Easter Sunday breakfast is an orgy of eggs and pancakes, and bacon curling about everything. I crept up on Mary and patted her silk-covered fanny and said, “Kyrie eleison!”

“Oh!” she said. “I didn’t hear you coming.” She regarded my dressing gown, paisley pattern. “Nice,” she said. “You don’t wear it enough.”

“I haven’t time. I haven’t had time.”

“Well, it’s nice,” she said.

“Ought to be. You picked it. Are the kids sleeping through these wonderful smells?”

“Oh, no. They’re out back, hiding eggs. I wonder what Mr. Baker wants.”

The quick jump never fails to startle me. “Mr. Baker, Mr. Baker. Oh! He probably wants to help me start my fortune.”

“Did you tell him? About the cards?”

“Course not, darling. But maybe he guessed.” Then I said seriously, “Look, cheesecake, you do think I have a great business brain, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” She had a pancake up for turning, and it stayed up.

“Mr. Baker thinks I should invest your brother’s legacy.”

“Well, if Mr. Baker—”

“Now wait. I don’t want to do it. That’s your money and your safety.”

“Doesn’t Mr. Baker know more about that than you do, dear?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is my father thought he knew. That’s why I’m working for Marullo.”

“Still, I think Mr. Baker—”

“Will you be guided by me, sweetheart?”

“Well, of course—”

“In everything?”

“Are you being silly?”

“I’m dead serious—dead!”

“I believe you are. But you can’t go around doubting Mr. Baker. Why, he’s—he’s—”

“He’s Mr. Baker. We’ll listen to what he has to say and then—I still will want that money right in the bank where it is.”

Allen shot through the back door as though fired by a sling-shot. “Marullo,” he said. “Mr. Marullo’s outside. He wants to see you.”

“Now what?” Mary demanded.

“Well, ask him in.”

“I did. He wants to see you outside.”

“Ethan, what is it? You can’t go out in your robe. It’s Easter Sunday.”

“Allen,” I said, “you tell Mr. Marullo I’m not dressed. Tell him he can come back later. But if he’s in a hurry, he can come in the front door if he wants to see me alone.” He dashed.

“I don’t know what he wants. Maybe the store’s been robbed.”

Allen shot back. “He’s going around front.”

“Now, dear, don’t you let him spoil your breakfast, you hear me?”

I went through the house and opened the front door. Marullo was on the porch, dressed in his best for Easter mass, and his best was black broadcloth and big gold watch chain. He held his black hat in his hand and he smiled at me nervously like a dog out of bounds.

“Come in.”

“No,” he said. “I just got one word to say. I heard how that fella offered you a kickback.”

“Yes?”

“I heard how you threw him out.”

“Who told you?”

“I can’t tell.” He smiled again.

“Well, what about it? You trying to say I should have taken it?”

He stepped forward and shook my hand, pumped it up and down twice very formally. “You’re a good fella,” he said.

“Maybe he didn’t offer enough.”

“You kidding? You’re a good fella. That’s all. You’re a good fella.” He reached in his bulging side pocket and brought out a bag. “You take this.” He patted my shoulder and then in a welter of embarrassment turned and fled; his short legs pumped him away and his fat neck flamed where it bulged over his stiff white collar.

“What was it?”

I looked in the bag—colored candy Easter eggs. We had a big square glass jar of them at the store. “He brought a present for the kids,” I said.

“Marullo? Brought a present. I can’t believe it.”

“Well, he did.”

“Why? He never did anything like that.”

“I guess he just plain loves me.”

“Is there something I don’t know?”

“Duck blossom, there are eight million things none of us know.” The children were staring in from the open back door. I held out the bag to them. “A present from an admirer. Don’t get into them until after breakfast.”

“Marullo? I’ll have to admit, darling, I wish I knew what it was all about too.”

“But a bag of cheap candy—”

“Do you suppose it might be a grave simplicity?”

“I don’t understand.”

“His wife is dead. He has neither chick nor child. He’s getting old. Maybe—well, maybe he’s lonely.”

“He never has been here before. While he’s lonesome, you should ask him for a raise. He doesn’t drop in on Mr. Baker. It makes me nervous.”

I gauded myself like the flowers of the field, decent dark suit, my burying black, shirt and collar so starchly white they threw the sun’s light back in the sun’s face, cerulean tie with cautious polka dots.

Was Mrs. Margie Young-Hunt whomping up ancestral storms? Where did Marullo get his information? It could only be Mr. Bugger to Mrs. Young-Hunt to Mr. Marullo. I do not trust thee Margie Young, the reason why I cannot tongue. But this I know and know right spung, I do not trust thee Mrs. Young. And with that singing in my head I delved in the garden for a white flower for my Easter buttonhole. In the angle made by the foundation and the sloping cellar door there is a protected place, the earth warmed by the furnace and exposed to every scrap of winter sunlight. There white violets grow, brought from the cemetery where they grow wild over the graves of my ancestors. I picked three tiny lion-faced blossoms for my buttonhole and gathered a round dozen for my darling, set their own pale leaves about them for a nosegay, and bound them tight with a bit of aluminum foil from the kitchen.

“Why, they’re lovely,” Mary said. “Wait till I get a pin, I’ll wear them.”

“They’re the first—the very first, my creamy fowl. I am your slave. Christ is risen. All’s right with the world.”

“Please don’t be silly about sacred things, dear.”

“What in the world have you done with your hair?”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it. Always wear it that way.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d like it. Margie said you’d never notice. Wait till I tell her you did.” She set a bowl of flowers on her head, the yearly vernal offering to Eostre. “Like it?”

“I love it.”

Now the young got their inspection, ears, nostrils, shoe-shines, every detail, and they resisted every moment of it. Allen’s hair was so plastered that he could hardly blink. The heels of his shoes were unpolished but with infinite care he had trained a line of hair to roll on his crested brow like a summer wave.

Ellen was girl of a girlness. All in sight was in order. I tried my luck again. “Ellen,” I said, “you’re doing something different with your hair. It becomes you. Mary, darling, don’t you like it?”

“Oh! She’s beginning to take pride,” Mary said.

We formed a procession down our path to Elm Street, then left to Porlock, where our church is, our old white-steepled church, stolen intact from Christopher Wren. And we were part of a growing stream, and every woman in passing had delight of other women’s hats.

“I have designed an Easter hat,” I said. “A simple, off-the-face crown of thorns in gold with real ruby droplets on the forehead.”

“Ethan!” said Mary sternly. “Suppose someone should hear you.”

“No, I guess it couldn’t be popular.”

“I think you’re horrid,” Mary said, and so did I, worse than horrid. But I did wonder how Mr. Baker would respond to comment on his hair.

Our family rivulet joined other streams and passed stately greetings and the stream was a river pouring into St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, a medium-high church, maybe a little higher than center.

When the time comes that I must impart the mysteries of life to my son, which I have no doubt he knows, I must remember to inform him about hair. Armed with a kindly word for hair, he will go as far as his concupiscent little heart desires. I must warn him, however. He may kick, beat, drop, tousle, or bump them, but he must never—never—mess their hair. With this knowledge he can be king.

The Bakers were just ahead of us going up the steps, and we passed decorous greetings. “I believe we’re seeing you at tea.”

“Yes, indeed. A very happy Easter to you.”

“Can that be Allen? How he’s grown. And Mary Ellen. Well, I can’t keep track—they shoot up so.”

There’s something very dear about a church you grew in. I know every secret corner, secret odor of St. Thomas’s. In that font I was christened, at that rail confirmed, in that pew Hawleys have sat for God knows how long, and that is no figure of speech. I must have been deeply printed with the sacredness because I remember every desecration, and there were plenty of them. I think I can go to every place where my initials are scratched with a nail. When Danny Taylor and I punched the letters of a singularly dirty word with a pin in the Book of Common Prayer, Mr. Wheeler caught us and we were punished, but they had to go through all the prayerbooks and the hymnals to make sure there weren’t more.

Once, in that chair stall under the lectern, a dreadful thing happened. I wore the lace and carried the cross and sang a beefy soprano. Once the bishop was officiating, a nice old man, hairless as a boiled onion, but to me glowing with rays of holiness. So it was that, stunned with inspiration, I set the cross in its socket at the end of processional and forgot to throw the brass latch that held it in. At the reading of the second lesson I saw with horror the heavy brass cross sway and crash on that holy hairless head. The bishop went down like a pole-axed cow and I lost the lace to a boy who couldn’t sing as well, a boy named Skunkfoot Hill. He’s an anthropologist now, somewhere in the West. The incident seemed to prove to me that intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There’s luck or fate or something else that takes over accidents.

We sat the service through and heard the news announced that Christ was risen indeed. It ran shivers up my spine as always. I took communion with a good heart. Allen and Mary Ellen weren’t yet confirmed and they got pretty restless and had to be given the iron eye to stop their jittering. When Mary’s eyes are hostile, they can pierce even the armor plate of adolescence.

Then in the drenching sunshine we shook hands and greeted and shook hands and wished the season’s best to the communityof our neighbors. All those we had spoken to coming in, we regreeted going out—a continuation of the litany, of a continuous litany in the form of decorous good manners, a quiet supplication to be noticed and to be respected.

“Good morning. And how are you this fine day?”

“Very well, thank you. How is your mother?”

“She’s getting old—getting old—the aches and daggers of getting old. I’ll tell her you asked for her.”

The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it? Ahead of our small parade in the sun went Mr. Baker, avoiding stepping on cracks; his mother, dead these twenty years, was safe from a broken back. And Mrs. Baker, Amelia, tripping along beside him, trying to match his uneven stride with her fluttering feet, a small, bright-eyed bird of a woman, but a seed-eating bird.

Allen, my son, walked beside his sister, but each of them tried to give the impression that they were total strangers. I think she despises him and he detests her. This may last all their lives while they learn to conceal it in a rose cloud of loving words. Give them their lunches, my sister, my wife—their hard-boiled eggs and pickles, their jelly-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, their red barrel-smelling apples, and turn them free in the world to spawn.

And that’s just what she did. They walked away, carrying their paper bags, each one to a separate private world.

“Did you enjoy the service, my darling?”

“Oh, yes! I always do. But you—sometimes I wonder if you believe—no, I mean it. Well, your jokes—sometimes—”

“Pull up your chair, my dimpsy darling.”

“I have to get lunch on.”

“Bugger lunch.”

“That’s what I mean. Your jokes.”

“Lunch is not sacred. If it were warmer, I could carry you to a rowboat and we would go out past the breakwater and fish for porgies.”

“We’re going to the Bakers’. Do you know whether you believe in the church or not, Ethan? Why do you call me silly names? You hardly ever use my name.”

“To avoid being repetitious and tiresome, but in my heart your name rings like a bell. Do I believe? What a question! Do I lift out each shining phrase from the Nicene creed, loaded like a shotgun shell, and inspect it? No. It isn’t necessary. It’s a singular thing, Mary. If my mind and soul and body were as dry of faith as a navy bean, the words, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,’ would still make my stomach turn over and put a flutter in my chest and light a fire in my brain.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Good girl. Neither do I. Let’s say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?”

“You say such dreadful things, even to the children.”

“And they to me. Ellen, only last night, asked, ‘Daddy, when will we be rich?’ But I did not say to her what I know: ‘We will be rich soon, and you who handle poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.’ And that is true. In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”

“You talk this way about your own children. What must you say of me?”

“I say you are a blessing, a dearling, the brightness in a foggy life.”

“You sound drunk—anyway intoxicated.”

“I am.”

“You aren’t. I could smell it.”

“You are smelling it, sweetheart.”

“What’s come over you?”

“Ah! you do know, don’t you? A change—a bloody big storm of a change. You are only feeling the outmost waves.”

“You worry me, Ethan. You really do. You’re wild.”

“Do you remember my decorations?”

“Your medals—from the war?”

“They were awarded for wildness—for wilderness. No man on earth ever had less murder in his heart than I. But they made another box and crammed me in it. The times, the moment, demanded that I slaughter human beings and I did.”

“That was wartime and for your country.”

“It’s always some kind of time. So far I have avoided my own time. I was a goddam good soldier, potkin—clever and quick and merciless, an effective unit for wartime. Maybe I could be an equally efficient unit in this time.”

“You’re trying to tell me something.”

“Sadly enough, I am. And it sounds in my ears like an apology. I hope it is not.”

“I’m going to set out lunch.”

“Not hungry after that nor’easter of a breakfast.”

“Well, you can nibble something. Did you see Mrs. Baker’s hat? She must have got it in New York.”

“What has she done with her hair?”

“You noticed that? It’s almost strawberry.”

“ ‘To be a light to lighten the gentiles, and to be the glory of thy peo-ple Israel.’ ”

“Why would Margie want to go to Montauk this time of year?”

“She loves the early morning.”

“She’s not an early riser. I joke with her about that. And don’t you think it was queer, Marullo bringing candy eggs?”

“Do you connect the two events? Margie gets up early and Marullo brings eggs.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not. For once I’m not. If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell?”

“It’s a joke!”

“No.”

“Well, I promise.”

“I think Marullo is going to make a trip to Italy.”

“How do you know? Did he tell you?”

“Not exactly. I put things together. I put things together.”

“But that’ll leave you alone in the store. You’ll have to get someone to help you.”

“I can handle it.”

“You do practically everything now. You’ll have to get someone in to help.”

“Remember—it isn’t sure and it’s a secret.”

“Oh, I never forget a promise.”

“But you’ll hint.”

“Ethan, I will not.”

“Do you know what you are? A dear little baby rabbit with flowers on your head.”

“You help yourself in the kitchen. I’m going to freshen up.”

When she was gone, I sprawled out in my chair and I heard in my secret ears, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant de-part in pee-ace, according to Thy word.” And darned if I didn’t go to sleep. Dropped off a cliff into the dark, right there in the living room. I don’t do that often. And because I had been thinking of Danny Taylor, I dreamed of Danny Taylor. We were not small or great but grown, and we were at the flat dry lake-bottom with the old house foundations and cellar hole. And it was early summer, for I remarked the fatness of the leaves and the grass so heavy that it bent of its weight, the kind of day that makes you feel fat and crazy too. Danny went behind a young juniper straight and slender as a column. I heard his voice, distorted and thick like words spoken under water. Then I was with him and he was melting and running down over his frame. With my palms I tried to smooth him upward, back in place, the way you try to smooth wet cement when it runs out of the form, but I couldn’t. His essence ran between my fingers. They say a dream is a moment. This one went on and on and the more I tried, the more he melted.

When Mary awakened me I was panting with effort.

“Spring fever,” she said. “That’s the first sign. When I was a growing girl, I slept so much my mother sent for Doctor Grady. She thought I had sleeping sickness, but I was only growing in the spring.”

“I had a daymare. I wouldn’t wish a dream like that on anyone.”

“It’s all the confusion. Go up and comb your hair and wash your face. You look tired, dear. Are you all right? It’s nearly time to go. You slept two hours. You must have needed it. I wish I knew what’s on Mr. Baker’s mind.”

“You will, darling. And promise me you will listen to every word.”

“But he might want a word alone with you. Businessmen don’t like ladies listening.”

“Well, he can’t have it that way. I want you there.”

“You know I have no experience in business.”

“I know—but it’s your money he’ll be talking about.”

“Good afternoon,” Mrs. Baker said. “So glad you could come. You’ve neglected us, Mary. Hasn’t it been a glorious day? Did you enjoy the service? For a clergyman I think he’s such an interesting man.”

“We don’t see you nearly often enough,” Mr. Baker said. “I remember your grandfather sitting in that very chair and reporting that the dirty Spaniards had sunk the Maine. He spilled his tea, only it wasn’t tea. Old Cap’n Hawley used to lace his rum with a little tea. He was a truculent man, some thought a quarrelsome man.”

I could see that Mary was first shaken and then pleased at this warmth. Of course she didn’t know I had promoted her to be an heiress. A reputation for money is almost as negotiable as money itself.

Mrs. Baker, her head jerking with some nervous disorder, poured tea into cups as thin and fragile as magnolia petals, and her pouring hand was the only steady part of her.

Mr. Baker stirred with a thoughtful spoon. “I don’t know whether I love tea or the ceremony of it,” he said. “I like all ceremonies—even the silly ones.”

“I think I understand,” I said. “This morning I felt comfortable in the service because it had no surprises. I knew the words before they were said.”

“During the war, Ethan—listen to this, ladies, and see if you can remember anything like it—during the war I served as a consultant to the Secretary of War. I spent some time in Washington.”

“I hated it,” said Mrs. Baker.

“Well, there was a big military tea, a real doozer, maybe five hundred guests. The ranking lady was the wife of a five-star general and next in importance was the lady of a lieutenant general. Mrs. Secretary, the hostess, asked the five-star lady to pour the tea and Mrs. Three-Stars to pour coffee. Well, the top lady refused because, and I quote her, ‘Everyone knows coffee outranks tea.’ Now, did you ever hear that?” He chuckled. “As it turned out, whisky outranked everybody.”

“It was such a restless place,” Mrs. Baker said. “People moved before they had time to gather a set of habits, or manners.”

Mary told her story of an Irish tea in Boston with the water boiling in round tubs over an open fire and served with tin ladles. “And they don’t steep. They boil,” she said. “That tea will unsettle varnish on a table.”

There must be ritual preliminaries to a serious discussion or action, and the sharper the matter is, the longer and lighter must the singing be. Each person must add a bit of feather or a colored patch. If Mary and Mrs. Baker were not to be a part of the serious matter, they would long since have set up their own pattern of exchange. Mr. Baker had poured wine on the earth of conversation and so had my Mary, and she was pleased and excited by their attentiveness. It remained for Mrs. Baker and for me to contribute and I felt it only decent to be last.

She took her turn and drew her source from the teapot as the others had. “I remember when there were dozens of kinds of tea,” she offered brightly. “Why, everyone had recipes for nearly everything. I guess there wasn’t a weed or a leaf or a flower that wasn’t made into some kind of tea. Now there are only two, India and China, and not much China. Remember tansy and camomile and orange-leaf and flower—and—and cambric?”

“What’s cambric?” Mary asked.

“Equal parts hot water and hot milk. Children love it. It doesn’t taste like milk and water.” That accounted for Mrs. Baker.

It was my turn, and I intended to make a few carefully meaningless remarks about the Boston Tea Party, but you can’t always do what you intended. Surprises slip out, not waiting for permission.

“I went to sleep after service,” I heard me say. “I dreamed of Danny Taylor, a dreadful dream. You remember Danny.”

“Poor chap,” said Mr. Baker.

“Once we were closer than brothers. I had no brother. I guess we were brothers in a way. I don’t carry it out, of course, but I feel I should be my brother Danny’s keeper.”

Mary was annoyed with me for breaking the pattern of the conversation. She took a small revenge. “Ethan gives him money. I don’t think it’s right. He just uses it to get drunk.”

“Wellll!” said Mr. Baker.

“I wonder—anyway the dream was a noonmare. I give him so little—a dollar now and then. What else can he do with a dollar but get drunk? Maybe with a decent amount he could get well.”

“No one would dare do that,” Mary cried. “That would be after killing him. Isn’t that so, Mr. Baker?”

“Poor chap,” Mr. Baker said. “A fine family the Taylors were. It makes me sick to see him this way. But Mary’s right. He’d probably drink himself to death.”

“He is anyway. But he’s safe from me. I don’t have a decent amount to give him.”

“It’s the principle,” Mr. Baker said.

Mrs. Baker contributed a feminine savagery: “He should be in an institution where they could look after him.”

All three were annoyed with me. I should have stayed with the Boston Tea Party.

Strange how the mind goes romping, playing blindman’s buff or pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey when it should be using every observation to find a path through the minefield of secret plans and submerged obstacles. I understood the house of Baker and the house of Hawley, the dark walls and curtains, the funereal rubber plants unacquainted with sun; the portraits and prints and remembrances of other times in pottery and scrimshaw, in fabrics and wood which bolt it to reality and to permanence. Chairs change with style and comfort but chests and tables, bookcases and desks, relate to a solid past. Hawley was more than a family. It was a house. And that was why poor Danny held onto Taylor Meadow. Without it, no family—and soon not even a name. By tone and inflection and desire, the three sitting there had canceled him. It may be that some men require a house and a history to reassure themselves that they exist—it’s a slim enough connection, at most. In the store I was a failure and a clerk, in my house I was Hawley, so I too must be unsure. Baker could offer a hand to Hawley. Without my house, I too would have been canceled. It was not man to man but house to house. I resented the removal from real of Danny Taylor, but I couldn’t stop it. And this thought sharpened and tempered me. Baker was going to try to refurbish Hawley for Baker’s participation in Mary’s fancied inheritance. Now I was on the edge of the minefield. My heart hardened against my selfless benefactor. I felt it harden and grow wary and dangerous. And with its direction came the feeling of combat, and the laws of controlled savagery, and the first law is: Let even your defense have the appearance of attack.

I said, “Mr. Baker, we don’t need to go over the background. You know better than I do the slow, precise way in which my father lost the Hawley substance. I was away at war. How did it happen?”

“It wasn’t his intention, but his judgment—”

“I know he was unworldly—but how did it happen?”

“Well, it was a time of wild investment. He invested wildly.”

“Did he have any advice?”

“He put money in munitions that were already obsolete. Then when the contracts were canceled, he lost.”

“You were in Washington. Did you know about the contracts?”

“Only in a general way.”

“But enough so you didn’t invest.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you advise my father about investments?”

“I was in Washington.”

“But you knew he had borrowed the money on the Hawley property, the money to invest?”

“Yes, I knew that.”

“Did you advise against it?”

“I was in Washington.”

“But your bank foreclosed.”

“A bank doesn’t have any choice, Ethan. You know that.”

“Yes, I know. Only it’s a shame you couldn’t have advised him.”

“You shouldn’t blame him, Ethan.”

“Now that I understand it, I don’t. I didn’t mean to blame him, but I never quite knew what happened.”

I think Mr. Baker had prepared an opening. Having lost his chance, he had to grope about for his next move. He coughed, blew his nose and wiped it with a paper handkerchief from a flat pocket package, wiped his eyes with a second sheet, polished his glasses with a third. Everyone has his own method for gaining time. I’ve known a man to take five minutes to fill and light a pipe.

When he was ready again, I said, “I know I have no right in myself to ask you for help. But you yourself brought up the long partnership of our families.”

“Good people,” he said. “And usually men of excellent judgment, conservative—”

“But not blindly so, sir. I believe that once they decided on a course they drove through.”

“That they did.”

“Even if it came to sinking an enemy—or burning a ship?”

“They were commissioned, of course.”

“In 1801, I believe, sir, they were questioned about what constituted an enemy.”

“There’s always some readjustment after a war.”

“Surely. But I’m not taking up old scores for talk. Frankly, Mr. Baker, I want to—to rehabilitate my fortunes.”

“That’s the spirit, Ethan. For a time I thought you’d lost the old Hawley touch.”

“I had; or maybe I’d not developed it. You’ve offered help. Where do I start?”

“The trouble is, you need capital to start.”

“I know that. But if I had some capital, where would I start?”

“This must be tiresome for the ladies,” he said. “Maybe we should go into the library. Business is dull to ladies.”

Mrs. Baker stood up. “I was just about to ask Mary to help me select some wallpaper for the big bedroom. The samples are upstairs, Mary.”

“I’d like Mary to hear—”

But she went along with them, as I knew she would. “I don’t know a thing about business,” she said. “But I do know about wallpaper.”

“But you’re concerned, darling.”

“I just get mixed up, Ethan. You know I do.”

“Maybe I’ll get more mixed up without you, darling.”

Mr. Baker had probably suggested the wallpaper bit. I think his wife does not choose the paper. Surely no woman picked the dark and geometric paper in the room where we sat.

“Now,” he said when they were gone, “your problem is capital, Ethan. Your house is clear. You can mortgage it.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Well, I can respect that, but it’s the only collateral you have. There is also Mary’s money. It’s not much, but with some money you can get more money.”

“I don’t want to touch her money. That’s her safety.”

“It’s in a joint account and it’s not earning anything.”

“Let’s say I overcame my scruples. What have you in mind?”

“Have you any idea what her mother’s worth?”

“No—but it seems substantial.”

He cleaned his glasses with great care. “What I say is bound to be in confidence.”

“Of course.”

“Fortunately I know you are not a talker. No Hawley ever was, except perhaps your father. Now, I know as a businessman that New Baytown is going to grow. It has everything to make it grow—a harbor, beaches, inland waters. Once it starts, nothing can stop it. A good businessman owes it to his town to help it develop.”

“And take a profit.”

“Naturally.”

“Why hasn’t it developed?”

“I think you know that—the mossbacks on the council. They’re living in the past. They hold back progress.”

It always interested me to hear how philanthropic the taking of a profit can be. Stripped of its forward-looking, good-of-the-community clothing, Mr. Baker’s place was just what it had to be. He and a few others, a very few, would support the town’s present administrations until they had bought or controlled all the future facilities. Then they would turn the council and the Town Manager out and let progress reign, and only then would it be discovered that they owned every avenue through which it could come. From pure sentiment, he was willing to cut me in for a small share. I don’t know whether or not he had intended to let me know the timetable, or whether his enthusiasm got the better of him, but it did come through the generalities. The town election is July seventh. By that time, the forward-looking group must have the wheels of progress under control.

I don’t suppose there is a man in the world who doesn’t love to give advice. As I maintained a small reluctance, my teacher grew more vehement and more specific.

“I’ll have to think about it, sir,” I said. “What’s easy for you is a mystery to me. And of course I’ll have to discuss it with Mary.”

“Now that’s where I think you’re wrong,” he said. “There’s too much petticoat in business today.”

“But it’s her inheritance.”

“Best thing you can do for her is make her some money for a surprise. They like it better that way.”

“I hope I don’t sound ungrateful, Mr. Baker. I think slowly. I’ll just have to mull it over. Did you hear Marullo is going to Italy?”

His eyes sharpened. “For good?”

“No, just a visit.”

“Well, I hope he makes some arrangement to protect you in case something happened to him. He’s not a young man. Has he made a will?”

“I don’t know.”

“If a bunch of his wop relations moved in, you might find yourself out of a job.”

I retired into a protective vagueness. “You’ve given me a lot to chew on,” I said. “But I wonder if you can give me some little idea of when you will start.”

“I can tell you this: Development is pretty much dependent on transportation.”

“Well, the big thruways are moving out.”

“Still a long way to come. The kind of men with the kind of money we want to attract will want to come by air.”

“And we have no airport?”

“That’s right.”

“Furthermore, we have no place for an airport without pushing hills around.”

“An expensive operation. The cost of labor would be prohibitive.”

“Then what is your plan?”

“Ethan, you’ll have to trust me and forgive me. I can’t tell you that at this time. But I do promise that if you can raise some capital, I’ll see that you get in on the ground floor. And I can tell you that there is a very definite situation, but it has to be solved.”

“Well, I guess that’s better than I deserve.”

“The old families must stick together.”

“Is Marullo part of the group?”

“Certainly not. He goes his own way with his own crowd.”

“They do pretty well, don’t they?”

“Better than I think is healthy. I don’t like to see these foreigners creeping in.”

“And July seventh is the sound-off.”

“Did I say that?”

“No, I guess I just imagined it.”

“You must have.”

And with that Mary came back from the wallpaper. We did our courteous duties and walked slowly toward home.

“They just couldn’t have been nicer. What did he say?”

“Same old thing. I should use your money to get a start, and I won’t do it.”

“I know you’re thinking of me, dear. But I say if you don’t take his advice you’re a fool.”

“I don’t like it, Mary. Suppose he’s wrong. You’d be without protection.”

“I tell you this, Ethan, if you don’t do it, I’ll take the money and hand it over to him. I promise you I will.”

“Let me think about it. I don’t want to involve you in business.”

“You don’t have to. That money’s in a joint account. You know what the fortune said.”

“Oh, Lord—the fortune again.”

“Well, I believe it.”

“If I lost your money, you’d hate me.”

“I wouldn’t. You are my fortune! That’s what Margie said.”

“What Margie said, is in my head, in letters red, until I’m dead.”

“Don’t make a joke.”

“Maybe I’m not. Don’t let fortune spoil the sweetness of our failure.”

“I don’t see how a little money could spoil anything. Not a lot of money—just enough.” I didn’t answer. “Well—do you?”

I said, “O prince’s daughter, there is no such thing as just enough money. Only two measures: No Money and Not Enough Money.”

“Why, that’s not true.”

“That is true. Remember the Texas billionaire who died recently?He lived in a hotel room and out of a suitcase. He left no will, no heirs, but he didn’t have enough money. The more you have, the less enough it is.”

She said sarcastically, “I suppose you find it sinful for me to want new living-room curtains and a water heater big enough so four people can bathe the same day and I can wash dishes too.”

“I was not reporting on sin, you juggins. I was stating a fact, a law of nature.”

“You seem to have no respect for human nature.”

“Not human nature, my Mary—nature. Squirrels bank ten times as many hickory nuts as they can ever use. The pocket gopher, with a stomach full to bursting, still loads his cheeks like sacks. And how much of the honey the clever bees collect do the clever bees eat?”

When Mary is confused or perplexed, she spurts anger the way an octopus spurts ink, and hides in the dark cloud of it.

“You make me sick,” she said. “You can’t let anyone have a little happiness.”

“My darling, it isn’t that. It’s a despairing unhappiness I’m afraid of, the panic money brings, the protectiveness and the envy.”

She must have been unconsciously fearful of the same thing. She struck at me, probed for a hurting place, and found it and twisted the jagged words. “Here’s a grocery clerk without a bean worried about how bad it will be when he’s rich. You act as though you could pick up a fortune any time you want to.”

“I think I can.”

“How?”

“That’s the worry.”

“You don’t know how or you’d have done it before. You’re just bluffing. You always bluff.”

The intent to wound raises rage. I could feel the fever rise in me. Ugly, desperate words moved up like venom. I felt a sour hatefulness.

Mary said, “Look! There it goes! Did you see it?”

“Where? What?”

“Went right past the tree there and into our yard.”

“What was it, Mary? Tell me! What did you see?”

In the dusk I saw her smile, that incredible female smile. It is called wisdom but it isn’t that but rather an understanding that makes wisdom unnecessary.

“You didn’t see anything, Mary.”

“I saw a quarrel—but it got away.”

I put my arm about her and turned her. “Let’s go around the block before we go in.”

We strolled in the tunnel of the night and we didn’t speak again, or need to.