Lady by Thomas Tryon

Author:Thomas Tryon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: B001KYKBPO
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2073-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

10

The next night found us returned to our own house: damp, musty, and all too common in its familiarity. It bred contempt within me; I longed to be back at Lady's again. But, as Ma said, "All good times must end," and morosely I conceded the truth of it. The flood was over, our stay at Lady's likewise, and what lay ahead except more school, with the dullest of prospects at every turn? March went out baaing, sure enough, though April resembled February in its cold and blustery particulars, and the remaining snow froze fast again.

It was then that I suddenly remembered the Pilgrim Market basket I had buried in the drift behind the Piersons' garage on that fateful day. I took a hatchet, sneaked across the Green, and found the basket, upended in the half-melted drift. I freed it, chopped it up for kindling, and no one was the wiser as it fed our late Sunday-afternoon fire, and I sat on the living-room davenport, watching Blue Ferguson's shame go up the flue in smoke and ashes. It made a cheerful light.

To me, it had been an awesome fall from grace, Blue Ferguson's. Many things had become clear to me -- low, deceitful things. I knew now why the Pilgrim Market truck had so often been parked at the Piersons' kitchen door, hidden behind the screen of fir trees from Mrs. Sparrow's prying eyes. I knew now why Mrs. Pierson had been in the woods the day we'd gone hunting with Jesse, and had found Blue there also. I knew now the precise reason for his trips to the back of Mr. Keller's drugstore. He was no different from anybody else, just one more of the common mold, a god with feet of clay. True gods must be at pains to disguise their frailties; True Blue had revealed his, naked to the eye, in Mrs. Pierson's upper hallway, and what hope did he have of disguise? For if I had thought that the secret lay buried with the market basket I was mistaken. In some way the news had leaked out, and the next thing we heard was that Blue had left town. But who, besides myself, had known? I thought immediately of Dora Hornaday, and the scene at the railroad tracks, when she had done her pantomime about the parrot lady. I was right -- she'd been spying. The talk that subsequently went around was that Mrs. Pierson, in a fit of remorse, had confessed her sins to Mr. Pierson, and had sought his forgiveness, which had been withheld until the culprit had been dealt with. Mr. Pierson made all sorts of threats against Blue, even to declaring he'd sue the Pilgrim Market, though on what grounds no one could imagine. Then we learned that Blue had run off, nobody knew where, and his mother was sick with worry.

In no time the story was all over town. People talked of nothing else. True Blue Ferguson -- the fair-haired boy,

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