could take so much credit for wanting things just so when she wasn't ever the one who went to work and put them just so. Not her! Too proud to make her own bed, though she probably could if she wanted to. She could do a lot of things, blind though she was. And awful proud of that, too. Josephine looked out the side of her eye at Duff and added quickly, "Poor lady."
Well, it was better than feeling sorry for herself, Duff suggested, and Josephine agreed glumly.
With Miss Isabel handicapped, too, Duff went on, all the little chores must fall to Josephine. How hard that must be.
"Talkiug about fussy," said Josephine, "she's the one is always at me for something. She tries to help out, though. Land, she's always flying at some job I ain't had time to get around to, but I always have to do it all over, time I get there." Josephine wrung her dishrag out slowly. "You know, Mr. Dufi, .there's two ways of doing your work. You can get it done real fast and sit down and rest and have a little time to yourself. I used to do that with Mrs. Dr. Follett. But Miss Isabel can't stand it to see me sitting stiU. She'll think of something. Something gets to worrying her. So I kinda slow up."
"Of course," said Duff. "Naturally."
"Well, if I was to go rushing around here, I'd be doing twice as much," said Josephine, "and there's too much as it is. Now she can figure out ways . . . She don't like to spend money, Miss Isabel don't, so she'll figure I can do it the hard way and save a coupla pennies. Well, I go slow, that's all. There's just so many hours. You can't blame me."
"She wants your hours full," said Duff.
"She sure don't want to waste any of my time," cracked Josephine, and Duff risked a laugh.
Josephine took it properly. They were friends.
"It seems to me you do pretty well to keep this house going at all," said Duff. "How about Miss Maud? Is she fussy, too?"
"Oh, Miss Maud! If she was the only one, it'd be a cinch. She's easy-going. A little dust don't bother her."
"If it doesn't bother her, I don't suppose she helps with the dusting, does she?"
"Her?" Josephine laughed. "She's too lazy."
"Lazy," said Duff thoughtfully. "Is she, really'?" Hesaw a qualm growing on Josephine's face and made a quick retreat to the field of psychological observation. "Tell me, would a girl rather work for a lazy mistress or for a fairly strict one?"
"Well, I'll tell you. In a way . . ." Josephine pondered. "I dont know," she confessed. "The thing is, if she's lazy and sloppy, you get so's you can't stand it yourself. "
"I see. You feel the responsibility," Duff said. Whereas, if you're told your duties strictly, you know where you are."
"Yeah," said Josephine gratefully, "that's what I mean. I don t know's I'd like it, working for Miss Maud alone. Even If she is lazy—say, she'd live in a pigsty—she wants plenty of service for herself, just the same. You know what she'll do? She'll yell for me when she's lying on her bed to come upstairs and hand her a pillow that's across the room. That's what she'll do."
"Tell me," said Duff. "suppose she yelled and no one came? Would she get it herself then?"
"I'll never know," Josephine said bitterly. "Boy, when she yells, she yells."
She fell into a moody silence. Duff said, "There's a handyman, isn't there? He does the heavy work?"
"Oh, sure." Josephine sloshed water lackadaisically in the sink.
"Where does he sleep?"
Josephine raised startled eyes. "In the barn," she said, her voice losing body. She turned her back then.
"I was just wondering if he came home drunk last night and went down and did things to the furnace."
"Nope," said Josephine. "My room's off the kitchen. The back door makes a racket if it's opened. I'd have heard him. Besides, he don't get drunk so much."
Josephine was being less communicative, even though she said words.
"You were up last night?" Duff asked.
"I never heard anything until Fred went pounding down the cellar stairs. That woke me. Then I got up." Josephine was nearly brief.
Duff rose. "I like to chat," he said, "and thanks for the coffee."
"You're welcome," said Josephine. Her eyes were uneasy. They fixed on Duffs with some appeal. She fingered the tiny gold cross that hiing around her neck. "I been here fourteen years," she said huskily, "and I dunno where to go to get another job."
Was it apology? It seemed to be. For what? For being a doormat? For being a drudge?
Duff waited quiedy, sending her his steady friendliness.
"Some things ain't right," Josephine said, and her eyes fell and her big pink hand clenched and covered the cross.
Duff saw, then, that the handyman was coming along the back of the house, outside. He would get no more from Josephine. He stepped quickly to the back door, relying on her essential meekness to watch him go without requiring an explanation.
When Mr. Johnson found Duff waiting on the narrow stoop, he stopped with one foot in a broken shoe resting on the bottom step and looked up. His unfathomable black eyes were as rudely without self-consciousness, as insulting in their complete lack of personal curiosity, as the child's had been on the train. Duff sent back his own synthetic innocence.
"You want to say something?" inquired Mr. Johnson without a flicker.
"About the furnace here," Duff purred. "Do you remember what time you banked the fure last night?"
"Ten o'clock, close to."
"It was all right then, was it?"
"Yeah." Mr. Johnson spat into the dust, but his eyes came back as boldly as ever.
Duff tried a quick carelessness. "Who closed all those dampers afterward?"
No surprise or pretense of surprise showed on the dark face. The big shoiilders denied knowledge. Duff smiled his most enigmatical smile, but the black eyes continued to take him for a total enigma in which they were not much interested.
"I wonder, did you see the lamp fall a little earlier in the evening?" Duff said.
"Naw."
''You were out of the house, perhaps?"
"Sure."
''Downtown?"
"Naw."
"Where, then?"
"In the bam."
"Alone?"
''Sure."
"See the accident?" Duff surrendered to the staccato and tried sharpness.
"What accident?"
"To the car."
"Naw."
"Where were you then?"
"In the bam."
"Alone?"
"Sure."
"What were you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Alone?" Duff tried it softly.
Mr. Johnson spat.
Duff said a few words in a strange tongue. The black eyes betrayed no light, although they were not uncomprehending.
"What about it?" said Mr. Johnson.
MacDougal Duff said, ''Thank you. I won't keep you," in a tinny voice and stood aside to let him by.
Mr. Johnson went by.
Duff stood on the back stoop for a few minutes, gnawing on his own thumbnail. After a while he took his thumb out of his mouth and looked at it, wiped it twice across his other sleeve, put his hands in his pockets, and commanded himself to stroll aroimd the house toward the front door.
One who knew Duff well would have remarked that he seemed upset.
14
Alice woke up with her cheek on the bare mattress, her tweed coat scratchy under her chin, sat up under the mass of muddled bedclothes, and looked at her watch. Ten o'clock, Saturday. And the real significance of that was that Art Killeen must have been here in this house for nearly two hours.
She began to dress in a hurry, with a guilty sense of being late to a rendezvous. Her eyes, she saw in the glass, were puffy with weariness and her hair was wild. In her skirt and blouse, she snatched a towel and her make-up I box and fled through the deserted hall to the bathroom. |
When she came out, she was on the surface a self-possessed and fairly well-groomed young woman who might have taken the wild goings-on of the middle of the night in her stride. She'd made herself seem refreshed by sheer skill, and she had beaten down her excitement. She was ready when Innes's door opened and Art Killeen came out.