Town of Masks Read online

  “My father was not a tyrant.”

  “Perhaps not, but he had in common with tyrants that he was never wrong. He was about you, you know.”

  It was the first time in her recollection that Maria had ever taken the initiative in talking about Hannah Blake to Hannah. Sykes must be coming soon, Hannah thought, for her to be so magnanimous.

  “In what way, Maria?”

  “He thought you were emotionally self-sufficient—as he pretended himself to be—and perhaps was. But no one ever reared a hungrier child.”

  God knows, there’s some truth in that, Hannah thought. She had spent a lifetime trying to conceal it, but she was hungry still.

  “What happened in New York?” she asked.

  Maria sent a stream of smoke between them. “What are you ashamed of, Hannah? Look at you—bursting to talk about yourself, but you can’t get a word of it out until I bare my secrets first.”

  Hannah lifted her chin. “I am not as proud of my sins as you are of yours, Maria.”

  “Hannah—what sins?”

  “I do not have an Andrew Sykes, if that’s what you mean.”

  Without another word, Maria set down the wineglass and walked to the door. “Good night, Hannah.”

  She followed but a few steps. “We aren’t children, to quarrel like this.”

  “Together we are,” Maria Verlaine said. “Somehow I invariably become a crawling, scratching brat in your presence.”

  “It always was that way,” Hannah said. “You always hurt me and I fought back the only way I knew.”

  “And presently we’re both hurting the one person—yourself.”

  “Have I never hurt you, Maria?”

  “Shall I answer that truthfully?”

  “Truth or consequences,” she said foolishly, as she so often spoke in Maria’s presence.

  “I don’t believe you ever have.” Hannah smiled a little. There was some remote pleasure in the pain. She would have to take it home with her to dig it out thoroughly.

  “Good night, Maria. I am often in debt for your hospitality. Tonight is no exception.”

  8

  IT WAS SURPRISING HOW much the meeting had taken out of her, Hannah thought, coming down in the morning. She should not have counted so much on it. Supposing Verlaine had carried the night and the contest had been turned down? Foolish.

  In the living-room she stopped before the mantel mirror. There were smudges beneath her eyes, but her complexion was good. She had always looked healthy. She could remember as a girl wishing fervently that she looked more delicate. In fact, she would have been most pleased to look downright emaciated. Now it was satisfying to look healthy, and to feel it.

  The statuary on the mantel was all askew, and a perfect half moon of dust trailed over the edge of black marble. Sophie was in the doldrums, apparently. Even the sounds from the kitchen were listless. Hannah went to the window. She had awakened to the sound of the power mower. At eight o’clock Dennis had almost finished the acre of lawn. Nothing listless about him.

  Whatever weariness she had felt on awakening quite vanished at breakfast. She watched Sophie drift between the kitchen and the table, an expression on her face that would curdle the cream. Certainly something was off between her and Dennis. For a moment, Hannah entertained the idea of a direct approach with sympathy—all the nice farm boys in the neighborhood, more of her age and tastes than Dennis. She decided against it and brought the matter up in a discussion of the household chores.

  “You clean Dennis’s room for him, don’t you, Sophie?”

  The girl looked at her, down to the floor and back at her again. “Please don’t ask me to do it no more, Miss Blake.”

  “Well, I was not aware of having ever asked you to do it, Sophie. But I have no objections, so long as you don’t neglect your duties to me.”

  “I won’t do it. I won’t ever do it again.”

  “Oh, my. You and Dennis have quarreled?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “He’s such a nice boy. You and he spend a lot of time together, don’t you?”

  “Some.”

  “I believe I saw you as I was driving by the wharves the other night. You looked—very nice together.”

  The color was rising in Sophie’s face and the flesh seemed ready to burst with it. Not very attractive, Hannah thought. But there was no accounting for tastes. “Sit down a moment, Sophie.”

  The girl pulled a chair far away from the table and sat on the edge of it.

  “Did he make love to you?” Hannah asked quietly.

  Sophie lifted her chin as though, not being allowed to escape, she had determined on the boldest face possible.

  “Yes’m.”

  Hannah tried to hold her eyes with her own, thinking in that way to best ferret out the truth. But Sophie could not meet them, except to fly from them at every try. She was no doubt exaggerating. “Put his arm around you and all that, I dare say,” she encouraged. “Yes’m.”

  Hannah had to find out. “Was he ever in his room with you, Sophie?”

  The girl’s eyes widened with alarm. “No!”

  “All right, all right. He might have come on you there by chance, you know. I don’t mean that he took advantage of you.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Suddenly Hannah was weary of it. “What’s all the trouble about, then?”

  Sophie began to cry. Before the first tear had rolled off her bulging cheek she was letting out great, wailing sobs. Hannah got up and patted her shoulder. It was hard to be sorry for the girl, much less affectionate toward her, when she had no more control over herself than this. But affection seemed the only likely thing to calm her. Hannah gave her a tentative hug, pulling the girl’s shoulder against her own hipbone. What a ridiculous position to have got herself into, Hannah thought. What a way to start the day.

  “There,” she said, pushing Sophie upright. “It’s all over. Go and wash your face.”

  Amazing, for her having said so, it did seem to be all over. Sophie got up and reached the kitchen door.

  “What did happen?” Hannah called.

  The girl turned, grimacing against more tears. “He told me to stop spying on him.”

  “Well, were you spying?”

  Sophie nodded that she was.

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t see nothing, Miss Blake.”

  “Hurry up and wash your face, child. I want to be in the office sometime this morning.”

  She had done a lot of foolishness in her life, Hannah thought, and this had not been the least of it. On her way for the car, she looked about to see where the boy was. He was trimming the hedge at the front drive.

  On impulse then, she went to the tool shed and looked in the bottom drawer of the bench. The notebook was gone. Driving out, she paused where he was working and motioned him to the side of the car.

  “Dennis, I should like to talk to you. If it’s convenient, will you come up to the house after dinner tonight?”

  “Yes, Miss Blake.”

  He betrayed no curiosity at all. Watching in the rearview mirror, she saw that he returned to work without even a glance after her. Here indeed would be a hard nut to crack.

  9

  SHE WATCHED FROM THE study window as the twilight deepened. Sophie went down the driveway, dragging her heels except when she kicked at a stone like the child she really was. When she was gone there was no movement in the garden, not a bird flying, nor, that she could see, any leaves stirring. A desolation seemed to have spread, suspending life there with the child’s going, and Hannah wished that she might spring into view again, waving that wild farewell of hers which she had forgotten tonight. But only a blue-white mist seeped in from the lake and settled like a silken shroud. She watched, fascinated, for the instant that the illusion would be broken.

  When Dennis Keogh strode through it, his appearance startled her for all her expectancy of him. He was a stranger, more in place there surely than in her house. In
deed a part of the mist seemed to trail after him, trying to retard him, as he came toward her.

  Hannah retreated from the window and lighted one lamp after another. What monstrous folly to have summoned him here! For all she knew of him, she might as well have summoned Daniel O’Gorman, the “mayor” of Front Street! Who was he? What to her? She heard his knock on the kitchen door. He was a boy she had hired on no recommendation except his own presence, and she realized now that, for all her satisfaction with his work, she had accepted him on that first interview because to do it was to be as bold as himself, and to deny him the job would have left her at the mercy of his opinion. She had squandered a lifetime in the pursuit of good opinions. He knocked again, louder, with his fist clenched, she thought, as though it would be no more trouble to drive it through the door.

  A shiver ran through her as she moved toward him with stark determination. To send him away quickly would be wisdom now. Pay him a pretty compliment on his garden and dispatch him. Tell him he earned a raise. Try that on him for a smile! Opinion be damned! What right had he to an opinion of Hannah Blake?

  And you, Hannah Blake, settle down—with your sulphur baths and your new old books, to the adulation of the Katherine Shanes, the creepers-up from Front Street, yours for a nickel’s worth of attention and a cup of tea; to the reverence of toothless farmers and the tribute of their moth-holed mortgages; to the Blake tradition and the company of Blakes, twenty-odd of them, simpering yellow faces awaiting your presence among them on the walls. Then let the fog trail in.

  Send him away. Drive him away if needs be, and bolt the door.

  “I’m sorry, Dennis. I thought Sophie was here to let you in.”

  “I thought maybe you’d forgotten, Miss Blake.”

  “I rarely forget an appointment. You may come with me into the study.”

  He followed after her, his strides long and easy over the polished floor. No bumpkin. He wore, she noticed, a checkered shirt, the garb affected by the fishermen of the Cove. And jealous they were of it, too. He would not go among them wearing it without their approval. At home in shanty or manor!

  “I see you’ve joined a fraternity,” she said in the study. She motioned him into a chair before her desk, and pulled her desk chair around. But while they talked, she gradually rolled herself to behind the desk.

  “I don’t understand, Miss Blake.”

  “The shirt.”

  “Oh. It was a present.”

  “A warm one,” Hannah said.

  “And warmer when a heart accompanies it,” he said, smiling a little. As bold as the shirt.

  “Indeed,” she murmured. “Dennis, may I ask how old you are?”

  “Twenty-four, Miss Blake.”

  “As I remember it, I did not ask you for references when I hired you.”

  “I couldn’t have given you any as a gardener, Miss Blake. If I concealed that, I didn’t mean to.”

  “It was not very well concealed,” she said, “though your work here has covered it nicely. But I should have asked for a personal reference. You could have given it?” He had certainly not volunteered it, she recalled.

  “I think I’d have managed if I had to. Why?”

  His directness angered her when she had to be so devious. “Because I’m not sure your conduct has justified my confidence.”

  He watched her, his eyes narrowing a little.

  If only she could stop there, she thought, but having made that start, she had no stopping place. “Sophie is in a state of hysterics these days. She confessed to me this morning that you are responsible.”

  His eyes never wavered. “What did she confess?”

  He was driving her to the wall with his insolent ease. “That you have been taking advantage of her.”

  What would he understand by that? The instant the words were out she quailed at them herself. Only his hands tightened over the arms of the chair.

  “It may be, of course, that the girl exaggerates.” She tried to qualify. “But if this sort of thing gets about town, well, it might make for a nasty situation.”

  She waited as long as she could endure his silence. “Well?”

  “It might,” he said.

  “I must say, you’re an arrogant young man.”

  “If I denied it, Miss Blake, would you believe me?”

  By which he meant “would you want to believe me?” she thought.

  “I should certainly listen to your account of it,” she said.

  “And I don’t want to give any account of it.”

  “Then you leave me to believe Sophie’s story.” And he was thinking that it was Sophie’s story she wanted to believe, she decided. “Apparently you’ve had similar experiences before, Dennis.”

  “I had one reminiscent of it, Miss Blake. It will do me a lifetime.”

  “I see,” she said, wild to see, but determined that he should not have that insight into her. “In which case Sophie was fabricating. Young girls often do. Certainly having escaped one situation, you would not invite another. She’s only a child, you know, at least here.” She lifted a finger to her head. “Otherwise, she’s quite developed. Which may be the trouble. I should suggest, Dennis, that you discourage her more actively.” She studied the letter folder on her desk.

  “Would you suggest that I drown her, Miss Blake?”

  Hannah glanced up, startled, and caught a flicker of mirth at the corners of his mouth. The impulse to laugh rose inside her, a tingling provocative urge responding to what she took to be his sly exposure of the hoax in the situation. It was as though he had said, “You faker, let’s come to the heart of the matter.”

  She threw back her head and burst the high, rich music of her laughter to the walls. The young man laughed also with a fine heartiness. When the spasm left her, its relaxation lingered, a lazy, delicious ease rolling out the constrictions. “Oh, Dennis, I haven’t laughed like that in such a long time.”

  “An eggcup full of it is worth a bucketful of tears,” he said.

  “That’s a lot of wisdom to pick up at twenty-four,” she said. “When I was young I much preferred the tears.”

  “So did I,” he said, “when I was young.”

  “Right now you’re very young to say that. Or to think I’d be in sympathy with it. What have you been through to get that sober look you wear all the time?”

  “I was born with a caul,” he said.

  “You were born with a fine, glib tongue at any rate,” she said, aware of the evasion but not hurt by it, finding an easy retort herself. “They say it’s part of an Irish inheritance, and you do have an affinity for them here, don’t you?”

  “I’m at home down there, Miss Blake.”

  “And you a minister’s son?”

  “My father would not be at home there,” he said, “though he’d go through all the motions of being comfortable.”

  Whatever they might be, Hannah thought. She got up from her desk and sat in an upholstered chair, turning the lamp to where it would not shine in her face. “That is an element of the Cove which I have never understood. Sometimes I’d like to. I just can’t make it. It puts me in awe of people like yourself who can break away from their inheritance.”

  “If you can just get far enough away to take a good look at it, Miss Blake—that’s all it takes.”

  She smiled. He had said it in such an earnest, boyish manner, much as though he were trying to teach her how to ice-skate.

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all if you want to. You have to want to. I don’t know what happens if you’re afraid to do it. It’s probably like quitting church. You have to dare yourself not to go once, twice. Then suddenly it’s easy.”

  “Is that how you quit church?”

  “No. I quit in one fell stroke. I didn’t have any trouble, but some people do.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to quit than it is to stay,” she murmured.

  “It was for me,” he said bluntly.

  She watched him for a few sec
onds. “Dennis, I know something of you that I have no right to know.” She had to move away then from the intentness of his eyes. She went to the window, her back to him. “I’m a snooper, an idle snooper,” she began, and even as she spoke she found that the truth she had not intended to tell seemed almost a fable as she admitted it. “I must say in my own defense, I didn’t intend to snoop. I was plowing through that exquisite order in which you keep the tool shed. I think I was looking for a trowel and I was annoyed to find the bench drawers locked. I was going to leave them open. Then I found your notebook. I read only a few lines the first time. But I could not resist the temptation to go back and finish them. Actually, that’s what I wanted to tell you tonight.”

  She waited at the window, honestly not wanting to see his reaction.

  “May I smoke?” he asked after a few seconds.

  “Of course.”

  “Is that why you were afraid for Sophie?” he asked, the cigarette lighted. “Because of what you read there?”

  She was glad then that her back was to him. He had not seen the hoax at all. His laughter with her had been no more than contagion. How little she knew really of the estimate others put on her, how frightfully small it was in her calculations.

  “Perhaps it was,” she said, falling back on the lie helplessly.

  “You shouldn’t have been. But then I guess it was natural when you didn’t know me very well.”

  “Natural?” she murmured, trying to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “I mean that you shouldn’t understand it. You see, the things I put down on paper aren’t meant to be taken literally.”

  “You don’t need to explain that to me, Dennis. I’m not without some adequacy to poetry.”

  “Excuse me. I didn’t mean that either,” he said. “All I’m trying to tell you now is that sometimes I write the things when I can’t have the experience.”

  “You write of the dream,” she said away from him that he might not see the color his frankness had brought to her face.

  “Exactly.”

  “I believe they call it sublimation,” she murmured.

  “Call it whatever they like, it’s my own business what I do with it.”