Free Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly Page A

enquiring.
    â€œSurely you noticed that Caroline and I—and Blake too, though he won’t admit it—get more enjoyment out of a guest like yourself when we have him to ourselves?”
    â€œIn the upper hall?” Gamadge smiled.
    â€œExactly so. Blake is really in our camp—Caroline’s and mine; or I should say that we are really both in hers. But his consideration for others makes him practically a neutral, and he is not and could not be a party to our conspirings.”
    Gamadge said: “It’s a large house.”
    â€œIt is, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t all live comfortably enough in it, going our separate ways; but Blake cannot bear to feel that his sister-in-law should be left out of things and forsaken. All this must come oddly from me, since I’m a hanger-on myself.” He paused, and looked at Gamadge.
    â€œNo, I understand; you’re of their blood, and all the rest of it.”
    â€œYes. As for me, I can get on with anybody and put up with anything; that’s one of my few virtues, the virtue of a professional dependent. But it’s hard on Caroline.”
    â€œI can see that it might be.”
    â€œMight be? My dear Mr. Gamadge! Caroline gave up her separate life, and what might have been something of a career, to preside in her father’s house. For two and a half years Belle Fenway has been in the house with her afflicted son and her entourage. Wherever Belle Fenway happens to be, she will always impose her personality; she can’t help it. She’s always had an establishment of her own until now, and she sometimes forgets that she isn’t the mistress of this one. Invalided, confined to her rooms upstairs, she dominates us.
    â€œAnd it all came about so naturally; Blake asked her to come here until she was able to take Alden to a house or an apartment—they’re of course well able to afford anything; the poor fellow is a rich man. She won’t be separated from him—that’s natural enough too, though I think it’s a great mistake on her part, both for his sake and her own. By the way, I’m assuming that you are aware of his affliction.”
    â€œIt’s not obvious.”
    â€œPoor Blake thinks it’s invisible, and Belle, of course, is never so happy as when she can persuade herself that Alden is a normal member of society. Well, we have them here, we have the enigmatic—Mrs. Grove, we have Craddock—a young fellow who is as well equipped to deal with a patient like Alden Fenway as I am—and we have, or had, Hilda Grove. A very nice child indeed, I am quite fond of her, but a fifth outsider. Five is a good many.”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œBelle’s injury is slower in healing than the doctors at first expected; some nerve was involved, I think. Alden is a perpetual source of—we’ll say awkwardness; he’s a spiritual depressant. It isn’t generally known, by the way, even now, that there’s anything wrong with him, but it’s bound to leak out. Rather a blight on a house.
    â€œMind you, if there were no more to it than that, I should strongly advise Caroline—as I have advised her in the past—to seek grace and say nothing; to keep things smooth and comfortable for her father. But now—it’s a responsibility. I’ve known certain disturbing things for some time now, suspected others; Caroline’s begun to feel that something’s wrong in the other camp. She’s getting very nervous.
    â€œI’ll go back to the first incident, which I wasn’t over-much perturbed about at the time; two years ago Caroline’s dog was found dead in the street.”
    Gamadge had been thoughtfully smoking. Now he looked up, startled.
    â€œNice fellow, a Dalmatian,” continued Mott Fenway. “She’d only had him down here in New York for a month. Some ear trouble, needed long treatment at a vet’s. Well-mannered