CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Neil turned into Post-office Square just on the stroke of four. Thesquare was as empty and strange to the eye as his mother's kitchen,though this was the rush hour of the day in that business centre uponordinary days, when the fair had not emptied the town.
A solitary Ford of prehistoric make stood before the post-office, andeven that was just cranking up. It lurched dispiritedly off, leaving acloud of dust behind. A dejected-looking group of children hung aboutthe door of the ice-cream parlour, and appeared to lack the initiativeto enter in. Half the shops were shut. In the big show-window of thecentral section of Ward's Emporium Luther Ward, usually on parade andmagnificently in charge of his shop and his staff of employees at thistime of day, stood in his shirt sleeves, embracing an abnormally slenderlady in a mauve velveteen tailored suit.
At first glance he seemed to be instructing her in the latest dancesteps, but on a nearer view the visible part of her proved to be wax,and the suit was ticketed nineteen-fifty. He jerked her into place,turned and saw Neil, and hailed him cheerfully, waving him round to themain entrance door, where he joined him, still wiping his brow.
"If you want a thing well done, do it yourself," he said, explaining hislate exertions with the air of believing the explanation was originalwith him and did credit to his intellect. "What are you here for,brother? Isn't Madison good enough for you?"
"No," Neil said. "Not with the big race called off."
"Called off? How's that?"
"Because you weren't there, Luther."
Mr. Ward gave a gratified laugh at this graceful compliment, anddescended to facts.
"I'm too old for horse racing. It's my boy's turn. He went over withWillard Nash's crowd to-day. Why didn't you?" Mr. Ward demandedseverely.
"Oh, Willard asked me all right. He's quite strong for me now." Mr. Wardhad doubted this, being on the watch for slights to Neil and resentingthem, though he never made an effort to prevent them. This was the usualattitude of Neil's more influential friends.
"Willard's a shrimp," said Mr. Ward gruffly. "And I like you," he addedin a burst of frankness. "I always did like you, Neil. You've pulledyourself up by your boot-straps, and I hope you hang on to them tight.There's nobody better pleased than I am. Oh, I got a rig and sent allthe help from the store over to the fair to-day," he added, turningquickly to impersonal subjects.
"You always do treat them right."
"Well, this wasn't my idea. I got it from the Colonel." A look ofharmless but plainly evident pride came into Mr. Ward's open and ruddycountenance as he mentioned the great man's name. It was only the weekbefore that he had received his first dinner invitation from theEverards. It came at the eleventh hour and did not include his wife, buthe was dazzled by it still. "You know what he's doing? Closing hishouse, practically, for all three days of the fair, and sending all thehelp on the place over there--two touring cars full. It's a fine thingfor them. They're high-class help and don't have it any too interestingdown here. Anybody that says he's not democratic don't know the Colonel.This town don't half know him yet."
"You're right," Neil put in softly.
"Democratic," declaimed Mr. Ward, "and public spirited. Look at thefountain he's going to put up in the square. Look at the old Grant housegoing to be fitted up for a library. Look at him running for mayor, whenhe's been turning down chances at bigger offices for years--willing tostay here and serve for the good of the town. There's talk against himmore than ever this year. I know that. It amounts to an indignationmeeting when the boys get together at Halloran's. Well, failures hate asuccessful man, and their talk don't count. It will die down. But I hateto hear of it. For the Colonel's put this town on the map. He's notperfect, but who is? And suppose he does have a good time his own way?We've got a right to--all of us. It's a free country."
Mr. Ward delivered this last sentiment with touching faith in its forceand freshness, and waved a plump hand of invitation toward the littleprivate office back of the main section of his store, where he haddeveloped his unfailing eloquence of speech upon subjects of publicinterest, and liked best to practise it. But Neil, himself listened towith growing deference by the groups that forgathered there, was not tobe lured to that sanctum to-day. Speaking hastily and vaguely of work tobe done, he escaped from his good friend and across the street to JudgeSaxon's office.
He climbed the stairs heavily, and did not linger before the door topicture the sign changed to "Saxon, Burr, and Donovan," as he had donemore times than he cared to admit. The office was not a thing to beproud of as a step up in life for him to-day; it was a place to be alonein, as men feel alone and safe in the place that is their own becausethey have worked there.
Showing this in every move, Neil locked the door, threw off his cap, anddropped into the broken-springed chair at the desk that was nominallyTheodore Burr's, but really his. He groped mechanically for the handleof the drawer where he usually rested his feet, found it hard to open,gave up the attempt and, leaning back without its support, stared at Mr.Burr's ornate, brass-mounted blotter with unseeing eyes.
Sitting there, he was no longer the boy who had the privilege ofintimate talk with prominent citizens like Mr. Ward and valued it; orthe boy who had laughed at his mother's anxiety so bravely. He was noteven the boy that he used to be, sullen, but rebellious, too. To-day forthe first time he was something worse, a defeated boy. The long minutesdragged like hours, and he sat through them as he would have sat throughhours, silent and motionless, losing run of time and acknowledgingdefeat.
For there was something that this boy wanted, and had always wanted, ashe could never want other things, even success or love, as a boy or aman can want one thing only in one lifetime. It was a remote andpreposterous dream that he had, a dream that nobody else in Green Riverwas foolhardy enough to cherish long, but this boy belonged to the raceof poets and dreamers, the race that must sometimes dream true, becauseit always dreams. His dream had taken different forms: sometimes he sawhimself doing desperate things, setting fire to a house that he knew andhated, striking a blow in the dark for which nobody thanked him, but theissue was always the same, and the dream never left him. He was to findGreen River a new master. He was to save the town. That was his dream.It had never left him till now.
He was only a lean, tense boy, crouched over a battered desk and staringout of the window at a country street with absent, beautiful eyes, buthe was living through a tragic hour; the terrible hour that poets anddreamers know when they lose hold upon their dreams. Measured byminutes, this hour was not long. Neil passed a hand across his foreheadand sat up, reaching for his cap in a dazed way, for he was not to bepermitted to hide longer from his trouble here. The plump and personablefigure of Mr. Theodore Burr was crossing the square and disappearinginto the door below. His unhurried step climbed the stairs. Neil openedthe door to him.
"Hello, stranger. Why aren't you at Madison?" Neil said.
"I didn't go," said Mr. Burr lucidly. "Where are you going? I don't wantto drive you away from here."
"Oh, just out. I was going anyway."
"You don't invite me. I don't blame you. I'm poor company, and I've gotbusiness to attend to here."
"No!"
"Why shouldn't I have business here?" snapped Mr. Burr.
"You should, you should, Theodore. Say"--the question had been troublingNeil subconsciously all the time he sat at the desk--"what's wrong withthat lower drawer? I can't open it."
"It's locked."
"What for?"
"That," said Mr. Burr with dignity, "is my private drawer--for privatepapers."
"Papers!" Mr. Burr's private papers were known to consist chiefly of afile of receipted bills and a larger file of unreceipted bills, bothkept with his usual fastidious neatness. "What papers?"
"That's my business. I've got some rights here, if I am a figurehead.I've got some privileges."
"Sure. Don't you feel right to-day, Theodore?"
"That," said Mr. Burr, "is my business, too."
"Don't you feel right?" Neil said. "Don't you want me to do something,Theodore?"
"Yes. Get out of here. Leave me alone," Mr. Burr snapped angrily.
"Sure," said Neil soothingly.
Suddenly Mr. Burr gripped Neil's reluctant, shy, boy's hand, kept it inhis for a minute in silence, and then abruptly let it go, pushing Neiltoward the door.
"Don't begrudge me one locked drawer when you'll own the whole placesome day," he said, with all the dignity that his fretful burst ofirritation had lacked. "I'd like to see that day. You're a good boy,Donovan."
"You're not right. You've got a grouch. Come with me and walk it off,"Neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friendhad little more to say. His silence was perhaps the most unusual thingabout his behaviour, which was all out of key to-day. Neil rememberedafterward that just as he closed the door upon Mr. Burr and hisvagaries, shutting them at the same time out of his mind, Mr. Burr,sitting rather heavily down in the broken-springed desk chair, wasbending and stretching out a faultlessly manicured, slightly unsteadyhand toward the locked drawer of the desk.
Neil stepped out into the street with a cautious eye upon the Emporiumacross the way, but no portly form was in sight there now, and no heartyvoice hailed him. He crossed the square and turned north, walkingquickly, soon leaving the larger houses behind, and then the smallerhouses above the railroad track, always climbing gradually as he walked.Finally, at the entrance to an overgrown road that led off to his left,and at the highest point of his long and slow ascent, he turned andlooked back at the town.
The town that Colonel Everard had put on the map hardly deserved thehonour, seen so in a glitter of afternoon light, with the long, slopinghill leading down to it, and the white tower of the church pointing highabove it, a cozy huddle of houses at the foot of the hill. It lookedunassuming and sheltered and safe, only a group of homes to make asimple and sheltered home in. The boy looked long at it, then turnedabruptly and plunged into the road before him.
It led straight across a shallow belt of fields and deep into the woods.Only a cart-track at first, it soon lost itself here in a path, and thepath in turn grew fainter and became a brown, alluring ghost of a path.It was hard to trace, but this was ground that Neil knew, a favouritehaunt of his, though few other boys ventured to trespass here. The woodswere part of the Everard estate.
Neil had found his first May flowers here on the first spring that hewas privileged to give them to Judith. Last year she had helped him lookfor them here. His errand here was not so pleasant to-day. The brownpath did not really lead to the heart of the woods as it seemed to. Itwas not so long as it looked. It was a fairly direct short cut to theEverard house.
The boy followed it quickly, with no eyes for the dim lure of the woodsto-day.
"You've beat me," he muttered once to himself; "I'll have a look atyou."
Soon the woods were not so thick. They fell away around him, carelesslythinned at first, littered with fallen trees and stumps, but nearer thehouse combed out accurately by the relentless processes of landscapegardening, and looking orderly and empty. The little path vanishedentirely here. Ahead of Neil, through a thin fringe of trees, was theColonel's rose garden; beyond it, the broad stretch of lawn and thehouse, bulky and towered and tall.
Neil broke through the trees and stood and looked at it, straight ahead,seen through the frame of the trellised entrance to the garden,upstanding and ugly and arrogant.
"You've beat me," he said to the Colonel's house. "You've beat me; youand him. I hate you!"
His voice had a hollow sound in the empty garden. Garden and lawn andhouse had the same look that the whole deserted town had caught to-day;the look of suddenly empty rooms where much life has been, a breathlessstrangeness that holds echoes of what has happened there, and even hintsof what is to happen; haunted rooms. It is not best to linger there.Neil turned uneasily toward the path again.
He turned, then he turned back, stood for a tense minute listening, thenbroke through the rose garden and began to run across the lawn. Veryfaint and small, so that he could not tell whether it was in a man'svoice or a woman's, but echoing clearly across the deserted garden, hehad heard a scream from the house.
It came from the house somewhere, though as Neil ran toward it the housestill looked tenantless. The veranda was without its usual gay litter ofcushions and books and serving trays. At the long windows that opened onit all the curtains were close drawn--or at all but one.
As Neil reached the house he saw that the middle window was thrown highand the long, pale-coloured curtain was dragged from its rod anddangling over the sill. Just then he heard a second scream from thehouse. It was so choked and faint that he barely heard it. Neil ran upthe steps and slipped through the open window into the Everards'library.
Little light came through the curtained windows. The green room,sparsely scattered with furniture in summer covers of light chintz thatglimmered pale and forbidding, looked twice its unfriendly length in thegloom. There was a heavy, dead scent of too many flowers in the air. Ona table across the room a bowl of hothouse hyacinths, just overturned,crushed the flowers with its weight and dripped water into the soddenrug.
Neil, at the window looking uncertainly into the half-dark room, saw thebowl and the white mass of crushed flowers, and then something else,something that shifted and stirred in a far corner of the room. He sawit dimly at first, a dark, struggling group. There were two men in it.
One was a man who had screamed, but he was not screaming now. It wouldhardly have been convenient for him to scream, for the other, thesmaller and slighter man of the two, was clutching him by the throat,gripping it with a hand that he could not shake off as the two figuresswayed back and forth.
"Who's there?" Neil cried.
Nobody answered him. Nobody needed to, for just then the two men whoseemed to be fighting swung into the narrow strip of light before theuncurtained window and he could see their faces. He could see, too, thatthey were not fighting now, though they had seemed to be. The bigger manwas choked into submission already. No sound came from him and he hunglimp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the stripof light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He droppedto the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, withthe light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man wasColonel Everard, the man who stood over him was Charlie Brady.
As Neil looked Brady dropped on his knees beside the Colonel, felt forhis heart, and found it. He knelt there, motionless, holding his handpressed over it and peering intently into his face. Presently he got tohis feet deliberately, gave a deep sigh of entire content with himself,and looked about him. Then and not until then he saw Neil. He saw himwithout surprise, if without much pleasure, it appeared.
"You're late," he remarked.
"You drunken fool," Neil began furiously, then stopped, staring at hiscousin. Whatever the meaning of this exhibition was, Charlie was notdrunk. The excitement that possessed him was excitement of some otherkind. It possessed him entirely, though it was under control for themoment. His muscles twitched with it. His shoulders shifted restlessly.His hands closed and unclosed. His eyes were strangely lit, and therewas an absent, exalted look about them. Whatever the excitement, it wasstrong--stronger than Charlie. Neil, his eyes now used to thehalf-light, could see no weapon in the room, dropped on the floor ordiscarded. Mr. Brady, normally a coward in his cups and out of them, hadattacked his enemy with his bare hands.
"Charlie, what's got you?" Neil said. "Wha
t's come to you?"
"What's come to him, there?" Charlie said, in a voice that was changed,too, and was as remote and as strange as his eyes, a low voice, with thedeceptive, terrible calm of gathering hysteria about it.
"Look what's come to him," the voice went on. "Don't he deserve it, andworse? How did I find him to-day when I broke in through the windowthere? At his old tricks again. There was a woman with him in thelibrary there, when he came out to me. He locked the door. She's therenow. Neil, you'd better get away from here. I don't know what you'redoing here, but you'd better go, and go quick."
He had given this advice indifferently. He made his next observationindifferently, too, with his furtive, absent eyes on the library door.
"I've killed him."
"What's got you? Are you crazy?"
"No--not now. You'd better go. I want to take a look in there first. Thekey's in the door."
"Charlie, come back here."
The note of command that he was used to responding to in his youngcousin's voice reached and controlled Mr. Brady even now; he obeyed andswung round and stood still, looking at Neil. Neil's dark eyes, justabove the level of his own, and so like them, were unrecognizable now.They were dull with anger, and they were angry with him.
"What's the matter?" he quavered. "What's the matter, Neil?"
Between the two cousins, as they stood facing each other, the Colonellay ominously still. The cruel eyes did not open, and the distortedmouth did not change.
"Look! You can see for yourself. Feel his heart," Mr. Brady offered, buthis cousin's dark, disconcerting eyes did not leave his face. "What'sthe matter, Neil? What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to make you talk out to me," Neil said. "You'll tell mewhat's got you, and why you did this, which will be the ruin of you andme, too, but first you'll tell me something else. You'll tell me whatyou've hid from me for a year, you who can tell me the truth when you'redrunk and lie out of it when you're sober, till you've worn me out andI'm sick of trying to get the truth from you. I'll be getting it now toolate, but I'll get it. Have you or have you not been living on thisman's money?"
"Yes."
"Was it hush money?"
"Yes," Mr. Brady said. "Neil, I'll tell you everything. You've guessedmost of it, but I'll tell you the rest. I can prove it. I can proveeverything I know. I did take hush money. It was dirty money, but Ididn't care. I didn't care what happened. I didn't care till to-day."
"To-day?"
"I got--a letter."
"Go on," Neil said.
As he spoke Mr. Brady's face began suddenly to change, lighting againwith that strange excitement which had gripped him, revived, and burningthrough its thin veneer of control. His eyes blazed with it, and hisvoice shook with it. He waved a trembling hand toward the library door.A sound had come from the library, the faintest of sounds, a low,frightened cry. It was like the ghost of a cry, but he heard. Neil heardit, too, and was at the door before him, trying to unlock it, fumblingwith the key.
"She's there yet," Mr. Brady cried; "whoever she is. Well, she'll be thelast of them. I had a letter, I tell you, a letter from Maggie. She'scoming home, what's left of her--what he's left of her--Everard. I neverthought he was to blame. I said he was, but I was talked out of it. IfI'd thought so, if I'd suspected it, would I have touched a penny of hisdirty money? But she's coming home. Maggie's coming home."
For the moment Neil was not concerned with the fact. Graver revelationsmight have passed over him unheeded. The key had turned at last. ThenNeil felt the door being pushed open from inside. He stepped back andwaited. The door opened cautiously for an inch or two, then swungsuddenly wide. Standing motionless, framed in the library door, wasJudith.
The Wishing Moon Page 18