The Town Cried Murder Page 4

  If it hadn’t been so very awful, I should have been irresistibly amused at the sudden horrible look of utter consternation on Bill Haines’s face. I don’t know how to describe the color he turned. If a Peel boot could turn the color of a brick, it would about approach it.

  “I…I beg your pardon,” he said. “I’m dreadfully sorry!”

  He didn’t so much as look at Faith, although it was to her he spoke as much as Mason Seymour.

  “I…guess the romantic setting’s getting me down. I’m really frightfully sorry.”

  “I’m sure Miss Yardley understands,” Mason Seymour said stiffly. He bowed. “If you’re ready, Faith. Good evening, Miss Lucy.”

  They closed the door and we heard the motor purr. Bill Haines sank down on the ottoman in front of the fire and mopped his dripping forehead.

  “Well, my God!” he groaned. “What would you think of that?”

  “You were quite right,” I said.

  He looked up, his face blanker than ever.

  “What do you mean, quite right?” he demanded.

  “I mean, she hated having him kiss her, like that. It was brutal and vulgar of him.”

  He gave me a sidelong look out of one eye. I could see he thought it was because I didn’t know the so-called facts of life, and no doubt I would think any man kissing any woman was vulgar and brutal. It is, of course, what most young people think about old ones, so I don’t know why I should have minded his thinking it. But I did, some way. We sat there, each engaged in his own thoughts.

  He looked up abruptly. “What’s a girl like that marrying him for?”

  I hated just to say “Money,” so I said, “To keep from selling Yardley Hall.”

  He frowned. I don’t think he believed that either. It must have seemed awfully nineteenth century, I’ll admit.

  “It’s quite true,” I said.

  “Is that the big place across from the Palace Wall?”

  I nodded.

  “The Royal Governors had the fence set in the wall there, so the Yardleys could have the Palace garden vista. You can see straight through across the garden from Yardley Hall’s front door.”

  “Why don’t they sell to the Restoration?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “And I think you’d have to have lived in Virginia to understand it.”

  “Is it Doctor Yardley?”

  I nodded.

  “Mr. Baldwin told me about him. Was that his daughter?”

  I nodded again. And I suppose it’s because I’m a woman that I asked, “Did he tell you about Miss Yardley, Miss Melusina—Doctor Yardley’s sister? ”

  “No,” he said.

  I’m afraid I winced in spite of myself. I’d never heard Melusina dismissed before with so short a “No.” For the first time it occurred to me that I might have been wrong about Melusina’s Sacrifice. If Summers Baldwin hadn’t mentioned her, when he had mentioned all the rest of us, it was probably because she lay deeper in his secret heart than I had known.

  “How is Summers Baldwin?” I heard myself asking then.

  He shook his head.

  “Not so well, since his wife died.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Two months ago. She was an awful snob. I think that’s why the old boy keeps looking back here, where things were simple and you don’t devote two servants to the care, feeding, and bathing of one lousy pomeranian.”

  “Melusina was a snob, of course,” I said, “but she never had a pomeranian.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  He’d got up and was pacing back and forth between the door and the corner fireplace like a caged circus tiger. He spent the rest of the evening doing it, it seemed to me—at least, he was still there, and still moving about, when supper was served, and although he ate prodigiously I doubt if he could have told half an hour later what he’d eaten. Finally he went back to the office, and I drew a deep breath and sat down to my work. But he was back again almost immediately.

  “Say—will she come here again?”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Yardley.”

  “Her name’s Faith,” I said. “And I don’t reckon she’ll have the courage to chance meeting you here again.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Bill Haines said, very seriously. “Look. You tell her I’ve left on the night train, will you?”

  I know I looked surprised, because he grinned suddenly.

  “You’re just to tell her that,” he said. He grinned again, and was gone. I heard him come in very late. The old hinge on the office door groans even now. My father used to say it was haunted by the ghost of one of his clients whose case he’d lost.

  And next morning he brought: his breakfast tray over to the house.

  “This guy Seymour, now, Miss; Lucy,” he said, rather quietly, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “—I saw him last night out at Jamestown.”

  “Everybody in Williamsburg drives out there to get the air,” I said, no doubt rather primly.

  “Yeh. But he wasn’t getting it, he was trying to give it—to a gal with black hair in a sort of page boy bob. And boy, was that baby telling him something.—What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  I couldn’t tell him that that was Ruth Napier he’d seen, or that Faith’s cousin Marshall was in love with her, and that she was in love with Mason Seymour.

  “Well, all I mean is, if he’s going to marry Faith Yardley, what’s he doing with the black-haired gal? Or do I just come from the more conventional North?”

  He looked at me with that funny puzzled sort of pucker between his eyes, set down his tray, reached over and took my hand. “I’m sorry—what have I done now?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. “It’s just that Faith is very dear to me, and I…well, I just…”

  “I know,” he said.

  He gave my hand a warm hard squeeze. Then he picked up his tray and finished his breakfast in silence. I didn’t see him any more that morning. He didn’t come in to dinner. It was about two, I imagine, that I went over to Yardley Hall to fix Faith’s wedding dress.

  I’d hoped all night that the scene in my parlor would be enough to make her break with Mason Seymour, and yet I’d had no word not to come. And the scene with Ruth Napier at Jamestown must have meant, of course, that he had succeeded in apologizing to Faith, and that the Yardley pride was still to be reckoned with. I thought as I went along Palace Green, crowded with tourists oh-ing and ah-ing at a dead past, how surprised they would be if they knew what the living present was behind our quaint other-world charm. But they wouldn’t have been any more surprised than I was as I walked down under the old elm-bordered path, opened the door at Yardley, stopped, and stood there blinking more, I’m afraid, than a lady should.

  What I heard was the unmistakable cheerful voice of my new boarder, and it was saying:

  “And this cornice, Miss Yardley? Was that in the original house?”

  And it wasn’t Melusina who answered, it was Faith. She was saying, “Yes, Mr. Haines. The entire room is original.”

  And Mr. Haines said:

  “But it isn’t original at all, Miss Yardley, to marry somebody you aren’t in love with, just to pay off the old family mortgage. That was done in all the old melodramas.”

  I heard Faith gasp, as well she might.

  “I’m sorry… but I’m not sorry about yesterday. I couldn’t stand seeing that fellow kiss you, even if I didn’t know who you were. I mean—”

  “Mr. Haines—will you kindly leave this house?”

  “No,” said Mr. Haines. “Your father said you were to show me around, and you’ve got to do it.”

  “I certainly do not.”

  “You certainly do. Or I’ll steal the silver, and the linen, and the portrait of you
r grandmother.—And this mantel, Miss Yardley, is it original?”

  I don’t know what Faith said. My head was swimming quite a bit anyway, with just plain incredulity and amazement at all this. But I heard Mr. Bill Haines then.

  “You know this table is like one we’ve got at home, Miss Yardley. Except that written right across the center of ours there’s a motto. It says, ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’ Now don’t you think that’s interesting?”

  “If true,” Faith said coolly.

  “Oh, it’s true. I can vouch for it myself. May I tell you about an experience I had yesterday?”

  “You certainly may not, Mr. Haines.”

  His voice was suddenly very quiet, then, and very gentle.

  “Look,” he said; “you won’t believe it—not right away, maybe—but it’s true. I know it sounds crazy. You think I’m a fool or a boor, or both. But I’m not. Something just happened to me, yesterday. I’ve known you all my life. I knew the minute I saw you nothing would ever be the way it was again.—Listen: don’t marry this fellow…not just yet, anyway. Give me a chance…Faith.”

  She didn’t even see me as she flew out of the room and up the stairs, and I slipped behind the door as old Abraham came out and saw Bill Haines looking very intently at a most uninteresting oil painting of the well house before they put the new roof on it.

  “Miss Yardley was called away,” he said calmly. “Will you tell her, please, that I’ll let her know how things develop?”

  “Yas, suh. Ah’ll cert’nly tell her, suh. Good evenin’, suh.”

  Abraham bowed the brash young man out, and retired to the pantry, and I slipped up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 5

  Melusina was in her room with the wedding dress out and ripped and ready.

  “I don’t know what on earth has come over Faith,” Melusina said. Did anything happen at your house?”

  She fixed me with an eye that has always terrified me.

  “No,” I said.

  “I’ll call her. If she’s through showing that young man you sent here around…”

  I gulped a little.

  “I’m sure I don’t understand your sending him to Peyton, Lucy—of all things. You know he’s never disturbed in the afternoon. What on earth was there so urgent about it?”

  I filled my mouth with pins—which I almost swallowed—to keep from having to answer her.

  “And Peyton must have lost his mind. He had Abraham hunting all over the place for a bottle of sherry, and had the young man to lunch when he knew I was going out.”

  She went to the door and called Faith, and Faith came. I was almost afraid to look at her, and when I did finally my heart sank. Her lips were set, a faint flush burned in her cheeks, her eyes were almost coal black. She took off her blue linen dress and stood perfectly still while Melusina slipped the white satin wedding dress over her head. I heard Melusina draw a faint breath of relief. I think she’d expected another difficult session. But Faith was perfectly resigned, even determined, it seemed to me. It was only when Melusina, interested now, I think, in the showmanship of the thing, picked up the old lace veil and put it on her head, and then reached over and picked up the mock orange sprig that I saw Faith close her eyes a moment.

  Melusina stood back.

  “There. You really look lovely, Faith—if you weren’t so brown. Some buttermilk and cucumber paste will help that. Doesn’t she look sweet, Lucy?”

  I looked at her, and she looked at me. I don’t know how a lump as big as the one in my throat could be there without choking a body.

  And then, quite suddenly, I saw Melusina staring beyond me as if she’d seen a ghost, and I turned.

  Doctor Yardley was standing in the door, looking at his daughter. I had never realized he was so old, or…or human, or so beautiful, indeed, as he was then. He just stood looking at her, his lips moving so you could almost see the word they breathed:

  “Faith, Faith!”

  And then in the utter silence of the room—the mocking-birds in the garden were still, even Melusina was speechless—he came forward and stood in front of his daughter, looking at her face as if he’d never seen her in this world before.

  She stood perfectly motionless in front of him. He raised his hand and touched her sleeve and her veil, and then her face, and her forehead, and her bright gold hair under the mock orange blossoms. Then he took her face in both his hands and looked down into it a long long time before he bent his head and kissed her star-clear eyes and her forehead, and folded her to him.

  “My little Faith,” he whispered. “Forgive me, Faith.”

  I looked at Melusina. For once in her life her hands hung limp and nerveless in front of her. I think I felt sorry for her, too, for the first time in all my life.

  Doctor Yardley stood there, looking at her, a slow puzzled cloud settling on his face.

  “Are you unhappy, Faith?” he asked gently.

  “Oh, no, no, Father!” she cried eagerly. “I’ve never been so happy!”

  He looked at her intently.

  “You’re the very picture of her,” he said.

  We watched him retracing his slow steps to the door. He didn’t look back. I think he didn’t trust himself. When he had closed the door, Faith stood, her lips parted, her face radiantly lovely. I felt my throat contract sharply. She really was, just then, the image of the girl who had stood at the chancel at Bruton Church in that dress and veil, with real orange blossoms, twenty-two years before.

  Even Melusina’s face paled a little. But she shook the vision from her and said, even more brusquely than usual, “I hope you see now what this means to your father.”

  “Oh, I’d do anything, anything, for him!”

  The girl almost sang the words.

  I was so annoyed I could hardly take the pins out of my mouth. At the same time I was trying desperately to think whatever could have happened to bring Peyton Yardley out of his seclusion.

  I said, more sharply than I would have otherwise, “If you can’t stand still, Faith, I can’t do a thing with this dress.”

  I could hardly do anything anyway, but I finally finished—I don’t know how—and escaped. Doctor Yardley, I thought, must have been told she wasn’t happy, and then, asking her himself, he would see that she was almost radiantly happy… and it would never occur to him that it was because he had at last come out of his fastness, and spoken to the child who had worshipped him for years. And he might have stopped all this if he had known.…

  I hurried down the stairs, and halted abruptly at the bottom. Doctor Yardley was coming out of the library, coming toward me. He was even looking at me.

  “Thank you, Lucy, for sending that young Haines over. I’m not sure I could help him very much, but I gave him a little information.—He has helped me a great deal.”

  “I…I’m so glad,” I stammered. If I had only known what story the young rascal had told, to tread roughshod where angels had feared even to knock!

  Doctor Yardley turned away. Then he turned back again, and looked at me.

  “You’ve stood the years remarkably well, Lucy. You weren’t very pretty as a girl, as I remember, but you are now.”

  I started backing away. This was altogether too much, and I even wondered if he was losing his mind. But he held me back—or at least his manner did, and then what he was saying.

  “This marriage, Lucy…of my daughter.—Seymour seems a charming fellow. The difference in age isn’t important.”

  I remembered that his own difference of age had been the same.

  “And his mother is a Mason from Fauquier County. But—she didn’t look as happy as… Well, no matter.”

  I screwed up my courage.

  “It’s a lot of matter,” I said flatly. “It’s Melusina’s match, pure and simple. The child isn’t in love with him—she’s doing
it entirely for you.”

  He stood there for an instant, looking at me, his bent shoulders gradually straightening, his grave eyes probing, and so terribly troubled.

  “For…me?” he said at last, very quietly and gently.

  I heard the door upstairs slam, and I turned and fled, scuttling out and away as fast as I could go, my heart beating wildly. And I didn’t stop running till I’d got to Long Wall Street.

  There, sitting very calmly in his open car, and grinning at me like an ape, was Mr. William Quincy Adams Haines.

  “What…what did you do?” I cried, when I’d got my breath.

  “I just told the old gentleman you’d commissioned me to write the life and letters of your father and your grandfather, and of course I badly needed any recollections he had.—And put in a few home truths about Brother Seymour.”

  “Look, young man,” I said. “You’re heading for trouble.”

  His face sobered instantly. In fact, as he leaned forward, it was quite grim.

  “No trouble that connects with Mr. Mason Seymour is too much for me,” he said evenly. “I hate that guy’s guts.—Begging your pardon, Miss Lucy,” he added with a grin.

  “But—you can’t hate anybody’s… anybody you don’t even know,” I said, rather helplessly.

  “It just happens I do know him,” Bill Haines said. “And I don’t like him, or anything about him.”

  “I’m beginning to see that,” I said.

  He opened the car door.

  “Get in,” he said peremptorily. “I’ll take you home.”

  I hadn’t intended going home, but I got in. He started the car. “Where does Seymour live?” he asked, almost civilly.

  “Up the street.”

  I indicated the turn, and when we passed England Street I pointed out the old Ball house, set back in a screen of mimosa and poplars covered with great pale green and orange tulips.

  “He rents it,” I said. “That’s his servant.”

  He looked at the white man in a bowler hat and black sack suit just getting out of the Ford coupé there, and scowled. I glanced at him quickly, hoping he had not also seen the figure of a woman in a flowered print dress who slipped just then through the hedge and into the empty Israel Lane garden. I don’t think he had; he was too much occupied in scowling, for no reason that I know, at Mason Seymour’s valet Luton. But I had seen her. I never should have, if we hadn’t been just in front of the gate. And I was sorry. In a small town it’s better not to see too much.