AT FOUR O’CLOCK on a June afternoon Lou was still trying to make up her mind whether to go to Mrs. Boadman’s reception.
She was sitting at the table in the sewing-room finishing the hem of a dress by hand, and thinking what a nuisance it was that a reception for an English writer in Vine Falls (where receptions were rare and English writers even rarer) should have to be held at the Boadman home. There were so many other homes to which Lou would sooner have gone!
Since she had had to give up all hope of two years at a dress-designing school in New York, she had made it a practice to accept every invitation she received, sensibly deciding that a full social life in a small town was better than no social life at all. Parties in Vine Falls were dull compared with those imaginary parties in New York about which her fancy had played, but at least she was Somebody at the parties in Vine Falls, and it was more satisfying to be a big fish in a little sea than a frustrated fish who refused to swim in any social ocean. And, quite apart from her habit of accepting local invitations, she had wanted to meet this English writer; the dress she was finishing had been designed and made for this very ocasion. Oh, yes, she had been looking forward to it; it was only an hour or two ago that the quietness of the empty, sunny house had begun to creep over her spirits in a vague sadness, and then her depression had ended (as all depression did nowadays) in thoughts of Bob, and she had remembered how inquisitive and cruel Mrs. Boadman could be.
“The hell with the old battleaxe,” thought Lou, reaching for the cotton. “I feel just like going out. It would take me out of myself, as they put it. There certainly is nothing like a quiet summer afternoon alone in the house for making a girl realize that time is fleeting. But if I go, that old heel is sure to ask if we’ve heard from Bob lately, and I know Miss Cordell will ask me right out where he is; she doesn’t believe a word of that Down South story, she as good as told Mother so. Oh, well. Maybe if I don’t open my mouth and stay all evening behind the radiogram. …”
She sighed. Her nature from childhood had been curiously without illusions or dreams. She had never been unthinkingly happy, as most of the young people in Vine Falls were happy, but she had had a cool appreciation of the good things of life and the climate of her spirit had been equable, dry yet bright like a pleasant day in any season of the year. Now even this moderate happiness (Greek in its natural wisdom, although Lou did not suspect it) had been driven away by Bob’s disappearance; and when his sister sighed it was because she could not imagine ever regaining her former ease of mind. She had always loved Bob deeply, as a naturally sophisticated nature will sometimes love a simple one, and her distress in watching the misery that was torturing her mother, and the helpless rage that was making an old man of her father, was increased by her own ceaseless anxiety.
But she did not believe that Bob would never come back to them. She had said to her mother, in the first dreadful days after he had gone:
“I’m sure he’ll come back. I’ve got a cast-iron hunch he will. He’s so good, naturally good, like a dog or a nice kid. Life doesn’t smash up that sort of person. He’ll stop being crazy and then he’ll come home.”
And this had been all the comfort Mrs. Vorst had been able to find in the three months since Bob had disappeared.
For all efforts to trace Dan Carr by private detectives had been useless; and Mr. Vorst had been hindered by the fact that he did not dare to inform the police. If he had told them that his son was last heard of in the company of a small time gangster who had promised him “a job,” he might draw Bob into a net that would end in his ruin and death. The father raged, but he raged helplessly. The boy was of age and could do as he chose. So long as he did not drive a car in the State of New Leicester he was on the right side of the Law, and if he wanted to run with mobsmen, neither his father nor the police could stop him. He had chosen to share the gangsters’ dangers and if he came up against the police in doing so they could shoot him, but they could neither arrest nor kill him so long as he did not break the law. A father could not say to the police: “I think my boy is in bad company; find him and save him for me.” And his family did not even know if he was still with Dan.
Since the night that Helen had watched him walk through the doors of the Black Lake Hotel, silence had fallen over him, and not a word nor a glimpse nor a rumour had broken that silence. He might have been dead—except that had he been dead they might sometimes have spoken of him only with love and sorrow.
The family had prepared a story that he had gone South to continue his medical studies in Louisiana, where Mrs. Vorst’s brother, the doctor, lived; and most of their old friends and neighbours pretended to believe it. But gradually Vine Falls as a whole had come to realize that something mighty queer had happened to Bob Vorst.
This was the fault, naturally, of Myron.
Myron had been surprisingly moved out of his usual malicious detachment by Bob’s disappearance, and he had not been able to hold his tongue after years of letting it wag. His contempt for his buddies in Vine Falls and his grudging loyalty to the Vorsts had prevented him from telling everything that he knew to the pool-rooms and bars, but he had not been able to prevent himself from hinting. The story had spread from south of the tracks to the residential district, and it was too good a story for people not to listen to it. Many kind neighbours disbelieved it, but many others did believe it and were both shocked and sorry, while a minority was eager to find out as many facts as possible and to enjoy a thrill.
The Boadmans came in this last class; and that was why Lou did not want to go to their home to meet the famous English writer Amy Lee.
But towards five o’clock, when the dress was pressed and hanging by the window in the sunlight, Lou’s desire to exchange the quiet of the sunlit house for voices and company proved too strong for her, and she went upstairs to put on the new dress. After all, she thought, if I’m there I can at least quash any stories that old battleaxe spreads around, and maybe she won’t say so much if I’m there, either. I’ll go.
Amy stood in the centre of a group with a polite serious expression on her face, listening. In one hand she held a glass full of golden drink and in the other a cigarette from which a piece of ash occasionally fell to the ground. The large room was full of people and the air was thick with smoke, and if anyone there had had ears sufficiently sensitive to mind an ugly noise they would have noticed the ugly noise of voices talking foolishly and fast, like ghosts gabbling in Hell. But no-one noticed the uproar except Amy, and she was getting used to it, for it seemed to her, as she stood there politely listening and sometimes sipping her golden drink, that for the last two months she had lived in an uproar and had never been away from crowds of people.
Her heart (already troubled by its own coldness before she left England) had been touched by the admiration, the kindness and hospitality which she had everywhere found in America; and she felt that she was a kinder, friendlier person than she had been two months ago because of the welcome she had received; it was impossible not to be warmed by so much kindness. But she had made no friends, although she had made many pleasant acquaintanceships which might have ripened into friendships had they been given time, and there had been times when she had found herself wishing rather drearily amid the clamour and the crowds that she had never come to America.
It was not the America she had loved in the stories of her childhood; the Land of The Free, where the feathered headdress of the Indian and the black face of the negro were woven with the white hood of the prairie schooner and the dull gleam on the rattlesnake into one marvellous tapestry, bordered with the red maple leaves of the fall. It was just a country new to her, where she liked the people and enjoyed the novel food and the sense of great tracts of country lying all about her; but where her chief happiness, so far, had been in those moments when she had recognized some custom or object (distorted by time but still identifiable) that was dear and familiar to her from the pages of American books she had loved in her childhood. And there had not been many of those moments.
The tour had seemed like a confused and noisy dream in which she, its central figure, obediently read aloud the lectures prepared for her, and was afterwards applauded, fêted, and asked questions which she found it simplest to answer by a shake of her head, a nod, or a smile.
But it had been a comfort to realize that the Americans whom she met at receptions seemed to like her better than the English people she had met at Lady Welwoodham’s parties. The remarks that she made about her stories or about the news of the day, her mild little jokes and her shy inquiries about those things in American life that interested her, were received by Americans with attention and apparent pleasure, and she had found, with a heartening sensation of being understood, that she could talk as “ordinarily” (as she called it) to most Americans as she did to the Beedings.
Her only encounter with that doubtful and amused expression which had disturbed her when she saw it on the charming and intelligent faces of Lady Welwoodham’s friends had been in New York, where her agent gave a party for the Press to meet Amy Lee. Some of the smart newspaperwomen had looked at her knowingly, as if they could see that she was playing a joke on them, and some of them had been condescending, as if she had been a soppy kid. And when the interviews appeared in the New York papers some of them had had headlines like: SO SIMPLE: AMY LEE RIBS NEW YORK, and others had said: JUST A DAISY IN THE FIELD: AMY LEE CAN’T TALK. It had been unpleasant, and had cast a shadow over the beginning of her American tour which had only been dispersed by the simple kindness she had met in the smaller towns.
(The newspaperwomen, in fact, were still wondering whether Amy was too green to be real or whether she was the most sophisticated thing that had hit the city since Dorothy Parker. Their experiences had prepared them for reporting every type of publicity-hunter except a person who never thought about publicity at all, and it was not unnatural that they had fallen down on the story).
Amy’s childhood interest in America had revived at the prospect of visiting the country, but it had again faded as the weeks went on and she did not find her dream-America except in the kind hearts of its people. Her itinerary took her from cities to small towns and back again to cities, and she could never stay long enough in any one of the places she visited to absorb its special atmosphere; therefore all American cities and small towns seemed much alike to her. Only New York had seemed different from all the other places. In spite of her unfortunate experiences with the newspaper-women, she had liked the sparkling streets of New York under its hard blue sky, and had been sorry to leave it. And now the tour was nearly over, Vine Falls was the last town but two on her itinerary, and here she was in Vine Falls, the only town in America which was linked with her childhood, the only place where someone had once lived who had seen her and talked to her when she was a little girl living in a secret world.
She had looked forward all through her tour to visiting Vine Falls, hoping wistfully that there, in the town with the pretty name where her American had lived, she might find the America of her childhood. But on alighting from the train at the depot she had been gushingly received by a large smart woman called Mrs. Boadman and a committee of ladies, who at once whisked her off to the hotel where the lecture was to be given; she had barely had time for a glance through the windows of the car before they arrived.
However, she had seen a brightness in the air, a profusion of snowball bushes and lilacs in the gardens, a glimpse between the houses of distant hills lending mystery to the view, that made this town seem different from all the other places she had visited; and all through the lecture, and even now as she stood in Mrs. Boadman’s apartment listening politely to an elegant middle-aged man talking about American literature, she was wishing that she could slip away by herself and explore Vine Falls. She wanted to wander through its streets as she did in London, unrecognized and in old clothes, watching and listening and remembering that day long ago when she had talked to the American boy outside Kenwood House. He would be grown up by now, of course, and gone away; Americans did not live in the same place for years as English people did, but it would be delightful to wander through the streets where he had walked to school and think about him.
I suppose (Amy lifted her glass and took a sip, her light brown eyes fixed steadily upon the face of the elegant elderly man) the way I’ve always felt about that American boy is the nearest I’ve ever been to being in love. It’s awfully queer. And it was queer, too, seeing the picture of that young man with his head on the red cushion looking just like my American grown up.
I do wonder what my American looks like now?
And then she happened to glance away from the elderly man for an instant towards the crowd in the background, and gave such a start that she nearly dropped her glass.
A face, smiling under a slanting grey hat like a young man’s, was moving slowly towards her.
Her heart began to beat fast. She could not take her eyes from that face—so strangely familiar and dear!—whose owner was working her way through the crowd. Her way, for Amy could now see that the face belonged to a girl of her own age, elegantly dressed in dark grey. But the high cheekbones, the shape of the grey eyes, the sweet wide mouth, were those that had haunted Amy’s imagination ever since the evening in her flat when she had seen the picture of the young man asleep on a red cushion. And as she stared, she realized that this was the face that had come between her own face and the blue eyes of the young lieutenant in her dream; it was the face of her American, Robert Somebody, grown-up!
The girl had now got clear of the crowd and was approaching their little group, with a faint wary smile. She held a pair of dark red net gloves in one hand and was swinging them gently as she came up.
“Hullo, Mrs. Boadman,” she said in a high, soft voice, holding out her hand.
“Why, Lou, dear,” replied Mrs. Boadman absently, taking the hand for a moment and continuing to give most of her attention to the elderly man. “So glad you could make it. I’m sure you’re just crazy to meet Miss Lee. Miss Lee, this is Lou Vorst, she’s just crazy to meet you, she’s a clever girl, too, she was going to do dress-designing in New York, weren’t you, Lou, only——”
Amy held out her hand. She heard nothing of Mrs. Boadman’s speech except the name. Lou Vorst. VORST. She must be his sister, she thought, beginning to tremble. It’s the same name. It sounds just the same as when he said it that time; and then her hand was taken in a cool clasp for a second, and the girl said:
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Lee.”
“I’m very pleased to meet you, too, Miss Vorst,” said Amy faintly, and perhaps that sentence had never before been said in Mrs. Boadman’s drawing-room with such complete truth.
“You weren’t at the lecture, you bad thing!” continued Mrs. Boadman, pulling Lou’s slender arm within her fat one. Her tone made the words offensive. “Miss Lee told us all about her methods of work. So original. You missed quite a treat.”
“I couldn’t make it. I’m sorry,” lied Lou, gently withdrawing her arm from Mrs. Boadman’s and reaching out to take a canapé from a tray which was being carried past. She addressed Amy, looking at her with interest. She’s a funny little number but there’s something cute about her, decided Lou. She certainly does stare. I wonder if maybe my hat is on crooked? Amy smiled vaguely, but did not reply and continued to stare.
At this moment Mrs. Boadman was called away by her daughter Elenor to greet some important new arrival. Amy, Lou and the elderly man were left alone, and he was just opening his mouth to continue his lecture on American literature when he was hailed by an acquaintance and, excusing himself with a smile, turned away. Amy and Lou were now, by one of those chances which sometimes occur at crowded receptions, left facing one another in a corner which was sufficiently apart from the rest of the room for them to feel themselves alone, and to carry on a conversation in comparative comfort.
They looked at one another in silence for a moment. Then Amy began to say something but Lou began to speak at the same instant, and they both laughed.
“I’m so sorry—you were going to say something.”
“No, do go on.”
“It wasn’t anything original,” said Lou. “I was only going to ask you the usual question about this being your first visit to Vine Falls?”
“Yes, it is, but I was so looking forward to coming here,” replied Amy, so earnestly that Lou was surprised.
“Mighty nice of you,” she said a little drily; she had taken a fancy to Amy, and it was disappointing to hear her making the type of remark usually made by visiting celebrities.
“You think I don’t mean it, don’t you?” Amy had gone pink with distress, but for once she did not take refuge in silence when confronted by a suspicious, yet amused glance. She was so anxious to talk to Lou, and to find out if she had a brother!
“Why, Miss Lee—surely—I didn’t mean——” Lou felt that she had been rude, and was embarrassed.
“No, I’m sure you didn’t, it’s only that people don’t always believe I mean what I say. I don’t know why. I suppose they think a person can’t write books and be sincere at the same time. I really did mean it. I did want to come to Vine Falls. I—I had a special reason,” ended Amy, suddenly feeling so desolate that tears came to her eyes, and she turned away to hide them, putting her glass beside Lou’s on the piano.
“Why, I’m so sorry, Miss Lee,” said Lou gently, not knowing quite what to say but feeling more interested in Amy every moment. “It’s just that Vine Falls is a small town, you know, and we live in it all the year round, and I guess it seems strange to us that a writer like yourself, who goes places and gets around, should want to come to a place like this. But maybe if you had a special reason——”
Lou was as sophisticated as a small town society girl could be, but she had never lost one of her childhood weaknesses: she liked to find out. The little girl who had gossiped with Myron was now grown up, but she still enjoyed hearing secrets and getting sidelights on the odd corners in human nature. She was longing to know Amy Lee’s “special reason” for wanting to visit Vine Falls.
“Well, I had. Only when I come to—to tell somebody (you see, I’ve never told anybody before) it seems—soppy,” said Amy, staring at Lou desperately. “Crazy, you’d say, if I told you.”
“Oh, do tell me!” coaxed Lou, lowering her voice a little and moving her charming face, so like Bob’s with its faintly Indian look and thick fair eyelashes, a little nearer to Amy’s own.
But at that moment——
“Miss Lee, here’s Miss Cordell just crazy to meet you,” announced Mrs. Boadman, coming up with a small old woman. “Miss Cordell’s a great reader, she read Gone with the Wind three times. Miss Lee, Miss Cordell.” And Mrs. Boadman, waving to someone, rushed away.
Amy held out her hand, but Miss Cordell did not take it. Instead, she gave a stiff little bow and folded both her own tiny gloved hands upon the tall ivory handle of an antique sunshade. She was nearly seventy, and very ancient indeed by American standards. She wore the dim nondescript clothes worn by unfashionable old women all over the Western world and a hat with squashed tremulous roses on it, but her back was straight and her eyes were sharp and her voice was firm.
“Well, Miss Lee (no, Lou Vorst, don’t you try to get away from me, you stay right here until I’m ready to talk to you about that brother of yours, I want to know all about it and I want the truth, this time) I liked your lecture, Miss Lee, but I don’t like your books.”
And Miss Cordell, settling her hands more firmly upon the handle of her sunshade, unhurriedly surveyed Amy from head to foot, at the same time moving across the corner so that Lou could not escape.
“Don’t you?” said Amy faintly. What was that remark to Lou about that brother of yours? She looked steadily at the old woman, but her thoughts were not on what she was hearing.
“No, I don’t, and what’s to stop me saying so in spite of Nell Boadman pulling my jacket” (here Miss Cordell twitched herself free from Mrs. Boadman, who had grasped the situation in passing, seized the old lady’s tail, and was agitatedly jerking at it), “No, my dear, I don’t like your books. You write about people on the wrong side of the law, and we’ve still got quite enough of that right here in New Leicester without the children reading about it in books.”
“Oh, come now, Lucy, you’ll have Miss Lee thinking we’re overrun with gangsters right here in Vine Falls,” protested another lady pleasantly; she had already been introduced to Amy as Mrs. Jonas Frankwood Senior. “Why, I think it’s wonderful the way the G-men have cleared things up.” She was about to join their group, which she had paused to address on her way to some friends at the other end of the room, but at that moment she caught sight of Lou, and looked a little embarrassed. “Why hullo, Lou dear, I didn’t see you there,” she murmured, and continued on her way.
“Still plenty of rats about, and we don’t want ’em glorified in our books,” persisted Miss Cordell with a sharp glance at Lou, “The business of literature is to elevate and improve, not to make bad men and bad ways fascinating to our boys and girls. You’re a young girl, Miss Lee, and I can see you don’t know much about life and you don’t mean any harm, but one day you’ll learn that evil can’t be played with.”
She paused, putting a tiny hand in a grey glove gently on Lou’s arm, but continued to address Amy, looking severely yet sorrowfully into her eyes:
“Why, haven’t I seen one of the dearest boys in the world, this girl’s own brother … my cousin Amalie and I have known him since he was born and she taught him to play the piano … a fine young man, going to be a doctor. Now he’s got into bad ways, running around with gangsters. …”
She suddenly turned on Lou, who was watching her with a pale but composed face.
“Isn’t that so, Lou?” she said sharply. “Doesn’t everybody know it?”
Lou said nothing, and Miss Cordell went on.
“And now his own mother doesn’t know where he is. Your books won’t help him to come to his senses, nor help people like me to pray for him … as I do every night of my life. He comes of a fine old family, too. One of the oldest families in New Leicester.’ She drew Lou a little closer, and her expression softened. “Been settled here since the War.”
“The War?” To Amy, the Englishwoman, there was only one War. But Lou explained, her face a study in amusement and resentment and another feeling that Amy, with a shock, recognized as grief:
“Our War, Miss Lee. The one between the North and the South.”
“You’re one of the forces, Miss Lee, that’s helping to break up civilization,” concluded Miss Cordell firmly. “Anyway, your books are, and it comes to the same thing. You think it over. Try and write something sweet and homey that the women’ll like. Good-day to you,” and she gave Amy another stiff little nod and turned towards Lou. But the expression on Lou’s face, and the sudden recollection that they were not alone, and that Mrs. Boadman and her daughter were gossips—seemed to change her mind. All she did was to take Lou’s hand again, give it an affectionate squeeze, and look at her for a moment. Then she smiled painfully and turned away.
Lou took a glass from a passing tray and held it out to Amy, but Amy shook her head.
“Well, I will. I need it.” Lou drank half the contents, and set it down beside the other on the piano. She looked as if she were trying to put something out of her mind.
“Miss Lee,” she said, “you’ve got me all worked up about your special reason for wanting to come to my home town. Are you in a hurry to get away after this show? If you could spare the time I’d just love to drive you round and show you places. And then,” she smiled charmingly, “maybe you could tell me what the special reason is?”
“I should love to come,” stammered Amy, more confused and excited every moment. “My train doesn’t go till nine o’clock, so I should have time. The only thing is, I’m afraid someone on the Committee, Mrs. Frankwood, I think, was going to drive me to the station.”
“Tell them you’d rather go with me,” said Lou coolly. “What’s the use of being famous if you can’t throw a temperament?”
“But wouldn’t that seem rather——” Amy was beginning doubtfully, when there occurred another interruption.
“Miss Lee,” announced Mrs. Boadman, bustling up, “I’m so sorry. It really is too bad, but our Committee member who was going to drive you to the depot, Mrs. Frankwood, has just been called up to say she must go into Morgan, her daughter’s sick.”
“I’m so sorry,” murmured Amy.
“Isn’t it just too bad? I’ll find someone else, of course. I’d have been honoured if I or my daughter could have driven you down. We have two cars. But unfortunately we’ve both got engagements for later this evening (you know what girls are for going places evenings! and I’m nearly as bad!) Now I wonder who would——”
“I’ll be glad to drive Miss Lee to the depot,” said Lou quickly. “She wants to see something of the town, too. We can take a little run around.”
“Why, that’s sweet of you, Lou. I’m so pleased. You two girls have got quite a crush on each other, isn’t that nice.” And Mrs. Boadman glanced from Amy’s face to Lou’s. Her own expression was not made less acid by the conspiratorial solemnity of theirs. After exchanging one lightning glance on her approach which said Oh Lord Here Comes The Old Trout Again, they had composed their faces, but unfortunately they had composed them so well that Mrs. Boadman was quite sure they had been tearing her apartment and her character to shreds.
“Well, that’s fine. Now, Miss Lee, Lou has had you quite long enough. I’ve got two perfectly lovely people here I’d love to have you meet.” And Mrs. Boadman hurried away to get the two perfectly lovely people.
“All right, then,” said Lou. “As soon as the party breaks up, we’ll go. It won’t be long now. How about eating somewhere? Or would you sooner eat on the train?”
“I’d sooner eat with you, if you’d like to?”
“Fine. We’ll go to Roselands. That’s a place where two females can eat alone. They’ve got a terrace over the lake there, where my brother used to take his dates.”
Amy nodded. She could hardly speak. The American boy was coming nearer every moment. His presence (an unknown personality, but the eyes were like this girl’s eyes and the mouth smiled in the same way) filled the room. That old woman had spoken of him, and Lou had looked so sad, and now she had spoken of him herself. So he used to take girls to dine on a terrace above the lake! Amy saw a fair head and wide shoulders leaning towards a dark head and a white frock, and the sheen of moonlight on water, and suddenly experienced a novel and disagreeable emotion. It was her first attack of jealousy, and none the easier to bear because she was jealous of a kind of ghost! I must be going mad, she thought wildly.
“I’ll come and fetch you a bit later on,” smiled Lou, and moved away across the room, which was already growing less crowded.
Left alone for a moment, Amy looked about her in search of a chair, and when she discovered one, close to her, she sat down, suddenly feeling so tired that she could not stand up a moment longer. The large room with its modern wallpaper in a design of blue and grey tulips on a red ground, the late afternoon sunlight pouring through the open windows, the blue haze of the cigarette smoke, the chairs covered in red, blue and grey striped satin, the laughing faces and the sound of the shrill voices, all became dim and faraway. She shut her eyes.
At once she saw a picture.
But it was not a coloured and moving copy of an actual scene. It was a blurred photograph in a newspaper, and she was looking down at it as it lay on the floor at her feet. She could make out a kind of cabin made from rough-hewn logs, and some trees with pointed tips that looked like pines, and there was a group of men standing round something—it looked like a heap of dark clothes—lying on the ground. She gradually made out a streak of white between some dark shapes in one corner, and somehow she knew that it must be a swift mountain river rushing between large boulders. And as she looked, a horror of the scene came over her; the dark pines, the blurred group of men looking down at the motionless object on the ground, and the half-ruined cabin in the back-ground were horrible; they were wicked, and they terrified her.
“Miss Lee! Here are two lovely people who are crazy to meet you!”
She opened her eyes, and looked dazedly into Mrs. Boadman’s smiling face. Only the picture and that sense of wickedness were real, and she could not realize where she was. Then, as Mrs. Boadman stared at her curiously and the man and woman standing just behind her began to look surprised, she collected herself and stood up hastily, murmuring polite phrases. Her agitation and inexplicable alarm were by now so acute that she hardly knew how to reply to the friendly questions of her two new acquaintances, and the party suddenly became unendurable to her. The loud voices of the few people left in the room, the smell of smoke, the strong taste of alcohol in her mouth, all increased her nervous distress, and she longed for fresh air and silence and an opportunity to confide her recent extraordinary experience to Lou.
The liking which Lou had at once felt for her had been mutual; it was more than a fanciful wish to spend an hour with a girl who looked like her American that made Amy wish Lou would hurry up and get them both away from the party. I’ll tell her all about it, she thought. I’ll tell her how he gave me the coin, and how I’ve always remembered him, and how I saw the picture of that young man with his head on a cushion, looking so like my American grown up. I’ll tell her everything queer that’s ever happened to me about the American boy, and then I’ll ask her if she thinks he’s her brother and if I’m going crazy. I shan’t mind telling her, because I like her. She reminds me of Dora (only she’s younger, of course, and smarter) and I’m sure she’ll be sensible about it all.
Amy had fastened upon the quality of Lou which, next to her haunting likeness to a memory, was the one most likely to attract her. Amy herself was the least sensible of girls, ridden by a violent imagination and made unhappy by strong and unexpressed feelings whose existence she only half-suspected and for which she had no outlet. It was inevitable that the good sense in Lou’s manner should charm her as much as the cool friendliness. Lou, on her side, was equally charmed by the child-like earnestness and strength of emotion which she divined in Amy. These qualities, so different from her own, were not common in the girls of Vine Falls, and for Lou they had all the attraction of novelty.
Therefore, when the two girls drove away half an hour later with Lou at the wheel, both were pleased at having escaped together and at the prospect of enjoying an hour or so’s companionship, which might develop into a friendship. Amy’s spirits rose a little as they moved off down the wide pleasant road bordered with shady trees through which the sunlight came with tempered heat in long evening rays. There was a spirit of energy mingled with one of tranquillity in the air of this little town which she had encountered nowhere else in America, and it was impossible not to feel happier under its influence. But even her pleasure at being in Vine Falls, even the fairytale delight of driving down Sycamore Avenue with a girl who looked just like Robert Somebody himself, could not completely banish Amy’s agitation. She was unpleasantly, deeply disturbed, and afraid.
Presently Lou gave a little laugh.
“What is it?” asked Amy, smiling too.
“Oh, I was just thinking I have a nerve, carrying off a visiting celebrity like this. Mrs. Boadman didn’t like it at all.”
“I didn’t like her. She’s got a beastly face,” said Amy.
Lou blinked, then glanced at her.
“Yes, it’s downright mean, but we don’t usually say so. Miss Lee, do you always speak your mind right out like that?”
“Well——” Amy considered. “I don’t say much, because (since I got famous, you know) people sort of—pay too much attention to what I say. They won’t believe I mean just what I say and nothing else. I used to get awfully miserable about it at parties in London.”
“Smart Alecs,” murmured Lou. “So clever they fall right down and go boom. I know.”
“But it’s quite easy to talk to you because I like you,” Amy ended.
“That goes for me too,” said Lou cheerfully, turning to smile at her.
“I’m so glad! I’ve never had a friend of my own age.”
Lou felt a little as if she had stepped into the pages of Melbourne House, but her inward smile only added a glint of her dry humour to a situation which she found oddly moving. Amy Lee certainly was a funny little number! But she was very likable. The unexpected thought crossed Lou’s mind that Amy was like Bob. She had the same lack of sophistication, yet the same unaggressive confidence in herself. He used to be like a nice kid, thought Lou, and she’s rather the same.
It seemed to Amy that there was no pause before she answered:
“I’d like to be friends with you, too.”
She instinctively chose the simplest words, and was rewarded by Amy’s expression.
“Oh, I am glad! Because a lot of extraordinary things have been happening to me, and I want to ask your advice about them.”
“I’ll certainly be pleased to do what I can, Miss Lee.” Lou answered, with the formality which gives sometimes a quaint attraction to the speech of educated American girls. She added, unable to resist her curiosity:
“Is it something to do with your ‘special reason’ for wanting to come here?”
“Yes, it is.” Amy clasped her hands together. “Only the whole thing sounds so absolutely barmy—crazy, you know—that I don’t like to tell you about it. I’m afraid you’ll think I’m going mad, or else telling lies.”
“I promise I won’t.”
Amy sighed. “It is such an extraordinary business—and, of course, there may not be anything in it, after all, and then you will think I’m mad.”
“I won’t. I promise I won’t. There are few things I enjoy more than a really extraordinary business. Go on, Miss Lee! Shoot!”
“Well——” Amy hesitated. “Will you promise not to ask any questions about what I’m going to tell you until I’ve asked you some questions?”
Lou nodded.
“No matter how much you want to?”
Lou nodded again.
“All right, then.” Amy took one rather desperate glance around her at the vacant lots where children were playing past which they were now driving. Then she pressed both hands tightly together and asked quickly in a low voice:
“Have you any brothers?”
“Two,” answered Lou quickly, glancing at her, her face suddenly alarmed.
“Oh, please don’t look like that! Did either of them ever go to England?”
“Why, yes. My youngest brother Bob did, about ten years ago. In 1928, I think it was, or thereabouts.”
“Oh!” Amy gave a little gasp. “And—and did he go to London, do you know?”
“Surely. My mother went on the trip too, and my Aunt Carol Viner. We were all very thrilled about it, because it was the first time any of the family’d been to Europe since my father’s people sailed from Holland in the seventeenth century.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure it must have been your brother I met outside Kenwood House in London when I was a little girl. He gave me a shilling for my birthday. At least, he thought it was a shilling, but it was really five cents. I’ve still got it. And I’ve never forgotten him. That’s all.”
She was so agitated by this time that she could hardly get the words out, and Lou had to incline her head towards her to hear the end of the sentence.
“But——” began Lou.
“I thought you must be his sister, you see, because you’re so like him. You are like him, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes. We’re so alike it’s a family joke. But how could you possibly have remembered——”
“Well, that’s what’s so queer,” said Amy faintly. “You see, I did remember what your brother looked like as a little boy. I’ve always remembered his face perfectly. But, of course, I couldn’t know what he looked like when he was grown up, because I’d never seen him. But—but just before I came to America I—I did see him. In a kind of dream. Only I wasn’t really asleep, I was just resting.”
“You saw Bob? But how?”
Amy nodded. “He was asleep, with his head against a red cushion, and he looked so ill.”
Lou, looking utterly bewildered, could only shake her head. She had stopped the car under a group of trees on the edge of a field, and she now turned to Amy and demanded:
“But how could you know it was Bob in the dream?”
“He was so like the little boy I remembered, only grown up, of course. And—and I saw him another time, too, in a real dream, that time. His face—was quite close to mine, and he was—smiling.”
“See here,” Lou started the engine again, “Miss Lee, we can’t go to Roselands, we shall only meet half Vine Falls there. Shall we go home? We can hunt in the ice-box for something to eat, and then we can talk this out.”
“Oh, yes, let’s go to your home! You’re not angry, are you?” she added timidly.
“Of course not. But I am just a little bit scared. It’s all so creepy. And I suppose you must have heard what Miss Cordell said. You see, Bob isn’t with us any more. We don’t know where he is. Oh, we can’t talk here! Let’s get home.”
For some moments they drove in silence. Then Amy said:
“You see, when I saw you at the party, you looked so like him that I knew you must be some sort of relation.”
Lou nodded.
“And—and I was sort of worried about that picture of him I saw on the cushion. I felt I must tell you about it. And when Miss Cordell said he was running around with gangsters, I felt awful.”
“We don’t even know if he’s still with the gangsters. We don’t know if—we don’t know anything,” said Lou, accelerating. “That’s what’s so hard.”
“You see, the only time I ever saw him, he was so kind.” Tears came to Amy’s eyes. “My mother had died about a year ago and it was my birthday and I told him about it, and he said, ‘Gee, I’m sorry. That’s bad’.”
Lou smiled.
“That sounds just like Bob. He was the nicest kid. Until three months ago, he was the swellest guy around, too.” Her soft high voice played ironically yet tenderly on the slang words.
“Then he had a car smash and killed a little girl and put a boy’s eye out. He was acquitted, but my Dad made the mistake of getting a crooked lawyer to help him get off and—and I think some of the jury were fixed too, and that sent Bob quite crazy. He just went off.”
“Ran away, do you mean?”
“He told my cousin he was going off with a small-time gangster, a man we used to know when we were kids. She drove him out to a hotel in the mountains where he said he was going to meet this man, and we’ve never seen him since.”
“How can you bear it?” cried Amy, so violently that Lou glanced at her, startled.
“It is pretty bad. But I can bear it because I’m sure he’ll come back.”
“Are you? Why?”
“I don’t know. I just am. I’m not at all a suggestible type, Miss Lee, and I never get hunches. But I just do have a hunch about this. I know Bob as well as I know myself, and I know he’ll come back.”
Amy was silent. Her feelings were so confused, and she was so troubled by the dread that had haunted her ever since she had seen the blurred newspaper photograph, that she was glad to lean back for the rest of the journey without saying another word, and to let her mind play over what Lou had just told her. But the situation had developed so uncannily, one piece of it fitting into another like a puzzle with such strange precision, that she could not think clearly nor come to any conclusions, except that she was sorry—so sorry for the trouble that had overtaken her happy young American, and longed to help him. He was now a real person, not a kind of ghost, and so much had her feelings about him deepened and changed since earlier in the afternoon that she no longer remembered, as they drove through Vine Falls, that she had longed to wander through the streets dreaming about the little boy that he had been. Now she was on her way with his sister to the house that had been his home. Had anyone told her as she stepped out of the train at Vine Falls that this was to happen to her, she would have been overwhelmed with excitement and happiness. But now it only seemed the natural thing to be doing. At Lou’s home they could talk quietly and perhaps think out a way to help Bob. She thought of him now as Bob, not as My American. The ghost was rapidly becoming real, and with every moment he grew dearer and more important to the girl who had seen him once when they were children.
“Here we are,” said Lou, and drove the car between two low banks covered with long grass, where two opulent bushes laden with snowball flowers made a natural gateway to the drive. The house was white, with graceful portico approached by three shallow circular steps, and its proportions were so pleasing and so admirably set off by the shady trees grouped at either side of it that Amy could not help exclaiming:
“Oh, what a lovely house!”
“My great-grandfather built it,” said Lou, shutting off the engine, and glancing up at the shabby, charming façade with affection. “We like it. It’s falling to pieces, but we wouldn’t live anywhere else. There are only one or two houses like this in Vine Falls; my cousins, Helen and Stebby Viner, live in the one down the hill. Maybe you noticed it on the ride up.”
She opened the front door, and motioned Amy into a wide entrance hall with a small but graceful staircase. An atmosphere at once elegant, shabby and affectionate greeted Amy, which seemed familiar to her. It reminded her of the flat at Five Highbury Walk, and she immediately felt at ease.
“There’s nobody home,” said Lou. “Do come upstairs. My mother and father are away on a trip, to get mother better from worrying about Bob, and our handy-man’s out. Just a minute——” They were now crossing the landing, and she went into a room on her left. “I’d like to have you see something.”
It was a small room, with books piled on the floor in one corner, a bed stacked with folded blankets, college pennants crossed on the walls. The white frilled curtains hung straight at the closed windows. It looked like the room of somebody who had died. And Amy, who was standing at the open door, suddenly realized with a shock whose room it was.
“Look.” Lou came towards her holding out a photograph which she had taken from the wall. “Miss Lee—which of these boys is Bob?”
Amy took the photograph in a trembling hand, and looked at it.
It was a group of young men in rowing dress assembled outside a college building. Amy’s eyes moved eagerly over the smiling young faces and stopped at last at the young man on the extreme left of the group. She put her finger gently on the picture and said faintly:
“This one.”
Lou nodded. “Yes. That’s Bob. But he doesn’t look nearly so like me in this picture as he usually does, and that’s why I wanted to have you see it, to see if you’d know which he was. Miss Lee” (she turned away to re-hang the picture on the wall, followed by Amy’s rather wistful gaze; Amy would have liked to look at the photograph for a little longer) “this is the strangest business, isn’t it? What do you make of it, anyway?”
Amy shook her head helplessly.
“I don’t know, but I think it’s frightening, somehow, and I do feel—so dreadfully sorry for your brother. I do wish I could help.”
“That’s lovely of you,” said Lou, over her shoulder as she led the way to her room, and meant what she said, for with every moment that they spent together she liked Amy more, feeling beneath her child-like manner a true sweetness and strength, like the taste of honey, which had nothing to do with the determined “loveliness” that she, Lou, had always despised in women.
Both girls felt too disturbed in mind to talk much while they were freshening up, and their silence lasted while they made coffee and salad in the kitchen and carried two trays into the drawing-room.
It was nearly eight o’clock, and the neglected garden outside the long open windows was beginning to render up fragrance to the evening coolness. Amy’s eye was taken by a trellis just outside the window covered with a tapestry of convolvulus (morning glories is the pretty American name), and she continued to stare at the delicate mass of tiny red, white, blue and purple horns while she ate and drank; they were all twisted in sleep now, looking so crumpled among their long pointed leaves that it was difficult to picture them as they would be to-morrow morning, unrolled, without a crease in their fragile petals.
She was also very taken with the room, where old Colonial furniture was blent with pleasant modern pieces, and the whole set off by a wallpaper striped in soft grey and patterned with flowery medallions in green and rosy lilac. The curtains, the chintz on the chairs, matched the wallpaper. White-painted shelves of books, and sketches and paintings of vigorous American faces with old-fashioned collars and out-moded hairdressings gave dignity and a sense of the Past. A grand piano, its shape shown to advantage by the long low shape of the room, shared the musical honours with a radio cabinet. It was a charming room, but its charm was not due to the silent presence of flowers whose strange fringed faces stared out at the evening light, nor to that light itself, nor to the peaceful silence. Here was a room where people had been content, had danced on the shining floor, laughed and made plans for the happy summer, the gay fall, that was coming. In this room, brisk aunts had made plans for the undoing of graceless nieces or the welfare of worthy nephews; the arrival of new babies had been announced, and people had waited to hear of deaths. There had been a proposal or two blurted by the fireplace, and young faces had turned away to the window to hide tears. Amy, sitting in silence, was almost happy—in spite of the vague dread lurking in her mind—to be where she was. This is his home, she thought. He grew up here. I’ve never been in such a lovely room before. No wonder he was a happy little boy.
And then came the desolate recollection that he was happy no more.
Lou was sitting opposite to Amy in silence, also staring out of the window, and wondering if the whole story were a lie arranged and carried out for some reason which she could not imagine.
Perhaps Bob had met this girl at some place, and they had decided. …
What had they decided? What could be the reason for telling such an unconvincing lie?
No, I’m sure it’s true; it’s too queer not to be, decided Lou. Her doubts had only been the natural response of a sceptical nature to an unlikely tale, and she now had no reservations as she turned and said:
“Miss Lee——”
“Do call me Amy, please.”
“I’d love to have you call me Lou, too. Well, Amy, then. What do you think all this means? You must have some notion.”
Amy shook her head.
“No, I haven’t. I just think it’s queer and frightening.”
“Me too. The only clear thing about it is that you seem mixed up with Bob in some way.”
“Oh, yes!” breathed Amy, charmed in spite of her anxiety by this thought.
“You aren’t psychic, are you?”
“Oh, no. These pictures of your brother were the first ones I’ve ever had. That’s why I was so frightened.”
“You see,” Lou leant forward, with her elbows on her knees and stared at the carpet, “it’s so maddening because we can’t get at anything! There doesn’t seem to be any reason why you should see Bob in a dream.”
“Unless it was meant to show me he was in danger,” said Amy in a low tone.
“But what could you do, even if you did know he was in danger?”
“Well, I’ve told you, haven’t I? And you’re his sister.”
“Yes, but I already knew he was in danger. At least, I’m afraid he probably is. He mayn’t be in danger of being killed, but it can’t be doing him any good, knocking around with those rats.”
“I’m sure he’s in danger,” Amy said in the same low voice, speaking as if to herself. “It’s always been in the back of my mind, I know that now. I’ve been sure of it ever since that night when I saw him asleep on the red cushion.”
“That red cushion!” Lou got up and walked round the room, lighting a cigarette. “Why red? Why not green or blue or yellow?”
“Perhaps it was in some special place,” suggested Amy. “Do you know any rooms where your brother might be where there’s a red cushion?”
Lou laughed.
“America’s mighty large,” she said, and sat down.
“No, but I meant a room in some house or flat, belonging to someone you know where your brother might naturally go,” explained Amy.
Lou shook her head.
“Maybe I do, but I can’t think just now. I feel all balled up.” She got up again and walked over to the window and looked out at the darkening garden, where the trees were giving their usual impression of nature’s indifference to human affairs. “All I know is, you’ve made me feel much more worried about Bob than I was before.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Amy earnestly, “but I felt so bad about it that I had to tell you.”
Lou said nothing for a moment, and in the silence Amy made up her mind not to tell her about the picture she had seen only that afternoon, the blurred newspaper photograph. It had frightened Amy, but it might have nothing to do with Bob, so there was no point in letting it frighten Lou; Amy would keep it to herself.
Nevertheless, as she made this decision, she wished that she could tell Lou. Her loneliness and fear were increased by keeping this secret.
“You see,” Lou said suddenly, “I don’t like feeling helpless. And I do feel helpless about all this. What can we, you and I, do about it?”
“Well … I can keep in touch with you,” said Amy after a moment’s thought.
“I hope you’ll do that anyway.”
“Oh, I will! I want to. But I meant that if I have any more queer pictures I can let you know at once.”
“That’s about all we can do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And if you hear anything about him, or if he comes back, you’ll let me know at once, won’t you?”
Lou glanced across at her, then nodded. The daylight had almost gone and there was not enough of it left to reveal the look on Amy’s face, but the sound of her voice was enough to give Lou her final shock for that day. Good grief, she’s in love with him, she thought, and feeling herself quite unable to deal with this extraordinary discovery while standing still in the twilight, she moved quickly to switch on the light and blundered noisily into the coffee trays which they had left on the floor, causing Amy to jump almost out of her skin.
Of course, it’s only only a schoolgirl crush. She’s such a funny, lonely little number, just the kind to get romantic about a man she doesn’t know … the thoughts went vaguely through Lou’s mind as she stood staring down at the upset cups, blinking in the sudden glare of light.
“I’ll get a cloth,” she said, and went out of the room.
While they were on their knees clearing up the mess, Lou said:
“How much longer are you staying over here?”
“I’ve got two more lectures to do this week, one in Pennsylvania and one in Maryland, and then I’ve got to fill up a fortnight before I do the last two, in Illinois. So I’ll be here about another month.”
But even as she spoke, she could not believe that she would ever really go home, back to London and her lonely luxurious flat. London seemed unreal as a dream. She could not believe that she might have to go back to England without any more news of Bob. She longed so strongly for the story to go on, to come to a middle and then to an end, that she could not face the idea that it might drag on drearily without either.
“And where’re you going to stay for the fortnight?”
“New York,” answered Amy at once. “I liked it. I want to start my new story.”
“Have you got a place to stay?”
“No, I’ll have to find somewhere. Why?”
“Well, I was thinking … my other brother, Boone, and his wife have got an apartment in Greenwich Village that they want to let for the summer. If you stayed there, you’d feel in touch with us, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I should! I’d love to!”
“And my cousin Helen and I are going on a little trip to New York in a week or so and we could look you up.”
“That would be lovely. Perhaps you could both come and stay there with me?”
America had undoubtedly changed Amy’s habits; in London it had never occurred to her to invite anyone to spend so much as a single night in her flat, and here she was extending hospitality to two girls, one of whom she had never met. But then, she did not feel that Lou was a stranger, and any cousin of Lou’s must be nice.
“Thanks a lot, but we couldn’t do that,” answered Lou firmly and promptly. “My brother’s wife would be mad. She doesn’t like his relations. We aren’t progressive enough for her.”
“She sounds horrid.”
“She is. But she can’t stop us coming in for a drink sometimes. Now how about it? I’ll write to Boone’s agent to-night, shall I?”
“Oh, yes, please, if you would, and then he’ll know I’m all right.”
“He’ll feel that instinctively when I tell him who you are,” said Lou dryly.
“I wish you needn’t tell him. It is such a nuisance. People are sure to come bothering.”
“Very well, if you’d rather not. I’ll just say you’re Miss Lee, a friend of mine from England. He’s sure to find out and never forgive me for not stinging you for treble rent, but never mind. I’ll write him to-night.”
She glanced at her watch.
“Mercy! If we’re going to make your connection we’ll have to hurry!”
Dazed by the crowded events of the day and by the sudden need for haste, Amy put on her hat and jacket and went upstairs to fetch the small case containing her needs for a night on the train. When she came down again Lou was speaking to the handyman in the hall. He fiddled about with some letters on a table, apparently listening to what Lou was saying, but keeping a stare of sour, piercing curiosity fixed on Amy, who was too tired and agitated to notice it. She stood in a patient attitude, gazing dreamily up the shallow white staircase and wondering if she would ever see this house again, and meet the young man whose presence seemed to haunt its rooms? Sadness and tenderness crept over her, she did not know why, and made her want to weep.
“Let’s go,” said Lou coming quickly over to her. “I certainly am sorry to hurry you off like this, but I was so taken up with what we were saying that I never noticed the time. I suppose you must make this connection?”
“Oh, yes. It’s the only one that will get me to Bardsville in time for my lecture.”
“I was wishing you could have stayed the night here,” said Lou, getting into the car.
“Oh, I wish I could have; I do like your house so much,” and Amy turned, as the car passed between the two snowball bushes, to take a last look at the white columns glimmering through the dusk.
“You must come and stay when you’ve finished your lectures.”
Lou’s voice was not exactly absent; Amy could tell that she was not merely being polite; but it was plain that she was thinking of something else as she spoke. She went on: “I’m just wondering whether to tell Mother about all this. On the whole, I think I won’t. It would only worry her worse than ever.”
Amy said nothing. She was suddenly wondering if there was someone else whom Lou ought to tell about “all this”—the girl Bob was engaged to. The thought was painful, so painful that she was alarmed. I simply must stop feeling like this about him, she thought. Why, I may never see him again! A person can’t be in love with a person they’ve only seen once, when they were twelve years old! It would be soppy. If only I didn’t feel that he’s my American, and nobody else’s! That’s what makes it so difficult to be sensible about him. Oh dear, it’s all so frightening and queer, I don’t know how I’m going to think about anything else for the next three weeks.
They only just made the connection. Amy had to run, and was swung up on to the train by a grinning negro porter, with wonderful animal strength, as if she had had no weight. She turned back to wave to Lou, looking as if there were a thousand things she wanted to say, but the train moved off, faster and faster, into the darkness. Lou called “I’ll write to you,” and stood waving until its lights had vanished, then walked back to the car feeling as if she had had an unusually vivid dream.
Myron came out to help her put the car away, and while they were doing so, she said:
“Dan Carr hasn’t been around lately, has he?”
“Well, fer cryin’ out loud! Wouldn’t I hev said so, if I’d heard anythin’?”
“Yes, of course. I was only wondering. … Myron, you think Bob’ll come back, some time, don’t you?”
“He’ll come back if that big-mouth don’t get him shot up.”
“Do you think Dan’s all that dangerous? I thought you always said he was yellow.”
“So he is, yeller. But that sort, yeller an’ always shootin’ off their mouths, they’re the sort that is dangerous. They talk so big, everybody believes ’em, an’ when the time comes, they ain’t no manner of use. He’s the kind that gits folks into trouble an’ then can’t git ’em out again. Dangerous! He’s dangerous like some yipping little dawg that runs under an auto an’ gets the driver killed. That’s all. No, he ain’t been around, Lou. I’d know, if he had. I know a place up in the mountains where he hides. I was there yesterday, but he ain’t been there for months.”
“Do you, Myron! Where is it?”
“Never you mind, Lou. I’m keepin’ a watch, that’s all. Now you go right in, I waunt to rest up fer a bit, I got to mow that lawn termorrer, and I got ter be up early.”
He went off towards the kitchen and the radio, and Lou went in to write to Boone’s agent about the flat.