Beauty Queen

that she believed God to be unmerciful, or Jesus to be unforgiving. But she began to fear that her regeneration was only skin-deep, that there were still poisonous things deep in her soul that resisted the goodness and the forgiveness of the Lord. Perhaps she had been an infidel too long to change. She got her mother's Bible from the family altar and thumbed through it. She came across a passage in Jude that terrified her. Jude had written to his congregation, scolding them about converts who did not strictly keep the faith. She closed the Bible with a snap, those dread images flapping away like great birds into her mind.
    Angels which kept not their first estate, but which left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness.
    Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds.
    Trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots.
    Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame.
    Wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever . . .
    "Am I one of those angels?" she cried out to herself. "Am I one of those clouds? Those wandering stars?"
    The next time she saw Reverend Irving, she tried to talk about this latest dream with him. But he seemed to have little patience with her, and cut her off short.
    "Sister Jeannie," he said, "do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?"
    "Yes, I do, but. . ."
    "Do you accept him as your Saviour?"
    "Of course. I did, and I do . .
    "Then stick to that, and forget the rest. Throw your dreams out with the garbage."
    That day, Bill decided that he would give in to Jeannie's pleadings and go up to Windfall for a visit.
    Actually, she hadn't pleaded. She had spoken to him sharply about it. She seemed to be very much on edge lately. "Your grandchildren haven't seen you for weeks," Jeannie had said. "Jessica adores you. And she's starting to ask me if granddaddy doesn't love her any more."
    He felt deeply discouraged about the way his own affairs had been going. They had run into a hitch on connecting the Catherine Slip house into the sewers. Some of the hardwood flooring he wanted was delayed in shipment. And to top things off, Marion had been less in touch with him over the past few days. If Bill called him, he said the same things as always. But he called Bill less often. Bill's weariness and depression was evident even to Al, who had gruffly observed, just yesterday, that maybe he needed a little vacation.
    So that morning Bill had climbed into his Lancia and headed upstate to Pawling.
    When he arrived at Windfall, Jessica came flying up from the pony bam, screaming, "Granddaddy! Granddaddy!" She flung herself at him like a little wild animal, clinging and hugging with her skinny little arms, with a strength that amazed him.
    Naturally she made him come with her to the pony bam and see Jet. The pony stood knee-deep in fresh straw, groomed and pampered almost to death. He had given Jet to Jessica as a birthday present last year, and, to his surprise, Jeannie had objected. She didn't think it was seemly for girls to ride horses, though he suspected that she envied Jessica's ability to fly over the Earth on that pony.
    He sat with Jessica on a bale of straw, and Jessica talked to him jerkily, sullenly, holding onto his arm till he thought she would bruise him.
    "I want to come live with you in New York," she said.
    "Oh?" said Bill. "Don't you like it here any more?"
    "Mommy doesn't like me any more," said Jessica.
    "Oh now, I don't think that's true," said Bill. "Your mommy is pretty busy right now, but I think she's . . ."
    Jessica cut him off in the most abrupt adult style.
    "Mommy talks about God all the time, and about my Grandmommy."
    Bill smoothed the little girl's hot silky hair gently. Jessica had a little purple bruise on her forehead, as delicately tinted as the petal of the anemone.
    "Did you fall off Jet?" he asked, touching the bruise.
    Jessica shook her head.
    "Well, how did you get such a bump on your head? Did Jet run under a tree with you?"
    Jessica kept shaking her head, with the air of a child keeping a secret, but so sullenly that it gave Bill a creepy feeling. He knew Jeannie's impatience with the children, and wondered if she'd hit Jessica harder than she meant to.
    He went up to the house, and in through the kitchen door.
    Auntie' Mary was in the kitchen with the cook and one of the staff women. The three of them were making potato salad and hamburger patties, obviously to feed a horde