Then the Cayley girl looked at his uncle again. Her eyes were all right so far. They were just watchful.
‘I never did wear it,’ she said. On account of my father. He don’t think Max is any good. And I’m not going to even keep it, as soon as I can find him to give it back. Because I don’t think so too now—’
The Harriss girl made a sound. It didn’t sound to him like anything she would have learned in a Swiss convent either. The Cayley girl gave her another of the hard black contemplative looks. But her eyes were still all right. Then she looked at his uncle again.
‘I didn’t mind what he said to me. I didn’t like the way he said it. Maybe that was the only way he could think of to say it at the time. But he ought to have been able to think of a different way. But I wasn’t mad because he felt he had to say it.’
‘I see,’ his uncle said.
‘I wouldn’t have minded his having to say it, anyway,’ she said.
‘I see,’ his uncle said.
‘But he was wrong. He was wrong from the beginning. He was the one that said first that maybe I better not wear the ring out where folks could see it for a while yet. I never even had time to tell him I already knew better than to let Papa find out I even had it—’
The Harriss girl made the sound again. This time the Cayley girl stopped and turned her head quite slowly and looked at the Harriss girl for five or six seconds while the Harriss girl sat with the unlighted cigarette between her fingers. Then the Cayley girl looked at his uncle again.
‘So he was the one that said we better not be engaged except in private. So since I wasn’t to be engaged except in private, I didn’t see any reason why Captain Golldez—’
‘Gualdres,’ the Harriss girl said.
‘Golldez,’ the Cayley girl said. ‘ — or anybody else couldn’t ride up and sit on our gallery and talk to us. And I liked to ride horses that didn’t have trace-galls for a change too, so when he would bring one along for me—’
‘How could you tell whether it had a trace-gall or not, in the dark?’ the Harriss girl said.
Now the Cayley girl, and still without haste, turned her whole body and looked at the Harriss girl.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What did you say?’
‘Here,’ his uncle said. ‘Stup it.’
‘You old fool,’ the Harriss girl said. She wasn’t even looking at his uncle. ‘Do you think that any man except one like you with one foot already in the grave, would spend half the night every night riding a horse up and down an empty polo field by himself?’
Then the Cayley girl moved. She went fast, stooping and hiking up the hem of her skirt and taking something from the top of her stocking as she went, and stopped in front of the chair and if it had been a knife, he and his uncle would still have been too late.
‘Stand up,’ she said.
Now the Harriss girl said ‘What?’ looking up, the hand still holding the unlighted cigarette in front of her mouth. The Cayley girl didn’t speak again. She just rocked back onto her heels, slender and solid too, and swung her arm back and his uncle was moving now, hollering ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ hut the Cayley girl had already swung, slapping the Harriss girl’s face and the cigarette and the hand that held it, all together, and the Harriss girl jerked in the chair and then sat with the broken cigarette dangling between her fingers and a long thin scratch down her cheek; and then the ring itself, a big diamond, tumbled winking down the front of her coat and onto the floor.
The Harriss girl looked at the cigarette a moment. Then she looked at his uncle. ‘She slapped me!’ she said.
‘I saw her,’ his uncle said. ‘I was just about to, myself —— and then jumped too; he had to: the Harriss girl coming fast out of the chair and the Cayley girl already rocked back onto her heels again. But his uncle got there first, between them this time, flinging the Harriss girl back with one arm and the Cayley girl with the other, until in another second they both stood there crying, bawling, exactly like two three-year-olds who have been fighting, while his uncle watched diem for a moment and then stooped and picked up the ring.
‘That’ll do now,’ his uncle said. ‘Stop it. Both of you. Go to the bathroom and wash your faces. Through that door yonder’ — saying quickly ‘Not together’ as they both moved. ‘One at a time. You first,’ to the Harriss girl. ‘There’s styptic in the cabinet if you want it, fear hydrophobia rather than merely believe in it. Show her the way, Chick.’
But she had already gone on into the bedroom. The Cayley girl stood wiping her nose on the back of her hand until his uncle handed her his handkerchief.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sniffling, snuffling, that is. ‘But she ought not to have made me do it.’
‘She ought not to have been able to,’ his uncle said. ‘I suppose she had you waiting out there in the car all the time. Drove out to your house and got you.’
The Cayley girl blew her nose into the handkerchief. ‘Yes sir,’ she said.
‘Then you’ll have to drive her home,’ his uncle said to him, not looking back. ‘They both cant—’
But the Cayley girl was all right now. She gave her nose a good hard wipe right and then left and started to hand the handkerchief back to his uncle and then stopped, letting the hand drop at her side.
‘I’ll go back with her,’ she said. ‘I’m not afraid of her. It wont he but two miles home even if she wont take me any further than her gate.’
‘All right,’ his uncle said. ‘Here’: holding out the ring. It was a big diamond; it was all right too. The Cayley girl didn’t hardly look at it.
‘I don’t want it,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t either,’ his uncle said. ‘But you owe yourself the decency of letting your own hand be the returner.’
So she took the ring and then the Harriss girl returned and the Cayley girl went to bathe her face, still carrying the handkerchief. The Harriss girl looked all right again, with a glazed swipe of styptic on the scratch; and she had the platinum-and-jewel box now, but it was powder and such. She didn’t look at either of them. She looked into the mirror in the box’s lid, finishing her face.
‘I should apologise, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But I imagine lawyers see all sorts of things in their trade.’
‘We try to avoid bloodshed,’ his uncle said.
‘Bloodshed,’ she said. She forgot her face then and the platinum-and-jewel box too and the flipness and the hardness both went and when she looked at his uncle, the terror and dread were in her eyes again; and he knew that, whatever he and his uncle might think about what her brother could or would or might do, at least she didn’t have any doubts. ‘You’ve got to do something,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to. If I had known anybody else to go to, I wouldn’t have bothered you. But I’
‘You told me he made a pact with you to do nothing for twenty-four hours,’ his uncle said. ‘Do you think he will hold himself still bound to it, or will he do what you did — make an effort of his own behind your back too?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘If you could just lock him up until I’
‘Which I cant do, any more than I can have the other one deported before breakfast. Why don’t you deport him yourself? You said that you—’
Now there was terror and despair both in her face.
‘I can’t. I tried. Maybe Mother is a better man than I am, after all. I even tried to tell him. But he’s like you: he doesn’t believe either that Max is dangerous. He says it would be running from a child.’
‘That’s just exactly what it would be,’ his uncle said. ‘That’s just exactly why.’
‘Exactly why what?’
‘Nothing,’ his uncle said. Then his uncle was not looking at her, not looking at any of them, not at anything as far as he could tell, just standing there rubbing the ball of his thumb against the bowl of the cob pipe. Then she said, ‘Can I have another cigarette?’
Why not?’ his uncle said. She took the cigarette from the box and this time he lit it for her, passing his uncle to the smoking stand, stepping carefully among the scattered chessmen to strike the match as the Cayley girl came in, not looking at anybody either, saying to his uncle:
‘It’s on the mirror.’
‘What?’ his uncle said.
‘Your handkerchief,’ the Cayley girl said. ‘I washed it.’
‘Oh,’ his uncle said, and the Harriss girl said, ‘Just talking to him wont do any good either. You tried that once, you know.’
‘I don’t remember,’ his uncle said. ‘I don’t recall hearing anything but him. But you are right about the talking. I have an idea this whole business started because somebody has already talked too much.’
But she wasn’t even listening. ‘And we’ll never
