Town of Masks Read online

  “I know.” He nodded. “Good night, Miss Blake.”

  She watched him go down the walk in great, long strides that took him soon beyond her vision. Either he had planned that she should meet him there or she had startled him away from another meeting. As she moved to the door, she wondered if he would return after she was gone. Unlikely with the distance he had already put between him and the library. He was not dawdling.

  One of the library assistants almost collided with her as she opened the door, the Clennan girl. She certainly didn’t waste time getting away after closing time, Hannah thought. She wondered if she knew anything at all about books. Probably not. Most librarians didn’t. Elizabeth Merritt was the exception. They had been fortunate to get a Campbell’s Cove girl with her ability. And a girl with her origins on Front Street no more than a generation back! Elizabeth was indeed exceptional. The happy recollection came to her that Elizabeth had given her name for reference in applying for the post. Just out of school, she had the courage to go after a big job, and the luck to get it. Hannah could still remember her words of recommendation as she had written them: Modest, pleasant, and intelligent beyond her years. Six years were not so long ago. She wondered if Elizabeth had a voice in the nominations.

  She moved quickly through the arcade. But at the charge desk she paused. It was like an island in the high domed room. The lights were out now in the reading and stack rooms, and the indirect lighting here fell eerily upon the huge mural paintings of the Greek philosophers, playwrights, and poets. Nor had Sappho, the woman of equal glory in the man’s world, been omitted. But she had been portrayed as frightfully masculine, Hannah always thought. A maliciousness on the part of the artist, no doubt. She liked a moment alone here. But a moment was quite enough. Impressive as it was, a library should be a cozy place. The building of this one, planned for so many years, should not have been entrusted to the PWA.

  She hastened on to the study room at the back. The French doors were open, the board members gathered on the veranda in the half-light which shone from the globes of the old-fashioned lamp posts. She moved from one member to another with a word of greeting, measuring her chance of the nomination by their response. Friendlier than usual, she decided, or at least more aware of her. Mrs. Copithorne shook hands, and Katherine Shane complimented her on her dress. Ed Baker bowed. But he did that to every woman, silly old fool, she thought. He was the only man on the board. A plumber, he owned his own business and had several men working for him, but he always looked as though he had just slipped out of his overalls and pulled on his coat without rolling down his sleeves. He was responsible for dozens of books on engineering, donating some the board had turned down. To impress Miss Merritt, no doubt. He was just the age for it.

  “How is Mrs. Baker, Ed?”

  “Oh, not so bad, Hannah. Just ailing a little, thank you.”

  She was always ailing a little, Hannah thought, and small wonder with him capering over the town every night in the week. He was a born “joiner.”

  She moved on to Mrs. Verlaine. Maria was fussing furiously with a cigarette lighter, the cigarette wagging in her mouth like a dog’s tail. Now and then, with the exertion she put into the unresponsive lighter, she had to push her wide-brimmed hat back on her forehead. Hannah drew a packet of matches from her purse and gave them to her.

  “I keep these for such emergencies.”

  “Thanks,” Maria said without moving the cigarette. “They deliberately sabotage these things. I’m convinced of it. More work for the repair shops.”

  “More work for the undertaker,” Hannah said.

  “What?”

  “That’s the title of a book I’ve just read.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s an English book,” Hannah said, wishing that she had not mentioned it. Further exploration would need to reveal that it was a mystery.

  “Of course it’s an English book,” Maria said. “Over here they’d say funeral director. More commercial.”

  “I don’t see anything commercial about it. It’s simply a less macabre description of the profession.”

  “And looks better in an advertisement,” Maria snapped.

  It was ridiculous to be carried into something like this, Hannah thought, and to no end except Maria’s sour amusement. “Isn’t it pleasant out here?” she said. “Really, we could have meetings all summer.” She amended it quickly: “For those who want them. I expect to be away, myself.”

  Maria’s dark eyes roamed over the veranda, meeting Hannah’s only in passing. “Traveling?” she murmured.

  “I’m thinking of a trip to Europe,” Hannah said, convincing herself that she had been thinking of it for a long time.

  Maria sent a great burst of smoke between them. “Still more work for the undertaker,” she said, giving Hannah her bird’s wing of a smile. She took off the uneasy hat and stroked the fringe of gray bangs on her forehead. “Well, here we are again,” she called out. “To what purpose, Ruth?”

  “You’re right, Maria.” Ruth Copithorne whirled about from where she had been chatting. “Are you set, Elizabeth?”

  Miss Merritt held up a sheaf of papers to indicate that she was ready and the nine members gathered around the table. Before Elizabeth sat down she threw on the switch for the overhead light.

  “Oh, do we need all that light?” Hannah exclaimed. “It was so pleasant without it.”

  When no one else responded, Mr. Baker said, “I think we better. I don’t think my wife would approve me sitting in the dark with all you ladies.”

  Some of the women tittered. The light stayed on and Mrs. Copithorne, the retiring president, called the meeting to order.

  The minutes of the April meeting were read, and Elizabeth Merritt made her monthly report. A concise, forthright piece of work, Hannah thought. How lacking in directness most women were in contrast to Elizabeth. It almost amounted to dishonesty. At bottom it was dishonesty—with themselves certainly. They refused to take the proper evaluation on their own worth. The librarian knew hers and wore the knowledge comfortably. A fine, honest girl. When her report was finished, Hannah suggested a vote of approbation.

  All the members seconded it, and Hannah felt complimented herself for her perspicacity. She felt her chances further enhanced. It was strange, she mused, that there had been no discussion of the nominations before the meeting, at least not in her presence. Then it occurred to her that this was a good omen. They were unlikely to discuss it with the nominees themselves. As the meeting progressed, she watched for a chance to clinch the matter, her heart kicking at her ribs in anticipation.

  Among the new business of the evening was a demand by the neighboring village of Wallington for library privileges at Campbell’s Cove. The discussion bogged down in a wrangle over the accuracy of the surveys setting the boundary lines.

  Hannah was impatient for the floor. “Do they use our fire department?” she asked when Mrs. Copithorne recognized her.

  On occasion they did, paying for the service.

  “Out of tax monies?”

  Presumably.

  “Then,” Hannah said, “at such a time as they are willing to contribute tax money to the library fund, by all means let them have the privileges.”

  “Well,” Baker said, “the library isn’t out to make money, Hannah. I don’t see the harm in letting them get a little smarter at our expense.”

  He dearly loved to play Santa Claus, she thought. “Nor do I, for that matter. But there is an issue of morals in their case, their need for a sense of responsibility. Getting something for nothing is responsible for the condition of the country today.”

  “Right, that’s right,” a couple of members chorused.

  “Getting nothing for something hasn’t helped it either,” Mrs. Verlaine said snidely, and out of order.

  Hannah looked at her. To retreat was to lose the nomination. “You’re merely turning a phrase, Maria.”

  “Look under it then for the maggots.” Verl
aine snapped. “‘The condition of the country today—’” Her voice trailed off in sarcasm.

  Mrs. Copithorne tapped the gavel for order. “Miss Blake has the floor.”

  “I am merely suggesting to this meeting that Wallington be alerted to responsibility as the complement of privilege, and I know of nothing to alert a citizenry faster than taxes.”

  “Hear! Hear!” someone called.

  Hannah’s point won the discussion.

  “You’d make a good administrator, Miss Blake,” Katherine Shane remarked, leaning across the table toward her.

  “I am a good administrator,” Hannah said rather louder than she intended, but she did not want the Shane comment to be lost. Nor was it, she decided, and the fact that Katherine made it was a good sign. She remembered her compliment on her dress earlier that evening. There was no better sign of a rising star in Campbell’s Cove than Katherine Shane’s running after it with her wagon.

  The meeting drew to the business of the nominations at last. Then Maria Verlaine raised her hand. “I’ve got a few remarks I’d like to make before we proceed. May I, Ruth?”

  Mrs. Copithorne recognized her.

  “Tonight is nomination of officers, and next meeting will be the last until fall, I presume—” She paused to squash out a cigarette.

  Hannah wondered if she were going to mention that Miss Blake suggested meeting all summer. It would be like Maria, telling all of them that Hannah Blake loved meetings so well.

  “Between now and next meeting,” Maria resumed, “we have the problem of bludgeoning two citizens of the Cove into serving on the library board next year.”

  “No-o-o,” someone murmured.

  Maria glanced in the direction of the protest. “Then we shall have if what I am about to propose is followed. I have a question for you, ladies and Mr. Baker. What is wrong with the men of Campbell’s Cove? And is the disease common throughout the country?”

  Her voice had a thin stridency which commanded attention. A shiver of wind through the trees beyond the veranda was the only sound.

  “I ask it in all seriousness: is the comic strip ‘Bringing Up Father’ a true picture of American life? Are Maggie and Jiggs archetypes of our culture?”

  She might have waited for this sort of thing until Ed Baker was not among them, Hannah thought. He was studying the backs of his hands, miserable. No need to say of a man in his presence that he was out of step. But like Maria. No tact.

  Maria at that instant turned to him. “Ed, I make no apologies to you. We’re all adults here, or as close to it as we are likely to be in our lifetimes. You must have thought about this yourself. I’m sure you’re not on the board because you enjoy being the only man amongst us. I’m sick to death of jokes about it, and I’m sure you are of having to make them. You’re not an oddity. Or if you are, I belong in the same coop.”

  She’s off on her white horse, Hannah thought as Mrs. Verlaine paused to light another cigarette, off to a new crusade. But for all her savoir-faire, she, too, was nervous, speaking in public. Chain-smoking. But how she could make a point, and how she selected her points to make. As sharp as an arrow. Hannah could see the head on the item in the Campbell’s Cove Gazette: Mrs. Verlaine Castigates Cove Men. It would be the one issue of the meeting to pique the editor’s interest. The new officers would be lucky to get their names listed, and the Wallington business which she had carried would be lost entirely. She glanced at the secretary of the meeting. Little fat obsequious Nellie Home was scribbling as fast as her stubby fingers could manage the pencil.

  Maria looked at the president. “John Copithorne was asked to serve last year, Ruth. Have you any idea why he refused?”

  Mrs. Copithorne shrugged. “He just leaves these things to me, I guess.”

  “And Franklin Wilkes,” Maria turned to Hannah. “He reads occasionally, doesn’t he?”

  The question caught Hannah like a twinge of pain. Maria had gone to work on her in this devious fashion. It was her way of discrediting her before the nominations were in order, of calling attention to the fact that Hannah Blake did not actually belong on the board at all, that she was there by the tolerance of the members who had actually invited Franklin Wilks. She strove desperately to clutch something with a point out of her fragmented thoughts.

  “Only Dun and Bradstreet,” she said tightly.

  Maria’s only acknowledgment was the flicker of a sardonic smile. There was a discussion then of the proportion of men to women among the borrowers. Gradually, Hannah got control over her temper and put on a smile to further hide the disappointment she sensed coming to her. Maria worried the argument to its last drama, announcing that she would resign from the board if the new members did not make for a better representation. But she would not resign. She would be there next year, Hannah thought. She would be there with her bobbed locks flying and her wits as edged as sharks’ teeth.

  In the wake of Maria’s coup, Edward Baker was nominated. It was unanimous, no other name being put forward. But Hannah knew her defeat lay with Maria Verlaine. She made a fine gesture of congratulating Baker. He bowed lower than ever, already puffed up with his sense of importance. For a second Hannah pitied him: a plumber president of the library board—a haberdasher in the White House. He would no doubt take to music, to reading poetry and philosophy.

  Poetry.

  “Elizabeth.” She laid her hand on the librarian’s arm, as she was taking her papers inside at the end of the meeting.

  “Yes, Miss Blake?”

  “Will you have dinner with me one night soon? I have a project in mind and I think you might find it interesting.”

  4

  HANNAH SUGGESTED THAT THEY take their coffee on the veranda to be beyond the clatter of Sophie’s clearing up. Moving through the house, Elizabeth remarked on one piece and another of its fine old furnishings. It was strange, Hannah thought, that she had not been here oftener these past few years, at least, since Elizabeth had made her own mark in the community.

  “And the house itself,” Elizabeth said as they reached the veranda, “it has such a lived-in atmosphere.”

  Intended as a compliment, Hannah thought. “Illusion would be the better word for it,” she said. She could say things to her that she would not admit to others. Not that the girl was receptive. Hannah’s feeling was more that Elizabeth had somehow seen her at her worst and was here, nevertheless. “Still, in its day it has been lived in abundantly. My great-great-grandfather built it, you know, except for the south wing and the portico. They’re Victorian, and ugly. But I’m reluctant to tear them down.”

  “I can understand that,” Elizabeth murmured.

  Can you? Hannah wondered. She said, “There seems to be something here I should preserve. I don’t know what. But all my life I’ve been carrying it around. Every once in a while I wonder if perhaps it isn’t an empty box.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t dare to look.”

  “Why not?”

  Hannah poured the coffee. Only someone very safe and happy could ask that. “Empty boxes are sometimes useful,” she said. “I hear your brother’s doing very well these days, Elizabeth.”

  “He’s district manager now,” the girl said. “And he started at the Temple Market, a clerk.”

  “A delivery boy,” Elizabeth amended.

  “Your mother must be very proud of you both. I’m very glad for her. I’ve always had a great affection for her.”

  “And she for you, Miss Blake. She asks for you after every meeting.”

  “I must visit her. Or perhaps you’ll bring her here to tea some Saturday?”

  “Mother would like that.”

  And you, Elizabeth, she thought. Would it be a trial, a charity for her sake? “Tom’s still a bachelor?”

  “Still.”

  “Not for want of girls, I dare say.” It was well known in the town how wide his choice.

  “Probably not,” Elizabeth said. “Isn’t that a starling?” She fled to the edge of the porch as though the bird were wai
ting there to greet her.

  What a turn that little flight gave Hannah. When Elizabeth was a child Hannah had often called at her house to bring Mrs. Merritt here to sew. It was shortly after John Merritt’s death and his wife was left to support two children. Hannah was in her late twenties then, and Elizabeth seven or eight, a beautiful child with great solemn eyes. No other child had ever affected her so, and she remembered now the impulses that drove her to touch the girl, to smooth her hair and run her fingers over the golden skin. And once, when Elizabeth had drawn away from her, she had pinched her. Why, God only knew. So, then, had Elizabeth fled from her to the farthest corner of the room. Nor had she ever been persuaded to go for a ride in the Packard touring car Hannah drove in those days. She could remember coaxing, begging the child. Elizabeth had forgotten it, please God. Would that she herself could forget it.

  “There’s a flock of starlings in the rose arbor,” she said. “They’ve been coming every year since Father gave them their first welcome. Do you remember him?”

  “Indeed I do, Miss Blake.” Elizabeth turned back, all smiling, which was the way with many people when Hannah’s father was mentioned. All she needed to do to escape an awkward situation was to mention him.

  “I remember him coming to our zoology class in high school to speak to us,” Elizabeth mused aloud. “I can even remember how he started—something like: ‘I have finally convinced your teachers that a live bird may contribute as much to man’s knowledge as a dead one.’”

  “How typical of him,” Hannah said. “He had such a nice sense of humor.” Which was not part of her inheritance, she thought. She got very little from him, and all the things she wanted that were denied to her had seemed to be his by virtue of his nature and not by his wish at all.

  “Do you know,” she continued, “he used to keep those windows on the garden—that’s the study—he kept them open from early March to hear the first robin until the wild geese went south in November. He died in winter. I’ve always thought it sad that there were no birds singing for him those last days.” She laid her hand on Elizabeth’s, hoping to persuade her to an understanding of what she told, or of what she felt even more than of what she told. “I suppose it’s foolish of me, but I keep a little vial of bird seed near his grave.”