Chapter 3

Were the dear little canaries trying to say something to Delphinia? Were they trying to say:

Just a minute, Delphinia dear,

And your own dear Rodipoo will soon be here? It would be a comfort for her to believe it. She'd been waiting for him to return from Jason whole hours now. The Lord knew she had few enough comforts to support her. Wasted by illness, conspired against by doctors, scanted by her husband, and scorned by her only child—it was a harder life than a woman of delicate constitution should have had to bear. She lifted her eyes to heaven—as much in accusation as in prayer...

.. And saw the cracks in the ceiling. By now Delphinia knew every one of them by heart. Directly over the bed was a great patch of chipped paint that resembled a horse and rider, posting. Over to the left, above the escritoire, was a lady in hoop-skirts, as clearly defined as if she'd been painted there by an Old Master. Beyond that, in the northeast corner, was a face that could be a man's or a woman's, depending on Delphinia's mood and the events of the day. Once, unwisely, she had complained to Jason about the cracks in the ceiling (hoping he would relent and let them have the house on Boston Street for themselves), and he had sent plasterers in to repair the cracks. Delphinia had had some difficulty explaining why she'd sent the plasterers away.

Such a day: Delphinia's back hurt! The canaries were starving! Rodipoo was taking forever! She wanted to stamp her loot from sheer pique, but there was nothing to stamp it against but the contour mattress. Her bed was so monstrously big that when she sat halfway up in it her foot was a yard away from the foot-board. It made her feel like a little girl sometimes.

The bed was such a nice bed—an heirloom that had been in Delphinia's family for ages. Her mother's grandmother was supposed to have rescued it from the burning of Atlanta, single-handedly fighting off Sherman's henchmen. It—and maybe the cameo clasp on the neck of her nightgown—was the only remnant of what had been a proud old Southern family.

There was still money, of course, but it was new money, money without a tradition to ennoble it. Her father, Morgan Duquesne, had made his fortune speculating in tobacco futures and real estate back in the 'twenties. Still, tradition or no, if Delphinia could have had that money, she would have been much happier. She would have given it a tradition. Her pale thin fingers twiddled on the counterpane as the thought of how she might have ennobled that money: elegance, chandeliers, a tremendous staircase, gardens; parties every Friday night—not parties—balls!—invitations to all the best homes—which she might ignore if she so chose! Dozens of coloured servants, including a butler just like that sonofabitch at Jason's, and a chauffeur in livery. Relaxing on the veranda in the evening, friends dropping in to gossip and admire the elegance, the chandeliers, the...

Dreams! She would never have that money. The injustice had been done, and now it could not be undone. She would spend the rest of her life a prisoner in her own bedroom. It was like a romantic old story, the sadness of it...

Delphinia had never been a strong woman, and the shock of her father's will, coming as it had hard on the heels of Alice's delivery, had turned her into a permanent invalid. She could still remember the fateful afternoon when the will had been read, the musty office, and that terrible, sly smile of Jason's when he came to the part that had disinherited her. Her father had warned he would do it, but she had never taken him seriously. Jason must have put her father up to it. Jealous Jason. Otherwise it was too incredible. She must remember and tell that to her lawyer. They should sue Jason for alienation of affections.

Actually, they should have sued him long ago, because when the will had been read, Delphinia had swooned right on top of one of the heavy oak chairs in Jason's office and injured her spine. He had been thoughtful enough to pay the hospital bill for X-rays and such. (Or had that been just some mode of his foxiness? Just a clever way to sidestep his legal responsibilities?) After the hospital, the arthritis had set in, and Delphinia had to be confined to her bed. No matter what nonsense the doctors talked, Delphinia had faith that she would be delivered from her cross some day. It was all a matter of finding the right doctor. If only Jason would let her make a trip to Europe to consult specialists...

It wasn't fair! And it always came back to Jason! Jason, smiling that sly, lawyer's smile of his, telling her she wasn't really sick! If only he knew the pain she suffered every day from the arthritis—not to mention a stomach as delicate as a butterfly's. Jason, sending around his quack doctors for 'checkups'. Doctors? Spies, rather, whose only interest was in seeing how close to death's door she was and then reporting back to him!

Delphinia poured herself a glass of icewater from the pitcher on the bedside table, shook one of the useless pink tablets into her palm, and swallowed it with a sip of water. Gasping from the exertion, she set the glass back on the porcelain tray. A few drops of water spattered on to the surface of a tortoise-shell hand-mirror. After wiping it with a tissue (it was exactly for chores like this that she ought to have had a maid of her own), she began to examine her features as carefully as an augerer would search for omens.

I'm pale as a white rose, she thought. A single, delicate vein showed upon her ivory brow like an ornament. A hairdresser came in once a week to rinse lavender into Delphinia's long, greying hair and do it up exactly as it had to be done. It was worth the effort—everyone said her hair was like a work of art. She had the pale grey eyes of a Duquesne, but hers seemed to have taken on the delicate lavender tint of her hair, or of the vein in her forehead. Or of the vivid purple shadows beneath her eyes? The shadows came from lack of sleep and would vanish if ever her illness were cured and the insomnia went away.

The coral rosebud of her lips which she had put on fresh an hour before, puckered and drew near to the friendly, flattering mirror, but before they could touch it, she heard Rodipoo's familiar tread in the hallway—why did he always seem to march everywhere?—why couldn't he just stumble around like everybody else?—and Delphinia had barely time to set aside the mirror and fluff the artificial nosegay pinned to her nightgown before he came in the door.

'Rodipoo! Quel surprise!'

Rodipoo looked sullen and out-of-sorts, and he slumped in the genuine imitation antique Louis Quatorze chair beside the bed, which was most unlike Rodipoo to do. The canaries had suddenly gone wild with anxiety, and Delphinia knew that something terrible had happened.

He told her everything he'd said to Jason or Jason to him. She could scarcely bear to listen. Rodipoo got angrier and angrier. His shoulders hunched, and his chin came jutting forward aggressively. He looked like a bulldog. How could a man do so little exercise and remain so strong-looking? Why, he looked more like some Norfolk sailor than a Southern gentleman who'd never had to do a day's work in his life.

It had been just this—the lower-class burliness coupled with a gentlemanly manner—that had first endeared Rodipoo to her. It had been a mistake to fall in love. She should never have given in to his demands for an elopement. But how was she to have known he'd been expelled from college two weeks short of graduation? He had deceived her. He knew she would have never eloped with him if she had thought he wasn't the sort of young man a Duquesne could be proud to marry.

When Roderick was done telling his same old story, Delphinia lowered her eyelashes contemptuously. 'You're drunk,' she said. 'Were you drunk when you went in to see him? Is that why you were so ready to surrender to his base conditions?'

'Delphinia, there's no need for us to fight. We have enough real problems without tearing each other apart again.'

'Oh, it's all very well for you ! But do you ever think what it must be like for me! To lie here, day after day, with nothing to look at but a cracked ceiling! Oh, I wish I were able to leave this bed. I wish I could go to Jason's office and lay it on the line to him. I can promise you that I wouldn't go creeping away with my tail between my legs, like a beaten dog! God, I wish I were the man in this family. If I had my strength and health about me, there is nothing I wouldn't stop at to get what justly is mine.  Murder would not be too much ...'

'Delphinia, you're being silly, and you're going to end up in a state.'

'That money is my money. It belongs to me. And it's your fault that I don't have it. If I'd married a decent man—if you hadn't lied to me—Daddy would not have cut me out of the will. It's your fault that we're practically starving!'

'It's nobody's fault but your father's. You might as well try to blame it on Alice, who wasn't a year old at the time.'

'I do! It is her fault! What does she need all my money for? Why does she need a full-time personal servant, who costs I don't know how many thousands for the three months of the summer, when I lay here at death's door with no one to look after me? Who's the sick one—me or Alice? She's not sick. She puts on an act to get attention. I should know what sickness is. My life has been nothing but one long sickness. So don't talk to me about Alice! Schizophrenia—my ass! What's schizophrenia compared to arthritis?'

Delphinia developed this train of reasoning at some length, but when she looked up from behind her lace hankie, damp with tears and sweat, she discovered that Roderick had tiptoed out of the room. It was just as well. She needed to rest after the emotional ordeal she had been put through. Eventually the canaries quieted down, and the house became so still that Delphinia could hear, somewhere outside in the garden, Alice singing a French song about a fox and a crow.

Mes sincer's compliments, cher monsieur du Corbeau 

'Dans ce chic habit noir, Ah! que vous etes beau! 

Et si votre ramage egale vos atours, 

Vous etes la phinix des forets d'alentour.' 

Sur I'air du tra la la, la, 

Sur I'air du tra de ri de ra 

Tra la la!

Alice glanced up quizzically at Miss Godwin, for the little flourish of grace notes that she had added as her own contribution had got lamentably out of hand.

'Your French is improving, Mademoiselle,' Miss Godwin observed tactfully. 'And now that you've shown me you still remember La Fontaine—which I never for a moment doubted —why don't we get down to the business of state capitals? What is the capital of Alabama?'

'Montgomery.'

'Of Alaska?'

'Juneau. Miss Godwin, there something else I had to talk to you about this morning.' Miss Godwin half-closed the book on her lap and pushed up her reading glasses with an impatient forefinger. 'It's a personal problem. Remember, you said I was always supposed to tell you about anything like that right away —instead of talking to Dinah.'

'You haven't been talking to her lately, have you?'

'No,' Alice said. Quite honestly, for it had been fully a week since she'd had her conversation with Dinah sitting in front of St. Arnobia's in the rain. 'No, I waited till I could talk to you this morning. It's about Mommy. You see ... I don't think ... I mean, I wonder sometimes ...'

'Yes?'

'If she loves me.'

'Of course she does, Alice. She loves you very much. What makes you wonder about it, though?'

'Weil, I've been home a week now and every time I go to her room she's got something else wrong with her and doesn't want to see me. The only question she had to ask about school was if I'd had the same desk she'd written her name on thirty-five years ago. When I told her all the furniture was new, she started to cry.'

Miss Godwin bit her lower lip, then, with conscious effort, smiled. 'Do you remember last year, Alice, when we went to the zoo and I explained about all the different kinds of love in the world? How the mother-bear will cuff her children about to show the way she loves them, how the eagle's children never see their mother at all, because she's always hunting for their food and is only home at mealtimes

'Like Daddy,' Alice interjected, smiling.

'Some love is very loud and noisy like a cage of monkeys, and other love hides away like a crab in the sand, afraid to show itself. We can never just walk up to somebody and say— love me the way I want to be loved. We have to wait for them to do it in their own way at their own time.'

Alice sighed. 'I suppose so ...'

'Now, your father—he certainly pays attention to you, doesn't he?'

'Yes, sometimes. Although it's funny about Daddy. He's very nice to me and all, but sometimes I get the impression that he doesn't know who I am. He's like one of those people at the Museum, the ones who see a statue and walk around it and finally turn and ask someone else: "What do you think it means?"'

'And no wonder, Alice! It's been nine long months since he's had a good look at you. You're inches taller and kilowatts brighter, and you must seem like an entirely new girl to him. You do to me.'

'Really? I mean, do you really think I've improved?''

'Now, that's fishing. You know the rule about fishing for compliments. Tell me the capital of Arizona.'

Alice closed her eyes and tried to remember the pictures she'd made up to make it easier to remember that one by. Ariz were the first four letters of Arizona, which was almost the same as arising. And who was the bird La Fontaine had mentioned? The bird that arose out of his own ashes every thousand years?

'Phenix!'Alice proclaimed triumphantly. The capital of Arizona is Phenix!'

'And Arkansas?' 'Little Rock.'

And Geography was the capital of Dullness. If only there were some way to make it really interesting, the. way math and science were interesting. Bored but not unhappily (because it was nice after all, to be home, with intelligent people to talk to), she recited state capitals and stared at her arms, first one way and then another, to see if she'd started to tan. No, it was hopeless. She was still as pale as ...

A white rose.

Across from Alice, putting her pallor to shame. Miss Godwin was a veritable festival of colours in her orchid-and-green floral-print, Speckles of sunshine filtering through the willow branches brought out bright tints of copper in the dark skin of her face and arms, and behind her a border of young marigolds echoed the same ruddy tone.

A few yards up the garden path stood the house itself—-Alice's house. A simple white wood box of two and a half stories, it had a quiet middle-of-the middle-class air about it. The Raleigh house and the others spaced out along Gwynn River Falls Drive had known a brief moment of glory half a century before when the patrician element of Baltimore had made their country homes there, but now the suburbs were encroaching, the patricians had decayed or moved out, the fabulous gardens were being divided into lots, and the carriage houses were being rented as homes.

Just a few feet on the other side of the Drive was Gwynn River Falls, now little more than a marsh, due to the unrelenting dryness of recent years. It was June, but the screen of willows along the shore had a Septemberish look, and the sweet corn in the fields on the other side of the river was scant and unpromising. At the further end of this field a car had stopped on the dusty county road. The man in the driver's seat was looking across the river at the houses along Gwynn Falls River Drive through high-powered Japanese binoculars.

'It's too open,' he said to his companion, a tall Negro youth masked in sunglasses. 'And there's too much traffic on the highway.'

'Ain't that what I said all along?' the Negro commented.

'Well, it wasn't my idea either, you know.' The man in the driver's seat lowered his binoculars to reveal eyes as vividly green as the leaves of the cornplants.

'Don't sweat it,' said the Negro. 'Let's split.'

Jason Duquesne was behind the library curtains watching the cars go by on Boston Street and trying to ignore the monumental awfulness of the development just across the street. A copper-coloured Buick stopped for the signal, and only a few cars behind it was Miss Godwin's Saab. Jason waved out of the open window, and Alice threw him a kiss.

When the butler entered the library to announce their visit. Jason was decorously installed at his desk, pretending to read Miss Godwin's twenty-four-page report.

'Show Miss Godwin into the library, and tell my niece that we'll join her in the parlour in just a while. Oh—and James...?'

'Sir?'

'Tell my niece that a certain book with a peppermint drop on it may be of interest to her in the meantime.'

Miss Godwin was wearing a fluffy pink dress, a wide-brimmed pink hat, and an unconvincing, but still sweet, pink smile. Jason had never been able to put her at her ease when they were alone together, although when Alice was with them all her constraint disappeared. As though the woman were only comfortable with children.

It had been just the opposite with Mrs. Buckler, Alice's governess of two years before. Jason had got on splendid with her. They had discussed Alice's progress in her studies, her health, her character, and Mrs. Buckler had seemed to be the most sensible, refined, and conscientious of women. The old hypocrite had taken Jason in for almost a year, and the consequences had been disastrous. When Mrs. Buckler had not been entirely indifferent to her eight-year-old charge, she had been nasty, devising subtle cruelties that would make Alice appear to be in the wrong. The girl had retreated more and more into a private world of pretence and fantasy to escape the treacheries of her governess—a retreat that would inevitably have led to out-and-out psychosis, if it had not been for Jason's tardy awakening to his niece's condition and Mrs. Buckler's true character. He could still remember that Christmas morning two years ago when he had paid a surprise visit to the Raleigh home and found Alice sitting alone beneath the gigantic, tinsel-decked evergreen and 'giving away' all her gifts to Dinah, who would, ungratefully, break them up or tear them to pieces. The psychiatrist in New York who'd examined her had said it was a very close thing, a matter of only months perhaps. How, Jason had always wondered, could her parents have seen her playing and talking with 'Dinah' every day and never suspected?

Yes, all things considered, Miss Godwin was an improvement. If only she had been a little less ... Negro-like ... Jason would have been more comfortable with her, but he hadn't been able to bring up the subject with Dr. Wirth at the clinic in New York, and it had not seemed to make any difference to Alice, who was used to dealing with Negroes on terms of equality, since Dinah, when she had not been simply a cat, had been a coloured girl. So, despite a certain residual uneasiness, Jason could not help but be grateful to the Negress for what she'd done.

'Are you feeling well, Mr. Duquesne?'

'Oh dear, have I been sitting here woolgathering? Excuse me. Yes, thank you, I'm quite fine, though I may add that from a meteorological point-of-view, there may be general cause for anxietal behaviour, eh? Due to the inspissation of the liquid element. Wouldn't you say so?'

'I beg your pardon?' The fashion-show smile was definitely slipping away.

'I was just trying to demonstrate, Miss Godwin, the way in which language sometimes interferes with the normal processes of communication. I refer especially to this latest, and least comprehensible, report on my niece's condition. Twenty-four pages written in the obscurest dialect of Sociology.' Jason flicked through the report. 'What am I to make of 'approach to group-response orientation"? Or—and this is my favourite— "redirection of sublimed and non-sublimed anxietal behaviour"? I am told you understand your work, Miss Godwin, but I assure you no one else ever will at this rate. You make the cure sound worse than the disease. A machine would not describe another machine so coldly as you describe Alice in these pages.'

'Mister Duquesne!'

'Oh, now I've done it. Forgive me. I don't mean to be curmudgeonly, but I've been sitting here all afternoon inventing bon mots. But if you would just take back this report and translate it into English for me, I'd be grateful. You see, I understand that "verbal behaviour" means speech; and I think "affective projection" is daydreaming, but for most of the rest of it I'm really at a loss. A single page of conclusions is enough, just something to let me know if she's better, and what danger there is of her falling back into the unfortunate condition from which you've rescued her. I give you credit for that, Miss Godwin, but when you write your reports, just tell in an old-fashioned way whether Alice is a good girl and whether she will grow up to be worthy of her fortune and her name.'

'You will have such a report tomorrow, sir. In the meantime, let me assure you that Alice is much better. St. Arnobia's has done her a world of good. Only the most exceptional and unlikely circumstances could precipitate a return to ... her former condition. I think Alice is strong enough at this point to stand up to even another Mrs. Buckler, though God forbid she should have to. And I had thought, sir, that I'd said as much in Section Eight, the summary.'

Jason cradled his forehead in his fingers, avoiding the governess' eyes. 'Excuse me, Miss Godwin, I've not only been unfair to you, but dishonest as well. No doubt you've seen through me all this while. It wasn't your report that upset me; it was something else entirely. Perhaps you're a good enough psychologist—or fortune-teller—to be able to tell me what that was, eh?' Jason smiled a crooked, self-mocking smile.

'Perhaps I can. Would it be that you've had another fight with Alice's father?'

'Bravo! Yes, he's been around trying to weasel more money out of the trust. The way those two vultures circle around that child's inheritance! I used not to worry about it so much, but since this whole Buckler affair, I'm afraid that their attitude will poison her character, drive her back into the old fantasies.'

Then let me assure you, Mr. Duquesne, that it simply isn't the case. Alice has—what shall I say that isn't jargon?— adjusted beautifully. I've been particularly attentive of her relationship with her parents, and though it is not ideal, Alice's character will probably be strengthened by it in the long run. She's stopped living in daydreams and started living in the world of ideas. She is learning things at an incredible pace and has a logical sense that astounds me more each day, even knowing her I.Q. I don't know if I should say this—but she may already be brighter than her parents.'

'Ha! That's no very great distinction, is it? I've never yet lost an argument to Roderick—and as for my sister Delphinia ... well, we always used to be charitable and say she inherited the family looks. As for Alice ...'

'As for Alice,' Miss Godwin broke in, T suspect she's growing terribly impatient with us. Why discuss my report, when the subject of it—or' (with an arch smile) 'should I say Exhibit A?—is waiting for us in the next room?'

'All right,' Jason agreed, chuckling, 'let's examine the evidence.' He walked behind her to the parlour, where James was about to lay the tea.

'Dear, dear Uncle Jason,' Alice trilled, coming forward exactly as Miss Boyd had coached her to, with her right hand slightly lifted for her uncle to press to his lips. 'How delightful to see you again!' But at the last moment all her etiquette deserted her, and she found herself disgracefully clinging to the old man's neck and kissing his face all over. Then, a moment later, she was as calm as one of the Fates, sitting beside Jason on the settee.

'You've grown, my dear, I'm delighted to say. I have to stoop far less this year to kiss you. But you still look exactly like Alice in Wonderland.'

And indeed, she might have stepped right out of a Tenniel illustration with her navy-blue dress and contrasting apron, her knee-length stockings and patent-leather pumps. A clear case of Nature imitating Art.

I must thank you, Uncle, for letting me look at your book.' She nodded at a battered-up edition of Just-So Stories on the (able before them. 'As you know, Kipling is one of my favourite authors. And it seems to be very old.'

'It's a first edition, Alice, and it's yours. That is, if you'll pour the tea and do a good job of it.'

'A first edition! Of Kipling! Really? Oh, Uncle!'

After she had gathered her etiquette about her again and tea was over, Uncle Jason paid Alice the supreme compliment of challenging her to a game of chess. He offered her a two-rook handicap, which she loftily refused.

'Excuse us, Miss Godwin,' Jason explained, 'but it's been nine months since I've had a go at this young lady, and I suspect she's been polishing up her endgame in the meanwhile.' Miss Godwin appeared to be quite content with her copy of Realites.

For the sake of probability, Jason usually trounced Alice, but today Alice played particularly well. She took his queen, without his quite intending she should, and later, when she made her most masterly move (and he could tell from the glint in her eye that she knew it was brilliant) he threw up his hands in mock despair. 'The Defence concedes.'