I WAS DINING WITH SOME FRIENDS—Elizabeth and Mac Bradley—on Massachusetts Avenue that night. It was a few minutes before eight when I entered their upstairs drawing room, but two other guests whom I knew were already there. My hosts were sitting in front of the fire with them.
“My dear, we were just scandal-mongering,” Elizabeth said. She drew me down on the sofa beside her. “Have you heard about Stanley Woland?”
“His name’s Wolanski,” her husband said.
“I know, but you mustn’t! He has a right to change his name if he wants to. Anyway, my dear, he went around to a woman who used to be very fond of him and borrowed five thousand dollars.”
“She was a fool to let him have it.”
“Oh, darling, please let me get on—he’ll be here in a minute. . . . Oh, no, I don’t mean Stanley; I mean the girl’s uncle, Bartlett Folger. Anyway, Stanley told her he’d found this wealthy girl he was sure would marry him, and she was coming here to live and he had to get his car out of hock and put on a decent front, and, my dear, it’s practically in the bag. All of us will be wishing we’d been nicer to Stanley before we’re through.”
“I won’t,” Mac said.
“Oh, well, you, darling. Nobody expects you to admit you were wrong about anything. But the point about it is that the Hilyard child—I can’t think of her name—has turned down dozens of really splendid boys, all because she had a silly love affair with a workman in her father’s plant. And now her mother’s so relieved that she’s delighted to have her marry Stanley if she wants to.”
“I’d rather my daughter would marry the garbage collector,” her husband said.
“Well, I wouldn’t, frankly. Stanley has beautiful manners.”
“Are you sure the Hilyard child is going to marry him?” I asked.
“I don’t know how he’ll ever pay back the five thousand dollars if she doesn’t. He hasn’t a penny of his own, and he must have had—”
My hostess stopped abruptly. “Sh-h—there’s her uncle.”
She went forward to greet him. “Isn’t this delightful!”
I watched Bartlett Folger bow to her and shake hands with Mac. I could see what Agnes had meant in her letter. He was very attractive. His face was so suntanned that the other men looked as if they’d spent the winter underground, and his black hair was shot with just enough gray to make the gray look premature. He was rather hard-bitten someway, although he also looked as if he hadn’t done any work for quite a while. I found myself wondering why Mac and Elizabeth were having him there to dinner. If Lawrason Hilyard and his wife had been there, too, I’d have understood it, because Mac was also a dollar-a-year man, acting as a co-ordinator of some kind between economic agencies.
Just then I heard Bartlett Folger say, “I’m sorry the Hilyards couldn’t come. My brother-in-law can’t get out much. They’re running him ragged these days. I suppose you heard about the attack on him in the House this afternoon.”
“It probably didn’t bother him,” Mac said.
Mr. Folger’s jaw hardened. “On the contrary. He’s sacrificed a good deal to come here, and he’s not used to politics. He doesn’t know how to take it.”
“He’ll learn,” Elizabeth said cheerfully. She introduced him around until she came to me. “And Mrs. Latham . . . Mr. Folger.”
“I’ve heard a good deal of you, Mrs. Latham,” he said. We shook hands. His was very cold. I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to like me much. I’ve seldom seen such a calmly scrutinizing appraisal of one dinner guest by another. If we’d met in a pawnshop I could have understood it.
Then suddenly he became amazingly affable.
“I understand I’m having the pleasure of dining with you Friday, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were going to be here this evening too.”
I may have been mistaken, but I got the impression that Mr. Folger thought it was rather clever of me to have arranged it all so neatly. I was so annoyed that I felt the color rise in my cheeks—which, from Mr. Folger’s point of view, must have clinched it very nicely. He wouldn’t know, of course, that Sgt. Phineas T. Buck has made me unduly sensitive about eligible bachelors; nor could I tell him, as I should have liked to do, that the dinner at my house was Colonel Primrose’s idea, not mine. I was delighted when dinner was announced. Until I found myself seated next to Mr. Folger, anyway.
As a matter of fact, the dinner was very pleasant, or was, until somehow—I wasn’t able to figure it out because I was talking to the man on my left when it began—somebody brought Stanley Woland’s name into the conversation.
I was first aware of it when I heard Bartlett Folger saying calmly, “We’re delighted, of course. Even if it doesn’t last, it means she’s got over a schoolgirl attachment her parents had to break off.”
In the little silence that ensued, our hostess said brightly, “Well, of course, I always think it’s really a shame—”
“To destroy love’s young dream?” Mr. Folger interrupted with a smile. “I thought so myself. I was in charge of the mill at the time, and I liked the boy.” He smiled again. “I could see the parents’ point of view. It would have been a little awkward, if you own a town, to have your daughter’s mother-in-law running a roadside filling station and hot-dog stand. At least my sister thought so.” He put his wineglass down, his face becoming serious again. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been better to have made the best of it. Diane would have come to her senses. Or they might even have made a go of it. It’s always a mistake, in my opinion, to make unnecessary enemies. And they made two very bitter ones.”
“Who?” I asked. It was none of my business, of course, but I found myself, just then—no doubt quite irrationally—on the side of the woman running the service station.
“The boy,” Mr. Folger said calmly, “and my niece. Diane has never forgiven her parents, and I don’t believe she ever will.”
“How did you—I mean, how was it broken up?” someone asked.
“We paid the boy off,” Mr. Folger said equably. “He was very decent about it. I thought we were going to have trouble. He could have got a lot more if he’d sat tight. But this is just personal history—”
I, for one, was glad when Elizabeth got up and we went into the drawing room for coffee, leaving the men to their cigars.
“Of course, the point is,” Elizabeth said calmly, “that the Hilyards have made a tremendous lot of money and the young man certainly knew it. Promethium is in enormous demand, and it sells for thirty-seven dollars a pound. Mac says if they hadn’t spent a lot developing it that they have to get out, they could sell for around eighteen dollars and make a good profit. He had me buy some of their stock over the counter several years ago at three, and he made me sell it last fall at forty-five. It’s around fifty now.”
It was nearly eleven when we got up to go. Bartlett Folger went down the stairs with me.
“May I see you home, Mrs. Latham?” he asked.
“Thanks,” I said. “I have my car.” Then, for fear I’d been a little offhand, I added, “I’m looking forward to seeing you Friday.”
“Nothing could keep me away, Mrs. Latham,” he replied.
I opened my front door, went inside and stopped. Lilac, who’s normally in bed at ten o’clock, came waddling out of the back sitting room. She gave me a non-committal look, opened the basement door and went downstairs. For a moment I thought perhaps Colonel Primrose had dropped by, though he was hardly in the habit of appearing at that time of night. I laid my wrap across the newel post and went along to see. At the door I stopped again, abruptly.
Diane Hilyard was calmly sitting there on the ottoman in front of the fire, in her stocking feet, drinking a cup of hot chocolate and eating a piece of bread and butter. She had on the same periwinkle sweater and skirt she’d worn that afternoon. Her tan-and-brown saddle shoes were drying on the hearth, her beaver coat and an old brown felt riding hat were lying on the sofa.
“I hope you don’t mind my being here,” she said. “Your maid said my shoes were wet and made me take them off. She said I was cold, and I guess I was. Would you like some chocolate? I’m sure there’s some left.” She took the lid off the Dresden pot and looked in. “No, I’m afraid I’ve drunk it all. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want any anyway,” I said.
She finished her chocolate and put the cup and saucer down on the tray.
“I suppose you’d like to go to bed, wouldn’t you?” she asked, reaching for her shoes.
“Not particularly,” I said. “It’s early yet.”
I sat down, looking at her. It was hard to imagine her as a bitter enemy of her parents, or for that matter to imagine her married to Stanley Woland, who’d borrowed five thousand dollars to see him through his courtship. She turned her head and stared silently into the fire.
After a moment, she said, “It’s very cold outside, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
I looked at the clock. It was twenty-five minutes past eleven. She must have been there some time already. Her shoes were quite dry. I began to wonder if her mother knew where she was, but I hesitated to ask her. We just sat there in silence. She started a little as the French clock over her head on the mantel daintily struck the half hour.
“It’s such a mess at our house,” she said.
There was something wistfully matter-of-fact about the way she said it that was rather shocking.
“Everybody is always in a stew about something,” she went on after another little pause. “My sister and her husband came for dinner and sat like a couple of—of accusing images all through it. My father’s upset and my mother’s upset and the servants are upset. Finally they all went in the library and shut the door.”
She drew a long breath, picked up her other shoe and started putting it on.
“I don’t know what I’ve done now. It’s always something I’ve done, when they have these family conferences. I thought I’d finally done something to please them, but I guess I was wrong.” She looked up from her shoelaces. “Did you ever have everything you did be wrong?” she asked earnestly.
I shook my head as soon as I got the sentence unscrambled and saw what she meant. She sat there for a moment looking at me.
“Did you have an older sister?” she asked calmly.
“I had a lot of brothers,” I said. “No sisters.”
“You were lucky. Mother says I’m just spiteful and—and jealous, and maybe I am—I don’t know. But my sister’s always done everything right. She never tore her clothes or fell down when she skated. She always liked the proper people and wrote her bread-and-butter letters on time. All her teachers liked her, so she never had to study. She married the proper young man and she dresses properly and has the proper people to dine. She’s a great comfort to her parents and a pain in the neck to her sister Diane.”
She giggled suddenly and her eyes, as dark as sapphires in the glow from the fire, lighted up irrepressibly for an instant.
“I’m horrible, really. Unnatural, mother says. And I suppose I am.” She faded out again like the sound on the radio. “When I couldn’t stick it any more at home, I used to go over and talk to Agnes Philips. She said you’d let me come here when we came to Washington. I didn’t really mean to come tonight, but I couldn’t stand it another minute, with all of them acting like cannibals. I had to get away. I went to a movie, but—well, it was about a girl marrying a man her father wanted her to, and—well, I couldn’t stay any longer, so I thought you might be home—”
“I’m glad you came,” I said. “I hope you’ll always come. It doesn’t matter whether I’m here or not. Lilac’s always around somewhere.”
“She’s nice. I wish we had somebody like her at our house.” She got up and picked up her coat. All of a sudden she sat down on the sofa. “You don’t like Stanley, do you?” she asked abruptly.
“I . . . don’t dislike Stanley,” I answered. By this time I was prepared for her rather startling statements, so I wasn’t taken aback at all. “I’ve known him a long time.”
“I’m going to marry him. Did mother tell you? She’s telling almost everybody she talks to.”
I shook my head. “Is it . . . his idea, or yours?”
“Mine,” she said calmly. “I suppose that’s what the row’s about tonight. My sister’s mad as hops. She heard he’d borrowed some money so he could take me around.”
I looked at her with amazement. It seemed to me that any girl would have hotly resented either the fact or the accusation, and especially this girl.
“And he did,” she went on coolly. “That’s what I like about him. He’s perfectly honest. He hasn’t any money and he’s never worked in his life. His car didn’t break down in front of our house. He wants to marry a girl with money, and he’d heard about me. He told me so himself. He borrowed some money from a woman he knows, just the way people borrow from banks to conduct other kinds of business.”
“But, Diane!” I began.
“I know it sounds awful,” she agreed placidly. “But, you see, the only difference between him and my brother-in-law is that Stanley’s perfectly open and aboveboard about it. Do you think Carey would have fallen in love with Joan if her father had—had owned a filling station?”
She picked up her hat and put it on the back of her head; her pale gold hair stuck up like a cherub’s halo around the narrow brim.
“You see, I thought I was in love, once,” she said. Her face was as expressionless as an ivory figurine’s. “His name was Bowen Digges. He was supposed to be in love with me. We had all kinds of the most lovely plans. My family offered him twenty-five hundred dollars to go away somewhere else and never see me again. And he took it. I’ve hated him ever since. And mother and my sister and my father say I’ve got to marry; it isn’t decent to be an old maid. So, very well, I’m going to marry. I decided that a long time ago. I decided I’d marry the first presentable man who came along and who didn’t pretend my father’s money was an obstacle he’d do his best to get over. Anyway, Stanley’s very amusing, and my sister can’t stand him.”
“And that’s what’s commonly known as cutting off your nose to spite your face, my pet,” I said.
She got up quickly. “Don’t say that?” She was angry, and pretty close to tears.
“I think it’s about time somebody said it,” I returned. “After all, your Bowen Digges and Stanley Woland are only two men out of an awful lot of extremely nice ones in the world.”
“Then why haven’t you ever married again?” she demanded.
“That’s quite different,” I said. “I’ve got two sons. Stepfathers—”
“Bowen and I were going to have six children,” she said quietly. “We were going to—we were going to do lots of things.” She went over to the door. “Good-by.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Have you got a car?”
She shook her head. “I walked.”
“Then I’ll take you home. Don’t be silly; you can’t wander around the streets alone this time of night.”
I put on my galoshes and coat and followed her out to the car. It had started to snow again. We sat there for a moment, waiting for the defroster to unstick the snow around the windshield wipers. Diane huddled down in the corner of the seat beside me, a silent furry bundle, her head bent forward in her coat collar, her hands stuck down in her pockets. She didn’t move as I crossed Wisconsin Avenue and went cautiously along P Street as far as the university. I turned left and went along N to 37th, and down to Prospect Street.
The Hilyards’ house was dark, except for the yellow half circle of the fanlight above the door. A party was just breaking up at a house a little way along, and the people were coming out and starting up their cars. There was no place to park in front of the Hilyards’, so I stopped in the middle of the street, my headlights shining across the sidewalk and up the steps.
Diane took her hands out of her pockets and raised her head. She sat quite still for a moment. Then she said, “I feel better than I did. Thanks a lot. Good night—is it all right for me to call you Grace?”
“Of course,” I said. “Good night, Diane. Don’t do anything just to spite somebody—your sister, or your parents, or Bowen. Life’s got too much in it, and you’re much too sweet.”
She shook her head slowly. “I think it’s a first-class mess, myself. What I’ve seen of it.” She put out her hand and pressed mine. “Oh, I’m not so bad as I sound, actually. Thanks anyway, Grace. Good night.” She opened the door and slid out onto the snowy street.
“Be careful you don’t slip,” I said.
A man in dinner jacket and overcoat was coming along, his head down against the snow. He had a darkhaired girl in a long white dress by the arm, and they were laughing and sliding along the slippery walk, headed for the car in front of the Hilyards’. I waited with my foot on the brake as Diane went over to the sidewalk and stepped up on the curb. And just as she cleared it her feet went out from under her and down she went.
“Oh, damn!” she said. She was half laughing and half mad, but not at all hurt.
I got out of the car, but before I got to the curb, the man coming along had dropped the girl’s arm and jumped forward to help Diane up.
“Upsy-daisy!” he said. They were all three of them laughing, and so was I. He pulled Diane up to her feet. And suddenly he dropped her arms, and they just stood there, staring at each other. I stopped where I was and stared too.
Diane raised her hand slowly and touched his face with her finger tips.
“Bo,” she whispered. “Bo.”
The second time it was a low cry from somewhere very deep inside her. She moved her eyes slowly from him to the girl in the white evening frock standing a little to one side in the bright glare of my headlights. Then she looked back at him, at the starched front of his dinner shirt and the black silk lapels of his jacket. Her face was blank and white and stunned. And so, I imagine, was mine.
The young man standing there was Bowen Digges. He was also the same young man from OPM that I’d talked to in the corner behind the piano at the party that afternoon—the young man from California who didn’t know Diane’s sister and brother-in-law socially, but knew their names, and whose boss was Lawrason Hilyard, and who’d said—it came back to me in a sudden flash—that he hated Lawrason Hilyard’s guts.
He was standing there quite calmly. I could hear myself that afternoon saying, “There’s another daughter. She’s beautiful,” and hear him answering me, “So I’ve heard.”
For a minute something odd seemed to happen to his face, as if he had a slow pain inside him. He started to move, and caught himself sharply. A twisted sort of grin came to his face.
“You’re right, Miss Hilyard,” he said. “I’ve got dinner clothes now. But my mother still used to run a roadside store.”
Diane stared at him as if he’d slapped her in the face, her jaw dropping a little, her eyes as blankly un-understanding as a child’s.
“I hope you didn’t hurt yourself,” he said. “May I—”
She turned and ran. Why she didn’t slip and fall again, I’ll never know. She was up the steps, knocking frantically on the door. It opened suddenly. Her father stood there under the hall light. She stumbled forward arid past him.
He turned and stared after her, and then looked back out into the street. I saw his hand drop from the knob as he recognized Bowen Digges.
“Good evening, sir,” Bowen said.
Mr. Hilyard nodded curtly and closed the door.
“Well, of all things,” the girl in the white dress said. “Who was that?”
“That,” Bowen Digges said, “was a girl I used to know. Be careful you don’t slip, and look out for your skirt.”
I went back to my car. I don’t think he’d even seen me, and I was sure he hadn’t recognized me if he had. He waited till I got my car started and out of his way. I heard his motor go on and race violently for a moment behind me.
It just didn’t make sense, I thought. He’d never been “paid off” by any two thousand, five hundred dollars. I would have been willing to stake everything I owned on that. There was some ghastly mistake somewhere. I’d as soon have believed one of my own sons had done such a thing. They just weren’t that kind of people.
That was Monday night at half past twelve. It was on Tuesday night at eleven thirty-five that Lawrason Hilyard’s watch stopped when he fell or was thrown into the Georgetown Canal. And as far as anyone knew or could find out, Bowen Digges was the last person who had seen him alive.