Mathilda said angrily and bluntly, "I don't understand a word you're saying. You're trying to confuse me. Start at the beginning, why don't you? What are you? Who is Francis?"
"I'm a secretary," said Jane. She shrugged.
"But what are you trying to do? You're in a plot, aren't you? Some kind of plot against—"
Jane lifted her chin.
Mathilda said, faltering, "It's against Grandy, isn't it?"
Jane said, "Do you know that if you repeat any of this conversation, my life won't be worth a nickel? It's worth about ten cents, as it is.
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Is it nonsense?" said Jane. "Where's Fran, then? Why didn't he get to the police station where he was going? What stopped him? Where is he now? Why doesn't he tell us, send some word? Telephone?"
"Because he—because the plot wouldn't work," answered Mathilda weakly.
Jane said bitterly, "You never had a thought in your life. Your mind's been formed for you. You're all wrong about everyone. You don't see straight. It's not your fault. I guess it's your misfortune. You couldn't see Oliver and Althea dancing like puppets on the ends of their strings, could you? You thought they acted for themselves. They didn't any more than you do. Nobody does in this house. Oh, Francis understood. You mustn't think he didn't understand. But he told you there was danger, didn't he?"
"He—"
"And there was danger, and there is danger. He was worried sick about you. You're so blind. And he knew what the danger was." Mathilda was trembling. She was angry and scared. But Jane went on as if to herself, "There's one thing for me to do. There's that man. and I know his name and where he works. And Francis wasn't any helpless girl, you see? So there would have to be a man. That's what he meant." Jane's blue eyes took in Mathilda with a strange, absent look. "You'll spill these beans, of course. My fault. I ought to have known better. Fran warned me. But you looked for a minute as if you'd . . . hear me. But you can't hear me. It isn't your fault."
Suddenly, Jane's voice quickened. "I am glad we talked. I was frozen up, too scared to move, just stuck, just letting things happen. Lord, you can't afford to wait! I guess it's worth any extra danger to get unstuck." Jane's face flamed with resolution. "I'd better get
going" She came around the bed. She said, looking down, "Maybe it will work out all right for you sometime. I hope it will." She added gently, "Francis hoped it would, you know."
Jane went out of the room and down the hall to her own.
Chapter Twenty-six
Mathilda fled into the gray room. That which she had been trying not to think about had been spoken out—too plain for her to dodge it any more. She knew now the ridiculous reason, the preposterous—why, the utterly mad reason—for all Francis' lies. First, Francis was mixed up somehow with Rosaleen Wright.
All of a sudden she knew how. Rosaleen had never been one to talk about herself or to confide romantic details. Yet Mathilda had always known that somewhere in the back of Rosaleen's life there was a man she planned to marry someday. Tyl sat down to brood, to think back. She could remember only an impression. This man was an old playmate. A childhood friend, a relative, even—some kind of cousin. It was no flaming romance, but one of those comfortable things. She could remember no name.
Francis? Well, then, Francis thought Rosaleen hadn't killed herself. That was the whole thing. And Jane was in it, too, somehow or other. Certainly, Jane was in love with him. Of course she was. It was perfectly obvious that they were partners. Was Jane a kind of
second-string sweetheart?
"Never mind," Jane had said. "He's nothing to you." Nothing to me, thought Mathilda, and what am I to him? Someone to be used in his schemes? She felt herself in a little glow of anger. Schemes against Grandy. Of all people in the world, dear, kind, lovable
Grandy, who wouldn't hurt a fly, wouldn't even hurt your feelings if he could help it.
Surely she knew him best. All Grandy's ways, the splendid difference of the way he lived. An amateur of living, he called himself. Lover of life. Oh, he had taught them so much. He'd sent them to carefully chosen schools, but their real education had been in the summers with Grandy. And the world would be stale without him to teach them where its flavor lay.
Why, they wanted to make him out a monster. They wanted to say he was wicked, scheming, unfeeling. Grandy? Grandy, who didn't care about money or any of the stupid material things, who loved, above all, beauty and good food and good talk and ideas. Who believed in the love of these things.
The thought came like a stray. Grandy s fabulous bathroom had cost quite a penny. The love of some kinds of beauty was rather expensive. No, she wrenched at her thoughts. She was off the track. Love. Human love. Grandy believed in love. But he didn't know it
when he saw it, said some cynical thing inside her head. He thought Oliver meant security to her. She rubbed her aching forehead.
Someone knocked softly at her door.
"Come in."
Tyl, darling." And there he was.
Mathilda looked up, startled. There he stood, Grandy himself, his white hair ruffled, as it almost always was, his rather large feet turned out just a little, like the frog footman. His fat little tummy on his thin frame, his big-knuckled hands, his beak of a nose and his sharp black eyes watching her.
She saw him briefly, just in a flash, quite unadorned by her affection. She saw the man standing in her door. She knew he was alert and watchful, and she knew she was not sure, at that moment, of his love. Because she thought of a spider.
"Are you just sitting there?" he asked wonderingly. "Anything troubling?"
Mathilda swallowed. "Headache," she said.
"Ah, too bad." His sympathy was rich and easy for that voice of his. Her heart began to pound. She heard the voice for the first time as a musical instrument played by a mind.
"I won't bother you, sweet. Lie down, eh? There's just the one thing. Yesterday, Francis—"
"Yes?" Her voice shook more than she'd intended.
"Francis showed me a document" he said a little wearily and sadly, "that purported to be your will."
"I know," she said. Her shoulder ached where she pressed it into the back of the chair.
"You know, dear?"
"I mean, he showed it to me, Grandy," she said a bit impatiently, She turned all the way around in the chair and pulled her knees up the other way.
"Another forgery," he sighed.
"Yes."
The black eyes were watching. They were noting her downcast eyes, the nervous interlacing of her fingers. They weren't missing anything. She felt like a bug on a pin. She wanted to squirm and hide, to get away. She bent her head and began to cry.
"Darling." He was very near.
Suddenly, she knew the safest place was nearer still. She wept against his shoulder. She could hide her face there.
"What is the trouble?"
She said, "Grandy, I don't know. The whole thing's so confusing."
He held her off a little, trying to see her eyes. But she kept them hidden.
"I thought you were confused last evening, sweetheart. Tyl, what are you trying to tell me?"
"The trouble is," she wailed, "I do—I did—somehow or other remember that minister, Grandy! It's as if I'd seen him before, in a fog or something!”
"Why didn't you tell me?" he said in a moment. "Poor child. And it's been bothering you all the while? You are shaken. That's it, isn't it? Now, you mustn't worry. You really must not."