It took Margaret a moment to remember that “this girl” was Hilary’s acquaintance of the movies. “What’s her name?”
Hilary gave her a surprised look. “Isabel.”
Patience. “No, your friend, the girl you met.”
“Rosina.”
Just in time Margaret stopped herself from pursuing, “Rosina what?” It was not so much her impression that Hilary didn’t know the girl’s last name as an appalled realization of what her own motive would be in asking it. To go about the town seeking out a stranger, and a child at that. . .
“Her mother worked for Mrs. Foale,” said Hilary, mind-reading, “and that’s how Rosina knows what Mrs. Foale looks like. And one day her mother came to the house and there was a note on the door telling her not to come any more. I guess that was when she went away.”
And now was the time, wasn’t it, when the issue stood more or less squarely between them? Margaret said directly, “Hilary, where did you get this snapshot and— the other things?”
She would not mention Philip, because it was possible that Hilary hadn’t recognized him with a mustache, hadn’t even related the doorway or the white iron chair with the porch of this house. She held her breath and Hilary, subsiding on her pillow with a markedly invalidish air, said, “Down behind some books in the library. Can I have some soup?”
“In a minute. Which books?”
“I don’t know, I was only trying to get things tidy,” said Hilary. Her tone and her wriggle under the sheet implied that sheer hard work had reduced her to her present state. She swallowed, apparently with difficulty. “I’m so thirsty.”
Margaret heated clear soup and buttered toast, on Mrs. Foale’s stove, in Mrs. Foale’s toaster. Mrs. Foale of the light-minded shoes, the rum bottles, the inconsiderateness of a note tacked to the door rather than due notice to a woman who had worked for her . . . How very driven she must have been—perhaps by the shadows, the stilled birds, the solemn clock; perhaps even by Elizabeth Honeyman—to have fled so precipitately.
Hilary consumed her soup and toast with appetite. She can’t be so badly off, Margaret told herself reassuringly, and then stood hastily back as Hilary rushed for the bathroom and was sick.
That was at one o’clock. At two, freshly pajamaed, sponged off with alcohol, cooler-looking against tightened sheets and plumped pillows, Hilary drank a cup of tea without incident. Margaret played checkers with her until three, losing with dignity, and then removed her propping pillow firmly and thrust the thermometer under her tongue.
Almost 103, and if it went as temperatures usually did it would climb toward evening. “Going down,” said Margaret carelessly to Hilary’s sharp too-bright yellow gaze, “but have another aspirin, just in case . . . Lena’s vacuuming, so I’m going to close your door for a few minutes. Try and take a nap, will you? And then have some nice cold sherbet when you wake up.”
In her own room, that door closed too, she opened the directory with fingers that rattled the pages. Children ran high temperatures with ease, they could be wretchedly ill one day and bouncing about the next, but somehow Hilary in her present state was like a toothless bulldog or a fallen oak.
And what would the Revertons say?
There were surprisingly few general practitioners in the town; it seemed to be a refuge for specialists. Margaret, calling grimly by alphabet, grew mountingly anxious. Ambulances sped through her mind, hospital corridors, the accusing faces of Hilary’s parents. She had a number of frustrating encounters before she got hold of Dr. A. J. Wimple. His nurse said he would come as soon as possible after office hours, probably between six and seven o’clock.
Lena left at four; Margaret thanked her and saw her go with a queer strong reluctance. As usual after her day there, the house literally shone. Rosewood clock, pottery ashtrays, Mexican silver fireplace fan collected what little light there was in puddles and sheets, and the bank of windows in the dining room, a cold flare from the shadows of the hall where Margaret stood listening outside Hilary’s door, coated the dark table and chair tops with polished pewter.
The sun and warmth of the morning had been swallowed up under massed clouds, and when Margaret wandered into the library, briefly reassured by Hilary’s quiet even breathing, the white mountain peaks had disappeared into a stormy purple gray. Darkness was going to come early tonight.
. . . And how very quiet it was, almost as though Hilary’s sleep had spread through the house. Margaret stood listening, examining the very air, and realized suddenly that it was a long time since the grandfather clock had chimed and that even its soft measured tick was missing.
Wound only the day before, it had stopped, its pendulum motionless, the imperturbably smiling sun on the painted upper panel tipped low. Margaret reminded herself that the man who had wound it had not been in great clock-winding shape; nevertheless, it bothered her sharply. Had he raised the weights only slightly, in order to give himself an excuse for coming back? (“Missa Foale give Julio money . . .”)
At six o’clock, as though he had been waiting patiently for the fall of night, for darkness to detach himself secretly from, he came back.”
Seven
JEROME Kincaid had called at five. Until she heard his voice Margaret had forgotten that he was to have taken her to dinner tonight; Hilary and Mrs. Foale between them had driven everything else from her mind. She explained lightly, covering her own surprising disappointment, and Kincaid said reflectively, “You know, she looked like the kind of child who might do this.”
There was a mutual and tentative pause, full of the possible alternative of Margaret’s asking him to dinner there. Would it do? No, she thought firmly, it wouldn’t; for one thing, it wasn’t her house to
