Fair Warning (5 page)

Ivan was back.

And Marcia Godden’s heart leaped and pounded and nearly suffocated her with its frenzy.

She took a long breath or two, fighting to subdue it. She rose, a slim figure in her brave yellow sweater; automatically she smoothed her fine hair and wished she had thought to powder and wondered if there were signs of tears on her face.

Something flashed in the murky green waters of the aquarium. The head of Caesar watched her blankly. The half-glimpsed reflections in the glasses of the bookshelves moved and seemed about to disclose something they knew. She went to the door and opened it.

I
VAN GODDEN, INJURED IN
the automobile accident which came so near to costing him his life, returned from the hospital on the day of April eighteenth, a month to the day from the time of his injury.

It was really extraordinary and a curious commentary upon him that the familiar sense of his presence immediately and thoroughly permeated the house and all it held. It was something intangible but extremely definite, too; it was as if any of them, returning themselves from an absence and entering the house, would have known immediately upon opening that door and venturing the long, somber hall—running back past closed doors to the eerie glow down the stairway from the windows at the landing—that Ivan, too, had returned. That Ivan Godden was in the house and the two were in curious secret accord.

Afterward Marcia realized that his return was easier because there was so much to be done. Such a flurry of solicitation—of arranging his chair in the library, of telling him of household affairs, of talking of his illness, of his injuries, of the journey from the hospital, of his bandaged foot, of food he would like, of every physical comfort with which he could be surrounded. And later there were directions to be given—directions about the house, the garden, the spring repairs, the cars—letters to be read, reports from the mill to be looked at and talked over with Beatrice (a flour mill in the southern part of the state which Beatrice and Ivan had inherited along with the house and from which most of their income was derived).

Dr. Blakie brought him and came into the house with him, and Ivan leaned on the doctor and on Ancill as he hobbled with great care along the hall and into the library. Once seated, he looked for Marcia, beckoned to her, put his cold white fingers on her face and obliged her to bend over for his kiss. It was over in a second or two, but it seemed long to Marcia, and as if Rob’s kisses ought to protect her from that well-remembered slow pressure. But they couldn’t, of course; and she had a quick, queer fear that Ivan could detect her thought or that Rob’s kisses had been visible, and still upon her mouth.

Beatrice said, “Here’s a cushion for your foot,” and Dr. Blakie spoke rather abruptly, and Marcia was released, to stand there beside Ivan, who lay, handsome and rather sleek and fat after his four weeks of illness, in his favorite big chair.

“My prize exhibit,” Dr. Blakie was saying when the drumming in Marcia’s ears stopped. “Out of the hospital in four weeks and, except for that right ankle, absolutely fit and well again. You’ve done me credit, Ivan.”

Ivan, elegantly and consciously the center of all. that flurry of solicitation, looked annoyed. “Oh, I fancy I wasn’t so bad off,” he said. “Not that I’m not grateful, of course, Graham. Still, one doesn’t like to be regarded solely as a monument to one’s doctor’s skill. After all, doctors are supposed to save their patients, aren’t they?”

Marcia tried to think of something to say and couldn’t, because all at once Ivan’s eyes had the light, blank mesmeric look which she knew too well. Dr. Blakie stopped smiling.

“We don’t always manage it,” he said neatly and dryly and with no inflection at all in his voice. “Don’t walk much on that foot, Ivan. And don’t touch the bandages.” He stooped and touched the bandage which was visible through the smooth, thin, silk sock and nodded approvingly. “It’s about right. Tight but not too tight. Well, I’ll be going. I’ll drop in tonight after Verity Copley’s dinner party and see that you get a good night’s rest.”

“All right,” said Ivan ungraciously and moved his bandaged foot restlessly. Delia, fluttering in the doorway, and Mrs. Beek, peering over her shoulder, both made quick, abortive motions, and Ancill, hovering behind Ivan’s chair, slid quickly forward. Ivan forestalled them all.

“Bring me the footstool, Marcia,” he said.

Marcia pulled the heavy ottoman forward and adjusted it to his foot while Ancill watched and Beatrice asked the doctor again about diet.

“He can eat anything,” said the doctor in a remote voice. “He’s the better off for the rest he’s had. He’s been living on cream. Well, I’ll be off.”

Marcia snatched at the chance to go to the door with him, and Ivan was busy rearranging his bandaged foot and did not call her back.

Dr. Blakie paused for a moment, hat in hand, and looked scrutinizingly at Marcia. So scrutinizingly that Marcia felt as if the whole history of the tremendous and tumultuous thing that had happened during that few hours’ interval since he had gone, earlier in the day, was written on her face. She said defensively and also because she felt apologetic and sorry for Ivan’s churlishness:

“We—Ivan is very grateful to you—in spite of —”

He interrupted in an explosive way that was the more impressive because it was as if he actually permitted it and it did not burst out of its own accord. “Ivan!” he said briskly. “I wish I had him back at the hospital again!”

Marcia smiled with a pretense of lightness. “What would you do with him?” she asked.

He was still, quite deliberately, letting out exasperation. It was an economic procedure; designed to prevent the waste of inward seething.

“What would I do with him! There’s a whole laboratory full of things to do. Cute little test tubes crowded with—say, botulism cultures. Typhus germs… . Forgive me, my dear. Doctors’ jokes are likely to be a bit grim. Don’t worry about him. He’s cautious; he’ll take care of himself, all right. But see that you get to looking better yourself, Marcia. Get out doors in the sun. I’ll send you some capsules —”

Ancill materialized at Marcia’s elbow and said, so suavely that for an instant it escaped offensiveness, that Mr. Godden noticed the draft.

“Good-bye, Marcia,” said Dr. Blakie and closed the door himself with considerable force. It did not quite bang, however, for Ancill caught it and eased it gently to.

“Lunch,” said Ancill, “is to be served at a small table in the library.”

Lunch. Marcia went back to the library. To Ivan and to Beatrice. She felt as if she were poised precariously above a precipice, above a dangerous height. Going over rapids in a canoe. A breath, a tilt to the right or a tilt to the left would be disaster. Tomorrow, she thought, would be better. She would have had by then, a little time to adjust herself. To think, to map her course more definitely and with more security. Today was dangerous. And one look into Ivan’s face, one touch of his hand, threatened such small certainty and self-possession as she might have stored up.

That was perhaps two o’clock, and it was about three that Rob’s letter came. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Marcia was in the hall when it arrived, and either by chance or because Rob had planned it that way, it arrived with the afternoon mail, though it was not postmarked and had probably been placed in the mail box by Stella, the Copley housemaid. At any rate, there it was on top of the sheaf of letters Ancill brought in, and Marcia saw it and instantly recognized the writing.

“This is for me,” she said and took the letter swiftly.

“But Madam—”

“This is for me,” she repeated steadily. Ancill looked over her shoulder but, probably, saw the writing and the lack of postmark. “You may take the rest of the mail in to Mr. Godden.”

He did so disapprovingly.

Marcia turned quickly into the closed and seldom-used drawing room, running along parallel with the hall and in front of the library. She closed the door behind her and tore the letter open with hands that were cold and shaking at the thought of the nearness of the thing. Only a moment and it would have gone straight into Ivan’s hands. Rob, of course, couldn’t have known.

The writing was jerky and black, against the single piece of white notepaper:

“Dear Marcia: You must leave him now. He’s home; I saw him come. Don’t you see now that it’s impossible; that you can’t stay there? You are never to be his wife again. I can’t let you, Marcia. You’re to come today, tonight, when you come to Verity’s dinner. You must come. He’s killing you by inches. I can’t just stand by and see it. I love you.”

It was signed “Rob.”

Ivan was at home, yes. But Rob couldn’t know that his return only held her tighter. That the fact of his presence only further paralyzed her.

She did, then, for one clear, revealing instant think of obeying Rob; not that day, of course, but later, when there was time to decide how to do it, time to call all her strength together and to do it because she loved Rob. She did for a blinding flash see that, sometime, it might be inevitable and that the urgency of her love for Rob might give her, eventually, the strength to do it.

But it was for only one clear, bright instant. For Ancill opened the door.

She thrust the letter and the envelope hastily in the pocket of her sweater.

He said that Mr. Godden wanted her and looked at her sweater pocket and followed her as she went through the hall and back into the library, so she had no chance to dispose of the letter.

Ivan was for the moment alone.

“What was your letter?” he said, smiling. “Ancill says you had one. Was it from anyone I know?”

She felt, as one did with Ivan, as if she were in a huge glass bowl exposed at every angle.

“Let me see it,” he said.

Beatrice, coming into the room with some letters in her hand, unwittingly saved her.

“I’m just going to phone Verity Copley,” she said, “and tell her I can’t come to dinner tonight. Marcia can go, but I much prefer to stay at home with you, Ivan—Verity didn’t know you would be at home today.”

“I’ll stay,” said Marcia quickly. “I’ll telephone to her at once so she can get someone else.”

But Ivan wouldn’t have it.

“Nonsense, both of you must go. Do you think I want you to martyr yourselves for me? Who is going to be there?”

He had been told, of course, at the time of the invitation, perhaps a week ago, and because Ivan never forgot anything doubtless remembered every guest on the list. But he chose to make a point of it and to emphasize its triviality.

Beatrice replied. As she stood there looking down at Ivan, Marcia was struck again by the extraordinary likeness between them. Beatrice was actually Ivan in a feminine and not unhandsome mold, except that her eyes lacked his light, peculiar stare, for they were, instead, dark and clouded and remote. And that look, although Marcia sensed it only dimly, had lately changed somehow, as if it had turned inward in secret preoccupation.

“Not many,” she said. “Verity and Rob Copley. Marcia. Galway Trench. Dr. Blakie. I’m going to stay with you.”

“You must go. Both of you. I insist. Do you think I want them saying I kept you at home!” He was becoming angry; his cheeks were whiter and his eyes very light except for that small hard, black pupil. Beatrice looked at him again. There was something detached and coolly exploratory about it, as if she were viewing him without any intervening veils of custom or familiarity. She said after a moment, “Why, certainly, Ivan, if you wish it.” She put the letters on a small table beside him. “Do you want me to answer these just now?”

“I suppose so. Yes—let me see… . Where are you going, Marcia?”

She stopped abruptly, on her way to the door. She was acutely conscious of Rob’s letter in her pocket, and it had dangerous potentiality. Ivan was quite capable of taking the letter from her by force.

“I was only going upstairs. Do you want me?”

“Yes, please. Will you write some letters for me? I find the exertion of writing tires me. Get a pen and some paper.”

She went to the desk obediently, hoping her face didn’t show her anxiety. He was quite likely to keep her at his side, writing, for hours, and Marcia knew it. And he was likely at any moment to remember the letter and to inquire again about it. It was rather as if she were carrying a small and highly charged bomb in her sweater pocket. And under that surface uneasiness was a greater, more poignant anxiety which there was no time to consider. “… You must come,” Rob had said. “I love you.”

Pen, stationery with “Ivan Godden” engraved upon it, a blotter. She might slip the letter somewhere in the desk. But Ivan would be sure to find it, if he suddenly decided he was able to sit in his usual chair at the desk. There must be some place in the room where she could hide the letter until she could unobtrusively take it away and destroy it.

Ivan and Beatrice were talking, and she looked hurriedly around her. French doors, curtains, bookshelves. The aquarium at the opposite end of the room with gleams of small moving bodies in the greenish water.

If Ivan caught one faint glimpse of a white corner of that letter she was lost.

Ivan and Beatrice were still talking. She rose and sauntered toward the french doors. On either side of the doors were niches which had been made into small store cupboards wherein were stacked old magazines, ink and paper supplies, all the unsightly objects which accumulate in a library. The doors were made of paneled dark wood and were merely latched. But of course she couldn’t open one of the doors, for they would hear it and turn.

Ivan was looking at Beatrice. Beatrice was reading. Marcia, standing with her back to the cupboard and watching Ivan and Beatrice, managed to slip first the letter and then the envelope through the small space between the door and the casing. She heard the tiny swish as they fell one after the other. Neither Ivan nor Beatrice looked up, and she moved away.

She felt very much relieved and, indeed, a little pleased at her dexterity. She would recover the note as soon as it was safe; neither of the two was at all likely to approach the cupboard; and it would have been impossible to sit at Ivan’s elbow, writing letters for him, without his detecting the little square outline of the letter through the thin, revealing weave of her yellow sweater.