Sir. Mildred Cram
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hoped that Mrs. Littlefield hadn’t heard her swear . . . she never did unless she lost her temper.
The caretaker’s wife came in from the kitchen. “What on earth was that?”
Eithne pointed to the clock, too shaken to answer.
“It’s ten to five,” Mrs. Littlefield said. With the tip of an arthritic finger she turned back the hands. “He said supper at five. I’m fixing apple turnovers for him. They don’t wait, once they’ve risen. Isn’t he coming?”
Eithne went to the window, and Mrs. Littlefield followed her. The two women stood side by side looking out across the cold dry brownness of the lawn into the last rays of the sun. There was no sign of Edward and Eithne recalled what Dr. Brandt had said about the possibility of suicide. “Watch for any signs of a total withdrawal from reality. He has had a severe shock and will try to escape from something that shouldn’t have happened, but did happen. There’s a sort of psychic wound; healing may be slow, but it needn’t leave a scar. It won’t, unless he finds the suffering unendurable. In that case he might take his own way out.”
“I don’t think he looks very well,” Mrs. Littlefield said. “Mr. Littlefield and I both remarked on it. Of course he’s grieving. But we can’t grieve forever. It’s not natural.”
“No,” Eithne said.
“When the young President was shot, the whole world grieved. But after awhile people put it out of mind . . . not that they forgot. They just pushed it down and covered it up. It was over. It was history.”
“Yes,” Eithne said again.
Mrs. Littlefield went back toward the kitchen, but Eithne stopped her.
“You’ll stay here and take care of him, won’t you?”
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Littlefield said after a pause. “But I thought he’d send for his own help. Mr. Littlefield and I don’t care for being in service. We’re not young enough any more . . .”
“Just for a few days! You’ll stay here in the house, of course? He shouldn’t be alone at night.”
“We couldn’t do that. We have our own house in the village, and a cat and nursing kittens we can’t leave. We’ll come first thing in the morning and do what we can for him. But no, once the sun’s down, we go home. I’m sorry, but that’s that. Fond as we are of him and grateful for all he’s done for us.”
Eithne said nothing; she recognized the New Englander’s stubborn resistance to discipline . . . it would be useless to insist. As for Edward’s sending for the half-dozen servants who had followed him from post to post for years, it wasn’t likely that they’d stay long in the Victorian country-house. Well, coming here was Edward’s own idea. Eithne had no intention of giving up her own pursuits to make her brother’s stupid flight from heartache comfortable.
Restless again, really apprehensive now, she rustled from room to room, lighting lamps against the deepening twilight. She had never liked Easterly, except in mid-summer when the cottages and hotels along the lake-shore were occupied and the roads hummed with traffic. And of course, when Edward was governor the old mansion had served as a summer Statehouse and the constant coming and going of people, the colorful garden, the sweep of fragrant lawn, the receptions and dinners erased the sense of remoteness — and for a few months Easterly was at the center of important happenings.
But then Edward began his service in Europe. As ambassador he was useful, but he disliked the devious devices and subterfuges of diplomacy and was never quite adjusted to life in the formal embassies; he was too American, physically and mentally, to blend with the decor. Eithne responded to his call for help and flew over to act as hostess for her bachelor brother. She was determined to rescue him from ambitious women who saw themselves lifted to the heights he was certain to scale. Eithne knew how to detach their predatory fingers. She made enemies, but she also made herself indispensable to Edward. Until he married Valerie.
Eithne paused in the library, a room that reflected the tastes and pursuits of her father and grandfather. The portrait of a great-grandfather wearing the uniform of an officer of the Revolution hung above the white marble mantel, but most of the wall-space was given over to cabinets and bookshelves. The cabinets contained trophies and a display of rifles and hunting knives; the books, well bound, mellow, were beautiful in themselves. Like the worn velvet arm chairs and sofas, the room was vaguely shabby in spite of an air of luxury, something modern designers can’t achieve for all their access to old furniture and fabrics. The ornaments . . . oversized crackled jars and bronze candlesticks with flat crystal pendants . . . were probably valuable. Eithne wondered what would happen to them in case Easterly were ever sold . . . There would be no place for them either in the Georgetown house, which Edward owned, or in the modern setting she had contrived for herself in New York. Everything belonging to Easterly . . . even the paintings . . . would probably be put up at auction. The small Burne-Jones, the Watts, the more recent Childe Hassam, the portrait of Edward’s mother, painted by Shinn in the Forties, just before she died . . . Easterly would die, too, if Edward did.
Once more the word “suicide” attacked Eithne’s consciousness like a vicious-toothed bat. It was all she could do not to strike out with both hands in panic-stricken revulsion. Edward a suicide? Surely, that fine, sound mind of his hadn’t been weakened by the tragedy . . . he was still grief-stricken, of course, and that was what she had felt — not a breaking down of his will to live. He had seemed calm enough during the long drive from New York, had handled the car with his usual skill, driving too fast as he always did, but with hands firm on the wheel, and eyes steady. Sitting beside him, wrapped in her furs, Eithne had relaxed, had even dozed. Was this a man who would sacrifice a lifetime of effort and accomplishment? Yet there had been something . . . something deep in him, out of reach, a difference . . . Why in God’s name had she let him come here? Why hadn’t she sent for Ricardo . . . some friend strong enough to help? She couldn’t do it, herself; she hadn’t the pity or the knowledge or the selfless love. And she thought that perhaps it would have been better had the war snuffed him out years ago. Better than a cowardly death now, with all the ugliness to follow: inquests, headlines, questionings, a hurried, shamefaced funeral, a flag for a hero but no wreath, no laurel, for an immortal.
Besides, what would happen to her, to Eithne? She had planned to step back into his need of her now that Valerie and the boys were gone. He would never again live in the Georgetown house, but she would; she could be a great help to him there, entertaining the right people, the “important” people. A nod from Eithne meant that you were “in,” and while she wasn’t particularly political-minded, she knew everything there was to know about protocol. She had considerable power of her own, but it would mean nothing if she were to lose Edward. Particularly now that he was only a few short steps from the summit. She had always sensed this, but losing him had seemed an unlikely disaster, until today.
Edward stayed in the grove for a long time. Once, noticing a small white object thrusting through the matted carpet of pine needles, he knelt and uncovered an Indian Pipe, freed it, and for a long time contemplated the miracle of its growth. The stem, blanched from a winter beneath the snow, curved like a swan’s neck. Edward realized the plant’s beauty but there was no response in his heart; his recognition of it began in the intellect and ended there. This was frightening enough . . . to remember an emotion but to be unable to feel it . . . and Edward, getting to his feet, hurried away from the spot as if the Indian Pipe were a poisonous viper. He was not yet at the bottom of despair, but he was close to it. So far . . . and he was certain of this . . . he hadn’t behaved like a madman, hadn’t worn his coat backwards or switched his shoes from right to left or slipped into babbling incoherencies. Some inner voice kept right on dictating what gestures he should make, what words he should speak to appear normal. Only the horrible thing about it was that he heard himself speaking and saw himself behaving as if he were on the outside of himself . . . a solipsist in reverse? Sitting in judgment upon himself he took great care to censor any indication of self-pity, or to admit, ever, that a rug had been pulled out from under him and that he had fallen flat on his face at the foot of the throne. A stranger had said to him once: “You’ve had it too easy. All