Upstairs, a door banged sharply open and Sandra’s strident voice hurled an unprintable epithet. And then she came marching down the stairs, her head held high, her cheeks blazing beneath her deft make-up. She did not glance at the group still about the table in the dining area but marched straight out of the big front door.
Jonathan, his face set and white with anger, came behind her, carrying two large suitcases; and following Jonathan was Eben with two more cases. Elsie brought up the rear. As the men followed Sandra outside Elsie stopped at the foot of the stairs and watched as the big front door closed behind Eben.
“My sakes alive!” she murmured, and then came to the table. “That was better than a movie. For a minute there I thought she was going to try to kill him. Man, was she ever mad! She called him things I never heard a man say, let alone a woman that’s supposed to be a lady.”
She looked at the three around the table and saw the forbidding gleam in the Judge’s eyes and said hastily to Cherry, “He gave her a check.”
Cherry cried out angrily, “He
what?”
Elsie nodded. “He sure did. But I don’t reckon it was as big as she was hoping for. She sure screamed some nasty things at him. But she kept the check. He said it was to tide her over until she could get back to work.”
“That will do, Elsie!” said the Judge sternly.
“Sure, Your Honor,” said Elsie mildly. But as she began clearing the table she winked at Cherry, who was seething with anger at Jonathan’s supine surrender to Sandra’s outrageous demands.
They had moved into the living room area and Elsie was busy clearing the dining area in preparation for the lunch hour when Jonathan came back. The sound of Sandra’s car was dying away down the drive, and Jonathan paused at the foot of the stairs and faced them, his face taut and drawn.
“There are no apologies I could offer for the outrageous episode that just ended,” he said quietly. “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am or how much I regret it. I’ll be packed and away from here as fast as I can make it.”
The Judge forestalled Loyce’s protest by saying quietly, “You’re fed up with the Lodge, Jonathan?”
Jonathan looked startled. “You know better than that, sir. It’s just that I felt sure you’d want me to leave, after this outrageous affair.”
“Oh, Jonny, don’t go,” stammered Loyce, her voice shaking. “Please don’t go!”
Jonathan looked uncertainly at the Judge.
“I don’t want to go, Loyce, unless I’m no longer welcome here,” Jonathan told her. “And that’s for you to say, Judge. Am I?”
The Judge’s eyes twinkled beneath his bushy brows, but he answered without a smile, “Loyce is a full partner in the Lodge, my boy. She has as much to say about who’s to stay as Cherry or I. If she wants you to stay, then you are quite welcome.”
Jonathan turned to Cherry, who met his gaze with her chin tilted at a defiant angle and her eyes frosty.
“Cherry?” he asked uncertainly.
“It’s up to Loyce,” said Cherry coldly. “Personally, I couldn’t care less one way or another. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”
The door of her small library-office closed behind her, and Jonathan looked gratefully at Loyce and the Judge.
“You’re all very kind and I’m really very grateful,” he said simply.
“You don’t think she’ll be back, Jonathan?” asked the Judge.
Jonathan’s face grew taut. “I’m
quite
sure she won’t sir!”
“Then we may as well forget about her, don’t you think?” suggested the Judge.
“That’s good of you, sir. I hope we can.”
In the late afternoon, as Loyce came up from the bottom fields, she discovered Jonathan at the spot where the path to the fishing spot joined that to the fields.
She paused for an instant, and color flooded her sun-tanned face as her eyes met his shyly. Then she came on to meet him, eager-eyed and breathless.
“What did you find out, Jonny?” she asked him eagerly.
“It’s too soon to have found out anything, Loyce honey,” Jonathan answered her quickly. “I started some inquiries, but it will be several days before we can hope for news. I waited here because I wanted to thank you for taking my part in that ugly mess with Sandra.”
“I didn’t want you to leave,” Loyce told him awkwardly, “until we had found out about Weldon.”
Jonathan looked as though she had slapped him. He took a step backward, and his expression hardened.
“Oh, yes, of course. It was your concern for news of Hammett, not any interest in me, that caused you to want me to stay. I was a fool to have thought anything else,” His voice was harsh, his eyes bitter.
Loyce put out a hand to touch him, drew it back and locked it tight in her other hand. Her eyes were warm and anxious and her voice was not quite steady when she answered:
“It wasn’t altogether that, Jonny. Please believe me. I didn’t want you to have to go just because she’d made things so unpleasant for all of us. I didn’t feel it was your fault that she followed you around. You seemed happy here, and I didn’t see why you couldn’t stay on if you wanted to.”
Jonathan studied her for a long time, tense moment as though not quite sure that he dared believe her. But the earnestness in her eyes, the warm sincerity in her voice dispelled his doubts, and suddenly he smiled warmly at her.
“That’s good to know, Loyce. I suppose it
was
my fault, as Cherry pointed out, because I didn’t smack her down when the pursuit first started,” he admitted ruefully. “But a man feels an utter fool to imagine a beauteous damsel like Sandra has dishonorable intentions toward him.”
He was trying hard for a light note, but it didn’t come off quite as he had hoped. Loyce merely nodded solemnly.
“I can imagine that it would,” she agreed. “Do you think she will come back, Jonny?”
“Not here,” Jonathan assured her grimly.
“I know. But if she is shameless enough to hire private detectives to trail you, mightn’t she do it again when you are somewhere else; when she’s spent the money you gave her?”
Jonathan’s brows drew together in a small frown.
“You know about that?” he asked.
Loyce’s color deepened but she managed a faint smile.
“Elsie is a terrific tattletale,” she reminded him. “And she said the whole thing was better than a movie. Naturally she knew that you gave Sandra a check, and naturally she told us. I’m sorry, Jonny, but there are very few secrets at the Lodge.”
“You think I gave her the fifty thousand she demanded?” asked Jonathan, his tone cool and expressionless.
“Elsie said Sandra wasn’t satisfied with the amount, and you told her it was to tide her over until she got back to work. So I don’t imagine it was the whole amount she wanted.”
“It wasn’t,” Jonathan said curtly. “It wasn’t even a tenth of what she wanted. She said she was broke; I gave her enough to take her back to New York and to keep her going until she could get back to modeling. Was that wrong, Loyce?”
“Of course not, Jonny,” Loyce answered swiftly. “It was kind of you, and I’m awfully glad you did it.”
Jonathan’s brow cleared.
“Well, thanks,” he told her. “That’s something I hated to have you or Cherry know. Cherry surely made no bones of what she thinks of me for letting myself in for such a messy affair.”
“Cherry’s young,” said Loyce earnestly. “Oh, I know she’s only four years younger than I am; but in many ways I’m many years older. To Cherry everything has to be black, very black, or snowy white; there are no in-betweens. But she likes you very much.”
Jonathan nodded. “And I like her. She’s a wonderful person. If living here in the mountains creates people like the Brambletts, then it’s too bad the whole world isn’t mountain-reared.”
Loyce laughed. “Oh, there are villains in the mountains as frequently as in other places,” she assured him. “But I don’t think there are any Sandra Elliotts. Of course, that might just be because there aren’t any Jonathan Gayles to attract them!”
Jonathan studied her for a moment and then laughed.
“I’ve a strong suspicion that if I took that statement apart and analyzed it very carefully, I could find a sarcastic jibe in it,” he told her.
Loyce laughed, too, and it was a sound so unaccustomed that it startled Jonathan.
“If there’s a sarcastic jibe it sneaked in,” she said. “I didn’t put it there.”
“That’s nice to know.” Jonathan grinned at her and turned to walk with her up the path toward the Lodge. At the kitchen steps he asked with a touch of anxiety, “I’ll see you at dinner?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered.
Emboldened, he asked quickly, “I suppose I couldn’t persuade you to go in to town to dinner with me, and maybe a movie afterwards, or whatever wild excitement the town affords?”
Loyce looked up at him, bright-eyed and smiling.
“You might try,” she suggested gently.
Jonathan’s eyes warmed.
“Then will you?” he asked.
“Thanks, I’d love to,” she answered, and turned toward the steps.
Jonathan laid a swift restraining hand on her arm, his eyes anxious.
“You promise not to stand me up again?” he demanded.
“Oh, Jonny, no. Of course I won’t.”
For a moment their eyes met and clung, and Jonathan said huskily, “Please don’t, Loyce.”
There was the faintest possible mist in her eyes, and her smile was tremulous, her voice very low when she said, “I won’t, Jonny, ever again.”
He stood back then and let her go up the steps and into the house.
In the kitchen, as Loyce flashed through without a word, Elsie and her mother stood staring at each other.
“I reckon you saw what I saw, Muv?” asked Elsie.
“I reckon I did.”
“What does it mean, do you reckon?”
“I reckon it means that maybe Loyce has got over that Hammett feller and is getting more than a mite interested in this feller Gayle. And I’m right glad to see it. He seems a likely kind of a feller, even if he does have some right queer lady friends,” said Muv. “It’s way past time for Loyce to be getting out of them ‘down-yonders’ she’s had since that feller Hammett got killed. Time she was taking a mite of interest in some other man. I’m right surprised, though, that it ain’t Hutch.”
Elsie shrugged disdainfully. “Oh, who’d bother with Hutch Mayfield when Jonathan Gayle is around? Honest, Muv, he’s the most!”
Her mother’s eyes twinkled. “Don’t you let Jeff hear you saying that,” she ordered.
Upstairs, Cherry had just emerged from the shower, a toweling robe tied snugly about her, when Loyce came in, flushed and eager.
“Cherry, Jonny had asked me to have dinner with him, and I don’t have anything pretty to wear. Lend me something?” she asked.
Cherry’s eyes flew wide with surprised pleasure.
“Well, be my guest, honey-lamb,” she ordered as she swung open the door of her closet. “Anything you want. Isn’t it swell to wear the same size? I’m tickled pink, honey, that you’re interested in clothes again. It’s been so long — ” She cut herself off and felt color pour into her face as she realized how close she had come to mentioning Weldon and the tragedy that had so nearly finished Loyce, too.
Loyce was engrossed in the contents of the closet. When she turned she held a copper-colored linen sheath in her hands.
“Would this be all right on me?” she asked hesitantly. “It looks gorgeous on you, but I don’t have your vivid coloring.”
“Stop low-rating yourself or I’ll smack you,” Cherry ordered her sternly. “That will be wonderful on you. Let me fix your hair. You just brush it back and wind it in a knot so tight you can hardly blink, and it’s a shame. It’s such a beautiful color, like the inside of a chestnut burr.”
“You’re the one with the lovely hair, Cherry,” said Loyce humbly.
“Phooey!” Cherry protested inelegantly. “I’m the one that was called Carrot-top when we were growing up, remember?”
Later, when Loyce was dressed in the copper-colored linen sheath, which did marvelous things for her tanned skin and her burnished chestnut-brown hair, and she and Jonathan had departed, Cherry stared for a long moment at the door that had closed behind them. The Judge watched Cherry and waited.
“Well,” she said at last, and turned to face him. “What do you think, Gran’sir?”
“That they make a very handsome couple,” he answered.
“Oh, they do that, they do indeed,” Cherry agreed, but it was obvious she was thinking of something else.
“Do you mind, honey?” asked the Judge after a long silent moment.
Cherry looked sharply at him, frowning.
“Mind? I’m tickled pink; aren’t you? I mean I’m tickled to see Loyce interested in pretty clothes and men again,” she answered.
“I wondered if you minded that the man is Jonathan.” The Judge’s tone was grave.
“Oh, well, I think she could do a lot better for herself,” Cherry admitted. “Jonny seems to me a pretty weak character. Any man who’d let himself be hounded by a dame like that Elliott creature — ”
“That’s something you don’t understand, honey.”
“Well, I don’t suppose I do. And, frankly, Gran’sir, I couldn’t care less,” Cherry stated flatly. “It’s just that if Loyce
is
coming back to life again, I can’t help wishing it could be with somebody with a little more moxy than to step into a woman-trap baited by a gal like Sandra Elliott.”
“It’s not that you want Jonny for yourself?” asked the Judge.
He had his answer in the astounded glance she gave him.
“Good grief, no!” she exploded. “Gran’sir, you surely don’t think I’d pass up Job for a spineless creature like Jonny? My sainted aunt!”
The Judge eyed her shrewdly for a long moment and then chuckled.
“ ’Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he quoted dryly.
“For Pete’s sake, I do not,” Cherry protested warmly. “Oh, he’s nice and a novelty; Loyce and I have never known a man like him before. And somehow I feel maybe that’s just as well. We’ve got Hutch and Job, and any sane women ought to be tickled to death with a couple of stalwarts like those. Can you imagine Job letting a woman crowd him into a corner and try to marry him against his wishes and finally demand to be paid off?”
The Judge hesitated for a moment and then said frankly, “Look, honey, you know my attitude toward gossip. But there is something I feel that you should know. That is, if you have decided to marry Job.”