Authors: William March
Mrs. Penmark folded the paper and put it on the hall table, thinking it strange that nobody had asked for a contribution from Rhoda. She wondered if the oversight had been a deliberate one, and then she thought:
I’m paying too much attention to this thing. There was no intention back of it.
Perhaps one of the Misses Fern had telephoned when she was out, although that did not seem likely; perhaps Rhoda’s name had been accidentally left off the list. Perhaps.…
She decided to ignore the slight, although the implications hurt her a little, and, turning away, she told herself that she would not speak of it, not even to Monica and Emory. That afternoon she decided to go shopping, and taking Rhoda with her, she drove into town. She selected a pale-blue evening gown for herself, and she bought material for Rhoda’s fall school dresses; but when she was home again, and Rhoda was skating in the park, up the walks, and around the cement path that circled the lily pond, the matter was still on her mind, and upon impulse she dialed the Fern School.
Miss Octavia answered, and Christine said, “I read about the Daigle boy’s funeral, and the beautiful gardenias the children sent him. I’m sorry I wasn’t in when you telephoned about Rhoda’s share.”
There was no answer for a time; she could almost feel Miss
Fern’s embarrassment over the phone; but at last the old woman said in a voice scarcely audible, “There are so many children in the school. The blanket wasn’t nearly so costly as the papers seem to think. Please don’t worry. The money has already been collected, and the flowers paid for.”
“Did you telephone me about the flowers?” asked Christine. “If you did not, I think I should know.”
Miss Fern said in a soft, placating voice, “No, my dear, we did not telephone you. My sisters and I thought it better not to.”
Christine said, “I see!” She waited, and then went on. “Were there other children left out, or was it simply that you didn’t telephone me?”
“My sisters and I thought you’d prefer to send flowers individually,” said Miss Fern. She waited again, as though shaping her words with the greatest care, and then went on in a voice that carried no conviction at all. “It isn’t as though you’d been here a long time; this is Rhoda’s first term with us, as you know.”
Christine said, “I see. I see.” Then, softly, she added, “But why did you think we’d prefer to send flowers individually? Rhoda wasn’t friendly with the boy, and my husband and I didn’t even know the Daigles.”
Miss Fern said, “I don’t know, my dear. I couldn’t answer truthfully if my life depended on it.” Then, as though pleading forgiveness, she said so quietly that her voice was almost a whisper, “I must go now. We have guests, and they’ll think it strange.”
Mrs. Penmark turned away from the telephone, a frown on her usually serene brow. If there were overtones she did not understand, if there were implications her mind could not take in, she would tell herself that they were meaningless, of no significance at all. She would tell herself it was a simple oversight; she would not even refer to it when she wrote her husband. After all, she reminded herself, Kenneth had his problems, too; and this, certainly, should not be one of them. She sat at her desk
and wrote him a bright letter full of gossip about the people they both knew; she missed him greatly, as always, but was consoled in the knowledge that their lives held many years in which they would not be separated at all, years of contentment and peace. She affirmed the unalterable fact that she loved him. “I’ll dismiss the Daigle drowning and everything connected with it from my mind,” she said to herself. “It was sad and unfortunate, but, after all, how can it concern me very deeply?”
A week later Mrs. Penmark got a letter from the Fern School. The letter was brief, courteous, and to the point; it said in substance that the school to its regret found its membership filled, its rolls closed, for the term commencing in September, and it would not, therefore, be able to make a place for Rhoda. The writer was sure that Mr. and Mrs. Penmark would experience little difficulty in making other arrangements for the child; and again with regrets, and sincere good wishes, she was, most cordially, Burgess Witherspoon Fern.
That day Christine went about in a preoccupied manner, the note constantly in her mind. In the afternoon, she showed the note to Mrs. Breedlove, asking her advice. Mrs. Breedlove said, “The longer I live, the more I see, the more I’m unable to understand the tight little minds of people like the Fern girls!” She tossed her pebble over her shoulder, and went on. “The truth of the matter is, Rhoda is much too charming, too clever, too unusual, for them! She isn’t like those simpering little neurotics who believe everything that’s told them, and never have an original thought of their own. Rhoda stands on her own feet, and makes her own decisions, I may add. She’s all-of-one-piece. She makes those others look stupid and stodgy by comparison. That’s the
real
complaint, I assure you!” She lit a cigarette, and in the silence Christine thought:
Monica loves Rhoda, and she loves me,
too. When she loves anybody, she can never see any wrong in them. She’s completely loyal. She’s a wonderful friend to have.
Mrs. Breedlove said, “If I were you, I’d send Rhoda to public school next term; but if you think she won’t meet the right sort of companions there, then we must arrange a private tutor for her. Anyway, I’d forget the matter for the time being. I wouldn’t even answer Burgess Fern’s insolent note.”
But Christine went about with a feeling of panic in her breast, as though the incident of the Baltimore school were about to be renewed. To herself, she said for reassurance, “It’s nothing like that. If it were, they’d have said so long ago.” Nevertheless, she felt there were things she did not understand, facts which the Fern sisters had, perhaps, but which had been withheld from her, and on the third afternoon, as though the matter were a most casual one, she telephoned the school and asked for an appointment in order that she might talk things over with the sisters.
Miss Claudia ushered her into the big formal parlor, and said, as though in reproach, “As a usual thing, we’d be at Benedict this time of year, but the death of the Daigle child has ruined the summer for us.”
“I’ll never go there again,” said Octavia firmly. “The place is spoiled for me now.” She pulled a bell cord, and almost at once a maid came in with tea and bread and butter. When the servant had gone, Christine said, too abruptly, she felt, that she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind that the drowning of the boy and the dismissal of Rhoda from the school were somehow connected. The thing puzzled her, and she wished they’d tell her frankly if this were, or were not, true.
“But why do you think there’s a connection between the two events?” asked Miss Octavia primly. “My sisters and I haven’t intimated such a thing, I’m sure.”
“Then may I assume there is no connection?”
Miss Octavia sipped her tea and said that this particular situation
was one she had earnestly hoped to avoid. She could not see what was to be gained, how anyone could really be served, by discussing it further; but since Mrs. Penmark had brought up the matter and wanted the truth, she had to confess there was a connection, a most definite one, between the two things.
Miss Burgess said, “The busses hadn’t even started before Rhoda began teasing the boy. She wouldn’t give him any peace. She hung over his seat and breathed down his neck, staring at the medal all the time. The child sitting with Claude got up and moved finally, and Rhoda took the vacated place at once. She wanted Claude to take off the medal and let her hold it for him; but he covered the medal with his hand and said, ‘Let me alone! Let me alone!’ ”
“She became so insistent,” said Claudia Fern, “that I finally had to take her by the arm and make her sit by herself, up near the driver—as far away from Claude as I could get her. But even then she twisted her neck around and looked at the medal the whole time.”
Mrs. Penmark sighed and said, “Rhoda is certainly an aggressive child, and a selfish one, too, I’m sure. But then our world seems to be full of selfish and aggressive people. My husband and I hope that she’ll outgrow these things in time.”
“That isn’t all, I’m afraid,” said Burgess Fern. “When we were at the bay, and the other children were shouting and playing games together, Rhoda did nothing but follow the boy about, making his life miserable. She didn’t say anything to him—she only stared at the medal, and at last the little boy, who was nervous and not at all strong, as we know, began to tremble so badly that I called him to me, and told him to pay no attention to Rhoda. Then he did a peculiar thing which I’ve thought about a great deal since his death. He took off his medal and asked me to keep it until the picnic was over.”
“Did you do it? Perhaps the medal isn’t lost, after all.”
Miss Octavia rang for more hot water, and after the maid had gone, Miss Burgess continued. “No, I didn’t do what he asked. I pinned the medal back on his shirt, and told him to develop more confidence in himself. I reminded him that the medal belonged to him, and nobody else. He had won it fairly. It was his. He had every right to wear it.” She walked to the window and looked out at the garden beyond. “I called Rhoda, and talked to her as well. I told her that her behavior was unpardonably rude, and not what we expected from our pupils.”
Miss Claudia took up the story. “I joined my sisters about that time and gave Rhoda a talk on courtesy and fair play; but she only looked at me with that puzzled, calculating expression we’ve all come to know so well, and said nothing.”
“She’s not an easy child to understand,” said Christine. “If we went wrong with her somehow, it isn’t surprising, I suppose.”
“I hoped my talk would make some impression on her,” said Claudia, “but not an hour afterward one of our older pupils came on Rhoda and the little Daigle boy at the far end of the grounds. The boy was upset and crying, and Rhoda was standing in front of him, blocking his path. The older girl was standing among the trees, and neither of the children saw her. She was just at the point of intervening, when Rhoda shoved the little boy and snatched at his medal; but he broke away and ran down the beach in the direction of the old wharf where he was later found, with Rhoda following him, although she wasn’t running. She was walking along taking her time, the big girl said.”
“Did it occur to you that the big girl you mentioned might not be telling the truth?”
“That isn’t at all likely,” said Miss Claudia. “She was one of the monitors we’d appointed to keep an eye on the younger children; she’s almost fifteen, and she’s been with us since her kindergarten days. We’re familiar with her character by this time,
and it’s excellent. No, Mrs. Penmark. She was telling precisely what she saw.”
Miss Octavia said, “A little later—it must have been around noon, really—one of the guards saw Rhoda coming off the wharf. He shouted a warning, and was on the point of going to her, but by then she was on the beach again, and he decided to forget the matter, as it didn’t seem very important under the circumstances.”
It was true, she went on, the guard had not identified Rhoda by
name
; he knew the names of none of the children, actually; and at that distance he couldn’t have identified anyone positively, whether he’d known them or not. He’d only mentioned a girl in a red dress, and since Rhoda was the only girl who had worn a dress that day, they had reasonably assumed that she was the one he had seen.
Miss Octavia’s old tottering spaniel came wheezing across the room. She picked the dog up and held it on her lap while the animal thrust its tongue out weakly and tried to touch her cheek. “The guard saw Rhoda on the wharf about noon, as I’ve said,” continued Miss Octavia. “At one o’clock the lunch bell rang, and when roll call was made, Claude was missing. You know the rest, I think.”
Christine said, “Yes. Yes. I heard it on the air.” She opened and closed the catch on her bag, and then, against her will, she remembered an incident which had taken place in Baltimore the year before. One of the children in the apartment house where they’d lived had had a puppy, and Rhoda, seeing it, wanted one, too. They had bought the dog she selected, a little wire-haired terrier, happy to see the child was showing an interest, at last, in some object other than herself. At first she had been delighted with her dog; she had taken it everywhere, even exhibiting it to people in the lobby and boasting of its cost and pedigree; but later, when she found she was expected to take care of her pet
herself—Kenneth had thought this excellent training for her, an object lesson in responsibility and kindness—when she found she must feed the dog and take it out, even though these things interfered with her reading, her jigsaw puzzles, her piano practice, the dog had somehow managed to fall from a window ledge onto the courtyard below.
Christine had heard the dying whimpering of the dog, and going into her daughter’s room, she had seen Rhoda leaning out of the window, dispassionately watching some object below. She had joined her daughter, and there, three stories below, was the little terrier with its spine crushed. She said, “What happened? What happened to the dog?” But Rhoda had walked away, as though the matter concerned her not at all. At the door she paused and said, “It fell out of the window, I think.”
It was the only explanation that either she or Kenneth had ever got out of the child. But now, remembering the incident, sensing some vague connection between the two accidents, Mrs. Penmark felt a sudden anger rising in her. Her hand trembled, and her teacup rattled in its saucer. She looked around her, as though somebody were about to attack her. Carefully she put down her cup, closed her eyes, waited until she knew her voice would be as detached, as soft, as gentle as the voices of the Fern sisters, and said, “Are you hinting that Rhoda had anything to do with the boy’s death? Is that the purpose of all this?”
Her words had an odd effect on the Fern girls. They glanced at one another in astonishment, as though their guest were demented. “Why, of course not!” said Miss Octavia in horror. “That would be impossible! An eight-year-old child mixed up in a thing like
that
? Oh, no! Such a thing never entered our minds.”