Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  He carried the telephone into his room that night, and slept without resting. He was sitting on the edge of his bed drinking coffee at eight the next morning when the phone rang stridently. Hot liquid spilled over his hand as he jumped involuntarily, and picked up the receiver before it could ring again.

  "David?" It was Doc Knudsen.

  "Yes, Doc—"

  "Bjarne is gone, David."

  David asked mechanically, "When, Doc?"

  "Early this morning. Eve and I were with him. He went in his sleep, David. He did not awaken again after you left him. I had thought it would be that way. He was waiting for you. You will tell your grandfather, or—or shall I?"

  "I will, of course, Doc. I—I—we're both—hell, I don't know what to say—"

  "There is nothing to be said, my boy. He loved you very much. Will you be at home this morning?"

  "Certainly. What can I do?"

  "Just let us come and sit with you and Li'l Joe and talk."

  "Anytime, Doc. Come now and have breakfast with us."

  Ambrose Jefferson drove Li'l Joe and David to the brief service in the chapel of the university and afterwards the Knudsens followed them back to Beauregard.

  At supper, which Gramp had insisted be served in the dining room, Karl said: "Ah! I had almost forgotten. We have heard from our Sara. She spoke of you, David."

  David kept his breathing slow and steady with an effort. He glanced down the table at Eve, saw her face flush with exasperation, and knew that if she could have reached the length of the table with a foot she would have kicked her husband without mercy. Knudsen, engrossed in the task of dismembering an artichoke, continued: "She is in Brussels for the time being. She says she is doing very well. There have been two paintings exhibited and both were sold. She is delighted, of course. She will do better now. An artist like Sara must have the feeling of communication, of giving something of herself to others, even if they are strangers and the gift is her art."

  David had scarcely heard Knudsen's words after his, "She spoke of you, David." He would not ask what she had said, could only hope that Doc would not catch his wife's eye and the warning therein and stop before he had revealed whatever Sara had said. Then Eve, apparently resigned to her husband's blunder, and knowing it irrevocable, said, "In one of my letters I told her about Bjarne's illness, and that was why she wrote. She's a rotten poor correspondent. She addressed her letter to Karl. She said she knew how you would feel, David, as well as Karl. And, of course, that her sympathy was with you both."

  Knudsen, the artichoke reduced to submission now, said, "Tell me, David, do you see Martin ever? And Sutherland? And Evans?"

  David, living for a moment in a brighter world, a world made small enough for Sara to reach across it and touch him gently, replied almost automatically: "Sutherland is in his last year at med school, and married. Chuck Martin will be ordained in a few months as a—I think as a deacon—then a full-fledged minister, later. Tom is teaching at Bennington in Vermont."

  Eve was laughing. "It's hard to picture Tom Evans as finally teaching. Sara always said he'd never last as a professor because all his students would fight to hold him on their laps."

  David walked to the car with them and stood for a moment with his hand on the ledge of the door, leaning over to look in at them, loath suddenly to see them go.

  "You will leave tomorrow morning, David?" asked Knudsen.

  "I have to."

  The car came to purring life under Knudsen's foot. "And you will remember that we want you with us for whatever time you can spare one of these days?"

  "I'll sure remember, Doc."

  Eve reached across her husband's body and laid her hand over David's. "Everything that's good to you, David. Keep in touch—"

  He watched them drive off, his mind occupied by the memory of Eve's words about Sara. He wondered if Sara had thought, when she wrote, that the Knudsens would see him, if she had meant her words as a message destined to reach him eventually. He wanted to think that she had, and his step was lighter and quicker as he walked up the path to the little house whose lamps glowed warmly now through the open door.

  CHAPTER 48

  As soon as he arrived at his apartment late in the afternoon of the next day, David called the office. Dora answered the telephone. "I missed you, David. I had time on my hands without you around to ask questions."

  David laughed. "Remind me to tell Brad Willis that your presence in the office is incompetent, irrelevant, and irresponsible. Is he there?"

  "No. He had to go to Dedham, poor dear. He left word that if you called I was to tell you to meet him in the lobby of the Bay State Hotel at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. He's taking you to breakfast"

  "Eight o'clock!"

  "Yup. And don't be late. I'm so sorry about your Wiking, David. He was one of those people you can't think of as dying."

  "He was one of those people who don't, Dora. They leave too much vitality and good behind them for anyone to ever think of them as dead."

  ***

  Brad was ten minutes late the next morning, but smiling as he crossed the lobby.

  "What in hell is going on?" asked David. "Breakfast here at eight, all this jazz. I've only been gone three days. Am I fired?"

  "Good God, no! Have you been worrying, brat? I wanted to have you come to the house last night, but—well, I couldn't, that's all."

  "I sort of figured that It's why I didn't call. Things are rough?"

  "Very. At the moment."

  They followed a waiter through the dark-paneled, old-fashioned dining room to a small wall table. After they had ordered and the waiter had brought orange juice, Brad said: "Brace yourself, brat This is the kind of talk that usually takes place in the hallowed sanctuary of a law office or a family living room after the services."

  "Will you get going!"

  "Do you remember when Professor Knudsen was here in the very early summer, and you came to the office one morning early and he was in conference with me?"

  "Yes. I thought he was being Dr. Spock on David Champlin."

  "He wasn't. You know what his feeling was for you, David. It shouldn't be too big a surprise to you to hear that he was discussing methods of expediting your receipt of a large portion—a third, to be exact—of his estate."

  "A third? Of the Prof's estate?"

  "Yes. You, his brother, and ALEC are residuary legatees, after expenses and some minor, but still generous, bequests to servants and friends. He also bequeathed you your choices of his books."

  David sat without speaking, staring across the table at Brad. That the Prof might have remembered him in his will to a certain extent would have come as no surprise. This was a different thing entirely. He repeated stupidly, "A third? Brad, there's a mistake—"

  "You know there isn't He did not include your grandfather, he said, because he knew you would always take care of him. He specifically asked me to advise you—not that you need advice—on means of safeguarding Li'l Joe should you predecease him."

  "He didn't forget anything, did he," said David, almost in a whisper.

  "No. I wish I had known him for as many years as you did."

  "It's hard to take in all at once."

  "Aren't you going to ask how much?"

  "I don't dare. Listen, Brad, I'm earning money today, and unless I really goof it'll increase. But I might be earning seventy-five cents an hour, even with a college education, driving a laundry truck or working as a janitor or God knows what if it hadn't been for a guy named Bjarne Knudsen and the cockeyed kind of luck that got me into his hands."

  "Let's don't get into another argument about 'luck.'"

  "O.K. But I feel that damned near everything I have the Prof left me."

  "I think you'd have made it, somehow, on your own. But I'll go along that the Professor made it possible for you to get there on a first-class ticket. For some that might not have been good. But it did you no harm. For which, thank Gramp."

  "We can't know I'd have m
ade it. Not for sure."

  "Let's leave the speculative, shall we? As for the extent of the estate, if you're interested—"

  "Oh, hell, of course I am."

  "We'll get into full detail back at the office. I doubt that anyone, even his brother, realized the full extent of the Professor's holdings. Even split three ways it will give you, carefully invested, an independent income of several thousand a year. Roughly, five. As times goes on, this will increase. If, as I say, if it is wisely handled."

  "My God! And that's a third?"

  "Yes."

  "You," said David. . "I? What?"

  "Take over. For God's sweet sake, take over. I'll make you my attorney-in-fact with absolute powers. We'll set it up somehow. So much each month to me, so much for Gramp. My God!"

  "You're repeating yourself. And you're crazy besides. You're perfectly capable—"

  "I'm not. Somebody else's maybe, not my own."

  "We'll go into it later."

  "It's decided."

  "All right, all right. Eat, man! Time's a-wasting."

  "Right."

  When they arrived at the office, Brad told Dora he would take only important calls, rang for Lucy and more coffee, and took a copy of the last will and testament of Bjarne Knudsen from the wall safe, going over it quickly with David. It had been drawn up by a New Orleans attorney. "He wanted me to do it," said Brad, "but I explained that it should be done by a resident of the city in which he lived. That was why he had the idea of creating the trust for you before his death, naming me as trustee—what the hell had you been telling him about me, anyhow?—and having it become yours in its entirety, outright, on his death. He apparently didn't trust anyone down there."

  "But—but no one said anything to me—"

  "David, your 'Prof knew when he was here that he was dying. He was told about it before he went to Europe, and it was confirmed by specialists there. He underwent a long and hideously unpleasant course of treatment there. And then he voluntarily discontinued it. He submitted to surgery in New Orleans more as an alleviation of pain and discomfort than as a therapeutic procedure. He knew it wouldn't be that."

  "But I wish I'd known. I could have written oftener, been a hell of a lot more thoughtful than I was. I feel cheated out of the chance to have shown him—"

  "Maybe that's why. Don't ever think the Prof doubted your affection for him. I think he simply did not want to make that affection a burden. Anyhow, he swore me to absolute secrecy."

  "Good God! I still don't take it in. He didn't even tell Gramp. Or did he?"

  "Said he didn't dare. Fond as he was of Li'l Joe, he said he was afraid Li'l Joe wouldn't have been able to keep quiet about this."

  "And he wouldn't have been, even if he'd promised, and good as his word is."

  "If the miracle had happened, he probably would have come out in the open and set up the trust anyhow."

  "And I'd have raised a sand—"

  "Exactly. He knew that. But he also knew how remote the possibility was. A few months did not matter."

  A few months did not matter. The words brought the

  Prof's death home to him more than anything that had happened during the past three days. Only a few months—and for much of that short time a sick and dying man had planned and worked out details for the future of David Champlin. And at the end there had been no shadow of things to come, of benefits to be gained, in that final poignant meeting.

  He got up and prowled restlessly around the room until Brad's voice called him back to reality.

  "Do you think you can manage to buckle down to what's left of the Litchfield mess now? Lloyd's all primed to come over this afternoon, if you're back."

  David pulled his mind back to the office of Abernathy, Willis and Shea with an effort. "Sure, I'm ready. We ought to wind it up in about ten days. Then I'll rush out and put in an order for his first issue of stock."

  It took three weeks instead of ten days to finish with Litchfield and get the final file on Brad's desk. The following week Brad came into his office and said, "Good going. Litchfield is delighted."

  The next morning Brad called out to David as he heard him walk by the office. When David was standing beside the desk he said, "For God's sake, get a car."

  "May I, daddy?"

  "Shut up, you big ape. Treat your elders with more respect. You need one to run errands for the firm. Someone's got to make several trips to Dedham this week."

  "It's up to you. I keep telling you that."

  "No souped-up jobs, no swank. That you can't afford."

  "No, sir. A modest, middle-income-type car for a modest, middle-income-type young lawyer. Of course, I've always hankered for a Jag—"

  "No."

  "Yes, sir. The modest, middle-income-type two-door. A little chrome, maybe?"

  "A small amount. Beat it. Go out to Fenway Motors. I'll phone them, and we'll handle it until final settlement of the estate is made."

  "Yes, sir." He grinned and started out the door, turned back at the threshold. "Radio and heater? It gets awful cold and lonesome—"

  "Scram!"

  "Right."

  CHAPTER 49

  Sara Kent swept her London studio as though earthly time had run out to its last hour and eternal damnation awaited her who left behind an unswept floor. One reason was that she hated any form of housework and she wanted to put it behind her. Another reason was that on this particular morning she was tired, her mouth dry and fuzzy from too many cigarettes, her head aching from too much wine the night before, and her mood one of bitter self-analysis that she tried to sweep away along with the clutter and messiness left over from an informal studio party. It was a cool day for midsummer, drizzly and gray. She had rented the studio a month before, when she came over from Brussels and Copenhagen after more than a year away from the United States.

  "It doesn't work, Sara Kent." She spoke out loud, pouncing on an empty cigarette package under an easel. "It doesn't work. Parties don't work, and kook friends don't work, and other men only make it worse, and trying to be cynical doesn't work. Nothing works. But work." She tossed the package onto a pile of swept-up debris in a corner just as there was a sharp knock at the door. That was the last thing she wanted—company. She hesitated before she said "Come in!" and braced herself to tell whoever it might be to get out and let her alone.

  Then she was calling out "Hunter!" and suddenly wanting to cry, and finding it very good to hide her face against the lapel of his coat when he hugged her.

  He walked farther into the studio, one arm still around her shoulders, looking over the room with unabashed curiosity. "You've got company?"

  "No. Whatever made you think I had?"

  "I heard you talking."

  "To myself, luv. A lifelong habit."

  "Before I came here I called that mausoleum."

  "Mausoleum?"

  "That great gray pile of fustiness where you—hell, I can't say 'live'—where you reside. Why for God's sake?"

  "Because I like it, Hunter Travis. And you'll be careful, if you please, how you refer to one of London's oldest. It's quiet, and they're wonderful to me. The maids and porters and everyone else treat me as though I were their youngest and puniest."

  "God knows you have to be their youngest. My mother tells me they keep a stock of collapsible wheelchairs behind the desk." He lowered himself to a cushion on the floor and sat cross-legged, looking up at her. "But why not save money and live here? Is it because you haven't any chairs? I'm sure the family has some, stashed away in storage—"

  "No. And I do have chairs, two of them, over there in the corner. And a couch behind that screen where I can sleep if I want to work late."

  "Or?"

  " 'Or' nothing. Or—or nothing that matters. Hunter, go back where you came from if you're going to chivvy me."

  "I'm not, ducks. Bed and breakfast at the mausoleum? And what they call food? Don't look at me like that. We stayed there once when I was a child, and ever after when I was naughty th
e family threatened me with dinner there again."

  "Well, I don't mind. Sometimes they have treacle pudding—"

  "My God!"

  "I love it. Anyhow, as you well know, I hate to cook, especially makeshift studio cooking."

  "You didn't exactly starve in Boston."

  "I—I—" She stopped, unable to finish, and was pleased to see that Hunter's thin, expressive face showed embarrassment. She knew the slip had been careless and without intent to remind her that in Boston she had shared most of her meals with one David Champlin, a master cook since childhood, who would rather prepare a meal himself than take a chance on someone else's ignorance of the niceties of the art, a man whose strong, long-fingered hands had magic in them when they handled food. More than magic when they—"

  "Hunter. Tea? I can make it. Biscuits from a tin I can give you—"

  "No. Having made a colossally stupid remark, I might as well follow through and not back away from it."

  "No!"

  He paid no attention to her protest, drew up his legs, folding long arms around them, resting his chin on a knee.

  "You look like a blond satyr," said Sara.

  "I have earlobes. I understand satyrs don't. Besides, who's ever heard of a Negro satyr?" His eyes narrowed to blue slits, showing no expression. "How you making it, young Kent?"

  "Fine. Just fine and dandy and peachy-keen, you—you prying bastard!"

  "I am, I know. The only reason I'm concerned is because—"

  "I know, I know. Because you're fond of me. Keep your damned fondness! I don't mean that, Hunter; I don't, truly. But keep your concern. I'm not such an idiot I don't know that it takes time. And more time. And more—"