The Sundial (17 page)

“I must go and find Aunt Fanny,” he said. “We are burning another ten shelves of books this afternoon.”

_____

Gloria sat on alone for a minute or so, thinking that the sun was warm and the sky blue, and wondering if the sky would be bluer if Aunt Fanny had never been born. The end of the world, Gloria thought concretely, the whole world, all of it, my father, our house, our friends, gone in one bad night, and here I am among strangers, and willing to dare it all for one more strange than the rest; but I wouldn't, she thought, I am intoxicated by the tradition of romantic love. Assume myself and Essex, with suitcases, endeavoring to climb over the gate secretly;
I
could only do it when I wanted to get
in
. When I came here, she thought, when I came here I would have laughed at such ideas as these. When I left home and came here I would have thought that these people were lunatic, and the gates locked to keep them from getting out; I wish I had a chance to say goodbye to my father.

“He's gone to tell my grandmother,” Fancy said suddenly from behind her.

Gloria, startled, was annoyed. “You little sneak,” she said.

“He's gone to tell every word both of you said. She makes him.”

Fancy came around the end of the bench and sat down where Essex had been.

“Who told her he was here?” It occurred to Gloria that with Fancy everyone found themselves saying things they would rather not have said; perhaps it was because Fancy looked at one so directly, and spoke so clearly herself. “Did you tell?”

“The captain. She's had him following you two around. Like she had Essex following the captain and Julia.”

“Why?”

“So she can make Essex tell her what you were saying. She likes to hear things like that.”

“She's a terrible old woman.”

Fancy laughed. “You sound like my mother.
I
like her.”

“Spying on people.”

“
She
doesn't spy, the
rest
of you spy, on each other,” Fancy said flatly. “Did you make it up, what you saw on the mirror?”

“No.”

“I think you did.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“How can anyone know what they are really seeing?”

“
I
know. Essex wouldn't run away, anyway, because he's scared of my grandmother.”

“She can't hurt him. He can't stand the thought that he might die.”

“He talks more about dying than Aunt Fanny, even. The captain's been in danger of his life and reason a hundred times and more and
he
doesn't talk about dying. Only Essex and Aunt Fanny.”

“I think the captain tells lies.”

“So does Essex.”

“He does not.”

“He does so.”

Gloria laughed again and after a minute Fancy laughed with her. “I like everything,” Fancy said.

“And if Aunt Fanny—”

“I heard so much already about Aunt Fanny and her lousy dreams I think I'm going to throw up,” Fancy said. “I wish she'd only shut up for a while. It used to be bad enough, Aunt Fanny snuffling all the time, but now that people listen to her it's awful.”

“We can't afford
not
to listen.”

“Well, I just don't get it myself.” Fancy thought, and gestured at the garden which lay before them. “Look,” she said, “don't any of you just plain
like
things? Always worrying about the world? Look. Aunt Fanny keeps saying that there is going to be a lovely world, all green and still and perfect and we are all going to live there and be peaceful and happy. That would be perfectly fine for me, except right here I live in a lovely world, all green and still and perfect, even though no one around here seems to be very peaceful or happy, but when I think about it this new world is going to have Aunt Fanny and my grandmother and you and Essex and the rest of these crazy people and my mother and what makes anyone think you're going to be more happy or peaceful just because you're the only ones left?”

“That's because you're not very grown up yet,” Gloria said, sedately. “When you get older you'll understand.”

“Will I?” asked Fancy innocently. “Right now I'm not allowed to play with the children in the village because my grandmother says we are too good a family for me to play with the children in the village and so later on I won't be allowed to play with the children in the village because there won't
be
any village, and we'll certainly be too good a family because we'll be the
only
family. And what will there be left for me to understand when I grow up?”

“You make it all sound foolish. Fancy, tell me. What
is
going to happen? Do you know?”

“Well,” Fancy said slowly, “you all want the whole world to be changed so
you
will be different. But I don't suppose people get changed any by just a new world. And anyway that world isn't any more real than this one.”

“It is, though. You forget that I saw it in the mirror.”

“Maybe you'll get onto the other side of that mirror in the new clean world. Maybe you'll look through from the other side and see this world again and go around crying that you wish some big thing would happen and wipe out
that
one and send you back
here
. Like I keep trying to tell you, it doesn't matter which world you're in.”

“Essex—”

“I'm sick and tired of Essex.” Fancy tumbled off the bench and rolled like a puppy in the grass. “You want to come and play with my doll house?”

At four-thirty on the afternoon of July thirtieth, Julia and the captain defeated Gloria and Arabella at tennis, Gloria wearing blue-striped shorts borrowed from Julia, and Mrs. Halloran, Aunt Fanny, Miss Ogilvie, Mrs. Willow, and Essex watching from under the beach umbrella set up near the court. Maryjane, who thought the hot sun beneficial to her asthma, lay on a rug on the grass, and Fancy played at some random game, singing to herself and smiling.

In the shaded porch outside his room, where Richard Halloran spent the late afternoons when the sun was cooling, the nurse read levelly, “‘I cannot express the confusion I was in, though the joy of seeing a ship, and one which I had reason to believe was manned by my own countrymen, and consequently friends, was such as I cannot describe; but yet I had some secret doubts hanging about me, I cannot tell from whence they came, bidding me to be on my guard.'”

_____

After dinner Mrs. Halloran walked with Essex, going toward the sundial with her arm against his, relishing his even strength and sympathetic deference; “Tell me again,” she said, standing over the sundial.

“‘What is this world?'” Essex said obediently, “‘What asketh man to have? Now with his love, now in his colde grave, Allone, with-outen any companye.'”

“I do not care for it,” Mrs. Halloran said, caressing the W in WORLD.

“Orianna,” Essex said. “Do you think that we will be happy there?”

“No,” Mrs. Halloran said. “But then, we are not happy here.”

“Aunt Fanny specifically promised us happiness.”

“Aunt Fanny will promise anything to get her own way. How would she know what happiness is, say, to me?”

“How could anyone know?” asked Essex politely.

“Least of all my dearest and closest friends. Well,” Mrs. Halloran said, “we have not long to wait, and I think I will begin to plan my personal future.”

_____

The fire in the drawing room was still lighted of an evening because Richard Halloran felt the chill of the drawing dark in his old bones. When Mrs. Halloran had come in with Essex and given him her shawl to put away, she went directly to stand by her husband's wheel chair and face the room. Looking around at them, at Aunt Fanny and the captain, at Mrs. Willow and Julia and Arabella, at Miss Ogilvie and Essex and Maryjane, Mrs. Halloran said, “I want to speak to all of you. You will be astonished, I think: I want to ask your assistance. No, be still; do not reassure me—I think I know what I may count on from any of you. I require only your willing presence.”

“Certainly,” Aunt Fanny said softly, “what you require,
we
—”

“Be still, Aunt Fanny. I want to speak to
all
of you. The books burning away in the barbecue pit have put me in mind of it; it has come to me that we must—I say advisedly, we
must
—give a celebration for the village; you may call it a farewell party, if you like, Aunt Fanny; it will certainly be the last gesture they will ever see from the big house.”

“A farewell party is a pretty idea,” said Miss Ogilvie. “It becomes Mrs. Halloran to have thought of it.”

Mrs. Halloran lifted one hand and set it on the shoulder of her husband, who stirred. “It may be in order to choose some occasion for this party,” she said, “since clearly we cannot publicly announce it as a farewell; I thought of a golden wedding anniversary.”

“Who for?” Maryjane demanded, and Aunt Fanny echoed, “Not Richard's?”

“The village,” Mrs. Halloran said, “will not care particularly how many years Richard and I have been married—beyond marvelling at my youthful appearance—and I am sure that my good friends will not quarrel with my desire to do honor, one last time, to the husband of my choice and . . .” she hesitated, “. . . the joy of my life. In other words, I choose to hold a celebration, and I do not care how it may be justified; the burning of the books in the barbecue pit has put me in mind of a public barbecue—”

“A witch-burning?” said Gloria, but no one heard her.

“And it is my pleasure that the populace be invited for the afternoon and early evening of August twenty-ninth, for a barbecue, dance, celebration, and farewell.”

“Well, now,” Mrs. Willow said, moving in heavily, “You're two years older than I am, Orianna, and if you've been married to that Richard of yours any more than twenty-eight years I'll be hogtied and thrown in the fishpond. Willow never lasted till our tenth year, but I guess
I
know how long I would have been married by now, as if I cared.”

Mrs. Halloran touched her husband's shoulder caressingly, and said, “In any case,
I
have decided that August twenty-ninth will be the occasion of the celebration of our golden nuptials; let me be sentimental, Augusta, before I have no time left.”

“If Willow had lasted—”

“You would be as eager as I to celebrate any anniversary of your union.”

“Richard,” said Aunt Fanny darkly, “ought to celebrate in sackcloth and ashes. It was the blackest day of my life.”

“No doubt,” said Mrs. Halloran, “and I count on
you
, Aunt Fanny, to enhance the general joy on the occasion. I thought that—since there is really no purpose in trying to preserve the grounds of the house from the people of the village, when they are to be so wholly revised on the night of August thirtieth—we might throw all the grounds open to our visitors; let them wander in the secret garden and lose themselves in the maze; let them fall into the pool and pick fruit from the orchard. So long as not one of them comes into the house.”

“It would be most unfortunate if anyone should stray into the library,” Mrs. Willow agreed.

“We will set up a barbecue around by the kitchen garden, although, as I say, we will burn charcoal in it this once. Captain, I will ask you to take charge of the barbecue and supervise the cooking. Essex, you will arrange for a pavilion of some sort, where other refreshments will be served. Julia, Arabella, Maryjane, I have a particular fancy for japanese lanterns; will you see to them, please? Assorted colors, and I think in festoons. Miss Ogilvie, you will of course make the salad dressing, as always. Aunt Fanny and Mrs. Willow, you will oblige me by making a careful examination of the gardens and lawns, to determine what improvements or additions need be made by the gardeners; this is, after all, the last formal entertainment ever to be held here, and I should like to think that everything was looking its best.”

“When is this . . . farewell party . . . to take place?” Mrs. Willow asked.

“Since we have only until August thirtieth, as I say, I believe that August twenty-ninth would be the most proper day. We will invite the entire village—subject, of course, to certain unavoidable omissions—to come at five. They will dine upon barbecued beef, and whatever else we plan to offer, and should leave us, I imagine, by eleven in the evening, after having properly admired the japanese lanterns. We will then be able to retire early, in anticipation of a busy day on August thirtieth, and very likely, I should think, a sleepless night. I have, by the way, promised the servants that they will have an unexpected holiday; after the labor and confusion of the garden party, I have told them, they will have the next afternoon and evening off. In the late afternoon of August thirtieth, two of the cars will take the entire staff into the city, planning to return here the next morning.”

“As I supposed,” said Miss Ogilvie, nodding. “I
thought
we should have to make our own breakfast that morning.”

“Several more unimportant items,” Mrs. Halloran continued. “Essex can hint to the villagers that a country dance of some kind, celebrating our fifty years of happy marriage, would be supremely appropriate.”

“By the villagers,” Essex said, “I assume you mean the twenty-odd assorted young ladies who attend Mrs. Otis's dancing classes? I daresay they could do a tap dance on the terrace.”

“Suppose I leave that in
your
hands, Essex. I had also thought of some testimonial from the younger children—a pretty little girl, perhaps, tendering me an armful of flowers? You will see that flowers are provided, Essex, and perhaps a short, badly-scanned poem in honor of the occasion.”

“Bad scansion I will
not
descend to,” Essex said. “I will find some little girl to give you flowers, and see that her face is washed.”

“We can ring the bells over the carriage house,” Richard Halloran said, inspired.

“Richard,” Aunt Fanny said, “you know that you have not been married to Orianna for fifty years.”

“I have been married to Orianna for a very long time,” Richard Halloran said to the fire.

“I have no objection to your mingling with the villagers, any of you; Miss Ogilvie, you may mingle freely with the villagers. I have also given some considerable thought to my own costume for the occasion; it is going to be in shocking bad taste, but of course it is for my last public appearance. I think to sit on the terrace under a gold canopy.”

“Disgraceful,” Aunt Fanny said.

“I want my people to have their last remembrance of me—if they have time to give me a thought at all—as truly regal, Aunt Fanny; I plan to wear a crown.”

“Orianna, you old fool,” Mrs. Willow said.

“A crown,” Mrs. Halloran said firmly. “In shocking bad taste, as I said, and probably no more than a small tiara, but it will be in my mind a crown. I have always fancied myself wearing cloth of gold, and bowing.”

“Seems to me,” Arabella said suddenly, “you ought to be giving
us
pretty dresses, too. Not crowns if you don't want to, but some kind of pretty dress.”

“Oddly enough, Arabella, I find the idea entirely suitable. I think we should all go, that last day, newly clothed and fresh.”

“Well, not gold for
me,
please. I'm much better in blue, with my eyes. Julia wears the red tones.”

“I do not.” Julia scowled at her sister. “She wants me to look hideous,” she said, “just because she thinks it makes
her
look prettier. I want green,
if
you don't mind.”

“I like a flowered chiffon, myself,” Mrs. Willow said. “Something bright;
my
size, it doesn't matter anyway. The gels should be in light colors, Orianna, a bevy of beauty around you, if I do say it myself. I can run into the city and if I can't find what I've got in mind I can buy the material and we can put them together here. At least my gels and I are handy with our needles, for so many years of making things do and patching things together.”

“
I
wore the patches,” Julia said spitefully. “Arabella never had any trouble in just making do with any old thing so long as it was brand new and cost twice what we could afford.”

“You—” Arabella began, but Mrs. Willow interrupted smoothly. “No squabbling, girls; at least
this
time we don't have to worry about what it costs; what about you, Miss Ogilvie?”

“I
always
worry about what things cost, thank you, Mrs. Willow; I formed an early habit—”

“No, no, dear; what will you wear to Orianna's party?”

“Oh, dear.” Miss Ogilvie looked anxiously at Richard Halloran. “Pink?” she suggested hopefully.

“I should think a nice dove grey,” Maryjane said.

“I'd
like
pink,” Miss Ogilvie said.

“If anyone cares, I shall wear black,” Aunt Fanny said. “To mark my sense of the occasion.”

“It sounds like I shall have to do a
lot
of shopping,” Mrs. Willow said happily. “I'll go into the city one day next week, and that will give us plenty of time to take things back if we don't like them. What about you, Orianna—shall I look for your golden gown for you?”

“I have already ordered my dress, thank you. And my crown.”

“I can't help feeling,” Mrs. Willow said, “that you will look like something of a fool, you know. Wearing a crown.”

“You have not perceived, then, Augusta, that I wear a crown on August twenty-ninth to emphasize my position after August thirtieth.” Mrs. Halloran smiled obscurely. “I shall probably never remove the crown,” she said, “until I hand it on to Fancy.”