Town of Masks Read online

  “I think Hannah is creative.”

  She heard the words still and she remembered the face of the girl who had said them although her name was gone, a pugged, hopeful face always turned up at you with eyes that pleaded for attention, for all the world like Katherine Shane at home today.

  And she remembered the sort of buoyed-up silence that hung in the room after the remark, and the little escaped hiss through someone’s teeth which punctured it. They’re thinking I’m not creative because I’m a mathematics major, she had thought lying stiff and straight in bed that night, and I’m a mathematics major because my mother wanted to send me to Vassar and my father took my side. I’m rewarding him.

  “Look at Einstein,” she had said in her own defense, when no one else confirmed or denied the little one’s observation.

  “That’s different,” someone had remarked, and she could not remember what had followed, except her own feeling of being different as the only girl majoring in mathematics, the only girl in a classroom of forty, and playing honeymoon bridge with the little pug-faced one on Saturday nights.

  The masseuse slapped her unbecomingly. “Sleeping?”

  She sat up and pulled the sheet about her. “Einstein is creative,” she said, staring at the masseuse, and thinking that it would serve the bold creature right if she were to think her crazy and unlikely to remember a tip.

  The big woman grinned, wiping the sweat from her face on her forearm like a farmhand. “He sure is, honey. Better get your clothes on before you catch cold.”

  7

  MRS. VERLAINE SAT AT the head of her table pouring coffee with the grace of a dowager queen. “There’s one thing I do like about it,” she said. “That’s asking Andy to judge it.”

  Andy, Hannah thought. That was Maria’s way of keeping before them that she was the one on intimate terms with Andrew Sykes, that the poet might consent to judge the Campbell’s Cove contest if he were asked by his old friend, Mrs. Verlaine—Maria Verlaine whom he had met in Paris, and on whose suggestion he first came to the Cove to research materials for an epic poem on the Campbellites and their religious travails. He had subsequently treated of the Shakers, the Quakers, and the Lord knew how many other vagrant sects, but still each summer he came to the Cove to work—in peace, he said, and to visit with Maria. She wondered if Maria had not at one time hoped for something more than an annual visit from the vigorous old gentleman. And perhaps she got it. Maria was not liable to scruple. Marriage to her had no doubt come to seem no more than an American convention, highly advertised to the purpose of extending the business of the clergy. When Maria went to church at all it was to the Christians, and she admitted that she went not so much to be in communion with her God as to be reminded of what Alexander Campbell’s followers went through.

  Well. The judge might be Maria’s, but the contest was not. Nor would the poet it uncovered be hers either. Hannah could almost see her surprise, the cigarette dangling from her mouth. Do you mean to say that lad has been in Hannah’s garden all summer? My God! Hannah smiled, bringing her cup to the hostess. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

  “The buffet is lovely, Maria,” she said. “You always set such a nice table.”

  “I enjoy doing it,” Maria said. “So does Annie. She says it keeps us both from getting out of tune.”

  Annie Tully was Maria’s housekeeper, maid of all tasks. She had come up from Front Street to the job twenty odd years before, a young widow, her husband drowned in one of the heavy lake storms.

  “How quaint a way to put it,” Hannah murmured.

  “How was the vacation?”

  “Nice, thank you. The Ozarks are lovely this year. I do love the mountains.”

  “And mountaineers?” Maria blinked her eyes at her maliciously.

  “Very nice in the mountains,” Hannah said. She could not linger to see the effect of that parry. Ed Baker was almost climbing her back, two cups in hand and both clattering in their saucers. He had brought Mrs. Baker to the supper, picking her up after the meeting—to show her his importance now, no doubt. And she probably needed convincing.

  “You’re mighty keen on this contest, aren’t you, Hannah?” he said across the table, able to speak now that he was relieved of one of the cups.

  “In a way. Don’t you think it will add to the prestige of Campbell’s Cove Day?” It had been decided that the winner should be announced in September, on the occasion of the annual town festival.

  “No question of it. And I don’t think putting that kind of serious note to it’s going to hurt either. Serious times, these.”

  “I can’t help wonder who has that kind of money,” Katherine Shane said, sashaying up to Baker.

  “You can just about count them on your fingers,” Ed said.

  “Don’t,” said Elizabeth Merritt good-naturedly and rather as though she were reprimanding a small boy. “Mr. Baker, you know my brother, Tom?”

  “I certainly do. Best third baseman a Cove team ever had. How are you, Tom?” The men shook hands.

  Hannah was torn between the desire to see Tom Merritt, who rarely was home to join Cove activities, and following Katherine Shane. For some reason, perhaps that she thought it would get her attention, Katherine had decided to harp on the contest. Every objection that Verlaine had raised at the meeting, and which Elizabeth had successfully countered (how fortunate she had been so thorough in her rehearsal of Elizabeth, and that she knew Maria and her tactics so well)—all these objections, Katherine was pursuing now in private conversation. A saboteur, no less. Maria might have put her up to it. Maria, with her pride in a reputation for good sportsmanship, couldn’t very well do it herself.

  “I don’t see the point in closing it so early, I must say,” Katherine was telling the Copithornes. “Just two months.”

  Oh, she must say, all right, Hannah thought, closing in on the remark. “As I understand it, Katherine—How are you, John? As Elizabeth explained it, Katherine, the sponsor or whatever you want to call him, purposely set an early date so that the entries submitted would represent work done. Nor does he want a patriotic jingle whipped up for that occasion. Apparently he’s interested in working poets.”

  John Copithorne grinned. “Do you know any working poets, Hannah?” He put the emphasis on “working.”

  “I expect anyone writing poetry thinks he’s working,” she said.

  Copithorne smoothed the hair around his bald spot. “You got something there, all right. It’d sure be work for me.”

  Really, Hannah thought, moving across the room to the Merritts, Maria had not been altogether wrong about the Cove men. John Copithorne was president of the town council, he was active in the Parent-Teachers, and he was a dentist. He also raised Sealyham dogs. That should make for a gentleman. Well.

  “Tom Merritt, it’s nice to see you.” She extended her hand.

  “Thanks, Miss Blake.”

  “You’re doing well with the Worthy organization, I understand.”

  “Still peddling groceries.”

  “I think Elizabeth told me you’re their district manager now.”

  Merritt grinned. “That just means I need a bigger bicycle.”

  He was a salesman all right, Hannah thought, and on the whole she liked salesmen. There was among them a frankness and openness, a comradeship into which you were immediately welcome.

  “Have you ever thought of going into business for yourself, Tom?”

  “Many a time.”

  She laid her hand on his arm. “When you’re serious about it, come to see me at the bank. I can be of great help to you.”

  “I will, Miss Blake. I’ll remember that. Can I get rid of that cup for you?”

  “Thank you.”

  She watched him to the table and saw Maria intercept him as he was about to return. He lighted her cigarette and stayed on for an exchange of words with her that sent them both into laughter, their heads rolling back with it. Maria got a coughing spasm from that and the cigaret
te smoke. Hannah turned away. She saw Elizabeth watching her brother.

  “He’s very handsome, Elizabeth. There’s a strong resemblance.”

  The girl smiled a little, and nodded. “Excuse me, Miss Blake.”

  Hannah caught her arm as she was passing and pressed it. “You were magnificent tonight, my dear,” she whispered. “I shan’t forget it.”

  Elizabeth eased away. “I wish you would, Miss Blake. I intend to now.”

  It had been a responsibility for Elizabeth, Hannah thought. It would be for one who took things so seriously. In anyone except the girl, her abruptness now would have been rude. She watched her chance for another word with Tom, hoping to hear the story from him which had sent Verlaine into such hysterics. She dearly loved a good joke herself. She approached him while Maria was refilling Elizabeth’s coffee cup.

  “Dry summer, isn’t it?” he said.

  Dry, she thought, bone-dry.

  “Tom, I’m a little concerned about Elizabeth.” That commanded his attention. They were very close for brother and sister, so close that she often wondered if Elizabeth were not the ideal by which he measured every other woman and found her lacking. “She’s so serious about everything these days.”

  “It’s this damned poetry business,” he said, a response she had not expected.

  “She is something of a fanatic,” Hannah tested. Elizabeth, she saw, was laying her cup on the table, untouched, and coming toward them with more haste than dignity.

  “It’s downright ridiculous,” Tom said.

  “And what’s ridiculous?” Elizabeth said, her hand on his arm.

  He looked at her. “That you get involved—”

  Elizabeth cut him off. “That’s my business.” But it was her eyes that silenced him, Hannah thought. They were splendid in their anger. Elizabeth turned to her. “Forgive me, Miss Blake. You understand?”

  By which Hannah understood an apology for having divulged something of the contest and its sponsor, since Tom seemed on the verge of taking it up with her.

  Tom permitted his sister to draw him to the table where Verlaine linked arms with both of them, and led them, laughing, into the study. Their going left Hannah depressed, lonely for all the people in the room. She wandered from bookcase to bookcase, all the titles she had at some time in her life intended to read. Had Maria read them? Some were new, some old. She remembered, a long time ago, having made herself a reading list which would span twenty years of her life, reading two books a month. Twenty years—and the books unopened, the years closed; the years unopened, the books closed. She turned away.

  She had no right to feel as though she were a guest of honor, she told herself, since she had deliberately cloaked herself in anonymity. Now that the issue was won she already wished that she had not so disguised herself. She had done it because of a mortal dread that the idea with her name on it should have been rejected. Foolish, she told herself now. But it was hard not to have at least a word of approbation from Elizabeth who shared the secret and carried the responsibility of it. A thousand dollars was a good deal of money, and no one should know the worth of it better than Elizabeth. But she had been tight-lipped through it all, earnest, and almost dogged in her persuasions through all Verlaine’s objections. “It smacks of chest-thumping, flag-waving,” Maria had said. “Poetry is an art, not something to be dished up for blue ribbons at the county fair.” If some of today’s so-called poetry could be dished up at county fairs, Hannah thought, a few more people might get a taste for it.

  She found a comfortable chair and tried to give herself up to the contemplation of Maria’s house. As children they had played together in this very room, their parents being friends. There were not many of the old things left, Maria’s taste running more to museum pieces than anything manufactured in Campbell’s Cove. She could remember the horsehair sofa and chairs where she had looked for pennies and hairpins every time she came. A colonial rocker was the only piece she remembered from her childhood, and the mirror over the fireplace. Beside it still hung the long silk bell cord that had not worked then and probably did not work now. It was one of Maria’s mother’s notions of elegance that a servant should be summoned by the touch of a bell cord, but having it installed, she could not bring herself to use it. Hannah had played with the cord as a child, pretending she was a streetcar conductor until Maria spoiled it. “Hannah’s pulling the chain,” she would sing out every time Hannah gave it a tug. “Hannah’s pulling the chain.”

  She got up and moved about the room again, avoiding the people in it, even those making a place for her. It was strange, she thought; seldom had she come to this house without high anticipation of pleasure, and seldom had she left it without disappointment.

  The supper guests departed, going in twos and threes. She was about to offer a ride to anyone needing it when it occurred to her that Katherine Shane would be the only one to take her up on it, and right now Katherine Shane could walk home on her elbows for all of Hannah. She went upstairs and dabbled about, powdering her nose, fixing her hair, stalling until she heard the last guest leave and the tinkle of china as Annie cleared up.

  “Oh, my, is everyone gone?” she said from the stairs.

  Maria glanced up at her and went on, asking over her shoulder, “Want to see the jewels while I have them out?”

  “I’d like that.”

  They were the lump of Maria’s French inheritance after all the years of litigation. Maria had them laid out on the library table in the study. This accounted for the traffic between there and the living-room, and now being conducted on a private showing, Hannah was pleased.

  “They’ve just arrived?” she asked at the door.

  “Last week. A cloak-and-dagger man brought them over.”

  “How exciting,” Hannah said.

  Maria snorted smoke. “I’m pulling your leg. They came by bonded messenger.”

  “You’ll put them in the bank vault, Maria?”

  “I will not. I shall wear whatever of them suits the occasion and show them to anyone interested in what was more important than human life to one of my in-laws’ forebears.”

  Hannah gazed down at the array of ruby and diamond. She could not help but think that her poor acquaintance with such things left her as likely to be impressed with a tray of dime-store trinkets.

  “How can you tell their worth?” she asked.

  Maria picked up a deep-red brooch set in a braid of gold, and held it between them and the light. “See the lightnings in it?”

  Hannah stared and saw the lines streaking through it as Maria turned it. “How marvelous.”

  Maria dropped the piece contemptuously on the satin cloth. “I read the evaluation on the insurance papers,” she said. “I know as much about it as you do.”

  “You’re poking fun at me, Maria.”

  “I’m poking fun at the stone. What mortal worth is it? No more than the time it takes us to look at it. For that, the Verlaines boast, one of their seventeenth-century kinswomen sent a lover to his death to rescue it from a brigand. The fool, he!”

  “How ironic it should come at last to you, Maria.”

  “Isn’t it? The most irreligious of their marriages. They outbred too late. Do you know what it cost me in court fees to get that stone?”

  “No,” Hannah said, going over in her mind for any large transfers in Maria’s account. The fees must have been paid from one hearing to the next. Typical of the French—cash on the line. “How much?”

  “Roughly, thirty thousand dollars.”

  “Are they worth that much?”

  “Only in blood,” Maria said, rolling the jewels up with no more attention than she might give to her everyday silver.

  The maid, emptying ash trays, tittered. Hannah turned to look at her. She was even getting to look like Maria, for all her Irish origins. They were too close for servant and employer.

  “Annie knows,” Maria said. “They’ve paid for a lot of things in blood where she comes from—buying jewels fo
r their fair Kathleen. Isn’t that right, Annie?”

  “The only jewels she ever had was the stars in her eyes,” Annie said, the brogue still thick on her tongue.

  “Kathleen is the word for Ireland,” Maria explained.

  “I’m not altogether ignorant,” Hannah said. “Even of the Irish.” She waited until the woman had left the room. “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all, Maria.”

  Maria laughed. “You try too hard, I’m just a simple country girl.”

  “Now you’re describing me,” Hannah said. “If ever there was a woman of the world, it’s yourself.”

  Maria shrugged and looked about for a cigarette. “I find that a small compliment, Hannah.”

  “I meant it for a large one. What was your first really bold move, Maria?”

  Maria paused in her search. “Damn it, Annie,” she called out, “didn’t anyone bring his own cigarettes tonight?” To Hannah she said, “Probably at Vassar. A week-end in New York.”

  Hannah smiled. “Perhaps my mother was right,” she said. “That’s where she wanted me to go.”

  Annie brought Mrs. Verlaine a package of cigarettes, taking one from it herself as she came. Hannah wondered that the servant didn’t light it up in front of them, also.

  “I’ll have my sherry with Miss Blake tonight,” Maria said.

  Without Miss Blake’s consent, Hannah thought, yet following her into the living-room like a puppy invited to a treat.

  “There was many a time your mother was right,” Verlaine said, “but small good it did her in your father’s house.”