The name of the other one in the room came suddenly to mind, and he turned to the plump widow. “Mrs. Wilson, I’m Justin Miller. I don’t know if you remember me, but we—”
“Oh, yes,” she said quickly, kittenish little whimper of a voice. “You wrote up such nice things when I lost … when I lost …” And she began to pucker up.
“Now, now!” intervened Eleanor Norton. “Please remember, Mrs. Wilson, we must all stand firm!” She glanced up sharply at Miller, partly accusing, partly as though seeking — but seeking what? Some kind of signal, or—?
Miller nodded firmly. He thought of saying something like “I’m sure that’s how Eddie would want it,” but it was just too cornball, he might start grinning, so he kept silence. He let his gaze lift past the two women toward Giovanni, fixed, he hoped, with an adequate awe. For the moment, at least until he understood better what was going on, what had happened, what was expected, it was the best he could do for Mrs. Norton. On the wall over the headboard of the bed, there was a crucifix. Other things framed here and there. What looked to be an old wedding portrait of Antonio and Emilia: something of the old woman in Marcella, all right.
“We have been discussing certain instructions, Mr. Miller,” Eleanor Norton said suddenly. She had a precise gentle voice that cut cleanly through the silence. “Instructions from … from the worlds beyond us.” She paused. Miller, coming back to the table, noticed now the book open on it between the two women, a blank book, bound, the kind used for record-keeping. “These are messages received over the recent weeks from … from them, by way of extrasensory perception.” Miller didn’t know what to say to that, so he merely returned, unsmiling but genuinely attentive, her gray-eyed gaze. This, he knew, was his worst test. Marcella’s soft proximity bolstered him, yet he felt vaguely uneasy about her presence, witness to this act of his. “We are anxious, all of us, to comprehend what we can from them, and we are quite naturally … pleased, Mr. Miller, to have with us in our endeavors the sincere interest of all fellow beings whose motives are pure and who will … that is, who will participate in our meditations in a spirit of hope and honesty and … in a positive spirit, let me say.”
“Of course, Mrs. Norton. Let me—”
“But do understand, we are not like … like evangelists, Mr. Miller. Quite the contrary. We believe in quiet unpretentious and unadvertised gatherings.”
“Sure,” said Miller. “I can understand that you’re concerned about my being a newspaper editor. But I can assure you, Mrs. Norton, that my interest here has nothing to do with my paper, and I’ll never publish anything in it unless you want me to. Unless,” he added, feeling adventurous and addressing the whole room, “we all do.”
The doorbell rang. “That must be Mrs. Collins,” Marcella said, and left him to stand alone. Miller watched her go, moving lightly, a spontaneous gladness seeming to lift her up. She glanced back at him from the door and they exchanged smiles, surprised at each other’s attention.
Miller pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, turned to offer one to Wylie Norton, standing beside him, but Mrs. Norton came up, put her hand over his pack: “Please, Mr. Miller. No smoking.” And she turned her head significantly toward Bruno, who watched them darkly.
“Of course,” he said, returning the cigarettes to his pocket. Here but a couple minutes, and he’d already forgot that the sick miner was even in the room. As for Mrs. Norton, she seemed jumpy and peremptory, but Miller guessed it was at least partly due to Clara Collins’ imminent arrival. Eleanor had had Bruno — and Marcella, too — entirely to herself until three weeks ago when Clara Collins appropriated him to her own vision. The February eighth show, as he understood it, was a kind of emotional steamroller, with Eleanor Norton finally outlasting them all and obtaining a tenuous kind of intellectual control over Clara.
After four times through the white bird routine, more ridiculous than ever from this side of the door, the widow Clara Collins strode noisily in with her daughter Elaine, the coalminer Willie Hall, and a woman who turned out to be Mabel Hall, Willie’s wife. Miller had had no idea the Halls would be here, Marcella hadn’t mentioned them, yet he wasn’t surprised, recalling his interview of Hall, Oxford Clemens’ buddy, just after the disaster. Hall, he remembered, lived by hunches.
The Halls were introduced to everyone. Talk was about the snowstorm. Some took it as a portent. The boys, also new here apparently, were introduced to Clara and Elaine, though Carl Dean said he recognized Elaine from a study hall they had together. While Elaine, hand covering her mouthful of bad teeth and small shoulders hunched, received shy attention from Meredith and Palmers, her mother swung horsily around the bedroom, greeted Bruno, the Nortons, Betty Wilson, never waiting for a reply. She seemed intent, nervous, self-important, yet respectful. She lugged a large shiny patent-leather handbag out of which she now pulled a man’s handkerchief, blew her nose stoutly. As she strode long-legged — Miller thought of trotters — over to him, he realized she was nearly as tall as he was. Then he saw that she was wearing heels tonight. White ones, odd for midwinter. Nylons, wrinkled, sparkled above the ankles with melted snow. “It’s a good thing you come,” she said to him, and he understood immediately that he would suffer no challenges from her. Somehow from the beginning, maybe because of his interest in her husband and the note, she had clearly supposed him friendly to any cause of hers. “We need folks like you here.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come before,” he said.
“Well, maybe jist as good you didn’t.” Trace of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. “We had a couple purty rough nights. But this’n’s apt to be a mite better.” The Halls tittered nervously.
Miller asked about the meeting on the eighth, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it, except to repeat Bruno’s six-word message. As for the small and uneventful gathering on the fifteenth, she only shrugged, said that Mrs. Norton had received a “kinder prophecy like” that something was sure to happen this night, the first of March. Something, uh, final? Nope. “It ain’t the eighth.” He pursued further the matter of Mrs. Norton’s talents, seeking skepticism, but saw clearly that Clara was impressed by them, thought Eleanor “a fine Christian woman,” believed that it was God who had brought them all, each with his different gifts, together. “She’s been a great comfort to me, Mr. Miller, and she’s taught me more about the Holy Bible than I ever knowed before.” He wondered if she’d changed her mind about the Second Coming, but before he could ask, she was gone, trotting away from him as abruptly as she had come, her feet broad and knobby in the white pumps.
Marcella stood at his side, and in the moment they had together he asked her what exactly they were expecting tonight. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps … the coming of light.” Was that irony he heard? Was she, like him, having fun with all this? He wished to know what she meant, but feared to risk too much. Instead, he asked her why she had told him that tonight’s password was designed “to keep out the Baxters.” Did Abner Baxter have something to do with it?
“He’s the one who hates Mrs. Collins. He’s the man who turned all her friends against her and made his own wife the president of Mrs. Collins’ Evening Circle.”
“Was he here on the eighth?”
“Yes. He’s a fat man with red hair and a furious temper.” She made funny puffing gestures of fatness and fury. “He made everybody walk out and leave her alone. He’s with the enemy.”
“The enemy? Who are they?”