old farmhouse. After that a week in the city in the little house off Morton Street, then back here to work.
Presently Rosetta arrived. She looked very pretty in a full-skirted blue taffeta dress, her round cheeks red and her big black eyes bright. Julie wished Frances wouldn’t keep examining Rosetta through her lorgnette as though she were an inanimate object, a pair of curtains or a view she couldn’t quite make up her mind about. It was a relief to find someone to whom Eleanor’s presence meant nothing, but Rosetta had to blunder even there. She stared open-mouthed when she was introduced to the thick-set, weather-beaten woman in the corner of the couch. She knew who Brian’s aunt was, and she had evidently expected something sumptuous and seductive.
Frances laughed openly at her expression, and Eleanor chuckled. “So have the mighty fallen. I’m only a fat old farm woman, child. Where’s that sister-in-law of yours? I want to have a look at her.”
Rosetta stammered that Mouse and Joe would be up in a few minutes Joe had gone to the village for the mail. She was flustered and embarrassed. Sam said kindly, “to the kitchen, men,” and put his arm around her waist to waltz her out of the room.
More than a few minutes passed, but Mouse and Joe didn’t appear. Everything was ready. Brian’s long trestle table he had made himself had been cleared of its books and papers and was set with china and cutlery, mounds of sandwiches, hors d’oeuvres and a great bowl of salad that Frances’s cook had prepared. Brian was in the kitchen mixing fresh cocktails, Rosetta was helping Sam with the turkey and Frances and Eleanor were talking on the couch. Julie went through the glass door, across the hall, and out on the little sun deck from which Brian claimed you could look down on all the kingdoms of the world.
The house was set into the hill near its peak and the sun deck was level with the top to the west and south. The porch was glassed in for the winter. Julie walked to the end of it and peered down through blackness. What could be keeping Mouse? She was usually punctual. Living with Sarah had done that; the house on Twenty-second Street with its hour for this and minute for that had been run on a schedule whose rigidity would have made the Medes and Persians pale.
There was a glowworm coming up the weaving path through the young birches. It was Joe with a torch, holding Mouse’s arm. They went past the glass panes toward the door at the inner end of the sun deck. The door opened and Julie started forward and stood still. They didn’t see her. Their backs were partially turned. Joe’s face in profile was illuminated by light from the hall. It wasn’t cheerful. It was gaunt and strained and tired, with triangles of shadow under the high cheekbones. He was talking to Mouse hurriedly. His voice was low and there was urgency in it and tenderness. “Pull yourself together, honey, keep a stiff upper lip. I only saw him from a distance—and I could have been mistaken. Don’t worry until there’s something to worry about ” He kissed her and they passed across the porch and went inside.
Julie followed them, slowly. Him…“I only saw him from a distance…I could have been mistaken.” To whom was Joe referring? It couldn’t be Bill Conroy who had no connection with Hoydens Hill. She thought of the footsteps she had heard on the driveway in front of her cottage earlier that evening, and gave herself an impatient shake. There might have been no one there at all. She had Bill Conroy on the brain.
A glance at Mouse through the glass doors was comforting. She looked perfectly all right, fresh and comely and composed, standing in front of the couch, her arm through Joe’s, talking sedately to Eleanor. Julie went into the living-room and they both greeted her. Joe said, “Hello, Julie,” with his usual cheerful grin. Mouse said, “Oh, Julie, what a pretty dress!” Her tone was faintly wistful. She had on the blue tailored wool in which she had gone away. She had plenty of money, but she couldn’t seem to get used to the idea of spending it on herself. Frances had lectured her roundly about her wardrobe, telling her that she ought to get herself some decent clothes.
Sam was serving the turkey and Rosetta was helping him with the plates. Fresh cocktails were poured. Mouse protested at the glass Sam put into her hand. “I don’t drink,” she said, “and I don’t think…” She looked anxiously past him at Rosetta, who was also holding a glass. Sam said firmly, “You’re going to drink tonight. You’re going to drink to Brian and Julie.” He raised his glass.
Firelight and candles, Brian’s Christmas greens, idle talk—it was all very gay. Eleanor and Frances were discussing Brian’s man, Walter, and his periodic sprees, also the changes in the house that Brian was going to have to make. “There ought to be another room…They could throw out a wing…”
Julie was sitting on the arm of the couch and Brian was standing behind her. “Four days…” he said quietly. She leaned back and looked up at him. “…will quickly turn themselves to night. Four nights…”
Neither of them heard the doors open. They didn’t hear anything unexpected at all. The fire was the natural center of the room, and the entire group was clustered loosely around it. Their own voices and a laugh from Sam were cut across sharply. Another voice, a strange voice, said, “Good evening.”
They swung in a united movement. A woman was standing between the partially opened glass doors. She had on a leopard coat, and a small leopard toque was tipped sideways over her black hair. It was the woman who had been with Bill Conroy in the Biltmore. She was smiling a little. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. Her eyes were making a circle. They rested on Julie, moved to Brian.
Julie knew then what it was that Brian and Eleanor and perhaps Sam and Frances had been concealing from her. The lights didn’t dim or the walls fade. Instead a fierce brilliance beat whitely on the room and all the people in it, on Mouse crushed into the curve of the grand piano, as wooden as she had been when Bill Conroy had left her in Sarah’s little study, on Joe, his plain gaunt face knobby and mottled, on Sam’s carved immobility. Frances’s thin ringed hand was a balled fist on a crossed knee. As for Brian, something deep inside Julie twisted.
Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor is home from the sea. The woman in the doorway was Brian’s wife. She spoke, and her words fell like little stones into the well of paralyzed silence her appearance had produced. Her voice was husky. It had a faintly foreign inflection. She said, “I’m back, Brian—for good. I should never have left you—never. Let’s kiss and make up, shall we? Brian—oh, my dear!” Her purse and gloves, tan suede gloves and a long brown alligator purse, fell from her fingers and she started across the floor, her arms out.
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