Part 14 (1/2)

”He's gone,” I said, my head down, my mouth hidden.

”What a mess! What's made you frizz up like this? A little dampness in the air, and she turns into a sort of Zulu.”

”He went away,” I tried again. ”Nick.”

”Yes, yes, he's gone,” she acknowledged.

”I saw the bicycle he came on.”

”He didn't come on a bicycle!”

”Yes. he did.”

”Well, suppose he did,” Enoch said.

The comb hesitated.

”It was all blue, even the handlebars,” I said.

”Out here everyone gets around that way,” she capitulated.

”But even the handlebars,” I persisted.

”That only means it's second-hand and painted over,” my mother murmured, stifling what might have been wonder or disgust; it was, in any case, fascination. Furiously she resumed combing and tweaked my scalp until I squealed. ”You weren't supposed to be looking out the window! I told you to stay in bed. It's no concern of yours, you don't want to have anything to do with people like that. -Stand still! How do you expect me to get through the snarls?”

”The concierge took the sheets off,” I said.

”Too bad, she'll just have to put new ones on for tonight. It should teach them a little cleanliness. They think dirt and thrift are the same thing. I never heard of a Paris hotel that didn't change the sheets every day! Let them learn, they're too greedy. You have to fight greed in this world,” she went on authoritatively, ”even if it makes you a little less comfortable. Never give in to greed. There's no telling what can come of giving in to greed.”

Enoch coolly kept his gaze on my mother's lips; she had made a little tunnel of them and was blowing the uprooted tangles out of the teeth of the comb. ”I thought you were going to show some sense, Allegra,” he said.

”Sense! All right, I'll show some sense. Pick your head up, why are you so difficult?” she muttered at me. ”You don't mean sense, you mean resignation.”

”I mean keeping your mind on the highest good,” he began.

”Oh, what's the use,” she interrupted.

”-for the greatest number,” he finished diligently.

”Philosophy!” she spat out. ”As though a whole crowd were involved. As though the whole world were involved. You're always making things sound as if the universe depended on, oh I don't know, on every single private act.”

”Maybe it does.”

”I hate that sort of talk, you know I do. I always have and I always will. It doesn't mean anything. What's private is private and what's public is public; that's all there is to it.”

”Do you know of anything more public than the universe? And yet all the private things happen inside it. In the end,” he said softly, ”everything private turns out to be public, if you don't take care.” He pulled from his breast pocket the handkerchief my mother had folded for him earlier. It was in the shape of a triangle. With a rapid wag of its points he flashed it open and lapped corner over corner meticulously, until he had made it into a rectangle.

”Poor Enoch,” said my mother, pausing to watch these maneuvers, ”you have no notion of dress.”

”But I have distinct ideas of design.” Amiably he restored the cloth to his pocket. ”That compensates, doesn't it? It was a question,” he took up finally, ”of choosing the most intelligent tactics”-almost as though he were referring to his adroitness with the handkerchief.

”It was a question of getting rid of him,” my mother bluntly denied. She tugged at the last strand curled at my nape and put me off at arm's length. ”There, you're finished. Let me see you. You know, I think she looks a little like my great-aunt Huntingdon. That was my father's aunt on the paternal side. She had very close-set eyes, not at all like mine. It's really remarkable about genes-they have such a definite idea of where they're going, only n.o.body can find out where until it's too late. -She doesn't look anything like me.”

”No,” Enoch agreed, ”nothing like you.”

”She looks like someone else.”

”I suppose so,” he said without interest.

”The chin. And the temples, diamond-shaped in that funny way, can't you tell? Even the nose. The nose very much.”

He scarcely deigned to shrug. ”I'm not competent to judge.”

”What?”

”-Not having been acquainted with great-aunt Huntingdon,” he explained, but he had no smile.

”All right, if you want to take that att.i.tude,” she said reproachfully. ”You know whom I mean.” She brooded down over me. ”Maybe she'll change. Although it doesn't matter to you. You don't care anything about her.”

”You expect too much, Allegra.”

”No, no, you never even try. You leave it all to me.”

”You expect the impossible.”

”I don!t, it's not true. I just wish you wouldn't be so detached, that's all.”

He permitted a moment to go heavily by. ”I'm not the child's father,” he said at length; his weak eyelid stood up suspended in the aftermath of a blink. ”You seem to keep forgetting that, Allegra.”

”Oh no,” she said at once. ”You're wrong. I never forget it.” Her hand flew defensively to her bosom; she searched him out, wondering after consequences, but the expression he quite readily delivered had nothing for her. She came from him empty. It appeared he had chosen to punish her-not severely; it was only that he had deprived her of his comfort She turned her head here and there like a parakeet in a frenzy of escape, not knowing where to light: she lit on me. ”Look at her-look at her eyes. She's been crying,” my mother charged. ”You can't leave her alone for an hour without her making some sort of mess. I suppose we're in luck, it could have been the stomach-thing. You can go to the ends of the earth, there's no getting away from that. It's genes,” she p.r.o.nounced, shoving the comb into the laced slit of my dress. ”Oh my G.o.d, give me your handkerchief, will you?”-she s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of his coat and blew her nose into it urgently-”I'm allergic to something, it must be those d.a.m.n hedge-clippings, I can't stand cut greens in the rain-”

She exploded with a tremendous sneeze.

”There goes my last clean handkerchief,” said Enoch. ”Oh no, please!” as she meekly offered it to him, ”do me the favor of keeping it.”

”I spoiled your design,” she said penitently; it was crushed in her fist.

”It doesn't matter. I can buy more.”

”You won't have time. Anyhow I think there's some unopened laundry in your grip. In the tan one, I think.”

”No, there are s.h.i.+rts in there. You mean that bundle with the blue wrapping paper? Just s.h.i.+rts, no handkerchiefs. I should think you'd know, you put it there.”

They dallied back and forth in this manner, domestically, troubling themselves about handkerchiefs. My mother sneezed again, almost on prescription; and afterward she apologized and Enoch blessed, both in the same breath. They were all at once restored to laughing: ”I really wasn't going to give it back to you. I mean I have some sense of hygiene.” ”You expected me to fold it up again and put it in my pocket,” he accused. My mother rushed in, struck with an invention: ”You know what? I've just had a thought-it's about Iago. I've never been able to understand his motive. I mean it's always seemed so wanton. But now you know what I think it was? When he picked up Desdemona's handkerchief”-she wiped her eyes and tested her nose more out of celebration than utility-”when he picked it up, well, it was just so full of snot, and his fingers-” Enoch snorted in disgust, but she played it out to the end. ”It was such an unpleasant experience he had to get even. So he got Oth.e.l.lo to do her in.” ”Oh, oh,” my stepfather said admiringly, ”she has a child's faculty. Alarming Allegra.” ”I wish it could be Alpine Allegra. I wish I could go to Switzerland with you.” ”You will another time,” he promised her. The vagaries of her talk for some reason failed to repel him; he would not have endured it for a moment from his a.s.sistants.

Yet it was plain that their hilarity-half secret, half capricious-had nothing at all to do with a handkerchief. -They had forgiven one another.