Moon Garden. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ well, easier,” Aunt Minna said disdainfully. “It’s easier to lie down then to stand up. The easiest thing of all is to be a vegetable, so far as that goes.”

      Ellen rang the bell as she was asked. Aunt Minna had gone to the window, and Ellen followed.

      “It’s lovely,” she said.

      “Yes. That’s the Savannah River. Down there, though you can’t see it from here for the trees, we have our own little inlet and dock, so we have ocean access still, by the river. Not many houses can boast that. And from the other side, from the window in the hall, you can see the whole Terrace. It used to be so much nicer I’m afraid.”

      Ellen leaned forward a little, out the window. Off to the left, through the trees, she could see a yellow house, a cottage. As she looked in that direction, she thought a curtain moved, as if it had been held aside and then, as she looked, allowed to fall.

      “Who lives there?” she asked.

      Aunt Minna followed her glance. “Oh, there. It’s the Creighton’s guest cottage, but they’ve let it. That’s what has happened to the terrace, people letting houses to any riff-raff that comes along.”

      “They have rented to somebody unsavory, have they?” Ellen was amused at her aunt’s rigid social sense.

      “That’s exactly what they’ve done. The man’s a writer.”

      “Isn’t Dawson Elliott a writer?”

      “Yes. But this man writes romances. I have no doubt what kind of romances, either. And he’s a northerner. His name is, let me see, Parker. Yes, Mr. Kenneth Parker. I looked in the Who’s Who, but there are no writers listed by that name. You won’t want to mix with him, dear. Ah, here’s Bondage.”

      * * * *

      Dawson Elliott smoked a cigarette, pacing the length of the sitting room and then, since Minna had not yet returned, smoked a second cigarette. A window was open upon the street, and he went to it. On the table by it was the old telescope she used to spy on people. Thank god for it, he thought. He’d had more than one occasion to use it himself.

      Minna entered from the hall, sniffing the air disapprovingly. He not put out his cigarette, but he did stay by the window so that the gentle breeze caught the wisps of smoke and carried them away.

      “Well?” he asked.

      She seemed to be completely unconcerned with their real problem. While he was worrying, she looked downright happy.

      “Bondage is making the bed for her,” she said, which had nothing to do with what was worrying him. “She’ll be comfortable there, I’m certain.”

      “What brought her a day early?” he asked, determined not to be put off in that way she had. “You don’t suppose that she...?”

      Minna’s dark eyes flashed. She knew perfectly well what was bothering him. “Don’t be ignorant,” she snapped. “The girl has been ill. We must make little allowances. She got her dates mixed up. I myself would have been more accurate, but as I say, she’s been ill. Who left the lid off that box?” She snatched up the lid for the little silver cookie box and clapped it into place.

      “It’s most inconvenient.” He tossed his cigarette outside. “Having her here tonight.”

      She stood for a moment in thoughtful silence, staring at the silver box but seeing, he was sure, something quite different.

      “She’s very tired,” she said on a note of finality. “I expect she’ll sleep very soundly tonight.”

      I hope so, he thought, but he did not voice the thought aloud. He wondered if there was an innuendo in her statement, something to be read between the lines. Did she mean to ensure that the girl slept very soundly? There was no telling, and no use asking.

      Asking in fact might be very bad. He had made one grave mistake already, when he had strongly opposed having that girl here at all. He knew, without ever being told, that his resistance to the idea had helped her decide to have her niece come. If she once thought you were trying to make her do something, she was determined at any cost to do the opposite. And the girl was put in the role of an underdog. The old woman loved a loser.

      It occured to him to wonder if that was why she had taken to him, but he did not like that thought.

      She was watching him. He was expected to go now. In her mind the matter was settled.

      “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll go to my own room.”

      “Dawson,” she said as he was going out the door, “I don’t think Ellen will interfere.”

      When she said it, she could not see what Dawson saw, Ellen approaching down the hall, close enough to hear that remark.

      “Interfere with what?” she asked, from the door.

      Dawson looked perturbed, but Minna, without batting a lash, said, “Why, with Dawson’s book, darling.”

      Dawson fled.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Ellen woke with a start. For just a moment, she did not know where she was. She thought she was still at Lawndale, in that cold, institutional room with its wire-mesh-covered windows. She lay with her eyes closed, trying to recall the dream that had wakened her, listening without any real attention to the murmur of voices in the hall outside. One of the patients must be causing trouble, she thought

      Then she remembered, this was not Lawndale, but Aunt Minna’s home in Savannah. And the voices, she realized, opening her eyes, were not coming from the hall, but from outside.

      She slipped out of bed and went to the window, but the voices had stopped. She listened, and heard a whispering sound, but she could not say for certain whether it was really people whispering, or only the wind in the trees. Perhaps she had not heard voices of all. Perhaps it had only been a remnant of her dream.

      Something flickered through the trees, gleamed briefly, and was gone. It might have been someone walking with a flashlight. Or it might have been a boat on the river.

      Or I might have imagined it, she told herself. She felt restless. She turned and crossed the dark room, to the door.

      She was not imagining that the door was locked, certainly. She tried it timidly, and then with some force. It was plainly locked.

      She stepped back from it, staring at the faint gleam of the brass knob. Even in Lawndale she had not been locked into her room. She had not been considered violent, only....

      But what did Aunt Minna know of these distinctions? Aunt Minna had obviously considered her dangerous, dangerous enough that she must be locked up like a caged animal at night.

      She had gone to bed earlier with a sense of happiness and the feeling of confidence. When she returned to her bed now it was to huddle like a frightened chick, pulling the covers close up under her chin and staring for long time at the molding about the ceiling.

      * * * *

      “You must have been mistaken, dear. You can see for yourself, the door isn’t СКАЧАТЬ