• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 784 0

so genially proffered that even Olympia’s mother cannot hide her pleasure at the prospect of a diversion from the claustrophobic imprisonment of the weather. In fact, Mrs. Haskell exclaims, having almost certainly planned the wording of the invitation during the pastoral prayers, they needn’t return home at all; they can simply follow the Haskells to the hotel. This is all said and done in the center aisle of the church, while Olympia stands gazing fixedly at an uncharacteristically lurid depiction of the Last Supper. It would not be proper of Haskell to speak to her then; and he does not, nor she to him. But once, as they are moving to the nave, she catches his eye in the turn, and the gaze is so intimate, so knowing, that she colors immediately, a fact he cannot fail to notice.

Olympia takes it as an omen that the sky has brightened during the hour and a half they have been inside, that the west wind, now palpable, has blown out nearly all of the clouds, which form a line one can watch as they make their way out to sea. The week of constant rain has left the world shimmering with droplets on every leaf, every blade of sea grass, every beach rose. On the way to the hotel, the sheen on the rocks is so ferocious, Olympia can hardly bear to look.

At the Highland, they pass through the glass-paned front doors to a cavernous lobby with a thirty-foot-long mahogany desk; and from there to the dining room that is so large, it might accommodate a thousand diners. Set as it is for Sunday lunch, with its starched linen, polished silver plate, and clean white crockery, the dining room seems, upon entering it, an ocean itself of welcome, so far removed from the gloomy interior of the church they left just minutes earlier. And she wonders why it is that the men who design places of worship do not consider more often the appeal of light and beauty in their architecture.

Catherine, in her role as hostess, seats Olympia with her mother to one side and Martha to the other, as though Olympia were neither woman nor girl, but rather inhabited some world in between. Their posture and gestures are formal, as befits a Sunday dinner, but the meal is infused with warmth and even gaiety; and it may be that the current which Olympia knows passes between her and Haskell, who sits at the head of the table, is drawn off in part by the others. Catherine invites Josiah to dine with them, but he excuses himself immediately on the grounds that he deeply desires a walk along the beach and with it the rare opportunity to take the fine air after so long a confinement. Were it not for Haskell’s presence, Olympia would have ached to join him.

Olympia listens to the light banter that accompanies the settling in to a meal.

Catherine, you are looking well.

I am well now that the sun is out.

Has Josiah gone?

Mother, must I sit next to Randall?

And so you say you have not received your supplies yet?

Those are lovely pearls.

I thought it was rather a brilliant sermon.

And who was the soloist?

I understand they do a marvelous lamb here.

Do they?

Glancing at her from his end of the table, Haskell seems more an attractive stranger than someone with whom she has been intimate. And it strikes Olympia then as astonishing how willing we are to give our hearts — and indeed our souls — to someone we hardly know.

Olympia notes that more than one person entering the dining room turns to look at Catherine and Haskell together, the dark and the fair, Catherine no longer hiding with her hat the loveliness of her face or the silvery gossamer of her hair. Idly, as Olympia watches them, Catherine reaches over to her husband and smooths a tendril of hair behind his ear, a wifely gesture that causes Olympia to have to look away. And she thinks that Haskell himself cannot be unaware of the irony of suffering such a caress in her presence.

Around them is an agreeable clinking of silver against china, of ice rattling in goblets, of the low murmur of gentle and even animated discourse. Through the windows, which are sparkling with a vinegar wash, is the ever present surf