Calamity Town (5 page)

Mr Queen slipped out, feeling a little lonely.

6

‘Wright–Haight Nuptials Today'

Hermy planned the wedding like a general in his field tent surrounded by maps of the terrain and figures representing the accurate strength of the enemy's forces. While Nora and Pat were in New York shopping for Nora's trousseau, Hermione held technical discussions with old Mr Thomas, sexton of the First Methodist Church; horticultural conferences with Andy Birobatyan, the one-eyed Armenian florist in High Village; historic conversations with the Reverend Dr Doolittle
in re
rehearsals and choir-boy arrangements; talks with Mrs Jones the caterer, with Mr Graycee of the travel agency, and with John F. at the bank on intrafamiliar banking business.

But these were Quartermaster's chores. The General Staff conversations were with the ladies of Wrightsville. ‘It's just like a movie, dear!' Hermy gushed over the telephone. ‘It was nothing more than a lover's quarrel to begin with—Oh, yes, darling,
I
know what people are saying!' said Hermy coldly. ‘But my Nora doesn't have to grab anybody. I don't suppose you recall last year how that handsome young Social Registrite from Bar Harbor…Of course not! Why should we have a
quiet
wedding? My dear, they'll be married in church and…
Naturally
as a bride…Yes, to South America for six weeks…Oh, John is taking Jim back into the bank…Oh, no, dear, an
officer's
position…Of course, darling! Do you think I'd marry my Nora off and not have
you
at the wedding?'

On Saturday, August thirty-first, one week after Jim's return to Wrightsville, Jim and Nora were married by Dr Doolittle in the First Methodist Church. John F. gave the bride away, and Carter Bradford was Jim's best man. After the ceremony, there was a lawn reception on the Wright grounds. Twenty Negro waiters in mess jackets served; the rum punch was prepared from the recipe John F. had brought back with him from Bermuda in 1928. Emmeline DuPré, full-blown in an organdie creation and crowned with a real rosebud tiara, skittered from group to group remarking how ‘well' Hermione Wright had carried off a ‘delicate' situation, and didn't Jim look interesting with those purple welts under his eyes? Do you suppose he's been drinking these three years? How romantic! Clarice Martin said rather loudly that
some
people were born troublemakers.

During the lawn reception Jim and Nora escaped by the service door. Ed Hotchkiss drove the bride and groom over to Slocum Township in time to catch the express. Jim and Nora were to stay overnight in New York and sail on Tuesday for Rio. Mr Queen, who was prowling, spied the fleeing couple as they hurried into Ed's cab. Wet diamonds in her eyes, Nora clung to her husband's hand. Jim looked solemn and proud; he handed his wife into the cab gingerly, as if she might bruise under less careful manipulation.

Mr Queen also saw Frank Lloyd. Lloyd, returning from his ‘hunting trip' the day before the wedding, had sent a note to Hermy ‘regretting' that he couldn't attend the ceremony or reception as he had to go upstate that very evening to attend a newspaper publishers' convention in the Capital. Gladys Hemmingworth, his Society reporter, would cover the wedding for the
Record
. ‘Please extend to Nora my very best wishes for her happiness. Yours, F. Lloyd.'

But F. Lloyd, who should have been two hundred miles away, was skulking behind a weeping willow near the grass court behind the Wright house. Mr Queen experienced trepidation. What had Patty once said? ‘Frank took the whole thing pretty badly' And Frank Lloyd was a dangerous man…Ellery, behind a maple, actually picked up a rock as Jim and Nora ran out of the kitchen to get into the cab. But the weeping willow wept quietly, and as soon as the taxi disappeared F. Lloyd left his hiding place and stamped off into the woods behind the house.

Pat Wright trudged up onto Ellery's porch the Tuesday night after the wedding and said with artificial cheeriness: ‘Well, Jim and Nora are somewhere on the Atlantic'

‘Holding hands under the moon.'

Pat sighed. Ellery sat down beside her on the swing. They rocked together, shoulders touching. ‘What happened to your bridge game tonight?' Ellery finally asked.

‘Oh, Mother called it off. She's exhausted—been in bed practically since Sunday. And poor old Pop's pottering around with his stamp albums, looking lost. I didn't realize—quite—what it means to lose a daughter.'

‘I noticed your sister Lola—'

‘Lola wouldn't come. Mother drove down to Low Village to ask her. Let's not talk about…Lola.'

‘Then whom shall we talk about?'

Patty mumbled: ‘You.'

‘Me?' Ellery was astonished. Then he chuckled. ‘The answer is yes.'

‘
What?
' cried Pat. ‘Ellery, you're ribbing me!'

‘Not at all. Your dad has a problem. Nora's just married. This house, under lease to me, was originally designed for her. He's thinking—'

‘Oh, El, you're such a darling! Pop hasn't known what to do, the coward! So he asked me to talk to you. Jim and Nora do want to live in their…well, I mean who'd have thought it would turn out this way? As soon as they get back from their honeymoon. But it's not fair to you—'

‘All's fair,' said Ellery. ‘I'll vacate at once.'

‘Oh, no!' said Pat. ‘You've a six-month lease, you're writing your novel, we've really no right, Pop feels just awful—'

‘Nonsense,' smiled Ellery. ‘That hair of yours drives me quite mad. It isn't human. I mean it's like raw silk with lightning bugs in it.'

Pat grew very still. And then she wiggled into the corner of the swing and pulled her skirt down over her knees.

‘Yes?' said Pat in a queer voice.

Mr Queen fumbled for a match. ‘That's all. It's just—extraordinary'

‘I see. My hair isn't human, it's just extraordinary,' Pat mocked him. ‘Well, in that case I must dash. Cart's waiting.'

Mr Queen abruptly rose. ‘Mustn't offend Carter! Will Saturday be time enough? I imagine your mother will want to renovate the house, and I'll be leaving Wrightsville, considering the housing shortage—'

‘How stupid of me,' said Pat. ‘I almost forgot the most important thing.' She got off the swing and stretched lazily. ‘Pop and Mother are inviting you to be our house guest for as long as you like. Goodniiiiiight!'

And she was gone, leaving Mr Queen on the porch of Calamity House in a remarkably better humor.

7

Hallowe'en: The Mask

Jim and Nora returned from their honeymoon cruise in the middle of October, just when the slopes of Bald Mountain looked as if they had been set on fire and everywhere you went in town you breathed the cider smoke of leaves burning. The State Fair was roaring full blast in Slocum: Jess Watkins's black-and-white milker,
Fanny IX
, took first prize in the Fancy Milch class, making Wrightsville proud. Kids were sporting red-rubber hands from going without gloves, the stars were frostbitten, and the nights had a twang to them. Out in the country you could see the pumpkins squatting in mysterious rows, like little orange men from Mars. Town Clerk Amos Bluefield, a distant cousin of Hermione's, obligingly died of thrombosis on October eleventh, so there was even the usual ‘important' fall funeral. Nora and Jim stepped off the train the color of Hawaiians. Jim grinned at his father-in-law. ‘What! Such a small reception committee?'

‘Town's thinking about other things these days, Jim,' said John F. ‘Draft registration tomorrow.'

‘Holy smoke!' said Jim. ‘Nora, I clean forgot!'

‘Oh, lordy,' breathed Nora. ‘Now I've got something else to worry about!' And she clung to Jim's arm all the way up the hill.

‘The town's just agog,' declared Hermy. ‘Nora baby, you look
wonderful!
'

Nora did. ‘I've put on ten pounds,' she laughed.

‘How's married life?' demanded Carter Bradford.

‘Why not get married and find out for yourself, Cart?' asked Nora. ‘Pat dear, you're ravishing!'

‘What chance has a man got,' growled Carter, ‘with that smooth-talking hack writer in the house—'

‘Unfair competition,' grinned Jim.

‘In the
house
,' exclaimed Nora. ‘Mother, you never wrote me!'

‘It was the least we could do, Nora,' said Hermy, ‘seeing how sweet he was about giving up his lease.'

‘Nice fella,' said John F. ‘Bring back any stamps?'

But Pat said impatiently: ‘Nora, shake off these men and let's you and I go somewhere and…talk.'

‘Wait till you see what Jim and I brought—' Nora's eyes grew big as the family limousine stopped in the Wright driveway. ‘Jim,
look!
'

‘Surprise!' The little house by the big one glistened in the October sunshine. It had been repainted: the fresh white of the clapboard walls, the turkey-red of the shutters and ‘trim,' the Christmas green of the newly landscaped grounds made it look like a delectable gift package.

‘It certainly looks fine,' said Jim. Nora smiled at him and squeezed his hand.

‘And just wait, children,' beamed Hermy, ‘till you see the
inside
.'

‘Absolutely spick and utterly span,' said Pat. ‘Ready to receive the lovebirds. Nora, you're blubbing!'

‘It's so beautiful,' wept Nora, hugging her father and mother. And she dragged her husband off to explore the interior of the house that had lain empty, except for Mr Queen's short tenure, for three frightened years.

* * *

Mr Queen had packed an overnight bag the day before the newlyweds' return and had taken the noon train. It was a delicate disappearance, under the circumstances, and Pat said it showed he had ‘a fine character.' Whatever his reason, Mr Queen returned on October seventeenth, the day after national registration, to find bustle and laughter in the little house next door, and no sign whatever that it had recently been known as Calamity House. ‘We do want to thank you for giving up the house, Mr Smith,' said Nora. There was a housewifely smudge on her pert nose.

‘That hundred-watt look is my reward.'

‘Flatterer!' retorted Nora, and tugged at her starchy little apron. ‘I look a sight—'

‘For ailing eyes. Where's the happy bridegroom?'

‘Jim's down at the railroad station picking his things up. Before he came back from his apartment in New York he'd packed his books and clothes and things and shipped them to Wrightsville care of General Delivery, and they've been held in the baggage room ever since. Here he is! Jim, did you get everything?'

Jim waved from Ed Hotchkiss's cab, which was heaped with suitcases and nailed boxes and a wardrobe trunk. Ed and Jim carried them into the house. Ellery remarked how fit Jim looked, and Jim with a friendly handclasp thanked him for ‘being so decent about moving out,' and Nora wanted Mr ‘Smith' to stay for lunch. But Mr ‘Smith' laughed and said he'd take advantage of that invitation when Nora and Jim weren't so busy getting settled; and he left as Nora said: ‘Such a mess of boxes, Jimmy!' and Jim grunted: ‘You never know how many books you've got till you start packing ‘em. Ed, lug these boxes down the cellar meanwhile, huh?'

The last thing Ellery saw was Jim and Nora in each other's arms. Mr Queen grinned. If the bride's house hid a calamity within its walls, the calamity was hidden superlatively well.

* * *

Ellery attacked his novel with energy. Except for mealtimes he remained within the sanctuary of his quarters on the top floor, the whole of which Hermy had placed at his disposal. Hermy and Pat and Ludie could hear his portable clacking away until immoral hours. He saw little of Jim and Nora, although at dinner he kept his ears alert for dissonances in the family talk. But Jim and Nora seemed happy. At the bank Jim had found waiting for him a private office with a new oak desk and a bronze plaque saying
MR HAIGHT V.-PRES.
Old customers dropped in to wish him luck and ask about Nora, not without a certain vulturous hope.

The little house was popular, too. The ladies of the Hill called and called, and Nora gave them tea and smiles. Sharp eyes probed corners, looking for dust and despair; but they were disappointed, and Nora giggled over their frustrated curiosity. Hermy was very proud of her married daughter.

So Mr Queen decided he had been an imaginative fool and that Calamity House was buried beyond resurrection. He began to make plans to invent a crime in his novel, since life was so uncooperative. And, because he liked all the characters, he was very glad.

The twenty-ninth of October came and went, and with it the published figures of the Federal draft lottery in Washington. Jim and Carter Bradford drew high order-numbers; Mr Queen was observed to drop in at the Hollis Hotel early on the morning of the thirtieth for a New York newspaper, upon reading which he was seen by Mark Doodle's son Grover to shrug and toss the paper away.

The thirty-first was mad. People on the Hill answered mysterious doorbells all day. Menacing signs in colored chalk appeared on pavements. As evening came on, costumed gnomes began to flit about town, their faces painted and their arms flapping. Big sisters complained bitterly about the disappearance of various compacts and lipsticks, and many a gnome went to bed with a tingling bottom. It was all gay and nostalgic, and Mr Queen strolled about the neighborhood before dinner wishing he were young again, so that he, too, might enjoy the wicked pleasures of Hallowe'en. On his way back to the Wright house, he noticed that the Haight place next door was lit up; and on impulse he went up the walk and rang his ex-doorbell.

But it was Pat, not Nora, who answered the door. ‘Thought you'd run out on me,' said Pat. ‘We
never
see you any more.' Ellery fed his eyes for a moment. ‘Now what?' demanded Pat, blushing. ‘If you aren't the wackiest man!
Nora?
It's the famous author.'