“Come and let me look at you, young woman. Ah, she’s lovely, isn’t she, Brian?”
Julie said, “You might as well ask the fish man ‘Are your fish fresh?’ He wouldn’t dare say no, even if he prefers blondes.”
Brian said, “I do prefer blondes, and I think she’s a fright.” Julie sat down in the other corner of the couch. She evidently wasn’t going to be told what it was they had been talking about when she interrupted them. She agreed that her dress was pretty and put the question it would have been unnatural not to put. “What tore you from Westhaven, Eleanor? What brought you to Hoydens Hill?”
Was there a pause? Did Eleanor fill it before Brian could speak? “Business,” she said in her rich full voice, and put a match to a Mexican cigarette that looked like a small cigar in its brown wrapping. “I’ve got to see a lawyer,” she continued, “and Brian’s attorney here is as good as anyone else. You’ve got to explain to him that I’m broke, Brian, and that I won’t pay any extravagant fees. If Sinclair Lewis was right about doctors, if tonsils were put into the human system to provide physicians with closed motor cars, the income-tax forms do as much or more for our legal brethren. How about a cocktail all hands around? You two go and make it and let me toast my shins. The cold is vile, and I’ve got a whole brood of hens with roup.”
In the kitchen Brian took Julie in his arms, suddenly and without warning. She felt the tenseness in him as he held her close, resting his chin on her hair. “I wish we could get away from here tonight, you and I,” he said in a muffled voice. “This last-minute business is the devil. Red tape, red tape, red tape.”
Julie shivered involuntarily. The dark impetuosity in him, the way his arms tightened around her, brought the shadow a step closer. He to as worried about something; it wasn’t her imagination. “What is it, Brian?” she asked again, as she had asked almost a week earlier in the Biltmore lounge.
Brian Moore might have told Julie then, if it hadn’t been for the interruption. The face lifted to his was very lovely. It wasn’t a child’s face, it was a woman’s, with strength and endurance, courage and resolution in its delicate contours, its play of light, and shade.
Julie felt the hesitation in him. The opportunity passed. The door opened and Sam and Frances came in, Frances mistily lovely in taupe chiffon with topazes in her ears and a string of them around her slender throat. Sam hadn’t bothered to dress. Frances said despairingly, “What can you do with a husband who spends his entire life in a potting-shed? I had difficulty making him wash his hands. He should have married an onion.”
She was as surprised to find Eleanor there as Julie had been. She didn’t ask any questions. Julie watched that swift glance flow, from Sam to Brian to Eleanor, from Frances to Eleanor to Brian. They left the ball in the air, in play, continued with their surface chatter of this and that. Hot color stung Julie’s cheeks. Whatever had brought Eleanor to Hoydens Hill, and it wasn’t to see Brian’s lawyer about business of her own, Frances and Sam knew about it. It was the same thing that had hit Brian when he was paged in the Biltmore. Her hurt was back again and with it that nagging uncertainty as to how much of Brian she actually possessed. He was eight years older than she was, and his life had settled into a definite pattern, hardened into a definite mold, before they met.
The others were discussing the arrangements for the wedding. Brian had to go to New York on business and was going straight to Westhaven from there. Sam and Frances were going to drive Julie. Mouse and Joe Westing with Rosetta were going in Mouse’s new car. Brian and Julie were to be married at eleven and have breakfast at Eleanor’s lovely old farmhouse. After that a week in the city in the little house off Morton Street, then back here to work.
Presently Rosetta arrived. She looked very pretty in a full-skirted blue taffeta dress, her round cheeks red and her big black eyes bright. Julie wished Frances wouldn’t keep examining Rosetta through her lorgnette as though she were an inanimate object, a pair of curtains or a view she couldn’t quite make up her mind about. It was a relief to find someone to whom Eleanor’s presence meant nothing, but Rosetta had to blunder even there. She stared open-mouthed when she was introduced to the thick-set, weather-beaten woman in the corner of the couch. She knew who Brian’s aunt was, and she had evidently expected something sumptuous and seductive.
Frances laughed openly at her expression, and Eleanor chuckled. “So have the mighty fallen. I’m only a fat old farm woman, child. Where’s that sister-in-law of yours? I want to have a look at her.”
Rosetta stammered that Mouse and Joe would be up in a few minutes Joe had gone to the village for the mail. She was flustered and embarrassed. Sam said kindly, “to the kitchen, men,” and put his arm around her waist to waltz her out of the room.
More than a few minutes passed, but Mouse and Joe didn’t appear. Everything was ready. Brian’s long trestle table he had made himself had been cleared of its books and papers and was set with china and cutlery, mounds of sandwiches, hors d’oeuvres and a great bowl of salad that Frances’s cook had prepared. Brian was in the kitchen mixing fresh cocktails, Rosetta was helping Sam with the turkey and Frances and Eleanor were talking on the couch. Julie went through the glass door, across the hall, and out on the little sun deck from which Brian claimed you could look down on all the kingdoms of the world.
The house was set into the hill near its peak and the sun deck was level with the top to the west and south. The porch was glassed in for the winter. Julie walked to the end of it and peered down through blackness. What could be keeping Mouse? She was usually punctual. Living with Sarah had done that; the house on Twenty-second Street with its hour for this and minute for that had been run on a schedule whose rigidity would have made the Medes and Persians pale.
There was a glowworm coming up the weaving path through the young birches. It was Joe with a torch, holding Mouse’s arm. They went past the glass panes toward the door at the inner end of the sun deck. The door opened and Julie started forward and stood still. They didn’t see her. Their backs were partially turned. Joe’s face in profile was illuminated by light from the hall. It wasn’t cheerful. It was gaunt and strained and tired, with triangles of shadow under the high cheekbones. He was talking to Mouse hurriedly. His voice was low and there was urgency in it and tenderness. “Pull yourself together, honey, keep a stiff upper lip. I only saw him from a distance—and I could have been mistaken. Don’t worry until there’s something to worry about ” He kissed her and they passed across the porch and went inside.
Julie followed them, slowly. Him…“I only saw him from a distance…I could have been mistaken.” To whom was Joe referring? It couldn’t be Bill Conroy who had no connection with Hoydens Hill. She thought of the footsteps she had heard on the driveway in front of her cottage earlier that evening, and gave herself an impatient shake. There might have been no one there at all. She had Bill Conroy on the brain.
A glance at Mouse through the glass doors was comforting. She looked perfectly all right, fresh and comely and composed, standing in front of the couch, her arm through Joe’s, talking sedately to Eleanor. Julie went into the living-room and they both greeted her. Joe said, “Hello, Julie,” with his usual cheerful grin. Mouse said, “Oh, Julie, what a pretty dress!” Her tone was faintly wistful. She had on the blue tailored wool in which she had gone away. She had plenty of money, but she couldn’t seem to get used to the idea of spending it on herself. Frances had lectured her roundly about her wardrobe, telling her that she ought to get herself some decent clothes.
Sam was serving the turkey and Rosetta was helping him with the plates. Fresh cocktails were poured. Mouse protested at the glass Sam put