up what lay there for him, only a squirrel's tail and probably no gift at all but only the remnants of an owl's or a fox's breakfast, this is madness, it was only the dense weight of virgin hope that had allowed him to tie it to his Ford, expecting nothing. But they had kept their promise, oh they had, he was on the way to becoming an entire anthology of love, with footnotes (there were a pair of step-ins under his seat, he could not remember who had stepped out of them); only, as he drove from drugstore to church, from farmhouse to farmhouse, with the hairy thing flying from his windscreen, he came to know that it did not and had not ever contained his power over women: his power over women lay in their power over him.
Darker Before It Lightened
The Flowers came on Wednesdays, usually, bringing armloads of blossoms for Violet's room, and though Violet always felt somewhat ashamed and guilty in the presence of so many decapitated and slowly expiring blooms, she tried to express admiration and wonder at Mrs. Flowers' green thumb. But this visit was Tuesday, and there were no flowers.
"Come in, come in," Violet said. They were standing, unwontedly shy, at her bedroom door. "Will you take some tea?"
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Flowers. "Just a few words."
But when they were seated, exchanging glances with one another (though unable apparently to look at Violet) they said nothing for an uncomfortably long time.
The Flowers had come up just after the War to take Mr. MacGregor's old place, "fleeing," as Mrs. Flowers put it, the City; Mr. Flowers had had position and money there, but just what position wasn't clear, and how it had made him money was even less clear, not because they chose to hide it but because they seemed to find commonplaces of daily life hard to converse about intelligibly. They had been members with John of the Theosophical Society; they were both in love with Violet. Like John's, their lives were full of quiet drama, full of vague yet thrilling signs that life was not as the common run supposed it to be; they were among those (it surprised Violet how many there were, and how many gravitated toward Edgewood) who watch life as though it were a great drab curtain which they are sure is always about to rise on some terrific and exquisite spectacle, and though it never did quite rise, they were patient, and noted excitedly every small movement of it as the actors took their places, strained to hear the unimaginable setting being shifted.
Like John, they supposed Violet to be one of those actors, or at least to have been behind the curtain. That she couldn't see it that way at all made her only the more cryptic and entrancing to them. Their Wednesday visits made matter for a whole evening's quiet talk, inspiration for a whole week's reverent and watchful life.
But this wasn't Wednesday.
"It's about happiness," Mrs. Flowers said, and Violet had to stare puzzled at her for a moment until she reheard this as "It's about Happiness," the name of their eldest daughter. The younger ones were named Joy and Spirit. The same confusion happened when their names came up: our Joy is gone for the day; our Spirit came home covered with mud. Folding her hands and raising eyes that Violet now saw were red from weeping, Mrs. Flowers said, "Happiness is pregnant."
"Oh my."
Mr. Flowers, who with his thin boyish beard and great sensitive brow reminded Violet of Shakespeare, began speaking so softly and indirectly that Violet had to lean forward to hear. She got the gist: Happiness was pregnant, so Happiness had said, by her son August.
"She cried all night," Mrs. Flowers said, her own eyes filling. Mr. Flowers explained, or tried to. It wasn't that they believed in worldly shame or honor, their own marriage bond had been sealed before any words or formulas had been spoken; the flowering of vital energies is always to be welcomed. No: it was that August, well, didn't seem to understand it the way they did, or perhaps he understood it better, but anyway to speak frankly they thought he'd broken the girl's heart, though she said he said he loved her; they wondered if Violet knew what August felt, or—or if she knew (the phrase, so loaded with common and wrong meaning, fell out anyway, with a clang, like a horseshoe he had had in his