I Married A Dead Man (13 page)

               
She turned and fled from the room. They made no attempt to follow her.

               
She closed the door after her. She stormed back and forth, two, three times, holding her head locked in her upended arms. "Swindler!" burst from her muffledly. "Thiefl It's just like someone climbing in through a window and--"

               
There was a low knock at the door about half an hour later. She went over and opened it, and Bill was standing there.

               
"Hello," he said diffidently.

               
"Hello," she said with equal diffidence.

               
It was as though they hadn't seen one another for two or three days past, instead of just half an hour before.

               
"He signed it," he said. "After you went up. Winthrop took it back with him. Withessed and all. It's done now, whether you wanted it or not."

               
She didn't answer. The battle had been lost, downstairs, before, and this was just the final communiqué.

               
He was looking at her in a way she couldn't identify. It seemed to have equal parts of shrewd appraisal and blank incomprehension in it, and there was just a dash of admiration added.

               
"You know," he said, "I don't know why you acted like that about it. And I don't agree with you, I think you were wrong in acting like that about it" He lowered his voice a little in confidence. "But somehow or other I'm glad you acted like that about it. I like you better for acting like that about it." He shoved his hand out to her suddenly. "Want to shake goodnight?"

23

               
She was alone in the house. That is, alone just with Hughie, in his crib upstairs, and Aunt Josie, in her room all the way at the back. They'd gone out to visit the Michaelsons, old friends.

               
It was nice to be alone in the house once in awhile. Not too often, not all the time, that would have run over into loneliness. And she'd known what that was once, only too well, and didn't want to ever again.

               
But it was nice to be alone like this, alone without loneliness, just for an hour or two, just from nine until eleven, with the sure knowledge that they were coming back soon. With the whole house her own to roam about in; upstairs, down, into this room, into that. Not that she couldn't at other times--but this had a special feeling to it, doing it when no one else was about. It did something to her. It nourished her feeling of belonging , replenished it.

               
They'd asked her if she didn't want to come with them, but she'd begged off. Perhaps because she knew that if she stayed home alone she'd get this very feeling from it.

               
They didn't importune her. They never importuned, never repeated any invitation to the point of weariness. They respected you as an individual, she reflected, that was one of the nice things about them. Only one of the nice, there were so many others.

               
"Then next time, maybe," Mother had smiled in parting, from the door.

               
"Next time without fail," she promised. "They're very nice people."

               
She roamed about for awhile first, getting her "feel" of the place, saturating herself in that blessed sensation of "belonging." Touching a chair-back here, fingering the texture of a window-drape there.

               
Mine. My house. My parents' house and mine. Mine. Mine. My home . My chair. My window-drape. No, hang back like that, that's the way I want you to.

               
Silly? Childish? Fanciful? No doubt But who is without childishness, fancies? What is life without them? Or, is there life without them?

               
She went into Aunt Josie's pantry, took the lid off the cookie-jar, took one out, took a big bite out of it.

               
She wasn't hungry. They'd all finished a big dinner only a couple of hours ago. But--

               
My house. I can do this. I'm entitled to them. They're waiting there for me, to help myself whenever I feel like it

               
She put the lid on the jar, started to put the light out.

               
She changed her mind suddenly, went back, took out a second one.

               
My house. I can even take two if I want to. Well, I will take two.

               
And one in each hand, each with a big defiant bite taken out of it, she came out of there. They weren't food for the mouth, actually, they were food for the soul.

               
The last crumbs brushed off her fingers, she decided to read a book finally. Utter repose had come to her now, a sense of peace and wellbeing that was almost therapeutic in its depth. It was a sensation of healing ; of becoming one, becoming whole again. As though the last vestiges of an old ache, from an old split in her personality (as indeed there was one in the fullest sense), had been effaced. A psychiatrist could have written a learned paper on this; that just roaming about a house, in utter security, in utter relaxation, for half an hour or so, could achieve such a result for her, beyond all capacity of coldblooded science, in the clinic, to have done likewise. But, human beings are human beings, and science isn't what they need; it's a home, a house of their own, that no one can take away from them.

               
It was the right time, almost the only time, for reading a book. You could give it your full attention, you could lose yourself in it. You become one with it for awhile, selfless.

               
In the library, it took her some time to make a definitive selection. She did a considerable amount of leaf-fluttering along the shelves, made two false starts back to the chair for an opening paragraph or two, before she'd finally settled on something that gave an indication of suiting her.

               
Marie Antoinette , by Katharine Anthony.

               
She'd never cared much for fiction, somehow. Something about it made her slightly uncomfortable, perhaps a reminder of the drama in her own life. She liked things (her mind expressed it) that had really happened . Really happened, but long ago and far away, to someone entirely else, someone that never could be confused with herself. In the case of a fictional character, you soon, involuntarily, began identifying yourself with him or her. In the case of a character who had once been an actual living personage, you did not You sympathized objectively, but it ended there. It was always, from first to last, someone else. Because it had once, in reality, been someone else. (Escape, they would have called this, though in her case it was the reverse of what it was for others. They escaped from humdrum reality into fictional drama. She escaped from too much personal drama into a reality of the past.)

               
For an hour, maybe more, she was one with a woman dead a hundred and fifty years; she lost track of time.

               
Dimly, with only a marginal part of her faculties, she heard brakes go on somewhere outside in the quiet night.

               
". . . Axel Fersen drove swiftly through the dark streets." (They're back. I'll finish this chapter first.) "An hour and a half later, the coach passed through the gate of Saint-Martin. . ."

               
A key turned in the front door. It opened, then it closed. But no murmur of homecoming voices eddied in. Vocal silence, if not the total kind. Firm, energetic footsteps, a single pair, struck across the preliminary gap of bare flooring adjacent to the door, then blurred off along the ball carpeting.

               
". . . A little way beyond, they saw a large travelling-carriage drawn up at the side of the road." (No, that's Bill, not they. He's the one just came in. I forgot, they didn't take the car with them, the Michaelsons live just around the corner) "a large travelling-carriage drawn up at the side of the road . . ."

               
The tread went to the back. Aunt Josie 's pantry-light flashed on again. She couldn't have seen it from where she was, but she knew it by the click of its switch. She knew all the lights by the clicks of their switches. The direction from which the click came, and its sharpness or faintness of tone. You can learn those things about a house.

               
She heard water surge from a tap, and then an emptied glass go down. Then the lid of the cookie-jar went down, with its heavy, hollowed, ringing, porcelain thud. It stayed down for some time, too, was in no hurry to go back on again.

               
". . . drawn up at the side of the road." (Aunt Josie'll have a fit She always scolds him. She never scolds me, for doing the very same thing. I guess she used to when he was a boy, and can't get over the habit) "The pseudo Madame Korff and her party entered the carriage. . ."

               
The lid went back on again at long last. The footsteps started forward again, emerged into the back of the hall. They stopped short, backed up a step, the floor creaked slightly with doubled weight in one place.

               
". . ." (He dropped a chunk on the floor, stopped to pick it up. Doesn't want her to see it lying there in the morning, and know what he's been up to. I bet he's still afraid of Aunt Josie in his heart, in a little-boy way.) " . . ."

               
But her thoughts were not consciously of him or on him. They were on her book. It was the perimeter of her mind, the unused residue, that kept up a running commentary to itself, and which the center of her attention paid no heed to.

               
He subsided for awhile, was lost to awareness. Must have been slumped somewhere, finishing his cookies. Probably with a leg thrown over a chair-arm, if he was in a chair at all.

               
He had known they were going over to the Michaelsons, and must have thought she had gone with them, that he was alone in the house. The library was to the right of the stairs, and he had taken the left channel, to the pantry and return, hadn't come near here as yet, so he couldn't have known that she was in here. The shaded lamp she was beside had a limited radius of reflection that did not reach past the room-doorway.

               
Suddenly his lithe footfalls were underway again, had recommenced, the nibbling interlude at an end. They struck out into the hail again, clarifying as they emerged from wherever it was he had been, rounded the bottom of the stairs, and turned in on this side. They were coming straight toward here, toward this room she was unsuspectedly in.

               
She went ahead steadily reading, trapped by the mounting interest of the passage she had just entered upon, held fast. Didn't even raise her eyes.

               
His tread reached the threshold. Then it stopped short there, almost with a recoil.

               
For perhaps a moment he stood stock-still, looking at her.

               
Then, abruptly, he took an awkward step in retreat, a full step to the rear, turned, went away again.

               
It was almost subconsciously that she knew all this; not in full consciousness, at least not as yet. It was there, clinging to her awareness, but it hadn't penetrated it as yet.

               
". . ." (Why did he turn and go away like that, when he saw me in here alone?) ". . . and disposed themselves upon the comfortable cushions. . . ." (He intended coming in here. He did come as far as the door. Then when he saw that I was in here, and didn't seem to have seen him yet, he backed away. Why? Why was that?) "Axel Fersen took the reins...."

               
Slowly the spell of the book unravelled, disintegrated. Her eyes left its pages for the first time. She raised her head questioningly, still holding the book open before her.

               
Why? Why did he do that?

               
It isn't that he was afraid of disturbing me. We're all one family, we don't stand on ceremony like that with one another. We all go from room to room as we like without a by-your-leave, except in the upstairs-rooms, and this isn't upstairs, this is down here. He didn't even say hello. When he saw that I didn't see him, he wanted it left that way, did his best to keep it that way, tried not to attract my attention. Withdrew backward the first step, and only then turned around.

               
The front door had reopened, but without closing behind him. He'd gone out front for a moment, to put the car away. She heard the thump of its door as he shut it on himself, heard its gears mesh into motion.

               
Doesn't he like me? Is that why he doesn't want to find himself alone in a room with me, when no one else is here? Is he holding something against me? I thought--it seemed--as if his full confidence had been given to me long ago, but--To balk like that, curb himself, almost swerve away, at the very threshold.