“And don’t mention the amnesia, dear. We haven’t told Mr. Petherbridge or Mr. Moffat that Gordy is suffering from amnesia. We thought it might make Mr. Moffat suspicious. But since he hasn’t the remotest idea you’re a fake, he won’t try and trip you with awkward questions, I’m quite sure of that.”
“I hope so,” I said. “Incidentally, are you sure none of the members ever saw Gordy?”
“I don’t see how any of them could have, dear. I really don’t.” Mrs. Friend stared at the two girls. “Marny, you’re all right. Selena”—she sighed—“I wish there was something you could do with your bosom.”
“I can cut them off,” said Selena.
“No, dear, I don’t think that will be necessary.” Mrs. Friend took one final, all-observing glance around the room. “Now I’ll get Grandma. She’s thrilled at the idea of sitting in on the meeting and I think she’d make a good effect next to Gordy. Gordy with his old grandmother on one side and his wife on the other. Remember, Selena, wifely but not sexy—like St. Paul. That’s your attitude.”
She made a vague gesture with her hand. “Oh, dear, I shall feel better when this is over. So tiresome, the whole thing. So very tiresome.”
She went out and came back soon with Grandma, draped in black crepe, spry on her arm. She was settled in a seat next to my wheel chair. She leaned towards me, bringing her own atmosphere of lavender and dust. An ancient lid was slowly lowered and raised over a bright eye.
“This is fun,” she whispered. “More fun than the radio. More fun than Jack Benny.” She cackled. “Jack Benny. There’s a funny man for you. Didn’t have men funny as that in Seattle when I was a girl.”
She was still cackling about the absence of funny men in Seattle in her girlhood when a maid came in to announce Mr. Petherbridge.
“Show him in, Susan,” said Mrs. Friend.
As the maid departed, a twinge of anxiety came. Was I sticking my neck in a noose? I looked at Selena. She grinned. I thought of last night and I wasn’t nervous any more.
Mr. Petherbridge came in behind the maid. From a dramatic point of view, he should have been a tall, ominous character with a steely, penetrating gaze. In fact, Mr. Friend’s lawyer was tiny and fluttery with a pink bald dome and blue, watery eyes. He looked like one of those butterflies that somehow manage to last through the winter and totter shabbily through the first few days of spring.
Mrs. Friend rose. “Mr. Petherbridge.”
“Ah, Mrs. Friend.”
Mrs. Friend took his hand and led him around. “I think you know everyone. My mother. Marny. Selena. Gordy… oh, no, I don’t believe you do know Gordy. Mr. Petherbridge, this is my son.”
Mr. Petherbridge looked at the cast on my right arm, seemed undecided as to whether or not to shake my left hand and then gave up.
“Ah, yes. I heard of your accident. What a merciful escape.”
He smiled awkwardly. In fact, he seemed extremely embarrassed by the whole situation.
Mrs. Friend laid her hand on his arm. “Dear Mr. Petherbridge, I know this is uncomfortable for you. Frankly, I think the will’s just a teeny, teeny bit silly, don’t you? But we must abide by it. You have to inspect the house. Remember? Come on. Let us at least get that over with before our virtuous guests arrive.”
“Virtuous guests. “Mr. Petherbridge tittered. “I must admit I never quite understood your poor husband’s enthusiasm for the Clean Living League. Myself, I always enjoy a glass of sherry before dinner, I’m afraid.”
“Mr. Petherbridge, you naughty man.” Mrs. Friend tapped his sleeve archly. “Now, let us ransack the house for signs of depravity—you and I.”
She led him out of the room. After a moment’s pause Grandma cackled.
“Funnier than Jack Benny,” she said.
None of the rest of us spoke. Jan came in and sat down stiffly on one of the wooden chairs. Soon Mrs. Friend and Mr. Petherbridge reappeared.
Mrs. Friend was looking guardedly pleased. “There. That’s cleared up,” she said. “Mr. Petherbridge feels our house is no more sinful than the average American home, don’t you, Mr. Petherbridge?”
“Ah, yes, Mrs. Friend. Nothing wrong there that I can see. Nothing that would have distressed poor Mr. Friend.”
He sat down next to Mrs. Friend, his little hands scurrying back and forth over his pin-striped trousers. He was getting more and more nervous. I wondered why.
Splendidly adequate, Mrs. Friend kept the conversation simmering until the sound of an automobile was audible from the drive.
“Ah, that will be they. The League. Mr. Moffat, I understand, has chartered a bus to bring them all at once. They enjoy doing things in a group. Things are jollier in a group.”
Soon the maid, rather rattled, came in, said: “They’ve come, Mrs. Friend,” and scuttled out.
People—thirty or forty of them—started streaming into the huge room then. For some reason, I had expected the Clean Living League to be as dour and lugubrious as our own mournful black clothes. I was completely wrong. Most of them, men and women alike, were dressed in white—a discreet gesture, I felt, towards someone else’s mourning. But they were far from lugubrious.
Bouncy was the word for them. Although, as they descended upon us, they assumed expressions suitable to greet a bereaved family, they were all bursting with a sort of inner heartiness. I felt that they had come from a jolly good romp somewhere on the shore, probably, tossing balls to each other and wading and maybe uproariously burying one of the stouter men in the sand and dancing around him.
In spite of their outdoorsiness, however, none of them looked healthy. The men were either fat and middle-aged or young and scrawny with a fine display of pimples. Of the women and girls I didn’t see one who would ever be on the receiving end of the drunkest sailor’s whistle. They reeked of self-complacency, too. They were obviously thanking Aurora for their own purity which set them loftily above those unfortunates whose romps were vitiated with tobacco and drink and sex. I saw what Mrs. Friend had meant the night before. The prospect of these people with several million dollars behind them indeed curdled my blood.
Chattering in respectful undertones, nudging each other in the ribs, carrying on little pure flirtations, they swarmed over the wooden chairs and seated themselves facing our family group.
Until then there had been no sign of Mr. Moffat. I suspected he was staging his entrance, and I was right. A moment after the Aurora Clean Living League had finally seated itself, a man’s figure appeared at the door, paused there a second and then strode eupeptically through his seated satellites straight up to Mrs. Friend.
He grasped her hand, shaking it up and down vigorously.
“Mrs. Friend, Mrs. Friend. A sad occasion. A very sad occasion. But we know he’s still with us, do we not? Part of the sparkling summer light. Part of the lovely garden flowers. Part of the glorious sunset.” He beamed. “There is no death, Mrs. Friend.”
Mr. Moffat was unbearably dynamic. Large, youngish, with tightly curled reddish hair and red hairs on his thick wrists, he projected personality as if he was charged with it from a battery concealed beneath his crinkled seersucker suit. He was unbearably chummy too.
He swung to me, picking up my left hand and pumping it. “And this is Gordy.” He surveyed the casts. “A crack-up, eh, boy? Well, sometimes we need a real shock to help us Come Through. Ah, alcohol, that weevil-like borer. It’s caused many a worse tragedy than a smashed arm, a broken leg. You were lucky, boy. And we’re lucky too, for today’s a great day, I understand. Today you’re Coming Through.”
He leaned over me. From the faint dilatation of his thick nostrils, I could tell he was sniffing for alcohol on my breath.
Coming Through, apparently, was the Aurora Clean Living League’s term for conversion.
I smiled weakly. “I’m Coming Through,” I said.
Mr. Moffat slapped me on the back. “Fine, glorious.” His bright, dirty brown eyes were trying unsuccessfully to register a delight he obviously di
d not feel at the prospect of my Coming Through. “Let’s be frank, boy. There’s a little situation today. Money, boy. A question of the allocation of money.” He bowed at the twittering Mr. Petherbridge. “Let’s get this clear, boy. Don’t you—or your dear mother—think we care about money. Mr. Friend was a fine man, a splendid man, but sometimes he didn’t always understand. What is money—when the best things in life are free? The rolling breaker, Gordy. The sunshine over the little kirk on the mountain. The sunlight, boy, in your mother’s eyes when you come home to her from your wanderings. Those are the things that brace you. To us, to all of us, it’s a millionfold jollier to welcome a new friend who’s Come Through than to miss that friend and be a little wealthier in terms of Cash.”
His smile flashed big, irregular teeth. “We’ve always been lucky, boy. When times are lean, there’s always a good friend ready to put his hand in his jeans for us. Lucre, the old Bible folk called it. Filthy lucre. And that’s how I’ve always thought of it too. We’re not going to have filthy lucre come between us and a—pal.”
Having unburdened himself of this disastrous speech, Mr. Moffat slapped me on the back again, swung around dramatically to face the crowded chairs, lifted both arms as if he was about to hail the rising sun and cried ringingly:
“At it, boys and girls. Aurora’s song.”
One of his raised arms became a conductor’s baton. A seedy girl had seated herself at the piano. She played a tremolo octave and, to a man, the group rose and burst into a loud merry song. I caught only snatches of the words—Aurora… Jollity… sunshine…no death… Come Through…
Aurora’s song concluded, Mr. Moffat embarked upon his eulogy of Mr. Friend. From it emerged the sharp division between those who had Come Through and those who had not Come Through. Those who had not Come Through were poor misguided sinners doomed to a life of blind debauch on this planet and utter annihilation after death. Those who had Come Through earned the inestimable privilege of Mr. Moffat’s society both on this earth and, eternally, after death in some jolly Valhalla of Cleanliness.
Mr. Friend had definitely Come Through.
I tried to visualize the grim old man I had seen in the photographs frolicking jollily with Mr. Moffat’s flock and then returning from the romp to excoriate his family’s wickedness. The thought made me faintly nauseated. Mr. Moffat was extolling Mr. Friend’s many virtues, ending with his talents as a poet. Suddenly, before I was at all prepared for it, he swung round to me with a flourish reminiscent of a circus ringmaster and cried: “And now we have the great pleasure of hearing his own very son, who is Coming Through to us, recite what is probably his most inspiring work—his Ode to Aurora.”
A chatter of applause sounded.
Mr. Moffat held up his hand. “But first there’s something I’m sure my friend Gordy boy here would want you all to know.” His voice lowered to an awesome whisper. “Until recently, he was on the Wrong Track—steaming down the Wrong Track. All the weaknesses, the frailties. Alcohol, boys, that weevil-like borer. Even worse, boys. But now, girls, he’s seen the red signal. Now he’s swung the lever, he’s switched tracks. Now, when he recites the Ode”—he paused, raising both hands over his head and clasping them together like a victorious boxing champ—“now, girls and boys, on this glorious summer day when the very birds sing for joy, he’s Coming Through—to me, to you.”
The applause was thunderous. Grandma, at my side suppressed a cackle behind a small handkerchief. I glanced desperately at Selena and then at Mrs. Friend. Both of them were sitting quietly with downcast eyes. In a moment of panic, my mind went completely blank. Then Selena half raised her head and winked. I was all right again then.
In fact, I felt so elated that I decided to abandon the meek method of recitation suggested by Mrs. Friend and to adopt some of Mr. Moffat’s rousing swagger.
“ ‘Seven sins lead our sons to Perdition’,” I bellowed, “ ‘Seven sins that lure youth like a Whore’ …”
I got my audience. Steadily, accurately, I progressed through the Ode, increasing the passion of my delivery from verse to verse. When I had finished, applause soared. Mr. Moffat, a look of undisguised fury in his eyes, swung round and slapped me on the back. Almost before I realized it, he had grabbed a document and a pen. He was thrusting them at me. I glanced at the first line.
I hereby declare that from this day on, I abstain from all uncleanliness, the sordidity of alcohol, the…
I didn’t need to read any more to recognize the abstinence pledge. I held the pen in my left hand over the document. For a moment I hesitated. This was it. Once I signed the forged name, I had irrevocably thrown in my lot with the Friends for better or for worse.
In that second while I hesitated, Selena sprang up as if possessed by a cleanly rapture. Her eyes aglow with evangelical fervor, she clutched my arm.
“Sign it, Gordy boy,” she cried. “Oh, renounce forever alcohol, that weevil-like borer.”
Mr. Moffat looked taken aback by this unexpected burst of ardor. As I glanced from him to Selena, the need to control an irresistible desire to giggle obliterated every other consideration from my mind. Bowing my head over the document I scrawled a clumsy pretense of the words Gordon Renton Friend III at the foot of the pledge.
Selena sat down with a sigh. Mr. Moffat snatched the paper and brandished it.
I had Come Through.
The League was still clapping. With a swoop of the hand, Mr. Moffat gave his musical signal. The tremolo octave warbled from the piano. The League rose and burst into a closing paean to Aurora.
It was all over as quickly, as easily as that. Either Mr. Moffat was bowing to the inevitable or he had decided to postpone any legal contentions to the future.
As I looked at him, trying to guess what was in his mind, I had the uneasy suspicion that Mr. Moffat was not the type to bow to the inevitable.
Something other than coarse reddish hairs, I felt, was up his sleeve.
It was a feeling I did not like at all.
Chapter 18
“Now, boys and girls,” Mr. Moffat was booming to the assembly, “here is some fun. Mrs. Friend has invited us to hold our Sunshine Hour in her glorious swimming pool. We all have our Aurora Swimming Suits?”
A chorus of assent rose.
“Then, boys and girls—to the pool.”
In a clatter of chairs, the League rose and started to swarm around me, heartily greeting their new pal. As one after another gave me a word of cheer, I noticed that two strange men had slipped into the room and were standing uncertainly by the door. One was elderly and stooped with a red-veined nose and white hair. The other was young and very solid with a wary, assertive air which marked him definitely as someone who had not Come Through to Mr. Moffat.
While youths and maidens giggled their hopes that I would soon be sufficiently recovered to take an active part in their larks, I saw that Mr. Petherbridge had bustled away from Mrs. Friend and had joined the two men at the door. The three of them were talking together in low, conspiratorial tones.
Gradually the Aurora Clean Living League was spiffing out through the library and the french windows towards the pool.
When the last member had paid his respects, Mr. Moffat wrung my hand again.
“Welcome to us, Gordy boy. Welcome. There’ll be many a glorious spree ahead for all of us, I’ll be bound. Ah, your beautiful mansion—the ideal setting for the League. The ideal setting.” The smile stretched to engulf Mrs. Friend who was standing nearby. “And the filthy lucre?” He gave a rich, false laugh. “Where do the life earnings of the Father belong but in the lap of his widow and his fatherless children—provided they have been proven worthy?”
The irregular teeth flashed as he completed that faintly ominous remark. Then the shoulders were thrown back. Mr. Moffat, much jollier than a man who had just lost several million dollars ought to have been, strode away to supervise the Sunshine Hour. Before he left, his eyes flashed to the two men with Mr. Petherbridge and then flicked quickly a
way as if he was pretending he had not seen them.
I noticed that, but Mrs. Friend, apparently, did not. Her face was radiant and she gave my arm a little squeeze.
“We’ve done it,” she breathed. “Darling boy, you were wonderful, wonderful. We’ve done it.”
She hurried after Mr. Moffat, presumably to put in a hostess appearance at the pool. Selena and Marny had taken Grandma back to her room and Jan had disappeared. I supposed that I, too, should have wheeled myself to the pool. But the mental image of the Aurora Clean Living ladies in their Aurora swimming suits was too much for me. I stayed where I was.
I had the room to myself now except for Mr. Petherbridge and the two strangers who were still grouped by the door. I glanced at them, thinking about Mr. Moffat and feeling obscurely uneasy. As if my glance were a signal, the three men started towards me.
Mr. Petherbridge seemed almost beside himself with nervousness now. “Ah, Mr. Friend, you—ah—seem to have carried off your duties as stipulated in the will. The terms are plain. You have obeyed them to the letter.”
“Then Mr. Moffat can’t start anything?” I asked.
“So far as the terms of the will are concerned—ah—no.” Mr. Petherbridge’s dainty face was almost purple with the embarrassment for which I could still see no cause. “But… Mr. Friend, before we discuss the matter further, there is something, something, rather distressing… I wonder if you could spare me and these gentlemen a few moments.”
“Of course,” I said, my nervousness aggravated by his.
“It is awkward. Awkward to say the least.” Mr. Petherbridge made a little fluttering gesture towards the older of the two men, the stooped man with the red-veined nose and the white hair. “This is Dr. Leland, Mr. Friend. I do not know whether you two have met. Dr. Leland is the physician who was attending your father when he—ah—passed on.”
My nervousness was almost panic. Mrs. Friend had not planned on Dr. Leland.
Dr. Leland was watching me from tired, heavy-lidded eyes. After an interminable moment, his hand came out.
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