Town of Masks by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

throwing her head back in a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’ve been to a revival meeting! Are the Presbyterians in such straits these days?”
    “Shut up,” Hannah cried. “Just shut up!”
    Maria squashed out the cigarette she had just started. “I shall do what I damned well please, Hannah. And if you would take a look at yourself, you might get a laugh out of it, too. The best thing in the world for you would be to have a good laugh at your own expense.”
    Hannah lumbered out of the chair. Her weight on the sore ankle shot a pain through her that fanned the quieted flames. “You had a good laugh the other night with your Andrew Sykes and his new protégé, didn’t you? The house must have rocked with it. Was Elizabeth Merritt here, too?”
    “So that’s it,” Maria said.
    “Yes, that’s it! That boy was mine until you and your wretched poet made love to him. I planned the world for him, and he was the world to me.”
    “Hannah, sit down a moment,” Maria said.
    “I will not sit down. You told me to look at myself and I’m going to do it.” She stood where she was, however, enjoying the surge of pain with every pressure on her foot.
    “You’re misunderstanding purposely, Hannah. You’re trying to hurt yourself again.”
    “Ha! There’s nothing can hurt me. Nothing can hurt Hannah Blake. There’s nothing there to hurt.”
    “Hannah—have you any idea what some of us have gone through not to hurt you?”
    “What?”
    “Your poetry contest—it’s all set up and working, isn’t it?”
    “So she told you. I didn’t think Elizabeth could be that deceitful, that dishonest.”
    “She told no one. Not once that night when she and Keogh were here to meet Andy, was your name mentioned.”
    “I can believe that.”
    “You can believe whatever you want to, which is what you’ve always done anyway. But I can assure you, Hannah, that although not one word of it was mentioned, I, for one member of the library board, was never in doubt of the contest’s origin.”
    That was a lie, she thought, part of Maria’s cruel game. But Hannah had trouble trying to focus on its many implications—that night here after the meeting, Katherine Shane’s “I must says,” Ed Baker’s snide “You’re kind of keen on this contest, Hannah.” Were they playing the game all the time? Pin the tail on the donkey, the poor blindfolded donkey?
    “Elizabeth could have told me,” Hannah said, forgetting for the moment the scene she had seen on the beach.
    Maria lit another cigarette. “Not to tell you was the greatest kindness. Besides, I think Elizabeth is in love with Keogh. A thousand dollars is a lot of money when you’re in love, and that was before Andy had seen his poetry.”
    Hannah heard only the words of love. “Oh, she’s in love with him, all right,” she cried. “They’re rolling in it down on the beach right now.”
    Maria’s mouth hung open, the smoke dribbling out of it. “You followed them?” she said finally.
    “Do you know he carried on like that first with my Sophie—my servant?”
    “Hannah, I don’t care. I shouldn’t even care if he slept with you.”
    Hannah squared her shoulders and trod stiff-legged toward the mantel. The very sight of Maria was offensive. Her kind was a plague on a decent world.
    “You are a witch, Maria, an evil-minded witch, and I shall not think about what you have just said.”
    The sight of Maria was not to be escaped. Maria’s eyes followed her in the mirror, the small, ferreting eyes of a preying animal.
    “Do think about it, Hannah. On your life, think about it. What would you do with the boy? Make a eunuch of him?”
    Everything to this moment had been planned, Hannah realized, everything in her life built toward it from Maria’s childish taunt, “Hannah’s pulling the chain” to their last meeting here. So, she thought, Maria Verlaine has never been hurt by Hannah Blake — never, never hurt!
    With one great swipe she tore the bell cord from where