June went up and downstairs every day after that and her muscular strength came back very fast. One morning, determined to conquer the lethargy which kept her indoors, she decided to take a walk. As was customary in the Grey family, she stopped first to bid her grandmother good morning.

Mrs. Grey was playing cards in bed as she always did between eight and nine at the beginning of the day. She went along as far as she could honestly, and then cheated to make her game come out. Although she was neither senile or foolish, she imbued the cards with a life of their own and treated them as sly, mischievous elves of whom one must get the better by guile. Her fingers, slightly swollen at the joints, darted down on this one or that. The old woman wore a lace cap on her head, which failed to soften the austerity of her features, and a linen nightgown of old-fashioned make.

The door was open and June did not knock. She had only just greeted her grandmother when Catherine entered the room. Catherine was a spidery little woman with eyes like sapphires. As the remaining servant, she ruled the house, vying for authority with its owner. She was getting on and the heavy work was now beyond her strength, so a cleaning woman from the village came once a week. Catherine, aside from her domestic talents, could drive and she owned an ancient car of uncertain make. She was proud of her car, for Mrs. Grey no longer owned one. But the old woman never left the peninsula and Catherine took this as a secret slight against her driving. She hoped that if ever an emergency of the right sort came about, the young Greys would not be there, then her mistress would have to swallow her pride in this respect. Not that Catherine wished her mistress ill; in their own way they loved each other.

Now Catherine said: “How sweet to see them both together! It’s a real picture you make, the two of you.”

She was ignored, and both June and Mrs. Grey felt drawn together in their disapproval of such remarks. Catherine, not at all nonplussed, proceeded to lay out her mistress’ clothes. First, batiste undergarments, straight in shape and neatly darned, then intricately clocked stockings of strong silk, and finally a black dress.

“I don’t want to wear that dress. It’s too warm,” complained Mrs. Grey, dealing out the cards afresh.

Now it was Catherine’s turn for ignoring. She brushed the garment vigorously in preparation and said: “Isn’t it grand to see Miss June up again?” Catherine emphasized the ‘Miss’ which she had not used before June’s illness. “And it’s different she is now, I’m thinking. More of a young lady.”

“Is that an improvement?” asked June.

“Sure and you don’t want to be a kid forever,” said Catherine. “Now will you kindly step out and away while I dress your grandmother?”

June trailed out of the room, glancing up in passing at the portrait of her grandfather on the wall near the door. She had never known him and, despite this portrait and others in the house, she had no clear picture of the man in her imagination. The house too, which was outwardly his shrine, had secretly forgotten him. His robust footsteps had faded from the halls, and if the corridors had ghosts they were not his. Believing firmly in the harmony of body and soul, he had taken his spirit courageously with him to the grave.

June moved down the stairs, laying her hand against the banister. Beneath her palm the wood stuck and made a small, squeaking sound. She pushed open the side door, which was of screen, and held it deliberately ajar while a fly zig-zagged into the house. Then she walked down the veranda steps and onto the lawn.

Mrs. Grey owned all the peninsula of which the house was center and, except for a small corner, would neither let nor sell. She owned the acid, moss-covered lawns and the tangled woods. She owned the beaches with their bluffs, their stones, their quick-mud creeks. The unkept, rutted roads were hers. The taxes for these things took the place of the suburban villa and the comfortable apartment in town for which her daughter-in-law sighed. But Mrs. Grey would stay out her life here and ask no change.

June now wandered slowly between the trees on the lawn. The shade from their expanded leaves threw a tender light on her head, and beneath her feet fresh rings of moss were scattered here and there. These brilliant, soft circles of varying sizes were like secret signals, or an antique alphabet which no one could read any more. June and her brothers had played many games around them and had attached to them a hundred meanings. Now June looked down carelessly with abstracted eyes.

She stepped out of the shade. Had anyone been watching, he would have seen, in the instant the sun hit her, a gleam of future beauty. Just now June was only half formed. There was a lack of harmony about her; that soft, sliding, disturbing quality that is at once the despair of adolescents and their fascination. Her face was over-large for the skull behind it. The strong sweep of her jawbone met her ears as though surprised to come so suddenly upon these exquisite, small shells. Her eyes were yellow-brown; set deep with rough brows above them. Her forehead was too high. Only her nose, piercing through, so to speak, from behind the mask of her face, showed the same proportion as that dainty skull. It was straight, narrow, pure and of medium length. The nostrils were so thin that one could see the blood through, and they quivered with every emotion, giving her an angel look. Then too, softening the whole, were the rich, blond locks of her hair which fell wild upon temple, cheek and nape.

June kicked through the spiked grasses of the pasture and avoided the five cows with her eyes. She had never gotten over her fear of them and did not want to attract them with her regard. A few mushrooms which had sprouted in the morning dew now lay dying. Their rosy, pleated undersides were black. She reached the woods and started down the steep path to the bay. Occasionally her knees bent the wrong way from weakness and sent a sharp twinge along her leg. She had had the intention of bathing, but now she knew she would never have the strength to do so. She went on simply because it was downhill and had no idea of how she would ever get back up. The path wound around the trunks of trees like a cool, dark snake slipping downwards to drink in the marsh. Presently June could see the glitter of water through the branches and she came to a little dell at the bottom of the path where a spring burst out of the ground and ran away.

Someone was here already; a boy on a horse. He was a lad of eleven or so, with a dark mop of hair and his horse was drinking thirstily at the spring. June was startled. One might wander through these woods day after day and never meet a soul. Then she noticed that the boy had a bird on his wrist and, probably to protect himself from beak or claw, wore a leather gauntlet which reached up his forearm. The boy was regarding her, black-eyed, from a face which, even in repose, bore a mobile, nervous expression.

An unaccountable feeling of happiness came over June on seeing this child, like the pleasant recollection of a dream which one cannot really remember. She spoke first. “Do you live near here?” She neither smiled nor made any gesture of friendship, but the boy did not seem shy.

“Yes, over there.” He jerked his head in the direction of the beach. His voice was in that fluty stage which not all boys have. So far no trace of manhood marred its tone although it was touched by shrillness. June, listening, thought that it reminded her of something. Then she asked, surprised:

“You don’t live in the millionaire’s boathouse, do you?”

She was referring to a large brick building which had stood tenantless now for years, yawning over the water. Mrs. Grey had rented the land over ten years ago to a rich man called Walsh. No one knew why and perhaps there was no reason. At any rate Mrs. Grey had never given one to her son. Walsh had built a house on it for his mistresses and his speed boats, but no one seemed to know what had happened to him lately. Only a caretaker and his wife remained, and they kept to themselves and were ignorant of the intentions of their employer. A high wall around the property kept out intruders, or rather wild animals, since forests and reeds had grown up on three sides and on the other the salt water slid beneath the building, in and out.

The boy, who had not answered her question, now stated: “My name’s Ronny. What’s yours?”

“June.”

“You look rather funny,” he said.

June defended herself. “I’ve been sick. It’s the first time I’ve been out and I think I shouldn’t have, come so far.”

“I’m never sick,” said Ronny with a look of regret. Then suddenly his face changed as though a secret thought had opened like a rose inside his brain. “I sometimes have headaches,” he offered, looking down at her with that flirting glance which children sometimes give, a glance to which June could not respond. With a proud gesture he took the hood from his bird’s head. The falcon fluttered for a moment and then lifted himself straight upwards. They watched in silence as his dark wings cut the sky above the trees. “He’s a hunting hawk,” said Ronny.

“Is he hunting now?” asked June.

“Well, he doesn’t really hunt yet. I haven’t got as far as that with him, but he comes when I call him home at night.”

June started and looked up surprised. Ronny’s horse, long finished drinking, was tearing at the foliage which grew near the spring. Now and then he stamped his hoof impatiently. A big fly with a brilliant green head was bothering him, giving him long, vicious bites so that his flanks quivered.

“Do you know,” asked Ronny in his high, excited voice, “what happens when you put the leaves he is eating into the water?” With a kick he threw his bare leg over the horse’s back and slid to the ground. Grasping one of the weeds from beneath the animal’s nose, he pulled it up roots and all and plunged it into the water. He was like a magician performing a star trick and at once the leaves turned into precious silver, glittering as they bent beneath the water’s current. Ronny crouched there in triumph by the spring and his black hair fell across his eyes.

“It’s beautiful!” cried June, who had known about silver-weed all her life.

Ronny rose to his feet. “Where do you live?” he asked.

“In the house on top of the hill,” replied June. “But I don’t know how I’m ever going to get back there. My legs are so tired and weak.”

“Get on behind,” said Ronny at once. “Gambol will take you there.” He led the horse to a fallen tree and they both climbed up. “I usually spring onto his back in a single bound,” said Ronny, “but there’s no point if you must mount too.”

“None at all,” agreed June, holding on to the boy’s waist in order not to fall. She was overcome with lassitude and murmured directions as though in a dream. Once Ronny half turned around and asked:

“Do you think you could be called a damsel?”

“Certainly,” June answered with a smile. “A damsel in distress.”

Ronny was silent after that. He frowned in thought and swung his bare feet against the horse’s sides.

CHAPTER THREE

Ronny, the lovely child with his silky olive skin and tangle of hair, was a worry to his mother. Especially of late. The boarding school, to which he had been sent for the first time, did not suit his temperament. He failed in his classes, and his constant tension forced them to release him early. Even pretty, worldly Grace Villars realized that something must be done about her son. But Grace could not bear to give up her summer visits at fashionable resorts; indeed she could not afford to. So it was good luck when she came across Walsh at a party in New York that spring; Walsh who owned the boathouse on Mrs. Grey’s peninsula.

“Grace,” he said, “how nice to see you again after all these years, and looking as pretty as ever. How’s Roger?”

“Roger’s dead, Jim. Surely you must have heard,” said Grace Villars.

“Oh, yes, as a matter of fact I did read about it.” He put his rubbery face nearer hers so that she could look into his eyes below their heavy lids and asked: “How’s the boy?”

“It’s about time you asked,” said Grace, shaking her bright curls and blinking her lashes against the melancholy power of his eyes.

“Now Grace, you know I’ve always taken an interest in the boy, even though we don’t see each other,” protested Jim, who had never been sure whether or not Ronny was his own son. He looked again at his companion. How strange it always was after a lapse of years to rediscover an old love! Their coy ways and the meaning which they unconsciously gave to every gesture mixed oddly with their added signs of age and filled him with a cruel pleasure. That he himself had grown flabby and gout-ridden did not disturb Walsh. He had never been handsome, nor young in any real sense; only, after a while, rich.

Walsh had decided tastes in women, although they had evolved slightly. When he had first been in a position to choose, show girls had been his choice; blond, with adequate experience and without tiresome, dramatic ambitions. Later, perhaps because this type was becoming hard to find, Jim had preferred women on the fringe of society: elegant but slightly flashy, women in their thirties, women who knew how to dress and how to set off a man’s wealth without looking like a wife, women with thin, active legs, with long, tubular arms and bracelets on their wrists. He had never had a dark woman and he had never been in love.

A dozen years ago Grace, even if too young, had been a fairly good embodiment of his ideal. Married to a man whose money and career were slipping from his fingers, she had been looking around with those blue eyes of hers to find something different. By her husband Roger’s trembling hands, his mute mouth and desperate gaze she knew that he was finished. Sometimes he had looked as though he wanted to beg her understanding, as though some sign must pass between them for their eight years together, their common meals, the darkness of their bed. Then Grace would cry:

“Roger, don’t look like such an old bear! Take a drink! Do something! I must hurry and dress for dinner. I’m going out.”

Her liaison with Walsh had lasted a little over a year and it was Walsh who had tired first; Grace could have gone on forever in the atmosphere of wealth which he exuded. Never mind, she had her twin diamond brooches, an emerald and diamond bracelet, a superb fur coat and the beginnings of Ronny. About Ronny she had not been so sure, and had tried several times in a haphazard way to get rid of him. But he clove stubbornly to her side and, after nine months and three days, emerged as dark as a changeling and yellow with jaundice.

Grace today was no longer too young. Her hair was bleached and she covered her face with a bricklike powder, in imitation of the ash blond curls, the peachy glow that had once been hers. Those little birdlike ways were showing a hint of the peckish; the nerves were rubbing through. Yet such details were only to be seen on scrutiny. Grace could still show a stranger that blond, dolly femininity for which men are supposed to sigh. The brave candid blue eyes glittered as though to say: “We at least are fearless, two stones unworn by tears.”

Walsh looked into them now and smiled. “Well, he said, “what is it?” and moved his knee beneath the table.