Three Bright Pebbles

by Zenith Brown

  “You God-damned fool,” he said.

  Alan Keane, his face white as a sheet, his dark eyes burning with tragedy, faced him squarely for just a moment, and sank down on the table, sweeping the envelopes that were lying in front of him under his arms, burying his head in them. Not before I’d seen the names on three of them: one to his father, one to Mr. and Mrs. Chew, one to Mara Winthrop.

  The other things on the table were mute but so terribly eloquent. His car key in a worn leather holder, a dime and three pennies, a soiled paper of matches, an empty picture frame. On the brick hearth of the closed-up fireplace were the charred remains of what, I suppose, was Mara’s picture that he’d burned to keep the reporters from getting and spreading the length and breadth of the country.

  I stood there stupidly in the hot stuffy room. There’s something very devastating about suicide . . . especially of a young person, and more here, I suppose, because it wasn’t spineless cowardice that moved Alan Keane. It was just utter and total despair. I don’t suppose I should have recognized that as clearly as I did if I hadn’t seen him and Mara that afternoon, and seen her paroxysm of tears. I could imagine Alan living over that scene, the hopelessness of it, the fear, and then coming here where the Chews had been so kind to him, and learning that he was only bringing trouble to them.

  This all crystallized in my mind as my eyes went from the pitiful store on the table to the burned picture on the hearth and moved about the meager unlovely room with its iron double bed and marble-topped wash stand where a pair of socks were drying. They fell on the cheap worsted jacket hanging on the back of the door, a large tear near the pocket, and came back to Alan. He had raised his head. His thick chestnut hair needed trimming, his collar was clean and frayed. A sharp barb of pity went into my heart as I wondered if one of my own kids would do this if he was put to it in this way.

  Alan pushed his chair back, slid the letters into his pocket and got unsteadily to his feet. He mumbled something that Dan interrupted gruffly.

  “You’re coming home, kid,” he said,

  I felt the tears start in my eyes as Alan winced and caught hold of himself.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t got any home, Dan,” he said.

  “Look,” Dan said. “Romney’s just as much your home as mine. I’m sorry, Alan . . . and I’m ashamed. I hope you’ll forgive us.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Dan. It’s my own fault. I just can’t take it. I always thought I could, but I guess—”

  “Skip it,” Dan said. “Get your coat.”

  The boy shook his head.

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I understand plenty,” Dan said, very quietly. “Are you coming?”

  Alan shook his head again. Dan pulled the gun out of his pocket and swung it lightly in his hand.

  “Get that coat,” he said. His big face broke into an irresistible grin.

  For an instant Alan Keane’s body stiffened and his face flushed. Then he grinned too.

  “All right—you big bully,” he said.

  I think all three of us were on the point of tears. I know I looked out of the window down onto the kitchen roof, and sniffled at the smell of fried chicken and hot biscuits for a moment. When I turned back Alan had taken his coat down. I saw him look at the tear in it. “I guess it isn’t cold,” he said, and folded it over his arm.

  The old stairs creaked under our feet as we went down. When we were children my brothers and I used to pretend stairs had voices, because those at the farm sounded different from the ones in town, and the narrow back stairs had a lowlier note than the wide polished ones in the hall. They’d warn us to slip Dead-Eye Dick under the pillow and put out the light. I wished I’d remembered that then, as we went down. Heaven knows those stairs did their part. We were just too deaf to hear. It wasn’t till we’d got to the turn at the landing, just about the parlor, that we were suddenly aware of the voices below.

  “There’s no earthly way of tellin’ how long them arrows have been missin’, Barney.”

  It was Mr. Chew’s kindly familiar drawl, and the voice that answered him was Mr. Purcell’s.

  “That doesn’t matter, John. There’s plenty of people know he was on hand last night. He’s been hanging around out there, trying to see Mara. Rick was dead set on putting an end to it. Sam here knows as well as I do that if he’d made Rick a deputy, like I told him to, he’d have shot him for trespassing a month ago. Stand aside now, John—we don’t want any trouble.”

  Mr. Chew’s meager form blocked the stairway.

  “He’s not up there, Barney. He’s gone out, I tell you,” he drawled.

  But it was too late. Mr. Purcell had already seen us as we stopped at the turn. My own impulse, oddly enough, was to go back and take it, as my younger son says, on the lam, and I imagine Alan’s must have been instinctively the same only more so. I could hear his sharp intake of breath as he hesitated an instant. Then he went steadily on down till he’d reached the foot of the stairs.

  Mr. Chew moved reluctantly aside.

  “I did the best I could, son,” he mumbled.

  Mr. Purcell turned to the lean form of the sheriff. And Mr. Sam Dorsey, who obviously hated the whole business, cleared his throat with some embarrassment.

  “I guess we got to arrest you, my boy.”

  But Alan Keane was not looking at him. His eyes were fixed beyond all of them—the three Chews, the State’s Attorney and the sheriff—on the door. Frozen in it, her face as white as death, stood Mara Winthrop. Behind her, also frozen in the act of holding the screen door open for them to enter, was Cheryl. For one completely humiliating moment that must have seemed a century Mara stood there, watching Sam Dorsey’s clumsy reluctant hands fix the handcuffs on Alan Keane’s wrist. Then with a passionate cry she burst across the room and threw her arms about the boy’s neck.

  “Oh, Alan, Alan!”

  He closed his eyes, his face white, let his head fall against hers for an instant, raised it abruptly and with his free hand tried gently to unlock her arms.

  “Come along now, Alan,” Mr. Purcell said. His voice was curt, and uncomfortable.

  “Oh no, you can’t, Mr. Purcell, you can’t!”

  Mara threw her dark head back, her eyes wild.

  “Oh, you can’t, you can’t!”

  “Now look here, Mara—your mother wouldn’t like—”

  The child’s body froze.

  “So it’s Mother!”

  She drew back from him like a person coming slowly from under some stupefying drug, her dazed wide stare fixed, painfully groping, on each of our faces in turn. Mr. Purcell, who certainly knew all about Mara and Alan’s passion for each other, equally certainly, I saw, had never thought of it in any such terms as these. He took a lavender handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his forehead. He glanced very uneasily at Dan . . . and if I had not seen his eyes light on the shiny deputy sheriff’s badge visible where Dan’s coat had fallen back, I could never in this world have believed the incredible thing that happened next. A glint lighted in Mr. Purcell’s eye. I realized that he was trying desperately to see his way out of any possible recrimination from Irene Winthrop . . . and realized then that it wasn’t for nothing that Mr. Purcell had the reputation of being the smartest politician in the county.

  “Dan’s arrest, I guess, sheriff,” he said shortly.

  Dan Winthrop, never glib at his best, stood there open-mouthed. Alan moved a step away from him as if he’d been struck, an angry flush burning in his pale cheeks. Mara’s eyes were fixed on that badge, too stupefied to move. Cheryl, who’d come up behind her, stared at him, perfectly appalled, and so did the plump red-headed girl standing by her side. And Dan, more stunned than any of them—and more by their ready acceptance of it than by Mr. Purcell’s finesse—clamped his jaws together in what instantly occurred to me was the true Winthrop fashion, and said not a word.

  “Now come along, Alan,” Mr. Dorsey said. His voice was kindly and almost pleading. Alan K
eane took one step, and held back then, his face suddenly white again.

  I saw the terror in his eyes . . . and while I don’t as a rule have the least luck with my intuitions, I realized with the most instant and extraordinary clarity just what had happened.

  I went quickly up to him and held out my hand.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be going by the post office, Alan,” I said. “Give me back my letters, and I’ll mail them myself.”

  The wave of relief and gratitude in the boy’s haggard eyes was almost too poignant to bear . . . and I was afraid almost too obvious to deceive.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “I forgot all about them.”

  He pulled out the four letters he’d written with the shadow of death heavy over him—letters that, if I knew anything about country jails, would have been in the hands of some smart well-heeled newspaper man before midnight, and God knows how far by morning—and handed them to me.

  I said “Thanks,” and put them in my bag. In the old Victorian pier glass between the side windows I caught Mr. Purcell’s eye fixed on me. There was a shade of skepticism in it—or so I thought—and I turned to Mr. Chew and inquired, as innocently as I could without overdoing it, when the next mail went out.

  Alan said, “I’m ready, Sam,” and the two of them walked that sickening distance to the door, while Cheryl’s brown young hands tightened protectively on Mara’s shoulders, forcing her to control herself. The boys mending their fishing gear under the reading lamp looked on, saucer-eyed, too fascinated, too frightened, to move. The screen door slammed shut. I saw Cheryl raise her eyes, blue resentful coals of fire, burning with reproach and incredulity.

  For Mara, numb and motionless, the slamming door released a pent-up torrent of despair. She turned on Dan, her dark pointed little face transformed with helpless fury.

  “This is how you help me!” she said, with a quiet so desperately controlled that my heart chilled. “This is what you meant last night when you said you wouldn’t tell anyone! Rick was right when he said you never cared about anybody but yourself and the only reason you were coming home was to keep him and me from getting a break. You killed him yourself—and you’re trying to make Alan suffer for it! You and Mother! I see it all now!”

  She turned with a heart-breaking sob and fled across the room and out before any of us, stunned and dismayed, could move to stop her. Dan stood there still, speechless, hurt and angry, his face pale and hard as granite. Cheryl was the first to recover. She ran to the door. We heard her heels click sharply down the verandah steps to be drowned out in the roar of the station wagon engine. She came slowly back inside as we all stood there, paused a moment at the door, and came quickly across to Dan.

  She looked up into his face with those extraordinarily clear and tranquil hyacinth eyes of hers.

  “Dan,” she said, “—I don’t believe you told them?”

  His face flushed darkly.

  “You can believe anything you like,” he said.

  I caught my breath.

  “Well,” I said, as cheerfully as I could, “all the Winthrops act like two-year-olds when they’re crossed. It’s a family trait.”

  “That’s why people murder them,” a voice said behind us. We all turned sharply. Major Tillyard was standing in the door of the bar. How much he’d heard of all this I hadn’t a notion—enough, I imagine. He came over to me.

  “If you’re going back to Romney, Mrs. Latham, may I give you a lift?”

  The tiny amused flicker in his eyes made me break off before I’d said what I started to say. I nodded and tossed my keys to Dan.

  “Bring Cheryl in my car, will you?” I said.

  Cheryl looked at me, and at Dan, for just an instant.

  “Thanks,” she said—and I thought it was only a proper show of spirit; “but I’d rather go with you, if you don’t mind.”

  Dan drew a deep breath, and grinned at me.

  “You can either come with me, or walk, my girl,” he said amiably.

  “If either of you can get the car started,” I remarked pointedly.

  19

  Major Tillyard and I got in his car. “You’re really very helpful,” I said as we crossed Potobac Creek.

  He laughed.

  “I have a good deal of sympathy for lovers who’d like to be left alone a moment,” he said dryly. “And Cheryl’s a pretty fine girl.”

  “You and Irene don’t, I take it, always see eye to eye,” I said.

  “You take Irene’s whims too seriously,” he answered. “The trouble with all the Winthrops is that they’re too stiff-necked to go around an obstacle. They have to crash right through it. Not one of those youngsters has ever made the slightest attempt to lead Irene. They try to bully her, and she balks. She’d never have objected to Cheryl if Rick hadn’t been as insulting as possible to Natalie, and then married Cheryl without a word to Irene. If he’d even brought her down on a visit! You know, Irene’s consuming ambition has always been to stage an elaborate wedding at Romney. Rick might have given her a chance. But no indeed—he plunks a wife down on the back steps and says, ‘Now where’s the income, and make it snappy, the plane’s waiting in the alfalfa field to get me back to Broadway in time for the floor show.’ You can’t blame Irene entirely.”

  “No,” I said. “But it’s rather unfair to Cheryl.”

  “Since when have mothers started being fair to their sons’ wives, Mrs. Latham?” he inquired pleasntly. “If Dan would just use his head, everything will work out beautifully.”

  “And Mara? Will that work out too?”

  “That’s a horse of another color,” he said. “I think Irene has some justice on her side. Even so, the thing’s grown out of all rational bounds. But there again, if Mara’d use a little tact . . .”

  “Like Natalie?”

  He laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have got Natalie very far?”

  “I doubt if she’d agree with you. It’s got her out of a dress shop to Romney. And who knows whither?”

  He smiled, rather wryly, I thought.

  “It didn’t get her Rick,” I said.

  “Perhaps she didn’t want Rick—have you thought of that?”

  He didn’t speak again until we were going down the cedar lane.

  “Who, by the way, is this Fellowes Dunthorne person?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer immediately.

  “I’m interested in that myself,” he said, after a while. “He’s solvent enough, if that’s what you mean. Rick met him about five years ago, on shipboard, or so he told the Chews at the Inn last night. I happen to know he’s gone on Rick’s notes for a lot of money, at one time and another. Rick’s taken him around a bit. I met them once at the Maryland Hunt Cup. Oddly enough, he never brought him here. However, I hope to know more about all that tomorrow.”

  He smiled suddenly. “I’m wondering if Irene’s going to let him spend the night here.”

  I didn’t have a chance to inquire into that any further, or do more than wonder curiously about Major Tillyard’s very practical interest in him—which in view of that unfinished note on Rick’s desk seemed peculiarly significant. We rounded the Romney Oak and came to a stop at the back porch. Old Yarborough in his white coat, the hall light shining down on his kinky white head, was hooking the screen door behind the solid four-square figure of Mrs. Jellyby. She stalked heavily down the stairs, nodded to us and set off down the brick path to her cottage. Yarborough grudgingly unhooked the door for us, and hooked it again.

  “Ah wouldn’ go in th’ liberry jus’ now,” he said. “Miss Natalie, she been there, and Miss Jelly, she been there, an’ ain’ nothin’ come out ’ceptin’ hard words. An’ dinner’s been gettin’ col’ since half-past seben.”

  He started for the door, muttering darkly. Major Tillyard put his hat on the sofa. His face in the mirror over it was distinctly troubled. He caught my reflection behind his own and turned.

  “Mrs. Jellyby’s the one pe
rson Irene never uses hard words to,” he said with a smile. “It must be Mara again.”

  Yarborough, still muttering, finally closed the door. Mr. Fellowes Dunthorne looked out of the sitting room door, looked at the platinum watch on his wrist, shook it and held it significantly to his ear. Mr. Dunthorne, I took it, was hungry, and with some reason—it was almost nine o’clock.

  Major Tillyard glanced at me and went forward genially.

  “What about a drink, Dunthorne?” I heard him say.

  I slipped up the stairs, and stopped abruptly on the landing. Natalie Lane was standing by the Palladian window looking down into the drive, her burnished head resting on her bare arm. For a moment I thought she was crying—incredible as it seemed. It seemed to me also a very odd place to be crying. It flashed through my head that Dan would probably have pointed out to her that female guests at Romney were expected to do their crying in their own rooms. But she wasn’t crying. She was looking pretty grim, however, and her really extraordinarily handsome face had a nacre quality.

  “Something wrong?” I inquired cheerfully.

  “Does Irene ever stick to the same idea fifteen minutes together?” she asked—too bitterly for a guest, I thought.

  “On the contrary, I should say Irene has a singlemindedness one seldom meets in a woman,” I answered casually.

  “You don’t like me either, do you, Mrs. Latham?” she said.

  It was so abrupt that I was definitely taken aback.

  “Who, me?” I said. “Don’t be silly!”

  “Then will you do something for me?”

  She came over to me quickly, her face and voice suddenly full of the most extraordinary entreaty.

  “Please, Mrs. Latham—it’s terribly important! You’ve got to help me!”

  I’m afraid I drew back instinctively under the intensity of her emotion.

  “Everything in my life depends on it! Won’t you please make her let Mr. Dunthorne stay tonight, and get them to be . . . decent to him? It’s really . . .”

  She stopped. Her hand on my arm was trembling.