The Sundial Read Free

her eyes tiredly. Lifting her hand with deliberation, she put it down softly onto her husband’s shoulder, and said, “His funeral went off very well.”
    “Do you remember,” the old man said, “we rang the bells over the carriage house when he was born?”
    _____
    Mrs. Halloran set her wine glass down very quietly, looked from Essex to Miss Ogilvie and said, “Aunt Fanny will be down for dessert?”
    “Adding the final touch of jubilation to a day of perfect happiness,” Essex said.
    Mrs. Halloran looked at him for a minute. “At such a remark,” she said finally, “Lionel would have found it necessary to remind you that you were not here to be ironic, but to paint murals in the breakfast room.”
    “Orianna dear ,” said Essex with a little false laugh, “I had not suspected you of fallibility; the one painting murals in the breakfast room was the last young man; I am the young man who is supposed to be cataloguing the library.”
    “Lionel wouldn’t have known,” Miss Ogilvie said, and turned pink.
    “But he would have suspected,” Mrs. Halloran said agreeably, and then, “Aunt Fanny is at the door; I hear her little cough. Essex, go and let her in, or she will never bring herself to turn the doorknob.”
    Essex opened the door with a flourish; “Good evening, Aunt Fanny,” he said. “I hope this sad day has agreed with you?”
    “No one needs to worry over me, thank you. Good evening, Orianna, Miss Ogilvie. Please don’t bother, really; you know perfectly well Aunt Fanny is not one to worry over. Orianna, I shall be glad to stand.”
    “Essex,” said Mrs. Halloran, “set a chair for Aunt Fanny.”
    “I’m sure the young man would rather not, Orianna. I am accustomed to taking care of myself, as you have surely discovered.”
    “A glass of wine for Aunt Fanny, Essex.”
    “I take wine only with my equals, Orianna. My brother Richard—”
    “Is resting. He has had his dinner, Aunt Fanny, and his medicine, and I promise you that nothing will prevent your seeing him later in the evening. Aunt Fanny, sit down at once.”
    “I was not brought up to take orders, Orianna, but I suppose you are mistress here now.”
    “Indeed I am. Essex.” Mrs. Halloran turned easily in her chair and leaned her head back comfortably. “I want to hear how you wasted your youth. Only the scandalous parts.”
    “The path gets straighter and narrower all the time,” Essex said. “The years press in. The path becomes a knife edge and I creep along, holding on even to that, the years closing in on either side and overhead.”
    “That’s not very scandalous,” Mrs. Halloran said.
    “I am afraid,” Aunt Fanny said, “that this young man did not have what we used to call ‘advantages’. Not everyone, Orianna, was fortunate enough to grow up in luxury and plenty. As of course you know perfectly well.”
    “The statistics scratch at your eyes,” Essex said. “When I was twenty, and could not see time at all, the chances of my dying of heart disease were one in a hundred and twelve. When I was twenty-five and deluded for the first time by a misguided passion, the chances of my dying of cancer were one in seventy-eight. When I was thirty, and the days and hours began to close in, the chances of my dying in an accident were one in fifty-three. Now I am thirty-two years old, and the path getting narrower all the time, and the chances of my dying of anything at all are one in one.”
    “Very profound,” said Mrs. Halloran, “but still not altogether scandalous.”
    “Miss Ogilvie,” said Essex, “treasures in an ebony box stolen from the music room and hidden under the handkerchiefs in the top right hand drawer of her dresser the small notes Richard Halloran wrote her four years ago, before, although it is perhaps rude to mention it, he took to his wheel chair. He left one every evening for her, under the big blue cloisonné vase in the main hall.”
    “Good heavens,” said Miss Ogilvie, pale. “ That