Talk of feathers in the wind, there was no way of stopping the slander. It was obviously all over the hospital and would undoubtedly precede us back into town. I was in such a state of impotent wrath that it was all I could do to keep from lashing out at the floor nurse and the orderly, to wipe the smug expressions from their faces as we shifted Pat. Pat was mumbling herself into a drugged slumber, and the floor nurse was fussing unnecessarily about the room, when Chuck came stalking through the hall.
"All that fuss because Pat's brother and his wife are helping the girl cover an indiscretion," he said with commendable poise. "What some people will think!" He shook his head over the frailties of mankind and then imperiously gestured the nurse out of the room.
When she'd left he indulged himself in a spate of curses as inventive as they were satisfying, and all relative to the slow and painful demise of one Louise Baxter.
"You've sedated her?" he asked, feeling for Pat's pulse and then stroking her disordered hair back from her face. "Let her sleep."
He turned from the bed and perched his rump against the windowsill, trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. He finally got it lit and inhaled deeply.
"Is that what you told Avery? That Pat was indiscreet?"
"No, I told him the truth. I've a hunch it might be important later. I can't say he believed me," and Chuck let out a harsh snort of laughter, "but I've convinced him that the charge of - ha! - incestuous fornication is the accusation of a psychotic. He's quite ready to believe that, judging from the way Her Ladyship Baxter carried on. He does think, and he subscribes to making it informally the truth, that we're covering up an illegitimate birth and that Peter and Cecily are going to adopt the children. He's a good man, Avery, but I'm afraid our revolutionary and irreligious fact is beyond his comprehension."
"Illegitimacy is a lot more palatable than" - I couldn't even say it - "the other."
"Our public fiction depends on a cooperative grand-mother, and I can't see the likes other cooperating with you or me, or the Kelloggs. Christ, how I'd love to get my hands on her. I'd have her committed so fast… But Avery will handle matters here - neurotic grandmother, hates to admit her age - he's smooth as silk. He's having a long talk with that floor supervisor - one for letting Baxter in, two for not shutting her up the moment she started, and three for half believing her." He walked back to Pat, feeling her abdomen.
"No, it's hard," I said.
"I'd like to move her out of here, quickly."
"Will Avery let Esther stay on as special?" I asked.
"You just bet he will," said Esther from the door, grim- lipped. She was in her whites, starched and ready for action. I was inordinately relieved. "What else do you expect from provincial hospitals?" She checked Pat, smoothed the bed-clothes unnecessarily, and began checking the room's equipment, as if she hoped to find fault with it. "They don't have rooming in or I'd bring the babies right here. But she's all right with me. You'd better get back to the cottage. Oh, and Dr. Craft, I administered a strong sedative to Cecily before I came out. You look as if you need one, too, Allison," she added and then settled herself on the chair by the sleeping Pat.
As we passed Avery's office on the way out, we heard him administering quite a lecture to some unfortunate person.
Wizard's angry barking alerted us before we turned off the main road into the lane that led to the cottage. Two of the group hovering by the path evidently had urgent business somewhere else.
"My God! People! I hate 'em," muttered Chuck, staring belligerently back at the four hangers-on as we parked the car.
"Don't go in there," one of the men told Chuck. "That dog's dangerous!"
"Is he?" asked Chuck with innocent mildness, and we walked right past the snarling dog. "Howd'ya like that?" someone muttered.
Peter was in the shadows of the small screened porch.
"Esther gave Cecily something. She'd made herself ill with weeping," he said. "Is Pat all right?"
"Esther's with her. Avery's handling the hospital staff." Chuck wearily combed his hair back from his forehead. "He doesn't believe in exogenesis, but the notion that you and Cecily are going to adopt your sister's indiscretion is acceptable."
"What?"
Perhaps it was a trick of the sun, but I thought I saw a glint of anger in Peter's dead eyes.
"How long do Pat and the babies have to stay here?"
"We'll leave as soon as Pat can stand the trip," I said, sagging against the wall.
Chuck sort of maneuvered me into the nearest chair, but it faced the pathway and the curious faces parading by. I tried to tell myself it was reaction to the whole nasty scene, but I was depressed by the notion that if Louise Baxter had spread her filth this fast in a small vacation village, she'd sure as hell go on to pollute the more rewarding atmosphere of our university town. Though what she stood to gain by such slander, I couldn't understand.
Before we all got very drunk. Chuck sat me down at the dining-room table, and we wrote up our notes on the delivery. I could see that they were going to be very important documents, but the clinical reportage sure as hell took the glamour out of the achievement, just as surely as Louise Baxter had tarnished the greatest gift of love.
The third day after her delivery, we took Pat and the babies home downstate in an ambulance. As I was still nominally on my vacation and I certainly didn't want Pat alone in her apartment in her psychological condition, I insisted that she stay in my house. So Chuck, who was following the ambulance in my station wagon, turned off to go to Pat's apartment to pick up a list of unmatemity clothing for her. Peter, Cecily, Wizard, and the babies dropped out of the cavalcade for their place.
Esther and I had suitably settled Pat when first Chuck, brakes squealing viciously, then Cecily and company pulled up in my driveway.
I had thought in the hospital three days earlier that Chuck had a superb vocabulary of invective, but he had evidently kept a supply in reserve, which he now employed as he helped Peter out of the car with the babies.
"What happened?" I asked, rather inanely, because it took little guessing.
"That blankety-blank female is not going to have an incestuous woman living in her respectable house. And to think that she had once admired her. And to think that all along that adulterous woman had been poisoning the minds of helpless youngsters and - Do I really need to read further from that script?" asked Chuck, now at the top of his strong baritone voice. He woke young Anne Kellogg.
"Mrs. Baxter's got to town?"
"Quod erat demonstrandum! Only I'd say that the bitch has gone to town!" Incongruously, Chuck was deftly soothing the frightened baby before he passed her on to Esther.
Peter's usually calm face was etched with grief as he helped Cecily up the steps. Wizard, head down, tail limp, followed them to the steps, then turned and settled himself on the paving, watching the front gate.
"We are no longer welcomed by the management of the apartment house," was all Peter said.
"Good Lord," said Esther, "did she use a bullhorn?"
Then the phone rang. Jiggling Anne, Esther answered it. She listened for a moment, then with grave pleasure firmly replaced the handset.
"I think it would be better to have the phone disconnected or the number changed immediately. Dr. Craft. Shall I put in the request?"
I nodded numbly.
Wizard uttered a warning bark, and Chuck peered out the window.
"Who're they?" he asked me, and I glanced out at three militant figures about to enter the yard.
I shook my head.
"Peter, is Wizard on the guard?"
Peter nodded sadly. So we watched as the trio opened the gate. Wizard advanced menacingly, slowly, but his intention was quite plain. The visitors hesitated, conferred together, withdrew. Wizard took up a new position, twenty yards from the gate.