Hangman's Whip Read online

  “I’ll be up in a few days,” he cried. “See you then.”

  Abruptly his figure vanished. She turned, clasping her handbag and the package of toffee and the newspaper, and went on into the cool air-conditioned car and found herself a seat.

  And sat there for a long time, the newspaper unopened in her hands, thinking of Howland Stacy; telling herself she must think of Howland Stacy and the thing he had said. Perhaps that way she could accustom herself to the new and unexpected role he had proposed for himself.

  But as the train swept through Winnetka and Glencoe and Ravinia and slipped on northward past Lake Forest, the familiar names and stations turned her thoughts irresistibly toward Lake Kentigern.

  Lake Kentigern and the old-fashioned Abbott house sprawling above the lake, amid its trees, its gardens—its bay windows and turrets and wide, roofed verandas. It lay at the head of the long clear lake and so far above it that there was a steep flight of steps twisting down to the pier between hedges of rose shrubs.

  When she thought of the house at Kentigern she always thought of Richard, and she did so then.

  But it didn’t matter, she thought presently, how many pictures of Richard came, so clear and vivid, out of her memory. For they were all grown up now. She and Diana and Richard—and Howland. Diana was married to Calvin Peale. Richard was married to Eve—beautiful golden Eve with her great soft blue eyes and gentle voice.

  She was glad that Richard—and Eve—would not be at Kentigern when she arrived. Glad? An errant and troublesome impulse made her question it. She ought not to care; she ought to feel nothing about Richard that was important. She remembered something Howland had said: “You are eating your heart out for a man that married someone else.”

  All at once, threatening the little fortress she had built, there came an unexpected and forbidden thought. Suppose Richard were at Kentigern! Suppose she was going then to meet him!

  She caught back that thought with something very like fright. It was only her talk with Howland, she reminded herself resolutely, that had started that train of memory. And it was only the memory of past emotion that had hurt.

  The train went on.

  Once or twice she thought of Ludmilla’s letter with again a kind of uneasy perplexity.

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS ABOUT A three-hour trip from Chicago to Kentigern village, lying with its peaceful-looking white houses, vine-covered and sedate, its quiet main streets, its church and its small harbor, at the end of the lake. The sun dropped lower and turned to orange and then to red; the shadows of the train slanted and became sharply black.

  It was close to eight o’clock when she arrived at Kentigern village and still very hot. The little station had not changed; she had barely time to glance around her, remembering, when a chauffeur approached, touching his cap. He’d been sent by Mrs Peale, he said; the car was waiting; did she have any other bags?

  It was a strange chauffeur, and the long limousine was new too. But the road that twisted all around the shore of the lake was as familiar to her as the lines of her own hand. The chauffeur drove rather rapidly; probably dinner was waiting for her; it seemed only a few moments before they passed the entrance to the big Stacy place, with lights showing in the caretaker’s cottage near the gate. The Abbott place was next door.

  The sun had quite set, but the sky above was pink and was reflected rosily in the lake so there was a kind of warm glow over the stone-pillared entrance to the Abbott grounds, over the twisting drive (it had been, a carriage road originally) to the house, over the tennis court on one side (which needed rolling) and Aunt Ludmilla’s herb and perennial gardens on the other.

  The driveway was heavily shrubbed; they were almost at the house when a tall, extremely slender woman, already dressed for dinner in thin, trailing white, emerged from a thicket of lilacs, threw away her cigarette so it made a tiny red rocket in the gathering twilight under the trees and put up her hand. It was, of course, Diana. The car stopped.

  “Hello there, Search darling. I came to meet you.” Her voice was thin in tone and a little monotonous. She spoke to the chauffeur: “Take Miss Search’s bags up to the house; Carter knows what room. She’ll walk the rest of the way with me.”

  “Yes, madam.” The chauffeur hurried to open the door for Search, and as she stepped out of the car Diana kissed her and then held her away as if to look at her and at the same time laughed a little—a small light cascade of laughter that was with Diana a kind of social bridge rather than an expression of mirth.

  “You’re looking well, darling. It’s nice you’ve come.”

  “You’re looking very well yourself, Diana.”

  Diana smiled briefly; she was extremely thin as always, but her fine straight light hair was drawn smoothly upward from her narrow high forehead in a becoming way; her extraordinarily light eyes were carefully made up; her thick light eyebrows and her wide scarlet mouth gave her face character and detracted from the length of her narrow chin. She had a certain elegance of bearing; she was always beautifully gowned and perfectly groomed. She, said, linking her thin bare arm through Search’s: “I wanted to talk to you a moment alone. Let’s go this way.”

  The heavy car moved on along the drive, gravel spattering from under its wheels. Diana drew Search along the green soft turf toward the house that loomed ahead of them, a few lights shining through the trees.

  “How are you, Diana? How’s Calvin? And Aunt Ludmilla?”

  “That,” said Diana abruptly, “is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. Calvin says she’s all right, just notional. But Richard says there’s something wrong.”

  Search stopped.

  “Richard!”

  “Why, yes.” Diana glanced at her, her thick fair eyebrows frowning in surprise. “Didn’t you know that Richard is here? He’s been here most of the summer.”

  Search’s heart was beating hard. Richard there; in a few moments she would see him. She couldn’t help seeing him unless she turned then and there and ran away. But that was absurd—that momentary impulse to escape. Besides, her desire to see him was stronger, so much stronger that it confused and bewildered her. Hadn’t she secretly, telling herself it wasn’t so, wanted him to be there? She felt almost guilty for an instant, as if that secret stubborn wish had brought about the fact.

  She took a long breath. And then something beyond her control made her say, quite evenly, really, walking on with Diana along the quiet path: “And Eve?”

  “Oh, Eve’s gone. For good. And it’s good riddance.”

  “For good! You mean—” She must mean divorce. And that meant that Richard was free. And that meant—that might mean—

  Again, resolutely, she checked herself; her love for Richard was over, conquered. He had never loved her. It didn’t—it couldn’t matter about Eve.

  Diana was speaking with as much unconcern as if it really didn’t matter.

  “I mean she wants a divorce. I imagine she’s got another man in view. Somebody with money.”

  That brought a swift memory too—of golden hair and soft blue eyes and demure, gentle beauty.

  “Eve?”

  Diana laughed. “Eve’s not as helpless as she looks. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Search, why did Aunt Ludmilla send for you?”

  “But I—I don’t know. She didn’t say anything but that she’d like me to come. What is wrong?”

  There was a little silence except for the small silk rustle of their skirts.

  Quite suddenly and rather fancifully it seemed to Search that she could feel Diana’s mind sending out exploring little tentacles toward her through the dusk, almost as Diana’s thin white fingers fastened themselves upon her arm. Then she gave her silvery tinkle of laughter. “I can’t imagine,” she said. “You see, she’s behaving so very oddly. Says the strangest—” She stopped on a quickly drawn breath. And Diana Abbott Peale, self-possessed, never afraid of anything, certainly not cold in the warm summer twilight, lifted her thin white shoulde
rs in what in another person would have been a quickly restrained but unmistakable shiver. Then she laughed again.

  “It’s nothing, probably. But whatever it is, find out for me, will you, darling? And come along now; Calvin’s in town until tomorrow, but Richard will be waiting; dinner’s as soon as you are ready. Calvin’s thinking of running for state senator, did you know? How well that outfit becomes you; I hoped you’d be able to use it when I sent it to you.”

  “I like it very much. Thank you for it, Diana.”

  They were nearing the house; beyond the enormous clump of lilacs just ahead were the steps. But whatever feeling she’d had for Richard was dead and buried and definitely in the past. She told herself that. Therefore her heart ought not to beat so hard and fast. They walked up the flagged steps, and Richard rose from a lounge chair on the broad veranda and came to meet them.

  It was dusk on the veranda, with only a reflected light from the calm waters of the lake away below penetrating the thickening shadows. A light from the wide hall illumined the doorway, and against it Richard’s tall figure was outlined rather sharply in his white flannels and dark coat. And it was as if she had never been away from him. He came toward her, his hands out, utterly familiar in every motion. Not a gesture he made, not a tone of his voice was strange or unfamiliar. If, owing to the dusk, she couldn’t quite see the look in his eyes, she knew by his voice the look of pleasure and friendliness that must be there.

  “Hello there, Search,” he said, taking her hand. It was a hard brief clasp that was also inexpressibly familiar. “It’s grand you’ve come. It’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve seen you. How are you?”

  She replied; she did so, miraculously, in as unforced and natural and honestly friendly a way as Richard himself and spoken. And that was all, for Diana hurried her upstairs where a maid was already unpacking her bags and laying out a thin summer dinner gown.

  She was a new maid; her name, she said, was Carter; she was very English and very smart; she unpacked quickly and efficiently and went away while Search was dressing, to return with a message from Ludmilla who, it developed, was having dinner on a tray in her room and wanted Miss Search to come to her room sometime after dinner.

  “Any time,” said the maid. “Miss Abbott reads late.”

  “Thank you, Carter.”

  The maid swished away again, closing the door softly behind her.

  She would not think of Richard and that brief encounter. Not then. She sheered away from it as from a danger.

  Hurriedly she changed. Running a comb through her hair so it lifted cleanly in short soft curls away from her face, she thought again but briefly of Ludmilla; she must find out what was wrong—if anything really was wrong, as Diana had seemed to think.

  She put down the comb and rose. Her handbag and the package of rum-butter toffee were on the dressing table, and she left them there. She leaned nearer the mirror to adjust the soft folds of her pale yellow gown and to fasten her only jewelry—her mothers amethyst necklace—around her white neck. The rosy light threw her heart-shaped face into soft relief and gave a glimpse of a beautiful mouth, warm and crimson and gently curving, and black slender eyebrows above eyes that were a little in shadow but were dark lashed and seemed to catch violet lights from the amethysts. Her brown hair, swept upward severely from white temples, had small gold gleams in it.

  She fastened the necklace and reminded herself that rose-shaded lights were flattering. The rose-shaded lamps—and the big harp in the south drawing room and the old sundial in the rose garden—marked Isabel Abbott’s era in the old Abbott house. Charming, witty, vain Isabel Abbott had chosen those frilled, round little silken shades. Search touched one of them with a lingering forefinger, struck with a sense of the impermanence of life and the permanence of some small thing—a piece of pink silk. Isabel’s theory was that a woman is as beautiful as she feels, so all the dressing-table lamps in the Abbott house had flattering, softening rose silk shades.

  But the thought of Isabel brought her back to Richard again; Isabel had been Isabel Bohan, Richard’s aunt and guardian. So when she married John Abbott and came to live at the Abbott house she’d brought Richard there too. But it was Ludmilla, really, who’d mothered the three children—Search and Diana and Richard. With Howland living next door.

  She frowned a little, looking at her image again with sudden seriousness, wondering if she had changed since Richard had seen her. But there was nothing between her and Richard, nothing except friendliness and affection. If Eve had gone, if Eve was away getting a divorce, it still made no difference. Richard had never loved her, Search.

  Yet the eyes of the woman in the mirror were lighted and mysterious, and there was a look of happiness about her mouth and about the way she stood there regarding herself. She turned abruptly from the mirror and went downstairs, glancing only once along the wide hall down toward the room at the end of it, where Ludmilla was having dinner on a tray. The door to Ludmilla’s room was closed.

  Diana and Richard were waiting on the veranda—they had not lighted the lamps out there but were sitting in the warm darkness which had dropped like a mantel over the lake. They went at once, all three, in to dinner.

  There were lights there—on one end of the long table there were candles in crystal holders which looked oddly sophisticated and out of place.

  “But you’ve changed nothing,” said Search, looking around the enormous high-ceilinged room.

  “How could I?” said Diana. “It would have meant to rebuild it. All that silly stained-pine paneling. Come along, darling. Richard, will you sit between us?”

  Under her thin sandals Search felt the small resiliency of India matting which covered the whole floor; it carried her instantly back to her childhood as did the faint odor of potpourri from, she knew, the huge blue Chinese vase on the mantel. The mantel itself was an enormity, she supposed, with its set-in mirror and its thick wood carving above ugly brown marble, but she liked it and knew exactly the place where the carved griffon’s wings began to spread upward.

  She sat down as Richard held her chair for her, and a waitress in black came in with soup. It was an enormously long table; the candles made an oasis of light at one end, in the midst of which the three places were set. The table easily accommodated thirty; there had been times, and they had been frequent, when extra tables were brought in. Now the table was pulled over near the bank of windows which overlooked the perennial garden, and around the rest of the room were ranged straight chairs of stained light pine with all kinds of seats—cane and leather and polished wood—light and surprisingly comfortable.

  She said again, looking around the room with delighted eyes:

  “But nothing’s changed. There’s the china dog with souvenir of St. Augustine written on it.”

  “It carries you back, doesn’t it?” said Richard, beginning his soup. His face sobered suddenly. “Seems ages—far more than three years—since I was here last.”

  “Well,” said Diana, “it’s grand to have you both back. It’s so exactly as it used to be.”

  It was just then that for the first time Search looked fully at Richard, and he was looking at her. His eyes were smiling a little, yet there was something grave and deeply intent in that look too. So it seemed to have a kind of meaning and importance. Then Diana said something and Richard turned to reply to her, and Search reached for the tall goblet beside her plate and cold water touched her lips.

  “We aren’t exactly as we used to be though, Di,” said Richard slowly. “We’ve all changed. Grown up, I suppose. God knows it was time.” Was there a tinge of bitterness in his voice? Search was sharply aware of his face: the clean line of his cheek and stubborn chin, his level dark eyebrows and the familiar quick way he turned his dark head when someone spoke to him. Yet she wouldn’t meet his eyes again, not just then. But she saw Diana put her long thing white hand with its spatulate fingers on Richard’s wrist and lean toward him a little, smiling.

  “Dear,” sh
e said softly, “we are all still so young. There’s all life before us. Things will be better.”

  All at once Search realized that her nerves were tuned to a high pitch. That a kind of excitement had caught at her, so things seemed different, apart from their normal level. Otherwise, certainly, she would have imagined no extra significance in Diana’s words—or in her gesture and smile. Diana had always liked Richard.

  But it seemed to her then, nevertheless, that almost imperceptibly something had changed in the old dining room. As if not only she and Diana in their sleek gowns and their sophisticated modern look were different, out of pace and rhythm with the wide, quiet old room, but as if something else was awry. Something that went deeper than—well, fashionable dinner gowns and high soft coiffures and maturity. They were no longer the children who had laughed and squabbled and struggled and planned for the future in that house and in that room; they seemed to have, indeed, no relation to the ghosts of themselves the house evoked.

  Perhaps the house had changed too. Perhaps something had crept into it that was strange and inexplicable and a little frightening.

  She took a long breath, watching one of the candles waver. That was nonsense. There was nothing wrong about the house. Nothing formidable in the still, warm night; nothing threatening.

  Richard was patting Diana’s hand cheerfully—and drawing his own hand away. Soup was being removed; fish was being placed before them. Diana laughed—the little silvery tinkle which was habitual with her. Richard was talking. He was reminding them of a childish escapade, something about the lily pool and their French governess. She didn’t remember the particular incident. And then all of them began to talk—quickly, almost excitedly, remembering, reminding each other, interrupting each other as one childhood memory led to another. Laughing—until all at once dinner was over, and they rose and went back to the quiet veranda for coffee. The moon had come up while they sat at dinner, but the veranda, shaded by roof and vines, was scarcely touched by the moonlight.