The Hangman's Whip (3 page)

“But I—I don’t know. She didn’t say anything but that she’d like me to come. What is wrong?”

There was a little silence except for the small silk rustle of their skirts.

Quite suddenly and rather fancifully it seemed to Search that she could feel Diana’s mind sending out exploring little tentacles toward her through the dusk, almost as Diana’s thin white fingers fastened themselves upon her arm. Then she gave her silvery tinkle of laughter. “I can’t imagine,” she said. “You see, she’s behaving so very oddly. Says the strangest—” She stopped on a quickly drawn breath. And Diana Abbott Peale, self-possessed, never afraid of anything, certainly not cold in the warm summer twilight, lifted her thin white shoulders in what in another person would have been a quickly restrained but unmistakable shiver. Then she laughed again.

“It’s nothing, probably. But whatever it is, find out for me, will you, darling? And come along now; Calvin’s in town until tomorrow, but Richard will be waiting; dinner’s as soon as you are ready. Calvin’s thinking of running for state senator, did you know? How well that outfit becomes you; I hoped you’d be able to use it when I sent it to you.”

“I like it very much. Thank you for it, Diana.”

They were nearing the house; beyond the enormous clump of lilacs just ahead were the steps. But whatever feeling she’d had for Richard was dead and buried and definitely in the past. She told herself that. Therefore her heart ought not to beat so hard and fast. They walked up the flagged steps, and Richard rose from a lounge chair on the broad veranda and came to meet them.

It was dusk on the veranda, with only a reflected light from the calm waters of the lake away below penetrating the thickening shadows. A light from the wide hall illumined the doorway, and against it Richard’s tall figure was outlined rather sharply in his white flannels and dark coat. And it was as if she had never been away from him. He came toward her, his hands out, utterly familiar in every motion. Not a gesture he made, not a tone of his voice was strange or unfamiliar. If, owing to the dusk, she couldn’t quite see the look in his eyes, she knew by his voice the look of pleasure and friendliness that must be there.

“Hello there, Search,” he said, taking her hand. It was a hard brief clasp that was also inexpressibly familiar. “It’s grand you’ve come. It’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve seen you. How are you?”

She replied; she did so, miraculously, in as unforced and natural and honestly friendly a way as Richard himself and spoken. And that was all, for Diana hurried her upstairs where a maid was already unpacking her bags and laying out a thin summer dinner gown.

She was a new maid; her name, she said, was Carter; she was very English and very smart; she unpacked quickly and efficiently and went away while Search was dressing, to return with a message from Ludmilla who, it developed, was having dinner on a tray in her room and wanted Miss Search to come to her room sometime after dinner.

“Any time,” said the maid. “Miss Abbott reads late.”

“Thank you, Carter.”

The maid swished away again, closing the door softly behind her.

She would not think of Richard and that brief encounter. Not then. She sheered away from it as from a danger.

Hurriedly she changed. Running a comb through her hair so it lifted cleanly in short soft curls away from her face, she thought again but briefly of Ludmilla; she must find out what was wrong—if anything really was wrong, as Diana had seemed to think.

She put down the comb and rose. Her handbag and the package of rum-butter toffee were on the dressing table, and she left them there. She leaned nearer the mirror to adjust the soft folds of her pale yellow gown and to fasten her only jewelry—her mothers amethyst necklace—around her white neck. The rosy light threw her heart-shaped face into soft relief and gave a glimpse of a beautiful mouth, warm and crimson and gently curving, and black slender eyebrows above eyes that were a little in shadow but were dark lashed and seemed to catch violet lights from the amethysts. Her brown hair, swept upward severely from white temples, had small gold gleams in it.

She fastened the necklace and reminded herself that rose-shaded lights were flattering. The rose-shaded lamps—and the big harp in the south drawing room and the old sundial in the rose garden—marked Isabel Abbott’s era in the old Abbott house. Charming, witty, vain Isabel Abbott had chosen those frilled, round little silken shades. Search touched one of them with a lingering forefinger, struck with a sense of the impermanence of life and the permanence of some small thing—a piece of pink silk. Isabel’s theory was that a woman is as beautiful as she feels, so all the dressing-table lamps in the Abbott house had flattering, softening rose silk shades.

But the thought of Isabel brought her back to Richard again; Isabel had been Isabel Bohan, Richard’s aunt and guardian. So when she married John Abbott and came to live at the Abbott house she’d brought Richard there too. But it was Ludmilla, really, who’d mothered the three children—Search and Diana and Richard. With Howland living next door.

She frowned a little, looking at her image again with sudden seriousness, wondering if she had changed since Richard had seen her.
But there was nothing between her and Richard
, nothing except friendliness and affection. If Eve had gone, if Eve was away getting a divorce, it still made no difference. Richard had never loved her, Search.

Yet the eyes of the woman in the mirror were lighted and mysterious, and there was a look of happiness about her mouth and about the way she stood there regarding herself. She turned abruptly from the mirror and went downstairs, glancing only once along the wide hall down toward the room at the end of it, where Ludmilla was having dinner on a tray. The door to Ludmilla’s room was closed.

Diana and Richard were waiting on the veranda—they had not lighted the lamps out there but were sitting in the warm darkness which had dropped like a mantel over the lake. They went at once, all three, in to dinner.

There were lights there—on one end of the long table there were candles in crystal holders which looked oddly sophisticated and out of place.

“But you’ve changed nothing,” said Search, looking around the enormous high-ceilinged room.

“How could I?” said Diana. “It would have meant to rebuild it. All that silly stained-pine paneling. Come along, darling. Richard, will you sit between us?”

Under her thin sandals Search felt the small resiliency of India matting which covered the whole floor; it carried her instantly back to her childhood as did the faint odor of potpourri from, she knew, the huge blue Chinese vase on the mantel. The mantel itself was an enormity, she supposed, with its set-in mirror and its thick wood carving above ugly brown marble, but she liked it and knew exactly the place where the carved griffon’s wings began to spread upward.

She sat down as Richard held her chair for her, and a waitress in black came in with soup. It was an enormously long table; the candles made an oasis of light at one end, in the midst of which the three places were set. The table easily accommodated thirty; there had been times, and they had been frequent, when extra tables were brought in. Now the table was pulled over near the bank of windows which overlooked the perennial garden, and around the rest of the room were ranged straight chairs of stained light pine with all kinds of seats—cane and leather and polished wood—light and surprisingly comfortable.

She said again, looking around the room with delighted eyes:

“But nothing’s changed. There’s the china dog with souvenir of St. Augustine written on it.”

“It carries you back, doesn’t it?” said Richard, beginning his soup. His face sobered suddenly. “Seems ages—far more than three years—since I was here last.”

“Well,” said Diana, “it’s grand to have you both back. It’s so exactly as it used to be.”

It was just then that for the first time Search looked fully at Richard, and he was looking at her. His eyes were smiling a little, yet there was something grave and deeply intent in that look too. So it seemed to have a kind of meaning and importance. Then Diana said something and Richard turned to reply to her, and Search reached for the tall goblet beside her plate and cold water touched her lips.

“We aren’t exactly as we used to be though, Di,” said Richard slowly. “We’ve all changed. Grown up, I suppose. God knows it was time.” Was there a tinge of bitterness in his voice? Search was sharply aware of his face: the clean line of his cheek and stubborn chin, his level dark eyebrows and the familiar quick way he turned his dark head when someone spoke to him. Yet she wouldn’t meet his eyes again, not just then. But she saw Diana put her long thing white hand with its spatulate fingers on Richard’s wrist and lean toward him a little, smiling.

“Dear,” she said softly, “we are all still so young. There’s all life before us. Things will be better.”

All at once Search realized that her nerves were tuned to a high pitch. That a kind of excitement had caught at her, so things seemed different, apart from their normal level. Otherwise, certainly, she would have imagined no extra significance in Diana’s words—or in her gesture and smile. Diana had always liked Richard.

But it seemed to her then, nevertheless, that almost imperceptibly something had changed in the old dining room. As if not only she and Diana in their sleek gowns and their sophisticated modern look were different, out of pace and rhythm with the wide, quiet old room, but as if something else was awry. Something that went deeper than—well, fashionable dinner gowns and high soft coiffures and maturity. They were no longer the children who had laughed and squabbled and struggled and planned for the future in that house and in that room; they seemed to have, indeed, no relation to the ghosts of themselves the house evoked.

Perhaps the house had changed too. Perhaps something had crept into it that was strange and inexplicable and a little frightening.

She took a long breath, watching one of the candles waver. That was nonsense. There was nothing wrong about the house. Nothing formidable in the still, warm night; nothing threatening.

Richard was patting Diana’s hand cheerfully—and drawing his own hand away. Soup was being removed; fish was being placed before them. Diana laughed—the little silvery tinkle which was habitual with her. Richard was talking. He was reminding them of a childish escapade, something about the lily pool and their French governess. She didn’t remember the particular incident. And then all of them began to talk—quickly, almost excitedly, remembering, reminding each other, interrupting each other as one childhood memory led to another. Laughing—until all at once dinner was over, and they rose and went back to the quiet veranda for coffee. The moon had come up while they sat at dinner, but the veranda, shaded by roof and vines, was scarcely touched by the moonlight.

Her cheeks felt hot, her pulse quick. She sat down in the shadow of the heavy wisteria vine and leaned her head back against the cushions of the great wicker chair.

A hurricane lamp, its flame golden and tranquil, stood on the table before Diana. The small silver coffee-pot winked in the light.

“One lump, isn’t it, Search?” said Diana and handed the tiny cup to Richard. He came to Search, looking very tall, and bent to give her the cup. Her fingers touched his as she took it. He smiled quietly at her in the twilight and turned and went back to Diana.

Search put the cup down and reached for a cigarette on a table near her. Abruptly she was at the end of the almost feverish gaiety that had caught them all during dinner. And it was absurd, but the brief cool touch of his fingers seemed to linger on her own.

She lighted the cigarette, and as she did so a maid came to call Diana to the telephone.

“It must be Calvin,” said Diana, rising. “Excuse me, will you?” She made a gesture toward Search but looked at Richard, and then trailed away into the house, following the maid who closed the screened door gently behind them both.

It was very quiet on the long veranda. Richard was still standing beside the little coffee table. He was looking at her, and she was aware of it. And it was absurd, thought Search again, that she couldn’t look at him.

But she did. She turned and began, trying to resume the light tone of the dinner talk: “Do you remember” and was stricken dumb. (Remember what? She wondered, and then caught at the first memory that offered itself.) “Do you remember my debut party and your Southern belle? And how the Botwick boy got tight and had to be taken home?”

He still looked at her above the little flame of the hurricane lamp. How clearly she remembered the clean curve of his cheek. The yellow candle flame cast a shadow around his eyes so she could feel the steadiness of his look rather than see it.

He did not answer. Did not smile, as she had expected him to do. Instead quite suddenly he bent over the hurricane lamp; she had an instant’s clear picture of his face, the strength and the tenderness of his lips. Then he blew out the flame in the lamp and came toward her.

But instead of coming as far as her chair, there in the shadow, he stopped at the railing and looked out over the broad lake away below them.

“Come here,” he said.

Nothing of which her will was capable could have stopped her just then from rising. Her sandals tapped lightly, almost gently, along the floor, and she reached the railing and stood beside him—poignantly aware of his tall figure beside her—his shoulder in its dark flannel jacket touching her own, the white oval of his face.

“Same old moon,” he said.

She looked too; the moon was yellow and full, still low enough to lay a path of light across the lake. The shadow where they stood was soft and deep in contrast.

Richard said: “It’s nice to stand here—the two of us—in the dark. Watching the moon again. Like this.”

She was very still; everything about her seemed to wait. And Richard said suddenly, almost quietly: “I remember too much. God, how much I’ve wasted. Search—oh, Search—”

He turned toward her then. And abruptly, as if he couldn’t help it, as if he had to do it, took her in his arms.