. . . you mean I’m . . . ?” Tom and Jean heard his hoarse, frightened curse. “That quick, huh?” His defiant mouth twisted wryly, his fingers snapping with a small pop that might have been a twig breaking on the hearth. “Just like that, and it’s all over?”
Old Miss Faraday smiled. “All over? My dear! It’s only the beginning! ‘To sleep; perchance to dream . . .’ That was what bothered Hamlet, you know. Because, he wasn’t sure it was the end. Just pouf! Just . . . oblivion. Which, of course, it isn’t!” The ivory fan fluttered, almost flirtatiously, in front of the young man’s face. “That’s what these poor—well, the ones who do it themselves, believing it’s a way out—That’s what they discover, almost at once! There was one who came here last April, a young girl who had . . . ah, made rather a mess of her life and had decided she couldn’t face the music. But, naturally,” Miss Addie’s cheery laugh rose above the subdued murmur of other voices in the quiet room, “she still had the same problems. Only, she couldn’t get at them. She couldn’t go back and work them out, poor and . . . and fix things. She had around here, weeping and blaming herself, for weeks! Because there was a very simple solution to her problem, if she’d only sat down and thought it out, instead of . . . But then, of course,” the old lady shrugged placidly, “it was too late. She couldn’t go back and . . . and fix things. She had to go on, with her life ahead complicated by what she had left undone. . . . Poor child! If she’d only used her . . . her body more constructively, while she had one.”
The boy hunched beside her nodded miserably. “Yeah . . . That goes for me, too, huh?”
“That goes for everybody, at some time or another,” Miss Addie said gently. “So, it’s wicked to complicate . . . living for those we leave behind us to straighten out. You understand?” The youth jerked his head in another helpless nod. “Sure, sure! Now you tell me—!” he burst out, bitterly sarcastic.
“Why, I’m pretty sure your parents told you the same thing,” old Miss Faraday said, in a mildly chiding manner. “Or your pastor, or some favorite teacher. Or . . . well, if you had any gumption, you’d have just figured it out for yourself!”
The boy grinned sheepishly. “All right! So I knew better! What do I do now? How can I . . . ?” His face crumpled again in sudden youthful dismay. “How can I ever make it up to Mom? And . . . and Dad? What can I do . . . ?”
Old Miss Faraday gave a little shrug, oddly comforting in its finality, despite its gentle reproof.
“You’ll have to leave it up to your brothers and sisters, if you have any,” she said briskly. “Maybe they can make up for . . . the things you say you’ve done or left undone. As for now,” she smiled at the boy, not unkindly, “you must go on. And try to do better at . . . the next place. You realize,” she added sternly, “you won’t be given the same chances as . . . as, say, that old Mr. Wilkins over there? Poor man, he’s done his best. So I’m sure he’ll be given wonderful advantages where he’s going. If he can only reconcile himself to the fact that he can’t go back!”
Jean and Tom, still frankly listening in on these double-entendre conversations, nudged each other. Their puzzled eyes drifted to a little group of three oddly-assorted people near the fireplace: a crabbed old man, a leggy bobby-soxer chewing gum, and a wizened little man with slanted eyes who looked as if he might be a Chinese laundryman. As they stared, Miss Addie drifted back to them, following their look with a faint smile.
“The ‘flu epidemic,” she explained lightly. “They’ve been comparing symptoms all evening! Ah, well—it gives them something in common,” she laughed with a gay flutter of her fan. “They won’t be lonely on the way, those three, for all they’re so different!”
Tom cleared his throat nervously. “Uh . . . I wonder, could we go up to our room now? And have that little snack you promised? Partridge!” He smacked his lips, winking at Jean. “I don’t suppose you’d have any wine? A dry wine, like Sauterne?”
“Why, yes,” their tiny hostess bobbed her silver head graciously, “I believe there’s a bottle or two left, down in the wine cellar. My brother was fond of good wine,” she said pleasantly, “though he never drank too much for . . . safety, like that nice boy over there. Such a biddable lad!” Miss Addie glanced back at him, still hunched on the loveseat with his tousled head in his hands. What a pity!”
“He . . . was in some kind of car accident?” Tom asked cautiously.
“Yes.” The blue eyes flitted from him to Jean, with a sad look of understanding. “Like you two,” and before they could correct her, she hurried on: “Saul will bring up your luggage presently . . . er . . . as soon as he can. Did you see a door just at the head of the staircase? That room will do nicely for you. Just go on up, won’t you? I . . . I really must stay down here with these other poor dears. Some of them are . . . really quite troubled, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I must do what I can to . . . to comfort them. May I look in on you later in the evening?” She beamed at them, almost fatuously. “It’s such a pleasure to have guests who have . . . well, as Saul says, decided to cooperate with the inevitable!”
“Yes . . . sure! D-drop up to see us later . . .” Tom gulped.
Swapping another bewildered look the honeymooners left the parlor with its queer collection of occupants, and mounted the great curving staircase that swept upward from the hall. Pressed close to his side, Jean whispered:
“What’s going on here? That weird old lady! Telling everybody they ‘can’t go back’, that they must ‘go on’! And that little girl . . . ! Why, she ran out into the rain in her nightgown, Tom! And Miss Faraday didn’t even try to stop her! And that poor old farmer—why can’t he go on back to his sister who’s bedridden? Did you ever hear anything like that old woman . . . ?”
“No, I never did!” Her husband laughed shortly. “You know what I think?” he growled. “I think that big Negro picked my pocket as I came in the door! And . . . and they’re going to steal our luggage and maybe sell the car. . . . Look, baby,” he stopped grimly on the stairway, listening to the faint voices below, “we’re getting out of here! We . . . why, I wouldn’t spend the night in a creep-joint like this for all the tea in . . . Oh-oh!”
His words ended in a curse. At the head of the dim-lighted stairway the giant Negro, Saul, was looming like a dark genie waiting to show them into their room. There was a tray in his great ham-like hand—a tray set for two, with a delicious-looking grilled partridge for each of them, and a wicker-covered bottle of Sauterne. In spite of how his stomach knotted with apprehension, Tom’s mouth watered. They had not eaten, he remembered, since breakfast—many hours and miles away from this strange old house just north of the Florida Line.
“Miss Addie say, ‘Put dem young honeymooners in de Lavendar Room’!” The tall servant was prattling, again bowing and gesturing them through an open door. “And here de partridge and de wine y’all done ordered, suh. Compliments o’ de house! . . . All dis-yeah good food,” his childish voice sank to a mumble, “goin to waste! Cook, cook, cook!” Saul mumbled pettishly. “Don’ nobody but me and Miss Addie eat ary bite o’ all dem victuals! Feather, he goin live high dis week! Us two cain’t eat all dat stuff she tell me to fix for de guests . . . !”
Hesitantly, rolling their eyes at each other, Tom and Jean entered the bedroom, not daring to antagonize that giant black. Blind he might be—but he could crush them between those two great hands, wring their necks like chickens before they could cry out.If, Tom thought helplessly, any of those bizarre people downstairs would come to their aid . . . !
