At this point the conductor opened the door and came down the aisle. Ahead, the locomotive broke into a doleful wail for the crossing on the Cobble road just south of New Winton. The conductor held the top of the next seat and said: "This is your station, Mrs. Cole."
Mrs. Cole objected: "I gave you my ticket, young man."
"Yes, I got it. This is New Winton. This is where you want to get off."
"Is this Bridgeport?"
"No, ma'am. This is —"
"Well, I'm going to Bridgeport. Will you tell me when we're getting in?"
"This train don't go to Bridgeport, Mrs. Cole."
"Why didn't you say so when you took my ticket? Land sakes, where does it go to?"
"You don't live in Bridgeport any more, Mrs. Cole. This is New Winton."
"Well, have the train stop, please. That's where I want to get off." She arose, flurried, and the conductor bent down, recovering her packages. "Those are some little things I bought at the five and ten," she told him. "Thank you very much." She hooked her umbrella over her arm, clasped her handbag tight and poked the newspaper under one elbow. Three or four amazed faces watched her leave the smoking car.
"Will you be kind enough to assist me, young man?" she said to the conductor. "I have all these things."
"Don't you worry, Mrs. Cole. We'll get you off." He opened the door of the other car and shouted perfunctorily, "New Winton, New Winton. . . ."
When the train had moved on, and most of the cars and light trucks waiting for it had either got into motion or shown no immediate sign of doing so, Mrs. Cole judged it safe to cross from the gravel platform of the station to Fell's Meat Market. She looked sharply at the wide closed doors of the station garage to be sure that no motor was going to sally out on her. Continuing, she went briskly by Fell's lighted windows to the corner, where the short street led up to the green, between Upjohn Brothers' store and the bulky building known as Upjohn's Hall across the way. At this point she stopped, made a slight clicking sound with her tongue, turned about and went back to Fell's.
Warner Fell himself, in a dirty apron, was behind the hacked cutting-block. "Good evening, Mrs. Cole," he said.
Mrs. Cole sniffed. "Something don't smell very fresh here," she remarked generally. "Why, Mrs. Cole, I'm sure everything —"
"Well, something isn't. How are your lamb chops?"
Warner Fell pushed up the latch of the big refrigerator doors, produced, dropping on the block, a chunk of bone-backed meat. Mrs. Cole bent down and sniffed it, looked a moment at the faint round government inspection stampings in purple ink. "H'm," she said, "it's a poor cut. Well, I'll take a dozen. Cut them thick."
'Warner Fell drew out a long knife, sliced to the bone, chopped through with a cleaver. When he had done this four times, he said appraisingly, "Don't you guess four would be enough, Mrs. Cole? These are good thick ones."
"Yes. Four's right. That's two for the Doctor, and one for me, and one for Susie."
She added this to her other packages, went out and walked up to the green. Crossing the road, she passed the lighted windows of the library, looked carefully to be certain that the fire truck wasn't on the point of coming out of the adjoining drive-way. In front of Weems' house at the corner, she paused, glancing up and down the deserted road. Then she crossed over and passed along the upper end of the green. When she got beyond the Ordways' house she saw that there was no light at home; the Doctor couldn't have got in yet, and she remembered that she had let Susie go. The Doctor could eat the other chop, or it would do for Susie to-morrow.
Passing through the gap in the lilac hedge, she reached the door. Here on the steps, she had to set down most of her packages in order to find her key and use it. Once inside, she got a light on, went directly to the kitchen where she deposited all her things on the table.
This was hardly done when the telephone rang, for, up at the other end of the green, Helen Webster saw the light. Mrs. Cole came pattering back again and took off the receiver. "No," she said, "I don't know where he is. I just this minute got in. Oh! You say she died? Oh! Now, that's too bad. Please wait a minute until I get something to write with. I'll make a note for him —"
She laid the receiver down and went back to the kitchen, turning over her things on the table in search of a pad and pencil. Not finding them immediately, she paused, perplexed. Out of a page of photographs which her paper, thrown down, had exposed, the nostalgic word Bridgeport arrested her. It went on— Beauty of Maniac's Retribution? The photograph of a dark, thick-featured girl regarded her. Revenge hinted in murderous attack on pretty Nita Popolato. Story p. 2. Mrs. Cole made a clicking sound with her tongue and turned to page two.
February 19th, Bridgeport, Conn. Near death in St. Vincent's Hospital, Nita Popolato, dark-eyed Bridgeport beauty of seventeen, gasped out a tale of primitive vengeance and passion which set police scouring the city for —
After a while Helen Webster shrugged. Having no facilities for a howler circuit, the most she could do was keep ringing the line. This effected a small, discontented clucking noise, audible a few yards around the unhooked receiver in the hall. Mrs. Cole, who had found her reading-glasses and pulled a chair up to the light in the kitchen, was not disturbed by it.
"Guy, darling!" Mrs. Banning called, "Guy!"
She heard the violent opening of his door and his quick step in the upper hall. "Oh, never mind, dear," she said. "I just thought I heard your car. It was probably one on the road."
"You did hear it," said Guy. His voice was constricted with fury, and Mrs. Banning turned from her dressing-table. "Come in, dear," she said. "Why, what is the trouble?"
Guy pushed the door open. A pattern of half-dry lather, left from his interrupted shaving, decorated his face, he knotted the cord of his dressing-gown hard about him. "Why, Guy," repeated Mrs. Banning, "what on earth has happened?"
"What you heard," Guy said, "was Ginny taking my car out. And I won't have it. I've told her twenty times that it isn't safe for her to drive it. It's not a Ford. If she thinks I'm going to let her smash it up just for fun—the crazy little fool!"
"Oh," faltered Mrs. Banning, "how did she get it? Why, how dreadful! She couldn't hurt herself, could she?"
"I don't care what she does to herself; it's the car I'm worried about. She got it because I was fool enough to leave the keys in it. How did I know she was going to sneak around and take it when I wasn't looking? If you and Father can't make her stop, I can. I'll spank the pants off her —"
"Now, Guy!" interrupted Mrs. Banning. "That's enough. I want you to control your temper. I quite understand that you're upset; and there's no excuse for Virginia. Your father will deal with it —"
"He won't do anything to her; he never does—"
"Now, darling, we aren't going to spoil this week-end with quarrelling. Virginia is younger than you are. She doesn't always understand —"
"Understand?" he groaned. "What doesn't she understand? The English language? And, my God, she's practically seventeen. You talk as if she were about ten. That's the whole trouble, really. Everybody treats her like a baby. She ought to be at school. Except, I suppose, no decent school would take her, after she's been fired from everywhere on the map."
Mrs. Banning arose. "We won't talk about it when you're so excited, dear. You go and finish dressing. I'm not excusing Virginia; it was very wrong of her to take your car without your permission, and I know she won't do it again. And, Guy, try to be a little patient with her, won't you? She's not very strong, and she's not very happy. She really hasn't a friend her own age except Valeria Hoyt —"
"All right," he said, "all right! I suppose you would make her behave if you could; and if you don't, you just can't." He turned and went out.
His mother, following him, went to the stairs. The slight weight of her small, but carefully recorded and clearly seen concerns made her frown a little. She could, almost simultaneously, be anxious about Virginia; regret Guy's violence when annoyed; remember to speak to Mary about
the mint sauce. From the afternoon's meeting of the School Committee, she kept her resolve to do something—perhaps appeal to Hartford—about Doctor Bull's utter neglect of his duties in-regard to the compulsory vaccination of the school children at Cold Hill. Plainly the county authorities weren't going to do anything about it. Her own personal distaste for Doctor Bull, his boorishness, his coarse, roaring manner, his callous, undoubtedly ignorant neglect of his work and his patients, she tried to keep out of it; but really it was almost incredible that a family like the Bulls could have produced such a person!
From her encounter with Doctor Wyck, the Rector, she had the matters of seeing that flowers for the altar, in the proper, seasonally difficult red of an Apostle and Martyr, were on hand on Tuesday. When Doctor Wyck spoke of Tuesday, she had, with the greatest presence of mind, been able to remember that it was v St. Matthias's Day, and say so, before he made his own reference to the Feast of Our Patron. She was, after all, one of the few that Doctor Wyck relied on for a decorous High Church attitude, and she would have been much chagrined if she had let him down.
Then there was poor Mamie Talbot. She must really go over to-morrow and see for herself if anything could be done to make the child more comfortable. Mamie's illness brought back the never welcome thought of Doctor Bull; and she wondered if Doctor Verney couldn't be persuaded—Doctor Bull's gross negligence and incompetence made it really Doctor Verney's Christian duty—to come up and—
In the hall and along the stairs, the walls were papered in the modern copy of an old pattern. Vertically, horizontally, and obliquely, in exact alignment, three sage-green designs repeated themselves on the white ground. One was a stiff, heraldic eagle, his claws full of furled American flags; one was a laurel-wreathed bouquet of cannon, swords, muskets, and infantry drums. The third showed the gaunt face of President Jackson. Below his bust, the cleft streamer read: Our Federal Union it must be preserved. Mrs. Banning halted and studied it, startled, for she thought that she had seen a stain near the top at the end. Her mind jumped instantly to the chance of a tub overflowing in the bath between Guy's room and Virginia's. Relieved, she realized then that it was only a shadow, and went on.
Turning back through the hall, the half-open door gave her a glimpse of the warm dusk in the library. A mixture of lamplight and failing firelight shone up the panelled, urn-topped doors of a secretary desk from her great-grandfather's New Haven house. Her husband sat before it, the pen in his hand moving steadily. Beyond his small, neat shoulders and upright head, she could see the books climbing the wall in unbroken rows through the aureate twilight, gilt titles catching the glow. From this glimpse as from the tranquil hall, and from the dining-room (now that she went through it) with the fine sideboard, the laid oval table with candles unlighted, the four good Chippendale chairs— , she wished that she had four more, instead of three more; but seven, when they were such exceptionally good and authentic ones, was a respectable number— Mrs. Banning could take the quiet, never-ending, often not even conscious, pleasure of a house by years of patient effort made exactly the way she wanted it, and functioning serenely under her attentive eye.
The pantry and kitchen were glowing, full of a savoury warmth of good cooking, a cheery cleanliness and shining order in the porcelain and enamel, the glass and non-corrosive metals of modern equipment. Mary, seated by the prim burnt orange curtains, was reading the morning paper. Ethel was calmly busy over pots steaming on the long stove. Mary put down the paper and stood up. Ethel said: "Good evening, ma'am."
"Oh, Ethel, that smells very nice," Mrs. Banning said contented. "Mary, will you remember to use the little silver boat for the mint sauce, please? And will you bring some ice and a shaker into the library in about five minutes? I think Mr. Banning and Guy would like a cocktail."
Laying down the tapering black shadows of screening cedars, gilding the enclosing fence of woven chestnut paling, Virginia watched her headlights sweep the garage and stable. Immediately mounted up the boom of deep-throated barking. Virginia could see, now that she was past the fence, the twin dog-houses near the door of Larry's living quarters. Out of them were thrust the smooth piebald heads, large ears cocked bristling, belligerent, of the Great Danes. Observing that this car was going right into the garage, first Delilah, then, eagerly, Samson, planted massive thick-toed forepaws on the trampled snow. Their splotch-marked bodies emerged. First one, then the other, barked; monitory rather than excited. With diligent haste, majestic in their mere stature, they bounded together in order to investigate.
Virginia brought Guy's car to a halt beside her father's; switched off the ignition and then the lights. She could hear the pad of heavy feet on the cement. Samson's sharp ears and bold, big muzzle appeared, face to face with her, his paws supported on the doortop at her side. He made at once a gratified whining sound. Jostling him, up came Delilah, pawing Virginia's leather-covered shoulder with her blunt claws. Virginia sat still a moment and Samson's wide wet tongue slapped vigorously down her cheek. Recoiling, she pushed his head away, opened the door, forcing them both down, and stepped out. Delilah made a half wheel, collapsed, displaying her long, nipple-marked breast and belly to be scratched. Virginia started to put out a foot, but her knees, she found, were not yet steady. Samson pushed his heavy head confidingly against her hip, crowding closer.
The kindness of this reception seemed enough to kill her. Virginia could feel a violent tingling in the bridge of her nose; tears swam warm into her eyes; a trembling came over her and her chest swelled to suffocation. She sniffed a little, and Delilah rolled back; disappointed, she arose to her feet. Both of them tilted their heads up to regard her face, their tongues hanging in mild wonder.
She managed to say, "Leave me alone, you damn fools!" for she knew that they were going to do that in a moment. Their instinctive, reasonless jubilation at sight of her would be innocently exhausted. The dog-houses, slightly warmed by their big bodies, were where they wanted to be, since there was nothing to eat and no one to attack. They would withdraw, her two last senseless friends, bored with her. "Get away!" she choked. She went and snapped out the garage lights. In the darkness she could see the dogs' big shadowy shapes slip round the jamb, out against the starlit snow. When she had come out and pulled down the overhead doors, she saw that they were already back, snug in their kennels.
At the top, across the back of the last cheque, Mr. Banning wrote Herbert Tracy Banning for deposit only. He blotted it, laid it with the others. Turning the little pile over, he took the deposit slip and compared the list. Since it was correct, he put cheques and slip together in a long envelope and addressed it to his New York bank. Laying his pen on the rack of an old Sheffield tray, he sat back in his chair, thoughtful.
A pad covered with columns of his neat figures informed him that he was slightly better off than he had expected to be. There might not be much margin this year; but really it was remarkable that there was any margin at all.
Part of the difference, he supposed, was not having Virginia's school bills through the winter. Getting herself expelled from Miss Keble's, however regrettable, would seem to have been a very comfortable financial lift. A solid contribution, in fact; both to him, and, little as Guy might suspect it, to Guy. It would not be necessary to bring up the matter of Guy's expenses—
This was Guy's third year at Yale, and he had managed to spend progressively more money. Naturally, he did it without making a splurge. Being ostentatiously rich was something he and his friends regarded with contemptuous distaste; the only possible worse form was being obviously poor. From what Mr. Banning had seen of these young men on rare occasions in New Haven, or when one or two of them came up to visit Guy, he concluded that they were perfectly satisfied if they had, materially, no more than the best of everything in merely practical quantities. This seemed to Mr. Banning reasonable. Philosophy had nothing to do with youth. If you were not a great athlete, or what seemed to be called a Big Man, and so beyond criticism, what buttressed your pride—not less exc
ruciatingly sensitive for being callow—except the perfection of your clothes and possessions? It would be time enough to laugh at this puerile obsession with material things later, when the ego had found a new mainstay in some form of personal accomplishment and might even enjoy not looking like the great man everyone could easily learn that you were.
Having by now a fair idea of what it cost Guy to be impeccable in Yale's eyes, Mr. Banning was prepared to add it to the already remarkably large total of Guy's expenses through school and college. Guy's education would probably prove a good investment. Guy would not, naturally, know anything in the scholastic, or even cultural sense; but he would be admirably fitted, through his acquaintances and habits of mind and life, to enrich himself. There was no reason to doubt that he would be happy doing it. Since Mr. Banning had never in his own life done anything but reflect, and read in his library, and work in his garden, he was not sure that he was qualified to have an opinion on the virtue or value of Guy's prospects.
Indeed, he doubted if he knew enough about Guy to see clearly where good lay for him in life. He could not possibly guess what it was like to be Guy; or what Guy, in command of his own affairs and able to behave as best pleased him (rather than as his family with its crushing full knowledge of his past expected him to behave), was like. At home you couldn't tell; he deferred to his father partly through habit, partly perhaps because he did not and never had understood the defensive nature of his father's dry, often indulgently ironic speech. The day hadn't yet come when Guy would realize that he himself was much the more formidable of the two; that irony was really a form of embarrassment; and that what his father needed was a little firm handling. Probably, Mr. Banning reflected, he would live to find Guy competently making up his mind for him, patiently seeing that his vagaries didn't do him any real harm. Guy already had the voice and expression; he merely lacked the sharpened eye to see that his father was an aimless old putterer. The patronage of to-day would be reversed as Guy, turning from his large and successful affairs, found a moment to say: "Father, you know you don't want anything of the sort. It's absurd. I'll arrange to —"
The Last Adam Page 6
