Finally Cash said, "By the way, Dick -- "
"Yes?"
Cashel licked his lower lip, looking uncomfortable. "About tomorrow -- " he said, and stopped.
Dick turned aside impatiently to pass a gossiping group of matrons. "What about tomorrow?"
"I mean," said Cash, following, "about you going to Colorado, and so on."
Dick looked at him.
"I mean," Cash said, with a final burst of candor, "about you going instead of me. I mean it's all right."
Dick stared at him speechlessly for a moment; then his fists clenched and his neck grew swollen. He closed his jaws tight. It was no good: he couldn't contain it. "Oh, go to hell!" he shouted. He made an impotent gesture, whirled and Strode away.
After a moment Cashel caught up with him. His long face had turned pale. "Look, Dick, you had no call to talk to me that way -
"Leave me alone," said Dick with difficulty. "Will you? Will you do that, old man?"
"Look, Dick -- "
"You look!" said Dick, exasperated beyond reason. "Everywhere I go, I see your slobby face! Mush off! Flap!"
Cashel stood there with his white face, and his heavy hands hanging, and said, "Dick, apologize." Dick turned away without answering. Cashel did not follow him.
The house was filling up again; some of the guests were streaming downstairs for the bowling tournament, some gathering for cards and dice. Dick prowled purposefully through the house, glancing into each game room and lounge. In the Upper Hall he ran into his mother, serenely promenading with a group of ladies in flustered hats. She saw him before he could get clear.
"Dick, is something the matter?" She put her palm against his cheek, ignoring his attempt to pull away. "You're feverish, darling."
"It's hot out in the open," said Dick.
"Ladies," she said without turning, "I think you know my son Richard."
Unmoved in the chorus of "Oh, yes," "My, how you've grown," and "Aren't you a lucky young man," she fixed him with a clear, ironic gaze. Dick's mother was a tall blonde woman, majestically built like all the Dabneys. Her features were too strong for beauty -- Dick and Constance both resembled her, which, Dick privately thought, was a good thing for himself, and a pity for Con -- but in her bearing and manner she was the perfect embodiment of the ideal big-house wife. She was as brave as a man. In her maiden days, it was said, she had once struck down a crazed slob with a mashie, and then resumed her game as calmly as if there had been no interruption.
Now she said, "Of course, if you're sure -- "
Dick finished his dutiful nods and bows to her companions. Feeling acutely uncomfortable, he said. "It may not be anything. I have to talk to Dad first -- do you know where he is?"
"Try the den."
Her hand touched his shoulder as she moved away, and then her clear voice was receding down the Halclass="underline" " ... this wing, as you know, was rebuilt by my husband's father in the nineties ..."
Dick went on, moving faster. The elevators were all busy with guests, so he took the escalator to the top floor, and then climbed the tower stair. In the cool, leather-smelling dimness of the vestibule, he knocked at the carved ebony door, then entered.
His father was seated behind a glass-topped ebony desk, narrow head bent. He glanced up from the letter he held in his hand. "Yes, Dick?" he said. "Sit down; I'll be just a moment."
Dick sat on the broad window seat that followed the curve of the tower. From here, looking down the south slope, he could see the early sun glinting off the speedboat lake. The red stable roofs showed above the trees, and beyond that, the gray hunched bulk of the old fortifications. Vine-grown and crumbling now, they had encircled the whole estate in Dick's grandfather's time -- three levels of steel and concrete, with walls fifteen feet thick in places, and a moat that once could have been filled with fuming acid in ten minutes. The first Jones had been a cautious man who believed that attack on Buckhill, if it ever got beyond the stage of small aircraft raids, would come as a mass attack of foot soldiery.
Nobody, as it happened, had ever attacked Buckhill at all. (As a child, Dick had always imagined that his grandfather must have died a disappointed man.) Most of the fortifications had got in the way of one thing or another in later years, and been pulled down; this one piece was all that was left. There hadn't been even a local war in twice Dick's lifetime ...
He turned to look at his father, erect in the carved ebony chair that seemed to belong to him, though its thick arms made his seem spindling. A faint, cool light played on his head from the prism in the skylight, twenty feet above; around the skylight well, tier on tier of bookshelves went up, heavy grave-looking volumes of rich red and brown leather, tooled and stamped. The windows were shut; the air was heavy with the odors of paper, leather, tobacco, polished wood. If it were my room, Dick thought involuntarily, I'd open all the windows and let the wind blow through ...
His father glanced at him, folded the letter and sat back, taking a thin hunting-case watch from his vest. He opened it, snapped it shut again. "All right, Dick, what is it?"
Dick said, "I think Cashel's going to try to get permission to call me out."
He braced himself, without quite knowing why; but the Man said only, "Tell me about it."
Dick did so, as briefly as he could, ending: "When I got back to the house I saw Cash once more, and I think he saw me. But he went on by. He had a kind of a look on his face."
"Yes?"
"He looked as if he'd made up his mind."
The Man nodded, looking tired and thoughtful. He spread the papers on his desk idly, then pushed them aside. "It's awkward, Richard. I suppose there's no doubt that you provoked him, not the other way around?"
Dick hesitated. "No, I guess not," he said unwillingly.
"I'm not asking for explanations, or exhibitions of penitence," said his father precisely. "Nor am I going to give you a lecture. You were armed, you provoked a quarrel. When I gave you permission to wear a handgun, I tacitly agreed to treat you as a man in matters of personal honor. I am going to do so. If this challenge is made -- " The telephone rang.
The Man answered it. "Yes. Very well, send them up." He put the receiver back. "When the challenge is made," he said "I'll do everything I can as the head of your family ... I assume you do wish me to act for you?"
Dick swallowed hard. "Yes, please, Dad."
"Very well. If you wish any advice, I will of course give it. But I think the choice is fairly clear. You fight, or back down."
"Yes, mister," said Dick, moistening his lips. He felt bewildered and, to be absolutely honest, a little scared, but one thing he was sure of: he was not going to make the Man ashamed of him.
After a considerable time, the door opened and Uncle George entered. Behind him were his brother-in-law, Uncle Floyd Logan, and a cousin of Aunt Jo Anne's named Alec Brubaker. Uncle Floyd was older than the rest, a dark paunchy man with bad teeth. Cousin Alec was fair skinned, wispy and nervous. Last of all came Cashel, looking sullen.
Dick's father looked them over coolly. "I think you'll find that settee comfortable, if a trifle crowded," he said. "Dick, bring a chair for Cashel." Uncle George's choleric flush was a shade deeper when he spoke. "Fred, I'm afraid you misunderstood -- this matter is private."
The Man raised an eyebrow. "So? But your son Cashel is present."
"Cashel is the injured party."
"If one of my family has injured him," the Man said dryly, "I don't suppose it was my wife or daughter, and my other sons are all too young to give serious offense. That leaves Richard, if I am not mistaken."