“She’s a great girl,” Drinkwater said, indicating her with his thumb. “A great girl…” He looked down at Violet, dreamy again, and she up at him, as the dust-motes descended in the sun like Danae’s gold. “I suppose,” he said gravely, the bamboo stick swinging pendulum-fashion behind his back, “I suppose you think of me as old.”
“You mean you think that’s so.”
“I’m not, you know. Not old.”
“But you suppose, you expect…”
“I mean I think…”
“You’re supposed to say ‘I guess,’ ” she said, stamping her small foot and raising a butterfly from the sweet William. “Americans always say ‘I guess,’ don’t they?” She put on a bumpkin basso: “I guess it’s time to bring the cows in from the pasture. I guess there’ll be no taxation without representation.—Oh, you know.” She bent to smell flowers, and he bent with her. The sun beat down on her bare arms, and as though tormenting them made the garden insects hum and buzz.
“Well,” he said, and she could hear the sudden daring in his voice. “I guess, then. I guess I love you, Violet. I guess I want you to stay here always. I guess…”
She fled from him along the flagged garden path, knowing that next he would take her in his arms. She fled around the next corner of the house. He let her go. Don’t let me go, she thought.
What had happened? She slowed her steps, finding herself in a dark valley. She had come behind the shadow of the house. A sloping lawn fell away down to a noiseless stream, and just across the stream a sudden hill arose straight up, piney and sharp like a quiver of arrows. She stopped amid the yew trees planted there; she didn’t know which way to turn. The house beside her was as gray as the yews, and as dreary. Plump stone pillars, oppressive in their strength, supported flinty stringcourses that seemed purposeless, covert. What should she do?
She glimpsed Drinkwater then, his white suit a paleness loitering within the stone cloister; she heard his boots on the tiles of it. In a change, the wind pointed the yews’ branches toward him, but she wouldn’t look that way, and he, abashed, said nothing; but he came closer.
“You mustn’t say those things,” she said to the dark Hill, not turning to him. “You don’t know me, don’t know…”
“Nothing I don’t know matters,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “oh…” She shivered, and it was his warmth that caused it; he had come up behind her, and covered her now with his arms, and she leaned against him and his strength. They walked on together thus, down to where the full-charged stream ran foaming into a cave’s mouth in the hillside and was lost. They could feel the cave’s damp and stony breath; he held her closer, protecting her from what seemed the cold infection of it that made her shiver. And from within the circle of his arms she told him, without tears, all her secrets.
“Do you love him, then?” Drinkwater said when she had done. “The one who did this to you?” It was his eyes that were bright with tears.
“No. I didn’t, ever.” It had never till this moment mattered. Now she wondered what would hurt him more, that she loved the one who had done this to her or did not (she wasn’t even absolutely certain which one it was, but he would never, never know that). Sin pressed on her. He held her like forgiveness.
“Poor child,” he said. “Lost. But no more. Listen to me now. If…” He held her at arm’s length, to look into her face; the single eyebrow and the thick lashes seemed to shutter it. “If you could accept me… You see, no stain on you can make me think less of you; I’d still be unworthy. But if you could, I swear the child will be raised here, one of mine.” His face, stern with resolve, softened. He almost smiled. “One of ours, Violet. One of many.”
Now at last the tears came to her eyes, wondering tears at his goodness. She hadn’t before thought of herself as in terrible trouble; now he had offered to save her from it. What goodness! Father had hardly noticed.
Lost, though, yes; that she knew herself to be. And could she find herself here? She left his touch again, and went around the next corner of the house, beneath beetling arcades grotesquely carved and thick castellations. The white ribbons of her hat, which she held now in her hand, trailed across the damp emerald grass. She could sense him following at a respectful distance.
“Curious,” she said out loud when she had rounded the corner. “How very curious.”
The stonework of the house had changed from grim gray to cheerful brickwork in eye-intriguing shades of red and brown, with pretty enamel plaques set here and there, and white woodwork. All the Gothic heaviness had been stretched, pulled, pointed, and exploded into deep-curving, high-sweeping eaves, and comical chimney pots, and fat useless towers, and exaggerated curves of stacked and angled brick. It was as though—and here the sun shone again too, picking out the brickwork, and winking at her—it was as though the dark porch and soundless stream and dreaming yews had all been a joke.
“What it is,” Violet said when John, hands behind his back, came up to her, “is many houses, isn’t it?”
“Many houses,” he said, smiling. “Every one for you.”
Through a silly piece of cloistery archwork she could see a bit of Father’s back. He was still ensconced in his wicker chair, still looking out through the curtain of wisteria, presumably still seeing the avenue of sphinxes and the cedars of Lebanon. But from here, his bald head could be a dreaming monk’s in a monastery garden. She began to laugh. You will wander, and live in many houses. “Many houses!” She took John Drinkwater’s hand; she almost kissed it; she looked up laughing at his face, that seemed just then to be full of pleasant surprises.
“It’s a great joke!” she said. “Many jokes! Are there as many houses inside?”
“In a sense,” he said.
“Oh, show me!” She pulled him toward the white arched door that was hinged with neat brass Gothic e’s. In the sudden darkness of the brief, painted vestibule within, she lifted his big hand to her lips in an access of gratitude.
Beyond the vestibule, there was a vision of doorways, long lists of arches and lintels through which underscorings of light were painted by unseen windows.
“However do you find your way about?”Violet asked, on the threshold of all this.
“Sometimes I don’t, in fact,” he said. “I proved that every room needed more than two doors, but couldn’t ever prove that any could get along with only three.” He waited, unwilling to hurry her.
“Perhaps,” she said, “one day, you’ll be thinking of such a thing, and not be able to get out at all.”
Hands on the walls and going slowly, as though she were blind (but in fact only marveling), Violet Bramble stepped into the pumpkin-shell John Drinkwater had made to keep her in, which he had first transformed into a golden coach for her delight.
Tell Me the Tale
After moonrise Violet awoke in a large and unfamiliar bedroom, feeling the pressure of cold light and the sound of her name called. She lay deathly still for a long moment on the tall bed, holding her breath, waiting for the tiny call to come again; but it didn’t come. She threw off the coverlet and climbed down from the tall bed and across the floor. When she opened the casement she thought she heard her name again.
Violet?
Summer odors invaded the room, and a host of small noises from which she couldn’t sort out the voice, if it was one, that had called her, if it had. She pulled her big cloak from the steamer trunk which had been put in her room, and quickly, quietly left the room on the balls of her feet. Her white calico nightgown billowed in the stale air which came searching up the stairways for the window she had left open.