Chapter 3
The hall seemed dark after the blazing sunlight of the garden, and musty. Christina opened the door again and felt a tide of air, fragrant with freshly cut grass, lilacs, and the more elusive scent of apple blossoms. Anson always said the latter had no smell, but she knew better. She paused, listening. The old house was very quiet; not a sound came from Anson's study. If only he would rest outdoors, in the sun! But he insisted that he liked the darkness, and the old leather couch that had been in his father's office. It was hard, and narrow, and it suited his back perfectly. He always lay down there after lunch, though Christina didn't think he slept. The pain must be worse. He never mentioned it, but he had grown so much thinner this winter, and he was so pale-Anson, who had been brown ever since she could remember-that she was sure he must be suffering. Last month she had spoken to Dr. Loring about him, and the doctor had suggested a visit to Boston, to a neurosurgeon, who, it was said, had performed amazing operations on the nerves of the spine.
"But if they are destroyed?" Christina asked.
Dr. Loring, a young-old, overworked country practitioner, sighed. "We're not sure they are. In cases like these an ordinary X-ray isn't conclusive. Your husband should have a special kind, with an injection of iodized oil."
When he finished, Christina said, "Anson won't go to Boston."
"I'll do my best to persuade him."
"I wish you would try," she said gently. She knew it would do no good, but she didn't say that, and she didn't tell him what she herself believed: that Anson knew exactly how he was and wanted no false encouragement, no vain hopes. And he's right, she thought. Anson knows. He isn't a child-he's forty, and he has seen death, not just in the war, but when he was a boy and went with his father on calls. Dr. Barr had been Dr. Loring's predecessor in Windover several times removed. Christina remembered him vaguely from her childhood, though no one in her family had ever needed a doctor except her father, and he always stoutly refused to call one.
Dr. Loring had talked to Anson about the Boston neurosurgeon, but nothing had come of it, and in a sense, Christina was relieved. It was easier-if anything was easy-to go on as they had for nearly three years, when Anson was sent back from 'Nam with a puzzling spine injury, not a wound, the Army doctors had said; an infection, perhaps, or the result of some mysterious strain. For the first few months, he had seemed better; then the pain began, dreadful spasms that left him white and sweating and that nothing could relieve. Those had passed, but the pain, though was less acute, was more constant, or, so Christina thought, for Anson never mentioned it. Sometimes, when he moved with greater difficulty than usual, his eyes would meet hers with a steady, ironic little smile as if he were saying, "You and I know all about this, but we won't tell anyone."
But perhaps, she thought, she imagined that look of his, though she had never been especially fanciful. When she was little, her father used to tease her for being so prosaic. "You are no child of mine," he would say, and add something in Swedish that she didn't understand, but that she knew from her mother's expression must be shocking. Then her father would laugh harder than ever.
Now, standing in the silent hall of the old house, Christina Barr sighed a little. She wouldn't go back, even if she could, to her childhood. And yet she often missed it. Her father hadn't a tenth of Anson's goodness and character, but he used to make her laugh as no one else ever did. It was strange for a man as ill as he was to love life and laughter so much. He had died the year before her marriage. How he would roar if he knew she was Mrs. Anson Barr! She could hear his booming voice: "Good for you, Stina-on the right side of the tracks at last!"
She smiled to herself; then, because the creaking of the stairs might wake Anson, she went into the kitchen to wash her earth-stained hands. She had been working in the vegetable garden-there was little time, nowadays, for flowers. The mirror over the sink reflected her flushed face; the sun had been strong this noon, and she had been out in it for nearly and hour. The color made her eyes look very blue, her hair more golden, but it wouldn't last. She could never get tanned; her fair skin burned and peeled and burned again. Anson used to be brown summer and winter, but now he was whiter than she, with a grayish pallor that struck at her heart.
"Chris!" It was queer, Christina thought, that only two people had ever shortened her name-her father and her husband, two men who were poles apart. Her father, in the old-fashioned way, had called her Stina, and Anson, "Chris!"
"Yes, Anson. I'm here."
He leaned against the study doorway, a thin man with rumpled dust-brown hair and a haggard, distinguished face. She had seen pictures of other Barrs, ancestors of his who had fought in the Civil War and the Revolution, all with the same high-bridged nose, the same long jaw, and gray eyes set in carved hollows. Just now his eyes showed that he hadn't slept, but she must keep up the pretense. "You took a long nap," she said.
He nodded absently. "You've been out?"
"Just in the garden. I was going out in a little while to do some marketing and perhaps make a call."
"A call?"
"Mrs. Collier-Dan Collier's wife. You know. I told you I met them downtown last week. He had a job in Deanebury." She hesitated. "She's young, and she must be lonely."
"If they're young," Anson said, "they'll find friends easily enough. There will be plenty of summer people."
"But not yet." She looked straight at him. "I won't go, if you'd rather I didn't."
"I didn't say that, Chris. But it seems like a waste of time and energy to bother with children."
She said quietly, "Dan Collier was kind to my father one summer, years ago." She didn't add that she herself had been kind to Dan, because she didn't think she had, especially. He had been lonely and unhappy, and so, in another way, had she; they had been friends, and they had helped each other. She went on, as Anson said nothing, "It's not easy to come to a new place, and Windover is really new to Dan. He lived here only a few weeks each year. The girl he married is pretty." She added thoughtfully, "She looks like a kitten I had once when I was a child."
"Go and call on her, if you like," Anson said. "But I should think you had enough to do taking care of me, without adopting two stray kittens."
Christina smiled. She wanted to put her arms around him, but he disliked any show of affection, even when they were alone. "I like taking care of everyone," she said. "Even stray kittens."
Anson's somber face lit briefly. "I believe you do. Is that long chair outside? I think I'll sit in the sun for a while."
"Good. I'll bring you a blanket when I come down." She went upstairs, quickly, so that he could make his way outdoors alone. He hated to be helped, and hated still more being watched as he got out of chairs or walked up and down steps. The only exception was at night when he went up to bed. Then he was tired, and he would let her walk beside him while he held the banister with his left hand and with his right clutched her shoulder, sometimes so hard that she had to bite her lip, remembering that his own pain was much worse.
She left him settled with a book, and waved to him as she started out in the seven-year-old sedan. She always loved the feeling of driving off in a car, no matter how many errands she had to do; she liked going to market and meeting people, the friends who had known Christina Edgren and the ones who knew Mrs. Anson Barr. When Anson was overseas, she had closed the house and taken a room in town for the winter months, where she had worked in the library, and at the Red Cross, and accomplished far more than she could have if she had struggled to keep warm in a hundred-year-old farmhouse. When Anson came home, and they went back to the farm, it had been like the first days of their marriage, or it would have been, if he had been well.
On this warm May afternoon she did her shopping with her usual quiet efficiency, and then, because it was too early for a call, she drove down the old road by the river. She wished that this were a weekend, and that Dan would be at home. Christina had never thought of herself as shy, but now, remembering her meeting witn Dan's wife in the village, she wasn't at all sure she wanted to see her alone. The girl had looked her over with such coolness, almost rudeness, Christina thought, What has she heard about me? Perhaps Dan told her something about that last summer, though there's really nothing to tell.
As the car sped along the dirt road that was still rutted after the spring rains, she thought about that summer, and about her first meeting with Dan. She had seen him, of course, a good many times when he was younger, for she had worked in Pringle's store since she had finished high school. But in those earlier summers, Dan had been a child, a thin boy in shorts or duck trousers that were too big for his slender frame, a dark-haired boy who dashed up to the soda fountain, gulped a milk shake, and rushed out again.
Sometimes he spoke to her, briefly and shyly; once, when he had been buying some poison ivy lotion-strange, how you remember things like that!-she had asked what size bottle he wanted, and he had looked up, surprised, as if seeing her for the first time. She had been startled, herself, meeting the deep blueness of his eyes. They were queer eyes for a boy of fifteen, and she found it difficult to look away. As she handed him the package, he had smiled, a smile that was twisted with shyness. "Thanks," he said. "Will you charge it to my uncle, Mr. Blake?" Then, before she could reply, he was gone, leaving the door swinging furiously behind him.
It was that winter that Edgar Blake and Dan's mother had stayed in Windover. Mrs. Collier was ill, and there were frequent orders from the drugstore. Christina had delivered one herself, in a snowstorm. She remembered Edgar Blake's look of surprise when she appeared in the front hall, and his voice: "This is very kind of you, Miss-rr. Very."
His hand had gone to his pocket, and for an awful moment she thought he was going to offer her money. She said quickly, "The order is charged. I was glad to bring it," and went swiftly out.
What a house! she had thought, walking down the ice-covered stone steps. It's like a nightmare. She said the same thing that evening to her parents and her two young brothers.
The boys were disappointed. "Isn't it grand?"
"Maybe, but it's not home-like," Christina said, and her father, pouring out his beer, nodded in agreement. He knew the house, for he had built some of the stone walls for old Mr. Blake, Dan's grandfather.
Dan didn't come to Windover the summer after his mother's death. Christina heard from the postmaster that he was on a ranch, out West. But the next year he came early, the second week of June. He was taller, but his slenderness had filled out and he was surprisingly handsome. Christina thought that he looked older than her brother Carl, who was the same age, and who had just enlisted in the Navy. But he was still shy, saying hello and asking if she had had a good winter.
"It's two winters," Christina told him. "You weren't here last year."
He scowled. "I know. My uncle sent me to a tutoring ranch because he had an idea I was behind in my studies. I'm all right now, finished school."
"Did you graduate this spring?" she asked, and he nodded. "That's fine. I suppose you're going to college."
"Tech. My uncle doesn't like it, but I'm crazy about building things. It's hard, but it's fun."
Christina smiled, but before she could speak, another customer came up, and by the time she was free again, Dan had gone out.
He came in, however, more and more often as the days went on, sometimes to leaf through the magazines on the counter, and buy one, or put them back neatly; sometimes to drink sodas or milk shakes. As June slipped into July, Chris tina became more aware of his brilliant, dark-blue gaze fixed on her. At first it made her curious, and later, uncomfortable, especially as Mr. Pringle, the seemingly absentminded proprietor, had begun to notice the boy's presence. One morning when Dan was in the store, the old man spoke to Christina, without raising his head from the column of figures he was adding: "What is it-calf love?"
She felt herself flush, but she said, in the same casual undertone, "No, no. Just boredom."
"Hm." Mr. Pringle's grunt was anything but noncommittal. It was, quite definitely, a warning, and she wondered if she ought to pass it on to Dan.
And then, one evening, when she was walking home from the store, a car pulled up beside her and Dan Collier's voice said, "Can I give you a lift?"
"It would be nice, but you're not headed my way," she said.
"That's all right," he said. "I was just driving around. I thought of going to the movies in Deanebury, and then I changed my mind." She got in, and he said awkwardly, "I guess I don't know where you live."
"On River Road, the last house."
Still he hesitated, and she gave him directions. "That's funny," he said. "I've just come from that part of town, but I didn't realize it was River Road. I picked up an old guy a little while ago-he'd been down at the tavern on the highway. He was pretty tight, and I-well, I was afraid he'd be hit." He sounded embarrassed. "So I gave him a lift to River Road. He said his name was Axel, but, what with the accent and the beer, he was hard to understand. Maybe he's a neighbor of yours."
Christina said gently, "He's my father."
"Oh." He had been embarrassed before, now he was utterly stricken. "Listen-gosh, I'm sorry. I oughtn't to have said that about his being tight."
"It's all right," she said. "Sometimes he drinks too much-quite often. He's older than most of the men in town, and he can't work much because of his heart. My mother argues with him, and he goes to the tavern. It was good of you to take him home."
"No, but-" He slowed the car, turning to her, and in the dim light from the instrument panel she could see his eyes fixed on her almost desperately. "I wouldn't want you to think-I mean, he wasn't any drunker than lots of men I've seen. And he was a nice sort of guy."
"He is, when you know him," Christina said. "Please don't be embarrassed. I'm awfully grateful, and he will be, too."
They were both silent until he stopped beside the white frame house. Then she said, "Thank you, Dan, for both of us."
"It wasn't anything," he said. "Good night, Christina. That's you name, isn't it? Christina Edgren?"
"Yes. Good night." She turned away, and then stood hesitating, wanting to say something more. But he had slid the car into gear and was going on, to cross the bridge by the old cider mill probably, and take the long way around up to the Green. She stood for a minute breathing the softness of the summer night before she went up the path between the scraggly day lilies to the house and her family. And that ride home, though she didn't know it then, was the beginning of her friendship with Dan Collier.
Christina slowed the car abruptly, turned into a wood road, and started back. She had been lost in that summer of eight years ago. Her father was dead and she was married; Dan was grown up and married, too, and she was on her way to call on his wife. She drove rapidly toward the town, avoided the Green by a shortcut she knew, and reached Edgar Blake's gate-Dan's gate, now. A car stood in the drive, a black convertible with New York plates. Mrs. Collier must have other callers. She was tempted to circle the drive and come out again. But as she approached the strange car, she saw two figures beside it-a slim, dark girl in yellow shorts and Dan himself. She felt quick relief.
He was beside her car as she stopped. "I thought it was you! Leona, here's Christina Barr."
She smiled at him and shook hands with Kay. "If you have guests, Mrs. Collier, I'll come another day." The girl looked blank, and she explained, "That car-"
"It's mine," Dan said. "I got off early today. That is, there was a meeting at the Deanebury bank at two and I didn't go back to work. Will you come in, or shall we sit outside?"
Christina chose the garden. "It's beautiful," she said. "So early in the season, too."
Dan said, "Leona's handiwork."
"And Pete's," the girl said. "Pete Romano. He's teaching me. He really knows about flowers, doesn't he, Mrs. Barr?"
"Please call me Christina. I still jump when I hear Mrs. Barr-I keep thinking it must be Anson's mother. Yes, Pete is a good gardener. Italians usually are."
"But not Swedes?" Dan laughed.
"I haven't had much time for flowers, since Anson came home."
He looked grave. "I've heard that he was ill. What is it?"
"An injury to the spinal cord, they think," she said quickly. "But no one quite knows."
"Is he, does he suffer?" Leona asked.
Christina nodded. "Yes, though he never says so." She changed the subject. "Are you and Dan going to live here, or in the big house?"
"We don't know," Dan said. "There's so much to do to it." He leaned forward. "But you're just the person. Leona, Christina knows everything about Windover. She can tell us who to get-"
He talked on as eagerly as a boy-no, she thought, more eagerly than he ever had, as a boy-about painting and papering and other changes. Leona lay back in her canvas chair, her slim bare legs crossed, her fingers playing with an unlighted cigarette. Watching her amber eyes, her cloudy dark hair, Christina remembered her tawny-eyed, black kitten. The girl looked relaxed, as a kitten does, even bored, but Christina knew that she was neither. She's really quite excited-not by me, but by being Dan's wife and living here. She's very young. And yet perhaps she'll make him grow up. I think she already has.
"You must come to see us," she said as she rose to go. "Perhaps some Sunday-Sundays in spring are long for Anson, because he always used to go trout-fishing and now he can't. Good-bye, Leona-I may call you Leona?"
"Of course." The amber eyes narrowed in a brief smile, and the girl gave her a cool, slim hand.
Dan walked out to the car. "I wish you could take a look at the house, Christina, and give us some advice," he said.
"Next time," she said. "Though you don't need my advice. Good-bye, Dan. Bring your wife to see us."
She thought, as she drove away, how handsome he was standing there in the late-afternoon sunlight. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves over his brown arms; his eyes, under the thick, dark hair, were as deeply blue as they had been when they watched her over a magazine in the old store, years ago. He was twenty-five, now, almost twenty-six, and she was thirty-two. Anson was forty, but he looked old enough to be Dan's father.
Leaving the Green behind, and turning the car homeward, she felt queerly depressed. That was unusual for her; she often felt sober, but not melancholy. Quite suddenly, she wished that she could drive in the opposite direction, up to the top of Whittlesey Hill, and sit watching the clouds turn to rose as the sun spread through them, watching the sky change from blue to lavender-gray. As a child, she used to go up there when things at home grew difficult. She would slip away and climb through the steep fields to come out in a meadow that seemed on top of the world. She would lie flat in the summer grass, not thinking or feeling, simply gazing up into the blueness until she was lost in it, deeper and deeper.
She wished she could do that now. It seemed as if she hadn't been alone for years. And that was true; since Anson had come home wounded she had been with him constantly-nursing him, watching him, wondering, and worrying, sharing his pain. If only she could forget it for a moment.
She caught herself up. "If Anson can bear it, I can." She said the words aloud". What was the matter with her? Had the Colliers upset her? That was nonsense. She loved Anson more than she had ever dreamed she could love anyone, and they had been happy together-they still were. Besides, she wasn't a child anymore; romantic love, the kind that Dan and his young wife shared, wasn't for her. But she didn't matter-it was Anson who mattered. She drove faster, thinking, I've left him alone too long. He will be tired and depressed. I shouldn't have gone.