"But how bad? What!"
We both know, Hannah said to herself. But it's better if you bring yourself to say it. "It certainly wasn't because you didn't care, anyway," she said.
"No. No it certainly wasn't that, but I think I do know what it was. I think, I think I must have been too afraid of what he would have to say."
Hannah looked into her eyes. Nod, she told herself. Say yes I imagine so. Just say nothing and it'll be just as terrible for her. She heard herself saying what she had intended to venture a while before, when Mary had interrupted her: "Do you understand why J-your father stayed home, and your mother?"
"Because I asked them not to come."
"Why did you?"
"Because if all of you came up here in a troop like that, it would be like assuming that-like assuming the very worst before we even know."
"That's why they stayed home. Your father said he knew you'd understand."
"Of course I do."
"We just must try to keep from making any assumptions-good or bad."
"I know. I know we must. It's just, this waiting in the dark like this, it's just more than I can stand."
"We ought to hear very soon."
Mary glanced at the clock. "Almost any minute," she said.
She took a little tea.
"I just can't help wondering," she said, "why he didn't say more. 'A serious accident,' he said. Not a 'very' serious one. Just 'serious.' Though, goodness knows, that's serious enough. But why couldn't he say?"
"As your father says, it's ten to one he's just a plain damned fool," Hannah said.
"But it's such an important thing to say, and so simple to say, at least to give some general idea about. At least whether he could come home, or go to a hospital, or… He didn't say anything about an ambulance. An ambulance would mean hospital, almost for sure. And surely if he meant the-the very worst, he'd have just said so straight out and not leave us all on tenterhooks. I know it's just what we have no earthly business guessing about, good or bad, but really it does seem to me there's every good reason for hope, Aunt Hannah. It seems to me that if…"
The telephone rang; its sound frightened each of them as deeply as either had experienced in her lifetime. They looked at each other and got up and turned towards the hall. "I…" Mary said, waving her right hand at Hannah as if she would wave her out of existence.
Hannah stopped where she stood, bowed her head, closed her eyes, and made the sign of the Cross.
Mary lifted the receiver from its hook before the second ring, but for a moment she could neither put it to her ear, nor speak. God help me, help me, she whispered. "Andrew?"
"Poll?"
"Papa!" Relief and fear were equal in her. "Have you heard anything?"
"You've heard?"
"No. I said, 'Have you heard from Andrew?' "
"No. Thought you might have by now."
"No. Not yet. Not yet."
"I must have frightened you."
"Never mind, Papa. It's all right."
"Sony as hell, Poll, I shouldn't have phoned."
"Never mind."
"Let us know, quick's you hear anything."
"Of course I will, Papa. I promise. Of course I will."
"Shall we come up?"
"No, bless you, Papa, it's better not, yet. No use getting all worked up till we know, is there?"
"That's my girl!"
"My love to Mama."
"Hers to you. Mine, too, needless to say. You let us know."
"Certainly. Good-bye."
"Poll."
"Yes?"
"You know how I feel about this."
"I do, Papa, and thank you. There's no need to say it."
"Couldn't if I tried. Ever. And for Jay as much as you, and your mother too. You understand."
"I do understand, Papa. Good-bye."
"It's only Papa," she said, and sat down, heavily.
"Thought Andrew had phoned."
"Yes…" She drank tea. "He scared me half out of my wits."
"He had no business phoning. He was a perfect fool to phone."
"I don't blame him. I think it's even worse for them, sitting down there, than for us here."
"I've no doubt it is hard."
"Papa feels things a lot more than he shows."
"I know. I'm glad you realize it."
"I realize how very much he really does think of Jay."
"Great-heavens, I should hope you do!"
"Well, for a long time there was no reason to be sure," Mary retorted with spirit. "Or Mama either." She waited a moment. "You and her, Aunt Hannah," she said. "You know that. You tried not to show it, but I' knew and you knew I did. It's all right, it has been for a long time, but you do know that."
Hannah continued to meet her eyes. "Yes, it's true. Mary. There were all kinds of-terrible misgivings; and not without good reason, as you both came to know."
"Plenty of good reasons," Mary said. "But that didn't make it any easier for us."
"Not for any of us," Hannah said. "Particularly you and Jay, but your mother and father too, you know. Anyone who loved you."
"I know. I do know, Aunt Hannah. I don't know how I got onto this tack. There's nothing there to resent any more, or worry over, or be grieved by, for any of us, and hasn't been for a long time, thank God. Why on earth did I get off on such a tangent! Let's not say another word about it!"
"Just one word more, because I'm not sure you've ever quite known it. Have you ever realized how very highly your father always thought of Jay, right from the very beginning?"
Mary looked at her, sensitively and suspiciously. She thought carefully before she spoke. "I know he's told me so. But every time he told me he was warning me, too. I know that, as time passed, he came to think a great deal of Jay."
"He thinks the world of him," Hannah rapped out.
"But, no, I never quite believed he really liked him, or respected him from the first and I never will. I think it was just some kind of soft soap."
"Is Jay a man for soft soap?"
"No," she smiled a little, "he certainly isn't, ordinarily. But what am I to make of it? Here he was praising Jay to the skies on the one hand and on the other, why practically in the same breath, telling me one reason after another why it would be plain foolhardiness to marry him. What would you think!"
"Can't you see that both things might be so-or that he might very sincerely have felt that both things were so, rather?"
Mary thought a moment. "I don't know, Aunt Hannah. No, I don't see quite how."
"You learned how yourself, Mary."
"Did I!"
"You learned there was a lot in what your father-in all our misgivings, but learning it never changed your essential opinion of him, did it? You found you could realize both things at once."
"That's true. Yes. I did."
"We had to learn more and more that was good. You had to learn more and more that wasn't so good."
Mary looked at her with smiling defiance. "All the same, blind as I began it," she said, "I was more right than Papa, wasn't I? It wasn't a mistake. Papa was right there'd be trouble-more than he'll ever know or any of you-but it wasn't a mistake. Was it?"
Don't ask me, child, tell me, Hannah thought. "Obviously not," she said.
Mary was quiet a few moments. Then she said, shyly and proudly, "In these past few months, Aunt Hannah, we've come to a-kind of harmoniousness that-that," she began to shake her head. "I've no business talking about it." Her voice trembled. "Least of all right now!" She bit her lips together, shook her head again, and swallowed some tea, noisily. "The way we've been talking," she blurted, her voice full of tea, "it's just like a post-mortem!" She struck her face into her hands and was shaken by tearless sobbing. Hannah subdued an impulse to go to her side. God help her, she whispered. God keep her. After a little while Mary looked up at her; her eyes were quiet and amazed. "If he dies," she said, "if he's dead, Aunt Hannah, I don't know what I'll do. I just don't know what I'll do."