The Golden Box

Chapter 1

One morning, towards the end of November, I was sitting by the fireplace in my shop, glancing through a back number of Vogue and thinking it might be a good idea to read a piece on the advantages of being an old maid, when a boy come in with a telegram.

Mother has pneumonia, it said. Not too worried but why don’t you come home for a change? Love, Peg.

Peg was my cousin Margaret Holly, now Mrs. Bill McCrea. Her mother was Aunt Sue. By home she meant my home town, Elm Hill, Illinois, which I’d left eight years ago when my parents were killed in an automobile accident. I’d never been back. Peg was always saying they’d come to Santa Maria one of these days, but it was a longish trip and Bill had only an annual couple of weeks’ holiday from the refinery, and they somehow never came.

It was all right for Peg to say she wasn’t worried. I knew she was. So twenty-six hours later, thanks to Patrick Abbott’s driving me a hundred-and-thirty-some miles through the mountains to catch a through train, I stood on the platform of one of the rear coaches of a streamliner slowing down for Elm Hill. Autumn this year had been exceptionally mild. The country hereabouts rolled gently and in the light of the fine afternoon was rich in color, some of it vivid, like the green in the fields of winter wheat; some delicate and unspeakably lovely, like the pink and mauve haze in the frequent patches of woodland, or the turquoise and hyacinth of the sky. It was exciting to peer ahead and see at last the old courthouse on the hill, the water-tower, and then familiar roofs under gracious leafless elms.

Just as we got in I had a brief glimpse of Fabian House. Now that Peg was Mrs. Bill McCrea she lived next door. I wondered how she liked being neighbors with Mrs. Claribel Fabian Lake.

The train stopped. I stepped down on to the red brick platform. The porter handed me my dressing case, grinned and touched his cap and swung back upon the steps of the car as the train immediately moved on. I was the only passenger on the train for Elm Hill and, except for an agent, who was already going into the station, I was now alone on the platform. No one at all had met the train. I wondered if Patrick had forgotten to wire.

My bags and Toby’s crate had been set down near the station itself. I’d started walking towards them when a gray coupé whipped in from the street across the cindered parking space, pulled up short, and a girl my size in greenish tweeds and a brown felt sports hat jumped out, and ran towards me.

Hi, kid! she shouted.

Hello. We were converging. How’s Aunt Sue?

Much better. Sulfapyridine. Gosh, you look swell!

You’re not half bad yourself, I said.

We stared right at each other and kept laughing, which is a good way to keep from crying, of course. But there was nothing sloppy. That was our Scotch. Or Scots, as one of our grandmothers, a MacGregor, always said it. Scotch, she said, was something one drank.

Peg and I were the same age. Twenty-six. I hoped I was as well preserved as she was. We were said to look alike, and we both do have the yellow Holly eyes with black brows and lashes, but Peg was extra lucky in getting tawny hair and a perky nose to go with them. Nothing lightens a girl’s path like a nose that invites a tweak, especially when it is backed by strong character, like my cousin Peg’s. My hair is black, my nose, alas, is quite conventional, and my character is definitely wavery.

Peg set my case at the back of the seat, slipped an arm in mine and started marching me hastily towards my luggage.

It’s Mrs. Lake, she said. I left her in a committee meeting. She’s apt to do murder while I’m away.

Is Mrs. Lake still running Elm Hill?

More than ever, now that she has Ernest Fabian back to yes-yes her. I remembered that Ernest Fabian was some sort of cousin to Mrs. Lake. The meeting’s at the church. I didn’t tell them where I was going, because if she’d known I would be away several minutes she’d do the dirt and adjourn before I got back. I’m the only one who stands up to her, see. Mrs. Lake is furious at the whole church just now. Our preacher is leaving next month and a nephew of Dr. Fearheiley’s wanted his place, but he was so sappy the congregation voted against him, so Mrs. Lake won’t rest now till she’s even, and I’ve got a hunch that she’s going to pounce down on the annual Christmas Party—which is part of the committee business this afternoon—because that way she can get it back at the whole church. Just sling your checks at the baggage window. I’ll grab your junk—gosh, what a beautiful cat!

Toby ignored it. He was ignoring everything. He sat in the cramping crate exactly as he would sit if alone on top of a universe. His dignity was colossal, but the tip of his tail quirked small quirks, which meant that his pride suffered. It would take time to forgive me for this journey in a crate.

We took the things to the car. Peg put the cases in the back and I set the crate behind the front seat.

You’re staying with us, of course. Mother isn’t to know you’ve come yet. Mary—she’s our maid—is simply thrilled about having Toby. We can’t keep a cat for some reason. She loaded up on liver.

I blinked. How did you know I’d bring Toby?

The wire said Miss Holly and Cat. Jean, who is Patrick Abbott?

Chapter 2

Peg spun the car about, but pulled up at once for the stop sign where you turned out of the station car-space into Main Street. A lovely ice-blue convertible had just stopped at a machine-shop straight ahead and across the street. The driver, a tall slim girl in a beige polo coat and wearing a dark beret over black flowing hair, got out, noticed Peg, waved, and then walked around the car towards the shop. A little woman with her, who wore a plain, dark coat and hat, got out on her side and followed the girl.

Peg turned and headed towards town. She said thoughtfully, What do you suppose they were doing at that place?

Who were they? I asked.

Claire Lake. And Annie.

I felt astonished. Was that Claire? She’s grown up stunning.

Oozes glamour, Peg said coolly. In a clammy sort of way.

I sensed Peg didn’t like her.

I’m ashamed not to have recognized Annie, I said. Good old Annie. She was a lot more fun than Emma when we used to go to Fabian House to play.

Poor Annie, Peg said.

I haven’t thought of a Lake or a Fabian or even little Annie since I left Elm Hill. There was Emma and the two little ones. Claire and—what was the name of the youngest?

Val, darling. You and I are getting on in life, chum. Valerie Lake is almost eighteen, and in love. With Tommy Ross. Remember Tommy? He’s flying over at Scott Field. Has a mustache. Mrs. Lake, of course, is fighting the match and Val spends most of her time in hysterics. Wacky kid, but she’s my favorite Lake.

How old is Claire?

Twenty.

Did Emma finally marry Ernest Fabian?

Peg passed a truck.

You are out of date, Jeanie. Emma eloped with Carl Green. Just when Mama almost had her and Ernest at the altar. That was seven years ago, anyhow. They’ve got four kids.

I did know about it. I forgot. I remember Carl. He was sweet.

He’s all right. Soft but harmless. But you can’t help feeling sorry for them, Jean. Carl teaches chemistry in the high school and would make enough to live on except that something’s always happening to the kids. The eldest got run over by a car last week, and I heard today that he may lose a leg. They want to send him to the Mayo Clinic and can’t afford it. Bitchy Mrs. Lake reminded Emma that if she had married Ernest Fabian things might have been nicer, meaning they’d’ve had money. From herself, of course. As it is, she never gives Emma a penny.

She was always nuts about Ernest Fabian, Peg.

She’s nuts about everything Fabian.

Peg turned into Church Street.

But isn’t Ernest closely related? I asked.

His father and Mrs. Lake were first cousins. Ernest is the very last Fabian, which makes him very choice, see? Mrs. Lake was going to endow him heavily when he married Emma. She blamed Emma entirely for the breakup. Ernest went away soon after that and, incidentally, nobody knows why, or where. They must have had a row of some kind. Years passed without Mrs. Lake so much as mentioning him, and then about six or seven weeks ago Ernest blew back in with a lot less hair and many brand new clothes, and Mrs. Lake let it be known that he’d been residing in San Francisco these seven long years, but now had returned from exile, permanently, to take over the management of her estate. Peg chuckled. She’s so vague about Ernest’s absence that Nora Landis says he’s been residing in a suburb of San Francisco called Alcatraz. Peg chuckled. Mike Landis—Nora Helm married Mike. You do remember that?—is Mrs. Lake’s lawyer, and he’s on pins and needles whenever Nora starts slamming Ernest Fabian; but Nora and I have loathed Ernest ever since, when we were nine or ten, we saw him deliberately drive the Lakes’ Pierce-Arrow over a cat. Peg took a sharp breath. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d known anyone was looking.

She slapped in at a curb and stopped. We had arrived at the church. I thought of Sunday clothes, cards with Bible scenes on them, and Christmas and Easter programs.

What does he look like now? I asked, as we got out, and hurried up the steps. There hadn’t been time to decide whether I should or shouldn’t go into the meeting, so I went.

Ernest Fabian? Peg asked, over a shoulder. Like an egg. All real Fabians look like eggs and are proud of it. She opened the door. We stepped into the vestibule. Peg said, The pigment ran out when they got to Ernest. He looks like a peeled egg, specially since getting bald. He’s already thirty-one.

She opened the door. We entered an unpeopled auditorium dimly lit by bracket-lamps behind the vacant pulpit. The air was close and stale. I smelled the smell which as a kid I had thought was what people meant by the expression the-odor-of-sanctity. It was only the scrubbed and perfumed Sunday smell of the congregation, however, and pretty stale by Thursday afternoon. We went on through a door at the back into a narrow hall between two rows of Sunday School classrooms.

A light gleamed through the transom of one door. Peg opened it and I stepped ahead of her into a green-painted room lit by a droplight with a glass shade hanging over a table on a slightly elevated platform. At the table sat a wide, round-shouldered woman of about sixty with a big solid-looking egg-shaped face on a short thrust-forward neck. She had a small tight mouth and high-arching black eyebrows above glassy pale-blue eyes with hooded lids. She was Claribel Fabian Lake.

The eyes fixed themselves on Peg as if for keeps.

Chapter 3

There was delay, which made Mrs. Lake fidget, while I shook hands with the Ways and Means Committee. Foxy two-faced Mrs. Mayrose. Amiable Mr. Healy, editor of the Elm Hill News. Angelic-looking Elizabeth Borden, a girl from New York who’d married John—now Doctor—Borden. And, of course, Ernest Fabian.

Only I didn’t shake hands with Ernest. I looked at him and felt surprised that he was bigger than I remembered, noted the crouching Fabian shoulders and the Fabian hooded eyes, with white brows and white lashes in his case, and then I thought I’d better speak to Mrs. Lake. I stepped upon the platform. She released me one of the small brief Fabian smiles, touched my hand, and said they must get on with the meeting, which was why I didn’t have to shake Ernest’s hand. I was glad of it. My own hand recoiled at the very thought.

We should have adjourned by now, Mrs. Lake said. Her gaze fastened angrily on Peg again. Sit down, Jean, she ordered me. I receded into a chair beside my cousin. There remains only one more piece of business, continued Mrs. Lake. I am going to recommend that we discontinue our annual Christmas party. There were a couple of gasps: from Peg McCrea and Elizabeth Borden. I consider the party a useless expense, said Mrs. Lake. These are grim times, and I am sure we can find a better use for that money than spending it on a tree and a lot of useless presents and candy. Having retrieved full mastery now, Mrs. Lake became impressively parliamentarian. Mr. Fabian, she said, will you make the motion—and Mrs. Mayrose, will you second it—to dispense with the Christmas party? Then we’ll adjourn.

Peg was the first on her feet.

Madam Chairman, she said very sweetly, I would like to remind the committee that the party is an old institution with our church. It seems to me that whether we have it or not should be decided by a vote of the entire congregation.

The chair didn’t give you permission to speak, Mrs. McCrea, said the chair, plainly holding its ample self in.

Peg smiled a gay nonchalant smile, which probably hit the chair like a padded brick.

I’m sorry. But the party means so much to all the children, Mrs. Lake. We must find a way to have it, even if we have greatly to reduce the expense.

My children love it, Mrs. Lake, Elizabeth Borden spoke up.

Mrs. Lake shifted the eyes to Elizabeth.

Your children can have a party at home, Mrs. Borden. And the poor of our church will be sent suitable baskets of necessities.

Peg stopped pretending. Potatoes and long underwear for Christmas! How dreadful! We should see that they have necessities anyhow, if we’re a church worth the name. The party is something quite different. It’s beautiful, it’s fun, and it’s the only escape from reality lots of our children have in the whole year. Mrs. Lake, we can’t do without our party.

Why should poor children escape reality? The sooner they face facts the better, stated Mrs. Lake.

But—

Margaret, proclaimed the chair, and it began to rise. Impressively. You are in one of your stubborn moods, but I am not going to sit here and listen to you argue. She had got entirely on to her feet. She picked up her bag and gloves from the table. Her mink coat hung over the chair beside Ernest. He took it, and rose. Mrs. Lake rested a hand on the table and her pale stare impaled the entire committee in a lump. We’ll discuss the Christmas party at our next meeting one week from today. Meanwhile bear this in mind—I don’t like seeing money wasted, and if you insist on having the party I shall stop my annual contribution of three thousand dollars.

There was utter silence for a moment. Ernest stepped up and helped her with her furs, then took her elbow while she stepped heavily from the platform.

That’s the meanest thing I ever heard of, Peg said then. Mrs. Lake didn’t reply. She was moving towards the door. Ernest Fabian walked after her. He had a peculiar sort of glide. His arms hung down limply from his stooping shoulders. His plump inanimate-looking white hands, their fingers crooked towards the palms, hung from their sleeves like little white bags.

At the door Mrs. Lake turned and faced the committee.

The meeting is adjourned. I’ll see you all here at the usual hour next Thursday.

Ernest Fabian opened the door for her, picked up his overcoat and Homburg hat from a chair near by, nodded curtly, and followed Mrs. Lake.

Oh, Peggy, how could you? cried Mrs. Mayrose. Listen, you must call her the minute you get home, and apologize.

Like fish I will! Peg retorted.

But three thousand dollars! And she’s the only really rich member we’ve got!

Oh, what of it? Peggy cried. She’s gloomed over this church long enough.

"But how will you ever collect three thousand dollars? And we have to have it. It pays the minister’s salary and for the coal

Here for long, Jean? Editor Healy was asking me. He took out a little pad. What’s the name of that place where you live now?

Santa Maria, New Mexico, I said. He wrote it down.

Three thousand dollars, Mrs. Mayrose was moaning.

Three thousand hells, said Peg.

Peggy! gasped Mrs. Mayrose.

Honestly, Peggy, Mr. Healy said, coming to the car after we’d left the others and were about to start home, we do need that money pretty badly. She always gives it just before Christmas, and by that time we’re up to our necks in IOU’s.

Oh, I’m going to give in, Peg said, but not right off the bat, Mr. Healy. Don’t worry. She won’t stop her contribution, Mr. Healy, because she has such a lot of fun heckling us. Because of it, see? But it’s time we put a foot down, even though it’s not permanent. Mr. Healy chuckled. We said good night and drove away. What a female! It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t murdered her long ago, Jean. Honestly, you’d think she’d be satisfied enough to let other people alone, now that she’s got Ernest Fabian back and everything fixed up for him and Claire.

Claire?

Ernest is marrying Claire, Peg said.

Chapter 4

As we turned in under the McCreas’ tall arching elms I caught a glimpse ahead of the double row of cedars which bordered the drive into Fabian House. In the pink and blue dusk they looked quite dramatic.

The two houses occupied what would be perhaps a city block. They faced east. The McCrea house was a venerable brick colonial, not too large, painted white, with green shutters at wide windows and tall fluted columns in front. It was south of the street, and closer to it than Fabian House. Various other houses in town had names, incidentally, but Fabian House was the only one called by it, probably because Mrs. Lake always referred to it by its title. The McCrea drive went in straight from the street past one end of the front porch and the north side of the house to garages at the back. Peg stopped beside the porch. I got out and lifted out the crate. Peg took my dressing case, and, leaving the suitcases for Bill to bring in later, we went in by the front door and straight through the wide main hall into the back hall, then on into the kitchen, to hand over Toby to the cook.

Mary Raymond was a slim coffee-colored woman in a blue uniform with a white kerchief round her head. In Elm Hill, if you could get one of the Raymonds as a maid you were among the blessed. Mary beamed at me and gushed over Toby.

I got a nice basket for him on our screened-in back porch, she said. And lots of liver.

I don’t often give Toby liver. When he has it he won’t eat anything else, and when liver-stuffed he’s so snooty you can’t stay in the same house with him. Of course, I didn’t say so now. Besides, Toby wouldn’t leave the crate. He was so outraged that he wouldn’t take even freedom if he had to have it from me. When I finally pulled him out forcibly he set his teeth in my hand, not too deep but deep enough, then he started stalking about the kitchen. He wouldn’t even look at me or anyone, just pranced around with his handsome tail up, jerking indignant jerks.

Keep an eye on him, Mary, Peg said.

Yes-s, ma’am! Mary said, emphatically.

Peg put me in the yellow room. This was the northeast room on the second floor. It was connected with another guest room by a yellow-tiled bath. I took a shower and put on a clean sweater and the same suit and went down to the living room. Peg had a tea-tray on a coffee table in front of one of the two sofas facing each other across the fireplace. On another table was a tray with bottles of whiskey and gin and a siphon of soda.

Want tea and then a highball when Bill comes, or only highballs? Peg asked. She didn’t drink.

Tea, I said. I glanced around the beautiful room—which occupied the whole south side of the house on the ground floor—with its mahogany and pale chintz, its green satin-striped wallpaper, books, magazines, ruffled curtains, and an ebony piano. It smelled sweet and clean. There was a fire laid, but not lighted.

My, this is lovely, Peggy.

Peg handed my tea. Nothing like being kept, kid.

I had a moment of weakness.

I’ve been wondering.

Patrick Abbott?

I lit a cigarette and tossed away the match.

Peg said, What does he do?

I slid her a look to see how she’d take it and said, Detective.

She blossomed! Gosh! That’s wonderful. But how come you’ve got detectives in an artist colony?

He wants to be an artist, I admitted, before I thought. I hurried to explain. But that’s only a hobby. He was doing it for a vacation. I’d hate to think he took it too seriously, I mean. As if anyone could take it more seriously than Patrick did, but I wasn’t saying so to anybody. I mean, that would look like bad judgment, Peg. Sooner or later, have you ever noticed, you get so you don’t trust people who have bad judgment. Pat’s a darn good detective, and sometimes I think it looks queer that he’s not satisfied with that, but also wants to be an artist. I thought of something. Speaking of bad judgment, he said that was what I had for bringing Toby. That’s really why I brought him. And that’s why he mentioned Toby in the telegram, of course. Thought he was funny, I suppose.

There’s always something, Peg said. What’s he look like?

Oh, he’s grand. Lean, lanky, western-looking. Tanned. Makes his eyes look very blue. Dark hair and eyebrows. Little lines around his eyes from the sun and very good hands.

You’re in love with him.

I am not. He’s just a pleasant change from real artists. I could feel my neck getting pink and said quickly, to cover up, Tell me more about Ernest Fabian.

What a comedown! Peg said. She reached for the silver teapot and filled our cups. "There’s nothing to tell, either. He vanished. He returned. You remember how Mrs. Lake always had him here all she could, summers and vacations and all? She sent him to college, of course. Yale. He took premed, I think, or maybe it was law. Anyhow it lasted for years, but finally he was pronounced graduated and Mrs. Lake bore down on New Haven with