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Title: Peyton Place
Author: Metalious, Grace (1924-1964)
Date of first publication: 1956
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Julian Messner, 1956
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 10 July 2016
Date last updated: 10 July 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1339

This ebook was produced by Marcia Brooks, Alex White,
Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






PEYTON PLACE

by Grace Metalious




BOOK ONE




CHAPTER 1


Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she
comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will
come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England,
Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a
little while. She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an
unchartered season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone
of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground. Those
grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged edged
winds of winter, know sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met
with hard-eyed cynicism. But the young wait anxiously, scanning the
chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming. And sometimes the old,
against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and
hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to seek the first
traces of a false softening.

One year, early in October, Indian summer came to a town called Peyton
Place. Like a laughing, lovely woman Indian summer came and spread
herself over the countryside and made everything hurtfully beautiful to
the eye.

The sky was low, of a solidly unbroken blue. The maples and oaks and
ashes, all dark red and brown and yellow, preened themselves in the
unseasonably hot light, under the Indian summer sun. The conifers stood
like disapproving old men on all the hills around Peyton Place and gave
off a greenish yellow light. On the roads and sidewalks of the town
there were fallen leaves which made such a gay crackling when stepped
upon and sent up such a sweet scent when crushed that it was only the
very old who walked over them and thought of death and decay.

The town lay still in the Indian summer sun. On Elm Street, the main
thoroughfare, nothing moved. The shopkeepers, who had rolled protective
canvas awnings down over their front windows, took the lack of trade
philosophically and retired to the back rooms of their stores where they
alternately dozed, glanced at the _Peyton Place Times_ and listened to
the broadcast of a baseball game.

To the east on Elm Street, beyond the six blocks occupied by the
business section of the town, rose the steeple of the Congregational
church. The pointed structure pierced through the leaves of the
surrounding trees and shone, dazzlingly white, against the blue sky. At
the opposite end of the business district stood another steepled
structure. This was St. Joseph's Catholic Church, and its spire far
outshone that of the Congregationalists, for it was topped with a cross
of gold.

Seth Buswell, the owner and editor of the _Peyton Place Times_, had once
written, rather poetically, that the two churches bracketed and held the
town like a pair of gigantic book ends, an observation which had set off
a series of minor explosions in Peyton Place. There were few Catholics
in town who cared to be associated in any partnership with the
Protestants, while the Congregationalists had as little desire to be
paired off with the Papists. If imaginary book ends were to exist in
Peyton Place they would both have to be of the same religious
denomination.

Seth had laughed at the arguments heard all over town that week, and in
his next edition he reclassified the two churches as tall, protective
mountains guarding the peaceful business valley. Both Catholics and
Protestants scanned this second article carefully for a trace of sarcasm
or facetiousness, but in the end everyone had taken the story at its
face value and Seth laughed harder than before.

Dr. Matthew Swain, Seth's best friend and oldest crony, grunted,
"Mountains, eh? More like a pair of goddamned volcanoes."

"Both of 'em breathin' brimstone and fire," Seth added, still laughing
as he poured two more drinks.

But the doctor would not laugh with his friend. There were three things
which he hated in this world, he said often and angrily: death, venereal
disease and organized religion.

"In that order," the doctor always amended. "And the story, clean or
otherwise, that can make me laugh at one of these has never been thought
up."

But on this hot October afternoon Seth was not thinking of opposing
religious factions or, for that matter, of anything in particular. He
sat at his desk behind the plate glass window of his street floor
office, sipping at a cold drink and listened desultorily to the baseball
game.

In front of the courthouse, a large white stone building with a
verdigris-colored dome, a few old men lounged on the wooden benches
which seem to be part of every municipal building in America's small
towns. The men leaned back against the warm sides of the courthouse,
their tired eyes shaded by battered felt hats, and let the Indian summer
sun warm their cold, old bones. They were as still as the trees for
which the main street had been named.

Under the elms the black tarred sidewalks, ruffled in many places by the
pushing roots of the giant trees, were empty. The chime clock set into
the red brick front of the Citizens' National Bank, across the street
from the courthouse, struck once. It was two-thirty on a Friday
afternoon.




CHAPTER 2


Maple Street, which bisected Elm at a point halfway through the business
section, was a wide, tree-shaded avenue which ran north and south from
one end of town to the other. At the extreme southern end of the street,
where the paving ended and gave way to an empty field, stood the Peyton
Place schools. It was toward these buildings that Kenny Stearns, the
town handyman, walked. The men in front of the courthouse opened drowsy
eyes to watch him.

"There goes Kenny Stearns," said one man unnecessarily, for everyone had
seen--and knew--Kenny.

"Sober as a judge, right now."

"That won't last long."

The men laughed.

"Good at his work though, Kenny is," said one old man named Clayton
Frazier, who made a point of disagreeing with everybody, no matter what
the issue.

"When he ain't too drunk to work."

"Never knew Kenny to lose a day's work on account of liquor," said
Clayton Frazier. "Ain't nobody in Peyton Place can make things grow like
Kenny. He's got one of them whatcha call green thumbs."

One man snickered. "Too bad Kenny don't have the same good luck with his
wife as he has with plants. Mebbe Kenny'd be better off with a green
pecker."

This observation was acknowledged with appreciative smiles and chuckles.

"Ginny Stearns is a tramp and a trollop," said Clayton Frazier,
unsmilingly. "There ain't much a feller can do when he's married to a
born whore."

"'Cept drink," said the man who had first spoken.

The subject of Kenny Stearns seemed to be exhausted, and for a moment no
one spoke.

"Hotter'n July today," said one old man. "Damned if my back ain't
itchin' with sweat."

"'Twon't last," said Clayton Frazier, tipping his hat back to look up at
the sky. "I've seen it turn off cold and start in snowin' less than
twelve hours after the sun had gone down on a day just like this one.
This won't last."

"Ain't healthy either. A day like this is enough to make a man start
thinkin' about summer underwear again."

"Healthy or not, you'd hear no complaints from me if the weather stayed
just like this clear 'til next June."

"'Twon't last," said Clayton Frazier, and for once his words did not
provoke a discussion.

"No," the men agreed. "'Twon't last."

They watched Kenny Stearns turn into Maple Street and walk out of sight.

The Peyton Place schools faced each other from opposite sides of the
street. The grade school was a large wooden building, old, ugly and
dangerous, but the high school was the pride of the town. It was made of
brick, with windows so large that each one made up almost an entire
wall, and it had a clinical, no-nonsense air of efficiency that gave it
the look more of a small, well-run hospital than that of a school. The
elementary school was Victorian architecture at its worst, made even
more hideous by the iron fire escapes which zigzagged down both sides of
the building, and by the pointed, open belfry which topped the
structure. The grade school bell was rung by means of a thick, yellow
rope which led down from the belfry and was threaded through the ceiling
and floor of the building's second story. The rope came to an end and
hung, a constant temptation to small hands, in the corner of the first
floor hall. The school bell was Kenny Stearns' secret love. He kept it
polished so that it gleamed like antique pewter in the October sun. As
he approached the school buildings now, Kenny looked up at the belfry
and nodded in satisfaction.

"The bells of heaven ain't got tongues no sweeter than yours," he said
aloud.

Kenny often spoke aloud to his bell. He also talked to the school
buildings and to the various plants and lawns in town for which he
cared.

From the windows of both schools, open now to the warm afternoon, there
came a soft murmuring and the smell of pencil shavings.

"Hadn't oughta keep school on a day like this," said Kenny.

He stood by the low hedge which separated the grade school from the
first house on Maple Street. A warm, green smell, composed of the grass
and hedges which he had cut that morning rose around him.

"This ain't no kind of a day for schoolin'," said Kenny and shrugged
impatiently, not at his inarticulateness but in puzzlement at a rare
emotion in himself.

He wanted to throw himself face down on the ground and press his face
and body against something green.

"_That's_ the kind of day it is," he told the quiet buildings
truculently. "No kind of a day for schoolin'."

He noticed that a small twig in the hedge had raised itself, growing
above the others and marring the evenness of the uniformly flat hedge
tops. He bent to snip off this precocious bit of green with his fingers,
a sharp tenderness taking form within him. But suddenly a wildness came
over him, and he grabbed a handful of the small, green leaves, crushing
them until he felt their yielding wetness against his skin while passion
tightened itself within him and his breath shook. A long time ago,
before he had taught himself not to care, he had felt this same way
toward his wife Ginny. There had been the same tenderness which would
suddenly be overwhelmed by a longing to crush and conquer, to possess by
sheer strength and force. Abruptly Kenny released the handful of broken
leaves and wiped his hand against the side of his rough overall.

"Wish to Christ I had a drink," he said fervently and moved toward the
double front doors of the grade school.

It was five minutes to three and time for him to take up his position by
the bell rope.

"Wish to Christ I had a drink, and that's for sure," said Kenny and
mounted the wooden front steps of the school.

Kenny's words, since they had been addressed to his bell and therefore
uttered in loud, carrying tones, drifted easily through the windows of
the classroom where Miss Elsie Thornton presided over the eighth grade.
Several boys laughed out loud and a few girls grinned, but this
amusement was short lived. Miss Thornton was a firm believer in the
theory that if a child were given the inch, he would rapidly take the
proverbial mile, so, although it was Friday afternoon and she was very
tired, she restored quick order to her room.

"Is there anyone here who would like to spend the thirty minutes after
dismissal with me?" she asked.

The boys and girls, ranging in age from twelve to fourteen, fell silent,
but as soon as the first note sounded from Kenny's bell, they began to
scrape and shuffle their feet. Miss Thornton rapped sharply on her desk
with a ruler.

"You will be quiet until I dismiss you," she ordered. "Now. Are your
desks cleared?"

"Yes, Miss Thornton." The answer came in a discordant chorus.

"You may stand."

Forty-two pairs of feet clomped into position in the aisles between the
desks. Miss Thornton waited until all backs were straight, all heads
turned to the front and all feet quiet.

"Dismissed," she said, and as always, as soon as that word was out of
her mouth, had the ridiculous feeling that she should duck and protect
her head with her arms.

Within five seconds the classroom was empty and Miss Thornton relaxed
with a sigh. Kenny's bell still sang joyously and the teacher reflected
with humor that Kenny always rang the three o'clock dismissal bell with
a special fervor, while at eight-thirty in the morning he made the same
bell toll mournfully.

If I thought it would solve anything, said Miss Thornton to herself,
making a determined effort to relax the area between her shoulder
blades, I, too, would wish to Christ that I had a drink.

Smiling a little, she stood and moved to one of the windows to watch the
children leave the schoolyard. Outside, the crowd had begun to separate
into smaller groups and pairs, and Miss Thornton noticed only one child
who walked alone. This was Allison MacKenzie, who broke away from the
throng as soon as she reached the pavement and hurried down Maple Street
by herself.

A peculiar child, mused Miss Thornton, looking at Allison's disappearing
back. One given to moods of depression which seemed particularly odd in
one so young. It was odd, too, that Allison hadn't one friend in the
entire school, except for Selena Cross. They made a peculiar pair, those
two, Selena with her dark, gypsyish beauty, her thirteen-year-old eyes
as old as time, and Allison MacKenzie, still plump with residual
babyhood, her eyes wide open, guileless and questioning, above that
painfully sensitive mouth. Get yourself a shell, Allison, my dear,
thought Miss Thornton. Find one without cracks or weaknesses so that you
will be able to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Good Lord, I _am_ tired!

Rodney Harrington came barreling out of the school, not slowing his pace
when he saw little Norman Page standing directly in his path.

Damned little bully, thought Miss Thornton savagely.

She despised Rodney Harrington, and it was a credit to her character and
to her teaching that no one, least of all Rodney himself, suspected this
fact. Rodney was an oversized fourteen-year-old with a mass of black,
curly hair and a heavy-lipped mouth. Miss Thornton had heard a few of
her more aware eighth grade girls refer to Rodney as "adorable," a
sentiment with which she was not in accord. She would have gotten a
great deal of pleasure out of giving him a sound thrashing. In Miss
Thornton's vast mental file of school children, Rodney was classified as
A Trouble-maker.

He's too big for his age, she thought, and too sure of himself and of
his father's money and position behind him. He'll get his comeuppance
someday.

Miss Thornton bit the inside of her lip and spoke severely to herself.
He is only a child. He may turn out all right.

But she knew Leslie Harrington, Rodney's father, and doubted her own
words.

Little Norman Page was felled by the oncoming Rodney. He went flat on
the ground and began to cry, remaining prone until Ted Carter came along
to help him up.

Little Norman Page. Funny, thought Miss Thornton, but I've never heard
an adult refer to Norman without that prefix. It has almost become part
of his name.

Norman, the schoolteacher observed, seemed to be constructed entirely of
angles. His cheekbones were prominent in his little face, and as he
wiped at his wet eyes, his elbows stuck out in sharp, bony points.

Ted Carter was brushing at Norman's trousers. "You're O.K., Norman," his
voice came through the schoolroom window. "Come on, you're O.K. Stop
crying now and g'wan home. You're O.K."

Ted was thirteen years old, tall and broad for his age, with the stamp
of adulthood already on his features. Of all the boys in Miss Thornton's
eighth grade, Ted's voice was the only one which had "changed"
completely so that when he spoke it was in a rich baritone that never
cracked or went high unexpectedly.

"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Ted asked, turning toward
Rodney Harrington.

"Ha, ha," said Rodney sulkily. "You, f'rinstance?"

Ted moved another step closer to Rodney. "Yeah, me," he said.

"Oh, beat it," said Rodney. "I wouldn't waste my time."

But, Miss Thornton noticed with satisfaction, it was Rodney who "beat
it." He strolled cockily out of the schoolyard with an over-developed
seventh grade girl named Betty Anderson at his heels.

"Why don'cha mind your own business," yelled Betty over her shoulder to
Ted.

Little Norman Page snuffled. He took a clean white handkerchief from his
back trouser pocket and blew his nose gently.

"Thank you, Ted," he said shyly. "Thank you very much."

"Oh, scram," said Ted Carter. "G'wan home before your old lady comes
looking for you."

Norman's chin quivered anew. "Could I walk with you, Ted?" he asked.
"Just until Rodney's out of sight? Please?"

"Rodney's got other things on his mind besides you right now," said Ted
brutally. "He's forgotten that you're even alive."

Scooping his books up off the ground, Ted ran to catch up with Selena
Cross, who was now halfway up Maple Street. He did not look around for
Norman, who picked up his own books and moved slowly out of the
schoolyard.

Miss Thornton felt suddenly too tired to move. She leaned her head
against the window frame and stared absently at the empty yard outside.
She knew the families of her school children, the kind of homes they
lived in and the environments in which they were raised.

Why do I try? she wondered. What chance have any of these children to
break out of the pattern in which they were born?

At times like this, when Miss Thornton was very tired, she felt that she
fought a losing battle with ignorance and was overcome with a sense of
futility and helplessness. What sense was there in nagging a boy into
memorizing the dates of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire when the
boy, grown, would milk cows for a living, as had his father and
grandfather before him. What logic was there in pounding decimal
fractions into the head of a girl who would eventually need to count
only to number the months of each pregnancy?

Years before, when Miss Thornton had been graduated from Smith College,
she had decided to remain in her native New England to teach.

"You won't have much opportunity to be radical up there," the dean had
told her.

Elsie Thornton had smiled. "They are my people and I understand them.
I'll know what to do."

The dean had smiled, too, from her heights of superior knowledge. "When
you discover how to break the bone of the shell-backed New Englander,
Elsie, you will become world famous. Anyone who does something for the
first time in history becomes famous."

"I've lived in New England all my life," said Elsie Thornton, "and I
have never heard anyone actually say, 'What was good enough for my
father is good enough for me.' That is a decadent attitude and a
terrible clich, both of which have been unfairly saddled on the New
Englander."

"Good luck, Elsie," said the dean sadly.

Kenny Stearns crossed Miss Thornton's line of vision, and abruptly her
chain of thought broke.

Nonsense, she told herself briskly. I have a roomful of fine,
intelligent children who come from families no different from other
families. I'll feel better on Monday.

She went to the closet and took out her hat which was seeing service for
the seventh autumn in a row. Looking at the worn brown felt in her hand,
she was reminded of Dr. Matthew Swain.

"I'd be able to tell a schoolteacher anywhere," he had told her.

"Really, Matt?" she had laughed at him. "Do we all, then, have the same
look of frustration?"

"No," he had replied, "but all of you do look overworked, underpaid,
poorly dressed and underfed. Why do you do it, Elsie? Why don't you go
down to Boston or somewhere like that? With your intelligence and
education you could get a good-paying job in business."

Miss Thornton had shrugged. "Oh, I don't know, Matt. I just love
teaching, I guess."

But in her mind then, as now, was the hope which kept her at her job,
just as it has kept teachers working for hundreds of years.

If I can teach something to one child, if I can awaken in only one child
a sense of beauty, a joy in truth, an admission of ignorance and a
thirst for knowledge, then I am fulfilled.

One child, thought Miss Thornton, adjusting her old brown felt, and her
mind fastened with love on Allison MacKenzie.




CHAPTER 3


Allison MacKenzie left the schoolyard quickly, not stopping to talk with
anyone. She made her way up Maple Street and walked east on Elm,
avoiding the Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe which her mother owned and
operated. Allison walked rapidly until she had left the stores and
houses of Peyton Place behind her. She climbed the long, gently sloping
hill behind Memorial Park and came, eventually, to a place where the
paved road ended. Beyond the pavement, the land fell away in a sharp
decline and was covered with rocks and bushes. The drop off was barred
with a wide wooden board which rested at either end on a base resembling
an outsized sawhorse. The crosspiece had red letters printed on it.
ROAD'S END. These words had always satisfied something in Allison. She
reflected that the board could have read, PAVEMENT ENDS or CAUTION--DROP
OFF, and she was glad that someone had thought to label this place
ROAD'S END.

Allison luxuriated in the fact that she had two whole days, plus what
was left of this beautiful afternoon, in which to be free from the
hatefulness that was school. In the time of this short vacation she
would be free to walk up here to the end of the road, to be by herself
and to think her own thoughts. For a little while she could find
pleasure here and forget that her pleasures would be considered babyish
and silly by older, more mature twelve-year-old girls.

The afternoon was beautiful with the lazy, blue beauty of Indian summer.
Allison said the words "October afternoon" over and over to herself.
They were like a narcotic, soothing her, filling her with peace.
"October afternoon," she said, sighing, and sat down on the board that
had ROAD'S END lettered on its side.

Now that she was quiet and unafraid, she could pretend that she was a
child again, and not a twelve-year-old who would be entering high school
in less than another year, and who should be interested now in clothes
and boys and pale rose lipstick. The delights of childhood were all
around her, and here on the hill she did not feel that she was peculiar
and different from her contemporaries. But away from this place she was
awkward, loveless, pitifully aware that she lacked the attraction and
poise which she believed that every other girl her age possessed.

Very rarely, she felt a shred of this same secret, lonely happiness at
school, when the class was reading a book or a story which pleased her.
Then she would look up quickly from the printed page to find Miss
Thornton looking at her, and their eyes would meet and hold and smile.
She was careful not to let this happiness show, for she knew that the
other girls in her class would laugh to let her know that this kind of
joy was wrong, and that they would tag it with their favorite word of
condemnation--babyish.

There would not be many more days of contentment for Allison, for now
she was twelve and soon would have to begin spending her life with
people like the girls at school. She would be surrounded by them, and
have to try hard to be one of them. She was sure that they would never
accept her. They would laugh at her, ridicule her, and she would find
herself living in a world where she was the only odd and different
member of the population.

If Allison MacKenzie had been asked to define the vague "they" to whom
she referred in her mind, she would have answered, "Everybody except
Miss Thornton and Selena Cross, and sometimes even Selena." For Selena
was beautiful while Allison believed herself an unattractive girl, plump
in the wrong places, flat in the wrong spots, too long in the legs and
too round in the face. She knew that she was shy and all thumbs and had
a headful of silly dreams. That was the way everybody saw her, except
Miss Thornton, and that was only because Miss Thornton was so ugly and
plain herself. Selena would smile and try to dismiss Allison's
inadequacies with a wave of her hand. "You're O.K., kid," Selena would
say, but Allison could not always believe her friend. Somewhere along
the path of approaching maturity she had lost her sense of being loved
and of belonging to a particular niche in the world. The measure of her
misery was in the fact that she thought these things had never been hers
to lose.

Allison looked across the emptiness beyond Road's End. From up here, she
could see the town, spread out below her. She could see the belfry of
the grade school, the church spires and the winding, blue road of the
Connecticut River with the red brick mills, like growths, attached to
one of its sides. She could see the gray stone pile of Samuel Peyton's
castle, and she stared hard at the place for which the town had been
named. Thinking of the story connected with the Peyton place, she
shivered a little in the warm sun, deliberately turning her eyes away.
She tried to locate the white and green cottage where she lived with her
mother, but she could not distinguish her home from all the others in
her neighborhood. From where Allison was sitting, her house was two
miles away.

The houses in Allison's neighborhood were simple, well constructed,
one-family dwellings, most of them modeled on Cape Cod lines and painted
white with green trim. Once Allison had looked up the meaning of the
word "neighbor" in a book which, although she now knew better, she still
thought of as belonging to one man in very peculiar circumstances:
Webster's _On A Bridge_. A neighbor, said the book, was one who dwelt in
the same vicinity with one, and for a short time Allison had been
comforted. Webster's _On A Bridge_ apparently found nothing odd in the
fact that a neighbor was not a friend. There were, however, no
dictionary definitions to explain why the MacKenzies had no friends
anywhere in the town of Peyton Place. Allison was sure that the reason
for this friendlessness was the fact that the MacKenzies were a
different kind of family from most, and that therefore other people did
not care to become involved with them.

From Road's End Allison pictured the home she could not see as full of
busy, popular people whose telephone rang constantly. From here, she
could imagine her house as being no different from any other house--not
queer in its emptiness and not all wrong, just as having no father was
all wrong, and her life and herself. Only here, alone on the hill, could
Allison be sure of herself--and contented.

She hopped down from where she had been sitting and bent to pick up a
small branch broken from a maple tree by the cold wind and rain of a few
days before. Carefully, she broke all the twigs from the branch so that
it became an almost straight stick, and as she walked, she peeled the
bark from the wood until it was stripped clean. When this was done, she
paused and put her nose against the wood's bare, green-whiteness,
sniffing its fresh, wet smell, running her finger tips over its
unprotected surface until she felt the dampness of sap on her hands. She
walked on again, pressing the stick into the ground with each step, and
pretended that she was carrying an alpenstock the way people did in
pictures taken in the Swiss Alps.

The woods on either side of Road's End were old. They were one of the
few remaining stands of lumber in northern New England which had never
been cut, for the town ended below Memorial Park and the terrain above
had always been considered too rocky and uneven for development. Allison
imagined that the paths on which she walked through these woods were the
same trails that the Indians had followed before the white man had come
to settle. She believed that she was the only person who ever came here,
and she felt a deep sense of ownership toward the woods. She loved them
and she had learned them well through every season of the year. She knew
where the first arbutus trailed in the spring, when there were still
large patches of snow on the ground, and she knew the quiet, shady
places where the violets made purple clusters after the snows had
disappeared. She knew where to find lady's-slipper, and where there was
an open field, hidden in the middle of the woods, and covered in summer
with buttercups and brown-eyed Susans. In a secret place, she had a rock
where she could sit and watch a family of robins, and she could tell
just by glancing at the trees when the time of the first killing frost
had come. She could move quietly through the woods with a gracefulness
that she never possessed away from them, and she imagined that other
girls in the world outside felt always as she felt here, safe and sure,
knowing the surroundings and belonging in them.

Allison walked through the woods and came to the open field. The summer
flowers were gone now, and tall, tough stalks of goldenrod had taken
their place. The clearing was yellow with them, and as she walked
through them they encircled her on all sides so that she seemed to be
wading, waist deep, in goldenness. She stood still for a moment and then
suddenly, with a feeling of pure ecstasy, reached out both her arms to
the world around her. She looked up at the sky with its deep blueness
peculiar to Indian summer and it seemed like a vast cup inverted over
her alone. The maples in the woods around the field were loud with red
and yellow, and a warm, gentle wind moved through their leaves. She
fancied that the trees were saying, "Hello, Allison. Hello, Allison,"
and she smiled. In one moment of time, precious with a lack of self
consciousness, she held her arms wide and called, "Hello! Oh, hello,
everything beautiful!"

She ran to the edge of the field and sat down, resting her back against
a wide-trunked tree, and then looked back on the field of goldenrod.
Slowly, a wonderful feeling of being the only living person in the whole
world filled her. Everything was hers, and there was no one to spoil it
for her, no one to make anything less peaceful and true and beautiful
than it was right at this moment. She sat for a long time not moving,
letting the feeling of happiness settle into a comforting warmth in the
pit of her stomach, and when she stood up and began to walk through the
woods again, she touched the trees and bushes in her passing as if
caressing the hands of old friends. At last she came back to the
pavement and the wooden board that said Road's End. She looked down at
the town, the feeling of joy beginning to dissolve within her. She
whirled around, away from the town, to face the trees again, trying to
recapture the sensation that was so warm, so lovely, but it would not
come back. She felt heavy, as if she suddenly weighed two hundred
pounds, and as tired as if she had been running for hours. She turned
and started down the hill toward Peyton Place. When she was halfway
down, she lifted the stick that she had been carrying and hurled it far
into the woods at the side of the road.

Allison walked rapidly now, hardly aware of distance, until she was
below the park and into the town. A group of boys came toward her, four
or five of them, laughing and shoving good-naturedly at one another, and
the last wisps of Allison's happiness melted away. She knew these boys;
they went to the same school as she did. They walked toward her, clad in
bright sweaters, munching on apples and letting the juice run down their
chins, and their voices were loud and rough in the October afternoon.
Allison crossed the street in the hope of avoiding them, but she saw
that they had noticed her and she was once more tense, aware and
frightened of the world around her.

"Hi, Allison," called one of the boys.

When she did not answer but continued to walk, he began to mimic her,
holding himself stiffly and putting his nose in the air.

"Oh, Allison," called another boy in a high falsetto, dragging out the
syllables of her name so that it sounded as if he were saying, "Oh,
Aa-hal-lissonnn!"

She made herself go on, not speaking, her hands clenched in the pockets
of her light jacket.

"Aa-hal-lissonnn! Aa-hal-lissonnn!"

She looked ahead blindly, knowing by instinct that the next street was
hers, and that soon she could turn the corner and be out of sight.

"Allison, Bumballison, teelialigo Allison. Teelegged, toelegged,
bowlegged Allison!"

"Hey, Fat-stuff!"

Allison turned into Beech Street and ran all the way up the block to her
house.




CHAPTER 4


Allison MacKenzie's father, for whom the child had been named, died when
she was three years old. She had no conscious memory of him. Ever since
she could remember, she had lived with Constance, her mother, in the
house in Peyton Place which had once belonged to her grandmother.
Constance and Allison had little in common with one another; the mother
was of too cold and practical a mind to understand the sensitive,
dreaming child, and Allison, too young and full of hopes and fancies to
sympathize with her mother.

Constance was a beautiful woman who had always prided herself on being
hardheaded. At the age of nineteen, she had seen the limitations of
Peyton Place, and over the protests of her widowed mother she had gone
to New York with the idea of meeting, going to work for and finally
marrying a man of wealth and position. She became secretary to Allison
MacKenzie, a handsome, good-natured Scot who owned a highly successful
shop where he sold imported fabrics. Within three weeks he and Constance
became lovers and during the next year a child was born to them whom
Constance immediately named for its father. Allison MacKenzie and
Constance Standish were never married, for he already had a wife and two
children "up in Scarsdale," as he always put it. He said these words as
if he were saying, "up at the North Pole," but Constance never forgot
that Allison's first family was painfully, frighteningly near.

"What do you intend to do about us?" she asked him.

"Keep on as we are, I suppose," he said. "There doesn't seem to be much
of anything else we can do, without causing an unearthly stink."

Constance, remembering her small-town upbringing, knew well the
discomfort of getting oneself talked about.

"I suppose not," she said agreeably.

But from that moment she began to plan for herself and her unborn child.
Through her mother she spread a respectable fiction about herself in
Peyton Place. Elizabeth Standish went to New York to attend the small,
family wedding of her daughter Constance, as far as the town knew. In
reality, she went to New York to be with Constance when her daughter
returned from the hospital with the baby who had been named for Allison
MacKenzie. A few years later it was a simple thing for Constance to use
a little ink eradicator and to substitute a different number for the
last digit in her daughter's year of birth as shown on her birth
certificate. Slowly, by not answering letters hinting broadly for
invitations to visit the MacKenzies, Constance Standish cut herself off
from the friends of her girlhood. Soon she was forgotten by Peyton
Place, remembered by her old friends only when they met Elizabeth
Standish on the streets of the town.

"How's Connie?" they would ask, "And the baby?"

"Just fine. Everything is just fine," poor Mrs. Standish would say, in a
terror lest she give a hint that everything was not fine.

From the day Allison was born, Elizabeth Standish lived with fear. She
was afraid that she had not played her part well enough, that sooner or
later someone would find out about the birth certificate that had been
tampered with, or that some sharp-eyed individual would spot the fact
that her granddaughter Allison was a year older than Constance said she
was. But most of all, she was afraid for herself. In her worst
nightmares she heard the voices of Peyton Place.

"There goes Elizabeth Standish. Her daughter got into trouble with some
feller down to New York."

"It's all in the way you bring up a child, what they do when they're
grown."

"Constance had a little girl."

"Poor little bastard."

"Bastard."

"That whore Constance Standish, and her dirty little bastard."

When Elizabeth Standish died, Constance allowed the cottage on Beech
Street to stand vacant but in readiness for the day when Allison
MacKenzie should tire of her, and she should have to return to Peyton
Place. But Allison did not abandon Constance and her child. He was a
good man, in his fashion, with a strict sense of responsibility. He
provided for his two families until the day of his death, and even
beyond that. Constance neither knew nor cared about the circumstances in
which Allison's wife found herself. It was enough for Constance that her
lover had left a substantial amount of money for her in the hands of a
discreet lawyer. With this, and what she had managed to save during
Allison MacKenzie's lifetime, she returned to Peyton Place and
established herself in the Standish house. She did not weep for her dead
lover, for she had not loved him.

Soon after her return to Peyton Place, she opened a small apparel shop
on Elm Street and settled down to the business of making a living for
herself and her baby daughter. No one ever questioned the fact that
Constance was the widow of a man named Allison MacKenzie. She kept a
large, framed photograph of him on the mantelpiece in her living room,
and the town sympathized with her.

"It's a shame," said Peyton Place. "And him so young."

"It's hard for a woman alone, especially trying to raise a child."

"She's a hard worker, Connie MacKenzie is. Stays in that shop of hers
'til six o'clock every night."

At thirty-three, Constance was still beautiful. Her hair still gleamed,
sleek and blond, and her face had not yet begun to show the lines of
time.

"Good-lookin' woman like that," said the men of the town, "you'd think
she'd look to get married again."

"Perhaps she's still grieving for her husband," said the women. "Some
widows grieve their whole lives long."

The truth of the matter was that Constance enjoyed her life alone. She
told herself that she had never been highly sexed to begin with, that
her affair with Allison had been a thing born of loneliness. She
repeated silently, over and over, that life with her daughter Allison
was entirely satisfactory and all she wanted. Men were not necessary,
for they were unreliable at best, and nothing but creators of trouble.
As for love, she knew well the tragic results of not loving a man. What
more terrible consequence might come from allowing herself to love
another? No, Constance often told herself, she was better off as she
was, doing the best she knew how, and waiting for Allison to grow up. If
at times she felt a vague restlessness within herself, she told herself
sharply that this was _not_ sex, but perhaps a touch of indigestion.

The Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe prospered. Perhaps because it was the
only store of its kind in Peyton Place, or perhaps because Constance had
a certain flair for style. Whichever it was, the women of the town
bought almost exclusively from her. It was the consensus of town opinion
that Connie MacKenzie's things were every bit as nice as those in the
stores down to Manchester or over to White River, and since they were no
more expensive, it was better to trade with somebody local than to take
town money elsewhere.

At six-fifteen in the evening, Constance walked up Beech Street toward
her house. She wore a smart black suit, the product of a rather
expensive Boston shop, and a small black hat. She looked like a fashion
illustration, a fact which always made her daughter Allison vaguely
uncomfortable, but was, as Constance frequently pointed out to her, very
good for business. As she walked toward home, Constance was thinking of
Allison's father, a thing she seldom did, for the thought was an
uncomfortable one. She knew that someday she would have to tell the
child the truth about her birth. Many times she had wondered why this
was so, but she had never found a reasonable answer to her question.

It is better that she find it out from me than to hear it from a
stranger, she often thought.

But this was not the answer, for no one had ever discovered the truth,
and the chances that someone would in the future were very slight.

All the same, thought Constance, someday Allison will have to be told.

She pushed open the front door of her house and went into the living
room where her daughter waited.

"Hello, darling," said Constance.

"Hello, Mother."

Allison was sitting in an overstuffed chair, her legs swung over the
wide arm, reading a book.

"What are you reading now?" asked Constance, standing in front of a
mirror and carefully removing her hat.

"Just a babyish fairy tale," said Allison defensively. "I like to read
them over once in a while. This one is The Sleeping Beauty."

"That's nice, dear," said Constance vaguely. She could not understand a
twelve-year-old girl keeping her nose in a book. Other girls her age
would have been continually in the shop, examining and exclaiming over
the boxes of pretty dresses and underwear which arrived there almost
daily.

"I suppose that we should think of something to eat," said Constance.

"I put two potatoes in the oven half an hour ago," said Allison, putting
her book away.

Together, the two went into the kitchen to prepare what Constance
referred to as "dinner." She was, Allison realized, the only woman in
Peyton Place who did this. Outside, Allison was very careful about
saying "supper." To others, she also spoke of "going to church," never
to "services," and of a dress being "pretty," but never "smart." Little
things, such as different terminology, had the power to embarrass
Allison to a point where, thinking about them in bed at night, she
writhed with shame, her face scarlet in the darkness, and hated her
mother for her differentness, for making her different.

"_Please_, Mother," she would say, in tears, whenever her mother's
conversation irritated her to the exploding point.

And Constance, the idioms of her people buried under the patina of New
York, would say, "But, darling, it _is_ a smart little dress!" or, "But,
Allison, the main meal of the day is _always_ called dinner!"

At nine o'clock that night Allison, clad in pajamas and robe and ready
for bed, set her books down on the mantelpiece in the living room. Her
eyes fell on the photograph of her father, and she stood still for a
moment, studying the dark face that smiled into hers. Her father's hair,
she noticed, had grown into a pronounced peak on his forehead, giving
him a rather devilish air, and his eyes had been large and dark and
deep.

"He was handsome, wasn't he?" she asked softly.

"Who, dear?" asked Constance, looking up from the account book in front
of her.

"My father," said Allison.

"Oh," said Constance. "Yes, dear. Yes, he was."

Allison was still looking at the photograph. "He looks just like a
prince," she said.

"What did you say, dear?"

"Nothing, Mother. Good night."

"Good night, dear."

Allison lay in her wide, four-poster bed and stared up at the ceiling
where the street light outside made weird shadow figures with the room's
darkness.

Just like a prince, she thought, and felt a sudden tightness in her
throat.

For a moment she wondered what her life might have been like if it had
been her mother who had died and her father who had lived. At once, she
sank her teeth into the edge of the bed sheet in shame at this disloyal
thought.

"Father. Father." She said the strange word over and over to herself,
but the sound of it in her mind meant nothing.

She thought of the photograph on the mantelpiece downstairs.

My prince, she said to herself, and immediately the image in her mind
seemed to take on life, to breathe, and to smile kindly at her.

Allison fell asleep.




CHAPTER 5


Chestnut Street, which ran parallel to Elm Street, one block to the
south of the main thoroughfare, was considered to be the "best" street
in Peyton Place. On this street were located the homes of the town's
_lite_.

At the extreme western end of Chestnut Street stood the imposing red
brick house of Leslie Harrington. Harrington, who was the owner of the
Cumberland Mills and a very rich man, was also on the board of trustees
for the Citizens' National Bank, and the chairman of the Peyton Place
school board. The Harrington house, screened from the street by tall
trees and wide lawns, was the largest in town.

On the opposite side of the street was the home of Dr. Matthew Swain.
His was a white house, fronted with tall, slim pillars. Most of the
townspeople defined it as "southern looking." The doctor's wife had been
dead for many years, and the town often wondered why The Doc, as he was
informally known, insisted on keeping his big house.

"Too big for a man alone," said Peyton Place. "I'll bet The Doc rattles
around in there like a marble in a tin cup."

"The Doc's place ain't as big as Leslie Harrington's."

"No, but it's different with Harrington. He's got a boy that's going to
get married someday. That's why he keeps that big house since his wife
died. It's for the boy."

"I guess that's so. Too bad The Doc never had kids. Must be lonely for a
man with no kids, after his wife goes."

Below Dr. Swain, on the same side of the street, lived Charles
Partridge, the town's leading attorney. Old Charlie, as the town called
him, had a solid, Victorian house which was painted a dark red and
trimmed with white, and where he lived with his wife Marion. The
Partridges had no children.

"Seems funny, don't it?" said the townspeople, some of whom lived, with
many children, in cramped quarters, "that the biggest houses on Chestnut
Street are the emptiest in town."

"Well, you know what they say. The rich get richer, and the poor get
children."

"Reckon that's right enough."

Also on Chestnut Street lived Dexter Humphrey, the president of the
Citizens' National Bank; Leighton Philbrook, who owned a sawmill and
vast tracts of hardwood forest; Jared Clarke, the owner of a chain of
feed and grain stores throughout the northern section of the state, who
was also chairman of the board of selectmen; and Seth Buswell, the owner
of the _Peyton Place Times_.

"Seth's the only man on Chestnut Street who don't have to work for a
living," said the town. "He can just set and scribble to his heart's
content and never worry about the bills."

This was true. Seth was the only son of the late George Buswell, a
shrewd landowner who had eventually become governor of the state. When
he died, George Buswell left a healthy fortune to his son, Seth.

"Hard as nails, old George Buswell was," said the townspeople who
remembered him.

"Yep. Hard as nails and crooked as a corkscrew."

The residents of Chestnut Street regarded themselves as the backbone of
Peyton Place. They were of the old families, people whose ancestors
remembered when the town had been nothing but wilderness, with Samuel
Peyton's castle the only building for miles around. Between them, the
men who lived on Chestnut Street provided jobs for Peyton Place. They
took care of its aches and pains, straightened out its legal affairs,
formed its thinking and spent its money. Between themselves, these men
knew more about the town and its people than anyone else.

"More power on Chestnut Street than in the big Connecticut River," said
Peter Drake, who practiced law in town under a double handicap. He was
young, and he had not been born in Peyton Place.




CHAPTER 6


On Friday nights the men of Chestnut Street met together at Seth
Buswell's house to play poker. Usually, all the men came, but on this
particular Friday evening there were only four of them sitting around
Seth's kitchen table: Charles Partridge, Leslie Harrington, Matthew
Swain and Seth.

"Small gang tonight," commented Harrington, who was thinking that a
small group precluded a large pot.

"Yep," said Seth. "Dexter's got his in-laws visitin' and Jared had to go
over to White River. Leighton called me up and said that he had business
down to Manchester."

"Alley cat business, I'll bet," said Dr. Swain. "How old Philbrook has
managed to avoid the clap this long, I'm sure I don't know."

Partridge laughed. "Probably looks after himself like you taught him,
Doc," he said.

"Well, let's play," said Harrington impatiently, riffling the cards with
his white hands.

"Can't wait to take our money, eh, Leslie?" asked Seth who disliked
Harrington intensely.

"That's right," agreed Harrington, who knew very well how Seth felt and
smiled, now, into the face of his enemy.

It excited Leslie Harrington to know that people who hated him
nevertheless felt impelled to tolerate him. To Harrington, this was the
proof of his success and it renewed in him, every time it happened, a
rich sense of the power he wielded. It was no secret in Peyton Place
that there was not a single issue that could come to a town vote with
any assurance of success unless Harrington was first in favor of it. He
was not in the least ashamed of the fact that on various occasions he
called his millworkers together and said, "Well, fellers, I'd feel
pretty damned good if we didn't vote to put up a new grade school this
year. I'd feel so goddamned good that I'd feel inclined to give
everybody in this shop a five per cent bonus the week after next." Seth
Buswell, in whose veins flowed the blood of a crusader, was as helpless
before Harrington as was a farmer who had fallen behind in his mortgage
payments.

"Cut for the deal," said Partridge, and the poker game began.

The men played quietly for an hour, Seth rising from his chair only when
there was a need to refill glasses. The newspaper editor played badly,
for instead of keeping his mind on the cards, he had been busily
thinking up, and discarding, ways to broach a sensitive subject to his
guests. At last he decided that tact and diplomacy would be futile in
this case, and when the next hand had been won, he spoke.

"I've been thinkin' lately," he said, "about all the tar paper shacks
that this town has got spread around. Seems to me like we ought to think
about gettin' zonin' laws into effect."

For a moment no one spoke. Then Partridge, to whom this was an old topic
of conversation, took a sip of his drink and sighed audibly.

"Again, Seth?" asked the lawyer.

"Yes, again," said Seth. "I've been tryin' to talk some sense into you
guys for years, and now I'm tellin' you that it's time to get somethin'
done. I'm goin' to start runnin' a series of articles, with pictures, in
the paper next week."

"Now, now, Seth," said Harrington soothingly, "I wouldn't be too hasty
about this. After all, the folks who own those shacks you're talking
about pay taxes the same as the rest of us. This town can't afford to
lose any taxpayers."

"For Christ's sake, Leslie," said Dr. Swain. "You must be going soft in
the head in your old age to run off at the mouth like that. Sure the
shackowners pay taxes, and their property is evaluated so low that what
they pay the town is peanuts. Yet they live in their shacks and produce
kids by the dozen. We're the ones who are paying to educate their kids,
to keep the roads paved and to buy a new piece of fire-fighting
equipment once in a while. The taxes a shackowner pays in ten years
wouldn't pay to send his kids to school for one year.

"You know damned well that Doc's right, Leslie," said Seth.

"Without the shacks," said Harrington, "the land that they stand on now
would be idle. How many tax dollars would you collect then? Not only
that, but you can't raise taxes on the shacks unless you raise
everybody's taxes. Rezone the shack areas, and you've got to rezone the
whole damned town and everybody'll be madder than hell. No, fellers, I
don't like paying to educate a woodchopper's kids any better than you
do, but I still say, leave the shacks alone."

"For Christ's sake!" shouted Dr. Swain, forgetting himself and losing
his temper in a way that he and Seth had agreed privately beforehand not
to do. "It's not only a matter of taxes and the fact that those places
are eyesores. They're cesspools, as filthy as sewers and as unhealthy as
an African swamp. I was out to another shack just last week. No toilet,
no septic tank, no running water, eight people in one room and no
refrigeration. It's a wonder that any of those kids ever live long
enough to go to school."

"So _that's_ the boil on your ass, is it?" laughed Harrington. "You're
damned right it's not the taxes that are bothering you and Seth. It's
the idea that some squalid little urchin might catch cold running to the
outhouse in his bare feet."

"You're a fool, Leslie," said Dr. Swain. "I'm not thinking of colds. I'm
thinking of typhoid and polio. Let one of those get a toehold around the
shacks and it wouldn't be long before the whole town was in danger."

"What are you talking about?" asked Harrington. "We've never had
anything like that around here before. You're an old woman, Doc, and so
is Seth."

Seth's face colored angrily, but before he could say anything, Partridge
intervened quickly and quietly.

"How in hell did you plan to get the owners out of their shacks if they
refused to abide by these zoning laws of yours, Seth?" asked the lawyer.

"I don't think that many of them would choose to leave," said Seth.
"Most of them can well afford to make improvements on their property.
They could use some of the money they drink up to install toilets and
tanks and water."

"What are you trying to do, Seth?" asked Harrington, laughing. "Make
Peyton Place into a police state?"

"I agree with Doc," said Seth. "You _are_ a fool, Leslie."

Harrington's face darkened. "Maybe so," he said, "but I say that when
you start telling a man he's got to do this, that or the other thing,
you're coming pretty damned close to infringing on a citizen's rights."

"Oh, God," moaned Seth.

"Go ahead and accuse me of being a fool if you want," said Harrington
righteously, "but you'll never get me to vote for passing a law that
dictates what kind of home a man must have."

Seth and Dr. Swain regarded Harrington with utter disbelief when he
spoke this sanctimonious sentence, but before they could speak,
Partridge, who was a born pacifist, picked up the deck of cards and
began to shuffle them.

"We came here to play poker," he said. "Let's play."

The subject of the tar paper shacks of Peyton Place was not mentioned
again, and at eleven-thirty when one of the men suggested playing a last
hand, Dr. Swain picked up the cards to deal.

"I'll open," said Harrington, holding his cards close to his chest and
peering at them frowningly.

"I'll raise," said Seth, who held his cards one on top of the other in
one hand.

Partridge and Dr. Swain dropped out and Harrington raised Seth.

"Again," said the newspaper editor pushing more money into the center of
the table.

"All right," said Harrington irritably. "And raise again."

Dr. Swain noticed with distaste that Harrington had begun to sweat.

Greedy bastard, thought the doctor. With his dough, he's worried over a
measly hand of five-and-ten poker.

"Again," said Seth coldly.

"Goddamn you," said Harrington. "O.K. There you are. Call."

"All pink," said Seth softly, fanning out his diamond flush on the
table.

Harrington, who had held a king high straight, purpled.

"Goddamn it," he said. "The one hand I hold all night and it's no good.
You win, Buswell."

"Yes," said Seth and looked at the millowner, "I generally do, in the
end."

Harrington looked Seth straight in the eyes. "If there's one thing I
hate more than a poor loser," he said, "it's a poor winner."

"Hold up a mirror and you're bound to see your own reflection, as I
always say." Seth grinned at Harrington. "What do you always say,
Leslie?"

Charles Partridge stood up and stretched. "Well, boys, morning comes
early. Guess I'll be on my way."

Harrington ignored the lawyer. "It's the man who holds the best cards
who wins, Seth. That's what I always say. Wait a minute, Charlie. I'll
walk home with you."

When Partridge and Harrington had left, Dr. Swain put a sympathetic hand
on Seth's arm.

"Too bad, feller," he said. "But I think you'd better wait a while and
talk to Jared and Leighton before you start anything about those shacks
in your paper."

"Wait for what?" demanded Seth angrily. "I've been waiting for years.
What'll we wait for this time, Doc? Typhoid? Polio? Pay your money and
take your choice."

"I know. I know," said Dr. Swain. "All the same, you'd best wait a
while. You've got to educate people to new ways of thinking, and that's
a long, slow process sometimes. If you go off half cocked, they'll turn
on you the same as Leslie did tonight and tell you how those shacks have
been around town for years, and we've never had an epidemic of any kind
yet."

"Hell, Doc, I don't know. Maybe a good epidemic would solve everything.
Perhaps the town would be better off without the characters who live in
those places."

"There is nothing dearer than life, Seth," said Dr. Swain gruffly. "Even
the lives being lived in our shacks."

"Please," said Seth, his good humor restored. "You could at least refer
to them as 'camps' or 'summer dwellings'!"

"The suburbs!" exclaimed Dr. Swain. "That's it, by God! Question: 'Where
do you live, Mr. Shackowner?' Answer: 'I live in the suburbs and commute
to Peyton Place.'"

Both men laughed. "Have another drink before you go," said Seth.

"Yes, sir, Suburbia," said Dr. Swain. "We could even name these estates.
How about Pine Crest, or Sunny Hill, or Bide-A-Wee?"

"You left out Maple Knoll and Elm Ridge," said Seth.

It wasn't funny, though, reflected Dr. Swain half an hour later after he
had left Seth and was taking his usual nightly walk before going home.

He walked south, after leaving Chestnut Street, and was no more than
half a mile out of town when he passed the first shack. A light shone
dimly through one small window, and a curl of smoke rose thinly from the
tin chimney. Dr. Swain stopped in the middle of the dirt road and looked
at the tiny, black tar-papered building which housed Lucas Cross, his
wife Nellie and their three children. Dr. Swain had been inside the
shack once, and knew that the interior consisted of one room where the
family ate, slept and lived.

Must be colder than hell in the winter, thought the doctor, and felt
that he had said the kindest thing possible about the home of the Cross
family.

As he was turning to walk back to town, a sudden shrill scream echoed in
the night.

"Christ!" said Dr. Swain aloud, and began to run toward the shack,
picturing all kinds of accidents and cursing himself for not carrying
his doctor's bag at all times. He was at the door when he heard Lucas
Cross's voice.

"Goddamn sonofabitch," yelled Lucas drunkenly. "Where'd you put it?"

There was a loud crash, as if someone had fallen, or been pushed, over a
chair.

"I told you and told you," came Nellie's whine. "There ain't no more.
You drunk it all up."

"Goddamn lyin' bitch," shouted Lucas. "You hid it. Tell me where it is
or I'll beat your goddamn lousy hide right off you."

Nellie screamed again, sharp and shrill, and Dr. Swain turned away from
the shack door feeling slightly nauseated.

I suppose, he thought, that the unwritten law about a man minding his
own business is a good one. But sometimes I just don't believe it.

He walked toward the road, but before he had gone more than a few steps,
he tripped and almost fell over a small figure crouched on the ground.

"For Christ's sake," he said softly, reaching down and gripping a girl's
arm. "What are you doing out here in the dark?"

The girl broke away from him. "What are you doing here yourself, Doc?"
she asked sullenly. "Nobody sent for you."

In the meager light that came through the shack windows, the doctor
could barely discern the girl's features.

"Oh," he said. "It's Selena. I've seen you around town with the little
MacKenzie girl, haven't I?"

"Yes," said Selena. "Allison is my best friend. Listen, Doc. Don't ever
say anything to Allison about this ringdangdo here tonight, will you?
She wouldn't understand about such things."

"No," said Dr. Swain, "I won't say a word to anyone. You're the oldest
of the children here, aren't you?"

"No. My brother Paul is older than me. He's the oldest."

"Where is Paul now?" demanded the doctor. "Why isn't he putting a stop
to the goings on inside?"

"He's gone to see his girl in town," said Selena. "And what are you
talking about anyway? There's nobody can stop Pa when he gets drunk and
starts fighting."

She stopped talking and whistled softly, and a little boy came running
from behind a tree.

"I always come outside when Pa starts," said Selena. "I keep Joey out
here, too, so Pa won't get after him."

Joey was small and thin, and not more than seven years old. He stood
behind his sister and peered timidly at the doctor from around her
skirt. A fierce anger filled the old man.

"I'll put a stop to this," he said, and started once more toward the
door of the shack.

Immediately, Selena ran in front of him and put her hands against his
chest.

"You want to get killed?" she whispered frantically. "Nobody sent for
you, Doc. You better get back to Chestnut Street."

A continuous wailing came from the shack now, but the screaming had
stopped and Lucas' voice was still.

"It's all over with anyhow," said Selena. "If you went in now, it would
just get Pa all worked up again. You better go, Doc."

For a moment the doctor hesitated, then tipped his hat to the girl.

"All right, Selena," he said. "I'll go. Good night."

"Good night, Doc."

He was back on the road when the girl ran and caught up to him. She put
her hand on his sleeve.

"Doc," she said, "me and Joey want to thank you anyway. It was nice of
you to stop by."

Like a lady bidding her guests farewell after the tea party, thought the
doctor. It was nice of you to stop by.

"That's all right, Selena," said Dr. Swain. "Any time you'd like to have
me come, just let me know."

He noticed that although Joey was directly behind Selena, the little boy
never spoke a word.




CHAPTER 7


Lucas Cross had lived in Peyton Place all his life, as had his father
and grandfather before him. Lucas did not know where his ancestors had
come from originally, and this fact did not bother him at all, for he
never thought of it. If he had been asked, he would have been dumfounded
by the stupidity of such a question and, shrugging, would have replied,
"We always lived right around here."

Lucas was a woodsman of a now-and-then variety common to northern New
England. Professional lumbermen regarded the forests with respect,
knowing that the generations before them had abused the woods, felling
them flat without a thought toward conservation and replanting, and
approached them now with patience and precision. Men like Lucas looked
on them as a precarious kind of security, a sort of padding to fall back
on when one was given a shove by life. When all else failed and cash
money was needed in a hurry, the task of "workin' the woods" was always
available. The lumbermen had nothing but contempt for men like Lucas,
and assigned to him the secondary jobs of the lumbering trade: the
stacking of logs on trucks, the fastening of chains and the unloading at
the sawmills. In northern New England, Lucas was referred to as a
woodsman, but had he lived in another section of America, he might have
been called an Okie, or a hillbilly, or poor white trash. He was one of
a vast brotherhood who worked at no particular trade, propagated many
children with a slatternly wife, and installed his oversized family in a
variety of tumble-down, lean-to, makeshift dwellings.

In an era of free education, the woodsman of northern New England had
little or no schooling, and in many cases his employer was forced to pay
him in cash, for the employee could not sign his own name to a check.
What the woodsman knew, he knew by instinct, from listening to
conversation or, rarely, from observation, and much of the time he was
drunk on cheap wine or rotgut whisky. He lived in rickety wooden
buildings which were covered on the outside with tar paper instead of
clapboards, and his house was without water or sewerage. He drank, beat
his wife and abused his children, and he had one virtue which he
believed outweighed all his faults. He paid his bills. To be in debt was
the one--and only--cardinal sin to men like Lucas Cross, and it was
behind this fact that the small-town northern New Englander, of more
settled ways and habits, hid when confronted with the reality of the
shack dwellers in his vicinity.

"They're all right," the New Englander was apt to say, especially to a
tourist from the city. "They pay their bills and taxes and they mind
their own business. They don't do any harm."

This attitude was visible, too, in well-meaning social workers who
turned away from the misery of the woodsman's family. If a child died of
cold or malnutrition, it was considered unfortunate, but certainly
nothing to stir up a hornet's nest about. The state was content to let
things lie, for it never had been called upon to extend aid of a
material nature to the residents of the shacks which sat, like running
sores, on the body of northern New England.

Lucas Cross was different from many woodsmen in that he had a trade
which he practiced when coaxed with liquor or bribed with outrageous
sums of money. He was a skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker.

"Never saw anything like it in my life," Charles Partridge had said,
soon after Lucas had been persuaded to make some kitchen cabinets for
Mrs. Partridge. "In came Lucas, not drunk, mind you, but he'd had a few.
He had this folding yardstick that looked about as accurate to me as a
two-dollar watch. Well, he sat and looked at our kitchen walls for a
while, then he started in measuring and cussing under his breath, and
after a time he began sawing and planing. The next thing I knew, he was
done, and if I do say so myself, there are no finer-looking cabinets in
any kitchen in Peyton Place. Look."

The cabinets were made of knotty pine and they fitted perfectly in the
spaces between the Partridges' kitchen windows. They gleamed like satin.

Over a period of years, Lucas had done much of the interior "finish"
work in the houses on Chestnut Street, and most of what he had not done
had been done by his father.

"Good cabinetmakers, the Crosses," said the people of the town.

"When they're sober," they amended.

"My wife wants Lucas to make her a buffet for the dining room when he
gets through working the woods next."

"She'll have to sober him up first. Whatever money he makes in the
woods, he'll spend on one helluva drunk before he starts looking around
for work again."

"They're all alike, those shackowners. Work for a while, drunk for a
longer while, work and then drunk again."

"They're all right, though. Don't do any harm that I can see. They pay
their bills."

Seth Buswell, in a rare philosophical mood, said, "I wonder why our
woodsman drinks? One would surmise that he hasn't the imagination to
invent phantoms for himself from which he must escape. I wonder what he
thinks about. Doubtless he has his hopes and dreams the same as all of
us, yet it appears that all he ever dwells upon is liquor, sex and food,
in that order."

"Watch that kind of talk, old feller," said Dr. Swain. "When you talk
like that, the old Dartmouth education shows through."

"Sorry," said Seth elaborately and reverted to the patois of his people,
the one hypocrisy which he consciously practiced. It might not be
honest, this omitting of _r_'s and dropping of final _g_'s, but his
father had made a barrel of money in spite of it, and had gained many
votes because of it.

"Mebbe they're a harmless crew at that, our woodsmen," said Seth. "Sort
of like tame animals."

"Except Lucas Cross," said Dr. Swain. "He's a mean one. There's
something about him, something around the eyes, that rubs me the wrong
way. He has the look of a jackal."

"Lucas is all right, Doc," said Seth comfortably. "You're seein'
things."

"I hope so," said the doctor. "But I'm afraid not."




CHAPTER 8


Selena Cross lay on the folding cot that served as her bed and which was
pushed against the wall on the kitchen side of the one-room Cross shack.
She was thirteen years old and well developed for her age, with the
curves of hips and breasts already discernible under the too short and
often threadbare clothes that she wore. Much of the girl's clothing had
been inherited from the more fortunate children of Peyton Place and
passed down to Selena through the charity-loving hands of the ladies
from the Congregational church. Selena had long dark hair that curled of
its own accord in a softly beautiful fashion. Her eyes, too, were dark
and slightly slanted, and she had a naturally red, full-lipped mouth
over well-shaped, startlingly white teeth. Her skin was clear and of a
honey-tan shade which looked as if it had been acquired under the sun
but which, on Selena, never faded to sallowness in the long months of
the harsh New England winter.

"Put a pair of gold hoops in her ears," said Miss Thornton, "and she'd
look like everybody's idea of a perfect gypsy."

Selena was wise with the wisdom learned of poverty and wretchedness. At
thirteen, she saw hopelessness as an old enemy, as persistent and
inevitable as death.

Sometimes, when she looked at Nellie, her mother, she thought, I'll get
out. I'll never be like her.

Nellie Cross was short and flabby with the unhealthy fat that comes from
too many potatoes and too much bread. Her hair was thin and tied in a
sloppy knot at the back of her not too clean neck, and her hands,
perpetually grimy, were rough and knobby knuckled, with broken, dirty
fingernails.

I'll get out, thought Selena. I'll never let myself look like that.

But hopelessness was always at her elbow, ready to nudge her and say,
"Oh, yeah? _How_ will you get out? Where could you go, and who would
have you after you got there?"

If Lucas was away, or at home but sober, Selena would think,
optimistically, Oh, I'll manage. One way or another, I'll get out.

But for the most part it was like tonight. Selena lay in her cot and
listened to her older brother Paul snoring in his bed against the
opposite wall, and to the adenoidal breathing of her little brother
Joey, who slept in a cot like her own. But these sounds could not cover
the louder ones which came from the double bed at the other end of the
shack. Selena lay still and listened to Lucas and Nellie perform the act
of love. Lucas did not speak while thus engaged. He grunted, Selena
thought, like a rooting pig, and he breathed like a steam engine puffing
its way across the wide Connecticut River, while from Nellie there was
no sound at all. Selena listened and chewed at her bottom lip and
thought, Hurry up, for Christ's sake. Lucas grunted harder and puffed
louder, and the old spring on the double bed creaked alarmingly, faster
and faster. At last, Lucas squealed like a calf in the hands of a
butcher and it was over. Selena turned her face into her moldy-smelling
pillow which was bare of any sort of pillowcase, and wept soundlessly.

I'll get out, she thought furiously. I'll get out of this filthy mess.

Her old enemy, hopelessness, did not even bother to answer. He was just
there.




CHAPTER 9


Allison MacKenzie had never actually visited at Selena's house. She was
in the habit of walking down the dirt road to where the Cross shack
stood, and of waiting in front of the clearing until her friend came out
to her. Many times Allison had wondered why none of the Crosses ever
invited her into the house, but she had never quite dared to ask Selena.
Once she had asked her mother, but Constance had persisted in saying
that the reason was that Selena was ashamed of her home, so Allison had
never discussed it with her again. Constance could not seem to
understand that Selena was perfect and sure of herself, and that it was
only she, Allison, who ever had feelings of shame. But still, it was odd
the way no one had ever invited her into the house. Most of the time
Selena came right out the shack door as soon as she saw Allison, but
once in a while she emerged from the enclosed pen that was attached to
the side of the house in which Lucas kept a few sheep. Whenever she had
been in the sheep pen, Selena always yelled, "Wait a minute, Allison. I
got to wash my feet," but she never asked Allison to come in while she
did so. Usually Selena's little brother Joey tagged along behind his
sister, but this Saturday afternoon Selena came out of the house alone.

"Hi, Selena," called Allison warmly, her antisocial mood of the previous
afternoon forgotten.

"Hi, kid," said Selena in the oddly deep voice which Allison found so
intriguing. "What'll we do today?"

The question was rhetorical. On Saturday afternoons the girls always
sauntered slowly down the streets of the town, looking into shop windows
and pretending that they were grown up and married to famous men. They
studied every piece of merchandise in the Peyton Place stores, carefully
picking and choosing what they would buy for themselves, for their
houses and for their children.

"That suit would be adorable on little Clark, Mrs. Gable," they said to
one another.

And, nonchalantly, "Since I divorced Mr. Powell, I just can't seem to
work up much interest in clothes any more."

Together, they spent every cent Allison could beg from her mother on
junk jewelry, motion picture magazines and ice-cream sundaes. Sometimes
Selena had a little money which she had earned by doing some odd job for
a local housewife, and then she and Allison would go to a movie at the
Ioka Theater. Later, they would sit at the soda fountain in Prescott's
Drugstore and eat toasted tomato and lettuce sandwiches and drink
Coca-Cola. Then, instead of pretending that they were married to motion
picture stars, they would play at being well-to-do local housewives out
for an afternoon stroll and stopping for tea while their infants slept
peacefully in perambulators parked outside Prescott's front door.
Allison held a drinking straw, ripped in half as if it were a cigarette,
and carried on what she considered a grown-up conversation.

"When Mr. Beane decided to start up the movie theater," she said, "he
didn't have enough money, so he borrowed from an Irishman named Kelley.
That's why the theater is named the Ioka. It stands for I Owe Kelley
All."

She drew a great deal of satisfaction out of knowing these little town
anecdotes and from repeating them, with her own embellishments, while
she picked imaginary shreds of tobacco daintily off her tongue. Selena
was always an appreciative audience, never mean or stinting with her
"Oh's" or "My goodnesses," or her breathlessly disbelieving "No's!"

"Oh, my goodness. Did Mr. Beane ever pay Mr. Kelley back?" asked Selena.

"Oh, sure," said Allison. And then, after a moment's pause in which a
better answer occurred to her, "No, wait a minute. He didn't. No, he
never paid Mr. Kelley back. He ascended with the funds."

Selena slipped out of her grown-up character long enough to ask,
indignantly, "What do you mean, ascended?" She always considered it as
hitting below the belt when Allison used words which Selena had never
heard of, and oftentimes she thought that Allison made up her own words
as she went along.

"Oh, you know," said Allison. "Ascended. Ran away. Yes, Mr. Beane
ascended with all the funds, and Mr. Kelley never got any of his money
back."

"Allison MacKenzie, you're making that up!" protested Selena, the
grown-up conversational game now completely forgotten. "Why, I saw Amos
Beane right on Elm Street just yesterday. You're making the whole thing
up!"

"Yes," said Allison, laughing, "I am."

"_Absconded_," said Mrs. Prescott severely from behind the soda
fountain. "And he never did. That's how gossip gets started, young lady.
Outrageous lies, multiplied and divided and multiplied again."

"Yes, ma'am," said Allison meekly.

"Gossip's just like amoebas," said Mrs. Prescott. "Multiply, divide and
multiply."

Allison and Selena, struck with a sudden fit of giggles, ran outdoors,
leaving their half-finished sandwiches. They clung together on the
sidewalk, laughing hysterically, while Mrs. Prescott looked on
disapprovingly from behind the plate glass window.

When these long Saturday afternoons were over, the two girls went to
Allison's house where they spent many enchanted hours making up each
other's faces with minute quantities of cosmetics which they had
obtained by sending magazine coupons to companies who offered free
samples.

"I think this 'Blue Plum' is just the right shade of lipstick for you,
Selena."

And Selena, with lips that looked like swollen Concord grapes, would
say, "This 'Oriental #2' is swell on you, kid. Gives you a swell color."

Allison, studying the reflection that looked back at her and which now
looked rather like that of a pallid Indian, would say, "Do you really
think so? You're not just _saying_ that?"

"No, really. It brings out your eyes."

This game had to be over before Constance arrived home. She had a
withering way of saying that make-up looked cheap on young girls so that
Allison, listening to her, would feel the shine of pleasure rub off her
lovely Saturday afternoon, and would be depressed for the rest of the
evening.

Selena always stayed to supper on Saturdays, when Constance usually made
something simple, like waffles or scrambled eggs with little sausages.
To Selena, these were foods of unheard of luxury, just as everything
about the MacKenzie house seemed luxurious--and beautiful, something to
dream about. She loved the combination of rock maple and flowered chintz
in the MacKenzie living room, and she often wondered, sometimes angrily,
what in the world ailed Allison that she could be unhappy in
surroundings like these, with a wonderful blonde mother, and a pink and
white bedroom of her own.

This was the way the two friends had always spent their Saturday
afternoons, but today some restlessness, some urge to contrariness, made
Allison hesitant to answer Selena's, "What'll we do today?" with the
stock answer.

Allison said, "Oh, I don't know. Let's just walk."

"Where to?" demanded Selena practically. "Can't just walk and walk and
not go anywhere. Let's go down to your mother's store."

Selena loved to go to the Thrifty Corner. Sometimes Constance allowed
her to look at the dresses which hung, shimmering gorgeously, from
padded white hangers.

"No," said Allison decisively, wanting to go anywhere but to her
mother's store. "You always want to do the same old thing. Let's go
somewhere else."

"Well, _where_, then?" asked Selena petulantly.

"I know a place," said Allison quickly. "I know the most wonderful place
in the world to go. It's a secret place, though, so you mustn't ever
tell anyone that I took you there. Promise?"

Selena laughed. "Where's this?" she asked. "Are you going to take me up
to Samuel Peyton's castle?"

"Oh, _no_! I'd _never_ go up there. I'd be scared. Wouldn't you?"

"No," said Selena flatly, "I wouldn't. Dead folks can't hurt you none.
It's the ones that are alive, you have to watch out for."

"Well, anyway, it's not the castle I'm talking about. Come on. I'll show
you."

"All right," said Selena. "But if it's somewhere silly, I'll turn right
around and go downtown. I've got a dollar and a quarter from doing Mrs.
Partridge's ironing, and the new _Photoplays_ and _Silver Screens_ are
in down at Prescott's."

"Oh, come on," said Allison impatiently.

Arm in arm, the two girls walked, Allison leading the way through town
and into Memorial Park. She felt excited, the way she often did just
before Christmas, when she had a special gift to give to someone, and
she felt, too, the particular happiness that comes from sharing
something precious with a dear friend.

"Here comes Ted Carter," said Allison in a whisper, although the boy was
at the opposite end of the park walk and could not possibly have heard
her. "Pretend you don't see him."

"Why?" asked Selena aloud. "Ted's a good kid. Why should I make out not
to see him?"

"He's _after_ you, that's why," hissed Allison.

"You're nuts."

"I am not. You don't want anything to do with Ted Carter, Selena. He
comes from a _terrible_ family. I heard my mother talking to Mrs. Page
once, about Ted's mother and father. Mrs. Page said that Mrs. Carter is
no better than a _hoor_!"

"D'you mean whore?" asked Selena.

"Sh-h," Allison whispered. "He'll hear you. I don't know what Mrs. Page
meant, but Mother's face got all red when she heard it, so it must be
something terrible, like a thief, or a murderer!"

"Well, maybe it is, in a way," drawled Selena and burst out laughing.
"Hi, Ted," she said to the boy who was now almost abreast of the two
girls. "What're you doing here?"

"Same thing you are," said Ted and grinned. "Just walking."

"Well, then, walk with us," said Selena, ignoring Allison's elbow in her
ribs.

"I can't," said Ted. "I gotta get back and get groceries for my mother."

"Well, if you can't, you can't," said Selena.

"Come _on_," said Allison.

"'Bye, Ted," said Selena.

"'Bye," said Ted. "'Bye, Allison."

The girls walked on through the park and Ted continued on his way toward
town. When he reached the end of the walk where it emerged into the
street, Ted turned to look back.

"Hey, Selena," he yelled.

The girls turned to look at him and Ted waved his hand.

"I'll be seeing you, Selena," called Ted.

"Sure!" Selena called back, and waved.

Ted turned out of the park into the street and was out of sight.

"_See!_" said Allison furiously. "You _see_! I told you so. He's _after_
you."

Selena stopped walking to look at her friend. She looked at her long and
hard.

"So what?" she asked finally.

The afternoon was not a success. For the first time during their long
friendship, the two girls did not see eye to eye.

What's wrong, wondered Allison, not able to understand a person who
remained unmoved by the beauty of the land.

I wonder what ails her, thought Selena, unable to imagine anyone for
whom "going downtown" was not a thrilling experience, gaining in new
joys with every trip. But then, Allison had a lot of queer ideas,
thought Selena. Like when she wanted to be all by herself, or when she
got to mooning over her dead father.

After all, Selena reasoned, her own father was just as dead as Allison's
father, but no one ever caught her mooning around over some dumb picture
the way Allison did. Selena had no idea at all of how her father had
looked. He had been killed in a lumbering accident two months before she
was born and Nellie had had no framed photographs to show her daughter.
Lucas Cross was the only father Selena knew. He had been a widower with
one son by a wife who had died in childbirth, and he had married Nellie
when Selena was six weeks old. Paul was not Selena's own brother any
more than Joey was but, thought Selena, she didn't bother to think of
that much. If Allison were in my shoes, mused Selena, I bet she'd always
be talking about half brothers and stepfathers and that kind of stuff. I
wonder what ails her all the time.

Allison wondered incredulously if Selena could possibly be approaching
the stage which Constance described as "being boy crazy." She was
certainly in an awful hurry to get downtown. Maybe she hoped that she'd
see Ted Carter in one of the stores. Allison frowned at this thought, as
she began to climb the long, sloping hill behind the park, Selena at her
heels.

Selena did not like one single feature of Road's End and said so in no
uncertain terms when she and Allison had reached the top of the hill.

"It's just an old drop-off," said Selena when Allison pointed out the
wooden board with the lettering on its side. "Why shouldn't there be a
sign there. People might get killed if there wasn't."

Allison was ready to cry. She felt as if she had been unjustly slapped
in the face. It was like giving someone a mink coat, or a diamond
bracelet, or something just as special as that, and having the person
say, "Oh, I have more of those than I can use."

"They're just woods," commented Selena a few minutes later, and flatly
refused to walk through them with Allison. "What do I want to walk in
any old woods for? There's plenty of woods right around our shack. I get
a bellyful of woods every day in the week."

"You're mean, Selena," cried Allison. "You're just plain mean and
hateful! This is a special, secret place. No one ever comes here but me,
and I brought you up because I thought you were my special friend."

"Oh, don't be such a baby," said Selena crossly. "And what do you mean,
no one comes here but you? Boys have been bringing girls up here ever
since I can remember, at night, in cars."

"You're a liar!" shouted Allison.

"I am not," said Selena indignantly. "Ask anybody. They'll tell you."

"Well, it's just not true," said Allison. "What would anyone want to
come up here at night for? You can't walk in the woods at night."

Selena shrugged. "Forget it, kid," she said, not unkindly. "Don't be mad
at me. Come on, let's go downtown."

"That makes the hundredth time you've said that," said Allison angrily.
"All _right_. We'll go downtown."

Constance MacKenzie did not wholly approve of Allison's friendship with
the stepdaughter of Lucas Cross. Once or twice she had tried,
halfheartedly, to put a stop to it, but after a few days of returning
home from work to find Allison in tears, vowing that she was totally
friendless now that Selena was being kept from her, Constance had
relented. She had never been able to answer Allison's questions about
Selena satisfactorily.

"I never said that I didn't like Selena," she would tell Allison
defensively. "It's just--" and here she would always stop to search for
just the right words.

"Just what, Mother?" Allison would prompt her.

Constance would have to shrug, unable to put her finger on what it was
in Selena that disturbed her.

"With all the _nice_ children in this town," she had said once, but was
stopped by Allison's look, and her question.

"Why don't you think Selena is nice?"

"I didn't say that," said Constance, and then she had hunched her
shoulders helplessly. "Never mind."

So the friendship between Allison and Selena had continued, full and
satisfying, until this Saturday afternoon when each girl had wanted a
different something, and neither had been able to understand the other's
need.

Together, they walked up one side of Elm Street and down the other,
looking into the shop windows, but unable to play the game that had
always amused them.

"Let's go to your mother's store," said Selena.

But Allison refused, feeling cheated at spending the lovely afternoon
away from her favorite place.

"Go in yourself, if you want to go that bad," said Allison, knowing that
Selena would not go into the Thrifty Corner without her.

In the end, they walked around all the counters in the five- and
ten-cent store, fingering strands of false pearls, gazing longingly at
the rows upon rows of cosmetics, and listening to the popular tunes that
came from the music counter. They sat at the store's soda fountain and
each ate a huge, gummy banana split, and Allison felt her good humor
beginning to return.

"We'll go over to Mother's now, if you want," she offered.

"No, never mind. Let's walk to your house."

"No, really. I know you want to go to the shop. I don't mind. Truly, I
don't."

"You don't have to go, just on account of me."

"But I _want_ to, Selena. Really."

"All right, if you really want to go."

They wadded their paper napkins into small, round balls and dropped them
into the empty sundae dishes, and things were suddenly all right between
them again.

Constance MacKenzie waved to them from behind the hosiery counter as
they came into the shop.

"There are some new party dresses," she called. "Over there on the
second rack."

Selena looked, and as if in a trance, moved toward the shining garments
that hung displayed on a movable rack. There seemed to be hundreds of
dresses, each one prettier than the last. Selena stared, her fingers
aching to touch the lovely fabrics.

Allison stood in front of the shop window and looked out at the traffic
on Elm Street. It was always this way. She had to stand around for what
seemed hours while Selena looked at every single article in the Thrifty
Corner.

Constance finished with a customer and walked toward Selena with the
intention of holding up one of the new dresses to show to Allison, but
she was stopped short by the glazed expression on Selena's face. The
child's parted lips and half-closed, dreaming eyes wrung a sharp pity in
Constance. She could understand a girl looking that way at the sight of
a beautiful dress. The only time that Allison ever wore this expression
was when she was reading.

"Here," said Constance to Selena loudly and suddenly, surprising
herself. "This one is your size. Try it on if you like."

She held out a white, stiff-skirted dress, and her eyes began to fill
foolishly at the look of gratitude on Selena's face.

"Do you _mean_ it, Mrs. MacKenzie?" whispered Selena. "Can I really
_touch_ it?"

"Well, I hardly see how you can try it on without touching it," said
Constance shortly, and hoped that she had managed to cover the shaking
of her voice.

A few minutes later, when Selena emerged from the dressing room
resplendent in the white dress, even Allison caught her breath.

"Oh, Selena!" she cried. "You look perfectly beautiful. You look just
like a fairy princess!"

No, she doesn't, thought Constance, knowing suddenly what it was that
bothered her about Selena Cross.

She looks like a woman, thought Constance. At thirteen, she has the look
of a beautifully sensual, expensively kept woman.

Later that evening, Selena walked down the dirt road toward her home.
She was still warm with the memory of Constance's pancakes which had
dripped with butter and maple syrup, and of the coffee which had been
served with real cream. She could still see, in her mind, the beautiful
MacKenzie living room, with its big chairs and its wrought-iron magazine
rack filled with copies of _The American Home_ and _The Ladies' Home
Journal_. In disgust, Selena thought of her friend Allison, who mooned
over a photograph and whispered, "Isn't he handsome? That's my father."

"He's dead--and you're better off, kid," Selena had wanted to say. But
she hadn't, because Mrs. MacKenzie might not like it, and Selena never
wanted to do anything in the world to offend Allison's mother.

I'll get out, thought Selena as she stepped into the clearing in front
of the Cross shack. Someday, I'll get out, and when I do, I'll always
wear beautiful clothes and talk in a soft voice, just like Mrs.
MacKenzie.

As Selena fell asleep, she was thinking of the way the fire in the
MacKenzie fireplace had made shining, shimmering lights in Constance's
hair. For Ted Carter, she had not a single thought to spare, although in
his bed Ted was picturing Selena's face and the way she smiled at him
when she said, "Well, then, walk with us."

Darned if I wouldn't, thought Ted, turning over on his side, if Miss
Prissy Allison hadn't been with her. Ma's groceries could have waited.

"Selena," he whispered her name aloud in his darkened room. "Selena," he
said, tasting the word on his tongue.

His heart lurched within him in an odd way that caused him to feel a
peculiar mixture of fear and anticipation, and something else that was
almost pain.




CHAPTER 10


Dr. Matthew Swain was a tall, big-boned man with a head of thick and
wavy silver hair. The doctor's hair was his best feature, and he was
proud of it in an unobtrusive way. He kept it carefully brushed, and
every morning he examined it closely to make sure that it held no yellow
streaks.

"A man's entitled to one vanity," he excused himself, and Isobel Crosby,
who kept house for the doctor, said that it was a good thing that the
old man was vain about something. He certainly didn't care what the rest
of himself looked like. His suits always needed pressing, and he had a
terrible habit of eating in the living room. The doctor's coffee cups,
strewn all over the house, were Isobel's cross.

"It ain't a backbreakin' job to carry a half-empty cup into the
kitchen," she often complained. "It ain't gonna rupture you to lift one
little cup."

"If I never do anything worse than leave a coffee cup hanging around,
Isobel, you can count yourself lucky," replied the doctor.

"It ain't just the cups," said Isobel. "You let your clothes lay
wherever they drop, you sprinkle the house with cigar ashes, and your
shoes always look like you just came from a long session in somebody's
barn."

"Count your blessings, Isobel," said the doctor. "Would you rather keep
house for some lecherous old devil? At least I haven't always got a hand
up your skirt. Maybe that's what ails you."

"And on top of it all," said Isobel, who had known the doctor for too
many years to be shocked at anything he said, "you've got a dirty tongue
and an evil mind."

"Oh, go starch some antimacassars," said the doctor crossly.

Everyone in Peyton Place liked Doc Swain. He had warm, blue eyes of the
type which, to his eternal disgust, were termed "twinkling," and his
kindness was legend in the town. Matthew Swain was one of a rapidly
disappearing species, the small-town general practitioner. The word
"specialist" was anathema to him.

"Yes, I'm a specialist," he had once roared at a famous ear, eye, nose
and throat man. "I specialize in sick people. What do you do?"

At sixty, the doctor still went out on calls day or night, summer and
winter, and it was his habit to send birthday cards to every child he
had ever delivered.

"You're nothing but a soggy sentimentalist at heart," Seth Buswell often
teased. "Birthday cards, indeed!"

"Sentimental, hell," replied the doctor good-naturedly. "It just gives
me a continuous feeling of accomplishment to stop every day and realize
all the work I've done."

"Work, work, work," said Seth. "That's your favorite word. I think you
hope to give me an inferiority complex by impressing my laziness on me
all the time. You'll drop dead of a heart attack one of these days, from
your goddamned work, work, work. Just like one of those handsome,
silver-haired doctors in the movies."

"Crap," said the doctor. "Heart attacks are so commonplace. Give me a
nice troublesome ulcer any day."

"On second thought," said Seth, "you'll die of a bashed in skull
administered by one of those nurses you're always tickling over at your
hospital."

The Peyton Place hospital was small, well equipped and Dr. Swain's pride
and joy. He ran it efficiently and admired it with all the tenderness of
a young lover, and the fact that it was often used by citizens of the
surrounding towns in preference to other, larger hospitals was a source
of unending satisfaction to him. The hospital belonged to the town, but
everybody in Peyton Place referred to it as "Doc Swain's hospital," and
the girls who used its small but excellent training school for nurses
referred to themselves as "The Doc's girls."

Matthew Swain was a good and upright man, and a lover of life and
humanity. If he had a fault, it was his careless, sometimes vitriolic
tongue, but the town forgave him this for Matthew Swain was a good
doctor, and if he spoke gruffly at times, he also always spoke the
truth. He had a sense of humor which was sometimes loud, oftentimes
lewd, but never deliberately unkind, and for this, too, the town forgave
him, for The Doc could laugh longest and loudest at himself. Everyone
loved Dr. Swain, with the possible exception of Charles Partridge's wife
Marion, and her only reason for disliking him was that the doctor
refused to be impressed with the picture she had created of herself.

"It don't pay to puff yourself up in front of The Doc," said the town.
"Surer than hell he'll have a pin to stick into you if you do!"

But Marion Partridge could not and would not believe this. She tried
continually to make Matthew Swain see her as she was sure the rest of
the town saw her, and because he would not, she often referred to him as
"that impossible man."

Marion was a medium-sized woman. Seth Buswell, whenever he looked at
her, reflected that everything about Marion Partridge was medium.

"_Rien de trop_," said Seth to himself and felt that these words
described Marion perfectly, from her medium-brown hair and average
figure to her mediocre mind.

She had been born Marion Saltmarsh, the daughter of an impecunious
Baptist minister and his tired wife. She had one brother, John, who had
decided early in life to follow in his father's religious footsteps and
at the age of twenty one had been ordained as a minister. It was John's
ambition to carry religion to "the savage peoples of the earth" and
immediately after his ordination, he left America as a missionary.
Marion, meanwhile, finished her schooling, graduating with average
grades, and settled down to live in the parsonage with her parents,
ready with them to offer succor to the poor and troubled, and happily
rolling bandages for a local hospital every Wednesday afternoon.

In later years, Charles Partridge admitted to himself that he had met
Marion by accident and married her in a moment of weakness. After
passing his bar examinations, he had been taking a long summer vacation
in the seaside town where the Reverend Saltmarsh lived with his family.
Charles Partridge was a Congregationalist and had attended a Sunday
service at the Reverend Saltmarsh's Baptist church more out of curiosity
than from a desire for religious comfort, and there he had seen Marion
singing in the choir. The girl had been standing in the front row of the
group of singers, her face uplifted and shining with a look of ecstasy.
Charles Partridge had caught his breath and believed that the girl
looked like an angel. In this he was mistaken. It was neither rapture
nor exultation which shone from Marion. She had much of this same look
whenever she lay in a tub of hot water, or whenever she ate something
she particularly liked. Music affected Marion only sensually, lighting
her medium face with a sudden pleasure and making it, for a few moments,
extraordinary.

Charles Partridge, young and impressionable, and perhaps with his
resistance lowered by the long years of study now behind him, began to
court Marion Saltmarsh. In August, five weeks after he had seen her
singing in the choir for the first time, they were married, and on the
first of September the young couple returned to Charles's home in Peyton
Place where he was to begin his career.

As he grew older, Partridge sometimes wondered if he would have married
in such haste had he been able, during his years as a student, to afford
to patronize the houses of ill repute so enthusiastically acclaimed by
his classmates. He thought not.

Success had come easily to Charles Partridge, and as the years passed,
he accumulated money and a house on Chestnut Street, and Marion became
active in club and charity work. She liked her comfortable life,
uncomplicated as it was either by children or lack of money. Guiltily,
she often realized that she gloated whenever she compared her
circumstances now against what they had been during her childhood, but
her guilt was short lived and easily forgotten.

Marion liked things. She surrounded herself with all sorts of small
bric-a-brac and odd pieces of furniture. It gave her a thrill of
pleasure to open her linen closet and see the piles of extra sheets and
towels stored there. The size, purpose or quality of an object was
secondary to Marion, coming after her desire to acquire and possess.

Immediately after her marriage, Marion deserted the Baptists and joined
the Congregational church, for the latter was considered to be the
"best" church in Peyton Place. Marion would have very much liked to
instigate some sort of committee, with herself as president, to pass on
memberships for her church. She hated to belong to an organization, even
a religious one, which allowed "undesirables" to become members, and she
had many dark thoughts about persons whom she considered "inferior."

"That MacKenzie woman," she said to her husband. "Don't tell me a young
widow like that is any better than she should be. Don't tell me she
doesn't do a lot of running around that no one has heard about. Don't
tell me she hasn't got an eye on every man in town."

"My dear," said Charles Partridge wearily, "I'd never attempt to tell
you anything."

But when Marion said the same things to Matthew Swain the doctor would
fix her with a straight look and roar, "What the hell do you mean by
that, Marion?"

"Well, after all, Matt, a young widow like that, living alone in a
house--"

"Hey, Charlie! Marion feels bad for Connie MacKenzie living all alone.
Why don't you pack up and move over there for a while?"

"Oh, that Matt Swain is impossible, Charles. _Impossible._"

"Now, Marion," replied Charles Partridge. "Matt is a fine man. He
doesn't mean any harm. And he's a good doctor."

Shortly after Marion reached the age of forty, she developed symptoms
which worried and frightened her, and she called Dr. Swain. He examined
her thoroughly and told her she was as healthy as a horse.

"Listen, Marion, this is nothing to worry about. I can give you shots to
keep you fairly comfortable, but beyond that I'm helpless. This is
menopause, and there isn't much anyone can do."

"Menopause!" cried Marion. "Matt, you're out of your head. I'm a young
woman."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-six."

"You're a liar, Marion. You're over forty."

Marion went home and raged at her husband. She told him that friend or
no friend, lifelong or not, Matthew Swain had stepped through her front
door for the last time. Thereafter, she went to a doctor in White River
who treated her for a delicate stomach condition.

"What the hell, Matt," said Seth Buswell, whenever he saw Marion cut the
doctor dead on the street, "you didn't want to be beloved by everyone
did you?"

"I wouldn't mind," said the doctor. "Would anyone? Would you?"

"No," replied Seth.




CHAPTER 11


Indian summer lingered on in Peyton Place for exactly six days and then
she was gone as suddenly as she had come. The bright leaves on the
trees, beaten loose by cold wind and rain, fell to the ground like tears
wept for a remembered past. They lost their colors quickly on the
sidewalks and roads. They lay wet and brown and dead, a depressing
reminder that winter had come to stay.

Less and less frequently now, Allison walked up to Road's End. Whenever
she did she wrapped her raincoat tightly about her and stood, shivering,
unable now to see the town clearly from the end of the road. Everything
was blurred by a thin, gray mist and the hills, no longer a hot,
beautiful purple, loomed black against the horizon. The trees in her
woods no longer lifted their arms to shout, "Hello, Allison. Hello!"
They hung their tired heads and sighed, "Go home, Allison. Go home."

It was a sad time, thought Allison, a time of death and decay with
everything waiting sorrowfully and subdued for the snows that would come
to cover the exposed bones of a dead summer.

But it was not the season which weighed heaviest on Allison. She did not
know what it was. She seemed to be filled with a restlessness, a vague
unrest, which nothing was able to ease. She began to spend the hours
after school in sitting before the fire in the living room, an open book
in her hands, but sometimes she forgot to read the page before her eyes
and sat idly gazing into the flames on the hearth. At other times, she
devoured every word she read and was filled with an insatiable longing
for more. She discovered a box of old books in the attic, among them two
thin volumes of short stories by Guy de Maupassant. These she read over
and over again, unable to understand many of them and weeping at others.
She had no sympathy for "Miss Harriet," but her heart broke for the two
old people who worked so long and so hard to buy another "Diamond
Necklace." Allison's reading had no pattern, and she went from De
Maupassant to James Hilton without a quiver. She read _Goodbye, Mr.
Chips_, and wept in the darkness of her room for an hour while the last
line of the story lingered in her mind: "I said goodbye to Chips the
night before he died." Allison began to wonder about God and death.

Why was it that good people like Mr. Chips and the Little Match Girl and
Allison's father died as indiscriminately as bad people? Was God really
the way Reverend Fitzgerald pictured him for her every Sunday from the
pulpit of the Congregational church? Was he really all good, all
compassionate, loving everyone and truly listening to prayer?

"God hears every word," said the Reverend Fitzgerald. "Every prayer sent
heavenward is heard."

But, wondered Allison, if God was so good and powerful, why was it that
He sometimes seemed not to hear?

For this question, too, the Reverend Fitzgerald had an answer, and like
all his answers it held the ring of truth at first, but as soon as
Allison paused to think, another question would occur to her, and
sometimes the minister's answers made no sense at all, but seemed empty
and contradictory.

"He hears every single word," assured the Reverend Fitzgerald, but
Allison asked silently, If He really hears, why is it that He often does
not answer?

"Sometimes," said the minister, "The Almighty Father must refuse us.
Like a loving father on earth, refusing a child for his own good, so
must our Heavenly Father sometimes refuse us. But He always acts in our
best interests."

Well, then, thought Allison, why pray at all? If God was going to do
what He thought was best anyway, why bother to ask for anything one
wanted? If you prayed, and God thought that what you asked should be
granted, He would grant it. If you did not pray, and it was true that
God always acted in one's best interests, you would receive whatever He
wanted you to receive anyway. Prayer, thought Allison, was a dreadfully
unfair, rather unsportsmanlike affair, with all the advantages on one
side.

When she had been younger, she had prayed and prayed that her father
might be returned to her, but nothing had come of that. It had seemed
unreasonable to her then that a loving God who could perform miracles
any time the urge struck Him should want to see a little girl go without
a father. Now that she was twelve, this still seemed unreasonable, and
unfair as well.

Allison looked up at the gray skies of October and wondered if it was
possible that there was no God at all, just as there were no real fairy
princesses, no magic elves.

She roamed the streets of the town with an air of searching, and it left
her with a hollow feeling of loss when she pulled herself up short and
asked herself what she was looking for. She dreamed vague, half-formed
dreams that were easily broken, and every day she waited impatiently for
tomorrow.

"I wish it would hurry and be June," she told her mother. "Then I'd be
ready to graduate from grade school."

"Don't wish time away, Allison," said Constance. "It goes much too
quickly as it is. In a little while, you'll look back on these times as
the best years of your life."

But Allison did not believe her.

"No, don't hurry time, Allison," repeated Constance, and peered into the
mirror on the living room wall, searching the corners of her eyes for
small lines. "You'll be thirteen next month," she said, and wondered,
Can it be possible? Thirteen? So soon? Fourteen, actually. I'd almost
forgotten. "We'll have a nice little party for you," she said.

"Oh, _please_, Mother," protested Allison, "birthday parties are so
_childish_!"

A few days later Allison said, "Perhaps a party _would_ be nice after
all," and Constance rolled her eyes heavenward, wondering if she had
ever gone through this phase of never knowing what she wanted.

If I did, she thought sourly, it's no wonder that my poor mother died
young!

To Allison, she said, "All right, dear. You go ahead and invite your
little friends and I'll take care of everything else."

Allison almost screamed that she did not want a party after all, if her
mother was going to refer to her classmates as "her little friends." Her
mother did not seem to realize that Allison would be thirteen in two
more weeks, and on the verge of entering something described in magazine
articles as "adolescence." Allison pronounced this word, which she had
read but never heard spoken, as "a-_dole_-icents," and to her it had all
the mysterious connotations of hearing someone speak of "entering a
nunnery."

Allison was not unaware of the physical changes in herself, nor did she
fail to notice many of these same changes in others. Size, she had
decided, was something that one was stuck with, no more alterable than
the slant of one's cheekbones. Selena, she realized, had been different
from younger girls for quite a while now, for she already wore a
brassire all the time, while Allison was sure that she herself would
have no need for such a garment for a long time. She locked herself in
the bathroom and examined her figure critically. Her waist seemed
slimmer, and she was definitely beginning to develop breasts in an
unobtrusive way, but her legs were as long and skinny as ever.

Like a spider, she thought resentfully, and hurriedly put on her
bathrobe.

Boys were different now, too, she had noticed. Rodney Harrington had a
slight shadow above his upper lip and boasted that soon he would have to
go to Clement's Barbershop every day to be shaved, just like his father.
Allison shivered. She hated the idea of hair growing anywhere on her
body. Selena already had hair under her arms which she shaved off once a
month.

"I get it over with all at once," said Selena. "My period and my shave."

Allison nodded approvingly. "Good idea," she said sagely.

But as far as she was concerned, "periods" were something that happened
to other girls. She decided that she would never tolerate such things in
herself.

When Selena heard that, she laughed. "There's not going to be much you
can do about it," she said. "You'll get it the same as everyone else."

But Allison did not believe her friend. She sent away to a company which
advertised a free booklet entitled, _How to Tell Your Daughter_,
offering to send it in a plain wrapper, and she read this carefully.

Phooey, she thought disdainfully when she had finished studying the
pamphlet. I'll be the only woman in the whole world who won't, and I'll
be written up in all the medical books.

She thought of "It" as a large black bat, with wings outspread, and when
she woke up on the morning of her thirteenth birthday to discover that
"It" was nothing of the kind, she was disappointed, disgusted and more
than a little frightened.

But the reason she wept was that she was not, after all, going to be as
unique as she had wanted to be.




CHAPTER 12


Constance MacKenzie provided ice cream, cake, fruit punch and assorted
hard candies for Allison's birthday party, and then retired to her room
before an onslaught of thirty youngsters who entered her house at
seven-thirty in the evening.

My God! she thought in horror, listening to thirty voices apparently all
raised at once, and to the racket made by thirty pairs of feet all
jouncing in unison on her living room floor to the accompaniment of
something called "In the Mood" being played on a record by a man to whom
Allison referred reverently as Glenn Miller.

My God! thought Constance, and there are still apparently sane people in
this world who take up schoolteaching by choice!

She sent up a silent message of sympathy to Miss Elsie Thornton and all
others like her who had to put up with many more than thirty children
every day, five days a week.

My God! thought Constance, who seemed unable to stop calling on her
Maker.

She picked up a book and tried determinedly to shut her mind to the
noise that came from the living room. But at nine-thirty things became
so quiet that Mr. Glenn Miller's music was clearly audible, and
Constance began to wonder what the children were doing. She turned out
her bedroom light and moved softly into the hall toward the living room.

Allison's guests were playing post office. For a moment, Constance felt
her face stiffen with surprise.

At _this_ age? she wondered. So _young_? I'd best go in and put a stop
to this right now. I'll have every mother in town down on my neck if
this ever gets out.

But she hesitated, with her hand on the door jamb and one foot on the
threshold. Perhaps this was the regulation party game these days for
thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, and if she burst into the living room
mightn't Allison, to quote her daughter, "Simply die of embarrassment"?

Constance stood outside the darkened living room and tried to remember
at what age she had begun to participate in kissing games. She concluded
that she had been at least sixteen. Could her shy, withdrawn little
Allison actually be playing such games at thirteen?

For the first time since Allison's birth, Constance felt the finger of
fear which is always ready to prod at the minds of women who have made
what they considered to be "A Mistake."

A quick picture of her daughter Allison, lying in bed with a man,
flashed through her mind, and Constance put a shaking hand against the
wall to steady herself.

Oh, she'll get hurt! was the first thought that filled her.

Then: Oh, she'll get in trouble!

And finally, worst of all: SHE'LL GET HERSELF TALKED ABOUT!

After all I've done for her! thought Constance in a flush of angry
self-pity. After all I've done for her, she acts like a little tramp
right under my nose, letting some pimply-faced boy paw her and mush her.
After the way I've slaved to give her a decent bringing up!

A frightened anger, which she did not realize was for a dead Allison
MacKenzie and a girl named Constance Standish, filled her and was
directed at her daughter.

I'll fix her in a hurry, she thought, and took her hand away from the
wall.

The voice which came to her then, before she could step over the
threshold, filled her with such relief that she began to tremble.
Allison was not playing the game; she was on the side lines, calling the
numbers.

For a moment Constance could not move, and then, weak with vanishing
apprehension, she almost giggled aloud.

The unkissed postmistress, she thought. I should be more careful. I
almost made a fool of myself.

When she felt that she could walk, she returned silently to her bedroom.
She turned the light back on, stretched out on her chaise and picked up
the book she had dropped. Before she had read one sentence on the
printed page, the fear came back.

It won't always be like this. Someday Allison won't be content with just
calling the numbers. She will want to join in the game. Soon I am going
to have to tell her how dangerous it is to be a girl. I'll have to warn
her to be careful, now that she is thirteen. No, fourteen. I'll have to
tell her that she is a year older than she thinks she is, and I'll have
to tell her why, and I'll have to tell her about her father and that she
really doesn't have any right to call herself MacKenzie.

These thoughts set up a hammering in her temples, and Constance put a
knuckle between her teeth and bit down on it, hard.

Allison was always the postmistress at parties where kissing games were
played. This was of her own choosing and, in fact, if she was voted down
for this job, she refused to play the game at all, saying that it was
time for her to leave anyway, and making her escape before anyone could
protest. When Selena said that after all this was Allison's birthday,
and it wasn't right for her to be postmistress at her own party, Allison
said, "Well, I'm not going to stumble around in the dark letting any old
boy kiss _me_! If I can't call the numbers, we won't play at all."

Selena shrugged. She didn't really care who called the numbers as long
as she could play herself.

Mr. Glenn Miller's orchestra sobbed a ballad of love and moonlight and
Allison said, "A letter for number ten."

Selena felt her way through the dark room and into the foyer. Rodney
Harrington groped for her and when he touched her, he wrapped his arms
around her and kissed her on the mouth. Then he went back into the
living room and Allison said, "A letter for number fifteen." Ted Carter
went into the hall. He kissed Selena gently, holding her by the
shoulders, but when she realized who her partner was, she pressed
herself close to him and whispered, "_Really_ kiss me, Ted."

"I did," Ted whispered back.

"No, silly, I mean like _this_," said Selena and pulled his head down.

When she released him, Ted was gasping, and he felt his ears redden in
the dark. Selena laughed, deep in her throat, and Ted grabbed her
roughly.

"D'you mean like _this_?" he asked, and kissed her so hard that he felt
her teeth scrape against his.

"Hey!" yelled Rodney Harrington from the living room. "What's going on
out there? Give somebody else a chance."

Everyone laughed when Selena came back into the living room.

"A letter for number four," called Allison, and the game went on.

At ten-thirty, two or three girls said that they had to be home by
eleven o'clock, and someone snapped on the lights.

"Nobody gave Allison her thirteen spanks!" cried one girl, and everyone
began to laugh and push toward Allison.

"That's right," they agreed. "Thirteen spanks and one to grow on."

"Time to take your medicine, Allison!"

"I'm too big to spank," said Allison. "So don't anybody dare try."

She was laughing with the others, but there was a threat behind her
words.

"O.K.," said Rodney Harrington. "So she's too big to spank, kids. Lay
off. She's big enough to kiss now."

Before Allison could run or dodge, he pulled her to him and pressed his
mouth against hers. He held her so tightly that she could feel the
buttons on his coat digging into her. His face was damp and he smelled
of lavender soap and sweat, and he pressed her body in a curving arc
against his, so that she thought that she could feel the moist heat of
his skin through all his clothing.

"Oh!" gasped Allison, when he released her, her face scarlet. "Oh, how
dare you!"

She rubbed the back of her hand vigorously against her mouth and kicked
Rodney as hard as she could in the shins.

Rodney laughed. "Be careful," he warned, "or I'll give you one to grow
on!"

"You're hateful, Rodney Harrington," said Allison, and then she burst
into tears and ran out of the room.

Everyone smiled a little uncertainly, but they were all too used to
Allison's swiftly changing moods to be actually uncomfortable.

"Come on, kids," said Selena. "The party's over."

She led the way to the dining room where Constance had provided a rack
and clothes hangers. Everyone took his own coat and then drifted toward
the front door.

"Good-by, Allison," they called up the staircase.

"'Bye, Allison. Happy birthday. It was a swell party."

"Good-by, Allison. Thanks for asking me."

In her room Allison lay in the dark, feeling tears that were almost cool
against her hot face.

"Hateful," she whispered. "Hateful, hateful, hateful!"

Her stomach quivered as she remembered Rodney's wet mouth and the
heaviness of his soft, full lips.

"Hateful," she said aloud. "Hateful. He spoiled my whole party!"




CHAPTER 13


On the Saturday afternoon following her birthday, Allison walked to
Selena's house to meet her friend. She stood in front of the clearing,
kicking disconsolately at the frozen ground, until finally the door of
the Cross shack opened. It was Joey who came running toward her.

"Selena's in the house," said Joey. "She'll be out in just a minute.
Come on in the sheep pen. We got new baby lambs."

Joey was a thin, wild-haired child dressed in faded dungarees and a
ragged, short-sleeved shirt. His feet were bare on the cold November
ground and, as usual, his nose was running. Joey was used to this
affliction. He sniffed continually, and from time to time he wiped his
dripping nose on his upper arm with the result that his nose was always
red and chapped. It made Allison cold just to look at Joey. As she
followed him into the sheep pen, she noticed that his bare heels were
gray with a crust of dirt.

"Oh-h-h." The sound came from Allison in a whisper of joy as she bent to
look at the small furry creatures which Joey displayed with pride. "Oh,
how lovely they are, Joey. Are they yours?"

"Naw," said Joey. "They're Pa's, same as the big ones."

"Will he let you keep these for pets?"

"Naw. He's gonna raise 'em big like the others, then he can slaughter
'em and sell 'em for chops and legs of lamb and like that."

Allison's face went white. "Oh, that's terrible!" she said. "Don't you
think that he'd let you keep these little ones if you asked him? Maybe
you could raise them yourself and later you could sell the wool from
them."

"Are you nuts?" asked Joey, not facetiously but in a serious tone, as if
he really wanted to know. "Folks around here don't raise sheep for wool,
they raise 'em for meat. Where do you suppose your Ma gets lamb chops,
if it ain't from animals?"

Allison swallowed. She thought of the tender chops which Constance
sometimes cooked and served from a platter decorated with parsley.

"Aren't you freezing, Joey?" she asked, to change the subject.

She huddled herself down in her warm coat and dug her fingers into the
soft lamb's wool.

"Naw. I'm used to it," said Joey, wiping his nose. "My feet's tough."

But just the same, he shivered and Allison saw the duck bumps on his
thin arms. She had a sudden, embarrassing urge to take Joey and pull him
close to her, to hide him under her coat and warm him with her body.

"What's Selena doing?" she asked, not looking at Joey.

"Making a pot of coffee for Pa, I guess. He just came in from the woods
before you got here."

"Oh? Isn't your mother home?"

"Naw. Today's Saturday. She goes down to Harrington's to wax the floors
on Saturday."

"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten," said Allison. "Well, I guess I'll go out front
to wait for Selena."

"Come on out back," said Joey. "I'll show you my lizard."

"All right."

They walked out of the sheep pen and Joey led the way toward the rear of
the house.

"I keep him in a box up on the window ledge," said Joey. "Here, stand up
on this crate and you can see right into the box. I got holes punched in
it so's he can breathe."

Allison stood up on the wooden crate which Joey upended and peered into
the box that had holes punched in it. When she raised her eyes for a
moment, she looked right into the Cross kitchen.

So _this_ is what the inside of a shack looks like, thought Allison,
fascinated. Her eyes took in the unmade cots and the sagging double bed
and the dirty dishes which seemed to be strewn from one end of the room
to the other. She saw a garbage can in one corner which had not been
emptied for a long time, and on the floor next to it was an empty can
that had once held tomatoes and one that had contained beans. Lucas was
sitting at a table that was covered with a streaked oil cloth so old and
filthy that the pattern in it was no longer discernible, and Selena was
filling a coffeepot from a pail of water, with a long-handled dipper.
Allison thought of the houses in town that Nellie Cross kept spotless,
and she remembered the food she had eaten in various homes that had been
cooked by Selena's mother.

"Reckon you're gettin' to be quite a gal, makin' coffee for your old
pa," said Lucas.

Allison could hear every word through the thin walls as clearly as if
she had been in the same room. She knew that she should get down from
the packing crate and stop eavesdropping, but she was held still by
something in Lucas' face, a sly and evil something that held her
motionless, just as a horror movie holds a frightened child to his
theater seat in spite of his fear.

Lucas Cross was a big man with a chest like a barrel and a
disconcertingly square-shaped head. His lank hair lay in strings on his
broad skull, and when he smiled his whole forehead moved grotesquely.

"Yep," said Lucas. "Quite a gal. How old're you now?"

"Fourteen, Pa," said Selena.

"Yep. Quite a gal."

"That's sure some lizard, ain't it?" asked Joey, happy that Allison was
so fascinated with his pet.

"Yes," said Allison, and Joey smiled and bent to pick up a stone.

He threw it toward the pine trees beyond the clearing, then bent to pick
up another.

Lucas got up from the table and went to a shelf over the sink. Allison
wondered what in the world the Crosses had a sink for, when they had
neither running water nor sewerage. Lucas took a bottle from the shelf
and held it to his lips while Allison watched. The brown liquid flowed
in an unbroken stream down Lucas' throat, and he did not stop swallowing
until the bottle was empty. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand and tossed the bottle over his shoulder into a far corner of the
shack.

"We got a trash can, Pa," said Selena disapprovingly. "There's no need
to go throwing stuff all over the place."

"Well, well, well," said Lucas. "Miss High and Mighty herself! You
gettin' fancy ideas from your little prune-faced friend Allison
MacKenzie?"

"No, Pa," said Selena. "I just don't see that there's any call for
throwing things on the floor when there's a trash can right beside you.
It wouldn't do any harm to take that garbage out and bury it, either."

Lucas grabbed Selena's arm. "Listen, you," he snarled. "Don't you be
tryin' to tell your pa what to do."

Selena stood very still and looked down at the hand on her arm. Her
dark, gypsy eyes seemed to grow darker and to narrow slightly.

"Take your hand off me, Pa," she said at last, so softly that Allison
could barely hear the words.

Lucas Cross slapped his stepdaughter a stunning blow on the side of the
head. Selena staggered halfway across the room and fell heavily to the
floor, while outside, Allison grabbed onto the window ledge to keep from
falling off the crate on which she stood.

"Oh, Joey," she whispered frantically. "What shall we do?"

But Joey had run to the edge of the trees and was busily tossing pine
cones at a squirrel.

Allison knew she should stop looking in the window, but she literally
could not move. She had never seen a man strike anyone in her life, and
she was held now by a terrible fear.

Selena got up from the floor, and the coffeepot which she had not
dropped when she fell now flew across the room in a direct line with
Lucas' head.

"Oh, no, no, Selena," whispered Allison. "He'll kill you," and she was
puzzled that Selena did not look up at the window, for Allison thought
she had screamed her words.

The coffeepot sailed past Lucas' head and crashed against the wall
behind him.

"You little bitch," he shouted. "You goddamn little bitch. I'll teach
you!"

He held Selena with one hand and slapped her face. Back and forth, back
and forth went his big hand. Selena fought with all her strength. She
kicked and tried to get close enough to Lucas to sink her teeth into
him.

"You bastard!" she yelled.

"Reg'lar dirty-mouthed little bitch," said Lucas. "Just like your old
lady. I'll teach you, same's I taught her! Don't do no good to be decent
to you. If it wasn't for me you'da starved to death, just like your old
lady. I been decent to you just as if you was my own. Kept a roof over
your head and food in your belly."

Back and forth, back and forth went his enormous hand, striking another
blow with every word he spoke.

At last Selena managed to tear herself away from him. She drew back her
fist and slammed it into Lucas' mouth as hard as she could, and the man
yelped with rage. He wiped the trickle of blood from his chin and looked
stupidly at the red stain on his fingers. He cursed unintelligibly, and
his face was a terrible, congested purple. Allison waited hysterically
for his next move.

"You goddamn sonofabitch," roared Lucas, beside himself. "You goddamn
whorin' little slut!"

He grabbed at Selena and when she wrenched away from his grasp, he was
left holding the entire front of the girl's blouse. Selena backed away
from Lucas, her breasts naked and heaving in the light of the room's
unshaded electric bulb, her shoulders still covered ridiculously by the
sleeves of the faded cotton blouse.

Why the ends of hers are _brown_, thought Allison foolishly. And she
does not wear a brassire all the time, like she told me!

Lucas dropped his hands and stared at Selena. Slowly, he began to walk
toward her while she, just as slowly, began to move backward. She kept
moving until her buttocks hit the black sink, and she never took her
eyes from Lucas' face.

"Yep," said Lucas, "you're gettin' to be quite a gal, honey."

Slowly, he raised his two grimy hands, and his forehead moved when he
smiled his grotesque smile.

Selena's scream ripped the stillness with a sound like tearing fabric,
and from behind Allison there came another scream. It was Joey, running
frantically toward the door of the shack. He almost fell through the
door, and still he screamed.

"Don't you dare put your hands on Selena! I'll kill you if you put your
hands on Selena."

The little boy stood in front of his sister, and like a horse swishing
his tail, Lucas Cross swept him away. The child lay still on the floor
of the shack, and Lucas said, "Yep. Gettin' to be quite a gal, ain't
you, honey."

Allison fell off the packing crate and lay on the cold ground. Her whole
body was wet with perspiration and the world seemed to undulate over her
and around her. She panted with the effort to fight off the blackness
that threatened her from every side, but she had to give way to the
nausea that fought its way out of her throat.




CHAPTER 14


Now it was winter and the town lay frozen under a low, gray sky that
held no visible sun. The children, clad in bright snow suits although
there was still no snow, hurried on their way to school, eager now to
reach the comfortable, steam-heated buildings that awaited them at the
end of Maple Street. The wooden benches in front of the courthouse were
deserted; the old men who had kept them filled all summer had long since
moved into the chairs around the stove in Tuttle's Grocery Store.
Everyone waited for the snows which had been threatening to arrive since
before Thanksgiving, but the ground was still bare in this first week of
January.

"The cold'd snap if we got some snow," said one of the old men in
Tuttle's.

"Sure looks like we'd get some today."

"Nope. It's too cold to snow."

"That's foolishness," said Clayton Frazier. He lit his pipe and stared
into the bowl until he was satisfied with its glow. "Snow's in Siberia
all the time, and the thermometer falls to sixty below over there.
'Tain't never too cold to snow."

"That don't make no difference. This ain't Siberia. It's too cold to
snow in Peyton Place."

"No, 'tain't," said Clayton Frazier.

"Them fellers still down in the cellar?" asked the man who was so sure
that it would not snow that he declined to discuss the matter further
with Clayton Frazier.

This was the big topic of conversation in Peyton Place and had been
since before Christmas. It had become so familiar that there was no
longer any need for anyone to ask, "What fellers?" or "What cellar?"

On the first of December, Kenny Stearns, Lucas Cross and five other men
had disappeared into Kenny's cellar where Kenny stored the twelve
barrels of cider which he had made early in the fall. They had been
armed with several cases of beer and as many bottles of liquor as they
could carry, and they had remained in the cellar ever since. The men had
fastened a strong, double bolt attachment to the inside of the door and
so far the efforts of any outsider to penetrate this barricade had been
futile.

"I seen one of the school kids headed over that way yesterday with a
bagful of groceries," said one of the old men, putting his feet up on
the warm stove in Tuttle's. "Ast 'im what he was doin', and he told me
Kenny'd sent 'im for food."

"How'd the kid get into the cellar?"

"Didn't. Told me Kenny handed the money out through the cellar window
and took in the groceries the same way."

"The kid see anything?"

"Nope. Said Kenny's got this black curtain fastened to the inside of the
window so's nobody can see in, and he said Kenny no more than opened the
window a slit to pass out the money and take in the stuff."

"What do you suppose made them fellers go down there and stay all this
time?"

"Dunno. There's some say that Kenny promised the next time he caught
Ginny runnin' out he was gonna go on a drunk like nobody ever seen.
Reckon this is it."

"Reckon so. Them fellers been down in that cellar goin' on six weeks
now."

"Wonder if they run out of booze yet. Twelve barrels of hard cider don't
go too damn far. Not with seven of 'em drinkin'."

"Dunno. Somebody said they seen Lucas over to White River one night,
late. Drunk as a lord he was, with a beard a foot long. Mebbe he sneaks
out at night and goes over to White River to get more drink."

"Six weeks. Jesus! I'll bet a nickel they don't even have any beer left,
let alone hard stuff."

"Can't understand why Buck McCracken don't put a stop to it, though."

"Reckon the sheriff's ashamed, that's why. His own brother is down in
the cellar with Kenny and them."

"Wish I could be a fly on the wall down there, by God. Must be goin's on
in that cellar that'd make a man's blood run cold."

"You'd think the cold would freeze 'em out."

"Naw. Ginny told me Kenny's got an old Franklin stove down there, and
he'd got in his cord wood long before him and the fellers went down to
stay. Ginny said she had to move out because she couldn't get down to
get wood for the stoves up in the house."

The men laughed. "Reckon Ginny don't need no wood fire to keep _her_
warm!"

"Wonder what Ginny's doin' for company these cold nights. With all her
boy friends down in that cellar, she must be gettin' a trifle lonesome."

"Not Ginny Stearns," said Clayton Frazier. "Not by a long shot."

Several men snickered. "How do you know, Clayton? You been takin' up
where the others left off?"

Before Clayton could answer, a group of school children came trooping
into the store and the men ceased talking. The youngsters crowded around
Tuttle's penny candy counter, and the men around the stove smoked
silently, waiting. When the children had spent their pennies and one
lone boy had bought a loaf of bread, the men rustled themselves and
prepared to talk again.

"Wa'nt that the Page kid? The one that bought the bread?"

"Yep. Never seen a kid with such a pinched-lookin' face. Don't know what
it is exactly. He's better dressed than most kids and his mother's
comfortably fixed. Yet, that kid has the look of a starvin' orphan."

"It's his age," said Clayton Frazier. "Growin' pains."

"Mebbe. He's growed fast in the last year. Could be that's what makes
him so pale lookin'."

"Nope," disagreed Clayton, "that ain't it. He's just got one of them
dead fish skins, like his mother. His father wa'nt ever too ruddy
himself."

"Poor old Oakleigh Page. Reckon he's better off in his grave than he was
alive with all them wimmin fightin' over him all the time."

"Yep," the men agreed. "'Twa'nt no life for a man."

"Oh, I dunno," said Clayton Frazier. "Seems to me like Oakleigh Page ast
for all his troubles."

"Ain't nobody asks for trouble."

"Oakleigh did," said Clayton.

The argument began. Oakleigh Page was forgotten once his name had served
to start the words flying. The men in Tuttle's began to enumerate the
people in town who had--or had not--asked for their troubles. Clayton
Frazier's old eyes gleamed. This was the part of each day that he lived
for; when his disagreeableness finally provoked a lively discussion. The
old man tilted his chair back and balanced himself on its two rear legs.
He relit his pipe and wished fleetingly that Doc Swain had more time to
hang around. A man didn't have to work hardly at all to get The Doc
going, while it sometimes took a considerable while to get the men in
Tuttle's riled up.

"Don't make no difference what none of you say," said Clayton. "There's
folks that just plain beg for trouble. Like Oakleigh Page."




CHAPTER 15


Little Norman Page hurried down Elm Street and turned into Depot Street.
When he passed the house on the corner of Depot and Elm, he kept his
eyes on the ground. In that house lived his two half sisters Caroline
and Charlotte Page, and Norman's mother had told him that these two
women were evil, and to be avoided like mad dogs. It had always puzzled
Norman that he should have two such old ladies for sisters, even half
sisters. They were really old, as old as his mother.

The Page Girls, as the town called them, were well over forty, both big
boned with thick, white skins and white hair and both unmarried. As
Norman walked past the house, a curtain in the front room window
quivered, but neither a hand nor a figure was to be seen.

"There goes Evelyn's boy," said Caroline Page to her sister.

Charlotte came to the window and saw Norman hurrying down the street.

"Little bastard," she said viciously.

"No," sighed Caroline. "And that's the pity of it all. Better if he were
a bastard than what he is."

"He'll always be a bastard as far as I'm concerned," said Charlotte.
"The bastard son of a whoring woman."

The two sisters bit off these words as crisply as if they had been
chewing celery, and the fact that these same words in print would have
been an occasion for book banning and of shocked consultation with the
church did not bother them at all, for they had the excuse of righteous
indignation on their side.

Caroline dropped the curtain as Norman moved out of sight.

"You'd think that Evelyn would have had the decency to move out of town
after Father left her," she said.

"Humph," said Charlotte. "Show me the whore who knows what decency
means."

Little Norman Page did not slow his steps or sigh with relief when he
had passed the house of his two half sisters. He still had to go by the
house of Miss Hester Goodale before he could reach the sanctuary of his
own home, and he dreaded Miss Hester every bit as much as he feared the
Page girls. Whenever he encountered his half sisters on the street, they
merely fixed him with dead looks, as if he were not there at all, but
Miss Hester's coal-black eyes seemed to bore right through him, looking
right down into his soul and seeing all the sins hidden there. Norman
hurried now because it was Friday afternoon and almost four o'clock, and
at exactly four on Fridays Miss Hester came out of her house and walked
toward town. Although Norman was on the opposite side of the street from
the one on which Miss Hester would walk, he was nonetheless afraid, for
Miss Hester's eyes, he knew, could see for miles, around corners and
everything. She could look right into him as clearly from across the
street as she could have if he stood directly in front of her. Norman
would have run except that if he arrived home flushed and panting his
mother would think he was sick again and put him to bed. She might even
give him an enema, and while Norman always got a bittersweet sort of
pleasure from that, he had to stay in bed afterward. Today he decided
that getting the enema was not worth the hours alone that were sure to
follow, so he forced himself to walk. Suddenly he saw a figure ahead of
him, and recognizing it as Allison MacKenzie he began to shout.

"Allison! Hey, Allison. Wait for me!"

Allison turned and waited.

"Hi, Norman," she said when he reached her side. "Are you on your way
home?"

"Yes," said Norman. "But what are you doing over here? This isn't the
way to your house."

"I was just taking a walk," said Allison.

"Well, let me walk with you," said Norman. "I hate to walk alone."

"Why?" asked Allison. "There's nothing to be afraid of." She looked hard
at the boy beside her. "You're always afraid of something, Norman," she
said jeeringly.

Norman was a slight child, built on delicate lines. He had a finely
chiseled mouth which trembled easily, and enormous brown eyes which were
filled with tears more often than not. Norman's eyes were fringed with
long, dark lashes. Just like a girl's, thought Allison. She could see
the lines of blue veins plainly beneath the thin skin on his temples.
Norman was very good looking, thought Allison, but not in the way that
people thought of as handsome. He was pretty the way a girl is pretty,
and his voice, too, was like a girl's, soft and high. The boys at school
called Norman "sissy," a name with which the boy found no quarrel. He
was timid and admitted it, easily frightened and knew it, and he wept at
nothing and never tried to stop himself.

"I'll bet he still pees the bed," Rodney Harrington had been heard to
say. "That is, if he's got a dink to pee with."

"There is too something to be afraid of," said Norman to Allison.
"There's Miss Hester Goodale to be afraid of, that's what."

Allison laughed. "Miss Hester won't hurt you."

"She might," quivered Norman. "She's loony, you know. I've heard plenty
of folks say so. You never can tell what a loony person will do."

The two of them were now standing directly opposite the Goodale house.

"It is sort of sinister looking," said Allison musingly, letting her
imagination take hold.

Norman, who had never been afraid of the Goodale house before, now felt
his fear spark on the edge of Allison's words. He was no longer looking
at a rather small and run down Cape Cod, but at a closed-looking house
whose windows stared back at him like half-lidded eyes. Norman began to
tremble.

"Yes," repeated Allison, "it has a _definite_ sinister look."

"Let's run," suggested Norman, forgetting his mother, the enema,
everything, for Miss Hester's house looked suddenly to him as if it were
about to sprout arms, ready to engulf children and sweep them through
the front door of the brown shingled cottage.

Allison pretended not to hear him. "What does she do in there all day,
all by herself?"

"How do I know?" asked Norman. "Cleans house and cooks and takes care of
her cat, I suppose. Let's run, Allison."

"Not if she's loony," said Allison. "She wouldn't be doing plain,
everyday things like that if she's loony. Maybe she stands over her
stove cutting up snakes and frogs into a big black kettle."

"What for?" asked Norman in a shaking voice.

"To make witch's brew, silly," said Allison crossly. "Witch's brew," she
repeated in a weird tone, "to put curses and enchantments on people."

"That's foolish," said Norman, striving to control his voice.

"How do you know?" demanded Allison. "Did you ever ask anybody?"

"Of course not. What a question to ask!"

"Don't you visit Mr. and Mrs. Card next door to Miss Hester's a lot? I
thought you said Mrs. Card was going to give you a kitten when her cat
has some."

"I do and she is," said Norman. "But I'd certainly never ask Mrs. Card
what Miss Hester does. Mrs. Card's not nosy like some people I know.
Besides, how would she be able to see anything? That big hedge between
the two houses would keep everybody from seeing into Miss Hester's
house."

"Maybe she _hears_ things," said Allison in a whisper. "Witches chant
something when they stir up a brew. Let's go visit Mrs. Card and ask her
if she ever hears anything spooky coming from Miss Hester's."

"Here she comes!" exclaimed Norman and tried to hide himself behind
Allison.

Miss Hester Goodale came out of her front door, turned carefully to make
sure that it was locked behind her, and walked out her front gate. She
wore a black coat and hat of a style fashionable fifty years earlier,
and she led a huge tomcat along on a rope leash. The cat walked
sedately, neither twisting nor turning in any effort to escape the
length of clothesline which was tied on one end to a collar around his
neck, and wound several times around Miss Hester's hand at the other
end.

"What's the matter with you, Norman?" asked Allison impatiently as soon
as Miss Hester was out of sight. "She's just a harmless old woman."

"She's not either. She's loony. I even heard Jared Clarke say so. He
told my mother."

"Phooey," said Allison disdainfully. "If I lived on this street like
you, I'd sneak around and find out what Miss Hester does when she's
alone. That's the real way to find out if people are loony, or witches,
or something like that."

"I'd be scared," admitted Norman without hesitation. "I'd be scareder to
do that than I would be to go up to Samuel Peyton's castle."

"Well, I wouldn't. There's nothing spooky about Miss Hester Goodale. The
castle's full of spooks, though. It's haunted."

"At least there's nobody loony living in the castle."

"Not any more," said Allison.

They had arrived at Norman's house and were standing on the sidewalk in
front of it when Evelyn Page came to the front door.

"For Heaven's sake, Norman," called Mrs. Page. "Don't stand out there in
the cold. Do you want to get sick? Come in the house this minute! Oh,
hello Allison, dear. Would you like to come in and have a hot chocolate
with Norman?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Page. I have to get home."

Allison walked toward the front door of the house with Norman.

"Mrs. Page, is Miss Hester Goodale really crazy?" she asked.

Evelyn Page folded her lips together. "There's some who say so," she
said. "Come in the house, Norman."

Allison walked down Depot Street the same way she and Norman had come.
Now that she was alone, she walked on the same side of the street as the
Goodale house, and she stopped directly in front of the gate to look at
the small place.

Yes, she thought, it does have a _definite_ sinister look. If Mr. Edgar
Allan Poe were alive, I'll bet he could make up a swell story about Miss
Hester and her house.

She began to walk again, but she had not moved more than a few steps
when a brilliant daring thought stopped her in the middle of the
sidewalk.

_I_ could, she thought exultantly. _I_ could write a story about Miss
Hester and her house!

The idea sent cold shivers of excitement crawling up and down her back,
and in the next second she felt hot all over.

_I_ could. I'll bet I could write a story every bit as good as Mr. Edgar
Allan Poe ever did. I could make up a real spooky story just like "The
Fall of the House of Usher." I could have Miss Hester be a witch!

Allison ran all the way home and by the time she reached there the first
lines of her story were already framed in her mind.

"There is this house on Depot Street in Peyton Place," she would write.
"It is a brown shingled Cape Cod house, and it looks out of place on
that street because it sits right next to a lovely little white and
green Cape Cod owned by some people named Mr. and Mrs. Card. Mr. Card is
big and handsome and does not come from around here, but from Boston or
somewhere like that. Now he owns the print shop downtown. Miss Hester
lives all alone in her brown house with her cat, Tom, and she is as
loony as they come."

Allison wrote these words that same night. She locked herself in her
bedroom and set them down in a notebook on white, blue-lined paper, and
when they were written she sat and gazed at them for a long time. She
could not think of anything else to say. A new respect for Mr. Edgar
Allan Poe and for everyone else who had ever written began to take form
within her.

Maybe being a writer isn't so easy after all, she thought. Perhaps I
shall have to work very hard at it.

She picked up her pencil and made big, impatient _x_'s through the words
she had written, then she turned to a fresh page in her notebook. The
blank white sheet stared back at her, and Allison began to chew at her
left thumbnail.

I can't write about Miss Hester because I don't know her, thought
Allison. I'll have to make up a story about somebody I know about.

She did not know it then, but she had just taken the first step in her
career.




CHAPTER 16


Jared Clarke could have told Allison all about Miss Hester Goodale for
he had cause to remember her well. Miss Hester had been living in Peyton
Place when Jared was born, but it was not until he was grown, prosperous
and on the board of selectmen that he had encountered her face to face.
Miss Hester represented Jared's first big failure, and he resented her
bitterly. When the subject of Miss Hester arose, Jared always told the
story of his one visit to her home, and he told it, of course, to his
own advantage, but he never could rid himself of the feeling that when
people laughed they laughed at him, not with him.

He had gone to Miss Hester's house with Ben Davis and George Caswell,
his fellow selectmen, to speak to her about town sewerage. He had
knocked at her front door and then stepped back to wait nervously,
twisting his doffed hat in his hand until she came to the door.

"We came to talk about the pipes," said Jared to Miss Hester after the
preliminary greetings had been exchanged.

"Come in, gentlemen," she said.

It had really given Jared quite a turn, he said later, to walk into Miss
Hester's front parlor. The place was as neat as a pin with its horsehair
furniture and unfaded rug. There was an air of waiting about the room,
as if a welcome guest were expected at any moment, and Jared found
himself remembering that once Miss Hester had had a lover.

Of course, he had been only a little shaver back then, but he could
remember folks talking about it. Miss Hester's young man used to drive
up to the Goodales' front door in a shiny victoria on Sunday afternoons.

"A nice young man," Jared's mother had said. "It's time Hester thought
about getting married. She's not getting any younger."

"Young or not," said Jared's father, "She's still a damned fine-looking
woman."

"She's the kind that thins out to gauntness after a while," said Jared's
mother, ignoring her husband. "She'll have to watch herself before too
many more years."

The whole town had waited for Hester Goodale to marry. When her young
man had been calling on her for over six months Jared's father said he
could not understand what was holding him up.

"He's comfortable," said Jared's father, using the town idiom which
described anyone who had a steady job and was free of debt. "And Hester
is out of mourning. It's been a year and a half since her mother died."

"Oh, she's probably waiting to make sure," said Jared's mother. "After
all, he may be a nice young man, but he doesn't come from around here,
and one can never be too careful where marriage is concerned. I'll bet
she marries him before June."

But one Sunday afternoon it was Mr. Goodale, Hester's father, who
answered the young man's knock at the door. They exchanged only a few
words and no one had ever found out what was said, and then Mr. Goodale
had closed the door in the young man's face. Hester's friend climbed
into his victoria and drove away. The next day he quit his job in
Jared's father's feed and grain store and left Peyton Place. No one ever
saw him again.

A few months later, Mr. Goodale died and Miss Hester was left alone in
the cottage on Depot Street. After that the town never saw much of her.
She kept to herself, living carefully on the small amount of money her
father had left. Eventually she got herself a cat, and in a few years
she was well on her way to becoming a town legend.

"Miss Hester has a broken heart," said the town. "She is only waiting to
die."

The prediction that Jared's mother had made came true. Miss Hester's
slenderness thinned to gauntness. Her skin seemed hardly to cover her
angular bones, and her eyes gleamed like coal set into a sheet of white
paper. Her hands were no longer slim fingered, but clawlike, and even
her hair thinned to a sparseness that barely covered her bony skull.

Jared Clarke had looked around Miss Hester's front parlor and then he
looked at Miss Hester, and he wondered if it could be possible that
there had been a time when a man had loved this woman. He shifted his
feet awkwardly and cleared his throat. Miss Hester did not ask her
callers to sit down.

"Well, Jared?" she asked.

"It's about the pipes, Miss Hester," said Jared. "You must know that it
has been quite a fight to get everyone to agree on town sewerage. But
that's all over now. We voted in the pipes at the last town meeting."

"What has all this to do with me?" asked Miss Hester.

"Well, we are going to run the mains under the streets," said Jared,
"and the town's going to pay for that while everybody has agreed to pay
for the sections of pipe used in front of his own house."

"Did you not," said Miss Hester, "just finish saying that the town was
going to pay?"

Jared smiled patiently. "The town is going to pay for _laying_ the pipe.
Labor costs."

"Am I to understand, Jared," asked Miss Hester, "that you are asking me
to pay for pipes to be laid under a public street?"

Jared searched his mind for a tactful answer. He had begun to sweat and
was actively hating this woman for making his job more difficult than it
was.

"It would benefit you as well as the rest of the town, Miss Hester," he
said. "From the street lines, you would be able to run pipes into your
house."

"What do I want with pipes in this house?" demanded Miss Hester.

Jared Clarke's face flushed with the effort of attempting to find a
gentlemanly way to tell Miss Hester that it simply would not do for her
to have the only outside privy on Depot Street.

"But Miss Hester--" he began and stopped, unable to go on.

"Yes, Jared?" Miss Hester's voice asked the question, but her tone gave
him no encouragement.

"Well, it's this way--" began Jared again. "I mean to say--Well, it's
like this--"

George Caswell, who was not hindered by feelings of delicacy, finished
Jared's sentence for him.

"It's like this, Hester," said Caswell. "We don't want no more outhouses
in town. They're all right for the folks in the shacks, but outhouses
just don't look right in the middle of town."

There was an embarrassing moment when no one spoke, and then Miss Hester
said, "Good day, gentlemen," and led the way to her front door.

"But Miss Hester," said Jared, and got no further.

"Good afternoon, Jared," said Miss Hester and closed the door firmly.

"Great closers of doors in folk's faces, the Goodales," said Ben Davis,
and he and George Caswell began to laugh.

But Jared Clarke did not laugh. He was furious. Later, he had been
forced to stand up at a meeting of the newly formed Sanitation Committee
and admit that he had failed to convince Miss Hester of the advisability
of helping to pay for the town's new sewerage system.

"Well, she don't rightly have to anyway," said one of the committee
members. "We ain't got no zonin' laws that say anybody's got to do
anythin'."

"Maybe she don't have the money," volunteered another member.

"She's got the money all right," said Dexter Humphrey, who was president
of the bank.

"She's loony," cried Jared angrily. "That's all there is to it. Loony as
hell!"

"Reckon property values will go down on Depot Street now," said Humphrey
sadly. "What with Miss Hester's outhouse sittin' right there in her back
yard as plain as the nose on your face. Too bad you couldn't talk her
into doin' different, Jared."

"I did all I could," shouted Jared. "She's just plain crazy. Crazy as a
loon."

"The house next door to Hester's is for sale," said Humphrey. "Nobody'll
ever buy it now."

"Too bad," said one of the committee members. "You should have talked
louder, Jared."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," said Jared bitterly.

The new sewerage pipes were laid on Depot Street, the town absorbing the
cost of those passing in front of the Goodale house, and eventually
someone did buy the house next door to Miss Hester.

When the man who had been the town printer died, his family sold his
business to a young man named Albert Card, a printer from Boston, and
Mr. and Mrs. Card bought the house on Depot Street next door to Hester
Goodale's.

"Nice young couple," said Peyton Place about the Cards.

"Yep. A real go-getter, that young feller."

The young Cards joined the Congregational church and the Pine Hill
Grange.

"Real nice young man, Card," said Jared Clarke. "Takes an interest. He
and his wife are just pitching right in. We need more like them in this
town. Real assets to the community."

"Say, listen," said Albert Card one day shortly after he had bought his
house. "Who's the old crone lives next door to me?"

"That," said Jared Clarke, pursing his lips, "is Miss Hester Goodale.
She's loony as they come."

"Are you telling me? I don't see much of her, that hedge between her
place and ours screens the property pretty well, but I hear her roaming
around in her back yard. Well, not her exactly, but I hear that goddamn
cat of hers. I can hear him meowing over there fit to raise the dead
sometimes. She's loony all right."

"No doubt you also hear Miss Hester herself," said Jared sourly, "as she
goes back and forth to her outhouse."

"Well, I hear her cat anyway."

"Well, that tom is never anywhere that Miss Hester isn't. Oh, she's
loony all right. Never goes out of that house except to go downtown for
groceries once a week, and nobody ever goes to visit her, either. I'll
bet no one's been inside her house since the time I went there with Ben
and George to tell her about the pipes. Now there's a story for you. It
was quite a while back, before we had town sewerage, and I was elected
to go see Miss Hester about paying for the pipes to run in front of her
house. Well I walked up on her front porch, bold as brass, and knocked
on her door. 'Look here, Hester,' I said, 'there's no two ways about it,
but you're going to have to pay for your share of the pipes. Come on
now, let's have no nonsense. Just write me out a check and I'll be on my
way.' Well, she began to cry and scream and carry on something terrible,
so I told Ben and George right then that she was crazy, and the best
thing for us to do was to just leave the poor old soul alone."

Later, after Albert Card had told this story to his wife Mary, she said,
"This certainly must be quite a town for characters, what with the story
about Samuel Peyton and now this one about Miss Hester Goodale."




CHAPTER 17


Norman Page sat at the kitchen table while his mother poured out hot
chocolate for him.

"Did you have a good day, dear?" she asked.

"Sure," said Norman absently. He was thinking of Allison and Miss
Hester.

"Tell me about it, dear."

"Nothing to tell. It was just like any other day. We're learning a
little bit about algebra now. Miss Thornton says we'll need it when we
get to high school."

"Oh? Do you enjoy Miss Thornton, dear?"

"She's all right. She's not crabby like some teachers."

"How come you were walking with Allison MacKenzie, Norman?"

"She just happened to be on this street and she walked along with me."

"But what was she doing on Depot Street? She lives on Beech."

This was the part of every day that Norman hated. Every afternoon he had
to sit and drink hot chocolate, or milk, or fruit juice, which he did
not want most of the time, while his mother quizzed him about the
children with whom he had associated that day.

"I don't know what Allison was doing here," he said crossly. "She just
happened to be on Depot Street when I came along."

"Do you like Allison, dear?" asked Mrs. Page.

"She's all right."

"Then you _do_ like her!"

"I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did."

"I did not. I just said I thought she was all right."

"It's the same thing. Do you like her as much as you like Miss
Thornton?"

"I never said I like Miss Thornton, either!"

"Oh, _Norman_! Your _voice_!"

Mrs. Page sank down into her rocking chair and began to cry, and Norman,
stricken with shame and guilt, ran to her.

"Oh, Mother. I didn't mean it. Truly, I didn't. I'm so sorry."

"It's all right, dear. You can't help it. It is your father's blood in
your veins."

"It is not! It is not, either!"

"Yes, dear. Yes, it is. You are a great deal like your father and like
Caroline and Charlotte."

"I am not."

Norman's eyes filled with tears, and he could not control his throat
muscles enough to keep himself from sobbing.

"I am not like them," he cried.

"Yes you are, dear. Yes, you are. Ah, well, maybe you'll be happier when
I'm dead and you can go to live with your half sisters."

"Don't talk like that, Mother. You're not going to die!"

"Yes, I am, Norman. Someday soon I'll be dead, and you'll have to go to
live with Caroline and Charlotte. Oh, my darling son, even in Heaven I
shall weep to see you in the clutches of those two dreadfully evil,
wicked women."

"No! Oh, no, no, no!"

"Oh, yes, dear. I'll be dead soon, and perhaps you'll be better off."

"You're _not_ going to die. You are not. What would I do if you did?"

"Oh, you'd have Caroline and Charlotte, and Miss Thornton and little
Allison MacKenzie. You'd get along without your mother."

Norman collapsed on the floor at his mother's feet. He sobbed
hysterically and tugged at her skirt with both his hands, but she would
not look down at him.

"No, I wouldn't get along! I'd die myself. I love only you, Mother. I
don't love anybody else."

"Are you sure, Norman? There's nobody else you love?"

"No, no, no. There is no one else, Mother. Just you."

"Don't you like Miss Thornton and little Allison, dear?"

"No. No, I hate them! I hate everybody in the whole world except you."

"Do you love Mother, Norman?"

Norman's sobs were dry and painful now, and he hiccuped wretchedly.

"Oh, yes, Mother. I love only you. I love you better than God, even. Say
you're not going to leave me."

For a long time Mrs. Page stroked her son's bowed head which rested now
on her knees.

"I'll never leave you, Norman," she said at last. "Never. Of course I am
not going to die."




CHAPTER 18


Kenny Stearns raised his head and looked carefully around him. From
where he was lying on his cellar floor, he could vaguely discern other
shapes lying on the same floor, and he wondered who these people could
be.

"Seems to be a slew of 'em clutterin' up this cellar," said Kenny aloud.

"Who're you?" he asked and prodded at one sleeping body with an
inaccurately aimed toe. "Who're you?"

Lucas Cross mumbled and turned over on his side. "Go to hell," he said.

"Whadya mean, tellin' me to go to hell in my own cellar?" demanded
Kenny. "It is my cellar, ain't it?"

"Go to hell," said Lucas.

Kenny Stearns raised himself to his feet by sliding his back up against
the cement wall behind him. At last he was standing, propped against the
cold stone.

"Ain't no man tells Kenny Stearns to go to hell in his own cellar," he
said truculently.

Two other bodies stirred on the cellar floor and Kenny regarded them
calmly.

"More sonsofbitches to tell a man to go to hell in his own cellar," he
said.

He made a motion in the direction of one of the men who had just moved.

"Here, you," shouted Kenny. "What're you doin' in my cellar?"

Henry McCracken almost jumped to his feet, so startled was he by Kenny's
official-sounding voice. Henry had been dreaming, and in his dream he
had heard the voice of the sheriff, his brother Buck, who stood over him
ready, as usual, to yell at him about something. Henry focused his gaze
on Kenny.

"Jeez, you just give me a helluva turn, Kenny," he said reproachfully.
"Thought for a minute you was old Buck standin' there."

Kenny sneered. "Well, I guess not!" he said indignantly. "There ain't no
sheriff that's gonna be tellin' my friends what to do in my cellar."

"Atta boy, Kenny," said Henry yawning. "Let's you and me get us a little
drink and then go back to sleep."

"You're my friend, Henry McCracken," said Kenny, "my one and only true
friend."

He looked around him sadly. "I ain't got one other friend in this whole
cellar, you know that, Henry? Not one."

Kenny indicated the sleeping Lucas with a jerk of his thumb.

"See him?" he asked. "See that drunken bum? Told me to go to hell not
two minutes ago, right here in my own cellar. How do you like that?"

"Terrible," replied Henry, nodding his head in woeful agreement. "Well,
that's the way things are in this world. You get the idea that you got a
friend, and then he tells you to go to hell. Awful. Wonder if Lucas ever
got rid of all them bugs that was botherin' him."

"Dunno," said Kenny. "Seems we'd see some, if they was still here. Gray,
they was, and green, and crawlin' all over the walls, so Lucas said."

"He musta got rid of 'em," said Henry, looking fearfully at the cement
walls. "Don't see none now."

"Good thing," said Kenny sanctimoniously. "I don't hold with insects.
Never did. I don't want no goddamn insects crawlin' around in my
cellar."

"I thought you was gonna get a bottle," said Henry.

"Yep. I'll find one. Must be one around here somewheres."

Kenny began to gaze around the cellar floor. His eyes shifted slowly
from one spot to another, but they did not fall upon anything that could
be mistaken for a full bottle of liquor. At last, with a supreme effort,
he swayed away from the wall which had been holding him up and began to
shuffle groggily around the cellar. He picked up one bottle after
another and stared mournfully into the empty depths of each one.

"Them bastards drunk it all up," he told Henry. "That's what they done."

He moved slowly to the Franklin stove and peered down into its
blackness, and then, sighing mightily, he reached down into it and
rummaged around thoroughly.

"'Tain't no use, Henry," he said, almost in tears. "Them bastards drunk
it all up."

Suddenly Henry gave a glad cry. "Kenny! Look at all them barrels! Look
at 'em, lined up against that wall over there, just as pretty as a line
of girls at a county fair."

Kenny turned to look at his twelve cider barrels. A remembered perfume
came to him, of apples and wood smoke, and he could see again the
streams of juice pouring into his barrels.

"Christ, yes," he said, moving almost quickly toward the cider barrels.
"I worked like a nigger fillin' the goddamn things. How the hell could I
forget a thing like that?"

He leaned his hand against the first spigot, while Henry crawled over to
him on his hands and knees.

"Jeez, Kenny, put something under that faucet! Don't let the stuff run
all over the floor."

Kenny picked up an empty whisky bottle and held it under the spigot.
Nothing happened.

"How do you like that?" he demanded of Henry. "Those bastards went and
drained a whole goddamn barrel of my cider."

"Try the next one."

"All right. Hold this bottle under the spigot."

Kenny pressed every spigot on every barrel while Henry held the bottle
hopefully each time, and when they had finished there was not a single
drop of cider in the empty whisky bottle.

"Well, I'll be a dirty pile of horseshit, if those bastards ain't
drained every drop!" yelped Kenny, enraged beyond endurance.

He began tipping the barrels so that they fell onto their sides and
rolled creakingly on the cement floor. He kicked at each one hard and
viciously and cursed until he was exhausted and Henry began to cry.

"'Tain't no use, Kenny," wept Henry. "There just ain't no more cider.
'Tain't no use at all." He wiped his eyes and blew his nose on the
sleeve of his shirt. "Come on, Kenny, 'tain't no use carryin' on like
that. Let's make Lucas wake up. It's the only way. Time for Lucas to
make another trip to White River."

Henry dragged himself toward Lucas, and when he reached the sleeping
man's side, he began to kick him with both heels.

"Wake up, you pig," commanded Henry. "Wake up and move your ass. Time
you went to White River. Wake up, I say!"

Lucas moved protestingly against the sharp heels which dug into his back
and buttocks.

"Go to hell," he mumbled.

Henry went on kicking and Kenny came to help him.

"Wake up, you drunken bum," yelled Henry. "Wake up, you cider-drinkin'
pig!"

"Go to hell," murmured Lucas.

"Hear that?" demanded Kenny shrilly. "What'd I tell you? Tellin' a man
to go to hell, right in his own cellar."

"It's insultin', that's what it is," sympathized Henry. "Kick him
harder, Kenny."

At last Lucas groaned, turned over on his back and attempted to focus
his eyes on the wooden beams of the cellar ceiling.

"What got into you fellers," whined Lucas, "kickin' at a feller fit to
rupture his guts?"

"We're out of booze," said Henry. "Time for you to take another trip to
White River."

"Like hell," said Lucas. "Just shut up and gimme another drink."

"There ain't any," yelled Henry, in a rage. "Didn't you hear what I
said? It's time for you to go over to White River. There ain't nothin'
left to drink. Get up."

"All right," sighed Lucas and tried to raise himself to a sitting
position. "Oh, Christ."

His last two words were a groan, uttered more as a prayer than a curse,
and he collapsed flat on his back.

"Oh, Christ," he moaned. "They're back."

He began to cry and covered his eyes with gray, crusty hands.

"Where?" asked Kenny. "Where they at now, Lucas?"

Lucas kept his eyes covered with one hand, and with the forefinger of
the other he pointed to the opposite wall.

"Right there next to you. Behind you. All over the place. Oh, Christ!"

Kenny fixed his eyes on the cellar wall. "I don't see nothin'," he
quavered. "I don't see nothin' at all."

"They're there," sobbed Lucas. "All gray and green. Millions of 'em,
crawlin' all over!"

He spread two of his fingers apart and stared out through this small
slit.

"Watch out!" he screamed and began to slap at his thighs. "Watch out!
They're comin' right at us!"

"I don't see nothin'," cried Kenny.

"You crazy bastard," yelled Lucas. "You're drunk, blind drunk, that's
why you can't see nothin'. You're drunker than hell. Watch out!"

Lucas turned over on to his stomach and covered his head with his arms,
but almost immediately he jumped to his feet and ran to a corner of the
cellar where he crouched, panting.

"They was under me," he wept, terror stricken. "Right under me, waitin'
for me to lay down so's they could start feastin'."

Kenny and Henry bent to examine the spot where Lucas had been lying.

"There's nothin' there," they agreed. "Nothin' at all."

"Drunken bums!" screamed Lucas. "Blind drunk, both of you!"

Two of the other four sleeping men were aroused by Lucas' screams. They
looked about with dull, uncomprehending eyes.

"Where's the bottle?" asked one man.

"Watch out!" cried Lucas. "Put your head down!"

"Where's the goddamned bottle?"

"There ain't none," shouted Henry, exasperated with all the sudden
confusion.

"I don't see nothin'," said Kenny. "Not a bloomin' thing."

"Where's the friggin' bottle?"

"Ain't none."

"Not a bloomin' thing."

"They're covered with slime. Green slime."

"I'll go after some," said Henry. "I'll go myself, and to hell with
Lucas. Gimme some money."

Henry began to feel through his pockets. His fingers searched every
possible hiding place in his clothing, but he found nothing.

"I ain't got no more money," he told Kenny.

"I got some, Henry," said Kenny, rummaging through his pockets. "Always
got money for my friend Henry McCracken." But after a few more minutes
of searching, he said, "Reckon I'm as bad off as you, Henry. Not a cent
on me."

"Maybe he's got some," said Henry, indicating the gibbering Lucas.

Together, Henry and Kenny approached Lucas and began to search him, but
his pockets, too, were empty. The men who had awakened began to search
themselves, but finding nothing they began to feel in the pockets of the
two men who still slept.

"Gotta get somethin' to drink," said Kenny. "Come on, empty your
pockets, boys. Wake up. There ain't a goddamn thing to drink."

When the men had searched themselves thoroughly, they began to search
one another.

"You got some," each accused the other. "You're keepin' it hid. Come on,
now, dig it out. All for one and one for all. Put up your money."

In the end, they collected six cents.

"There, by God," said Henry McCracken. "I'll go over to White River
myself. To hell with Lucas, I'll go myself."

He stood up and lurched against the wall. "Yep, you can count on me,
boys. I'll go right now."

Carefully, he put the six cents into one of his pockets.

"I'll get whisky and a coupla cases of beer," he said to Kenny. "That
should hold us until tomorrow."

"Watch out!" screamed Lucas. "Oh, Christ!"

"Where's the friggin' bottle?"

"Come on, Henry. I'll give you a boost out the window."

"I'll get three cases of beer. That'll be better."

"Better get one apiece," advised Kenny.

"Chase 'em out the window," ordered Lucas. "Quick!"

When Henry had gone, all the men except Lucas sat down to await his
return. Lucas still crouched in the corner, whimpering, and peeking out
from behind his fingers once in a while. Every time he uncovered his
eyes he screamed, "Watch out!" then hastily covered them again.

"Takin' Henry one godawful while," said one man.

"Prob'ly gonna stay in White River and get drunk," said another.

"If there's one thing I hate, it's a sonofabitch who won't share."

One man, sitting a little apart from the others, began to move carefully
toward the end of the cellar. This was Angus Bromley, and he vaguely
remembered having hidden a bottle on top of one of the low rafters. He
made his way slowly further away from the others, and they did not
notice his movement. They still discussed the fickleness of Henry
McCracken who had been gone, now, perhaps eight minutes.

"Greedy sonofabitch, that Henry."

"Prob'ly havin' a big time over to White River."

"Met some whore, that's what he done, and he's showin' her a big time.
On our money."

"Oh, Christ!" moaned Lucas. "Oh, Christ, help me!"

"That sonofabitch McCracken. Gone out to get drunk."

"His whole goddamn family drinks. Every last one of the McCrackens is a
drunk."

"On our money."

Angus Bromley managed to reach a spot under a beam, and now contemplated
the wide rafter over his head. Slowly, he raised himself up on his toes,
his hands sliding carefully over the top of the beam over his head, and
at last his fingers wrapped themselves around the neck of a quart
bottle. He lowered this treasure painstakingly and held it before his
eyes.

"Beautiful," he murmured, caressing the shoulders of the bottle as if
they had been those of a perfumed woman. "Beautiful, beautiful."

He sat down abruptly on the floor and hastily broke the seal on the top
of the bottle. The cap rolled, unheeded, across the floor while Angus
raised the mouth of the bottle to his lips.

Kenny Stearns turned his head sharply at the sound of a bottle cap
dropping on cement, and he saw Angus--drinking.

"Look!" cried Kenny to the other men. "Angus has got a bottle!"

The men turned toward Angus, who wiped his mouth and quickly hid the
bottle under his shirt.

"You're crazy, Kenny," he said and smiled ingratiatingly. "You're drunk,
Kenny. Drunk and seein' things. I ain't got no bottle."

"Bastard!" shouted Kenny.

He rushed toward Angus, who had not had time to prepare for an
onslaught. He was felled and lay on the floor. Kenny managed to rescue
the bottle just in time. He held it in his hands and kicked viciously at
Angus' head, and Angus groaned and did not move again. In a few minutes,
he began to snore.

"Greedy bastard," mumbled Kenny and turned to face the others. "Who
wants a drink?" he yelled.

All the men began to struggle to their feet, and even Lucas lowered one
of his hands to look at Kenny.

"Anybody here that can take it away from me gets it," said Kenny, and
without another word raised the bottle to his mouth.

The men, like starving animals, snarling and crafty eyed, approached
Kenny slowly, circling him, watching for an opening.

Kenny laughed. "Anybody who's man enough to take it away from me gets
it," he said, and then raised his foot unsteadily to push at the first
man who rushed him.

Kenny had the advantage of a leaning place, for his back was against the
broad cellar chimney, but the others had nothing to balance them but
their equilibrium which was, at the moment, nonexistent. In ten minutes
it was over. The sound of four snoring men filled the cellar and covered
the noise of Lucas' whimpering.

"Bastards," gloated Kenny. "Tellin' a man to go to hell right in his own
cellar. I guess I showed 'em. To hell with them." He approached Lucas.
"You're the only friend I got, Lucas," he said. "The only real, true
friend in the whole world. Have a drink."

He did not relinquish the bottle, but held it to Lucas' lips while Lucas
swallowed thirstily.

"That's enough," said Kenny, withdrawing the bottle, and Lucas, already
saturated with alcohol from the long weeks of drinking, fell unconscious
to the floor.

Kenny sat down, leaning against a wall, and took a long pull from the
bottle. At once everything began to swing dizzily in front of his eyes,
and he was transported back to a wonderful time when he had taken Ginny
to a county fair and they had gone for a ride on the Ferris wheel. He
half closed his eyes and saw the bright lights of the fairgrounds and
heard the thin music of the calliope.

"Once more," he said, and obediently the Ferris wheel began to turn.

Kenny took another drink. After six weeks of the most prolonged spree in
town history, Kenny's cellar floor was covered with vomit and feces. The
stench had floated up through the floor boards of the story above and
Ginny Stearns had long since moved in with a friend of hers who lived
down by the river. But to Kenny now, his cellar was a beautiful place of
carnival and pleasure.

"Once more," he cried, wanting to stay on the Ferris wheel forever.
"Hold my hand, Ginny. Don't be scared."

Kenny looked in the direction of his sleeping friends and saw Ginny's
smile.

"Here we go!" he shouted, and reached for her hand.

But abruptly she was gone and Kenny was alone in the Ferris wheel.

"Stop!" he yelled. "Stop! Stop! She fell out! Stop this goddamned
thing!"

But the wheel turned faster and faster, and the music of the fair was
suddenly sinister, a gay tune gone wrong and played in a minor key.

"Ginny!" he cried. "Ginny! Where'd you go to?"

He staggered to his feet and looked around wildly while the lights of
the fair swung crazily all around him, dipping, swaying, hurting his
eyes.

"Ginny!" he screamed from the top of the Ferris wheel.

And then he saw her. She was walking arm in arm with a smiling,
oily-looking man. The stranger was dressed in city clothes, and he
looked up at Kenny, trapped in the wheel, and laughed out loud.

"You bastard!" shouted Kenny. "Come back here. Come on back here with my
Ginny!"

But Ginny was laughing, too. She turned her head and looked up at Kenny,
her red lips parted so that her teeth showed, square and white, and she
laughed and laughed.

"You bitch!" cried Kenny. "You dirty, whorin' bitch!"

Ginny laughed harder than ever and shrugged her shoulders and looked up
at the city-dressed stranger. Kenny could see her painted nails resting
against the man's dark sleeve, and he could feel her breasts and thighs
straining through her dress to rest against the stranger's side.

"I'll kill you," he screamed, standing up in the Ferris wheel. "I'll
kill you both!"

But Ginny and the stranger began to walk away, still laughing, as if
they had not heard Kenny's threat. They walked slowly, and Ginny reached
up and put her finger tips against the stranger's cheek. Kenny dropped
the bottle he held and tried to get off the Ferris wheel. He dashed
crookedly toward the stairs in his cellar, and when he reached the top,
he fell heavily against the door. It would not budge.

"I'm locked in," he shouted, his fingers moving senselessly against the
wooden panels. "I'm locked in this goddamned Ferris wheel!" His fingers
touched the door's strong double bolt without recognizing it. "Let me
out!" he called to the man who was operating the Ferris wheel. "Let me
out, you sonofabitch!"

But the man kept the wheel going, smiling up at Kenny, his head like a
skull and his yellow teeth gleaming dully in the dark.

Kenny ran down the cellar stairs and grasped the ax that he had put down
next to his woodpile weeks before. He turned toward the grinning Ferris
wheel operator.

"I'll chop my way out, you bastard!" he shouted.

He ran up the cellar stairs and when he reached the top he began to chop
at the panels of the door in front of him.

"I'll kill you both," he yelled at Ginny and the stranger, who had
stopped their walking now, to stand and stare at him. Ginny's smile was
gone, replaced by a fear that contorted her face and made her mouth
droop, and Kenny's heart exulted.

"I'll get you first, you rotten bitch," he called. "I'll get you and
hack your pretty face all to pieces."

The ax bit into the wooden door panels once again, and this time Kenny
had to struggle to loosen it for another swing. At last he freed it from
the wood and raised it above his head. He aimed for the bottom of the
Ferris wheel car and swung the ax in a tremendous arc.

Suddenly his foot was bleeding. While he stood and stared stupidly,
blood was gushing in a fountain through the sliced leather of his shoe.
It poured out redly, all around him, so that he was lost in it,
drowning. Kenny Stearns fell forward, out of the Ferris wheel into the
crowds below, while Ginny's laughter rang in his ears.




CHAPTER 19


It was Dr. Matthew Swain who found Henry McCracken. The doctor was on
his way home from a call in the country when he saw something in the
ditch at the side of the road. Immediately, he braked his car to a stop
and got out to investigate, and in the gleam of his car's headlights, he
saw a still figure, lying face down, in the dirt. It was Henry,
unconscious, unbelievably dirty and bleeding from a nasty gash on his
forehead but, as the doctor said later, it was Henry, still breathing
and stinking to high heaven. Dr. Swain looked at him once and then
picked him up, slung him over his shoulder and carried him to the car
where he bundled him into the back seat. He drove straight to the Peyton
Place hospital where Henry was entrusted to two nurses who stripped him,
washed him and moaned their fate over every inch of Henry's filthy body.

"Cheer up, girls," said Dr. Swain, after he had stitched Henry's head.
"Give this boy a few hours' sleep, and you'll be falling all over
yourselves trying to get a chance to wait on him."

The two nurses gazed at Henry's drooling mouth and still unshaven face,
with its neat forehead bandage giving him a slightly rakish look, and
shook their heads at one another.

"You're the limit, Doc," said Nurse Mary Kelley, who was not noted for
the originality of her remarks.

"No, I'm not," said the doctor. "_He_ is."

Mary made a face at the doctor's retreating back.

"Go home and go to bed, Doc," she called after him. "And don't stop to
pick up any more like this one on your way."

"Don't kid me, Mary," said the doctor. "You love 'em all with a wicked
lust. Good night!"

Mary Kelley shook her head. "That Doc," she said to Nurse Lucy
Ellsworth. "He never minds what he says. I've known him all my life, but
I'm still not used to him. When I was in training here I almost got
discouraged and quit before The Doc had got done with his teasing."

"Was he teasing you about this same fellow?" asked Lucy Ellsworth.

Lucy was comparatively new to Peyton Place and had not yet had a chance
to become acquainted with its legends and anecdotes. She had come to
town only six months before when her husband had obtained a job in the
Cumberland Mills. John Ellsworth was a job shifter, perpetually
discontented with his lot and forever looking for a plot of greener
grass. Lucy had been a registered nurse when she married John, and she
always said that it was a good thing she was, for she had had to work
ever since to support the two of them, and later, the daughter who was
born to them. Very often, Lucy Ellsworth said that she would leave John
if it weren't for Kathy. But after all, a child needed her father, and
John might have his faults but he was good to the little girl, and a
woman couldn't ask for much more than that now, could she? Kathy was
thirteen and in the eighth grade, and sometimes Lucy said that when the
child was older, old enough to realize what was happening, then the two
of them would leave John and his restlessness.

"Doc teases everybody about everything," said Mary Kelley. "He takes it
easy with you because you're new here, but just wait until he gets used
to seeing you around, then you'll see what I mean."

"What happened to almost make you quit when you were in training?" asked
Lucy.

"Oh, it had nothing to do with Henry, here," said Mary, mournfully
smoothing the sheet over Henry's thin legs. "It was over this big, black
Negro we had in here once. The man was in a terrible automobile
accident, and they brought him here because it was the nearest place. He
was the first nigger I ever saw, close to. Well, The Doc worked most all
night patching that man up, and then we put him in the ward with the
rest of the patients, except of course the others were all white people.
Well, every morning The Doc would come out of the ward and whisper to
me, 'Mary, you watch that black feller,' and every day I'd ask him why.
I took my work very seriously then, and I was trying to learn everything
at once. 'Never mind,' The Doc would say, 'you just keep your eyes
peeled. That feller there is different from any other man you ever saw.'
The Doc is a man who loves everybody. Black, white, green even, if there
is such a thing, it doesn't matter to him. 'What do you mean,
different?' I asked the Doc. 'Because his skin's so black?' 'No,' The
Doc said, and I should have known right then that he was up to some
devilment, but I'd just started in training and I had the idea that a
hospital was no place for fooling around, besides, I never did get used
to The Doc's teasing.

"'No, Mary,' The Doc said. 'It's not his skin. I'm surprised at you, a
smart girl like you.' Well, I was almost crying I felt that bad to feel
that maybe I'd missed something I was supposed to have learned in class.
'What do you mean?' I asked him, and The Doc leaned down and whispered
in my ear. 'Mary,' he said, 'don't you know that niggers fart black?'
Well, I can tell you, I was fit to be tied. 'That's nice talk,' I said,
'from the man who brought me into the world.' Oh, I knew that I was
supposed to talk respectfully to all doctors at all times, even to The
Doc, but I was so mad I just didn't care. The Doc never cracked a smile,
but just looked at me, surprised. 'No kidding, Mary,' he said. 'I
wouldn't spoof you, not a nice girl like you. I just wanted to put you
wise, in case you ever have to take care of a black man again.' Well,
fool that I was, I believed him. That's a trick of The Doc's. He can
tell out-and-out lies with the straightest face in the world, and he can
make anybody believe anything. I can tell you, I watched that black man.
He couldn't even burp, much less anything else, without me right there
by his side to see what I could see. I watched him for days, and finally
one morning The Doc came out of the ward and walked up to me in the
corridor. 'There,' he said, 'what did I tell you?' 'What're you talking
about?' I asked him, and he looked at me, surprised. 'Why, Mary, didn't
you see it?' 'See what?' I asked him. 'Come on, quick,' he said, and led
me over to the ward by the hand. Of course, there was nothing there, and
The Doc looked around, all innocent and puzzled, and he said, 'Hm,
that's funny, it must have all gone out the window.' 'What?' I asked
him, all excited by this time. 'The soot,' he said, and right away I got
mad, thinking he was making remarks about the way we kids in training
kept the room. 'What soot?' I asked him. 'From that black feller,' he
said. 'So help me, I was in here a minute ago and that black feller
farted and this whole room was black with soot!'"

Lucy Ellsworth laughed so loud that Henry stirred in his sleep, and Mary
put a warning finger to her lips.

"Sh-h," she said. "I don't see anything so funny in that story anyway. I
think it was a cruel thing to do to a young girl."

She sighed impatiently and put out the light in Henry's room when Lucy
dashed for the hall, a handkerchief over her mouth to smother her
laughter.




CHAPTER 20


Dr. Matthew Swain drove slowly past Kenny Stearns's house to see if, as
he put it to himself, any more bodies had fallen up out of the cellar.
He saw Kenny's open cellar window with its black curtain flapping in the
cold winter wind, and he pulled his car over to the curb and stopped.

For Christ's sake, he thought, if any of them have gone to sleep with
that window open, Mary will have a hospital full of sick drunks on her
hands.

He got out of his car and moved slowly toward the cellar window with the
idea of glancing in to make sure that everything was well, and of
slamming the window shut if none of the drunks were awake to do it for
themselves.

That sounds like a noble gesture, he admitted to himself, when the truth
of the matter is that I've been panting for a chance to take a look into
that cellar. I wonder how they passed the time. He bent to look in the
window. And I wonder, he asked himself, how in hell they lived with this
stink for six weeks?

"Good God Almighty!" said the doctor aloud.

Kenny Stearns was lying at the foot of the cellar stairs, unconscious
and covered with blood.

"He's dead, surer than hell," said the doctor. "If I ever saw a man who
had bled to death, it's Kenny Stearns at this minute."

He straightened up quickly and went to the house next door to telephone
for an ambulance.

Within minutes, the street in front of Kenny's house began to fill with
people so that when the hospital ambulance arrived, the driver and his
assistant had to fight a path clear to reach the cellar. Telephones rang
all through the town, and people who had been in bed, or reading by
their firesides, hurried out into the cold to join the crowds who had
gathered to watch The Doc "drag the drunks out of Kenny's cellar."

"It works the same way in prisons," said Dr. Swain to Seth Buswell a few
minutes later. "Some call it a grapevine, but it has always seemed like
a pair of giant antennae to me. Nobody admits to having said a word, but
the minute anything happens everyone seems to know about it."

He turned to the group of old men who usually wandered out into the cold
only to make their way to and from Tuttle's Grocery Store.

"For Christ's sake," roared the doctor, "get the hell out of the way!"

The two men who carried the stretcher lifted it gently to the rear of
the ambulance, and the crowd began to buzz.

"Poor Kenny."

"Is he dead?"

"Jesus! Look at the blood!"

"Tried to slash his throat with a razor, I heard."

"Cut his wrists with a broken bottle."

"They all got into a fight and went at each other with knives. All of
'em drunk, of course."

The ambulance made four trips in all, taking Kenny on the first trip and
Lucas Cross on the last.

Selena Cross stood on the fringe of the crowd, holding tightly to her
little brother Joey's hand. When Lucas was dragged from the cellar,
screaming, cursing and fighting off imaginary insects, she felt Joey
squirm against her, trying to bury his head in the skirt of her dress.
The ambulance driver and his assistant had Lucas by the scruff of the
neck and the arms, pulling him across Kenny's front lawn.

"There's Lucas Cross!" shouted someone in the crowd.

"Lookit him! Drunk as a lord!"

"He's got the d.t.'s!"

Lucas screamed, "Let me go! Watch out!"

The crowd laughed at the ridiculous picture he made. He dug his heels
into the ground and stiffened his body in protest against the men who
dragged him.

"Watch out!" cried Lucas, and tried to hide his face in the white coats
of the ambulance attendants.

"It's all right, Lucas," said Dr. Swain soothingly. "You're going to be
all right. Now go with these boys and you'll be all right."

Lucas looked at the doctor as if he had never seen him before. "Watch
out! Don't let them get me! They'll eat me alive!"

Joey Cross began to cry, but Selena did not cry. She watched Lucas with
eyes ugly with hate.

Miserable slob, she thought. Crumby bastard. Drunken bum. I hope to hell
you die.

"Be careful!" shouted someone in the crowd. "He's getting away!"

Lucas had managed to break away from one of his captors, and now
struggled insanely against the other. He kicked at the crotch of the man
who still held him, and when the attendant let him go, Lucas began to
run drunkenly in wide circles, slapping at his arms and thighs and
trying to cover his face at the same time.

"Watch out!" he called to the crowd. "They're all covered with slime!"

The crowd roared and Selena hissed silently between her teeth.

"I hope you die. I wish you'd fall down dead, you rotten sonofabitch."

Joey hid his face and wept.

Charles Partridge waited until Lucas ran directly in front of him and
then grabbed the frightened man in a grotesque bear hug.

"Come on, Lucas," said Dr. Swain gently. "Come with me. You'll be all
right."

At last they managed to put Lucas into the ambulance and slam the door
behind him, but even from inside the long car Lucas' voice was audible
to the crowd outside.

"Watch out! Watch out!"

The ambulance moved away and Selena shook Joey. "Come on, honey. Let's
go tell Ma that we finally saw him."

The two started away from the crowd, and many faces turned to watch them
as they walked.

"There go the Cross kids."

"It's a shame, a man with a family."

"Don't know how his wife stands it."

"It's the children I feel sorry for."

"Well, that's the shackowners for you."

Shut up, Selena wanted to scream. Shut up. I don't need your stinking
pity. Just shut up.

She held her head up, as if she were walking alone, and looked neither
left nor right. She made her way toward Elm Street, leading her little
brother Joey by the hand.

"I'll walk with you," said a voice behind her.

Selena whirled. "I don't need you, Ted Carter," she said viciously,
taking out her hurt and anger at the crowd on him. "Beat it back to the
right side of the tracks. Your people worked hard enough to get there.
Don't leave now to come down by the shacks."

Ted took her arm and it was stiff and unyielding beneath his fingers.

Selena jerked away from him. "I don't need you," she said. "I don't need
anybody. Keep your lousy pity for someone who wants it. Take it and
shove it."

An innate wisdom kept Ted silent now, and moved him to Joey's side. He
took the little boy's hand in his, and he and Selena were on opposite
sides of the child, each holding one of his hands. Joey felt almost
warmed and comforted.

"Come on, Selena," said Joey. "Let's go home."

The three figures moved down the deserted main street of Peyton Place,
and their feet struck sharply on the snowless sidewalks. They walked
without speaking to the end of the paved street and onto the dirt road,
and when they came to the clearing in front of the Cross shack, Joey
broke away from them.

"I'm goin' in to tell Ma," he said, and dashed into the house.

Selena and Ted stood together, still not speaking, motionless in the
middle of the road. Then Ted put both his arms around Selena and drew
her close to him. He did not kiss her or touch her in any way except to
hold her, and at last Selena began to cry. She wept silently, without
moving her body, her burning, wet face the only sign that she wept.

"I love you, Selena," Ted whispered in her ear.

She wept until her whole body ached and she leaned, a dead weight,
against Ted, so that if he had moved she would have crumpled and fallen.
He took her hand and led her to the side of the road, and she followed
him like an idiot or a sleepwalker, uncaring and somnolent. Ted made her
sit down on the cold ground and then sat next to her, holding her,
pressing her face into the front of his coat, and he stroked her hair
with his cold fingers.

"I love you, Selena."

He opened his heavy overcoat and sat closer to her, so that part of his
coat covered her, and his hands went under the ragged thinness of the
jacket she wore, trying to warm her.

"I love you, Selena."

"Yes," she muttered, and it was neither a question nor an exclamation of
wonder. It was an agreement.

"I want you to be my girl."

"Yes."

"For always."

"Yes."

"We'll get married, after we finish high school. It's only four years
and a little bit more."

"Yes."

"I'm going to be a lawyer, just like old Charlie."

"Yes."

"But we'll get married before I have to go away to college."

"Yes."

They sat quietly for a long time. The one small light in the Cross shack
went out, and the darkness from the woods reached out to cover them.
Selena was limp against Ted, like a rag doll. When he kissed her, her
mouth was soft, but neither resistant nor yielding, and her body neither
flinched from his touch nor leaned toward it. She was just there, and
tractable.

"I love you, Selena."

"Yes."

It was snowing. The cold had snapped soundlessly under the strength of
the thick, quiet flakes that fell and soon covered the ground.




CHAPTER 21


Allison lay still and listened to the sounds of winter. The snow against
her small-paned bedroom window made a tiny sound, like sugar sprinkled
over the surface of hot coffee, and it piled itself up quietly,
beautifully, so that it was hard to look at it and think of danger. The
memory of giant tree limbs broken off by the sly snow's weight, or the
tale of the hunter, taken in by the false warmth of a white blanket, who
froze to death, or the story of someone's small dog, lost in a silvery
wonderland, who fell at last into a drift over his depth and was
suffocated were like pain, easily forgotten. Allison listened to the
soft sift of snow against her window and remembered only loveliness. She
tried not to hear the wind which frightened her with its persistence and
power. The winter winds did not blow over northern New England in blasts
and gusts. They were like living things, breathing unceasingly and
mightily, with breaths as cold as death. Allison hid her head under the
bedcovers and was afraid that spring would never come again.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In this second week of February winter still had a long time to stay.
But Allison had the feeling that when spring came her life would
miraculously straighten itself out. She was assailed by a feeling of
vague unrest, yet she could not put her finger on the source of her
uneasiness.

"Nothing is the way it used to be any more," she would say angrily.

She saw less and less of Selena Cross these days, for Selena was either
with Ted Carter, or busy looking for an odd job to do.

"I'm saving my money," said Selena one Saturday afternoon when Allison
suggested a movie. "I'm saving up to buy that white dress in your
mother's store to wear when we graduate. Ted's already asked me to the
spring dance. Are you going?"

"Of course not," said Allison promptly, preferring to give the
impression that she did not choose to go rather than have Selena guess
that she had not been invited.

"Ted and I are going steady," said Selena.

"Ted, Ted, Ted!" said Allison crossly. "Is that all you can talk about?"

"Yes," said Selena simply.

"Well, I think it's disgusting, that's what I think," said Allison.

But she began to pay a little more attention to her clothes, and
Constance no longer had to nag her into washing her hair. She made a
secretive trip to the five- and ten-cent store where she bought a
brassire with full rubber pads in each cup, and when Constance remarked
on the fact that her daughter was filling out nicely and quickly,
Allison gave her a withering look.

"After all, Mother," she said, "I'm not getting any younger, you know."

"Yes, dear, I know," said Constance, hiding a smile.

Allison shrugged angrily. It seemed to her that her mother grew more
stupid every day, and that she had a positive genius for saying the
wrong thing at the wrong time.

"How come we never see Selena Cross around here any more?" asked
Constance, toward the end of February.

Allison very nearly shouted that Selena hadn't been inside the MacKenzie
house for weeks and weeks, and if it had taken Constance all this time
to realize that fact, then she must be blind as well as stupid.

"I guess I've just sort of outgrown Selena," she told her mother.

But it had been bad, at first, losing Selena. Allison had thought that
she would die of loneliness, and she spent many a long Saturday
afternoon weeping in her room, rather than go poking about in the shops
by herself. Then she had become friendly with Kathy Ellsworth, a new
girl in town, and she no longer missed Selena. Kathy loved to read and
walk and she painted pictures. It was this last which had prompted
Allison to tell Kathy about the stories she had tried to write.

"I'm sure you'll understand, Kathy," said Allison. "I mean, one artist
to another."

Kathy Ellsworth was small and quiet. Allison often had the feeling that
if anyone were to strike Kathy, that Kathy's bones would crumble and
disintegrate, and she was often so still that Allison could forget that
she was there at all.

"Do you like boys?" Allison asked her new friend.

"Yes," said Kathy, and Allison was shocked.

"I mean, do you _really_ like them?"

"Yes, I do," said Kathy. "When I grow up, I'm going to get married, and
buy a house, and have a dozen children."

"Well, I'm not!" said Allison. "I am going to be a brilliant authoress.
Absolutely brilliant. And I shall never marry. I just hate boys!"

Boys were another question that disturbed Allison that winter.
Oftentimes, she lay awake in her bed at night and had the most peculiar
sensations. She wanted to rub her hands over her body, but when she did,
she always remembered her thirteenth birthday and the way Rodney
Harrington had kissed her. Then she would either go hot and prickly all
over, or else she would feel cold enough to shiver. She tried to imagine
other boys kissing her, but the face that swam beneath her closed lids
was always that of Rodney, and she almost wished that she could feel his
lips again. She pressed her hands flat against her abdomen, then let
them slide up to her small breasts. She rubbed her finger tips over her
nipples until they were hard, and this caused an odd tightening
somewhere between her legs that puzzled her but was, somehow, very
pleasant. One night she began to wonder how it would feel if it were
Rodney's hands on her breasts, and her face burned.

"I just hate boys," she told her friend Kathy, but she began to practice
sultry looks in her mirror, and all day long, at school, she was aware
of Rodney in the seat next to hers.

"Did a boy ever kiss you?" she asked Kathy.

"Oh, yes," replied Kathy calmly. "Several of them. I liked it."

"You didn't!" cried Allison.

"Yes, I did," said Kathy, who, Allison had discovered, would not lie, or
even be tactful if it occasioned a slight coloring of the truth. "Yes,"
repeated Kathy, "I liked it very much. A boy even screwed me once."

"Oh, my goodness!" said Allison. "How did he do that?"

"Oh, you know. Put his tongue in my mouth when he kissed me."

"Oh," said Allison.

Kathy and Allison changed their reading habits radically that winter.
They began to haunt the library in search of books reputed to be "sexy,"
and they read them aloud to one another.

"I wish I had breasts like marble," said Kathy sadly, closing a book.
"Mine have blue veins in them that show through the skin. I think I'll
draw a picture of a girl with marble breasts."

"Kathy is just wonderful," said Allison to Constance. "She's so
talented, and imaginative and everything."

Dear God, thought Constance, first the daughter of a shackowner and now
the daughter of an itinerant mill hand. Allison's taste is all in her
mouth!

Constance had not much time to spend with her daughter these days. She
had bought the vacant store next door to the Thrifty Corner and was now
busily engaged in enlarging her shop. She put in a line of men's socks
and shirts and another of infants' wear, and by the first of March she
had hired Selena Cross to work for her part time, after school. She also
hired Nellie Cross to come in three days a week to clean house for her,
and it was at this time that Allison noticed Nellie's newly developed
habit of talking to herself under her breath.

"Sonsofbitches, all of 'em," she would mumble, attacking the woodwork
viciously. "Every last one of 'em."

And Allison would remember the day she had stood on a packing crate and
looked into the Cross kitchen.

"Booze and wimmin. Wimmin and booze," muttered Nellie, and Allison
shivered, remembering Selena's scream ripping at the cold November
afternoon. She had never been able to bring herself to tell that story
to anyone, and she had never mentioned to Selena that she had seen, but
soon afterward she saw a book with a paper jacket showing a slave girl
with her wrists bound over her head, naked from the waist up, while a
brutal-looking man beat her with a cruel-looking whip. That, she
concluded, was what had been in Lucas Cross's mind on the afternoon that
she had stared through his kitchen window. Lucas must have beaten Nellie
until the woman's mind was gone.

"Sonsofbitches," said Nellie. "Oh, hello, Allison. Come in here and sit
down, and I'll tell you a story."

"No," said Allison quickly. "No, thank you."

"O.K.," said Nellie cheerfully. "You tell me one."

It was a cold snowy afternoon and Nellie was ironing in the MacKenzie
kitchen. Allison sat down on the rocking chair beside the stove.

"Once upon a time," said Allison, "in a land far across the sea, there
lived a beautiful princess--"

Nellie Cross ironed on, her small eyes shining and her slack mouth half
open. After that, whenever Allison was in the house, Nellie would smile
and say, "Tell me a story," and each one had to be different, for Nellie
would interrupt at once. "Nah. Don't tell that one. You told me that one
already."

"Nellie Cross may look like a pig herself," said Constance, "but she
certainly keeps this house shining."

One morning in March, Nellie came to the MacKenzies' before Constance
had left for work.

"Guess you ain't heard about Mr. Firth, have you?" she asked.

Nellie had a disconcerting habit of cackling, and she cackled now.

"Dropped dead, he did," she told Constance and Allison. "Shovelin' snow
in his driveway, and fell down dead. I always knew he'd get his someday.
Sonofabitch, he was. Just like all of 'em. Sonsofbitches."

"For Heaven's sake, Nellie!" remonstrated Constance. "Watch your
tongue."

Mr. Abner Firth was the principal of the Peyton Place schools, and he
had dropped dead of a heart attack, that morning.

"Isn't that a shame," said Constance absent-mindedly.

"Are you sure, Mrs. Cross?" asked Allison.

"You bet I'm sure. One sonofabitch less in this sad world."

At school, Miss Elsie Thornton was white faced but dry eyed. She asked
that every boy and girl bring a dime to school the next day for flowers
for Mr. Firth.

"We'll have a bitch of a time replacing old Firth at this time of the
year," said Leslie Harrington, who was the chairman of the school board.
"Christ, why couldn't he have waited until spring to have his goddamned
heart attack."

Roberta Carter, Ted's mother, who was also on the school board said,
"There is no need to be profane, Leslie."

"Come off it, Bobbie," said Harrington.

Theodore Janowski, a mill hand and the third member of the board, nodded
his head impartially to both Leslie and Mrs. Carter. Janowski was
supposed to fill out the Peyton Place School Board and make it truly
representative of the town's population, but in his two years of service
he had never once voted on an issue. Leslie Harrington decided policy,
he and Mrs. Carter argued for a while, and then the two of them declared
what was to be done. Occasionally they would turn to Janowski and ask,
"Don't you agree, Mr. Janowski?"

"Yes," was always Janowski's answer.

"We'll get in touch with one of those teachers' agencies down to
Boston," decided Harrington. "They should be able to come up with
someone. Now, I suppose, we'd better all dig down and send old Abner a
wreath, goddamn his soul."

It was nearly April, with no sign of a break in the cold weather, before
the Boston Teachers' Agency came up with the name of a man qualified to
be principal of the Peyton Place schools. His name was Tomas Makris and
he was a native of the city of New York.

"Makris!" roared Leslie Harrington. "What the hell kind of name is
that!"

"Grecian, I think," said Mrs. Carter.

"I dunno, Mr. Harrington," said Janowski.

"His qualifications are excellent," said Mrs. Carter. "Although I
imagine that he is a little unstable. Look at what he gives as a reason
for leaving his last job. 'To go to work in Pittsburgh steel mill for
more money.' Really, Leslie, I don't think we want anyone like that up
here."

"A goddamned Greek, for Christ's sake, and a lousy millworker at that.
This Boston agency must be run by screwballs."

Theodore Janowski said nothing, but for the first time he felt a
powerful urge to slam his fist into Leslie Harrington's mouth.

"What about Elsie Thornton," suggested Mrs. Carter. "Goodness knows
she's been teaching long enough to know our schools inside out."

"She's too old," said Harrington. "She's practically ready to retire.
Besides, being principal is no job for a woman."

"Well, then," said Mrs. Carter acidly, "it looks like either this Makris
person or no one."

"Take your time, for Christ's sake," said Harrington.

The school board procrastinated until the middle of April. Then they
received a curt note from the State Department of Education informing
them that a school could not be run without an administrator, and that
therefore the Peyton Place School Board would please remedy the
situation in their town at once. The fact that Abner Firth had also
taught three classes of English, a required subject on all levels, and
that these classes had not been held since his death made it imperative,
in the eyes of the state department, that a replacement be hired
immediately. That same evening, Leslie Harrington attempted to telephone
Tomas Makris, long-distance collect, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

"Will you accept a collect call from Mr. Leslie Harrington?" asked the
operator.

"Like hell I will," said the full voice of Makris. "Who is Leslie
Harrington?"

"One moment, please," sang the operator.

When she put Makris' question to Harrington, Leslie roared back that he
was the chairman of the Peyton Place School Board, that was who, and if
Makris was interested in a job there, he had damned well better accept a
collect call. Unfortunately, the operator left the line open while
Harrington was speaking, and before she could relay his message, in more
courteous words, Makris began to roar himself.

"To hell with you, Mr. Harrington," he shouted into the telephone. "If
you can't afford to pay for a long-distance call, you can't afford to
hire me," and he banged the receiver into place.

Two minutes later his telephone rang and the operator informed him that
Mr. Harrington was on the line, prepaid from Peyton Place.

"Well?" demanded Makris.

"Now listen here, Mr. Makris," said Leslie Harrington. "Let's discuss
this thing sensibly."

"It's your money," said Makris. "Go ahead."

The next day the whole town buzzed with talk that Leslie Harrington had
gone and hired a Greek to come be principal of the schools.

"A Greek?" demanded Peyton Place incredulously. "For God's sake, isn't
it enough that we've got a whole colony of Polacks and Canucks working
in the mills without letting the Greeks in?"

"Good grief!" said Marion Partridge. "I don't know what Roberta Carter
could have been thinking of. The next thing you know, we'll have an
all-night fruit store on Elm Street!"

"It's a lucky thing for me that he'll be the only one in town," said
Corey Hyde, who owned the largest eating place in town. "You know what
they say happens when Greek meets Greek? They take one look at each
other and open up a restaurant!"

"You put your foot in it that time, Leslie," said Jared Clarke. "Hiring
a Greek, for God's sake. What got into you?"

"Nothing got into me," said Harrington angrily. "He was the only man we
could get with decent qualifications. He's got a Master's from Columbia
and all that sort of thing. He's a good man."

Leslie Harrington did not admit then, or ever, that he had been unable
to keep from hiring Tomas Makris. He never told anyone that he had
almost begged Makris to come to Peyton Place, and he could not explain
to himself why he had done so.

"What'll you pay?" Makris had demanded. And, when Leslie told him, "Are
you kidding? Keep your crummy job."

Leslie had upped the offer by four hundred dollars per year, and had
offered to pay for transportation to Peyton Place. Makris had demanded a
three-room apartment, steam heated, in a decent neighborhood, and an
ironclad contract, not for one year but for three.

"That will be entirely satisfactory with the school board, I am sure,"
Leslie Harrington had said, and when he hung up he had been sweating and
feeling ridiculously weak and ineffectual.

I'll fix your wagon, Mr. Independent Greek Makris, thought Harrington.
But for the first time in his life he was afraid, and he could not have
said why.

"Qualified or not," said Jared Clarke, "you've put your foot in it this
time, Leslie."

Jared's opinion was shared by the whole town with the exception of Dr.
Matthew Swain and Miss Elsie Thornton.

"Do the kids good to have a young fellow like that in charge," said Dr.
Swain. "Shake 'em up a little."

A Master's from Columbia, thought Miss Thornton. A young man, well
educated and unafraid. She sent the dean of Smith College a swift
thought. I'll show you yet, exulted Miss Thornton. You'll see!

The old men in Tuttle's to whom the schools had never been of the
remotest interest, now talked volubly about the new headmaster.

"A New York feller, you say?"

"Yep. A Greek feller from down to New York."

"Well, I'll be damned!"

"Don't seem right, somehow, what with all the teachers who've been here
so long to go givin' the best job to some Greek feller from out of
town."

"Oh, I don't know," said Clayton Frazier. "Do us good to see some new
faces around."

Allison MacKenzie made a special trip to the Thrifty Corner to tell her
mother about the new principal who was coming to town.

"Makris?" asked Constance. "What an odd name. Where is he from?"

"New York," said Allison.

Constance's heart began to knock painfully against her side.

"New York City?" she asked.

"That's what the kids were saying."

Constance busied herself with hanging up a new shipment of skirts, and
Allison did not notice that her mother seemed suddenly nervous. She was
too nervous herself to notice much of anything, because the real reason
she had come into the shop was not to pass on the news about the new
principal.

"I'd like to have a new dress," she blurted.

"Oh?" asked Constance, surprised. "Did you have anything special in
mind?"

"A party dress," said Allison. "I have a date for the spring dance next
month."

"A _date_!" said Constance incredulously, and dropped the two skirts she
was holding. "With whom?"

"Rodney Harrington," said Allison calmly. "He asked me this afternoon."

She did not feel calm. She was remembering the night of her birthday
party when Rodney had kissed her because she was too big to spank.




CHAPTER 22


A few days later, Tomas Makris stepped off the train in front of the
Peyton Place railroad station. No other passenger got off with him. He
paused on the empty platform and looked around thoroughly, for it was a
habit with him to fix a firm picture of a new place in his mind so that
it could never be erased nor forgotten. He stood still, feeling the two
heavy suitcases that he carried pulling at his arm muscles, and
reflected that there wasn't much to see, nor to hear, for that matter.
It was shortly after seven o'clock in the evening, but it might have
been midnight or four in the morning, for all the activity going on.
Behind him, there was nothing but the two curving railroad tracks and
from a distance came the long-drawn-out wail of the train as it made the
pull across the wide Connecticut River. And it was cold.

For April, thought Makris, shrugging uncomfortably under his topcoat, it
was damned cold.

Straight ahead of him stood the railroad station, a shabby wooden
building with a severely pitched roof and several thin, Gothic-looking
windows that gave it the air of a broken-down church. Nailed to the
front of the building, at the far left of the front door, was a blue and
white enameled sign. PEYTON PLACE, it read. POP. 3675.

Thirty-six seventy-five, thought Makris, pushing open the railroad
station's narrow door. Sounds like the price of a cheap suit.

The inside of the building was lit by several dim electric light bulbs
suspended from fixtures which obviously had once burned gas, and there
were rows of benches constructed of the most hideous wood obtainable,
golden oak. No one was sitting on them. The brown, roughly plastered
walls were trimmed with the same yellow wood and the floor was made of
black and white marble. There was an iron-barred cage set into one wall
and from behind this a straight, thin man with a pinched-looking nose,
steel-rimmed glasses and a string tie stared at Makris.

"Is there a place where I can check these?" asked the new principal,
indicating the two bags at his feet.

"Next room," said the man in the cage.

"Thank you," said Makris and made his way through a narrow archway into
another, smaller room. It was a replica of the main room, complete with
golden oak, marble and converted gas fixtures, but with the addition of
two more doors. These were clearly labeled. MEN, said one. WOMEN, said
the other. Against one wall there was a row of pale gray metal lockers,
and to Makris, these looked almost friendly. They were the only things
in the station even faintly resembling anything he had ever seen in his
life.

"Ah," he murmured, "shades of Grand Central," and bent to push his
suitcases into one of the lockers. He deposited his dime, withdrew his
key and noticed that his was the only locker in use.

Busy town, he thought, and walked back to the main room. His footsteps
rang disquietingly on the scrubbed marble floor.

Leslie Harrington had instructed Makris to call him at his home as soon
as he got off the train, but Makris by-passed the solitary telephone
booth in the railroad station. He wanted to look at the town alone
first, to see it through no one's eyes but his own. Besides, he had
decided the night that Harrington had called long-distance that the
chairman of the Peyton Place School Board sounded like a man puffed up
with his own importance, and must therefore be a pain in the ass.

"Say, Dad," began Makris, addressing the man in the cage.

"Name's Rhodes," said the old man.

"Mr. Rhodes," began Makris again, "could you tell me how I can get into
town from here? I noticed a distressing lack of taxicabs outside."

"Be damned peculiar if I couldn't."

"If you couldn't what?"

"Tell you how to get uptown. Been living here for over sixty years."

"That's interesting."

"You're Mr. Makris, eh?"

"Admitted."

"Ain't you goin' to call up Leslie Harrington?"

"Later. I'd like to get a cup of coffee first. Listen, isn't there a cab
to be had anywhere around here?"

"No."

Tomas Makris controlled a laugh. It was beginning to look as if
everything he had ever heard about these sullen New Englanders was true.
The old man in the cage gave the impression that he had been sucking
lemons for years. Certainly, sourness had not been one of the traits in
that little Pittsburgh secretary who claimed to be from Boston, but she
said herself that she was East Boston Irish, and therefore not reliably
representative of New England.

"Do you mind, then, telling me how I can walk into town from here, Mr.
Rhodes?" asked Makris.

"Not at all," said the stationmaster, and Makris noticed that he
pronounced the three words as one: Notatall. "Just go out this front
door, walk around the depot to the street and keep on walking for two
blocks. That will bring you to Elm Street."

"Elm Street? Is that the main street?"

"Yes."

"I had the idea that the main streets of all small New England towns
were named Main Street."

"Perhaps," said Mr. Rhodes, who prided himself, when annoyed, on
enunciating his syllables, "it is true that the main streets of all
_other_ small towns are named Main Street. Not, however, in Peyton
Place. Here the main street is called Elm Street."

Period. Paragraph, thought Makris. Next question. "Peyton Place is an
odd name," he said. "How did anyone come to pick that one?"

Mr. Rhodes drew back his hand and started to close the wooden panel that
backed the iron bars of his cage.

"I am closing now, Mr. Makris," he said. "And I suggest that you be on
your way if you want to obtain a cup of coffee. Hyde's Diner closes in
half an hour."

"Thank you," said Makris to the wooden panel which was suddenly between
him and Mr. Rhodes.

Friendly bastard, he thought, as he left the station and began to walk
up the street labeled Depot.

Tomas Makris was a massively boned man with muscles that seemed to
quiver every time he moved. In the steel mills of Pittsburgh he had
looked, so one smitten secretary had told him, like a color illustration
of a steelworker. His arms, beneath sleeves rolled above the elbow, were
knotted powerfully, and the buttons of his work shirts always seemed
about to pop off under the strain of trying to cover his chest. He was
six feet four inches tall, weighed two hundred and twelve pounds,
stripped, and looked like anything but a schoolteacher. In fact, the
friendly secretary in Pittsburgh had told him that in his dark blue
suit, white shirt and dark tie, he looked like a steelworker disguised
as a schoolteacher, a fact which would not inspire trust in the heart of
any New Englander.

Tomas Makris was a handsome man, in a dark-skinned, black-haired,
obviously sexual way, and both men and women were apt to credit him more
with attractiveness than intellect. This was a mistake, for Makris had a
mind as analytical as a mathematician's and as curious as a
philosopher's. It was his curiosity which had prompted him to give up
teaching for a year to go to work in Pittsburgh. He had learned more
about economics, labor and capital in that one year than he had learned
in ten years of reading books. He was thirty-six years old and totally
lacking in regret over the fact that he had never stayed in one job long
enough to "get ahead," as the Pittsburgh secretary put it. He was
honest, completely lacking in diplomacy, and the victim of a vicious
temper which tended to loosen a tongue that had learned to speak on the
lower East Side of New York City.

Makris was halfway through the second block on Depot Street, leading to
Elm, when Parker Rhodes, at the wheel of an old sedan, passed him. The
stationmaster looked out of the window on the driver's side of his car
and looked straight through Peyton Place's new headmaster.

Sonofabitch, thought Makris. Real friendly sonofabitch to offer me a
lift in his junk heap of a car.

Then he smiled and wondered why Mr. Rhodes had been so sensitive on the
subject of his town's name. He would ask around and see if everyone in
this godforsaken place reacted the same way to his question. He had
reached the corner of Elm Street and paused to look about him. On the
corner stood a white, cupola-topped house with stiff lace curtains at
the windows. Silhouetted against the light inside, he could see two
women sitting at a table with what was obviously a checkerboard between
them. The women were big, saggy bosomed and white haired, and Makris
thought that they looked like a pair who had worked too long at the same
girls' school.

I wonder who they are? he asked himself, as he looked in at the Page
Girls. Maybe they're the town's two Lizzies.

Reluctantly, he turned away from the white house and made his way west
on Elm Street. When he had walked three blocks, he came to a small,
clean-looking and well-lighted restaurant. "Hyde's Diner" said a polite
neon sign, and Makris opened the door and went in. The place was empty
except for one old man sitting at the far end of the counter, and
another man who came out of the kitchen at the sound of the door
opening.

"Good evening, sir," said Corey Hyde.

"Good evening," said Makris. "Coffee, please, and a piece of pie. Any
kind."

"Apple, sir?"

"Any kind is O.K."

"Well, we have pumpkin, too."

"Apple is fine."

"I think there's a piece of cherry left, also."

"Apple," said Makris, "will be fine."

"You're Mr. Makris, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Makris. My name is Hyde. Corey Hyde."

"How do you do?"

"Quite well, as a rule," said Corey Hyde. "I'll keep on doing quite
well, as long as no one starts up another restaurant."

"Look, could I have my coffee now?"

"Certainly. Certainly, Mr. Makris."

The old man at the end of the counter sipped his coffee from a spoon and
looked surreptitiously at the newcomer to town. Makris wondered if the
old man could be the village idiot.

"Here you are, Mr. Makris," said Corey Hyde. "The best apple pie in
Peyton Place."

"Thank you."

Makris stirred sugar into his coffee and sampled the pie. It was
excellent.

"Peyton Place," he said to Corey Hyde, "is the oddest name for a town
I've ever heard. Who is it named for?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Corey, making unnecessary circular motions with
a cloth on his immaculate counter. "There's plenty of towns have funny
names. Take that Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I had a kid took French over to
the high school. Told me Baton Rouge means Red Stick. Now ain't that a
helluva name for a town? Red Stick, Louisiana. And what about that Des
Moines, Iowa? What a crazy name that is."

"True," said Makris. "But for whom is Peyton Place named, or for what?"

"Some feller that built a castle up here, back before the Civil War.
Feller by the name of Samuel Peyton," said Corey reluctantly.

"A castle!" exclaimed Makris.

"Yep. A real, true, honest-to-God castle, transported over here from
England, every stick and stone of it."

"Who was this Peyton?" asked Makris. "An exiled duke?"

"Nah," said Corey Hyde. "Just a feller with money to burn. Excuse me,
Mr. Makris. I got things to do in the kitchen."

The old man at the end of the counter chuckled. "Fact of the matter, Mr.
Makris," said Clayton Frazier in a loud voice, "is that this town was
named for a friggin' nigger. That's what ails Corey. He's delicate like,
and just don't want to spit it right out."

While Tomas Makris sipped his coffee and enjoyed his pie and
conversation with Clayton Frazier, Parker Rhodes arrived at his home on
Laurel Street. He parked his ancient sedan and entered the house where,
without first removing his coat and hat, he went directly to the
telephone.

"Hello," he said, as soon as the party he had called answered. "That
you, Leslie? Well, he's here, Leslie. Got off the seven o'clock, checked
his suitcases and walked uptown. He's sitting down at Hyde's right now.
What's that? No, he can't get his bags out of the depot until morning,
you know that. What? Well, goddamn it, he didn't ask me, that's why. He
didn't ask for information about when he could get them out. He just
wanted to know where he could check his bags, so I told him. What'd you
say, Leslie? No, I did not tell him that no one has used those lockers
since they were installed five years ago. What? Well, goddamn it, he
didn't ask me, that's why. Yes. Yes, he is, Leslie. _Real_ dark, and
big. Sweet Jesus, he's as big as the side of a barn. Yes. Down at
Hyde's. Said he wanted a cup of coffee."

If Tomas Makris had overheard this conversation, he would have noticed
again that Rhodes pronounced his last three words as one: Kupakawfee.
But at the moment, Makris was looking at the tall, silver-haired man who
had just walked through Hyde's front door.

My God! thought Makris, awed. This guy looks like a walking ad for a
Planter's Punch. A goddamned Kentucky colonel in this place!

"Evenin', Doc," said Corey Hyde, who had put his head out of the kitchen
at the sound of the door, looking, thought Makris, rather like a tired
turtle poking his head out of his shell.

"Evenin', Corey," and Makris knew, as soon as the man spoke, that this
was no fugitive Kentucky colonel but a native.

"Welcome to Peyton Place, Mr. Makris," said the white haired native.
"It's nice to have you with us. My name is Swain. Matthew Swain."

"Evenin', Doc," said Clayton Frazier. "I just been tellin' Mr. Makris
here some of our local legends."

"Make you want to jump on the next train out, Mr. Makris?" asked the
doctor.

"No, sir," said Makris, thinking that there was, after all, one
goddamned face in this godforsaken town that looked human.

"I hope you'll enjoy living here," said the doctor. "Maybe you'll let me
show you the town after you get settled a little."

"Thank you, sir. I'd enjoy that," said Makris.

"Here comes Leslie Harrington," said Clayton Frazier.

The figure outside the glass door of the restaurant was clearly visible
to those inside. The doctor turned to look.

"It's Leslie, all right," he said. "Come to fetch you home, Mr. Makris."

Harrington strode into the restaurant, a smile like one made of molded
ice cream on his face.

"Ah, Mr. Makris," he cried jovially, extending his hand. "It is indeed a
pleasure to welcome you to Peyton Place."

He was thinking, Oh, Christ, he's worse and more of it than I'd feared.

"Hello, Mr. Harrington," said Makris, barely touching the extended hand.
"Made any long-distance calls lately?"

The smile on Harrington's face threatened to melt and run together, but
he rescued it just in time.

"Ha, ha, ha," he laughed. "No, Mr. Makris, I haven't had much time for
telephoning these days. I've been too busy looking for a suitable
apartment for our new headmaster."

"I trust you were successful," said Makris.

"Yes. Yes, I was, as a matter of fact. Well, come along. I'll take you
over in my car."

"As soon as I finish my coffee," said Makris.

"Certainly, certainly," said Harrington. "Oh, hello, Matt. 'Lo,
Clayton."

"Coffee, Mr. Harrington?" asked Corey Hyde.

"No, thanks," said Harrington.

When Makris had finished, everyone said good night carefully, all the
way around, and he and Harrington left the restaurant. As soon as the
door had closed behind them, Dr. Swain began to laugh.

"Goddamn it," he roared, "I'll bet my sweet young arse that Leslie has
met his match this time!"

"There's one schoolteacher that Leslie ain't gonna shove around,"
observed Clayton Frazier.

Corey Hyde, who owed money at the bank where Leslie Harrington was a
trustee, smiled uncertainly.

"The textile racket must be pretty good," said Makris, as he opened the
door of Leslie Harrington's new Packard.

"Can't complain," said Harrington. "Can't complain," and the millowner
shook himself angrily at this sudden tendency to repeat all his words.

Makris stopped in the act of getting into the car. A woman was walking
toward them, and as she stepped under the street light on the corner,
Makris got a quick glimpse of blond hair and a swirl of dark coat.

"Who's that?" he demanded.

Leslie Harrington peered through the darkness. As the figure drew
nearer, he smiled.

"That's Constance MacKenzie," he said. "Maybe you two will have a lot in
common. She used to live in New York. Nice woman, good looking, too.
Widow."

"Introduce me," said Makris, drawing himself up to his full height.

"Certainly. Certainly, be glad to. Oh, Connie!"

"Yes, Leslie?"

The woman's voice was rich and husky, and Makris fought down the urge to
straighten the knot in his tie.

"Connie," said Harrington, "I'd like you to meet our new headmaster, Mr.
Makris. Mr. Makris, Constance MacKenzie."

Constance extended her hand and while he held it, she gazed at him full
in the eyes.

"How do you do?" she said at last, and Tomas Makris was puzzled, for
something very much like relief showed through her voice.

"I'm glad to know you, Mrs. MacKenzie," said Makris, and he thought,
Very glad to know you, baby. I want to know you a lot better, on a bed,
for instance, with that blond hair spread out on a pillow.




CHAPTER 23


From the evening of the day when Constance MacKenzie was introduced to
Tomas Makris, a new tension began to make itself felt in the MacKenzie
household. Where Constance had always tried to be patient and, to the
limit of her ability, understand her daughter Allison, she was now
snappish and stubborn for no reason at all, and this unfortunate new
habit did not confine itself to her home but made itself obvious in her
shop as well. To her own dismay, Constance discovered that she had a
streak of hatefulness that she had never realized she possessed and,
even worse, that it gave her a bitter kind of satisfaction to express
thoughts that she had kept buried for years.

"You have too much around the hips to get into an eighteen any more,"
she told Charlotte Page one day toward the end of April. "You'd better
start thinking of women's half sizes."

"Why, Constance!" said Charlotte, stunned. "I've worn an eighteen for
years, ever since I began buying my clothes from you. I declare, I don't
know what's got into you!"

"You have worn an eighteen for years only because I've always torn the
size tag out of everything you ever tried on and substituted one that
read eighteen," said Constance bluntly. "Here's a size twenty four and a
half that may fit, although to tell you the truth for a change, I doubt
it."

"Well!" said Charlotte Page, picking up her umbrella and gloves. "Well!"

Constance winced at the emphatic banging of the door behind Charlotte
which said, more clearly than words, "Good-by! And I won't be back!"
Then she pushed tiredly at her hair and went to the small room in the
back of the shop where she kept an electric plate and a refrigerator.
She made herself a bicarbonate of soda and drank it down quickly,
shuddering.

I don't know what's got into me any more than you do, Charlotte, she
thought.

In the beginning, Constance had told herself it was an overwhelming
sense of relief that had shaken her when she first met Tomas Makris and
knew that she had never seen his face before. How ridiculous she had
been!

Eight million people in the city of New York, she had thought, laughing
shakily. And I was worried about the one who found his way to Peyton
Place!

But after that first meeting, when relief should have calmed her and
left her soothed, Constance began to be plagued with restless nights and
frequent attacks of indigestion. Twice she had glimpsed Tomas Makris on
the street, and both times she had run rather than face him, but
afterward she could not think of a reasonable explanation for her
action. Perhaps she had been more apprehensive than she had first
thought when Allison had told her of the new headmaster who was coming
to town from New York, and she was suffering now from the after effects
of a terrible anxiety.

It would, she admitted, have been a distressing situation if Tomas
Makris had turned out to be someone who had known Allison MacKenzie and
his family from Scarsdale. But since he was not, it was hard to explain
why the image of the town's new headmaster stayed with her so
persistently.

_Anyone_, she declared to herself, would be impressed with a man that
size, with his almost revolting good looks and that smile that belongs
in a bedroom.

But nothing she told herself served to make the thought of Tomas Makris
fade from her thoughts.

Late one night, Allison was awakened by a vague stirring somewhere in
the house. She lay still, in the unreal world between sleep and
wakefulness, and heard the sound of water running in the bathroom.

It's only Mother, she thought sleepily.

With the adaptability of the young, she had accepted her mother's new
restlessness without question.

Allison turned over and saw the luminous face of her bedside clock
shimmering. She opened her eyes wider, and the clock's face no longer
wavered. Two o'clock. With the miraculous facility which seems to
disappear with childhood, Allison was suddenly thoroughly awake. She sat
up in her bed and circled her knees with her arms. It was raining, the
way it had been raining for days, and the white curtains at Allison's
window turned and twisted in the wind. For a long time she watched them,
noticing that the wind caused not one motion that was ungraceful. Her
curtains had the same bodilessness that the branches of the trees seemed
to have in the face of a high wind. They dipped and swayed and turned,
and every motion was liquid.

I wish, thought Allison, that I could dance like something moved by the
wind.

Allison got out of bed quietly and turned on the lamp next to her clock;
then she went to the closet where her dress for the spring dance hung.
She touched the wide tulle skirts and ran her fingers over the slippery
softness of the bodice of her first floor-length and therefore grown-up
party dress. When she took the dress from its hanger and held it out and
away from her, the air moving through her room caught at the pale blue
material and made the skirts billow softly.

It dances by itself, she thought, and held the dress against her body.
She moved around the room with small, dancing steps, trying to keep her
neck relaxed so that her head moved gracefully from side to side, and it
was only when she caught a glimpse of herself in the long mirror
attached to the inside of her closet door that she stopped. She looked
at her sturdy, pajama-clad body and noticed how her hair hung on her
shoulders, fine, limp and plain brown.

If I only had more of a shape, she thought sadly, lowering the party
dress. If I were very thin and much taller, I could move like a bluebell
in the wind, and everyone would say that I was the best dancer in the
world. If I were only completely blonde, like Mother, or very dark, like
my father. If I just wasn't so awfully _medium_!

Her cotton pajamas were printed colorfully with dancing circus figures,
and the top was cut full and straight, with a small round collar. The
bottom had wide legs and was banded at the waist with elastic, and
Allison looked at herself with disgust.

What a babyish outfit for a thirteen-year-old girl! she thought
resentfully. I look like a child!

Her fingers pulled impatiently at the buttons of her pajama coat,
fumbling in their eagerness to shed a garment that underlined her
childishness. The silk bodice of her new dress was cold against her bare
skin, but it was smooth, like rich soap lather, and the blue of the
material reflected itself in her eyes. The tulle scratched uncomfortably
against her bare legs, and Allison, panicky now, saw that her first
grown-up dress did not make her look grown up at all.

What if _he_ doesn't think I'm pretty, she thought. What if he looks at
me and is sorry that he asked me!

She ran to her bureau and took her rubber-padded brassire from a
drawer. She held it in front of her, over the dress, and studied herself
in the mirror, almost afraid to slip the top of her dress down and put
on the undergarment; for if the brassire failed to make her look grown
up, there was nothing left to try. At last, with her back to the mirror,
she lowered the dress top, fastened the brassire into place and slipped
the top of her dress back on. She whirled quickly, trying to capture in
her own reflection the impression she would make on Rodney Harrington
when he saw her dressed like this for the first time. Her mirror assured
her that it would be a favorable one. The top of her new dress swelled
magnificently, the fabric straining tautly against her rubber breasts,
so that her waist seemed smaller and her hips more curved.

Allison bent forward, hoping that the front of her dress was loose
enough, and cut low enough, that the top curves of her bosom would be
visible to anyone who cared to look at her from that angle. She and
Kathy Ellsworth had finished reading a book the previous afternoon in
which the hero had been reduced to a perspiring jelly by the sight of
his true love's breasts over the bodice of her silver lam gown. Allison
sighed. Her dress covered her completely, and even if it had not, her
rubber-cupped brassire did.

But, she thought, turning to get a side view of her figure, I look
_very_ mature from this angle, and you can't have everything.

"For Heaven's sake, Allison, it's almost three o'clock in the morning.
Take off that dress and get to bed!"

For a moment, Allison was so startled that she felt as if she had been
punched in the stomach. She realized, suddenly, that it was cold in the
room, and shivered, and without knowing why, she wondered how a canary
bird felt when someone poked inquisitive fingers into its cage.

"You might at least knock before you open my door," she said crossly.

Constance, not realizing that she had broken into a private dream,
replied in the same tone.

"Don't be fresh, Allison," she said. "Take off that dress."

"Whenever I say anything, it's always fresh," said Allison furiously.
"But no matter what you say, it's always courteous."

"And give me that stupid rubber bra," said Constance, ignoring Allison's
remark. "You look like an inflated balloon with that thing on."

Allison burst into tears and let her new dress drop to the floor.

"I can never have a moment of privacy," she wept. "Not even in my own
room!"

Constance picked up the dress and hung it up. "Give," she ordered,
holding out her hand for Allison's brassire.

"You're mean," cried Allison. "You're mean and hateful and cruel! No
matter what I want, you always try to spoil it!"

"Shut up and go to sleep," said Constance coldly, turning off the light.

The sound of Allison's sobs followed her down the hall and into her own
room. Constance lit a cigarette. She was smoking too much lately, and
she was too often unfair to Allison. That business with the brassire
had been unfair, for Constance had let the child go for months thinking
that her mother was taken in by the fact that Allison could sprout a
voluptuous figure whenever the occasion for one arose.

I should have put a stop to it in the beginning, she thought. Even if it
was only something she did around the house, I should have let her know
that no one would be fooled by falsies for very long.

Constance sighed heavily and puffed at her cigarette.

"It's the goddamned season that makes me so hard to get along with," she
said, to her own surprise, for she never talked out loud to herself and
seldom swore.

It's all this rain that makes everything so depressing, she amended
silently.

It was easy, that year, to blame the season for anything. Spring had
come late and was making up for lost time. She invaded Peyton Place like
a whirlwind hurrying, hurrying, hurrying, Allison had thought, like the
White Rabbit on his way to the Mad Hatter's tea party. Spring came in a
deluge and loosed the ice in the wide Connecticut River so that the
river roiled and groaned and overflowed in protest. She washed the snows
of winter from the fields and trees, and she battered the earth
relentlessly until the thick layers of frost gave way before her and
melted into muddy submission. Spring was ungentle that year, so that it
was hard to think of her as a time of tender leaves and small, delicate
flowers. She was a fury, twisting and beating, a force obsessed with the
idea of winning the land in a vicious contest with winter. Only after
she had won was she smiling and serene, like a naughty child after a
temper tantrum. May was half gone before Spring relaxed and sat back,
spreading her green skirts smugly, while the farmers planted their
gardens and kept one eye on this capricious maiden who might fly into a
rage at any moment. Once Spring had calmed down, the days passed slowly,
flowing into one another like the movements of a symphony, and it was
only Constance MacKenzie who was left disquieted. Even with the
turbulent days of April gone, and with her calendar showing her that it
was May and a time of sunshine and silent growth, Constance was as
unstill as the river in floodtime. She did not recognize the symptoms in
herself as akin to the painful restlessness of adolescence, nor did she
admit that the dissatisfied yearning within her could be a sexual one.
She blamed the externals of her life; her daughter, the heavier
responsibilities of an enlarged business, and the constant effort she
had to make toward both.

"It's enough to make a Christian Scientist sick!" she declared angrily
one day while unpacking merchandise in her shop.

"What did you say, Mrs. MacKenzie?" asked Selena Cross from behind a
counter where she was sorting children's underwear.

"Oh, go to hell," said Constance crossly.

Selena kept quiet. It disturbed her to see Mrs. MacKenzie as unhappy as
she had been for the last few weeks. Not that her unhappiness always
manifested itself in a sharp tongue, but one could never tell in advance
when it would, and it made things in the shop difficult. When Selena had
a feeling that Mrs. MacKenzie was going to turn ugly, she always tried
to get to the customer first, hoping silently that the customer would
not demand to see Constance. But the worst of all for Selena, was the
way Mrs. MacKenzie acted after one of her outbursts. She was always
sorry and tried to make amends, and as she did so she smiled an
uncertain, quivering smile. It made Selena want to pat Constance's
shoulder to assure her that everything would be all right. When Mrs.
MacKenzie was sorry for something, she looked the way Joey did when he
made Selena angry and wanted to make up with her. It was bad enough when
Joey looked like that, but when Mrs. MacKenzie did it, Selena wanted to
cry. This emotion in Selena was the measure of her devotion to Constance
MacKenzie, for Selena could have watched anyone but Constance or Joey
suffering the tortures of regret without a quiver.

Constance put an invoice down on the counter and turned to Selena.

"I'm sorry, dear," she said, and smiled. "I shouldn't have talked to you
like that."

Oh, _don't_, thought Selena. Please don't look like that!

"That's all right, Mrs. MacKenzie," she said. "I guess we all have our
off days."

"My stomach is a little upset," said Constance. "But I shouldn't take it
out on you."

"That's all right," said Selena. "Why don't you go home and lie down for
a while. It's almost time to close anyway, and I could manage alone
until six."

"Of course not," said Constance. "I'll straighten out in a few minutes,
I--" she broke off at the sound of the front door opening.

Tomas Makris seemed to fill the entire front of the shop. His shoulders,
covered now by a trench coat against the temperament of the May
afternoon, gave him a look of strength and power that left Constance
terror stricken. Foolishly, she was reminded of the simile of the bull
in a china shop, but it did not amuse her in that moment. She could
imagine only too clearly the smashing havoc of such a situation.

"I'd like some socks," said Makris, who had contrived this prospective
purchase as an excuse to see Constance MacKenzie again.

He had at first hoped to meet her on the street, but when he had
glimpsed her twice, only to have her either cross the street or enter a
building to avoid him, he had decided to face her in a place where she
would not be able to avoid talking to him.

"Socks," he repeated, when Constance did not speak. "Solid colors, if
you have them. Size twelve and a half."

"Selena!" said Constance sharply. "Selena, wait on this gentleman,
please," and, without looking at Makris again, she fled to the small
room at the back of the shop.

Makris stood still, looking after her, and his dark eyes narrowed in
speculation.

"I wonder why she is frightened?" he asked himself. "And she is
frightened."

"May I help you, sir?" asked Selena.

Going on the assumption that anything is possible, thought Makris, who
had not even heard Selena, perhaps she has an extrasensory perception
that lets her know what I'm thinking. Maybe she is the exception to the
rule that all women love to know that a man finds them physically
attractive. But if that's the case, why isn't she disgusted, repulsed,
anything except frightened?

"Was it something in socks, sir?" asked Selena.

"Yes," said Makris absently and walked out of the shop.

Selena went to the front window and watched the tall, broad figure that
moved away on Elm Street. She felt a sympathy for Mr. Makris. He wasn't
the first man in town who had hoped, at some time or another, to find
his way to Constance Mackenzie's bedroom. It seemed to Selena that all
men regarded divorcees or widows as fair game, and Constance had had her
share of advances made and remarks passed. It had been more noticeable
lately, because of the steady stream of new customers that came into the
shop since Constance had put in men's wear. Even Leslie Harrington had
come in more than once, although everyone in town knew that he bought
all his clothes in New York. What had seemed to discourage the men more
than anything else was the fact that Constance seemed unaware that a man
might be trying to make up to her, and it had amused Selena to see most
of the town's male population struggle for an opening gambit with the
town's most beautiful woman. Mrs. MacKenzie had never seemed to realize
that men were human, mused Selena, but here she was, the first time Mr.
Makris looked at her, not only realizing it but letting it frighten her.

"Did he buy anything?" asked Constance.

"No," said Selena, turning to her. "I guess he didn't see anything he
wanted."

Now that Allison was no longer friendly with Selena, Constance had
developed a deep affection for the stepdaughter of Lucas Cross. She
found her intelligent and a good worker, but it was with a feeling of
shock that Constance sometimes found herself discussing adult questions
with a child who could answer her in kind.

"What do you think of him?" she asked Selena.

"I think he's the handsomest man I ever saw," said Selena. "Handsomer
than Doc Swain must have been when he was young, and even handsomer than
anyone in the movies."

Do you think he finds me attractive?

For one lightheaded moment the question quivered on the tip of
Constance's tongue, and she almost asked it aloud while Selena waited
expectantly.

Why should it matter to me whether he does or not? Constance demanded of
herself.

"I'm going to get my dress this week," said Selena to cover the awkward
pause. "I have the rest of the money saved so that I can get it on
Friday, in time for the dance."

"Take it today, if you like," said Constance. "I told you weeks ago,
Selena, that you didn't have to wait until you had the money. You could
have taken the dress home any time."

"I'd rather not," said Selena. "I wouldn't want to owe money on it, and
besides, I don't have a place to keep it at home."

She went to the closet where Constance kept garments on which deposits
had been made and looked at the white dress which hung there, carefully
marked. "Selena Cross," said the tag. "Balance due: $5.95."

"You'll be the prettiest girl at the dance," said Constance, smiling.
"And you'll be the only one there wearing white. All the other girls
will be in colors."

"I just hope Ted will think I'm the prettiest girl there," said Selena
and laughed. "I've never been to a dance before. It's a nice feeling to
have everything new to go somewhere you've never been before. Then
everything is brand new, the feeling, and your clothes, and yourself,
almost."

"How old do you think he is?" asked Constance.

"Thirty-five," said Selena. "Leslie Harrington told Ted's mother."




CHAPTER 24


Selena, who had been kneeling on the floor in front of her cot, sat back
on her heels. There was a sickness in her stomach that brought
perspiration out on her face and turned her weak, and she balanced her
body by placing her hands on the floor.

"It's gone," she said.

"What, Selena?" asked her brother. "What's gone?"

Selena waited until the sick feeling subsided a little, then she stood
up.

"My money," she said. "It's gone, Joey. Someone took it."

"Naw," protested Joey. "Naw it ain't, Selena. You just didn't look
good."

Selena ripped the thin mattress from the cot and threw it halfway across
the shack.

"There!" she demanded. "Do you see it anywhere?"

There was not a trace of Selena's white money envelope anywhere in the
bed, nor did it fall out of the torn blanket that she and Joey shook
out. The envelope had contained ten dollars in single bills and
represented ten afternoons of work at the Thrifty Corner.

"It's gone," repeated Selena. "Pa took it."

Although her voice was low, it held such a terrible sound that Joey was
afraid of his sister for the first time in his life.

"Pa wouldn't steal," protested Joey. "He might get drunk and fight and
hit, but Pa wouldn't steal."

As if she had not heard, Selena said, "And the dance is tomorrow night
and I'll have to stay home."

In a box under her cot, carefully packed in tissue paper, were the
things she had bought, piecemeal, to wear with the new white dress; a
pair of silk stockings, a pair of black sude shoes, and a set of white
underwear.

"The only dress I ever wanted," she said, "and Pa took the money. I was
going to have my hair washed at Abbie's Beauty Salon with the rest of
the money, and buy a bottle of perfume down at Prescott's. And Pa stole
my money."

"Stop saying that!" cried Joey. "Pa wouldn't take it. You just hid it
somewhere, and now you forgot where. We'll find it. Remember the time
Paul was missing money, and he thought Pa took it? He found it the next
day where he hid it in his good pants."

For a short moment Selena was cheered, for it was true that her
stepbrother Paul had once unjustly accused his father of stealing. There
had been a terrible fight that night, and the next day, after Paul had
found his money, he had left Peyton Place and gone north to work. The
only trouble was that Selena had seen her white envelope on the morning
of this same day. She had taken it out from under the mattress, counted
the money in it and returned it to its hiding place.

"He took it," said Nellie Cross. "Your Pa took it. I seen him do it."

Nellie was sitting on the edge of the sagging double bed, staring at her
toes where they came through the holes in the tips of her house
slippers. Selena and Joey were startled when Nellie spoke, for in recent
months their mother had developed a talent for erasing herself from most
situations. She seemed able to blend herself into the background, so
that for long periods of time her children and her husband would forget
that she was in the same room with them.

"He took it this mornin'," said Nellie. "I seen him. He took it from
under Selena's bed. I seen him, the sonofabitch."

Selena's fists clenched in frustration. "Why didn't you stop him?" she
demanded, knowing that her question was unreasonable. "You could have
told him it was mine."

Nellie spoke as if she had not heard her daughter. "Sonsofbitches," she
said. "All of 'em."

The door of the shack swung open then, and Lucas Cross stood there
smiling and swaying a little.

"Who's a sonofabitch?" he asked.

"You are," said Selena without a moment's hesitation. "Not just a plain,
ordinary sonofabitch, but a dumb sonofabitch. You didn't learn anything
about drinking from being in the hospital and seeing bugs all over the
place until everybody in the town thought you were crazy. It didn't mean
anything to you to see Kenny Stearns almost bleed to death, so that even
Doc Swain was scared he wouldn't live. You still hang around with that
dumb Kenny and get drunk all the time, and now you've gone to stealing
money. Give me what's left of it, Pa."

Lucas looked down at her outstretched hand.

"What're you talkin' about, honey?" he asked innocently.

"You know what I'm talkin' about, Pa. The envelope you stole from under
my bed. I want it back."

"Watch out what you say to your pa, Selena. Lucas Cross never stole from
nobody yet. The last person said that to me was your brother Paul, and I
give him a helluva lickin' for it. Be careful."

"Where's the envelope that was under my mattress then? The one with the
ten one-dollar bills in it?"

"You mean this one?" asked Lucas. He held up the envelope which was
grimy now, and well creased.

The girl snatched at it anxiously, but Lucas laughed and raised it over
his head.

"Give it to me," she said.

"Well, now, hold on a minute," said Lucas in a maddening drawl. "Just
you hold on a minute, honey. Seems to me a gal oughta start payin' board
if she's workin'. 'Tain't right, Selena, for you to hold out on your pa
like you been doin'."

"It's mine," said Selena. "I worked for it, and I earned it. Give it to
me."

Lucas moved away from the door and sat down on a chair next to the
kitchen table.

"Since your brother went, things ain't been too easy for me," said Lucas
in an exaggerated whine. "Seems to me you could help your pa out, a big
girl like you."

"You had plenty of money after you got done working the woods this last
time," said Selena. "You shouldn't have spent it all for drink. You're
not going to drink up my money, Pa. I worked every afternoon after
school for that money, and I want it back."

"It's a shame to spend good money to get yourself prettied up for Ted
Carter," said Lucas. "A waste of money, if you ask me. Them Carters.
Trash, they are. Always were. She's no better than a whore, and him,
he's been pimpin' for her for twenty years."

"The Carters have nothing to do with my money," cried Selena. She rushed
at her father and attempted to tear the white envelope from his hand,
but he moved back quickly in his chair, and Selena almost fell. Lucas
laughed.

"Seems to me," he said, "that a gal big enough to talk to her pa like
that, a gal big enough to go out dancin' with the son of a whore and a
pimp, oughta be big enough to take what she wants from her pa, easy as
takin' candy from a baby. If she went about it right."

For a long moment Selena looked at her father. Only for a second did her
eyes ask for pity; then they held only realization. Lucas smiled his
grotesque smile, and when his forehead moved, the girl noticed the shine
of sweat on it.

"From what I understand," he said, "you don't mind rasslin' with Ted
Carter, when he's tryin' to get what he wants. I just turned the tables
on you, honey. Now you gotta rassle me to get what you want."

Without taking her eyes from her father's, Selena spoke to her brother.

"Go on outside, Joey," she said.

The child stared at his sister. "But it's dark out," he protested. "And
cold."

"Go on outside, Joey. Go on outside and stay there 'til I call for you."

She did not speak again until the door closed behind her little brother
and then she said: "I'm not going anywhere near you, Pa. Just give me my
money."

"Come on over here and get it," said Lucas hoarsely. "You just come on
over here and try to take it away from me."

Nellie Cross stared at her toes through the holes in her slippers.
"Sonsofbitches," she said softly. "Sonsofbitches, all of 'em."

Although Nellie spoke softly, Lucas started as if he had just realized
that she was in the room. He looked first at his wife and then at
Selena, and Selena's eyes were filled with hatred.

"Here," he said, after another glance at Nellie. "Take your goddamn
money."

He tossed the creased envelope toward Selena and it fell on the floor at
her feet.

"Sonsofbitches," repeated Nellie. "All of 'em. Booze and wimmin. Wimmin
and booze."




CHAPTER 25


Rodney Harrington, wearing a white jacket and with his curly black hair
well slicked down with water, sat on the edge of a chair in the
MacKenzie living room. Constance had left him there while she went
upstairs to see if Allison was ready, and now Rodney sat and stared
morosely at the braided rug on the floor.

What, he asked himself, ever prompted him to ask Allison MacKenzie to
the biggest dance of the year? Especially to this dance, the very first
that he was being allowed to attend. There was Betty Anderson, all eager
and hot after him, just waiting for him to ask her to the dance, and he
had gone and asked Allison MacKenzie. Ask a nice girl, his father had
ordered, and look where Rodney had wound up. On the edge of a chair in
the MacKenzie living room, waiting for skinny Allison. He could have had
a good time with Betty, damn it all.

Rodney felt himself reddening and looked surreptitiously around the
empty room. He did not like to think of the afternoon that he had spent
in the woods at Road's End with Betty Anderson, unless he was sure that
he was by himself. When he was alone, he could not keep from thinking of
it.

That Betty! thought Rodney, letting memory take him. Boy, she was really
something. Nothing kiddish about her or what she had shown him that
afternoon. She didn't talk like a kid, either, or look like one. By God,
she was something, whether her father was a mill hand or not, she was
still something!

Rodney closed his eyes and felt his breath coming fast with the memory
of Betty Anderson.

No, he shook himself, not here. I'll wait until tonight when I get home.

He looked around the MacKenzie living room and once again his thoughts
began to lacerate him.

He could have had a swell time at the dance with Betty, and here he was,
waiting for Allison. And if that wasn't bad enough, Betty was mad at him
for not asking her. You couldn't blame Betty for that, after all, when a
girl shared a secret with you, she had a right to expect you to ask her
to the biggest dance of the year. He just hoped she'd be at the dance.
Maybe he'd get a chance to talk to her and find out if she was still
mad. Damn it, he could have talked his father out of putting his foot
down about Betty if he had really tried. And there was skinny Allison,
always making cow eyes at him, and his father had said to ask a nice
girl.

Fool! said Rodney Harrington to himself. Damn fool!

He could hear a stirring on the stairs in the hall, now, so he supposed
that Allison was finally coming down. He just hoped she looked decent
and wouldn't make those cow eyes at him at the dance, where some of the
boys might see. He couldn't afford to have Betty overhear anyone teasing
him about Allison or any other girl.

"Here's Allison, Rodney," said Constance.

Rodney stood up. "Hi, Allison."

"Hi."

"Well, my father's outside in the car."

"All right."

"You got a coat or something?"

"I have this. It's an evening coat."

"Well, let's go."

"I'm ready."

"Good night, Mrs. MacKenzie."

"Good night, Mother."

"Good night--" Constance caught herself just in time. She had almost
said "Children." "Good night, Allison," she said. "Good night, Rodney.
Have a nice time."

As soon as they were out the door, Constance sank wearily into a chair.
It had been a difficult week, with Allison alternating between moments
of unbearable impatience and hours of demoralizing panic. When she
awakened on the day of the dance with an angry red pimple on her chin,
she wept and demanded that Constance telephone Rodney immediately to
tell him that Allison was ill and would not be able to go out that
evening. Constance lit a cigarette and looked at the framed photograph
on the mantelpiece.

"Well, Allison," she said aloud, "here we are. Alone at last."

Your bastard daughter is all bathed, curled, perfumed, manicured and
dressed, and here we are, Allison, you and I alone, waiting for her to
return from her first formal engagement.

It frightened Constance when she thought in that fashion, with
bitterness and self-pity, and it shocked her to realize that lately her
bitterness was not only for the position in which Allison MacKenzie had
placed her fourteen years before. In recent weeks she had been actively
resenting the idea of being left alone to cope with a growing girl, and
in her angry reasoning the blame for this fell entirely on the shoulders
of her dead lover. Allison's crime, and in Constance's eyes it was a
crime, was that he had claimed to love her. That being the case, his
first thoughts should have been for her protection, coming ahead of his
desire to lead her to bed but, as Constance put it to herself, he had
not thought of protection until too late, and Constance had ended up by
allowing Allison MacKenzie to become a habit with her. She knew that she
had not loved him, for if she had, the relationship between them could
never have been what it was. Love, to Constance, was synonymous with
marriage, and marriage was something based on a community of tastes and
interests, together with a similarity of background and viewpoint. All
these were blended together by an emotion called "love," and sex did not
enter into it at all. Therefore, reasoned Constance, she had certainly
not loved Allison MacKenzie. Constance's eyes went again to the
photograph on the mantelpiece, and she wondered where, eventually, she
would find the words to explain the way of things to the daughter of
Allison MacKenzie. The ringing of the doorbell cut across her mind,
breaking sharply into her thoughts. Constance sighed again, more deeply
than before, and rubbed the back of her neck where it ached. Allison,
she supposed, had forgotten a handkerchief in her excitement.

Constance opened her front door and saw Tomas Makris standing on the
steps. For a moment she was unable to move or speak, overcome not so
much by surprise, as by a feeling of unreality.

"Good evening," said Tom into the silence. "Since you always manage to
avoid me on the street and even in your store, I thought I'd come to
call formally."

When Constance did not answer but continued to stand with one hand on
the inside doorknob and the other leaning against the jamb, Tom went on
in the same conversational tone.

"I realize," he said, "that it is not the conventional thing to do. I
should have waited to call until after you had called on me, but I was
afraid that you would never get around to performing your neighborly
duty. Mrs. MacKenzie," he went on, pushing gently at the outside of the
door, "I have been standing on the street corner for over half an hour
waiting for your daughter to be off with her date, and my feet are
damned tired. May I come in?"

"Oh, yes. Please do," said Constance at last, and her voice sounded
breathy to her own ears. "Yes, do. Please come in."

She stood with her back against the panels of the closed door while Tom
walked past her and into the hall.

"Let me take your coat, Mr. Makris," she said.

Tom took off his coat and folded it over his arm, then he walked to
where Constance was standing. He stood close enough to her so that she
had to raise her head to look up at him, and when she had done so, he
smiled down at her gently.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to be
around for a long time. There's no hurry."




CHAPTER 26


The gymnasium of the Peyton Place High School was decorated with pink
and green crepe paper. The paper hung in twisted festoons from the
ceiling and walls. It was wrapped carefully around the basketball hoops
and backboards in a hopeful effort at disguise. Some imaginative senior,
discouraged with the limp look of the basketball nets, had cleverly
stuffed them with multicolored spring blossoms and someone else had
fastened a balloon to every spot that provided a place to tie a string.
On the wall, behind where the orchestra sat, huge letters cut of
aluminum foil had been pasted.

                 PEYTON PLACE HIGH SCHOOL WELCOMES YOU
                        TO ITS ANNUAL SPRING HOP

The seniors who had been on the decorating committee drew sighs of
relief and looked at their work with well-earned satisfaction. The gym,
they assured one another, had never looked better for a spring dance
than it did this year. The annual spring dance, which had become a
custom in Peyton Place since the building of the new high school, was an
affair given by the graduating seniors as a premature welcome to the
grade school children who would be entering high school in the fall, and
it had come to represent a number of things to different people. To most
eighth grade girls it meant the time of their first formal and their
first real date with a boy, while to most boys it meant the official
lifting of the nine o'clock curfew which their parents had imposed on
them. To Elsie Thornton, dressed in black silk and acting as a chaperon,
it seemed to be a time of new awareness in the youngsters whom she had
taught that year. She could discern in them the first stirrings of
interest toward one another and knew that this interest was the
forerunner of the searching and finding that would come later.

Not, thought Miss Thornton, that a few of them hadn't done their
searching and finding already.

She watched Selena Cross and Ted Carter circling the floor slowly, their
heads close together, and although she was not a believer in the myth of
childhood sweethearts who grew up, married and lived happily ever after,
she found herself hoping that it could be so in the case of Selena and
Ted. Her feelings when she watched Allison MacKenzie and Rodney
Harrington were very different. It had been like a blow to her heart to
see Allison come in with Rodney. Miss Thornton had put up an involuntary
hand, and lowered it quickly, hoping that no one had noticed.

Oh, be careful, my dear, she had thought. You must be very careful, or
you'll get hurt.

Miss Thornton saw Betty Anderson, dressed in a red dress that was much
too old for her, watching Allison and Rodney. Betty had come to the
dance with a boy who was a senior in the high school and who already had
a reputation as a fast driver and a hard drinker. But Betty had not
taken her eyes off Rodney all evening. It was ten o'clock before Rodney
got up the courage to approach Betty. He walked over to her the moment
that Allison left him to go to the rest room, and when Allison returned
to the gymnasium he was dancing with Betty. Allison went over to the
line of straight chairs where the chaperons were sitting and sat down
next to Elsie Thornton, but her eyes were fixed on Rodney and Betty.

Don't you care, darling, Miss Thornton wanted to say. Don't pin your
dreams on that boy, for he will only shatter them and you.

"You look lovely, Allison," she said.

"Thank you, Miss Thornton," replied Allison, wondering if it would be
proper to say, So do you, Miss Thornton. It would be a lie if she said
it, because Miss Thornton had never looked uglier. Black was definitely
not her color. And why was Rodney staying so long with Betty?

Allison kept her head up and her smile on, even when one set of dances
ended and another began, and Rodney did not come to claim her. She
smiled and waved at Selena, and at Kathy Ellsworth who had come with a
boy who was in high school and kissed with his mouth open. She felt a
small pang of compassion for little Norman Page who stood leaning
against the wall, alone, and stared down at his feet. Norman, Allison
knew, had been brought to the dance by his mother, who was going to
leave him there until eleven o'clock while she attended a meeting of the
Ladies' Aid at the Congregational church. Allison smiled at Norman when
he raised his head, and wiggled her fingers at him, but her stomach had
begun to churn and she did not know how much longer she could keep from
being sick. Betty's finger tips rested on the back of Rodney's neck, and
he was looking down at her with his eyes half closed.

Why is he doing this to me? she wondered sickly. I look nicer than
Betty. She looks cheap in that sleazy red dress, and she's wearing gunk
on her eyelashes. She's got awfully big breasts for a girl her age, and
Kathy said they were real. I don't believe it. I wish Miss Thornton
would stop fidgeting in her chair--and there's only one more dance left
in this set and I'd better get ready to stand up because Rodney will be
coming for me in a few minutes. I'll bet that dress belonged to Betty's
big sister, the one who got in Dutch with that man from White River.
Selena looks beautiful in that white dress. She looks so old. She looks
twenty at least, and Ted does, too. They're in love, you can tell by
looking at them. Everybody's looking at me. I'm the only girl sitting
down. Rodney's gone!

Allison's heart began to beat in hot, heavy thuds as her eyes circled
the dance floor wildly. She glanced at the door just in time to see a
flash of red, and she knew then that Rodney had left her here alone
while he went somewhere with Betty.

What if he doesn't come back? she thought. What if I have to go home
alone? Everyone knows I came with him. EVERYONE IS LAUGHING AT ME!

Miss Thornton's hand was cold and hurtful on her elbow.

"My goodness, Allison," laughed Miss Thornton. "You _are_ off in a dream
world. Norman's asked you to dance with him twice, and you haven't even
answered him."

Allison's eyes were so full of tears that she could not see Norman, and
her face hurt. It was only when she stood up to dance with him that she
realized that she was still smiling. Norman held her awkwardly while the
orchestra imported from White River for the occasion played a waltz.

If he says one thing--thought Allison desperately. If he says one word I
shall be sick right here in front of everyone.

"I saw Rodney go outside with Betty," said Norman, "so I thought I'd ask
you to dance. You were sitting next to Miss Thornton for an awfully long
time."

Allison was not sick in front of everyone. "Thank you, Norman," she
said. "It was nice of you to ask me."

"I don't know what's the matter with Rodney," continued Norman. "You're
much prettier than that fat old Betty Anderson."

Oh, God, prayed Allison, make him shut up.

"Betty came with John Pillsbury." Norman pronounced it Pillsbree. "He
drinks and takes girls riding in his car. He got stopped by the state
police once, for speeding and drunken driving, and the police told his
father. Do you like Rodney?"

I love him! screamed Allison silently. I love him and he is breaking my
heart!

"No," she said, "not particularly. He was just someone to come with."

Norman whirled her around inexpertly. "Just the same," he said, "it's a
dirty trick for him to leave you sitting with Miss Thornton and go off
with Betty like that."

Please, God. Please, God, thought Allison.

But the orchestra continued to play, and Norman's hand was sticky in
hers, and Allison thought of the girl in the fairy tale about the red
shoes, and the electric lights glared down at her until her temples
began to pound.

Outside, Betty Anderson was leading Rodney by the hand across the dark
field that served as a parking lot for the high school. John Pillsbury's
car was parked a short distance away from the others, under a tree, and
when Betty and Rodney reached it, she opened the back door and got in.

"Hurry up," she whispered, and Rodney climbed in behind her.

Swiftly, she pressed down the buttons on the four doors that locked
them, and then she collapsed into the back seat, laughing.

"Here we are," she said. "Snug as peas in a pod."

"Come on, Betty," whispered Rodney. "Come on."

"No," she said petulantly, "I won't. I'm mad at you."

"Aw, come on, Betty. Don't be like that. Kiss me."

"No," said Betty, tossing her head. "Go get skinny Allison MacKenzie to
kiss you. She's the one you brought to the dance."

"Don't be mad, Betty," pleaded Rodney. "I couldn't help it. I didn't
want to. My father made me do it."

"Would you rather be with me?" asked Betty in a slightly mollified tone.

"_Would_ I?" breathed Rodney, and it was not a question.

Betty leaned her head against his shoulder and ran one finger up and
down on his coat lapel.

"Just the same," she said, "I think it was mean of you to ask Allison to
the dance."

"Aw, come on, Betty. Don't be like that. Kiss me a little."

Betty lifted her head and Rodney quickly covered her mouth with his. She
could kiss, thought Rodney, like no one else in the world. She didn't
kiss with just her lips, but with her teeth and her tongue, and all the
while she made noises deep in her throat, and her fingernails dug into
his shoulders.

"Oh, honey, honey," whispered Rodney, and that was all he could say
before Betty's tongue went between his teeth again.

Her whole body twisted and moved when he kissed her, and when his hands
found their way to her breasts, she moaned as if she were hurt. She
writhed on the seat until she was lying down, with only her legs and
feet not touching him, and Rodney fitted his body to her without taking
his mouth from hers.

"Is it up, Rod?" she panted, undulating her body under his. "Is it up
good and hard?"

"Oh, yes," he whispered, almost unable to speak. "Oh, yes."

Without another word, Betty jacknifed her knees, pushed Rodney away from
her, clicked the lock on the door and was outside of the car.

"Now go shove it into Allison MacKenzie," she screamed at him. "Go get
the girl you brought to the dance and get rid of it with her!"

Before Rodney could catch his breath to utter one word, she had whirled
and was on her way back to the gymnasium. He tried to get out of the car
to run after her, but his legs were like sawdust under him, and he could
only cling to the open door and curse under his breath.

"Bitch," he said hoarsely, using one of his father's favorite words.
"Goddamned bitch!"

He hung onto the open car door and retched helplessly, and the sweat
poured down his face.

"Bitch!" he said, but it did not help.

At last, he straightened up and wiped his face with his handkerchief,
and fumbled in his pockets for a comb. He still had to go back into the
gymnasium to get that goddamned Allison MacKenzie. His father would
drive up at eleven-thirty and expect to find him waiting with her.

"Oh, you rotten bitch," he said under his breath to the absent Betty.
"Oh, you stinking, rotten, goddamned bitchy sonofabitch!"

He racked his brain to think of new swear words to direct at her, but he
could think of nothing. He began to comb his hair, almost in tears.

Over Norman's shoulder, Allison saw Betty Anderson come back into the
gymnasium, alone.

Dear God, she thought, maybe he's gone home alone! What shall I do?

"There's Betty," said Norman. "I wonder what happened to Rodney?"

"He's probably in the Men's," said Allison who could not seem to keep
her voice steady. "Please, Norman. Couldn't we sit down. My feet hurt."

And my head, she thought. And my stomach. And my arms, and hands, and
legs, and the back of my neck.

It was eleven-fifteen when she saw Rodney walk through the door. She was
so overwhelmed with relief that she could not be angry. He had saved her
face by returning to her and not leaving her to go home alone. He looked
sick. His face was red and swollen looking.

"You almost ready to go?" he asked Allison.

"Any time you are," she said nonchalantly.

"My father's outside, so we might as well go."

"We might just as well."

"I'll get your coat."

"All right."

"Do you want to dance one more first?"

"No. No, thank you. I've been dancing so much all evening that my feet
are ready to fall off."

"Well, I'll get your coat."

And that, thought Miss Elsie Thornton, is that. Valiant is the word for
Allison.

"Good night, Miss Thornton. I had a lovely time."

"Good night, dear," said Miss Thornton.




CHAPTER 27


To Miss Elsie Thornton, the twentieth of June was the most trying day of
the year. It was graduation day, and it always left her with an
uncomfortable mixture of feelings comprised of happiness, regret and the
peculiar weariness that comes with the relaxation of effort. She sat
alone in the empty auditorium after the exercises, enjoying these few
minutes by herself now that the crowd had gone. In a little while, Kenny
Stearns would come in, with his mops and pails, to begin the work of
cleaning up, but for these few moments everything was still, and Miss
Thornton looked around tiredly.

The hastily constructed wooden benches, built in graduated rows like
bleachers at a football stadium, still stood on the empty stage. A short
while before, their nakedness had been hidden by the white skirts of
thirty-two girls and the dark trousers of forty boys who comprised the
graduating classes of the grade and high schools, but all that was left
now to show that the youngsters had been there at all was one lost white
glove and three crumpled programs. There were tall letters, made of gilt
cardboard, pinned to the black velvet curtain behind the benches:
ONWARD!--CLASSES OF 1937. Sometime during the evening, the nine in 1937
had been pulled loose so that it hung now at a tipsy angle, giving a
comic look to something that had been arranged with utmost seriousness.

Perhaps, thought Miss Thornton defensively, the entire evening's
performance would be comical to an outsider. Certainly, the scratchiness
of the Peyton Place High School band attempting to play a composition as
pretentious as "Pomp and Circumstance" had its comical aspects. And
Jared Clarke, while he had not actually remarked that the graduates were
"standing with reluctant feet" had most certainly implied it.

Yes, Miss Thornton imagined, there were many people, especially the dean
of Smith College, who would find these things laughable.

But Miss Thornton had not been amused. When seventy-two children, among
them the forty-odd whom she had taught all year, rose in a body to sing,
"Hail, Alma Mater fair, our song to thee we raise," Miss Thornton had
been filled with emotion which some might have called "sentimentality"
and others, of a younger, more tactless generation, perhaps would label
as "corny." Graduation, to Miss Thornton, was a time of sadness and a
time of joy, but most of all it was a time of change. On graduation
night, the change meant more to Miss Thornton than a simple transition
from one school to another. She regarded it as the end of an era. Too
many of her boys and girls had ceased to be children this night. They
had all looked so grown up and different from where she sat in her
front-row seat in the auditorium. Many of them had only the summer ahead
in which to enjoy the last days of childhood. In the fall they would be
"high schoolers," and already they regarded themselves as adults. She
had heard Rodney Harrington speak of "going down to New Hampton" as if
he were going off to Dartmouth rather than to a prep school, and she had
heard several girls complain of parents who would not allow them to go
to "coed" summer camps.

It's all too fast, thought Miss Thornton, realizing that she was not
thinking a new thought. She seemed to be full of clichs this evening,
the way she was after every graduation, and her mind persisted in
framing phrases like, The best years of their lives, and, What a pity
that youth is wasted on the young.

Kenny Stearns came limping into the auditorium, the two pails he carried
clanking together. Miss Thornton sat up and gathered her gloves
together.

"Good evening, Kenny," she said.

"Evenin', Miss Thornton. I thought everybody was gone."

"I was just leaving, Kenny. The auditorium looked lovely tonight, didn't
it?"

"It sure did. I'm the one built them benches. Held up good, didn't
they?"

"They were perfect, Kenny."

"I pinned them letters up for the seniors, too. Had a helluva time
gettin' 'em on straight. That nine wa'nt crooked when I got done, like
it is now."

"No, it wasn't, Kenny. That happened during the exercises."

"Well, I gotta get started. Those benches gotta come down tonight. I got
a coupla kids comin' in to help me later."

Miss Thornton took the hint. "Good night, Kenny," she said.

"'Night, Miss Thornton."

Outside, the night sky was black. There was no moon and Miss Thornton
reflected that there would not have been room for one, for all the
available sky space was taken up with stars. She looked up and breathed
deeply of the faintly scented June air, and suddenly her depression was
gone. There would be another group of children in the fall, perhaps one
more promising and rewarding than the last.





BOOK TWO




CHAPTER 1


Two years had passed since that graduation night. They had passed
quickly for Allison. The work was much harder in high school and this
provided a mental stimulation for her that had been lacking in the
grades. Somehow, too, she had come to accept herself and the world
around her more calmly, and while she still had periods of fear and
resentment, they were fewer and less wretchedly painful than before. She
had also developed a new, insatiable curiosity. Two years earlier she
had been content to let books answer her questions, but now she tried to
learn from people. She asked questions of everyone whom she dared to
approach, and the most sympathetic of these was Nellie Cross.

"How did you ever come to marry Lucas, anyway?" she asked Nellie one
day. "You're always cussing him and talking as if you hated him. How
come you married him at all?"

Nellie looked up from the brass candlestick that she was polishing, and
she was quiet for so long that to anyone but Allison it might have
seemed that she had not heard or that she was ignoring the question. But
Allison knew that neither of these was true. If Nellie was sympathetic
to Allison's questions, Allison had learned to be patient with Nellie's
inarticulateness.

"I dunno that I ever did come to it, like you say," said Nellie finally.
"Marryin' Lucas wa'nt nothin' I ever come to. It was just one of those
things that happened."

"Nothing," said Allison positively, "ever just happens. There is a law
of cause and effect that applies to everything and everybody."

Nellie smiled and put the candlestick down on the mantelpiece in the
MacKenzie living room.

"You talk good, honey," she said. "Mighty good, with them big words and
all. It's like music, listenin' to you."

Allison tried not to look pleased, but she felt the way she often did at
school when she received an A in composition from Mr. Makris. Nellie's
wholehearted and absolute appreciation of Allison was the basis of their
friendship, but Allison never admitted that this was so. She said,
instead, that she "just loved" Nellie Cross.

"Now that I think of it," said Nellie, "there most likely was a reason
why I married Lucas. I had Selena. Tiny, she was then. Just barely six
weeks old. My first husband, Curtis Chamberlain he was, got himself
killed by a mess of falling logs. Fell off a truck, the logs did, and
killed old Curt deader than hell. Well, there I was, out to there
carryin' Selena, and right after she was born I met Lucas. He was alone,
too. His wife died havin' Paul. It seemed like a good idea at the time,
my marryin' Lucas, I mean. He was alone with Paul, and I was alone with
Selena. Don't do for a woman to be alone, or a man either. Besides, what
could I do? I wa'nt in no shape to work right then, bein' as how I just
had a baby, and Lucas was after me."

She began to cackle, and for a moment Allison was afraid that Nellie
would begin to get vague and go off on a conversational tangent the way
she often did these days, but Nellie stopped her weird laughter and went
on talking.

"More fool was I," she said. "I went from the fryin' pan right straight
into hell. Lucas always drank, and fought, and chased the wimmin. And I
was worse off than before."

"But didn't you love him?" asked Allison. "Just at first?"

"Well, Lucas and me wa'nt married too damned long before I got pregnant
the first time. Lost that one. Miscarriage, The Doc said. Lucas went out
and got drunker than hell. Said I was still grievin' for Curtis, Lucas
did, but that wa'nt true. Anyways, I got in the family way again and
then I had Joey, and after that Lucas didn't seem to feel so bad over
Curtis no more. There's some say you gotta love a man to get a child by
him. I dunno. Maybe this love you're talkin' about is what kept me by
Lucas all these years. I coulda left him. I always worked anyway, and he
always drunk up most of his pay, so it wouldn't have made no
difference."

"But how could you stay with him?" asked Allison. "How come you didn't
run away when he beat you, and beat your children?"

"Why, honey, beatin's don't mean nothin'." Nellie cackled again, and
this time her eyes did turn vague. "It's everythin' else. The booze and
the wimmin. Even the booze ain't so bad, if he'd just leave the wimmin
alone. I could tell you some stories, honey--" Nellie folded her arms
together, and her voice took on a singsong quality--"I could tell you
some stories, honey, that ain't nothin' like the stories you tell me."

"Like what, then?" whispered Allison. "Tell me. Like what?"

"Oh, he'll get his someday," whispered Nellie, matching her voice to
Allison's. "He'll get his, the sonofabitch. They all get it, in the end,
the sonsofbitches. All of 'em."

Allison sighed and stood up. When Nellie began to croon and curse, it
was futile to try to talk sense to her. She would go on for the rest of
the day, swearing under her breath, unaware of all questions put to her.
It was this trait in Nellie that caused Constance MacKenzie to remark
frequently that something would have to be done about her. But somehow
Constance never got around to doing anything, for Nellie, eccentric or
not, was still the best house worker in Peyton Place. But it was not
Nellie's vagueness or her language which bothered Allison. It was the
frustrating way in which Nellie threw out veiled insinuations, like a
fisherman casting out line, only to withdraw the bait as soon as Allison
nibbled. In times past, Allison had attempted to batter against this
wall of things left unsaid, but trying to pin Nellie down to words,
Allison had discovered, was a hopeless business.

"What could you tell me, Nellie?" she would ask, and Nellie would cradle
her arms and cackle.

"Oh, the stories I could tell you, honey--" but she never did, and
Allison was still too young to pity the incapability of an individual to
share his grief. She merely shrugged and said crossly, "Well, all right,
if you don't _want_ to tell me--"

"Well, all right, if you don't _want_ to tell me," said Allison on this
particular day, "I'll go for a walk and leave you by yourself."

"Heh, heh, heh," said Nellie. "The sonsofbitches."

Allison sighed impatiently and left the house.

In two years Peyton Place had not changed at all. The same stores still
fronted on Elm Street, and the same people owned and operated them. A
stranger, revisiting the town after two years, would have the feeling
that he had been here only yesterday. Now that it was July the benches
in front of the courthouse were well filled by the old men who regarded
them as their private property, and a stranger might look at them and
say, "Why, those old men have been sitting there all this time."

Allison walked down Elm Street in the hot summer sun and the old men in
front of the courthouse followed her with heavy, summer-lidded eyes.

"There goes Allison MacKenzie."

"Yep. Growed some lately, ain't she?"

"Got some growin' to do, 'fore she catches up with that mother of hers."

The men snickered. It was the consensus of town opinion that Constance
MacKenzie was built like a brick shithouse, a sentiment that was given
voice every time that Constance walked past the courthouse.

"Good-lookin' woman, though, Constance MacKenzie is. Always was."

"Oh, I dunno," said Clayton Frazier. "Kinda fine drawn for my taste. I
never was much taken with wimmin whose cheekbones stick out."

"For Christ's sake. Who the hell looks at her cheekbones?"

The men laughed, and Clayton Frazier leaned back against the hot stone
of the courthouse wall.

"There's some men," he said, "who occasionally got their minds fixed on
other things in a woman besides her tits and her ass."

"That right, Clayton? Name one."

"Tomas Makris," said Clayton Frazier without a second's hesitation.

The men laughed again.

"Jesus, yes!" they said. "That horny Greek never noticed nothin' about
Connie MacKenzie 'cept her brains!"

"Them two got nothin' to talk over these hot nights 'cept literchoor and
paintin'," they said.

"Why, that big, black Greek never even notices that Connie MacKenzie's a
well-built blonde!"

Clayton Frazier tipped his old felt hat down over his eyes.

"Don't make no difference what none of you say," he said. "I'd bet my
next six months' pension that Tomas Makris never laid a finger on Connie
MacKenzie."

"I'll side with Clayton," said one man with mock sobriety. "I'll bet Tom
never laid a finger on Connie MacKenzie, either. But I wouldn't take no
bets that he's laid everything else on her!"

The men roared and turned to watch Allison walk out of sight on Elm
Street.

Memorial Park was patchy with grass burnt pale brown by the sun that had
shone daily for six weeks of drought. The wide-branched trees stood as
if paralyzed in the windless air, their leafy tops dusty green and
cicada filled, and they waited for rain with the patience of a hundred
years. Allison walked listlessly, feeling over-clothed in spite of the
brief shorts and sleeveless blouse that she wore, and loneliness weighed
heavily on her as she climbed the sloping hill behind the park. Hers was
not a loneliness to be alleviated by people, for she could have gone
swimming at Meadow Pond with Kathy Ellsworth and had refused. She had
thought of a crowd of young people, a splashing, yelling, playful crowd,
and the thought had repelled her. She had thought also of sun reflecting
itself on motionless water, and had told Kathy no, she did not want to
go swimming. Now she was sorry, for the July heat was like a weight on
her bare head as she climbed the hill toward Road's End. But for the
sizzling of the cicadas and the scrape of her own feet against the rocky
ground, there was no sound and Allison had a feeling of being the only
inhabitant in a dry, burntout world. It was almost a physical shock to
see another figure, standing motionless before the board with the red
letters printed on its side, as she turned from the path to approach the
place called Road's End.

The figure turned as she came near, not disturbed by sound, for Allison
made none, but by a sense of no longer being alone.

"Hi, Allison," said Norman Page.

"Hi, Norman."

He was wearing a pair of the khaki pants known as "tennis shorts" and
his knees, like his elbows and cheekbones, were sharp and angular.
Norman was the only boy in Peyton Place who wore shorts in the
summertime. The others wore dungarees and uncovered their legs only when
they donned bathing trunks.

"What are you doing up here?" asked Norman vaguely, as if he had just
been awakened.

"Same thing you are," replied Allison unpleasantly. "Looking for a place
to cool off and be by myself."

"The river looks as if it were made of glass from here."

Allison leaned against the board that barred the drop-off at Road's End.

"It doesn't seem to be moving at all," she said.

"Nothing in the whole town seems to be moving."

"It looks like a toy village, with everything made out of cardboard."

"That's what I was thinking just before you came. I was thinking that
everybody else in the world was dead, and I was the only one left."

"Why, so was I!" exclaimed Allison, turning her head to look up at him.

Norman was staring straight ahead, a lock of dark hair curling damply on
his forehead; the skin at his temples was almost translucent. His finely
made lips were parted slightly, and his lashes, over half-closed eyes,
made tiny shadows on his thin, white cheeks.

"So was I," repeated Allison, and this time Norman turned his head and
looked at her.

"I used to think," he said, "that no one ever thought the same things as
I. But that's not always true, is it?"

"No," said Allison, and looked down. Their hands rested close together
on the board that had the red letters printed on its side, and there was
a companionable sort of intimacy in the sight of them. "No, that isn't
always true," said Allison. "I used to think the same thing, and it
bothered me. It made me feel queer and different from everyone else."

"I used to think that I was the only kid in town who ever came up here,"
said Norman. "It was a kind of secret place with me, and I never told
anyone."

"I thought that once," said Allison. "I'll never forget the day that
someone told me it wasn't so. I felt mad and sick, as if I'd caught
someone looking in my window."

"Outraged is a good word," said Norman. "That's the way I felt. I saw
Rodney Harrington and Betty Anderson up here one afternoon, and I ran
all the way home, crying."

"There's one place I'll bet no one knows about. Not even you."

"Tell me."

"Come on. I'll show you."

Indian file, with Allison leading, they made their way through the woods
at the side of the road. The branches of low bushes scratched at their
legs and they paused every few feet to pick some of the blueberries that
grew there. Norman took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and knotted
the four corners to make a sort of pouch, and together they filled it
with fruit. At last they came to the open field, hidden deep in the
woods, and the buttercups and brown-eyed Susans were a sea of
brown-dotted gold. Allison and Norman stood close together in the
cicada-slivered stillness, not speaking, and ate from the handkerchief
basket of berries. After a long time, Norman bent and picked a handful
of buttercups.

"Hold up your chin, Allison," he laughed. "If the flowers reflect gold
on your skin it means that you like butter and are going to get fat."

Allison laughed and tipped her head back. Her pale brown hair, pulled
back now and tied into a tail, moved against her back, and the nape of
her neck was damp.

"All right, Norman," she said. "You just look and see if I'm going to
get fat!"

He put two fingers under her chin and bent to see if the buttercups he
held shed a reflection.

"No," he said, "I guess not, Allison. It doesn't look as if you'll be
fat."

They were both laughing, and Norman's fingers were still under her face.
For a long moment, with the laughter still thick in their throats, they
looked at one another, and Norman moved his fingers so that his whole
hand rested gently on the side of her face.

"Your lips are all blue from those berries," he said.

"So are yours," said Allison, not moving away from his touch.

When he kissed her it was softly, without touching her except for
raising his other hand to her cheek. The buttercups he still held were
like velvet on their faces.




CHAPTER 2


Dr. Matthew Swain and Seth Buswell sat in Seth's office in the building
that housed the _Peyton Place Times_. The doctor fanned himself with his
white straw hat and sipped at Seth's special summertime concoction of
gin and iced grapefruit juice.

"Like the man said," remarked Seth, "ninety-nine degrees in the shade,
and there ain't no shade."

"For Christ's sake, don't talk about the weather," said the doctor. "I
was just being thankful that very few have picked this month to be
sick."

"Nobody's got the energy to get sick," said Seth. "It's too goddamned
hot to think about layin' on a rubber sheet over in your hospital."

"Jesus!" exclaimed the doctor, half rising to his feet as a car raced
past on Elm Street. "Don't push my luck talking about it, or we'll be
scraping young Harrington off a road somewhere."

"It'll be Leslie's fault if you do. Damned foolishness, buyin' a
sixteen-year-old kid three thousand dollars' worth of convertible
coup."

"Especially Rodney Harrington," said the doctor. "That kid's got as much
sense as a flea. Maybe it's a good thing he got kicked out of New
Hampton. Leslie can have him here in town where he can keep an eye on
him, which isn't worth much, I'll grant."

"Didn't you know?" asked Seth. "Leslie's got Proctor to take him. How he
worked getting Rodney into that school, I don't know, but the kid is
going there in the fall."

"I don't imagine he'll be there too long," said the doctor. "I saw him
over to White River last week. He had that convertible piled full of
kids, and they were all drinking. Leslie about bit my head off when I
told him about it. Told me to mind my own business and let the kid sow a
few wild oats. Wild oats at sixteen. As I remember it, I was
considerably older when I started planting mine."

"I don't like that kid," said Seth. "I don't like him one bit better
than I ever liked Leslie."

Two figures passed in front of the plate glass window in Seth's office.
The girl raised her head and glanced in, waving her hand at the two men
inside, but the boy was preoccupied in watching the girl, and he did not
look up. He carried a handful of buttercups as if he had forgotten that
he held them.

"There goes Allison MacKenzie with the Page boy," said the doctor. "I
wonder if his mother knows he's out."

"She went to White River this afternoon," said Seth. "I passed her going
in just as I was leaving."

"That accounts for Norman walking on the street with a girl then," said
the doctor. "I imagine that Evelyn went to White River to consult John
Bixby. She hasn't come near me to be treated since I told her there was
nothing the matter with her but selfishness and bad temper. Odd," he
continued after a pause, "how hatred manifests itself in different ways.
Look at the Page Girls, healthy as plow horses, both of 'em, and then
look at Evelyn, always suffering with an ache or a pain somewhere."

"But look at what hatred did for Leslie Harrington," said Seth. "He
hated the whole world and set out to lick it. And he did."

"I'd like to see the boy get free of her before it's too late," said the
doctor, still thinking of Norman Page. "Maybe if he got himself a nice
girl, like Allison MacKenzie, it would counteract Evelyn's influence."

"You're worse than an old woman, Matt," said Seth, laughing. "An old
woman and a matchmaker to boot. Have another drink."

"Have you no shame?" demanded the doctor, extending his glass. "Sitting
around soaking up gin all day?"

"Nope," said Seth unhesitatingly. "None at all. Here's to little Norman
Page. A long life and a merry one, providing Evelyn doesn't eat him
alive first."

"I don't think that he's strong enough to fight her," said the doctor.
"She expects too much from him--love, admiration, eventual financial
support, unquestioning loyalty, even sex."

"Oh, come now," said Seth. "The weather's got you. Don't go tellin' me
that Evelyn Page is sleepin' with her son."

"The trouble with you, Seth," said the doctor with mock severity, "is
that you think of all sex in terms of men sleeping with women. It's not
always so. Let me tell you about a case I saw once, a young boy with the
worst case of dehydration I ever saw. It came from getting too many
enemas that he didn't need. Sex, with a capital S-E-X."

"Jesus, Matt!" exclaimed Seth, making his eyes bulge with exaggerated
horror. "Do you think that's what put old Oakleigh in his grave?
Enemas?"

"Don't be a conclusion jumper," protested the doctor. "I didn't say that
what I was talking about had anything to do with Evelyn Page and Norman.
And, no, Oakleigh didn't die of enemas. He was lashed to death, by the
tongues of Caroline and Charlotte and Evelyn Page."

"I'm goin' to stop feedin' you gin," said Seth. "It makes you too
goddamned morose, and today it's too hot to be morose or anything else."

"Except drunk," said Dr. Swain, standing up, "which I have no intention
of getting at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon. I have to go."

"See you tonight?" asked Seth. "The whole gang is comin' tonight, which
makes for good poker."

"I'll be there," said the doctor. "And bring your checkbook, Seth. I
feel lucky."




CHAPTER 3


Selena Cross, standing in front of the window in the Thrifty Corner, saw
Dr. Matthew Swain go by. At once, her heart began to pump more heavily
as fear gripped her and spread itself through her body. She stared in
horror at the tall, white-suited figure that had never shown her
anything but kindness.

Help me, Doc, she rehearsed silently. You've got to help me.

"Matt Swain is the only man I ever saw who can wear a white suit
successfully," said Constance MacKenzie at Selena's elbow. "He may look
unpressed, but he never looks sweaty."

Selena's fingers clenched around the middle of the curved-in Coke bottle
she held.

I'll wait one more day, she thought. One more day, and if nothing
happens, I'll go see The Doc. Help me, Doc, I'll say. You've got to help
me.

"Selena?"

"Yes, Mrs. MacKenzie?"

"Don't you feel well?"

"Sure, Mrs. MacKenzie, I feel fine. It's just the heat."

"You're so pale looking. It's not like you."

"It's just the heat, Mrs. MacKenzie. I'm fine."

"Things are so slow today. Why don't you take the rest of the afternoon
off?"

"Thanks anyway, but Ted's meeting me at six."

"Well, go on out back and sit down for a while, then. Honestly, I never
saw you looking so white."

"All right. I'll go sit down. Call me if you need me."

"I will, dear," said Constance MacKenzie, and at the kindness of her
tone, Selena almost wept.

If you knew, she thought. If you knew what the matter is, you wouldn't
talk so gently to me. You'd tell me to get out of your sight. Oh, Doc,
help me. What if Ted found out, or his folks, or anybody?

Selena had never been one to let the opinions of Peyton Place bother her
in any way.

"Let 'em talk," she had said. "They'll talk anyway."

But now, with this terrible thing that had happened to her, she was
afraid. She knew her town, and its many voices.

"A girl in trouble."

"She got in Dutch."

"She's knocked up."

"The tramp. The dirty little tramp."

"Well, that's the shack dwellers for you."

If it had not been for Ted Carter, Selena would have stuck her chin out
at the world and demanded: "So what?" But she loved Ted. At sixteen,
Selena had a maturity which some women never achieve. She knew her own
mind, and she knew her own heart. She loved Ted Carter and knew that she
always would, and to imagine him looking at her with his heart breaking
for all to see was more than she could bear. Ted, with a sense of honor
that he had inherited from somewhere, with a rigid self-control that he
would not let break. Ted, holding her and saying, "I won't, darling. I
won't hurt you." Ted, pulling away from her when he did not want to,
saying that in addition to love and respect, he had patience. They had
laughed about it.

"We girls from the backwoods are all hot blooded," she had said.

"It's not too much longer," Ted had told her. "Two years. We're only
sixteen, and we have our whole lives. We'll get married before I go to
college."

"I love you. I love you. I never loved anybody in the world except Joey,
and I love you more."

"I want you, baby. How I want you! Don't touch me. What if I ever got
you in trouble? It happens, you know. No matter how careful people are,
it happens. You know what this town is like. You know how they treat a
girl that gets in trouble. Remember when it happened to the Anderson
girl, Betty's sister? She had to move away. She couldn't even get a job
in town."

Oh, Doc, prayed Selena, putting her head down between her knees against
the faintness she felt. Oh, Doc, help me.

"Selena?"

"Yes, Mrs. MacKenzie?"

"Telephone."

Selena stood up and ran shaking fingers over her cheeks and hair, then
she went to the front of the store.

"Hello?" she said into the receiver.

"Oh, honey," said Ted Carter, "I'm afraid I won't be able to meet you at
six o'clock. Mr. Shapiro has three thousand more chickens coming in, and
I have to stay and help."

"That's all right, Ted," said Selena. "Mrs. MacKenzie offered me the
rest of the afternoon off. As long as you can't get away, I'll take her
up on it."

The rest of the afternoon. The rest of the afternoon. I'll go see The
Doc during the rest of the afternoon.

Selena hardly heard Ted's plan to meet her later. She hung up on his
telephoned kiss, and stood staring down at the whiteness of her hand on
the black receiver.

"Mrs. MacKenzie," she said, a few minutes later, "is it all right if I
take the rest of the afternoon after all?"

"Of course, dear. Go home and get some rest. You look all tired out."

"Thank you," said Selena. "That's just what I'll do. I'll go home and
take a nap."

Constance MacKenzie watched Selena walk out of sight on Elm Street. It
was odd, she mused, that Selena refused to confide in her. In the last
two years they had become so friendly that there were very few things
that they had not discussed. Selena was the only person who knew that
Constance was planning to marry Tomas Makris. Constance had told her, in
her first flush of joy, over a year ago. Selena understood how it was
with Constance. She knew how careful she had to be, because of Allison.
Selena had even offered advice.

"The longer you wait, Mrs. MacKenzie, the worse it's going to be,"
Selena had said. "Allison always had strong feelings about her father.
She'll have them next year, and the year after that. I don't see how
waiting until she graduates from high school is going to solve
anything."

Constance sighed. Tom didn't see how waiting for Allison to graduate
from high school was going to solve anything, either. She had a date
with him this evening, and she knew that the subject would come up. It
always did. If she could only get up enough courage to tell him the way
it had been with Allison's father, if she only dared to tell him
everything. But she loved him in the only way a woman of thirty-five can
love a man when she has never loved before--wholeheartedly, with all her
mind and body, but also with fear. Constance regarded Tomas Makris as
the embodiment of everything she wanted and had never had, and she was
afraid of losing him. What made the situation even more difficult was
the fact that he loved her. He loved, she told herself fearfully, the
woman she appeared to be: Widow, devoted mother, respected member of the
community. How well would he love a woman who had taken a lover and been
stupid enough to bear him a bastard child? Constance, who had despised
herself for sixteen years, could not believe that any man could love her
once he knew the truth. She had many reasons for not marrying Tom
without first telling him the facts, and all her reasons had to do with
honor and nobility and truth. The fact of the matter was that she was
tired of carrying a burden alone and wanted, at all costs, to share its
weight with someone. More than anything, she wanted to be with someone
with whom she need not forever be painstakingly, frighteningly careful.
Constance MacKenzie, almost as unhappy as she had been two years before,
went into the small room at the back of her store and made herself a
tall glass of iced tea.

Selena Cross hurried in the late afternoon sun. When she reached
Chestnut Street, she felt as though every window held a pair of eyes
that stared at her and knew her secret at once.

A girl in trouble, said every pair of eyes. A girl in Dutch. Not a nice
girl, a bad girl. No kind of girl for young Ted Carter.

Selena hurried up the flagstone walk, wet now with the spray from two
lawn sprinklers that were making lazy circles, and ran up the front
steps between two of the pillars of the doctor's "Southern-looking"
house. Matthew Swain answered her urgent ring.

"For God's sake, Selena," he said, looking only once at her white face,
"come in out of that beastly heat."

But inside, in the wide, cool hall, Selena's teeth began to chatter, and
the doctor looked at her sharply.

"Come into the office," he said.

A visiting colleague had once said that Matt Swain's office looked less
like a doctor's office than any other anywhere. It was true, for the
doctor had used part of what had once been a drawing room for his place
of business. Half of the drawing room was shut off with folding doors,
and on the other side Matthew Swain had his examining rooms. The floors
in both the office and the examining rooms were the same hardwood floors
that had been put down when the house was built, and next to the
doctor's untidiness the floors were Isobel Crosby's greatest source of
complaint.

"It's bad enough," Isobel would say, "that The Doc has all kinds of
folks trackin' into the house when he could well afford an office
downtown, but hardwood floors! Imagine it. Hardwood floors that you
can't run over with a wet mop!"

Selena Cross sat down carefully on the straight chair next to the
doctor's desk.

"Relax, Selena," said the doctor. "No matter what it is, it's nothing
that won't feel a little better for telling me about it."

"I'm pregnant," said Selena, and immediately bit her lip. She had not
meant to blurt it out like that.

"What makes you think so?" asked the doctor.

"Two and a half months and no period makes me think so," said Selena,
and this time she twisted her hands, for she had not meant to say that,
either.

"Come on in the other room," said Dr. Swain. "Let's see what we can
see."

His hands were cool against her hot skin, and once again her mind set up
its prayerful refrain.

Help me, Doc. You've got to help me.

"Whose is it?" he asked when they had returned to the office.

Now came the worst part, the part she had rehearsed so carefully in her
mind so that she could phrase it in a way that would not antagonize the
doctor.

"I am not at liberty to say," said Selena.

"Nonsense!" roared the doctor, and she knew that she had failed. "What
kind of rot is that? You're not the first girl in the world who has to
get married, nor in this town, for that matter. Whose is it now, and no
more foolishness. Young Carter's?"

"No," said Selena, and when she bent her head forward her dark hair
swung softly on either side of her face.

"Don't you lie to me!" shouted Dr. Swain. "I've seen the way that boy
looks at you. What gave you the idea he was inhuman? Come on now, don't
lie to me, Selena."

"I'm not lying," said the girl, and in the next moment she lost control
of herself and began to shout at him. "I'm not lying. If it were Ted's
I'd be the happiest girl in the world. But it's _not_ his! Doc, help
me," her voice went to a whisper. "Doc, once you told me that if I ever
needed you, to come and you'd help me. Well, I'm here now, Doc, and I
need help. You've got to help me."

"What do you mean by help, Selena?" he asked, his voice almost as soft
as her own. "How can I help you?"

"Give me something," she said. "Something to get rid of it."

"There is nothing I can give you to take, Selena, that would help you
now. Tell me who is responsible. Maybe I could help you that way. You
could get married only until after the baby is born."

Selena's lips went tight. "He's already married," she said.

"Selena," said Dr. Swain as gently as he knew how, "Selena, there is
nothing I can give you at this point that will make you miscarry. The
only thing now is an abortion, and that's against the law. I've done a
lot of things in my time, Selena, but I have never broken the law.
Selena," he said, leaning forward and taking both her cold hands in his,
"Selena, tell me who this man is, and I will see that he is held
responsible. He'll have to take care of you and provide for the baby. I
could work it so no one would know. You could go away for a little
while, until after the baby comes. Whoever did this thing to you would
have to pay for that, and for your hospitalization, and for you to look
after yourself until you get back on your feet. Just tell me who it is,
Selena, and I'll do everything I can to help you."

"It's my father," said Selena Cross. She raised her head and looked
Matthew Swain straight in the eyes. "My stepfather," she said, and tore
her hands away from him. She fell forward onto the doctor's hardwood
floor and beat her fists against it. "It's Lucas," she screamed. "It's
Lucas. It's Lucas."




CHAPTER 4


Early that same evening, Dr. Swain telephoned to Seth Buswell that he
would be unable to join with the other men of Chestnut Street to play
poker.

"What's the matter, Matt?" asked the newspaper editor. "Did we push your
luck too far? Somebody go and get sick?"

"No," said the doctor. "But some things at the hospital need
straightening out and I should attend to them this evening."

"Nothing in the accounting department, I hope," said Seth laughing. "I
hear that those guys from the state auditor's office are bastards."

"No, Seth. Nothing in the accounting department," said the doctor, and
his hearty laugh was strained. "But I'd better watch my step or the
Feds'll be on my tail."

"Sure, Matt," laughed Seth. "Well, sorry you can't make the game. See
you tomorrow."

"See you, Seth," said Dr. Swain and hung up gently.

Selena Cross had not left the doctor's house. She lay in a darkened
upstairs bedroom with a cool cloth on her forehead.

"Stay here," the doctor had told her. "Stay right here on the bed, and
when you feel a little better we'll talk over what we can do."

"There's nothing to do," said Selena and retched violently while the
doctor held a basin for her.

"Lie quietly," he said. "I have to go downstairs for a while."

In his dining room, Matthew Swain went at once to the sideboard where he
poured himself a large drink of Scotch whisky.

Gin, Scotch, young girls in bed upstairs, I'd better watch out, he
thought wryly. If I'm not careful, I'll be getting a reputation as a
drunken old reprobate who is no longer the doctor he once was.

He carried the second drink into his living room and sat down on a
brocaded sofa in front of the empty fireplace.

What are you going to do, Matthew Swain? he asked himself. Here you've
been shooting your mouth off for years. What will you do now, when it is
time to put your fancy theories to the test? Nothing dearer than life,
eh, Matthew? What is this thing you are thinking of doing if it isn't
the destruction of what you have always termed so dear?

Dr. Swain drank his second drink. He was honest enough to realize that
the struggle he fought with himself now would leave its mark on him for
the rest of his life, and he knew that no matter what his decision, he
would always wonder if he had made the right one. It was true that he
had never broken any of the laws of the land before, unless a weekly
game of five-and-ten poker with friends in a state that prohibited
gambling could be looked upon as breaking the law.

No exceptions now, Matthew, he cautioned himself. Poker at Seth's is
against the laws of this state, so you _have_ broken the law before.

But not in my work, protested another part of his mind. Never in my
work.

No, not in your work. Rules are rules and you have always abided by
them. Certainly, you are not going to start breaking them now, at your
age, and that's the end of it. Rules are rules.

But what about the exceptions to the rules?

There aren't any exceptions in your business, Doctor. You report
syphilis, you tell the police if a man with a bullet wound approaches
you, and you isolate the sick over protest. No exceptions, Matthew.

But if this child of Selena's is born, it will ruin the rest of her
life.

That's none of your affair, Matthew. Go to the police. See that this man
Lucas is brought to justice. But keep your hands off Selena Cross.

She is only sixteen years old. She has the beginnings of a pretty good
life mapped out for herself. This would ruin her.

You might kill her.

Nonsense. I'd do it in the hospital with all sterile precautions.

Are you mad? In the hospital? Have you gone stark, raving mad?

I could do it. I could do it so no one would know. I could do it
tonight. The hospital is practically empty. People just haven't been
sick this month.

In the hospital? Are you mad? Are you really mad?

Yes, goddamn it, I am! Whose hospital is it, anyway? Who built the
goddamn place, and nursed it, and made it go if it wasn't me?

What do you mean, _your_ hospital? That hospital belongs to the people
of this community whom you are solemnly bound to serve to the best of
your ability. The state says so, and this country says so, and that oath
you stood up and took more years ago than you care to remember says so.
_Your_ hospital. Humph. You must be mad.

Matthew Swain threw his empty whisky glass against the hearth of the
empty fireplace. It shattered noisily and crystal slivers flew out in a
circle.

"Yes, goddamn it, I'm mad!" said the doctor aloud, and stamped out of
his living room and up the stairs that led to the second floor.

But all the while the silent voice pursued him.

You've lost, Matthew Swain, it said. You've lost. Death, venereal
disease and organized religion, in that order, eh? Don't you ever let me
hear you open your mouth again. You are setting out deliberately this
night to inflict death, rather than to protect life as you are sworn to
do.

"Feeling better, Selena?" asked the doctor, stepping into the darkened
bedroom.

"Oh, Doc," she said, staring at him with violet-circled eyes. "Oh, Doc.
I wish I were dead."

"Come on, now," he said cheerfully. "We'll take care of everything and
fix you up as good as new."

And to hell with you, he told the silent voice. I _am_ protecting life,
_this_ life, the one already being lived by Selena Cross.

"Listen to me, Selena," said Dr. Swain. "Listen to me carefully. This is
what we are going to do."

                 *        *        *        *        *

An hour later, Constance MacKenzie, riding past the Peyton Place
hospital with Tomas Makris in the car that he had bought the previous
spring, saw the lights showing through the huge square of opaque glass
that she knew screened the hospital's operating room.

"Something must have happened," she said. "The operating room lights are
on. I wonder who's sick."

"That's one of the things I love about Peyton Place," said Tom, smiling.
"A man can't have so much as a gas pain without the whole town wondering
who, why, when, where and what he's going to do about it."

Constance made a face at him. "Big-time city slicker," she said.

"Taking advantage of the farmer's daughter," he added, taking her hand
and kissing the finger tips.

Constance relaxed against the seat cushions with a contented sigh. She
didn't have to open the store in the morning, for Selena Cross had
promised to do it for her. Allison was spending the week end with Kathy
Ellsworth, and Constance was on her way to dinner in a town eighteen
miles away, far from the prying eyes of her neighbors, with the man she
loved.

"Why the happy sigh?" asked Tom.

"My cup runneth over," said Constance, and leaned her cheek against his
shoulder.

"Cigarette?"

"Please."

He lit two, one after the other, and passed one to her. In the quick
flare of his lighter, she saw the pointed arch of one eyebrow and the
perfect, Grecian line of his nose. His lips, over the narrow tube of his
cigarette, were full without being loose, and the line of his chin was
pleasantly pronounced.

"Altogether," she said, "a head from an old Greek coin."

"I like it when you talk like a smitten lady," he said.

"That, I am," she conceded.

There was an easiness to being with him that she had never before
experienced with a man. It had been a long time in coming, this
easiness, but now was it a part of her and she could almost forget that
once she had been fearful of him almost to sickness.

"What is it?" he asked with the peculiar way he had of knowing when she
was thinking of something that concerned either him or both of them.

"I was thinking," she said, "of the first time you ever came to my
house. It was over two years ago, on the night of Allison's spring
dance."

Tom laughed and put her hand to his lips again. "Oh, that," he said.
"Listen, forget about that. Start thinking of what you want to eat when
we get to the restaurant. Today is Friday, so they'll have all kinds of
fish. It always takes you forever to make up your mind, and we're nearly
there now."

"All right," she said, "I'll concentrate on haddock, clams and lobster
and see what happens."

She linked her hand through his arm, and at once the remembrance of
another, later, time with him came to her.

It must have been three months after the first time that he had come to
her house, for it had been August, and Allison had been away at summer
camp down at Lake Winnipesaukee. It was a Saturday night, she
remembered, and hot. She was working on her store ledger, and although
every window in the house was open no breeze stirred. When the doorbell
rang she was so startled that she dropped her pen, and it made an ugly
blot on the white ledger page.

"Damn," she muttered, belting her housecoat more tightly around her.
"Damn it all."

She pulled open the front door and Tomas Makris said, "Hi. Let's go for
a swim."

In the weeks following the spring dance in May, he had come to call on
her perhaps half a dozen times, and once during that time she had gone
out to dinner with him. He had made her feel uncomfortable in a way she
could not explain, and she did not want to see him.

"Well, of all the nerve!" she said angrily. "What do you mean by ringing
my doorbell at eleven thirty at night with some such insane suggestion
as that!"

"If you're going to give me hell," he said comfortably, "at least ask me
in. What will your neighbors think?"

"Heaven only knows what they think already," she said furiously. "The
way you're always barging in here, uninvited, any time you feel like
it."

"'Always'?" he asked incredulously. "Six times in the last three months.
Does Peyton Place regard that as 'always'?"

She had to laugh. "No, I guess not," she admitted. "It's just that you
startled me, and I dropped my pen and it made a blot on the ledger."

"We can't have that," he said. "Blots on the ledger, I mean."

She felt herself stiffening, and he seemed to feel it, too, for he spoke
quickly.

"Get your bathing suit," he said, "and we'll go for a swim."

"You're crazy," she told him. "In the first place, there is no place to
go around here except Meadow Pond, and that's always full of necking
teen-agers."

"Heaven forbid," he said, "that we should go where the neckers go. I
have a car outside that I'm thinking of buying, and there is a lake not
eight miles away from here. Let's go try out my prospective car."

"Mr. Makris--"

"Tom," he said, patiently.

"Tom," she said, "I have no intention of going anywhere with you at this
hour of the night. I have work to do, it's late, it's after
eleven-thirty--"

"It's scandalous," interrupted Tom, clucking his tongue and shaking his
head. "Listen, you've worked all day. Tomorrow is Sunday, so you don't
have to get up early. Your daughter is away at camp, so you needn't stay
home for her. You have no other excuse that you can possibly offer
except that you hate my guts, and you aren't going to say that. Get your
bathing suit and come on."

The surprising thing, thought Constance as she leaned against Tom's
shoulder two years later, was not that he had spoken as he had, but that
she had obeyed him.

"All right," she had said, exasperated with his persistence. "All
_right_!"

She had put on her bathing suit in her bedroom and only for a moment,
when she caught her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table, did
she pause.

What am I doing? she had asked herself.

Something I want to do, for a change, she had answered the face in the
mirror.

Resolutely, she fastened the straps of her bathing suit into place,
slipped on a cotton dress and a pair of sandals, and ran down the stairs
to where Tomas Makris stood waiting in the hall.

"Did you lock your door?" he asked when they were outside.

"That's another thing you'll have to learn about small-town living," she
told him. "If you take to locking your door in Peyton Place, people will
begin to think that you have something to hide."

"I see," he said. "I should have realized. It must be for this same
reason that people here never draw the curtains in their living room
windows when the lights are on inside. How do you like the car?"

"Not bad," she said. "It's certainly not new though, is it?"

"Chevvies," he said, "like good wines, are supposed to improve with age.
Honest. That's what the used car salesman told me."

He drove to the lake he had spoken of, eight miles from town, and
whether the fact that the place was deserted was due to the hour or, as
Tom said later, to their almost miraculous good luck, Constance did not
know. She knew only that when he had turned off the car lights and cut
the motor, the darkness and quiet of the place were unearthly.

"How are we supposed to see to get down to the beach?" she whispered.

"What are you whispering about?" he asked in a normal tone, startling
her. "I have a flashlight."

"Oh." Constance cleared her throat and wondered if the first few minutes
in a dark, parked car were as awkward for everyone as they were for her.

"Come on," he said, and took her hand to lead her.

It was the first time he had ever touched her, and she felt his grip in
her hand, in her wrist, through her whole arm. They dropped the clothes
they had worn over their bathing suits on the beach and went into the
water together. Now that Constance's eyes had become accustomed to the
dark, she could see almost plainly, and what she saw was Tomas Makris
standing at her side, massive, naked from the waist up, and evil
looking. With a silent cry of fright, she dived into the water and swam
away from him.

Oh, God, she thought, why did I ever come? How am I going to get home?
Why didn't I stay home in the first place?

She swam until she was exhausted. Her body quivered with fear and chill,
and when she swam close enough to the shore to stand, she saw that he
was already on the beach, waiting for her. He did not move toward her as
she came out of the water toward him, nor did he offer her the towel
which he held in his hand. Nervously, she took off her bathing cap and
shook her head to loosen her hair.

"My," she said, with a strained little laugh. "It was cold, wasn't it?"

"Untie the top of your bathing suit," he said harshly. "I want to feel
your breasts against me when I kiss you."

Two years later, sitting in a car at Tomas Makris' side, Constance
MacKenzie shivered again as uncontrollably as she had shivered that
night.

"Don't think about it," said Tom gently. "That part is all over with
now. Now we are us, and we understand one another. Don't, baby," he
said, as she shuddered again. "Don't think about it."

She shook her head and gripped his arm, but she could not help but think
about it. Not five minutes before, they had passed the place where it
had happened, and Constance could recall it in every detail.

She had stood like a statue, one hand on the back of her neck where she
had put it to fluff out her hair, when he spoke. He did not speak again,
but when she did not move he stepped in front of her and untied the top
strap of her bathing suit. With one motion of his hand, she was naked to
the waist, and he pulled her against him without even looking at her. He
kissed her brutally, torturously, as if he hoped to awaken a response in
her with pain that gentleness could not arouse. His hands were in her
hair, but his thumbs were under her jawbone, at either side of her face,
so that she could not twist her head from side to side. She felt her
knees beginning to give under her, and still he kissed her, holding her
upright with his hands tangled in her hair. When he lifted his bruising,
hurtful mouth at last, he picked her up, carried her to the car and
slammed the door behind her. She was still crumpled, half naked, on the
front seat, when he drove up in front of her house. Without a word, he
carried her out of the car, and she could not utter a sound. He carried
her into the living room where the lights still blazed in front of the
open, uncurtained windows and dropped her onto the chintz-covered couch.

"The lights," she gasped finally. "Turn off the lights."

When the room was dark he came to her. "Which room is yours?" he asked
coldly.

"The one at the end of the hall," she said, through her chattering
teeth. "But it doesn't matter, because you'll never see the inside of
it. Get out of my house. Get away from me--"

He carried her, struggling, up the dark stairway, and when he reached
the second floor, he kicked open the door of her room with his foot.

"I'll have you arrested," she stammered. "I'll have you arrested and put
in jail for breaking and entering and rape--"

He stood her on the floor beside the bed and slapped her a stunning blow
across the mouth with the back of his hand.

"Don't open your mouth again," he said quietly. "Just keep your mouth
shut."

He bent over her and ripped the still wet bathing suit from her body,
and in the dark, she heard the sound of his zipper opening as he took
off his trunks.

"Now," he said. "Now."

It was like a nightmare from which she could not wake until, at last,
when the blackness at her window began to thin to pale gray, she felt
the first red gush of shamed pleasure that lifted her, lifted her,
lifted her and then dropped her down into unconsciousness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It depressed Constance MacKenzie to relive this memory, and it shamed
her to remember that she had uttered only one desperate question during
that whole, long night.

"Did you lock the door?" she had cried.

And Tom, laughing deep in his throat, had replied against her breasts,
"Yes. Don't worry. I locked it."

Looking at him now, as he drove quickly along the road that led away
from Peyton Place, Constance wondered again at this man whom she had not
yet begun to know.

"What?" he inquired, again reading her mind.

"I was thinking," she said, "that after two years, I really don't know
you very well."

Tom laughed and turned into the graveled drive in front of the
restaurant they had come to visit. As he helped her out of the car he
lifted her chin and kissed her gently.

"I love you," he said. "What else is there to know?"

Constance smiled. "Nothing else that really matters," she said.

Much later, as they returned to Peyton Place, she did not even glance at
the dimly lit hospital. It was only when Tom parked the car in front of
her house and she saw Anita Titus waiting for her that she felt an
uneasy foreshadowing of disaster.

"Your phone's been ringing all evening," said Anita, who was Constance's
next door neighbor and on the same telephone party line. "The hospital's
been trying to reach you."

"Allison!" cried Constance. "Something has happened to Allison!"

She ran from the car and up her front walk, forgetting her gloves and
purse, and leaving Tom to cope with Anita. For a long moment he stood
and gazed after this woman who hurried into her own house in order to
listen in on Constance's telephone call.

Christ, he thought angrily, I haven't met ten people in this goddamned
town who don't need to spend the next year douching out their goddamned
souls.

When he went into the house, Constance was already in contact with the
hospital.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," she was saying relievedly. "Oh, yes. Thank
you for calling me."

"What is it?" he asked, lighting two cigarettes.

"Selena Cross," said Constance. "Dr. Swain performed an emergency
appendectomy on her this evening. She had the hospital call me to say
that she wouldn't be able to open the store in the morning. Imagine her
thinking of the store at a time like that."




CHAPTER 5


Nurse Mary Kelley closed the door on a sleeping Selena Cross and went
quietly, on large, white-shod feet that looked incapable of such
quietness, to the desk in the first floor hall. She sat down, adjusting
her cap nervously, and sighed as she molded her hips to the straight
chair. Once her legs were hidden by the kneehole desk, she spread her
thighs cautiously. In the summer, when it was very hot, the insides of
her thighs were always chafed. Nothing seemed to help her at these
times, neither powder, nor dry cornstarch, nor zinc oxide ointment. She
just suffered, and her temper grew short. Now, in addition to night duty
and the July humidity and the thighs that hurt as if they had been
burned by fire every time she took a step, she was being forced to put a
code of medical ethics to the test for the first time in her career.
Mary Kelley had been a serious student. She knew all about the ethics
that were meat for so many novels and motion pictures and bull sessions
in student nurses' quarters.

"What would you do," the students had been fond of asking one another in
the long hours after the lights had been put out, "if you saw a doctor
make a mistake in the O.R.? A mistake that resulted in the death of a
patient?"

"I'd never tell," they assured each other. "After all, everyone makes
mistakes. If a carpenter or a plumber makes a mistake, no one is going
to ruin him for it. A doctor can make mistakes. Why should he be ruined,
or disgraced, or sued?"

"Nurses never tell," they said. "And they see mistakes every day. They
keeps their mouths shut. It's ethics."

Mary Kelley, sitting spread-legged at the first floor desk, stared down
at her hands which were large, square and naked looking in the night
dimness of the Peyton Place hospital.

It never stopped there, she remembered, the noble-sounding talk about
medical ethics.

"But what if it wasn't a mistake?" they asked one another. "What if a
doctor was drunk, or did something deliberately?"

"What if it was your own mother and he killed her to put her out of her
misery if she was suffering from some incurable disease?"

"Supposing the doctor had a daughter and his daughter had an
illegitimate child and he let the baby die during delivery?"

"I'd never tell," they said solemnly. "You just don't tell on doctors.
That's ethics."

Mary Kelley stirred in her chair and spread her legs as far apart as the
kneehole in the desk would allow. It all sounded so fine in theory, she
thought. It had always sounded fine and beautiful during the bull
sessions in the nurses' quarters. Talk was cheap. It cost nothing to
give voice to what you wanted people to think you believed. Mary
wondered if medical ethics could be compared to the question of
tolerance. When you talked you said that Negroes were as good as
anybody. You said that Negroes should never be discriminated against,
and that if you ever fell in love with one, you'd marry him proudly. But
all the while you were talking, you wondered what you would _really_ do
if some big, black, handsome nigger came up and asked you for a date.
When you talked you declared that if you fell in love with a Protestant
who refused to change his religion for you, that you would marry him
anyway and love him for having the courage of his convictions. You would
marry him over parental objections and the objections of the Church, and
you would cope intelligently with the problem of a mixed marriage. You
knew that you were safe in saying these things, for there hadn't been a
nigger living in Peyton Place for over a hundred years, and you didn't
date boys who were not Catholics. You said that you knew what you would
do if confronted with an unethical doctor, but what, wondered Mary
Kelley, putting her face in her large, square hands, did you really do
when it happened?

For a moment, she pondered the advisability of going straight to Father
O'Brien and confessing to him the sin in which she had taken part this
night. She pictured the big, blue-jowled face of the priest, and the
narrow, black eyes that could pierce like knives. What if she told him
and he refused to give her absolution? What if he said, "Deliver this
doctor into the hands of the law, for only in this way can I wash the
sin from your soul"? Mary Kelley pictured the face of Doc Swain, his
good, kind face, and the hands that she had regarded as next to those of
Christ in their gentleness. She had, really, not been able to help
herself, for The Doc had not offered her a choice.

"Prep her," he had said, indicating Selena Cross. "I've got to yank her
appendix."

Mary's thighs were hurting, her temper was short and she had been
annoyed, as always, by The Doc's unprofessional language. He never used
the more polished, mysterious words of medicine if he could help it. She
had been full of protests.

What about an assistant? she had queried. An anesthetist? An extra
nurse? She was alone on night duty in the almost empty hospital. What if
there were only three patients in bed at the time? It wasn't right to
leave those three unattended while she helped The Doc! What if the
telephone rang now that it was evening and the daytime secretary gone?
What if someone called up and no one answered the phone? It wouldn't
look right, she had told The Doc, if there should be an emergency and
there was no one on duty at the desk.

"Goddamn it!" roared The Doc. "Stop your jaw-flapping and do as I say!"

Mary didn't mind when The Doc roared. It was just his way, and a good
nurse never interfered with a doctor's way any more than she tried to
tell him what to do in the O.R. She had tried, though, later, with
Selena Cross unconscious on the table.

"Doc," she had whispered. "Doc, what're you doing?"

He had straightened up and looked at her, his eyes blazing, blue and
furious, over his mask.

"I'm removing her appendix," he said coldly. "Do you understand that,
Mary? I am removing an appendix so diseased that it might easily have
ruptured had I waited until tomorrow morning to remove it. Do you
understand that, Mary?"

She had lowered her eyes, unable to look at the pain in his which he
tried to cover with rage. Later, she supposed that this had been The
Doc's way of offering her a choice. She could have said no, she didn't
understand, and run out of the O.R. and called Buck McCracken, the
sheriff, right then. But she had, of course, done nothing of the kind.

"Yes, Doctor," she had said, "I understand."

"Make sure you never forget it then," he told her. "Make goddamned
sure."

"Yes, Doctor," she said, and wondered why she had always thought that it
was only Catholics who were against abortion. It couldn't be so, for
here was The Doc, a Protestant, with his eyes full of pain as his hands
expertly performed an alien task.

At least, thought Mary later, she supposed that The Doc was a
Protestant. He followed no religion at all, and Father O'Brien had
always led her to believe that it was only Protestants who fell away and
wound up with no religion at all. A Catholic, she told herself, would
never have performed this shocking, horrifying, repulsive act, and she
had been shocked, horrified and repulsed, as any good Catholic girl
would have been. But underneath all that, like a poisonous snake
slithering through deep jungle grass, ran a thread of sinful pride. The
Doc had chosen her. Of all the nurses he might have picked--Lucy
Ellsworth, or Geraldine Dunbar, or any of the nurses who came over from
White River to help out when the hospital was loaded--he had chosen Mary
Kelley. He could have left her on floor duty and called in someone else,
but he had chosen her, and, wrong or not, there was an area of dark
happiness in her.

The Doc might make her his accomplice in the most serious of all crimes,
but he was not a liar, nor did he make one of her. In the end, when he
had finished with the other, he had removed Selena Cross's appendix.
While it might be the prettiest, healthiest looking appendix that Mary
Kelley had ever seen come out of anyone, The Doc _had_ removed it.

"Messiest appendectomy I ever performed," he told Mary when he had
finished. "Clean it up, Mary. Clean it up real good."

She had, too. While the patients slept peacefully, she had given thanks,
like a seasoned criminal, for the phenomenal good luck that the Fates
had bestowed upon The Doc and her, and she had cleaned up the O.R. real
good as The Doc had told her to do. She had cleaned up real good, like
The Doc said, and she had disposed of everything very carefully and
conscientiously.

Mary Kelley twisted in her chair and put her hand under her skirt. She
pushed the extra material in the skirt of her slip down between her
sweaty, chafed thighs and relaxed.

There, she thought, as the fabric absorbed some of the moisture, that
was better.

When the telephone rang, she was almost cheerful again.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. MacKenzie," she said into the receiver. "Yes, I've called
you a couple of times. Anita told me you'd gone out, so I told her to
have you call me. Oh, dear no, Mrs. MacKenzie. It's not Allison. It's
Selena Cross. Emergency appendectomy. Oh, yes indeed. It was about to
rupture. She's fine now, though. Sleeping like a baby."

It was only after she had hung up that Mary Kelley realized that she had
taken the irrevocable step in the question of ethics. She had made her
choice with this first handing out of false information. Resolutely, she
picked up the detective novel that she had started the night before. She
forced her eyes to concentrate on the printed page, hoping that her mind
would absorb what her eyes picked up. There would be plenty of times in
the future, when she couldn't read, to think of sin and God and Father
O'Brien.




CHAPTER 6


Dr. Matthew Swain parked his car at the side of the dirt road in front
of the Cross shack and then went quickly to the door of the house. He
pounded against the flimsy door with both fists, as if to find a
physical outlet for the rage that was in him.

"Come in, for Christ's sake," bawled Lucas from inside. "Don't break the
goddam door down."

Matthew Swain stood in the open doorway, tall, white suited, looking
larger than he really was. Lucas was sitting at the kitchen table,
dressed only in a pair of greasy dungarees. The black mattress of hair
on his bare chest looked as if it might be a hiding place for lice, and
his skin was shiny with sweat. There was a game of solitaire spread out
on the table, and a quart bottle of beer, half empty. Lucas looked up at
Dr. Swain and smiled. His forehead and lips moved at the same time, but
his eyes remained flat and still with suspicion.

"Lost your way, Doc?" he asked. "Nobody here sent for you."

At these words, the doctor felt the sweat break out on his own body. It
wet his shirt through in seconds and trickled down his sides. Nobody
sent for you, Doc. The words brought back a picture of Selena, huddled
outside in the night, to protect her little brother Joey against the
fists of the man whom the doctor faced now.

"I've got Selena in the hospital," he said hoarsely, as soon as he could
control his rage.

"Selena?" asked Lucas. He pronounced it S'lena, and the doctor knew that
Lucas had been drinking all day. "What you got Selena in the hospital
for, Doc?"

"She was pregnant," said the doctor. "She had a miscarriage this
afternoon."

For only a moment, Lucas' smile wavered.

"Pregnant?" he asked. "Pregnant?" he repeated, and tried to put outrage
into his voice. "Pregnant, eh? The goddamn little tramp. I'll fix her.
I'll give her a beatin' she won't forget in a hurry. I told her she'd
get in a mess of trouble, always lettin' that Carter feller rassle
around with her. I told her, but she wouldn't listen to her pa. Well,
I'll fix her, the little tramp. When I get done with her, she'll listen
good."

"You miserable bastard," said Dr. Swain in a voice that shook. "You
miserable, lying sonofabitch."

"Now, just you hold on a minute, Doc," said Lucas, pushing away from the
table and rising to his feet. "There's no man calls Lucas Cross a
sonofabitch in his own house. Not even a high mucky muck doctor like
you."

Matthew Swain advanced toward Lucas. "You hold on a minute," he said.
"You do the holding on, you sonofabitch. That was your child that Selena
carried, and we both know it."

Lucas sat down abruptly on his chair. "I can prove it, Lucas," continued
the doctor, lying and knowing it, and not caring. "I can prove it was
your child," he repeated, using his superior knowledge now in a way he
had never done before. To intimidate the ignorant. "I have enough
proof," he told Lucas, "to put you in jail for the rest of your life."

Sweat dripped from Lucas' face now, and its odor rose from him in hot
waves. "You ain't got nothin' on me, Doc," he protested. "I never
touched her. Never even laid a hand on her."

"I've got plenty on you, Lucas. More than I can use. And just to be on
the safe side, I've got a paper here I want you to sign. I wrote it up
before I left the hospital. It's a confession, Lucas, and I want you to
write your name on it. If you won't do it for me, maybe Buck McCracken
can sweat it out of you in the cellar of the courthouse with a rubber
hose."

"I never touched her," insisted Lucas harshly. "And I ain't gonna put my
name on nothin' says I did. What you got against me, Doc? I never did
nothin' to you. What you want to come in here and bully me for? Did I
ever do a wrong thing against you?"

The doctor leaned on the table, towering over the man who sat and stared
sullenly at his folded arms. Matthew Swain knew that Selena had carried
Lucas' child. He was as sure of it as he had ever been of anything. Just
being sure should have been enough, yet some perverseness in him drove
him on. He knew that Lucas Cross was guilty of a crime so close to
incest that the borderline was invisible. The knowing should have been
enough. With the knowing alone, he knew that he could force Lucas to
sign a confession, but something made him drive on, made him bully the
man until Lucas should admit in his own words that he had fathered the
foetus in Selena's womb.

"Maybe I won't go after Buck," he said softly. "No, I won't go after
Buck. Instead, I'll raise an alarm all over town. I'll go personally and
tell every father in Peyton Place what you did, Lucas. I'll tell them
that their daughters aren't safe with you around. The fathers will come
after you, Lucas, the same way they'd go after a wild and dangerous
animal. But they won't shoot you." He paused and looked at the figure in
front of him. "Know how long it's been since we had a lynching in this
town, Lucas?"

The eyes of the man in front of him swiveled around frantically,
searching for escape from the merciless voice that drummed in his ears.

"It was so long ago, Lucas, that no one remembers, for sure, just when
it was. But lynching seems to be something an outraged man always knows
how to do. The fathers will know how to do it, Lucas. Not too good,
maybe. Not good enough so's you'd die on the first try, maybe. But
they'd get the hang of it after a while."

He waited for a moment, but Lucas did not raise his head. He continued
to sit, staring at the matted black hair on his forearms, with the smell
of sweat rising from skin that was roughened now with the tiny bumps of
fear. The doctor turned as if to leave, but Lucas' moan stopped him
before he had taken three steps.

"For Christ's sake, Doc," said Lucas. "Hold on a minute."

The doctor turned and looked at him.

"I done it, Doc," he said. "I'll sign your paper. Give it here."

And this should have been enough. Together with the other, with the
knowing beforehand, this final admission, oral and written, should have
been enough for Matthew Swain. But it was not enough. He wanted to
crush, to crush and grind with his heel; to degrade and humiliate and
break. He looked at the pile of broken pieces that more than thirty
years of honorable medical practice made when it came tumbling down, and
he looked at Mary Kelley's good, Irish Catholic face, overlaid now with
a certain hardness made by the cynical knowledge of crime committed. He
looked at the gelatinous red mass of Selena's unborn child that would
probably have been born and lived a normal number of years, and he
looked at Lucas Cross. He wanted to inflict pain on this man of such an
acute and exquisite caliber that his own pain would dissolve, and all
the while he knew that it was futile. Lucas would feel neither pain nor
shame nor regret, for in Lucas' lexicon he had not committed a crime of
such magnitude that it could not be overlooked and forgotten. Lucas
Cross paid his bills and minded his own business. All he asked of other
men was that they do the same. Before he spoke, Matthew Swain knew that
Lucas would first present excuses and then make a bid for sympathy, but
he could not keep from speaking, nor from hoping to twist the knife in a
wound that he knew Lucas did not possess.

"When did it start, Lucas?" he asked in a sly voice that was not his.
"How many times did you do it, Lucas?"

The man looked at him out of eyes which held nothing now but fear.
"Jesus, Doc," he said to this man with the crazy blue eyes whom he had
never seen before. "Jesus, Doc," he said. "What do you want from me? I
told you I done it, didn't I?"

"How long, Lucas?" the doctor repeated doggedly. "One year? Two years?
Five?"

"A couple," said Lucas in a low whisper. "I was drunk, Doc. I didn't
know what I was doin'."

Automatically the doctor's mind registered the first of Lucas' excuses.
I was drunk. I didn't know what I was doing. It was a standard with men
like Lucas, for everything from fighting and stealing to, apparently,
the raping of children.

"She was a virgin when you started, wasn't she, Lucas?" asked the doctor
in the same sly voice. "You busted your daughter's cherry for her,
didn't you, Lucas, you big, brave, virile wood-chopper?"

"I was drunk," repeated Lucas. "Honest, Doc. I was drunk. I didn't know
what I was doin'. Besides, it ain't like she was my own. She wa'nt mine.
She's Nellie's kid."

Dr. Swain grabbed a handful of Lucas' hair and twisted with his strong
fingers until Lucas' head went back with a snap.

"Listen, you sonofabitch," he said, enraged. "This is no job in the
woods that you've messed up. This is nothing that I'm going to listen to
your weak excuses about being drunk. You knew what you were doing every
minute. Stop being a pig for the one and only minute of your stinking,
perverted life and admit that you knew."

Lucas gasped as the doctor's fingers twisted in his hair. "Yes," he
said. "I knew. I seen her one day, and I seen she was almost grown. I
don't know what got into me."

When the doctor released Lucas' hair, he took out a clean handkerchief
and wiped his hand carefully. The second standard excuse had now been
presented. I don't know what got into me. It was as if men like Lucas
expected men like Matthew Swain to believe in the existence of strange
devils who lurked, ready and eager to invade the minds and bodies of men
like Lucas. The second excuse for misbehavior was always tendered in a
wistful, half-apologetic tone, as if the speaker expected the listener
to join with him in wonder at this thing which had got into him. I don't
know what got into me, but whatever it was, it was none of my doing.
Something just got into me, and there was nothing I could do.

Oh, Christ, prayed Matthew Swain. Oh, Christ, keep me from killing him.

"I dunno how many times it was," said Lucas thickly. "A couple--maybe
three--when I was half drunk and didn't give a shit." His eyes went
blank with remembered lust. "She's a wildcat, Selena is. Always was. I
used to hit her 'til she didn't fight no more."

Dr. Swain felt the greenness of nausea in his mouth as he listened to
Lucas and watched him lick his dry lips.

This is not true, he thought. It is not true that a man can rape a child
time after time and then remember these occasions as if they were the
loveliest of dreams. It is simply not true. I can no more believe this
than I can believe that the Crucifixion was a publicity stunt or that
the object of life is death. It is not true.

"She's pretty, Selena is," Lucas continued dreamily. "She's got the
prettiest pair of tits I ever seen, and the little ends was always all
brown and puckered up. I tied her up the first time, but I didn't have
to, 'cause she wa'nt awake anyhow. She was a virgin all right. Christ,
that cherry of hers was in there so solid I was sore for two weeks
after. Couldn't hardly work I was so sore."

The excuses which would not satisfy Matthew Swain had been exhausted,
and now Lucas had begun his bid for sympathy. Couldn't hardly work I was
so sore. Lucas uttered these words in a sick whine, as if he expected
the doctor to commiserate with him. What a shame, Dr. Swain was expected
to say. What a helluva shame, Lucas, that you could hardly work for two
weeks after the first time you raped your virgin stepdaughter.

Oh, Christ, thought the doctor, clenching his fists and feeling the sour
sweat on himself again. Oh, Christ, keep me from killing him.

"Pretty, Selena is," said Lucas.

Matthew Swain could hear his own breath, rising and falling, when Lucas
finished speaking. It was quiet for a long time in the Cross shack while
the doctor fought down his desire to put his hands around Lucas' neck
and choke him. It took a long time for the sickness and the rage that
come to a man when he realizes how thin the layers of civilization on
another man can be, to abate in Dr. Swain.

When he could speak, he said, "Lucas, I'll give you until tomorrow noon
to clear out of here. Get out of town. I don't want to see you around
tomorrow."

"Whaddya mean, get out of town, Doc?" cried Lucas, horror stricken at
the vindictiveness of this man to whom he had never done a wrong thing.
"Whaddya mean, get out of town? I ain't got nowheres to go, Doc. This is
my home. Always was. Where am I gonna go, Doc?"

"Straight to hell," said the doctor. "But failing that, anywhere you've
a mind to go. Just get out of Peyton Place."

"But I ain't of a mind to go nowheres, Doc," whined Lucas. "There ain't
nowheres for me to go."

"If I see you around tomorrow, Lucas, I'll have the whole town on your
tail. Get out and stay out, and don't try to come back. Not next week
nor next year. Not even after I'm dead, Lucas, because I'm going to
leave that proof I was talking about in a good safe place. Folks in town
will know what to do if you ever come back."

Lucas Cross began to cry. He put his head down on his arms and sobbed at
the injustice of this persecution.

"What did I ever do to you, Doc?" he cried. "I never done nothin' to
you. How'm I gonna get out of town when I ain't got nowheres to go?"

"Selena had nowhere to go to get away from you," said the doctor. "That
made you happy enough. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and if it
pinches, that's too bad. I mean it, Lucas. Don't let the noon sun shine
on your head tomorrow."

Matthew Swain felt old, as old as time and as weary, as he walked, stoop
shouldered now, toward the door of the Cross shack. Lucas' confession
weighed heavy in his suit coat pocket, and the words of Lucas were a
sore on his soul. There was a tiredness in him such as he had never
known and his mouth was filled with the taste of tarnished silver.

If I can make it home, he thought. If I can just get home and into a
hot, hot bath. If I can just scrub this filth off myself and get to my
dining room sideboard and pour myself a drink. If I could go to sleep
tonight and wake up in the morning to find Peyton Place as clean and
beautiful as it was yesterday. If I can just make it home.

He had the shack door half open before a high, keening wail behind him
stopped him with his hand still on the knob. He turned, horror struck,
knowing before he turned that he had committed another act of
destruction. His eyes searched the gloom beyond the circle of light shed
by the shack's one electric light bulb, and found the sagging double bed
against the rear wall of the room. Nellie Cross was lying on it, wailing
a high sustained wail, and her body writhed and twisted as if she were
in the agonized labor of childbirth.




CHAPTER 7


Ted Carter put the end of his tongue between his teeth. Painstakingly,
he tried again to fold the ends of a sheet of white tissue paper
smoothly around the corners of a candy box which he wanted to wrap. No
matter how many times he started over, the corners always seemed to
bunch up so that the package looked clumsy, and as if it had been
wrapped by a child. Ted's mother had glanced over at him several times,
but she did not offer to help. She went on washing dishes and staring,
when she was not looking at her son, out the small window over the
kitchen sink. Ted's father sat in the living room and shook out the
pages of his newspaper at frequent intervals, but he, also, kept silent.

Since Ted had started dating Selena Cross, over two years before, there
had been an unfriendly tension in the Carter house, and it did not
lessen with time. Roberta and Harmon Carter, Ted's parents, had not met
the problem of Selena with the smiling tolerance which most parents
employ when confronted with an offspring who is sure he is in love.
"Puppy love," with its connotations of childishness, was not a term
easily applied to Ted Carter's emotion for Selena Cross.

Roberta Carter swished her hands around in the soapy dishwater and
reflected that nothing about Ted had ever been childish. Once, this fact
had pleased her. It had made her happy when Ted talked and walked
earlier and better than other babies. It had pleased her when his
teachers commented on how smart he was, how easily he learned, how
mature he was for his age. She had been filled with pride when he could
swim at six, ski at seven and hit a baseball at eight. She had looked
upon her big, strapping son with wonder, for both she and Harmon were
thin, small people, and she had had the satisfaction of a job well done.
And she had done a good job with Ted, she knew. He was not only tall and
solidly built, but healthy. His teeth were innocent of fillings, his
skin never broke out, and he was blessed with twenty-twenty vision. He
was kind, considerate and courteous, never raised his voice and seldom
lost his temper, and he went at any task with an energy and a
conscientiousness seldom seen in sixteen-year-old boys. Even Mr.
Shapiro, who owned the huge chicken farm where Ted worked summers and
had a reputation of being hard to please, had commented on Ted's
steadfastness and industry.

"Nice boy, Teddy," he had told Roberta. "A good boy. He works like a man
already, at his age."

It had pleased her to hear that, until she remembered that with Ted's
lack of childishness went her comfort in thinking that the boy's love
for Selena Cross was a passing, childish love.

When Roberta and Harmon Carter realized that the question of Selena was
no longer a question but an established fact, they had been unable to
face it with resignation. Had they been able to do so, there might have
been a relaxation of the tension in their home and a semblance of
friendliness in their lives. They wanted him to be the child he had
never been, with a child's swiftly changing moods and easily broken
attachments. They regarded as a failure a son who could allow himself to
become involved with a girl from the shacks. The stepdaughter of a
drunken woodchopping father and the flesh and blood of a slatternly,
half-crazy mother.

"What are you doing, Ted?" Roberta asked her son, although she and
Harmon both knew very well what he was doing.

"Trying to wrap a box of candy for Selena," he replied.

"Oh?" Roberta spoke only the one word, on a rising inflection, yet she
managed to convey biting sarcasm and mocking laughter in that one
syllable.

"Oh?" she repeated, but Ted would not enlarge on his original remark,
and Roberta felt anger mount in her and redden her throat.

"She is still in the hospital, I presume," she said, managing to make
known her low opinion of people who remained in the hospital longer than
a week for an operation as simple as an appendectomy.

"Yes," said Ted.

In the living room, Harmon Carter shook out his newspaper.

"Well," said Roberta, "how long is she planning to stay there, taking up
a bed which could be used for a really sick person?"

"Until Doc Swain says she can leave, I imagine," replied Ted shortly.

"Theodore!"

"Yes, Dad?"

"Keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak to your mother."

"I wasn't uncivil," said Ted. "I answered her question."

"It's your tone, Ted," said his mother. "I don't think I particularly
care for your tone."

"Foolishness," said Harmon from the living room. "Running out every
night to go see that little chippy."

"Selena's no chippy," said Ted calmly, "and you know it."

It was true that Harmon knew it, but it enraged him to have Ted tell him
that he knew it.

"Goddamn it," he shouted, coming to stand in the doorway between the
kitchen and the living room. "I told you to keep a civil tongue in your
head. Go to your room until you learn to control your remarks."

Ted finished wrapping his package and did not answer his father.

"Didn't you hear your father, Ted?" asked Roberta. "He told you to go to
your room. Your little friend will have to survive without seeing you
tonight."

Ted stood up, unzipped his trousers, and stuffed his shirt down into
them. He did not speak.

"Did you hear me?" shouted Harmon.

"Yes, Dad," said Ted, picking up the wrapped candy box. "I heard you."

"Well?" Harmon uttered this word in a heavily underlined, threatening
tone. "Well?" he demanded, dragging the word out.

Ted opened the door that led out into the back yard. "Good night, Dad,"
he said. "'Night, Mother."

For a moment after the door had closed softly behind their son, Roberta
and Harmon merely stood and looked at one another. Then Roberta took her
hands out of the dishwater and, without drying them, sat down on a
kitchen chair and began to cry. Harmon threw his newspaper down on the
floor and pounded the fist of one hand into the palm of the other.

"Insolent," he said. "That's what he is. Insolent."

"After all we've done for him," cried Roberta, echoing the remark of
untold millions of mothers. "After all we've given him. Everything. A
good, decent bringing up and a nice home and everything."

"A prospective college education," said Harmon, taking up the litany. "A
chance any boy would jump at."

Harmon Carter had graduated from the eighth grade and had attended high
school for two years before quitting to go to work at the Cumberland
Mills. To him, a chance at a college education was on a par with a
chance at the True Cross.

"I'm not going to sweat blood at the mill to send him to college if this
is the way he is going to behave," said Harmon.

Harmon Carter did not sweat blood at the Cumberland Mills. He was a
bookkeeper in the office, and the only time he ever broke out in a mild
perspiration was when one of the young secretaries there bent over his
desk to ask him a question. Nor did Harmon have to worry about the money
for Ted's college education. The money had been in the Citizens'
National Bank since before Ted was born. It had, in fact, been there
since before Harmon married Roberta.

"He's had everything," cried Roberta, wiping her still wet hands on her
apron.

This was true, in a way. While the Carters did not live on Chestnut
Street, believing that it would be ostentatious for a bookkeeper at the
mill to live on the same street as Leslie Harrington, they nevertheless
lived in a very good house in a very decent neighborhood. They lived on
Maple Street, two blocks away from the schools, a street that was
considered as the "second best" in Peyton Place. The Carter house was
large, well furnished, well heated in winter, well shaded in summer and
well kept. It was given a coat of paint every three years, and Kenny
Stearns took good care of the grounds that surrounded it. In addition to
the "nice" home which Ted Carter's parents provided for him, he also had
the social advantages of good clothes and expensive sports equipment. He
had the promise of college and the security of knowing that funds
existed to provide against the time when he graduated from college and
set up a law office of his own. And in return for all these things, Ted
Carter's parents asked nothing of him but his undivided devotion,
unquestioning loyalty and immediate obedience.

"I never asked him for a thing," said Roberta, blowing her nose. "I
wouldn't even take board money when he worked and practically insisted
on giving me part of his wages. I never asked him for a single thing,
except to leave Selena Cross alone, and he won't even do that much.
After all we've done for him."

All the things that Roberta and Harmon did for Ted had been done for
themselves long before Ted was born. For a long time Peyton Place had
rocked with the talk of what Roberta and Harmon had done for themselves,
and even now, after so many years, there were still those who
remembered, and talked.

It had been a long, uphill struggle for Roberta and Harmon to lift
themselves out of the ranks of the mill hands. It had taken time and
sacrifice to attain a house on Maple Street, a bank account, a good car,
a fur coat for Roberta and a solid gold pocket watch for Harmon. Some
mill hands worked all their lives to succeed in getting just a few of
the things that Roberta and Harmon obtained for themselves before they
were thirty.

Roberta Carter had been seventeen years old and her name had been
"Bobbie" Welch the year that Harmon Carter, aged eighteen, had conceived
his great plan. Harmon was employed at that time as an office boy in the
Cumberland Mills, a position he had held since leaving high school at
the age of fifteen. Bobbie was employed as a part-time secretary and
cleaning woman by Dr. Jerrold Quimby. This was during the same year that
young Matt Swain was serving his internship in the Mary Hitchcock
Hospital at Hanover. Young Swain, as he was then called, was supposed to
go into Old Doc Quimby's office when he finished at Hanover, for that
was the year that Old Doc Quimby was seventy-four years old, and much in
need of a younger man to help him.

Bobbie and Harmon were keeping steady company at that time, and it was
understood that they would get married as soon as Harmon was promoted
from office boy to office clerk at the Cumberland Mills. The two young
people either went for walks or sat on the vine-covered Welch porch on
their date nights, for Harmon did not have the money for more expensive
amusement. They discussed their jobs with one another, and Harmon often
laughed at the way Old Doc Quimby depended on Bobbie for everything. One
night he did not laugh, for that day he had conceived his great plan. He
unfolded it to Bobbie carefully, so as not to startle her with its
unorthodox daring. He began by making her dissatisfied with the bleak
future that loomed ahead for both of them. He accented, particularly,
the constant and continual lack of funds which was sure to plague them
as it always had, and as it had plagued their parents and grandparents.

"It takes money to make money," he told her.

And: "The best way to get money is to have a rich relative die and leave
you a packet."

And: "Hand to mouth, one payday to the next. That's the life of an
office worker's family."

And: "You are so beautiful. You should have everything. Furs and jewels
and gorgeous clothes. I can't get things like that for you, and I never
will be able to--with my job."

In the end, the seed was planted and began to sprout. Bobbie, who was a
fair and buxom creature and had always had a certain cowlike contentment
about her, began to see herself as tall and sylphlike, a woman who
needed furs and Paris trips to bring out the best in her. Her
contentment was replaced by an active dissatisfaction, a feeling of
being put-upon by her lot of poverty. Harmon then began to unfold the
second step of his great plan.

"Old Doc Quimby's got plenty," he told her.

And: "Old Doc Quimby's got more money than anyone could ever use."

And: "Old Doc Quimby's an old man. A woman smart enough to land him
wouldn't have to wait long for his money."

And: "Old Doc Quimby depends on you for everything. He needs you. If you
wanted to go ahead and marry him, I'd wait for you."

At first, of course, Bobbie had been shocked. She loved Harmon, she
said, and always would, through riches and in poverty, in sickness and
in health. Harmon immediately pointed out to her that if she loved him
that much, her great love for him would not desert her while she was
married to Old Doc Quimby, not even if the Damned Old Fool lived for
another five years. "Bobbie" saw the reasonableness of this after a
while, and the program of leading Old Doc Quimby to the trough and
making him drink was begun. As they often said to each other later, it
had been a long, uphill struggle. Old Doc Quimby had been a widower for
twenty years, and did not mind it a bit as long as he could hire someone
to come in to look after him. There was the hook, and Bobbie, under
Harmon's tutelage, sunk it deep. She threatened to quit her job; she
refused to cook the old man's meals; she left his dirty clothes where he
dropped them; she spread the word around town that he was a vile, old
lecher and an impossible man to work for. Old Doc Quimby, unable to find
a replacement for Bobbie who would come into his house and look after
him, had succumbed wearily. Bobbie married Old Doc Quimby, and Peyton
Place rocked with shock and, later, laughter. The town called Old Doc
Quimby a senile old man, an old fool of the kind there is no other like,
an old fool who did not know enough to see that he was being cuckolded
regularly by young Harmon Carter, and into this sorry state of affairs
walked Young Doc Swain. Bobbie, still under Harmon's tutelage, refused
to let the young doctor into the house. After all, as Harmon pointed out
to her, Old Doc Quimby might have plenty, but there was no need to pay
any of it out to Matthew Swain. The young doctor turned away angrily
from the front door of the big house on Maple Street, where he had
expected to have his first office, and went to the home of his parents.
He put out his shingle in front of their large, "Southern-looking" house
on Chestnut Street and never had cause to regret that he had done so.
Peyton Place had laughed harder than ever, when sick people began going
to Young Doc Swain. In the end, Peyton Place laughed Old Doc Quimby to
death. Two weeks before the date of the first anniversary of his
marriage to Bobbie Welch, Old Doc Quimby put his revolver to his head
and shot himself.

Small towns are notorious for their long memories and their sharp
tongues, and Peyton Place did not spare Bobbie Quimby and Harmon Carter.
It was years before the words hurled at them began to soften, and the
epithets hurled by Peyton Place ran the gamut from "Whore" and "Pimp" to
"Harlot" and "White Slaver." It was many years before the house on Maple
Street was forgotten as "The Quimby Place" and called by its now correct
name of "The Carter House," and it was as many years before Mrs. Carter
succeeded in making Peyton Place call her "Roberta" instead of the
frivolous and, to her, harlotish-sounding name of "Bobbie." Even now,
when she was over fifty, and had been married to Harmon for more than
thirty years, and had a son sixteen years old, there were still those
who remembered. It was because of these that Roberta and Harmon Carter
were hard pressed for sympathetic listeners whenever they spoke of "all
they had done" for their son Ted. It was because of the old-timers, the
ones with the long, long memories who had the habit of passing on
scandalous stories to their young, that Peyton Place cheered for Ted
Carter. When the boy insisted on working part time after school and
during the summer vacations, Peyton Place approved.

"Young Carter ain't goin' to live on Old Doc Quimby's money," said the
town, "the way his folks always did."

When Peyton Place noticed young Ted Carter walking down Elm Street on a
hot July night with a box of candy under his arm, bound for the hospital
where his sweetheart lay sick, they approved and cheered him on.

"Nice boy, young Carter is," said the town. "Like to see him make a go
of it with Selena Cross. She's a nice enough girl, for a shack girl."

But it was the humiliation to Roberta and Harmon that Peyton Place
loved. To see young Carter take up with a shack girl, after his people
had worked so hard to escape the same environment that had spawned
Selena, had a certain beauty, a poetic justice.

A comeuppance, the town called it. Roberta and Harmon Carter were
getting their comeuppance at long last.




CHAPTER 8


Ted Carter hurried down Elm Street and eventually came to the broad,
three-lane highway which was called Route 406 and which was the main
road between Peyton Place and White River. It was on this highway, a
mile from the center of town, that the Peyton Place hospital was
located. Ted walked rapidly, with the wrapped box of candy for Selena
under one arm, and his other arm swinging back and forth in rhythm with
his stride. In two years, he had fulfilled the promise of size that had
been his at fourteen. Now he was only a scant inch under six feet tall,
and he weighed close to a hundred and seventy pounds. Although his chest
and shoulders were as broad as those of a man much older, he gave the
impression of leanness, for years of sports and outdoor work had kept
fat to a minimum and made his body hard and muscular.

Ted Carter's was the kind of body that older people look upon with
satisfaction. Things can't be so bad, they said, when this country can
produce young men like that. In the summer of 1939, when the stage
whispers of war in Europe were already audible to the pessimists in
America, those who believed that world conflict was inevitable could
look at Ted Carter and be comforted. Things won't be so bad, they said,
as long as we have big, healthy boys like that to send to war. Because
Ted Carter's body had none of the loose-jointedness, the clumsily put
together look of many sixteen-year-olds, his was the envy of every
adolescent in Peyton Place. Because of it, and also because of his
outstanding talent at sports, other, less fortunate, sixteen-year-olds
forgave him his good marks in school, his charm, his easy way of making
friends, and the good manners which many mothers flung constantly into
the faces of sloppy talking, often discourteous sons.

With all his blessings, including everything his parents did for him,
Ted Carter should have had the happy, open-faced look of a carefree
youngster, but there was none of the child in his face as he walked
rapidly toward the Peyton Place hospital. There was a suggestion of
shadow on his cheeks and chin, although he had shaved carefully before
supper, and there were two diagonal lines in the skin between his
eyebrows. He frowned, not because he was upset or angry as he remembered
the scene of a short time before with his parents, but because he was
perplexed. As he put it to himself, walking along, he just didn't
understand his folks. Ever since he could remember, he had been making
his own decisions. His folks had said that they were proud of his common
sense, and they had never had cause to interfere with him. It was only
in the last two years that they had begun to find fault and to
criticize. Yet all they ever criticized was his going with Selena, while
everything else remained as it always had been. When he had wanted to go
to work for Mr. Shapiro, his folks had not interfered. They had told him
to go ahead, if he wanted, although the work on a chicken farm was hard
and tedious, and Mr. Shapiro was Jewish and hard to work for. They had
not tried to influence him when he had started looking around for a used
car to buy, and he knew that they would approve his choice if he found
one he wanted. Everything he had always wanted to do had always been all
right with his folks, so why, he wondered, were they so unyielding, so
downright mean and stupid, about Selena? Certainly, since they had
always trusted his common sense before, they should do so now. They
should be able to realize that he was no dumb kid out for what he could
get from a girl. He was planning a career in the law--and his plans
included Selena--remaining in his home town to go into practice with Old
Charlie, and eventual success in his chosen field. Certainly, his folks
should realize that a plan such as his had no room in it for
foolishness. He had discussed his hopes in detail and at length with old
Charlie Partridge, and the lawyer had no fault to find with them.

"It's good to know what you want," Charles Partridge had said. "You go
right ahead, boy. When you get done at law school, you come on back here
to Peyton Place. I'll need a bright young feller to help me out by
then."

"You couldn't do better than Selena Cross," Charles Partridge had said.
"Not for looks and not for brains. You go ahead, boy. It's good to know
what you want in this world."

Since Ted truly loved Selena Cross and had told his parents so, they
should realize that he had enough sense and self-control to keep his
hands off her until after they were married. Not that it wasn't
difficult, at times, but his folks should realize that Ted's plan had no
room in it for foolish mistakes. He had explained all this to Selena
long ago, and she had seen the common sense in it. Why, then, couldn't
he convince his folks of this, after two years of trying?

The Carters seldom fought between themselves; the swearing and shouting
of this evening's scene had been the rare exception rather than the
rule. Instead, they argued sensibly, rationally and continually, but it
always ended with Ted on one side of the fence and his parents on the
other.

It was perplexing, thought Ted, as he walked along the gravel edge of
the highway. The only thing he could do was to stick by what he thought
was right for him, and hope that his folks would come to see his way of
thinking. It would be different, he thought, if they could present one
sensible argument against Selena. He was willing, just as he had always
been, to listen to reason. But they could say nothing against Selena
except that she lived in a shack and that she was the daughter of a
drunkard. Ted couldn't see what that had to do with anything. As he
pointed out to his folks, both of them had lived in shacks not much
better than Selena's when they had been young, and it hadn't harmed them
any. As for drinking, old man Welch, Roberta's father, had been one of
the most notorious drunkards in town, and that hadn't left any taint on
either Ted or his mother. The only other argument his folks had was that
people were bound to talk if he kept on with Selena. People were bound
to talk anyway, Ted had told them. Look at the way some people still
talked about his mother's first husband. People always talked, and they
always would. As long as a man worked hard, did not steal or get a girl
in trouble, there was nothing that people could say that could harm him
much. Ted pointed out carefully, and in detail, the stories he had heard
about his mother and father and Old Doc Quimby. He did this to
illustrate to them how little talk mattered. Talk, he said, had not
harmed his parents, in the long run. They had everything they wanted.
His father was head bookkeeper at the mill, and they lived in a nice
house in a good neighborhood. They could see, couldn't they, how little
talk really amounted to, in the long run?

It was always at this point that an argument between the Carters fell
apart. Ted's parents either fell silent altogether so that the tension
in their house was almost as palpable as fog, or else they began to talk
disjointedly, foolishly. He just didn't know, they said. He was too
young. He just did not realize.

Ted Carter walked into the Peyton Place hospital with his head up and a
smile on his face. He realized, all right. He realized that he loved
Selena Cross so much that the thought of life without her was the same
as thinking about being dead.

Selena was sitting up in a chair in the private room to which Dr. Swain
had assigned her. She was wearing the bright red robe that Constance
MacKenzie had brought her the day after the operation, and her dark hair
was brushed out loosely around her shoulders. Ted's heart lifted as he
entered the room and looked at her. She looked like herself again. For
the first time in the whole, long week since the operation, she looked
like the Selena of before, who had never had a sick day in her life. Her
lips were red again, and the shine was back in her eyes. Ted bent over
her chair and kissed her gently.

"Really kiss me," she said, laughing up at him, and he did.

"I guess you're all better," he said. "Nothing wrong with a girl who can
kiss like that."

It was wrong, thought Selena, for her to be this happy. But she could
not help it. Her room was full of flowers, from friends she did not even
know she had, and Mrs. MacKenzie had come to see her every day. Allison
had come, too, and Miss Elsie Thornton, carrying a book and a little
plant of African violets. There was an enormous, formal bouquet of glads
and roses from Mr. and Mrs. Partridge, which had surprised Selena, for
she had not been in Marion's house for over two years, since the time
when she used to go on Tuesdays to do Mrs. Partridge's ironing. But best
of all, creating her happiness and sustaining it, was the news that Dr.
Swain had brought her that morning. Lucas was gone. Lucas had left town
in the night, a week ago, and he was never coming back. Selena felt as
if she had put down a load that she had carried for years. She had
actually twitched her shoulders several times during the day, after The
Doc had told her the news, and she believed that she could feel a
lightness there that she had not known it was possible to feel.

If it was wrong to be this happy, thought Selena, she wanted to be wrong
all the rest of her life. When Ted talked, she could close her eyes and
see her future stretching out before her as smooth as satin ribbon and
as calm as the wide Connecticut River in summer. She had thought
carefully about the other, the ugliness of a week ago, and she had
expected to feel horror or shame. All she had felt was an overwhelming,
grateful sense of relief. Her practical mind decided to forget it, to
think no more about it than one would think of a cut suffered long ago,
during childhood. It was over and done with, and she would not even be
able to find a scar unless she looked hard for it.

"Oh, Ted," she said, shiny eyed. "I can go home tomorrow."

I can go home, she thought, and only Joey and my mother will be there.

"I think I'll buy that Ford I was looking at," said Ted. "I'll buy it
tomorrow and come to fetch you home in style."

"How much are they asking for it?" asked Selena.

Ted told her, and they began to discuss the advisability of investing so
much capital in a used car. They realized that they sounded like old,
married people when they talked this way, and it gave each of them a
sense of warmth that nothing else could. They held hands and decided
that the Ford wasn't a bad buy, providing that Jinks, the garageowner,
guaranteed them a good price if they should want to trade next year.

Ted kissed Selena good night at nine o'clock and walked out of the
Peyton Place hospital with a silent whistle on his lips. When he was
halfway to town his happiness would no longer let him be still. He
uttered a loud war whoop, without caring if anyone heard and thought him
crazy, and ran all the way to Elm Street.

"Evening, sir," he said to the man he met just before he turned the
corner into Maple Street.

Reverend Fitzgerald, of the Congregational church, started as if someone
had put a gun against his ribs.

"Oh!" he said. "Oh, Ted. You startled me for a minute. How are you?"

"Very well, sir," said Ted, and waited for the minister's next question.
It came, as it always did.

"Er, Carter," said Reverend Fitzgerald. "Carter, I didn't see you in
church last Sunday. Will we see you this Sunday?"

"Yes, sir," said Ted.

It was odd, thought Ted a few minutes later as he approached his house,
that no matter whom Reverend Fitzgerald talked to, he always asked that
same question. Every Sunday, the Congregational church was jammed to the
doors, but every time Reverend Fitzgerald met a Congregationalist, he
always asked the same question. Will we see you next Sunday?

Ted shrugged. It was, he supposed, just one of the eccentricities that
people had. The minister asked his question; the old men in front of the
courthouse swore and talked dirty; his father hated Jews and shack
dwellers. Everyone had an eccentricity of some kind, Ted imagined, and
went into his house. His parents were sitting in the living room. Harmon
was reading and Roberta was knitting. No one spoke.




CHAPTER 9


Reverend Fitzgerald glanced up at the second-story windows of the
parsonage before he went into the house. The lights upstairs were
burning, which meant that Tomas Makris was at home.

Perhaps, Reverend Fitzgerald hoped, he could persuade Tom to come down
to sit on the porch and talk for a while.

The Congregationalist minister smiled to himself in the darkened,
first-floor hall. Two years ago, he would not have approached Tom with a
ten-foot pole, let alone invite him down for a conversation. Reverend
Fitzgerald had been furious when Leslie Harrington had asked about
renting the apartment over the parsonage. He had refused good-naturedly,
and Leslie Harrington had been just as good-naturedly insistent. A
second-floor apartment had been installed in the house next to the
Congregational church long before the church had bought it for a
parsonage. The apartment had been built to accommodate the married son
of the man who had first owned the house, and it had stood idle ever
since the place had been purchased by the church. Certainly, as Reverend
Fitzgerald had pointed out to Leslie Harrington, the millowner could not
expect his minister to take kindly to the idea of having someone live up
over his head after all his years of privacy. Harrington, though, could
not remain good natured for long when he thought that he was being
balked. He had a streak of vulgarity in him. He had ended up, over two
years ago, by telling the minister that he was lucky to have a roof over
his head at all, and that it was people like Leslie Harrington, regular,
openhanded churchgoers, who made it possible for Reverend Fitzgerald to
be maintained in such style.

"We've been decent to you, Fitzgerald," Harrington had said. "We've seen
to it that you had this house, and heat, and a car and a salary. The
least you can do is to not make things unpleasant for yourself. I want
that upstairs apartment for the new headmaster, and I want it now."

Well, thought Reverend Fitzgerald, that was Leslie Harrington for you.
What he could not get by fair means, he obtained by the foul expedient
of threats. It was typical of Leslie Harrington to point out bluntly the
reality of his regular and generous contributions to the church. And
what defense did a dependent minister have against such tactics? How
could the minister tell Harrington that he was afraid to have anyone in
such close proximity as the upstairs apartment? A minister was supposed
to spend his life in close proximity to others. How would it sound if he
told Harrington, the Peyton Place Congregational Church's largest
supporter, that he, Reverend Fitzgerald, was terrified of having people
near him? No, it would not do at all. As the minister put it to himself,
his hands were tied and his lips were sealed. He had laughed and clapped
Leslie Harrington on the shoulder and told the busy millowner not to
worry himself with such petty details. He, Reverend Fitzgerald, would
get Nellie Cross to clean the upstairs apartment and get it in shape for
Mr. Makris, who was due to arrive in town in three days.

When Tom arrived, Reverend Fitzgerald waited until Leslie Harrington was
gone to put his foot down.

"See here, Mr. Makris," he said, "I don't want any smoking or drinking
or loud radio playing going on upstairs."

Tom laughed. "You stay downstairs, padre," he said, unpleasantly, "and
I'll stay upstairs. That way, you won't know if I drink myself senseless
every night, and I won't know whether or not you worship idols in
secret."

Reverend Fitzgerald gasped. What Tom said was not the truth, but it was
a little too close to it for comfort.

"Fitzgerald?" Tom had inquired on that night over two years ago. "Irish,
isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Orangeman, eh?"

"No."

That had put an end to that particular conversation, but the
Congregationalist minister had spent a few anxious weeks wondering what
Tom was thinking.

Francis Joseph Fitzgerald was an Irishman, born and bred a Catholic and
raised in a tenement in East Boston. When he was in his late teens, it
had pleased him to say that he had remained a Catholic until he was old
enough to read. At that time, he used to say, he had discovered too many
holes in Catholicism to satisfy an intelligent, intellectual man. He had
renounced the Holy Roman Church and become a Protestant. His new
religion had so satisfied his questioning that he decided to become a
minister. It had not been easy. Protestant theological schools, he had
found, were not overly eager to accept former Catholic Irishmen by the
name of Fitzgerald. In the end, however, he had succeeded. Not only was
he accepted by a good school, he graduated at the head of his class, and
when he was ordained and sent out into the field, it had been with many
high hopes and good wishes on the part of his teachers.

Thinking it over now, Francis Joseph Fitzgerald could not remember when,
exactly, he had begun to wonder about the Catholic faith which he had
shed so easily in his youth. He knew that it had been since coming to
Peyton Place, twelve years before, but he could not recall the exact
moment when Protestantism had begun to be less than enough. If he could
recall the moment, he reasoned, he would be able to recall an incident,
and if he could do that he would know the reason for his torturing,
unending questions. For there must have been an incident, he was sure,
some happening so trivial at the time that he had paid it no attention,
and it had festered in his mind, producing, at last, the pus-filled,
running sore that was his diseased faith. Fitzgerald's mind grew weary
with his constant searching, and his tongue ached with the desire to
speak, but he could not, of course, discuss his questions with his wife.
Margaret Fitzgerald, who had been born Margaret Bunker, the only
daughter of a Congregationalist minister from White River, hated
Catholicism with a violent, un-Christianlike hatred. Francis Joseph
Fitzgerald had discovered that shortly after he married her. He had, in
fact, discovered it after they had been married only one week, and while
they had still been honeymooning in the White Mountains.

"Peggy Fitzgerald," he had said, laughing in what he later remembered as
his one and only attempt at humor with her. "Peggy Fitzgerald," he said,
in his easily remembered brogue. "Puts me in mind of me mither, an Irish
lass from County Galway."

Margaret Bunker Fitzgerald had not been amused. "You'll never get over
it, will you?" she had spit at him furiously. "You'll never get over
being an Irishman, a black Irish Catholic from a Boston slum. Don't you
ever dare call me Peggy again. My name is Margaret, and don't you forget
it!"

He had been shocked. "My mother's name was Margaret," he said
defensively, the brogue completely gone now from his speech. "And my
father always called her Peggy."

"Your mother," said Margaret, succeeding in making Mrs. Fitzgerald the
elder sound like a werewolf. "Your _mother_!"

So, of course, when Reverend Fitzgerald began to wonder, and to be
frightened by his thoughts, he could not go to his wife for the comfort
that discussion might have brought. He had carried on his work,
torturedly asking and trying to find replies to his own questions, until
Tomas Makris had come to live in the apartment upstairs over the
parsonage.

Reverend Fitzgerald climbed the stairs to the second floor, taking care
to avoid every loose board on the way, in the hope of not waking
Margaret who slept, snoring softly, in the rear bedroom of the
parsonage. Margaret did not like Tom. She said that he was too loud, too
brash, too dark, too big and too much lacking in respect for the
Congregational church. The real reason that she disliked him was that
she could not intimidate him. When she used tactics on him, which would
have reduced her husband to an acquiescent lump, Tom merely laughed--at
_her_.

The headmaster of the Peyton Place schools was sprawled out in an easy
chair in the living room of his apartment. He was naked except for a
pair of athletic shorts, and he held a tall, frosted glass in one hand.

"Join me," he said to Fitzgerald, after the minister had knocked and
entered.

"I thought you might like to come down and sit on the porch for a
while," said Fitzgerald shyly. Nakedness always made him shy, and he
kept his eyes turned away from Tom when he spoke.

"We can't talk down on the porch," said Tom. "We might wake Mrs.
Fitzgerald, who has been snoring cozily for the last hour. Sit down and
have a drink. It's as cool here as it is outside anyway."

"Thank you," said Fitzgerald, sitting down. "But I don't drink."

"What?" demanded Tom. "An Irishman who doesn't drink? Never heard of
one."

Fitzgerald laughed uneasily. Tom did not speak softly, by any means, and
Fitzgerald was afraid that Margaret might wake. She hated to have anyone
refer to her husband as an Irishman. If she heard Tom she would,
undoubtedly, come upstairs and drag Fitzgerald off to bed.

"All right," he said. "I'll have one. Just a little one, though."

Tom went to the small kitchen and returned carrying a glass as tall and
as full as his own.

"Here," he said. "This will do you good."

Fitzgerald fascinated Tom. The minister was a perfect study of a man at
war with his environment and himself. Often, Tom looked at Fitzgerald
and wondered how the older man had survived as long as he had without
either running away physically, or taking refuge in a mental breakdown.
He had asked Connie MacKenzie about the minister, but she had not agreed
with him that something was radically wrong with Fitzgerald. He was all
right, she said. Not as gifted as some preachers, maybe, but a good man,
conscientious and faithful. But when Tom looked at Fitzgerald, he
wondered at the powerful, destructive tendency in humanity which drives
a man to painful extremes in order to maintain the picture of himself
which he has manufactured for the rest of the world to look upon.

As a very young man, Tom had realized that there were two kinds of
people: Those who manufactured and maintained tedious, expensive shells,
and those who did not. Those who did, lived in constant terror lest the
shells of their own making crack open to display the weakness that was
underneath, and those who did not were either crushed or toughened.
After much thought, Tom had been able to put the souls of humanity on
the simple, uncomplicated plane with bare feet. Some people could walk
without shoes with the result that their feet grew tough and calloused,
while others could not take a step without the bad luck of stepping on a
broken bottle. But the majority, thought Tom with a smile, like Leslie
Harrington and Fitzgerald and Connie MacKenzie, would never think of
taking off their shoes in the first place. Leslie Harrington played the
hardheaded, successful businessman to hide the mediocre mind and fear of
impotency that tortured him, while Constance MacKenzie covered the
passionate, love-demanding woman that she really was with the
respectable garments of the ice maiden. And here was Francis Joseph
Fitzgerald, playing the nondrinking Congregational minister when he
really longed for the tight white collar and the daily ecclesiastical
wine of the Irish priest. Tom longed to put his fist through
Harrington's false front, and with Constance he wanted to destroy
completely the need for protection, but for Fitzgerald he felt only
pity.

Why doesn't the poor bastard chuck what he has, thought Tom, and run as
fast as he can to the nearest priest to make his confession?

"We didn't see you at church last Sunday," Fitzgerald was saying. "I'm
afraid all my talk has done you no good, Mr. Makris. You are an
impossible man to convert."

Fitzgerald prided himself on the fact that he kept his conversations on
religion with Tom on a depersonalized, intellectual plane.

"Of course," continued Fitzgerald, "we Protestants are at a disadvantage
when it comes to getting the crowds into the churches. We don't have the
whip that the Catholics have to hold over our members. If a Catholic
misses Mass, he has committed a sin and has hurt only himself, but if a
Protestant does not come to church, all we can do is to hope that we see
him next Sunday."

"That's one way of looking at it," said Tom. "On the other hand, I don't
think much of a religion that holds a whip over anybody for any reason."

Fitzgerald was shocked. "Oh," he said, shaking his head, "I think that
your reasoning is faulty, Mr. Makris. I really do. In fact, having a
powerful hold over the people is the one point in which I am in complete
sympathy with our Catholic friends."

Fitzgerald always claimed that he was in sympathy with only one point of
the Catholic philosophy but, Tom knew, before the night was over he
would have named a dozen points with which he was in sympathy, and they
would run the gamut from birth control to the refusal to bury suicides
in consecrated ground.

Just how much, wondered Tom bitterly, was religion, any religion, worth
when it could do to a man what it had done to Fitzgerald?

Somewhere, Fitzgerald had lost sight of his larger purpose in life. He
had lost it in a welter of man-made contradictions, and now he was
fighting with his sanity to find it again. He enumerated for Tom all the
rules involved in what he called "serving God." He pointed out carefully
the differences between the Catholic rules and the Protestant rules.

"Now I ask you, Mr. Makris, how do the Protestants expect to keep the
church strong, if they refuse to outlaw birth control? The Catholics
have it on us there, I'm afraid. Watch the number of children who go
into St. Joseph's every Sunday. There are twice as many as I get. You
have to get plenty of them--and catch them while they are young--for
lasting results."

Give me a child until he is seven, thought Tom, and he is forever after
mine. When the Fascists say it, they're bums and kidnapers, but when the
Church says it, it is known as putting a kid on the right track.

"Listen, Reverend," said Tom when the minister had run down for a
moment. "Why do you make such a big thing out of all these differences
in ceremony, and this matter of rules? It's ridiculous, isn't it? If I
got you and Father O'Brien in here and tried to start up a discussion
about the number of angels that can dance on a needle's point, you'd
both think I'd gone off my head. Isn't it, then, just as foolish to
argue about whether a child will be baptized by total immersion or by a
few drops of water sprinkled on the head? Or whether eating meat on
Friday constitutes a sin or not?"

Reverend Fitzgerald had gone white. He had heard no more of Tom's
sentence after the words Father O'Brien.

They are in league with one another, thought Fitzgerald's sick, tired
mind. If they weren't, Makris would never have mentioned his name.

Fitzgerald stood up abruptly, upsetting what was left of his drink. He
ran from the room before Tom could look at him with _that_ look, Father
O'Brien's look. It was a look that recognized a sinner on sight.

You have fallen away, said the look. You have sinned, you have
transgressed, you are doomed.

"Is that you, Fran?" Margaret Fitzgerald's voice called.

Tom went to his door to listen for Fitzgerald's answer, but no voice
spoke. All he could hear was a panting sound, which came from a figure
crouched at the foot of the stairs.




CHAPTER 10


The next morning, when Tom left his apartment to go out, Reverend
Fitzgerald was nowhere to be seen. This was unusual because it was
Saturday, and every Saturday morning found the minister hard at work in
his small flower garden at the side of the house. Tom stood on the front
porch and listened curiously. The town was full of summer morning
sounds. Somewhere a lawn mower was being pushed, and from farther away
came the scrape of roller skates against cement. Very faintly, from
perhaps as far as Depot Street, there came an echo of someone practicing
the chromatic scales on the piano, and from behind Tom, coming from
Reverend Fitzgerald's quarters, there was the uneven chatter of
typewriter keys. All together, thought Tom, a very normal Saturday
morning. But where was Fitzgerald? The sound that was missing was the
clip of the minister's garden shears, as he cut and snipped and pruned.
Tom shrugged and swung down the front steps of the house. It was nothing
that concerned him. If the Congregationalist minister was spending the
morning in cutting out paper dolls that had the shape of a robed Pope,
it was no business of Tom's.

At any other time, in any other place, Tom could and would have gone to
someone in a position of authority and said: "Your minister is ill. He
is in no condition to lead a flock of searching souls, for he has lost
his way. He is ill and needs help," but in Peyton Place, on a sunny
Saturday morning in July, Tom shrugged and walked off down Elm Street.
He had learned the hard way, the wisdom of minding his own business, at
the first town meeting he had attended the year after his arrival in
Peyton Place. At that time, he had attempted to state his opinion on
town zoning. When he had finished speaking, a man had stood up and
looked him up and down.

"You on the voting check list in this town, Mr.--?"

The inquirer had asked his question in a slow drawl, and had let the end
of his question peter out, as if he had forgotten Tom's name.

Then Tom had understood. He had seen that the privilege of outspoken
criticism, the privilege of rectifying a faulty condition, were
privileges allowed only to the older residents, and that by "Older
Residents," Peyton Place meant people whose grandparents had been born
in the town. Tom had laughed at the fact that this was so, but he had
not attempted to criticize or correct again. He contented himself with
observation, and with the realization that he had made two friends at
his first town meeting, Seth Buswell and Matthew Swain.

Now as he passed the building that housed the _Peyton Place Times_, Tom
glanced in through the glass window that was between Seth's office and
the street. Seth was sitting at his desk and sitting next to Seth, in
the visitor's chair, was Allison MacKenzie. She was dressed in a
polished, starched cotton dress, and she was wearing a pair of white
gloves. Wondering, Tom managed a casual wave of his hand to the two in
Seth's office, and continued on his way to the Thrifty Corner.

It would be difficult, he thought, for many people in New York, and
quite a few in Pittsburgh, to believe that Tomas Makris was in love at
last. Not only in love, but kept dangling impossibly by a widow of
thirty-five who had a fifteen-year-old daughter, and who had done him
the favor, in over two years, of sleeping with him perhaps a dozen
times. A widow, moreover, whom he wanted to marry, but who would not
marry him for another two years, if then. Tom smiled. There were men who
would wait forever for the woman of their choice, but he had never been
one of them. There were also men who preferred to wait to claim their
women physically until they were legally married. He had never been one
of those, either. Tom admitted cheerfully, in the idiom of Peyton Place,
that he was hog-tied and completely swozzled. He would wait for Connie
MacKenzie if it took her fifty years to make up her mind.

"That's what I am," he said as he entered the Thrifty Corner.

"What?" laughed Constance MacKenzie, putting down her newspaper and
coming to greet him.

"Hog-tied and completely swozzled," said Tom, and bent down to kiss the
inside of her wrist.

Constance caressed the back of his head with her free hand.

"Nice goings on in a place of business in broad daylight," she whispered
to him.

He could do little things like kissing her finger tips or the inside of
her wrist with a complete naturalness and sincerity that kept them from
seeming planned or contrived. Once, he had kissed the sole of her bare
foot and she had been aroused to the point of powerful and immediate
sexual desire. At first, she had been embarrassed by his unorthodox
expressions of tenderness, for they had reminded her of love scenes in
rather effete novels. They seemed incongruous coming, as they did, from
a man of Tom's size and temperament.

"The trouble with you," he had told her, "is that you got all your ideas
of virile love-making from paper-backed books and Hollywood."

She had laughed and dismissed herself as a fool for being affected by
such gestures as wrist-kissing. She did not laugh now. Her voice grew
husky and she trailed her finger tips over the short, tough hairs at the
back of his neck.

"So am I," she said.

"What?"

"Hog-tied and completely swozzled," she said.

"Enough," he said, releasing her, "or I'll forget that it is the morning
of a business day, and that I am in the women's department of the
Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe. Shoppe, that is, with two _P_'s and an
_E_. Where's the coffee?"

"All made," she said. "I'll get it."

She carried cups and saucers to an empty place on one of the counters,
and Tom went to the room at the back of the store for the coffeepot.
They leaned against the counter and drank coffee and ate doughnuts.

"I saw Allison in Seth's office," said Tom. "What in the world is she
doing there?"

"Don't you remember what you told her months ago?" asked Constance. "You
told her that the best place for a writer to get started was on a
newspaper. She's gone to ask Seth for a job."

Tom laughed. "Well," he said, "the _Peyton Place Times_ wasn't exactly
what I had in mind when I spoke with Allison, but it would do nicely for
a beginning. She has more imagination than I, to even think of going to
Seth. I hope she can talk him into something."

"I don't," said Constance. "Writing social notes for a small-town weekly
wasn't what I had in mind for Allison."

"What did you have in mind, then?"

"Oh," said Constance vaguely, "college, then a good job for a while,
then marriage to a successful man."

"Maybe Allison doesn't want that," said Tom. "I think she has a talent
with words, and I am a firm believer in anyone with a talent working it
for all it's worth."

"It doesn't take much talent to write that Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So
visited Mr. and Mrs. Somebody-or-Other for the week end. That about
covers what Seth puts in his paper."

"It is a beginning," said Tom. "As I said before, Seth's paper wasn't
exactly what I had in mind when I suggested newspaper work to Allison.
But it will do for now."

"I shan't worry about it," said Constance. "She has two years of high
school left. That ought to be enough time for her to get over this
foolishness about writing for a living."

Tom smiled, refraining from telling Constance of a few people he knew to
whom writing for a living was anything but foolishness. "It's Saturday,"
he said. "How about driving down to Manchester for dinner tonight?"

"All right," said Constance. "I won't be able to leave until late,
though. I'll be glad when Selena is well and can come back to work."

"The pleasures of a teacher's life, also those of a teacher's wife,
include a long summer vacation every year. If we were married and you
had given up business, you could come down to Mudgett's Hardware with me
now and feast your eyes on the fishing equipment. I might even buy you a
rod and reel."

"Beat it, laziness," laughed Constance, "before you talk yourself into
something you'll be sorry for."

"I'll pick you up here, at six," he said.

"Fine."

She watched him walk down Elm Street, a tall figure in an open-necked
sports shirt and tan slacks. She wondered, for the millionth time, what
Allison would think about having him for a stepfather, and her mind went
from that to the child who was now sixteen, although she still believed
herself to be only fifteen, and who should know better, at her age, than
to pursue such a flighty course as writing for a living.

In Seth Buswell's office, Allison MacKenzie was feeling far from
flighty. She fidgeted nervously with the zipper closing on the brief
case she had brought with her. After much soul searching and discussion,
she and Kathy Ellsworth had chosen six of what they called, "The Best of
Allison MacKenzie," and Allison had taken the six stories from the brief
case and handed them to the newspaper editor.

Seth leaned back in his chair and pulled at his lower lip while he read.
Allison's stories were thinly disguised portraits of local characters,
and Seth pulled at his lip to hide a smile.

Brother! he thought, would these cause a sensation on my front page!

Allison had written up Miss Hester Goodale as a witch who kept the bones
of her dead lover hidden in her cellar. She had made the Page Girls into
religious fanatics, and turned poor old Clayton Frazier into a lecherous
devil. Leslie Harrington was a dictator who came to a bad end, but
Matthew Swain was a twinkling, determinedly good-natured creature who
devoted his life to Doing Good. Marion Partridge was portrayed as a
bosomy club lady with a secret vice. Marion, according to Allison, took
snuff on the sly.

Brother! thought Seth Buswell, as he set aside the last of Allison's
stories. He cleared his throat and looked at the girl who sat nervously
waiting for his decision.

"What did you have in mind, Allison?" he asked. "You know, don't you,
that I hire a few out of town correspondents for news in different
communities, and that I do all the local stuff myself?"

"I wasn't thinking of writing anything like social items," began
Allison, and Seth heaved a silent sigh of relief. "I was thinking that
perhaps I could write a little story for you every week. There are a lot
of things to write stories about in Peyton Place."

God help my circulation, thought Seth, glancing down at the stories on
his desk.

"What kind of stories?" he asked. "Fiction?"

"Oh, no," said Allison. "Fact stories. About points of interest in the
community, and things like that."

"Did you ever think about a historical type of column?" asked Seth. "You
know, Elm Street as it was fifty years ago, that sort of thing?"

"No, I hadn't thought of it," said Allison, enthusiasm showing in her
voice. "But it's a fine idea. We could call it 'Peyton Place Then and
Now,' and you could put it in a box on the front page."

Nothing reticent about this kid, thought Seth. A box on the front page,
yet!

"We could try it," he said cautiously. "We could run it a few weeks and
see how it goes over."

"Oh, Mr. Buswell!" cried Allison jumping up. "When? When could we
start?"

That tears it, thought Seth. "Write something up this week," he said.
"I'll try it on Friday."

"Oh, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Buswell. I'll start right away. I'll go
home and start thinking up things right now."

"Hold on a minute," said Seth. "Aren't you going to ask me what I'll
pay?"

"Pay?" cried Allison. "You don't have to pay me. I'll do it for nothing
and count it as a privilege."

"That's no way to talk, Allison. If people like your writing, they
should be willing to pay for it. I'll give you two dollars for every
article of yours that I print."

For a moment, Seth was afraid that the child would either burst into
tears or throw up. Her face went white, then pink, then whiter than
before.

"Oh, thank you," she said breathlessly. "Thank you, Mr. Buswell."

"And Allison," called Seth after the figure that was making for his
office door. "It's going to be too hot to write this week end. Wait 'til
Monday. Maybe it will rain before then."

Allison ran out of the building that housed the _Peyton Place Times_ and
ran straight into the figure of Tomas Makris. She would have fallen if
he had not grasped her elbows and steadied her.

"I've got a job," she cried. "I've got a job writing, Mr. Makris. For
money. On the paper!"

Over Allison's head, Tom looked through the window into Seth's office.
The newspaper editor was bent over the stories that Allison had left
behind, and this time he was smiling openly.

"Well," said Tom, looking down into Allison's face that had gone white
again, "that calls for a celebration. Everybody's first job calls for a
celebration. Come on into Prescott's and I'll buy you a Coke."

He led Allison into the drugstore, and her elbow, still cupped in his
hand, trembled. The color was beginning to come back into her face, but
she could not stop chattering.

"A historical type thing," she was saying, "and for money. Just like a
real writer."

Looking at her, in her trembling excitement, Tom felt suddenly very old.

"I was going to start right away, this afternoon," Allison was saying.
"But I'll wait until tomorrow. I promised Norman that I'd go on a picnic
with him this afternoon. Isn't that funny, Mr. Makris? I'd forgotten all
about the picnic until just this minute. I was so excited about the job.
Wait until I tell Norman! He'll just die! Norman writes, too, you know.
Poems. I'll have to hurry. I promised Norman that I'd bring the lunch.
Isn't that crazy? I just remembered about the picnic!"

Foolishness, eh? thought Tom, remembering Constance's remark. When an
adolescent forgets something as romantic as a picnic with another
adolescent in the excitement generated by the thought of writing for
money, it is difficult to regard it as foolishness any longer.

"Thanks for the Coke, Mr. Makris," said Allison, and she was gone, in a
swirl of polished cotton skirts.

Tom put a dime down on Prescott's soda fountain.

Goddamn it, he thought, still feeling old, this waiting has gone on long
enough. I'll talk to her again tonight. Two more years to wait is too
long. Too much wasted time. We're not getting any younger.




CHAPTER 11


Allison ran up the front steps of her house and into the front hall,
letting the screen door slam behind her.

"Nellie!" she called. "Nellie, where are you?"

There was no answer, but Allison heard a rattling from the back of the
house which meant that Nellie was in the kitchen, doing her regular
Saturday morning job of straightening out the cabinets. Allison did not
call out again, but ran up the stairs to her room, unbuttoning her dress
as she went. She changed into a pair of brief shorts and a sleeveless
blouse and, still running, went down to the kitchen.

"Nellie!" she shouted. "Nellie, I've got a job! A job writing. For
money!"

Nellie Cross, on her hands and knees in front of a low kitchen cabinet,
looked up at her.

"Oh, yeah?" she asked, without interest.

"Oh, Nellie," said Allison. "Is it one of your bad days?"

"Same as any other," said Nellie sullenly. "Ain't nobody feels good when
they got nothin' but pus in all their veins."

This was something recent with Nellie, but it disturbed Allison no more
than had some of Nellie's previous ideas. It was just different, and
Allison accepted it calmly. During the last week, Nellie had gone from
cursing Lucas and all other men to believing that she was afflicted with
a strange disease.

"It's the clap," she told Allison, nodding her head sagely. "Lucas give
it to me, just before he run away."

Lucas Cross, Allison knew, had disappeared from Peyton Place a week
before, and his going had caused a flurry of talk in the town for a few
days. The consensus of local opinion was that Lucas' going was good
riddance to bad rubbish, but, to everyone's surprise, Nellie did not go
along with this view. She had gone from cursing Lucas as a sonofabitch
to defending him as a man put upon by the forces of society, wronged by
bad companions and seduced by diseased women.

"I should think you'd be glad to be rid of him," Allison had said when
Nellie told her of Lucas' disappearance. "It would have been better for
you if he had gone long ago."

"He wouldna gone now, except he give me the clap and was ascared I'd
tell on him. I wouldna told on Lucas, not even if them people from the
health department down at Concord was to cut me to pieces. Pus in all my
veins, that's what Lucas left me with. He couldn't help it, poor man. He
caught it off some hoor, that's what he done. He couldn't help it. He
was drunk and forgot himself, is all."

At frequent intervals, the pus in Nellie's veins hardened into lumps
which were very painful, and which caused, Allison had learned in the
past week, what Nellie referred as as "one of her bad days."

"Yep," she replied to Allison's question, "a real bad day. Them lumps is
all through my whole system. I don't know how I'll get through this
day."

"I'm so sorry, Nellie," said Allison, eager to get the conversation back
to herself. "But aren't you surprised about my job?"

"Nope," said Nellie, spreading fresh paper on the floor of the low
cabinet. "I always said you was good at makin' up stories. I ain't
surprised. You want to eat?"

"No. I've got to pack a lunch. Norman and I are going on a picnic."

"Humph," said Nellie.

"What?" demanded Allison sharply.

"Humph," repeated Nellie.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Allison, more sharply than before.

"I mean humph, that's what I mean," said Nellie. "Them Pages, humph.
That Evelyn Page, always so high and mighty. She married Oakleigh
because he was an old man and she thought she'd get his money when he
died. Well, he fooled her. Left her, he did, left her flatter than a
pancake as soon as them girls of his told him to. Evelyn Page never had
nothin' to be high and mighty about. Her husband left her same as mine
left me, 'cept that Oakleigh didn't have no excuse for it, and Lucas
did."

"You stop talking like that, Nellie Cross!" said Allison. "Mrs. Page is
a perfectly fine lady, and it wasn't her fault if Norman's father left
her."

"Fine lady my foot!" snorted Nellie. "Tit-fed that son of hers 'til he
was four years old. That kid had teeth as solid as the ones in your head
right now, and perfectly fine lady Evelyn Page was still nursin' him and
lovin' every minute of it! Old Oakleigh never had teeth like Norman had
at four years old. No wonder perfectly fine lady Evelyn Page hated to
wean that child!"

Allison's face was white and her voice low and furious. "You're a
filthy-minded old woman, Nellie Cross," she said. "You don't only have
pus in your veins, you have it in your brain. It'll make you crazy,
Nellie, that's what it will do. You'll go stark, raving crazy, as crazy
as Miss Hester Goodale, and it'll serve you right for talking so mean
about people."

"Your mother worked hard to raise you right," cried Nellie. "She didn't
raise you to go runnin' out with boys that was tit-fed at four years
old. It ain't right, Allison, for you to be runnin' out with that Page
boy. All them Pages is trash. Plain, dirty, queer trash. Always was."

"I don't even want to talk to you, you crazy old woman," said Allison.
"And I don't want you to say another word about Norman or his family to
me!"

She flounced around the kitchen, slamming pans as she put eggs on to
boil, and banging the refrigerator repeatedly as she took out food to
make sandwiches. When she had finished, she packed everything into a
picnic hamper and ran out of the kitchen, leaving a mess behind for
Nellie to clean up.

Nellie sighed and stood up, staring down at the vein in the bend of her
elbow. It was lumpy. She took one step forward and stopped, putting her
hand to her head. Her fingers searched frantically through her stringy
hair, and at last they found the lump. It was a big lump, as big as an
egg, and it pulsated like a boil.

Crazy. The word burned Nellie's consciousness like hot fat. Crazy. Soon
the lump in her head would burst and spread pus all over her brain and
she would be crazy, just as Allison had said.

Nellie Cross sat down on the floor in the MacKenzie kitchen and began to
whimper.

"Lucas," she whimpered aloud. "Lucas, just you look here and see what
you done."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Allison and Norman pushed their bicycles ahead of them, for it was too
hot to pedal uphill. The bicycles were heavy because the baskets
attached to them were loaded with the picnic hamper, a six-bottle carton
of Coca-Cola, a cotton patchwork quilt, two bathing suits, four towels
and a thick volume entitled, _Important English Poets_. Allison and
Norman pushed and panted, and the July heat rose, shimmering, from the
highway that led away from Peyton Place.

"We should have settled for Meadow Pond," said Norman, pushing his
sunglasses back into place on his nose.

"We wouldn't be able to get near the water at Meadow," said Allison,
raising one hand from her bicycle handle bars to lift the heavy hair
that clung to her damp neck. "Every kid in town will be at Meadow this
afternoon. I'd rather stay home than go there."

"It can't be much farther," said Norman philosophically. "The bend in
the river is exactly one mile beyond the hospital, and we've certainly
come almost that by now."

"It's not much farther," agreed Allison. "We passed the mills ages ago."

After what seemed an eternity in the summer afternoon, they came at last
to the bend in the Connecticut River. Gratefully, they pushed their
bicycles into the shade of the giant trees that grew close to the
water's edge, and sank down on the soft, dry pine needles that covered
the ground.

"I thought we'd never get here," said Allison, puffing out her bottom
lip and blowing at a strand of hair that fell on her forehead.

"Neither did I," said Norman. "It was worth it, though. There isn't
another soul around for miles. Listen to the quiet."

When they had rested, he said, "Let's push our bikes into the woods a
ways. Then no one will be able to see them from the highway, and no one
will know we're here."

"O.K.," said Allison. "There's a place up just a little way. The trees
grow farther back from the water, and there's a sort of sandy beach. You
can't see it from the road."

When they had arrived at the place which Allison had described, they
leaned their bicycles against two trees and began to carry their things
down to the beach. They spread the quilt carefully, and placed the
hamper, the book and the towels on it.

"Shall we swim or eat first?" asked Allison.

"Let's swim," said Norman. "As soon as I get into my suit, I'll put the
Coke underwater to get cold. It's lukewarm now."

"We'll have to change in the woods," commented Allison. "There isn't
anywhere else."

"You go first. I'll wait until you're ready."

When they had both changed into bathing suits, they stood at the edge of
the water, sliding their feet back and forth slowly in the wet sand. It
was dangerous to swim in the river at this point, and they both knew it.
The river was full of rapids and the bottom was covered with jagged
rocks.

"We'll have to be careful," said Norman.

"You go first."

"Let's go together."

Slowly, cautiously, they let themselves into the water, and suddenly the
river did not seem dangerous at all. They began to splash and swim away
from the shore.

"It's good and cold. Icy cold."

"Better than Meadow Pond. That's always warm on hot days."

"Can you still touch bottom?"

"Yes. You?"

"Yes. This is far enough."

"I don't believe this place is dangerous, except in the spring, maybe."

"My foot just scraped against a rock."

"Can you float?"

"Yes. I learned how at camp two years ago."

They stayed in the water until they were chilled, and when they stood on
the shore again, water clung to them in little rainbow-colored drops.
Allison, who swam without a bathing cap, began to towel her hair, and
Norman sat down on the quilt to examine his scraped foot. The sun was
welcome now, beating down on their cold skins and warming them. Allison
sat down next to Norman.

"Do you want to eat?"

"O.K. I'll see if the Coke is cooled off any."

"It should be. That water is like ice."

They munched sandwiches and looked, squinty eyed, across the water where
the sun reflected itself as if in a mirror.

"I don't know why it should," said Norman, "but it always gives me a
funny feeling to look across the river and think that it's Vermont over
there."

"It's like riding in a car and crossing a town line," said Allison. "One
minute you're in Peyton Place and the next you're somewhere else. I
always say it to myself. Now I'm in Peyton Place--and now I'm not. It
always makes me feel funny, just the way sitting here and looking at
Vermont does."

"Are there any more egg sandwiches left, or only ham?"

"I brought four of each. You can have one of mine, if you want. I'd just
as soon have ham."

"I should have brought some potato chips."

"They're always so greasy in the summertime."

"I know it."

"Have a pickle."

"Do you want to swim again?"

"Not until the sun begins to feel hot."

"Are you going to get married when you're old?" asked Norman.

"No. I'm going to have affairs instead."

"What shall we do with all this waxed paper? We can't just leave it
here."

"Put it back in the hamper. I'll throw it away when we get back."

"That's not a very good idea, you know," said Norman. "I read that
affairs are very conducive to maladjustment. Besides, people who have
affairs don't have children."

"Where did you read that?"

"In a book on sex that I sent away for," he said.

"I never read a book that was exclusively about sex. Where did you send
to for it?"

"New York. I saw an ad for it in a magazine. It cost a dollar
ninety-eight."

"Did your mother see it?"

"I guess not! I went to the post office every day for the mail for two
weeks, waiting for that book to come. My mother'd kill me if she ever
thought I was interested in such stuff."

"What else did it say?" asked Allison.

"Oh, it was all about how a man has to have a technique when he makes
love to a woman. That's so she'll like it and not be frigid."

"What's frigid?"

"Women who don't like to make love. A lot of women are like that, this
book says. It makes for maladjustment in marriage."

"Does it tell what to do?" she asked.

"Oh, sure."

"Shall we read for a while?"

"Okay. Shall I, or do you want to?"

"You go ahead. Pick something by Swinburne. I like him the best."

As Norman read aloud from the book, _Important English Poets_, Allison
picked up the sandwich scraps and repacked the hamper. Then she turned
over on her stomach and lay stretched out on the quilt. Norman propped
himself up on his elbows, put on his sunglasses and continued to read
for a while longer. Soon, they both slept.

When they awoke, some of the heat had left the sun and it was four
o'clock. Their bodies were damp with sweat, and they yawned and decided
to swim again. When they had cooled off in the water, they lay side by
side on the cotton quilt.

"I feel good," said Allison, looking at Norman through half-closed eyes.

"So do I."

They rested their sun-warmed, water-cooled, relaxed and well-fed bodies
on the cotton quilt and squinted up at the cloud patterns in the blue,
July sky.

"Someday," said Allison, "I'll write a very famous book. As famous as
_Anthony Adverse_, and then I'll be a celebrity."

"Not me. I'm going to write thin, slim volumes of poetry. Not many
people will know me, but the few who will will say that I am a young
genius."

"I'm going to write about the castle for my first article in the paper."

"How can you write about the castle? You've never been up there."

"I'll make something up."

"You can't make up things to go into a historical article. It has to be
fact, all pure, true fact," said Norman.

"Baloney. _Anthony Adverse_ is a historical novel, and I suppose you
think that isn't made up."

"It's different with a novel. Novels are always made-up stories."

"So are poems."

"Is that when you'll start having affairs? After you write a famous book
and become a celebrity?" asked Norman.

"Yes. I'll have a new affair every week."

"You'll be maladjusted if you do."

"I don't care. Men will be dying for my favors, but I'll be very, very
particular."

"Aren't you ever going to have any children?"

"No. I won't have time," replied Allison.

"That book I was telling you about said that the natural function of the
female body is the bearing of children," said Norman.

"What else did it say?"

"Well, it showed pictures about how women are made. It showed how a
woman has breasts to hold milk, and how she is put together inside to
hold a baby for nine months."

"I wouldn't spend a dollar ninety-eight just to learn that. I knew all
that when I was thirteen. What did it tell about how men are supposed to
make love to women?"

Norman put his arms up behind his head and crossed his legs. He began to
speak as if he were explaining a troublesome problem in algebra to
someone who had no inclination toward mathematics.

"Well," he began, "this book says how all women have certain areas of
their bodies which are known as erotic areas."

"Are they the same for all women?" asked Allison, with the exact tone
she would have used if she had been the dull math student whom Norman
was trying to help.

"Certain ones, yes," said Norman. "But not all. For instance, all women
have erotic areas around their breasts and also around their bodily
orifices."

"Orifices?"

"Openings."

"Like what?"

Norman half turned onto his side and ran the tip of his little finger
around the opening in Allison's ear. Immediately her skin broke out in
duck bumps and she sat up with a jerk.

"Like that," said Norman.

"I see," said Allison, rubbing her left arm with her right hand. She lay
down again next to Norman.

"The area around the opening of the mouth is, of course, the most highly
sensitized of all," said Norman, "except for one other, and that is a
woman's vaginal opening. As I understand it--"

Norman's voice went on, but Allison was no longer listening. She wanted
him to run his finger around the opening in her ear again, and she
wanted him to kiss her the way he had done in the woods at Road's End
the previous Saturday. She was getting angrier and angrier as he went on
talking in his cool, academic voice.

"--And kissing, of course, is the first, or one of the first, overtures
that a good lover makes to a woman."

"Oh, shut up!" cried Allison and jumped to her feet. "Talk, talk, talk.
That's all you know how to do!"

Norman looked up at her, shocked, "But, Allison," he said, "you asked
me, didn't you?"

"I didn't ask you to quote the whole damned book, word for word, did I?"

"You don't have to swear at me, do you? You asked me and I was telling
you. There's no reason in the world for swearing, is there?"

"Oh, shut up," said Allison. "Some boys I know," she lied, "don't have
to explain to a girl what wonderful lovers they are. They show her."

"What boys?" demanded Norman, thereby calling her bluff.

"I don't have to tell you anything, Norman Page. Not a single thing."

He reached out and grasped her ankle. "What boys?" he asked.

Allison sat down and Norman sat up. "Oh, forget it," she said. "Nobody
you know, anyway."

"Tell me," he said. "I'd like to know who some of these wonderful lovers
of yours are."

"I won't tell."

"You can't, that's why. You don't know any. You're a liar."

Allison whirled toward him and slapped him. "Don't you dare call me a
liar," she shouted.

He grasped her two wrists and forced her down on the blanket. "You're a
liar," he said, looking her straight in the face. "You're a liar, and
because you slapped me, I'm not going to let you up until you admit it."

Allison capitulated at once. "I made it up," she said, not looking at
him. "You're the only boy who ever kissed me, except for Rodney
Harrington, and that was so long ago that it doesn't count. I'm sorry I
slapped you."

Norman released her wrists, but continued to lean over her, his hands
resting on the quilt on either side of her body.

"Would you like me to kiss you again?" he asked.

Allison felt her face redden. "Yes," she said. "Except that I don't like
for you to ask me, Norman. For anything."

He kissed her gently, and Allison wanted to burst into tears of
frustration. That wasn't the way she wanted to be kissed at all.

"It's getting late," said Norman. "We ought to be starting back."

"I suppose so," replied Allison.

Later, as they were pedaling slowly down the highway toward Peyton
Place, a convertible, with the top down, passed them.

"Get a horse!" yelled the voice of Rodney Harrington from the speeding
car.

"Smart guy," said Norman.

"I suppose so," said Allison, but she was thinking, resentfully, that at
thirteen Rodney had known more about kissing than Norman knew at
fifteen.




CHAPTER 12


Rodney Harrington laughed out loud as he caught a last glimpse of
Allison MacKenzie and Norman Page in his rear-vision mirror. The two of
them were pedaling for all they were worth, worried, perhaps, about
being late for supper. It was too bad that they were riding bikes
instead of walking. If they had been on foot Rodney would have offered
them a lift in his car. It made him feel good to drive other kids around
in his car. None of them ever said anything, but Rodney knew that every
last one of them sat in his leather-upholstered seats and wished that
they had cars exactly like his. Rodney laughed out loud and wondered
what Allison and Norman had been doing so far away from home. Maybe they
had stopped off in the woods for a private party. At that thought,
Rodney laughed so hard that he almost hit the ditch with his new car.

"I feel good!" he exclaimed to the world at large, and sounded his
automobile horn in the classic da-da-da-dada, dum, dum.

Why shouldn't he feel good? he asked himself. He had just been to the
mill to hit the old man up for ten bucks, he had a swell car, and he was
on his way to meet Betty Anderson. Who the hell wouldn't feel good?

"Don't spend it all in one place," Leslie Harrington had told his son,
handing him the ten dollars and giving him a broad wink. "There's not a
one of 'em worth over two dollars."

Rodney had laughed with his father. "You're telling me?" he had replied.

His father had clapped him on the back and told him to go on and have
fun.

Rodney smiled to himself as he drove his car down Elm Street, doing
forty in a twenty-five-mile zone. All the crap people dished out about
motherless boys was a laugh, as far as he was concerned. He hadn't even
a vague memory of his mother. All he knew of her was what he could see
in a blurry photograph which his father kept on his bureau. She had been
a rather pale and thin-looking character, with a lot of brown hair done
up high on her head. Her mouth looked straight and tight, in the
picture, and Rodney had never been able to imagine her as married to his
father. All he knew about her, and all he cared to know, was that her
name had been Elizabeth, and that she had died giving birth to her son
at the age of thirty. Rodney had never missed his mother. He and the old
man got along swell. They understood each other. They bached it very
successfully, in the big house on Chestnut Street, with the help of Mrs.
Pratte, who served as cook and general housekeeper. That crap that
people put in books, about motherless boys, was just that. Crap. He, for
one, was extremely grateful that he had no mother to put up with, always
nagging him about something. He had heard too many fellows complain
about their own mothers not to be grateful that his own was safely
buried. He liked that _status quo_. Him and the old man, and old Pratte
handy whenever either of the Harringtons wanted anything.

At sixteen, Rodney Harrington had not changed substantially from the boy
he had been at fourteen. He was an inch or so taller, which made him
five feet eight now, and he had filled out a bit with the result that he
looked more than ever like his father. Other than that, Rodney was
unchanged. His hair, which he wore just a trifle too long, was still
black and curly, and his heavy mouth still showed a lack of discipline
and self-control. There were a few people in Peyton Place who said that
it was too late for Rodney Harrington. He would always be just what he
had always been--the indulged only child of a rich widowered father.
They cited his expulsion from the New Hampton School for Boys as proof
of what they said. New Hampton, which had attempted to teach Rodney, had
ended by expelling him for laziness and insubordination after two years
of trying. New Hampton had a good reputation, and had succeeded in the
past, where other schools had failed with other problem youngsters, but
it had been unable to leave its mark on Rodney Harrington. Apparently,
the only thing that Rodney had learned while away at school was that all
boys of good family had had sexual intercourse with girls before
reaching prep school age, and those who had not were either fairies or
material for the priesthood. Rodney had learned quickly, and by the time
he had been at New Hampton for less than a year he could outtalk the
best of them. According to Rodney, he had deflowered no less than nine
maidens in his own home town before reaching the age of fifteen, and he
had almost been shot twice by the irate husband with whose wife he had
carried on a passionate affair for six months.

Rodney had the sensual good looks, the money and the glib tongue to make
himself believed. He had been considered quite a man among men by the
time he was kicked out of New Hampton. Even his own father believed him,
although he made his stories much weaker for Leslie, and named
fictitious girls from White River as the heroines of his tales. Rodney
had told his stories of successful seduction so often, to so many
different people, that most of the time he could believe them himself.
Actually he had never had a sexual experience in his life, and at times
when the truth smote him, he felt as if someone had flung a glass of
cold water in his face for no reason. The frightening thought that he
would not know how to go about completing the act, if he ever once had
the chance to get started, affected him like the sun going behind a
cloud on a hot day. It left him chilled, and lent a dreary aspect to his
otherwise cheerful world. What horrified him the most about the truth
was not the possible personal humiliation to himself, but that the girl
with whom he failed might talk. Whenever Rodney thought of what his many
friends would say if they ever discovered that he had been spinning
fantasies, and that he was, in reality, as inexperienced as a
seven-year-old, he turned cold with horror.

He was thinking along this depressing line now, as he swung his car into
Ash Street which was a narrow, tumble-down street in the neighborhood
where the mill hands lived. He pulled up smartly in front of the
Anderson house and sounded his horn with a bravado he was far from
feeling. Determinedly, he made the effort to shrug off his fears, and
for Rodney Harrington the shaking off of depression or fear had never
been a difficulty.

What the hell? he thought, and the sun came back out from behind its
dark cloud. What the hell? He had money to spend, a car to get around
in, and a pint of rye whisky in the glove compartment. What the hell?
He'd know what to do if he ever got old Betty to take her pants off.
He'd heard it described enough times, hadn't he? He'd described it
enough times himself, hadn't he? What the hell? He had not only talked
and heard about it, he had read books about it and seen pictures of it.
What the hell was he worried about?

Betty strolled down the short walk in front of her house, undulating her
hips fully, as she had seen a musical comedy queen do in a movie the
week before. She moved slowly toward Rodney's car.

"Hi, kid," she said.

She was exactly one year and fourteen days younger than he, but she
unfailingly called him kid. Tonight she wore a pair of tight green
shorts and a small yellow halter. As always, whenever he looked at her,
Rodney felt his speech thicken in his throat. The only way he could
explain his reaction to Betty was to say that it was just like the way
it had been when he was small and old Pratte had let him watch her make
pudding. One minute, there was the liquid in the pan, so thin and runny
that you thought it would never be any other way, and in the very next
minute the stuff turned thick and syrupy, so that old Pratte really had
to work to get a spoon through the mess. That was the way he was about
Betty. Like pudding. Until he saw her, his mind was clear and cool and
liquid, but the minute she leaned over the car door and said, "Hi, kid,"
his speech thickened, his eyes grew heavy lidded, and he struggled to
pull breath through the syrupy mass in his chest.

"Hi," he said.

"It's too hot to get all dressed up to go somewhere," said Betty. "I
just want to go for a ride and stop at a drive-in to eat."

Rodney was wearing a shirt and sports jacket because he had planned to
take her to a restaurant and then somewhere to dance, but he capitulated
without a murmur.

"Sure," he said.

Without another word, Betty opened the car door and flopped into the
seat next to him.

"Why don't you take off that coat?" she demanded crossly. "It makes me
hot and itchy all over just to look at you."

Rodney immediately took off his coat and put it on the back seat. From
the Anderson house, two sullen, tired faces watched him as he put the
convertible into gear and roared off down Ash Street. As soon as Rodney
had turned the corner, Betty wiggled her fingers at him and he passed
her his cigarettes.

"How come you couldn't go out with me last night?" he asked.

"I had other things to do," replied Betty coolly. "Why?"

"I just wondered. Seems funny to me that you have time for me only a
couple of times a week, that's all."

"Listen, kid," she said. "I don't have to account to you or anybody like
you for my time. Get it?"

"Don't get sore. I was just wondering."

"If it'll make you feel any better, I went dancing last night. Marty
Janowski took me over to White River and we went to the China Dragon to
eat and dance. Any more questions?"

Rodney knew that he should keep quiet, but he could not let it go at
that. "What did you do after?" he asked.

"Went parking over at Silver Lake," replied Betty without hesitation.
"Why?"

"I just wondered. Have fun?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. Marty's a swell dancer."

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

"I mean after. Parking."

"Yes I did, if it's any of your business."

"What did you do?" asked Rodney, not wanting to hear but unable to keep
himself from asking.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," said Betty disgustedly. "Find a drive-in, will
you? I'm starved. We mill hands are used to getting our supper at
five-thirty. We're not like high mucky muck mill owners who have
servants to give them dinner at eight."

"I'll stop at the next one," said Rodney. "Listen, Betty. I don't think
it's right for you to go parking with Marty Janowski."

"What!" The word was not so much a question as an exclamation of rage.

"I don't think it's right for you to go parking with Marty Janowski. Not
after I've asked you a thousand times to be my girl."

"Turn this car around and take me home," demanded Betty. "At once."

Rodney stepped on the gas and kept going. "I won't let you out until you
promise not to fool around with Marty any more," he said doggedly.

"I didn't tell you to let me out," said Betty furiously. "I told you to
turn around and take me home."

"If you don't want to go for a ride with me," said Rodney, hating
himself for not keeping his mouth shut, "I'll stop the car right here
and you can walk back."

"All _right_," said Betty. "You just stop and let me out. I won't have
to walk far, I'll guarantee you that. The first car that comes along
with a good-looking fellow in it is the car I'll stick out my thumb for.
I don't come from a mill-owning family. I don't mind hitchhiking one
damned bit. Now let me out."

"Aw, come on, Betty," pleaded Rodney. "Don't be mad. I wouldn't let you
out on the highway like that. Come on, don't be mad."

"I am mad. Damned good and mad. Who do you think you are, telling me who
I can go out with, and who I can't?"

"I didn't mean anything. I just got jealous for a minute, that's all. I
have asked you, thousands of times, to be my girl. It makes me jealous
to think of you with another fellow, that's all."

"Well keep it to yourself from now on," ordered Betty. "I don't take
orders from anybody. Besides, why should I be your girl and go steady
with you? When you go away to school next fall, I'd be left high and
dry. It's hard for a girl to get back in circulation after she's gone
steady for a while."

"I thought that maybe you liked me better than anyone else," said
Rodney. "I like you better than any other girl. That's why I want to go
steady with you."

Betty's expression softened a trifle. "I like you all right, kid," she
said. "You're O.K."

"Well, then?"

"I'll think it over."

Rodney turned into a drive-in and a spurt of gravel flew up from behind
one of his rear wheels.

"Would you go parking at Silver Lake with me?" he asked.

"I might," she said, "if you'd hurry up and feed me. I want a couple of
cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake and a side of French fries."

Rodney got out of the car. "Will you?" he asked.

"I said I might, didn't I?" said Betty impatiently. "What more do you
want, a written agreement?"

Much later, after they had eaten and the night had turned thoroughly
dark, Rodney drove around Silver Lake. It was Betty who showed him one
of the good parking places. When he had cut the motor and turned off the
lights, the humid night closed in on them like a soggy black blanket.

"God, it's hot," complained Betty.

"There's a bottle in the glove compartment," said Rodney, "and I bought
some ginger ale at the drive-in. A good drink will cool you off."

He mixed two drinks quickly and expertly, by the dashboard light. They
were warm and tasted vaguely of the paper cups which contained them.

"Whew!" said Betty, and spit a mouthful of the warm, strong drink over
the low car door. "Jeez! What swill!"

"It takes getting used to," commented Rodney, suddenly feeling very
man-of-the-world. If there was one thing he knew, it was good liquor and
the drinking of it. "Take another sip," he suggested. "It grows on you."

"To hell with that," said Betty. "I'm going in for a swim."

"Did you bring a suit?"

"What's the matter with you, anyway? Haven't you ever been swimming in
the raw with a girl?"

"Sure, I have," lied Rodney. "Dozens of times. I was just asking if
you'd brought a suit is all."

"No, I didn't bring a suit," mimicked Betty. "Are you coming?"

"Of course," said Rodney, hurriedly finishing his drink.

Before he could get his shirt unbuttoned, Betty had shed her shorts and
halter and was running, naked, down the beach toward the water. When
Rodney reached the water's edge, feeling very naked and more than a
little foolish, Betty was nowhere to be seen. He inched himself slowly
into the water, and when he had waded in as far as his waist, she was
suddenly beside him. Her head emerged silently from the water, and she
spit a stream straight into the middle of his back. He fell forward and
when he came up, Betty was standing up and laughing at him. He tried to
catch her, but she swam away from him, laughing, taunting, calling him
names.

"Wait 'til I get you," he called to her. "You've got to come out sooner
or later, and I'll be right here waiting."

"Don't let your teeth chatter," she yelled, "or I'll be able to find you
in the dark."

As it turned out, he did not catch her. A few minutes later the blatant
sound of his horn rang out in the dark, and he started violently.

"I've had enough," shouted Betty from the car.

Goddamn it. Rodney cursed savagely. He had planned to catch her and
throw her down in the sand and roll her around good, feeling her,
touching her. He had never been close to her when she was completely
undressed before, and now, goddamn it, she had gone and beat him to the
car. She must have eyes like a cat to find her way around in this
moonless dark. He stumbled several times before he finally discerned the
bulk of his automobile up ahead of him.

Betty waited while he stumbled again and nearly fell. She waited until
he was directly in front of the car, and then she turned on the head
lights. Her hoot of laughter filled the night, and Rodney was only too
painfully aware of the ridiculous picture he must make as he stood and
stared like a startled animal and tried to cover himself with his hands.

"You bitch!" he shouted, but she was laughing so hard that she did not
hear him.

He made his way to the car and grabbed for his trousers, cursing her
silently while she laughed.

"Oh, Rod!" she cried, and went off into another spasm of laughter. "Oh,
Rod! What a picture to put on a postcard and send home to Mother!"

Rodney got into the car, clad only in his trousers, and immediately
pressed the starter. The car's powerful motor roared to life, and Betty
reached over and turned off the ignition.

"What's the matter, honey," she asked softly, running her finger tips
over his bare chest. "You mad, honey?"

Rodney exhaled his breath sharply. "No," he said, "I guess not."

"Kiss me, then," she said, prettily petulant. "Kiss me to show me you
aren't mad."

With something that was almost a sob, Rodney turned to her. This was the
thing he could never understand about Betty. For hours, she could act as
if the last thing she wanted was for him to touch her. She could make
him feel as if she did not even like him particularly, but the minute he
kissed her she began to make small sounds in her throat and her body
twisted and turned against him as if she could not get enough of his
kisses. This was the moment he waited for every time he saw her. It made
everything else bearable, from the way she taunted him with her other
boy friends to the way she teased him by pretending not to like him.

"Quick!" she said. "Down on the beach. Not here."

She ran ahead of him, and he followed, carrying the car robe. Before he
could get the blanket smooth on the soft sand, she was lying down,
holding her arms out to him.

"Oh, baby, baby," he said. "I love you. I love you so."

She nibbled hungrily at his lower lip. "Come on, honey," she said, and
her body moved ceaselessly. "Come on, honey. Love me a little."

His fingers found the tie of her halter, and in less than half a minute
the garment lay on the sand next to the blanket. Betty's back arched
against his arm as she thrust her breasts up to him. This was not new to
Rodney. She let him do this often, but it never failed to arouse him to
near frenzy. Her nipples were always rigid and exciting and the full,
firm flesh around them always hot and throbbing.

"Come on, honey," she whimpered. "Come on, honey," and his mouth and
hands covered her. "Hard," she whispered. "Do it hard, honey. Bite me a
little. Hurt me a little."

"Please," murmured Rodney against her skin. "Please. Please."

His hand found the V of her crotch and pressed against it.

"Please," he said. "Please."

It was at this point that Betty usually stopped him. She would put both
her hands in his hair and yank him away from her, but she did not stop
him now. Her tight shorts slipped off as easily as if they had been
several sizes too large, and her body did not stop its wild twisting
while Rodney took off his trousers.

"Hurry," she moaned. "Hurry. Hurry."

For only a moment, Rodney was panicky, and after that he did not care,
not even when she had to help him. For less than a moment he wondered if
all the stories he had read and heard and told about virgins could be
wrong. Betty did not scream in pain or beg him to stop hurting her. She
led him without a fumble, and her hips moved quickly, expertly. She did
not cry out at all. She moaned deep in her throat the way she did when
he kissed her, and the only word she uttered was, "Hurry. Hurry. Hurry."

After that, Rodney did not notice what she did or said. He was lost in
her, drowning in her, and he did not think at all. In a very few minutes
he lay shivering on the blanket next to her, and her voice seemed to be
coming from very far away.

"Smart guy," she was hissing at him. "Smart guy who knew all about it.
So smart he doesn't even know enough to wear a safe. Get me home, you
dumb jackass. Quick!"

But, unfortunately, Rodney did not get her home quickly enough, or her
douche was not strong enough, or, as Rodney was inclined to believe, the
Fates were out to foul him up good. It was five weeks later, during the
third week of August, when Betty faced him with the worst.

"I'm a month overdue."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm pregnant, smart guy."

"But how can you tell so soon?" stammered Rodney.

"I was supposed to come around the week after we were at the lake. That
was five weeks ago," said Betty tonelessly.

"What are we going to do?"

"We're going to get married, that's what. Nobody's sticking me with a
kid and then running out on me, like that bastard from White River did
to my sister."

"Married! But what will my father say?"

"That's for you to find out, smart guy. Ask him."




CHAPTER 13


Leslie Harrington was not a worrier, for he had discovered as a young
man that worry is profitless. Early in life, Leslie had learned the best
way of beating any problem. Whenever one presented itself, instead of
spending hours in futile, squirrel-in-a-cage worry, he would sit down
and list on paper all the possible solutions to the problem at hand.
When his list was as complete as he could make it, he was able to choose
a good, sensible solution which was, more often than not, advantageous
to him. This system had never failed him. If it had, he would have
discarded it at once and searched for another, for Leslie Harrington
could not stand to be bested by anyone or anything. He had never been
curious enough to wonder why this was so. It was simply a facet of his
personality and he took it as much for granted as he did the shape of
his skull. He could not bear to lose, and that was the end of it. On the
few occasions when he had lost, he had been physically ill for days and
mentally depressed for weeks, but even these bad times served a purpose.
In the painful wake which followed a loss, he had time to figure out the
reasons why he had not won, and to strengthen the weaknesses which had
caused him to lose. At fifty, Leslie Harrington could, and often did,
say with pride that he had never suffered the same loss twice.

As a small child, Leslie had thrown himself to the floor in screaming
tantrums of rage on the few occasions when his mother or father beat him
at a game of lotto or old maid. His parents had adjusted quickly to this
twist in their son, and as soon as they had, Leslie never lost another
game of any kind when he played with them. Later, he had discovered that
it was possible to win at practically anything if one could cheat
successfully and well. He had become the star of his basketball team at
school as soon as he had learned to knee and elbow so well that the
referees could not catch him, and he had graduated as valedictorian of
his class after four years of carrying notes on his shirt cuffs and thin
tubes of paper in the hollow half of his fountain pen. Leslie Harrington
was voted most likely to succeed by his classmates, and this was not the
mockery it might have been. It was extremely likely that Leslie would
succeed, for he felt he must where others would merely have liked to
enjoy the rewards of success. To Leslie Harrington, success was not the
vague word of many meanings which it was to a majority of his
intellectual classmates. In his mind the word was crisp, sharp and
clearly defined. It meant money, the biggest house in town and the best
car. But most of all it meant what Leslie termed "being the boss." That
he would "be boss" at the Cumberland Mills was a foregone conclusion.
The mills had been started by his grandfather and enlarged by his
father, and the "boss" chair in the factory offices was cut to fit
Leslie, the third generation owner. It was, of course, not enough. What
Leslie really wanted was to be boss of the world, and while he wisely
limited himself to his mills, his home and his town, he never lost sight
of his larger desire.

At the age of twenty-five, Leslie decided to marry Elizabeth Fuller, a
tall, slim girl who had the aristocratic look which sometimes comes
after generations of inbreeding. At the time when Leslie set out to
marry her, Elizabeth had been engaged to Seth Buswell for over a year.
The obstacles between Leslie and Elizabeth were of a number and caliber
to excite any man who loved a contest which he was sure of winning, and
Leslie knew that he would win. He had only to look at Elizabeth, sweet,
young and as pliant as a green willow branch, and he knew. The obstacles
in his path consisted of her family, Seth and Seth's family and the
Harrington family, and there was not a soul among them who thought that
marrying Elizabeth was the wise thing for Leslie to do. He had beaten
them all and he had won Elizabeth, and in less than ten years he had
killed her. In eight years, Elizabeth Harrington miscarried eight times
in the third month of each pregnancy, and after every time Dr. Matthew
Swain and several Boston specialists to whom Leslie dragged his frail,
tired wife, told him that she could not survive another. It was
impossible, they said, for Elizabeth to carry a child full term, and
none of them realized that with that word, "impossible," they had
changed what had been a desire for a son and heir in Leslie to an
obsession. When Elizabeth became pregnant in the ninth year of her
marriage, Leslie hired a doctor and two nurses from White River. The
three of them moved into the Harrington house, put Elizabeth to bed and
kept her there for nine months. When she was delivered of a
black-haired, red-faced, nine-and-one-half-pound son, Elizabeth lived
long enough to hear him cry once. She died several minutes before one of
the nurses from White River had had time to clean the baby and put him
at his mother's side. When Leslie held his son for the first time, his
triumph had been greater than any he had ever known, and it did not
horrify him that this time the obstacle in the path of his desire had
been his wife.

As the years passed, Leslie continued to "boss" his mills and his town,
but he did not "boss" his son. This, too, was of his own choosing. It
pleased him when he saw reflected in Rodney the traits which were his.

"Got gumption, that kid has," Leslie often said. "There's not a trace of
the weak-kneed Fullers in him."

In this, Leslie Harrington was badly mistaken, for Rodney was weak in
the terrible, final way in which only those who are protected and
surrounded by powerful externals are weak. Rodney never had to be
strong, for strength was all around him, ready-made to protect and
shield him. Nor was Rodney driven by a compulsion to succeed as was his
father. True, he liked to win well enough, but not to the extent that he
would fight and struggle to win, especially if his opponents happened to
be his physical match. Before he was ten years old, Rodney knew that
there was nothing worth winning that involved effort, for without effort
he could win anything he wanted from his father. He had merely to ask
or, later, to hold out his hand, and whatever he wanted was his. Yet
Rodney was not a fool. He knew that it was politic for him to please his
father whenever he could, especially when it involved no sacrifice on
his part. Thus, when he had been younger and his father had wanted him
to associate with "nice" children, Rodney had done so. It made no
difference to him. He could be King anywhere. And later, when his father
had wanted him to go to New Hampton, Rodney had gone willingly. He hated
school anyway, so it did not matter to him where he went. When he was
expelled, he had not been afraid to come home and face his father.

"I got bounced, Dad," he said.

"What the hell for?"

"Too much drinking and girling, I guess."

"Well, for Christ's sake!"

Leslie had gone at once to the headmaster at New Hampton and told him
what he thought of a school that tried to prevent a youngster from
sowing a few wild oats.

"I'm paying you to teach him a few academic courses," Leslie had
shouted, "not to worry about what he does with his free time. I'll worry
about that."

But Leslie Harrington had never been a worrier. It was stupid and
profitless. He certainly did not worry about his son, for there was no
scrape that Rodney could possibly get into that his father could not
fix. It was natural for a healthy, red-blooded boy to get into a few
scrapes. Leslie said often that he wouldn't give a nickel for a boy who
didn't get into a fix now and then. He had a fine relationship with his
son, who was a normal, healthy, good-looking boy. He and his son were
pals, chums, and while they respected one another in the way good
friends would, there were no binding father-and-son strings attached to
their relationship.

"Apron strings are for women," Leslie told Rodney often, so that when he
was still very young, Rodney learned to love his life in the womanless
house on Chestnut Street.

For all these reasons, Rodney, at sixteen, was not in the least afraid
of his father. When he asked Betty Anderson what she thought his father
would say about the trouble she was in, it was not fear which prompted
him but, rather, a curious desire to know.

When Rodney left Betty Anderson on the night she told him she was
pregnant, he went at once to his father. Leslie was sitting in the house
on Chestnut Street in the room designated as "The Study." The walls of
this room were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves containing
books in handsome, leather-bound sets, none of which had ever been read.
The books had been bought by Leslie's father for decorative purposes and
Leslie had inherited them along with the rest of the house. Twice a
week, old Pratte dusted the book spines with an attachment which she
hooked up to the vacuum cleaner. Leslie was seated at a table in front
of a book-lined wall, doing a jigsaw puzzle.

"Hi, Dad," said Rodney.

"Hello, Rod," said Leslie.

The conversation which ensued after this exchange might have shocked and
surprised an outsider, but it held neither of these elements for the two
participants. Rodney flopped down into a leather-upholstered chair and
flung his legs over the wide arm, while Leslie continued to work on the
jigsaw puzzle.

"There's this girl down on Ash Street who claims I knocked her up."

"Who's that?"

"Betty Anderson."

"John Anderson's girl?"

"Yes. The youngest one."

"How far gone is she?"

"She says a month, although I don't see how she can know for sure so
soon."

"There are ways."

"She wants me to marry her."

"What do you want?"

"I don't want to."

"O.K. I'll take care of it. You want a drink?"

"O.K."

The two Harringtons sipped whisky and soda, the father's drink only
slightly stronger than the son's, and talked about baseball until eleven
o'clock when Rodney said that he guessed he'd take a shower and go to
bed.

On the following Monday morning, Leslie Harrington sent for John
Anderson who worked as a loom fixer in the Cumberland Mills. Anderson
entered Leslie's pine-paneled, wall-to-wall carpeted office with his cap
in his hand and stood in front of Leslie's desk shuffling his feet.

"You got a daughter named Betty, John?"

"Yes, sir."

"She's pregnant."

John Anderson sat down on a leather chair without being asked. His cap
fell on the floor.

"She's going around saying my son did it, John."

"Yes, sir."

"I don't like that kind of talk, John."

"No, sir."

"You've worked for me a long time, John, and if you're having trouble at
home I'd like to help you."

"Thank you, sir."

"Here's a check, John. It's for five hundred dollars. There's a note
attached to it on which I've written the name of a close-mouthed doctor
from White River, so that your daughter can get rid of her package. Five
hundred will be more than enough, with a little bonus for you in the
bargain, John."

John Anderson stood up and retrieved his cap. "Thank you, sir," he said.

"Do you like working for me, John?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's all, John. You can go back to work now."

"Thank you, sir."

When John Anderson had left, Leslie sat down at his desk and lit a
cigar. He buzzed his secretary to find out if his coffee was ready.

That same afternoon, Betty Anderson who had not only the morals but the
claws of an alley cat, stormed her way past Leslie's secretary and into
Leslie's office. Her face bore the marks of her father's rage, and her
mouth was still twisted with the filthy names she had called Rodney. She
flung Leslie's check down on his desk.

"You're not buying me off that cheap, Mr. Harrington," she screamed.
"It's Rodney's kid I'm carrying, and Rodney's going to marry me."

Leslie Harrington picked up the check the girl had flung. He did not
speak.

"Rodney's going to marry me or I'll go to the police. They give a guy
twenty years for bastardy in this state, and I'll see to it that he
serves every single day of it unless he marries me."

Leslie buzzed for his secretary. "Bring my checkbook, Esther," he said,
and Betty flounced to a chair, a smile of satisfaction on her bruised
lips.

When the secretary had come and gone, Leslie sat down at his desk and
began to write.

"You know, Betty," he said, as he wrote, "I don't think you really want
to bring Rodney to court. If you did that, I'd have to call in a few
boys as witnesses against you. Do you know how many witnesses it takes
to testify against a girl and have her declared a prostitute in this
state? Only six, Betty, and I employ a great many more than six men in
the mills." Leslie tore the new check from his book with a crisp rip. He
looked at Betty and smiled, extending the check. "I don't think you want
to take Rodney to court, do you, Betty?"

Beneath the red bruises, Betty's face was white and still.

"No, sir," she said, and took the check from Leslie's hand.

With her back to him, on her way to the door, she glanced down at the
paper in her hand. It was a check made out to her father for two hundred
and fifty dollars. She whirled and looked at Leslie Harrington, who
still smiled and who looked right back at her.

"Half of two fifty is one twenty-five," he said quietly. "That's what
it'll cost you to come back again, Betty."

That night, Leslie and Rodney Harrington ate an early dinner so that
they could make the first show at the movie theater at White River. They
went in Rodney's convertible, with the top down, because it gave the kid
a big kick to drive people around in his car.




CHAPTER 14


The gossip about Betty Anderson was like a candy bar in the hands of
children. That is, it was not allowed to linger overlong at any one pair
of lips before it was passed on quickly to another. The talk was started
on its way by Walter Barry, a hollow-chested young man who worked as a
teller at the Citizens' National Bank. It was to Walter that John
Anderson presented his check from Leslie Harrington. Walter looked at
the check curiously and immediately decided that something was up.
Something being up was Walter's favorite phrase. It had connotations of
mystery and intrigue otherwise missing in the circumspect Irish Catholic
life which he shared with his aged mother and his brother Frank. Walter
decided that something was up because his brother Frank worked as a
foreman at the mills, and Frank had mentioned nothing at home about John
Anderson receiving a bonus in the huge amount of two hundred and fifty
dollars. At first, Walter, who was a reader of murder mysteries, was
struck by the thought that John Anderson was blackmailing Leslie
Harrington for some dark, mysterious reason, but no sooner was this
thought formed than his face reddened. The idea of anyone blackmailing
Harrington was ridiculous. Walter smiled nervously as he counted out two
hundred and fifty dollars in bills for John Anderson.

"That's a lot of money, John," said Walter as casually as he could. "You
planning to take a little vacation?"

John Anderson had a favorite phrase, too. His was that he, John
Anderson, was nobody's fool, not by a damsight. He had expected
questions at the bank, friendly, probing questions, but questions,
nevertheless, which would demand answers. John Anderson had come
prepared. It was not his fault that he had been born in Stockholm, a
large, cosmopolitan city, and that in thirty years he had not learned
the devious art of living in a small town in America.

"No vacation for me," said John Anderson. "The money's for my daughter
Betty. She goes for a while to make a visit with her aunt in Vermont."
John had lived in northern New England for thirty years. He pronounced
it ahnt. "This aunt is sister to my wife. Old sister, and sick now.
Betty goes to take care of her for a while. Mr. Harrington fine man. He
loans Anderson money to send Betty to take care of sick aunt."

"Oh," said Walter Barry. "That's a shame, John. Will Betty be gone
long?"

"No," said poor John Anderson who was nobody's fool, "not very long."

"I see," said Walter pleasantly. "Well, here you are, John. Two hundred
and fifty dollars."

"Thank you," said John and walked out of the bank, secure in the
knowledge that he had done very well with the inspired story of Betty
and her maiden aunt in Vermont. He had even had the name of a specific
place in Vermont picked out, in case anyone should ask. Rutland, he
would say. That was far enough away to be safe. John Anderson did not
know anyone in Peyton Place who had ever been as far away from home as
Rutland, Vermont.

Walter Barry waited until the revolving door into which John Anderson
had stepped was empty. Then he went immediately to Miss Soames who
worked two cages to the left of Walter's.

"Did you hear about Betty Anderson?" he asked. "Gone to visit a maiden
aunt in Vermont."

The lenses of Miss Soames's gold-rimmed glasses gleamed. "You don't
say!" she exclaimed.

All this took place between twelve and one o'clock in the afternoon, for
John Anderson had come into the bank on his lunch hour. By five o'clock
of this same afternoon, the word had fallen on the ears of people who
remembered Betty's bruised face of the day before. It fell on the ears
of Pauline Bryant, who was the sister of Esther Bryant who was secretary
to Leslie Harrington. Pauline, who worked as a clerk in Mudgett's
Hardware Store, telephoned to Esther, and Esther, proud of being the
only one who was really in the know, as she put it, gladly related the
true story about Betty Anderson. That evening, the true story about
Betty Anderson was served, along with the meat and potatoes, at every
supper table in Peyton Place. Allison MacKenzie heard it from her
mother, who used it as a sort of hammer with which to drive home her
reasons for chastity in young girls.

"You see what happens," said Constance MacKenzie, "when a girl lets some
fellow paw her. The result is what happened to Betty Anderson. That is
the way cheap behavior pays off. In trouble."

A few hours later, Allison and Kathy Ellsworth sat, tailor fashion, on
Allison's bed.

"Did you hear about Betty Anderson?" asked Allison.

"Yes," replied Kathy, who was dreamily brushing her hair. "My father
told us at supper."

"Don't you think it's just awful?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think it would be sort of exciting to have a child
by one's lover."

Allison rubbed cold cream into her throat with firm, upward motions as
she had learned to do from an illustrated article in a women's magazine.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be shipped off to Vermont to live
with a maiden aunt while my baby was being born."

"Neither would I," agreed Kathy. "Do you suppose Rodney was a good
lover?"

"I suppose so. He's had enough experience. Norman was telling me about
this book he read. It said in this book that knowledge alone would not
make a good lover. It takes experience as well."

"Rodney had that all right. I think he should have married Betty, don't
you?"

"No. Why should he? People who have affairs should be intelligent enough
to cope with them. Marriage is for clods, and if you go and get married
the way you plan, Kathy, that will be the end of your artistic career.
Marriage is stultifying."

"What's 'stultifying'?"

"Oh, confining, or binding, or something like that," said Allison
impatiently. She always became impatient when asked to define a word of
whose definition she was not sure.

"Do you think your mother and Mr. Makris will get married?"

Allison lowered her cream-covered hands and wiped them carefully on a
towel. This was a question to which she had given much thought. She knew
it was perfectly acceptable for a widow to remarry. Her common sense
told her it was entirely possible that her mother might consider
marriage to Tomas Makris, but her emotions would not let her believe it.
Her mother had been married to Allison MacKenzie, and in the mind of the
daughter of Allison MacKenzie it was inconceivable that a woman who had
been married to him could ever think seriously of doing anything other
than mourn his loss for the rest of her life.

"No, I don't think so," said Allison to Kathy.

"Wouldn't you like it if they did?" asked Kathy. "I think they'd make an
adorable couple. He's so dark and she's so fair."

Allison's stomach began to quiver. "No," she said sharply. "I wouldn't
like it a bit."

"Why not? Don't you like Mr. Makris? When he first came here, you said
you thought he was the handsomest man you ever saw."

"I never said such a thing. I said that next to my father, he was the
handsomest man I ever saw."

"I think Mr. Makris is much better looking than your father ever was, if
your father looked anything like that picture downstairs."

"Well, he isn't," declared Allison. "Besides, my father was good and
kind and sweet and considerate and generous. Looks aren't everything,
you know."

"What makes you think Mr. Makris isn't?" asked Kathy.

"Please," said Allison. "I don't want to discuss it any more. My mother
won't marry him. I'll run away from home if she does."

"You'd really run away?" asked Kathy, shocked. "You'd quit school, and
your job on the paper and everything?"

Allison thought about her job. In the past few weeks she had done
articles on Elm Street as it was a hundred years ago, the Peyton Place
railroad station as it was fifty years ago, and several other pieces in
the same vein. Her job was not at all what she had expected working on a
newspaper would be. It was, to use Allison's currently favorite but
inappropriate word, "stultifying."

"Yes, I would," said Allison decisively.

"You'd leave your home and your friends and everything?"

"Yes," said Allison with a tragic sigh, for her friends included Norman
Page with whom she fancied herself in love. "Yes, I'd leave everyone and
everything."

"But where would you go?" asked Kathy, who could sometimes be of a
disagreeably practical mind.

"How should I know?" said Allison crossly. "New York, I suppose. That's
where all writers go to get famous."

"That's where artists go, too," said Kathy. "Maybe we could go together
and be bachelor girls in an apartment in Greenwich Village, like those
two girls in that book we read. Of course, I don't know what I'd ever
tell Lew."

"Oh, Lew," said Allison, dismissing with a wave of her hand the current
love of Kathy's life.

"That's all right for you to say," said Kathy in an injured tone. "Lew
isn't in love with you. Maybe Norman doesn't excite you and thrill you
the way Lew does me, but that's no reason for you to be jealous."

"Jealous!" exclaimed Allison. "Jealous! Why on earth should I be
jealous? Norman is every bit as exciting as Lew. Just because he's quiet
and isn't always giving me sexy looks the way Lew does you, is no reason
for thinking he can't be very exciting and thrilling, because he can.
Norman's an intellectual. He even goes about making love
intellectually."

"I never heard of intellectual love," said Kathy. "Tell me what it's
like. The only kind of love I know about is Lew's kind, and I like it
fine. What's this other kind?"

Allison turned off the light and the two girls got into bed. Allison
began to make up a story of intellectual love. Intellectual love
differed from physical love, according to her, in that instead of merely
kissing a girl, an intellectual first told her that her lips were like
ruby velvet. Intellectual love was, in fact, full of similitudes such
as, eyes like deep pools, teeth like pearls and skin like alabaster.

"If he talks that much," said Kathy sleepily, "when does he have time to
do anything else?"

Allison went to sleep after deciding that the next time she was alone
with Norman, she would see if she could make him stop being an
intellectual for a while.

                 *        *        *        *        *

At approximately this same time, Constance MacKenzie and Tomas Makris
were sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Hotel Jackson at White River.
She and Tom, Constance realized, spent quite a lot of time in
restaurants and cocktail lounges. There was nowhere else for them to go.
Constance would not go to Tom's apartment in the parsonage, and she did
not like to have him at her house when Allison was at home.
Nevertheless, as she lifted her second drink, Constance decided that she
was rapidly growing sick and tired of cocktail lounges and restaurants.

"If we were married," said Tom suddenly, "we could go out for a drink
and dinner only when we wanted to. On our wedding anniversary, for
instance."

"I was thinking the same thing," Constance admitted. "I'm beginning to
feel like a traveling salesman with the nearest bar for my natural
habitat."

"And that," said Tom, "is the best opening gambit I've been offered for
over two years. My next natural line is to say, 'Well, then?' so I'll
say it. Well, then? Or do you want this stylized? Such as, 'Well, then,
darling be mine. Two can live as cheaply as one.'"

"Three," said Constance.

"Three can live as cheaply as two. With your Cape Cod and my salary."

"Oh, stop it," said Constance wearily.

Tom looked down into his glass. "I mean it, Connie," he said. "What are
we waiting for?"

"For Allison to grow up."

"We've had this same conversation so many times," said Tom, "that we
ought to be able to prompt each other with our lines."

"Tom," she said, covering his hand with hers, "I'll begin to mention us
to Allison soon. I'll have to step softly. She has no idea that I'd ever
consider marriage. But I'll mention it soon, Tom. Just to see how she
takes to the idea."

"I hate to sound insistent," he said, "but how soon?"

Constance thought for a moment. "Tomorrow evening," she said. "Come for
dinner."

"Moral support, eh?"

Constance laughed. "Yes," she said. "Besides, if you're right there
where she can see you, I don't see how she will be able to resist the
idea of such a handsome stepfather."

"I hear it, but I don't believe it," said Tom, raising two fingers in
the direction of the waiter. "However, I'm a great one for premature
celebration."

"I'll simply say, 'Allison, I'm not getting any younger. Soon you will
be grown and will leave me. It's time I thought of someone to spend my
old age with.'"

"Put it off much longer, and we won't even have much of that left."

"What?"

"Old age."

They held hands and smiled into one another's eyes. "We're worse than a
couple of kids," he said, "sitting around holding hands and mooning."

"Speaking of kids," said Constance, "isn't it awful about Betty
Anderson?"

"All depends on what you mean by 'awful,'" said Tom, releasing her hand
as the waiter put down their drinks. "Awful that she is left with the
short end of the stick, yes. Awful that the Harrington boy is getting
away with it, yes. Especially awful that Leslie Harrington did what he
did, yes. But otherwise, not so awful. Nor unexpected, for that matter."

"For heaven's sake, Tom," said Constance. "You can't mean that you don't
think it's awful when fifteen-and sixteen-year-old kids go around--" she
paused, searching for the right phrase. "Go around doing things," she
finished.

Tom grinned. "That's exactly what I mean," he said.

"Do you actually mean to sit there and tell me that if we got married
and Allison did anything, got into trouble, or even if she was lucky and
didn't get caught--" she stopped, unable to find words to conclude her
thought.

"If Allison, or any kid for that matter, goes around, quote doing things
unquote, I cannot say that I think it is something as terrible as you
want me to say it is," said Tom and folded his arms and leaned back in
his chair.

"For heaven's sake, Tom. It's abnormal in a child that age. There's
something wrong with a kid who thinks overmuch of sex."

"What do you mean by overmuch?"

One of the few things about Tom which annoyed Constance was his habit of
questioning every questionable word in her arguments. More often than
not, she had discovered, he could render her opinions utterly senseless
and baseless by making her say exactly what she meant, word for word.

"By overmuch," she said crossly, "I mean just what I say. It is thinking
overmuch of sex when a fifteen-year-old girl lets some boy like
Harrington take her out and do whatever he wants with her. If Betty
hadn't been thinking too much about sex for years, she wouldn't even
know enough to realize that a boy wanted to take her out for what he
could get. The idea would never enter her head."

"Wow," said Tom, lighting a cigarette. "Are you confused!"

"I am not! It's abnormal for a girl of fifteen to be as wise as Betty
is. Well, she wasn't quite wise enough, apparently."

"I'd be inclined to think that if Betty, at fifteen, didn't think about
sex she was abnormal. Much more so than because she obviously has
thought about it. I think that any normal kid," he said, pointing his
cigarette at her--"'normal' being your word, not mine--has thought
plenty about sex."

"All right!" conceded Constance unwillingly. "But thinking and doing are
two different things. And nothing you can say is going to make me
believe that it's perfectly all right for kids like Betty Anderson and
Rodney Harrington to go around having--things to do with each other."

Tom raised an eyebrow. "What the hell have you got against the word
intercourse?" he asked. "It's a good, serviceable word. Yet you'd rather
rack your brain for fifteen minutes to find a substitute rather than use
it."

"Whatever you want to call it, I still don't think it is all right for
children."

"In the last few minutes," said Tom, "you've gone from calling what
happened between Betty and Rodney 'awful' to 'abnormal' and now to 'not
all right.' I'm not going around advocating fornication on every street
corner and an illegitimate child in every home, and for those reasons
I'll admit that I don't think that it is 'all right.' But since I know
that a kid at fifteen or sixteen, and oftentimes younger, is physically
ready for sex, I can't agree that I think Betty and Rodney are
'abnormal.' And since I also know that in addition to a child being
physically ready for sex at fifteen or sixteen, his mind has been
educated and conditioned to sex and he feels a tremendous, basic drive
for sex, I cannot agree with you when you say that you think Betty and
Rodney are 'awful.'"

"Tremendous, basic drive," scoffed Constance. "Now you're going to go
all Freudian on me and tell me that sex is on a par with eating,
drinking and defecating."

"In the first place, Freud never said any such thing, but we'll let that
pass. And in the second place, I certainly do not put sex on a par with
the things you mentioned. I put it next to the urge for
self-preservation, where it belongs."

"Oh," said Constance, with an impatient gesture, "you men make me sick.
I suppose you were being driven by this tremendous, basic urge at the
age of fifteen or sixteen."

"Fourteen," said Tom, and laughed at the look on her face. "Fourteen, I
was. She was a kid who lived in a tenement on the same floor as I, and I
caught her in the toilet at the end of the hall. I took her standing up,
with the stink of potatoes boiled too long in too much water, and filth
and urine all around us, and I loved it. I may even say that I wallowed
in it, and I couldn't wait to get back for more."

"And that's the second thing about you that annoys me," said Constance.
"The first one is the way you always rip my arguments into pieces, and
the second one is the way you seem to try to be deliberately crude. You
don't care what you say, nor to whom. Sometimes I think that you lie
awake nights thinking up things to say for their shock value."

"Faulty reasoning," said Tom. "What am I to do with you?"

"Don't say things like you do," she said. "It's not necessary or even
nice."

"God!" exclaimed Tom. "Nice, yet! Some of the things I say may not be
particularly 'nice,' but they are true. It was, perhaps, not nice of me
to have intercourse with little Sadie, or whatever the hell her name
was, in a hallway toilet, but it is true. It happened, and it happened
exactly as I told you. Also, my reaction was just what I said it was.
What about you? I suppose you never thought of sex at all until you were
married, and then you went to your new husband all sweetness and
virginity, with never a thought of eagerness."

For a moment Constance hesitated. Here was a perfect opening. She could
smile right back at Tom and say: "As a matter of fact, he wasn't my
husband." Tonight would be a good time to say it, before she talked to
Allison. She glanced up into his waiting face and the moment was gone.

"As a matter of fact," she said, "that's just the way it was. It never
changed, either. Sex was always something I allowed him as a sort of
favor."

"What a liar you are," said Tom.

She felt her hands grow cold as she waited fearfully for his next words.
Now it was coming. Now he would look at her with disgust and say, "He
was never your husband. What a liar you are. He was your lover and you
bore him a child. Yours was the same situation as Betty and Rodney's,
except you were old enough to have known better."

"What a liar you are," said Tom. "Would you have me believe that when
you give yourself to me it is as a favor?"

"Not with you," said Constance, and hurriedly finished her drink. "But
just the same," she said, laughing a trifle nervously, "you will never
make me believe that it is the right thing for children to be doing.
Why, if Allison ever did anything like that, I'd kill her."

"There is a shaggy dog story in that vein," said Tom as he stood up and
put down a bill on the check the waiter had left. "It has to do with a
woman who put a new dress on her little girl. She told the little girl
that if the little girl went out and fell into the mud, she'd kill her.
So the little girl went out and fell in the mud and her mother killed
her."

"This is a joke?" asked Constance, taking his arm as they walked to the
car.

"I don't think so," said Tom.

Constance leaned back comfortably in the front seat of the car. "I may
have put it a little strongly," she said. "But I mean it when I say that
I wouldn't put up with Allison behaving the way Betty Anderson has for
years. Luckily, I don't have to worry about putting up with it. Allison
isn't like that. I doubt if she ever thinks about it. She always has her
nose in a book and her head in the clouds."

"Then you had best watch what she reads," said Tom. "As one
fourteen-year-old who developed a crush on me once said, 'After all, Mr.
Makris, Juliet was only fourteen.' Watch out that Allison doesn't begin
to think of herself in terms of Juliet. Or worse, in terms of
Mademoiselle de Maupin."

"What's that?" asked Constance. "That French name?"

"It is the name of a very famous novel by a Frenchman named Gautier,"
said Tom and burst out laughing.

"Now you are making fun of me because my literary education was sadly
neglected. I don't care. I don't have to worry about Allison. At sixteen
she still loves to read fairy tales."

"I thought she was only fifteen."

"Well, she will be sixteen in the fall," said Constance and bit her lip
against the slip she had made. "And it won't be too long until fall."

"No, it won't," said Tom. "School will be opening in a little over two
weeks."

"I'll talk to her tomorrow, about us," said Constance. "Maybe by next
summer--"

"Sure," said Tom, and pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The car
sped smoothly on the road to Peyton Place.




CHAPTER 15


The next day was Saturday and it began what Seth Buswell, without his
tongue in his cheek for once, later referred to as "the bad time in
'39." The drought was still upon Peyton Place. The land lay burnt and
fruitless under the August sun, and there was that peculiar, waiting
quietness in the air which comes when every man, woman and child watches
the hills which encircle his town.

A stranger passed through Peyton Place early on that Saturday morning.
He parked his car on Elm Street and made his way into Hyde's Diner.
Corey Hyde stood with his fists on his hips and stared out of a window
at the back of the diner, and Clayton Frazier who stood next to Corey,
holding a coffee cup, also stared. The stranger craned his neck to look
over the heads of Corey and Clayton, but there was nothing to see from
the window but a ridge of hills topped with yellowed, unmoving trees.

"Coffee," said the stranger, and for a moment Corey's shoulders tensed
before he turned around.

"Yes, sir. Right away," said Corey.

Clayton Frazier shuffled to a seat at the end of the counter but a seat,
the stranger noticed, from which the old man could look out the window
to the ridge of hills in the distance. Corey put a cup, saucer and spoon
down on the counter in front of the stranger.

"Will that be all, sir?" asked Corey.

"Yes," the stranger replied, and Corey left him to take up his post by
the window.

This particular stranger was different from the majority of those who
pass through northern New England, or from those who come to stay for a
while in the summer, in that he was a sensitive man. He was an author's
representative on his way to Canada to vacation with his number one
client, a prolific but alcoholic writer, and he sensed something of the
waiting tension which gripped this town in which he found himself early
on a Saturday morning. He slapped his hand down against Corey Hyde's
counter.

"What's the matter with everyone around here?" he demanded. "Everyone
acts as if he were waiting for doomsday. Not five minutes ago I stopped
at a gas station, and the man there was so busy watching and waiting for
something that I had a struggle to find out what I owed him. What is
everyone waiting for?"

Corey and Clayton, who had started almost fearfully at the sound of the
stranger's hand against the counter, were, nevertheless, not so startled
that they forgot themselves to the point of answering the stranger with
a direct reply.

"Where you headed?" asked Clayton Frazier.

"Canada," replied the stranger, almost mollified now that he had managed
to get some response from someone about something in this weary and
apprehensive place.

"Drivin'?" asked Clayton, who by now had noticed the gray Cadillac
parked outside.

"Yes," said the stranger. "I have two weeks so I thought the drive up
would be enjoyably slow and peaceful. I wish now that I had taken a
train. It's been wretchedly hot all the way from New York.

"Humph," grunted Clayton. "New York, eh? New York City?"

"Yes," said the stranger.

"Long ways away."

"At least the worst is over now," said the stranger, sipping his coffee.
"The Canadian line can't be more than a three-hour drive from here."

"Nope," said Clayton, "it ain't. You should make it easy in three hours.
If you go fast, mister, you could make it in less than three hours."

The stranger smiled into the lined, stubbly face of the not-too-clean
old man. "Why should I hurry?" he asked pleasantly, and he was thinking
what an amusing anecdote this would make to tell his friends when he
returned to New York. He would practice that nasal twang, and when he
returned home he would tell of the picturesque old native whom he had
met and conversed with up in northern New England. "Why should I hurry,
old-timer?" he asked jocularly.

Clayton Frazier set his coffee cup down with a little click, and then he
looked hard at the stranger for a moment.

"Go fast, mister," he said. "Get over that line of hills as fast as you
can go. Mebbe they got rain up to Canada."

The stranger laughed. By God, this was like some story by an impossibly
bad writer. Git over that line of hills, stranger, else yore a dead dog.

"What do you mean?" he asked, swallowing his laughter with the rest of
his coffee. "What does rain in Canada have to do with my getting there
quickly?"

"We ain't got rain here," said Clayton Frazier, turning to look out the
window. "Ain't had none since June."

"Oh," said the stranger, feeling rather disappointed. "Is that what
everyone is waiting for? Rain?"

Clayton Frazier did not look at him again. "Fire," he said. "Everyone's
waitin' for the fires to start, mister. If you're smart you'll go fast.
You'll get past the hills before the fires start."

A few minutes later, the stranger paused with his hand on the door of
his car. He squinted up at the ridge of hills beyond Peyton Place. The
hills were topped with trees of a peculiar yellowish color. It was an
unhealthy shade, the stranger thought. Ugly. But because he was a
sensitive man, he felt a finger of apprehension prod at his mind. He
could look at the unmoving, yellow hills and imagine a single,
quick-moving, red streak. He could picture the way the red streak would
move, eagerly, hungrily, almost gaily, through all the dry, dry
quietness that surrounded Peyton Place. The stranger climbed into his
car and drove away, and when he noticed later that his speedometer
indicated seventy-five, he laughed at himself, but he did not slow down.

The waiting and watching were everywhere, but other than that, this
particular Saturday started off in the way of countless other summer
Saturdays gone by.

Allison MacKenzie and Kathy Ellsworth, having spent the night together,
breakfasted in the MacKenzie kitchen after Constance had left for her
shop. They ate eggs and toast and drank coffee, and there was sunshine
all over the yellow tablecloth. Nellie Cross rattled dishes in the sink
as a hint for the girls to be finished and gone, but they paid no
attention to her.

"I've lived in Peyton Place longer than I've ever lived anywhere," said
Kathy, chewing absent-mindedly at a piece of toast. She was looking out
the window at the vivid pattern made by hollyhocks against a white
picket fence. The MacKenzies' lawn and flowers were the most colorful on
Beech Street, kept that way through the weeks of drought by the
assiduous hand watering of Joey Cross whom Constance hired for that
purpose. "I never want to move away," continued Kathy. "We won't,
either. My mother told my father that we wouldn't."

"I'm going to move away," said Allison, "as fast as ever I can after I
finish high school. I'm going to go to Barnard College. That's in New
York City."

"Not me," said Kathy ungrammatically. "I'm never going away from here.
I'm going to marry Lew and live in Peyton Place forever and have a huge
family. You know what?"

"No. What?"

"Lew and I are going to _buy_ a house after we get married."

"What's so extra about that? All married people buy houses eventually.
It's all part of the whole stultifying, stupid pattern."

"We never owned a house. We've lived in nineteen different houses since
I was born, and we never owned a one. My mother wants to buy the house
that we're renting now, but my father's credit is no good. Mr. Humphrey
said so, down at the bank. I guess he'd have let Daddy have the money
anyway, but Mr. Harrington wouldn't let him. Mr. Harrington says my
father is a poor risk."

"Buy a house like Nellie's shack," said Allison, raising her voice
cruelly so that Nellie would be sure to hear. She had not forgiven
Nellie for the remarks which Nellie had made about Norman and Evelyn
Page.

"How much would a house like that cost?" asked Kathy seriously.

Nellie did not answer, nor did she look at Allison. She looked down into
the dishwater in the sink and rubbed the vein in her left arm.

"Oh, practically nothing," said Allison in the same unnecessarily loud
tone. "My goodness, _anybody_ can own a shack. Lew could be a drunken
bum and leave you, and you could be a crazy old woman with pus in your
veins, but you could still own a shack. _Anybody_ can own a shack, even
crazy, insane people who have the crazy, insane idea that they're better
than other people."

At last, Kathy realized that friction surrounded her. She turned first
to look at Nellie, then she turned to Allison.

"You're mean, Allison," she said soberly. "And cruel."

"So are a lot of other people," cried Allison, ashamed at being caught
so obviously in an act of unkindness, but unable to back down now.
"People who call other people names, for instance, and tell filthy lies
about them. I suppose that's not mean and cruel!"

"You are supposed to turn the other cheek," said Kathy virtuously,
enjoying this feeling of righteousness at someone else's expense. "I've
heard Reverend Fitzgerald say so a thousand times, and so have you."

"Maybe so," cried Allison furiously. "But I've read about plucking out
the eye that offends you. That goes for people whom you consider your
friends but who go around sticking up for others."

"If you mean me, Allison MacKenzie, come right out and say so. Don't be
such a little sneak."

"Oh!" gasped Allison, outraged. "Now I'm a sneak, am I? Well, I do mean
you, Kathy Ellsworth. There. I think that you're silly and stupid with
your rented house and your dumb boy friend Lewis Welles, and your
eternal talk about getting married and having babies, babies, babies!"

"_Well!_" said Kathy, standing up and maintaining what she was pleased
to refer to as "an icy calm," "_Well!_ I'm certainly glad that I found
out what you think of me before it was too late! Good-by!"

Kathy walked majestically out of the kitchen door, twitching her flat
hips indignantly. She did not explain what she meant about finding out
what Allison thought of her "before it was too late." Nor did Allison
stop to wonder. It was a beautiful exit line, and both girls accepted it
as such without question. Kathy walked down Beech Street with her nose
in the air, hoping desperately that Allison was watching, and Allison
burst into tears.

"Now see what you've done!" she said to Nellie Cross. "If it weren't for
you, my best friend wouldn't be mad at me. If it weren't for you, I
wouldn't be crying and making my eyes all red. I'm supposed to pack a
lunch and meet Norman in an hour. What will he do when he sees me all
disheveled and red-eyed? Answer me that."

"Humph," said Nellie. "He'll prob'ly take one look at you and run home
to his ma. The minute Evelyn sees him comin', she'll start right in
unbuttonin' her dress." To Nellie, also, there were things which were
unforgivable. Primarily, she could not forgive Allison for the way the
girl seemed to look constantly for opportunities to criticize Lucas who
had, since leaving town, become a paragon of virtue in Nellie's eyes.
The second reason for Nellie's unwillingness to forgive was because of
something Allison had said. She could not rightly remember what it was,
but whenever she thought of it, the pus-filled lump in her head began to
throb. It was throbbing now, and Nellie turned to Allison and cackled.
"You can bet your life on that, honey," she said. "Evelyn don't need to
no more than see that snot-nose kid of hers comin' near but what she
gets ready to feed him."

"I hate, loathe and despise you, Nellie Cross," cried Allison
hysterically. "You're crazy as a loon. Crazier than Miss Hester Goodale,
and I'm going to tell my mother not to let you come here to work any
more."

Then Nellie remembered the second reason that she was unable to forgive
Allison. Allison had said she was crazy. That was it, thought Nellie.
She had known it was something wicked like that.

"You're so crazy that you should be locked up in the asylum down at
Concord," Allison shouted, her voice high and rough with anger, and
hurt, and tears. "I don't blame Lucas for running off and leaving you.
He knew that you'd end up in a padded cell down at Concord. And I hope
you do. It would serve you just exactly right!"

Allison ran sobbing out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room.
Nellie stood and gazed sightlessly out of the window over the sink.

"That ain't true," she said at last. "Ain't a bit of truth in it. That
ain't why Lucas done like he done."

But her head throbbed violently, and the soapsuds in the sink were
suddenly thick and slimy, like pus.

Allison stood motionless in the middle of her bedroom floor.
Deliberately, she inhaled and exhaled in deep breaths until the pain of
anger in her chest and throat was eased, then she went into the bathroom
and held a wet washcloth over her eyes. She would not, she decided,
allow _anyone_ to spoil her day. Back in her bedroom, she powdered her
face carefully and applied the small amount of lipstick which Constance
permitted, then she went back down to the kitchen. Silently, without
even looking at Nellie who still stood in front of the sink, Allison
began to make sandwiches. When she had finished packing the picnic
hamper, she sat and gazed sullenly out of the window, waiting for
Norman. When finally she heard the jangling ring of his bicycle bell,
she picked up the hamper and walked out the door without a word. Nellie
did not raise her head, not even when Allison took her bicycle off the
back porch as noisily as possible, letting the vehicle clatter against
each step.

Allison and Norman divided the burdens of picnicking evenly between
their two bicycle baskets and pedaled off.

"I hope you didn't get up on the wrong side of the bed," said Allison
crossly. "Everyone else seems to have done so."

"Not I," said Norman and grinned. "Who's everybody?"

"Oh, Kathy and Nellie. My mother, too, I suppose. And even if she didn't
she'll probably be as cranky as the others by suppertime. It's so hot."

"And dry," added Norman as they pedaled down Elm Street and turned into
the highway. "I heard Mr. Frazier say that the state militia has been
alerted in case of a forest fire. Look."

He pointed to the hills toward the east, and Allison's eyes followed his
direction.

"I know it," she sighed. "Everyone's been waiting for days and days.
Maybe it'll rain tomorrow."

The sky was a bright blue, as polished and hard looking as enamel, and
it held an enormous sun which was persistent and impossible to look upon
because of its hurtful brightness. In all this blue and yellow
harshness, no cloud could survive, and not a trace or a wisp of
whiteness was to be seen.

"It won't rain," said Norman.

He did not think of it particularly, but his was a statement being
spoken all over town that day. The farmers, who long ago had lost all
hope of saving their crops, stood with unchanged faces in front of the
Citizens' National Bank. Their faces were no different than they had
been in the spring, when the men had seeded the earth. But if a deep
crease or two in a neck, or carved deep in the skin from nose to mouth,
showed gray now, this was understandable. A farmer could not go out for
long to stand and gaze at his burnt fields without getting a bit of dust
on him somewhere. The farmers stood in front of the bank, waiting for
Dexter Humphrey to come in and sit behind his desk in the mortgage loans
department, and they looked up at the sky and said, "It won't rain."
They said it in the same tone which they would have used had it been
raining for a week, and were they expressing their opinion of the next
day's weather.

"No, I guess it won't rain," said Allison MacKenzie, pushing her
sunglasses back onto the slippery bridge of her nose. "Let's push
awhile, Norman. It's too hot to pedal."

They came to the bend in the river at last, and they did much as they
had done on previous visits to this place, but there was a subtle
difference to this particular day. It was as if each of them sensed
vaguely that the Saturday afternoons of youth are few, and precious, and
this feeling which neither of them could have defined or described made
every moment of this time together too short, too quickly gone, yet
clearer and more sharply edged than any other. They swam and ate and
read, and Norman brushed Allison's long hair. He put his face against it
and told her that it was like silk. Like corn silk in August, when the
season had not been dry. For a while, they pretended that they were
Robinson Crusoe and Friday, but later they decided that they were both
Thoreau, and that the Connecticut River was Walden Pond.

"Let's stay all day," said Allison. "I brought plenty of food to eat."

"Let's stay until dark," said Norman. "We both have lights on our bikes.
We can get back easily enough."

"We could see the moon come up," said Allison, enthused.

"Except that we're facing the wrong way," said Norman practically. "The
moon doesn't come up over Vermont. It rises from the opposite
direction."

"We could pretend," said Allison.

"Yes, we could do that," agreed Norman.

"Oh, what a beautiful day!" exclaimed Allison, stretching her arms wide.
"How can anyone be cranky or mean on a day like this!"

"I wasn't," said Norman.

"I was," said Allison, and for a moment the sun seemed less bright. "I
was perfectly beastly to Nellie Cross. I'll have to make it up to her on
Monday."

The shadow of Allison's shame departed quickly on the feet of her good
resolution. The sun returned to its brightness, and Allison grasped
Norman's hand.

"Let's run," she cried happily. "I feel so good I could run for an hour
without getting tired," and she had no premonition that this was the
last day of her childhood.

                 *        *        *        *        *

During the minutes when Allison and Norman were running down the strip
of sandy beach on the shore of the Connecticut River, Nellie Cross
stepped away from the sink in the MacKenzie kitchen and sat down on the
floor. It had seemed only a few minutes that she had been standing as
Allison had left her, but she was tired. Her head, she felt, had grown
enormous, and she held it carefully on her neck so that it would not
fall off and break into pieces on the clean linoleum. She leaned back
against a cabinet, and it seemed perfectly natural to her to sit calmly
on the kitchen floor on a hot Saturday afternoon, resting her feet which
ached from standing too long in one place. She stretched her legs
straight out and folded her arms against her chest.

It wa'nt goin' to hurt nothin', she thought, if she just let her mind
dwell on Lucas for a minute, and it might make her feel better.
Sometimes it did.

But she couldn't seem to think too clearly about Lucas, right this
minute. There was so much else going on in her monstrous huge,
pus-filled head.

Not that she blamed Lucas for that. It wa'nt his fault that he'd gone
and caught the clap off that whore woman, and it was no more than right
that he should give the sickness to his wife. Where else could a man
leave a thing like that to get rid of it, if he couldn't leave it with
his own wife?

But there was something else. Something she should be able to remember.
Now what was it? Nellie Cross sat still, first opening her eyes wide and
then closing them tightly. Her mouth pursed with the effort to remember,
and a line of sweat appeared over her top lip. At last, she shrugged.

Didn't do no good to struggle. Try as she might, her poor head just
wouldn't let her think what it was that she should rightly remember. It
was somethin' to do with havin' a baby, and she'd be a monkey's uncle if
she could recall anythin' else. She could remember layin' on the bed and
twistin' and turnin' with the pain of it. Doc Swain was right there,
though, same as he always was when you needed him. Stayed all night, he
must've, although she couldn't rightly remember havin' seen him when it
come daylight. That was all right, though. She didn't need him no more
when it come day. It was all over by then, and she could hear little
Joey cryin'. Funny, though, the way little Joey had come in from
outside. She could see him plain as anythin', walkin' through the door
and bawlin' that his pa was gone. It was after that when she saw the pus
for the first time. It was right after Joey'd come in, because that's
when she got up and went outside to the privy. That's when she seen it
for the first time. Runnin' out of her like a river it was, all yellow
and thick. That's when she knew it was no baby she was gettin' the night
before. It was the clap she'd been gettin'. Gettin' it off her husband,
like any decent woman should. Funny, though. Sometimes she could swear
that it was somethin' to do with gettin' a baby. She was sure that she
could recollect hearin' The Doc tellin' about a baby. Lucas' baby, The
Doc said. She could hear him sayin' it plain as day. Lucas' baby. Now if
she could just remember when it had been. Couldn't of been too long ago,
because it'd been hot then, just like now, and there hadn't been rain
for a long time. The woods was dry, Lucas had told her, dry as gunpowder
and just as ready to explode any time. The Doc tellin' about a baby must
of been on the same day, because her and Lucas was talkin' while they
et, about the woods bein' dry and all. They had waited for Selena for a
while, but she hadn't showed up. Off somewheres with that bastard
Carter, Lucas had said. Lucas was a good father to his children, and as
good to Selena as he was to his own. He didn't hold none with his kids
runnin' wild. But Selena didn't come and didn't come, not even after it
turned dark. And she couldn't of been with young Carter, because he come
lookin' for her. It made Lucas kinda mad when he seen Selena wa'nt with
young Carter. Off alley-cattin' with some other bastard, Lucas had said,
and in the end Carter and Joey went to look for her. God, how her head
hurt! She lifted her arms and spread them as wide as she could, but her
hands could not reach the sides of her aching head. It just grew bigger
and bigger every second--

Allison was right. Her head was gonna bust wide open and make one
helluva mess all over the clean, waxed linoleum. But that wa'nt what
Allison had said, was it? She couldn't rightly remember. No. No, that
wa'nt it. Allison had said somethin' about Lucas. Somethin' mean, like
she was always doin'. And you couldn't tell that little know-it-all
nothin'. She was always harpin' about the way Lucas beat Nellie, and no
matter how many times Nellie told her that a man didn't go around
beatin' a woman he didn't give a damn about, it didn't mean nothin' to
Miss Know-It-All Allison. That one always thought she knew it all. And
Nellie had told her. When a man didn't give a damn about a woman, he
just turned his back on her, but when he thought a lot of her, and
wanted to teach her right, he beat her. Well, Allison'd find out
different one of these days. So would everybody else. They'd all see
that Lucas was a good man who didn't go around givin' the clap to nobody
but his own wife. Funny, though, she coulda swore it was somethin' to do
with a baby. Lucas' baby. Still, it couldn't of been that, because
Lucas'd never go off and leave her when she was havin' a baby. He beat
her up plenty, and that showed he cared a lot for her, didn't it?
Besides, there was Joey, full grown and cryin', so it couldna had
nothin' to do with havin' a baby. Funny, though, the way she could hear
The Doc plain as day.

"Nellie."

She looked around the empty kitchen matter of factly.

"That you, Lucas?"

"Yep. I'm upstairs."

With no sense of surprise in her mind, Nellie left the MacKenzie kitchen
and mounted the stairs to the second floor. She looked into Allison's
empty bedroom.

"You in here, Lucas?" she demanded.

"Over here by the window, Nellie."

She walked to the window and looked down at the empty street below, and
then she saw him.

"What're you doin' out there, Lucas?"

"I'm dead, Nellie. I'm an angel now, Nellie. Can't you see the way I'm
floatin'?"

"I see you, Lucas. You enjoyin' yourself out there?"

"Well, there's always plenty to drink, and nobody has to work. But a man
don't feel right without his woman along."

Nellie giggled coyly. "Was you lookin' for me, Lucas?"

"Been lookin' for you day after day, Nellie. But you don't never stay in
one place long enough for me to catch up with you, a pretty girl like
you."

"Now go on, Lucas. You was always a big one for the talk."

"Not me, Nellie. I mean every word I'm sayin'. Come on with me, Nellie.
I'm lonesome for a pretty girl like you."

"Oh, stop that."

"No foolin', Nellie. You're the prettiest gal I ever seen. Go look in
the mirror if you don't believe me."

"Just for that I will, you fancy talker you."

She went to Allison's closet and opened the door. She looked at herself
in the long mirror fastened to the inside of the door.

"See, Nellie? What'd I tell you?"

He was right beside her now, blowing on the soft hair at the back of her
neck. She could see him behind the reflection of the slim, pretty girl
in the mirror.

"A man don't feel right without his woman," whispered Lucas. "Come on,
Nellie. It's lonesome as hell without you. My bed gets awful cold."

Nellie smoothed the hair at the nape of her neck with a pretty gesture.

"All right, Lucas," she said. "There's no girl could resist your pretty
talk. You go on outside while I get dressed now. It won't take me a
minute."

As Nellie spoke, she fingered the strong silk cord of Allison's bathrobe
which hung on a hook just inside the closet door, and she was smiling, a
moment later, when she dragged a straight chair into the closet. It took
two tries before she could get the end of the silk cord over the
two-by-four beam which the closet had been constructed to hide.

"You quit that stampin' 'round out there, Lucas," she giggled. "You
sound just like a stud horse. I'll be ready in no time. I'm fixin'
myself up just like a pitcher I seen in a magazine once."

"Well, damn it, Nellie, a man don't want to wait forever for a girl as
pretty as you. Get a move on."

"There was somethin' I wanted to ask you, Lucas," Nellie called. "But I
can't rightly remember what it was. It was somethin' to do with a baby."

"That's a helluva thing for a young girl like you to be thinkin' about,"
Lucas called back. "Come on, now, get a move on."

In the quick second after she had kicked over the chair, and before the
strong silk cord of Allison MacKenzie's bathrobe had cut off her life,
Nellie Cross remembered.

Selena! she screamed silently. It was Selena havin' Lucas' baby!




CHAPTER 16


Shortly after six o'clock, Constance MacKenzie entered her house on
Beech Street. She had no premonition of tragedy as she surveyed her
living room. She was terribly angry. Nothing had been done. The ash
trays still held last night's cigarette ends, the sofa pillows had not
been straightened, and there were two magazines on the floor, in the
exact position in which they had been left the previous day. The rug had
not seen a vacuum cleaner since Nellie Cross's last cleaning day, and it
should most certainly have been attended to that morning. Constance
strode angrily to the kitchen, and she nearly burst into tears at the
disorder which she encountered there. There were plates, caked with
dried egg yolk, sitting on the table, and dirty dishes in the sink. The
garbage had not been taken out, and the glass coffee maker, still half
full, sat on one of the burners on the electric stove. "That damned
Nellie," muttered Constance angrily, forgetting all the times when she
had come home from work to find her house spotless. "She hasn't done a
thing all day!"

Constance, who had been looking forward to a cool bath and clean clothes
all afternoon, slapped her purse, hat and gloves down on top of the
refrigerator. She snatched one of Nellie's tent-like aprons from a hook
inside the broom closet door and began to run clean water into the sink.

Steak, French fries and a green salad, she thought. That was what
Allison and Tom would get for dinner. There wasn't time for anything
else. And as for Allison, where was the child? Constance had told her
distinctly to be home in plenty of time to bathe and change, because Mr.
Makris was coming to dinner at seven-thirty. Constance glanced at the
clock set into the back of the stove. Six-thirty. Well, dinner was going
to be late and there was nothing she could do about it. Certainly, no
one could expect her to prepare food in a kitchen as messy as this one.

At seven o'clock, when Constance went upstairs to her room, she glanced
carelessly through Allison's half-open door. The room was empty,
Allison's bed still unmade, and there was a pair of crumpled pajamas on
the floor.

Why couldn't that girl do as she was told for once? she wondered
angrily. And why hadn't Nellie Cross cleaned the house? Nellie had come
in plenty of time this morning. She had come before Constance had left
for work. She had had all day to clean. Constance shrugged impatiently.
It just went to show, she thought, how little you could depend on
anyone. If you wanted anything done to your own satisfaction, it was
best to do it yourself.

Constance showered and dressed with the same efficiency with which she
did everything. On her way back downstairs, she closed Allison's door.
In the event that Tom should want to use the bathroom, she did not want
him to glance into her daughter's room and see an unmade bed. When Tom
rang the front doorbell at seven twenty-five, Constance met him, looking
as if she had done nothing more strenuous all afternoon than buff her
fingernails. She carried a frosty cocktail shaker in one hand and a
cigarette in the other. In the kitchen, potatoes sizzled in the deep fat
fryer, and the salad stood in the refrigerator, waiting to be dressed.

"You didn't, by any chance, see Allison on your way, did you?"

"No," replied Tom, "I did not. Did you tell her the reason for our
little dinner party?"

"No. I merely told her that you were coming at seven-thirty, and that I
wanted her home early."

"She is probably doing something interesting and has forgotten the
time."

"Probably," agreed Constance. "Let's have a drink first. Then I'll call
Kathy Ellsworth. Allison must be at her house. What a day," she sighed,
after she had poured two drinks. "Hot, no business worth bothering with,
and then home to a dirty house. Nellie didn't do a single thing that she
was supposed to have done, and Allison can't do me the favor of being
home on time. I'd better call Kathy."

It was an evening Tom would never forget.

"Hello, Kathy?" said Constance into the telephone. "Listen, Kathy, will
you please tell Allison to come home. She is over an hour late now."

"But Mrs. MacKenzie," protested Kathy, "Allison's not here."

"Not there?" Constance felt a thin jolt of fear. "Well, where is she
then?"

"Gone on a picnic with Norman Page," said Kathy, who had shared all of
Allison's confidences and did not mind betraying one of them now that
she and Allison were no longer on speaking terms. "She went early today,
Mrs. MacKenzie," said Kathy.

"Was Nellie Cross still here when you left this morning, Kathy?"

"Yes, she was, Mrs. MacKenzie. Allison was awfully mean to Nellie this
morning. She was mean to everyone. She called Nellie a crazy, insane old
woman."

"Thank you, Kathy," said Constance, and slammed the receiver into place
with a furious crash. Almost at once, she picked it up again and asked
the operator to ring Evelyn Page's number.

"Has that son of yours returned home yet?" she demanded as soon as
Evelyn Page answered.

"What business is that of yours?" asked Evelyn quickly, angry at once
because of Constance's truculent tone.

"The fact that he took my daughter off somewhere makes it my business,"
said Constance. "He took her off on a picnic only God knows where."

"A picnic!" shrilled Evelyn Page, in much the same tone she would have
employed if Constance had told her that Allison and Norman were
attending a hashish party. "Norman and Allison on a picnic? Alone?"

"I do not suppose for a minute, Mrs. Page," said Constance with heavy
sarcasm, "that your son invited a party to go along when he saw his
chance to take my daughter off somewhere alone."

"Alone?" repeated Evelyn, unable to get beyond the terrible vision which
this word conjured up for her. "Norman alone with Allison?"

Constance hung up viciously.

"Well?" she demanded, turning to Tom who lounged comfortably in an easy
chair and blew smoke toward the ceiling. "Well, what do you think of
that?"

"I think that we ought to eat," said Tom calmly. "And that we should put
Allison's dinner in the oven to keep warm. Then, I think, we should
either play checkers or listen to records until she comes home, at which
time we should feed her and act as if nothing out of the ordinary had
happened."

"She is off in the woods somewhere with Norman Page," cried Constance.

Tom looked at her levelly. "So what?" he asked.

"So what!" Constance shouted. "So what! How does anyone know what
they're doing? I didn't slave to bring Allison up so that she could go
off into the woods with boys, that's what! I won't have it!" she cried,
stamping her foot and flinging her cigarette into the empty fireplace.
"I simply will not stand for it!"

Tom did not raise his voice. "You'll have to stand for it until she
comes home, at least," he said. "There is nothing to be done about it
now, and if you are as smart as I hope you are, you won't act like this
when she comes home. As you told me last night, Allison will be sixteen
in the fall. She has to try her wings sometime."

"She isn't going to try her wings in the woods alone with some boy!"
declared Constance. "Come on. We'll go look for her in your car."

"Oh, cut it out," said Tom disgustedly. "You are making too much ado
about nothing. A parent cannot go chasing after a kid without making
both himself and the child ridiculous, especially in the eyes of the
child. If there has been an accident, you'll hear about it soon enough.
But if nothing has happened, as I am sure it has not, Allison will never
forgive you for going out to search for her as if she were six instead
of almost sixteen. There is nothing to do but wait."

"Nothing!" cried Constance. "Allison isn't your child, so what do you
care what she is doing! You keep your fancy theories about children and
sex drives to yourself, Tom Makris. I don't want them applied to
Allison!"

Tom looked almost shocked. "What makes you so sure that Allison's being
late for dinner has anything to do with sex?" he asked.

"Don't be a fool!" said Constance. "What else would she be doing off
with some boy in the woods? What else do males ever have on their minds?
They're all alike. The first thing that concerns them is their pants!"

Tom did not answer, but he looked at her closely, speculatively, and
Constance turned away from him and lit a cigarette with shaking fingers.

"I'm going to look for Allison," she said. "If you won't drive me, I'll
walk."

At that moment, Evelyn Page ran into the living room. She had neither
knocked nor rung the bell, but simply burst, unannounced, through the
unlatched front door. She was disheveled and wild eyed and looked,
Makris thought, truly insane.

"Where is he?" she panted, and Constance's face grew mottled with ugly
red patches.

"If you kept better tabs on him," said Constance, "you'd not only know
where Norman is, but also where he had taken Allison."

"Norman never took Allison anywhere," protested Evelyn. "If there was
any taking done, it was Allison who took Norman."

"Don't give me that," scoffed Constance. "He's a male, isn't he? Don't
try to tell me who took whom where! He knew what he was doing. Going off
into the woods with a boy would never enter Allison's head."

"Don't you dare say a word against Norman!" cried Evelyn hysterically.
"He has no interest in girls. He never has had. If Allison has him
interested, it is no one's fault but her own. And yours," she concluded
with a look in Tom's direction. "Some women never have enough of one
man. And daughters often take after their mothers!"

"You bitch!" shouted Constance, and if Tom had not stood up, she would
have hurled herself at Evelyn.

Good God! thought Tom. "Cut it out!" he demanded sharply, and Constance
stopped moving. She and Evelyn looked at one another with murderous,
spiteful eyes but the moment for physical violence had passed. Tom
almost smiled. It was the first time he had ever heard Constance utter a
word such as the one she had used to describe Evelyn Page.

"Listen, girls," he said, and this time he obviously smiled. "Let's
dispense with the verbal hair pulling and sit down. There is nothing to
get excited about."

"Nothing!" they cried in unison, and while the echo of their combined
exclamation still sounded in the room, Allison MacKenzie walked dreamily
through the front door.

"Allison!" cried Constance.

"Where is Norman!" demanded Evelyn.

Allison looked around vaguely. "Hello, Mother," she said. "Norman? He
was just outside. He went off down the street."

Evelyn ran to the front door. "Norman!" she screamed. "Norman!"

She kept screaming the boy's name until he had returned to the front of
the MacKenzie house.

"Come in here!" she ordered in the same screaming voice.

Norman came into the MacKenzie living room. He looked at Allison
fearfully, then at Constance, at Tom, and finally at his mother.

"Hello, Mother," he said.

"Hello, Mother. Hello, Mother!" shouted Constance. "Is that all either
of you can say? Where the hell have you been?"

Evelyn Page's lips compressed themselves. "There is no need to use vile
language in front of Norman," she said.

"Ha!" exclaimed Constance. "I imagine he knows many more vile things
than the word hell!"

Allison's face was paper white. She lowered the picnic hamper to the
floor. "What's the matter, Mother?" she asked, and her voice trembled.

Tom could not bear it a moment longer. He went to stand beside the girl.
"Your mother has been a little worried," he said. "It's dark now, and
she didn't know where you were."

"I know where she was all right," said Constance furiously. "Off in the
woods with this animal doing God knows what!"

"For God's sake, Constance," protested Tom, turning to her.

"Yes, for God's sake indeed!" said Constance. "Well!" She approached
Allison. "Well! I'm waiting for an explanation for your incredibly cheap
behavior."

"I haven't been behaving cheaply," protested Allison.

"I suppose you were off in the woods doing nothing but reading books!"
exclaimed Constance.

"We didn't read today," offered Norman. "Today we pretended that we were
at Walden Pond."

"You keep out of this," said Constance, turning on him. "When I want
your explanation, I'll ask for it."

"Norman," said Evelyn, grasping his shoulder and shaking him, "what has
that evil, wicked girl done to you?"

"Done to me?" asked Norman, bewildered. "Allison hasn't done anything to
me."

"What have you done to her?" asked Constance. "That's the important
thing."

"He hasn't done anything!" shouted Evelyn.

"So help me God," said Constance, in a low, terrible voice. "I am going
to take Allison to see Matt Swain tomorrow. If she isn't the way she
should be, I'll have your son arrested for rape."

Norman's face was as white as Allison's. "I didn't do anything," he
stammered. "We didn't do anything, did we, Allison?"

"This has gone far enough," said Tom, in a voice choked with outrage.
"Take your boy and go home, Mrs. Page."

"I see that you've taken over Mrs. MacKenzie's house along with
everything else that you've taken over," said Evelyn spitefully. "Come
along, Norman. We don't want to be in the same room with harlots and the
men who amuse themselves with them!"

Constance's teeth chattered with an anger such as she had never known.
"Get out of my house!" she screamed, and with a sniff, Evelyn took
Norman's hand and departed.

It might have ended there, had Allison not chosen that moment to find
her voice and make a remark. As soon as Norman and Evelyn were out the
front door, Allison turned on her mother.

"I've never," she said, almost spitting the words, "never, never been so
embarrassed in my whole life!"

Before Tom could stop her, Constance had swung her arm and slapped
Allison across the face. The girl fell backward onto the sofa, and a
woman Tom had never seen stood over her. Constance's whole body was
stiff with rage, her face distorted with it, spotted red with it, and
her voice shaking with it.

"You bastard!" shouted Constance at her daughter, and Tom felt sick with
the look that washed over Allison's face.

"Stop it!" he said, but Constance did not hear him. She bent over her
white-lipped daughter and screamed at her.

"Just like your father! Sex! Sex! Sex! In that way, you're just like
him. It is the only thing like him about you! You don't look like him,
or talk like him, but you certainly have acted just like him. It is the
only thing of his that belongs to you. Not even his name belongs to you.
And after the way I've sweated and slaved to bring you up decently, you
go off into the woods and act just like a goddamned MacKenzie. The
bastard daughter of the biggest bastard of all!"

Her words hung in the quiet room like fog over water. Her breathing was
loudly audible, as was Tom's. But Allison did not seem to be breathing
at all. The girl sat as if dead, not even her enormous eyes moved. The
three figures in the MacKenzie living room were as still, Tom thought,
as the stiff figures in a tableau, and when the quietness was smashed,
it was Constance who smashed it. She collapsed in a chair and began to
sob, realizing too late what she had done. As if on a signal, the other
two figures moved at the sounds of Constance's weeping. Tom's mind began
to function again, as he realized in this moment what he had tried
unsuccessfully to discover for two years. He looked down at Constance's
bowed head and fancied that he could see the pieces of her broken shell
lying around her feet. But what a cruel way for a woman to emerge from
the falseness of her existence. He turned to look at Allison, and as if
she had been waiting for his glance, Allison jumped to her feet and ran
toward the stairs which led to the second floor. Tom walked slowly
toward the front door, and Constance raised her head to look at him.

"I knew that you'd leave me when you knew the truth," she said, and her
breath caught on the edge of her tears.

"It is not the truth that is important," he said. "It was your cruel way
of putting it to a child that will take some getting used to in my
mind."

He winced when he heard Allison's first scream. He thought that the
child's reaction to Constance's words was only now beginning to make
itself felt. Allison screamed twice again before his numbed brain
realized that these were not screams of pain but of terror. He ran up
the stairs three at a time. He found Allison, a terrorized, impossibly
white Allison who stood and held herself with her back braced against
her bedroom wall and stared with eyes gone black with fear at her open
closet door. Tom caught her as she fell, and gazed over the limp figure
in his arms at the blue-faced, grotesque body of Nellie Cross hanging
from the beam in Allison's closet. He carried Allison to the head of the
stairs, and when he heard the voice speaking below, he felt as if he
were truly living a nightmare.

"This was the only place Ma was s'posed to come today," Joey Cross was
saying to Constance. "Selena sent me to look for her. Ma's been awful
forgetful this past coupla weeks. Selena thought maybe Ma'd gone and
lost her way again."




CHAPTER 17


"It was as if there was an evil and insatiable spirit loose in our
town," said Seth Buswell later. "An insatiable spirit bent on wreaking
havoc and destruction."

Seth said these words once when he was very drunk. As a matter of fact,
he pronounced the words as "inshayshabul shpirut," but Dr. Matthew
Swain, for once as drunk as Seth on this particular occasion, found no
quarrel with the words of his friend.

"Precisely," said Dr. Swain precisely. He prided himself on the fact
that his own speech never became slurred when he drank.

Others, who had not been directly concerned with Nellie Cross, or with
anything that happened later, were inclined to agree with Seth and the
doctor nonetheless. It had indeed, everyone agreed, been a bad time back
in the late summer of '39.

Clayton Frazier, walking down Elm Street toward his home on Pine Street
on the night of the last Saturday in August, 1939, had seen the sheriff
Buck McCracken driving quickly in the opposite direction with Doc Swain
sitting next to him. The fact that The Doc was sitting next to Buck in
the sheriff's car was an oddity, for The Doc always drove his own car.
Clayton wondered what The Doc was doing, sitting next to Buck in Peyton
Place's official police car, but as he put it to himself, he didn't
intend to worry about it none. He was too tired, and whatever the reason
for The Doc and Buck ridin' together was, it'd be all over town by
mornin', and he'd hear all about it then.

Clayton Frazier turned at his door for a last look around as was his
nightly habit, and it was then that he saw it--a red finger, probing
toward the sky on the ridge that was called Marsh Hill. It was an
insidious, evil-looking finger, glimpsed for only a fraction of a second
before it disappeared, but Clayton knew that he had seen it. He waited
only a moment more before it appeared again, and then Clayton waited no
longer.

"Fire!" he shouted, running into the street, for he had no telephone in
his house. "Marsh Hill's afire!"

A passing motorist stopped to pick up Clayton, and together the two men
sped to the firehouse. In the very few minutes that this consumed, the
red finger had touched half of Marsh Hill and set it ablaze.

"Fire!" cried Clayton, and the vast machinery which the state and the
town maintained for the fighting of forest fires groaned and moved
quickly into operation.

It was the local custom for the sheriff and the doctor to go at once to
a forest fire area. The sheriff because he was a volunteer fireman, and
Dr. Swain because he always anticipated the possibility of injury to the
men. On the walk leading to the MacKenzies' front door, both the doctor
and sheriff paused and turned as soon as they heard the wail of the
town's two fire engines, to search the hills which surrounded Peyton
Place. Marsh Hill was completely ablaze now, and the flames had begun
their swift climb up the slope of the next ridge which was known as
Windmill Hill.

Buck McCracken sighed. "It'll be bad," he said.

"Yes," said the doctor, and the two men continued on their way to the
MacKenzies' front door. They had come in response to Tomas Makris'
telephone call.

"Come at once, Matt," Tom had said. "And bring Buck with you. Nellie
Cross has hanged herself in a bedroom closet at the MacKenzies'."

"And this ain't gonna be no choir rehearsal, either," said Buck as he
rang the doorbell a few minutes later.

At first glance, things did not seem to be as bad as Buck had feared
they would be. In the MacKenzie living room, everyone was under a sort
of tight control and seemed to remain under it by the force of Tomas
Makris' will. Allison MacKenzie lay unconscious on the sofa with
Constance perched on the edge, next to Allison's feet. Joey Cross, who
had run to fetch his sister as Tom had told him to do, sat in an easy
chair at one side of the fireplace while Selena sat in a matching chair
at the opposite end of the hearth. Only Tom was standing, and he stood
still as if afraid that his control over the group would break if he
moved. Matthew Swain went at once to Allison.

"She faint?" asked Buck of Tom. Tom nodded. "Prob'ly be just as well if
she stays that way 'til we get done--" Buck hesitated and glanced at
Selena and Joey. "With what we have to do," he concluded.

At that moment, Allison opened her eyes. She did not cry out or look
about in bewilderment. She merely opened her eyes, looked at her
surroundings and then closed her eyes again.

"I'll want her in the hospital for a couple of days," said Dr. Swain to
Constance. "I'll send for the ambulance."

After the doctor had telephoned, the three men went upstairs to
Allison's room. A few minutes later, after the arrival of two more men
from Buck's office, the doctor did what he had to do and Buck and his
men prepared to take Nellie Cross's body away. Matthew Swain closed his
eyes in an effort to shut out the thumping sounds which came from the
hall as Buck and his men attempted to move the now stiff corpse that was
Nellie down the narrow stairway of the MacKenzie cottage.

Is there no end? he wondered. First Selena's child, then Lucas and now
Nellie. Will it never be over? I have destroyed them all. Even with
Lucas alive, he is as good as destroyed. I have made him an exile.

The doctor shuffled wearily down the stairs. Selena, dry eyed, her face
carved into the features of self-control, was waiting for him in the
hall.

"Doc," she said. "Was it because Ma knew? Is that why she killed
herself?"

Dr. Swain looked straight into Selena's eyes. "No," he said evenly. "She
had cancer, but she wouldn't let me tell anyone."

Selena, also, looked straight into the doctor's eyes. Without knowing
how he knew, Matthew Swain knew that she knew that he lied.

"Thanks, Doc," she said, her voice as even as his. She turned to the
living room. "Come on, Joey," she said. "It's time we went home."

Dr. Swain watched the two figures move down the walk and turn into Beech
Street.

What will she think about, all during this long, long night? he
wondered. What will she say to herself as she lies on her back in her
bed and looks at the ceiling?

Dr. Swain shrugged and turned to Tom. "Will you give me a lift to my
house in your car?" he asked. "I want to get mine so that I can go over
to the hospital."

A short while later, as the doctor drove toward the hospital with
Constance and Tom following close behind him, he turned to look at the
ridge of hills where the fire raged. The entire sky line, to the east of
Peyton Place, was a mass of flame. For a moment, the doctor entertained
the fanciful thought that perhaps the fire was a symbol. The purging of
evil by fire, he thought, and laughed at himself.

Scandalous occurrences, of a public nature that is, do not often take
place in small towns. Therefore, although the closets of small-town folk
are filled with such a number of skeletons that if all the bony remains
of small-town shame were to begin rattling at once they would cause a
commotion that could be heard on the moon, people are apt to say that
nothing much goes on in towns like Peyton Place. While it is true, no
doubt, that the closets of city dwellers are in as sad disorder as those
of small-town residents, the difference is that the city dweller is not
as apt to be on as intimate terms with the contents of his neighbor's
closet as is the inhabitant of a smaller community. The difference
between a closet skeleton and a scandal, in a small town, is that the
former is examined behind barns by small groups who converse over it in
whispers, while the latter is looked upon by everyone, on the main
street, and discussed in shouts from rooftops.

In Peyton Place there were three sources of scandal: suicide, murder and
the impregnation of an unmarried girl. There had not been a suicide in
the town since Old Doc Quimby had put his gun to his head and shot
himself many years before. By killing herself, Nellie Cross caused more
of a sensation in the town than she had ever done in her life. The town
buzzed with talk, and when it came out the day after she killed herself
that Nellie had been a baptized Catholic, the talk went from a buzz to a
roar. Everyone speculated about what Father O'Brien would say and do,
but the time of speculation was short, for the Catholic priest did what
he had to do and he did it quickly. He refused to bury Nellie in the
consecrated ground of the Catholic cemetery. The Catholic members of the
local population nodded to each other and said that Father O'Brien was a
man of principle, a man with the courage of his convictions. While it
was true that the Church had rules to keep priests in line, Father
O'Brien had not shilly-shallyed when it came time to do his duty. He had
not hemmed and hawed as some men might have done.

"Certainly not," said Father O'Brien to Selena Cross.

The Protestants smirked. What kind of man of God was it, they asked one
another loudly enough for the Catholics to hear, who would refuse to
bury the dead? Protestants, especially Congregationalists, were
certainly more Christian minded in their attitude than that. Reverend
Fitzgerald would never refuse a decent burial to anyone, not even a
Catholic.

And for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Peyton Place was
rocked to its foundations.

"Certainly not!" said Reverend Fitzgerald, when Selena asked him to bury
her mother.

Now it was the Catholics who smirked, and the Congregationalists who
fumed with rage. United we stand, declared the Catholics, divided they
fall. In a body, several of the more influential Congregationalists,
among them Roberta and Harmon Carter, which surprised everyone, the Page
Girls, and every member of the Ladies' Aid Society went to call on their
minister. Margaret Fitzgerald, who had escaped from her house through
the back door, joined her friends on the sidewalk in front of the
parsonage.

"I don't know what ails him," she replied to the many questions put her.
"I just don't know what got into him to make him act like this."

Margaret uttered these words in a puzzled and martyred tone, but her
mind seethed with hate and outrage. To her friends, Margaret proclaimed
her husband overworked, tired, weary, exhausted and ill. In her mind she
called him the vilest of traitors, a bastard of a black Irishman, a Pope
lover and a weakling.

Reverend Fitzgerald met the members of his congregation, who had more
the aspect of an angry mob at this point than of a flock come to consult
with its leader, at the door and kept them at bay on the porch.

"What do you want?" he demanded truculently.

Roberta Carter, who had appointed herself as spokesman for the task at
hand, said: "We came to ask you about burying Nellie Cross."

"Well? What is it you want to know?" asked the minister in the same
fists-cocked-and-ready-for-a-fight tone. "I have made my answer directly
to the party concerned."

"You can't do that!" said a voice in the crowd, and in seconds several
others had taken up the chant.

"You got to bury Nellie if her kin want you to bury her!"

"It's one of your jobs to bury the dead!"

"What are you? A Catholic?"

Reverend Fitzgerald did not speak as long as the crowd continued to
rumble. At last, everyone fell quiet, each feeling that his words must
have made an impression, for the minister kept silent so long.

"Has everyone had his say?" shouted Reverend Fitzgerald.

The mob was so still that even Seth Buswell, standing with Tomas Makris
at the edge of the street, was surprised. The moment when the minister
waited for an answer seemed eternally long, but at last he spoke.

"I've had my say, too," shouted Reverend Fitzgerald. "I am not going to
bury a Catholic who has committed suicide. Killing is a sin, and whether
a human kills another or himself, it is all the same in the eyes of the
Church. I cannot and I will not bury a Catholic who has killed herself."

Although the minister did not preface the word Church with the words,
Holy Roman, there was not a man, woman or child in the crowd who did not
realize at once that Reverend Fitzgerald had meant to imply them. At
once, shouts went up, but they rained against the closed door of the
parsonage, for the minister had retired to the inside of his house. The
cries ranged from "Papist" to "Money-changer," and they were of such
violence, and uttered with such hatred, that even Seth Buswell, one of
the most tolerant of all men, was sickened.

Seth, who had joked in his newspaper about the opposing religious
factions in his town, who had called them book ends and mountains,
turned away from the crowd in disgust.

"Christ, Tom," he said to Makris. "I need a drink."

"We'll get in touch with the proper authorities," Roberta Carter was
telling the crowd. "We'll have this man dismissed from our church and
replace him with someone who knows his place!"

But there was no organization to channel the crowd's anger. By the time
the Congregationalists could have agreed on a committee to contact the
proper authorities, the remains of Nellie Cross would have begun to
putrefy, and there was not a Protestant in the entire mob who did not
realize this fact. In the end, it was a man named Oliver Rank who buried
Nellie. He was the preacher for a religion so new to Peyton Place that
it was still referred to as "A Sect." The denomination of which Mr. Rank
was the head was called The Peyton Place Pentecostal Full Gospel Church.
It was referred to by those who did not attend its services as "That
Bunch of Holy Rollers Down on Mill Street." Oliver Rank went to Selena
Cross and relieved her of all the involved details which are part of the
ritual called The Burying of the Dead. Two days after she had hanged
herself, Nellie was laid to rest on a knoll of land behind the building
which Mr. Rank's congregation used as a church. Not much grass grew on
this land, for it was too close to the factories. Smoke and soot hovered
over it continually and the ground was hard and bare.

The next day, Francis Joseph Fitzgerald was seen emerging from the
rectory of the Catholic church where he had gone to make his confession
to Father O'Brien. That same afternoon Fitzgerald presented his
resignation to the deacons of the Congregational church, and in the
parsonage on Elm Street, Margaret Fitzgerald began to pack her
belongings for her return to her father and White River. In White River,
so Margaret said, everyone knew exactly where he stood on religious
matters.

"Well, that's that," said Seth Buswell to Matthew Swain. "Now perhaps
things will return to normal in Peyton Place. It was a bad time while it
lasted, but now it is over."

Dr. Swain looked beyond the town to where the fires still burned in the
hills.

"No," he said. "It's not over."




CHAPTER 18


Allison MacKenzie remained in the hospital for five days. For the first
two days of these five, she was in what Dr. Swain described to Constance
as a state of shock. She answered when spoken to and ate when food was
placed before her, but afterward she had no conscious memory of her
words or actions.

"She is going to be all right," the doctor told Constance. "She's only
escaped, for a little while, into a shadow world. It's a fine place,
extremely comfortable and provided by Nature for those exhausted by
battle, or terror, or grief."

On the third day, Allison emerged from her vague dreaminess. When
Matthew Swain arrived at the hospital, he found her lying face down on
the bed, her head hidden in the pillow to muffle the sounds of her
weeping.

"Now, Allison," he said, placing his hand gently on the back of her
neck, "what seems to be the matter?"

He sat down on the edge of the bed, a habit which Nurse Mary Kelley
considered highly unprofessional but one from which many patients seemed
to derive comfort.

"Tell me what the trouble is, Allison," he said.

She turned on to her back and covered her swollen, red face with her
hands.

"I did it!" she sobbed. "I killed Nellie!"

Her words came in a flood, and the doctor listened silently while
Allison wept and lacerated herself and gave way to her agony of guilt
and shame. When she had finished, he took both her hands in one of his
and bent over to wipe her wet face with his handkerchief.

"It is indeed a sorry thing," he said, as he daubed at her cheeks, "when
we are not given the opportunity to right our wrongs before it is too
late. Unfortunately, this is something which happens to most of us, so
you must stop thinking, Allison, that you are alone in what you have
done. You wronged your friend Nellie when you said the things you said
to her, but you must abandon the idea that you killed her. Nellie was
ill, horribly, incurably ill, and that is why she did as she did."

"I knew she was sick," said Allison, and sighed with a sobbing breath.
"She told me she had pus in all her veins, and that this sickness was
something called the clap. Lucas gave it to her, she told me."

"Nellie had cancer," said the doctor, and Allison had not the shrewd eye
of Selena to discern his lie. "There was nothing to be done for her, and
she knew it. I don't want you to repeat to anyone else what Nellie told
you about her illness. It was only an excuse she made. She didn't want
anyone to know what the matter with her really was."

"I won't tell," promised Allison, and turned her face away from the
doctor. "The way I feel, I don't care if I never talk to anyone again."

Dr. Swain laughed and turned her face back toward himself. "This is not
the end of the world, my dear," he said. "In a little while you will
begin to forget."

"I'll never be able to forget," said Allison, and began to cry again.

"Yes, you will," he said softly. "There have been many remarks made
about time, and life, and most of these have become bromides. What
writers call clichs. You'll have to avoid them like the plague if you
plan to write, Allison. But, do you know something? When people scoff at
the triteness of great remarks, I can't help but think that perhaps it
was truth which caused repetition until the words of wisdom became
overused and trite, and finally came to be called bromides. 'Time heals
all wounds' is so trite that I suppose many people would laugh at my use
of it. Still, I know that it is true."

His voice had become so soft that it seemed to Allison as if the doctor
had forgotten her presence entirely, that he was not talking to her at
all. It was as though he were musing out loud, but only for himself. At
Allison's age, it still came as a shock to her that there were people
other than herself, who thought thoughts worth musing upon.

"Time heals all wounds," repeated the doctor. "And all life is like the
seasons of the year. It is set in a pattern, like time, and each life
follows its own pattern, from spring through winter, to spring again."

"I never thought of it like that," Allison interrupted. "I have often
thought of life in terms of the seasons, but when winter comes, the
life, like the year, is over. I don't understand when you say 'to spring
again.'"

Matthew Swain shook himself a little and smiled. "I was thinking," he
said, "of the second spring which a man's children bring to his life."

"Oh," said Allison, eager not so much to listen, now, as to express
ideas of her own. "Sometimes," she said, "I've thought of each life as a
tree. First there are the little green leaves, that's when you're
little, and then there are the big green leaves. That is when you are
older, the way I am now. Then there is the time of Indian summer and
fall, when the leaves are bright and beautiful, and that's when you're
really grown and can do all the things you've always wanted to do. Then
there are no leaves at all, and it's winter. Then you are dead, and it's
over."

"But what about the next spring?" asked the doctor. "It comes, you know.
Always. I've done some thinking about trees myself," he admitted with a
smile. "Whenever I look at a tree and I take the time to stop and think,
I'm always reminded of a poem I read once. I can't remember the name of
it, or the name of the man who wrote it, but it had to do with a tree.
Somewhere in that poem it says, 'I saw the starry Tree Eternity, Put
forth the blossom Time.' Maybe that's a bromide, too. But sometimes it
comforts me even more than the one about time healing all wounds, in a
different way, of course. Sometimes, it makes me feel pretty good to
think of all of us living our lives as blossoms of time on a tree called
Eternity."

Allison did not speak again. She closed her eyes and thought of Dr.
Swain's poem, and suddenly it did not seem to matter so much that Norman
Page had not come to visit her in the hospital, and that her mother had
said wretched, cruel things to her.

I saw the starry Tree Eternity, Put forth the blossom Time, thought
Allison. She was asleep when Matthew Swain closed the door behind him
and stepped out into the corridor.

"How's she look to you, Doc?" asked Nurse Mary Kelley.

"Fine," said the doctor. "She can go home before the week is out."

Mary Kelley looked at him sharply. "You ought to go home yourself," she
told him. "You look exhausted. Terrible about Nellie Cross, isn't it?"

"Yes," said the doctor.

Mary Kelley sighed. "And the fires are still going strong. It's been an
awful week."

As the doctor was leaving the hospital, he caught a glimpse of himself
in the plate glass front doors. The reflection of his tired, lined face
looked back at him, and Matthew Swain turned away.

Physician, heal thyself, he was thinking as he walked quickly to his
car.

Because she did not leave the hospital until the Friday following the
Saturday when Nellie had died, Allison was spared the ugliness of
Nellie's funeral and the first sight of the consequences it had left
behind in Peyton Place. Norman Page was not as fortunate. He had been
forced to attend Nellie's bleak funeral with his mother who went more in
protest of Reverend Fitzgerald's behavior than from a desire to see
Nellie comfortably buried. Then he had had to listen to Evelyn explain
her opinion of the Congregationalist minister, often and in detail, for
the rest of the week. Norman's mother, it seemed, could not abide folks
who were not "morally and spiritually strong." Whatever that meant,
thought Norman resentfully as he sat down on the curbstone opposite the
house of Miss Hester Goodale on Depot Street. He could remember the time
when he had been terrified of Miss Hester, and Allison had laughed at
him and tried to frighten him even more by saying that Miss Hester was a
witch. Norman poked at a fat beetle with a stick and wished that he
could go to see Allison, but her mother would not allow it any more than
his own mother would let him go. He had missed Allison. During the short
time when they had been "best friends," they had told each other
everything about themselves. Norman had even told her about his father
and mother, or at least he had told her everything he knew about them,
and he had never told that to anyone else. Allison had not laughed.

"I don't believe that it's true when people say my mother married my
father because she thought he had money," Norman had told Allison. "I
think they were both lonely. My father's first wife had been dead for a
long, long time, and my mother had never been married at all. Of course,
he was much older, and folks said he should have known better than to
marry a woman as young as my mother, but I can't see that being old
makes you any less lonely. The Page Girls are my sisters, did you know
that? Not really and truly sisters, but half sisters. Their father and
my father were the same man. The Page Girls hated my mother. She told me
so herself, but she never understood why. I think that it was because
they were jealous. My mother was younger than they when she married my
father, and of course, she was beautiful. They hated her and tried to
get my father to hate her, too. It was awful, my mother said, the things
the Page Girls said about her to my father. They wouldn't even have her
in the house, so my father bought my mother her own house. It's the one
we live in now. It was worse after I came, my mother said. Then the Page
Girls tried to make everyone believe that I wasn't my father's son, and
that my mother had been with another man, but my mother never said
anything. She said that she would not stoop so low as to argue with
anyone like the Page Girls, and that she would not fight over a man like
a dog over a bone. Maybe that's why my father went back to live with the
Page Girls, instead of staying at our house with us. My mother says that
my father was morally and spiritually weak, whatever that means. She
never spoke to him again, and I don't remember him hardly at all. When
he died, the Page Girls came to tell my mother. They did not call him
her husband, or my father, or their father. They said, 'Oakleigh Page is
dead,' and my mother said, 'God rest his morally and spiritually weak
soul,' and closed the door right in their faces. There was an awful
fight about my father's money, after he was gone. But there was nothing
the Page Girls could do. My father had left a paper to tell how he
wanted his money divided up, and my mother got the most. That's why the
Page Girls hate her more than ever now, she said. They still try to say
that my mother married my father for his money, but my mother said that
she married him because she was lonely, and sometimes lonely people make
mistakes. She said that she is glad she did it, though, because she got
me. I guess I'm all she did get, except maybe the money."

Allison had not laughed. She had cried, and then she had told him about
her own father, who was as handsome as a prince and the kindest, most
considerate gentleman in the world.

It was going to be awful without Allison, thought Norman disconsolately.
He wouldn't have anyone to talk to at all.

Angrily, he crushed the beetle he had been teasing. It wasn't fair! It
wasn't as if he and Allison had done anything terrible, although his
mother had tried hard enough to make him admit that they had. When he
had confessed to kissing Allison a few times, his mother had wept and
her face had turned very red, but she had pressed on anyway, trying to
get him to say that he had done something else. Norman's face flamed in
the hot summer quiet of Depot Street as he remembered some of his
mother's questions. In the end, she had whipped him and made him promise
never to see Allison again. Norman had not minded being whipped, but he
was very sorry now that he had made the promise about not seeing
Allison.

"Norman!"

It was Mrs. Card, who lived in the house next door to Miss Hester's.
Norman raised his hand and waved to her.

"Come on over and have a lemonade," called Mrs. Card. "It's so hot!"

Norman stood up and crossed the street. "A lemonade would taste good,"
he said.

Mrs. Card had a wide-lipped mouth, and when she smiled, all her teeth
showed. She smiled at Norman now and said, "Let's go out back. It's
cooler there."

Norman followed her through the house and out into the back yard. Mrs.
Card was pregnant, eight and a half months gone, Norman had heard his
mother say to a friend of hers. She certainly was enormous, however far
gone she was, thought Norman, and he wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Card had
waited so long to have a baby. They had been married for over ten years,
and now Mrs. Card was pregnant for the first time.

"It's about time!" Norman had heard several people tease Mr. Card, but
Mr. Card did not mind. He had a reputation for being good natured. "Any
time's good enough for me!" he had replied to those who teased him.

But Norman felt sorry for Mrs. Card, especially when she groaned as she
lowered herself into the long chair in the back yard. It was the kind of
chair which Norman thought of as a "chayze lounge," because "chayze" was
French for chair and it was certainly a chair made for "lounging."

"Phew!" said Mrs. Card and laughed. "Will you pour, Normie? I'm bushed."

She always called him Normie and treated him as if he were the same age
as she which, he knew, was thirty-five. Rather than pleasing him, her
attitude always made him vaguely uncomfortable. He knew that his mother
would not have approved of some of the things which Mrs. Card discussed
with him. She spoke of pregnancy as if it were something that people
discussed all the time, like the weather, and she had gone so far as to
hold up her female cat, who was due to kitten anytime, and insist that
"Normie" touch the animal's swollen body so that he might "feel all the
tiny babies closed up inside." It had made him slightly ill. But he had
finally persuaded his mother to allow him to have a kitten, so naturally
he was interested in "Clothilde" as Mrs. Card called her cat. Mrs. Card
had promised him first choice of Clothilde's babies.

Norman filled a glass with lemonade and handed it to Mrs. Card. He
noticed that Mrs. Card had not let herself get sloppy just because she
was pregnant. Her fingernails were filed into perfect ovals, and the
ovals were covered from tip to cuticle with bright red polish.

"Thank you, Normie," she said. "There are some cookies there on the
table. Help yourself."

It was as he was reaching for a cookie that Norman heard a faint "Meow."

"Where's Clothilde?" he asked.

"Fast asleep on my bed, the naughty girl," replied Mrs. Card. "But I
just don't have the heart to push her off when she climbs up on the
furniture. She's due any time now, and I know exactly how she feels."

Mrs. Card laughed, but even over that sound, Norman heard again the
faint "Meow" of a cat. Surreptitiously, so as not to make Mrs. Card
suspicious, Norman turned and looked at the tall, thick green hedge
which separated the Cards' back yard from that of Miss Hester Goodale.
It was Miss Hester's cat that he had heard, and he knew very well that
the cat was never anywhere that Miss Hester was not. The back of his
neck was suddenly cold.

Why, she's watching us! he thought, shocked. Miss Hester's watching us
through the hedge! What else would she be doing out in her yard, if she
weren't watching?

But there was nothing for Miss Hester or anyone else to see in the
Cards' back yard, and for that reason, Norman began to wonder just
exactly what it was that Miss Hester watched. He knew that Miss Hester
sat and watched something for the mewing of the tom cat was the regular,
soft mewing which a cat makes when he rubs against the legs of someone
who is still and pays no attention to him. Norman was not an overly
curious child. He had never been plagued by the affliction to which he
referred as "nosiness," but now he was assailed by a sudden and terrible
longing to know _why_ Miss Hester watched, and, more important, _what_,
and in the next moment it came to him that this was Friday, and always,
on Fridays, at four o'clock, Miss Hester left her house and walked
toward town. He gulped his lemonade.

"I have to go, Mrs. Card," he said. "My mother wants me home by four
o'clock."

He ran out into the street and to a point far enough beyond Miss
Hester's so that Mrs. Card would not be able to see him if she should
decide to go into her own house and look out the front windows. Then he
sat down on the curbstone to wait for four o'clock.

Norman did not, or perhaps he could not, analyze this strange feeling
that was in him. It was a frantic need to see and to know, and of such
proportions that he knew he would never have a moment's peace until he
had seen and until he knew. It was fortunate for Norman that he realized
the dimensions of his desire, for after this one time, he was never able
to do so again. Years later, when he fell prey to vague longings of an
indeterminate nature, he brushed them away as foolishness. He never
again realized the enormity of a desire the way he did on this hot
Friday afternoon in 1939.

He _had_ to know, thought Norman, and his thinking did not go beyond
that point. When it was four o'clock, and he saw Miss Hester walk out of
her front gate and move down the street, his heart began to pound with
anticipation, as if he were on the brink of a world-shaking discovery.
He waited until she was out of sight, and before he could think any more
about it and grow frightened, he ran across the street and through Miss
Hester's front gate. It was the first time he had ever been beyond the
walk in front of her house.

The grass around Miss Hester's house was tall and unkempt. It came
nearly to Norman's waist as he made his way to the rear of the cottage.
When he had reached a point directly in front of the back porch, he
paused to study what he saw. The only article of furniture on Miss
Hester's porch was a wicker rocking chair, painted green. It was turned
to face the hedge which separated her yard from that of the Cards'.
Softly, with his heart thumping, Norman made his way to the porch. He
sat down in the rocking chair and looked at the hedge. There was a gap
in the green, he saw, of perhaps three inches, and through this gap he
could see Mrs. Card sitting in her "chayze lounge." Mrs. Card was
reading a bright-jacketed book, and smoking. Occasionally, she reached
down and scratched at the monstrous lump which was her abdomen. Norman's
heart sank with disappointment.

If this was all, Miss Hester must be as loony as folks said she was.
Only a really loony person would sit and watch Mrs. Card read and smoke
and scratch herself. There _must_ be something more. This couldn't be
all.

He sat in Miss Hester's rocking chair for a long time, waiting for
something to happen, but nothing did. It was hot, a hot, sleepy
afternoon. The "sizzle bugs" in the trees never stopped their scraping,
and a smell of smoke lay over everywhere. It came from the forest fires
which burned almost three miles away, but which were coming closer and
closer to town every minute. It was a sleepy, sleepy smell, the smell of
smoke. Norman started. Too late, he heard the echo of the clock on the
front of the Citizens' National Bank on Elm Street. It had rung five
times, and the sound Norman heard now was the latch on Miss Hester's
front gate.

Without a thought, except that he must not be caught by Miss Hester,
Norman hurled himself off the porch. There was a space between the under
part of the porch and the hedge of perhaps a yard in width, and Norman
lay there, flat on his stomach. He prayed that Miss Hester would not
walk to the edge of her porch and look down, for she would see him at
once, and God only knew what she'd do. You could never tell what a loony
person would do, and anyone who spent her time in looking through the
gap in a hedge when there was nothing to be seen must be really loony.
Norman heard the soft snap of Miss Hester's screen door, and the softer
squeak of her rocking chair as she sat down. Evidently, she was not
going to come to the edge of the porch and look down. He heard her
whispering to her tom as she tied him to a rung of her chair, and he
wondered how long she would stay out on the porch. Until dark, probably,
and then wouldn't he catch it when he got home. He heard a car pull up
in the driveway next door. It was Mr. Card, arriving home. Norman turned
his head in minute fractions of an inch to look through the gap in the
hedge. Sweat made him itch, and the dry blades of grass on which he lay
tickled his nose. He had an hysterical desire to sneeze and just as
strong an urge to urinate.

"Hi, baby!" It was Mr. Card, coming around the corner of his house and
into his back yard.

Mrs. Card dropped her book and held out her arms to him, and Mr. Card
came to sit on the edge of the "chayze lounge" next to his wife.

"Poor darling," said Mrs. Card. "You're all hot and sweaty. Have a
lemonade."

Mr. Card unbuttoned his shirt and then took it off. His chest and
shoulders gleamed as he reached forward to the small table to pour
himself a cool drink.

"Hot," he said, "I guess to hell it is. Hotter than the hinges down at
the shop." His throat muscles contracted as he drank, and he set his
glass down on the table with a little snick.

"Poor darling," said Mrs. Card, and ran her hand over his bare chest.

Mr. Card turned to her, and even from where he lay, Norman could see the
difference in him. His shoulders, the back of his neck, his whole body
had stiffened, and Mrs. Card was laughing softly. Mr. Card gave a little
cry and buried his face in her neck, and up over Norman's head, Miss
Hester's tom meowed softly. The rocking chair in which Miss Hester was
sitting did not creak at all. If Norman had not known better, he would
have sworn that there was no one on the porch but Miss Hester's tom.
Norman could not take his eyes off the Cards. Mr. Card had unbuttoned
the straight, full jacket of Mrs. Card's dress, and now he was loosening
her skirt. In the next instant, Norman could see the huge, blue-veined
growth which was Mrs. Card's abdomen, and he thought he would throw up.
But Mr. Card was running his hand lovingly over the growth; he caressed
it gently and even bent his head and kissed it. He held Mrs. Card in the
circle of his dark, black-haired arms, and Mrs. Card's body looked very,
very white. Norman dug his fingernails into the dry grass beneath his
hands and clenched his eyes tightly shut. The desire to be gone and away
from this place was a physical sickness in him. Why didn't Miss Hester
get up and go into the house? Would she never go? Mr. Card's big hands
were cupping Mrs. Card's breasts now, and Norman saw that these, too,
were swollen and blue veined. How was he going to get away? If he jumped
up and tried to run, Miss Hester might chase him. Miss Hester was tall,
and presumably long legged, and if she tried, she could probably catch
him. What would she do with him then? If she was as loony as folks said
she was, there was no telling what she might do. You could never tell
about a loony person. Nor could Norman try to crash through the hedge
and into the Cards' back yard. What would they think of him, after they
had befriended him, given him lemonade and promised to give him first
choice of Clothilde's kittens, if they ever found out that he had spied
on them. Norman glanced through the gap in the hedge. Mr. Card was on
his knees on the ground, his face hidden in Mrs. Card's flesh, and Mrs.
Card was lying very still, with her legs spread a little, and a smile on
her face that showed her teeth.

I've got to get out! thought Norman desperately. Whether old Miss Hester
catches me or not, I've got to get out!

He raised himself slowly to a crouch, so that his eyes came just barely
to the edge of the porch. Then he knew that he did not have to worry
about Miss Hester chasing him. Miss Hester was sitting rigidly in her
chair, her fists clenched on the arms, her eyes staring glazedly through
the gap in the hedge, and there was a line of sweat over her top lip.
The tom, black, fat and sleek, was tied to a rung of the chair, and he
rubbed gently against Miss Hester's legs, uttering his gentle, mewing
bid for attention. Norman stood up and ran, and Miss Hester never turned
her head to look at him.

"What happened to the front of your shirt, Norman?" asked his mother
when he went into his house. "It is all grass stained."

Norman had never lied to his mother. True, there were things that he had
occasionally omitted telling her, but he had never actually lied to her.

"I fell," he said. "I was running around in the park, and I fell."

"For Heaven's sake, Norman, how many times do I have to tell you that
you must not run in this heat?"

Later, after supper, Evelyn Page discovered that she was out of bread,
and she sent Norman to Tuttle's for a loaf. It was in the quickly gone
period, between dusk and dark, when Norman passed Miss Hester's house on
his way home from the store. He was almost abreast of the house, when he
heard the most dreadful sound he had ever heard. It was a fierce
caterwauling, the screaming of a terrorized animal fighting for freedom
that he heard. Carefully, Norman put his mother's loaf of bread down on
the sidewalk next to Miss Hester's front gate, and he walked toward the
back of Miss Hester's house. He knew, with a dreadful certainty, what he
would find there, but he forced his legs forward.

Miss Hester was sitting in her wicker rocking chair. Her position had
not changed since Norman had seen her that afternoon, except that there
was a new quality to the stiffness which held her now. Norman watched
the tom, who struggled insanely with the rope that held him bound to the
stiff, dead thing in the chair. The cat twisted, turned, leaped, but he
could not get away from Miss Hester, and all the while that he tried,
his throat emitted terrible, shrieking sounds of fear.

"Stop it!" whispered Norman from the porch steps. "Stop it!"

But the terrorized animal did not even notice him.

"Stop it! Stop it!" Norman's voice had risen until he was almost
shouting, but the tom paid him no attention, and when Norman could stand
it no longer, he jumped at the cat and fastened his hands around its
throat. The tom fought, digging his claws deep into Norman's hand, but
to the boy the scratches were no more than red marks made by a feather
dipped in paint. He squeezed and squeezed, and even when he knew that
the tom was quite dead, he continued to squeeze, and all the while he
was sobbing, "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was Mr. Card who found Miss Hester. He and Mrs. Card had spent the
evening at a movie, and when he opened the back door to let Clothilde
out, after they had returned, the cat headed straight for the hedge and
Miss Hester's back yard.

"Jesus! What a sight that was!" said Mr. Card later. "There was Miss
Hester, sitting straight as a stick in that rocking chair, dead as a
doornail. And that tom, with his neck broken, still tied to a rung. What
I can't figure is, how come that tom didn't scratch when she choked him?
There wasn't a mark on her!"

"Now perhaps it will be over," sighed Seth Buswell as he put a drink
together for his tired friend Matthew Swain.

"They say that deaths come in threes," said the doctor, smiling to keep
the seriousness from his words.

"Superstitious drivel," declared Seth angrily, angry because he was
afraid that his friend was right. "It's been a bad time, but it's over
now."

Matthew Swain shrugged, and sipped his drink.

In the Page house, Evelyn was holding Norman's head as he stood over the
toilet and vomited.

"I got into a fight," he said, when she asked him about the deep
scratches on his arms and hands.

"Your little tummy is all upset, dear," she said gently. "I'll give you
an enema and put you to bed."

"Yes," gasped Norman. "Yes, please," and in his head everything kept
running together. Allison, and the Cards, and Miss Hester and the tom.

On the hills beyond Peyton Place, the fires raged, unchecked and
uncontrollable.




CHAPTER 19


Everything that men know how to do for the fighting of forest fires had
been done in Peyton Place by the first week in September. Backfires had
been made and had proved useless, for the wooded hills blazed in too
many places at once. Weary men, in twenty-four-hour shifts, lined up on
the tarred roads which cut through the hills and waited patiently, their
backs bent under the filled Indian pumps they carried, for the blaze to
reach their particular position. Other, more experienced, men fought on
the dirt roads where they were enclosed on both sides by the tall,
flaming trees, and everywhere the fight was futile, for the strength was
all on one side. The fires which encircled Peyton Place in the late
summer of 1939 were uncontrollable for the reasons a forest fire is
always uncontrollable. A combination of too much fire in too large an
area with too few men and too little equipment, plus just enough wind to
fan and spread flame and too little, much too little, water. The only
stream of any size which was not completely dried up by the drought of
'39 was the Connecticut River.

"When the fire reaches the river--" the men said, and then stopped. If
the fire progressed far enough to the west, it would eventually reach
the river and be stopped, but there was no river to the east to compare
in size and width with the Connecticut.

"If it would rain--" and there was the answer which everyone knew to be
the only answer. As the fire crept swiftly to within a mile of Peyton
Place, everyone looked up at the cloudless September sky and said, "If
it would rain--"

The shops and business of the town were either closed altogether or
opened for two hours a day whenever the men could remain away from the
fire area for that long. The Cumberland Mills were closed completely,
and it was not only the lack of textile production which caused Leslie
Harrington to curse senselessly and pace his floor. It was the fact that
in northern New England there was a gentlemen's agreement which decreed
that an employer would continue to pay his help as if they were working
at their regular jobs while they were out fighting a fire. It was the
prohibitive cost of the fire which enraged Leslie, plus the fact that
there seemed to be nothing he could do to rectify the situation. No
matter how he cursed and raged, the fire would not stop. By the end of
the first week in September, Leslie was the only able-bodied man in town
who had not been out into the hills.

"The fire is costing me plenty," he said. "I've paid a hundred times
over for the right to sit back and watch this show."

Also, by the time the Labor Day week end rolled around, he had other
things to do. Besides the Cumberland Mills, Leslie Harrington was the
owner of a small carnival. There was a rather tired town joke concerning
Leslie's carnival. The mill hands said that Leslie kept them working all
summer in order to be able to take their money away from them with the
penny-pitch and wheel of fortune games which were the high spots of his
carnival. Leslie had come into possession of the carnival after having
taken over the mortgage on it from the Citizens' National Bank. The bank
had been ready to foreclose on the carnival's original owner, a true
"carny" by the name of Jesse Witcher, who liked his whisky and his
women, as he put it, a helluva lot more than he enjoyed paying his
bills. This attitude was not one to arouse sympathy in the hearts of
bankers, especially in Peyton Place where everyone remembered the
Witchers. Feast or famine, that was the Witchers. They had always been
like that. The bank had been on the verge of sending Buck McCracken to
serve a foreclosure notice on Jesse Witcher when Leslie Harrington had
intervened.

"For God's sake, Leslie, have you gone off your rocker?" Charles
Partridge had asked. "A carnival! What for? You'll get stuck with it.
Witcher won't pay you any more than he paid the bank."

"I know it," Leslie had admitted.

"Well, then. Leave it alone, Leslie. What in hell would you do with a
carnival? It's no kind of investment."

"Don't I have the right to buy something to enjoy myself with, same as
anybody else?" Leslie had shouted, angry at having to explain a
senseless business venture to his lawyer who had always regarded him as
practical and hardheaded. "God damn it, Charlie, I got a right to have
something just for the hell of it, don't I? With some men it's electric
trains or postage stamps. With me it's carnivals."

Leslie had jutted out his chin at a belligerent angle, daring Partridge
to laugh or criticize, but Partridge, a pacifist, did neither. He drew
up the papers, and not too much later he instigated the foreclosure
proceedings which made Leslie the sole owner of a carnival heretofore
known as "The Show of 1000 Laffs." Jesse Witcher was well pleased. He
could still run his beloved carnival, as Leslie's manager, without any
of the worries which besieged an owner.

The Show, as Leslie liked to refer to it casually, had played Peyton
Place on every Labor Day since Leslie had become owner six years before,
a fact which had shocked Witcher at first, and shocked him still.

"This ain't no place to play over Labor Day," complained Witcher. "Labor
Day's big. A long week end. We oughta be down around Manchester or
someplace like that where we'd get a crowd. There ain't enough people
around here to make a decent-sized crowd."

"The mills are closed over Labor Day," said Leslie. "So I might just as
well be making a few nickels one way as another."

"But you could be making dollars instead of nickels someplace else,"
protested Witcher.

"I like to see money being made," Leslie said, and Witcher shrugged and
set up his rides and games and soft drink stands on a large empty field,
also owned by Leslie Harrington, near the mills.

Witcher had not protested again after his first year as manager of The
Show, but when he arrived in Peyton Place on the Friday before Labor
Day, 1939, and saw the empty streets, the closed shops and the fires, he
went at once to Leslie Harrington.

"This time," he said, "it ain't only a question of making a few nickels.
It's a question of losing money. There ain't nothing sadder, nor more
expensive, in this world than a carnival with no people. And there won't
be no people in Peyton Place this week end."

"They'll come," said Leslie. "Set it up."

Witcher rubbed at eyes made sore by the smoke that seemed to be
everywhere. It hung suspended over the empty field where Witcher coughed
out orders for the unloading of the vans. He looked through the smoky
haze to where the fires burned.

"It's like dancing at somebody's funeral," he grumbled.

Surprisingly enough, people did turn out. It might have seemed like
dancing at a funeral to Witcher, but to the fire-tired, smoke-weary
residents of Peyton Place the carnival seemed like a breather, an oasis
of fun in the midst of extremely uncomical surroundings. Allison
MacKenzie was there because Dr. Swain had said that she should get out
of her room and into a crowd. She was still pale and tired looking, but
she was there, flanked by Tomas Makris and Constance. Rodney Harrington
was there with a bright-lipped girl from White River who looked up at
him as if she thought all the wonderful things that Rodney wanted her to
think. Kathy Ellsworth was there with her crew-cut boy friend Lewis
Welles. There were some in Peyton Place who did not take to Lewis. He
was an open-faced boy who wore a constant grin. It was Lewis' ambition
to become the top salesman in the drug concern at White River where he
now worked as a stock boy, and there were some who said that Lewis
should not have a hard time in realizing his hopes. They referred, of
course, to his easy smile, his penchant for practical jokes and his
sorry habit of greeting people with a resounding slap across the
shoulders. Where others found him insincere and loud, Kathy thought him
diplomatic, gay and wonderful.

On the evening of Labor Day, the empty field near the mills was no
longer empty. In fact, everybody in town was there except Norman Page.
It was a shoving, laughing, raucous crowd, a crowd that made the noises
of gaiety in a fiercely determined way which Seth Buswell found
peculiarly terrible.

"They're goin' to have a good time or die tryin'," he told Tom grimly.

From the ground, it was impossible to see the top seats on the Ferris
wheel. Only the bright lights which decorated the sides of the wheel
were visible through the smoky haze, so that it looked as though the
people in the seats were disappearing into another world as the wheel
spun slowly. For some reason, Allison thought of a play she had read
called _Outward Bound_, and she shivered, but the wheel was getting a
heavy play.

"Take a ride on the Ferris wheel," barked Witcher. "Get up there and
breathe air again. No smoke when you get to the top in this gigantic
wheel of pleasure."

The people laughed shrilly and pushed and did not believe him, but they
rode the Ferris wheel. Children rubbed red-rimmed eyes and cried for
rides on the carousel through dry, itching throats, and older children
screamed on the dodgem and on the whip, while grownups were taken,
retching, from the loop-the-loop. Allison shivered more violently than
before as she absorbed the sights and sounds all around her, and Tom
said: "We had better take you home."

"Oh, don't!" cried Kathy Ellsworth, who had had a tearful reunion with
her friend Allison the week before. Kathy clung to Lewis Welles's hand
and said, "Oh, don't take her home! Come with us, Allison. We haven't
gone to the fun house yet. Come on!"

"The wind!" yelled someone in the crowd. "The wind's comin' up strong.
It's gonna rain!"

The crowd screamed with laughter, and Seth Buswell tipped his head back.
Although he could not see the sky, he could feel a new stirring in the
air.

"Maybe," he said.

"Come on, Allison. We haven't gone to the fun house yet. Come with Lew
and me!"

Someone carrying a fat cone of cotton candy pushed past Allison, and a
shred of the fuzzy stuff brushed against her cheek. Once when she was a
child playing hide and go seek she had run into a barn and straight into
a cobweb. It had stuck to her face stickily, just like cotton candy.
Allison felt as if she were in a nightmare and trying to vomit, but
unable to because she could not wake.

"Soft drinks right here!"

"Ride the Ferris wheel and breathe air again!"

"Step right up, gentlemen, step right up. Three balls for a quarter."

"Win a beautiful, genuwine French doll for your lady, mister. Try your
luck."

"Ice cream. Peanuts. Popcorn. Cotton candy."

"The wheel of fortune goes round and round, and where she stops nobody
knows!"

And over it all, the music, playing in the peculiar up-and-down,
and-up-and-down-and-around rhythm of the carousel. Allison grabbed at
Kathy's free hand as if she were drowning.

"Come with us, Allison. Come with us!"

"Connie, I don't think she feels well."

Allison ran with Kathy and Lewis, and Tom's voice calling her
disappeared like a shadow in a thunderstorm.

The fun house of "The Show of 1000 Laffs" was the regulation building of
horrors common to all carnivals. Parents who knew from experience that
their young would be carried from it, screaming, if allowed to enter,
avoided it, but it was doing a big business with the youngsters of high
school age and older. The fun house, it was said, was guaranteed to have
a fellow's girl clinging to him within seconds, or your money back.
Jesse Witcher was justly proud of his fun house. It had helped to
bankrupt him. It had everything--evil faces which jumped up in front of
the patrons at unexpected moments, distorting mirrors, slanted floors,
intricate mazes of dimly lit passages, and a laugh-getting,
blush-producing wind machine. Witcher loved the fun house. Usually he
presided over it himself, and always he saw to it personally that the
machinery to operate his horribly funny effects was well oiled and in
perfect running order.

"There's nothing falls flatter," he had told Leslie Harrington, "than a
scary effect that happens a second too late, or the bat of an eyelash
too soon."

But this Labor Day week end had been a hectic one. The local labor on
which Jesse Witcher depended to help with the setting up of the carnival
had been nonexistent this year. All the men and boys old enough and
strong enough to be of any use were off fighting the fire. Witcher had
been everywhere, "like a goddamned mosquito," as he later explained to
Leslie, trying to get the carnival going. He had seen to it that the fun
house was erected, and the machinery in operation. Then he had entrusted
the final details to a performer who threw knives at his mistress in the
show, and to a thin-shouldered boy of sixteen from White River, whose
ambition it was to be a mechanic with a traveling carnival. Witcher had
not regretted hiring the boy. The fun house was drawing a crowd, and
from the shrieks that came from the exit, where the wind grate was, the
boy must certainly be pushing the right buttons at the right time. At
four o'clock, Witcher had set out to take a look at the fun house, to
make sure that everything was as it should be. He had not had a chance
to check it over all week end, but as he was walking toward it, someone
had called to him and he had gone to help fix the wheel of fortune which
was Leslie Harrington's favorite, and with which something had gone
momentarily wrong. As he later explained, the crowd had begun to come
then, and he had not had a chance to check the fun house at all.

It was after nine o'clock in the evening when Allison, dragged along by
Kathy and Lewis, passed through the entrance of the fun house. The three
made their way, single file, with Lewis leading them through the dim,
purple-lighted maze of corridors. Kathy giggled nervously and clung to
the back of Lewis' shirt, while Allison, feeling the sweat on her that
all small, tight places brought, clung to the back of the waistband on
Kathy's skirt. It was crowded and hot in the narrow passages, and when
they reached the room full of distorting mirrors, Kathy stretched and
jumped happily.

"Look at me!" she cried, as she ran from one mirror to the next. "I'm
two feet tall and big as a barn!"

"Look at me! I'm a bean pole. Look! I've got a triangle-shaped head!"

"Oh, look! This must be the machinery that run everything. Look at the
way all those wheels go round and round. Oh! Look at that huge fan. It
must be what makes the wind blow at the exit!"

The machinery was on the ground, under the floor, but visible through a
square cut in the floor boards. The square was large enough to allow a
man to get down to work on the machinery once the fun house had been
erected, and it was in a far corner of the room which housed the
distorting mirrors. There was nothing near the square opening, and
perhaps Kathy would never have noticed it if she had not been dancing
around delightedly in front of the tall, wavy series of distorting
mirrors. Afterward, neither Lewis nor Allison could say what it had been
that attracted Kathy to the far corner of the room. It could not have
been a sound from the machinery, as Jesse Witcher later testified, for
the machinery was well oiled, in good condition and fairly silent.
Besides, he said, the fun house was made of plywood, certainly not
soundproofed, and the noise of the carnival outside would penetrate into
the building to the point where the sound of well-oiled machinery would
never be heard. In addition to that, the wind had come up and it had
begun to thunder, so Kathy could not have been attracted to the square
opening by a sound. She was plain nosy and careless, and that was what
had caused the accident. Oh, yes, it, was true that the square opening
should have been covered. It usually was. If one looked, one could see
the holes where the hinges that held the cover had been made. But after
all, Witcher was only one man, and he couldn't be everywhere at once
seeing that everything was as it should be. Now could he? The kid should
never have gone near the opening. She had had no business there. She was
in a fun house, wasn't she? She should have been busy having fun, and
not gone poking her nose in where it didn't belong.

"Oh, look!" cried Kathy. "See how beautifully all the wheels go around
together!"

"Oh, look, Lewis! Look, Allison!" said Kathy, and leaned forward for a
closer look and fell down into the machinery.

The other young people began to move hastily out of the room, for they
had been well taught the danger which could result from being called
upon as witnesses. Lewis and Allison began to laugh in the way that
people laugh at a drunk who steps happily in front of a moving truck, or
at an old man who slips on the ice. Lewis squatted down on his heels and
tried to reach Kathy's hand, but Kathy's hand was on the end of an arm
no longer attached to her body. Allison laughed and laughed as she made
her way out of the fun house. She shrieked with laughter when the wind
machine blew her skirts up over her head, and she was still laughing
when Tom came running to her. She clenched the front of his shirt and
laughed until she cried.

"Kathy fell into the hole in the floor!" she screamed, laughing so hard
that she could not get her breath. "Kathy fell and her arm came off,
just like a toy doll."

The wind was blowing much harder now. It blew the smoke in gusts and
filled Tom's eyes with sand. The skirts of the women who hurried past
him, eager to get home before the rain started, ballooned grotesquely in
the wind, so that they all looked fat and misshapen.

"Seth!" cried Tom into the wind, and when the newspaper editor did not
hear him but continued to move away, Tom cursed the luck which had
separated him from Constance in the crowd. He left Allison propped
against the side of the fun house, for she was laughing so hard she
could scarcely stand, while he went to tell the boy from White River who
wanted to be a mechanic to shut off the machinery.

"But I don't know how," protested the boy, and Tom left him standing
openmouthed, thinking that here was a big, black drunk, while he ran
against the crowd to find Witcher.

Up in the hills, the fire fighters recoiled with forearms against
foreheads as the first drops of rain fell. Steam rose around them as
they turned and made their way toward Peyton Place.

"It's rainin'," they told one another unnecessarily.





BOOK THREE




CHAPTER 1


The nearest that Kenny Stearns could ever come to describing Indian
summer in northern New England was to say that it was "a pretty time."
It was also, for Kenny, a busy one. There was always a multitude of
last-minute chores to be done before winter set in; lawns to be mowed
for the last time, mowers to be oiled and stored, leaves to be burned
and hedges in need of one last clipping. But to Kenny Stearns, Indian
summer offered a bonus other than her beauty and the time of the last
warm spell. During this short time of sun and color before winter, Kenny
was always aglow with the satisfaction of a season's work well done. As
he walked down Elm Street on a Friday afternoon late in October, 1943,
Kenny glanced at all the lawns and shrubs which lined the main
thoroughfare and for which he had cared during the previous spring and
summer. He seemed to notice every blade of grass and every twig and
branch, and he spoke to all of them as he might have done to pretty,
well-groomed children.

"Hello there, Congregational lawn. You look mighty fine today," said
Kenny, smiling fondly.

"Afternoon, little green hedge. Need a haircut, dontcha? I'll see what I
can do for you tomorrow mornin'."

The old men who roosted on benches in front of the courthouse, taking
advantage of the last warm sunshine of the year, opened drowsy eyes to
watch Kenny.

"There goes Kenny Stearns," said one old man, and took a gold watch from
his pocket. "Headin' for the schools. Must be gettin' on for three
o'clock."

"Lookit 'im, noddin' and grinnin' and talkin' to that hedge. He ain't
right in the head. Never was."

"I wouldn't say that," said Clayton Frazier, who was much older and
feebler now, but who still loved to argue. "Kenny was always all right
'til his accident. He's still all right. Mebbe drinks a little more, but
he ain't the only one that drinks in this town."

"Accident, my arse! That wa'nt no accident when Kenny got his foot cut
up. It was the time him and all them fellers went down in his cellar and
stayed all winter, and had that brawl and cut each other up with knives.
That's how Kenny got that bad foot."

"'Twa'nt all winter," declared Clayton, imperturbably. "'Twa'nt more'n
five, six weeks that them fellers stayed down there in Kenny's cellar.
Anyway, there wa'nt no drunken brawl. Kenny fell down the stairs while
he was holdin' his ax and cut himself. That was what happened."

"That's _his_ story. I heard different. Don't make no difference what
happened anyway. It didn't cure Kenny from drinkin'. I don't guess he's
drawed a sober breath in over ten years. No wonder his wife does like
she does."

"Ginny was never no good," said Clayton, and tipped his old felt hat
down over his eyes. "Never. That's what set Kenny to drinkin' in the
first place."

"Mebbe so. But you can't blame her none for not changin' her ways if he
won't change his."

"Ginny'd have some changin' to do, I reckon," said Clayton Frazier
wanting and getting, as he usually did, the last word. "She was born
doin' what she does. Kenny, at least, was born sober."

None of the men could think of a suitable rejoinder for this remark, so
they turned silently and watched Kenny Stearns turn into Maple Street
and walk out of sight. It did not occur to any of them that they had
been watching Kenny Stearns turn into Maple Street and walk out of sight
every day for years.

"Hello, double-headed Quimbys," said Kenny to a row of purple asters.
"No, that ain't right. Hold on a minute."

Kenny stood for a long moment in front of a large white house on Maple
Street which he had helped to paint the previous spring. He scratched at
the back of his lined, continually sunburned neck. The window shades in
the white house were pulled neatly and evenly to a point halfway between
the top and the bottom, and it was this that reminded Kenny. He turned
toward the border of asters and bowed formally.

"'Scuse me," he said. "Hello, double-headed Carters. I beg your pardon."
He stood still for a moment and looked down at the flowers, a thoughtful
frown on his face. "Don't know but as I'd _rather_ be called Quimby,
even by mistake," he said at last.

Happy at having made what he considered a gross insult to Roberta and
Harmon Carter, Kenny proceeded on his way toward the Peyton Place
schools. At the hedge which separated the grade school from the first
house on Maple Street, Kenny paused and looked up toward the belfry.
There she was! Gleamin' and winkin' at him to beat the band in the
October sunlight.

"Hello, beautiful!" called Kenny, addressing his school bell. "I'll be
right with you!"

The polished bell gleamed and winked encouragingly as Kenny headed
toward the front doors of the grade school. He walked with an eagerness
now which he never had when approaching anything other than his bell.

And didn't that bell know it? thought Kenny. She certainly did. Look at
the way she'd turned almost coal black from a lack of loving care 'way
back when he'd had his accident. But how she had shone when he returned!

"Thought I was dead that time, didn'tcha, beautiful?" called Kenny.

There was lots of folks who'd given him up for dead that time, thought
Kenny. Even old Doc Swain. Oh, they all denied it afterward, but Kenny
could remember the way they'd talked. He could remember like it was
yesterday, the way The Doc'd leaned over him.

"He's a dead one if I ever saw one," The Doc had said, and Kenny had
answered, "Like hell I am!" but no one seemed to be listening to him.

They had rolled him onto a sort of bed, carried by a coupla big guys,
and lugged him off to the hospital, Kenny remembered. All them nurses
thought he was dead, too, but when Kenny hollered different, they didn't
listen to him any more than The Doc had. Ginny had thought he was dead,
or dying anyway.

"Is he dead, Doc?" Kenny could hear her asking it plain as day.

"No, you bitch!" he had shouted, but she hadn't heard him.

He had told her about it afterward. "Thought I was dead, didn'tcha?
Well, I ain't and wa'nt. It takes more than a little ax cut on the foot
to kill me!"

"By Jesus, it does!" roared Kenny, addressing his school bell in loud,
carrying tones. "Takes more'n a goddamn little cut to kill this feller!"

Kenny's voice carried easily through the open windows of the classroom
where Miss Elsie Thornton presided over the eighth grade. Before the
echo of Kenny's voice had died, Miss Thornton had rapped sharply on the
edge of her desk in an attempt to forestall the disorder which Kenny's
remarks always caused.

He is drunk again, thought Miss Thornton wearily. Something will have to
be done about Kenny. I should bring it up before the school board. One
of these days, he'll fall out of the belfry, or go head first down a
flight of stairs, and that will be the end of Kenny. A sorry end for a
wasted life.

Later, Miss Thornton was to remember her thought of this particular
Friday afternoon, but at the moment she wasted no more time on it. She
rapped again on the edge of her desk, and asked her stock question about
people who wished to spend the thirty minutes after dismissal with her.
Finally, the room quieted, but as each day passed, it was becoming
increasingly difficult for Miss Thornton to retain her iron hand over
her students. Most of the time, she could blame this state of affairs on
the people whom the bright young teachers out of college told her to
blame; namely, the parents of the children whom she taught. Misbehavior
in class, these bright young teachers told her, was a direct reflection
on a child's home environment. In the last four or five years, Miss
Thornton had learned to use a word which had never been particularly
popular when she had been at Smith College. The word was "complex."
Every child had at least one, said the bright young teachers, and it was
whichever complex a particular child had which caused him to misbehave
in class. Much of the time, Miss Thornton could go along with all these
new theories, but sometimes, especially when she was very tired as she
always was on Friday afternoons, she remembered the days when complex or
no complex, she had been able to force a child to behave while in the
confines of her classroom. On afternoons like these, Miss Thornton
realized that she was getting old and that she was very, very tired
indeed.

"You may read for the rest of the period, Joey," she said, after a
glance at her watch had shown her that it was ten minutes before three.

Joey Cross stood up and began to read aloud from _The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer_. He read well, enunciating his words clearly, but with that
singular lack of expression so often found in boys of grade school age
who are called upon to read to a class of their contemporaries. Miss
Thornton half closed her eyes, and the only part of her mind which was
alert to Joey's voice was the part which tells an experienced teacher
when a word has been brutally mispronounced.

Now there, thought Miss Thornton, is a child who should have every
complex in the book. A drunken beast for a father, who had run off and
abandoned him, a suicide for a mother, and never a morsel of decent food
or an adequate amount of shelter or clothing until after he was nine
years old. Yet, he seems to be the victim of fewer complexes after
making the adjustment to a decent standard of living than most children
are who are born knowing nothing different from what Joey has known for
only four years. He is the smartest child in the room, and he misbehaves
less than most, and fights and swears no more than the others outside.
Complexes? Humph. I'm getting old, that's all. I just wish that they
were all as smart and as easy to handle as Joey Cross.

Joey did not know it, nor did any of his classmates, but he was Miss
Thornton's pet. It was Joey's image which crossed her mind whenever she
grew discouraged and dreamed of retirement. _If I can teach one thing to
one child._ Whenever she thought her most secret, hopeful thought, it
was always Joey whom she saw. It was true that Miss Thornton had a
different pet every year. It had not been Joey last year, nor would it
be Joey a year hence, but for the short time that he was in the eighth
grade, it was on him that Miss Thornton fastened her current hopes of
fulfillment.

It had been a bad time for Selena and Joey Cross, back in '39. After
Nellie had killed herself, the Cross children had found themselves alone
in the world, with Selena barely turned sixteen, and Joey a thin,
undernourished boy of nine. No sooner was Nellie decently buried than
someone--and there were plenty of people in Peyton Place who said that
it was Roberta and Harmon Carter--had notified the state welfare
department about Selena and Joey. In due time, a social worker had
appeared at the door of the Cross shack. Selena and Joey had been out in
the sheep pen at the time, and since long black cars with the state seal
emblazoned on the front doors, and trim suited, short-haired women who
carried brief cases were a rarity indeed in Peyton Place, Selena had
become suspicious at once. As soon as the social worker had stepped
through the unlocked front door of the shack, Selena had grabbed Joey by
the hand and fled to Constance MacKenzie. Constance, in deadly fear lest
she be discovered, had hidden the Cross children in the cellar of her
house while she contacted Seth Buswell and Charles Partridge. It had
been Seth who had finally located the eldest of Lucas Cross's children,
Selena's stepbrother Paul.

Paul Cross had arrived in town driving his own car and accompanied by
his wife, whom he had met and married in the northern part of the state.
Her name was Gladys, and Gladys had made all the difference in the
world. There were plenty of people in Peyton Place ready and eager to
criticize Paul's wife, for Gladys was a busty blonde with hair so
obviously dyed that even small children noticed and commented upon it.
There were some who said that Gladys had been one of the loose women who
hung around up at Woodsville, ready to accommodate lumberjacks with
money to spend, but all Miss Thornton knew of her was what Joey had told
her, and what she had learned from Seth Buswell and Matthew Swain.

Gladys, according to Matt Swain, had entered the Cross shack, taken one
look at her surroundings and said: "Christ, what a shit house this is!"

The very next day, the word went around town that Paul Cross was home to
stay. He obtained a good job in one of the sawmills almost at once, and
within two weeks there was running water at the Cross shack. Within a
year, it was no longer a shack but a house, complete with plumbing and a
bedroom for everyone. The only remnant of the Cross property as it had
been was the old sheep pen which Lucas had built and which now housed
the sheep which Joey raised. It was Joey's greatest source of pride that
one of his ewes had taken three blue ribbons at three county fairs all
within one year.

"Paul's crazy to let his wife put all that money into a place that ain't
even his," said a few people in the town. "That house and land still
belongs to Lucas Cross."

"Lucas must be dead," said the majority of Peyton Place. "If he weren't,
he'd have been back before now."

Paul Cross, whom no one had ever suspected of having such a noble
emotion as family love, had confounded the town by returning home to
provide for his half brother and stepsister. In December, 1941, on the
day after Pearl Harbor, he confounded everyone still further by quitting
his job and enlisting in the Army.

"Now, we'll see," said Peyton Place, with both eyes fixed on Gladys. "It
won't be long before she runs off and leaves the Cross kids to shift for
themselves."

But Gladys, newly tight lipped, but as busty and brassy blond as ever,
remained in Peyton Place until after Selena was graduated from high
school. Two weeks afterward, when Selena went to work at the Thrifty
Corner Apparel Shoppe as the store's manager, Gladys left town and went
to Texas to join Paul.

Complexes? Humph, thought Miss Thornton as she looked at Joey who would
run home after school to feed his sheep and to start supper for his
sister. Show me a boy who is as loyal and devoted to his own mother as
my Joey is to his sister.

Above her head, the first joyous note of Kenny's bell sounded, and the
classroom began to buzz.

"Quiet!" ordered Miss Thornton. "You may stop reading, Joey. All of you
will remain quiet until I dismiss you."

There was a sullen murmuring from the back of the room which she
ignored.

"Are your desks cleared?"

"Yes, Miss Thornton."

"You may stand."

"You may stand," mimicked a voice from the rear.

"Dismissed!" said Miss Thornton.

The thunderous exodus began, and all but one boy made it out the door.

"Everett," said Miss Thornton. "Sit down, Everett. You may spend the
next thirty minutes with me."

There, she thought, I'm not so old after all, when I can still snap them
around like that.

It did not occur to her that a few years ago, no child would have dared
to mimic her from the back of the room. But if it had come to her mind,
Miss Thornton could have found a place to put the blame.

"The war," she could have said, as people all over the world were saying
in the autumn of 1943. "Nothing is the same since the war started."




CHAPTER 2


Constance Makris closed the oven door of her stove and straightened up
with a startled squeak. Her husband had come up quietly behind her and
encircled her with his arms. He tightened his hold on her as she started
and at once she relaxed against him.

"Don't sneak up on me like that," she said, laughing.

"I can't help it," he said with his lips against the nape of her neck.
"When you bend over the way you do when you look into the oven my lust
overpowers me. It's the sight of your rear end that does it."

"For an old man of forty-one you have remarkably young ideas," she said,
moving her head sensuously as he kissed her neck.

He crossed his arms in front of her and cupped her breasts with his
hands. "And you," he said softly, breathing in her ear, "have a
remarkably young body for a lady of thirty-nine."

"Stop it," she said. "My cake is going to burn if you don't stop it at
once and let me go."

"Cake," he said, in a derogatory whisper. "Who wants cake?"

"No one," she said and turned to face him, pressing close to him and
raising her lips.

He kissed her in a way he had, first softly and rather seekingly, then
hard, then softly again.

"Four years," he said huskily, "and you still make me feel as if I were
about to have you for the first time."

"The cake," she said, "is definitely going to burn. I smell it."

"Do you know that you have the breasts of a virgin?" he asked. "I can't
understand it. You should have some of the sexy sag of maturity that the
kid stuff never has. Yet here you are, all pointed and tip tilted, as
the detective always says just before he seduces the beautiful young
suspect in a murder mystery."

"And do you know that you have no tact at all?" she asked. "And no sense
of time fitness? Breasts are not a subject to be discussed just before
dinner."

Tom grinned and leaned the top part of his body away from her to look
down into her face. "What shall we discuss, then?" he asked, moving his
hips and thighs slowly against hers.

"Cake," she said with mock severity. "That's what. Also fish, which
comes first this evening."

"Fish!" said Tom and lowered his arms.

"Yes, fish. It's good for you," said Constance.

"I'll go make us a drink," he said sorrowfully. "If I have to eat fish I
must be well fortified in advance."

"Light me a cigarette while you're at it, will you?" called Constance as
he disappeared into the living room. "The new _McCall's_ came today. It
has a story by Allison in it."

"Where?"

"Right there on the end table."

Tom came back into the kitchen carrying two glasses, two cigarettes and
a magazine. He handed Constance her drink and one of the cigarettes and
then sat down at the kitchen table, sipping and leafing through the
magazine.

"Here it is," he said. "This is some title. 'Watch Out, Girl At Work.'"

"It's all about a girl who works in an advertising agency in New York,"
explained Constance. "She is a career girl who wants her boss's job.
This boss of hers is young and handsome and the girl can't help herself.
She falls in love with him. In the end she marries him, after deciding
that she loves him more than her career."

"Good God," said Tom and closed the magazine. "I wonder if she has done
anything with the novel she was thinking of doing?"

"I don't know. Hand me a pot holder, will you please?" Constance removed
a cake from the oven. "Maybe she gave up the idea of writing a novel.
The magazines pay very well, you know. And she is still so young. I
always thought that novelists had to be middle aged."

"Not if they have as much talent as Allison. On the other hand, I've
always understood that authors have to have some experience with life
before they can sit down and write about it successfully." Tom chuckled.
"I wonder if the editor who bought Allison's first short story is still
in the business. Also, I wonder if he has any idea of the ramifications
of his act."

Constance laughed. "That was some story. 'Lisa's Cat.' I wonder where
Allison ever got the idea for it."

"Straight out of Somerset Maugham," said Tom. "Allison really believed
that she had burst into the top literary circles when that story won the
prize."

"Well, it certainly finished making up her mind about not going to
college anyway."

"Lisa's Cat" had not been a very good short story. Allison had written
it at the age of seventeen as an entry in a contest which a slick
magazine was running at the time. The magazine had run a full-page
illustration of a black cat against a background consisting of a
half-open window, draped with red, and a vase of spring flowers resting
on the same table on which the cat sat.

"Write a short story of not more than five thousand words to fit this
picture," the magazine invited its readers, and offered a first prize of
two hundred and fifty dollars.

More important to Allison at the time was the fact that the magazine
announced that it would publish the prize-winning story in its next
issue. Allison had sat down at once and begun to write a cat story. It
had to do with an English gentleman in the Foreign Service who gave his
faithless wife Lisa a black cat as an anniversary gift. As the English
gentleman returned home from his office unexpectedly one afternoon, the
cat's sad cries had aroused his attention and he had discovered his
faithless Lisa in the arms of her lover.

Perhaps, Tom had often thought, the editor whose job it was to read the
contest entries was weary, or perhaps the sad ending of the story, where
the English gentleman went to a place designated by Allison as "up
country" and caught the plague and died, pleased his fancy. In any case,
Allison was declared the winner, received a check for the amount
promised, and in the next issue the story appeared.

"Maybe Allison was too lucky too quickly," Tom said as he sipped his
drink. "Perhaps she is too busy working in New York to take time out for
experiences."

Constance began to set the table absently, putting the plates and
glasses in their proper places through long habit rather than by
conscious thought.

"I never really believed she would stay away from home as long as she
has," she said. "I thought she'd be back inside of six months and now
she has been in New York for more than two years. Do you think that we
ever made her feel like the third person who makes up a crowd after we
were married?"

"No, I don't," said Tom. "Although Allison and I never came to
understand one another as well as I should have liked, I think that she
began to think of leaving here right after Nellie Cross killed herself."

There was an unspoken agreement of a sort between Tom and Constance.
Whenever they referred to Peyton Place's bad time back in '39, they
spoke of their own particular unhappiness in terms of Nellie Cross's
suicide. They did not speak of this same time as the period when Allison
had learned about her father and of the circumstances of her birth.

"But I think her determination took on form," continued Tom, "after
Kathy Ellsworth's accident, during the trial. I don't think that she
ever felt the same about Peyton Place after that was over with."

"If that was her main reason for leaving it was rather foolish,"
declared Constance. "The Ellsworths suing Leslie Harrington had nothing
to do with Allison. It was none of her affair."

"It was everyone's affair," said Tom quietly.

Later, as Constance stood at the sink doing the dinner dishes, she
reflected that Tom had probably been right when he had said that the
Ellsworths suing Leslie Harrington had been everyone's affair. It was a
situation which had split Peyton Place apart and for that reason alone
it had become of concern to everyone whether they wished to be concerned
or not. But still, Constance remembered, it was not the Ellsworth affair
alone which had changed Allison. Allison had begun to change before
that. She had never been a child again after Constance had brought her
home from the hospital following that unfortunate business with Norman
Page and the terrible tragedy of Nellie Cross. And the other, too,
thought Constance reluctantly. The truth about her father and me. She
must mind terribly although she always pretends not to give a damn. I
wonder if it's true what they say about bastards usually being
successful in their chosen fields because they feel they have to be to
make up for not having had fathers. Constance looked down into the soapy
dishwater and the suds were suddenly rainbow colored and shimmering
through her tears. She had no right to be so happy, not after the way
she had failed Allison. She wiped a tear from her cheek by brushing her
face against her shoulder, and she listened to the sound of Tom's
tuneless whistle which came from the cellar where he worked at his buzz
saw.

I have so much, she thought guiltily. But I should have seen to it that
Allison came first.

She had certainly not put Allison first back in '39. She remembered only
too clearly the hot night of Nellie Cross's suicide, with Allison lying
in a state of shock at the hospital. The fear uppermost in Constance's
mind that night had been that she had lost Tomas Makris. When everything
had been taken care of as well as possible that night, Tom had driven
away slowly from the parking lot behind the Peyton Place hospital. He
did not speak, Constance remembered, and neither did she as she sat in
the front seat of the car next to him. He did not ask her to move closer
to him as he usually did, or reach for her hand, and Constance sat
still, leaning against the door on her side of the car with her fear
making a bad taste in her mouth. Silently, Tom drove to a place called
Road's End and when he turned off the car lights the whole town lay
spread out below, like a patterned carpet. He sat still for a long time,
staring down at the town, and Constance did not dare to speak. At last,
he flung his cigarette end out into the dark and turned to her. In the
thin moonlight his face seemed more sharply etched than she had ever
seen it and she began to tremble.

"Tell me about it," he said, but he did not touch her, not even when she
was unable to keep from crying any longer.

"There is nothing to tell," she said. "I have never been married in my
life. That's all there is to it. Allison is an illegitimate child and
I've tried very hard to keep it a secret ever since she was born. I've
worked hard to protect Allison, Tom. When she was born my mother and I
fixed her birth certificate so that no one would ever know. She is a
whole year older than she thinks she is. I did everything I could think
of to protect her, but I can't change the fact that she is a bastard."

"That noble-sounding business about protecting your child is a lot of
crap," said Tom brutally. "You finagled around to protect yourself, not
her. And as for the fact, did you have to fling it at her the way you
did? I have seen cruelty in my time, Constance. Plenty of it. But I have
never seen anything to compare with what you did to Allison tonight."

"What the hell did you expect me to do?" cried Constance, knowing that
she sounded like a shrew and not caring, unable suddenly to stop the
words which bubbled crudely to her lips. "What the hell should I do with
her? Let her run wild? Let her go into the woods to screw every boy she
meets up with? Is that what I should do, just so that you would have one
mother in the world who would agree with your fancy theories about sex
for children?"

"But you don't know that Allison was doing anything with Norman of which
you might not approve," said Tom coldly.

"Like hell I don't! She is just like her father. The more I look at her,
the more I can see Allison MacKenzie in her. Sex. That's all he ever
thought of and his bastard daughter is the same way. I don't even have
to look very hard to see her father in Allison."

"It is not Allison MacKenzie whom you see in your daughter," said Tom.
"It is yourself, and that is what horrifies you. You are afraid that she
will turn out to be like you, that she will wind up with an illegitimate
child on her hands, as you did. That is what you saw when you looked at
Allison and Norman this evening. It never occurred to you that perhaps
she is different from the way you were."

"That isn't true!" cried Constance. "I was nothing like Allison at that
age. I would never have gone into the woods with a boy to do the things
that Allison has done."

"How do you know what Allison has done? You never gave her a chance to
tell you before you began to lash out on all sides with your poisonous
tongue."

"I just know, I tell you!"

"From experience?" asked Tom.

"Oh, how I hate you!" she said venomously. "How I hate you!"

"No," said Tom, "you don't hate me. You hate the truth, but you don't
hate me. The difference between us, Constance, is that I don't mind the
truth, no matter how sordid it is. But I do hate a liar."

He started the car and drove swiftly to her house on Beech Street
without speaking another word, and Constance knew that she had lost him.

"How could you ever have said that you loved me?" she said as she
stepped out of the car. "How could you have loved me and then speak as
you have spoken tonight?"

"I said nothing about loving you less, Constance," said Tom wearily. "I
only said that I hate a liar. I've wanted to marry you for two years
because I loved you. I still want to marry you because I still love you,
but I cannot stand to look at you and know that you lie every time you
find the truth too disagreeable to be faced."

"I suppose you've never lied," she said childishly.

"Only rarely," he said, "when the truth would have done more harm than
good, and I have seldom gone so far as to lie to myself. Moreover,
Constance, I have never lied to you. There can be neither beauty, nor
trust, nor security between a man and a woman if there is not truth."

"All _right_," said Constance angrily. "If it's truth you want, come
into the house and I'll give you truth. Every last damned word of it.
Come on."

He followed her into the house, locking the door behind him, and she led
the way into the living room. He drew the drapes together at the windows
and closed the door leading into the front hall while she sat stiffly on
the couch and watched him.

"Would you like a drink?" she asked timidly, her anger suddenly gone.

"No," he replied from where he stood leaning against the closed door
which led into the hall. "And neither do you. Let's get this over with.
Start, and start from the beginning and for God's sake try to be honest
with the two of us for once."

He had the air of a jailer as he stood waiting for her to speak and his
features had a quality of hardness which she had never seen before. Nor
did he soften when she began the hesitating recital of facts about
herself. Several times he paced away from the door to light a cigarette
but he did not offer her one, and several times, in a voice which she
did not recognize as his, he picked her up on the loose ends in her
stories.

"That's a lie," he said once, and Constance, caught in a web of her own
making, began the retelling of a particular incident.

"What are you leaving out?" he demanded, and she put in a fact about
herself which she had always considered shameful.

"Go back over that one again," he said. "Let's see if you can tell it
the same way twice."

It was a night that Constance never forgot and when it was over Tom
leaned against the closed door, white faced and haggard.

"Is that everything?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, and he believed her.

It was not until much later that Constance realized fully what Tom had
done for her. In the weeks which followed it was as if she were a new
and different person who walked freely and unafraid for the first time.
It was never again necessary for her to take refuge in lies and
pretenses, and it was only when she finally realized this that she knew
what Tom meant when he had spoken of the dead weight of the shell she
had always carried. But that night there was no realization. There was
nothing but a terrible need, a hunger that caused her to reach forward
for the first time in her life.

"Please," she whispered, and before he could move toward her she ran to
him. "Please," she cried. "Please. Please."

And then he was holding her and his lips were against her cheek, at the
corners of her eyes, soft against her ear as he murmured, "Darling,
darling, darling," while Constance wept. His fingers were firm against
her back, rubbing away the tenseness between her shoulder blades, until
at last she quieted and then they were gentle and caressing at the nape
of her neck. He sat down without releasing her and held her on his lap,
his arms cradling her, and she put her head against his shoulder,
warming herself in her own desire to give and give and give. Her finger
tips traced a pattern down the side of his face, and with her mouth
almost against his she whispered, "I didn't know it could be like this,
so comforting, with nothing to fear."

"It can be a lot of different things--even fun."

She gave him the soft nibbling kisses of love not in a hurry, and soon
their words were almost indistinguishable to themselves and each other.

For the first time in their relationship she undressed herself and let
him watch her, and still there was this joy of giving in her. She could
not lie still under his hands.

"Anything," she said. "Anything. Anything."

"I love this fire in you. I love it when you have to move."

"Don't stop."

"Here? And here? And here?"

"Yes. Oh, yes. Yes."

"Your nipples are as hard as diamonds."

"Again, darling. Again."

"Your legs are absolutely wanton, do you know it?"

"Am I good for you, darling?"

"Good! Christ!"

"Do it to me then."

He raised his head and smiled down into her face. "Do what?" he teased.
"Tell me."

"You know."

"No, tell me. What do you want me to do to you?"

She looked up at him appealingly.

"Say it," he said. "Say it."

She whispered the words in his ear and his fingers dug into her
shoulders.

"Like this?"

"Please," she said. "Please." And then, "Yes! Yes, yes, yes."

Later she lay with her head on his shoulder and one hand flat against
his chest.

"For the first time in my life I'm not ashamed afterward," she said.

"Shall I be revolting and say 'I told you so'?"

"If you like."

"I told you so."

She moved her head a little and bit his shoulder.

"Ouch!"

"Take it back!"

"All right! All right! Turn loose."

"Sure?"

"Yes, for Christ's sake!"

"Promise?"

"You cannibal! Yes."

She put her lips against the spot where her teeth had been. "Love me?"

He raised himself up on one elbow and put a hand gently on her throat so
that she could feel her pulse against his finger tips. For a long moment
he looked down into her eyes until she could feel desire begin again,
thick within her.

"Can't stand the sight of you," he said huskily.

"You just stick around me for sex, do you?"

"I don't know. I'd have to try you out again first."

"That'll be two dollars, please."

"Be good and I may tip you."

"Oh, darling," she said suddenly. "Darling, I'm not afraid any more,"
and her voice throbbed with happiness and relief.

"I know," he said. "I know."

A few weeks after that, when Tom asked her to marry him, she gave him a
simple, straightforward "Yes" and went home to tell Allison.

"Tom and I are going to be married, Allison," she said.

"Oh?" said the child who was no longer a child. "When?"

"As soon as possible. Next week end, if we can."

"Why the big rush all of a sudden?"

"I love him and I have waited long enough," said Constance.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Constance Makris finished wiping the silverware and put it away. It was
not, she thought, in marrying Tom that she had failed Allison. It had
been during the long talk which the two of them had had about Allison's
father that Constance had failed. Yet, she had tried faithfully to reply
with only the most truthful of answers to her daughter's questions.

"Did you love my father?" Allison had asked.

"I don't think so," Constance had answered frankly. "Not the way I love
Tom."

"I see," Allison had said. "Are you sure he was my father?"

She hates me, Constance had thought, and tried to be gentle with her
daughter.

"I shan't make excuses for myself," she had said, "but what happened
between your father and me could happen to anyone. I was lonely. I
needed someone and he was there."

"Was he married?"

"Yes," Constance had replied in a low voice. "He was married and had two
children."

"I see," Allison had said and later Constance was sure that this had
been the moment when Allison had begun to think of leaving Peyton Place.

The Ellsworth affair, when Allison had been made to feel that there was
no one in Peyton Place who was her friend, was secondary.

Constance hung the dish towel on a line out on the back porch and
breathed deeply of the October evening air. Allison, she remembered, had
always loved October in Peyton Place.

Oh, my dear, thought Constance, try to be a little gentle. Try to
forgive me a little, to understand a little. Come home, Allison, where
you belong.

Constance went back into the kitchen slowly. She ought to drive down to
see Selena Cross. It was terrible the way she had paid absolutely no
attention to business since Selena had begun to manage the Thrifty
Corner. But Constance didn't have to worry with Selena in charge. The
girl could run the place as well as Constance herself had ever done.
Constance smiled as she paused to listen to Tom's whistle. She was, of
course, making excuses. She would much rather spend the evening at home
than at Selena's going over accounts and receipts.

"Hey," she called down the cellar stairs. "Are you going to stay down
there all night?"

Tom shut off the buzz saw. "Not if you're free and willing," he said,
and Constance laughed.




CHAPTER 3


On this same Friday in October, at about four o'clock in the afternoon,
Seth Buswell met Leslie Harrington on Elm Street. They exchanged
greetings for they were, after all, civilized men who had been born on
the same street in the same town, and had attended school together as
boys.

In fact, reflected Seth wryly, he and Leslie had quite a lot in common
if one really stopped to think about it.

"You fellows still playing cards Friday nights?" asked Leslie.

Seth could hardly conceal his surprise, for this was the closest that he
had ever come to hearing Leslie make what amounted to a request.

"Yes," Seth replied, and an awkward pause followed the single word. Each
man waited for the other to speak, but Seth did not proffer the expected
invitation, and Leslie did not ask for it again. The men parted
casually, but the same thought was in both their minds. Leslie
Harrington had not played poker with the men of Chestnut Street since
1939, and if Seth had his way, he never would again.

For years, there had been an understanding between the Friday night
poker players, that if one of them was unable to attend the weekly card
game, he would telephone Seth to inform him as soon as possible after
supper on the evening of the gathering. One night, four years before,
Leslie had telephoned him. It was the evening of the day when the jury
had reached a decision in the case of Ellsworth _vs._ Harrington.

"Seth," Leslie had said, "I'm pooped from being in court all day. Count
me out of the game for tonight."

"I'll count you out, Leslie," Seth had said, with his rage of the
afternoon still a pain within him. "Tonight and every other Friday night
from now on. I don't want you in my house again."

"Now don't go off half-cocked, Seth," Leslie had cautioned. "After all,
we've been friends for years."

"Not friends," Seth had replied. "By coincidence, we happen to have been
born on the same street in the same town. By an unhappy coincidence, I
might add," and with that, he had hung up on Leslie.

Yes, indeed, thought Seth, as he mounted the wide steps in front of his
house, Leslie and I really have quite a lot in common. The same town,
street and friends. Even the same woman, once. How easy it is, how
dangerously easy it is to hate a man for one's own inadequacies.

This last thought caused an uncoiling of self-loathing in Seth to a
point where he fancied that he tasted bile, and as soon as he had
entered his house he poured himself a drink large enough to kill the
most disagreeable of flavors. By the time Matthew Swain arrived, a few
minutes before the others, the newspaper owner was quite drunk.

"For Christ's sake!" exclaimed the doctor, stepping over Seth's
outstretched legs to reach the table where the bottle stood. "What
brought this on?"

"I have been thinking, dear friend," said Seth, drunk enough to
pronounce been as bean, a thing he would never have done when sober, "of
the ease with which one man blames another for his own inadequacies. And
that, old friend," Seth closed one eye and wiggled a forefinger at the
doctor, "is a thought of some scope. To use an idiom on your level, I
might even say that it is a pregnant thought."

The doctor poured himself a drink and sat down. "I can see that it's not
going to be hard to take your money tonight," he said.

"Ah, Matthew, where is your soul that you can talk of cards when I have
found the solution to the world's problems."

"Excuse me, Napoleon," said the doctor. "The doorbell is ringing."

"If every man," declared Seth, ignoring the doctor's remark, "ceased to
hate and blame every other man for his own failures and shortcomings, we
would see the end of every evil in the world, from war to backbiting."

Matthew Swain, who had gone to answer the bell, re-entered the room
followed by Charles Partridge, Jared Clarke and Dexter Humphrey.

"All of us in the same leaky boat," said Seth, by way of greeting.

"What's the matter with him?" demanded Jared Clarke unnecessarily.

"He has found the solution to the world's problems," said Dr. Swain.

"Humph," said Dexter Humphrey, who was notoriously lacking in a sense of
humor. "He was all right when I saw him this afternoon. Well, I came to
play cards. Are we going to play?"

"Help yourselves, gentlemen," said Seth, waving a generous hand. "Make
yourselves at home. I, for one, shall sit here and meditate."

"What the hell got into you, Seth, to make you start in so early on the
bottle?" asked Partridge.

Seth eyed the lawyer. "Did it ever occur to you, Charlie, that tolerance
can reach a point where it is no longer tolerance? When that happens,
the noble-sounding attitude on which most of us pride ourselves
degenerates into weakness and acquiescence."

"Whew!" exclaimed Partridge, wiping exaggeratedly at his forehead. "You
sound like somebody at a fraternity bull session. What're you trying to
say?"

"I was referring," said Seth with dignity, "to you and me and all of us,
in conjunction with Leslie Harrington."

There was an uncomfortable silence while Seth looked owlishly from one
of his friends to the other. At last, Dexter Humphrey coughed.

"Let's play cards," he said, and led the way to Seth's kitchen.

"All of us, every last, damned one of us hating Leslie because of our
own inadequacies," said Seth, and slumped back into his chair and drank
slowly from his glass.

If Seth Buswell and Leslie Harrington had a trait in common, it was that
Seth, like Leslie, was not a worrier. The difference between them, on
this point, was that where Leslie had taught himself not to be, Seth had
never had to be. George Buswell, Seth's father, had been as wealthy as
Leslie Harrington's father, and much more prominent in the state, and he
had cast a long shadow. But where Leslie had suffered from a compulsive
need for success, Seth had abandoned all hope of making his own mark at
an age so young that he could no longer remember when it had been, and
this had saved him the worry of failure with which Leslie had had to
learn to cope. Seth could not recall a conscious memory of his decision,
for over the years it had faded into the vaguest of feelings.

No one will ever be able to say that I do not measure up to my father in
spite of my efforts, for I shall never try to measure up to him.

This feeling in young Seth was the beginning of what his father was
later to deplore as "Seth's laziness," and his mother to label as
"Seth's total lack of ambition."

Whatever its name, the unremembered decision had resulted in Seth's calm
drifting. He had drifted through his youth and through four years at
Dartmouth in much the same way he had later drifted into the ownership
of the _Peyton Place Times_. He had drifted, as if detached, through the
death of his parents and the loss of his sweetheart, and soon after that
Seth's detachment had become known in Peyton Place as Seth's tolerance.

"If you don't care a damn about anything, it is easy to be tolerant,"
Seth had once said to his friend young Doc Swain. "Neither side of any
picture disturbs you, which enables you to see both sides clearly and
sensibly."

Young Doc Swain, who had been married two weeks before to a girl by the
name of Emily Gilbert, had said: "I'd rather be dead than not care a
damn about anything."

And since it is difficult, if not impossible, for a man to survive
without loving something, Seth had turned his love to Peyton Place. His
was a tolerant, unbiased love which neither demanded nor expected
anything in return, so that to everyone else it seemed more like
interest and civic pride than love.

"We ought to have a new high school," Seth had written in an editorial,
"but of course, it'll cost us something. Taxes will go up. On the other
hand, we're not going to turn out many bright kids with the inadequate
facilities which we now have. Looks to me like it's up to you folks with
kids, and those of you who ever expect to have kids, to decide whether
we'll pay $1.24 more per thousand in property taxes, or whether we'll
settle for second-rate education."

The people of northern New England were Seth's people, and he knew them
well. His tolerance, his seeming indifference, succeeded with them where
force and salesmanship would have failed. Everyone in Peyton Place said
that Seth never used the _Times_ as a weapon, not even during political
campaigns, and this was the truth. Seth published items of interest to
the residents of his town and the surrounding towns. Whatever world news
he printed came from the wires of the Associated Press, and Seth never
commented or enlarged upon it in his editorials. "Social items and town
gossip of a watered down nature, that's what you get in the _Times_,"
other newspaper owners in other parts of the state were apt to say. Yet,
during the first few years during which Seth had owned the paper, he had
not only succeeded in getting a new high school built in his town, but
also in getting Memorial Park built and funds appropriated for its care
and maintenance. He had raised much of the money that went into the
building of the Peyton Place hospital, and through the pages of the
_Times_ volunteers were recruited for the building of a new firehouse.
For years, Seth, in his tolerant, unforceful fashion, saw to it that his
town grew and improved, and then Leslie Harrington's son was born. It
was as if Leslie, having succeeded in one field, turned now to new
interests. In the year following Rodney's birth, voices were raised
against Seth's for the first time at town meeting, and the voices raised
were those of the mill hands. Year after year, when items dear to Seth's
heart such as a new grade school and town zoning came up to a vote at
the meeting, the newspaper owner was defeated by overwhelming numbers.
Seth retired behind his tolerant detachment and allowed Leslie
Harrington to assume a position in Peyton Place which had the dimensions
of dictatorship, and he steadfastly refused to use the _Times_ as an
extension of his own voice. Seth shrugged and said that the people would
soon tire of Leslie's dictatorial methods, but in this he was wrong for
Leslie did not dictate, he bargained. When Seth realized this, he
shrugged again, and everyone in Peyton Place said that his tolerance was
of heroic proportions. Seth had believed it himself until one day in
1939 when Allison MacKenzie had come, white faced and with fists
clenched, into his office.

"The Ellsworths are suing Leslie Harrington," Allison had said, "and
everyone is saying that they'll never get a dime because the jury will
be made up almost entirely of mill hands. What are we going to do?"

Seth had looked at this girl, too tense and fine drawn for a child of
sixteen, and had tried to explain to her why they were going to do
nothing about the case of Ellsworth _vs._ Harrington.

"I get riled up the same as you," he had said. "In fact, I've often
threatened to use the paper as an instrument of exposure. I threaten to
do it every year, just before town meeting, when I know that I'm going
to get beat on an issue that I don't want to get beat on, like zoning,
or a new grade school. But I never do it. Why? Because I believe in
tolerance, and one of the requirements of tolerance is not only that you
will listen to the other fellow's viewpoint, but also that you won't try
to cram yours down his throat. I'll say what I think to anyone who is
willing to listen, but I won't force anyone to read about it in the
pages of my paper."

"Even when you know that your viewpoint is the right one?" Allison had
demanded, her voice rising in angry disbelief.

"That isn't the point, is it? One's viewpoint and a man's right to
defend himself against it are two different things. When I print
something in the paper, and a man reads it later in his own home, I am
not there for him to disagree with if his viewpoint is not in accordance
with mine. The only recourse he has then is to sit down and write a
'Letter to the Editor,' and then he is being unfair to me because he is
not here for me to argue with if I wanted to do so."

"I don't know," Allison had said in a tightly controlled voice, "how you
came to think the way you do, and I don't care. I have something here
which I've written. I'm not asking you to print your own words in your
paper. Print mine, with my name at the head of it. I'm not afraid to
write what I think, and I don't care who reads it or who might disagree
with me. I know when I am right."

"Let's see what you've written," Seth had said, extending his hand.

Allison had written a great deal, much of it to do with the Constitution
and the Declaration of Independence, and the individual's God-given
right to a fair trial by jury. She had written also of the miser's
desire to make money to a point where he grossly overlooked the means by
which he made it. She charged Leslie Harrington with negligence and
carelessness, and said that if he were any kind of man, he would never
have waited to be sued. He would have put his money at the disposal of
the Ellsworths, and he would carry the marks of what he had done to
Kathy on his conscience for the rest of his life. It was time, Allison
had written, for men of honor to stand up and be counted. When the time
came that an individual in a free American town was forced to fear a
prejudiced hearing, it was indeed a time to try men's souls. Altogether,
Allison had written seventeen typewritten pages expressing her opinion
of Leslie Harrington and the grip in which he held Peyton Place. When
Seth had finished reading, he put the manuscript down carefully.

"I cannot print this, Allison," he had said.

"Cannot!" the girl had cried, sweeping up the typewritten pages. "You
mean will not!"

"Allison, my dear--"

Angry tears had rushed to the girl's eyes. "And I thought that you were
my friend," she said, and had run out of his office.

Seth's cigarette burned his fingers and he sat up with a jerk. For a
moment, his mind refused to comprehend his circumstances, but then his
eyes fell on a bookcase at the opposite side of the room and he
understood that he was sitting in a chair in his own living room.

"Goddamn it," he muttered, and began to search the floor around his
chair for the cigarette end which he had dropped. When he found it, he
ground it into the carpet with the toe of his shoe, then he settled back
and picked up his half-finished drink. From the kitchen, there came a
low murmur of men's voices and the whisper of new playing cards.

"Raise you."

"I'll pass."

"Call."

"Full up."

"Christ, and me sitting with three kings."

My friends, thought Seth, swallowing a nausea caused by too much to
drink on an empty stomach, and caused, too, by unpleasant remembrances.
My good, tried and true blue friends, thought Seth, and like a phantom a
voice from the past struck him.

"And I thought that you were my friend!"

Seth finished his stale drink and poured himself another. I was, you
know, he thought, addressing an Allison MacKenzie of long ago. If you
had listened to me, you would have been spared a lot of hurt. I was
trying to teach you not to care too much. That business of caring too
much was always obvious in you, my dear. It showed in your writing, and
that, my dear, my too young, my sweet, my talented, my beautiful
Allison, does not make for clear, coolheaded, analytical prose.

"Straight, queen high and all black, by God! In spades!" came the
enthusiastic voice of Charles Partridge.

My friend, thought Seth drunkenly, my good friend Charlie Partridge.
What excuses we have made to one another in our time, Charlie. What
beautiful, noble, high-sounding excuses!

And suddenly Seth was back in 1939. October, 1939. Indian summer, 1939,
and a crowded courtroom, with his friend Charlie Partridge talking
softly to his friend Allison MacKenzie.

"Now, my dear, remember that you are sworn to tell the truth. I want you
to tell the court exactly what happened on the evening of Labor Day of
this year. Do not be afraid, my dear, you are among friends here."

"Friends?" The child's voice was not the voice of a child, not the same
voice which had thanked Seth for a chance to write for the paper. For
money. "Friends?" Such a tense, tightly controlled voice for a little
girl of sixteen. "Kathy Ellsworth is my friend. She is the only friend I
have in Peyton Place."

Seth had comforted himself later with the thought that he had only
imagined that Allison MacKenzie's eyes had found his in that packed
courtroom.

"Now," said the remembered voice of Charles Partridge, Leslie
Harrington's attorney, "could it not be that your friend Kathy became
dizzy as she looked down into the moving wheels of the machinery in that
building at the carnival?"

"Objection, your Honor!" It was the voice of Peter Drake, a young lawyer
who had set up an office in Peyton Place, for God only knew what reason.
He came from "away from here," as the townspeople put it, and until the
case of Ellsworth _vs._ Harrington, he had handled nothing but deeds and
the petty problems of the mill hands. And here he was, daring to object
to something that Charlie Partridge, who had been born in town, was
saying.

Honorable Anthony Aldridge, who stubbornly refused to live on Chestnut
Street, although he was a judge and could afford it, upheld Peter Drake.
The court was not interested in what Allison thought, but only in what
she had seen. Seth looked surreptitiously at the jury to see what damage
Charlie's question had done, for the jury was comprised of people who
would surely favor Leslie Harrington. It would have been impossible to
find twelve people in Peyton Place who neither worked at the mills nor
owed money on mortgaged property at the Citizens' National Bank where
Leslie was chairman of the board of trustees, and Leslie had acted
quickly, once legal proceedings had been instigated against him. He had
fired John Ellsworth, Kathy's father, and had suddenly found a buyer for
the house which the Ellsworths rented. No wonder the mill hands fastened
so thankfully on a morsel of evidence in favor of Leslie Harrington,
thought Seth, as he turned his eyes from the jury to Allison MacKenzie
on the stand.

The case continued for three days, and the only person to support
Allison MacKenzie was Tomas Makris, who testified that when he had gone
to the fun house operator to tell him to shut off the machinery which
ran the place, the operator had stated that he did not know how to
comply with this request. Lewis Welles's testimony, according to Peyton
Place, did not count, for everyone knew that he and Kathy were "going
together" and naturally he'd stick up for the girl, especially when it
might mean thirty thousand dollars.

Thirty thousand dollars! Peyton Place never grew weary of saying the
words.

"Thirty thousand dollars! Imagine it!"

"Imagine suing Leslie Harrington for thirty thousand dollars!"

"At thirty thousand dollars apiece, I'd let both my arms get ripped
off!"

"And who the hell does this Ellsworth think he is anyway? Where does he
come from? He's behind it. The girl would never have done it on her own
without her father pushing her!"

After three days the jury deliberated, according to Seth's watch,
exactly forty-two minutes. They assessed Leslie Harrington the sum of
twenty-five hundred dollars, the figure for which he had been heard to
say that he would settle. Kathy Ellsworth, who did not appear in court,
took the news more calmly than anyone else. Her right arm was gone, and
that, as she said, was that. Neither thirty thousand, nor twenty-five
hundred was going to alter the fact that she would have to learn to use
her left hand.

"Listen, baby," said Lewis Welles, in his brisk, salesman's voice to
which many people objected, "you don't need a right arm to hold a kid.
I've seen lotsa women holding babies with their left arm."

That night, when the men of Chestnut Street, with the exception of
Leslie Harrington, gathered at Seth's to play poker, Charles Partridge
had been full of excuses.

"Christ," he had said, "I know it wasn't right. What could I do? I'm
Leslie's lawyer. He pays me a yearly retainer for which I agree to take
care of his affairs to the best of my ability. Thirty thousand dollars
is a lot of money. I had to do what I did."

"It wasn't as if the sonofabitch couldn't afford it," said Dexter
Humphrey, the president of the bank.

"Leslie has always been a cheap skate," said Jared Clarke. "I don't
think he's ever bought a single thing without trying to beat the price
down."

"For a while," said Matthew Swain, "I didn't think the girl would live."

"Someday," said Seth, "that bastard will get his. In spades. He'll get
his comeuppance so good that he'll never forget it. I just hope I'm
around to see it."

All of us, every single, goddamned one of us, hating Leslie Harrington
because we haven't the guts to stand up and tell him, and everyone else,
where we stand, thought Seth, as he sat and drank in his house, in the
fall of 1943. He raised his empty glass and threw it with all his
remaining strength against the opposite wall. The glass did not even
break. It rolled across the carpet and came to rest against the
bookcase.

"My friends!" said Seth thickly. "My good, true blue friends. Screw 'em
all!"

"What did you say, Seth?" asked Dr. Swain, coming into the room followed
by the poker players who had finished with the cards.

"'Septyou, Matt," muttered Seth. "Screw 'em all, 'sheptyou, Matt," he
said, and fell asleep, leaning back in his chair, with his mouth open.




CHAPTER 4


The snow came early that year. By the middle of November the fields were
white with it and before the first week of December had passed, the
streets of Peyton Place were lined on either side with peaked, white
piles of snow pushed there, out of the way of traffic and pedestrians,
by the town's sharp-nosed plow.

Tuttle's Grocery Store was always more crowded during the winter months,
for the farmers who were hard pressed for a moment of rest in the summer
found themselves with hours of free time to spend. The majority of them
spent it in Tuttle's, talking. It was talk which mattered little, solved
nothing and which, in the winter of 1943, was concerned mostly with the
war. Yet, the war had changed the face of Peyton Place but little, and
the group in Tuttle's not at all. There were very few young men left in
town, but then, young men had never congregated around the stove in
Tuttle's so that the talkers there were the ones who had been there for
years. There were fewer products for sale in the store, but the old men
around the stove had never had much money to buy things anyway, so the
shortage of civilian goods did not affect them particularly. As for the
farmers, food was no more of a problem now than it had ever been. War
had not made the soil of northern New England less rocky, more yielding,
or the weather more predictable. The wresting of life from the land had
always been difficult, and the war made no difference one way or
another. The old men in Tuttle's talked and talked, and the farmers did
not feel cheated in having spent the hard-earned hours of leisure in
these conversations. When local talk faded, there was always the
fascinating, unending talk of war. Every battle on every front was
refought with more finesse, more brilliant strategy, more courage and
more daring, by the old men around the red-hot stove in Tuttle's. The
men, including those with sons gone to battle, spoke the words of
concern assiduously, for they felt this was expected of men whose
country was at war. Yet, there was not one among them who believed even
remotely in the possibility of an American defeat, although they
discussed the possibilities with infinite care. The idea of an alien
foot, whether German or Japanese, trodding the acres first settled by
the grandfathers of the old men in Tuttle's was one so farfetched, so
impossible to visualize, that it was spoken of--and listened to--with
the hushed attitude in which the men might have held a discussion on
extrasensory perception. It was all right to talk and to listen, but one
simply did not believe it. A stranger, coming to Peyton Place for the
first time from a place where the war had passed, might well have been
dumfounded by the lack of concern in evidence in the town. The largest,
single change which had taken place was in the Cumberland Mills, which
had gone into war work more than a year before. The mills worked in
three shifts now, operating twenty-four hours a day, and the fact that
more people had more money to spend was not particularly obvious, for
there was nothing to be bought with this newly acquired prosperity. To
the old men in Tuttle's, the war was almost like a game, a
conversational game, to be played when other subjects were exhausted. A
stranger to Peyton Place might easily have mistaken disbelief of danger
for courage, or faith for indifference.

Selena Cross was one of the few in town to be emotionally involved with
the war. Her stepbrother Paul was with the Army somewhere in the
Pacific, while Gladys was working in an aircraft factory at Los Angeles,
California. Selena fought a continual feeling of restlessness and a
sense of frustration during the winter of 1943.

"I wish I were a man," she had told Tomas Makris. "Nothing would hold me
back then. I'd join up in a minute."

Afterward, she was sorry that she had said this, for Tom, she had heard,
had tried several times to enlist. None of the branches of the service
were eager, it seemed, to accept Tom who was over forty, and who had had
both knees fractured in the past.

Restless and frustrated, Selena wrestled also with a sense of guilt. She
should, she knew, be grateful that Ted Carter was safe at the state
university, studying for his eventual legal career and being kept from
active duty by virtue of his good grades and the R.O.T.C. But somehow
she was not. She felt that Ted should be fighting side by side with Paul
and all others like him, and it irritated her when Ted came home week
ends, or wrote enthusiastic letters remarking on his good fortune in
"managing to stay in college."

It was fine, Selena admitted, for a man to have his goal firmly fixed in
his mind, and Ted, she knew, was not a coward. He was more than ready
and willing to go to war, after his schooling was done.

"If I can stay in for just one more year, including summers, I'll have
my Bachelor's. That will leave only law school, and who knows? The war
may be over before then," Ted had told her.

She had been furiously angry. "I should think that you'd _want_ to go.
After all, the United States is at war."

"It's not that I don't want to go," he had replied, hurt at her
unreasonableness. "It's just that this way, I won't be losing any time
and we can be married that much sooner."

"Time!" Selena had scoffed. "Let the Germans or the Japs get over here,
and see how valuable your time is then!"

"But Selena, we've had this all planned for years--ever since we were
kids. What's the matter?"

"Nothing!"

As a matter of fact, Selena could not have told Ted what the matter was.
She knew that her feeling was a childish, unreasonable one, so senseless
as to be unexplainable, yet it was there. She could not get over the
idea that there was something not quite right in a strong, able-bodied
man wanting to stay in a sleepy college town while a war raged over the
rest of the world.

Since Nellie's death and the advent of Paul and Gladys with its
consequence of tidiness and its measure of security, the Carters had
relented somewhat in their attitude toward Selena. After all, said the
Carters, it took a real smart girl to manage a business all by herself
with no help at all from the owner. Connie had scarcely set foot in the
shop from the day she had married that Greek fellow. Selena did it
alone, and a girl had to be real smart to be able to do that at the age
of eighteen. Now that Selena was alone with Joey, Roberta sometimes
invited the two of them to Sunday dinner, and she always insisted on
sharing her letters from Ted with Selena, in the hope that Selena would
reciprocate. Selena never did. She did not like Roberta and Harmon, nor
could she bring herself to trust them. She accepted Roberta's
invitations warily, for she could see no graceful way to avoid them, but
she never spent a comfortable Sunday in the Carter house, and whenever
one of these Sundays was over, she and Joey acted like a pair of
children let out of school. They ran and laughed all the way to their
own house, and when they reached it, Selena made hamburgers and Joey did
imitations of Roberta's hyperladylike mannerisms while they ate,
Selena's food growing cold while she laughed.

I haven't a thing to kick about, thought Selena, as she walked home one
cold December evening after closing the Thrifty Corner. If I had an
ounce of gratitude in me, I'd know enough to be grateful for all I have.

Just before she opened the door to enter the house, she paused and
looked up at the heavy sky. It's going to snow, she thought, and hurried
inside to warmth, where Joey had already started supper and where
another letter from Ted awaited her. Joey had started a fire in the
fireplace, too, for he knew that Selena loved to watch a fire while she
ate. The fireplace had been a needless extravagance, installed with much
labor and thought by Paul Cross after he had learned from Gladys that,
to Selena, no home was complete without one.

"Fireplaces!" Paul had scoffed good-naturedly when Selena had begun to
cry the first time she saw the completed hearth. "They're dirty and old
fashioned. Where'd you ever pick up such notions?"

"From Connie MacKenzie," Selena had answered. "I used to sit in front of
hers, with Allison, and think about the day when I'd have one of my
own."

"Well, now you've got it," Paul had said. "Don't you squawk to me when
the wood is wet, or the chimney doesn't draw and fills the house with
smoke."

Selena had laughed. "I used to wish that I had blond hair so that when I
had my fireplace I could sit in front of it and let the fire make
highlights in my hair, like it does in Connie's. I would have given
anything to look like her, to be that beautiful."

"Nothing could have helped you!" hooted Paul, teasing her. "You've got a
shape like a broom handle and a face like a hedgehog. Connie MacKenzie
indeed! Not a chance."

Although Selena did not resemble Allison's mother in the least, as she
had wished, she was, nevertheless, beautiful. By the time she was
twenty, she had fulfilled all the promises of adolescence. Her eyes held
a look of unshared secrets, but they no longer seemed old and out of
place as they had when she was a child. People turned to look twice and
three times at Selena, no matter where she went, for she had an air of
experience suffered, of mystery untold, which was far more entrancing
than mere beauty. Sometimes, when Joey Cross looked at her, his love so
overwhelmed him that he felt compelled to touch her, or, at the very
least, to call her name and force her to look at him.

"Selena!"

She raised her eyes from the book she held and turned to look at him.
The firelight highlighted her cheekbones so that the hollows beneath the
bones seemed deeper than they actually were.

"Yes, Joey?"

He lowered his eyes to the magazine in front of him. "It must be snowin'
real hard," he said. "The wind's howlin' like a sick hound."

She stood up and went to a window and pressed her face against the
glass, making blinders with her hands at the corners of her eyes.

"I guess it's snowing!" she exclaimed. "Blowing up a real blizzard. Did
you close up the sheep pen real well?"

"Yep. I knew it was goin' to blizzard. Clayton Frazier told me. He
showed me how he can tell, from lookin' at the clouds no later than four
o'clock in the afternoon."

Selena laughed. "What happens if the clouds don't blow over until after
four?"

"Then it won't blizzard that night," said Joey positively. "It'll hold
off 'til the next day."

"I see," said Selena seriously. "Listen, how about a cup of cocoa and a
game of checkers?"

"O.K. with me," said Joey casually, but his heart, and very nearly his
eyes, overflowed with love for her.

Selena always made him feel big and important. Like a man, instead of a
kid. She depended on him, and liked to have him around. Joey knew boys
at school whose older sisters would rather be dead than have their
brothers hanging around them. Not Selena, though. Whenever she hadn't
seen him for a while, even if it was only a couple of hours, she always
acted like he had just come back from a long trip. "Hi, Joey!" she'd
say, and her face got all smily and lighted up. She never kissed him or
fondled him, the way he had seen some women do to some boys. He'd have
died, thought Joey, if she ever did that. But sometimes she gave him a
playful poke, or rumpled his hair and told him if he didn't hurry and
get a haircut, the barber would soon be chasing him down Elm Street,
waving a pair of shears. She rumpled his hair and said that, even when
he didn't really need a haircut.

"Come on, poky," said Selena, rumpling his hair. "Get out the board. And
when are you going to get that mop cut? If you don't hurry, Clement will
chase you right down Elm Street one of these days, waving his shears and
yelling for you to wait until he catches up with you."

They drank cocoa and played checkers, and Joey beat Selena three games
straight while she sat and groaned, apparently helpless to stop her
brilliant opponent. Then they went to bed. It was much later, close to
one o'clock in the morning, when the doorbell rang.

Selena sat up in bed with a start. Paul! she thought, scrambling around
vainly in the dark, trying to find the button on the lamp next to her
bed. Something has happened to Paul, and there is someone outside with a
telegram. She knew what to expect. The yellow telegram with the one or
two red stars pasted inside the glassine window which was the
government's way of preparing people for the shock of learning that
their loved ones were either maimed or dead. Almost unconsciously, her
mind registered the fact that the wind was blowing fiercely, driving icy
pellets of snow against the windows. She struggled with one sleeve of
her robe while she put on the living room lights, and when she opened
the door at last, the wind yanked it out of her hand, ramming it against
the wall behind, and a sharp drift of snow struck her in the face. Lucas
Cross stumbled through the open door, while Selena's shocked mind could
think only of getting the door closed behind him.

"Christ, you kept me waitin' long enough, out there in the cold," said
Lucas, by way of greeting.

Selena's mind began to function again. "Hello, Pa," she said wearily.

"Is that any way to greet me, after I've traveled hundreds of miles just
to see you?" demanded Lucas.

His smile had not changed, she noticed. His forehead still moved as if
controlled by his lips. Then she realized that he was wearing a navy
uniform, with a pea jacket, and a white cap placed firmly on his oddly
square head.

"Why, Pa!" she exclaimed. "You're in the Navy."

"Yes, goddamn it. Wish to hell I'd stayed in the woods, I can tell ya.
Histin' an ax is a lot easier than the things they can think up for a
man to do in the Navy. Listen, I hitchhiked all the way up from Boston.
You gonna keep me standin' here all night? I'm froze."

"You're nowhere near frozen," said Selena acidly. "Not with all you've
got in you. I see that the Navy hasn't managed to cure you of drinking."

"Cure me?" demanded Lucas, following her into the living room. "Hell,
honey, the Navy's taught me tricks I'd never heard of!"

"I can imagine," she said, stirring up the embers in the fireplace and
putting on another log.

"Say!" he exclaimed, taking off his jacket and tossing it into a chair.
"There's been some changes made around here, ain't they? I didn't notice
too good from outside. It's blowin' up one helluva blizzard. But I can
see there's been a lot of improvements inside. Christ, it's cold. Feller
gave me a ride as far as Elm Street, and I hadda walk from there. Goin'
up to Canada, this feller was. Just passin' through. You'd a thought he
coulda given me a lift to the house, but no. He didn't like it 'cause I
was sippin' at a little insulation on the way up. The bastard."

I knew it, thought Selena. I knew all along that things were too good to
last. This is what I get for my ingratitude, for complaining when I had
no grounds for complaint.

She turned to look at Lucas, who was drinking from a pint bottle. When
he had finished and the bottle was empty, he threw it toward the
fireplace, where it smashed against the hearth.

"Listen, Pa," said Selena furiously. "You were right when you said that
there had been some changes made around here. Furthermore the changes
are going to remain. If you want to throw empty bottles around, you can
get out and go do it somewhere else. You can't do it here. Not any
more."

A great deal of liquor, plus the quick change from extreme cold to
warmth, made Lucas feel much drunker than he believed himself to be,
and, as always, drunkenness made him ugly.

"Listen, you," he snarled. "Don't go tellin' me what to do in my own
house. I don't give a shit what you've done to the place while I was
gone. It's still my place, and don't you forget it."

"Did you come back just to make trouble?" demanded Selena shrilly.
"Haven't you done enough? Wasn't it enough what you did to me, and to
Ma? You heard about Ma, didn't you? Killed herself. That's what you did
to Ma. Isn't that enough for you?"

Lucas made a deprecating gesture with his hand. "Yeah," he said. "I
heard about what Nellie done. A disgrace to the family, that's what it
was. There's never been a Cross who killed himself before, 'til Nellie
went and done it. She musta been crazy. But I don't give a damn about
that," he said, and began to smile. He stood up, swaying a little, and
began to move toward Selena. "I never did give a damn about Nellie," he
said. "Not after I got to know you real good, honey."

In one terrible flash, the memory of her day with Dr. Swain returned to
Selena. She could feel the heat of the July sun on her back, bringing
out the sweat, and the doctor's probing hands. She could hear his gentle
voice, and she remembered the pain when she had awakened and it had been
over with. She remembered Nellie's blue, swollen face, and the doctor
lying, telling her that Nellie had had cancer. Selena's hand tightened
on the fire tongs which she had not put down after fixing the fire.

"Don't come near me, Pa," she said, and fear and revulsion made her
choke on her words.

"Still a little wildcat, ain't ya, honey?" said Lucas softly. "Ain't had
a man around since I left who could tame ya. I can see that." He walked
closer to her, until he was standing directly in front of her. "Be nice
to me, honey," he said in the old whining voice she remembered so well.
"Be good to me. It ain't like I was your real pa. There ain't nothin'
wrong in you bein' good to me." He put his big hands on her shoulders.
"Be nice to me, honey. It's been a long time."

Selena threw back her head and spit square in his face. "You dirty old
bastard," she said, her voice furiously low. "Take your crummy hands off
me."

Lucas raised one hand and wiped her spittle away. "Little wildcat, ain't
ya," he said, smiling his smile. "I'll fix ya. Same's I used to fix you
long ago. Comere."

And then Selena realized that she was fighting for her life. In his
effort to subdue her, Lucas' hands had fastened about her throat and she
began to feel the lightheadedness which comes with the lack of
sufficient air.

"Little bitch," he spat as her knee came up to hit him in the groin.
"I'll fix ya!"

His face was congested with blood as he reached for her again, and in
the quick second before his hands could touch her she brought the fire
tongs around with both her hands and smashed them with all her strength
against the side of his head. He fell to the floor at once, almost at
her feet, and in fear lest he gather his strength and stand up, Selena
brought the tongs down again and again on his head. Blood gushed up in a
fountain and bathed her face.

_He must not stand up! If he stands up he will kill me! I must not allow
him to stand up! He must be dead._

But Selena dared not uncover her eyes to look. She felt two thin arms
from behind, pulling her, pulling her away from the thing at her feet,
and still she dared not uncover her eyes. It was not until she felt a
sharp blow against her chin that she lowered her hand and looked
straight into the eyes of her little brother Joey. Behind her the fire
made a crisp, crackling, friendly sound as the log she had placed across
the andirons began to burn.

So quickly, she thought numbly. In just the short time it takes for a
log to catch fire and begin to burn.

She raised her left hand and wiped it across her mouth. It came away
smeared with blood. She licked her lips and tasted blood.

"I cut my lip," she said stupidly.

Joey shook his head. "It's from _him_," he whispered. "It's all over
you. You're all covered with blood."

All Selena wanted to do was to lie down somewhere and go to sleep. She
felt as if she had not slept for weeks, and she shook her head now,
against the weariness which was on her. I must not go to sleep, she
thought sleepily. I must stay awake and think. With an effort, she
finally thought of what it was she must do. She walked toward the
telephone as if she were wading through mud, and her hand was on the
receiver before Joey reached her. He slapped her hand away, viciously.

"What're you doin'?" he demanded. He had wanted to shout, but the words
came out in a hoarse whisper.

"Calling Buck McCracken," said Selena, and reached again for the
telephone receiver.

"Are you crazy?" whispered Joey, his fingers around her wrist. He
coughed. "Are you crazy?" This time the words came out in a normal tone
which seemed too loud. "Are you crazy? You can't do that. They'll arrest
you, if you call the sheriff."

"What else is there to do?" asked Selena.

"We'll have to get rid of him," said Joey. "I heard you talkin'. Nobody
knows he's here. We'll get rid of him, and nobody'll ever know."

"How can we get rid of him?"

"We'll bury him."

"We can't. The ground's frozen. We could never dig a hole deep enough."

"The sheep pen," said Joey, and the two of them stood still, thinking of
the sheep pen. Neither of them looked at the body in front of the
fireplace.

"The ground ain't frozen in the sheep pen," said Joey. "I've had that
infra-red lamp goin' for two days in there, on account of the lambs.
It'll be soft, the ground will. Just like it is outdoors in the
summertime."

"We'll get caught," said Selena. "There's blood all over the place.
We'll get caught."

"Listen, we _can't_ get caught. If we do, they'll arrest you and put you
in jail. They'll put you in jail and then hang you." Joey sat down and
began to cry. "Selena!"

"Yes, Joey?"

"Selena, they'll hang you! Just like Ma went and hung herself. They'll
hang you by the neck 'til you turn blue and die!"

"Don't cry, Joey."

"Selena! Selena!"

As if Joey's sobs were a stimulant, Selena began to think. She forced
herself to look at Lucas, and then she swallowed the vomit which the
sight of him raised in her mouth.

"Get a blanket, Joey," she said calmly.

A moment later, after he had handed her a woolen blanket taken from the
foot of her bed, she said: "Go let the sheep out of the pen," in the
same calm voice.

She wrapped the blanket around the crushed thing that had been her
stepfather. Only his body was recognizable. When she and Joey dragged
him out of the house, the wind caught at the skirts of her robe and
nightgown and wrapped them tightly around her legs. Lucas' blood seeped
through the blanket and left a red trail in the drifting snow.

Selena and Joey buried Lucas in a grave three feet deep, and when it was
done, Joey let the sheep back into the pen. At once, they began to
wander around, as was their fashion, and in minutes the newly dug grave
was tamped down and covered with small hoof prints. But the digging and
burying was simple in comparison with the work involved in cleaning the
living room. It was daylight, with the wind still blowing and pushing
the icy flakes of snow, when they finished. They stood together and
looked out one of the front windows. The walk from the house to the
sheep pen was completely drifted over, so that it looked as if no one
had passed that way at all.




CHAPTER 5


Soon after the first of the new year, Joey Cross contacted a man by the
name of Enrico Antonelli who owned a pig farm on the outskirts of town
and who also operated as the local butcher. Mr. Antonelli had been born
in Keene, New Hampshire, and had come to Peyton Place as a child with
his parents. Yet, he was generally referred to by the town as "that
Eye-tye over on the Pond Road." He had the curly black hair, the bright,
dark eyes and the generous belly of a comic opera Italian, and it was a
source of continual pride to Mr. Antonelli to know that he spoke better
English than most of the townspeople who had been born of ancestors who
had been living in America during the 1600's.

"It is a bad time of the year to slaughter, Joey," he said. "How come
you are in such a hurry?"

"I'm just sick of sheep is all," replied Joey. "I'm thinkin' of puttin'
in chickens in another month or so. I want all the sheep gone before
then."

"Even Cornelia?" asked Mr. Antonelli, referring to Joey's three-time
blue ribbon winning ewe.

"Yes," said Joey, not without an effort, "even Cornelia."

"Joey, you are making a mistake. Keep the sheep for another couple of
months. Fatten them up. Meat will be bringing a much better price by
then."

Joey, terrified of creating even the slightest suspicion that all was
not as it should be at the Cross house, tried to keep his voice calm and
dispassionate. "No, I don't think I'll do that, Mr. Antonelli," he said.
"I don't wanna take care of 'em no more."

Mr. Antonelli ran his fingers through his thick, curly, comic opera
Italian hair and shrugged eloquently. "Isn't that odd," he said. "I
always had the idea that you loved those sheep as if they were your
brothers."

"I did," admitted Joey, trying to imitate Mr. Antonelli's shrug, and
failing. "But I don't no more."

"Well," sighed Mr. Antonelli, "I'll try to get over to your place in the
morning. If Kenny Stearns is sober enough, perhaps I can get him to help
me."

"I'll be home," said Joey. "It don't do to count on Kenny to show up for
nothin'."

It was just as well that Joey absented himself from school in order to
remain at home to help Mr. Antonelli, for Kenny Stearns was certainly in
no condition to help the butcher the next morning.

"I told you it didn't do to count on Kenny," remarked Joey as he helped
Mr. Antonelli load sheep into the Italian's truck.

Mr. Antonelli shook his head. "I saw him last night," he said, "and he
promised me faithfully that he would be at my place at six this
morning."

How Kenny Stearns managed to reach the schools in town, let alone being
able to find his way to Antonelli's in the outskirts, was a mystery, for
he was so drunk at seven o'clock that morning that he could not have
read a steam pressure gauge accurately had his life depended on it. He
put his hand gingerly against the plump sides of the school furnaces and
knocked experimentally on both boilers, then, satisfied that the fires
were hot enough and the boilers had enough water, he made his way
staggeringly, down Maple Street toward Elm and to his own home. Upon
reaching his house, Kenny immediately locked himself in the back
woodshed for the rest of the day, and the efforts to rout him out of his
retreat by his wife Ginny and the few townspeople for whom Kenny was
supposed to work that day were futile.

"He's in the woodshed, drunk as a skunk," said Ginny to those who came
to inquire for him. "I can't make him come out but you go ahead and try
if you want."

But for Ginny and his employers alike, Kenny had one answer. "Kiss my
arse."

Ephraim Tuttle, who owned the grocery store, was the only man in town
who managed to get another word out of Kenny that day.

"I would, Kenny," said Ephraim, in reply to Kenny's one remark, "if
you'd just come out of that woodshed and down to the store to shovel the
walks like you promised."

"Frig you," said Kenny hostilely, and those were the last words anyone
heard from him that day.

Ginny, who in addition to being cold due to her inability to get into
the shed for wood to keep the house stoves going, grew rapidly bored and
left the house early in the afternoon.

"I'm going down to The Lighthouse," she said, referring to Peyton
Place's one beer saloon, a horribly misnamed place, for not only was it
nowhere near the sea but it was neither light nor a house. It was
located on Ash Street, and was a dismal, barnlike affair from which
emanated an odor of sweat, stale beer and sawdust every time the door
was opened. "I'm going down to The Lighthouse," repeated Ginny, "where
there's a few that appreciates me."

Ginny Stearns was a tragic example of blonde prettiness gone to ruin. At
forty-odd years of age, she had faded from pink-and-white rosiness to a
rather pallid flabbiness, but Kenny still believed, with his whole
heart, that no man breathed who, after one look at Ginny, was not ready
to fall at her feet like--as he put it--"a cockroach after one taste of
Paris green." In her youth, Ginny had been a victim of such insecurity
that it had been necessary to her to prove her worth to herself
continually, a feat which she had accomplished, in some measure, by
sleeping with any man who asked her. Ginny, however, did not put it on
any such crude basis as that. In later years, she always said: "I could
count on the fingers of one hand the men in Peyton Place and White River
who have not loved me," and by love, Ginny meant a noble emotion of the
soul rather than a baser one of the sex glands.

"You hear me, Kenny?" she cried, pounding resentfully against the locked
door of the woodshed. "I'm going out."

Kenny did not deign to answer. He sat on a pile of cordwood in his shed
and opened a fresh bottle of whisky.

"Whore," he muttered, as the tap of Ginny's high-heeled shoes reached
him. "Harlot. Slut."

Kenny sighed. He had, he knew, no one to blame but himself for getting
tangled up with Ginny. His own father had warned him against her.

"Kenneth," his father had said, "no good will come of your mating with
Virginia Uhlenberg. The young of the mill hands are all alike. No good
a-tall."

Kenny knew that his father had been a smart man. He hadn't been a handy
man like Kenny, but a real landscape gardener who had landscaped the
grounds of the state house.

"Pa," Kenny had said, "I love Ginny Uhlenberg. I'm gonna marry her."

"God rest your soul," said his father, who was given to flowery phrases
and biblical quotations.

Nope, thought Kenny, taking a drink from the newly opened bottle, ain't
got nobody to blame but myself. Pa told me. He told me that he told me
so, right after Ginny started runnin' out. He told me every year 'til he
died, the sonofabitch. I'll bet he never got over bein' sore that he
couldn't have Ginny for himself.

Kenny spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening in trying
to convince himself that Ginny had never cuckolded him with his own
father. It was a hopeless task. In the end, the idea became a sharp
sword of torture in his mind and he could stand it no longer. He decided
to go to The Lighthouse and face Ginny with it.

"Ginny," he would demand in a terrible voice, "did you ever do it with
my father?"

Let her try to deny it, the bitch, he thought. Just let her try. He'd
beat the lying words right out of her with the jagged end of a broken
bottle.

This last was a prospect which propelled him out of his house and into
the cold January night. It kept him warm all the way to Mill Street and
then deserted him abruptly. He stood on the street corner, shivering
under the thin shirt he wore, and his teeth began to chatter. Up ahead
of him lights shimmered in the darkness, and Kenny decided to go into
the building behind the lights to get warm. He drank the last inch or so
of whisky which remained in the bottle that he was going to break into
jagged points to beat Ginny with, and tossed it into the street. He did
not realize that he walked erratically as he headed for the lighted
building ahead. His only thought was that it was taking him a helluva
long while to get there. When he finally reached the steps of the
building, he fancied that he heard singing, but he did not notice the
black, gilt-lettered sign next to the entrance which proclaimed this as
The Peyton Place Pentecostal Full Gospel Church. Kenny lurched through
the door, and spying a long, wooden bench close to the entrance, he sat
down abruptly. No one turned to look at him. Kenny sat for what seemed a
long time, letting the comfortable warmth of the building soothe him,
and hearing, without listening, the voices which testified to the
all-powerful healing ability of God. Occasionally, the whole group burst
into song, and when this happened, Kenny raised his heavy lids to look
around.

Why don't they, for Christ's sake, shut up, he thought resentfully, for
the voices, together with hand-clapping and the reverberant booming of
the organ, set up a painful throbbing in his head.

When the minister, Oliver Rank, began to preach in rolling, ringing
tones, Kenny regarded this as the last straw. A man, he decided, could
stand just so much. Goddamn it, where the hell were his feet? Kenny
looked down, trying to locate the legs which would not allow him to
stand, and when he did so, his head began to revolve in wide, sickening
arcs. At last, he raised himself. He took one step forward into the
aisle between the wooden pews, and fell flat on his face with a
resounding thud.

Well, I'll be a dirty sonofabitch, thought Kenny, if some bastard didn't
push me.

He did not realize it, but his thought formed itself on his lips and
left them in a low, indistinguishable whisper.

"Hark!" cried Oliver Rank. "Hark!"

Hark yourself, you sonofabitch, muttered Kenny, but fortunately his
words came out in a confused jumble of sound. Any man who would shove
another man is a sonofabitch, thought Kenny, beginning to feel sorry for
himself.

"Hark!" cried Oliver Rank again, for he was ever one to press any
advantage which came his way. "Hark! A stranger speaks in our midst.
What says he?"

I say, thought Kenny, that you are a sonofabitch who would screw his own
mother and sell his grandmother to a white slaver. Any man who'd push
another is a sonofabitch.

Kenny did not try to stand, or to change his position. The main aisle of
the church was carpeted with a soft red carpeting, and the building was
warm and he was extremely cozy.

"It's Kenny Stearns!" exclaimed one member of the congregation. "He must
be drunk."

"Tread easy, brother," intoned Oliver Rank. "Call not thy brother by
vile names. What says he?"

"Oh, God!" moaned Kenny aloud, why don't you keep your bloody mouth
shut?

The congregation, which had heard only Kenny's fervent, "Oh, God," began
to murmur among themselves.

Kenny turned over onto his back and winced as the bright lights of the
church struck his eyes. "Oh, sweet Jesus Christ," he groaned, "why don't
somebody turn off the friggin' lights," and again, the end of his
sentence came out in unrecognizable syllables.

"The unknown tongue!" screamed a hysterical woman. "He speaks the
unknown tongue!" and at once, the congregation went into an uproar. The
unknown tongue, the minister had told them, was a language of revelation
spoken only by the most holy. The ability to speak and interpret this
unknown language was a God-given gift, presented only to the prophets.

"Speak, O holy one!" cried Oliver Rank, as excited as any member of his
flock, for he, no more than they, had ever seen or heard a prophet who
spoke the unknown tongue of the holiest. "Speak! Speak!"

For two hours, Kenny lay on the floor of the church and raved drunkenly
in unintelligible words.

"A prophet!" cried those who listened to him.

"A Messiah come to lead us to Jordan!" cried Oliver Rank.

"A holy messenger who brings news of the Second Coming!" screamed the
same woman who had first cried out.

One man, completely carried away, ran into the street shouting of the
glory which had come to Peyton Place. He ran all the way to The
Lighthouse to fetch Ginny Stearns, who first hooted, but then consented
to go to the church provided that she could bring her friends with her.
The regular churchgoer, followed by Ginny and half a dozen of her
cohorts, rushed back to the church where Kenny still held forth. There
was Ginny's husband, lying on the floor and raving the same as he always
did when he was dead drunk, while a whole churchful of sober and
apparently sane people listened as if he were telling them where to find
gold.

"Kenny Stearns!" shrilled Ginny, who had been drinking most of the day
herself. "Get up off that floor." She prodded him with her toe. "You're
drunk."

"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone!" roared Oliver Rank,
seeing that Ginny was intoxicated.

Ginny shrank back as if Mr. Rank had breathed fire on her, and the only
part of Kenny's next sentence which was understandable was the word
"Whore."

"A revelation!" cried Mr. Rank, pointing an unusually sharp forefinger
at Ginny. "The sinners in our midst are uncovered!"

Ginny skittered away from Kenny and hid behind two of her friends.

At the end of two hours, Kenny passed out completely. His eyes rolled
back in his head until only the whites were visible, and four members of
the congregation carried him tenderly to his home.

In time, Kenny came to believe that it was the sure hand of God which
had led him to the church, and that it was the Lord who had put the
words of revelation into his mouth. Exactly what words, Kenny was never
absolutely sure, but that did not bother him. The members of the Peyton
Place Pentecostal Full Gospel Church accepted him as a man of holiness,
and before too many years had passed Kenny was baptized and ordained as
a minister in the sect. Fortunately, this religious group did not
believe it necessary for its ministers to attend a theological school of
any kind, for Kenny would have been hard pressed indeed to define his
philosophical beliefs.

Peyton Place never recovered from the shock of seeing the ex-town handy
man and ex-drunkard walk rapidly down Elm Street clad in a frock coat
and carrying a Bible under his arm. The men patrons of The Lighthouse
remembered Ginny Stearns wistfully, now that she had reformed and
accepted her husband's religion. As for Ginny, whenever Kenny took her
in the same uncouth, ungentle way he had done in years past, she did not
mind. She felt as if she were the Virgin Mary and Kenny the angel come
to tell her that the Lord had chosen her as the mother of a new world
hope. Only very, very rarely did something in Kenny pull him up short
and cause him to wonder what he was doing as a minister, and also to
wonder what road had led him to the path he now followed. At these
times, Kenny would shrug and blame it all on the sure hand of God.

In the early winter of 1944, Peyton Place talked of little else besides
Kenny Stearns. It did not even cause much of a stir when two men from
the Navy Department came to town, making inquiries about Lucas Cross
who, it seemed, had been in the Navy and was now absent without leave.
The men from the Navy Department went with Buck McCracken to the house
where Selena and Joey Cross lived and asked a few questions, but the
Crosses said no, that they had not seen Lucas since he had left Peyton
Place back in '39. The Navy men asked a few questions in town, but no
one had seen or heard from Lucas, so they went away, and the town went
back to talking about Kenny Stearns, who had been the hero in A Miracle.




CHAPTER 6


Before the sensation caused by Kenny Stearns had begun to abate
properly, the town was subjected to further excitement, for little
Norman Page came home from the war. He returned to Peyton Place in March
of 1944 as a hero, with a chestful of campaign ribbons, medals and a
stiff leg on which he walked with the help of a crutch. He was helped
from the train by his mother, who had gone down to Boston to fetch him
home, and he was greeted by the Peyton Place High School Band playing
"The Stars and Stripes Forever," and the welcoming cheers of the
townspeople. Jared Clarke made a speech in which he welcomed Norman as
"a hunter home from the hill, and a sailor home from the sea," although
Norman had served as an infantryman with the Army. The Ladies' Aid
Society, in conjunction with the board of selectmen and the school
board, declared the twentieth of March as Norman Page Day, and then
proceeded to organize a parade and to give a sumptuous banquet, at which
everyone in town was welcomed. Norman, at the head table at the banquet,
stood up and made a speech, and when he finished there were very few dry
eyes in the high school gymnasium, where the feast had taken place.
Peyton Place did, in fact, cover its first returning hero with a surfeit
of love and sentimentality.

"Poor boy. He's so white," they said, and no one pointed out that Norman
had always been a pale child.

"The dear boy. So young to have seen so much."

Seth Buswell photographed Norman as the young hero stood, leaning on his
crutch, in front of the monument to the dead of World War I in Memorial
Park. There was a lot of unpleasant talk directed toward Seth when this
photograph never appeared on the front page of the _Times_. What the
town did not know was that on the evening of the day when Seth had taken
the picture, Dr. Matthew Swain had approached the newspaper owner.
"Don't run that picture, Seth," said the doctor.

"Why not?" demanded Seth. "It's a good photo. Local hero returns home,
and all that. Good stuff."

"Somebody from out of town might see it," said the doctor.

"So what?"

"So nothing, except that I'd bet my diploma, my license to practice and
my shingle that there's nothing the matter with Norman Page's leg. He's
never even been wounded."

Seth was shocked. "But what about all those medals?" he asked. "The
kid's got ribbons from his waist to his shoulder, practically."

"Ribbons, yes," said the doctor, "medals, no. Anybody can go into a
store near a service base and buy those ribbons by the gross. There's a
store like that in Manchester. I noticed it when I was down there last
week. I'll bet everything I own that Evelyn went into one of those
stores in Boston and bought every single ribbon that Norman has on his
tunic."

"But why? There isn't any sense to a thing like that. Plenty of boys
don't come home as heroes. Why should she feel that Norman had to."

"I don't know, but I'll sure as hell find out. Fella who went to med
school with me is one of the big brass down in Washington now. He should
be able to tell me."

The next day, the doctor went to the state house to register his
automobile, and while at the state capitol, several miles away from
Peyton Place, he telephoned to his friend in Washington.

"Sure, I can find out, Matt," said the friend. "I'll call you tonight at
your home."

"No, don't do that," protested the doctor, thinking of Alma Hayes, the
town's telephone operator who had a reputation for listening in on
everyone's long-distance calls. "Write me a letter," he said. "I'm in no
hurry."

A few days later, the letter came and Dr. Swain took it at once to Seth.
Norman Page, according to the records, had been given a medical
discharge on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to handle the duties
of a soldier. While Peyton Place had sympathized with Evelyn Page, whose
son, according to her, lay wounded in a hospital in Europe, Norman Page
had been recovering from a bad case of battle fatigue in a hospital in
the United States. Matthew Swain's friend wrote further, that as far as
he could learn, Norman had gone PN under fire in France.

"What's that?" asked Seth, pointing to the letters PN.

"Psychoneurotic," said the doctor, and reached across Seth's desk for
the newspaper owner's cigarette lighter. He held the letter over an
empty wastebasket and set it afire. "I can see Evelyn's fine hand in
this," he said.

"So can I," agreed Seth.

Together, the two men decided that since they had discovered a truth
which would only hurt Norman in the town and possibly get him into
trouble with the Army authorities if it were known, they would forget
the matter entirely. Seth destroyed the photograph of Norman, together
with the negative, and let the angry talk of Peyton Place buzz over his
head while Matthew Swain had only one more comment to make.

"Somebody," he said, "should teach that boy how to walk properly
stiff-legged, and how to handle that crutch a little more
realistically."

Evelyn Page, meanwhile, was totally unaware that anyone had seen through
her "little subterfuge" as she referred to her hoax when she spoke of it
to Norman. She excused herself on the grounds that she had never meant
to carry her deception so far, that it was just one of those unfortunate
things which had got out of hand. After all, she told herself privately,
one had to make the best of it once the fat was in the fire, and no one
but a fool ever wept over spilt milk. She never regretted the decision
she had made when the government had notified her that Norman was back
in the United States suffering from a mental disorder. She had pondered
on what to do for several days before going to the hospital where Norman
lay ill. In the end, she had notified her friends that Norman had been
wounded, that he lay near death in a foreign hospital, with a terrible
leg wound. When Evelyn left town to go down to Connecticut to visit her
sister, her friends saw her off with many tears and good wishes. After
all, the poor soul was stricken with grief and worry; it was
understandable that she did not want to remain alone in her house on
Depot Street.

A few months later, when she received word of Norman's impending
discharge, she passed the word around town that she was going down to
Boston to await the ship which would bring "Norman's poor, broken body
home to her." For two weeks after Norman was medically discharged, she
remained in a Boston hotel with her son, coaching him in the role he
must play when the two of them returned home.

"Do you want everyone in town to think of you as crazy?" she cried, when
Norman protested. "Crazy the way Hester Goodale was crazy?

"Do you want everyone up home to think of you as a coward who ran under
fire?

"Do you want to disgrace the both of us so that we can never hold up our
heads again?

"Do you want to give the Page Girls something on us that they can really
talk about?

"You do what Mother says, dear. Have I ever steered you a false course?"

Norman, weary to death in mind, body, soul and spirit, finally nodded in
acquiescence, and Evelyn telephoned the joyous news to Peyton Place that
she was bringing Norman home. After the welcoming ceremonies and the
banquet, she congratulated him enthusiastically on the fine tone with
which he had delivered his speech, and for days afterward, she propped
him up in a chair in the living room, with his "bad leg" extended on a
matching ottoman, and smiled tearfully at the friends who came to visit
him. Even the Page Girls came, with their fat faces neatly powdered and
their bulky bodies encased in black silk. Caroline carried a jar of
homemade soup and Charlotte held a bottle of homemade dandelion wine.

"We have come to see Oakleigh's boy," they told Evelyn.

The house was empty at the time, except for Norman, so that Evelyn
finally had a chance to taunt her dead husband's daughters.

"Afraid of what Peyton Place would say, weren't you, if you hesitated to
come to see your war-wounded brother?"

Since this was the truth, the Page Girls had no ready answer. They
withstood another five minutes of Evelyn's tongue-lashing without
flinching before she let them into the living room where Norman sat. It
was the first time that the girls had ever been in Evelyn's house. Their
faces, their attitude, their soft voices, when they spoke to the child
they had maligned for years, made every speck of effort involved in
Evelyn's "little subterfuge" well worth while.

"You see?" she told Norman triumphantly, when the Page Girls had gone.
"What did I tell you? Isn't it better this way than if folks went around
thinking that you were crazy?"

As for Norman, he felt as if he moved through an unreal world. He
continued to suffer from nightmares, not all of them to do with the war.
He still dreamed the old, recurrent dream about Miss Hester Goodale and
her tomcat. In his dream, Miss Hester always wore the face of his
mother, while the two people whom she watched through the gap in the
hedge were no longer Mr. and Mrs. Card, but Allison MacKenzie and
Norman. In his dream, when he stroked Allison's abdomen he would feel a
tight excitement in his genitals but always, just at the moment of
release, Allison's abdomen would burst open and spew forth millions of
slimy blue worms. The worms were deadly poisonous, and Norman would
begin to run. He would run and run, until he could run no longer, while
the worms crawled swiftly after him. Sometimes he woke up at this point,
covered with sweat and choking with fear, but most of the time he
succeeded in reaching the arms of his mother before he awoke. It was
always at that moment, when he reached his mother, that Norman reached a
climax in the excitement engendered by Allison. At such times, Norman
awoke to warmth and wetness and a sense that his mother had saved him
from a terrible danger.

In time, the "stiffness" disappeared from Norman's "bad leg," and he
began to look around for something to do. Finally, Seth Buswell offered
him a job as a combination bookkeeper and circulation manager on the
_Times_, and Norman went to work. He worked faithfully every day and
carried his pay check home to his mother, uncashed, at the end of every
week.

It was Norman's circumspect behavior which really "showed up" Rodney
Harrington in the town's eyes, for Rodney had not gone to war. As soon
as the draft had become a reality, Leslie Harrington had found a job for
his son in the Cumberland Mills of enough importance so that Rodney was
classified as "essential" to the war effort as a civilian. There was a
lot of ugly talk in Peyton Place about that. There were some who said
that the three men on the local draft board lived in houses with
mortgages held by Leslie Harrington, and, furthermore, that the sons of
these men worked in jobs also considered as "essential" in the mills.

The position which Leslie Harrington had enjoyed for years, and which
had begun to be undermined in 1939, was seriously in danger by the
spring of 1944. People who had considered it folly, and worse, for the
Ellsworths to sue Leslie back in '39, began to change their minds soon
afterward. With quiet courage, Kathy had harmed Leslie far more than she
could have done with words. She had married Lewis Welles shortly before
his induction into the Army, and she had become pregnant at once. During
the war, there were a good many people in town who felt a thick shame
whenever they watched Kathy Welles walk down Elm Street, pushing a baby
buggy with her one hand. They looked at Kathy, who awaited the return of
Lewis with a hope that never faltered, not even during the dark days of
Bataan and Corregidor, and they began to wonder about Leslie Harrington,
who could well have afforded to make things a little easier for Kathy.

"Twenty-five hundred dollars," said Peyton Place. "Don't seem like much,
even if he did take care of her medical bills besides."

"Leslie Harrington would sooner sell his soul than part with a dollar."

"Don't seem right, somehow. Her with her husband gone off to the war,
and Leslie with his son right at home."

"Kathy Welles got the short end of that stick, all right. Even thirty
thousand dollars wouldn't've put her arm back on, but it would've made
things a mite easier. She coulda hired someone to help her around the
house, and to take care of her baby. I hear she whips around that house
of hers so good and so fast that she don't really need two arms."

"It's a shame though, the way Leslie Harrington got away with it so
cheap. His son is a great hand for gettin' away with things, too. Look
at the way he's stayed out of the war, and the way he always seems to
have plenty of gas to hell around in his car. Gas is rationed to
everybody else."

"Rodney was always a great hand for gettin' away with things. Remember
Betty Anderson?"

"I hear tell he's got some girl down to Concord now. Goes to see her
every night, I hear."

"He'll get his, one of these day. So will Leslie. The Harringtons have
been due for their comeuppance for a long time."

Yet, Leslie Harrington was never able to put his finger on the moment
when he had begun to lose his grip on Peyton Place. He was inclined to
believe that it had been when the AF of L succeeded in unionizing the
mills, a thing unheard of, even undreamed of, in Peyton Place. Leslie
had roared and threatened to close down the mills and put everyone out
of work forever, but he had, unfortunately for him, signed contracts
with the government which precluded his doing so, and the mill hands
knew it. Everything, according to Leslie, had begun to fall apart with
the unionizing of the mills. Business at the bank had fallen off, as
people began to transfer their mortgages to a bank in a town ten miles
to the south. Once, Leslie would have fired a man for doing this, but
with the union in command, he was unable to do as he would have liked.
It had been Tomas Makris, or so Leslie had heard, who had informed the
mill hands of the bank in another town which was eager for new business,
and even against this perfidy, Leslie was helpless. He had been defeated
when he had run for the school board that spring, a fact which had left
him dazed for weeks, and the school board in control now thought that
Tom was the best headmaster Peyton Place had ever had. In the spring of
1944, Leslie Harrington lived with fear, and his only comfort was his
son, whom he had managed to save from the war.

"I'll get even," he raved to Rodney. "Just you wait 'til this goddamned
war is over with. Wait and see how long the goddamned union lasts in my
mills then. I'll fire every sonofabitch who works for me now, and I'll
import a whole new population to Peyton Place."

But Peter Drake, the young attorney who had fought Leslie in the case of
Ellsworth _vs._ Harrington, took another view.

"The backbone of Chestnut Street is broken," said Drake. "When one
vertebra is out of kilter, the whole spine ceases to function
efficiently."

Rodney Harrington, however, was not concerned with either the mills, the
backbone of Chestnut Street or the changes in Peyton Place. He was, as
always, concerned primarily with himself. He had two sets of attitudes,
each completely separate and distinct from the other. The first set was
comprised of the attitudes which he knew it was politic for him to hold,
and the second of those which he actually did hold. It was an attitude
of the first set which often prompted him to say, "There is nothing more
frustrating than an essential war job. I feel so utterly useless, safe
here in America, while our boys are fighting for their lives overseas."
He usually said this to some pretty girl who consoled him eagerly by
telling him that he was most essential to her.

"Oh, yeah?" Rodney would generally reply. "How essential? Show me,
baby!"

There were not many girls, in the man-lean spring of 1944, who refused
to comply with this request.

But one particular attitude in Rodney's second set would not be denied.
He was, as he admitted privately, damned glad to be out of the war. The
thought of filth, lack of good food, cramped quarters, bad clothes and,
above all, regimentation, was an abhorrent one to him. Every man, Rodney
was sure, who had a grain of honesty in him would agree with this
attitude. Nobody _wanted_ to go off to war any more than he did. He just
happened to be luckier than most, and was damned grateful for the fact.

And what good could a fellow do himself? Rodney wondered. Just supposing
that a fellow could overlook all the disadvantages of being in the
service, just what was in it for him? Look at that half-assed Norman
Page. Back home from the war to a piddling little job on the paper, with
nothing to show for his effort but a few tin medals and a gimpy leg. No
sir, that wasn't for Rodney Harrington, not by a long shot.

He pressed his foot down on the accelerator of his car, confident of the
full gas tank and the four good tires under him as he drove swiftly
toward Concord and a date with his best girl.

She was a honey, all right, Helen was, he thought. But if he didn't get
to her tonight, he was going to tell her to go blow. There were too many
other girls eager to hook up with a good steady civilian, one with
plenty of money and a decent car.

With the idea of "getting to Helen" foremost in his mind, Rodney stopped
at a liquor store on Concord's Main Street and bought another fifth of
rum. Helen "just adored" rum when it was mixed with Coca-Cola. In
addition to the rum, he had six pairs of black market nylon hose in the
glove compartment of his car as extra persuasion.

"Oh, what're these!" cried Helen a few moments later as she held up the
stockings.

Levers to pry your pants off, thought Rodney, but he said: "Pretty
nylons for pretty legs," and the inanity of it was lost on Helen, who
had a nature as acquisitive as a squirrel's in autumn.

All in all, the two spent a highly pleasant evening. By ten o'clock they
were both feeling very rum-warmed and comradely.

"You understand me so well," purred Helen, smoothing the fingers of one
of his hands with her own.

"Do I?" he asked, circling her with one arm and resting that hand just
under her breast. "Do I?" he whispered, against her cheek.

"Yes," said Helen, snuggling up to him. "You understand about the finer
things in life. Books and music, and all that."

Helen's biggest trouble, thought Rodney, was that she had seen too many
movies. She tried to talk and act the way she imagined a motion picture
actress would, after a hard day on the lot. His kisses left her unmoved
if they were not of the expert, no noses bumped variety. Too bad,
thought Rodney, that they had not yet begun to make the sexual act a
part of every motion picture, for then Helen would have fallen into his
hands like an overripe grape. He sighed and thought of the girls he had
known, and left, who had not been movie fans. Getting to Helen, he was
afraid, was going to be a long, hard process, and he was not at all sure
that the game was going to be worth the candle, as someone or other had
put it.

"Hm-m," murmured Helen, against him. "We go together like peaches and
cream."

"Ham and eggs," he said, beginning to massage her breast with his hand.

"Pie and ice cream," she giggled, moving a little under his touch.

"Hot dogs and football games," said Rodney, putting his other hand on
her thigh.

"Speaking of hot dogs," said Helen, jumping up, "I'm hungry. Let's go
get something to eat."

And that, thought Rodney savagely, was that. He'd buy her a goddamned
hot dog, a dozen if she wanted, but he was goddamned if he was going to
bother with her again after tonight.

Helen giggled all the way down the stairs from her apartment to the car,
and she giggled nerve rackingly as Rodney drove to a drive-in a short
way outside of the city. He did not speak.

"Oh, honey," giggled Helen, chewing at the last of her hot dog. "Is my
little old honey mad at poor little me?"

Unaccountably, Rodney thought, he was thinking of Betty Anderson. He
could almost hear those same words coming from a contrite Betty on a
summer night of long ago.

"I guess not," he said, and again he had the eerie feeling of having
spoken those words before.

"Don't you be mad at me, doll," whispered Helen. "I'll be good to you.
Just you take me back to the apartment, and I'll show you how good I can
be. I'll be the best you ever had, baby, just you wait and see."

Playing at hard to get, in his turn, Rodney looked down at her and
smiled. "How do I know?" he asked.

And then Helen did the most exciting thing that Rodney had ever seen in
all of his twenty-one years. Right there in the car, with the lights of
the drive-in shining all around them and people sitting in cars not six
feet away from them on either side, Helen unbuttoned her blouse and
showed him one perfect breast.

"Look at that," she said, cupping the breast with her hand, "no bra.
I've got the hardest breasts you ever played with."

Rodney raced the car motor violently in his eagerness to be gone from
the drive-in's parking lot. Helen did not rebutton her blouse, but
leaned back in the seat, leaving her breast exposed. Every few seconds,
she inhaled and sat up a little, running her hand sensuously over her
bare skin, flicking her nipple with a snap of a fingernail. Rodney could
not keep his eyes off her. She was like something that he had read about
in what he termed "dirty books." He had never seen a woman so apparently
enamored of her own body before, and to him there was something wicked,
forbidden, exciting about it.

"Let me," he said, reaching for her as he sped along the highway toward
Concord.

She snapped her head away from him quickly. "Look out!"

It was a scream of warning, uttered too late. When Rodney recovered
himself enough to look up, the brightly lit trailer truck seemed to be
right on top of him.




CHAPTER 7


Each spring, it was the duty of Dexter Humphrey, as chairman of the
Budget Committee, to act as moderator at town meeting. He took this
responsibility seriously, reading each item of the town warrant in
sonorous tones and preceding each vote with a sepulchrally voiced
question.

"You have heard the item as listed in the warrant for this town. What is
your wish in this matter?"

The townspeople then either voted immediately or discussed the issue
until it was settled.

"The town meeting," said Tomas Makris to the high school students every
spring, "is the last example of pure democracy existing in the world
today. It is the one function which remains where each man may stand up
to express his ideas and opinions on the running of his town."

Of course, thought Tom, remembering his first year in Peyton Place, that
does not mean that each will be listened to, but he _is_ allowed to
speak.

At the town meeting held in the spring of 1944, the old, hot issue of a
new grade school had not been included in the warrant because of wartime
restrictions on building, but the other, equally controversial question
of town zoning was in its regular position. The Budget Committee always
listed the question on zoning as the very last item in the warrant, for
the arguments on the issue were apt to be long and many.

"We come now," intoned Dexter Humphrey, "to the twenty-first and last
question in the warrant." He paused and cleared his throat.

The townspeople, each of whom held a printed copy of the warrant, knew
very well what the last question was, yet everyone waited for Dexter
Humphrey to read it aloud.

"Whether this assembly will vote to accept Article XIV, in Chapter
XXXXIV, of the revised laws of this state," said Dexter.

A stranger might have begun to scramble furiously through the booklet in
which the warrant was included, at this point, to try to locate the
contents of Article XIV, Chapter XXXXIV of the revised state laws, but
the townspeople knew well enough how this law read. Everyone waited for
Leslie Harrington to rise to his feet, as he always did, when Dexter had
finished reading the question. Never before had Leslie waited for longer
than it took Dexter to read the item, and the moderator looked around
now in puzzlement.

"You have heard the item as listed in the warrant for this town," said
Dexter, staring stupidly at the front row of seats where Leslie sat.
"What is your wish in this matter?"

Surely, Leslie would now stand, glance at his gold watch as if he were
pressed for time, and say the words he had always said. "Mr. Moderator,
I move that this question be stricken from the warrant."

Then would come: "Second the motion," from whichever of his workers
Leslie had picked for this yearly honor.

And then Dexter would say: "A motion to strike this item from the
warrant has been made and seconded. What is your wish in this matter?
All those in favor?"

The "Ayes" would shake the rafters, while Seth Buswell and a few others
would utter the only "Nays."

Dexter Humphrey coughed. "What is your wish in this matter?" he demanded
frantically, refusing to put the question to a vote until someone spoke.

Leslie Harrington continued to sit still, staring thoughtfully out of a
window in the courthouse meeting room. Dexter's eyes sought the room,
trying to locate Seth Buswell. The newspaper owner sat with Matthew
Swain and Tomas Makris in a seat toward the rear of the room. Seth
studied his fingernails with a deep concentration, but he did not rise
to speak.

Fool! thought Dexter Humphrey angrily. Damned fool! He's been shooting
his mouth off for years about zoning, and now when he has a chance to
see the bloody question come to a vote, he does not rise to press his
advantage.

The tension in the room mounted to an almost unbearable degree while
Dexter waited. When a farmer finally stood up and cleared his throat
preparatory to speaking, the gathering let out its breath as if in one
gigantic sigh.

"Does this here zonin' business mean that if I wanna put up a new
chicken house, I gotta go and ask somebody?" asked the farmer.

"A pertinent question indeed, Walt," said Dexter, who prided himself on
knowing every citizen with his name on the check list. "Jared, would you
mind answering Walt's question?"

Jared Clarke stood up. "No, Walt," he said, "it don't. This Article XIV
affects only dwellings for human habitation. That is, a place where
people are gonna live. For instance, if you wanted to put up a house
here in town, you'd have to get a permit from the board of selectmen.
The board, of course, is permitted to restrict the type of dwelling to
be erected."

"What you mean to say, Jared," said the farmer named Walt, "is that you
and Ben Davis and George Caswell kin tell a man what kind of a house
he's gonna build. That right?"

"Not exactly," said Jared carefully, realizing that he was treading on
dangerous ground here. "The idea of zoning," he said, turning to face
the crowd, "is to protect property values in a town. That is its only
purpose."

"Yeah, but that ain't what I asked you, Jared," said Walt. "What I asked
was, how come you and Ben and George are gonna have a right to tell a
man what kind of a house to build?"

"The type of house," said Jared, feeling warm, "doesn't enter into it at
all."

"You mean to say then, that if I wanted to put up a tar paper shack on
Elm Street, I could?"

"The way things stand now," said Jared acidly, "you certainly could."

"But I couldn't if we had zoning."

"No," replied Jared flatly. "The minute a shack goes up in a decent
neighborhood, the values on all the rest of the property go down. It
isn't right, and it isn't sensible. Zoning would be an asset to this
community. Perhaps we could do away with chicken houses within a block
of Elm Street, if we had zoning."

"What?" It was a scream of outrage from the rear of the room, uttered by
a crafty old man who had noticed Jared's contradiction of himself.
"What's wrong with a man keepin' a few chickens?" demanded Marvin
Potter, who was one of the old men who hung around Tuttle's. "What's
wrong with a man tryin' to do a little something to make extra money?"
demanded Marvin. "Something like keepin' a few chickens?"

Marvin did not keep a few chickens in the back yard of his house on
Laurel Street. He kept a few minks, and in summer the stench from
Marvin's few minks wafted gently over Elm Street when the wind was
right, so that the townspeople shrugged and rolled their eyes
heavenward, while strangers looked around suspiciously.

"Chickens is one thing," said Jared, looking sharply at Marvin, "and
minks is something else."

"And I say," roared Marvin, "that being a selectman is one thing, and
tryin' to be a dictator is something else again." As was the way with
the townspeople, Marvin pronounced "selectman" as if it had been three
words: "See-leck-man."

"Mr. Clarke?" It was the poised, low voice of Selena Cross speaking.
"Mr. Clarke, since the house where I live with my brother is well within
the limits known to all of us as The Village, would zoning mean that I
would have to remove my brother's sheep pen from our premises?"

Jared hemmed and smiled and coughed, but there was only one answer and
he knew it. "Yes," he said.

"Now ain't that a helluva thing," said someone who did not rise to
identify himself.

Dexter Humphrey pounded with his gavel to restore order, and Seth
Buswell looked narrowly at Selena Cross. As far as he knew, Selena had
always been in favor of zoning in years past, and he wondered what had
happened to change her mind.

"I move," said Selena Cross, "that this item be stricken from the
warrant."

"Second the motion," cried Marvin Potter.

"All those in favor?"

There were perhaps six voices who agreed with Selena's firm "Aye."

Dexter Humphrey wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He picked up his
copy of the warrant and read the twenty-first item again. After he had
asked his regular question, he put the matter to a vote at once, and for
the first time in history, the town of Peyton Place voluntarily gave new
powers to its selectmen in the matter of zoning.

When the meeting was over, Peter Drake stood in the lobby of the
courthouse and lit a cigarette. Tomas Makris joined him, not by any
previous arrangement, but because they both happened to be in the lobby
at the same moment. Together, Tom and Drake stood and watched Leslie
Harrington leave the courthouse. When the millowner walked out, he was
flanked on either side by Seth and Dr. Swain, and Jared Clarke and
Dexter Humphrey.

"Isn't it odd," remarked Drake with a little smile, "that while they
stood divided against one another, each of them stood strong, while
today, when they stood together in silence, one of them fell. I always
thought Seth hated Leslie's guts. He'll never have another chance to
beat Leslie the way he could have done today."

Tom looked at the tip of his cigarette. "Harrington has lost his son,"
he said. "That's why none of them spoke but Jared. And Jared would not
have spoken, if he had not been asked direct questions."

"Someone's losing a son would never have stopped Harrington in the old
days," said Drake viciously. "How come everyone's gone soft on that
sonofabitch all of a sudden?"

Tom looked sharply at the lawyer. "Where are you from, Drake?" he asked,
and it was a full minute before he realized the suspiciousness of the
tone he had used.

By Jesus! he thought, I'll have to watch it. I'm beginning to sound like
a true shellback. He threw back his head and began to laugh.

"From New Jersey," said Drake, eying the laughing Tom. "You?"

"From Peyton Place," said Tom, "via New York, Pittsburgh, and other
points to the south."

Outside, the men of Chestnut Street stepped into Leslie Harrington's
car.

"I wonder where Charlie Partridge was today?" asked Drake.

"Home in bed with the grippe," said Tom. "If he weren't, he would have
been here, and he would be riding back to Chestnut Street with the
others right now, in Leslie's car."

"All the same," said Drake, dropping his cigarette and stepping on it,
"the old order changeth. The backbone of Chestnut Street is broken for
fair."

"Maybe," said Tom, and walked out of the courthouse.




CHAPTER 8


It was one sunny, fresh-scented May morning when Buck McCracken first
realized the meaning of words to which he had listened for years.

"It's a small world," people said, but Buck always disagreed silently
and violently.

It was an enormous world, thought Buck, millions of miles tall, and
deep, and wide. Let one of those who always spoke of a small world set
out to walk from Peyton Place to Boston some fine day. Maybe then they'd
quit their gab about a small world and realize what a damned big place
the world really was.

Buck was sitting at the counter in Hyde's Diner on this particular
morning. He always sat in the end seat, if he could, which was not too
often, for this was regarded by practically everyone as "Clayton
Frazier's seat." No matter who was sitting in the end seat, if Clayton
came in, he always stood up and moved somewhere else. Buck liked to sit
in the end seat because it was next to a window which overlooked Elm
Street, and from it he could look out at his black sheriff's car parked
at the curb. The red blinker on the cars roof gleamed in the sunlight
this morning, and the sharp, pointed antenna of the two-way radio rose
like a shaft in the bright morning. Buck was proud of his official car.
He kept it washed and polished and looked at it often and fondly. With a
contented smile, Buck turned away from the window as a stranger came
into the diner.

Salesman. Buck's mind ticketed the stranger at once, although the
sheriff pretended not to stare at the stranger. He sipped his coffee and
seemed to be lost in thought when the stranger spoke.

"This place looks a lot different than it did the last time I was
through here," he said.

Buck looked up disinterestedly. "Oh? Come this way often?"

"No, thank God, although as I say, the place looks pretty good this
morning. The last time I was here, it was in the dead of winter. Snowing
and blowing like the hounds of hell. That was a night, I'm telling you.
I couldn't make it beyond White River, and had to spend the night there.
I brought a fellow up with me that night, all the way from Boston. Ask
him. He'll tell you what a night it was."

"Feller from here?" asked Buck, trying to remember who had been out of
town last winter during the big blizzard.

"Sure," said the salesman. "Navy man. Can't remember his name right now,
but he told me what it was. God, how he told me! Drank like a fish, all
the way from Boston."

"Navy man, you say?" asked Buck, standing up as Clayton Frazier came
into the diner. Clayton sat down in his accustomed seat, and the sheriff
moved to the stranger's other side. "I can't remember nobody from here
was in the Navy last winter. Can you, Clayton?"

"Nope," said Clayton, picking up the cup of coffee which Corey Hyde had
put down in front of him. "You, Corey?"

"Nope. Nobody I know."

"Listen," said the stranger, becoming flustered by all the opposition to
his simple statement, "this man came from here all right. He told me so.
And he was in the Navy. I picked him up right outside Boston and gave
him a lift all the way to here. He said he was coming home to visit his
children, and that he hadn't been home since 1939."

Buck, Corey and Clayton looked at one another. Lucas Cross, they
thought, as if with one mind, but they would not give the stranger the
satisfaction of knowing he had stumped them momentarily.

"What'd the feller look like?" asked Buck, fixing the stranger with a
suspicious eye.

"Well, I can't remember exactly," said the stranger uncomfortably. "He
was big."

"So am I," said Buck. "Was it me?"

"No. No, of course not. This fellow drank quite a lot. I remember that."

"Well, that could make him just about anybody in town," said Corey Hyde.
"Is that all you can remember?"

The stranger scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "There was something
else," he said. "Something about the way this man smiled. I never saw
anybody else smile in quite that way. When this man smiled, his forehead
moved. Craziest looking thing I ever saw. I never forgot it. I'd know
that smile if I ever saw it again."

"Listen, mister," said Buck softly, "I think you musta been the one
drinkin' that night. I've lived in Peyton Place all my life, and I never
yet seen a feller who smiled with his forehead. You musta been the one
drinkin', and I don't take kindly to fellers drivin' drunk through my
town."

"Now listen here," said the stranger, and looked at the faces of Buck,
Clayton, and Corey. He did not say anything else. He finished his coffee
and walked quickly out of the diner.

For a few minutes, neither of the three men in Hyde's spoke. Then
Clayton Frazier set his cup down in his saucer.

"Seems funny," he said, "that Lucas'd come home and nobody'd know about
it."

There was another long pause before Buck said: "Selena and Joey didn't
see him if he did come. I was over to their place when them Navy men was
here lookin' for Lucas. Selena and Joey both said they hadn't seen him."

Corey Hyde refilled the coffee cups. "Selena is no liar," he said.
"Neither's the boy."

"Nope, they ain't," agreed Buck and Clayton. "Still, seems funny the way
that stranger could describe Lucas so good. I never seen another man
smiled like Lucas, either. No more than that salesman ever done."

"Of course," said Buck, quoting as nearly as he could remember from a
policeman's manual of long ago, "We have to consider the possibility of
foul play."

"Whaddya mean, foul play?" demanded Corey.

"Oh, you know," said Buck. "Somebody hittin' a guy over the head and
takin' his money, and like that."

"Who'd hit Lucas over the head?" asked Clayton. "Here in Peyton Place."

"I dunno," said Buck. "I didn't say somebody did. I just said we had to
consider the possibility."

"That's one possibility seems highly improbable to me," snorted Clayton.
"The idea of one of Lucas' neighbors hittin' him over the head for his
money. Lucas never had no money."

"I never said one of his neighbors," said Buck defensively. "It coulda
been somebody else, couldn't it? What about that salesman feller. How do
we know he didn't do it?"

"Yeah," said Corey disgustedly. "He'd be sure to come right back to
Peyton Place and start talkin' about Lucas if he'd hit him over the
head."

"Oh, I dunno," said Buck, in a superior tone. "Criminals often return to
the scene of the crime."

"Wonder who that salesman worked for?" said Clayton.

"S. S. Pierce, out of Boston," said Buck, in a snappy tone. "I seen it
on that brief case he was carryin'."

"Maybe you oughta go after him and ask him if he hit Lucas over the
head," said Clayton derisively.

"No, I won't do that," said Buck thoughtfully. "First, I'll get in touch
with them Navy fellers and see if Lucas ever went back to his ship in
Boston. If he didn't, then I'll begin to do some wonderin'."

"Ain't it a small world," said Corey. "A stranger passin' through town
on his way north, stops for coffee in my diner and sits down right next
to the sheriff and tells him that he's seen a man nobody in town has
seen since '39. Ain't it a small world?"

"Yeah," agreed Buck McCracken thoughtfully, and walked out of the diner
to the shiny sheriffs car parked at the curb.

It did not take long for Buck to receive a reply to the inquiries he had
made of the Navy Department. Within three days the same two men who had
been searching for Lucas Cross during the winter were back in Peyton
Place. They contacted the Boston office of the S. S. Pierce Company and
located the salesman who had passed through Peyton Place. His name was
Gerald Gage, and the Boston office of his company said that he was, at
the moment, making business calls on stores in Montpelier, Vermont. Mr.
Gage was contacted at Montpelier, and requested to return with all speed
to Peyton Place, which he did. He eyed Buck McCracken warily as the two
men from the Navy Department questioned him. Yes, he had on the night
of, let's see--the twelfth of December, he'd guess, because it was his
last trip north until after the holidays, and he was due in Burlington
on the thirteenth, picked up a hitch-hiker who wore the uniform of the
United States Navy. No, he had not asked the sailor if he was on leave.
Why the hell should he? The guy wanted a ride, and he, Gerry Gage, being
a good sort, had offered him one. He wished to hell he'd never done it
now. But that was his trouble, too goodhearted. He could never pass a
fellow up on the road, especially on a night like that one had been last
December. Snow? He guessed to hell it was snowing. And windy. Oh, about
half-past twelve, he'd guess. He'd noticed the time on account of he was
worried about finding a room in Burlington at that hour. As it turned
out, he never did make Burlington that night. Got hung up in White River
and couldn't drive another yard. That's how hard it had been snowing.
Sure, he guessed that he'd recognize the fellow again, all right. Of
course, it had been dark when he picked him up, and dark in the car, but
they had stopped for coffee down below Nashua someplace, and he'd got a
close look at the guy then. Big fellow, and tight as a tick. Drank
whisky all the way up from Boston. He'd recognize him again, all right.
In his business, it didn't do to forget a face, or a name, either. He'd
remembered the name the hitch-hiker had given him a couple of days ago.
Lucas Cross, that was the name the guy had given him, Lucas Cross. He
was coming home to visit his kids. Said he hadn't been home since '39.
And what was all this anyway? What had the sailor done? What did they
want with him, Gerry Gage? There was no law against picking up
hitch-hikers that he knew of, so how about if they let him go back to
work, huh? What? Why, he'd let him off right on Elm Street. What did
they want from him? That he take the guy right to his door and see him
in? No, the sailor hadn't said where he lived except that it was a long
walk on a cold night. Tough, that was what Gerry Gage had told him. He
had plenty of liquor inside of him to keep him warm all the way to White
River, if need be.

A short while later, on the same day, the two men from the Navy
Department went to the Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe to see Selena. They
told her that a salesman from Boston had positively identified her
father from a batch of Navy photographs, as the man whom he had picked
up in Boston and set down in Peyton Place.

"I can't understand it," said Selena levelly. "If Pa came home on leave,
why didn't he come to the house?"

Less than an hour later, Joey Cross, protected by Miss Elsie Thornton,
was giving the same answer in the office of the grade school.

"It seems odd," said Miss Thornton coldly, "that neither of you two
gentlemen have anything better to do with your time than the questioning
of little children."

"Yes, ma'am," said the two men, and returned to Buck McCracken's office
in the courthouse.

It was all over town that same afternoon. Everyone buzzed with it.

"Seems funny that Lucas'd come home and nobody'd know it."

"Not even his own kids."

"Who'd ever've thought that Lucas'd join up with the Navy?"

"Seems funny. You'd think _somebody_ would've seen him."

"Well, Selena's no liar. Never was. Neither is Joey. Lucas was always
the crooked one in that family. Nellie wa'nt never too bright, but she
was honest as the day is long."

"Nope. The Cross kids are no liars. If they say Lucas never reached
home, he never reached home, and that's the end of it."

Nevertheless, the two men from the Navy Department, together with an
embarrassed Buck McCracken, went to call on Selena and Joey that
evening. Buck sat in a chair, twisting his doffed hat nervously, and
wished that he'd never started any of this. The Navy men asked polite
questions, to which Selena and Joey replied with one answer. No. No,
they had not seen Lucas. They had not heard from him in years. No.
Never. He never wrote home. They had not even known that their father
had been in the Navy, until these same two gentlemen had informed them
of this fact last winter. In the end, the two men went away, followed by
a sullen Buck McCracken who whispered an apology to Selena behind their
backs.

                 *        *        *        *        *

"Selena!"

"Don't be afraid, Joey."

"But, Selena, so many questions!"

"Don't be afraid, Joey. They don't know anything. They can't. We were
too careful. We buried him, and we scrubbed and cleaned and burned
everything that might have given us away. Don't be afraid, Joey."

"Selena, are you afraid?"

"Yes."

Ted Carter came home that week end, and when he learned of the apparent
disappearance of Lucas Cross from Peyton Place, he went at once to
Selena.

"Didn't your father come here at all?" he asked.

Selena's tautly held nerves quivered. "Listen," she said, "stop making
noises like a lawyer around me! I've answered questions until I'm ready
to heave, and I've only one answer to make to any question. No. No! No!
No! Now leave me alone!"

"But Selena, I only want to help."

"I don't need your help."

He gave her an odd look. "Don't you want Lucas found?" he asked.

"You have known me for years," said Selena wearily. "If you had had to
live with him would you want him found?"

"I should at least want to know what had happened to him."

"Well, I don't. I pray to God that no one ever finds him."

The next morning, the child of a pair of shackowners from out on the
Meadow Road came into Buck McCracken's office carrying a
newspaper-wrapped parcel. The two men from the Navy Department were very
interested in the contents of the package, but Buck McCracken, feeling
sick, turned away from the articles spread out on his desk. There were
the burned remains of a Navy pea jacket, with its round buttons still
intact, and the scorched shreds of what had apparently been a woman's
bathrobe. Even from where Buck stood, a good six feet away from the
desk, he could see the rusty stains of blood on the sprigged,
feminine-looking fabric of the robe. The child, a boy of about twelve,
who had brought the parcel into town claimed that he had found it just
as the men saw it now, in a pile of rubbish at the town dump. The boy's
next remark had to do with the question of a possible reward.

"Beat it," Buck McCracken told him savagely, and from the waiting room,
outside the office, came the whining voice of a shack woman.

"I tole you, sonny," she whined. "I tole you 'n' your Pa both, that it
wa'nt no good at all, gettin' mixed up with what's none of our
business."

One of the navy men poked at the burned pea jacket with the tip of a
pencil. "Looks as if Lucas Cross must have had a good reason for being
A.W.O.L. after all," he said.

A good officer, recited Buck silently, never eliminates the possibility
of foul play. "Lucas musta been keepin a woman that none of us knew
about," he said aloud.

"I'll settle for the girl," said one Navy man.

"What girl?" demanded Buck, innocently.

"Selena Cross," replied the second Navy man.

It was still early when Buck and the two Navy men drove up in front of
the Cross house. Selena had not left for work, and Joey was still in his
pajamas. Selena let the men into the house and led the way to the living
room. She acted as if she had not seen the package under the arm of one
of the Navy men. The man put the parcel down on the couch, opened it and
spread out its contents. Then he straightened up and looked Selena
straight in the eye. She neither moved nor spoke, and for all the
emotion which showed in her face, she might as easily have been
examining a line of dry goods which did not particularly impress her.

"We know you did it," said the man.

Joey Cross hurled himself across the room and stood in front of his
sister.

"I did it!" he screamed. "I did it! I killed him and I buried him in the
sheep pen, and I did it by myself. I did it alone!"

Selena pressed his head to her side and rumpled his hair for a short
moment.

"Go into the other room, Joey," she said. "Go get dressed like a good
boy."

When he had gone, she turned to face Buck McCracken.




CHAPTER 9


It's a small world.

In later years, Buck McCracken used to say that he wished he had a
nickel for every time he heard those words spoken during the weeks
before Selena Cross came to trial.

Those were the short weeks of long days during the late spring and early
summer of 1944. In years past, these had been the weeks of the spring
hop, of graduation, of vacation for some and of work in the fields for
others, but in 1944, these were weeks of excitement of such pitch that
all else paled, including the war.

Peyton Place was overcrowded during the weeks preceding and during the
trial. Newspaper reporters walked streets where only Seth Buswell had
walked, as a newspaper man, before, and the summer people who usually
by-passed Peyton Place in favor of the better known, more highly
advertised sections of the state, came to town in streams of expensive
cars, all bearing out-of-state license plates. It was unlikely that the
case of Selena Cross would ever have drawn much attention if it had not
been for a brash young reporter who worked for a Hearst-owned Boston
newspaper. The young man, whose name was Thomas Delaney, had a talent
for attention-getting headlines. The day after Selena was arrested, the
_Daily Record_, for which Delaney worked, bloomed with a headline of
three-inch letters. PATRICIDE IN PEYTON PLACE. These words were hastily
picked up and flung across front pages by other newspapers throughout
northern New England, so that by the time three days were gone, they had
appeared and been read by practically everyone in four states. Editors
dispatched their best reporters to cover the trial of Selena Cross, and
Peyton Place took on the aspects of a large, open-air, lunatic asylum.
The town was without either hotel, inn, tavern or rooming house, so that
the reporters and tourists who had come to write or stare, each
according to his own vocation, were forced to use the inadequate
facilities at White River. Every morning these people flowed into Peyton
Place, and every evening they left, but they wrought havoc during the
hours in between. For the first time since anyone could remember, the
old men who peopled the benches in front of the courthouse were forced
to flee and scatter against the onslaught of photographers and reporters
who insisted on taking pictures of these "picturesque old characters"
and on buttonholing them with questions which always began with: "What
do _you_ think about all this?" The only one of the old men who did not
run was Clayton Frazier, who had developed a liking for Thomas Delaney,
the Hearst reporter from Boston. This strange alliance had begun on the
day when Delaney had arrived in Peyton Place, and had been discovered by
Clayton in Hyde's Diner, sitting unconcernedly in the old man's favorite
seat at the counter. Clayton had been furious, and everyone else in the
diner who was from Peyton Place had watched eagerly to see what the old
man would do. Clayton sat down on the stool next to Delaney.

"Newspaper reporter, eh?" asked Clayton.

"Yes."

"Who for?"

"The Boston _Daily Record_."

"Oh, one of them Hearst papers."

"What's the matter with the Hearst papers?"

"Nothin', if you go for that kinda thing. Read somethin' once by a
feller named Arthur J. Pegler. Reckon he's dead by now. He's got one of
his relations workin' for Hearst now. Anyhow, this Arthur Pegler told
how 'A Hearst newspaper is like a screaming woman running down the
street with her throat cut.' Now, I reckon there's nothin' wrong in
that, if a body's got the kinda mind that goes for that stuff."

Without an eyelash flicker, Delaney picked up his coffee cup. "I'd be
inclined to go a step further than Mr. Pegler," he said. "I should
describe it as a _naked_ woman running down the street, and so forth."

"Of course," said Clayton, "I'm not sayin' it don't take imagination to
work for Hearst. What you don't know, you have to make up, and that must
take some imagination."

"Not so much imagination as nerve, Mr. Frazier," said Delaney, "Plain,
brassy nerve."

"Who told you my name?" demanded Clayton.

"The same fellow who told me I was sitting in your seat when he saw you
approaching this place."

Clayton and Delaney became friends, although to listen to the insults
which they hurled at one another, one would never have suspected it. The
reporter remained in Peyton Place during the time before Selena's trial.
He wrote reams of background on the town and its people with the idea,
so he told Clayton, of eventually using this material for the basis of a
novel.

"But why Peyton Place?" he asked Clayton Frazier one day. "Crazy damned
name. Nobody around here seems overly eager to talk about it, either,
except to say that the town was named for a man who built a castle. What
about this man and his castle?"

"Come on," said Clayton. "I'll show you the place."

The two men walked along the tracks of the Boston and Maine Railroad
line with Clayton leading the way. The sun beat down, hot and bright, on
the treeless strips of rocky ground along the tracks. Soon, Delaney
removed his suit coat and necktie and carried them slung over his
shoulder. At last, where the tracks curved slightly before reaching the
bridge which crossed the Connecticut River, Clayton stopped walking and
pointed to the highest hill of all. On top of this hill sat the towered
and turreted gray pile of stone which was Samuel Peyton's castle.

"Feel like walkin' up that hill?" asked Clayton.

"Yes," said Delaney, making a mental note of the castle's sinister, dark
look, sinister and secretive looking even in the hot, open-faced
sunlight. "Who was this Samuel Peyton?" he asked as he and Clayton
trudged up the steep, bramble-covered hill. "An exiled English duke, or
earl, or something?"

"Everybody thinks that," said Clayton, pausing to wipe his face with his
sleeve. "Fact is, that castle was built--and this town named--for a
friggin' nigger."

"Oh, now listen--" began Delaney, but Clayton refused to speak another
word until they had reached the walls of the castle.

The walls were high, so high that standing in front of them one could
not see the castle as it was possible to do from a distance, and thick,
with the gates which broke them at intervals securely locked and barred.
Clayton and Delaney sat down, resting their backs against one gray wall,
and Clayton uncorked a bottle of whisky which he had been saving for
this moment. It was almost cool, up on the hill, with the trees shading
the two men from the sun.

Clayton took a drink and passed the bottle to Delaney. "Fact," he said.
"A friggin' nigger."

Delaney drank and returned the bottle to Clayton. "Come on," he said.
"Don't make me pull it out of you one word at a time. Tell it from the
beginning."

Clayton drank, sighed and adjusted his back against the stone wall.
"Well," he began, "quite a spell before the Civil War, there was this
nigger down South someplace. He was a slave, and he worked for a
plantation owner by the name of Peyton. Now this nigger, whose name was
Samuel, musta lived before his time, or out of his element, or whatever
you want to call it. Anyhow, he lived a long time before anybody ever
heard of a feller called Abraham Lincoln. The reason I say he lived out
of his time was that Samuel had funny ideas. He wanted to be free, and
this was at a time when most folks looked on niggers as work horses, or
mules. Anyhow, Samuel decided to run away. There's some say he done it
on gold stolen from his owner, this feller by the name of Peyton. Don't
ask me, 'cause I don't know. Nobody knows. No more than they know how he
done it. Samuel was a big, strappin' young buck. He had to be, 'cause I
don't imagine it was an easy thing for a nigger slave to escape from the
South in them days. Anyhow, he escaped and got on a boat goin' to
France. Don't ask me how he done it, 'cause I don't know that, either.
There's some say the captain of the boat goin' to France was one of them
half-breed fellers. Whaddya call 'em?"

"Mulattoes?" offered Delaney.

"Yep," said Clayton, drinking and passing the bottle, "that's it.
Mulatto. Well, there's some say that the boat captain was a mulatto. I
don't know. Nobody knows for sure. Anyhow, Samuel got to Marseilles,
France. It couldn't've been easy, like I said, 'cause Samuel was big and
strappin' and black as the ace of spades. But he got there, and in a few
years he had made a fortune out of the shippin' business. Nobody knows
how he got started, although there's plenty who say he still had a pile
of this Peyton feller's gold when he got over on the other side. Anyhow,
he made money, plenty of it and no mistake. But over there in France, he
got another one of his crazy ideas. He musta been a great one for crazy
ideas, Samuel. He got the idea that since he was free and had plenty of
money, he was as good as any white man, and he went and married a white
girl. French girl, she was. Her name was Vi'let. Not the way we spell
Vi'let, but with two t's and an e on the end. French. There's some say
she was pretty--frail lookin' like a piece of china. I don't know.
Nobody around here now knows, 'cause this was all such a long time ago.
Anyhow, Samuel decided to come back to America. It was durin' the Civil
War when he came back. That lady from Massachusetts named Stowe had
already wrote that book about the slaves, and there was plenty of people
who started lovin' niggers overnight. At least, they loved 'em with
their mouths. Well, Samuel and Vi'let got to Boston. Reckon Samuel musta
thought that with all his money, and everybody lovin' the niggers, that
he was gonna be able to move right onto Beacon Hill and start in
entertainin' the Lowells and the Cabots. Well, the upshot of it was that
Samuel couldn't even find any kind of a house anyplace in Boston. If
he'd of been in rags with welts all over his back, and if Vi'let had
been black and had looked like she was all pooped from bein' chased by
bloodhounds, maybe they'd of had an easier time of it. I dunno. I reckon
Boston wa'nt too used to seem' a nigger wearin' a starched frill and a
hand-embroidered waistcoat, and boots that cost forty dollars a pair.
Forty dollars was a heap of money, in them days. Well, with all his
money, and his white wife and bein' free and all, Samuel couldn't find a
place in Boston. There's some say he went into one of them black rages
niggers are supposed to have. I dunno. All I know is he came up here.
There's some say he wanted to get far enough away from Boston that he'd
never set eyes on a white man again as long as he lived. Anyhow, he came
here. There wa'nt no town here, then. Nothin' but the hills and the
woods and the Connecticut River. Course, there was towns and cities to
the south, but nothin' up here back then. Well, Samuel picked the
highest hill of all and decided to build him a castle for him and his
white wife named Vi'let. They lived in a cabin, because it took a long
time for this place to be built. Gimme the bottle."

Delaney passed the bottle to Clayton, who drank. "See this?" he asked,
slapping the flat of his hand against the stone wall behind them.
"Imported. Every stick and stone, every doorknob and pane of glass of
the castle was imported from England. I dunno, but I'd still be willin'
to bet that this here is the only real, true, genuwine castle in New
England. All the furniture inside was imported, too, and the hangin's,
and the paneling for the walls. When it was done, Samuel and Vi'let
moved in and neither one of 'em ever set foot outside these walls again.
It wa'nt too long before a feller by the name of Harrington came along
and built them mills down alongside the river, and after that there
started to be a town here. Pretty soon, the B & M put in the railroad
line to White River through here. Folks ridin' on the train used to look
up here at Samuel's castle and say, 'What's that?' and the conductors
would lean down and look out the windows of the coaches and say, 'Why,
that's the Peyton place.' And that's how the town got its name."

"But what happened afterward?" demanded Delaney.

"Whaddya mean 'afterward'?"

"The story can't end there," said the young reporter. "What happened to
Samuel and Violette?"

"Oh, they died," said Clayton. "Vi'let went first. Some say she had the
consumption, and there's others say she just faded away from bein'
cooped up in the castle. I dunno. Samuel buried her out in back of the
castle. There's a tall, white stone marks her grave, made outa Vermont
marble. When Samuel died, he was buried right next to her. But the stone
over Samuel's grave is short and squat, and made out of that black
marble that comes from Italy, or one of them foreign countries. It was
the state buried Samuel, on account of he left 'em all this land and the
castle besides. There's some say this state ain't fussy about takin'
presents."

"But what does the state get out of this place?" asked Delaney, looking
at one of the barred gates in the wall.

"Nothin' from this place," said Clayton. "But Samuel wa'nt dumb. He
owned forest land to the north of here. Lumber is what the state gets,
or used to get anyway. Now they got one of these forestry places up
there. In return, they got to look after this place 'til it falls apart.
Make sure the gates stay locked, keep people outa the place and like
that. There wa'nt nothin' in Samuel's will about lookin' after the
inside of the place, though. And inside, things has rotted away. The
drapes hang all torn and crooked, and rats have et holes in the
upholstery of Samuel's imported furniture, and the wooden paneling is
cracked and fallen apart. The big chandelier in the front hall got torn
loose of the ceilin' back durin' a storm we had once. The glass is still
layin' on the floor in Samuel's castle."

Delaney eyed Clayton suspiciously. "From the way you describe the
interior of the castle, I'd say that you had been in it at one time or
another."

"Sure," admitted Clayton. "There's a way to get in, or at least there
was when I was a boy. There was a tree grew around at the other side,
and there was a branch of this tree hung right over the wall. You used
to be able to climb the tree and go hand over hand along the branch.
Then, if you didn't think too much about breakin' a leg, you could drop
off the end of the branch right into Samuel's back yard. It was hell
gettin back over the wall, as I remember, but I done it once. You want
to try?"

Delaney stood up and looked at the blank-faced wall before him. He
thought for a long time. "No," he said at last. "No, I don't think so.
Let's start back. It's getting late."

As the two men walked down the hill, the lead for Delaney's next story
formed itself in his mind.

"In the tragic shadow of Samuel Peyton's castle," he would write,
"another tragedy has taken place. On a cold, blizzard-whipped night in
December, Selena Cross--"

Just before they reached Elm Street, Delaney turned to Clayton.
"Listen," he said, "you're a fairly tolerant man, for a northern New
Englander. How come you always refer to Samuel Peyton as a 'friggin'
nigger'?"

"Why?" demanded Clayton. "There's some say--and amongst 'em was my own
father--that durin' the Civil War, toward the end of it, Samuel Peyton
was runnin' boats out of Portsmouth carryin' arms to the South. If that
ain't the act of a sonofabitch, I never hope to hear of one. If Samuel's
skin had been of a different color, I'd say he was a 'friggin' rebel.'
But Samuel was a nigger."




CHAPTER 10


There were, of course, those in Peyton Place who remained calm, as does
the core of a hurricane, amidst the furor engendered by the coming trial
of Selena Cross. Among these was Constance Makris who, after her first
shock, started back to work at the Thrifty Corner. To all questions, and
there were many, she replied:

"I'm only back temporarily. Selena will be in charge again as soon as
this mess is cleared up."

Toward the end of clearing up what she referred to as "the mess Selena
is in," Constance had offered to pay for any legal services which the
girl might require.

"Although," as she said to Tom, "why the child should need a lawyer is
beyond me. If she killed Lucas, and I don't believe for a minute that
she did, she had a good reason. Lucas was a brute and a beast. He always
was. I can remember Nellie telling of how he used to beat her and the
kids. He was a terrible man."

"Maybe so," replied Tom, "but Selena is doing herself more harm than
good by keeping quiet at this time. She ought to unbend a little if only
to her attorney, but Drake says that she won't say a word."

This was true. Beyond saying that she had killed Lucas with a pair of
fire tongs while the two of them were in the Cross living room and that,
alone and unaided in spite of what Joey said, she had dragged him into
the sheep pen and buried him, Selena refused to comment. She had made
this statement on the day she was arrested and the efforts of Peter
Drake to make her tell why she had done as she had were futile. Peyton
Place talked of little else.

"I don't believe she killed him. She'd tell why, if she had."

"If she didn't do it how come she knew right where he was buried?"

"How come they found blood stains on the floor in the house? All the
scrubbin in the world won't take out blood if someone is really lookin'
for it."

"Yep. If she didn't do it, where'd all the blood come from?"

"I thought it was funny the way Joey got rid of all his sheep back in
January. January ain't no time to slaughter. I always thought that was
mighty peculiar."

"He done that so's nobody'd be tryin to get into the sheep pen to look
around. Kinda foolish though. He'd a done better to leave them sheep
right where they was."

"Well, I wouldn't say that. There's always some Jeezless nosy
sonofabitch ready to poke around somebody's animals. If it was me buried
my old man in a sheep pen it'd make me feel mighty queer to have
somebody pokin' around, walkin' right over his grave you might say."

"Remember how Selena tried to squash the zonin' at town meeting? I bet
that was because she was scared somebody'd go out to her place and poke
around."

"Well, I don't give a goddam what none of you say. I don't believe she
done it. She's shieldin' somebody."

"But who? Nobody'd want to kill Lucas."

"No. That's true."

"And how come she won't tell why?"

_Why?_ It was a question on the lips of practically everyone. Ted Carter
had gone to Selena, after assuring Drake that she would tell him the
real reason for what she had done.

"I did it. What else is there to say?" Selena said sullenly. "I killed
him and that's the end of it."

"Listen, Selena," said Ted, a trifle impatiently, "Drake has to know why
if he is to defend you. With a good reason he could plead temporary
insanity and perhaps get you off the hook."

"I was as sane as I am this minute when I killed him," said Selena. "I
knew what I was doing."

"Selena, for God's sake, be sensible. Without a good reason you will be
tried for murder in the first degree. Do you know what the penalty for
that is in this state?"

"Hanging," said Selena bluntly.

"Yes," said Ted on an indrawn breath, "hanging. Now smarten up and tell
me why you did it. Did Lucas threaten to beat you? To put you and Joey
out of your home? Why did you do it?"

"I killed him," said Selena in the flat voice which she had cultivated
during the past few days. "And that's the end of it."

"But you didn't mean to do it, did you? Perhaps you intended to frighten
him and struck harder than you meant to do. Isn't that the way it was?"

For a moment Selena paused and tried to remember the way it had been.
Did I really mean to kill him? she wondered dully. She tried to recall
the moment of striking and the thought which must have been in her mind,
but all that came to her was the remembrance of fear.

"I killed him," she said. "When I swung at him I swung with everything I
had. I'm not sorry he's dead."

Ted stood up and looked at her coldly. "Listen, you'd better get smart
in a hurry and change your tune if you expect to get out of this. Think
about it for a while. I'll be back tomorrow."

"No you won't," said Selena as he walked away, but she said it so softly
that he did not hear.

That night was one of sleepless indecision for Ted Carter. In less than
two weeks he would be graduated from the university and be commissioned
as a second lieutenant in the Army. If the war was still on, which
seemed highly likely at this point, he would then be sent somewhere for
additional training. But Ted's mind did not dwell upon these present
realities. He thought of the future, of the day when he would graduate
from law school and come home to practice. How far would a man get in
the legal profession tied to a wife who was a murderess? he wondered.
True, he loved Selena and probably always would, but how much chance did
they have together now? Ted spent the long hours of the night going over
his plan for the future, but nowhere could he find a loophole in his
plan large enough to accommodate a wife with a cloud over her head. Even
if Selena were found innocent--and how could that be since she had
already confessed to her crime--would there not always be people who
wondered? As for the plea of insanity, even temporary insanity, that was
no kind of way out. Insanity was looked upon with disfavor and shame by
Peyton Place. Selena would fare better in her town as a convicted
murderess than she would as a victim of insanity, Ted knew. Justifiable
homicide? In the dark of his room Ted shook his head. Lucas might have
been a drunkard, a wife and child beater, the most irresponsible of
fathers, but he had paid his bills and minded his own business. And the
fact that he had not been Selena's own father would hurt her in Peyton
Place, Ted knew. Had she been of Lucas' flesh and blood she would fare
better. As it was, Ted knew what the town would say. She wasn't even his
own, Peyton Place would say. He married Nellie when Selena was just a
newborn baby, but he provided for the child just as if she was his own.
To the name of murderess would be added the tag of ingrate. Ted Carter
bit the knuckle of his forefinger. He could well imagine the looks on
the faces of the jury if Drake tried to plead justifiable homicide for
Selena. If the lawyer tried that, Selena was as good as hanged right
now. Ted sat up in his bed and put both hands to his head. With stiff
fingers he tried to massage a scalp suddenly tight and prickly. And if,
he thought, by some impossibly lucky chance, by some fluke of luck,
Drake managed to get Selena off, what kind of life could the girl have
in Peyton Place. Forever after people would remember. There goes the
Cross girl. She did in her father. Well, he wasn't really her father. He
was more than that. He provided for her all her life, and he didn't have
to do it. She wasn't his own. There goes the Cross girl. Married that
young lawyer named Carter. Better keep away from him, a feller that'd
take up with a murderess.

But Ted's mind was not filled only with thoughts of the future that
night; it was plagued also with memories of the past. He remembered
kisses, conversations, hopes and dreams shared. He pictured the hill
that he and Selena had looked at, the one where they would build a house
that was made up almost entirely of windows, and he recalled the
arguments about the number of children a house of this type would hold
adequately. He remembered all the years when it had been only Selena,
when the thought of life without her had been like thinking of being
dead.

"You and me and Joey," Selena had said, laughing against him so that he
could feel her breath against his cheek. "Just us, with no one else
mattering at all."

It was true that Selena had changed a little since the war. She was
inclined to be a little sharp at times, a little unreasonable. But war
affected many women in that fashion. She sometimes seemed to think ill
of him because he was not off in a ditch somewhere, like her stepbrother
Paul, fighting for his life. But Ted had not worried overmuch about
that. It was a feeling in her which would pass when the war was over.
Then she would be as she had been before.

"Theodore H. Carter, Esquire," she had said, her eyes shining the way
they always did when she was happy. "Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Carter, both
esquires. Oh, Ted, how I love you."

It was dawn when he turned his wet face into his pillow. But my plan,
Selena, he thought. What about my plan? What chance would we have in
Peyton Place? he asked silently, and all the while he knew the answer
and knew what he must do. At last he slept, and he did not go to see
Selena the next day. Shortly afterward, when her trial was in session,
he wrote his mother that he was unable to get away from the university.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Selena had not waited for him the day after she had seen him for the
last time. But still, a tight little smile twisted her lips that night.

I knew he wouldn't come, she thought. I'm not part of his plan any
longer. He can't afford the luxury of not giving a damn what people say.
By God, I can. If I have nothing else, I have that. I don't give a damn.

She reflected that not too long ago she would not have been able to
stand it to think that Ted would desert her in a time of need, but in
the early summer of 1944 it did not seem to matter at all. Nothing
mattered except her constant, nagging worry over what was going to
happen to Joey. That she would be convicted and hanged she had no doubt.

"If you'd just tell me why," Peter Drake said to her, over and over.
"Perhaps I could help you. This way, the very least you can hope to get
is life. If we're that lucky. Help me to help you."

But what shall I say? thought Selena. Shall I say that I killed Lucas
because I was afraid he'd get me in trouble again? She thought of
Matthew Swain to whom she had given a solemn promise of silence, and she
thought also of the faces of her friends and neighbors if she ever told
the truth about herself and Lucas. No one would believe her. Why should
they? Why had she kept silent for years and years? Why had she not gone
to the police if Lucas was molesting her? Because a shack dweller never
goes to the law, thought Selena wryly. A good shack dweller minds his
business and binds up his own wounds. She remembered a time when Buck
McCracken, the sheriff, had come to the grade school to give a talk on
safety.

"Now I want allaya to remember that the policeman is your friend," he
had concluded, and Selena recalled the look in the eyes of the
shack-dwelling children.

_Friend my arse_, said the look. _Busybody. Mindin' everybody's business
but his own._

I'll never tell, thought Selena desperately. Not even when they take me
out to hang me. They'll never find out why from me. Let them ask.
They'll never find out.

In the entire population of Peyton Place, there was one man who did not
wonder why. This was Dr. Matthew Swain, who knew very well why. The
doctor had not worked since the day of Selena's arrest. He pleaded
sickness and directed his patients to Dr. Bixby at White River.

"He must be sick," said Isobel Crosby to anyone who would listen. "He
don't even bother to get dressed in the mornin' and he just sets all day
long. Just sets and stares and does nothin'."

This was not quite true. Very often during the day, and always during
the night, Matthew Swain bestirred himself enough to walk from his
dining room sideboard where he kept his liquor and back to whichever
chair he happened to be using at the time. He thought thoughts which he
phrased in what he termed brilliant rhetoric and all the while he knew
what he must do.

And now the destruction has come full circle, he told himself, staring
down into his full glass. It began with Lucas and it has ended with
Lucas. Almost, but not quite. In the beginning I destroyed life and now
I must pay with my own.

At times, when he got really drunk during the night, he took a small
photograph of his dead wife Emily from its hiding place.

Help me, Emily, he would plead, gazing into the kind, deep eyes in the
picture. Help me.

There had been quite a fuss made about photographs right after Emily had
died. He had insisted on having the large, silver-framed one of her
which had stood in his office for years removed.

"I should think you'd want that picture to stay right where it is,"
Isobel Crosby had said piously. "I should think you'd want her right
there, so's you could be reminded of her."

"Do you think I need photographs to be reminded?" the doctor had roared,
sweeping the picture of Emily from his desk with a vicious swipe of his
hand. "Do you think I need anything to be reminded?"

Roaring was an expedient cover up for tears, and the doctor had done a
lot of roaring in the days after Emily had died. Isobel, of course, lost
no time in spreading the word of his behavior all over town.

"Threw her picture right off his desk," said Isobel. "Threw her picture
down so's the glass smashed and the frame bent, and yelled at me. And
her not in her grave a week yet, poor thing. You saw how he acted at the
funeral, didn't you? Never shed a tear, or tried to throw himself into
the open grave or anything. He didn't even kiss her poor dead cheek
before the minister closed the coffin. Wait and see. He'll get married
again before six months are gone."

The doctor put the last remaining photograph of Emily away carefully. He
was, he realized, getting maudlin indeed when he expected help from a
faded picture.

First the child, he thought, destroyed because it had no choice, and
then Mary Kelley destroyed by a knowledge and a guilt which I had no
right to press on her. And then Nellie, destroyed because I could
control neither my temper nor my tongue and now Lucas, destroyed by
Selena because I had not the courage to destroy him myself. And that's
the way the world ends, thought the doctor, drunkenly trying to remember
the last part of the quotation. Something about a whimper, or a whine,
or something.

The night before the day when Selena was to go to trial, Matthew Swain
went through his house picking up empty bottles. He soaked for an hour
in a hot tub and followed this with a cold shower. He shaved and
shampooed his beautiful white hair and he telephoned to Isobel Crosby.

"Where the hell have you been?" he roared when she answered. "It's
summer and my white suit hasn't been pressed and I have to be in court
at nine in the morning."

Isobel, who had tried unsuccessfully to get into the doctor's house
morning after morning, hung up angrily.

"What do you think of that?" she asked her sister in an injured tone.




CHAPTER 11


On this same evening Allison MacKenzie returned to Peyton Place. She
stepped off the train at eight-thirty and decided to walk home.

"Hello, Mr. Rhodes," she said to the stationmaster as she went into the
station.

"'Lo, Allison," he said in exactly the same tone he would have employed
had she been returning from a day of shopping in Manchester. "Get sick
of the big city?"

"A little," she admitted and thought, Oh, if you knew how sick, Mr.
Rhodes. How sick and tired and fed up and ready to die I am.

"Ain't a bad place to visit, New York ain't," said Rhodes. "You want a
ride home? I'm ready to close up."

"I thought I'd walk," said Allison. "It's been a long time since I
walked in Peyton Place."

Rhodes glanced at her sharply. "The town'll be here in the mornin'. You
better let me ride you home. Look a little tired."

Allison was too tired to argue. "All right," she said. "My bags are
outside."

As they drove up Depot Street Allison stared absently out the car
window. It doesn't change, she thought wearily. Not a stick or a stone,
a tree or a house changes. It stands still.

"Hear about Selena Cross?" asked Rhodes.

"Yes," replied Allison. "That's the main reason I came home. I thought
it might make a good story."

"Oh?" asked Rhodes. "You still writin' them stories for the magazines?
The wife always reads 'em. Say's they're good, too."

"Yes, I'm still writing for the magazines," said Allison and thought,
Mr. Rhodes doesn't change either. He's still as nosy as ever. She
wondered what he would say if she told him of the novel she had worked
on for over a year which turned out to be no good. He'd be glad. Mr.
Rhodes was always glad when someone failed at something.

"How'd you hear about Selena?" he asked. "Your mother call you up?"

"No. I read it in a newspaper."

Mr. Rhodes stalled his car. "You mean to tell me it made the New York
papers? They know all about it down there to New York?"

"No, of course not. There is a man in New York who traffics in
homesickness. He runs a newsstand on Broadway where he sells copies of
out of town newspapers. I was walking by there one day and I saw the
headline on a four-day-old _Concord Monitor_."

Mr. Rhodes chuckled. "Musta give you a turn, seem' somethin' about
Peyton Place right in the middle of New York."

No, not really Mr. Rhodes, said Allison silently. I was too busy
thinking of something else at the time to be overly concerned with
Peyton Place. You see, I had just spent the week end in bed with a man
whom I love and it turned out that he was married.

"Yes," she said aloud. "It gave me quite a turn."

"Well, it's sure raised hell here," said Mr. Rhodes. "The streets ain't
fit to walk on these days. Full of newspaper reporters and tourists and
just plain nosy people from over to White River. The trial's tomorrow.
You goin'?"

"I imagine so," said Allison. "Selena will probably need every friend
she ever had tomorrow."

Mr. Rhodes chuckled and it occurred to Allison that there was something
obscene in the old man's laughter. "Ain't nobody really thinks she done
it. Leastways, not by herself. Well, here's your house. Hold a minute
and I'll give you a hand with your things."

"Don't bother," said Allison stepping out of the car. "Tom will come out
for them."

"Yep. Tom," said Rhodes and chuckled again. "That Greek feller your
mother married. How do you like having him for a father?"

Allison looked at him coldly. "My father is dead," she said and walked
up the walk in front of her house.

Constance and Tom jumped up in surprise as Allison walked through the
front door and into the living room.

"Hello," she said and stood there, pulling off her gloves.

They surrounded her and kissed her and asked her if she had eaten
dinner.

"But darling, why didn't you let us know you were coming? Tom would have
gone down to the station to pick you up."

"Mr. Rhodes drove me home," said Allison. "I had a sandwich on the
train."

"What's wrong?" cried Constance. "You're so white and you look
exhausted. Are you ill?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Mother," said Allison impatiently. "I'm just
tired. It's a long trip and it was hot on the train."

"Would you like a drink?" asked Tom.

"Yes," said Allison gratefully.

Something is wrong, thought Tom as he mixed a Tom Collins for Allison.
Something has happened. She has the same look that she always had
whenever she was running away from a disagreeable experience. A man?

"I tried to telephone you about Selena," Constance was saying, "but that
girl you share your apartment with said you were visiting someone in
Brooklyn. What's that girl's name? I never can remember it."

"Steve Wallace," said Allison, "and I don't share my apartment with her.
She shares her apartment with me."

"Steve," said Constance, "that's the name. Didn't you tell me that her
actual name is Stephanie?"

"Yes," replied Allison, "but no one ever calls her that. She hates it.
Poor Steve. I hope she can find someone else to share her place. I'm not
going back."

"Is something wrong?" asked Constance at once.

"I told you, Mother. Nothing is wrong," said Allison and burst into
tears. "I'm just tired, and sick of New York. I just want to be left
alone!"

"I'll go up and fix your bed," said Constance who had never been able to
cope with Allison's moods.

Tom sat down and lit a cigarette. "Can I help?" he asked.

Allison wiped her eyes and blew her nose; then she picked up her drink
and gulped half of it down.

"Yes," she said in a tightly controlled voice. "You can help me. You can
leave me the hell alone. Both of you. Or is that too much to ask?"

Tom stood up. "No," he said gently, "that's not too much to ask. But try
to remember that we love you, and we'd be glad to listen if you wanted
to talk."

"I'm going to bed," said Allison and ran upstairs before she started to
cry again.

But later Constance and Tom could hear her muffled sobs as they lay in
bed.

"What's wrong?" asked Constance, frightened. "I should go to her."

"Leave her alone," said Tom putting a hand on his wife's arm.

But Constance could not sleep. Long after Tom slept she went silently to
Allison's room.

"What's wrong?" she asked in a whisper. "Are you in trouble, dear?"

"Oh, Mother, don't be so stupid!" said Allison. "I'm not you. I'd never
be so stupid as to let a man get me in trouble. Just leave me alone!"

And Constance, who had not meant pregnancy when she spoke of trouble,
crept back to her bed and tried to warm herself against Tom's back.




CHAPTER 12


The trial of Selena Cross began at nine o'clock on a warm June morning.
It was held in a courtroom packed with townspeople and farmers, and it
was presided over by Judge Anthony Aldridge. A stranger to Peyton Place
might have looked around in panic on that particular morning, wondering
if he could have miscalculated the day or month of the year, for Elm
Street was as closed and deserted looking as it might have been on a
Sunday or holiday. All the shops were closed, and the benches in front
of the courthouse were empty of the old men who would usually have
appeared as if rooted there, now that it was June. Selena's trial opened
with what Thomas Delaney, of the Boston _Daily Record_, later described
as "a bang."

The "bang" to which Delaney referred came when Selena Cross repudiated
her earlier confession and pleaded not guilty.

A girl who called herself Virginia Voorhees leaned toward Thomas
Delaney. "Damn it," she whispered hoarsely, "they're going to try to get
away with temporary insanity." Her name was not Virginia Voorhees, it
was Stella Orbach, but she wrote articles for the Boston _American_
Sunday supplement under the name of Virginia Voorhees. Her articles
always bore the same title: "Was Justice Done?" She sighed dejectedly as
Selena Cross sat down after pleading innocent to first degree murder.
"Damn it," she muttered, "there goes a good story."

"Shut up, will you?" requested Delaney in a whisper, but Virginia
Voorhees did not hear him above the surprised buzzing which filled the
courtroom.

"Not guilty?" whispered Peyton Place.

"But she said she did it!"

"She knew where the body was buried!"

Charles Partridge, in his capacity as county attorney, was speaking
against the noise. "It is not the duty of this office," he was saying,
"to prosecute the innocent, but to bring the guilty to justice."

The lawyer's voice was soft, and his manner clearly apologetic for his
presence in the courtroom at all. His words left no doubts in the minds
of anyone that he was on Selena's side and that he hoped to help Peter
Drake prove the girl's innocence.

"For Christ's sake," mumbled the girl who called herself Virginia
Voorhees, "this is turning into a fiasco. Have you ever heard anything
like this?"

Behind Partridge, in a seat two rows from the front, Marion Partridge
stirred restively, not listening to her husband's words.

It certainly showed ingratitude on Selena's part, thought Marion, when
the girl deliberately set out to make Charles look foolish by changing
her plea like that. Charles had worked hard on this case, it was his
first murder trial, and he had spent a lot of time on it. Not that he
had wanted to be the one to prosecute Selena; he definitely had not. In
fact, thought Marion pursing her lips, it looked to her as if Charles
had tried harder to find a loophole for Selena than Peter Drake had. But
even so, Charles was the county attorney, and there was no excuse for
murder, so he had to prosecute. Oh, Marion had tried to tell him. A
murder trial which drew the publicity that this one had was bound to be
the making of the county attorney. Especially when he had an airtight
case. Selena had done it, and Selena had confessed, and the little
ingrate needn't think that Charles Partridge was going to be taken in by
an about-face at this late hour. It just went to show, thought Marion
grimly, that the more you did for shack people, the less they
appreciated it. The fact that Selena and Joey no longer lived in a place
which could be termed a shack did not matter to Marion. Put people like
the Crosses in Buckingham Palace, and they would still be shack people.
Just look at that girl! All rigged up as if she were going to a dance.

Marion Partridge sniffed a little, for she had the beginnings of a
summer cold, and she hated to keep using her handkerchief. She passed a
casual forefinger under her nostrils and stared at Selena.

The girl was wearing a dress of lavender linen, which Marion was willing
to bet cost at least twenty-five dollars, and a pair of sheer stockings
which Marion immediately classified as black market nylon. Selena's
shoes were new, and Marion wondered if the girl had used a wartime
ration coupon to buy them, or whether Constance Makris had got them from
a friendly salesman.

I always told Charles that Connie MacKenzie was no better than she
should be, but he wouldn't listen. I guess he saw what was what when she
began to carry on with that Makris fellow. Why, Anita Titus told me that
the goings-on in that house were something terrible. I'll bet they had
to get married. Connie must of had a miscarriage later. She and Selena
were always too friendly to suit me. Well, what can you expect? Birds of
a feather. Look at that girl! Earrings in court! Selena is the type who
will cross her legs and hoist her skirts when she gets on the stand. The
little ingrate, trying to make a fool of Charles. After all, I've been
good to Selena. I hired her for odd jobs when she didn't have a cent,
and I always tried to keep Nellie busy when Selena and Joey were
younger. And look what we paid Lucas, God rest his soul, to build our
kitchen cabinets. Outrageous, but we paid what he asked. You'd think
that Selena would remember favors like that. Well, Charles will fix her.
He'll see to it that she doesn't get away with murder. Charles will see
her hanged before he lets her get away with anything like that!

"--To prove that Selena Cross struck down Lucas Cross in self-defense,
and that her act, therefore, was one of justifiable homicide."

Marion Partridge sat up straight in her seat as if someone had stuck a
pin in her. It was Charles Partridge speaking, talking now of saving the
state's money by foregoing a lengthy trial now that new evidence had
come to light. Marion was bathed in the sweat of a hot flash.

But this is impossible, she thought frantically. He is throwing away his
big chance. There is no new evidence. He would have told me beforehand.
He's making it all up to save Selena's neck.

Marion took out her handkerchief and wiped her wet temples, and in that
moment it came over her that Charles was in the throes of a violent love
affair with his pretty young prisoner. She glanced around
surreptitiously, and it seemed to her that people were smiling and
casting sly looks in her direction. Feeling sorry for her because
Charles had thrown away his chance to be written up in the law books
because of his lust for Selena.

I'll kill her myself, thought Marion, and the resolve calmed her. The
hot flash passed, and she sat back in her seat, her eyes boring like
needles dipped in poison into the back of Selena's neck.

Later, when the trial was over and Thomas Delaney said that there was
not a single person in the Peyton Place courthouse who wanted to see
Selena found guilty, he did not know about Marion. Delaney thought that
he had found a place where there was no one eager to cast stones at the
fallen, and he did not see Marion, who could not forgive a deviation
from a norm set up by herself. Delaney was city bred, and did not
realize that in very small towns malice is more often shown toward an
individual than toward a group, a nation or a country. He was not
unfamiliar with prejudice and intolerance, having been called a Mick an
extraordinary number of times himself, but name calling and viciousness
had always seemed, to him, to be directed more at his ancestors than at
him as an individual. Clayton Frazier had attempted to explain something
of the way of it to him, but Delaney was a realist. He wanted to see
Clayton's examples in the flesh, to hear maliciousness with his own
ears, and to see the results of it with his own eyes.

"I told you about Samuel Peyton, didn't I?" demanded Clayton Frazier.
"Times and folks don't change much. Didn't you ever notice how it's
always people who wish they had somethin' or had done somethin' that
hate the hardest?"

"I don't know what you mean exactly," Delaney had replied.

"Well, I know what I mean," said Clayton testily. "I can't help it if I
can't phrase it fancy. I don't work for Hearst."

Delaney laughed. "Tell me what you mean in unfancy talk, then."

"Didja ever notice what woman it is who has the most fault to find with
a young, pretty girl who runs around havin' a swell time for herself?
It's the woman who is too old, too fat and ugly, to be doin' the same
thing herself. And when somebody kicks over the traces in a big way, who
is it that hollers loudest? The one who always wanted to do the same
thing but didn't have the nerve. Had a feller lived here, years ago, got
fed up with his wife and his job and his debts. Run off, he did. Just
upped and beat it, and the only one I ever heard holler about it, for
any length of time, was Leslie Harrington. Another time, we had this
widder woman got her a house down by the railroad tracks. Nice-lookin'
woman. She had just about every man in town keepin' his hands in his
pockets. She wa'nt a tramp, like Ginny Stearns used to be. She had
class, this widder did. I read in a book once about one of them French
courtesans. That's what the widder was like. A courtesan. Grand and
proud and beautiful as a satin sheet. None of the women in town liked
havin' her around much, but the one hollered the loudest, and finally
made poor Buck McCracken run her out of town, was Marion Partridge. Old
Charlie's wife."

"I've been working for Hearst too long," said Delaney. "These parables
of yours are over my head. What are you trying to tell me?"

Clayton Frazier spat. "That if Selena Cross is found innocent, there's
gonna be some that'll squawk about it. It'll be interestin' to see which
ones holler the loudest and the longest."

Charles knows better than this, thought Marion Partridge. Honor thy
father and thy mother. That's as plain as anything and no argument about
it. If he thinks that there is a reason good enough to excuse a girl
murdering her father, even a stepfather, he must be tottering on the
verge of senility and assume that the rest of us are, too.

Marion acknowledged coldly that she would rather have Charles slobbering
at the mouth and wetting the bed than to have him infatuated with
Selena. Folks could feel sorry for a woman with a sick husband, but a
woman with a husband who ran after young girls automatically became a
laughingstock.

"There is no need to clear the court," Charles protested, and Marion
raised furious eyes to look at him. "This girl is among her friends and
neighbors."

And if her friends and neighbors don't hear every word of the evidence,
Seth Buswell was thinking from his front-row seat, there will always be
a shadow of doubt in their minds if Selena is found innocent. Smart old
Charlie. I wish to hell I knew what he's talking about. When I talked to
Drake yesterday, things looked pretty black to him.

Allison MacKenzie, who was sitting halfway back in the courtroom,
between her mother and Tomas Makris, put her finger tips to her lips
when Charles Partridge uttered the word friends.

Friends! she thought, shocked, and immediately began to try to send
warning thought waves in the direction of Selena Cross.

Don't let them fool you, Selena, she thought, concentrating with all her
mind. Don't be fooled and taken in by their pretty words. You haven't a
friend in this room. Quick! Stand up and tell them so. I know. They
tried to tell me that I was among friends, right in this same room,
once. But I wasn't. I stood up and told the truth, and those whom I had
called my friends laughed and said that I was a liar. Even those who
didn't know me well enough to call me a liar to my face did it when they
robbed Kathy to save Leslie Harrington. Look at Leslie Harrington now,
Selena. He is on the jury that is going to play with your life. He's no
friend of yours, no matter how you may think he has changed. He called
me a liar, right in this room, and I've known him ever since I can
remember. Don't trust Charles Partridge. He called me a liar, and he'll
do the same for you. Stand up, Selena! Tell them that you would rather
be tried by your enemies than by your friends in Peyton Place.

"Call Matthew Swain," said a voice, and Allison knew that it was too
late. Selena had put her trust in her friends, as Allison had once done
herself, and her friends would turn on her and tell her she lied.
Allison felt the weak tears that came so easily since her return to
Peyton Place, and Tom reached out and put a gentle hand on her arm as
Matthew Swain was sworn in.

The doctor told his story in a voice familiar to everyone in Peyton
Place. He did not attempt to tidy up his English for the benefit of the
court.

"Lucas Cross was crazy," began the doctor bluntly. "And he was crazy in
the worst way that it's possible for a man to be crazy. There's not one
of you here today, except a few out-of-towners, who don't know some of
the things Lucas did in his lifetime. He was a drunkard, and a wife
beater, and a child abuser. Now, when I say child abuser, I mean that in
the worst way any of you can think of. Lucas began to abuse Selena
sexually when she was a child of fourteen, and he kept her quiet by
threatening to kill her and her little brother if she went to the law.
Well, Selena didn't go to Buck McCracken. When it was too late, and she
was in trouble, she came to me. I took care of her trouble in the way I
thought best. I fixed her so that she wouldn't have Lucas' child."

The courtroom began to buzz. Virginia Voorhees scribbled furiously.

"Abortion!" she whispered to Thomas Delaney. "This doctor has ruined
himself!"

But what a magnificent old gentleman, thought Delaney, ignoring his
colleague. White suit, white hair and those bright blue eyes. What a
gentleman!

"Now, I reckon there's going to be some questions asked as to how I know
it was Lucas' baby that Selena carried," said the doctor, and the
buzzing courtroom quieted as if everyone had been struck dead but
Matthew Swain. "I know it because Lucas admitted it to me. There's no
one here who doesn't remember when Lucas left town. Well, he left
because I told him he had to go. I told him that the men of this town
would lynch him if he stayed. In short, I scared the piss out of him and
he went. There's no question about how I should have gone to Buck
McCracken when I first found out about Lucas. It was a wrong thing that
I didn't go, but I didn't and I'm not the one on trial here today. I
should be. Had I done what I should have done, Lucas would not be dead
today. He would be alive and in jail. He would never have left town with
an opportunity to come and go as he pleased, especially with the
opportunity to molest a child again. When he did return and attempted to
do what he had done with her in years past, she killed him. I don't
blame her. Lucas Cross needed killing." The doctor raised his head only
a shade over the normally high angle at which he always held it. "If my
words need corroboration in the mind of anyone here, I have it." He
slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his suit coat and brought
forth a folded sheet of paper which he passed to Charles Partridge.
"That paper is a signed confession," he said. "I wrote it up the night I
took care of Selena, and Lucas signed it. That is all I have to say."

Matthew Swain stepped down from the stand and life returned to the
courtroom. In the back row, Miss Elsie Thornton pressed the black-gloved
fingers of one hand to her eyes and encircled Joey Cross with her free
arm. Joey was quivering, his fatless body as tight as a wound-up toy
against Miss Thornton's side.

In the front row, Seth Buswell lowered his head against the shame he was
afraid would show in his eyes. Oh, Matt, he thought, I would never have
had the courage.

In the second row, Marion Partridge shook with rage. I might have known,
she thought. Matt Swain's doing, all of it. A criminal and a murderer
himself, and everyone listens to his words as if he were God. He'll pay
for this, ruining Charles's big chance. He and the girl were in it
together, to make a fool of Charles.

The main reason why Virginia Voorhees later described the trial of
Selena Cross as "a fiasco" was that the court looked no farther than
Matthew Swain for an excuse for the girl. The confession which the old
doctor claimed to have obtained from Selena's stepfather was marked and
admitted as evidence. It was passed to the jury for examination but,
Virginia noticed, not one man of the twelve looked down at the paper as
it went from hand to hand. The judge's words to the jury were words
which Virginia had never heard uttered in a court of law.

"There's not one of you on the jury who don't know Matt Swain," said the
judge. "I've known him all my life, same as you, and I say that Matt
Swain is no liar. Go into the other room and make up your minds."

The jury returned in less than ten minutes. "Not guilty," said Leslie
Harrington, who had been acting as foreman, and the trial of Selena
Cross was over.

"It may have started off with a bang," said Virginia Voorhees to Thomas
Delaney, "but it certainly ended with a sound most generally associated
with wet firecrackers!"

Thomas Delaney was watching Dr. Matthew Swain as the old man made his
way out of the courtroom. A few minutes later, the reporter noticed that
the doctor was being escorted outside by five men. Seth Buswell held
loosely to one of his arms, while Charles Partridge walked at the
doctor's opposite side. Jared Clarke and Dexter Humphrey walked slightly
behind him, and Leslie Harrington walked ahead to open the door of the
doctor's car. The six men got into the car and drove away, and Delaney
turned to find Clayton Frazier at his side.

"Nice-lookin' bunch of old bastards, ain't they?" said Clayton
affectionately, and Delaney realized that this was the greatest
compliment Clayton felt that he could pay anyone.

"Yeah," he said, and fought his way through the crowd to the side of
Peter Drake.

"Congratulations," he said to Selena's attorney.

"What for?" demanded Drake.

"Why, you've just won a big case," said Delaney.

"Listen," said Drake sharply, "I don't know where you come from, but if
you couldn't see that this was Charlie Partridge's big case from
beginning to end, you've got a lot to learn about Peyton Place."

"What will happen to the doctor?" asked Delaney.

Drake shrugged. "Nothing much."

"I realize that I have a lot to learn about Peyton Place," said Delaney
sarcastically, "but I do think that I know enough about this state to
realize that abortion is against the law."

"Who's going to charge Matt Swain with abortion?" asked Drake. "You?"

"No one has to. The minute the state hears of this, they'll lift his
license to practice."

Drake shrugged again. "Come back in a year," he said, "to see if Matt
Swain is still in business. I'll bet you a solid gold key to Peyton
Place that he'll still be living on Chestnut Street and going out on
night calls."

"What about the girl?" asked Delaney, nodding in the direction where
Selena Cross stood, surrounded by a large segment of the town's
population. "Has she any plans? Where will she go?"

"Listen," said Drake wearily, "why don't you ask her? I'm going home."




CHAPTER 13


The summer passed slowly for Allison MacKenzie. She spent much of it in
sitting alone in her room and in walking the streets of Peyton Place.
She went to bed early and arose late, but the lethargic weariness which
weighed heavily on her would not leave her. Sometimes she visited with
Kathy Welles, but she could not find comfort on these occasions. It was
as if a wall existed between the two friends, and it did not lessen
Allison's sense of loss to know that it was a wall, not of
unfriendliness or lack of understanding, but a wall made by Kathy's
happiness.

A wall of happiness, thought Allison. What a wonderful thing to live
behind.

Kathy held her baby with her left arm and rested the child against her
hip. The empty right sleeve of her cotton dress was neatly pinned back,
and Allison wondered how Kathy dressed herself every morning.

"Happiness," said Kathy, "is in finding a place you love and staying
there. That's the big reason why I was never sorry about not getting a
lot of money after the accident. If Lew and I had had money, we might
have been tempted to travel and look around, but we would never have
found a place like this one."

"You always were infatuated with Peyton Place," said Allison. "I don't
know why. It is one of the worst examples of small towns that I can
think of."

Kathy smiled. "No, it's not," she said.

"Talk, talk, talk," said Allison impatiently. "Peyton Place is famous
for its talk. Talk about everybody."

"Crap," said Kathy inelegantly. "Everyone talks all over the world,
about everybody else. Even in your precious New York. Walter Winchell is
the biggest old gossip of all. He's worse than Clayton Frazier and the
Page Girls and Roberta Harmon all put together."

Allison laughed. "It's different with Winchell," she said. "He gets paid
to gossip."

"I don't care," said Kathy. "If I ever saw a back fence, I see one when
I look at his column. At least, we don't put our dirty wash into the
newspapers in Peyton Place."

Allison shrugged. "The papers confine themselves to big names anyway,"
she said. "In Peyton Place, anybody is fair game."

"Selena Cross is a sort of celebrity up here," said Kathy shrewdly. "And
Selena in relation to Peyton Place is what is bothering you, isn't it?"

"Yes," admitted Allison. "I think Selena was a fool to stay here. She
could have gone out to Los Angeles with Joey and lived with Gladys,
where no one knew about her. She's behaving like an ostrich by staying
here, as if nothing had happened. Right or wrong, it happened, and it
was only a matter of time before people would start to talk. All the
fine friends who didn't want to see her hang for murder are hanging her
themselves with their vicious talk."

"And this too shall pass away," quoted Kathy. "It always does, Allison."

"After about a hundred years of being talked about and hashed over,"
said Allison, and rose to leave. "You'll see. In the end, Selena will
have to leave."

"She doesn't act as if she is going to run away," said Kathy. "I was in
your mother's store yesterday and Selena was having a very friendly talk
with Peter Drake. She won't leave."

"You always were one to see a prospective love match in every casual
conversation," said Allison crossly. "Don't worry. Drake isn't about to
jeopardize himself by taking up with Selena. Ted Carter didn't do it and
neither will Drake. Men are all alike."

"For Heaven's sake," exclaimed Kathy. "What ever happened to you in New
York? You never used to have such an attitude as that before you went
away."

"I got smart," said Allison.

"Nuts," said Kathy. "What you need to do is to find a nice fellow and
get married and settle down."

"No thanks," said Allison. "Love and I don't mix well."

She said this flippantly, but too often, during that long summer and she
not only thought about the words but believed them. For love had caused
the pain which had not come before she left New York but had waited
until she reached Peyton Place to overwhelm her. And when it had finally
come to her she had thought she would die of it. It was pain of such
power that it left her gasping, and pain of such sharpness that it
stripped her nerves bare and left them rawly exposed to more pain.

She relived every childhood experience of rejection and wept in an
ecstasy of sorrow for herself: _I lost Rodney Harrington to Betty
Anderson, and Norman Page to his mother, and my mother to Tomas Makris.
But I thought it would be different in New York. Where did I go wrong?
What's the matter with me?_

                 *        *        *        *        *

It had been September, three months to the day after her graduation from
high school, when she had arrived in New York. Constance had insisted
that she stay in one of those depressing hotels for women, but Allison
had wasted no time in asserting her newfound independence and had set
about scanning the want ads in the _New York Times_ within fifteen
minutes of stepping off the train at Grand Central. She had seen one
notice which attracted her at once.

    GIRL WHO LIKES TO MIND HER OWN BUSINESS INTERESTED IN
    SHARING STUDIO APARTMENT WITH CONGENIAL FEMALE WHO ENJOYS DOING
    SAME.

Allison made a careful note of the address and within the hour she had
met, decided she liked, and moved in with a girl of twenty who called
herself Steve Wallace.

"Don't call me Stephanie," Steve had said. "I don't know why it should,
but being called Stephanie always makes me feel like something pale and
dull out of Jane Austen."

Steve was wearing a pair of leopard-spotted slacks and a bright yellow
shirt. Her hair was a rich auburn-brown and she wore a pair of enormous
gold hoops in her ears.

"Are you an actress?" Allison asked.

"Not yet," said Steve in her husky voice. "Not yet. All I do now is run
around to the casting offices, but I model to pay the rent and feed
myself. What do you do?"

"Write," Allison said, not without fear for she had been laughed at too
many times in Peyton Place to say the word now without a quiver.

"But that's wonderful!" cried Steve, and Allison began to be very fond
of her in that moment.

But writing stories and selling them were two very different things, as
Allison soon discovered. She began to realize that she had been
unbelievably lucky to sell her first story at all, and that the road to
her next sale was going to be a rocky one indeed.

"Oh, for an editor like the one who bought 'Lisa's Cat,'" she said often
and fervently, particularly on the day of every week when she received a
generous check from Constance.

Allison had hung the full-page color illustration which the magazine had
run with "Lisa's Cat" on the wall of Steve's living room. During that
first year in New York she had glanced at the picture often and had even
drawn encouragement from it, for there had been times when she was
afraid that she would never be able to support herself with her writing.
But then she met Bradley Holmes, an author's agent, and new doors began
to swing open for her. She would never have begun to be successful
without Holmes, but the thought of him as she sat in her bedroom in
Peyton Place on this hot summer afternoon was so painful that she turned
her face into her pillow and wept.

Oh, I love you, I love you, she wept, and then she remembered the touch
of his hands on her and shame added itself to her grief. The more
tightly she closed her eyes, the sharper his image became behind her
clenched lids.

Bradley Holmes was forty years old, dark haired and powerfully built
although he was not much taller than Allison. He had a sharp, discerning
eye and a tongue which could be both cruel and kind.

"It's easier to sell directly to a publisher," a friend of Steve's had
told Allison, "than it is to sell a good agent on your work."

And after a series of rebuffs from agents' secretaries and agents'
receptionists, Allison thought that this was probably true. It was after
one particularly crushing experience, when she had almost decided that
it was not so much a matter of selling an agent on her work as it was a
problem of getting past the desk in his reception room, that Allison had
sought refuge in the New York Public Library. The book she chose was a
current best seller and the author had dedicated it to his "friend and
agent, Bradley Holmes" who, according to the author, was a true friend,
a genius with the soul of Christ and the patience of Job in addition to
being the finest agent in New York.

Allison went directly to a pay station where she looked up the address
of Bradley Holmes in a telephone directory. He had an office on Fifth
Avenue and late that same afternoon she sat down at her typewriter and
wrote a long hysterical letter to Mr. Bradley Holmes. She wrote that she
had been laboring under a misapprehension, for she had always thought
that the function of a literary agent was to read manuscripts brought to
him by authors. If she was right, how was it that she, a prize-winning
writer, was unable to meet an agent face to face? And if she was wrong,
what on earth were literary agents for anyway? There were eight pages
more, in the same vein, and Allison had mailed them to the Fifth Avenue
address without rereading them, for she was afraid that she might change
her mind if she paused to think about what she had written.

A few days later, she had received a note from Bradley Holmes. It was
typewritten on exquisitely heavy, cream-colored paper, and his name was
engraved in black at the top of the sheet. The note was short and
invited Miss MacKenzie to his office to meet him and to leave her
manuscripts which Mr. Holmes would read.

Bradley Holmes's office was full of light and warmth the morning when
Allison went there for the first time, and it smelled of expensive
carpeting, and crushed cigarette ends, and of books in leather bindings.

"Sit down, Miss MacKenzie," said Bradley Holmes. "I must confess that I
am rather surprised. I hadn't expected someone so young."

Young was a word which Brad used often, in one form or another, in all
his conversations with Allison.

"I am so much older," he would say.

Or: "I've lived so much longer."

Or: "You have a surprisingly discerning eye, for one so young."

And many, many times, he said: "Here is a charming young man whom I
think you will enjoy."

Allison had spent perhaps fifteen minutes with him, and then he had led
her politely to the elevator in the hall.

"I'll read your stories as soon as I can," he told her. "I'll get in
touch with you."

"Humph," said Steve Wallace later. "The old casting director's line.
Don't call us, we'll call you. Fortunately, I've never run into it in
modeling, but the theatrical offices I've been ushered out of with those
words! Nothing will come of Mr. Bradley Holmes, though. You'd better try
someone else."

Three days later, Bradley Holmes had telephoned Allison.

"There are a few things I'd like to discuss with you," he said. "Could
you come down to the office today?"

"You have a great deal of talent with words," he told her, and in that
moment, Allison would have died for him. "Also," he said, "you have a
clever little knack with the slick type of short story. I think we ought
to concentrate on that for the time being. Save the real talent for
later, for a novel perhaps. Unfortunately, I don't know of a place where
your best short stories would fit. The slick magazines, the only ones
which pay enough for you to live on, aren't particularly partial to
stories full of old maids, and cats, and sex. Here."

He handed Allison a stack of manuscripts which represented her better
stories.

"We'll work on these others," he said.

Within two weeks, Allison had come to regard Bradley Holmes as a genius
of the highest order. Within a month he had sold two of her stories and
she had begun to think of doing a novel.

"You have plenty of time," he told her. "You are so young. But still,
once you begin to make a respectable amount of money with the magazines
you may never decide to try a book. Go ahead, if you like, and see what
you can do."

"Yes, Brad," Allison had said. If he had told her that it was all right
for her to step into a whirling propeller blade she would have said,
"Yes, Brad."

They were having dinner together in one of the good restaurants on the
East Side which Brad patronized.

"I don't have to travel 'way downtown to meet characters and perverts,"
he said. "I can see more of those than I care to at a variety of
so-called literary teas."

After that, Allison began to shy away from the Village, but it was a
long time before Bradley Holmes began to realize the influence he
wielded over his youngest client.

"Think for yourself," he told her sharply. "This is not a
Trilby-Svengali relationship which we have. Don't go thinking that it
is."

But Allison had formed the habit of dependence. She had telephoned him
and run to him for advice on a multitude of details which she could
easily have resolved for herself.

"Don't start thinking of me as your father," he warned her.

Allison didn't. She thought of him as God.

Then Brad had started introducing Allison to a variety of young men. The
most interesting was a tall, thin young man named David Noyes who wrote
what she referred to as "Novels of Social Significance."

"I wish that Allison would look at me just once the way she looks at
Brad Holmes all the time," David told Steve Wallace. "It is almost
embarrassing to watch her look at him. Such love, such worship. I
wouldn't be able to stand it. I wonder how he does?"

Allison enjoyed David. He opened a whole new realm of thoughts and ideas
to her, and he helped over the bad stages when she began work on her
novel. She told him the legend of Samuel Peyton's castle and he listened
attentively.

"Sounds good," he told her. "Of course, it may prove a little difficult
to handle. You're going to have to work like hell to make Samuel a
sympathetic character. If you goof, he turns into a villain."

"Brad thinks it's a wonderful story," Allison said. "He thinks it will
be a big best seller."

"Smeller," amended David.

"Well, everyone can't be a boy genius," said Allison.

David was twenty-five and had been hailed as a brilliant new talent by
the critics on the publication of his first novel. He wanted to reform
the world and he had a difficult time understanding people like Allison
who wanted to write for either fame or money. David saw a world free
from war, poverty, crime and penal institutions and he was constantly
trying to make others see what he saw. Brad Holmes called David a
"dedicated young man" so, of course, Allison saw him that way, too.

"Brad is dedicated himself," said David when Allison told him what the
agent had said. "He is like the city of New York. Hard, bright and
dedicated to the race after the dollar.

"Brad and New York have everything in common, and the criterion of both
is cash."

"Oh, what a terrible thing to say!" Allison exclaimed, angry almost to
tears. "Why Brad is the sweetest, most gentle man I've ever known."

"Brad is a goddamned good agent," said David, "and I have seldom, if
ever, seen money and gentleness go hand in hand."

"Sometimes," said Allison viciously, "in fact, most of the time, you
sicken me. Brad is the best friend I ever had."

"Oh?" asked David sarcastically. "What about this Makris fellow whom you
told me about? The one who stood by your side when your friend Kathy was
hurt. Isn't he your friend? When he stood up with you, he was
jeopardizing his job, his hard-won position in that charming snake pit
you call Peyton Place, and just about anything else you can name. What
of Makris? He sounds like your best friend to me."

"Oh, him," said Allison with a shrug. "He's different. He's my mother's
husband."

"Sometimes," said David slowly, "I think that one would have to put your
soul under a powerful microscope before it became at all obvious that
you have one."

"David, let's not argue. Just for one evening, let's not parry words.
Let's just be friends."

David had looked at her for a silent moment. "I don't want to be your
goddamned friend," he said.

"Well, what would you like to be then?" she asked.

"Your lover," he said bluntly. "But I don't have a set of pretty clichs
to let you know this."

They were sitting at a table in a Greenwich Village basement restaurant.
The table was covered with the standard red-checked cloth and a candle,
stuffed into the neck of an empty wine bottle, burned sulkily at its far
side. David had leaned toward Allison and twined his fingers gently in
the ends of her long hair.

"The only pretty thing I can think of to say, when I look at you, is
that you have lovely hair."

"Thank you," said Allison staring down at her hands. A low-voiced
compliment from David was something with which she was not prepared to
cope. "Hadn't we best hurry? I've never been to the ballet before. I
don't want to get there late."

They saw _Les Sylphides_ that evening and Allison had looked at the
costumed dancers and thought of Peyton Place and April coming wetly
through an open window. She shivered a little and David reached over and
took her hand in the darkened theater. Allison had felt closer to David
after that evening but still, when she thought of love at all, she
thought of Bradley Holmes.

                 *        *        *        *        *

"Allison!" It was Constance's voice calling her from the foot of the
stairs.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Tom is home. Come on down and have a drink with us."

"Thank you. I'll be down in a minute."

She washed her tear-swollen face and brushed her hair. David, she was
thinking. David would have been gentle with me.

Several days later, on an evening during the first week in September,
Allison sat on the back porch of her mother's house with Constance and
Tom. Allison watched a moth try to battle his way through the porch
screening and only half listened to Constance who was talking about Ted
Carter.

"I don't believe that he ever loved Selena at all," said Constance.

"I don't agree with that," said Tom, stretching his long legs and
sitting on the end of his spine. "It is true that love has different
depths but deep or shallow, it is still love." Carefully, he did not
look at Allison. "When a man does nothing more than sleep with an
available woman, he is still expressing a love of sorts."

Constance snorted. "Next you'll be saying that a man is expressing love
when he goes to a whore house."

"Mother! For Heaven's sake," protested Allison.

"Speak to Tom," said Constance comfortably, fishing for an orange slice
in the bottom of her glass. "He's the one who taught me to call a spade
a spade."

"A spade is one thing," said Allison, "and a bloody shovel is something
else again. Anyway, I don't see what all that has to do with Ted and
Selena. He led her on for years, pretending that he wanted to marry her,
and look at what happened the minute she was in trouble. He left her.
For years, we all thought that Ted Carter was so much and in the end he
turned out to be a miniature of Roberta and Harmon. Ted and his big
plans! The coward couldn't find room in them for Selena."

"But what does that have to do with whether he loved her or not?" asked
Tom.

"If he had really loved her, he would have stood by her," said Allison
hotly, glad that it was dark enough on the porch so that she did not
have to look at Tom.

"Not necessarily," he said. "There is such a thing as love not meeting a
test, but that does not mean that it was not a kind of love to begin
with. Love is not static. It changes and fluctuates, sometimes growing
stronger, sometimes weaker and sometimes disappearing altogether. But
still, I think it is difficult not to be grateful for the love one
gets."

"It's not worth it," said Allison. "You get too much pain for every
little bit and scrap of love."

"The thing to do, Allison, is to remember the loving and not to dwell
upon the loss," said Tom gently.

"What do you know about it?" cried Allison, jumping to her feet and
starting to cry. "You never lost anything. You got what you wanted." She
ran from the porch and up to her room.

"Well!" said Constance, surprised. "What ails her?"

"Growing pains," said Tom.

In her room, Allison lay face down on the bed. Remember? she thought
desperately. Remember what?

Her shame when she thought of herself with Bradley Holmes made her wince
and clench her fists and pray for forgetfulness. Remember the loving and
not the loss, Tom had said. How could one forget altogether?

Oh, God, groaned Allison lying on her bed with her cheek hot against the
crisp pillowcase, why did he have to mention love at all?

                 *        *        *        *        *

It had happened on the day when she had finished her novel. It was
eight-thirty in the morning and she had been up all night writing and at
last she wrote the two beautiful words THE END. She arched her neck and
moved her shoulders, feeling the pain of weariness and strain, and then
she glanced at the clock and lit a cigarette. It was almost nine o'clock
and she could call Bradley Holmes at his office.

"Oh, Brad," she said as soon as she heard his voice. "I'm finished with
it."

"Wonderful!" he said. "Why don't you bring it around on Monday?"

"On Monday!" cried Allison. "But Brad, I thought we could have dinner
and read it over together later."

"That would be nice," Brad had said, "but I'm leaving early this
afternoon to go up to Connecticut."

"Oh?" Allison asked. "Are you going alone?"

"Yes."

"Brad." Allison was silent for what seemed a long moment. "Brad?"

"Yes?"

"Take me with you."

He was silent for a long time in his turn. "All right," he said at last.
"I'll pick you up at about four."

"I'll be ready."

"And Allison."

"Yes, Brad?"

"Leave the manuscript at home. We can talk it over if you like, but I've
had a helluva hard week. I'd like to rest this week end."

"All right," she said and hung up slowly.

Steve Wallace came out of the bedroom, yawning. It was one of the rare
mornings when she had no early appointments and she was enjoying it
thoroughly.

"Hi," said Steve, rubbing her scalp with her finger tips. "Coffee
ready?"

"I'm going away for the week end with Brad," said Allison.

Steve began to stretch her torso in a rhythmic exercise guaranteed to
keep the waist trim. "Well, don't act as if you were about to die and go
to heaven."

Allison turned work-weary, red-rimmed eyes to look at her. "I've never
been away for the week end with a man."

"In the first place," Steve had emphasized her point with an extended
forefinger, "I don't think that what you are thinking will come to pass.
Not with Sir Galahad Holmes at the helm. And in the second place," this
time she extended two fingers, "it sure as hell won't happen if you
don't take a nap and get rid of those bloodshot eyes."

"I've finished the book."

"Eureka!" cried Steve. "Or gazooks! or something." She ran to the bridge
table which held Allison's typewriter and looked at the beautiful words
typed on the sheet of white paper. "The End," she said. "Thank God! I
was afraid you'd have a nervous breakdown before it came to this. Oh,
Allison, isn't it wonderful!" She did a few dance steps of joy, in her
bare feet. "You're done!" She stood still and looked at her friend.
"Oh," she said, "that's why Brad is taking you away for the week end. To
read the book."

"No. He just wants me to tell him about it. And he wants to rest."

"Nonsense," said Steve. "If I ever saw a man sunk with love it's Brad
Holmes. His problem is that he is over forty which makes him just about
twice your age." She was speaking from the kitchen and Allison was
sitting in the living room. "Of course, a little thing like that
wouldn't bother most men, but most men are not Brad Holmes."

"I don't see what age has to do with love. Do you?"

"No, I don't. Why don't you ask Brad?"

"Maybe I will, later. Right now I'm going to bed."

"I'll call you in plenty of time for you to make yourself gorgeous for
the week end."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Allison stood up and moved to the window of her room in Peyton Place.

How clever and cosmopolitan Steve and I thought we were that day, she
thought. We were so blas and nonchalant about my going off for the week
end with a man. How daring I felt, and grown up, and unafraid.

"Doesn't it shock you a little that I am going off for the week end
alone with a man?" she had asked Steve.

"Not if the man is Brad Holmes," Steve had replied as she packed
Allison's shapeless cotton pajamas into a suitcase. "The biggest favor
that guy ever did you was to introduce you to David Noyes. He knows it
and so should you. I've no doubt that you'll return to the city on
Monday as virginal as when you leave."

Allison moved restlessly away from her bedroom window and fumbled for a
cigarette among the things on the night table. Her fingers found an
empty package and she crumpled it in her hand as she made her way
quietly downstairs. Constance and Tom had long since gone to bed and
only one small light burned in the living room. Everything was still as
Allison opened the front door and looked out into Beech Street; the
night had turned off chilly as the September nights so often did in
Peyton Place. She closed the door softly and went back into the living
room. The hearth was cold and dark looking and Allison built a small
pile of kindling wood on the andirons. When the fire was lit she sat
down in an armchair and stared at the flames.

I should have run, she thought. I should have run from Brad and back to
David. But did I really want to? In that minute when I could have turned
away and said no, did I want to? Until now, Allison had made many
excuses to herself. _I couldn't help it_, she had thought. _I did not
realize. I loved him. It was all his fault. He should have known
better._ Allison stared into the fire in the living room of her mother's
house and for the first time since she had learned of her mother's
defection she wondered about the heart and mind of Constance.

"It could happen to anyone," Constance had said. "I was lonely and he
was there."

But I wasn't lonely. I had my work, and Steve, and David. I was not
alone.

The fire made sparks as a log began to flame and at once Allison could
feel the presence of Bradley Holmes. Strangely, where there had been a
hideousness in remembrance before, she could remember now with
curiosity.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He had stood in front of the fireplace in the living room of his
Connecticut farm and extended a glass toward her.

"It may be contributing to the delinquency of a minor," he had said,
"but a little sherry never hurt anyone. Here."

"Here's to _Samuel's Castle_," he said, "and fifty-two weeks on the
lists. If you have written it as well as you have told it tonight, we'll
have an immediate best seller."

Smeller, she thought, remembering David Noyes, but she did not say it
aloud. She looked at him. "As long as you like it," she said, "I don't
care if it's rejected by every publisher in New York."

"Don't talk like that," said Brad, sitting down next to her on the
couch. "How do you expect me to pay the office rent without a best
seller once in a while?"

There was a long silence during which she sipped at her drink, smoothed
the skirt of her dress and lit a cigarette. She sat and gazed into the
fire as Brad was doing, and for the first time since she had met him she
felt uncomfortable in his presence.

"You needn't, you know," said Brad, and she was so startled that she
nearly dropped the glass she held.

"Needn't what?"

"Feel uncomfortable." He stood up and went to stir the fire, keeping his
back to her. "I wonder if you knew what you were saying this morning
when you asked to come with me, or whether you were leaving it up to me
to figure out."

"And what did you decide was the right answer?"

"I decided that a young lady who asks to spend the week end with a man
is either after sex or well on the way to making a fool of herself. I am
gratified that you showed enough wisdom to choose me as your companion.
You must have known that no harm could come to you in the company of a
man old enough to be your father."

"David Noyes doesn't regard me as such an infant," said Allison crossly.
"He asked me to marry him a short while ago. I wish you'd stop using the
words young and old as if they were our first names just for this one
evening."

"Well, I can't," said Brad. "Not on this particular evening. If I put us
on a basis of equal age this evening it might prove to be a provocative
thought."

"Perhaps I'd rather like to provoke you into having a few thoughts. A
few thoughts about _me_, as an individual, instead of me in connection
with my work."

"Don't allow yourself to become piqued, my dear," he said coolly. "Pique
often puts words into the mouth of a woman for which she is heartily
sorry afterward."

"Well!" she exclaimed, with heavily underlined surprise. "Ring the
bells, hang out the flags, close the schools. Bradley Holmes has come
right out and said that Allison MacKenzie is a woman!"

He went to her quickly and raised her to her feet with his hands under
her elbows. In the second before he kissed her, she had thought
fleetingly that she was glad she had remembered to wear flat-heeled
shoes. In flat heels, the top of her head came exactly to Brad's
eyebrows.

He raised his lips but did not take his arms from around her. "Almost,
but not quite," he said softly.

"What?"

"Almost but not quite a woman," he said. "You kiss like a child."

In the firelight she could see her reflection in his eyes. "How do you
do that?" she asked, her breath hurting in her chest.

"What?"

"Kiss like a woman?"

"Open your mouth a little," he said, and kissed her again....

Brad was practiced and polished, an expert who regarded the making of
love as a creative art. He had led her well through the preliminaries of
sex, undressing her deftly and quickly.

"Don't," he said, when she turned her face away from him and closed her
eyes. He put his fingers to her cheek and brought her face back toward
his own. "If you are going to feel shame, Allison, it is not going to be
any good for you, not tonight or any other night. Tell me what it is
that makes you turn away from me, and I'll take care of it or explain it
away. But don't begin by closing your eyes so that you don't have to
look at me."

"I've never been naked in front of anyone before," she said, against his
shoulder.

"Don't use that word 'naked,'" he said. "There is a world of difference
in referring to yourself as nude. Nude is a word as smooth as your
hips," he said, caressing her, "but naked has the sound of a rock being
turned over to expose maggots. Now, what is it about being nude that
embarrasses you?"

She hesitated.... "I'm afraid that you'll find me ugly," she said at
last.

"I am not going to say anything, because no matter what reassurances I
made in this moment, every one would sound false to you. Besides, that
is not what you are afraid of, you know."

"What is it then?"

"You are afraid that I will think badly of you for allowing me to have
you. It is a perfectly normal feminine fear. If I gave you a reason that
was convincing enough for why you are doing as you are, this fear would
leave you. It is an odd thing, but most women need excuses of one kind
or another. It is much easier for men."

"How?" she had smiled at his descriptions of women.

"A man says, 'Ah, here is a gorgeous creature whom I should love to take
to bed.' Then he begins to work toward his goal. If he achieves it, he
jumps into the nearest bed with her and fornicates for all he is worth,
before she can change her mind and demand that he present her with a
good reason for what she is doing."

She turned on to her back and put her arms over her head. "Then you
think that sex between unmarried persons is excusable."

"I've never thought of it as being either excusable or inexcusable. It
is just there, and it can be good if people just won't mess it up with
reasons and apologies. Have you understood one word I've said?"

"Yes, I think so."

"May I look at you, then?"

She had clenched her fists, but she did not close her eyes or turn away
from him. "Yes," she said.

He did it slowly, following with his eyes the path created by his hands
as they traveled over her.

"You are truly beautiful," he said. "You have the long, aristocratic
legs and the exquisite breasts of a statue."

She let out her long-held breath with a sigh that made her quiver, and
her heart beat hard under her breasts. He placed his lips against the
pulsating spot, while he pressed gently at her abdomen with his hand. He
continued to kiss her and stroke her until her whole body trembled under
his lips and hands. When he kissed the softness of her inner thighs, she
began to make moaning, animal sounds, and even then he continued his
sensual touching and stroking and waited until she began the undulating
movements of intercourse with her hips. She was lying with her arms bent
and raised over her head, and he held her pinned to the bed with his
hands on her wrists.

"Don't," he commanded, when she tried to twist away from him at the
first thrust of pain. "Help me," he said. "Don't pull away."

"I can't," she cried. "I can't."

"Yes, you can. Press your heels against the mattress and raise your
hips. Help me. Quickly!"

In the last moment a bright drop of blood appeared on her mouth, where
she had bitten into her lip, and then she had cried out the odd, mingled
cry of pain and pleasure.

Later, after they had smoked and talked, he turned to her again.

"It is never as good as it should be for a woman, the first time," he
said. "This one will be for you."

He began to woo her again, with words, and kisses, and touches, and this
time she had felt the full, soaring joy of pleasure without pain.

"I thought I was dying," she said to him, afterward. "And it was the
loveliest feeling in the world."

By Sunday morning, she had been able to walk nude in front of Brad, and
feel his eyes probing her, without feeling either shame or fear. She had
arched her back, and lifted her heavy hair off her neck, and pressed her
breasts against his face, and gloried in his swift reaction to her.

This is what it is like, she had thought exultantly, to be in love with
a man with everything that is within oneself.

Too soon, it was Sunday night, and they made their way back to New York
over the Merritt Parkway. Brad held her fingers in his and she giggled.

"It would be terrible if I got pregnant," she had said, thinking that it
would not be terrible at all, "because then we'd have to get married and
I'd never get any work done. We'd be spending all our time in bed."

Brad withdrew his hand from hers at once.

"But my dear child," he said, "I was extremely conscientious about
taking precautions against anything as disastrous as pregnancy. I am
already married. I thought you knew."

She had felt nothing but a numbness which seemed to insulate her body
with ice.

"No," she said, in a conversational tone, "I didn't know. Do you and
your wife have children?"

"Two," said Brad.

She should have felt something, but the nothingness inside her would not
dislodge itself.

"I see," she said.

"I'm surprised that you didn't know. Everyone does. David Noyes knows
it. He met my wife in the office one day, as a matter of fact."

"He never mentioned it to me," she said as if she were talking about
someone who had met a vague acquaintance and had attached no importance
to it.

"Well," said Brad, with a little laugh, "Bernice is not the type who
impresses a stranger on a first meeting." He pulled up expertly in front
of her door. "I'll read the novel tomorrow. Let's hope that it's as good
as you make it sound."

"Yes." She got out of the car. "No, don't bother to come up, Brad. I can
find my way. Good night. Good night," she had repeated, "and thank you
for a lovely time."

Steve Wallace had been entertaining a friend in the apartment when
Allison came through the door.

"Beat it," Steve said to her friend, and as soon as the door had closed
behind him she turned to Allison. "What?" she demanded. "What is it?
What happened?"

Allison put her suitcase down on the floor. "Brad's married," she said,
in the same tone she would have used had she told a stranger that Brad
had black hair.

Steve went over to the coffee table, took two cigarettes from a box, lit
them both and passed one to her. "Well, it's not a tragedy, is it? I
mean, it's not as though you were in love with him or anything.
Allison?"

"Yes?"

"I said, it's not as though you were in love with him or anything. Is
it?"

"I never heard anyone talking about his wife," she said in a puzzled
tone. "Isn't that odd? I didn't even know Brad was married until he told
me on the way home."

"Allison! Answer me! I said, it's not as though you were in love with
him or anything. Is it?"

"I've spent the whole week end in bed with him. I don't believe that a
woman could know Brad and not think herself in love with him, or that
she could sleep with him and not know that she loved him."

"Oh, my Lord!" said Steve and sat down on the edge of a chair and burst
into tears. "Oh, Allison," she wept. "What can you do?"

"Do? Why, I'm going to bed."

When Steve looked into the bedroom to see if Allison was awake the next
morning, she found her lying on her back, staring dry eyed at the
ceiling.

"Are you all right?" Steve asked anxiously. "I have an appointment at
nine, but I'll call up and cancel it if you aren't all right."

"I'm perfectly fine," she had said, feeling as if she were encased in
ice.

"Oh, Allison. What are you going to do?"

"Do?" she had asked, in exactly the same tone as the night before. "Why,
I think I'll go for a walk. It looks like a lovely warm day."

She swung her legs over the edge of her bed and stood up. "You'd better
run if you have a nine o'clock."

"Oh," said Steve, "I forgot to tell you. Your mother called you on
Saturday. I told her that you were spending the week end in Brooklyn,
with a girl friend. She said it was nothing serious, that she just had a
piece of local news that she thought would interest you. I told her that
I'd have you call when you got back."

"I'll do that. Thank you."

She had drunk three cups of coffee and smoked four cigarettes, but she
did not eat, and she did not call Constance. She left the apartment and
began to walk, and she walked all morning. Around noontime, she found
herself on Broadway, near Times Square. She was almost fifty feet away
from the newsstand before what she had seen there registered on her
tired brain. She had seen a folded newspaper, and the bold letters of
the headline had nudged something in her. "Peyton Place," were the
letters she had seen. She fought her way against the crowd and back to
the stand.

"That paper there," she said, pointing.

"Ten cents," the man said.

It was a four-day-old copy of the _Concord Monitor_.

"PATRICIDE IN PEYTON PLACE," she had read. Then she hailed a cab and
told the driver to hurry her to her address, that she was ill and had to
get home.

When she had reached the apartment Steve had told her that Brad had
called three times.

She had walked past Steve and into the bedroom. She took her suitcase
from the closet where Steve had put it the night before.

"I'm going home," she had said to Steve.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Allison sat still and listened to the quiet which was part of Peyton
Place at night. She had not got away from New York before Brad called,
she remembered.

"I've read the book," he had said, as if nothing had happened between
them over the week end. "Can you come down to the office?"

"No, I can't, Brad," she had replied, trying to match her tone to his.
"I'm going home."

There was a long pause. "Listen, Allison. Don't be silly, please. Come
down to the office and we'll talk."

"What did you think of the book, Brad?"

Again there was a pause. "It lacks something," he said at last. "It
doesn't seem alive or quite real."

"Is it impossible to fix?" she had demanded.

"I didn't say that, Allison. I simply think that you should put it away
for a while. You are young. There is no hurry. Write me a few more
stories for the magazines, and perhaps you can try on the novel again
next year."

"You mean the book is no good, don't you?"

"I didn't say that."

"Can you sell it?"

Brad had allowed another silence to spread from his telephone to hers.
"No," he had said finally. "I don't think that I can sell it."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Allison stood up and went to the fire. She poked the dying log apart so
that the fire would go out more quickly, then she turned and went
upstairs to her room. She was thinking of what David Noyes had said
about _Samuel's Castle_. "If you goof--" he had said. Well, she had
goofed and the book was no good. She went to the small desk in her
bedroom and took out the letters she had been receiving from David all
summer. She smiled as she reread them, for each was a miracle of tact
and cheerfulness. He must certainly have heard about her novel from
Steve Wallace, yet he did not mention it in his letters. He wrote of his
daily activities, the work he was doing on his new book, the places he
went, the people he met. And in every letter he asked her to hurry back
to New York.

"I miss you," he wrote. "Your sharp tongue, or should I say the lack
thereof, has left a big hole in my daily existence. No one has called me
a 'boy genius' since you left and my ego suffers."

He wrote: "Today I am puking with disgust over the words of various
popular songs. 'Take me. Leave me,' say these sickening things. 'Knock
me down and kick me in the teeth. Grind your lovely heel into the bridge
of my nose. It matters not. I'll understand.' Can you imagine a guy that
stupid? I can."

Oh, David, thought Allison wretchedly. I am going to hurt you, but I
cannot help myself.

She sat down at her desk and wrote a letter to David. She wrote to him
as if she were writing a story, and she described her Connecticut week
end in the most minute detail. But it was not until she put down the
last sentences that she began to feel comforted.

"The measure of my shame, David, is that I did not love him," she wrote.
"This is the worst part of it now. I should have liked to think of
myself always as the type of woman who needs sex only to express love of
the highest kind. But this was not so with Brad. I used to think that
the business of confusing love with sex was childish and stupid, but now
I know why so many women do this. It is because it is too painful
afterward, if one can remember nothing of love."

She did not hear from David again, nor did she write him again. But his
silence created a feeling of apprehension in her and she was almost
sorry that she had written to him as she had.

But she could not imagine being careful of what she said in front of
David. She decided to return to New York at the end of October and she
wrote short notes to Steve Wallace and to Bradley Holmes to tell them.
She was able to write Brad's name on the envelope without a trace of
feeling, with her hands steady and her heart not pounding.

It is done, she thought, and yet she felt none of the calm satisfaction
which she had generally associated with the tying up of loose ends.

One afternoon, late in September, Allison and Tom walked up the hill to
Samuel Peyton's castle.

"I've never been there," she said. "Perhaps that's why I couldn't write
about it successfully. A long time ago I realized that it was a waste of
time to try to write about something one does not know about."

"Are you going to give it another try?" asked Tom. "The novel, I mean."

"Not for a while," said Allison. "I think I'll go back to the short
stories for another year or so. Tom--" She paused and bent to pick up a
stick which she poked into the ground as she walked. "Tom, I'd like to
make peace with my mother."

Tom bent in his turn and picked up a stick. "That sounds like a good
idea," he said calmly. "But don't do it on the spur of the moment. Don't
do it if you don't mean it because that would only hurt her more, and I
would not stand for that."

"I mean it," said Allison. "I understand how it could happen. Mother was
just unluckier than most, that's all."

Tom laughed. "I wouldn't say that," he said. "She got you, didn't she?
Maybe she was luckier than most."

"I wonder what Peyton Place would say about us if they knew," murmured
Allison.

"You wonder too much about Peyton Place," said Tom. "It's just a town,
Allison, like any other town. We have our characters, but so does New
York and so does every other town and city."

"I know that," said Allison, lowering her head to watch a rabbit skitter
off into the woods. "But I can't make myself feel it. It is like a lot
of other things with me. I know that something is so. I can even write
about it the way I think it; but I don't feel it the same way. Like
love. My agent says that I write a very creditable love scene but Tom--"
She raised her head to look at him. "Tom, what a difference there is
between writing something or reading something, and living it."

"The main difference is that it is easier to read or write than to
live," said Tom. "I guess that's the only real difference."

Allison leaned against one of the gray walls which surrounded Samuel
Peyton's castle. "To me, the main difference has always been that
writing and reading are less painful. In fact, when I first came home, I
had almost made up my mind to stick to those two and forgo living."

Tom smiled. "But on the other hand, to coin a phrase, life is too damned
short not to be lived every minute."

"And besides, people don't have much choice anyway," added Allison and
laughed. It was the first time she had laughed over nothing much all
summer. "We'd better start back," she said. "The days are getting
shorter and shorter. It'll be dark soon."

Constance and Allison had never been comfortable with the words of
sentimentality. So, when Constance noticed after dinner that the
silver-framed photograph of Allison MacKenzie which had stood for so
many years on the living room mantelpiece was gone, she merely turned a
startled, hopeful look at her daughter. Allison smiled, and Constance
smiled, and except for Tom nothing would have been said.

"Listen," he remarked, "this is supposed to be a big scene, like
Hollywood. Allison, you're supposed to break into the weeps and cry,
'Mother!' And Connie, you're supposed to smile through your tears and
say, tremulously, of course, 'Daughter!' Then the two of you are
supposed to fall on each other's necks and sob. Soft music and fade-out.
God, what a couple of cold fish I got tangled up with!"

Allison and Constance both burst out laughing and Constance said, "Let's
open that bottle of cognac I was saving for Christmas."

The autumn rains began that night. It rained almost steadily for two
weeks, and then one morning Allison awoke and knew before she got out of
bed and went to her window that Indian summer had come.

"Oh!" she cried aloud, a few minutes later, as she leaned as far out the
window as she could. "Oh, you came after all!"

She dressed rapidly and hardly paused to eat breakfast, and then she set
out to walk to Road's End. She climbed the long sloping hill behind
Memorial Park, and when she reached the top it was all there, waiting
for her, as she had remembered it. She walked through the woods with her
old light-footed grace, and came at last to the open field hidden in the
middle of the woods. The goldenrod stood as tall, and straight, and
yellow as it always had, and the same maples, loud with the paint of
Indian summer, surrounded everything. Allison sat for a long time in her
secret place, and reflected that even if this spot were not as secret as
she had once believed, the things it said to her were still secret. She
felt now the assurance of changelessness that had comforted her as a
child and she smiled and touched a goldenrod's yellow head.

I saw the starry tree Eternity, put forth the blossom Time, she thought,
and remembered Matthew Swain and the many, many friends who were part of
Peyton Place. I lose my sense of proportion too easily, she admitted to
herself. I let everything get too big, too important and world shaking.
Only here do I realize the littleness of the things that can touch me.

Allison looked up at the sky, blue with the deep blueness peculiar to
Indian summer, and thought of it as a cup inverted over her alone. The
feeling was soothing, as it had always been, but for a single moment
now, Allison felt that she no longer needed to be soothed and comforted
as she once had. When she stood up and began to walk again, the sun was
high with noontime brightness, and when she came to the sign with the
red letters painted on its side, she had to shade her eyes with her hand
to look down at the toy village that was Peyton Place.

Oh, I love you, she cried silently. I love every part of you. Your
beauty and your cruelty, your kindness and ugliness. But now I know you,
and you no longer frighten me. Perhaps you will again, tomorrow or the
next day, but right now I love you and I am not afraid of you. Today you
are just a place.

As she ran down the hill toward town, Allison fancied that the tree sang
to her with the many voices of a symphony.

"Good-by, Allison! Good-by, Allison! Good-by, Allison!"

She was still running with a spate of excess energy when she reached Elm
Street. Her mother called to her from the front door of the Thrifty
Corner.

"Allison! I've been looking all over town for you! You have company at
home. A young man all the way from New York. He says his name is David
Noyes."

"Thank you!" cried Allison and waved her hand.

She hurried, and when she reached Beech Street she ran all the way up
the block to her house.






[End of Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious]
