“O. K.” Dan turned and strode across the verandah and inside.
Suddenly out of the wet night came that ghastly eerie shriek again . . . and again. The gooseflesh rose on my arms.
“What is that, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Keane?” I demanded.
“That’s them fancy buzzards of Miz’ Winthrop,” he said in his slow drawl. “They make a heap of racket, about this time.”
He lapsed into silence, and we stood there, I rather uneasily, because he kept looking so anxiously at the door. Finally I asked him how his tobacco was, and if he thought the storm had hurt it; but before he could answer Irene Winthrop’s voice came, high-pitched and clear as a bell, from the drawing room. A window must have blown open in the wind, and the heavy gold damask curtains had been drawn, so they wouldn’t, I supposed, know it was open. And for the first time a sharp torn edge was audible under the gentle imperviousness of that lovely lilting voice.
“Tell Mr. Keane I don’t care to see him. The matter’s settled, and very liberally, I do think.”
Dan’s voice was charged with incredulity, and anger.
“You mean you’re kicking Mr. Keane off the place, after he’s been here half of his life?”
“The matter’s quite settled, Dan. Mr. Keane has been taken very good care of . . .”
Irene’s voice was suave, and final. Then I could hear Major Tillyard.
“You’re making a big mistake, Irene. Keane’s the best farmer in Southern Maryland. He’s made Romney pay when every other farm in the county is in the red, and the land’s better today than it was ten years ago. You’ll never get another tenant that touches him.”
“Money, money!” Irene moaned plaintively. “That’s all any of you think of! What about Mara! Oh, Rick’s perfectly right—if I’d sent Mr. Keane off the place four years ago, Alan would never have come back here, and we’d never have had any of this nonsense of Mara’s marrying a . . . a criminal!”
I stared helplessly at the farmer standing there by me, his heavy boots clogged with sand from the tobacco fields, his gnarled hands making futile helpless gestures, his face under his dripping tattered hat numb and stupid with pain.
And we just stood there for an instant, until he said, very simply, “I reckon she don’t want to see me,” and turned back the way he’d come.
The sound of his feet on the brick path had disappeared when Dan came out. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him, with a deep and sustained and choking anger.
“It’s a rotten damn system that lets a bounder like Rick turn a man like Mr. Keane off the land he’s had for twenty-five years. I’d like to know what the hell’s behind it. You needn’t tell me he gives a damn what happens to Mara. I’d like to . . . Oh well, what the hell.”
He kicked at the corn husk mat on the flagged porch, and took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll go and try to say something to Mr. Keane. I’ll be seeing you, Grace.”
I didn’t have the courage to point to the open window . . . and I don’t think it would have made any difference in the long run if I had. The things that were happening at Romney were the noxious flowerings of seeds that had been planted and were full grown before Dan and I barged in on them out of the storm-wracked night. Nothing anyone could have done at that point could have averted the doom about to break over Romney . . . any more than we could have stopped the inky black and murky yellow lightning-torn clouds from crashing down their pent-up fury of wind and water.
As Dan disappeared around the wing that shrill cry came again out of the night, and I saw the dark form of a huge bird soar across the box. I went inside, thinking that all in all I wished I’d not come to Romney.
5
Irene and Major Tillyard were standing in front of the bright wood fire burning behind the great old polished brass andirons, in what had been the dining room of the original house but was now a sort of family sitting room, with soft chintz-covered chairs and sofas instead of the formal period pieces of the drawing room across the hall—lovely but not particularly comfortable with its delicate Sheraton sofas and straight-backed fireside chairs. They were still talking about the farm, and they stopped abruptly as I came in.
Irene held out her hands to me.
“Oh, darling, it’s really so nice to have you here—like old times!” she said, smiling. All trace of annoyance and petulance was gone, like a cloud in April. “And I do hope this dreadful weather clears up, because in the morning we’re going to shoot a full Columbia round!”
I’m afraid I blinked, because Major Tillyard smiled.
“Archery, Mrs. Latham,” he said.
“Then that lets me out,” I said—adding to myself, in the expressive jargon of my younger son, “I hope I hope I hope!” Archery is not one of my favorite sports.
“Why Grace, aren’t you awful!” Irene cried. “We really need you! And besides, my dear, it’s awfully good for the figure!”
“I’ll stick to a horse, if you don’t mind.”
Irene shrugged her slim bare shoulders. She certainly, I thought, didn’t look like fifty-five . . . or act it, I added to myself as she said, “Oh, of course, Grace, if you want to spoil—”
Major Tillyard poked the fire a little abruptly, and she broke off.
“Of course you’ll come in, Grace—don’t be silly,” she laughed.
Major Tillyard put down the fire iron. “I think I’ll be getting along, Irene.” He took her hand. “I’m sorry about tonight. Don’t let it upset you, will you, my dear.”
He shook hands with me, and he and Irene moved toward the door. I looked at his broad straight back and thick iron-gray hair, thinking that Irene showed remarkably good judgment at times, and sat down by the fire. As I did I felt a sudden draft on my cheek, and glanced around at the window. And I started, not sure I wasn’t definitely seeing things.
A perfectly mammoth creature had pushed aside the curtains and walked in, blinking two light blue eyes through a ridiculous fringe of long dirty gray hair. I don’t know what, at first sight, I could have thought it was, because quite obviously under the three bags of curly wool it was a dog. He grinned very amiably and wagged his tail. Irene and Major Tillyard in the door both turned, and Irene said, “Oh, there’s Dr. Birdsong,” which seemed a little confusing to me until almost immediately the curtains parted again and a very tall man came in.
He was even bigger than the dog, and looked rather like him, in a slightly different way. He didn’t have as much hair, and it wasn’t gray, except a very little near the temples. His country tweed jacket was rough and baggy, with chamois patches at the elbows, and was definitely for use and not beauty, and his high laced boots and riding breeches were streaked with mud. His hands were enormous, and yet gave an impression of being extraordinarily mobile and sensitive. His eyes, like the dog’s, were a light pale bluish-gray, his face was burned almost black and looked more like corrugated iron than skin. And somewhere about him there was an astonishing quality of detachment, in his eyes probably—as if they seldom looked at the things close by.
He didn’t smile as he strode in through the window, and the dog looking up at him, and apparently realizing that he had been a little previous, took the grin off his face, walked over to the fire and lay down with a solid comfortable grunt, divorcing himself from whatever unpleasantness was about to ensue.
“There’s a tree down in the road, Sidney. You can’t get your car out. I thought if you were ready I’d pick you up.”
The smile died on Irene Winthrop’s face. Whatever she’d started to say