She took Coverly’s breath away; her golden skin and her dark-blond hair. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, and while her voice was pleasant enough it could never be compared to the power of her appearance. She seemed a triumphant beauty to Coverly—an army with banners—and he couldn’t take his eyes off her until Moses pushed him toward a bathroom where they put on their bathing trunks. “I think we’d better wear hats,” Melissa said. “The sun’s terribly bright.” Moses opened a coat closet, passed Melissa a hat and, rummaging around for one himself, brought down a green Tyrolean hat with a brush in the band. “Is this D’Alba’s?” he asked. “Lord, no,” Melissa said. “Pansies
Melissa didn’t swim that day. She sat at the edge of the marble curb, spreading the cloth for lunch and pouring the drinks. There was nothing she did or said that did not charm and delight poor Coverly and incline him to foolishness. He dived. He swam the length of the pool four times. He tried to do a back dive and failed, splashing water all over Melissa. They drank martinis and talked about the farm, and Coverly, who was not used to liquor, got tipsy. Starting to talk about the Fourth of July parade he was side-tracked by a memory of Cousin Adelaide and ended up with describing the rocket launchings on Saturday afternoons. He didn’t mention Betsey’s departure and when Moses asked for her he spoke as if they were still living happily together. When lunch was finished he swam the length of the pool once more and then lay down in the shade of a boxwood tree and fell asleep.
He was tired and didn’t know, for a moment, when he woke where he was, seeing the water gush out of the green lions’ heads and the towers and battlements of Clear Haven at the head of the lawn. He splashed some water on his face. The picnic cloth was still spread on the curb. No one had removed the cocktail glasses or the plates and chicken bones. Moses and Melissa were gone and the shadow of a hemlock tree fell across the pool. Then he saw them coming down the garden path from the greenhouse where they had spent some pleasant time and there was such grace and gentleness between them that he thought his heart would break in two; for her beauty could arouse in him only sadness, only feelings of parting and forsakenness, and thinking of Pancras it seemed that Pancras had offered him much more than friendship—that he had offered him the subtle means by which we deface and diminish the loveliness of a woman. Oh, she was lovely, and he had betrayed her! He had sent spies into her kingdom on rainy nights and encouraged the usurper.
“I’m sorry we left you alone, Coverly,” she said, “but you were sleeping, you were
Any railroad station on Sunday afternoon seems to lie close to the heart of time. Even in midsummer the shadows seem autumnal and the people who are gathered there—the soldier, the sailor, the old lady with flowers wrapped in a paper—seemed picked so arbitrarily from the community, seem so like those visited by illness or death, that we are reminded of those solemn plays in which it appears, toward the end of the first act, that all the characters are dead. “Do your soft shoe, Coverly,” Moses asked. “Do your buck and wing.” “I’m rusty, brother,” Coverly said. “I can’t do it any more.” “Oh, try, Coverly,” Moses said. “Oh, try …” Cloppety, cloppety, cloppety went Coverly up and down the platform, ending with a clumsy shuffle-off, a bow and a blush. “We’re a very talented family,” he told Melissa. Then the train came down the track and their feelings, like the scraps of paper on the platform, were thrown up pellmell in a hopeless turbulence. Coverly embraced them both—he seemed to be crying—and boarded the train.
