Something blue (21 page)

"Give up? Give up what! What do )'ou think you can do to me? Where is your proof?" The splendid animal was fierce and brave.

Johnny stepped backwards, took the door knob, opened the door to the hall.

"Here I am," said Dorothy Padgett in a tortured voice that had to come from a mangled throat.

Something behind Dick Bartee's eyes gave up—and Johnny saw it. But Dick's body sat down and crossed its legs.

"He told me how long it took to kill the others," croaked Dorothy. "Emily!" Her face was no longer that terrible color but it was teiTible.

Johnny had her cold fingers in his own. "All right, weVe got him," he said in a shaking voice. "Will somebody keep me from killing him, here and now, before the law comes?"

Johnny could feel how Dorothy was trembling. Dorothy's fingers clutched his and she said hoarsely, yet clearly, "I would hke to be the one to tell him."

"Yes," said Johnny.

". . . that n^ Uncle CHnton McCauley's eyes are htOwn/' said the blue-eyed girl.,.

Johnny watched Dick's eyes with bitter pleasure.

Bart said, "You bit, Dick. You never paid any attention. You didn't even remember the baby's eyes. Sims rattled you."

Dick rose. "McCauley is dead," he said stiffly.

"What gave you that idea?" said Charles Copeland. "And what's the difference! Nans his daughter. The money has nothing to do with Dorothy."

"I?" Nan said.

"You had manied the money," Johnny said to Dick Bartee, "all cosy. You were home safe. You bet you were. Not now."

From Nathaniel's front windows they could all tell that a car was coming in.

"There's the law, thank God," gasped Copeland.

"Dick?" said Nan. "You didn't? It isn't true?"

Dick Bartee didn't even look at her. "Sorry to skip out on my honeymoon," he said jauntily, "but I don't think I'll wait for the law."

He turned to the side window. He wagged his hips and

crashed the glass out. He put one knee on the sill and his head and shoulders through before anyone could move.

Nan screamed. "No, Dick, not Don't leave mel I believe in youl I do! I know it isn't truel"

She was away from Copeland, oflF the bed, crawUng and scrambling after her dream. She caught at Dick's leg. He lifted it to kick her ojff. But Nan had it embraced, clutched fiercely. She was on her knees and she fainted backward. Dick had no balance, now. His other knee slipped oJBF the sill. His body came in and downward. Upon the jagged shard, left in the lower sash, his naked throat came dov^ni.

Four days later, Johnny pulled his car up at the prison, got out and helped the girls out.

Nan whimpered. "I'm afraid."

"Don't be afraid," Johnny said mechanically.

Nan was so small, so forlorn. Although she was better. Johnny and Copeland had got Nan away from the law, (although there would be ordeals, inquiries, suspicion of manslaughter—before they could get her altogether free.) Dick Bartee was dead and gone. So they'd got Nan back north, and into the strong hands of Johnny's mother. Barbara Sims had pumped courage into her, helped her, got her in some measure, together again.

Now, of course, this was going to be an ordeal.

Johnny helped her to walk. Dorothy walked by herself. It was Dorothy who had stayed behind, two days, in Hestia and stood up to all the questioning.

Father Klein welcomed them. "He is waiting, my dear. He has been waiting for this a very long time."

McCauIey was better. The resolution of the dilemma had put him back together again, rather swiftly. He'd be out on parole soon.

"We won't go in," said Johrmy. "You go, Nan."

"No, Johnny, Dotty, please? Come with me?" Nan was shivering.

"He wants to see all three of you," the chaplain said.

The frail little man was waiting in the chaplain's office, white head bent down.

McCauley said, "I am a little afraid. Is it really she?"

Nan's face began to change. "Don't be afraid," she said. "Father?"

"This is your daughter, sir. And this is her cousin, Dorothy," Johnny spoke up. He had to be very cheerful, loud, and hearty. Somebody had to be.

"Thank you for all you have done," McCauley's brovvn eyes sent up to him a look of piercing gratitude.

"Thank Dorothy, too."

"I do thank Dorothy."

Dorothy said, w^ith that sturdy sweetness, "Ym. glad to meet you at last, Uncle CHnton."

"That's right," he mused. "You are Essie McCauley and Gordon O'Hara's child."

Nan's face had color. "I am Polly McCauley," she said shyly.

The man looked at her directly for the first time. "Oh, my poor Polly McCauley. My dear little one." The heart seemed to rush out of the frail body toward her. "What a terrible bad time you must have hadl"

Nan was very still. Everyone was still.

Then Nan said, "You've had the bad time. Oh, tell me.'' She sat down. She put out her hands. "What shall I call you? Father? Dad? ITL take care of you now, and .yi?ull help me?" 

She had said the exact right thing. McCauley wept for joy.

Johnny touched Dorothy's arm. They slipped away. They went out into the air. They stpod, leaning against a little parapet. They wept for McCauley, and neither let the other see.

After a while Dorothy sighed, "I'm glad I am Miss O'Hara-Padgett. I thought I might have to . . ."

"Hire an experienced snooper?" Johnny watched a gull. The gull was free.

Dorothy didn't answer.

"Dot, do you know what color a ceanothus petal is?''

"I . . ." She looked started. "Blue," she said.

Johnny leaned and saw the world fresh and beautiful and steady. Dorothy fidgeted.

"They'll be all right, I suppose?" she blurted. "Sure. All right now."

"Johnny, they won't. He is not of tliis world and Nan's going to be utter devotion or something impractical. Somebody will have to look after them."

'Not me," said Johnny. "No?" Dorothy was surprised.

''Well, not excessively. I've figured it out—vi^atching over people/' Johnny told her, rather harshly. "Keeping secrets to 'protect' them. Look at the whole list. George Rush protected Dick. Why? To protect himself from being expelled. Blanche protected Dick. Why? To protect herself from punishment, for disobedience and for burglarizing. Old Mrs. Bartee protected Nathaniel from being thrown out on the world. Why? For love, maybe. And that was wrong, too. All of them wrong. Because Rush wasn't innocent, Blanche wasn't innocent, Nathaniel wasn't innocent and Dick Bartee, Lord knows, wasn't innocent. Only one person protected someone rightfully. That was Emily. She protected the truly innocent—the httle baby. Everyone else should have faced the consequences of what he himself had done. OtheiAvise, it's no good. It's not even kind." "I know," said Dorothy.

"I should have given Nan the whole truth as soon as I knew it."

"Me, too," said Dorothy softly. "But we didn't. And now it isn't her fault, really, that she never learned. She . . . Johimy, it won't be easy for her for a long time."

"Wnbo says," drawled Johnny, "that things have got to be easy? That is a dream." Dorothy sighed.

"You know what's a better dream? To want the truth, have the truth and take the truth, and learn and be . . ." "Yes," said Dorothy, "that's a better dream, all right." "I want to tell you something true," said Johnny abi-uptly. "When I got my aims around you in that closet and felt your heart beating . . ." His ovsti heart stopped, for the memory.

"Bart said he thought . . ." Dorothy was a bit breathless. "He thought you wanted to fool Dick for a little while. When he told me about that blue-eyed bluff, he guessed you wanted to try another. Johnny, did it help, that Dick thought he had killed me?"

"Not much," said Johnny. "Tricks. I'm off of tricks. Dot. I want things plain. I hadn't finished a sentence." He looked at a gull. "Maybe I don't need to. Once you said that you could tell-"

She let him see, as he turned, miles deep into her blue eyes, clear and true. His breath caught.

'Tes, I can tell," said Dorothy gravely. Then, "Johnny, do you think we can possibly be happy?"

He knew what she meant. The ghost of Emily, the blood of Dick Bartee the tragedy of Nan—these memories were hovering and might always hover over the two of them when they were together.

This was going to be no romantic dream. This would not be Cloud Nine or any numbered cloud.

Here was J. Sims, just as he really was—sick and sore sad—and not much, in his own estimation. Here was also this lovely hvely giil, so real, that he could heardly breathe.

"Dotty," he said soberly, "I'll tell you the truth. I could live—although I can't imagine how—without you."

Then she was in his arms, warm and fragrant and he felt her heart beating.

Now, surely, sweetly, they were mending, their wounds were closing, they were being healed and they could tell.

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