Through the open door of the dressing room where I waited, I could hear the sound of applause rising in enthusiasm as Hillary took his last bows. How they loved him! Not just the women. He was thoroughly masculine, and men liked him too. I savored their approval, but still wanted him to hurry.
He came in on that whoosh of air that always seemed to stir in his whirlwind passage, even across a room—his own personal wake. I had never seen him move with anything but a spring in his step and a swiftness of motion. What a beautiful man he was. What a sometimes outrageous, entirely beautiful man! And I was close to falling hopelessly in love with him. Dangerous—dangerous. But it could happen.
“Darling!” His pleased surprise was evident. I almost never went to the theater. But his antennae were as sensitive as ever. He came over to me, smelling warmly of makeup and sweat, and tilted my chin in his hand. “Something’s happened?”
I took out the telegram and handed it to him silently. He read the words aloud: “‘I need you desperately. You must come. Letter follows. Persis Morgan.’”
I burst into words the moment he finished. “What arrogance! What an impossible old woman! All these years when she’s never so much as noticed my existence—and now, to summon me like this!”
“She knew where to find you. She must have been very much aware of your existence.”
“It turns out that Aunt Ruth has been writing to her all this time. And I never knew.” I was feeling betrayed on all sides. Especially betrayed by some strong governing emotion rising in me. I spoke against it angrily, denying. “Of course I wouldn’t think of going, no matter what she may say in her letter.”
Hillary sat down before his mirror and began to work on the removal of makeup. In the glass his eyes avoided mine, but he spoke quietly enough.
“That’s right—you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. But are you sure you don’t want to?”
I stared at him, feeling still further betrayed, and he laughed.
“Don’t look like that, Laurie. You must do what you please. I just wonder if you can know so quickly what that should be.”
“What would you do?” I demanded.
His eyes flashed in the mirror. “I’d go, of course! Think of the adventure! Think of the possibilities! How can you pass them up?”
“What possibilities?”
“Answers, Laurie. Don’t you want to know what happened out there? Don’t you want to free yourself of the past once and for all?”
He was beginning to sound like Peter.
“No,” I said flatly, “I don’t,” and left it at that.
Often after the show Hillary would come to Aunt Ruth’s for me, and we would drive out for a late supper somewhere. But tonight, when he was dressed, he said, “I’ll take you home. You’re upset and you’ll need to sleep on it. Don’t worry any more tonight. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
I nodded and wished that this feeling in my solar plexus like a knotted fist would go away. Tonight I would have liked to stay with Hillary and listen to him tell me that I need pay no attention to that woman in Colorado, or to her sudden arrogant pleas. But he wasn’t telling me these things. For once he seemed not to sense my need, and he left me with a quick kiss and drove away before I could find any words to explain.
I didn’t go into the house right away, but sat on the veranda steps, with the summer night humming about me. How lonely a summer night could seem. Frogs in a pond somewhere were harrumphing, and tree creatures added their chorus. The air was still warm from the day’s hot sun. Yet—unwillingly—I thought of mountains. Cool, high mountains. Of one mountain in particular. A strange cone-like shape that had often risen in my dreams to haunt me with a meaning I’d never been able to fathom. That mountain was part of the mystery. The mystery of me. Had Peter been right? Was Hillary right now? Unless I saw it again, stood on its slopes, I would never know and the haunting could go on forever. I would always be afraid of sudden dazzling light and what inevitably followed the flash. Must it be like that for the rest of my life?
Something told me that not to know was the best way, the wise way. Aunt Ruth, too, though my mother had always refused to tell her what had happened in Colorado, urged me not to go. Today, after the telegram had come, we sat together over coffee cups in her bright old-fashioned kitchen and she talked a little about her younger sister, my mother.
“Marybeth was afraid of what might happen to you, Laurie. I think she worried too much. Even though I loved her as my little sister, I never thought she had enough guts. You do, Laurie, and someday you’ll find that out. But I’m not sure that going to Colorado is the way.”
Aunt Ruth was the only person who had ever accused me of having guts.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
Now I sat on the veranda steps and pushed all these things futilely around in my mind, still coming to no decision. In the end, I swallowed hard upon questions I couldn’t bear to face and went to bed.
I needed Peter, I needed Hillary—I needed anyone at all who would hold and comfort and reassure me. Love me. But part of me resented a need that made me helpless and unable to decide for myself. A woman needed a man’s arms, but not only to shield and protect. And I was no longer certain exactly what I wanted from Hillary. I wasn’t even sure what he wanted from me.
Two days later the letter from Persis Morgan came. There were only a few paragraphs, the handwriting sometimes vigorous, sometimes wavering—as though the writer had forced herself to be assertive without complete success. The notepaper was heavy, the engraved address merely Morgan House, Jasper, Colorado, which in itself had a certain ring of arrogance about it.
I phoned Hillary and he met me in the park after Saturday matinee.
“I thought you told me the town was called Domino,” he said when he’d read the letter.
I was impatient with irrelevant remarks. “No, no! That’s where the first mine was dug—on Old Desolate. When Persis’ father became rich, he built a mansion in Jasper.” I closed my eyes against a flash of memory. “That was a bigger mining town, built by all that silver. Jasper is still on the maps. I looked it up once, years ago. I suppose Domino has long since blown away.”
“She doesn’t really say why she wants you,” Hillary puzzled.
“She sounds hysterical. Melodramatic. Hinting that someone is trying to destroy her. And it’s no affair of mine.”
“Are you sure of that? Have you written to say you won’t go?”
I stared at him, feeling oddly antagonized. “Not yet. There hasn’t been time.”
“What’s going on in that funny little head of yours, Laurie?”
I felt increasingly impatient. With myself as well as with Hillary. I didn’t have a “funny little head.” I couldn’t possibly go to Colorado—and that was that.
“If you don’t go, you’ll never know what happened,” he repeated.
“That’s right. I’ll never know what horrible thing I may have done out there.”
“You were eight years old. Whatever they are, a child’s acts are to be forgiven.”
“How can I forgive myself when I don’t know what there is to forgive?”
“Isn’t that the point?” he asked gently.
We were sitting on the same bench by the pond where I’d sat that first day when Red had wandered into the theater. I remembered what had followed when I’d gone up on that stage. I remembered the light, the dazzle. And I remembered another time since then, when the top in my head had begun to spin. We’d had a date to go riding, but when Hillary came for me I was sitting in my room upstairs at Aunt Ruth’s with a mirror in my hands and the sun striking from it. I had blanked out. It had taken both Hillary and my aunt to bring me back into the real world.
Restlessly I jumped up from the park bench, leaving the circle of his arm, and walked to the edge of the pond. A frog sat looking at me from the bank.
“I suppose I could go,” I said over my shoulder. “I could at least go and see what
is happening and why she wants me there. I could find out that much.”
Speaking the words seemed to release something in me. It was as though giving up began to dissolve that knot inside me. Hillary said nothing, but when I turned and walked back to him he was smiling his approval.
“It won’t be easy,” I said. “But I’m tired of being helpless and leaning on other people. I’d better go, no matter how scared I am.”
He made one of those swift decisions that were characteristic of him. “What if I go with you? We could face the old dragon together.”
I went into the arms he held out to me, and my relief was enormous. I had never expected this, yet apparently it could be managed very easily.
The company was dispersing after next week, and Hillary wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next. It was already too late for a fall play, and he was willing to take some time off. Perhaps he’d try writing again, and a change of scene might furnish just the inspiration he needed. Besides, he meant to keep an eye on me—so he’d better be there in case I needed him.
I had never loved him more. I gave myself willingly into his hands, agreeing to all the preparations he suggested, trying not to see Aunt Ruth’s pained disapproval, thrusting back my own treacherous fears that never quite subsided. One small part of me still held back with Hillary, not altogether sure—though wanting to be sure. It was just that I never wanted to give all of myself away again. There had to be something at the core that was still mine alone—and it was that core that was guiding me now, sending me out to Colorado, even though I was letting Hillary plot my course.
Not that we left for Jasper immediately. First there was correspondence, although not with my grandmother. A somewhat stiff letter came from a man named Caleb Hawes, who was apparently the Morgan attorney. He referred to her as “Mrs. Morgan,” and not by the name of her second husband, which I couldn’t even remember. His letter, addressed to me as “Mrs. Waldron,” was polite and noncommittal, and he let nothing of himself come through. He was an instrument carrying out Persis Morgan’s wishes. There were no more words of desperate need. My grandmother was very old, he explained, and she wanted to see me. A visit would be greatly appreciated and all my expenses would be taken care of. I would, of course, be a guest in her house. I accepted as coolly—though I didn’t feel cool. I was growing more excited by the moment, with an excitement that overrode my deepest fears and drove me relentlessly in the direction I had chosen. And I signed myself “Laurie Morgan.”
In a way this excitement and exhilaration resembled my feeling about heights. It was something dangerous, but not to be resisted. Something I could not stop myself from experiencing.
I didn’t mention in my reply to my grandmother that I would arrive with both a companion and a dog. Best to handle that once we got there, Hillary said. He would stay at a motel, if there was a motel, and out in that country dogs were probably acceptable. Aunt Ruth didn’t want to keep Red, and I didn’t want to part with him anyway. He practically died whenever I put him in a kennel.
So it was arranged. And so we went to Jasper, Colorado—Hillary, Red, and I.
All the while, out there at the foot of a mountain called Old Desolate, the dry bones of a town named Domino waited for me. Waited as though destiny had planned my coming for nearly a hundred years.
III
All the way to Denver by plane the emotion in me grew, part excitement, anticipation—part plain fright. The thought of an autocratic grandmother I had never seen and had no reason to like would alarm me if I let it. And so would the thought of whatever it was that I might learn about myself once I was there. At the same time, counteracting my fears, was a new and rising sense of being in control of my life for the first time. I was going at last to meet whatever it was necessary for me to meet, and that knowledge helped me to bluff and to achieve a brave front for Hillary.
Nothing had begun to spin in my head to alarm me, and that I managed this surface calm must have surprised him. From time to time I caught him watching me as though I had suddenly emerged as a woman he had never seen before.
My poor Red suffered the incarceration of plane travel with no grace at all, and his reunion with me at Stapleton Airport was ecstatic. I had to apologize to him and return the fervency of his affection before he could be calmed.
Persis Morgan’s attorney, Caleb Hawes, met our plane, and my first glimpse of him did nothing to reassure me. He was tall and poker-straight, with a chilly manner. A man of great dignity, probably in his late fifties, with a long face creased down each cheek by a vertical line that added to his look of unsmiling austerity. Dark hair clung to his skull, conservatively short. As conservative as his correct gray business suit and plain tie. Hardly a western type, I thought. But then my grown-up experience of the West had been mainly through old movies.
His companion better fitted my expectations, if I had any. He was young, perhaps in his early thirties, tall, thin, wiry, and sunbaked. His Levi’s, faded denim jacket, and scuffed leather boots were for real, not for style, and the beat-up cowboy hat he wore with jaunty confidence suited him. When he took off his hat, I saw that thick black hair curled tight to his head and grew a little long at the back. His name was Jonathan Maddocks, and the sound of it roused a faint memory in me, as though I might have heard it before. He regarded me with frank interest out of smoky gray eyes that seemed to see a great deal, but were not entirely friendly.
“Jon works for Mrs. Morgan,” Caleb Hawes added to his introduction.
As the young man bent to pick up our bags, I was aware of his continued oddly appraising look, and I had the increasing feeling that Jon Maddocks was more than a hired hand, and that he did not altogether approve of me and my coming.
Caleb Hawes showed no surprise when I introduced my friend, Hillary Lange, and my dog, Red, but I suspected this was simply because he was not one to display emotion of any kind. His stiff courtesy told me without words that he was performing a duty for which he had little enthusiasm. And I guessed that he might have opposed my coming.
Jon Maddocks went ahead with our bags, and on the way to the car Mr. Hawes explained that we would drive to Boulder, and then to Nederland, where we would turn west into the mountains. He had of course brought the jeep from the ranch, since the side road to Jasper was rough going. This was no tourist trail, he said, and we must be prepared for a tiring trip. I suspected that he meant this would serve me right. There would be no friendship whatever with this man.
Hillary was placed in front beside Jon, who was driving, while the attorney, Red, I, and our bags were sorted into the rear. The man beside me was not given to chitchat, though Jon and Hillary were talking casually enough up in front—mainly because Hillary was asking questions that the younger man appeared to answer laconically.
Red put his head on my knee, forgiving me for my recent abandonment, and I stroked him absently.
When we’d left Denver behind on the road to Boulder, I made my first comment to Caleb Hawes’ cold profile. “I didn’t know that my grandmother owned a ranch.”
“It’s still called that,” he told me. “Though it hasn’t been a working ranch, except for a cow and a few horses, for a good many years. But you must remember it. You came here often enough as a child.”
So he knew about that. “I remember riding,” I said. “And I remember mountains. Not much else.”
His silence had a ruminative quality, as though he were turning my reply over in his mind.
A few miles went by without conversation before he finally offered a faintly reproachful remark of his own.
“We didn’t expect Mr. Lange. While the house is a large one, of course, much of it is closed up, and there has been no preparation for another guest. I’m not sure Mrs. Morgan—” He floundered, and I knew the proprieties were worrying him.
Hillary heard and turned in the front seat. “Don’t worry about me. If there’s a motel or a boardinghouse, that’s where I’ll plan to stay. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone.�
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There was relief in Caleb Hawes’ response. “There’s the Timberline Hotel, though I’m not sure Mrs. Morgan will approve of your staying there. It’s the only place in town, so perhaps thay can put you up until we—uh—have told her about your being here.”
In other words, break the news that Persis’ granddaughter had arrived accompanied by a man, I thought.
“What’s wrong with the Timberline?” I asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s running, and it has been recently renovated. A man named Mark Ingram has taken over and opened up the hotel.”
Again he paused, and I sensed something hesitant in his manner, though I’d have said Caleb Hawes was hardly a hesitant man.
In the front seat Hillary turned again to fix him with a look that seemed almost challenging. I hoped he wouldn’t take to baiting the people I must make my peace with.
“Is this the man Laurie’s grandmother hinted about in her letter?” he asked. “The one who is supposed to be trying to—what was the word she used?—to destroy her?”
“An unfortunate choice of expression,” Caleb Hawes said. “He’s hardly attempting that.”
“Just the same, he’s as good as bought up most of the town,” Jon Maddocks said unexpectedly. Until now he had been mostly silent, giving his attention to his driving. “Ingram would like to buy Mrs. Morgan out too, but she has gumption enough to resist him.”
Caleb Hawes cleared his throat with a sound that seemed to carry cold disapproval for our driver. “We can discuss all this at some more suitable time. The point is that the Timberline is available and almost empty.”
“That sounds fine to me,” Hillary said, and I heard a certain relish in his voice. All this was an adventure to him, and I suspected that he might enjoy tilting at a few windmills. There were times when I wasn’t sure he understood my own predicament as fully as I’d have liked.
Domino Page 3
