The girl’s sister suddenly stepped up behind her, touched her just once on the shoulder, as if in remonstrance or as a reminder. That was all she did. Then she went right back to where she’d been sitting. The whole little pantomime had been so deft and quick it was hardly noticeable at all.
The player broke off, uncertainly. She apparently had felt the tap, but did not get its meaning. The slightly bewildered shrug and the look she gave Patrice was evidence of that.
“Oh, finish it,” Patrice protested unguardedly. “It was lovely. What’s it called? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”
“It’s the Barcarolle, from Tales of Hoffman,” the other girl answered quietly.
Standing there beside the player, Patrice became conscious of a congealing silence about her. Something wrong had happened just then.
I’ve said something wrong. I said something that was wrong just now. But I don’t know what it was, and I don’t know what to do about it.
She touched her punch-cup to her lips, there was nothing else to do at the moment.
They only heard it near me. The music left my voice stranded, and that only made it all the more conspicuous. But who else in the room heard? Who else noticed? Maybe their faces will tell—
She turned slowly and glanced at them one by one, as if at random. Mother Hazzard was deep in conversation at the far end of the room. She hadn’t heard. The flaxen-haired girl who had delivered the cautioning tap had her back to Patrice; she might have heard and she might not. The two girls with Bill hadn’t heard, it was easy to see that. They were oblivious of everything else but Bill.
No one’s eyes met hers. No one was looking at her.
Only Bill. His head was slightly down, and his forehead was drawn into a half-frown. He was gazing up at her with a strange intentness. Everything the girls were saying to him seemed to be completely ignored. She couldn’t tell if his thoughts were on her, or a thousand miles away.
She looked away. And even after she did, she could sense that his eyes were still upon her.
As they climbed the stairs together, after everyone had left, Mother Hazzard suddenly tightened an arm about Patrice’s waist, protectively.
“You were so brave about it,” she said, “You did just the right thing; to pretend not to know what it was she was playing. But, my dear, my heart went out to you for a moment, when I saw you standing there. That look on your face. I wanted to run to you and put my arms around you. But I took my cue from you, I pretended not to notice anything either. She didn’t mean anything by it, she’s just a thoughtless little fool.”
Patrice didn’t answer.
“But at the sound of the very first notes,” Mother Hazzard went on ruefully, “he seemed to be right back there in the room with all of us again. I could almost see him. The Barcarolle. His favorite song. He never sat down to a piano without playing it. Whenever and wherever you heard that being played, you knew Hugh was about someplace”
“The Barcarolle,” Patrice whispered, as if speaking to herself. “His favorite song.” And suddenly a chasm of uncertainly widened in her mind. So many little things she didn’t know. What day, what moment would trick her into confession?
It was only a week later, at supper one night, when the second test came.
“—Different now,” Mother Hazzard was musing comfortably. “I was there once, as a girl, you know. Oh, many years ago. Tell me, has it changed much since those days?”
Suddenly she was looking directly at Patrice, in innocent exclusive inquiry.
“How can she answer that, Mother?” Father Hazzard cut in. “She wasn’t there when you were, so how would she know what it was like then?”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” Mother Hazzard retorted indulgently. “Don’t be so precise.”
“I suppose it has changed,” Patrice answered feebly. She turned the handle of her cup a little toward her, as if about to lift it, and then didn’t lift it after all.
“You and Hugh were married there, weren’t you?” was the next question.
Again Father Hazzard interrupted before Patrice could answer, this time with catastrophic rebuttal. “They were married in London, I thought. Don’t you remember that letter he sent us at the time? I can still recall it; ‘married here yesterday’ London letterhead.”
“Paris,” said Mother Hazzard firmly. “Wasn’t it, dear? I still have it upstairs, I can get it and show you. It has a Paris postmark.” Then she tossed her head at him arbitrarily. “Anyway, this is one question Patrice can answer for herself.”
A moment before all had been security. Now she could feel nothing but the three pairs of eyes on her, waiting in trustful expectancy. In a moment, with the wrong answer, that trust could change to something else.
“London,” she said softly, touching the handle of her cup as if deriving some sort of clarivoyance from it. “But then we left immediately for Paris, on our honeymoon. I think what happened was, he began the letter in London, didn’t have time to finish it, and then posted it from Paris.”
“You see,” said Mother Hazzard pertly, “I was partly right, anyhow.”
“Now isn’t that just like a woman,” Father Hazzard marveled to his son.
Bill’s eyes had remained on Patrice. There was something almost akin to grudging admiration in them; or did she imagine that?
“Excuse me,” she said stiffly, thrusting her chair back. “I think I hear the baby crying.”
And then, a few weeks later, another pitfall. Or rather the same one, ever-present, ever lurking treacherously underfoot as she walked this path of her own choosing.
It had been raining, and the air was heavy with mist. A rare occurrence for Caulfield. They were all there in the room with her and she stopped by the window a moment to glance out.
“Heavens,” she said incautiously, “I haven’t seen everything look so blurry since I was a child in San Fran.”
In the reflection on the lighted pane she saw Mother Hazzard’s head go up, and knew before she turned to face them that she had said the wrong thing. Trodden incautiously again, where there was no support.
“In San Francisco, dear?” Mother Hazzard’s voice was guilelessly puzzled. “But I thought you were raised in — Bill told us you were originally from—” And then she didn’t finish it, withholding the clue; no helpful second choice was forthcoming this time. Instead a flat question followed, “Is that where you were born, dear?”
“No,” Patrice said distinctly, and knew what the next question was sure to be. A question she could not have answered at the moment.
Bill raised his head suddenly, turned it inquiringly toward the stairs. “I think I hear the youngster crying, Patrice.”
“I’ll go up and take a look,” she said gratefully, and left the room.
The baby was in a soundless sleep when she reached him. He wasn’t making a whimper that anyone could possibly have heard. She stood there by him with a look of thoughtful scrutiny on her face.
Had Bill really thought he heard the baby crying?
A single low-pitched voice was droning on as if somebody were reading aloud in the library. The three of them were in there, and a man she didn’t recognize was with them. He was reading aloud a mass of typed reports.
No one else was saying a word. Father Hazzard was following every word closely. Mother Hazzard was in an easy chair, a basket on her lap, darning something. And Bill, strangely present, sat with one leg dangling over the arm of his chair, his head tilted back.
She tried to get by the door without being seen, but Mother Hazzard looked up at just the wrong time and caught her. “There she is now,” she said, “Patrice, come in here a moment, dear. We want you.”
She turned and went in, with a sudden constriction in her throat.