The Night Travellers

11. The Triangle

11 The Triangle So that, calm, cordial, and peaceful, was how it was. Again at the table, Kate, Mary, and Jeff. Not in the dining room by candlelight but in the breakfast room, a glassed-in alcove off the kitchen, plants within and without, a long, draping tendril of wisteria, now pale green in the early light, the blooms beginning to shimmer with lavender as the light increased. Cups set out on the thick lemoncolored cotton mats on the glass-topped table. Kate's pleasure in luxury was there in every stitch, every curve of design in her blue willow ware from olden times, Harbison things, passed down. Steaming coffee poured from the Pyrex pot, silver tongs for the sugar lumps. ("Sugar Lump," Poppy had called his baby girl sometimes.) But no questions! Kate herself gave the excuse they had made up. "You were probably at Ethan's and didn't want to wake me up. I know how these things run on. The time goes by." Jeff looked at Mary with questioning blue eyes. She looked back with a little shrug. Changeable. "I've discovered my ambition," Mary announced. "I thought you knew it already," said Kate. "Dancing . . . oh, that, yes. But maybe different a little now. It's Arthur Manning. He's coming here for six weeks this summer. Not here, but up at Winston. Not far." "I don't dare ask who's that," said Kate, "but I have to." She went in the kitchen to scramble eggs. "Big name in modern dancing,"Jeff filled in. "One of a kind. Works with Croom, the composer—Robert Croom. Surely that means something." 72 The Home Scene 73 "It rings a bell somewhere/' She wasfeeding them, hungry mouths. Coffee and orange juice, eggs, toast and jam; then starting over. "Something in Time recently. On Groom, I mean. He hits one note and then walks out for an hour." Jeff laughed. "Just about." "Well, if she—" Kate put her hand to her head in a way that meant money. It was bound to cost something. She struggled. "I know I'm ready for it, or I can get ready. It's a chance." "Around here she'll just go on being a swan," Jeff said. "Pretty soon she'll grow a long neck." Kate said to Jeff, "I found some of her pictures the other day." She went off into the living room and came back with albums in her arms. Mary Kerr in elf costume, Mary Kerr as wood sprite, Mary Kerr as sylph, Mary Kerr as one of the Willis in Giselle. There followed some of Kate herself, as a girl, a young woman, at her own wedding—the fair hair, the fragile dresses, the straight intense look, softly burning. Jeff bent over the pictures, puzzling. "Where would you be?" Kate asked him. "If she goes there, would she be following you, or you be following her?" "I wouldn't know about that." He laughed uncertainly."No dancing for me." But she was regarding him, softly, directly. It should have been no surprise when a message got through to him, a day later. She wanted to see him. Would late afternoon Friday be all right, alone? So on the late afternoon she mentioned, he came, not knowing what to expect. They sat across the same glass-topped table and looked at one another. For a time, they did not speak. He had debated not coming at all. "The truth is," Kate told him, "I've met someone I care for." "I don't doubt it," Jeff said. What was this dodging around for? What they had to speak of, if anything, must be Mary. So they weren't to talk of her. All right. He said, "I loathe what you're doing. I asked you before, if you remember. You had to lie; I understand that. These newgovernment contracts ... you aregetting them, the animal shipments are going to you, and not for cancer research, either. Word has gotten out." 74 THE N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S "Ethan Marbell," was all she remarked. "It's just not necessary/' said Jeff, "to blame everything on Ethan. He doesn't stand alone. This whole country—" "He does not represent this whole country." "You didn't let me finish." "We all know what a gadfly—" "Yes, you've decided it...