The Roswell Legacy, page 14
“Yes, Mr. Quail. Good evening.”
Stanley disappeared with the letter in his hand. At the entrance to the office building, he engaged a runner to deliver it to the government building. With that done, he headed for a quick rendezvous with Maryann before going home to supper.
He was grateful to Maryann for giving him the information that might lessen the large fine imposed on him by Meadors’s committee. Keeping up two houses in Washington was expensive, but he was compelled to do it, especially with Maryann’s becoming pregnant and producing a child. He would have to take care of them from now on.
From the time he found out she was going to have the baby, he’d had nightmares, worrying that it might turn out to be a monster. It happened sometimes, he heard, with brother and sister. But they’d been lucky. The child was normal.
Well, he’d have to admit that it was probably because they weren’t full-blooded brother and sister. After all, they’d had different mothers.
He would never forget when it had first started, his sleeping with her. He had come home early from school for the holidays when he was sixteen and she was twelve. After that, his passion for her had grown into a full-fledged obsession with each vacation. Throughout those three years, he had taught her well. Too well. He should have known that they would finally get caught and he’d be sent away to England in disgrace—with his father putting an ocean between them. But now his father was dead. And there was no one to stop them—not even Cassie—from taking up where they had left off.
As he walked along to the small house beyond the Mall, he stepped back in time to that day when his world had changed.
He had left school a day earlier than planned, coming halfway home with Robert Landen. Then he’d gotten a ride with a peddler as far as the crossroads. And he had walked the rest of the way.
“Hello, everybody. I’m home.”
The house seemed empty at first, with no sign even of Hagar, the black servant. As a disappointed Stanley stood in the entrance hall of the rambling old country house, he heard footsteps. And then he saw his twelve-year-old sister, Maryann, rushing to greet him.
She threw herself into his arms. “You weren’t supposed to come home until tomorrow,” she said. “Mama and Papa aren’t even here.”
“Where are they?”
“At the Marsdens’s. There’s a big Christmas party and they’re staying overnight.”
“Well, then, maybe I’d better go away and come back tomorrow.”
“No, silly. You’re already here.”
“And where are the servants?”
“Elbert fell in the creek and took pneumonia. So there’s just Hagar left, to fix supper and spend the night with me.”
Stanley stepped back and began to examine Maryann. She was no longer a little girl. Her body had changed in the past four months.
“What are you staring at?”
“You. When I left, you were a little girl. Now I see you’re growing up.”
He suddenly shook his head as if to clear his vision. “I brought you a present.”
“May I have it then? Right now?”
“I can’t give it to you yet. It’s in one of my bags. And I left them at the overseer’s cottage.”
“Why did you leave them there in that deserted old building?” she asked.
“They were too heavy to carry. Want to ride with me to get them?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go to the stable and saddle up a horse.”
The two disappeared before Hagar, busy in the kitchen, knew he had returned home.
Thinking of that ride, with Maryann clinging tightly behind him, Stanley brushed his bald pate. His hair had not yet thinned at the time. It had still been brown and thick, and his youthful nose had not yet taken on the thin, aquiline shape of his uncle’s.
He remembered helping her down from the horse and seeing her dress slide upward, revealing her thighs before she nonchalantly smoothed her skirt.
They walked into the deserted cottage, and Stanley took a great deal of time to unbuckle the leather luggage. As soon as he brought out the elegant yellow hair ribbons, Maryann squealed in delight.
“Tie them in my hair, Stanley. They’re beautiful.”
“Well, then, stand still.”
He took his time, removing the others and patiently braiding the ribbons into the long brown hair, which felt like silk to his trembling fingers.
“You’re clumsy, Stanley. Here, let me finish.”
He watched her walk into the bedroom where the dusty old mirror hung on the wall, opposite the small cot. And then he came to stand behind her.
“You like them?” he had asked.
“Of course. I love them.”
“Well, then, don’t I get a kiss?”
She put her arms around him. But when she’d kissed him, he continued to hold her. “Kiss me, Maryann, like your mama kisses my father.”
“But that’s for married folks.”
“Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be married, Maryann? Beside the kisses?”
“Of course.”
“Would you like for me to show you?”
“I’m not sure. Mama said that’s for my husband to show me when the proper time comes.”
Stanley smiled. “We can pretend that I’m your husband, Maryann. And that this is our cottage. We can stay here until suppertime, just pretending.”
“You don’t think Mama and Papa will be mad if they find out?”
Stanley shook his head. “It will be a secret between us. I can even spend the night here, if you slip some food to me. Then they won’t have to know that I came home early.”
Maryann smiled. “We can have a tea party, the way we used to in the maze when I was little.”
“That’s right.”
“But I’m a little bit afraid, Stanley.”
“You don’t have to be. I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt you. Am I not your brother?”
“No, silly. You’re my husband,” she said, getting into the spirit of pretending.
He was almost sorry that she trusted him. For it made it too easy for him, lulling her with his words while finding her small budding breasts and kneading them.
“You’re beautiful, my wife,” he whispered. “I love you.”
“You’re hurting me, Stanley.”
“Do you like the yellow ribbons, Maryann?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to keep them?”
“Yes.”
“Then pretend with me, and I promise to bring you a better present each time I come home.”
She was still while he moved on top of her, searching for entrance …
Stanley took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. He had aroused himself with his memories. And he hurried to reach the house where Maryann waited, before he disgraced himself in public.
CHAPTER
18
“Rad, have you heard the latest bon mot making the rounds?”
“No. What is it, Miles?”
“They say that a certain oil company—you know the one I mean—has done everything to the Pennsylvania legislature except refine it.”
Rad Meadors barely smiled, for he was tired after the final day of committee hearings. But he knew the words spoken had more than a grain of truth in them.
“We’ve been had in Washington, too, Miles. For too many years.”
“As long as there’s extra money lying around, someone is going to claim it, Rad, whether they deserve it or not.”
“But the pension battle seems to have been won. Now if we can only repeal the Silver Purchase Act.”
“Depends on the price of senators these days.”
“Another bon mot making the rounds?”
“I wish it were,” Miles replied. “Well, we’ll know for sure on the fifth of August, won’t we?”
“That we will.”
“I’m going home now, Mr. Chairman,” Miles said, taking his coat from the back of the chair and switching his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “You’d better do the same. It’s been a mighty long day.”
Rad nodded, but he remained at the large curved desk where various papers still had to be gathered up and returned to the files.
Oblivious to the opening and shutting of doors in the corridors, Rad remained where he was, staring down at the reams of paper before him. Carefully, he piled one on top of the other, while his mind filled with old images and residues of problems that never seemed to change with the legislative seasons.
For seventeen years he’d come back and forth to Washington, always with the expectation that that particular session would be different. But after so many years, he’d finally grown cynical and disillusioned, no longer hoping against hope that the abuses could be stamped out completely. It was like a forest fire. As soon as one firebreak was established, the fire popped out somewhere else.
Senators were still bought and traded as commonly as shares on the stock exchange. Power and money still purchased favoritism for the few—railway magnates, bankers, oil and coal companies—causing private fortunes to quadruple, while some of the politicians grew rich, too, and the poor laborers grew poorer.
The stench in Washington that afternoon could just as easily have been coming from the government buildings, Rad thought, as from the trash bins in the alleys behind them.
For two weeks, he’d watched the men and their lawyers walk in, unrepentant for taking the pensions that had never been rightfully theirs. And then they’d barked like a bunch of mongrels when the stolen bone was wrested from them. The animosity had been so thick that it had hung ominously over the hearing room the entire time.
But the committee had persevered. And now the only thing left to do was to write his report for the president, with recommendations for censure.
“Are you ready for me to help you, sir?”
Rad looked up and saw his aide. “Awbrey, I thought you’d gone home long ago.”
“No, sir. I was waiting in your office to lock up the files at the end of the day.”
“Then you might as well carry half the papers.”
As the aide walked around the curved desk, he said, “A courier has just delivered a letter for you.”
“Whatever is in it will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“I thought you might want to take it home with you. It’s marked personal.”
A few minutes later, with the papers relegated to the locked files, Rad picked up the unopened letter from his private desk, stuck it in his coat pocket, and headed for the livery stable where his horse, Sumi, waited.
On the way home, Rad passed a small one-seater carriage. He smiled and touched his hat as he recognized his son’s fiancee, Ginna, but she did not see him. Her eyes were on the road and she was going inordinately fast. Too fast, Rad thought, for safety. Just like Jonathan. Uneasily, he rode on, glancing back only once. But she had already disappeared in a swirl of gray dust.
Half of Ginna’s life had been spent waiting. Waiting for her mother to notice her. Waiting for Cassie to become the loving sister she so desperately desired. And when she had despaired of either one, waiting to grow up so that she would no longer have any need for their attention, their approval.
But the old life had not been shed. She was still bound to them, even at that moment. Once again, she would have to wait—to approach her father for the truth. Cassie’s baby was coming and its birth took precedence over Ginna’s grief.
In her mind, she had already given up Jonathan. But in doing so, Ginna knew she could never continue in her present role as a dependent daughter. Hadn’t Jonathan already warned her? “Your place is no longer in this house,” he’d said.
Yes, she accepted that. But just where was her place in this world? Not as a wife and mother. Never that, because of the disgrace. But she was good with children. She could teach. Or, like Martha, she could work in an office. But not in Washington. It would have to be in another city.
The brownstone at the end of the street had a forbidding appearance to it in the late-afternoon haze as Ginna stopped short. She hurriedly tied the carriage reins to the hitching post and ran to the front door.
In the hallway, she breathlessly called out, “Mummy, where are you?”
In the shadows at the foot of the stairs, Nathan sat, with a cat’s cradle of string between his fingers. “She’s not here yet. Just me and Clara.”
“Do you know where she could be?”
“She’s gone over to speak to Pinky’s mother.”
“Oh, no. Are you two in trouble again?”
“Maybe. Pinky finally came to get some of his tadpoles out of the pool. Mama said he wasn’t supposed to come here, ever again.”
“Has she been gone long?”
“Depends on what you mean by long. Long as it takes ice to melt? Or long as it takes for her to get mad at me?”
Ginna looked at her little brother’s face. She sat down on the step beside him. “Oh, Nathan, you’ve been by yourself for three whole days, haven’t you? And not allowed to go anywhere.”
“The bad part is, I didn’t even get to see Pinky. Not even for a minute. He came into the garden about the same time she got home from Cassie’s.”
At the mention of her sister, Ginna remembered why she’d been in such a hurry. “Well, Cassie’s baby is coming and Mummy asked me to let her know the minute—” She looked at her brother and hesitated.
“You don’t have to stop on account of me, Ginna. I know how babies get here. Papa let me watch when the puppies were born.”
“Of course. I forgot.”
“Is Cassie yowling like Perserpina did?”
Ginna smiled in spite of herself. “Not at the moment.”
She stood and walked to the door, to peer down the street. “Did Barge take Mummy in the carriage?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go to meet her, Nathan.”
“She might get mad at me for leaving the house.”
“I’ll take the blame, Nathan, if it comes to that. You need some fresh air. But I have a feeling that when I tell her the news, she’ll forget about both of us.”
Nathan removed the cat’s cradle from his fingers and stood, pushing the string into his pocket. Ginna knew that he would return it later on to one of the paper bags stashed along the ledge of his bedroom window. In each bag, he kept small treasures, important only to Nathan—bits of string in one; acorns to feed the squirrels in the park in another; agate marbles that he’d traded with schoolmates; and smooth, round pebbles from the creek bed. She suspected that he’d even saved a little dirt from their garden in England, too.
Ginna glanced at the horse harnessed to the one-seater in front of the house. Then she turned to Nathan. “Do you want to ride or walk?”
“Let’s walk. It’s not that far.”
The two started down the street, with Nathan taking a hop, skip, and jump, lagging one moment and then rushing ahead, like a small, eager puppy finally breaking free of its leash.
But when he saw the family carriage returning up the street, he immediately stopped and waited for Ginna to catch up with him. “I see Mama,” he said, sliding his hand into hers.
“Yes.” Ginna waved to get Barge’s attention. She and Nathan crossed the street, and when Barge brought the carriage to a stop, Ginna and Nathan climbed in.
Ginna did not give her mother time to scold Nathan. “Cassie’s baby is coming,” she announced. “Stanley has already gone for Papa. Harriet is with her right now.”
“Hurry home, Barge,” Araminta said. “I’ll need to get my packed valise.”
Then Araminta began to give Ginna instructions. “You’re to stay at home with Nathan, do you understand? And you’re to let no one into the house while I’m away. I don’t think Pinky will be a problem from now on. But you never can tell.”
“Will Papa be coming home tonight, do you think?”
“It depends, I’m sure, on what time the baby arrives. But I’ll stay overnight, of course. And Nathan?”
“Yes, Mama?”
“We’ve had word from the school. They’re going to take you early. You’ll be leaving with Mr. Graves, one of the teachers, tomorrow afternoon. He’ll stop at the house for you on his way to the train station promptly at ten o’clock.”
She ignored the betrayed look on Nathan’s face as she turned again to Ginna. “And I’m relying on you to pack and make sure he gets off on time.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“And Ginna, when Maudie comes in the morning to do the ironing, send her on over to Cassie’s.”
“Before or after she does the ironing?”
“Why, before. You’ll be able to manage quite nicely, I’m sure, without her.”
When they reached the brownstone, Ginna said, “Nathan, would you like to take the one-seater to the carriage house and unhitch Twoopy after Barge leaves the driveway?”
“I sure would, Ginna.”
As soon as the larger carriage came to a stop, Nathan was the first one down. “I’ll stay outside to watch,” he said, and ran toward the one-seater, which was still at the hitching post.
Araminta stepped down and Ginna came next, following her mother into the house while Nathan climbed into the one-seater out front and thought about taking it and running away with Pinky.
Two hours later, Nathan and Ginna were alone in the kitchen. A few minutes before, Clara had finished the dishes and gone to her lodgings over the carriage house. Now Ginna watched while Nathan dealt the cards on the table for a game of Go Fish.
For Nathan’s sake, Ginna tried to keep her mind on the game. But she was not successful. At the end of the fourth hand, Nathan spread out his cards and announced, “I won again.”
“So I see.”
“But you’re not even trying to win, Ginna. The game’s no fun if you don’t try.”
“Well, I guess my mind’s on other things. Like your leaving tomorrow. I’m going to miss you, Nathan.”
He didn’t want to think about it. “Oh, I’m used to going away, Ginna. No big deal. Barge promised he’d watch Green Boy for me. He’s going to see that he gets enough bugs and flies to eat.”
“That’s nice.”
