by Peggy Gaddis
Bix managed a brief and mirthless grin.
“Well, I suppose I had it coming to me, but I really didn’t expect it from one of the servants,” he admitted frankly. “I rather thought you or Sam might give me a ‘dressing down’ for being so busy I hadn’t a chance to pay a visit, but not one of the servants!”
Beth’s cheeks colored faintly, and Judy’s eyes on Bix were tinged with hostility.
“Mam’ Chloe is part of the Oakhill family, Bix. I’m afraid she doesn’t look on herself as a servant. Neither do we, to be honest about it. She’s as deeply concerned about the welfare of the Old Gentleman and the estate itself as any of us; more than most of us, because she was born here and her parents before her. She can’t possibly conceive of ever living anywhere else.”
Bix said quickly, scowling slightly, “But if the place were sold—” He broke off as both women stared at him as though they could not possibly believe he had really said that.
“Oakhill sold?” It was Judy who recovered her breath first so that she could speak. “You aren’t really planning to sell Oakhill, Bix? You couldn’t! You wouldn’t!”
Irritated at their manner, Bix said shortly, “And why not? I certainly wouldn’t ever want to live here, be buried alive here! And it surely couldn’t run itself, as complex a set-up as this.”
Beth had regained some of her composure and said quietly, “But Sam Gillespie could run it, as he has been doing for years, and at a very nice profit, too. And I’m sure he would be glad to stay on. It’s his home, too, and has been for three generations.”
Bix stared from one to the other. Suddenly he crumpled his napkin, threw it down and stood up.
“Sorry if the idea seems so unpleasant to you,” he told them coldly. “But you may as well know now that when the place comes into my hands, it will be put up for sale. And it should bring a very handsome price. Now if you’ll excuse me? And thank you for a very interesting meal!”
He stalked out, leaving Judy and Beth to sit silently staring at the door that had closed behind him.
“He’s pretty sure that the Old Gentleman isn’t going to recover, isn’t he?” said Judy at last in a small, thin voice.
Beth answered tautly, “So is Dr. Dellinger.”
Judy drew a long, hard breath, and her hands clenched tightly.
“You know something, Miz’ Beth?” she asked at last.
“Such as what, darling?”
“Such as that I’m not quite so sure, after all, that I’m still in love with him,” Judy admitted frankly.
Beth studied her for a moment, and then she smiled.
“I wish I could believe that, Judy!”
Judy was silent for a moment, and then she nodded solemnly.
“So do I!” she said.
Chapter Three
For the next few days Judy carefully avoided Bix. It wasn’t hard to do, even though they both lived beneath the roof of Oakhill. Bix was restless, wandering about the house, occasionally roaming out of doors. But he spent a considerable portion of the day in the library at the telephone, with the door carefully shut.
Judy pursued her usual routine. For years she had ridden out with the Old Gentleman on his rounds of the plantation, knowing that he loved having her with him as much as she loved being with him. His attitude toward her was that of a grandfather toward a beloved grandchild. And Judy gave him the love and respect she would have given the grandfather she had never known.
With his illness, she took over the task of seeing that the horses got their necessary exercise, with especial attention to the Old Gentleman’s favorite mount, Starlight, a handsome, mettlesome mare with whom the stablehands were a bit uneasy. Yet Judy handled her with an ease and affection to which Starlight responded gratefully.
A few days after Bix arrived, Judy was in her favorite place beneath a giant live-oak at the end of the bridle path farthest from the Manor. Starlight cropped the tender new grass and moved slowly while Judy, perched on a large flat rock, looked off into the distance.
From the low hill where she sat, the meadow sloped away to the river, which curled a protective arm about Oakhill. The meadow was already starred with wild flowers, and directly below her a giant apple tree leaned crookedly, as though clinging to the ground with all its might against the winds and storms of the winter just past. It’s gnarled, twisted branches were cloaked with the pink-white of blossoms, and about its roots grew beds of dog-tooth violets.
Along the curve of the river, willows lifted their swaying branches, seeming to bend now and then to regard themselves in the yellow water below them. It was beneath those willows, that had been turning yellow with autumn glory, that Bix told Judy goodbye! Remembering how the willows had stirred above her head in an early fall wind, Judy’s pretty mouth thinned and twisted bitterly.
She knew now that she had lied to her mother when she had doubted her love for Bix. When she saw him daily at the table, and occasionally the house, her heart gave a small, startled lurch and cried out soundlessly for his love. No matter how hard she tried to hush it, she couldn’t. And no matter how much she despised herself for that whimpering, anguished cry, she had been unable to do anything about quieting it.
Suddenly startled, she looked up as she heard hoof-beats on the bridle path. She stood up as a chestnut-colored gelding came around the bend in the path, then dropped back on the rock as she saw Sam in the saddle.
He swung out of the saddle, dropped the reins so the gelding could crop grass beside Starlight and came over to join her.
“Wipe that scared look off your pretty face, honey,” he ordered. “And move over and let a guy sit down, will you?”
She made room for him on the big flat rock but still studied him anxiously.
“You scared me, Sam. When I saw you following me, I was afraid something had happened at the Manor.”
Sam shook his head.
“I saw you ride by while I was checking some work the boys were doing, and I didn’t see you ride back toward the Manor. So it seemed a good chance to have a few words with you, private-like. How goes it, Young ’Un?”
He hadn’t called her that in a long time, and it seemed to take her very briefly back to childhood. But she turned her face away from him and dug absently in the sand at the base of the rock.
“All right, I suppose,” she admitted. And then, with a little rush of words that she had not meant to speak, she demanded, “Sam, what do you suppose Bix intends to do with Oakhill once he gets his hands on it legally?
Sam’s brows drew together in a slight scowl and he replied cautiously, “I’m afraid to ask, but tell me anyway.”
Judy’s voice shook with outrage. “He plans to sell it!”
Her voice was touched with some of the shock and outrage she had felt the first night Bix had been at the Manor, when he had mentioned such a plan.
She saw Sam’s face tighten and caught a reflection of her own shock and anger in his eyes. He was obviously searching for words that would answer her and perhaps offer her some slight measure of comfort. But when he finally spoke it was plain he had not been able to find the words.
“So that’s why he asked so many questions when I showed him over the place,” he said slowly after a long moment, “and why he didn’t want to go over the books until he had an accountant and a lawyer on tap.”
Judy’s alarm tautened her voice and lit new anxiety in her eyes.
“But—but—oh, Sam, can he?” she stammered after a moment.
Sam nodded. “Once the place belongs to him legally, he can do whatever he wants to do with it,” he told her reluctantly. “But that won’t be as long as the Old Gentleman is alive.”
Judy drew a long, long, hard breath, and her hands clenched into tight sunburned fists.
“And the Old Gentleman is living on borrowed time,” she whispered desolately. “The end can come, Dr. Dellinger says, at any minute.”
Sam reached out, took one of the small, clenched fists, opened it and spread the finge
rs across his palm, in a comforting gesture that made the tears spring to her eyes.
“Dr. D. also says that he could easily live for years,” he reminded her.
She nodded soberly and avoided his eyes, her mouth tremulous.
“The Old Gentleman doesn’t want to live for years the way he is now, a sort of living vegetable!” she burst out. “He’s always been so strong and active, so energetic. Oh, Sam, it just about kills me to see him the way he is now!”
“I know,” Sam said quietly, his eyes somber, his voice troubled with an unaccustomed heaviness. “I feel the same way when I go in to see him and realize he doesn’t even know me.”
Judy nodded and set her teeth for a moment in her lower lip, fighting against the tears that threatened to choke her.
“Do you think he recognized Bix?” Sam asked after a moment.
“I—think so. So does the nurse. But of course we couldn’t be sure.”
They sat for a moment in a companionable silence.
“Sam,” she said at last very softly, “d’you know something?”
Sam grinned hearteningly and held her hand closer.
“Not very much about what goes on in that head of yours, Young ’Un, so I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me,” he replied.
“I think I hate Bix!” The words seemed almost to say themselves, and for a dazed moment Sam was very still, feeling the faintest possible stirring of his heart and yet not quite daring to accept a hope so faint that it scarcely dared call itself hope.
But before he could risk an answer, or any words at all, she lifted her tearful eyes and said tremulously, “The heck of it is that I think I hate him, and yet I think I still love him! Isn’t that the silliest thing you ever heard?”
The tiny hope died in Sam’s heart, and it took him a full moment to master himself enough to find words to make an answer. And before he could articulate them, she stumbled on.
“Is that possible, Sam?” she asked him as she had so often in the past asked him childish questions. “I mean, you can hate somebody and love them, too?”
Sam drew a deep breath and managed a pleasant grin.
“I don’t know, honey. I suppose it is possible. I’ve heard that sometimes people who fall in love begin by hating each other and then discover that it wasn’t hate at all; it was love all the time,” he told her slowly.
Judy grimaced.
“That doesn’t sound very—well, very comfortable,” she observed.
Sam set his teeth hard.
“My dear Young ’Un,” he told her loftily. “Where’d you ever get the cockeyed idea that being in love was comfortable?”
“Well, they do write songs about it, and now and then stories and movies.” Her voice dropped into a small pit of silence, and she sat very still.
“Oh, sure, they say so in movies and love songs and stories,” he agreed. “But life isn’t always like that, if I may be permitted the understatement of this or any other century.”
He looked down at her face and saw that tears were slipping down her cheeks and that she seemed completely unaware of them, and his heart twisted for the pain she was suffering.
She looked up at him after a long moment and managed a very faint and quite woeful smile.
“What would I ever do without you, Sam darling?” she said huskily, and leaned closer to him.
Sam’s arms moved to embrace her, but just in time he managed to hold back and answered grimly, “Oh, you’d manage, I’m sure.”
She nodded soberly. “I suppose I could if I had to,” she admitted. “But, Sam, I hope I never have to!”
There was small comfort to Sam in the impulsive words, and after a moment he asked brusquely, “Have you talked to Miz’ Beth about thinking you hate him and still not being sure you’re not in love with him?”
Judy shook her head. “She hopes I’m outgrowing him. And, oh, Sam, I wish I were! I wish I were!”
They both sat in silence for a long moment, looking out over the sun-drenched valley below them, the sleek, handsome cattle grazing in the daisy-starred meadow. A faint wind was touching the willows, so that they seemed to be leaning forward to admire their own reflection in the slow-moving water.
It was Sam who stirred first and stood up, looking down at her with eyes that yearned and that tried to hide that yearning.
“You’d better be getting home, honey,” he told her gently, “before Miz’ Beth gets worried about you.”
She stood up, as docile as a child, and moved toward Starlight.
“I suppose I had,” she agreed, and swung into the saddle.
She looked down at him where he stood beside her patting Starlight’s velvety muzzle with a gentle hand.
“Thanks, Sam,” she said huskily.
Puzzled, he repeated, “Thanks? For what?”
“Oh, for listening to me make a fool of myself,” she said.
“When you make a fool of yourself to me, honey—that’ll be the day!” Sam assured her.
“And thanks again for that. I’ll see you around, Sam. ‘Bye, now!”
She lifted the reins, and Starlight set off at a gallop along the path toward the Manor.
Chapter Four
It was several days later that Beth came down the stairs to the main hall and heard a car in the drive, then voices and a great deal of laughter and shrieks of merriment. She went to the big front door, frowning at such noise.
A sports car, bright red and gleaming, had stopped beside the steps, and behind it stood a sedan that was as expensive as the sports car, but of a dark, gleaming color. A girl in an expensive white car coat was still behind the wheel of the sports car, calling to the people in the sedan behind her, and the man who lounged beside her was eying her with amused exasperation.
“It’s straight out of Gone With the Wind, the girl in the sports car was calling to the four other people who were getting out of the sedan. “And just my luck, I left my hoopskirts and crinoline back in New York!”
Beth walked down the steps to the sports car and said quietly, “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid you have come to the wrong place. This is Oakhill, and there’s a very sick man here. What place were you looking for?”
The girl who lounged behind the wheel of the bright red sports car was dark-haired and very beautiful, with surprisingly blue eyes that raked Beth from head to foot as she answered insolently, “We’re looking for Bix Bullard and his place, Oakhill. Isn’t this it?”
“Well, yes, it is,” Beth answered, somewhat taken aback. “But I’m afraid he isn’t here right now. He’s out with the superintendent, looking over the new dairy herd.”
The girl flung her lovely head back and laughed joyously.
“Did you hear that, gang? Old Bix, the country gentleman, out looking at dairy cows!” She shrieked as if it had been the most delicious joke imaginable. It’s certainly way past time we came down to dig him out of this impossible, incredible mess! How the poor darling must have suffered in this awful place, with nothing to look at but cows and, I suppose, pigs and chickens. The complete farmer, our darling Bix! But we’ll soon put a stop to that, won’t we, gang?”
There were echoing assurances from the others. Then the girl in the sports car got out, looked Beth over and said, “Who are you? The old man’s nurse?”
“I’m the housekeeper, Mrs. Ramsey,” Beth answered evenly.
“Oh, that’s good,” the girl said carelessly, and indicated the luggage in both cars. “Have someone take those in, please, and put them in whatever rooms you have assigned us.”
Beth stared at her shocked.
“You’ve come on a visit? You’re staying?” she gasped, too surprised even to attempt to be diplomatic.
The girl from the sports car lifted her dark head haughtily, and her eyes chilled.
“We are Bix Bullard’s friends, and he has asked us here for a visit. Do you mind?” Her voice was so sarcastic that Beth’s face flushed with burning color and her eyes turned cold.
“I don
’t mind at all. Why should I? After all, this is Bix’s home, and he has a perfect right to invite anyone he chooses. But he said nothing to me about expecting guests.”
“Does he have to ask your permission?” asked the girl insolently.
“Of course not,” Beth managed with an effort to retain her slight hold on her temper. “But I should have been told how many rooms would be needed so they could be ready.”
The girl’s blue eyes raked her up and down, and she said with venomous sweetness, “In any well-managed household, a trained housekeeper always sees to it that there are guest rooms available.”
The very slight but definite emphasis on the words “well-managed” and “trained” could not possibly have been overlooked, and Beth stiffened. But before she could speak, there was the sound of hoof-beats on the bridle path, and Bix rode into view, turning his horse to a startled, rearing halt as he saw the cars and the people about them.
“Bix, precious!” cried the blue-eyed, dark-haired girl. As Bix flung himself out of the saddle, she ran to meet him, to hurl herself into his arms and to lift a radiant, laughing face to his, kissing him firmly and as though she had every right in the world to do so.
Bix held her for a moment, then looked at the others a trifle dazedly. At last he saw Beth, who was watching him, waiting for him to give her some small share of his attention.
“Oh, well, hello everybody,” Bix greeted the group, and then added, “But I didn’t expect you until the end of the week.”
“Oh, we knew you were having such a miserable time we decided to come on earlier. Things were getting a bit dull, anyway, and we felt you needed cheering up.” The girl laughed and tucked her hand through his arm and drew herself close to him.
He turned to Beth and said awkwardly, “I’m sorry, Miz’ Beth. I meant to tell you tomorrow that they were coming so rooms could be prepared for them.”
The girl lifted her head, and her eyes were frostily amused.
“If you’ve reached the point where you have to start apologizing to the servants, darling, then we really should have come much sooner,” she drawled.