Duff said, "Miss Gerttude, I am afraid I am being utterly stupid, but I seem to have quite lost the thread of what you are saying. Your sister had hurt herself?"
"Yes, days ago."
"I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I see now. Your sister came to you for help. Of course. And you very kindly did help her. You dabbed the witch hazel on her arm."
"It was not her arm," said Gertrude severely. "Really, Mr. Duff . . ."
"Forgive me," said Duff quickly. "I am struggling with a reversal of feeling. You see, I had been thinking of your sister taking care of you. I find, instead, that you, in the goodness of your heart and the fortitude of your spirit, are, instead, the one to whom she appeals."
Gertrude never winced, though Alice did. It was so sticky and so thick. Gertrude said, "It was nothing." But she didn't mean it
Duff bit his lip and cast a look at Alice. "Another question," he said humbly. "When you were out of doors, just before Mr. Whitlock and Miss Brennan and the chauffeur set forth in the car, do you remember ... ?"
"Yes," said Gertrude. "I had stepped out for a breath of air."
"You heard no stranger?"
"No," she said, puzzled. "Why?"
"Perhaps there was no stranger," said Duff soothingly. "Your brother is unwell and nervous, of course." He rose. "I hope," he said, "that I may come in and chat with you another time."
"Please do," said Gertrude cordially.
Duff drifted across to the table where the weaving lay. "You are doing some charming work," he said.
"My weaving?"
"Yes. Lovely."
"K you will hand it to me, Alice dear, perhaps I shall do a litde now."
Alice gave her the frame and the wool. They went away, leaving Gertrude upright in the rocker, her thin hands busy with the work, the very portrait of saintly patience.
Duff said, "Well? The sleeves?"
"They were all right," said Alice.
"None recently washed?"
"They were all silk. And not wrinkled. And pretty clean."
"The only hope was that she might have stained her sleeve and not known it."
"It's no help, though, is it?"
"Is she blind, Alice?"
"There's only one thing," said Alice slowly.
"Yes?"
"Those playing cards."
"I managed to look. They are special cards with tiny raised dots in the comers. For the blind."
"Oh. Well, what about the flowers?"
"Narcissus," said Duff. "Very fragrant"
Alice sighed. "And the mirror?"
"There's always a mirror."
"Then you think she's blind?"
"It does seem so," said Duff. "That's a monstrous woman, Alice."
They were m the hall, and Art Killeen came down the stairs.
"I'm off to the post office," he said.
"With the new will?"
"Yes. Innes wants it safely away. He is going to announce what he's done, as soon as it's safe with Uncle Sam."
"I see," said Duff.
"Want to help me find the post office, Alice?"
"I can't," she said. "Mr. Duff and I . . ."
"I'd like to talk to you," said Art Killeen wistfully. "For just a minute. Do you mind if I keep her just a minute, Mr. Duff?"
Duff drifted down the hall as if something were drawing him toward the kitchen.
Alice said sharply, "I won't be long."
Duff flapped his hand at her and disappeared.
18
"I'm not going to the post office. Art. No, really. What did you want to say?"
He drew her into the sitting room with an arm across her shoulders. "I don't know how I'm going to say it, exactly," he confessed. He turned her so that she faced him. "Darling, you've put Innes in a state. Fve tried to be helpful."
"What do you mean?" Alice felt choked and angry. She wanted to reject his help, whatever it was.
"You're going to marry him, aren't you?"
"That's up to him," she said bitterly.
"He'll be all right." Killeen spoke with a soft confidence.
Alice shook herself away from him. "I don't know why you think you've got to interfere."
"Interfere? Darling, I'm not. I'm helping."
"Helping what?"
"To clear up a misunderstanding," said Killeen, "between you and Innes." She was speechless, and he went on. "Really, darling, I think you ought to be less hostile. It's costing me something."
"Oh?" said Alice.
"I'm a little jealous," he said.
Alice felt as if firecrackers were going off in the black back of her eyes, but she managed to laugh.
"You may laugh," said Art Killeen, "but you're darned sweet, Alice. I told him he was a lucky man."
"What else did you tell him?" said Alice with an effort She wasn't angry any more.
"I convinced him that you meant the opposite of what you said."
'That was clever." Her voice shook a little.
"You said you were after his dough, darling, but actions speak louder than words, as I pointed out"
"What actions?"
"You can't be after the dough, sweet Alice. You didn't want him to sign that wilL"
"But . . ."
"He sees that, now."
"Maybe I don't understand myself," said Alice. As a matter of fact, she did feel all confused.
"I understand you, darling."
Alice caught a glimpse of a scheme of things in which wheels went around within wheels, and one seemed mercenary for the purpose of seeming unmercenary, though on the next layer down . ..
"Besides that," said Killeen, "I had to convince him that you weren't in love with me."
"Did he think ... I was?"
"I'm afraid he did there for a minute."
"Wasn't that bright of Innes?" she said flatly and openly.
He chose to take it for sarcasm. "Quite a brainstorm," he said.
"As if there was any percentage," Alice heard herself saying coolly, "in that."
His eye leaped to hers. She saw him come up to the very brink of an impulse, felt the surge of recklessness that almost carried him away. She saw it fail, too, come to the brink and not go over.
"I wanted to tell you," he said lamely, "but now I'd better get down to the post office. Innes would have a fit if he could see me dawdling."
'Then don't dawdle," she said.
He came rather near. "I hope everything is going to be all right," he said, with warmth left out of the wish.
"Do you, by any chance, mean the opposite of what you say?" asked Alice.
Light leaped in his eye. He bent and kissed her and made his exit without a curtain line.
A curious mmibness took hold of Alice. She didn't seem to be able to go over that little scene and analyze it. Her mind wanted to put it off. She had, besides, a sense of having been interrupted. There was something she had been in the middle of doing. Something absorbing. Mr. Duff.
It's that Indian! she thought. What's Duff saying to that Indian, I wonder.
Through the kitchen window she saw Duff and Mr. Johnson sitting on the back steps, side by side. Their eyes were fixed on the horizon. No duel this time. They gazed across the pit to the hills and distant trees. Mr. Johnson spat in the dust from time to time. Duff seemed to dream in the sun.
"I went down to the reservation yesterday," he said lazily.
Mr. Johnson grunted.
"Ever stay there?"
"Naw."
"What do you think of them?"
Mr. Johnson grinned and spat.
Duff said, "By the way, are you a Christian?''
"Sure," said Mr. Johnson. "You?"
"I am," said Duff, suppressing a sense of outrage. "Some of the Oneidas down there stick to the old religion, they tell me."
"The old man gimme a dollar."
"That so?" said Duff cautiously.
"Yeah." Mr. Johnson spat "To get baptized."
"The old man. That would be Stephen?"
"He's dead."
The dialogue seemed to have come to a dead end
"Go to school, did you?" ventured Duff.
"Sure."
"Where?"
"Here."
"How long?"
Mr. Johnson moved his shoulders. "The old man gimme a dollar to spht half a cord of wood. So I quit."
"What," said Duff rather desperately, "did you want to be?"