All Kneeling/Chapter 6
Christabel's engagement had helped her work so much that Carnation Flower, published that spring, was quite a success. But by the time it was in the bookshops she was glad to go to Atlantic City for a rest, with Aunt Lydia, who wanted company.
Aunt Lydia was as good as Talbot Emery Towne's whole publicity department. She advertised Christabel and Carnation Flower to all the old ladies and gentlemen in the combined hotel and sanitarium where she and Christabel stayed; she dealt out copies to those who could not be bullied into buying. She went up and down the Boardwalk in a rolling-chair, asking for Carnation Flower at all the bookshops. The inmates of Oversea Hall were well trained by her. They waited about with Carnation Flowers and fountain pens, to ask for autographs, they broke off talk of health to talk literature with the authoress. "Have you read that lovely new book by Zona Grey? Or is it by Zane Gale? Fiddlesticks! I always get those two mixed up!"
Christabel was sweet to them all. "But I wish they wouldn't treat us quite so much like royalty!" she complained whimsically to Aunt Lydia. "You and Mrs. Carey are so regal that even I become a princess in your reflected glory, Aunt Lydia darling!"
"Thee's an absurd child," Aunt Lydia answered, fondly. They were dining at a table covered with little dishes of this and that, with library paste for sauce. At the next table old Mr. Blanchard was having both vanilla ice cream and a Boston cream puff, and Mrs. Blanchard was sneaking an apple into her knitting-bag. I hope age brings me something more beautiful than greediness, Christabel thought, watching them. I hope it brings me even deeper love and understanding.
In the doorway the headwaitress stretched her mouth to show her teeth to arriving and departing diners, and then followed them with cold eyes. What a place, Christabel thought, trying first a kiss full of shredded string cocoanut, then a sawdust lady-finger.
Mrs. Carey sailed out, making the signals of head and hand that meant "See you outside," and Aunt Lydia fluttered her fingers. Then came the Simpsons, who, because they had bought a copy of Carnation Flower, were inclined to presume. Mrs. Simpson tottering on too high heels, a mountain of black lace with a crimson rose on the lower slopes, bowed impressively, and so did gray-coated, whitetrousered Mr. Simpson. Aunt Lydia dealt them a small cold unsmiling bow.
"Thee knows, I think that woman's hair is dyed. And so pushing—just because thee wrote in thy book for them they'll be telling people thee's a friend of theirs. Thee'll see! Through, dear? I suppose Mrs. Carey will be waiting."
They in their turn were affable to the headwaitress. They went through the reception hall, and on past the room where a little dark man peeped out from his store of gauze scarfs and knitting-bags, a little dark man, Christabel thought, who should have worn a turban and looked out from another bazaar on bare feet, yashmaks, camels swaying past, instead of on fat ladies, old gentlemen thin and trembling as dead leaves, and black boys drifting by with pitchers of ice-water. He'll never know, she thought, what I have felt about him. And yet it all helps. Every understanding thought, every kind thought, helps—somehow.
Mrs. Carey with two lesser ladies was already at the card table that was reserved for her and for Aunt Lydia night after night, and bridge began.
"Your bid, Lady."
"My bid? Mercy! what a hand!"
"Don't expect any help from me, partner!"
"Mustn't talk across the table, ladies."
"'Scuse us, please? Us was naughty dirls, but us'll be dood now!"
"Try one of these chocolates in silver paper, Mrs. Huntington."
"Thee's a bad lady, to tempt me!"
"I just wish chocolates liked me as well as I like them!"
"Have a chocolate, Christabel dear? I must get rid of these before my son comes tomorrow, or he'll think I didn't appreciate them."
"Is thy son coming tomorrow?"
"Yes. Isn't it wonderful that he's able to get down again so soon. Mm! Mershy! B'carefu' thish kin'—mmp! Cologne or something inside these big round ones!" She buried her chin in her breast, as a pigeon buries its bill. "Did I spill? I guess not. Yes, Curtis iscoming. I was so surprised when he wrote that he'd be down this week, too."
Christabel, sharing a chair beside the bridge table with Aunt Lydia's book and shawl and work-bag, saw through a shining mist the roomful of old ladies, pale or purple, playing bridge by the light of mustard-shaded lamps. She, too, had received a letter from Mrs. Carey's son saying he was coming again to Atlantic City, but she was not surprised.
She had been thinking of Curtis Carey 3d a great deal since his visit last week to Oversea Hall. She liked to make excuses to say his name. "Who told me that? Oh, I know—it was Curtis Carey." "Curtis Carey says his mother says you're one of the few real aristocrats she knows, Aunt Lydia." "Curtis Carey"
She was planning to write a new book for his eyes, as Carnation Flower had been written for Elliott's. It must show him the depth and beauty of her nature; it must show him, subtly, how used she was to things like footmen and conservatories, and how little they impressed her.
Sometimes Curtis and Elliott would come into her mind side by side, not to Elliott's advantage. The thought of him made her feel wise and sad and subtle, made her feel old as the stars or the sea. It was at one of those times that she wrote the poem beginning:
The age-old sob of the sea—
But he loves me so! she would think. He will be happy, and I will have my work, and, after all, life isn't so terribly long, and then comes peace. But when it was Curtis she thought of, she wrote to Elliott. The more glowing her thoughts of the one, the more intense her letters to the other. It was unfortunate that just at this time Elliott had sprained his right wrist so that he could only write a few jerky and tremulous lines with his left hand, or dictate restrainedly to Gobby.
Oh, My Heart's Dearest! [she wrote to Elliott, with a hand that shook as she thought of Curtis, who had arrived that day]
How I miss—miss you! When will the Wings stir in my heart again? I'm like a prism that is nothing until the Sun shines through it, and wakes it up, and makes it laugh and sparkle and scatter Shreds of Rainbow all about—and you're the Sun! I need you, Sun of my Heart!
This place is so dreary, my darling. It's a temptation to let one's little shining be buried under Talk of Health and Knitted Shawls and Diets and Draughts. But then I think, here are poor sick old things being brave enough to put on their beads and tell jokes, and outside are the Sky and the Sea. And I try to shine for them, gently, until they shine back at me. They love me, Elliott—isn't it touching? It makes me feel so humble.
And I am happy, Dearest. Isn't there a You? I went down on the sand yesterday at sunset, under a pink sky, with a pink and green sea, foam-edged, creeping up to my feet. And I sent you a message by a small Rosy Cloud—did it reach you? And I thought, here am I, ungrateful one, being unhappy in a World where there are Waves and Courage and Work to be Done and Little Pink Clouds and My Own Dear—and all my discouragements left me, and the Round World sang!
She put her letter into an envelope, took it out again, and got her Secret Journal. Curtis Carey and she were going for a walk and he would be waiting for her, but it was better to let him wait a few minutes. She began to copy, the letters growing more and more scalloped through her agitation at the thought of Curtis:
"This place is so dreary—it's a temptation to let one's little shining be buried under Talk of Health and Knitted Shawls and Diets"
"I was afraid you'd forgotten about me," Curtis said, as she stepped out of the elevator.
"Oh, did I keep you waiting? I didn't mean to. I'm so sorry! And such a place to wait in! Lost in a jungle of potted palms, among these big chairs like a herd of elephants."
"You certainly can express things wonderfully!"
"Oh no! But I do try to see the funny side of things. It helps, I think. Don't you?"
"Yes, indeed. There's nothing like a sense of humor."
"No, is there?"
"I'm always sorry for people who haven't any."
"Aren't you?"
This sedate conversation was getting them nowhere. It had been different in her anticipation. But she was sustained, as they went along the Boardwalk, by the knowledge that they were a good-looking couple. She felt that to deny one's own good looks was both silly and ungrateful. She had written in her Journal:
"It isn't Outer Beauty that I want, and yet I must be grateful for this gift that makes me able to give pleasure to so many. And I can't help knowing that some kind people think I'm lovely-looking. I can't put my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes all the time. But I want to be both grateful for it and humble about it, so I have made myself this little prayer:
"Oh, Lord, I thank Thee for Thy Gift of Beauty, but I pray Thee to let my body be only the Cloud that thinly veils the Real Beauty within. And, if Thou wilt, let that grow brighter and more bright, until it shines through this Cloud of my body. Amen."
And Curtis Carey's clothes were enough to make the world a better-looking place, even if they had not contained Curtis. His expensive hat, set on one side of his head, was enchanting to Christabel after the Oversea Hall atmosphere, so lacking in dash. As she looked at it she thought of Elliott, with his hair always a little too long, in a fringe in the back.
"I read your book last week. It's great!"
"Oh, do you like it, really? Thank you so much!"
"Gosh! I don't see how you can think of it all. And then writing it all out!"
"It's the thing I love to do."
"It sort of scared me about coming down again. I was afraid I couldn't be high-brow enough to interest you."
"You! When I've been thinking all week that you'd never want to talk to me again after I'd shown you how ignorant I am!"
"You ignorant!"
"Yes. I don't know anything about all the things you know everything about—salmon fishing, and yachting, and being in China, and riding to hounds"
She felt herself growing younger by the minute. He knows so much, she thought. He is so strong. I'm nothing but a child compared with him. Helpless. But strongly, tenderly protected.
"Well, but, Good Lord! those are just things I've happened to do. It isn't like having wonderful thoughts, like yours."
"You see, we've always been poor, and I've lived so simply. We have a little bit of a house, and there's just mother and father and me, with our funny old Katie Sullivan to take care of us, and love me and order me about just as if I were a little girl still, and then there's our little garden—I do adore that so! You see, the gentleman we call in moments of grandeur the gardener is also furnace man and window-washer and everything, so I take care of the flowers. And the furniture's shabby and my dresses are made over, but I'm such a goose that as long as there's a rose to smell or a poem to read I don't know enough not to be happy!"
"You know, you're a wonderful girl! I mean, most of the girls I know would sort of put on and try to make an impression—I mean, they wouldn't be just sweet and sincere, the way you are."
"Oh, but what else could one be? What else except sincere, I mean? Because, after all, being real is the only thing that matters, isn't it? To be really real and to be kind."
"Well, you're both, all right! I saw last week the way you acted with mother and Mrs. Huntington, and believe me, I know it isn't always easy to be so sympathetic and considerate with older people."
"Do you know, you're rather an—understanding—person?"
"Were you surprised when I wrote that I was coming down again?"
"Surprised isn't the word!"
"Were you sorry?"
She answered with a glance.
"I broke a date to go to the National with a foursome this week-end."
"Oh, why did you?"
"Can't you guess?"
"Because you knew how happy it would make your mother to have you come here, I think. Isn't it touching? Doesn't it make your heart ache, to think how happy we can make them? Oversea Hall seems so dreary sometimes, it's a temptation to let oneself be buried under talk about health and diets and draughts and shawls; and then I think of their being old, and yet brave enough to dress up and make little jokes—it makes me want to of cry, it makes me want to do something beautiful for them"
"When you talk like that you make me feel like—don't think I'm silly or sentimental or anything, but—well, like saying my prayers to you."
She looked at him gently. There were tears in her eyes. For her, too, waited that black pit of age, at the end of the long road, the road of renunciation that she must travel because of her promise to Elliott. She looked through her tears at this understanding man who had never heard of Elliott.
"But I didn't come to see mother. I came to see you."
"I'm glad," she said, simply, with a smile that made him flush, a touch of her hand on his, lighter than a butterfly.
They played bridge with Mrs. Carey and Aunt Lydia after dinner. Christabel, being exquisitely kind to the old, hardly looked at Curtis, but she felt his eyes on her-all evening. She fell asleep thinking of him, thrilling in the dark.
In the gray of the morning she was wakened by Aunt Lydia's maid. Aunt Deborah was dangerously ill. They were to leave at once.
All the way to Philadelphia Christabel fretted. If only she had known yesterday
But a letter came from Curtis:
"What have I done? Why did you run away without a word? If I come over to Germantown next Saturday, will you see me?"
And the following Monday Christabel wrote to Elliott:
"Let me go from your life with no bitterness, no crying-out, but gently, as the Little Mermaid melted into foam. We have always given each other Truth, and I must give you Truth now, although it breaks my heart" And so strong is habit that she ended the sentence "my darling," and had to rewrite the letter.