Lilith Page 4

  My grandfather had brought her to America as his bride at the turn of the century and had invested the proceeds of his share of the family business in a printing shop. He had prospered at this trade until 1930, when the drastically reduced activity of the Depression had revealed the long-standing malpractices of his partner. He had managed, through his great industry and integrity, to salvage the reputation of his small company and had later opened a restaurant in an abandoned Colonial tavern which stood at the outskirts of the town. This building he had devotedly reconstructed, furnishing it with early-American antiques, restoring its huge old fieldstone hearths and furbishing it with iron foundry ware, gleaming copper bed-warmers, skillets and horse-brasses. I think he was always at heart an English innkeeper; his tavern appealed profoundly to some old racial instinct of his. He loved it, and flourished.

  In spite of his being an immigrant in a community of old, often rancorous ante-bellum families, he had won, by his dignity and temperance, a position of great respect in Stonemont and had held, since before I can remember, a seat on the town council. He was a very short man with a plump, firm belly and a stern but sensitive big-featured face. He used to walk about the streets of Stonemont, winter and summer, in a black serge suit and a faded and fraying Panama hat, carrying an old-fashioned Malacca cane with a gold head.

  He loved horses. I can remember, with a sudden warm pang of affection, his face as he sat beside me in the show pavilion at the county fair when the draft horses were being judged, watching the huge old Percheron stallions with that humble, radiant look, so selfless and genuine, of a man absorbed in something he loves. As a boy he had worked in his father’s rendering concern in Liverpool, and in those days, long before automobiles, their delivery wagons had been drawn by teams of Clydesdales. It had been his job to care for them. “I groomed them night and morning,” he told me countless times, “and kept their manes and tails braided up in red ribbons the year round. It was a job, too—Liverpool is a dirty city. Ah, you should have seen them—stepping along over the cobbles with their great feet, all the brass shining on their harnesses. It was a lovely sight!”

  He taught me to love them, too; perhaps the capacity to love them was there already, but he showed me what was beautiful in them, and he taught me, most important of all, the great patience with which one must learn to love things truly. On my twelfth birthday he bought me one of my own, a little strawberry mare which he managed to buy very cheaply, because of a blind eye, at a county auction. I think that was the happiest birthday of my life. I stabled her at a farm just outside the town and paid for her keep with money that I earned delivering magazines, mowing lawns and fruit picking. I became a fine rider, and from that birthday onward I entered the jousting championships every year at the county fair.

  Jousting is a very popular rural sport in Maryland, and tournaments are held throughout the summer months in the farm country. Although many of the old elements of chivalry are preserved, the tournaments are no longer a contest between mounted knights, having become a demonstration of skill in riding and accuracy with the lance. A course is laid out under a series of wooden arches—three or more of them—from each of which a steel ring, bound in white cord to make it more easily visible, is suspended in a metal clip. As these rings are no larger than the diameter of a coffee cup, and must be taken at full gallop with a fifteen-foot lance, it is a truly stirring exhibition of horsemanship and poise. The riders are designated, according to the household, village or locality which they represent, as “The Knight of Boyds,” “The Knight of Gaitherburg,” “The Knight of Longview Farm” or—a particularly appropriate one, which always made me smile with romantic delight—“The Knight of Damascus”; and each wears, fluttering from his sleeve or basted to his jersey, the colors of his patron. How clearly I can see the summer sunlight falling among the elms, the railed wooden platform where the four-man band, in vests and shirt sleeves, sit on folding chairs, their brass horns glinting in the shadow as they raise them to sound a flourish for each champion, the line of wooden benches behind the roped boundaries of the course where elderly ladies in bright straw hats and cotton dresses sit holding a chicken leg in one hand, a sheet of waxed paper spread out in their laps, and the dogs and children running among the standing crowd of country people in their Sunday clothes!

  I shall never forget the year—it was my fourteenth—when I took forty-six out of fifty rings to win the Junior Championship at the county fair. It was a victory for which I had long prepared. Every weekend, during the school term, and almost every day throughout the summer, I would walk along the cool streets to the edge of town and then for a mile along the highway in the sun, to practice target riding. My grandfather bought me a lance, made out of hickory, with a steel-tipped point, and came with me, as often as he could, to help me train. I would gallop the length of a course I had laid out under a row of shade oaks at the edge of a meadow, tilting at metal washers which I had hung from the lower branches, while he stood in the center of the field with his short, stout arms folded across his chest and his Panama hat pulled down to his thick gray eyebrows, watching my progress like a general deploying troops from a hillside. Sometimes in his excitement he would run along beside me as I rode, brandishing his cane and very often his hat as well, while he shouted instructions and encouragement: “Up out of the saddle, Lad! Up in the stirrups—keep a straight back—that’s a good boy! Now then, elbow up—up higher—level with the lance—head over—give her the rein—good lad! Good lad!”

  He had my grandmother make a banner for the tournament, a copy of the faded coat-of-arms that hung above the parlor sofa, which she embroidered beautifully, in colored thread, on a pennant of scarlet silk. It was run up above the judges’ stand for my victory, and I shall never forget with what pride I watched it drifting, nobly and idly, in the mild breeze as I rode back down the list in triumph from my final trial, escorted by the pages—two very pretty, grinning girls in jodhpurs, mounted on bay mares—to accept my trophy from the Tribune, while the trumpets blared in tribute to my victory. I looked across to where my grandfather stood inside the gallery ropes nodding at me gently, unable to speak, his eyes shining with tears, clutching against his plump English belly his crushed and ruined Panama hat. I think I restored for him in that moment something that his son had once destroyed.

  I do not believe I ever realized, until the tournament, the fierceness of my grandfather’s pride, or the depth to which it had been wounded by my father’s dishonor; although in looking back, now, upon my childhood, I can remember many earlier incidents which might have illustrated it. One of these I recall—perhaps because I was only ten years old at the time—with particular clarity. This took place one evening when, walking with my grandfather on one of the pleasant strolls which we invariably took together before dinner, I was harried by a group of schoolboys sitting on the retaining wall of the courthouse lawn as we walked by. There was one considerably older boy among them, the privilege of whose company they were conspicuously aware of, and feeling, I suppose, that anxiety to distinguish themselves in the presence of a senior which is so common to small boys, they called after me a series of faintly disguised allusions to my ancestry, in a tone of voice very cunningly calculated to sound impressively defiant to the larger boy among them and yet not quite loud enough to be heard by, or to offend, my grandfather (who was after all a very old man, probably with imperfect hearing and obviously absorbed deeply in his thoughts). My grandfather did hear them, however, and, turning upon me a look of such pale and violent fury that I was astonished and alarmed—for I had never seen such passion in his face before—he drove me back with threatening gestures of his cane and the command to challenge and engage them. One of the bolder boys accepted my very tentative demand for satisfaction, and after struggling for a few minutes on the courthouse lawn we fell off the wall onto the sidewalk, so that my opponent banged his skull painfully on the stone and fled sobbing—a very dubious victory which I was nevertheless happy to appropriate as
entirely of my own design. My grandfather stood by throughout without once offering his assistance; but when I returned, very shaken and unsteady, he leaned down and laid his hands on my shoulders, smiling at me with a tenderness quite as intense as his anger of the moment before, and said gently, “Good lad. Well done. You have a good name, Sonny, and it’s up to you to prove it. There’ll be no one but you to defend it, soon.” I mumbled, “Yes, sir,” feeling pleased with my fortuitous success, and with the obvious pride he took in it, but entirely mystified by the intensity of his feelings. It was only in the light of my later understanding of his nature that I was able to interpret it—and with a regret for which I have never found assuagement.

  BECAUSE of the solitariness of my nature and the fewness of my friends I was painfully inept at social events; although I was an active and enthusiastic member of the high-school debating and dramatic clubs, I was never asked to join a fraternity, I never learned to dance, avoided the school proms, and seldom attended parties. One year, however, in the fall of my junior year of high school, I did attend the annual class picnic; and it was there that I met Laura, who is of such importance to this story.

  The combined junior-and-senior-class picnic was held at the beginning of each school year on Sugar Loaf Mountain, about fifteen miles from Stonemont, at the northern end of the Blue Ridge. It is, I think, the highest place in eastern Maryland—a blunt blue mountain, rising above the rolling fields of Montgomery and Frederick and Pope counties. We drove here in a school bus on a fine Saturday in mid-September. It is very beautiful in the fall, when the gum trees have turned the moist red of fresh blood and the few silver leaves of the tall aspens shimmer in the wind on the high slopes. There is a paved road that winds to within five hundred yards of the summit; here, among the great gray boulders and laurel thickets of a small plateau, there are stone barbecue pits and heavy wooden picnic tables. There is also a lookout, as it is called—an imitation Gothic castle with a battlemented parapet, built of the stones and boulders of the slopes. There is a splendid view: one looks out over vast blue distances, westward to the gentle peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, southward over the coastal plain, sunken and glimmering, almost to Washington, and northward to the green, softly heaving farmlands of Pennsylvania. Beyond the lookout there is a footpath leading to the very summit of the mountain, a rough, laborious trail cut through dense thickets and with steps hewn almost vertically in places out of the granite cliffs of the mountain peak. The prospect of gaining this further, consummate, height and the unimpeded view which one must have from the summit was almost magically urgent to me. I could hardly wait to complete my hasty share of the preparations—gathering a few armloads of dead branches for a pit fire—before separating myself as unobtrusively as I could from the party and starting up the trail toward the peak.

  It was a very steep and difficult climb of forty minutes, and I often had to stop, gasping, my heart pounding dully in my ears, to rest before going on; but it was more than worth the effort. From the top the view was truly magnificent. Below and around me lay a huge unbroken panorama of hills, farmland and forests; thin, glittering streams; the far-off, silent Potomac winding between its forested shores; tiny villages and homesteads, looking like pieces on a game board, all bathed in a soft violet mist and full of the tranquil and transcendent charm which great perspective gives to things. I fell down at full length in the grass at the bole of one of the small wind-warped pines that grow on the upper slopes and lay looking out over the distant, blue, beautiful earth with a curious sense of triumph. Far below me I could hear still the voices of my schoolmates, ringing, faint with distance, through the pines: the thin, pretty shrieking and laughter of the girls and the coarse exuberant shouting of the boys. The sound made me smile gently.

  My reverie was disturbed very shortly by Laura, whom I saw walking toward me through the stony grass. She was a short, plain but pleasant-looking girl whom I had seen often about the school but whom I did not know well, as she was in a different class from myself. My dismay at her intrusion was so great that for a moment I considered fleeing, with only a perfunctory pretense of not having seen her, to some other portion of the small circular plateau of the mountain peak; but her approach toward me was so determined and candid that I was forced to abandon the impulse. I sat up as she came near me, clasping my knees and nodding in a pretense of friendly composure. She came and stood immediately beside me, smiling and lifting both hands to brush back her short dark hair, disheveled from the climb.

  “Well, this is where you are,” she said.

  “Yes.” My voice was somewhat hesitant with surprise at the unexpectedness of the greeting. “Were you looking for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  I could think of nothing else to say; and in the silence she seated herself beside me in the grass, dropping down heavily with exaggerated fatigue and drawing a great sighing breath which she expelled slowly with a humorously weary sound.

  “It’s a pretty steep climb, isn’t it?” I said.

  “My goodness, yes. My legs are all twittery.”

  I had never before seen her so closely or at such length. Although she was not actually stout, her body had a heavy, graceless look; her wrists, ankles and waist were too thick, and—a thing which has always distressed me in women—her bosom too full. Her hands were appealing in motion and full of vitality, but broad and blunt-fingered and, in repose, not pleasant to watch. There was something curious about her features which it took me several moments to discover: although her face gave a simple, not ugly, but undistinguished general impression, her eyes and lips were truly beautiful. Her mouth was warm, full and sensitive, and I had the impression that she had constantly to exercise control over her lips to keep them from betraying her. Her eyes were a deep, pure brown, as brilliant and profound as a certain type of quartz which is common in our county and which, as a boy, I used to shatter sometimes with a hammer so that I might see the sheer, glittering facets of dark-chocolate-colored, liquid-looking stone; they had a wide, vulnerable look which combined oddly with the strength and simplicity of her appearance. She smiled at me pleasantly; and, becoming suddenly aware of the length of my gaze, I looked hastily away.

  “How did you know I was up here?” I asked.

  “I saw you slip away and start up the path.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know anybody was watching me.”

  “I was, though. I was watching you on the bus, too. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I think you’re very handsome,” she said. “I like to look at you.”

  I turned away in embarrassment and stared out for a moment at the valley, murmuring, “It’s a wonderful view up here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She looked out briefly, her head moving in a rapid, cursory arc, and pointed to the distant river, glinting in the hollows of the hills. “What’s that river you can see down there? The Potomac?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know it came up this way.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She turned her head to watch me for a moment. “Is that what you came up here for—to look at the view?”

  “Yes, I guess so,” I said; and then, aware of the oddness of the question, I added, “Why did you think?”

  “I thought you might just have wanted to get away from us. I could tell you didn’t like the picnic very much.”

  “I did. I liked it very much.”

  “Why didn’t you wait and get something to eat, then? There won’t be anything left by the time you get back.”

  “I wasn’t very hungry.” I looked at her fully for a moment, feeling suddenly rather indignant. “That seems like a pretty funny question to ask anybody.”

  She returned my gaze steadily, not in a challenging way, but simply, studiously and gently; and it was I who had to look away.

  “I don’t think that’s really a very nice impulse,” she said. “To run away from people like that
, just because you feel uncomfortable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you came up here because you like to feel superior. You don’t feel as if you were really among us, so you like to feel above us. But I don’t think that really solves anything.”

  “That isn’t true,” I murmured. “I don’t feel like that at all.”

  “Well, I wish you’d come back down and have some hamburgers, or something. They’ll all be gone soon. And I’m terribly hungry.”

  I sat still for a moment, staring away at the distant hills and plucking at the grass with my fingers.

  “What did you follow me up here for, anyway?” I asked.

  “I just wanted to get you to come back and have some fun. It isn’t very nice when you see people being so lonely.” She laid her hand over my own, stilling my fingers. “Vincent, come back down with me.”

  “All right,” I said, feeling suddenly quietly delighted by the invitation. “I was coming down in a minute, anyway.”

  We walked back between the boulders and laurel to the edge of the plateau, where the trail descended. She kept purposefully ahead of me, and as I followed her I watched the pleasant resolute movements of her body: the firm, alternate placement of her heavy-calved legs, the shifting of her broad hips under her woolen skirt and the serene carriage of her shoulders—movements not dainty or graceful, but vigorous and appealing in a womanly way. At the bottom of the first long flight of stone steps she turned and looked up at me, standing two levels above her. We were in the shadow of the granite cliff we had just descended.