which made Margaret, standing on the step below to find room to raise her hand and knock, seem smaller, and even standing at the top of the tower she felt that she was not really tall.
“Come in,” said the great-aunt’s voice, when Margaret had knocked twice; the first knock had been received with an expectant silence, as though inside someone had said inaudibly, “Is that someone knocking at this door?” and then waited to be convinced by a second knock; and Margaret’s knuckles hurt from the effort of knocking to be heard through a heavy wooden door. She opened the door awkwardly from below—how much easier this all would be, she thought, if I knew the way—went in, and said politely, before she looked around, “I’m Carla’s friend. They said I might come up to the tower to see it, but of course if you would rather I went away I shall.” She had planned to say this more gracefully, without such an implication that invitations to the tower were issued by the downstairs Montagues, but the long climb and her being out of breath forced her to say everything at once, and she had really no time for the sounding periods she had composed.
In any case the great-aunt said politely—she was sitting at the other side of the round room, against a window, and she was not very clearly visible—“I am amazed that they told you about me at all. However, since you are here I cannot pretend that I really object to having you; you may come in and sit down.”
Margaret came obediently into the room and sat down on the stone bench which ran all the way around the tower room, under the windows which of course were on all sides and open to the winds, so that the movement of the air through the tower room was insistent and constant, making talk difficult and even distinguishing objects a matter of some effort.
As though it were necessary to establish her position in the house emphatically and immediately, the old lady said, with a gesture and a grin, “My tapestries,” and waved at the windows. She seemed to be not older than a great-aunt, although perhaps too old for a mere aunt, but her voice was clearly able to carry through the sound of the wind in the tower room and she seemed compact and strong beside the window, not at all as though she might be dizzy from looking out, or tired from the stairs.
“May I look out the window?” Margaret asked, almost of the cat, which sat next to her and regarded her without friendship, but without, as yet, dislike.
“Certainly,” said the great-aunt. “Look out the windows, by all means.”
Margaret turned on the bench and leaned her arms on the wide stone ledge of the window, but she was disappointed. Although the tops of the trees did not reach halfway up the tower, she could see only branches and leaves below and no sign of the wide lawns or the roofs of the house or the curve of the river.
“I hoped I could see the way the river went, from here.”
“The river doesn’t go from here,” said the old lady, and laughed.
“I mean,” Margaret said, “they told me that the river went around in a curve, almost surrounding the house.”
“Who told you?” said the old lady.
“Paul.”
“I see,” said the old lady. “He’s back, is he?”
“He’s been here for several days, but he’s going away again soon.”
“And what’s your name?” asked the old lady, leaning forward.
“Margaret.”
“I see,” said the old lady again. “That’s my name, too,” she said.
Margaret thought that “How nice” would be an inappropriate reply to this, and something like “Is it?” or “Just imagine” or “What a coincidence” would certainly make her feel more foolish than she believed she really was, so she smiled uncertainly at the old lady and dismissed the notion of saying “What a lovely name.”
“He should have come and gone sooner,” the old lady went on, as though to herself. “Then we’d have it all behind us.”
“Have all what behind us?” Margaret asked, although she felt that she was not really being included in the old lady’s conversation with herself, a conversation that seemed—and probably was—part of a larger conversation which the old lady had with herself constantly and on larger subjects than the matter of Margaret’s name, and which even Margaret, intruder as she was, and young, could not be allowed to interrupt for very long. “Have all what behind us?” Margaret asked insistently.
“I say,” said the old lady, turning to look at Margaret, “he should have come and gone already, and we’d all be well out of it by now.”
“I see,” said Margaret. “Well, I don’t think he’s going to be here much longer. He’s talking of going.” In spite of herself, her voice trembled a little. In order to prove to the old lady that the trembling in her voice was imaginary, Margaret said almost defiantly, “It will be very lonely here after he has gone.”
“We’ll be well out of it, Margaret, you and I,” the old lady said. “Stand away from the window, child, you’ll be wet.”
Margaret realized with this that the storm, which had—she knew now—been hanging over the house for long sunny days had broken, suddenly, and that the wind had grown louder and was bringing with it through the windows of the tower long stinging rain. There were drops on the cat’s black fur, and Margaret felt the side of her face wet. “Do your windows close?” she asked. “If I could help you—?”
“I don’t mind the rain,” the old lady said. “It wouldn’t be the first time it’s rained around the tower.”
“I don’t mind it,” Margaret said hastily, drawing away from the window. She realized that she was staring back at the cat, and added nervously, “Although, of course, getting wet is—” She hesitated and the cat stared back at her without expression. “I mean,” she said apologetically, “some people don’t like getting wet.”
The cat deliberately turned its back on her and put its face closer to the window.
“What were you saying about Paul?” Margaret asked the old lady, feeling somehow that there might be a thin thread of reason tangling the old lady and the cat and the tower and the rain, and even, with abrupt clarity, defining Margaret herself and the strange hesitation which had caught at her here in the tower. “He’s going away soon, you know.”
“It would have been better if it were over with by now,” the old lady said. “These things don’t take really long, you know, and the sooner the better, I say.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Margaret said intelligently.
“After all,” said the old lady dreamily, with raindrops in her hair, “we don’t always see ahead, into things that are going to happen.”
Margaret was wondering how soon she might politely go back downstairs and dry herself off, and she meant to stay politely only so long as the old lady seemed to be talking, however remotely, about Paul. Also, the rain and the wind were coming through the window onto Margaret in great driving gusts, as though Margaret and the old lady and the books and the cat would be washed away, and the top of the tower cleaned of them.
“I would help you if I could,” the old lady said earnestly to Margaret, raising her voice almost to a scream to be heard over the wind and the rain. She stood up to approach Margaret, and Margaret, thinking she was about to fall, reached out a hand to catch her. The cat stood up and spat, the rain came through the window in a great sweep, and Margaret, holding the old lady’s hands, heard through the sounds of the wind the equal sounds of all the voices in the world, and they called to her saying, “Goodbye, goodbye,” and “All is lost” and another voice saying, “I will always remember you,” and still another called, “It is so dark.” And, far away from the others, she could hear a voice calling, “Come back, come back.” Then the old lady pulled her hands away from Margaret and the voices were gone. The cat shrank back and the old lady looked coldly at Margaret and said, “As I was saying, I would help you if I could.”
“I’m so sorry,” Margaret said weakly. “I thought you were going to fall.”
“Goodbye,” said the old lady.
III
At the ball Margaret wore a gown of thin blue lace that belonged to Carla, and yellow roses in her hair, and she carried one of the fans from the fan room, a daintily painted ivory thing which seemed indestructible, since she dropped it twice, and which had a tiny picture of the house painted on its ivory sticks, so that when the fan was closed the house was gone. Mrs. Montague had given it to her to carry, and had given Carla another, so that when Margaret and Carla passed one another dancing, or met by the punch bowl or in the halls, they said happily to one another, “Have you still got your fan? I gave mine to someone to hold for a minute; I showed mine to everyone. Are you still carrying your fan? I’ve got mine.”
Margaret danced with strangers and with Paul, and when she danced with Paul they danced away from the others, up and down the long gallery hung with pictures, in and out between the pillars which led to the great hall opening into the room of the tiles. Near them danced ladies in scarlet silk, and green satin, and white velvet, and Mrs. Montague, in black with diamonds at her throat and on her hands, stood at the top of the room and smiled at the dancers, or went on Mr. Montague’s arm to greet guests who came laughingly in between the pillars looking eagerly and already moving in time to the music as they walked. One lady wore white feathers in her hair, curling down against her shoulder; another had a pink scarf over her arms, and it floated behind her as she danced. Paul was in his haughty uniform, and Carla wore red roses in her hair and danced with the captain.
“Are you really going tomorrow?” Margaret asked Paul once during the evening; she knew that he was, but somehow asking the question—which she had done several times before—established a communication between them, of his right to go and her right to wonder, which was sadly sweet to her.
“I said you might meet the great-aunt,” said Paul, as though in answer; Margaret followed his glance, and saw the old lady of the tower. She was dressed in yellow satin, and looked very regal and proud as she moved through the crowd of dancers, drawing her skirt aside if any of them came too close to her. She was coming toward Margaret and Paul where they sat on small chairs against the wall, and when she came close enough she smiled, looking at Paul, and said to him, holding out her hands, “I am very glad to see you, my dear.”
Then she smiled at Margaret and Margaret smiled back, thankful that the old lady held out no hands to her.
“Margaret told me you were here,” the old lady said to Paul, “and I came down to see you once more.”
“I’m happy that you did,” Paul said. “I wanted to see you so much that I almost came to the tower.”
They both laughed and Margaret, looking from one to the other of them, wondered at the strong resemblance between them. Margaret sat very straight and stiff on her narrow chair, with her blue lace skirt falling charmingly around her and her hands folded neatly in her lap, and listened to their talk. Paul had found the old lady a chair and they sat with their heads near together, looking at one another as they talked, and smiling.
“You look very fit,” the old lady said. “Very fit indeed.” She sighed.
“You look wonderfully well,” Paul said.
“Oh, well,” said the old lady. “I’ve aged. I’ve aged, I know it.”
“So have I,” said Paul.
“Not noticeably,” said the old lady, shaking her head and regarding him soberly for a minute. “You never will, I suppose.”
At that moment the captain came up and bowed in front of Margaret, and Margaret, hoping that Paul might notice, got up to dance with him.
“I saw you sitting there alone,” said the captain, “and I seized the precise opportunity I have been awaiting all evening.”
“Excellent military tactics,” said Margaret, wondering if these remarks had not been made a thousand times before, at a thousand different balls.
“I could be a splendid tactician,” said the captain gallantly, as though carrying on his share of the echoing conversation, the words spoken under so many glittering chandeliers, “if my objective were always so agreeable to me.”
“I saw you dancing with Carla,” said Margaret.
“Carla,” he said, and made a small gesture that somehow showed Carla as infinitely less than Margaret. Margaret knew that she had seen him make the same gesture to Carla, probably with reference to Margaret. She laughed.
“I forget what I’m supposed to say now,” she told him.
“You’re supposed to say,” he told her seriously, “‘And do you really leave us so soon?’”
“And do you really leave us so soon?” said Margaret obediently.
“The sooner to return,” he said, and tightened his arm around her waist. Margaret said, it being her turn, “We shall miss you very much.”
“I shall miss you,” he said, with a manly air of resignation.
They danced two waltzes, after which the captain escorted her handsomely back to the chair from which he had taken her, next to which Paul and the old lady continued in conversation, laughing and gesturing. The captain bowed to Margaret deeply, clicking his heels.
“May I leave you alone for a minute or so?” he asked. “I believe Carla is looking for me.”
“I’m perfectly all right here,” Margaret said. As the captain hurried away she turned to hear what Paul and the old lady were saying.
“I remember, I remember,” said the old lady laughing, and she tapped Paul on the wrist with her fan. “I never imagined there would be a time when I should find it funny.”
“But it was funny,” said Paul.
“We were so young,” the old lady said. “I can hardly remember.”
She stood up abruptly, bowed to Margaret, and started back across the room among the dancers. Paul followed her as far as the doorway and then left her to come back to Margaret. When he sat down next to her he said, “So you met the old lady?”
“I went to the tower,” Margaret said.
“She told me,” he said absently, looking down at his gloves. “Well,” he said finally, looking up with an air of cheerfulness. “Are they never going to play a waltz?”
Shortly before the sun came up over the river the next morning they sat at breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Montague at the ends of the table, Carla and the captain, Margaret and Paul. The red roses in Carla’s hair had faded and been thrown away, as had Margaret’s yellow roses, but both Carla and Margaret still wore their ball gowns, which they had been wearing for so long that the soft richness of them seemed natural, as though they were to wear nothing else for an eternity in the house, and the gay confusion of helping one another dress, and admiring one another, and straightening the last folds to hang more gracefully, seemed all to have happened longer ago than memory, to be perhaps a dream that might never have happened at all, as perhaps the figures in the tapestries on the walls of the dining room might remember, secretly, an imagined process of dressing themselves and coming with laughter and light voices to sit on the lawn where they were woven. Margaret, looking at Carla, thought that she had never seen Carla so familiarly as in this soft white gown, with her hair dressed high on her head—had it really been curled and pinned that way? Or had it always, forever, been so?—and the fan in her hand—had she not always had that fan, held just so?—and when Carla turned her head slightly on her long neck she captured the air of one of the portraits in the long gallery. Paul and the captain were still somehow trim in their uniforms; they were leaving at sunrise.
“Must you really leave this morning?” Margaret whispered to Paul.
“You are all kind to stay up and say goodbye,” said the captain, and he leaned forward to look down the table at Margaret, as though it were particularly kind of her.
“Every time my son leaves me,” said Mrs. Montague, “it is as though it were the first time.”
Abruptly, the captain turned to Mrs. Montague and said, “I noticed this morning that there was a bare patch on the grass before the door. Can it be restored?”
“I had not known,” Mrs. Montague said, and she looked nervously at Mr. Montague, who put his hand quietly on the table and said, “We hope to keep the house in good repair so long as we are able.”
“But the broken statue by the lake?” said the captain. “And the tear in the tapestry behind your head?”
“It is wrong of you to notice these things,” Mrs. Montague said, gently.
“What can I do?” he said to her. “It is impossible not to notice these things. The fish are dying, for instance. There are no grapes in the arbor this year. The carpet is worn to thread near your embroidery frame,” he bowed to Mrs. Montague, “and in the house itself—” bowing to Mr. Montague, “—there is a noticeable crack over the window of the conservatory, a crack in the solid stone. Can you repair that?”
Mr. Montague said weakly, “It is very wrong of you to notice these things. Have you neglected the sun, and the bright perfection of the drawing room? Have you been recently to the gallery of portraits? Have you walked on the green portions of the lawn, or only watched for the bare places?”
“The drawing room is shabby,” said the captain softly. “The green brocade sofa is torn a little near the arm. The carpet has lost its luster. The gilt is chipped on four of the small chairs in the gold room, the silver paint scratched in the silver room. A tile is missing from the face of Margaret, who died for love, and in the great gallery the paint has faded slightly on the portrait of—” bowing to Mr. Montague, “—your great-great-great-grandfather, sir.”
Mr. Montague and Mrs. Montague looked at one another, and then Mrs. Montague said, “Surely it is not necessary to reproach us for these things?”
The captain reddened and shook his head.
“My embroidery is very nearly finished,” Mrs. Montague said. “I have only to put the figures into the foreground.”
“I shall mend the brocade sofa,” said Carla.
The captain glanced once around the table, and sighed. “I must pack,” he said. “We cannot delay our duties even though we have offended lovely women.” Mrs. Montague, turning coldly away from him, rose and left the table, with Carla and Margaret following.
Margaret went quickly to the tile room, where the white face of Margaret who died for love stared eternally into the sky beyond the broad window. There was indeed a tile missing from the wide white cheek, and the broken spot looked like a tear, Margaret thought; she kneeled down and touched the tile face quickly to be sure that it was not a tear.
Then she went slowly back through the lovely rooms, across the broad rose and white tiled hall, and into the drawing room, and stopped to close the tall doors behind her.
“There really is a tile missing,” she said.
Paul turned and frowned; he was standing alone in the drawing room, tall and bright in his uniform, ready to leave. “You are mistaken,” he said. “It is not possible that anything should be missing.”
“I saw it.”
“It is not true, you know,” he said. He was walking quickly up and down the room, slapping his gloves on his wrist, glancing nervously, now and then, at the door, at the tall windows opening out onto the marble stairway. “The house is the same as ever,” he said. “It does not change.”
“But the worn carpet . . .” It was under his feet as he walked.
“Nonsense,” he said violently. “Don’t you think I’d know my own house? I care for it constantly, even when they forget; without this house I could not exist; do you think it would begin to crack while I am here?”
“How can you keep it from aging? Carpets will wear, you know, and unless they are replaced . . .”
“Replaced?” He stared as though she had said something evil. “What could replace anything in this house?” He touched Mrs. Montague’s embroidery frame, softly. “All we can do is add to it.”
There was a sound outside; it was the family coming down the great stairway to say goodbye. He turned quickly and listened, and it seemed to be the sound he had been expecting. “I will always remember you,” he said to Margaret, hastily, and turned again toward the tall windows. “Goodbye.”
“It is so dark,” Margaret said, going beside him. “You will come back?”
“I will come back,” he said sharply. “Goodbye.” He stepped across the sill of the window onto the marble stairway outside; he was black for a moment against the white marble, and Margaret stood still at the window watching him go down the steps and away through the gardens. “Lost, lost,” she heard faintly, and, from far away, “all is lost.”
She turned back to the room, and, avoiding the worn spot in the carpet and moving widely around Mrs. Montague’s embroidery frame, she went to the great doors and opened them. Outside, in the hall with the rose and white tiled floor, Mr. and Mrs. Montague and Carla were standing with the captain.
“Son,” Mrs. Montague was saying. “When will you be back?”
“Don’t fuss at me,” the captain said. “I’ll be back when I can.”
Carla stood silently, a little away. “Please be careful,” she said, and, “Here’s Margaret, come to say goodbye to you, brother.”
“Don’t linger, m’boy,” said Mr. Montague. “Hard on the women.”
“There are so many things Margaret and I planned for you while you were here,” Carla said to her brother. “The time has been so short.”
Margaret, standing beside Mrs. Montague, turned to Carla’s brother (and Paul; who was Paul?) and said “Goodbye.” He bowed to her and moved to go to the door with his father.
“It is hard to see him go,” Mrs. Montague said. “And we do not know when he will come back.” She put her hand gently on Margaret’s shoulder. “We must show you more of the house,” she said. “I saw you one day try the door of the ruined tower; have you seen the hall of flowers? Or the fountain room?”
“When my brother comes again,” Carla said, “we shall have a musical evening, and perhaps he will take us boating on the river.”
“And my visit?” asked Margaret smiling. “Surely there will be an end to my visit?”
Mrs. Montague, with one last look at the door from which Mr. Montague and the captain had gone, dropped her hand from Margaret’s shoulder and said, “I must go to my embroidery. I have neglected it while my son was with us.”
“You will not leave us before my brother comes again?” Carla asked Margaret.
“I have only to put the figures into the foreground,” Mrs. Montague said, hesitating on her way to the drawing room. “I shall have you exactly if you sit on the lawn near the river.”
“We shall be models of stillness,” said Carla, laughing. “Margaret, will you come and sit beside me on the lawn?”
RICHARD MATHESON
Richard Burton Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, in 1926. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and subsequently gained a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He married Ruth Ann Woodson in 1952; one of their sons is the noted contemporary horror and science fiction writer Richard Christian Matheson. Matheson burst onto the horror scene in 1954 with two volumes, the novel I Am Legend and the story collection Born of Man and Woman. I Am Legend is one of the most inventive elaborations of the vampire myth since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, portraying a future society in which a virus has transformed every human being, with one exception, into a vampire; it was filmed as The Omega Man. Matheson subsequently wrote The Shrinking Man (1956), filmed the next year as The Incredible Shrinking Man with his screenplay. Matheson did much work in film and television, writing many scripts for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and also for Thriller and other series. A Stir of Echoes (1958) is an effective novel about psychic powers.
In spite of the success of such novels as Hell House (1971)—a takeoff of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House—and What Dreams May Come (1978), many critics believe that Matheson’s best work is in the short story, especially in the five-volume series, Shock! (1961), Shock II (1964), Shock III (1966), Shock Waves (1970), and Shock 4 (1980). Matheson, along with Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, and Charles Beaumont, is credited with bringing supernatural horror down to earth, eschewing the Gothic extravaganzas of Lovecraft for mundane, contemporary settings for greater immediacy of effect. The immense Collected Stories appeared in 1989.
“Long Distance Call” (first published in Beyond Fantasy Fiction, November 1953, and reprinted in Shock!) is typical of Matheson’s work in utilizing a common utilitarian device—the telephone—to effect a novel treatment of the conventional supernatural theme of the reanimated dead.