got to his feet so abruptly—and unsteadily—that his chair went crashing to the floor behind him. He turned, smashed his foot violently into it and swung back to us, facing his mother over the candles. I saw that up to that point I hadn’t at all realized how definitely he was under the influence—as my grandmother used to put it in the days when no gentleman was ever intoxicated.
“Then why don’t you divide it between us, and cut out all this harping about what father wanted!” he said bitterly. “Why don’t you let us get the benefit of it, instead of keeping us tied to your apron strings, having to grovel for every penny we get! Then marry Tillyard, if you want to, and the rest of us’ll clear out! Then—”
“Oh, shut up, Rick.”
It was Dan’s voice, quietly matter-of-fact, that interrupted that extraordinary tirade. The rest of us sat, too stunned to do anything but stare at him open-mouthed . . . even Irene, so much more used to Rick’s unbridled furies than the rest of us.
Rick turned, his dark eyes bloodshot, his mouth trembling.
“It’s all right for you to talk. You don’t have to take it—you never have had to. You’ve always had a way of getting whatever you wanted without the trouble of paying for it.”
I still don’t know how it was that everybody at that table knew instantly what it was that Rick meant. He didn’t look at Cheryl . . . but we did know, just as surely as if he’d said it. Maybe it was because he stopped short himself, as if he too was shocked by it. But there it was, as ugly and revolting as if he’d taken a whip and lashed it across her face.
Dan got slowly to his feet, white with rage, his jaw set like a steel trap. He stood motionless for an instant, turned and walked over to the door.
“Would you mind stepping outside?” he said, his voice so dreadfully quiet that gooseflesh stood suddenly on my arms.
Rick Winthrop moved around the long table.
“We’ll settle it right here!” he shouted.
Irene’s voice was a low terrible moan. “Boys, please! Oh, please!” If I’d ever thought her incapable of a very deep emotion—and I had—I’d been wrong. She leaned her head back against her chair, her face white as death. “Please, please!”
Cheryl got instantly to her feet, her face pale and set.
“Don’t be a fool, Rick,” she said quietly. “And please, Dan, come back. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He . . . he isn’t himself.”
She turned quickly to her mother-in-law. “If you’ll excuse me, please, Irene—I’d like to go to my room.”
Irene nodded without opening her eyes. Major Tillyard, who’d got up as Rick left his place, stood there looking down at her, his face hard and angry. Then he said, controlling his voice with an effort. “Perhaps if I left too, Irene, this might be a little less . . . difficult.”
She held out her hand.
“No, no, Sidney—please stay. Natalie, you go with Cheryl. The rest of you stay here. Come back, Dan. Sit down, Rick.”
For a moment no one moved except Natalie Lane, who got up and out like a streak of lightning. Dan closed the door and came back to his place. Rick picked up his chair and sat down, his face mottled, his eyes fixed on the lace mat in front of him. And all the time Mara sat there, motionless, her short thick black lashes shading her dark eyes, two hot dull spots burning in her cheeks, her brown sensitive little hands folded quiescent on the table in front of her. I don’t know why that should have surprised me so, and alarmed me too, in a way; for when she finally moved it was to give her mother a look that was utterly disillusioned and at the same time totally inscrutable. That was when Irene, having I suppose so much more survival value than most people—and I still think she had, really, in spite of the way things turned out—moved forward in her chair again, and smiled wanly.
“Now don’t you two think you’re being pretty silly? You’re forgetting you’re brothers . . . and Dan’s come back after being away so long! And the French look at these things so differently! Now, now, Dan—you mustn’t be ridiculous!”
I thought for a moment that Dan was going to invite her outside too, and I’m not sure he wouldn’t have if Mara hadn’t said quickly, “Wouldn’t it be a good plan if Dan would come out and say plainly where he and Cheryl knew each other? That seems to be what’s holding up this . . . this council of war, as Mother calls it. We ought at least to try to keep it from becoming a blood purge.”
I looked at Dan. He sat there tight-lipped and silent. Before there had been nothing he could say. Now, I knew, there was nothing he would say, even if he could.
Mara looked away quickly. “Then let’s skip it. And maybe Rick’ll let Mother finish what she was going to say.”
Irene raised her arched brows.
“So sweet of you, lamb,” she murmured, with a charming smile.
Mara flushed.
“It’s of as much interest to me and Dan to hear what you’re going to say as it is to Rick,” she said. It was almost painfully casual.
Her mother smiled again.
“As a matter of fact, Mara,” she said, rather gently, “—whatever disposition of your father’s money I may make, I shall certainly have to put definite restrictions on the use you put yours to.”
Rick Winthrop’s slow voice, angry and also a little blurred, spoke from the end of the table. “—And I’d like to say that if I see that jailbird around here again, I’ll fill him full of buckshot.”
Mara got up abruptly.
“If somebody doesn’t do it to you first,” she said. “May I be excused, please, Mother?”
Irene’s voice was even a little bored. “Certainly not, Mara. Sit down, and don’t be dramatic.”
Mara’s eyes smouldered with angry resentment.
“I’m not being dramatic—and I won’t sit down. I’ll not stay around and be treated like a feeble-minded child!”
“Then quit acting like one, darling.”
“Everything I want to do you keep me from—you’ve done it all my life! I’d have run away and married Alan . . . but I’ve got a right to part of my father’s money, and I’m going to have it!”
Irene’s voice was composed and pleasant—and impervious.
“Not, darling, if you insist on marrying the unemployed son of a tenant farmer.”
“He wouldn’t be unemployed if all of you hadn’t ganged up on him and kept him from getting a job!” Mara cried. “And what if he is the son of a tenant farmer? Where would Romney be if it weren’t for a tenant farmer?”
Major Tillyard spoke with a quiet authority that I thought would calm her. “He could have gone somewhere else and started over, Mara.”
She whirled around at him, her dark eyes filled with scalding tears.
“Yes—for
