There was one uncomfortable moment when I met Caleb alone in the hall near my room and told him about the deringer that had appeared with its twin in the mahogany box in the back parlor. I watched for his reaction, and even in the hall light that was always so dim, I could see how shaken he was. He took me by the arm and led me quickly back to his room.
“Who knows about this?” he asked.
“Only Jon. No one else.”
“Sit down for a minute,” he directed, and I sat in a worn leather chair and looked about a room that had been kept almost bare of decoration. This was the room he must stay in whenever he stopped in this house, and right now he was living here. Yet apparently he had never set any stamp of his own personality upon it, and it was as coldly austere as I had once thought him to be. I wondered what Caleb would be like if he ever really let himself go to the point of explosion.
While I sat waiting for him to speak, he stood at a window and stared unseeingly out at Jasper.
“Who do you think placed the gun in that box?” I asked him finally.
“I think I know,” he said. “But I’m not going to talk about it. I’m not going to guess. I just want to suggest that you should not mention this to your grandmother. Can I ask for your word on that?”
I wondered if he suspected what I suspected.
“I won’t promise anything unless I understand why.”
“I think you’ve come to love her. That’s why. You won’t want to damage her in any way.”
“But she has only to walk into that room to see for herself that two guns are there.”
“I don’t think she’ll do that. But it’s a good thing you told me about this.”
“I thought you might have put it there.”
Dislike for me showed in his eyes, and our interview was over. Whatever he could have told me, he had no intention of putting it into words. I left him feeling more frustrated than ever and defeated by the secrets that were still being held all around me.
During those days before the ball I saw nothing of Hillary, since he had gone to Denver. He phoned before he left to tell me that he wanted to buy materials in order to decorate the Opera House for Ingram’s party. I was just as relieved not to see him for a little while.
Jon was being especially wary with me. It was as though he wore a sign to hold off anyone who might come close to him.
Nor did we see Mark Ingram during this period, but Belle, who lived with us now, warned us not to be optimistic. She had a feeling that he meant to spring something unexpected at the ball.
As my state of anxiety grew, I began to wish that Persis would change her mind about attending the party. I wasn’t sure whether she could stand up to whatever he might be planning. Her strength wasn’t as great as she was trying to pretend.
Of Gail we saw nothing, but Belle reported scornfully that she continued to ingratiate herself with Mark Ingram and that something was definitely going on there.
In spite of Belle’s defection I knew there was still a bond between her and Mark Ingram, growing out of a long relationship. They were still fond of each other, and there were moments when I even wondered if Belle Durant was to be trusted.
Once Jon came to see my grandmother when she was sitting in the downstairs parlor, and this time I was present.
“I’d like an answer to something,” he told her. “I want to know where you and Caleb put the jewels that were sacrificed in the cause of that story you cooked up for the press. Caleb won’t tell me.”
“He’s under orders from me not to. Bringing them out again won’t help, though I know it’s been in your mind for a long time. It could be dangerous, so don’t ask me again.”
“I won’t ask you, but I’ll look,” he said. “As I’ve already been doing for a while—with no result.”
“What do you think you can learn from them?”
“I’m not sure I’d learn anything. But I don’t think you’ve played fair with us, and I’m wondering why.”
She would say nothing, and the exchange ended there.
Hillary, too, troubled me during those few days. When he got back from Denver, he came to see me, behaving as naturally as though I had never tried to tell him that everything was over between us. I had the feeling that he, too, was up to something and that it concerned Mark Ingram. He hinted at the mysterious and wondrous, and sometimes got carried away with his own playacting. Certainly he was busy working on the Opera House. All construction in Jasper had ceased while the men gave full effort to the theater. Hillary reported that progress was considerable. Of course complete refurbishing wasn’t possible in this short time, but at least it would be clean and some painting would have been done. All those ratty old seats were being cleared out, and the orchestra floor would be fine for dancing. Only reels and square dancing would be permitted, and several mountain fiddlers were coming in to call the dances.
It was going to be quite a party, Hillary said, and I knew he was excited about it. Too excited.
Once I tried to pin him down. “What about Mark Ingram? What is he really planning?”
Hillary looked as though he hadn’t been really focusing on me. But now he concentrated, though not by answering my question.
“I’ll wait for you, Laurie. All this will wear off, you know. I’ll be there when you need me. Remember that.”
I made no attempt to answer because I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t believe there would ever again be a time when I would turn to Hillary Lange for anything. We had grown away from each other, though he hadn’t really accepted that as yet. Only once, in a moment of anger, had he believed, and he had clearly talked himself out of that.
Persis insisted that I wear one of the old dresses from a trunk full of clothes dating back to before the turn of the century. No one in her family had ever thrown anything away, apparently. One could live like that in a house that came down through the generations. I brought out a pile of old garments, and she selected for me a dress that her mother had worn in the early 1900s. It was of black lace over nile green satin, cut straight, with a little train. All the bustles and flounces and hoops of the last century had been abandoned by that time. The neck was low and square, and Grandmother loaned me an emerald necklace to wear with it. The black pumps that I’d brought would serve, being well hidden by the length of the gown.
On the night of this party that I had no wish to attend, Belle came to my room and dressed my hair in an upswept, puffy style that was not unbecoming. She had put on one of her green hourglass gowns and a red wig she had adopted for use at the Timberline, and she looked perfectly in character.
“I’m not sure what I represent,” I said.
She considered me in the mirror. “You’re a lady from the East who wears the latest Paris fashions and is visiting a quaint mining town. Wait till you see your grandmother!”
Persis Morgan was not wearing the daisy-sprigged dress, but was decidedly the grande dame in gleaming black satin. About her throat sparkled a diamond dog collar that had once belonged to Sissy, and a diamond crescent of Sissy’s shone in her beautiful gray hair.
As we went downstairs, Jon came through the door and stared at the three of us. “Resplendent! I’ll hardly dare to be seen in your company.”
He had managed a minimum of costume in a miner’s rough clothes, with a coil of rope over one shoulder and a pan for washing dust under his arm. All he needed to look authentic was a beard.
Caleb was the real surprise, having unearthed a long frock coat and stovepipe hat. Thus garbed in lugubrious black, he looked the sober old-time lawyer—which perhaps he really was. A throwback from another age. An even less scrupulous age?
Earlier Mark Ingram had phoned that he was sending his station wagon for us, so we needn’t come in the jeep. While Belle and Caleb helped Grandmother Persis down the front steps and into the car, Jon held me back for a moment.
“Try to stay near her as much as possible tonight,” he warned me. “I don’t know what may ha
ppen, but she may need you.”
“Where will you be?”
“Around. Don’t worry about me.” And then, almost absently, “Laurie, you look beautiful. Who are you—Sissy Tremayne?”
“I think I’m trying to be Laurie Morgan,” I said.
For just an instant his eyes warmed with approval, and then he looked away. I really didn’t know what to do about Jon Maddocks.
We all went down the steps together and toward whatever this uncertain night might hold for us all. Mainly I was aware of Jon’s hand over mine for a moment as I took his arm. So small a thing to take comfort from.
XIX
The Timberline was ablaze with lights as we drove toward it, and a spotlight had been set up to shine upon the white face of the Opera House. Not exactly a forty-niner’s touch, but then the jeeps and other four-wheel-drives that had poured into town belonged to a later era too. The upper street had been cleared to use for parking, but as guests of honor we were brought straight to the theater.
Ingram’s informal summons must have been considered as a great lark, for the foyer was filled with men and women dressed in hastily conceived costumes and ready for adventure.
The press was there with cameras and reporters, and at once my grandmother was besieged. Mark Ingram himself strode through the lobby to rescue her from the flashbulbs, leading her into the theater grandly on his arm. The rest of us trailed after them. I noted that Ingram, of all the crowd, had not troubled to wear a costume, but then for him costume wasn’t necessary. He was already a dramatic, always costumed figure in his gray cords. He seemed to belong to a Jasper that no longer existed, and his manner of total assurance worried me. But if Mark Ingram seemed confident, Grandmother Persis could carry the charade still further because she was the real thing. Her own air of aristocratic poise could put him to shame. It was an American aristocracy she represented—from mining camp child to grande dame in one lifetime.
Belle and Caleb, Jon and I followed the conspicuous two with a bit of jostling because of the group that forever gathered around Ingram. Once we were inside, Jon gave my arm a reassuring squeeze and slipped away into the crowd, I watchd his tall figure disappear and wished that he had stayed with us. With me.
Hillary found us quickly, looking handsome and dramatic in a trapper’s fringed jacket that he must have found in Denver. He, too, was a costume man. It was his natural habit.
These details of what we wore and how we looked I can still remember with a strange clarity. Much of the rest is a blur because of what happened that night to wipe out trivial detail and leave only the stark and tragic.
I know that at first I tried to stay close to my grandmother, as Jon had suggested. But when a fiddler struck up his first tune and the calling of the dances began, I was swept away to be partnered by strangers, swept into reels and do-si-dos, and other unfamiliar steps. Not knowing what I was doing didn’t really matter. The few who knew carried the rest of us along on an exciting outpouring of energy, and we caught on quickly. At least I knew that Belle was with Persis. Caleb was with her too, usually standing against the wall, not far from her chair, looking as though he thoroughly disapproved of all these festivities. Looking somehow watchful as well, as though he waited—for what? Like Caleb, Ingram was not dancing either, this being one of the things he couldn’t manage gracefully, but I glimpsed him now and then, always with a lady on his arm and an air of triumph about him that made me uneasy.
In the beginning I was swept along on a flow of energy. Even the sparkle of light spilling from the great center chandelier added to my state of excitement, and I was entranced by the color from great swaths of crimson and gold materials that Hillary had draped over dusty boxes to give an illusion of richness and drama. The slanted floor of the orchestra sometimes lent unexpected speed to our steps, and sometimes made it an effort to dance uphill. Spare fiddlers sat on the stage, taking turns to music that never ended—an integral part of the total exhilaration.
Later, Ingram had said, refreshments would be served at the Timberline, but in the meantime a bar had been set up in the theater lobby, and it was already well patronized. All this ran by in reels of color and light and sound, borne on waves of that vitality and excitement that Mark Ingram could generate.
Once I danced with Hillary and saw that he was in his element, caught up by an excitement that was really his norm. Once I saw him dancing with Gail and thought what a handsome pair they made—he with the fringe on his trapper’s jacket making a blur of graceful movement; she dressed as if for a rodeo in frontier pants and embroidered jacket, a Stetson set jauntily atilt on her head, with a thong under her chin to hold it in place. The time was when I might have felt a pang of jealousy, but now I only wished happiness for Hillary—away from me.
I even danced once, briefly, joyfully, with Jon. The music had changed to a sentimental waltz, and he whirled me around the room, laughing a little, though his eyes were grave. After that he disappeared again, and I didn’t see him until later that evening, when it was all over.
One impression has stayed with me especially. As I danced, a sense of unreality grew in me. I seemed to have lost touch with everything that was familiar. Grandmother Persis was sitting somewhere across the floor and Belle was with her. Probably Caleb too. But for me they existed on a distant plane. None of this was real—none of it existed. If I closed my eyes, all the make-believe would vanish in a flash. I was sure of that.
As the first intoxication died, I began to feel oddly frightened of what was happening to me. The chandelier shone with too dazzling a light, the fabric draped over the boxes was too richly scarlet, too metallically gold, the noise and the music and the laughter—all were too shrill, too artificial.
What I was feeling was a little like that intensity of sensation that can come just before a storm, to be dissipated only when the crash of thunder follows the slash of lightning. I found that I feared the storm, the sense of imminent disaster, and I knew that I had to escape the crowd. I had to find a quiet space where I could breathe more easily, and where I would be out of reach of the thunderbolt when it came.
I fought my way around to the steps at one side of the proscenium. I ran up them and through dusty curtains into the hush of a backstage world. The playing of the fiddler seemed to be thrown outward, as was intended by the acoustics, and while I could hear and see from the wings, some of the tumult quieted. I found a stool that had been left near the curtain pulleys, and sat down to put my hands over my ears and close my eyes, to let a semblance of quiet flow through me.
Where was Jon? I hadn’t seen him since we danced. I didn’t know until later that he was no longer in the building.
Voices reached me from overhead, and I realized that someone else had found the stairs to the old dressing room loft. I hated that place after what had happened to me up there, but it was anyone’s privilege to explore. Though perhaps I’d better warn whoever it was about the splintered catwalk, in case it hadn’t been blocked off.
I stepped to the foot of the stairs to call out, and then, abruptly, as if at a signal—which Ingram had indeed given—the fiddling stopped. My attention was distracted to the stage. When the crowd paused in the middle of a promenade to look up toward the footlights, Mark Ingram strode out from the opposite wings, carrying a microphone in his hand. He walked with scarcely a limp tonight, handsome and powerful of build, his gray hair growing thickly back from his forehead and an air of command in every line of his body.
I stepped into the nearest wing, where I could better see and hear him. My heart began to beat rapidly, as if with some dreadful anticipation. The sense of danger had quickened in me. What, exactly, he meant to do I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling that it would be outrageous and dramatic, and that it would be intended to crush and defeat my grandmother. I must try to get back to her as soon as I could, but for now I could only stand arrested, along with all the others who stared at the man on the stage.
As I looked across the boards—empty now exc
ept for the current fiddler on his stool, and for Ingram standing before the footlights—I saw that Gail Cullen had come into the opposite wing, resplendent in her rodeo outfit, all her attention upon the man who occupied stage center.
The theater quieted, all the myriad faces upturned toward Ingram as he began to speak. When I glanced across the stage again, Gail had disappeared. Perhaps she had stepped out of sight behind another wing.
At first Ingram’s words were quiet—a welcome to his guests, a promise of more festivity to come. Then he went on.
“I have an announcement to make that may interest a number of you. Some of you already know about my plans for Jasper. It will be opened to the public about a year from now, and it is going to be one of the finest year-round resorts in the Rockies. I can promise you that the skiing will be superb and that the town will have a great deal to offer to those who want to visit us and see what the old West was like.”
The crowd cheered. No one contradicted him. No one spoke up to say that he didn’t own the valley, that he didn’t own all of Domino, or all of Jasper, for that matter. I edged forward in the wings. Someone had to answer him. He was making something come about through his sheer, overpowering arrogance and the conviction that he could make happen whatever he willed. I was growing angry now, and anger overcame my fears. I ceased to dread the thunderbolt. He had to be stopped, and I moved toward the stage.
He must have caught movement from the corner of his eye, for he turned his head and looked at me.
“Ah,” he said, “here is Laurie Morgan now. I’d like to introduce her to you. And I want to introduce her grandmother, Persis Morgan, as well, since she is part of Jasper’s history.”
There was scattered applause from the crowd, and Ingram beckoned to me. “Won’t you come out, Miss Morgan?”
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