Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [20]
The moon makes long cones upon the sea, which has settled with the darkness and resembles, as it approaches high tide, a magnificent lake. The continuous susurrus of the surf is soothing in and about the conversation and the piano’s notes. Olympia cannot hear what the men are saying, but the sound of their voices is instantly recognizable: the assured and gracious, if sometimes pedantic, pronouncements of her father; the short staccato bursts of enthusiasm and advice from Rufus Philbrick; the somewhat breathy and all too deferential note of Zachariah Cote; and, finally, the low, steady sentences of John Haskell, his voice seldom rising or falling. She strains to pick out words from the talk: merchandise . . . Manchester . . . carriage-maker . . . travesty . . . benefits . . . Masculine words drenched in smoke and slightly slurred on the tongue. From time to time, the men lower their voices conspiratorially, with heads bent toward one another, and then suddenly, with harsh bursts of laughter, they move apart. At these moments, Olympia thinks perhaps she should leave the porch. But so deep are her lassitude and physical contentment that she cannot rouse herself to action. It strikes her as possible that she might simply fall asleep in the chair and remain in it the entire night, this entire short night of the summer solstice. That she might watch the sun rise over the sea at dawn. And so it is that she does not notice that Catherine Haskell has stopped her playing until she hears the woman’s voice behind her.
“Did you know that nearly all civilizations have regarded the night of the summer solstice as possessing mystical powers?” she asks.
Olympia sits up straighter, but Catherine puts a restraining hand on her shoulder. She takes a seat near to Olympia and looks out over the railing.
“Your playing is very beautiful,” Olympia says.
Catherine Haskell smiles vaguely and waves her hand, as if to dismiss such an unearned compliment.
“Not as beautiful as your mother’s, or so I have heard,” she says. The heliotrope crepe de chine of her dress has the effect, in the darkness, of disappearing altogether, so that she seems, in the dim light of the lanterns, to be merely two slender arms, a throat, a face, and all that hair.
“And that the earliest setting of the blue stones at Stonehenge is aligned with the moment of sunrise on the summer solstice? On that day, sacrifices were made. Some think human sacrifices.”
“On this night I could believe anything possible,” Olympia says.
“Yes. Quite.”
Olympia can hear the creak of wicker as Mrs. Haskell leans back and begins to rock in the chair. Her white slippers glow faintly in the moonlight.
“Your mother is not unwell, I hope,” Catherine says.
“She tires easily,” Olympia explains.
“Yes, of course.”
Olympia hesitates. “She is delicate in her constitution,” she says.
“I see,” Catherine Haskell says quickly, as though this is something she has already divined. She turns her head toward Olympia, but Olympia can see only a quarter moon of face.
“I think you must be like your father,” Catherine says.
“How is that?” Olympia asks.
“Protective. Strong, I think.”
Beyond them there is another short burst of laughter, causing them both to glance in the direction of the men. The two women examine the tableau in the lantern light.
“Of course, you have your mother’s beauty,” Catherine adds. She smooths out an invisible skirt with her alabaster arms. “I have always thought there is a moment in the life of a girl,” she begins, and then pauses. They hear John Haskell’s voice rise briefly above the others with a fragment of a sentence: have deteriorated with the coming of the . . . “By ‘moment,’” Catherine continues, “I mean a period of time,