Town of Masks (22 page)

“Congratulations, Tom.”

“Thank you, Miss Blake.”

“I hope you’ll be very happy.”

“We can’t be much happier than we are right now,” he said. “Phyllis is an awfully sweet kid.”

Well. That was a summary of a new wife! How aptly Dennis seemed to have called it. Tom put his hand in the grab bag and brought it out with a prize package.

“I’m sure,” she murmured. “Has Elizabeth gotten over her prejudice?”

He put his hat on a file cabinet and sat at her desk, pulling the chair away a bit that he might feel more her equal, she thought. “There’s one thing about Campbell’s Cove that always gets me down—no offense, Miss Blake. The town seems to know what’s going on in your house before you’re sure of it yourself.”

“Your mother and I are old friends, Tom.”

“That’s right,” he said, thinking about it. “She’s a canny old girl, by God. She can make out to be as dumb as that—” he rapped the desk with his knuckles, “and not miss a trick. We tried to keep her out of it—to save her feelings. We should’ve known better. Liz’s prejudice, as you called it. That was because she was sore at me. And that was because I was sore at her. I guess you know why.”

“Keogh, of course,” Hannah said.

“Yeah. Two or three times I was on the point of coming out to see you, but I kept telling myself to mind my own business. Then all of a sudden, Mrs. Verlaine’s death. And Elizabeth could have been in real trouble. I had to pull for Liz then no matter what happened.”

“She still needs all her friends,” Hannah said. “That was a nasty business at the funeral parlor.”

“I don’t take that too serious, Miss Blake. I don’t think anybody there did, the way I heard it. Just Mrs. Tully—and you, maybe.”

Hannah was startled. “Me?”

“You laced into Sykes, didn’t you?”

“I was disturbed by what he and Annie said about Maria,” Hannah said. “There was no need to proclaim that at her funeral.”

“That’s true,” Tom said. “Anyway, it’s over with, and that item in the county paper this morning should quiet things down for a while. Did you see it?”

“Yes. Very ingenious of Walker.”

“It made sense to me,” Tom said. “I felt awful good about it when I read it. The funniest darn things happen to us, Miss Blake. I hated that kid’s guts—Keogh. Now I just feel kind of sorry for him.” He smiled. “Maybe marriage mellows a guy. You told me once to come and see you if I wanted to start business in the Cove. I never expected to be here so soon.”

He was really very shallow, Hannah thought, and selfish beyond belief. Spoiled by mother and sister, he had a wife now to keep up the practice, an awfully sweet kid. How could a woman throw herself at a man on terms such as Merritt offered? Was she blind to them? Love-blind? A husband on any terms? Here he was before her now expecting another world to open up to him, another woman to prostrate herself before his charms. Here he sat, confident and smiling, his own affairs taking a miraculous turn for the good, Elizabeth’s trouble forgotten.

“Before we get to that, Tom, what’s changed your mind about the Keogh boy?”

“I haven’t changed my mind about him. I just woke up to the fact that I came darn close to really messing things up.”

A marvelous discovery, Hannah thought. In the wake of finding another woman’s affections.

“I see,” she murmured.

“To put it squarely, Miss Blake, the more I fought against him, the more Elizabeth was for him. She’s loyal. Blind. At the rate I was pushing things, she might have run off with him. Now all I can do is hope she’ll get over her infatuation.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Merritt drew a long breath. “Miss Blake, I’m no tyrant. I tried my best at it. I even brought Phyllis home to live. Now we’ll get a place of our own. I’m just not cut out of that cloth. No big tragedies for me. I’m a simple guy. I like to make a decent living; I like a round of golf, but I like home better. I’d like to make up to my mother everything she’s done for me. That’s sentimental as hell, but that’s the way it is. I’ve always wanted to get married, to settle down. I never want to see a suitcase again except maybe for two weeks in the summer. But I was always looking for the right girl. I knew a lot of them. Elizabeth used to ride herd on me for that. So I thought I was really putting it up square to her marrying Phyllis like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I was going to make the big gesture, do right by the girl, that sort of thing. Then I was going to say, ‘Look what I did for you, Liz.’”

“I know,” Hannah said. “I’ve figured all this out myself.”

“But what happens? I’m in love with the girl. I couldn’t have gone through with it if I wasn’t. I just needed that push. And Phyllis knew it all the time. That’s the wonderful thing about it.” He spread his hands. “That’s it. You got my life story. Am I a dependable risk for the bank? I know my own mind in business.”

Copithorne, Wilks, Baker—the next generation of them before her, Hannah thought. Good, they must be good, or they would not so repeat themselves. Good for them, but not for her? Not for Hannah Blake? Oh, God, to be one of them. Not to be here alone waving a wand over their perpetuity, without a shred of her own. To hate them in the mornings and to yearn endlessly after their firesides at night. To despise their petty sins and envy the innocence they acquired by default. Marriages by default, and happy marriages! Lord God, to be so split asunder. To what end?

“I’m sure it’s a dependable risk for the bank,” she said. “Do you know Jeremiah Tobin?”

He nodded.

“He has a good location. He hasn’t much initiative, but he has a marvelous conscience, and I think I could persuade him to a partnership if that would interest you.”

“It might if it would interest Tobin. He’s been there a long time on his own, and he’s got kids—”

She interrupted. “Aren’t you confusing your position with mine, Tom?”

He flushed. “Excuse me, Miss Blake.”

“I think I can persuade him,” she said. She summoned her secretary to bring the file on Tobin’s application for a loan. “I take it, then, Tom, your only objections to Keogh were his occupation and youth?”

“He’s going to be a kid till he’s a grandfather. And a queer one. He won’t ever grow up.”

Hannah smiled. “Isn’t it strange—I had the notion he was born old. He’s gone from my place, you know.”

“No,” Tom said. “I didn’t know.”

“He was gone bag and baggage this morning. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s left the Cove altogether.”

Tom’s face had lost its flush. He frowned. “May I use your phone, Miss Blake?”

She nodded, pushing it toward him. “Dial nine for an outside line.”

She watched him strike the number of the library. His face relaxed, Elizabeth herself answering. But the sweat had come to his forehead. “Hi, Liz. Just checking up on you,” he said. Too heartily, Hannah thought. He had more than casual objections to Dennis. He had been in mortal fear that Elizabeth was gone. A few words of banter and he hung up. “Do you mind if I smoke, Miss Blake?”

“I don’t mind.”

“So he’s gone. Without even a word to her. She doesn’t know it yet.” He lit the cigarette. “Sweet heaven, I’m glad—that he’s gone, I mean.”

“Let’s not count on it,” Hannah said, “until we’re sure. But if he is gone, this way might be kinder. I’m sorry now I ever gave him a job.”

Tom watched the smoke from his cigarette, glancing then at her and away again. “He made quite a play for you, too, didn’t he?”

“What?”

“Sorry. That’s none of my business.”

Hannah composed herself. “I’m interested. Where did you get that idea?”

He was more uncomfortable than she was. “The poetry contest—something like that, I guess. It just happened to run through my mind, and kept on running. I got no sense. I don’t know. I always thought he was a little off, up here.” He touched his forehead. Then the color flooded his face. “I don’t mean because of his attentions to you—”

“Isn’t it strange,” Hannah cut in, completely composed in his confusion, “I haven’t thought of the poetry contest for days.” She looked at the calendar. “It closed Saturday.”

“Saturday was quite a day,” Tom said.

S
O, SHE THOUGHT, MARIA
was right. There was never a moment’s doubt among the library board as to the sponsor of the poetry contest. And Dennis Keogh revealed as a poet, what a wagging of heads and wriggle of tongues there must have been. What a thing of pity she must have been to the town when his love tryst with Elizabeth came out to alibi him. Not Walker’s genius, but the gossip he picked up from the Bakers and the Shanes and all accounted for his horrible wisdom, his ruthless quiz that day. Thus was Dennis suddenly despised in the town and heads bowed in the funeral parlor when she chorused her plea with Annie’s warning to Elizabeth. He was despised and Hannah Blake was pitied. Pitied by one and all, of high and low degree, even to Annie Tully, Maria’s maid. “Poor Miss Blake—you’ve been hurted, too!”

Throughout the day the shame of it tore through her like a hot, jagged knife. No wonder they answered her call whatever she proposed these days! Civil defense! Let’s gather for civil defense. Let’s rally round Hannah Blake and cover her nakedness! To the honor of Campbell’s Cove. To the rescue of the old and venerable name of Blake.

And Elizabeth had known all along, more than the shame she knew, for she could go back to that first night—to remember the high witness Hannah called upon to share the honor of the contest. “I should like to do it as a memorial to my father … He was something of a poet.” And Elizabeth could remember her lustful account of Sophie and Dennis—

Hannah drove her knuckles down on the desk remembering as she could see Elizabeth remembering. She looked about her. How apt that the bank was divided by glass partitions! No place to hide. And no use of hiding, really. The worst to be known of her was known. There was nothing left to do but to walk proudly through the shame, and out of it. To be bold.

Before leaving the office she called Elizabeth about the contest.

“Mr. Sykes left me an envelope with the entries,” Elizabeth said.

“Did he judge them?”

“Yes.”

“An envelope,” Hannah said. “How many entries were there, Elizabeth?”

“Five, Miss Blake.”

“Five out of the whole of Campbell’s Cove? With a prize of a thousand dollars?”

“That’s all. They came within a week of the contest’s announcement. Nothing since.”

“We shall have a board meeting,” Hannah said. “I’ll call Ed Baker. I’ve something to say on this. A great deal to say. Can you attend at my house tomorrow night?”

“I’m sure I can attend,” Elizabeth said flatly. Miss Blake—”

“Yes,” Hannah said when she hesitated.

“Is Dennis Keogh still with you?”

“No. Apparently he went off in the night. Sophie discovered he was gone this morning.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said, and Hannah wondered what she saw.

“If you should hear from him, Elizabeth, I owe him a week’s salary. You might forward it. I don’t want his money.”

“I don’t expect to hear from him,” the girl said, and hung up without a good-by or a thank you.

Hannah went down to Front Street that night to call on O’Gorman. He had a fine militant organization behind him. Their plans were already set for the evacuation of the town, and done with a flare for the dramatic. He suggested capsizing a boat and a rescue of its occupants.

“It makes a good picture,” Hannah said, “but we may have accidents without staging them. I don’t want panic, Dan.”

“In the real thing you might have it,” he said.

“We’re rehearsing against it. Not for it.”

He shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

That I am,
she thought. “Dan, I have an acre full of vegetables ready to harvest—onions, potatoes, carrots, eggplants—I don’t know what all is in it myself. You may send some of your people up. If they’ll put by a quarter of what they take for my use, they’re welcome to the rest.”

“That’s very decent of you, Miss Blake. I’m tempted to go digging myself. I’ve always thought I’d love to have a bit of land with something growing on it. ’Tis the dream of all sailors. I’ve a couple of lads could go through it in a day.”

“They’re not to go through it with a plow,” Hannah said. “I want it harvested, not devastated.”

“You’ve a bad opinion of us still,” he said.

“I’ve neither good nor bad. But what difference does opinion make, mine or anyone else’s?”

“None, unless it’s bad,” he said slyly. “We’ll go through your garden as gentle as the mist, and thank you for your generosity.”

About to turn up from Front Street a few minutes later, she passed a lonely figure walking in the semidarkness toward the docks. Elizabeth. The girl did not see her, but had she been driving a fire engine, Elizabeth would not have seen her, she thought. For a while Elizabeth would see no one except a phantom figure she conjured up out of a memory to meet her. The figure would fade with each recall and then, one day, be gone entirely. Well Hannah knew how ill-nurtured were those who fed on dreams. When Elizabeth’s was gone, she would be completely exorcized, and God willing, her demon thoughts of Hannah would be gone, too. But if they were not, it was Elizabeth’s loss, not hers. Really, she thought, she cared very little.

The lethargy in which she drove home, a sort of melancholy detachment wherein it would have been easy to cry should tears seem to comfort—this spell was broken as she approached her drive. A flashlight was playing over the garage. She had never been afraid in all the years she had lived alone. A thief, a burglar would not be so brazen as to use a light. Nor would he be at the garage. She drove on past the house, dark except for the night light she always left in the hall. She would almost welcome a thief, she thought. She parked off the highway and walked back across the lawn. The light was moving in the room over the garage now, but she had the key to it in her pocket. He would not come back, she told herself. He could not come back. And if it were he, she should go into the house and to bed with the quick hope that he would be gone again before she awakened.

She stopped in the added darkness of a tree’s shadow a few feet from the garage. She could see the play of the flashlight, but not its bearer. Nothing in the room escaped scrutiny from closet to dresser. There was nothing to be found or missed, she thought, although her search had not been this thorough. Her heartbeat seemed to make the noise of a frog as she grew aware of it in the still darkness. They were keeping company, her heart and a frog, beating time together, the fearsome throb of waiting. She remembered taking the heart from a frog in biology class—the living heart—