Last of all was Cousin Mabel, my own cousin, and a true Cameron. She showed about a hundred and thirty pounds, mostly between bust and hips, hair that was faintly grayish, thick eyeglasses, and the air of a nurse—which indeed she was. All I could remember of her as a girl of twenty was the fact that she was supposed to be “boy-crazy.” The years seemed to have taken care of that failing, though on her finger I noticed a very tiny chip diamond ring.
She, too, watched Uncle Joel as a cat does a mouse, or vice versa. Mabel did not exactly say “There, there, see the nice bed in the nice room with the nice padded walls,” but it was in her tone.
It may have been that Joel Cameron sensed something in our attitudes, for after a few minutes of family festivities he began to draw into his shell. I saw that he was uncomfortable, as if bewildered by the sound of so many voices, and finally he slipped out into the hall.
Aunt Evelyn was leading the usual chorus—“No, you really haven’t put on a bit of weight…. Do you remember the time we played charades and…that wasn’t then, it was the day after poor Todd’s puppy was run over…poor Myrtle, to go like that. But none of us knows what tomorrow may bring…”—of a family reunion. I soon had enough of it myself, and withdrew.
I could hear Uncle Joel’s voice at the stairs, where someone was banging about with suitcases. He was saying “…like all the devils of hell, and I won’t stand for it!” in a hoarse, excited voice.
There was a gruff, monosyllabic answer, and Joel again—“Don’t lie to me! I know you feed the thing!”
Then the front door slammed, and Uncle Joel came back. “Oviedo has gone to put the cars away,” he explained. “It looks like rain any minute.”
I saw Ely Waldron’s heavy face light up with pleased interest at that. “Just what I figured,” he said. “From the look of the sky I figure it might last three–four days.”
“Ely!” his wife cut in.
Uncle Joel shepherded us into the vast dining room, where a brown mountain in a black silk floor-length gown waited with a smallish platter of tamales wrapped in corn silk. This was evidently Pia, the cook. She eyed us with ill-concealed distaste, snatching the plates out from under our noses. “Supper is a bit sketchy tonight,” Uncle Joel apologized, “because this heathen hippopotamus and her husband are aching to get away to some native brawl up Capistrano way. Aren’t you, Pia ?”
“Damlousy!” Pia said, gathering up the remains of the sketchy meal and departing toward the kitchen.
“It’s her only word of English,” Uncle Joel tittered. “You can call her anything you like as long as you make sure her husband isn’t around.”
He turned, and shouted “Oviedo!” A man came down the hall and stood in the doorway. Aunt Evelyn stared at him as if he had been a new kind of bug. Indeed, he was something to see, standing more than six feet and dressed in clothing which could have been nothing but Uncle Joel’s hand-me-downs. His face, kneaded out of wet clay on a slightly brachycephalic head, was definitely Amerindian except for the beaked nose of the Spanish conquerors which stood out on his face as a monument to some forgotten rape.
“I’m not feeling at all well,” Uncle Joel told us. “Oviedo will show you to your rooms and get anything you need before he goes. We’ll be a little crowded, due to the fact that so many of the bedrooms aren’t in shape. Alan”—he looked at me—“you won’t mind my leaving some of my things in your room until tomorrow?”
“You’re not moving out of your room for me?” I protested.
He shrugged. “I will be comfortable, very comfortable.” Uncle Joel coughed. “Good-night, my dear relatives—and pleasant dreams! Yes, sleep well and pleasant dreams.”
He was gone, and I was surprised to hear the front door softly closing.
The family group around the barren dining-room table was silent for a moment. Then Aunt Evelyn rose, and headed toward the stolid brown figure at the door.
“Well, my man,” she greeted him, “I’m not going to like calling you Oviedo. Haven’t you got an easier name?”
“Sure,” he said easily.
“And what is it?” Aunt Evelyn insisted.
“Jesus,” replied the Mexican calmly. My aunt Evelyn, who takes everything in her stride, choked faintly and then smiled. “Lead the way, Oviedo.” Uncle Alger tittered.
We were speedily shuffled and dealt into our respective rooms. I was the only one to draw a room all to myself, the others being paired up logically—Uncle Alger and his lanky son, the Waldron couple, Dorothy and Mildred and Aunt Evelyn with Mabel. My room was at the end of the east corridor, with the Waldrons across the hall and Uncle Alger and Eustace next door.
It was a big, somewhat overfurnished room, the walls papered with unhealthy red roses. There was a tremendous cabinet between the windows, tightly locked. The furniture was all of heavy and very dark mahogany, and the walls undecorated (apart from the roses) with the exception of a photograph above the twin beds showing Aunt Hester and Uncle Joel in their wedding finery, and over the bureau a framed document indicating that Joel Cameron, Sgt., had been wounded and honorably discharged from the United States Army, July 1898.
Withal, it was a room on which a good deal of money had been spent without any creation of personality. The closet was full of somewhat musty clothes, presumably refused even by Oviedo, but there was plenty of room for my own meager belongings.
I had barely begun to unpack when a knock came at my door.
It was Aunt Evelyn. “Downstairs in half an hour,” she whispered. “In the sitting room.”
I shook my head. “No more decorating tonight for me,” I said. For some reason my Yuletide spirit was at a new ebb.
“Don’t be silly,” she snapped. “Now’s our chance, with Joel in bed nursing his sore throat and that pair of Mexicans hurrying off to their fiesta. We’re having a council of war.”
She dashed off without waiting to hear my decision. I debated the matter over a couple of pipes and then won—or lost—and started down the stairs. The hall lights were off, and I did not like to turn them on. After all, there was no use attracting the attention of Uncle Joel—and I remembered that he had stepped outdoors instead of going directly to bed. For all I knew he was wandering around in the night.
Halfway down the stairs I bumped into someone. It turned out to be, by the softness and smell, one of the girls. Dorothy, I knew, when she spoke.
“You, too, Brutus?”
Anyway, we went down together to join the others in the little sitting room under the stairs, around the ancient and dried Christmas tree. It was, as Aunt Evelyn had said, a council of war, with that redoubtable lady acting as chief of staff.
“You all know what we’re here for,” she said. “Business is business and pleasure is pleasure. The question is—what are we going to do about my poor brother, Joel?”
Everybody started to speak at once, then all broke off together. Uncle Alger Ely, who was without tie or collar, took the floor. “We all got our rights to consider,” said he. “It ain’t as if it was just a question of Joel Cameron leaving his money to his lawful heirs or not leaving it. You all know this ain’t—isn’t that kind of a setup. After Joel Cameron sunk two fortunes in his subdivision that nobody wanted to live in, and in this here house, my sister Hester had the good sense to tie up everything else in a trust fund, with the income going to him during his lifetime and divided equal among his heirs and hers, which is us—”
“Except for Todd Cameron and Gilbert Ely,” I interrupted.
“O’course. The question is, have we got to take steps to protect our rights?” Uncle Alger sat down.
“There’s no question but we’re entitled, Elys and Camerons both, to what’s coming to us,” Ely Waldron said heavily. “Aunt Hester tied it up, but maybe if she was alive today she wouldn’t tie it up just that way.”
“Money ought to go to those who have got a real use for it, I always say,” Mabel offered, a little primly.
Fay Waldron sighed. “Especially those wh
o have a son to bring up—an unusual child, like Sidney.” I suddenly remembered getting an announcement some years before of the birth of a child to Ely and Fay. Well, at least they hadn’t brought it along.
“We’re getting offen the subject,” Uncle Alger interrupted. “For myself, I don’t need the money. Or I won’t much longer, because the Townsend Plan will go through in a few months and that will take care of me. Eustace has his future all planned—”
“You have, you mean,” the sallow youth put in.
“Anyway, it’s the principle of the thing,” Uncle Alger insisted.
“It is not!” Aunt Evelyn cut in. “We’ve all been talking round the point. The terms of Hester’s trust fund are clear enough. We all know that until Joel’s death—or his lack of physical or mental competence—he derives all income from the trust. It doesn’t matter who needs it or who doesn’t. The question really is—”
“Is he crazy, or isn’t he ?” Dorothy Ely put in softly, leaning forward in her chair. Mildred, who was curled up on the floor peacefully doing her fingernails, gave a little shocked gasp.
At last it was out in the open. The thought had been put into words.
“Being scattered around the country the way we are, we never had a chance to get together before,” Ely Waldron began. “Gilbert was right, even if he didn’t come here himself,” he went on. “Uncle Joel is crazy as a hoot owl, and we all know it. We’ve got evidence enough to take to the doctors and get him certified. Each one of us…”
“He sent us blank checks for Christmas, really blank!” Mildred put in eagerly.
“He came up behind me tonight draped in cobwebs and scared the life out of me—on purpose!” Aunt Evelyn said.
“When Sidney was born, Uncle Joel sent us a set of birth-control books as a christening gift!” Fay Waldron added.
“Yes, and look at that tree! Whoever kept a Christmas tree standing for a month, let alone fifteen years ?” chimed in Mabel, pointing to the dust-draped relic which adorned the room.
“He hates us all!” Alger Ely said sorrowfully.
I went over to the window, raised the shade, and looked out into the streaming night. Then I turned to face them. “Wouldn’t it be funny,” I said, “if Uncle Joel were really as crazy as everybody seems to think—and if he took this opportunity of getting rid of us all by blowing up the house ? When he left us he went outside, you know.”
Mildred turned faintly green, and Mabel gasped. But the rest of them laughed at me. “Not Joel—he wouldn’t have anything happen to this house for the world! Besides, he’s not as crazy as all that,” Uncle Alger said.
Aunt Evelyn held up her hand. “So far, so good,” she said. “But there’s another side to the picture. First, who among us would have ever thought of applying the word ‘crazy’ to Joel’s eccentricities if it had not been for Gilbert’s wire?” The answer of course was “Nobody” and she went on: “Next, who wants to publish the fact that this family has a dash of the loony in it?”
Uncle Alger impatiently pointed out the fact that no doubt Gilbert Ely had run across some more damning evidence of Joel’s mental variability, and that was why he’d taken the initiative. “As for the rest of it, who cares ? After all, Joel and Hester had no children, and so none of us are directly descended from him. Besides, we won’t have to get much publicity—just have him certified and sent quietly away for nervous treatment.”
Aunt Evelyn made a wry face at that. “Seems cruel to send him away from his own house,” she admitted. “Anyway”—she stood up, adjusting the jacket which she had slipped over her wine-colored evening dress—“anyway, we seem to be pretty well agreed. Shall we wait through tomorrow and Thursday to see if Gilbert will show up? If not, we can go right ahead; have some doctors come down from Los Angeles and so forth.”
It came to an informal vote. “I’ll agree to anything the rest of you want,” Dorothy said, a little stiffly. Mildred nodded, still buffing her nails. Uncle Alger voted an emphatic “Yes, wait for Gilbert until the party breaks up, and then go ahead either way.”
“Yes,” voted Ely Waldron, “but I don’t see any sense in waiting even two days.
“There’s no use of that good money going to a lunatic,” Fay Waldron agreed. “Not for a minute longer than it has to!”
“Sure, what do I care?” Eustace joined in. He had been making eyes at Mildred all evening, with very little response.
Mabel Cameron said she guessed there was nothing else to do but say yes. “I hate staying on, but I can take care of Uncle Joel if he gets to acting violent while we’re here.”
Some of the other women shivered a little. Then I saw that Aunt Evelyn was looking at me. “Well, Alan?” she snapped. “It’s your bid.”
I saw Dorothy Ely watching me with an odd look in her blue eyes, saw the faces of the others—kind, everyday faces most of them—all lighted up with excitement and greed and that somewhat grim satisfaction that we all take in contemplating the misfortunes of others. “There,” one says smugly, “is something that fate has not done to me!”
Then I lost my temper and stood up and made a very bad speech. “Money!” I began. “Aren’t we all blinded by it? We believe that Uncle Joel is crazy because a clever scapegrace put the idea into our heads, and we want to believe it. Perhaps doctors will certify Uncle Joel, perhaps they would certify some others of us if they could see into our skulls.”
I saw Dorothy staring at me open-mouthed, and plunged on: “After all, money isn’t everything,” I said. “Money can’t bring happiness. Money can’t buy peace of mind, or love or respect. Money is only a valueless token.”
“Confederate money, you mean?” I heard Dorothy murmur. But there was something warm in her eyes, and I thought that I had made at least one convert. “We can’t do this thing!” I plunged on, with all the divine confidence of an utter fool. “We can’t railroad an old man to an insane asylum for the five or six thousand dollars a year that each of us would receive as blood money!”
“Alan,” Cousin Mabel said quickly, “you have been reading too many books and not seeing enough outside of them. You haven’t a wife or children or anything—you have just enough money to scrape along with and so you don’t care—you don’t understand—” Her face was red, and I saw that Mabel was terribly in earnest.
“Cousin Alan always was an impractical young fool,” spoke up Alger Ely. “It runs on the Cameron side of the family.”
“Perhaps it does,” I threw back at him, “but you may as well know right now that I’ll fight any attempt you make at certifying Uncle Joel. I’ll warn him, I’ll get lawyers and publicity—I’ll testify that this was a put-up job—” I sat back in my chair, breathing hard.
“You’ll spike our guns, eh, nephew?” Aunt Evelyn looked at me and sniffed. “Well, young man, I don’t know where you got this bee in your bonnet, but—”
Just then she broke off, staring at the door which led into the hall.
“The Mexican!” she whispered. “He must be listening.”
“Couldn’t be!” Alger Ely objected. “I saw him pile his wife into Joel’s car and go tearing down the hill about half an hour ago.”
We all sat there for a long moment, stock-still. Then Aunt Evelyn turned and walked to the door. As she put her hand to the knob there came a knock on the outside.
She opened it, and there stood Uncle Joel, his arms laden with packages.
“Christmas secrets, eh?” he said cheerily. He was dressed in a heavy bathrobe, muddy slippers and a felt hat.
“Er—yes,” murmured Aunt Evelyn. The back of her neck was red.
There was a long, long pause. Then Dorothy stood up, smiled faintly. “We were just talking over what we’re giving you, Uncle Joel,” she said clearly.
III
There is no quiet in the brain…
Tinder it is FOR EVERY BLOWING SPARK.
—CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
UNCLE JOEL BLINKED AND smiled, showing two new gold teeth in front. “I knew that
this tree would come in handy for another Christmas,” he said. “I came back to put your presents underneath but I didn’t expect to find you all at it, too.”
He handed his armful of neatly wrapped packages to Evelyn. “You arrange them so they look best,” he told her. “I’ve got to get back before the rain gets worse.”
“Get back where?” We all stared at the drops of water on his hat, at the muddy slippers, as Aunt Evelyn asked the question.
I suddenly remembered hearing that Cameron Heights had its own cemetery all neatly marked out, with a marble tomb where Aunt Hester had been laid away, and where Uncle Joel would sometime join her. The dreadful suspicion came over me that Joel was camping out in the mausoleum. But it was nothing like that.
“I’ve moved out over the garage,” he explained. “There’s some very comfortable servants’ rooms out there, but Oviedo and his wife prefer the kitchen basement here. I don’t mind giving up my room—in fact, I like to get away by myself. Not used to much going on here, you see. You go on and have your fun here, I’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.”
He turned to go, then paused. “Pleasant dreams, sweet dreams,” said my uncle Joel. Then he hurried down the hall, and I heard the main door slam.
“Of course he heard everything!” Mabel wailed.
Aunt Evelyn didn’t think so. Neither did I. The door was heavy and well-fitted, and there was no keyhole. Besides, his muddy slippers had not left any appreciable mark on the floor before the door, so he could not have stood there for long. Anyway, the conference was broken up for the night.
I discovered that I was lingering, waiting for Dorothy to come up and congratulate me on my vigorous stand, but she didn’t. As a matter of fact, she was engaged in separating Mildred from Uncle Alger’s boy, who had evidently resolved to make the most of his opportunities.
I felt faintly nettled, not so much at failing to receive a pat on the back for my nobility, but because I realized that a great deal if not all of it had come about through a desire to show off before the two girls.
Omit Flowers Page 3