The Catherine Wheel by Jean Stafford

Author:Jean Stafford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

CHAPTER IV

The Late Wedding Ring

A LETTER from John Shipley was waiting for Katharine when she and Andrew came back from the lake. In its thin, square European envelope, it lay on the table in the entrance hall, and though she changed the water in the cuspidor and took her time, painstakingly posing the lily so that it lay oblique to the burnished valentine of its pad, and though in this procedure, her hands were steady, she was invisibly assaulted. Her hands, moving with such deliberation that this might have been the creation of a masterpiece upon whose laurels she was to rest for the remainder of her life, in her imagination mauled the letter, and more vividly than she saw the chaste flower, she saw St. Stephen’s Green and him upon a bench, writing to her, using a book as a desk, the opal mist of Ireland and the sweetness of being in love hanging between his faculties and the red-haired children playing among the beds of public flowers.

Importunate at her elbow, Harriet said, “Aren’t you going to open Daddy’s letter? Please open it and see if he promises to bring us the plaid raincoats.”

Katharine shook her head, said she was busy as Harriet could plainly see and the girl, respectful but still impatient, fingered the foreign postage stamp and asked, “Then may I open it and read it to you?” With the unkind prerogative of the person in charge, Katharine severely changed the subject and more sharply than she meant to, she said, “Go up at once to dress. Honor is ready, why aren’t you?” Wounded, Harriet ran upstairs without a word, but at the top she leaned over the banister and said, “I’m sorry I was nosy, Cousin Kate.”

There were several further domestic interruptions before she could go to her room. Maureen had come in an excessive flood of tears to confess that she had broken a sugar bowl, not valuable, not pretty, and Katharine, aware that the girl for some time had been “carrying on” with a profligate and married lobsterman, feared that this undue display over nothing at all meant, perhaps, that she was pregnant and that in the midst of upheaval and revolution, a husband would have to be found for her. But for the time being, she refused to think about it and comforted the girl by saying that she would deduct a dollar from her week’s wage. Mrs. Shea, wringing her hands and almost weeping, had reported that “the boy” had frightened her with a tale of a snake in the meadow and she could not, would not, therefore, cook fish for dinner, the bellies of mackerel being what they were, Miss Congreve knowing how she felt. She revised the menu, endeavouring to keep a rasp of exasperation from her voice. Then Maddox had appeared at the windows of the dining room to announce, sepulchrally, that his prize Dr. Van Fleet rose bush, a new and costly importation from Long Island, had been mortally felled by the blacksmith’s dog whom he begged leave to shoot.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.