Sister Wolf Read Online Free

the gate behind it. She said nothing to Joe on the ride back to the house, and he knew her well enough to respect her silence.

TWO
    F OR A SHORT PERIOD in the early nineteen-thirties, Niles, Massachusetts, was as fashionable a resort for New Yorkers as Bar Harbor or Fishers Island. Under the glass of history, this period would be reckoned as a hiccup, or the blinking of an eye. It took the new summer gentry about five years to lose patience with the rain, bad roads, and midges, the tranquility, the grandeur of the hills, and the lack of water sports.
    One of these burned-out vacationers, a banker who was related to the horse-breeding Belmonts on his mother’s side, sold his new cottage as soon as it was built, before the lawns were seeded or the gutters were hung. Luba Deym did not like the country, but Vlado was coughing and his nerves were poor, and the banker’s house had many Gothic details, vaulted ceilings, a crenellated roof, and four pointed watchtowers. Seen from the front, the miniature battlements were an alternating pattern of rose and blue-gray bricks. The view from the battlements reminded Vladimir of Hungary because he could not see another human dwelling in any direction.
    While the painters were changing the walls from oyster to ivory, Luba began to make lists of guests for weekend parties. Her first house party, held in the second month of their residence, was also her last. Vlado did not come downstairs to greet the Nelson Cuttings or the Princess Rakoczi, who brought a gap-toothed young Englishman as her escort. He did not leave his room on Saturday or Sunday, except to pick a book from the library or to serve himself from the sideboard at mealtimes. Wearing striped pajamas, bleached and ragged, he heaped up his plate, taking time to ponder his selections, padding around the buffet in his backless leather slippers, tasting some of the dishes with his fingers, and wiping his hand on the front of his pajama jacket. He took a glass from the place that had been laid for him at the table, and went upstairs to bed, where dabs of creamed veal or spinach puree found their way onto the sheets, angering the maid, who had permission to change his bed linen only once a week. Luba took her defeat with bad grace, but she gave up importing guests from the city, and tried to make do with the company at hand, patrician but more solitary folk, who withheld their acceptance of the Deyms until their second summer in Niles. Bishop Meyerling became their particular friend, and Mrs. Paul Gilliam, the publisher’s wife, who had been widowed by an idling tractor which slipped into reverse while her husband was working behind it.
    When Marit was orphaned, she discovered her true social nature. Without Luba to hector and groom her, she fell into her father’s habits. She wore old clothes, stopped answering letters, and did not entertain. She pensioned off the butler and the housekeeper, and kept Mrs. Mayo, from the village, who cleaned the house twice a week and left a light supper in the oven. Because she was Luba’s daughter, Marit upheld her position. She attended civic functions, but only for groups of which she was a benefactor—the library, the hospital, the Meyerling Community, the historical society, and the woman’s industries—trading public patronage against the round of golf-club dances, bridge luncheons, and little dinners. As a social being, Marit was incompetent. She could not defer and she did not listen. If she was not drawn to a person at first introduction, she blanked him out. In her opinion most people were not well made and talked too slowly. Her manner was formal or caustic, and she made few friends. She did not need more than one person of either sex to share her life. She had not yet found the man; but she recognized Lola Brevard the moment she met her. Marit and Lola had met at a Meyerling prize-day tea, sneaked away from the ceremonies early and rudely, and stayed up talking all evening and through