The bride wore black (10 page)

greater discomfort of sitting in strained, hostile awareness of each other after the preliminary snub.

The countryside spilled past with the rippling motion of overturned earth, as though the bus were plowing a steady furrow through it but carrying its trees, houses, fences along with it intact. She saw it only with the physical surface of her eye, it wasn't transmitted through the iris. Every twelve minutes, regularly, she remembered something she'd forgotten to tell Frank about Cookie or the house or the milkman or the laundryman. But then and she realized this herself even if she had remembered in the first place and told him, he probably would have forgotten it himself by now. That docile nodding outside the bus window hadn't fooled her; it had been too facile.

Between the twelve-minute intervals she did a lot of worrying about her mother. The way one does, anyone does.

But she realized she was only making herself feel worse, borrowing trouble ahead of time, writing an obituary, so to speak, before there was any need to. As Frank said, it would be all right. It had to be. And if God forbid it turned out not to be in the end, then rushing to meet it halfway was no help, either.

She tried to shorten the trip, take her mind off its purpose, by thinking of other things. It was not easy to do. She had not the pictorial eye; inanimate scenery had never meant much to her. And since, on the other hand, she had never taken a passionate interest in the study of human nature in the abstract, what else was there left on a vehicle of this sort? She wondered if it would have helped if she'd bought a book or magazine at the terminal and brought it with her. Probably not; it would have remained opened on her lap at one certain page the whole way. She'd never been any great shakes as a reader.

In desperation that was almost pathetic she started to tally up her household expenses for the past week, and then for the past two weeks. The figures blurred in her mind, became fantastically senseless. She could not forget the hard httle knot of worr> that lay hea\7 within her.

It had grown dark now. and the view became restricted to the midget, tubular world she was confined in. The other people around her in the bus were the other people usually around in a bus. No sublimation to be found there. Just the backs of heads.

She sighed and wished she were an Indian or whatever those people were who could leave their bodies and get there ahead of where they were going. Or something like that, anyway; she wasn't sure of the mechanics of it.

.Around eight they stopped at Greendale for ten minutes, and she had a cup of coffee at the counter in the bus station. As far as Cookie was concerned, at home, the worst was already over by this time, she realized. Either he had a bad case of stomachache by now or else Frank had fed him the way he should be fed and there was nothing further to worry about.

It seemed needless to phone ahead to Garrison from here; she was already two-thirds of the way there. And then there was always the thought that if she should get worse news than she'd already had in the telegram, it would make the rest of the trip an imendurable torment. It was better to wait until she got there herself to find out.

They arrived strictly on schedule, ten-thirty on the dot. She was the first one dovvii, elbowing her way through the other passengers.

She wasn't disappointed that there was no one waiting to meet her, because she realized .Ada must have her hands full at the house; it couldn't be e.xpected at such a time.

Garrison's brief, foreshortened nightlife was in mid-career immediately outside the bus station. Which meant the movie-theater entrance was still lighted on one side of the way and the drugstore on the other.

She passed a group of chattering young girls in their late teens and early twenties holding down a section of the board sidewalk just outside the drugstore entrance. One of them turned her head to look after her as she went by, and she heard her say, "Isn't that Margaret Peabody now?'' -

She hurried along the plank walk, head lowered, into the surrounding darkness. Luckily they didn't yoo-hoo after her to try to make sure. She didn't want to stop and talk to near strangers. They might have news. She didn't want to hear it from them first. She wanted to go straight home and get it there, good or bad. But that "now," it hung trembling over her, roaring in her mind. What did it mean, that it was already . . . ?

She hurried up the dark tunnellike length of Burgoyne Street, smothered under trees, turned left, continued on for two house lengths (which here meant two city blocks, very nearly), turned in at the well-remembered flagstone walk with its tricky unevenness of edges. Each one went up a fraction of an inch higher than the one adjoining. Many a fall in childhood's awkward days

She caught her breath with a quick little suction as the house swiveled around full face to her. Oh, yes, oh, yes, there were too many lights lit, far too many. Then she curbed her mounting panic, forced it down. Well, even even if mother was laid up in bed at all with the slightest of attacks, Ada would have more than the usual number of lights lit, wouldn't she? She'd have to, to be able to look after her.

But then as she stepped up on the little white-painted porch platform, dread assailed her again. There were too

many shadows flitting back and forth behind the lowered linen shades, you could hear the hum of too many voices coming from inside, as at a time of crisis, when neighbors are called in. There was something wrong in there, there was some sort of commotion going on.

She reached out and poked the bell button with an icicle for a finger. Instantly the commotion became aggravated. A voice screamed, "I'll go!" Another shrieked, "No, let me!" She could hear them clearly out where she was. Had one of them been Ada's, high-pitched and unrecognizable with uncontrollable grief? It seemed to her it had. She must be hysterical, all of them must be.

Before her heart had time to turn over and drop down through her like a rock, there was a quick shuffie of frenzied footsteps, as though someone was trying to hold someone else back. The door billowed open and a great gush of yellow interior light fanned out all over her. There were two unrecognizable figures silhouetted in it, grotesques with strange shapes on their heads.

"I got to it first!" the smaller one proclaimed jubilantly. "I was opening doors before you were born " The music and the welter of hilarious voices streamed out around them into the quiet country night.

Her heart didn't drop, her overnight bag did instead with a slap to the porch floor. "Mother," she gasped soundlessly.

The other figure in the paper party cap was Ada. "Margaret, you darling! How did you remember it was my birthday? Oh, what a dandy surprise, I couldn't have asked for anything "

They were talking at cross-purposes, the three of them. "Oh, but Ada " Margaret Moran was remonstrating in a shaky, smothered voice, still unmanageable from the unexpected shock. "How could you do it that way! If you knew what I went through on the way up

here! No, mother's health is one thing I don't think you have any right to joke about. Frank won't like it a bit when he hears it!"

A puzzled silence had fallen over the two standing in the doorway. They turned to look after her. She was inside in the crepe-paper-lighted hallway now. The vivacious old lady asked Ada with a birdlike, quizzical cock of her head, "What does she mean?"

Ada asked at the same time, "What on earth is she talking about?"

"I got a telegram from you at one this afternoon. You told me mother'd had another of her attacks, and to come at once. You even mentioned Dr. Bixby's name in it " Margaret Moran had begun to cry a little with indignation, a natural reaction from the long strain she had been under.

The mother said, "Dr. Bixby's in there now; I was just dancing a cakewalk with him, wasn't I, Ada?"

Her sister's face had gone white under the flush of the party excitement. She took a step backward. "I never in the world sent you any telegram!" she gasped.

Moran surreptitiously stuck a thumb under the waistband of his trousers to gain a little additional slack. "Margaret couldn't have done any better herself," he said wholeheartedly, "and when I say that, I'm giving you all the praise I know how.

"Itll make her your friend for life when I tell her how you walked in here and saved the day. You must come over and have dinner with the two of us I mean without working for it when she gets back."

She eyed the empty plates with a cook's instinctive approval, flattered to see that her eff'orts have not been sUghted. "Thank you," she said, "I'd love to. I don't get as much home cooking as I might myself. I've had a room at the Women's Club since I've had this school job.

and there are no facilities. Before then, of course, at home, we all took turns in the kitchen."

She rose slowly, stacked the dishes together. "Now you just sit there and take it easy, Mr. Moran, or inside in the next room or wherever you please. 111 get through these in no time."

"You could leave them in there," he remonstrated. "Margaret's cleaning lady comes tomorrow, and shell do them."

"Oh, well," she shrugged deprecatingly, "it's not much trouble, and one thing I can't bear to see left lying around is dirty dishes, in my own or anybody else's kitchen. I'll be all finished before you know it."

She was going to make some lucky stiff a mighty fine little wife one of these days, Moran thought, watching her bustle back and forth; the wonder of it was she hadn't already. What was the matter with the young fellows around these parts, didn't they have eyes in their heads?

He went into the living room, turned on the double-globed reading lamp and sat down with his paper, to give it a second and more exhaustive going-over. It was just as good as though Margaret were home, really; you could hardly tell the difference. Except maybe that she didn't say, "Don't" to Cookie quite so often. Maybe too much of that wasn't good for a kid. She was a teacher, she ought to know.

She came out to the dining-room door one time and spoke to him, drying a large dish between her hands with a cloth. "Nearly through now," she announced cheerfully. "How're you two getting along in here?"

"Fine," said Moran, looking back across his shoulder at her from the semireclining slope the chair gave him. "I'm waiting to hear from my wife; she promised to call as soon as she gets up there and let me know how things are."

"That won't be for some time yet, will it?''

He glanced at the clock across the room. "Not much before ten-thirty or eleven, I guess."

She said, "I'm going to squeeze out some orange juice for the two of you, for the morning, as soon as I finish putting the last of these away. I'll leave it in a glass inside the Frigidaire."

"Aw, you don't have to bother doing that "

"Doesn't take a minute; Cookie really should have it daily, you know. It's the best thing for them." She returned to the kitchen again.

Moran shook his head to himself. What a paragon.

Cookie was in there with him just then, playing around. Then a minute or so later he got up and went to the hall door, stood there looking out, talking to her. She'd evidently wandered out there herself, from the kitchen door at the other end of it, while she finished drying the last of the utensils. Margaret had that habit, too, of perambulating around when she was in the last stages of drying.

Cookie was standing perfectly still, watching her. He heard him say, "What're you doing that for?"

"To dry it off, dear," she answered with cheery forthrightness.

Moran heard it only subconsciously, so to speak, with the fraction of those faculties not absorbed in his paper.

She came in a moment later, painstakingly wiping the blade of a small sharp-edge fruit knife that she'd evidently just used to cut and prepare the oranges.

Cookie's eyes followed the deft motions of her hands with that hypnotic concentration children can bring to bear on the most trivial actions at times. Once he turned his head and glanced back into the hallway, somewhere beyond the radius of the door, where she had been just now, with equally rapt absorption. Then back to her again.

"TTiere, all through," she said to him playfully, flicking the end of the dishcloth toward him. "Now HI play with you for five or ten minutes, and then we'll see about putting you to bed."

Moran looked up at this point, out of sheer sense of duty. "Sure there's nothing I can do to help?" he asked, hoping against hope the answer would be no.

It was. "You go right back to your paper," she said with friendly authoritativeness. "TTiis young man and I are going to have a little game of hide-and-seek."

She was certainly a godsend. Why, when it came to getting your paper read without distraction, she was even better to have around than Margaret. Margaret seemed to think you could read your paper and carry on a conversation with her at one and the same time. So either you had to be a surly bear or you had to read each paragraph twice, and slowly, once as a gentle hint and once for the meaning.

Not that he was being disloyal about it; rather have Margaret, bless her, conversational interruptions or not.

Ada tried to silence the buzzing party guests. "Shh! Be quiet just a minute, everybody. Margaret's out in the hall, trying to call her husband in the city and tell him about it." She took the added precaution of drawing the two sliding parlor doors together.

"From here?" one of the younger girls piped up incredulously. "For heaven's sake, that costs money!"

"I know, but she's all upset about it, and 1 don't blame her. Who could have done such a thing? Why, that's a horrible trick to play on anyone!"

One of the matrons said with unshakable local pride, "I know noliody up here in our community would be capable of it. We all think too much of Delia Peabody and her girls." Then immediately spoiled it by adding, "Not even Cora Hopkins. ..."

"And they signed my name to it!" Ada protested dramatically. "It must be somebody that knows the family."

"And mine, too, isn't that what she said?" Dr. Bixby added. "Where'd they hear about me?"

Half-frightened little glances were exchanged here and there about the room, as though somebody had just told a chilling ghost story. One of the giris, perchei on the windowsill, looked behind her into the dark, then stood up and furtively moved deeper into the room. "It's like a poison-pen tellygram," somebody breathed in a husky stage whisper.

Ada had reopened the sliding doors a foot, overcome by her own curiosity. "Did you get him yet?" she asked through them. "What does he say?"

Margaret Moran appeared in the opening, widened it and then stayed in it undecidedly. "She said our house doesn't answer. He could be out, but look at the time. And if he is, what's he done with Cookie? He wouldn't have him out with him at this hour. And the last thing he said was he wouldn't budge out of the house. There ought to be someone there with Cookie to watch him. . . ."

She looked helplessly from Ada to her mother to the doctor, who were the three nearest to her. "I don't like it. Don't you think I ought to start back "

A chorus of concerned protest went up.

"Now?"

"Why, you just stepped oif one bus, youll be dead!"

"Ah, Margaret, why don't you wait over until the morning at least?"

"It isn't that it's that telegram. I don't know, it gives me a creepy feeling, I can't shake it off. A thing like that isnt funny, it's it's malicious; there's something almost

dangerous about it. Anyone that would do that well, there's no telling what "

"Why don't you try just once more," the old family doctor suggested soothingly. "Maybe he's gotten back in the meantime. Then, if he hasn't and you still feel like going, ni drive you over to the bus station; my car's right outside now."

This time they didn't bother closing the doors at all; they didn't have to be told to be quiet. With one accord they all shifted out into the hall after her and fanned out in a wide half circle, ringing her and the telephone aTOund, listening in breathless sympathetic silence. It was as though she were holding a public audition for her innermost wifely distress.

Her voice shook a Httle. "Operator, get me the city again. That same number Seville 7-6262."

From time to time he could hear a splatter of quick running footsteps somewhere nearby, and a burst of crowing laughter from Cookie, and an "I see you!" from her. Mostly up and down the hall out there.

Hide-and-seek, he supposed tolerantly. They said there were two things that never changed, death and taxes; they should have added a third children's games. Even this she seemed to be able to go about in a soothing, fairly subdued way, without letting the kid be too boisterous about it. Must be the professional touch, that. He wondered how much kindergarten teachers earned. She was certainly good.

One time there was a stealthy, stalking cessation of sound, a little more long-drawn-out than the others, and he looked up to find her hiding herself just within the room doorway. She was standing with her back to him, peeping out around it into the hall. "Ready?" she called genially.

Cookie's answer came back with unexpected faintness. "Not yet wait."

She seemed to enjoy it as much as the kid. That was the right way to play with them, he supposed put your whole heart and soul into it. Children were quick to spot lack of enthusiasm. You could tell Cookie was already crazy about her. He was evidently seeing her in a different light than he had in the school, where she had to maintain a certain amount of discipline.

She turned her head, found him watching her approvingly. "He's gone into that little storage space built in beneath the staircase," she confided with a twinkle. And then, more seriously, "Is it safe for him to go in there?"

"Safe?" repeated Moran blankly. "Sure there's nothing in there, couple of old raincoats."

"Ready," a faint voice called.

She turned her head. "Here I come," she warned, and vanished from the doorway as unnoticeably as she had first appeared in it.

He could hear her pretendedly questing here and there for a preliminary moment or two, to keep up the relish of the game longer. Then a straining at woodwork and a muffled burst of gleeful acknowledgment.

Suddenly his name sounded with unexpected tautness. "Mr. Moran!" He jumped up and started out to them. It had been that kind of a tone: hurry. She'd repeated it twice before he could even reach them, short as the distance was.

She was pulling at the old-fashioned iron handgrip riveted to the door. Her face was whitening down around the chin and mouth. "I can't get it open see, that's what I meant a minute ago!"

"Now, don't get frightened," he calmed her. "There's nothing to it." He grasped the iron handgrip, simply pulled it up a half inch parallel to the door, the latch tongue freed itself, and he drew out the heavy oaken

panel. It was set into the back of the staircase structure, half the height of the average door and a little broader. It did not quite meet the floor, either; there was a half-foot sill under it.

Cookie clambered out hilariously.

"See what it was? You were trying to pull it out toward you. It works on a spring latch and you have to free that first by hitching the iron bracket up; then you pull it out."

"I see that now. Stupid of me," she said half-shamefacedly. She gestured vaguely above her heart, fanned a hand before her face. "I didn't let on to you, but what a fright it gave me! Phew! I was afraid it had jammed and he'd smother in there before we could "

"Oh, I'm sorry . . . darn shame ..." he said contritely, as if it had been his fault for having such a door in his house at all.

She seemed to want to continue to discuss possibilities, as though there was a hidden morbid streak in her. "I suppose if worse had come to worst, you could have broken it down, though, at a moment's notice."

"I could have taken something to it, yes," he agreed.

She seemed surprised. He saw her eye glance apprais-ingly over his husky upper torso. "Couldn't you have broken it down with your bare hands or by crashing your shoulder against it?"

He fingered the edge of the door, guided it outward so she could scan it. "Oh, no. This is solid oak. Two inches thick. Look at that. Well-built house, you know. And it's in a bad place; there isn't room enough on either side to run against it, to get up impetus. The turn of the wall here only gives you a couple yards of space. And on the inside it slants down with the incHne of the stairs; you can't even stand up full-length. The closet's triangular, wedge shaped, see? Swing your arm too far back over your shoulder, on either side of the door, and it would

jam against the sloping top. Or against the wall indentation out here/'

Suddenly, to his surprise, she had lowered her head, gone through the low doorway into the darkness inside. He could hear her sounding the thick sides of it with her palms. She came out again in a moment. "Isn't it well built!" she marveled. "But it's stuffy in there, even with the door open. How long do you suppose a person could last if they did actually happen to get themselves locked into such a place?"

His masculine omniscience was caught unprepared for once. He'd evidently never given the matter any thought before. "Oh, I don't know . . ."he said vaguely. "Hour and a half, two hours at the most." He looked up and down the thing with abstract interest. "It is pretty airtight, at that," he conceded.

She winced repugnantly at this thought she had herself conjured up, wholesomely changed the subject. Everyone, after all, has odd moments of morbid conjecture. She leaned down, grasped Cookie from below the armpits and started to march his legs stiffly out before him like a mechanical soldier. "Well, mister." Then she deferred to Moran: "Do you think he should go to bed now?"

Cookie started some more vertical emphasis. He was having too good a time to give it up without a battle. "One more! One more!"

"All right, just one more and then that's all," she conceded indulgently.

Moran went back to his chair in the living room. He'd finished his paper. Exhaustively; even down to the quotations of stocks he didn't own but would have liked to. Even down to letters from readers on topics that didn't interest him. He took out a cigar the man he'd lunched with had given him today, appraised it, accepted it for

smoking, stripped it and lit it up. He blew a lariat of sky blue around his head with ineffable comfort. He sat there with it for a moment in a complete vacuum of contentment.

It was a seldom enjoyed luxury, and he almost didn't know what to do with it. His head started to nod. He caught it the first time, took time off to put his cigar on the tray beside him so he wouldn't drop it and bum a hole in Margaret's carpet.

Cookie came tiptoeing in with exaggerated mincing of footfalls that was almost a hobbling creep, probably impressed upon him from outside, carrying Moran's soft-toed carpet slippers, one in each hand. Soft toed and softsoled. "Miss Baker says to put these on, you feel better," he whispered sibilantly.

"Say, that's fine," Moran beamed. He bent down and effected the change. "Tell her she's spoiling me."

Cookie tiptoed out with the discarded shoes heavy soled, thick toed with as much precaution as when he'd come in, even though the object of his care was unmistakably still awake.

Moran sprawled back and, when the second and third nods came, let them ride. A girl like that oughta . . . oughta be in a jewelry-store window .. . mmmmmm....

He MEANT WELL, but oh, God, it was like being on the rack to have to sit there beside him and listen to him. "Yessir, I brought all three of you girls into the world. I can remember the night you came as clear as though 'twere yesterday. And now look at you, sitting here beside me, all grown up and married and with a youngster of your own "

And frightened, oh, how frightened, she thought dismally, eyes straining for the bus that seemed never to come.

"Doesn't seem possible. No sir, either you grew up too fast or I don't feel old enough for my age, must be one or the other."

She matched her chortle with a wan smile by the faint light of the dashboard.

"1 know," he purred. He reached out and grasped her outside shoulder and juggled it hearteningly. "I know. You're all worried and upset and wish you were down there already. Now, honey, don't take on like that. Itll be all right, it's bound to be, how could it help being otherwise? Just 'cause he doesn't answer the telephone? Shucks, he's probably over at one of the neighbors' houses guzzling beer "

"I know, Dr. Bixby, but I can't help it. It's that telegram. It gives me the most uncanny feeling, and I can't throw it off. Somebody sent that telegram "

"Nat-chelly, nat-chelly," he chuckled benevolently, "telegrams don't just send themselves. Maybe some blame fool in his office thought he'd like to get back at him. ..." But he let the thought die out; it wasn't very convincing.

She was staring ahead, down the state highway that skirted the opposite side of the bus station to where the doctor had his Ford parked. "It's late, isn't it? Maybe there aren't going to be any more tonight. ..." She kept continually putting a finger to her teeth, replacing it a moment later with another one.

Dr. Bixby good-naturedly drew her hand down, held it pressed to her lap. "I broke you of that habit when you were seven; you're not going to make me do it all over again, are you?" He looked ahead through his none-too-spotless windshield. "Here she comes now. See those two lights way off down there? Yep, that must be her, all right."

Something soft brushing against his legs down by the floor roused him. He brought the point of his chin up off the second button of his shirt, looked down blurredly.

Cookie was scampering around down there on all fours hke a little animal, head almost lower than his feet. "Still trying to find someplace to hide?" Moran asked fondly.

His young son looked up, sharply corrected his failure to keep abreast of current events. "We not playing now anymore. Miss Baker los' her ring, I'm he'ping her to fine it.''

Her voice sounded somewhere outside at that moment. "See it yet, dear?"

Moran roused himself, got up and went out. He remembered seeing it on her when she first came in.

The stair-closet door was wide open, as though she'd already been in there. She was exploring the baseboard across the way, on the opposite side of the hall, slightly bent forward, hands cupped to knees.

"I don't know how it happened to slip off without my feeling it," she said. "Oh, it's probably around somewhere. The only reason I'd feel bad about losing it is my mother gave it to me on my graduation. ..."

"How about in here?" he said. "Have you looked in here? You stepped in here once, remember, and thumped the sides."

She glanced casually over her shoulder while she continued her search. "I looked in there already, but I didn't have any matches, so it was hard to make sure."

"Wait a minute, I've got some right here. 111 look again for you. ..." He stepped across the sill, struck a tarnished gold glow, crouched down with his back to the entrance.

The sound the door made was like a pistol shot echoing up and down the enclosed hallway.