Arrow Pointing Nowhere (7 page)

Two women, one reclining on a wheeled invalid chair, sat opposite each other, a round table between them, in the bay window. A younger woman and an elderly man shared a little sofa at right angles to the fireplace, which was in the wall to the right of the doorway; there was another door in the east wall, half open; it led to a handsome and luxurious bedroom,
and afforded a glimpse of blue-satin furnishings and a flowered carpet.

“I've fulfilled my promise to you all,” said Fenway, “and brought you Mr. Gamadge. Here they all are, Mr. Gamadge, eagerly waiting to make your acquaintance. My sister-in-law, Mrs. Fenway.”

Gamadge crossed the room to take the hand that she held out to him; a beautiful hand, and a once beautiful woman; beautiful still, if she had not had that drawn and anxious look, a caged look. Middle age had not lined her fair skin, dimmed her bright blue eyes, faded her blond hair; but it had slightly blurred the clear features which must in other days have been modelled like the Psyche's, but on a larger scale; a large-boned woman, and certainly tall. She wore a smart velvet coat, dark-blue, and there was a flame-colored robe over her legs and feet.

She said: “Very, very good of you to take pity on us, Mr. Gamadge. We're so
dull
.”

Gamadge, looking into the strained blue eyes, said that he couldn't believe that.

“Poor Mrs. Grove will tell you so. My friend Mrs. Grove, Mr. Gamadge.”

Mrs. Grove, a thin, small woman with a birdlike face, weather-beaten and unreadable, smiled with tight lips and regarded him unsmilingly from small dark eyes. Then she went back to her needlework. The round table was heaped with it—squares of canvas, myriad-colored skeins of crewel wool, scissors, workbags. The telephone which stood there was almost smothered, and a wastebasket under it contained many snippings of worsted. It also contained a crumpled paper ball.

“My daughter,” said Fenway. Gamadge turned to acknowledge the short nod vouchsafed him by Miss Fenway. He saw again the dark, plain, well-bred features that he had seen
the night before; the fine brown hair, plainly dressed; the clear, colorless skin. She was wearing a tailored suit and a silk blouse, but the brilliant earrings were in her ears, and there was a big sapphire ring on her right hand; old-fashioned; a family ring no doubt. He saw that her eyes were hazel, and that there was a sardonic look about them. She was polite and interested.

“My cousin Mott,” said Fenway. The tall old man who had risen from beside Caroline had Fenway's blue eyes, the Fenway short, high nose, and Caroline's sardonic expression; but he lacked the Fenway gravity. He had the humorous look of a tired old man who has found life rather absurd on the whole, and doesn't care. He said: “I've been looking forward to this. Mr. Gamadge, I read you.”

“We all do,” said Caroline.

“Indeed we do!” Mrs. Fenway smiled, and once it could not have mattered what she said when she smiled. Even now the smile was warming.

“Thank you all very much,” said Gamadge.

“My nephew Alden,” said Fenway.

Gamadge turned completely to acknowledge this introduction. No, he thought, you wouldn't guess unless you knew. He was vague, but he behaved as any rather stupid young fellow would behave; amiably, indifferently. He nodded, and stood quietly beside his chair. His mother's son, and—if you caught a glimpse of her face when she looked at him—the apple of her eye.

“And Mr. Craddock,” said Fenway, “and now we can all sit down.”

Craddock, a pale, wiry, black-haired young man with an intelligent face and an air of nervous repressed energy, came forward with a chair; he placed it near Mrs. Fenway, and when Gamadge sat down in it he had the whole group within his range of vision; he was directly facing Caroline. Fenway
settled himself opposite her and his cousin Mott, at the other end of the hearth; Craddock returned to the table between the west windows, and he and Alden returned to their game.

Quite a responsibility, thought Gamadge, for an untrained man; to look after a big fellow like that. If young Fenway wanted to, and knew how, he could break Craddock in two.

“Mr. Gamadge,” said Fenway, “has just done me a most tremendous favor. A trade in books, and I'm very much afraid he has the worst of it.”

Caroline said, dropping the ash of her cigarette into the fire, “I don't think he's been humoring you, Father.”

Gamadge smiled. “You don't think I look like the kind of idiot who'd cheat himself out of politeness?”

“That's cheating the other person.”

“You're quite right.”

“You don't behave so feebly, I think.”

Gamadge laughed. “I'm flattered.”

Mott Fenway was amused. He said, removing his cigar to do so, “We're great philosophers here, you observe, Mr. Gamadge; fond of dialectic.”

“You needn't make fun of me, you know, Cousin Mott,” said Caroline. She added, as Gamadge laid
Men Working
on the table in a spot clear of needle point, “Is that a philosophical book, Mr. Gamadge?”

“Very; and it has a message.”

“Oh, dear!” said Mott, in his subhumorous way.

“Definitely a message.” Gamadge was by this time so acutely aware of tension in the atmosphere about him that he was afraid he might betray his own nervousness. He went on, respectfully taking in the charming gray, brown and yellow room: “If you'll allow me to say so, the Fenways have a message for moderns. You have the best taste of all—you know what not to change.” But he wondered how the Fenways got fabrics replaced when these faded or became threadbare.
The gilt-and-walnut furniture had of course been made for eternity.

“We are a little antiquated, I'm afraid,” said Fenway. “Aren't we, Belle?”

This seemed to be a family joke. Mrs. Fenway, who had picked up her work again, gave him an affectionate smile. “The awful truth is, Mr. Gamadge,” she said, “that when I was first married I teased my dear husband and upset my father-in-law very much by wanting things changed here and at Fenbrook. I wanted art moderne, and I wanted the dreariest kind of decorator's colonial. They finally made me understand that a master had done both houses, and that nothing must ever be altered.”

“You were very good for us, my dear,” said Fenway. “At least your great bathroom crusade was a success.” He asked suddenly: “Are you sure you and Mrs. Grove want that window open? Don't you feel the draught?”

The middle window of the bay, as Gamadge had noticed, was raised an inch or so. Mrs. Fenway shook her head. “There's no draught, even on the coldest days, and Alice and I are used to old, cold Europe. We sometimes feel a little suffocated in all this lovely steam heat, and with the open fire besides.” She added, with a glance at the other, and the faint tone of diffidence that Gamadge had noticed in her voice when she addressed her: “Don't we, Alice?”

Mrs. Grove raised her eyes, smiled faintly, and lowered them again to her work. Her needle went methodically down between rows of diagonal stitches, and then its blunt and shining point reappeared from below.

“My sister-in-law,” said Fenway, “is at last graciously permitted to alter something at Number 24. The drawing-room brocade is in rags, the design can't be copied, there are no such colors any more; so she and Mrs. Grove have taken on the stupendous task of working demi-point covers for six side
chairs, two armchairs, a bench and a settee. Did you ever see more beautiful patterns?”

Gamadge, leaning forward to pick up a corner of a square, and clumsily pushing a pair of scissors off the table with his cuff, said they were indeed beautiful. Then he apologized, and bent to retrieve the scissors. He also retrieved the paper ball from the wastebasket, palmed it, and rose with it in his left hand and the scissors in his right. He slipped the crumpled paper in his pocket, laid the scissors on the table, and again admired the wreaths and scrolls against their pale-green background.

A rather low, deep voice, coming from somewhere on his extreme right, interrupted him. “My pencil's broken.”

“I'll get you one, old man.” Craddock rose.

Mrs. Fenway turned her head to look at her son, who sat frowning and regarding his pencil. “Darling,” she said, “you mustn't let poor Bill get your pencil for you. Go and get one yourself.”

“No, really, Mrs. Fenway; it won't take a second. The kind he likes are up in my room.”

Craddock went out into the hall and ran up the stairs to the top floor. Alden sat patiently waiting, his eyes on his pencil; his mother's haunted eyes remained on him—they were full of love and anxiety. A silence ensued, during which Miss Fenway lighted another cigarette, and Mott Fenway whistled under his breath; a cheerful tune it was, from another century. Craddock returned. Blake Fenway went back to the subject of needlework:

“Mrs. Grove's young niece Hilda copied the designs for our new covers at the Metropolitan Museum, Mr. Gamadge; they will be unique.”

“That dear child,” said Mrs. Fenway. “How she worked over it, and how clever she is. Does all this rather impress you as belonging in the well-known ivory tower, Mr. Gamadge?”

Gamadge said that he liked towers in a landscape.

“Hilda shouldn't be in one, though. I don't know how you can all keep her marooned up there in that barn of a Fenbrook, I'm sure.” Mrs. Fenway's tone was light, but she seemed to take the matter seriously; and Craddock, at the mention of the absent Hilda, had raised his head. His dark eyes moved from one speaker to the other, and back again.

“I think myself that it must be lonely for her.” Blake Fenway looked perturbed.

“Isn't she supposed to like it there?” Caroline's eyes were on the tip of her cigarette.

“Now, that's nonsense,” said Mrs. Fenway cheerfully. “No girl of her age could possibly like it; and I cannot see why the boys at least shouldn't go up for weekends. It's too absurd. Hilda is your secretary, Blake, and the Dobsons are fellow employees; she's part of the staff.”

Craddock was heard to mutter that Hilda liked to ski.

“Of course she does. Why shouldn't you all ski?”

Caroline drily remarked that perhaps Mrs. Grove might have an opinion on the subject.

Gamadge heard that lady's voice for the first time. It was a small, dry, clear voice. It said: “I can safely leave the decision to Mr. Fenway.”

“Yes.” Caroline glanced at her. “And we all know very well what it will be; exactly what it would be if I were nineteen and in Hilda's place. Won't it, Father?”

“Why not, my dear?”

Mrs. Fenway smiled roguishly at Gamadge. “I'm in a minority, it seems. But I'm always on the side of the young people, you know.”

Mott Fenway said that it was dusty work for the little girl, sorting out old books and papers; and went on to introduce a subject which Blake Fenway had apparently not intended to discuss with the family that afternoon. “Wonder what else
will turn up missing.” He looked at the guest. “Mysterious disappearance of a house, Mr. Gamadge.”

“Really?”

“Picture of our old house, torn out of its book.”

“Oh; yes. I saw the place where it had been.”

“Was it valuable, do you think?” asked Mrs. Fenway. “Could somebody have got money for it? I mean some unscrupulous guest, of course; if such there ever can have been at Fenbrook!”

“Or the unscrupulous servant of a visiting guest,” said Mott.

“Do you think it
could
have been sold for anything much, Mr. Gamadge?” asked Mrs. Fenway.

“The set of books is worth a tidy sum; if you call seventy-five to a hundred dollars a tidy sum,” said Gamadge. “I'm only guessing, you know.”

“A tidy sum,” smiled Mott Fenway.

“The plate alone, no; I should think little or nothing.” Young Craddock said: “I know a fellow who papered a room with them.”

“With what?” asked Caroline.

“Old portraits and views. Bought 'em up for five cents apiece, and pasted 'em up. Very nice, unusual.”

“Fenbrook wasn't pasted up,” smiled Mott. “But we might paste up some of the ancient bills and documents.”

“Oh no,” protested Mrs. Fenway, closing her eyes. “There's just one thing to do with old papers, and that's to throw them away—throw them away!”

Gamadge shuddered, Fenway shuddered, and Mott sympathetically smiled. Caroline said: “I wish we could get the thing back. I wish Mr. Gamadge would concentrate on it. Then we'll give you something you want, won't we, Father? If we have it. Perhaps there's a first edition of somebody up at Fenbrook still.”

Gamadge, rising, said that if they came across the Trollope he was looking for, he was in the market.

“What Trollope?” Caroline got out of her chair when the men stood up.

“
He Knew He Was Right
.”

“A grimmer book never was written,” said Mott.