At seven o’clock Caroline lit the lamp; it was a pale unluminous yellow
against the western window-panes, where rose color was fading. Half an
hour later she placed a small tray at Gideon’s elbow; the noiseless
hand was also skilful, for the cutlet was done to a turn, the coffee
superlative. Gideon ate and drank, thanking the stars now set in
chrysoprase above the apple trees. At nine he put down the last of the
letters, and, lifting one of the photographs, examined it intently. A
curious trembling seized him; he appeared a prey to obscure emotions,
and his face was visibly convulsed.
The picture, a highly glazed _carte-de-visite_ of the eighties, showed
a family group augmented by one stranger: it showed, clearly enough,
the four Pennimans and Gideon. There, seated side by side, were old
Joseph and his wife; at their feet was Ambrose; behind them, poised
as if for flight, the less substantial forms of Gideon and Millicent
wavered against a painted frieze of foliage. The faces were remarkably
distinct--distinct as the golden syllables of Harrogate bitten into
grayish cardboard below them.
The photograph completed at a single shattering blow the annihilation
of Gideon’s hard-won calm. The tears poured from his eyes upon the
glassy countenance of Ambrose while Gideon laughed and laughed.
Here, presented upon a little slip of grimy cardboard, was the whole
stupendous farce; the farce was here reduced to such miniature
proportions that the human eye could grasp it and the human
understanding contain it without effort. During the last three hours,
while letter after letter passed into the relentless illumination of
his mind, Gideon had gradually perceived the outlines of this farce;
they were at first too huge for his comprehension. But now, under the
complacent glow of the lamp, the picture made them very plain, very
clear and definite.
The Pennimans were funny, and he was a fool. They had always been
funny, and he had always been a blazing fool not to see it. They were
harmless and absurd; anyone with eyes in his head could see that now.
Joseph was funny and innately charming; a perfect Cruikshank portrait
of a blustering, heavy father born fifty years too late. Mrs. Penniman
was funny and pathetic and rather a dear; yes, she was entirely a dear,
with her cotton-wool hair and her face like a frightened baby’s. And
Ambrose was funny, and--well, Ambrose was enormously funny; Gideon left
it at that. As for Millicent and Gideon, they were funniest of all;
they were, he realized, tremendous.
There was Milly--and oh, how right the Pennimans had been to call her
Milly! There she was, in her famous green silk frock from Liberty’s,
looking like a Du Maurier drawing executed not in ink, but in China
tea, the sweet little ghost of a Du Maurier drawing. How sweet she
looked, and how extraordinarily silly! Yes, of course, that was the
word; that was precisely it--silly Milly, adorably silly Milly,
clinging to the arm of her devoted young husband. To the stalwart arm?
Perhaps not quite to the stalwart arm, but at least to the protecting
arm of a fiercely possessive Gideon in the first of all the black
cloaks, with the biggest and blackest of all the sombreros pulled down
over smoldering eyes, whose expression was accurately compounded of
love for his bride and haughty malevolence for the rest of the world.
Which meant, mostly, the Pennimans. No wonder poor Ambrose lifted his
own eyes in alarm to the face of his tall brother-in-law.
Was it possible that he had ever believed himself a suitable husband
for that delightful little idiot in green silk and Italian corals who
was so obviously made of pink sugar candy? Both sun and rain must
inevitably melt the pretty creature; the chills and ardors of common
life must reduce her to crumbs of sugary dust. Brittle and soft and
sweet, Milly was always sweet. Oh, he had loved her right enough, and
she had loved him; but Milly had loved every one, and Gideon had loved
no one but Milly.
Was it possible that he had ever expected the Pennimans to understand
his plans, his ambitions, for Milly and himself? He laughed again to
remember the mixture of frigid courtesy and contempt with which he had
invariably met their suggestions and advice. He might as well have worn
a black mask in addition to the outrageous sombrero for all he had
ever let them see of his thoughts or intensities of feeling. Not that
it mattered; he was such piercing vinegar to their emollient oil. It
was nobody’s fault: they were all of them good and kind; Milly was an
angel, a sugar angel; and the young, thin, eager Gideon no more than
an impulsive and infatuated fool. What a fool he had been to burden
himself with such confectionery! What a fool she had been to entrust
herself to his hot and sticky grasp! It was a miracle that they had
survived so long in each other’s strange company.
Gideon again bent his falcon gaze upon the photograph, and his laughter
was quenched in pity. The people in the picture were all so ridiculous
and serious and profoundly innocent, and now he might laugh at them as
much as he liked. He could never laugh with them, and it was nobody’s
fault.
And the book? Gone, like a gorgeous thundercloud, tiger-streaked, into
profound oblivion. Dead, like the Pennimans, who, in its death, were
prodigally revenged.
Gideon stooped, and set a match to the fire. It flew upward like a
sanguine flower, and the room was roseate instead of amber-yellow in
the lamplight. Its colors glowed from new planes and facets; its shapes
were subtly altered and enhanced. Caroline came in quietly with the
whisky and soda.
Presently Gideon rose, and lit his pipe. A tall and solitary figure, he
stood gazing into the lambent mystery of the fire; he sighed gently.
“I suppose I shall have to learn to dislike my neighbors,” he told
himself in a low voice. “One might write a grim realistic novel about
those squat dark people at Skatt’s Farm.”
But at the back of his mind was a sick conviction that they were
probably quite pleasant, harmless people, and after a little while he
took his candlestick from the hall table and went upstairs to bed.
He jumped very quickly between the cool sheets, and fell asleep trying
hard to hate the squat dark people at Skatt’s Farm. But the dreadful
part of it was that Gideon could not hate them.