An Insight
In spite of all my efforts not to do so, I have, again, run on ahead
of the story. But, I declare to Goodness, the horror of it, after all
these months, is still so strong upon me, that I know the only way to
get that written is to write it, with no more dilly-dally, and then to
go back and lead up to it properly with the events that immediately
preceded it.
That evening, then, the second of July, the two girls came down, late,
together. Danny was paler than usual, and her face had a drawn, hurt
look, which she explained by saying that she had a severe headache.
Gaby was gayer than gay.
I kept watching her, trying to catch her face in repose, to see if any
trace remained of that dreadful expression I had seen in the
afternoon. Her face, nor one bit of her, was in repose for a minute
from the time she came downstairs until she went upstairs again, after
twelve o’clock that night.
She put “La Paloma” on the phonograph, and did a Spanish dance,
clicking her heels and snapping her fingers until they sounded like
firecrackers. She did an Egyptian dance, slinking about, and
contortioning. It wasn’t decent. She got the whole crowd, including
the girls from the kitchen (who had stayed to gape through the door at
her dancing, instead of going home as they should have gone), and
excluding only Danny, with her headache, Mrs. Ricker and me, to join
in a game of follow the leader, and she led them a wild chase all over
the house from cellar to attic. Laughing, and jumping, and screaming,
and shouting they went, with the radio shrieking out the jazz
orchestra in Los Angeles; and me with depression so heavy upon me that
it felt real, like indigestion.
Mrs. Ricker was doing some tatting. As I watched her, I decided that,
ears or no ears, she was not the woman I had heard talking, that
afternoon, up in the cabin. Hubert Hand had said to that woman that
she had attempted murder. She could not have been Mrs. Ricker, not our
Mrs. Ricker, the thin, silent woman who had lived so decently with us
for so long. Those white, bony fingers, darting the shuttle back and
forth, making edgings for handkerchiefs, had never held any murderous
weapon. Those tight, wrinkled lips had never said, “I would kill her,
and you too.” John had never said—I shivered. It was fanciful
thinking, but it seemed to me that for years the Desert Moon had
ridden in our sky, clean and clear, a lucky, fair weather moon, and
that now the shadow of the wicked world was slowly creeping over it,
inch by inch, with the darkness that was to end in its eclipse. Wicked
thoughts and wicked words breed wicked actions, and I knew it then as
now.
Martha came crying to Mrs. Ricker. “Gaby hurt Chad,” she said. “I wish
she would die. We could make her a nice funeral.”
Mrs. Ricker’s fingers darted faster, back and forth.
Danny spoke, from the davenport. “You shouldn’t talk like that,
Martha, dear. It is wrong.”
Her voice sounded as if it ached. She looked, lying in a huddle over
there, as miserable as I felt. I was drawn to her. I went and sat
beside her.
“Could I do anything for your headache?” I asked. “Get you some
asperin, maybe.”
“No, thank you, Mary.” There was so much gratitude in her big dark
eyes for nothing but common decency on my part, that I felt downright
ashamed of myself.
“Danny,” I said, straight out, never caring much about mincing words,
“I know that something is troubling you. Why don’t you tell John, or
Sam, or even me about it? Just tell us the truth. We’d all go far to
help you, if we could.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Bless your heart, Mary,” she said. “Bless
all of your hearts. You are all so good, here——”
I was enough annoyed with John for coming up right then, to have
slapped him. I answered his question for Danny.
“There is plenty you could do for her,” I said. “You could shut off
that screeching radio, for one thing. And you could quiet down, and
get the others quieted down. Nobody ever told me that noise like this
was a remedy for a splitting headache; did they you?”
“The dickens! By Gollies! It is a wonder you wouldn’t have told me
before, Mary.” Man fashion, putting the blame on me.
Danny wouldn’t hear to John’s stopping the racket. Everyone was having
such a good time. Bed was the place for her. She couldn’t hear any
noise in her room, with the door shut. And off she went.
I know now that she would not have told me anything that could have
helped matters. But I did not know it then, and I was sorely
disappointed. For those sudden tears in her eyes, and her voice when
she had said, “bless your heart,” had convinced me that there was
sincerity behind them, and honesty, and good.
In the black days that followed, when all of us were living in the
dark shadows of doubts, and confusions, and fears and suspicions, I
was thankful, time and again, for those certainties, for that one
fleeting but sure insight into Danny’s soul.