Three Bright Pebbles. Leslie Ford
I still think she had, really, in spite of the way things turned out—moved forward in her chair again, and smiled wanly.
“Now don’t you two think you’re being pretty silly? You’re forgetting you’re brothers . . . and Dan’s come back after being away so long! And the French look at these things so differently! Now, now, Dan—you mustn’t be ridiculous!”
I thought for a moment that Dan was going to invite her outside too, and I’m not sure he wouldn’t have if Mara hadn’t said quickly, “Wouldn’t it be a good plan if Dan would come out and say plainly where he and Cheryl knew each other? That seems to be what’s holding up this . . . this council of war, as Mother calls it. We ought at least to try to keep it from becoming a blood purge.”
I looked at Dan. He sat there tight-lipped and silent. Before there had been nothing he could say. Now, I knew, there was nothing he would say, even if he could.
Mara looked away quickly. “Then let’s skip it. And maybe Rick’ll let Mother finish what she was going to say.”
Irene raised her arched brows.
“So sweet of you, lamb,” she murmured, with a charming smile.
Mara flushed.
“It’s of as much interest to me and Dan to hear what you’re going to say as it is to Rick,” she said. It was almost painfully casual.
Her mother smiled again.
“As a matter of fact, Mara,” she said, rather gently, “—whatever disposition of your father’s money I may make, I shall certainly have to put definite restrictions on the use you put yours to.”
Rick Winthrop’s slow voice, angry and also a little blurred, spoke from the end of the table. “—And I’d like to say that if I see that jailbird around here again, I’ll fill him full of buckshot.”
Mara got up abruptly.
“If somebody doesn’t do it to you first,” she said. “May I be excused, please, Mother?”
Irene’s voice was even a little bored. “Certainly not, Mara. Sit down, and don’t be dramatic.”
Mara’s eyes smouldered with angry resentment.
“I’m not being dramatic—and I won’t sit down. I’ll not stay around and be treated like a feeble-minded child!”
“Then quit acting like one, darling.”
“Everything I want to do you keep me from—you’ve done it all my life! I’d have run away and married Alan . . . but I’ve got a right to part of my father’s money, and I’m going to have it!”
Irene’s voice was composed and pleasant—and impervious.
“Not, darling, if you insist on marrying the unemployed son of a tenant farmer.”
“He wouldn’t be unemployed if all of you hadn’t ganged up on him and kept him from getting a job!” Mara cried. “And what if he is the son of a tenant farmer? Where would Romney be if it weren’t for a tenant farmer?”
Major Tillyard spoke with a quiet authority that I thought would calm her. “He could have gone somewhere else and started over, Mara.”
She whirled around at him, her dark eyes filled with scalding tears.
“Yes—for how long? Until they found he’d been in prison! But that’s not why he didn’t go somewhere else—he didn’t go because he’s innocent . . . and he’s not afraid of coming back here where he can prove it!”
“He’s had every chance to prove it, Mara,” Major Tillyard said wearily. “I admire your loyalty, my dear—but it’s badly out of keeping with the facts. We gave—”
Irene put a delicate white hand on his arm.
“Please don’t go into that again! Mara’s just a silly child. She’s hardly likely to marry a penniless boy. She can’t even wash out her own stockings.—Sit down, Mara.”
Mara stood a moment, choked and irresolute, turned with a stifled sob and groped blindly toward the door.
“Come back to the table, Mara,” Irene said—quietly, but the velvet glove sort of thing if I ever heard it.
“Oh, let the kid go, Mother,” Dan put in abruptly.
Rick Winthrop leaned forward.
“It’s all right with you if she marries a thief, I suppose? You’ll always get yours, in spite of jailbirds and . . . fortune hunters.”
He looked at Sidney Tillyard, his eyes sullen, his face flushed.
“Now you’re being offensive, Rick!” Irene said sharply.
Dan looked at me, his lips twisted in a bitter smile. He got up.
“The council of war doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere,” he said. “Good night, Mother. I’ll . . . see you in the morning.—What about a stroll in the rain, Grace?”
Irene nodded to me, and I went out with him. He opened the big front door with its smooth rubbed pine panels between fluted pilasters, with their carved acanthus capitals and we stepped outside onto the porch. The wind still rocked the branches of the old tulip poplars beyond the lawns, and shivered down the box alleys. The broad waters of the Potomac were dark except for the lights of a single river boat moving slowly on its way to the Chesapeake. The rain came in sharp gusts, wetting our faces. But the air was clean again, not sultry and leaden, as it had been in Georgetown . . . or charged with bitterness as it had been inside those lovely old mauve brick walls.
Neither of us spoke. There seemed after all so pitifully little to say. Dan lighted a cigarette. As he tossed the match on the gravel path he raised his head, listening. I heard a faint sound coming from the dining room end of the house. It stopped then, as abruptly as it had begun, and the figure of a man, dressed in work overalls, a battered gray hat pulled down to keep the rain from his face, came out of the shadows. He was walking on the grass, not moving stealthily, but walking so that his feet were noiseless on the sodden lawn.
He stopped when he saw us, and hesitated. Then he recognized Dan and touched his hat.
“Mr. Dan—certainly mighty glad to see you back.”
“Oh hello, Mr. Keane.”
Dan strode across the porch and shook hands with the man who had been the tenant farmer of Romney since Dan’s father had bought it, when he was still quite a small boy.
“You remember Mr. Keane, don’t you, Grace?—This is Mrs. Latham.”
“Howdy, Miz’ Latham. Ain’t seen you down this way for a long time.”
Mr. Keane wiped his hand on the seat of his overalls and held it out to me. It was wet, hard and rough, but it was a good hand, with a strong sure grip that had held many a plough to a straight deep furrow. And I don’t know why, during all that conversation at the table—even with Mara’s outburst over Romney and its tenant farmer—I had never thought of Alan Keane as being Mr. Keane’s son. Mr. Keane was as much a part of Romney as the white pillared portico and the boxwood alleys and the pineapples on the gate posts. And Alan had gradually stopped being a part of it, since he’d gone to high school and to college—I’d subscribed to a magazine I’d never heard of, and never got, because Irene was helping him out—and then to the bank in Port Tobacco, and after that to prison.
Mr. Keane glanced uneasily at the dining room windows.
“Is Miz’ Winthrop through her supper?” he asked.
“Just about,” Dan said. “Anything I could do for you?”
Mr. Keane fumbled with the stumpy pipe in his hands.
“I jus’ wanted to see Miz’ Winthrop about a little matter, is all. I jus’ thought I’d like to see her, if she wasn’t too busy.”
“You’d