Wall, Page 2

  “See here, Marcia,” he said, “what would you pay for my half interest in Sunset?”

  I sat down abruptly. The room was still in wild disorder. Juliette had made a clean sweep of her belongings, but she had left behind her a litter of tissue paper, torn-up letters in the fireplace, old evening slippers and half-empty jars and bottles. It had been an attractive room, jade-green curtains and mauve brocaded furniture as a background for her blond prettiness. Always before I had seen it filled with expensive flowers, silver photograph frames with pictures signed to her in terms of endearment, and the thousand and one trinkets with which she always cluttered her life. Now it looked stark and bare.

  “I mean it,” Arthur repeated. “You like the old place, and it’s too far for me to go nowadays.”

  “You like it too, Arthur.”

  “I suppose I could still have the quarantine room now and then,” he said. “Good Lord, Marcia, how far that seems from all this.”

  He told me then that Juliette owed the best part of twenty thousand dollars, debts contracted in his name. As a parting gesture she had piled the bills on her desk, and on top of them to hold them in place she had put a grotesque china figure of an urchin with his thumb to his nose. I had never thought of Arthur as a violent man until I saw him pick up that figure and smash it on the hearth.

  It seemed to surprise him, for he looked at it and then grinned sheepishly.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I feel better now. Well, what about Sunset?”

  In the end I bought it from him, using more of my depleted capital than I cared to think about, but at least saving his credit and, as it turned out, his happiness. A year later he had married Mary Lou, and the nightmare days were over.

  Fortunately I was busy that day, and so I put Juliette resolutely out of my mind. What I wanted was a round of golf; but what I found waiting for me as I went downstairs was Lizzie, with her mouth set and a long grocery list in her hand.

  “I’ll trouble you to order some food for the house,” she said. “That is, if you want any dinner, miss.”

  “I do. I want a lot of dinner,” I told her.

  That pleased her. She even condescended to smile.

  “You order it and I’ll cook it,” she said.

  But I did not eat much dinner that night, or indeed for many nights to come.

  I got out the car and went to the village in a more cheerful mood. It was pleasant to be back. It was pleasant to meet the tradespeople, most of them old friends. It was pleasant to be clean and cool, and to know that tomorrow I could slip off the old float and swim, even if the water was cold. It was even pleasant to be Marcia Lloyd, aged twenty-nine but perhaps not looking it. I remember taking off my hat and letting the sea breeze blow through my short hair; and that Conrad, the butcher, eying me so to speak between chops, said I looked like a bit of a girl.

  “Just for that,” I said, “you’ll have to give me a slice of bologna sausage. Do you remember? You always did.”

  He grinned and gave it to me. But he added a bit of advice to it.

  “You’re kind of alone out there, aren’t you?” he said. “No neighbors yet.”

  “I have the servants.”

  “They’d be a lot of help! See here, Miss Marcia, things have changed since we’ve had the bridge, and cars are allowed on the island. Used to be you could go to sleep and leave the front door open if you felt like it. Nowadays—well, I’d lock up the place if I were you. Away off like that by yourself it isn’t necessary to take any chances.”

  I refused to be discouraged, however, and I did the rest of my buying in high spirits. It was just as I left the fish market that the blow fell.

  I remember that I was carrying a basket of lobsters fresh and lively from the pots, their claws propped open with bits of stick but their energy in no wise diminished by the seaweed which covered them; and that just as the mainland bus stopped one of them escaped and made for the gutter with incredible speed.

  By the time I had retrieved it, my hat on one side of my head and my language totally unbecoming a lady, I heard a cool amused voice at my elbow.

  “What would Mother have said!” it observed. “Such language. Don’t faint, Marcia. It’s me!”

  It was Juliette—Mrs. Juliette Ransom as she now called herself—taller and better looking than I had remembered her, but with the old familiar mockery lurking about her mouth. She was extremely well-dressed, and she eyed me curiously.

  “How on earth do you keep your figure like that?” she said. “You look about sixteen.”

  I found my voice then.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’m visiting you,” she said, still in that cool amused voice. “Can you control those lobsters in your car, or do I take a taxi?”

  CHAPTER III

  I DROVE HER BACK to Sunset. There was nothing else to do. But I had some satisfaction, after piling her maid and a half dozen suitcases in the rear of the car, in putting the lobsters at her feet. She did not like it, although she still smiled.

  “They smell,” she said. “Do you always have to carry your own food, Marcia?”

  “I don’t often have to carry passengers.”

  “No? Then I take it you are alone.”

  “I am. I’ve just arrived.”

  “No Mary Lou? No little Arthur?”

  “No.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” she said, and seemed to relax.

  “What a train, and what a trip!” she said. “Why in heaven’s name bury yourself way up here all summer? Why not Newport? Not that I’m crazy about Newport, but you can at least get away from it.”

  “Even if I liked Newport I couldn’t afford it,” I said evenly. “You ought to know that.”

  I thought she glanced quickly at me. Then she drew a long breath.

  “So that’s the way it is. I thought it might be.”

  She said nothing more before we reached the house; I supposed because of the maid behind us. As we turned in at the driveway, however, she leaned forward and looked down at the pond.

  “It used to give me the creeps, that place,” she said.

  I had a chance to look at her then. She was several years older than I was, but she had kept her looks extremely well. As though she had read my mind she turned to me.

  “Not so bad, am I? The face isn’t yet on the barroom floor, although it’s seen a number of barrooms. And so here’s the dear old place again! Well, well, who would have thought it!”

  I stopped the car at the door, and William’s eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw who was with me. Juliette chose to be gracious.

  “Well, William,” she said. “How are you? And how do you manage never to grow any older?”

  He had the grace to color, for it is an open secret that he dyes his hair; that pathetic effort of the old servant to conceal his age. But he was very civil.

  “Time passes, Miss Juliette,” he said. She had been Miss Juliette while Mother lived, and she was still that to him. “Shall I take out the bags?”

  The maid, whose name I learned was Jordan, got out stiffly. She clutched Juliette’s jewel case in her hands but made no other effort with the luggage; and I led them both in and up the stairs.

  “I’ll give you your old rooms,” I said. “I suppose you’ll want Jordan next to you. She can use the laundry downstairs if you need anything pressed.”

  Juliette did not answer at once. She had moved to a window and was staring at the bay. The tide was out, and the gulls were busy and noisy on the rocks below.

  “Those damned birds,” she said at last. “They used to drive me crazy.”

  I faced her then for the first time. Jordan had disappeared into the next room, and William was lugging her baggage up the stairs.

  “See here, Juliette,” I said. “You don’t like me and you don’t like this place. You never have. Why have you come back?”

  “Because I have to talk to you,” she said. “If you want the truth, I’m
in a jam.”

  Then William came in, and there was no chance for more.

  I stood by for a few minutes. Juliette traveled, as she did everything, extravagantly. I recognized the suitcase in which she carried, for any night on any train, her own soft blankets, her own towels, and even a pillow or two. I saw her dressing case, filled with lotions, creams, and all the paraphernalia with which she cared for her smooth skin. I even watched with some irritation while Jordan, taciturn but skillful, whipped my best guest linen from the bed and replaced it with the monogrammed pale-rose silk sheets which Juliette affected. And I retired when, with her usual complete abuse of all ordinary decency, Juliette began to strip for her bath. Nudity means nothing to me, but long ago her particular form of exhibitionism had palled on me.

  It was some time before I could face the servants. I went into my own room and had what amounted to a private fit with the door locked. She had come for something. I knew that. And mixed with this fear was acute resentment. Not only was my peace gone, but Mary Lou’s plans would have to be changed.

  When at last I went downstairs it was to find Lizzie, lacking a kitchen maid these days, grumpily peeling potatoes. She looked up at me sourly.

  “How long’s she going to be here?” she said without preamble.

  “I haven’t an idea, Lizzie. Probably not long, but we’ll have to do our best by her.”

  “I’ll feed her all right,” said Lizzie, unappeased. “I’ll feed that sour-faced woman she’s brought with her too, if I have to stuff her meals down her throat. What I want to know is, what’s she doing here?”

  I never have had any secrets from Lizzie, nor—I suspect—had Mother before me. I put a hand on her militant old shoulder.

  “I don’t know, Lizzie,” I said. “All I know is that she has a reason, and that we’ll know it in due time. Perhaps she’ll stay only a day or two. She loathes it here.”

  “Then praise God for that,” said Lizzie, and went on paring potatoes.

  Nevertheless, and in spite of what was to come, that arrival of Juliette’s had its humorous side. One and all, the servants were determined that she should find nothing changed from our more opulent days. Perhaps I had fallen into slack habits. Ordinarily during the season I am not at home much. I am likely to lunch at the club and play bridge, and to dine out on those nights when I am not giving a small dinner myself.

  Now the best silver was coming out from the safe in the library, a safe cannily camouflaged by my grandfather by glass doors painted with imitation books which would not have deceived a blind burglar; Mother’s old Georgian tea set, the candelabra and even the silver service plates. The pantry was seething with activity, and wide-eyed Ellen was polishing vigorously under William’s watchful eyes.

  But my hopes that the visit was to be brief were shortlived. Late in the afternoon two large trunks arrived and were carried up to Juliette’s room; and suddenly I felt the need of air and action. As a result I took Chu-Chu, my toy Pekingese—so called because of various tracks hither and yon, on carpets and lawns—and went down beside the pond, where Chu-Chu and a red squirrel carried on a sort of daily flirtation, the squirrel plainly refusing to consider Chu-Chu a dog at all. On the way down I turned and looked back at the house, and I was almost certain that I saw a curtain move up in the old hospital room.

  I watched for some time but the movement was not repeated, and at last I went on. There was a bench there, out of sight of the house, and I sat down and faced my problem as well as I could.

  The pond was very still. At the upper end, where Stony Creek flowed down from the hills to feed it, was shallow; but where I sat near the dam it was deep and dark. What was left of the spring wild flowers formed small patches of color on the banks, and the thin overflow slid over the red stone wall and splashed cheerfully onto the shore below. But the air was cold. I found myself shivering, and so, calling Chu-Chu, who had found an acorn and was pretending to be a squirrel herself, I went back to the house.

  Before I dressed for dinner I went up to the hospital suite. Nothing had been disturbed there, but acting on impulse I turned the key in the door at the top of the stairs and took it down with me. I put it in my handkerchief bag in the upper drawer of my bureau, and when Maggie came in to dress me for dinner I showed her where it was. Also I told her what I had seen, and she sniffed audibly.

  “She’s a snooper,” she said. “Always was and always will be. But what did she want up there?”

  “I’m not certain she was there, Maggie.”

  “Well, she’s up to something,” she said, slapping the brush down on my cringing scalp as she used to do when I was a child. “What did I tell you about those crows? I’m only thankful your mother didn’t live to see this day, miss.”

  Maggie’s conversations with me are rather like those with the Queen of England, when one drops in a “ma’am” now and then, like inserting a comma. Sometimes I am miss to her, sometimes not. Privately and in her loyal old heart I am still little Marcia, making faces when she jerks my hair, and being inspected surreptitiously to see if I have washed my ears. But she was in deadly earnest that day. I knew it when she brought out one of my best dinner dresses and fairly dared me not to wear it.

  “Don’t let her patronize you,” she said, slipping it over my head. “You’re better looking than she is any day; and as for that woman she’s got with her—”

  Here words failed her. She gave me a final jerk and stood back to survey her handiwork.

  “Let her beat that!” she said vindictively.

  It was half past seven that night before I saw Juliette again. Then she trailed downstairs in a long silver-gray creation with bands of silver fox on the sleeves. It was still broad daylight, and the low sun, streaming in through the big windows in the drawing room, showed her face older and more tired than it had been that morning. There were deep lines around her eyes, and for all her nonchalance she looked worn and harassed. Her earlier cheerfulness, too, was gone. She was irritable and nervy.

  “Heavens, what a glare!” she said. “I could do with a cocktail, if you can manage one.”

  “They are coming.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “In the old days it was sherry. Do you remember? I’ve never looked at the stuff since.”

  She relaxed over the cocktails, and she ate a fair dinner, but no sweet.

  “I have to watch my figure,” she said. “I’m thirty-two, and I can’t go on forever being twenty-five. How do you stay so slim?”

  She was more than that, I knew; but I let it go.

  “I exercise a lot. And I have plenty to do.”

  It was not a pleasant meal, for all the newly polished silver and Lizzie’s efforts. There were long intervals of silence when only William’s quiet movements and the lapping of the waves were to be heard. But once she glanced around her and spoke almost violently.

  “God, how I hate this place,” she said.

  There was an obvious answer to that, but I did not make it. As the daylight faded she looked prettier and rather tragic. The candles shone on her fair hair, on her long white hands with their scarlet nails and on her petulant painted mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Juliette,” I said quietly. “Of course it’s home to me.”

  “It never was home to me,” she said, and launched into a barbed attack on all of us; on her home-coming as a bride, and Father at the head of the table, stiff and uncompromising. On the close association between Arthur and me, so that she was often the unwanted third. On the time, a year or so later, when she took sick and Mother sent her to the quarantine room until she had been diagnosed.

  “She hated me from the start,” she said.

  “I don’t believe that, Juliette. She was very good to you. Maybe she was a little jealous of you. Arthur was her only son.”

  “You never liked me yourself.”

  “You didn’t much care, did you? If you had tried—”

  “Tried! What was the use? You were too complacent, too rich in those days. And
I was nobody. So far as you were concerned I was something he picked up out of the gutter; and you were glad to pay any price to get rid of me at the end.”

  Enough of that was true to make me acutely uncomfortable. But luckily William reappeared then, and when he brought coffee to the library where a fire was burning, she had made up her mind to be more amiable.

  It was there, over a cigarette, that she divulged the reason for her visit.

  “I want to change the arrangement with Arthur, Marcia,” she said.

  “Change it? How?” I asked, startled.

  “I want a lump sum and call it quits.”

  I sat quite still. A lump sum, when none of us had any available capital! On the other hand, if it could be managed, an end for all time to the yearly drain on Arthur’s resources.

  “You said you were in trouble, Juliette. Is it about money? Is that the reason?”

  She hesitated.

  “I need money, yes. I suppose that’s no news to you. But—well, see here, Marcia. I’m young, comparatively; and I’m strong. I’ll probably live a long time.” She laughed a little. “Look what Arthur will have paid me in the next twenty years. A quarter of a million! That’s a lot of money.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “A hundred thousand dollars.”

  I must have gasped, for she looked at me queerly.

  “I have to have it,” she said. “He’ll be getting off easy at that, Marcia.”

  I remember the desperation in her voice when she said that, and it made me sorry for her and anxious. The next minute she had lighted another cigarette, and although her hands trembled her voice was steady enough. She knew there had been a depression. She knew our money—Arthur’s and mine—was in a trust fund for his children and mine if I ever had any. But there was property, wasn’t there? How about selling Sunset? It was supposed to be valuable.

  “Sunset belongs to me now,” I told her. “I bought Arthur’s share. As for selling it, even if I wanted to, I can’t. There’s no market for big places, Juliette.”

  She saw that I was speaking the truth, and she looked fairly haunted. She got up suddenly and went to one of the windows, standing there and staring out.