Читать книгу Three Bright Pebbles - Leslie Ford - Страница 9

When Yarborough had brought coffee and closed the pantry doors, Irene put her bare elbows on the polished table and leaned forward, her smooth chin resting on the back of her clasped jeweled fingers. A hush fell over the table, and in the mirror of the Empire plateau I saw the corners of Mara Winthrop’s mouth droop and the sides of her nostrils as sensitive as harp strings quiver, and her whole dark little body grow suddenly perfectly still. She had been waiting for this. So had all the rest of them—even the girl next to her. I looked at her, and our eyes met for the first time, just as Irene said, in her most charming voice:

“Grace dear, you must tell us everything you’ve been doing, you look too fit, really you do! What have you been up to? And Dan, I know you’re simply dying to talk Paris! How was the trip over? Was it awful?”

A quick smile flickered for an instant behind Cheryl Winthrop’s long gold-tipped lashes and was gone, as Irene, without waiting for Dan to speak—and heaven knows he looked less like a man dying to talk Paris than anyone I’d ever seen—went rippling along.

“I did want all of you together tonight! Because Sidney—” she held out one lovely hand to the man at her side—“Sidney has finally persuaded me there’s no use of our waiting any longer. We’re going to get married!”

She paused brightly and looked around. Good seeds, I’m afraid, never fell on thornier ground. That they had all known it for several weeks didn’t seem entirely to account for it. Even Natalie Lane, who tried to look pleased and interested, didn’t succeed particularly well. Irene, if she noticed it, didn’t mind, and neither, apparently, did Major Tillyard. He looked affectionately pleased, and really quite nice.

“Of course, the real point is that this is a sort of . . . well, a sort of council of war,” Irene said.

Dan’s eyes caught mine. I looked away quickly, and across at Mara, staring with unseeing eyes into the bottom of her green Worcester coffee cup.

“You see,” Irene said—she looked earnestly about at her small brood—“your father was so anxious for you all to have the benefit of the money he worked so hard to make—”

There was a sudden violent motion at the end of the table as Rick Winthrop pushed his chair back and got to his feet so abruptly—and unsteadily—that his chair went crashing to the floor behind him. He turned, smashed his foot violently into it and swung back to us, facing his mother over the candles. I saw that up to that point I hadn’t at all realized how definitely he was under the influence—as my grandmother used to put it in the days when no gentleman was ever intoxicated.

“Then why don’t you divide it between us, and cut out all this harping about what father wanted!” he said bitterly. “Why don’t you let us get the benefit of it, instead of keeping us tied to your apron strings, having to grovel for every penny we get! Then marry Tillyard, if you want to, and the rest of us’ll clear out! Then—”

“Oh, shut up, Rick.”

It was Dan’s voice, quietly matter-of-fact, that interrupted that extraordinary tirade. The rest of us sat, too stunned to do anything but stare at him open-mouthed . . . even Irene, so much more used to Rick’s unbridled furies than the rest of us.

Rick turned, his dark eyes bloodshot, his mouth trembling.

“It’s all right for you to talk. You don’t have to take it—you never have had to. You’ve always had a way of getting whatever you wanted without the trouble of paying for it.”

I still don’t know how it was that everybody at that table knew instantly what it was that Rick meant. He didn’t look at Cheryl . . . but we did know, just as surely as if he’d said it. Maybe it was because he stopped short himself, as if he too was shocked by it. But there it was, as ugly and revolting as if he’d taken a whip and lashed it across her face.

Dan got slowly to his feet, white with rage, his jaw set like a steel trap. He stood motionless for an instant, turned and walked over to the door.

“Would you mind stepping outside?” he said, his voice so dreadfully quiet that gooseflesh stood suddenly on my arms.

Rick Winthrop moved around the long table.

“We’ll settle it right here!” he shouted.

Irene’s voice was a low terrible moan. “Boys, please! Oh, please!” If I’d ever thought her incapable of a very deep emotion—and I had—I’d been wrong. She leaned her head back against her chair, her face white as death. “Please, please!”

Cheryl got instantly to her feet, her face pale and set.

“Don’t be a fool, Rick,” she said quietly. “And please, Dan, come back. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He . . . he isn’t himself.”

She turned quickly to her mother-in-law. “If you’ll excuse me, please, Irene—I’d like to go to my room.”

Irene nodded without opening her eyes. Major Tillyard, who’d got up as Rick left his place, stood there looking down at her, his face hard and angry. Then he said, controlling his voice with an effort. “Perhaps if I left too, Irene, this might be a little less . . . difficult.”

She held out her hand.

“No, no, Sidney—please stay. Natalie, you go with Cheryl. The rest of you stay here. Come back, Dan. Sit down, Rick.”

For a moment no one moved except Natalie Lane, who got up and out like a streak of lightning. Dan closed the door and came back to his place. Rick picked up his chair and sat down, his face mottled, his eyes fixed on the lace mat in front of him. And all the time Mara sat there, motionless, her short thick black lashes shading her dark eyes, two hot dull spots burning in her cheeks, her brown sensitive little hands folded quiescent on the table in front of her. I don’t know why that should have surprised me so, and alarmed me too, in a way; for when she finally moved it was to give her mother a look that was utterly disillusioned and at the same time totally inscrutable. That was when Irene, having I suppose so much more survival value than most people—and I still think she had, really, in spite of the way things turned out—moved forward in her chair again, and smiled wanly.

“Now don’t you two think you’re being pretty silly? You’re forgetting you’re brothers . . . and Dan’s come back after being away so long! And the French look at these things so differently! Now, now, Dan—you mustn’t be ridiculous!”

I thought for a moment that Dan was going to invite her outside too, and I’m not sure he wouldn’t have if Mara hadn’t said quickly, “Wouldn’t it be a good plan if Dan would come out and say plainly where he and Cheryl knew each other? That seems to be what’s holding up this . . . this council of war, as Mother calls it. We ought at least to try to keep it from becoming a blood purge.”

I looked at Dan. He sat there tight-lipped and silent. Before there had been nothing he could say. Now, I knew, there was nothing he would say, even if he could.

Mara looked away quickly. “Then let’s skip it. And maybe Rick’ll let Mother finish what she was going to say.”

Irene raised her arched brows.

“So sweet of you, lamb,” she murmured, with a charming smile.

Mara flushed.

“It’s of as much interest to me and Dan to hear what you’re going to say as it is to Rick,” she said. It was almost painfully casual.

Her mother smiled again.

“As a matter of fact, Mara,” she said, rather gently, “—whatever disposition of your father’s money I may make, I shall certainly have to put definite restrictions on the use you put yours to.”

Rick Winthrop’s slow voice, angry and also a little blurred, spoke from the end of the table. “—And I’d like to say that if I see that jailbird around here again, I’ll fill him full of buckshot.”

Mara got up abruptly.

“If somebody doesn’t do it to you first,” she said. “May I be excused, please, Mother?”

Irene’s voice was even a little bored. “Certainly not, Mara. Sit down, and don’t be dramatic.”

Mara’s eyes smouldered with angry resentment.

“I’m not being dramatic—and I won’t sit down. I’ll not stay around and be treated like a feeble-minded child!”

“Then quit acting like one, darling.”

“Everything I want to do you keep me from—you’ve done it all my life! I’d have run away and married Alan . . . but I’ve got a right to part of my father’s money, and I’m going to have it!”

Irene’s voice was composed and pleasant—and impervious.

“Not, darling, if you insist on marrying the unemployed son of a tenant farmer.”

“He wouldn’t be unemployed if all of you hadn’t ganged up on him and kept him from getting a job!” Mara cried. “And what if he is the son of a tenant farmer? Where would Romney be if it weren’t for a tenant farmer?”

Major Tillyard spoke with a quiet authority that I thought would calm her. “He could have gone somewhere else and started over, Mara.”

She whirled around at him, her dark eyes filled with scalding tears.

“Yes—for how long? Until they found he’d been in prison! But that’s not why he didn’t go somewhere else—he didn’t go because he’s innocent . . . and he’s not afraid of coming back here where he can prove it!”

“He’s had every chance to prove it, Mara,” Major Tillyard said wearily. “I admire your loyalty, my dear—but it’s badly out of keeping with the facts. We gave—”

Irene put a delicate white hand on his arm.

“Please don’t go into that again! Mara’s just a silly child. She’s hardly likely to marry a penniless boy. She can’t even wash out her own stockings.—Sit down, Mara.”

Mara stood a moment, choked and irresolute, turned with a stifled sob and groped blindly toward the door.

“Come back to the table, Mara,” Irene said—quietly, but the velvet glove sort of thing if I ever heard it.

“Oh, let the kid go, Mother,” Dan put in abruptly.

Rick Winthrop leaned forward.

“It’s all right with you if she marries a thief, I suppose? You’ll always get yours, in spite of jailbirds and . . . fortune hunters.”

He looked at Sidney Tillyard, his eyes sullen, his face flushed.

“Now you’re being offensive, Rick!” Irene said sharply.

Dan looked at me, his lips twisted in a bitter smile. He got up.

“The council of war doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere,” he said. “Good night, Mother. I’ll . . . see you in the morning.—What about a stroll in the rain, Grace?”

Irene nodded to me, and I went out with him. He opened the big front door with its smooth rubbed pine panels between fluted pilasters, with their carved acanthus capitals and we stepped outside onto the porch. The wind still rocked the branches of the old tulip poplars beyond the lawns, and shivered down the box alleys. The broad waters of the Potomac were dark except for the lights of a single river boat moving slowly on its way to the Chesapeake. The rain came in sharp gusts, wetting our faces. But the air was clean again, not sultry and leaden, as it had been in Georgetown . . . or charged with bitterness as it had been inside those lovely old mauve brick walls.

Neither of us spoke. There seemed after all so pitifully little to say. Dan lighted a cigarette. As he tossed the match on the gravel path he raised his head, listening. I heard a faint sound coming from the dining room end of the house. It stopped then, as abruptly as it had begun, and the figure of a man, dressed in work overalls, a battered gray hat pulled down to keep the rain from his face, came out of the shadows. He was walking on the grass, not moving stealthily, but walking so that his feet were noiseless on the sodden lawn.

He stopped when he saw us, and hesitated. Then he recognized Dan and touched his hat.

“Mr. Dan—certainly mighty glad to see you back.”

“Oh hello, Mr. Keane.”

Dan strode across the porch and shook hands with the man who had been the tenant farmer of Romney since Dan’s father had bought it, when he was still quite a small boy.

“You remember Mr. Keane, don’t you, Grace?—This is Mrs. Latham.”

“Howdy, Miz’ Latham. Ain’t seen you down this way for a long time.”

Mr. Keane wiped his hand on the seat of his overalls and held it out to me. It was wet, hard and rough, but it was a good hand, with a strong sure grip that had held many a plough to a straight deep furrow. And I don’t know why, during all that conversation at the table—even with Mara’s outburst over Romney and its tenant farmer—I had never thought of Alan Keane as being Mr. Keane’s son. Mr. Keane was as much a part of Romney as the white pillared portico and the boxwood alleys and the pineapples on the gate posts. And Alan had gradually stopped being a part of it, since he’d gone to high school and to college—I’d subscribed to a magazine I’d never heard of, and never got, because Irene was helping him out—and then to the bank in Port Tobacco, and after that to prison.

Mr. Keane glanced uneasily at the dining room windows.

“Is Miz’ Winthrop through her supper?” he asked.

“Just about,” Dan said. “Anything I could do for you?”

Mr. Keane fumbled with the stumpy pipe in his hands.

“I jus’ wanted to see Miz’ Winthrop about a little matter, is all. I jus’ thought I’d like to see her, if she wasn’t too busy.”

“You’d better wait till morning, unless it’s pretty important,” Dan said. “She’s just been having a run-in with Rick.”

Mr. Keane hesitated. “That ain’t hard to do, these days,” he said slowly. Then he added, almost painfully, it seemed to me, “I’d mighty like to see Miz’ Winthrop, if she ain’t too busy.”

“O. K.” Dan turned and strode across the verandah and inside.

Suddenly out of the wet night came that ghastly eerie shriek again . . . and again. The gooseflesh rose on my arms.

“What is that, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Keane?” I demanded.

“That’s them fancy buzzards of Miz’ Winthrop,” he said in his slow drawl. “They make a heap of racket, about this time.”

He lapsed into silence, and we stood there, I rather uneasily, because he kept looking so anxiously at the door. Finally I asked him how his tobacco was, and if he thought the storm had hurt it; but before he could answer Irene Winthrop’s voice came, high-pitched and clear as a bell, from the drawing room. A window must have blown open in the wind, and the heavy gold damask curtains had been drawn, so they wouldn’t, I supposed, know it was open. And for the first time a sharp torn edge was audible under the gentle imperviousness of that lovely lilting voice.

“Tell Mr. Keane I don’t care to see him. The matter’s settled, and very liberally, I do think.”

Dan’s voice was charged with incredulity, and anger.

“You mean you’re kicking Mr. Keane off the place, after he’s been here half of his life?”

“The matter’s quite settled, Dan. Mr. Keane has been taken very good care of . . .”

Irene’s voice was suave, and final. Then I could hear Major Tillyard.

“You’re making a big mistake, Irene. Keane’s the best farmer in Southern Maryland. He’s made Romney pay when every other farm in the county is in the red, and the land’s better today than it was ten years ago. You’ll never get another tenant that touches him.”

“Money, money!” Irene moaned plaintively. “That’s all any of you think of! What about Mara! Oh, Rick’s perfectly right—if I’d sent Mr. Keane off the place four years ago, Alan would never have come back here, and we’d never have had any of this nonsense of Mara’s marrying a . . . a criminal!”

I stared helplessly at the farmer standing there by me, his heavy boots clogged with sand from the tobacco fields, his gnarled hands making futile helpless gestures, his face under his dripping tattered hat numb and stupid with pain.

And we just stood there for an instant, until he said, very simply, “I reckon she don’t want to see me,” and turned back the way he’d come.

The sound of his feet on the brick path had disappeared when Dan came out. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him, with a deep and sustained and choking anger.

“It’s a rotten damn system that lets a bounder like Rick turn a man like Mr. Keane off the land he’s had for twenty-five years. I’d like to know what the hell’s behind it. You needn’t tell me he gives a damn what happens to Mara. I’d like to . . . Oh well, what the hell.”

He kicked at the corn husk mat on the flagged porch, and took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll go and try to say something to Mr. Keane. I’ll be seeing you, Grace.”

I didn’t have the courage to point to the open window . . . and I don’t think it would have made any difference in the long run if I had. The things that were happening at Romney were the noxious flowerings of seeds that had been planted and were full grown before Dan and I barged in on them out of the storm-wracked night. Nothing anyone could have done at that point could have averted the doom about to break over Romney . . . any more than we could have stopped the inky black and murky yellow lightning-torn clouds from crashing down their pent-up fury of wind and water.

As Dan disappeared around the wing that shrill cry came again out of the night, and I saw the dark form of a huge bird soar across the box. I went inside, thinking that all in all I wished I’d not come to Romney.