PARAMORE: (Crawling rapidly toward the kitchen
on his hands and knees) I’m not a guest
here—I work here.
(Again silence falls—so deep now, so
weighted with intolerably contagious apprehension,
that RACHAEL gives a nervous little giggle,
and DICK finds himself telling over and over
a line from Swinburne, grotesquely appropriate to
the scene:
“One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.”
... Out of the hush the voice of ANTHONY, sober
and strained, saying something to ADAM PATCH;
then this, too, dies away.)
SHUTTLEWORTH: (Passionately) Your grandfather
thought he would motor over to see your house.
I phoned from Rye and left a message.
(A series of little gasps, emanating, apparently,
from nowhere, from no one, fall into the next pause.
ANTHONY is the color of chalk. GLORIA’S
lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man
is tense and frightened. There is not one smile
in the room. Not one? Or does CROSS
PATCH’S drawn mouth tremble slightly open,
to expose the even rows of his thin teeth? He
speaks—five mild and simple words.)
ADAM PATCH: We’ll go back now, Shuttleworth—(And
that is all. He turns, and assisted by his cane
goes out through the hall, through the front door,
and with hellish portentousness his uncertain footsteps
crunch on the gravel path under the August moon.)
In this extremity they were like two goldfish in a
bowl from which all the water had been drawn; they
could not even swim across to each other.
Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was
nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to
be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay
and happy, and to have money and love. She wanted
what most women want, but she wanted it much more
fiercely and passionately. She had been married
over two years. At first there had been days of
serene understanding, rising to ecstasies of proprietorship
and pride. Alternating with these periods had
occurred sporadic hates, enduring a short hour, and
forgetfulnesses lasting no longer than an afternoon.
That had been for half a year.
Then the serenity, the content, had become less jubilant,
had become, gray—very rarely, with the
spur of jealousy or forced separation, the ancient
ecstasies returned, the apparent communion of soul
and soul, the emotional excitement. It was possible
for her to hate Anthony for as much as a full day,
to be carelessly incensed at him for as long as a
week. Recrimination had displaced affection as
an indulgence, almost as an entertainment, and there
were nights when they would go to sleep trying to
remember who was angry and who should be reserved next
morning. And as the second year waned there had
entered two new elements. Gloria realized that
Anthony had become capable of utter indifference toward
her, a temporary indifference, more than half lethargic,
but one from which she could no longer stir him by
a whispered word, or a certain intimate smile.
There were days when her caresses affected him as
a sort of suffocation. She was conscious of these
things; she never entirely admitted them to herself.
