The Sundial (27 page)

Miss Inverness sipped from her glass, her hand shaking. “Horrible, indeed,” she said weakly; in the darkness she peered at Essex, leaning forward and almost whispering. “The worst,” she said. “I suppose it
happened?
”

“Alas,” Essex said. “May I bring you more champagne?”

Miss Inverness drained her glass. “I think yes,” she said. “We
must
leave, my sister and I, but at the moment I think I am slightly ill.”

_____

“Aunt Fanny,” Essex said, coming up beside her where she stood in the darkness outside the champagne tent, “Aunt Fanny, will you do me a favor?”

“Essex? Yes, certainly, my dear.”

“If Miss Inverness asks you whether you were ever captured and held prisoner by pirates off the Mediterranean coast, I want you to say yes.”

“To say what? Yes? All right, surely, Essex. I think that will be splendid. Has anyone seen my brother tonight?”

“He was to have been moved into the drawing room, so he could watch the party.”

“I daresay his wife forgot. I must really go and see to it.”

_____

“A known murderer,” Essex said happily to Miss Deborah. “Mrs. Halloran has been sheltering him from the law, or, worse, the outraged relatives of his victims. ‘Captain’ is of course an assumed name.”

“Who—” gasped Miss Deborah.

“Whom did he kill? Old women, mostly. Mutilated them in a most shocking fashion.”

“A . . . a sex murderer?”

Essex shrugged. “One can hardly
ask
,” he said.

_____

“Now the proper carving of meat is an art,” Mr. Straus said heavily. “It takes a love of flesh. I’ve seen a man carve a roast of beef as though he hated every inch of it, and you can’t tell me
that
meat made fair eating.”

“Drink, brother?” asked Mrs. Willow.

“I have done too well already, ma’am. But yes, another small drop. If you see a man take up a piece of meat with care and fondness like he was lifting a baby, now,
that
man can carve meat. I remember a fellow—married man, of course—we used to have in the shop many years ago—”

_____

Hidden in the rose garden, Julia began to cry drunkenly. “I just don’t know why it’s got to end,” she said.

“What’s got to end?” The youngest Watkins boy handed her a lighted cigarette and laughed. “I never been in here before,” he said. “
Look
at those roses; I bet it costs plenty to keep this place going. But now I know the way,” he said to Julia, “I figure I could get back here sometimes. Nights, sometimes. And you can always sneak off and get down to the village. So what’s got to end?”

Lying in the grass under the roses, Julia laughed, and cried, and laughed.

_____

“Captain,” said the schoolteacher, moving up to him with a wavering intensity, “I hope you won’t think me bold?”

“Not at all,” said the captain. He glanced over his shoulder to the entrance of the champagne tent, clearly decided that it was too far to make in one leap, and submitted to the schoolteacher’s firm clutch on his sleeve.

“I want to hear about your adventures.”

“Adventures?” said the captain.

The schoolteacher laughed giddily. “For someone like
me
, little me,” she said, fumbling, “
you
know, reading nothing but
books?
It really
means
something to man a meet who’s had
real
adventures. Real real real real real real real
real
adventures
,”
and she sighed.

“But I am afraid that I—”

“Like carrying struggling maidens across your saddle—across your
horse
’s saddle, I mean, across your saddle across your horse across some desert. Screaming and struggling and begging to get away because she
knows
what’s going to happen, and screaming fruitlessly for help and struggling and begging and scratching at you with her fingernails and pleading—”

“Rarely,” said the captain. “Most of my ladies come willingly. I have little use for any other kind.”

“—and keeping her prisoner for long moonlight nights in a satin tent, with cushions.” The schoolteacher sighed. “Turkish delight,” she said. “Shishkebab. Ropes of pearls.”

“Yes,” the captain said, edging sideways. “Always ropes of pearls.”

“The desert moon,” the schoolteacher said, but he had gotten away.

_____

“I was
what?
” Miss Ogilvie demanded, her mouth open.

Miss Deborah leaned over, and whispered.

“What?”
said Miss Ogilvie.

“I’m
sure
you won’t mind my mentioning it, dear. I only hoped—”

“Why,” said Miss Ogilvie, her eyes shining, “how perfectly
marvelous!”

_____

“Well, of course,
I
didn’t know who he was,” Maryjane said earnestly. She and Arabella were sitting in a quiet corner of the terrace, not far from the spot prepared for the musicians, who were having their dinner. Maryjane and Arabella had set their empty dinner plates down on the stone floor and occasionally they stopped Mrs. Willow, who was by now travelling luxuriously among the guests with a bottle of champagne under each arm, and asked her to fill their glasses; “Here,” Mrs. Willow was shouting, “Cupbearer of the gods!”

“And he didn’t
say
anything?” Arabella asked.

“Well, what
could
he say? It was just like a movie, honestly. He came into the library one day and of course I was there at the desk and I thought the
minute
I saw him that he looked kind of unusual and sort of . . . well, not the least bit like the kind of fellows who used to be pestering me all the time for dates and things.”

“
I
saw a movie where—”

“And I said to myself,” Maryjane went on overwhelmingly, “that this was certainly the most
gentlemanly
fellow I had seen for a long time even though his name kind of put me off at first—Lionel,
you
know, and when he said Lionel I honestly thought at first I would have died, because after all how many men are called Lionel? But of course when it turned out he only wanted to use the reference books I was
sure
because who else would be looking things up? You see a lot of people in a library and if I do say so myself you get kind of particular, because
naturally
they were always around asking me for dates and things.”

“But if it was love at first—”

“Well, of course no, dear. When
you
get married you’ll know more about these things, I always think. We just kind of got to talking, because it turned out they were binding the volume he wanted—and remind me someday to tell you about the cute fellow from the bindery, because
he
was one you had to see to believe, honestly—and
I
said why didn’t he come back in a day or so, never thinking he
would
, of course. He wanted to be a poet then, you know, but of course we came right back here when we were married, because of course I wouldn’t
dream
of alienating his family; after all, I always think, what are families
for?
So of course he
did
come back the next day and the first thing I knew he was asking me to go roller-skating with him and
I
said—”

_____

Mr. Atkins of the hardware store, and Mr. Peabody who kept the Carriage Stop Inn, and Mr. Armstrong the postmaster, sat on folding chairs in a little group somewhat aside from the general crowd. They still held plates on their knees, and they ate slowly and methodically.

“That was when my father had the shop.” Mr. Atkins said. He waved generously with his fork. “Nothing here
then
,” he said.

Mr. Peabody nodded. “The Inn was a real carriage stop those days,” he agreed.

“I remember them digging the foundations,” Mr. Atkins said, “me, just a little kid. I used to hang around up here watching.”

“There was a fellow got killed, wasn’t there?” asked Mr. Peabody.

“Got run over by a wagon. I was here—just a little kid. I remember the old man come over and looked down at this fellow lying there and he said—I swear I can hear him now—
he
said, ‘Get him out of the way,’ he said, ‘this is where the terrace has got to go.’ I can hear him now.”

“He wasn’t one who cared a lot about other people getting in his way,” Mr. Peabody said.

“I remember,” Mr. Atkins said, “there was a little carnival came to town, two or three little wagons and a pony ride, maybe it was, and a fortune teller and what not; well, they set up their kind of little camp right down there where that rose affair is now, and folks were coming around, buying tickets and looking at the fortune teller—come to think of it, there was a tattooed man along with them—and they were giving the kids a pony ride, and
he
comes raging out with his gang of bullies and chased the whole pack right off down the road. ‘Let ’em stay off
my
land,’ he says, ‘let ’em stay off
my
land.’”

“And then he built the wall,” Mr. Peabody said.

“There was some around here didn’t care much for
that
wall,”
Mr. Atkins said, grinning, and Mr. Armstrong, the postmaster, shook his head with a tired old anger.

“Once,” he said, “I could walk you all around there where my father’s fences used to be. My father’s farm, and then one morning my father turned around and there was his farm,
inside
the old man’s wall, and here my father always supposed it was going to be
outside
. ‘Oh, no,’ says the old man, ‘it’s
my
land now—leastways, it’s inside
my
wall, and try and get it back.’ My father thought he ought to take it to the law, and my mother thought so too, but come to find out, there wasn’t a lawyer anywhere around wasn’t working for the old man, and so all my father could do was sneak in sometimes and walk around what used to be his farm, checking away on his fences, and then the old man, he had to have a lake, and there’s my father’s farm now, under ten feet of water. ‘Take it back, for all I care,’ the old man says once to my father, ‘
I
don’t want it any more. Just go take it back. Course, it’ll take some
draining
.’ Then he figured to make it all up by sending me to high school in the city.” Carefully Mr. Armstrong speared a piece of meat on his fork and put it into his mouth.

“Mr. Armstrong,” said Aunt Fanny, coming up with quick little steps, “Mr. Peabody, Mr. Atkins—do you all have everything you want? You mustn’t hesitate to ask for anything—we would be very much offended if you went away hungry, you know. My father always hated to see anyone leave his table with an appetite, and, after all, this party
is
in your honor; my father would be the first to say that you deserved a good treat.”

“He was a fine man,” said Mr. Armstrong tiredly.

“A fine man,” Mr. Peabody agreed.

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Atkins. “A very fine man.”

_____

Fancy slipped softly through the great doorway and sat herself quietly down on the step beside her grandmother. “Is it nearly over?” she asked.

_____

“About half,” said Mrs. Halloran.

“They look like pigs and weasels and rats,” Fancy said.

“They will be soon gone.”

“Why do you bother to give them all that good food and stuff to drink?”

“One last indulgence. Now we can remember them as being happy and carefree.”

“How much longer is there?”

“An hour or so, I expect.”

“
Not
the party,” Fancy said.

“Oh, I see. About twenty hours, I imagine. Perhaps a little less.”

“Do you think they will know what is happening?”

“I doubt it. For a minute, perhaps, no longer.”

“Will it hurt them?”

“I trust not.”

“Will they be frightened?”

“I suppose they will, for a minute or so; there will not really be very much time, I hope, for being frightened. In any case, people are not really frightened until they know what is happening to them, and I hope all of this will be quick enough for them not to know.”

“
Does
it happen quickly?”

“I can hardly say; it has never happened before, to my knowledge. I can only believe, in mercy, that it will not take very long.”

“Do they know now?”

“I hardly think so.”

“What would they do if they
did
know?”

“From what I have seen of them, I suspect nothing. They would stand with their jaws hanging, looking at each other and grinning in a foolish fashion.”

“I wish we could watch it when it happens.”

“I think, on the whole, that it is not the kind of sight fit for our eyes, or any others. I cannot imagine living on, with that picture before me.”

“When can I have your crown?”

Mrs. Halloran turned slowly and looked at Fancy. From down among the crowd, over the beginning sound of the music, came Mrs. Willow’s voice, no longer shouting anything intelligible; on the outskirts of the crowd a small group was singing, unrecognizably; there were still sounds of activity around the barbecue pit, and from the champagne tent great bursts of laughter.

“When I am dead,” Mrs. Halloran said.

_____

Miss Inverness was crying miserably in a corner of the champagne tent onto the shoulder of Mr. Straus, the butcher. She had been brought up a lady, Miss Inverness was wailing, and taught the right way of doing things and how to comport herself in a ladylike fashion, and where was her mother now? “She was the finest woman who ever lived,” said Miss Inverness, sobbing, and Mr. Straus nodded sympathetically and patted her gently on the back. “
You
’re fine, too,” Miss Inverness said, “I can always tell, always tell. You’re the finest woman who ever lived.”

_____

Miss Deborah had the captain by one arm and the schoolteacher, somehow still navigating, had him by the other.

“You’re a wicked wicked man,” Miss Deborah screamed joyfully, “you’re a pirate and I have been taken prisoner and I bet you won’t
ever
let me go!”