by Peggy Gaddis
As they stepped through the swinging doors, a blast from the jukebox struck their ears, and Larry, a few steps behind the sheriff, grinned wickedly as the big man in a not too clean apron stopped wiping the bar and came forward.
“Well, now, if it isn’t Sheriff Tait. What can I do for you, sheriff?” Jim Holland’s voice was unctuously polite, yet his eyes, as they met his son’s across Sheriff Tait’s broad back, held an anxious look. “How about a hamburger? Best in the county.”
“Jim, your son was caught driving one of Wayde McCullers’ cars,” Sheriff Tait began ominously, “without McCullers’ permission.”
“That so, son?” asked Jim genially.
“McCullers told me I could,” Larry insisted self-righteously. “And then he changed his mind and notified the sheriff here to pick me up and swore he didn’t know me.”
“Why, that—” Jim’s epithet was unprintable.
“Hold it, Jim,” Sheriff Tait ordered. “You know, of course, what could happen, what would happen, if McCullers wanted to press charges? Stealing a car can be a pretty serious offense for a kid who’s been in trouble as often as Larry.”
“A kid that’s been rode ragged by every two-cent cop and deputy in the whole danged county, just because he’s my kid,” Jim burst in heatedly. “You know as well as I do, Tait, that Larry’s a good boy. You’re making trouble for him, all of you, just because he’s my kid. Why don’t you go after me, if you’re so bothered by me and my tavern? I pay my taxes and renew my license every year and do a nice business of handing out presents come Christmas. How ‘bout that ham I sent you and your family? How about the Christmas baskets I give the poor? How about the nice fat checks some of the Rivertown police find in their socks Christmas morning? How about the donations I make to the policemen’s fund for widows and orphans? No, you got to ride my kid because you can’t get nothing on me.”
Larry was beside his father now, smiling, triumphantly malicious.
Sheriff Tait glanced about the room. The cacophony of the jukebox was deafening, but he dared not hope that it had been loud enough to keep most of the people from hearing Jim’s loud, angry voice.
Without a word, because he couldn’t trust himself to speak, and without another glance at Larry, he turned and strode out of the tavern and back to his car.
“Gee, Dad, you sure told him off,” Larry boasted, an arm about his father’s ample shoulders.
“Did McCullers tell you you could drive his car, son?” Jim demanded.
Larry’s eyes were limpid with innocence.
“Why, sure he did, Dad. You don’t think I’d lie to you, do you?”
“Well, why’d he do it then?” Jim insisted.
“You mean have the sheriff pick me up?”
“Why would he want to let you drive his car? How come he’s all of a sudden so fond of you he’d let you?” Jim insisted, and Larry saw the flicker of doubt in his father’s stern eyes.
“Oh, I dunno,” Larry hesitated. “Guess maybe it was because when I saw him over in Rivertown this afternoon, I was looking at the car and I guess he seen how I liked it. He sort of grinned and said, ‘How’d you like to drive her, son?’ And I said, ‘Oh, boy, do you mean it?’ And he said, ‘Why not? I’ll leave it in the drive for you when I get home and you can pick it up when you’re ready.’ ”
“How come he didn’t drive you home with him and then let you take the car? How come he made you walk all that way just so’s you could drive the car?”
Larry’s eyes dropped and he looked oddly confused. For the first time his words were not flowing smoothly.
“Oh, when he said that I told him it was a long way from Rivertown to Spook Hill, and he sort of laughed and said, ‘Hop in, kid, and I’ll drive to the Hill, and then you can take the car and pick up some of your pals. But mind you, only for an hour or so, and you must be very careful.’ And I was, Dad, I sure was.”
Jim scowled at him, unwilling not to believe him.
“So then after you’d started off, he called Sheriff Tait and had you picked up?” he demanded. “Claimed you’d stole his ear?”
“Oh, no,” Larry insisted. “Sheriff Tait saw me when we crossed the county line, and I s’pose he wanted to make some time with Mr. McCullers, so he made the kids get out and took me to Spook Hill. And Mr. McCullers swore he’d never seen me before and that he hadn’t given me permission to drive. And he told me what terrible things he’d do to me if I ever set foot on his property again.”
Jim’s face darkened with rage, and he turned to the interested listeners.
“How do ya like that McCullers guy?” he demanded. “Telling my kid to drive his car. Taking him home with him and handing the car over and then telling Tait he didn’t do it? I ask you! How do ya like that guy?”
“A dirty trick, Jim,” someone said.
There were angry murmurs of assent, and Larry breathed freely and expanded almost visibly in the friendly atmosphere of their approval. It wasn’t often that the people of Rivertown approved of him; and Larry always yearned to be the center of attention. It was a heady draught and one that boded little good for the future. Jim was so thoroughly incensed at the treatment of his son, so convinced that every word Larry had spoken had been the truth, that he was easily convinced most of the troubles and the scrapes that had given Larry a bad name both in Rivertown and in Oakville had been just such lies. Larry was a good kid, Jim told himself, and it was because of his father’s business that people gave his such a raw deal. And Jim began mentally going over his assets to see if by some means he could manage a Cadillac convertible for the boy. Oh, not right away, of course, because Larry couldn’t get a driver’s license until he was sixteen, and that was more than a year away. By that time, Jim promised himself, he’d have the money put aside to buy him a car as nearly like Wayde McCullers’ as he could manage.
Thirteen
Ruth came out of her room, looking cool and fresh and attractive in a thin gray dress, a white hat crowning her brown hair.
Lynn, across the hall, cool and dainty in a yellow linen sheath, eyed her mother with approval.
“You look like a picture of the perfect clubwoman just escaped from any fashion magazine,” she announced.
“Why, thank you, dear,” Ruth smiled at her. “You don’t look bad yourself. Where are you off to?”
“Oh, I thought I’d chauffeur you up to the Hill,” Lynn answered blithely.
“Well, that’s sweet of you, dear,” Ruth smiled. “You can take the car then, and I’m sure Mamie will find someone to bring me home.”
“Oh, I’ll wait for you and bring you home,” Lynn said airily. “I’ll have a chat with Wayde while I’m waiting.”
Ruth looked startled and faintly apprehensive.
“Now, Lynn, you’re not going to pick another fight with him?” she protested.
“I resent that!” Lynn said haughtily. “I didn’t pick our last fight. It was all his fault, evey single bit of it.”
“Well, if you’re going visiting, I do hope you’ll behave yourself,” Ruth answered worriedly. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to see him again after the way you treated him yesterday.”
Lynn hesitated thoughtfully.
“It was something Steve said while we were doing dishes yesterday,” she confessed, and added hurriedly, “I can’t tell you about it now. It’s too silly. But — well, I have to find out for myself if there was any truth in it.”
“Well, I haven’t the faintest idea what it was, but I feel sure if Steve said it, it must be true,” Ruth told her. “I have the utmost confidence in Steve. I don’t think he’d know how to lie. Not convincingly, anyway.”
“You kind of like the guy, don’t you?”
“I am very fond of Steve,” Ruth said firmly. “You would be, too, if you knew him as well as I do. Well, if we’re going, shall we get started? I have a suspicion that Mamie takes a nap in the afternoons, and I want to get there before she settles down for it.”
“Yessum
,” said Lynn meekly, and arm in arm they went out to the car and got into it.
Lynn lifted her head and sniffed delightedly as the car wound its way up the steep hill that was crowned by the big, grim old gray house.
“Smell that?” she demanded, and Ruth laughed. “That’s fresh air — country fresh and untainted! What a shame it can’t be bottled and sold in cities that are smog-bound!”
“Maybe some day it will be,” Ruth laughed at the absurdity, as the car came to a halt at the edge of the drive and she got out. “Coming with me?”
A sudden and utterly absurd shyness came over Lynn, and she avoided her mother’s eyes as she answered with an attempt at lightness, “Oh, it’s too perfect a day to waste inside those grim gray walls. I’m going to wander in the garden. It smells like fifty-dollar-an-ounce perfume, even from here.”
Ruth nodded, smiled and went up the steps, and the door opened and closed behind her. Lynn studied the grim gray facade of the house for a moment, and then she walked across the drive and around to the wide, shallow stone steps that led down to the garden.
It was an enchanting place for a hot summer afternoon. The roses were giving up their stored sweetness, and their massed colors were a glory in the golden sunlight. Green hedges divided the various beds, and all the graveled paths, swept neat and clean, led to a huge and very old sundial that was like the center of a wheel, with all the paths converging upon it.
There were beds of stock banked about it, and the path on the left held an enormous and very colorful bed of snapdragons. But the roses, of every imaginable variety from the masses of climbing roses that framed the walls at the far end to the finest and rarest of patented roses, dominated the garden.
Wandering, pausing now and then to touch a fragile, fragrant petal, Lynn came to the sundial with its inevitable motto: “I COUNT ONLY THE SUNNY HOURS.”
“Don’t be so smug about it,” she cautioned the sundial, half under her breath. “If it weren’t for the gray rainy hours you’d have no garden to hide in.”
She turned sharply at the sound of a footstep on the graveled path behind her, and color rushed into her face as she met Wayde’s startled, delighted eyes.
For a moment they stood quite still and merely looked at each other.
Cautiously, after what seemed to her an age, Wayde spoke. “Well, hello. This is a delightful surprise.”
“I drove Mother over to visit Mrs. Spencer,” she said hurriedly, “and it was such a nice day I decided to wait for her in the garden.”
“Shall I go away?”
“Goodness, why should you? After all, it’s your garden.”
“I only meant if you’d prefer to be alone …”
“I don’t! How silly! I mean — oh, isn’t the garden lovely? Those roses! I have to touch them to believe they are real. They’re so fantastically perfect.”
She was stammering, and her face was hot, and she was wondering how she had let herself get into such a state. It was silly! It was ridiculous! Poise, they had taught her at the secretarial charm school, was of the utmost importance in any and all circumstances.
Wayde studied her for a moment, then turned his head and looked at the terraces of roses almost as though he had never seen them before.
“I’d never realized how beautiful they are until now,” he admitted.
“I really came to apologize,” Lynn heard herself saying, without having had the slightest intention of saying anything of the sort.
Wayde looked swiftly at her, frowning.
“Apologize? What have you to apologize for, to me of all people?”
“Thanks, that’s kind of you,” Lynn said soberly. “For being such an ill-mannered brat, of course. I am sorry.”
“I’m the one to offer apologies, Lynn.”
“But you did, remember? And I refused to accept them. That’s why I’ve come to offer mine, and then you can even the score by refusing to accept them, and we can start all over again.”
Wayde chuckled, and the warmth in his eyes told her how pleased he was that she was here.
“Oh, no we won’t!” he told her firmly. “We’re not going through that again. From the first moment I set eyes on you at the Junction you’ve been smacking me down and turning your delightful nose up at me! If we accept mutual apologies, we’ll go on from there, not from the beginning.”
“Maybe that would be best,” Lynn smiled at him.
For a long moment he studied her, his brows drawn together in a puzzled frown. And then, speaking so quietly, so earnestly, that it was her turn to be startled, he asked, “Why have you come, Lynn?”
Lynn hesitated, and then she told him the truth.
“Because Steve told me it was unfair to dislike you so much without actually knowing you,” she admitted.
“Oh,” some of the warmth went out of his eyes and out of his voice, “so it’s Steve to whom I owe the honor of your visit. I’m deeply touched.”
“Steve’s very smart and shrewd and intelligent,” she told him swiftly. “His advice is usually sound. I thought perhaps he might be right when he said I was being unfair to you, because I’ve always disliked the thought of your calling your annual visits here a ‘prison sentence.’ ”
“Was that the only reason you disliked me so much?” he asked.
“Well, of course,” she answered quite honestly. “It was really the only thing I knew about you. We never saw you in Oakville, and you seemed to despise us all.”
Wayde said quietly, “Look at the house, Lynn. Can you honestly expect anybody to accept a compulsory three months’ stay in it as anything less than a sentence?”
Lynn studied the big, ugly old house.
“Poor house!” said Lynn. “Do you know what’s really wrong with it?”
“I could make you a list, but it would take days.”
“No what’s wrong with it is that it’s unloved, uncherished, unwanted, and it doesn’t feel any need to reach for something it knows it won’t get.”
She knew it was crazily sentimental, but she had been unable to restrain the words. Wayde smiled at her.
“Could we do something about making it more attractive?” he suggested.
“Oh, no, we don’t! We’re not going to start that again! That redecorating business! Remember what happened?”
“Then you haven’t forgiven me.”
“I don’t want a similar situation to arise.”
Wayde nodded. “I see what you mean.”
His tone held a measure of disappointment that surprised her.
“I’m sure you can get professional decorators who could do a much better job.”
“Not a better job, Lynn. But I can’t ask you to take the time when you’re really on vacation,” Wayde cut in briskly. “Matter of fact, now that I’ve decided to spend the summer here …”
“Oh, you’re not!” she gasped, wide-eyed.
“Didn’t you know?”
“But you only need stay a few more weeks to comply with the terms of your grandfather’s will …”
“Funny, Lynn, but since I’ve been here this time, I’ve realized that there must be something about Oakville to have made the other McCullers love it so much,” he admitted slowly, frowning thoughtfully as he tried to dredge up words that would explain the way he felt “Maybe, too, it’s that as I get older, I have the feeling I should stop being the ‘perennial bachelor,’ foot-loose and rootless, and settle down somewhere. And what better place than in the ancestral home?”
There was a moment of silence while Lynn digested that, and then she asked uneasily, “You’re planning to be married?”
“Doesn’t everybody, sometime or other?” he asked reasonably. “I’ve been thinking since the last batch of house guests departed. Thinking of some of the elderly bachelors I know — how crotchety and cantankerous they are, cultivated by people who hope to wangle money from them and don’t care a darn about them otherwise. I don’t want to be like that, Lynn. I want a home, a family, something to live f
or.”
Lynn drew a deep, hard breath.
“I couldn’t be more surprised,” she admitted frankly.
Wayde grinned at her, the grin dissipating the thoughtful expression that he had previously worn.
“You see, maybe Steve was right. You don’t know me very well after all, do you?” he asked her, a twinkle in his eyes.
“I don’t know this you at all!” she confessed.
“And do you like ‘this’ me any better than the one you thought you knew?” he probed.
She met his eyes, saw the anxiety in them, and suddenly smiled a warm, friendly smile.
“Steve was right,” she said lightly. “I didn’t know you at all.”
His expression altered slightly, and some of the warmth went out of his eyes.
‘Oh, yes, Steve. He’s quite a fellow,” he said curtly.
“I think so,” Lynn said cheerfully. “And I’m really glad you have decided to give Oakville a chance to show you that it can be a really wonderful place.”
Wayde nodded. “I got that impression yesterday at church,” he told her, and added ruefully, “But I did get something of a jolt when I got home. A call from the sheriff, no less.”
“Sheriff Tait?” Lynn asked swiftly, frowning. “What in the world did he want?”
“To find out if I’d given some youngster permission to drive my car,” Wayde answered lightly.
“And of course you hadn’t!”
“Of course not. I’d never set eyes on the boy. He slipped the car from the drive and was on his way with a bunch of his pals for a high old time when Sheriff Tait stopped them.”
“Who was the boy?”
“A kid named Holland, I think. The sheriff said his father ran a tavern just across the county line from Rivertown. Do you know him?”
“Larry Holland,” Lynn nodded. “Steve told me that he and Dad have had some bother with the boy, trying to keep him out of reform school. Stealing your car will finish him.”
“I refused to press charges against the youngster,” Wayde told her.
“Oh,” said Lynn eagerly, “that was kind of you!”