The Balcony

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “I believe that myself!” Cousin Hoy exclaimed involuntarily, and then continued in a cautious way, “Mind you, I’m not criticizing Aunt Amanda. But apparently her own activities aren’t making the investigation of her murder any easier.”

  “That’s quite an admission, Dad,” said Glenn with an irony that his father overlooked. He turned back to me. “Didn’t you say the woman mentioned money? I didn’t understand that part.”

  I hadn’t understood it either. But I repeated carefully the woman’s vehement and agitated words—her declaration that behind Aunt Amanda’s murder lay the shadow of her father’s vanished fortune, a fortune which, in her phrase, had ruined the Hieronomos and ruined the family of Stanley Ayres.

  “But the money’s gone, Anne,” Glenn said patiently. “It went with Daisy Witherspoon. Years ago. Ask Dad. He knows when the family fortune went and where.”

  He glanced toward his father for confirmation. Hoy was fiddling with his watch charm. Apparently he was intent upon placing it squarely in the center of his bulging middle.

  “I always thought I knew,” he said uncertainly.

  There was an odd, an electric little silence.

  “Thought?” repeated Glenn, and his tone was uncertain, too. “Thought, Dad? Isn’t it a matter of record that Daisy walked off with everything that Great-grandfather owned except the house?”

  “What record could there be,” inquired his father testily, “beyond the facts themselves? The money vanished and so did the girl. What else could we think? What could we do? We didn’t discover what had happened to the estate—that we were virtually pauperized—until Granddad was in his grave, and Daisy had fled to Europe. It was too late then.”

  “Too late to establish the facts?”

  “Too late to get the money back,” replied his father candidly. “You can take my word for it—we tried. Amanda went up to New York in an effort to trace Daisy. Less than two weeks after the accident. But the girl had already covered up her tracks, hopped an outgoing boat, and left no forwarding address behind. In my opinion,” he then admitted, “the search, the time and effort that went into it was wasted anyhow. We couldn’t have extra-dieted Daisy, even if we’d found her. We could only have attempted to persuade her to come back and face a test in court. It’s not a criminal offense to accept whatever a doting old man gives you, even though you thereby rob his family. I never doubted that Granddad acted voluntarily.”

  “But you didn’t see Daisy take the money?”

  “See?” said Hoy, exasperated. “You surprise me, son! We’re not discussing any ordinary transaction where a few hundred dollars changes hands. Nearly half a million dollars was involved.”

  I was as awed by that figure as Patience would have been. My own voice was small.

  “Exactly what are the facts?”

  “The reputed facts,” said Glenn.

  But Hoy’s account was impressive and damning to Daisy Witherspoon. Shortly after John Hieronomo met and wooed the young music teacher he had, without the knowledge of his family, begun systematically to liquidate his estate and remove his holdings from the bank. Those withdrawals were all on record, were still existent in yellowing files at the Mount Hope bank. During this interval Daisy had made frequent trips to New York. She had exhibited publicly the expensive gifts that John Hieronomo had lavished on her, and there was nothing to show that she had not received his fortune secretly. In her subsequent behavior there was a great deal to show that she had possession of the money and that she meant to keep it.

  “What else except a guilty conscience,” Hoy demanded, “could explain her conduct on the day of Grandfather’s death? Why else wouldn’t she wait to meet the family? Only Amos—and he was horribly shaken by his own injuries—and the stationmaster ever saw her after the accident. She didn’t talk to them, she didn’t weep or show any sign of feeling. She sat in the station—with her wedding luggage piled around her— until the next train came, and then she went.”

  Across the gulf of years I seemed to see Daisy Witherspoon. A young girl, with an ashen face, sitting in a railroad station surrounded by a heap of bags. A few short yards away, beyond a grimy unwashed window, lay the body of the fiance who had been killed before her eyes, flung beneath the wheels of the very train that was returning her to her wedding ceremony. What had been that young girl’s thoughts? Had she felt grief? Or had there stirred in her heart only a kind of shamed relief because accident had stepped in to release her from a crushing obligation? Had she loved in the least that tall, gaunt red-haired man who had adored her, but who had been two generations older than herself? She hadn’t waited for his funeral; she had sent no word to anyone; she had vanished on the next convenient train.

  My own thoughts were wandering in the past. It was Glenn who brought me back to sharp attention. It was he who brought into the discussion a name that I would not have mentioned—the name of Stanley Ayres.

  “Beyond bringing Daisy to Mount Hope,” Glenn asked, “and introducing her to Granddad, was Stanley Ayres actually connected with what happened? Is there any proof that he shared in the money?”

  “None whatever,” said Hoy at once. “But Ayres was with Granddad in the bank, and he was cognizant of what was going on, was thoroughly aware that Granddad was selling everything. He could have notified the children what was happening to the assets. He didn’t. It was his own attitude that caused the trouble—touched off the scandal that rocked Mount Hope twenty-five years ago.”

  Gradually as he talked, Hoy had begun to glow with an indignation that was old and worn, but that still could shake the Hieronomos. “Stanley Ayres took the attitude that the situation was a colossal joke. A joke on us! His opinion—and he expressed it frankly—was that Daisy Witherspoon was as much entitled to Granddad’s money as were his children, his natural heirs, his own flesh and blood. I know he told Amanda that Granddad had left us something better than a fortune—a priceless opportunity to go to work!”

  That reminded me of Dan himself. But I could see a man like Stanley Ayres wouldn’t be calculated to soothe a bereft, bewildered and impoverished family.

  “Naturally enough,” said Hoy, “the family wasn’t prepared to take such words calmly. Particularly the women. Amanda and Patience flung some mud of their own. They publicly accused Ayres of plotting with Daisy Witherspoon to pauperize us all. They suggested Ayres knew where the girl was hiding, was being subsidized by her for keeping quiet. Ayres threatened to sue for slander. They moved to file a counter-suit demanding an examination of Ayres’ own finances. The whole village took sides. Then Stanley Ayres caught pneumonia and died, and that was the end of it.”

  Twenty-five years had not been long enough to end the bitterness engendered in that long-ago and distant day. The Ayres-Hieronomo feud was a vivid and continuing reality. Cousin Hoy knew that, and so did Glenn and I. The little fat man rose to indicate that for him the conversation at least was ended.

  Glenn didn’t stir. Always his mind was more logical than mine, more precise and more exact. And he wasn’t satisfied.

  “Wait a moment, Father. You knew John Hieronomo. I never saw him. But I always thought of him as hardheaded, stubborn—not mean—but shrewd and clever. It doesn’t sound like him to relinquish power, to hand over his funds to anyone even in the—the rather special circumstances.”

  Hoy hesitated. He looked exceedingly uncomfortable.

  “Grandfather was very much in love. He was seventy-two. His—his best days were past.”

  “You mean,” Glenn put it baldly, “that his mind was affected?”

  Hoy was shocked, reproachful.

  “I wouldn’t say that, son. With increasing age everybody’s eccentricities multiply, everybody’s mannerisms become pronounced. That’s natural. That’s life. Grandfather became more secretive, more suspicious—particularly of—of us. Of his family. He could be charmed and attracted by outsiders, but with us it was different. As he loved strangers more, he loved his family less. Then, too, he got a cur
ious notion about property, began apparently to believe that no investment was safe, that stocks and bonds were slips of paper. He’d been brought up on gold, and he went back to it. You knew, of course, that the vanished fortune was in gold.”

  The unknown woman had spoken of gold, but I hadn’t supposed she meant it literally. Glenn was so startled that he almost dropped his flashlight.

  “Gold! You can’t mean gold, Dad. Half a million dollars in gold would weigh a ton!”

  “Half a million in gold,” said Hoy, “would weigh exactly 894.6 lbs. I know to the ounce. We investigated thoroughly at the time. There’s no doubt whatever the estate was all in gold. That’s on record.”

  “You—you suggest that Great-grandfather himself carted this thumping sum from the bank?”

  “Not all at once,” said his father dryly. “I told you his selling program covered a full year. He removed the money week by week, day by day, as his assets were liquidated. Sometimes he would take as much as ten thousand dollars at a time. Meanwhile Daisy was making almost weekly trips to New York. Grandfather carried a brief case to the bank,” said Hoy, and moved definitely toward the door. “Daisy carried her luggage to New York.” That was all that could be got from Cousin Hoy. We followed him through the raw, chill night, across wastes of slush and snow, to the house. Glenn was silent and was seemingly depressed by the melancholy revelations of the past. But I was not depressed. Even then I had a feeling—a kind of prescience—that in the past itself might lie an answer to the present.

  XVI

  THE LIBRARY OF HIERONOMO HOUSE was calculated to erase the present. It was in that large and gloomy room—one of John Hieronomo’s favorite retiring places—that we found the family gathered when we came in from our trip outside.

  Patience, who was firmly of the opinion that any volume owned long enough gained thereby intrinsic value, had decided to catalogue the books and, as she put it, save something from the wreckage. Great-uncle Richard, who detested any kind of manual labor, was poking halfheartedly at a dismal fire, and grumbling at the condition of the wood-box.

  “If that varlet Eliot were in my pay,” he was announcing in lord-of-the-manor tones, “I’d see he got his nose and skull repaired, or I’d send him packing. It’s monstrous the fellow should lie abed, and moan and puke, while his betters work. That wife of his is cut off the same bolt of cloth. Where’s Amos?” He opened his mouth to bawl for Amos.

  “Don’t call, dear,” cried Great-aunt Lucy, distressed. “The poor old soul has been on his feet since early morning. He needs his rest. Wait—I’ll try the bellows.”

  She rose, spilling in all directions a collection of yellowed photographs arranged in careful order on her lap. Lucy had selected an inconspicuous and uncomfortable corner, and a task suited to her talents and her tastes. From every cranny of the house, from the attic to the basement, she had tirelessly collected family photographs—out-dated and undistinguished, but undeniably family photographs. She was dividing them impartially among us all, as I discovered when I went to help her pick them up. To Patience went the finest views of John S. Hieronomo, countless snapshots, and a series of pictures of herself at many ages, including one pose of a plump young girl bursting from a splendid ball gown. I have forgotten exactly what treasures had been laid aside for Cousin Hoy, but I do recall that Great-aunt Lucy was confident Glenn would welcome a view of himself seated in a china tub at the tender age of eleven months. I received the inevitable photograph of John S. Hieronomo, and several stiff, old-fashioned prints of my Dad.

  “Gavin didn’t send East any of your baby pictures, dear,” said Lucy, and glanced apologetically at her own rather larger pile. She intended to share with me at once. I was spared by accident. Just then Lucy came upon a photograph that carried to her confused and exasperatingly gentle heart a personal and tragic message. She stared at it. She and Great-uncle Richard, years younger and years happier, were pictured against a leafy, summer background, and between them stood a boy of ten, the son whom the two had lost in his early youth. Aunt Lucy wept.

  Great-uncle Richard sought to comfort her. Glenn and I assisted him in vain. The torrents flowed on. Cousin Hoy interpolated one of his frequent helpful notes.

  “John II would be nearly forty-five if he'd lived, Lucy,” remarked Hoy consolingly. “Maybe like the rest of us he’d be struggling to make ends meet . . .”

  “My son,” cried Lucy, and though tears still sparkled in her eyes she exhibited the first spirit I’d ever seen in her, “would have been a famous banker by now. He would have been honored and distinguished in the great world that we used to know, and still whisper about among ourselves. John had the family brains. He was like his great-grandfather. Not like you. Not like . . .”

  I could have sworn that the word “Richard” trembled on her lips. This I can say for Richard Hieronomo. Not a muscle of his gaunt face quivered; he had his arms around his wife; he held her as tenderly as he would have held a child.

  “There, there, my dear. You and I have one crumb of bitter comfort. Our son will always be young to us and full of hope and promise. There are worse tragedies than that.”

  Patience had kept her own sympathy well in hand. She went back to cataloguing the books.

  “I told you, Lucy, to let those photographs alone—or to bundle them up, and ship them off and do the sorting in some less trying time. I’d have waited gladly for my share.” With no sense of incongruity, she said, “Anne, you and Glenn might help me with the book cases.”

  I soon discovered that Great-aunt Patience’s hopes of stumbling upon valuable first editions were doomed to failure. The dusty shelves had been filled by John S. Hieronomo himself. He had liked standard sets done in expensive leather bindings, now cracked and dimmed by age. He had liked heavy tomes dealing with banking practices in the eighties and the nineties. He hadn’t cared for first editions, or for any unusual reading matter.

  It was Glenn who came upon the only titles with any claim to rarity—a small section of dog-eared books and a handful of pamphlets—devoted to the abolitionist movement in the exciting and dangerous days that preceded the Civil War. Great-grandfather had once conceived the idea of collecting the literature of that period in which he himself had been so deeply involved, that period in which he had begun, at sixteen years, the life of his maturity.

  Unfortunately, the collection was by no means complete, nor was it extensive. Great-grandfather had lost interest in his project upon discovering that most of the writers of the day had spent their energies upon Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Thaddeus Stevens and other more celebrated figures, and had largely neglected the part played by John S. Hieronomo.

  In his indignation, he had sought to amend the lack by taking his pen in hand and producing two slim, paper-bound volumes of his own. These had been printed at his own expense. One was called, The History of the Underground Railway in Prince George County, Maryland. The other title read simply, My Fight to Free the Slaves.

  Glenn picked up the latter volume and riffled through it long enough to gather Great-grandfather’s good opinion of himself. He read aloud several samples, and then he grinned. “The old gentleman doesn’t leave Mr. Lincoln a leg to stand on. The history books must be wrong.”

  Great-uncle Richard was not amused. He got up from the sofa where he sat with Lucy. “You children may laugh,” he said, “but Father was among the first who sought to right the dreadful wrong of slavery.”

  Richard advanced into the center of the room. It was easy always for him to face an audience. His burning eyes held us all, but his speech was meant for Glenn and me.

  “What do you children know about my father? How dare you make a joke of him? Years before the Civil War, when he was as young as you and younger, he threw in his lot with the miserable and the oppressed. He risked his life more than once, assisting those wretched blacks who fled from the South to Canada. He sheltered them on this very place. Twice he was nearly lynched—believe me, slave owners weren’t appr
eciative of Father’s enlightened views and sympathies. They suspected his underground activities, and they would ride up here in packs to demand their human property. It took courage—real courage—to send infuriated and suspicious men away empty-handed. Father did it, faced down the owners and lied and lied, while the poor hunted devils hiding here got off the place, and lit out for somewhere farther north. North, north, they were frantic to reach the north, where human beings didn’t live in bondage and could lift their heads with any man.

  “They starved and died for it—those that did succeed in reaching Canada owed it to men like Father, who sheltered and protected them along that trail of tears and blood and brutal suffering. Laugh at my father, and you laugh at the stuff that made this country!”

  Glenn was red to the eyes. I, too, felt ashamed and oddly moved. The actor’s phrases had been brave and ringing, and they made me feel small and young and foolish. I think I got a little of what Aunt Amanda had meant when she spoke proudly of the traditions of the family.

  “Father’s book,” said Richard, who seemed suddenly a little weary as though his own passion had worn him out, “should be laid aside for Amos. I’ll speak to him tomorrow.”

  Patience looked alarmed. “It’s our only copy, brother. Amos wouldn’t appreciate its value or rarity, I’m afraid.”

  Richard understood his sister. “Amos might have family reasons for appreciating Father’s book,” he said curtly. “Obviously, the child of any slave would have more reason to feel interest in Father’s story of his abolitionist activities than any of us here. I warrant Amos wouldn’t find Father’s book humorous reading matter.”

  Patience soon decided that such value as the library possessed lay in those volumes dealing with the abolitionist movement. Thus neatly, and on the score that it would be absurd to break up the collection, she disposed of Amos. She made a tidy bundle of the books and left them on the library table.