Frances and Julie had both offered to have Rosetta till Joe’s leave was up, but Mouse had refused. She had said in her calm steady way, “I don’t mind her, really. She gets on Joe’s nerves a little because she plays on him, but there’s no harm in her. It’s just that she’s young. Anyhow, she and I have to learn to get on with each other and we might as well begin now.”
Julie had agreed with Mouse. Rosetta was awkward and shy, and it was her shyness that made her blunder. You couldn’t come into a close little corporation such as Hoydens Hill was and not make mistakes. It wasn’t her fault that she accented the wrong things. Frances’s money, for instance. Sam’s income had been cut down drastically in the last five years, and though he worked harder than ever he earned only a fraction of what he had formerly made. It was Frances now who bore the burden of their expenditures. Sam never said much about it, but he obviously didn’t like the state to which he had had to learn to become accustomed. Rosetta kept calling attention to it innocently enough, saying how wonderful Frances was and what taste she had. “She chooses your ties, doesn’t she, Sam? They’re lovely. I wish Joe wore ties like that. I wish I had money.”
In Julie’s and Brian’s case it had been Brian’s first wife, Rikki, upon whom Rosetta’s curiosity had lighted. Julie had never met the woman who had been Rikki Moore, Brian never spoke of her, and she hadn’t liked to ask questions. Frances had once described Rikki with what was, for her, unusual violence, in a terse five-letter word. All Julie knew was that Brian and his first wife had been unhappy together during a marriage that had endured for a little more than three years. It was Rosetta, prowling around in Brian’s cellar, who found Rikki’s trunk, a big costly outmoded affair, and a bag of shoes. They were expensive shoes, most of them scarcely worn. Rosetta had exclaimed over their elegance, bursting into a shower of questions. “Did she live here with you, Mr. Moore?” Brian said no, patiently, that he had had the things sent up from New York one winter when he rented the house in Morton Street to a friend. Was she pretty, was she nice, what a lovely name she had. Rikki. Rosetta played with the name like a kitten with a ball.
Julie would have smiled, only that Brian had been annoyed. She wasn’t in the least jealous. There had probably been plenty of women in Brian’s life, as there had been other men in her own. The past meant nothing. It was the future that concerned them both, the lovely, lovely future. Julie opened a drawer, took out a pair of stockings and began to pull them on.
She and Brian were coming straight back to Hoydens Hill after they were married. He had to go on with the work on his carburetor, so that there would be no time for a trip anywhere. It couldn’t be helped and nothing mattered as long as they were together.
They were all, she, Sam and Frances Ashe, Mouse and Joe Westing and Rosetta, going up to supper with Brian that night. Julie slid a simple dinner dress over her head. It was a sea-green piqué with a white ruffle at the V neck and tiny white ruffles edging the bracelet sleeves. She shook crisp folds into place and started doing her lips. Her mouth smiled warmly at her out of the mirror and her gray-blue eyes, long and liquid, were steady and shining. What was marriage with Brian going to be like? The answer was instant. It was going to be gorgeous. They would have their quarrels, of course, and plenty of differences, but the unity between them, the matching tempo, was so complete that nothing could break it. She stood up with a sudden movement. Her skirts swished and a little shiver went through her. Don’t be too happy, a small voice whispered. Surety in an uncertain world invites disaster. What was it George Eliot had said, something about prophecy’s being man’s most gratuitous form of mistake?
Julie refused to give ground to the tiny handful of doubt that lifted itself. There was nothing wrong. Everything was just as it had been, ought to be. Any difference in the colony, in Brian or Sam or Frances, in Mouse or Joe Westing, was a reflection of her own mood. It was natural that she should be edgy and unsettled in the face of the change that was coming. She got her tan polo coat. One of the white pearl buttons was loose. She had no needles, she would have to borrow one from Frances. She put cigarettes in her pocket, turned off the dressing-table lamps and went into the living-room.
Its simplicity was a continual pleasure. It was long and narrow and held all she needed: her drawing board and worktable, filing cabinet for swipes, a comfortable shabby chair, books, lamps and a lovely battered baroque sofa upholstered in tattered silk the colors of a dream, grays and lavenders and pinks and delicate blues and purples. Sam had bought it at an auction, but Frances had refused to give it house room so Julie had snatched at it. One set of windows at one end of the room looked down the hill on the valley and the river, the other up into the rock garden that separated her from Brian’s house in which she was going to live. This was larger, having been made over out of an older house.
No one ever locked a door at Hoydens Hill. Julie closed hers behind her and ran down the three steep steps. It was dark out and colder than she had expected. There was no wind. Bushes at the edge of the driveway rustled and she turned and peered through the blackness. There was a scratchy sound, like a heel on gravel. She called out, “Is there—anyone there?” No answer. She must have imagined the footstep. The rustle in the bushes might have been Horrible Albert, Sam’s cat, or a stray dog. She wasn’t afraid. She drew her coat tightly around her and went with a quick step up the winding path through the rock garden. She didn’t look back. She was glad when she reached the top.
It was early, and she and Brian would have a few minutes in front of the fire before the others came. Walter, Brian’s man of all work, had gone on a tear, so they were going to have a buffet supper with one hot dish, a turkey she had helped Frances’s maid prepare that afternoon. Julie decided to have a look at the turkey on the way in, so instead of going around to the front she went up the kitchen steps. The kitchen was a big, square, sunny room at the back. It had blue walls with yellow curtains and geraniums on the five window sills. Having been on his own for so long had made Brian quite an efficient housekeeper, but he wasn’t the world’s best cook.
The kitchen was empty when she went in. The turkey was doing nicely. She threw her coat over a chair and went out into the hall. The glass doors of the living-room up a step on the right were ajar. Had she come in the front way she would have been visible crossing the hall. Coming from the kitchen she wasn’t. Brian was in the living-room, but he wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him. Listening absently, Julie’s brows rose. The woman was Brian’s aunt, Eleanor Yates.
What on earth had brought Eleanor Yates to Hoydens Hill? Fifteen years earlier she had been an actress of note and a great beauty. Her husband’s failure and death in. 1929 had put an end to all that. An estate near Westhaven was the only thing the lawyers had managed to, salvage. Without money or experience she had turned the estate into a farm out of the products of which she had built up a substantial New Haven trade. She was as closely wedded to her poultry and cattle, her fields and gardens as though she were fastened to them with a ball and chain. The life that had formerly engrossed her was dead, and she never went anywhere. That was one of the reasons why Julie and Brian were going to be married in Westhaven. Eleanor had said, “I’d like to dance at your wedding, old boy, but I simply can’t get away. If I’m gone for more than a couple of hours a barn is struck by lightning or my cream curdles or a cow miscarries. Why not have the wedding up here? Anywhere in the state’s all right.”
Julie frowned at one of Bone’s etchings on the wall near the foot of the stairs. It was like Eleanor, strong and forthright. Inside the living-room Eleanor spoke. She said, “I thought you ought to know.” Brian said, “Yes.” He added, “I’ve been—afraid of it.”
Afraid? What was it that Brian was afraid of? Julie’s heartbeat accelerated. Instinctively her mind flew to Bill Conroy. But that large, handsome bird of evil omen who had already frightened her obscurely twice had no connection whatever with Hoydens Hill or with Brian. The two men knew each other simply as casual acquaintances, through Mouse and Sarah.
She couldn’t stand there listening. She called “Hello” on a bright note and followed her call through the