'No, you scamp.' Peter turned away, smiling and saying goodbye, and strode easily up the side of the square.
Ricky spotted Sears James's Lincoln cruising past the Archer Hotel at the top of the square, going as usual ten miles an hour slower than anyone else, and hurried on his way to Wheat Row. Somberness had not been evaded: he saw again the skeletal branches thrusting through the brilliant leaves, the implacable bloodied face of the girl on the film poster, and remembered that it was his turn to tell the story at the Chowder Society meeting that night. He hastened on, wondering what had become of his high spirits. But he knew: Edward Wanderley. Even Sears had followed them, the other three members of the Chowder Society, into that gloom. He had twelve hours to think of something to talk about.
'Oh, Sears,' he said on the steps of their building. His partner was just pushing himself out of the Lincoln. 'Good morning. It's at your house tonight, isn't it?'
'Ricky,' said Sears, 'at this hour of the morning it is positively forbidden to
Sears lumbered forward, and Ricky followed him through the door leaving Milburn behind.
Frederick Hawthorne
1
Of all the rooms in which they habitually met, this was Ricky's favorite-the library in Sears James's house, with its worn leather chairs, tall indistinct glass-fronted bookcases, drinks on the little round tables, prints on the walls, the muted old Shiraz carpet beneath their feet and the rich memory of old cigars in the atmosphere. Having never committed himself to marriage, Sears James had never had to compromise his luxurious ideas of comfort. After so many years of meeting together, the other men were by now unconscious of the automatic pleasure and relaxation and envy they experienced in Sears's library, just as they were nearly unconscious of the equally automatic discomfort they felt in John Jaffrey's house, where the housekeeper, Milly Sheehan, forever bustled in, rearranging things. But they felt it: each of them, Ricky Hawthorne perhaps more so than the others, had wished to possess such a place for himself. But Sears had always had more money than the others, just as his father had had more money than theirs. It went back that way for five generations, until you reached the country grocer who had cold-bloodedly put together a fortune and turned the James family into gentry: by the time of Sears's grandfather, the women were thin, palpitating, decorative and useless, the men hunted and went to Harvard and they all went to Saratoga Springs in the summers. Sears's father had been a professor of ancient languages at Harvard, where he kept a third family house; Sears himself had become a lawyer because as a young man he had thought it immoral for a man not to have a profession. His year or so of schoolmastering had shown him that it could not be teaching. Of the rest, the cousins and brothers, most had succumbed to good living, hunting accidents, cirrhosis or breakdowns; but Sears, Ricky's old friend, had bluffed his way through until, if he was not the handsomest old man in Milburn-that was surely Lewis Benedikt-he was the most distinguished. But for the beard, he was his father's double, tall and bald and massive, with a round subtle face above his vested suits. His blue eyes were still very young.
Ricky supposed that he had to envy that too, the magisterial appearance. He himself had never been particularly prepossessing. He was too small and too trim for that. Only his mustache had improved with age, growing somehow more luxuriant as it turned gray. When he had developed little jowls, they had not made him more impressive: they had only made him look clever. He did not think that he was particularly clever. If he had been, he might have avoided a business arrangement in which he was unofficially to become a sort of permanent junior partner. But it had been his father, Harold Hawthorne, who had taken Sears into the firm. All those years ago, he had been pleased-even excited-that he would be joined by his old friend. Now, settled into an undeniably comfortable armchair, he supposed that he was still pleased; the years had married them as securely as he was married to Stella, and the business marriage had been far more peaceful than the domestic, even if clients in the same room with both partners invariably looked at Sears and not himself when they spoke. That was an arrangement which Stella would never have tolerated. (Not that anyone in his right mind, all through the years of their marriage, would have looked at Ricky when he could have looked at Stella.)
Yes, he admitted to himself for the thousandth time, he did like it here. It went against his principles and his politics and probably the puritanism of his long-vanished religion too, but Sears's library-Sears's whole splendid house-was a place where a man felt at ease.
Stella had no compunctions about demonstrating that it was also the sort of place where a woman too could feel at ease. She didn't mind now and then treating Sears's house as though it were her own. Thankfully, Sears tolerated it. It had been Stella, on one of those occasions (twelve years ago, coming into the library as if she led a platoon of architects), who had given them their name. 'Well, there they are, by God,' she had said, 'The Chowder Society. Are you going to keep my husband away from me all night, Sears? Or aren't you boys through telling your lies yet?' Still, he supposed it was Stella's perpetual energy and constant needling which had kept him from succumbing to age as old John Jaffrey had. For their friend Jaffrey was 'old' despite his being six months younger than Hawthorne himself and a year younger than Sears, and in fact only five years older than Lewis, their youngest member.
Lewis Benedikt, the one who was supposed to have killed his wife, was seated directly across from Ricky, an image of expansive good health. As time rolled through them all, subtracting things, it seemed only to add to Lewis. It hadn't been true when he was younger, but these days he bore a definite resemblance to Cary Grant. His chin would not sag, his hair would not fall. He had become almost absurdly handsome. This evening, Lewis's big placid humorous features wore-like all their faces-an expression of expectancy. It was generally true that the best stories were told here, in Sears's house.
'Who's on the griddle tonight?' asked Lewis. But it was only courtesy. They all knew. The group called the Chowder Society had only a few rules: they wore evening clothes (because thirty years ago, Sears had rather liked the idea), they never drank too much (and now they were too old for that anyhow), they never asked if any of the stories were true (since even the outright whoppers were in some sense true), and though the stories went around the group in rotation, they never pressured anyone who had temporarily dried up.
Hawthorne was about to confess when John Jaffrey interrupted. 'I've been thinking,' he said, and then responded to the others' inquisitive glances, 'no, I know it's not me, and a good thing too. But I was just thinking that in two weeks it will be a year to the day since Edward died. He'd be here tonight if I hadn't insisted on that damned party.'
'Please, John,' said Ricky. He didn't like to look directly at Jaffrey's face when it showed his emotions so clearly. His skin looked like you could push a pencil straight through it and draw no blood. 'All of us know that you were not to blame yourself.'
'But it happened in my house,' insisted Jaffrey.
'Calm down, doc,' Lewis said. 'You're not doing yourself any good.'
'I'll decide that.'
'Then you're not doing the rest of us any good,' Lewis said with the same bland good humor. 'We all remember the date. How could we forget?'
'Then what are you doing about it? Do you think you're acting as though it never happened-as though it was normal? Just some old poop kicking the bucket? Because if so, let me inform you that you're not.'
He had shocked them into silence; even Ricky could think of nothing to say. Jaffrey's face was gray. 'No,' he said. 'You're damned well not. You all know what's been happening to us. We sit around here and talk like a bunch of ghouls. Milly can hardly stand having us in my house anymore. We weren't always like this-we used to talk about all sorts of things. We used to have fun-there used to
'I'm not so sure I'm scared,' said Lewis. He took a sip of his whiskey and smiled at Jaffrey.
'You're not so sure you're not, either,' snapped the doctor.
