Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [86]
But as it happens, she never does meet Hale, either that night or later.
“There is John Haskell and his wife,” Rufus Philbrick says beside her.
Her heart stammers a beat inside her chest. She scans the crowd quickly and sees the couple emerging from the front door onto the porch. She notices immediately that something is amiss. It is in the solicitous way Catherine hovers near to her husband, or perhaps it is in the strain on Haskell’s face. They move not toward Hale, but away, as if by tacit agreement they had decided to drift to the fringe of the gathering. Slowly, they make progress toward the railing nearest to where Philbrick and Olympia are standing.
Philbrick walks forward a few steps to greet them, but Olympia cannot move.
Haskell’s hair is slightly disheveled, as if he had combed it and then, unthinkingly, run his fingers through it. His tie is poorly knotted. Catherine, in long white silk gloves, touches her husband’s arm briefly. He seems not to see Olympia, who stands in his direct line of sight, but rather he appears to be gazing into that middle distance that reflects only the viewer’s own thoughts. Philbrick walks up onto the porch and greets Catherine, kissing her hand. Haskell turns briefly in Philbrick’s direction but seems not to be able to say much beyond the absolutely necessary.
He is not himself, Olympia thinks. He is ill.
She does not know whether to leave the area altogether or to go to them on the porch. Philbrick, doubtless made uncomfortable by Haskell’s silence, begins to involve himself in a conversation with a man from Rye whom Olympia vaguely recognizes. Haskell puts his hands onto the railing and leans forward and looks down at his feet in the posture of a man who might need to be sick. From time to time, Catherine makes half turns of her head, trying to monitor her husband’s behavior. She seems more puzzled than anything else — concerned certainly, but also disconcerted by Haskell’s uncharacteristic rudeness.
But it is not rudeness that accounts for his unnatural behavior. Not rudeness at all. And it is Catherine, in making another half turn, who sees Olympia first.
“Olympia,” she calls, her face brightening. “Oh, Olympia, look at you. John, do you see? Does she not look marvelous?”
Haskell moves his eyes in Olympia’s direction. Though there is some distance between them, she can see him clearly. His face gives nothing away. She waits for a sign, an indication of how she should behave. But he only nods briefly and does not say anything.
Catherine speaks up brightly in the manner of someone who wishes to disguise an awkwardness.
“Oh, do come up here, Olympia,” she calls. “We must look at you. I had heard your dress was a dream, but I had no idea. Of course, it is the young woman inside that makes it shimmer, do you not agree, John? And how is it that you are standing there alone, Olympia, and that every young man in your father’s house is not clamoring to speak to you?”
Haskell presses his lips together.
Does Catherine know? Olympia wonders with alarm. Has Haskell told her? And is Catherine somehow, incredibly, determined to rise above the crisis? To put it all behind her? Is that what this is all about? What happened between husband and wife this afternoon in their new cottage? Olympia searches Haskell’s face, her eyes darting all about his eyes and mouth, but she can see nothing that answers her questions.
And then he straightens