There was no doubt about it. The people of Kleph’s mysterious country were arriving here in force—for something. For the last week of May? He shrugged mentally; there was no way of guessing—yet one thing only was sure: all of them must come from that nameless land where people controlled their voices like singers and their garments like actors who could stop the reel of time itself to adjust every disordered fold.
The elderly woman took full charge of the conversation from the start. They stood together on the rickety, unpainted porch, and Sue had no chance even for introductions.
“Young man, I am Madame Hollia. This is my husband.” Her voice had an underrunning current of harshness, which was perhaps age. And her face looked almost corsetted, the loose flesh coerced into something like firmness by some invisible method Oliver could not guess at. The make-up was so skillful he could not be certain it was make-up at all, but he had a definite feeling that she was much older than she looked. It would have taken a lifetime of command to put so much authority into the harsh, deep, musically controlled voice.
The young man said nothing. He was very handsome. His type, apparently, was one that does not change much no matter in what culture or country it may occur. He wore beautifully tailored garments and carried in one gloved hand a box of red leather, about the size and shape of a book.
Madame Hollia went on. “I understand your problem about the house. You wish to sell to me, but are legally bound by your lease with Omerie and his friends. Is that right?”
Oliver nodded. “But—”
“Let me finish. If Omerie can be forced to vacate before next week, you will accept our offer. Right? Very well. Hara!” She nodded to the young man beside her. He jumped to instant attention, bowed slightly, said, “Yes, Hollia,” and slipped a gloved hand into his coat.
Madame Hollia took the little object offered on his palm, her gesture as she reached for it almost imperial, as if royal robes swept from her outstretched arm.
“Here,” she said, “is something that may help us. My dear—” She held it out to Sue—“if you can hide this somewhere about the house, I believe your unwelcome tenants will not trouble you much longer.” Sue took the thing curiously. It looked like a tiny silver box, no more than an inch square, indented at the top and with no line to show it could be opened.
“Wait a minute,” Oliver broke in uneasily. “What is it?”
“Nothing that will harm anyone, I assure you.”
“Then what—”
Madame Hollia’s imperious gesture at one sweep silenced him and commanded Sue forward. “Go on, my dear. Hurry, before Omerie comes back. I can assure you there is no danger to anyone.”
Oliver broke in determinedly. “Madame Hollia, I’ll have to know what your plans are. I—”
“Oh, Oliver, please!” Sue’s fingers closed over the silver cube. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Madame Hollia knows best. Don’t you want to get those people out?”
“Of course I do. But I don’t want the house blown up or—”
Madame Hollia’s deep laughter was indulgent. “Nothing so crude, I promise you, Mr. Wilson. Remember, we want the house! Hurry, my dear.”
Sue nodded and slipped hastily past Oliver into the hall. Outnumbered, he subsided uneasily. The young man, Hara, tapped a negligent foot and admired the sunlight as they waited. It was an afternoon as perfect as all of May had been, translucent gold, balmy with an edge of chill lingering in the air to point up a perfect contrast with the summer to come. Hara looked around him confidently, like a man paying just tribute to a stageset provided wholly for himself. He even glanced up at a drone from above and followed the course of a big transcontinental plane half dissolved in golden haze high in the sun. “Quaint,” he murmured in a gratified voice.
Sue came back and slipped her hand through Oliver’s arm, squeezing excitedly. “There,” she said. “How long will it take, Madame Hollia?”
“That will depend, my dear. Not very long. Now, Mr. Wilson, one word with you. You live here also, I understand? For your own comfort, take my advice and—”
Somewhere within the house a door slammed and a clear high voice rang wordlessly up a rippling scale. Then there was the sound of feet on the stairs, and a single line of song. “Come hider, love, to me—”
Hara started, almost dropping the red leather box he held.
“Kleph!” he said in a whisper. “Or Klia. I know they both just came on from Canterbury. But I thought—”
“Hush.” Madame Hollia’s features composed themselves into an imperious blank. She breathed triumphantly through her nose, drew back upon herself and turned an imposing facade to the door.
Kleph wore the same softly downy robe Oliver had seen before, except that today it was not white, but a pale, clear blue that gave her tan an apricot flush. She was smiling.
“Why, Hollia!” Her tone was at its most musical. “I thought I recognized voices from home. How nice to see you. No one knew you were coming to the—” She broke off and glanced at Oliver and then away again. “Hara, too,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Sue said flatly, “When did you get back?”
Kleph smiled at her. “You must be the little Miss Johnson. Why, I did not go out at all. I was tired of sightseeing. I have been napping in my room.”
Sue drew in her breath in something that just escaped being a disbelieving sniff. A look flashed between the two women, and for an instant held—and that instant was timeless. It was an extraordinary pause in which a great deal of wordless interplay took place in the space of a second.
Oliver saw the quality of Kleph’s smile at Sue, that same look of quiet confidence he had noticed so often about all of these strange people. He saw Sue’s quick inventory of the other woman, and he saw how Sue squared her shoulders and stood up straight, smoothing down her summer frock over her flat hips so that for an instant she stood posed consciously, looking down on Kleph. It was deliberate. Bewildered, he glanced again at Kleph.
Kleph’s shoulders sloped softly, her robe was belted to a tiny waist and hung in deep folds over frankly rounded hips. Sue’s was the fashionable figure—but Sue was the first to surrender.
Kleph’s smile did not falter. But in the silence there was an abrupt reversal of values, based on no more than the measureless quality of Kleph’s confidence in herself, the quiet, assured smile. It was suddenly made very clear that fashion is not a constant. Kleph’s curious, out-of-mode curves without warning became the norm, and Sue was a queer, angular, half-masculine creature beside her.
Oliver had no idea how it was done. Somehow the authority passed in a breath from one woman to the other. Beauty is almost wholly a matter of fashion; what is beautiful today would have been grotesque a couple of generations ago and will be grotesque a hundred years ahead. It will be worse than grotesque; it will be outmoded and therefore faintly ridiculous.
Sue was that. Kleph had only to exert her authority to make it clear to everyone on the porch. Kleph was a beauty, suddenly and very convincingly, beautiful in the accepted mode, and Sue was amusingly old-fashioned, an anachronism in her lithe, square-shouldered slimness. She did not belong. She was grotesque among these strangely immaculate people.
Sue’s collapse was complete. But pride sustained her, and bewilderment. Probably she never did grasp entirely what was wrong. She gave Kleph one glance of burning resentment and when her eyes came back to Oliver there was suspicion in them, and mistrust.
Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.
Kleph said, “This beautiful weather—” and Madame Hollia said, “So fortunate to have this house—” and Hara, holding up the red leather box, said loudest of all, “Cenbe sent you this, Kleph. His latest.”
Kleph put out both hands for it eagerly, the eiderdown sleeves
falling back from her rounded arms. Oliver had a quick glimpse of that mysterious scar before the sleeve fell back, and it seemed to him that there was the,faintest trace of a similar scar vanishing into Hara’s cuff as he let his own arm drop.
“Cenbel” Kleph cried, her voice high and sweet and delighted. “How wonderful! What period?”
“From November 1664,” Hara said. “London, of course, though I think there may be some counterpoint from the 1347 November. He hasn’t finished—of course.” He glanced almost nervously at Oliver and Sue. “A wonderful example,” he said quickly. “Marvelous. If you have the taste for it, of course.”
Madame Hollia shuddered with ponderous delicacy.
“That man!” she said. “Fascinating, of course—a great man. But—so advanced!”
“It takes a connoisseur to appreciate Cenbe’s work fully,” Kleph said in a slightly tart voice. “We all admit that.”
“Oh yes, we all bow to Cenbe,” Hollia conceded. “I confess the man terrifies me a little, my dear. Do we expect him to join us?”
“I suppose so,” Kleph said. “If his—work—is not yet finished, then of course. You know Cenbe’s tastes.”
Hollia and Hara laughed together. “I know when to look for him, then,” Hollia said. She glanced at the staring Oliver and the subdued but angry Sue, and with a commanding effort brought the subject back into line.
“So fortunate, my dear Kleph, to have this house,” she declared heavily. “I saw a tridimensional of it—afterward—and it was still quite perfect. Such a fortunate coincidence. Would you consider parting with your lease, for a consideration? Say, a coronation seat at—”
“Nothing could buy us, Hollia,” Kleph told her gaily, clasping the red box to her bosom.
Hollia gave her a cool stare. “You may change your mind, my dear Kleph,” she said pontifically. “There is still time. You can always reach us through Mr. Wilson here. We have rooms up the street in the Montgomery House—nothing like yours, of course, but they will do. For us, they will do.”
