by Zenith Brown
“Mr. Dan—certainly mighty glad to see you back.”
“Oh hello, Mr. Keane.”
Dan strode across the porch and shook hands with the man who had been the tenant farmer of Romney since Dan’s father had bought it, when he was still quite a small boy.
“You remember Mr. Keane, don’t you, Grace?—This is Mrs. Latham.”
“Howdy, Miz’ Latham. Ain’t seen you down this way for a long time.”
Mr. Keane wiped his hand on the seat of his overalls and held it out to me. It was wet, hard and rough, but it was a good hand, with a strong sure grip that had held many a plough to a straight deep furrow. And I don’t know why, during all that conversation at the table—even with Mara’s outburst over Romney and its tenant farmer—I had never thought of Alan Keane as being Mr. Keane’s son. Mr. Keane was as much a part of Romney as the white pillared portico and the boxwood alleys and the pineapples on the gate posts. And Alan had gradually stopped being a part of it, since he’d gone to high school and to college—I’d subscribed to a magazine I’d never heard of, and never got, because Irene was helping him out—and then to the bank in Port Tobacco, and after that to prison.
Mr. Keane glanced uneasily at the dining room windows.
“Is Miz’ Winthrop through her supper?” he asked.
“Just about,” Dan said. “Anything I could do for you?”
Mr. Keane fumbled with the stumpy pipe in his hands.
“I jus’ wanted to see Miz’ Winthrop about a little matter, is all. I jus’ thought I’d like to see her, if she wasn’t too busy.”
“You’d better wait till morning, unless it’s pretty important,” Dan said. “She’s just been having a run-in with Rick.”
Mr. Keane hesitated. “That ain’t hard to do, these days,” he said slowly. Then he added, almost painfully, it seemed to me, “I’d mighty like to see Miz’ Winthrop, if she ain’t too busy.”
“O. K.” Dan turned and strode across the verandah and inside.
Suddenly out of the wet night came that ghastly eerie shriek again . . . and again. The gooseflesh rose on my arms.
“What is that, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Keane?” I demanded.
“That’s them fancy buzzards of Miz’ Winthrop,” he said in his slow drawl. “They make a heap of racket, about this time.”
He lapsed into silence, and we stood there, I rather uneasily, because he kept looking so anxiously at the door. Finally I asked him how his tobacco was, and if he thought the storm had hurt it; but before he could answer Irene Winthrop’s voice came, high-pitched and clear as a bell, from the drawing room. A window must have blown open in the wind, and the heavy gold damask curtains had been drawn, so they wouldn’t, I supposed, know it was open. And for the first time a sharp torn edge was audible under the gentle imperviousness of that lovely lilting voice.
“Tell Mr. Keane I don’t care to see him. The matter’s settled, and very liberally, I do think.”
Dan’s voice was charged with incredulity, and anger.
“You mean you’re kicking Mr. Keane off the place, after he’s been here half of his life?”
“The matter’s quite settled, Dan. Mr. Keane has been taken very good care of . . .”
Irene’s voice was suave, and final. Then I could hear Major Tillyard.
“You’re making a big mistake, Irene. Keane’s the best farmer in Southern Maryland. He’s made Romney pay when every other farm in the county is in the red, and the land’s better today than it was ten years ago. You’ll never get another tenant that touches him.”
“Money, money!” Irene moaned plaintively. “That’s all any of you think of! What about Mara! Oh, Rick’s perfectly right—if I’d sent Mr. Keane off the place four years ago, Alan would never have come back here, and we’d never have had any of this nonsense of Mara’s marrying a . . . a criminal!”
I stared helplessly at the farmer standing there by me, his heavy boots clogged with sand from the tobacco fields, his gnarled hands making futile helpless gestures, his face under his dripping tattered hat numb and stupid with pain.
And we just stood there for an instant, until he said, very simply, “I reckon she don’t want to see me,” and turned back the way he’d come.
The sound of his feet on the brick path had disappeared when Dan came out. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him, with a deep and sustained and choking anger.
“It’s a rotten damn system that lets a bounder like Rick turn a man like Mr. Keane off the land he’s had for twenty-five years. I’d like to know what the hell’s behind it. You needn’t tell me he gives a damn what happens to Mara. I’d like to . . . Oh well, what the hell.”
He kicked at the corn husk mat on the flagged porch, and took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll go and try to say something to Mr. Keane. I’ll be seeing you, Grace.”
I didn’t have the courage to point to the open window . . . and I don’t think it would have made any difference in the long run if I had. The things that were happening at Romney were the noxious flowerings of seeds that had been planted and were full grown before Dan and I barged in on them out of the storm-wracked night. Nothing anyone could have done at that point could have averted the doom about to break over Romney . . . any more than we could have stopped the inky black and murky yellow lightning-torn clouds from crashing down their pent-up fury of wind and water.
As Dan disappeared around the wing that shrill cry came again out of the night, and I saw the dark form of a huge bird soar across the box. I went inside, thinking that all in all I wished I’d not come to Romney.
5
Irene and Major Tillyard were standing in front of the bright wood fire burning behind the great old polished brass andirons, in what had been the dining room of the original house but was now a sort of family sitting room, with soft chintz-covered chairs and sofas instead of the formal period pieces of the drawing room across the hall—lovely but not particularly comfortable with its delicate Sheraton sofas and straight-backed fireside chairs. They were still talking about the farm, and they stopped abruptly as I came in.
Irene held out her hands to me.
“Oh, darling, it’s really so nice to have you here—like old times!” she said, smiling. All trace of annoyance and petulance was gone, like a cloud in April. “And I do hope this dreadful weather clears up, because in the morning we’re going to shoot a full Columbia round!”
I’m afraid I blinked, because Major Tillyard smiled.
“Archery, Mrs. Latham,” he said.
“Then that lets me out,” I said—adding to myself, in the expressive jargon of my younger son, “I hope I hope I hope!” Archery is not one of my favorite sports.
“Why Grace, aren’t you awful!” Irene cried. “We really need you! And besides, my dear, it’s awfully good for the figure!”
“I’ll stick to a horse, if you don’t mind.”
Irene shrugged her slim bare shoulders. She certainly, I thought, didn’t look like fifty-five . . . or act it, I added to myself as she said, “Oh, of course, Grace, if you want to spoil—”
Major Tillyard poked the fire a little abruptly, and she broke off.
“Of course you’ll come in, Grace—don’t be silly,” she laughed.
Major Tillyard put down the fire iron. “I think I’ll be getting along, Irene.” He took her hand. “I’m sorry about tonight. Don’t let it upset you, will you, my dear.”
He shook hands with me, and he and Irene moved toward the door. I looked at his broad straight back and thick iron-gray hair, thinking that Irene showed remarkably good judgment at times, and sat down by the fire. As I did I felt a sudden draft on my cheek, and glanced around at the window. And I started, not sure I wasn’t definitely seeing things.
A perfectly mammoth creature had pushed aside the curtains and walked in, blinking two light blue eyes through a ridiculous fringe of long dirty gray hair. I don’t know what, at first sight, I could have thought it was, because quite obviously under the three bags of curly
wool it was a dog. He grinned very amiably and wagged his tail. Irene and Major Tillyard in the door both turned, and Irene said, “Oh, there’s Dr. Birdsong,” which seemed a little confusing to me until almost immediately the curtains parted again and a very tall man came in.
He was even bigger than the dog, and looked rather like him, in a slightly different way. He didn’t have as much hair, and it wasn’t gray, except a very little near the temples. His country tweed jacket was rough and baggy, with chamois patches at the elbows, and was definitely for use and not beauty, and his high laced boots and riding breeches were streaked with mud. His hands were enormous, and yet gave an impression of being extraordinarily mobile and sensitive. His eyes, like the dog’s, were a light pale bluish-gray, his face was burned almost black and looked more like corrugated iron than skin. And somewhere about him there was an astonishing quality of detachment, in his eyes probably—as if they seldom looked at the things close by.
He didn’t smile as he strode in through the window, and the dog looking up at him, and apparently realizing that he had been a little previous, took the grin off his face, walked over to the fire and lay down with a solid comfortable grunt, divorcing himself from whatever unpleasantness was about to ensue.
“There’s a tree down in the road, Sidney. You can’t get your car out. I thought if you were ready I’d pick you up.”
The smile died on Irene Winthrop’s face. Whatever she’d started to say went with it. Her lips tightened.
“Why doesn’t Mr. Keane move the tree?” she said sharply. She reached for the needlepoint bell pull hanging from the carved overmantel. “I’ll send—”
“Mr. Keane has been fired, Irene,” the tall man said curtly.
Irene’s delicate face flushed. “That’s silly! There’s no reason for his letting things go just because—”
Dr. Birdsong—I took it that he, not the dog, was the doctor—jammed his ancient felt hat on his head and interrupted her brusquely.
“Some day you’ll find you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Irene.—If you’re ready, Sidney. We can take your car to the tree—mine’s on the other side.”
He strode out. The dog, who apparently had been quite sound asleep, got up and ambled after him.
Irene held out her hand. “Good night, Sidney.” She closed the door sharply, came back to the fireplace and stood looking down into the yellow flames. She was very angry.
“If they think they can bully me into letting that man stay on, they’re wrong,” she said quietly, after a long time. “I must say I can’t understand Sidney Tillyard. He acts as if Alan Keane was completely in the right, stealing from the bank. He wanted to take him back, at the time—goodness knows what would have happened if his Board had let him have his way. Just because I’ve taken his advice from time to time is no reason for him to think he can dictate my affairs.”
“Is he trying to?” I asked. He had seemed to me amazingly patient, that night.
She drew a deep breath and shook her head. “He thinks I ought to give each of the children an allowance, and let them live wherever they please . . . including Mara, for heaven’s sake, who obviously isn’t capable of taking care of herself. He thinks it’s a mistake to divide the estate, and that if I give Rick his share now I’d have him back on my hands in two years.”
“I thought you were going to give Rick an allowance when he married,” I said.
“I certainly had every intention of doing so, until he flew in the face of all my . . . my prayers, and married a total stranger, that he picked up heaven knows where!”
“She seems to me like an extremely nice girl,” I said.
She looked at me with a slow astonished expression on her lovely face.
“My dear Grace, how can you say such a stupid thing? Anyone can look at her and see she’s nothing but an adventuress. And this business tonight certainly proves it. You didn’t see the look on Dan’s face when he saw her! At the table in his own home, his own brother’s wife, was certainly the last place in the world he expected to run across her again.”
I smiled. That part of it was certainly true.
“And I’m glad Rick’s eyes are finally opened,” Irene went on. “I’ve made it—I think—perfectly clear to him that as long as he’s married to her, he needn’t expect anything from me. I think he sees now what a fool he was not to be the one to marry Natalie.”
“Do you think Dan is going to marry her?” I inquired.
“Of course. He’s got to.”
“Why?”
She came over and sat down in the deep love seat beside me.
“Grace . . . the reason I sent for you this week end is this.—My husband was your husband’s own first cousin.”
I nodded.
“When he died, Grace, he left his estate entirely to me, except that at my death, or before if I chose, and if the need arose, three-fourths of one quarter of it was to go to his sister’s child. The other one-fourth of that quarter was to go to your two children.”
I looked at her in complete surprise. It was the last thing in the world I should have expected.
“And . . . Natalie is that sister’s child.”
“You mean she’s Dan’s cousin?”
She made a quick impatient gesture.
“That doesn’t make the least difference—she takes after her father and Dan takes after me, so it’s exactly as if they weren’t at all related.”
It seemed very convenient, and definitely, as Dr. Birdsong had said, of the eat-your-cake school.
“Does she know about this—the will, I mean?”
Irene shook her head. “The point is, however, that she’s an orphan, and a very nice girl, and a really quite beautiful girl . . . and if one of the boys marries her, I won’t have to divide the estate now . . .”
She got up abruptly.
“At least that was my idea this morning!”
Her slim white hands moved in a limp, weary gesture.
“I don’t know, now. I don’t suppose you realize how awful that scene at the table was, with Rick and Dan and Mara at each other’s throat, hating each other . . . and me. Of course, nobody understood but Sidney and myself that Rick is bitterly opposed to my marrying. He’s always hated Sidney. I think if Sidney hadn’t been in the bank Rick would have stayed on and perhaps amounted to something. Perhaps if I gave him his money now he’ll still do something. Sidney’s opposed to it, but it’s because he doesn’t understand Rick.”
She leaned her head on the mantel and stared down into the fire, the flames lighting her filmy crimson gown, making the shadow of her body seem too light and fragile to hold up against her strident warring family.
“I wonder if any other mother ever felt the way I do, or if I’m nothing but an unnatural beast,” she said quietly, after another long pause. “But Grace . . . sometimes I almost hate Rick, and . . . Mara. And I know they hate me.”
Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper. Outside a gust of wind buffeted the windows, a shutter banged. Above it came that dreadful shrill shriek. I got up abruptly.
“You’re being stupid. Irene,” I said, rather brutally, I’m afraid. “You’d better go to bed and forget tonight.”
I went to the window to close it, and for some reason that I wasn’t quite aware of I drew the curtains aside and looked out. Someone slipped quickly behind one of the white fluted columns, but not quickly enough to escape the shaft of light falling on her auburn hair. I let the curtains fall . . . wondering what difference it might make that Natalie Lane had heard all this too.
I drew the window down and came back to the fire.
“Who was the man with the dog?” I asked.
“That’s Tom Birdsong,” she said dully.
“Is he a doctor?”
“Among other things. He doesn’t practice—nobody knows why. He’s the local man of mystery.”
I started out.
“Please go to bed, Irene.”
She kissed me lightly on the cheek.
It wasn’t, I thought as I went up stairs, the old pine banister satin-smooth under my hand, as much a matter of thinking that Irene was wicked as of thinking that since I’d seen her last she had really changed incredibly . . . or that perhaps I’d never really known her, never had seen her before in a situation that was anything but rather charmingly casual—certainly not one as fundamentally emotional as this night’s.
I went to bed and turned out the light, but I didn’t go to sleep. Even if it hadn’t been for the wind moaning in the old chimneys and tearing like dead hands at the wooden shutters, and the eerie screaming of those birds, like souls lost in hell, Romney was still too full of ghosts for me, ghosts of my own dead past. I must have dropped off at last, however, for I’m sure I woke up hearing hushed frantic voices outside my door in the hall.
“You can’t leave now, you can’t! Don’t you see it’s just what they want you to do?”
It was Mara’s voice, urgent and passionate.
“Cheryl—you can’t go!”
“But I’ve got to go, to-night! You don’t understand, Mara! A horrible thing has happened . . . please let me go, I tell you I’ve got to!”
“But you can’t! The tree’s down over the road—you can’t walk, you can’t stay in the village all night!”
“But you can phone Alan—he can take me to Washington. I’ve got to go, Mara.”
There was a long silence. I heard steps on the polished pine floors then, and in a few minutes the tinkle of the country phone. I looked at my clock. The hands pointed to twenty minutes past one. I lay there as long as I could without going quietly out of my mind, and got up. However bad the situation was, it seemed utter folly for Cheryl Winthrop to go barging off into the night in Alan Keane’s open car . . . it would only give Irene and Rick another stick to thwack her with, and it wouldn’t help Dan.
I put on my dressing gown and slippers, opened the door into the hall, and went along the hyphen corridor to the main upstairs hall where the phone was. The receiver was hanging down, but neither of the girls was there. Then as I stood there, wondering what to do, I heard low and bitterly intense voices below. I looked over the pine rail. Down in the lower hall, cowering in a corner, was Mara Winthrop, in front of her, a riding crop in his raised hand, was Rick. His voice was like a hissing madman’s: “Where is she, damn you! Tell me where she is, or I’ll—”