Time Will Darken It Read Online Free PDF Page A

Potter turned and smiled at her. The smile said
Here is your party, my dear. I’ve started it off right for you. Now I’ll sit back and be a guest
. After that it was possible for Martha to look around quite calmly and see who was there. Austin was watching her and ready to come to her rescue, but she didn’t need rescuing. She moved the pillow to one side, and then, deciding that Nora Potter was dressed in an unbecoming shade of old rose, Martha King sat back, as passive as the room itself.
    “It’s a feeling like … well, it’s not possible for me to put it into words,” Nora Potter said to Lucy Beach. “It’s something you have to see in someone’s face or hear in their voice.” Her hair was a curious cinnamon colour, parted in the middle and with bangs covering a forehead that went up and up. Her eyes were a blue-violet and seemed even larger and more vivid than they were because the rest of her face had no colour in it. Her wide smile revealed two upper front teeth separated by a little gap that gave her a childlike appearance, as if she were seven or eight years old and just committing herself to the gangly stage. Though not at all beautiful, the Southern girl’s face had a charming, touching quality that the women in the room failed to notice (or if they did, to care about); the men all saw it immediately. The blue-violet eyes were searching gravely for something that was not to be found in this living-room or this town or perhaps anywhere, but that nevertheless might exist somewhere, if you had the courage and the patience and the time to go on looking for it. The same sincerity, the same impossibly high-minded principles, the refusal to compromise in a middle-aged or even a married woman would not have appealed to them. These qualities had to be combined with the sweetness of inexperience. Glancing at Nora the men were reminded of certain idealistic plans they had once had for themselves, plans that for practical reasons had had to be put aside.
You must be careful
, they longed tosay to her.
You are young and inexperienced. You may think you know how to take care of yourself but life is hard and there are pitfalls. However, you don’t have to be afraid with me. I can be trusted.…
    The little coloured girl broke up the conversation in the living-room by opening the dining-room doors and saying “Dinner is served.” Every face was turned towards her. The idea that had been, off and on for the last half hour, in all their minds—food—was now a shining fact. Martha King rose and led the way into the dining-room. The other women followed, according to age: Mrs. Beach, Mrs. Danforth, Mrs. Potter, Lucy and Alice Beach, young Mrs. Ellis, who had recently come to town as a bride, Nora Potter, and Mary Caroline Link. Mary Caroline had been asked so that young Randolph Potter would have someone of his own age to talk to.
    In the centre of the dining-room table there were two tall lighted white candles. Presiding at the head was Rachel’s ham on a big blue platter. At the foot of the table was a platter of fried chicken. Between these two major centres of interest were any number of minor ones—the baked macaroni, the stuffed potatoes, the tomato aspic, the devilled eggs, the watercress, the hot rolls covered with a napkin, the jellies and the preserves, the stack of dinner plates, the rows of gleaming silver, the napkins that matched the big damask cloth. Like a tropical flower, the dinner party had opened its petals and revealed the purpose and prodigality of nature.
    “Well, Martha,” Mrs. Beach said, without bothering to hide her astonishment, “I must say this looks very nice. I won’t have any of the ham. I can see it’s delicious by the way it cuts, but ham always gives me heartburn.” She glanced at the plate Martha King was fixing for her and was reassured; the chicken was white meat. “And a stuffed potato and a roll, thank you … no, that’s plenty. I’m an old woman and I don’t