Different Seasons - Stephen King [235]
I mounted the steps and Stevens closed the door firmly behind me. How different a door can feel when you are on the warm side of it! He took my coat and was gone with it. I stood in the hall for a moment, looking at my own reflection in the pier glass, a man of sixty-three whose face was rapidly becoming too gaunt to look middle-aged. And yet the reflection pleased me. I slipped into the library.
Johanssen was there, reading his Wall Street Journal. In another island of light, Emlyn McCarron sat over a chessboard opposite Peter Andrews. McCarron was and is a cadaverous man, possessed of a narrow, bladelike nose; Andrews was huge, slope-shouldered, and choleric. A vast ginger-coloured beard sprayed over his vest.
Face to face over the inlaid board with its carved pieces of ivory and ebony, they looked like Indian totems: eagle and bear.
Waterhouse was there, frowning over that day's Times. He glanced up, nodded at me without surprise, and disappeared into the paper again. Stevens brought me a Bombay martini, unasked.
I took it into the stacks and found that puzzling, enticing set of green volumes again. I began reading the works of Edward Gray Seville that night. I started at the beginning, with These Were Our Brothers. Since then I have read them all, and believe them to be eleven of the finest novels of our century.
Near the end of the evening there was a story -just one -and Stevens brought brandy around. When the tale was told, people began to rise, preparing to leave. Stevens spoke from the double doorway which communicated with the hallway. His voice was low and pleasant, but carrying: 'Who will bring us a tale for Christmas, then?'
People stopped what they were doing and glanced around. There was some low, goodnatured talk and a burst of laughter.
Stevens, smiling but serious, clapped his hands together twice, like a grammar school teacher calling an unruly class to order. 'Come, gentlemen-who'll bring the tale?' Peter Andrews, he of the sloped shoulders and gingery beard, cleared his throat. 'I have something I've been thinking about I don't know if it's quite right; that is, if it's
'That will be fine,' Stevens interrupted, and there was more laughter. Andrews had his back slapped good naturedly. Cold draughts swirled up the hallway as men slipped out. Then Stevens was there, as if by benign magic, holding my coat for me. 'Good evening, Mr Adley. Always a pleasure.'
'Do you really meet on Christmas night?' I asked, buttoning my coat I was a little disappointed that I was going to miss Andrews's story, but we had made firm plans to drive to Schenectady and keep the holiday with Ellen's sister.
Stevens managed to look both shocked and amused at the same time. 'In no case,' he said. 'Christmas is a night a man should spend with his family. That night, if no other. Don't you agree, sir?'
'I certainly do.'
'We always meet on the Thursday before Christmas. In fact, that is the one night of the year when we're assured a large turnout.'
He hadn't used the word members, I noticed-just happenstance or neat avoidance? 'Many tales have been spun out in the main room, Mr Adley, tales of every sort, from the comic to the tragic to the ironic to the sentimental. But on the Thursday before Christmas, it's always a tale of the uncanny. It's always been that way, at least as far back as I can remember.'
That at least explained the comment I had heard on my first visit, the one to the effect that Norman Stett should have saved his story for Christmas. Other questions hovered on my lips, but I saw a reflected caution in Stevens's eyes. Do you catch my drift? It was not a warning that he would not answer my questions; it was, rather, a warning that I should not even ask them.
'Was there something else, Mr Adley?'
We were alone in the hall now. All the others had left And suddenly the hallway seemed darker, Stevens's long face paler, his lips redder. A knot exploded in the fireplace and a red glow washed momentarily