‘Then stay here,’ he assented. ‘I think you’re wise. I’ll be back tomorrow.’ So he set out with Leick alone.
They made a silent journey, saying little; and they arrived at the cabin too late to do anything that night. On the way, and at the supper table, and while they washed the dishes afterward, Harland felt in Leick something like an unspoken accusation, as though the other knew the truth and waited for Harland to justify his forbearance. These two were so close that it was hard for either to be secret from the other; and when they sat for a while on the veranda, Leick with his pipe, Harland smoking many cigarettes, though for a long time they spoke only an occasional word, their thoughts ran together.
So it was like answering an insistent unuttered question when Harland said at last: ‘Leick, Ellen and I are going to have a baby.’ He said only this in words; but behind the words there was an appeal for understanding. It was as if he cried: ‘Oh, I know you know that Ellen killed Danny, and I know you’re wondering why I don’t accuse her. But I can’t, Leick! My hands are tied!’
Leick spoke in instant understanding. ‘Is she so? Why — that will make a lot of difference to you.’
‘It makes a lot of difference in — my feeling for her.’
‘Course it does!’ There was a frank relief in Leick’s voice. ‘Well now!’ He puffed deeply on his pipe, and after a time he repeated: ‘Well!’ The word was little, but Harland found it contenting. Leick almost at once rapped out his pipe and rose, saying easily: ‘Well, I guess we’ll sleep tonight.’ But though this was all he said, he seemed to say: It’s all right. You’ll do what you have to, and I’ll stand by.
In the morning, Harland rose early, and he climbed the hill to the lookout to search for the binoculars which he had there thrown heedlessly aside. He found them in the bed of moss below the ledge; and he remembered with a sick sense of loss the afternoon when he and Ellen had lain on that soft couch while the white clouds sailed smiling overhead.
When he returned to the cabin, Leick called cheerfully from the kitchen; and over breakfast they planned what was to be done that day. Harland said they would need to patch the motorboat before towing it down the lake; and Leick said: ‘Oh, I brought it down before Joe and me left here. It can be fixed up as good as new.’ Harland, even though Leick knew the truth, was glad he had been ahead of the other at the point to obliterate the footprints there.
They worked all morning, packing up everything Harland wished to take away. There was not much. In their room Harland noticed Professor Berent’s field kit, which Leick had brought so that Ellen could mount the dead hummingbird for Danny. Danny too was dead now; and Harland remembered the beauty of the dead bird, its shimmering throat, the jewelled colors on its outspread wings and wide-fanned tail; and he thought, turning for comfort to a simple, childlike faith, that Danny too was complete and perfect now, his deformities all healed. So, suddenly, his eyes were drenched with tears; and he lay across the bed in quiet weeping, and found refreshment and strength in this surrender.
At lunch he said to Leick: ‘I’ll never come here again. I’ll make you a present of the place, if it’s any use to you.’
‘I ain’t likely to use it unless you do,’ Leick replied, and Harland was grateful for this oblique assurance of the other’s affection.
‘I’ll make it over to you anyway,’ he insisted. ‘You can get a fair price for it, some day. Or let it go for taxes if you like.’ For a moment his tone was hard with bitter grief. ‘When I walk out of here this time, I never want to think of it again.’
He left that afternoon. Leick would stay behind; and Harland promised to bid Joe Severin come next morning with the cart to transport the things they had packed. That last walk through the forest alone seemed to him long and haunted, and sometimes he broke into a jog trot, in haste to leave the shadowed woods behind.
When he reached Bar Harbor, the dinner hour was past and dusk was near. Ruth came down the stairs to greet him, and he asked: ‘Where’s Ellen?’
‘She’s in bed,’ Ruth told him. ‘She’s had one of her upsets. Indigestion. Acute gastritis, the doctor always calls it; but she’ll be all right again in a day or two.’
‘I’ve never known her to be ill,’ he said in sharp alarm, remembering that Ellen’s health was all-important now.
‘She’s had these spells ever since she was a child.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s not very comfortable,’ Ruth admitted. ‘We’ve got a nurse for her, and they’ve given her a sedative.’
‘What made her sick?’ he insisted.
Ruth hesitated, trying to smile. ‘Why, I suppose she’ll blame my cooking,’ she said lightly. ‘Yesterday was Mrs. Freeman’s day out, and I got dinner.’ Then she added honestly: ‘But Mr. Quinton was here yesterday afternoon. He’d been talking to Doctor Hamper.’ Harland knew the name but not the man. Leick had arranged all the routine details of the procedure necessary after Danny’s death, and Doctor Hamper had signed the death certificate. ‘He made Ellen tell him all about Danny,’ Ruth explained. ‘That was terribly hard for her. I suppose it upset her.’
Harland quickly lighted a cigarette, intent upon this task so that he need not meet Ruth’s eyes. He had forgotten Quinton; but Quinton was State Attorney now, and he had the reputation of being one to hold a grudge, and certainly Ellen had treated him shabbily. Harland remembered a conversation between them all last June, when Mrs. Berent had warned Ellen not to give Quinton a chance to even the score, and Ellen had said drily: ‘I’m not planning to murder anyone, if that’s what you mean.’ But now — she had murdered Danny, and if Quinton began prying into the circumstances of Danny’s death, he might find evidence of the truth.
‘Did he come just to see her?’ he asked guardedly.
‘No, he was driving through to Augusta, stopped on his way.’
‘I suppose Ellen’s asleep.’ He wondered whether this weight of guilty knowledge would forever ride his shoulders.
‘She was, a while ago,’ Ruth told him. ‘But she may wake again.’
He said he would go sit with her, in case she woke and wanted him, and Ruth led him to her room and the nurse came at Ruth’s light touch on the door and spoke with them in the hall and agreed that Harland might take her place for a while, bidding him call her if any need arose.
So Harland sat for hours by Ellen’s bed. She lay all composed, her dark hair framing her face, and he thought he had never seen anyone so lovely in her every aspect; and thinking of Quinton, who threatened her now, he became fiercely her defender. Sleeping here, she was so completely childlike that it was impossible to imagine any guilt in her, impossible to believe her anything but good. One of her hands lay on the coverlet; and he leaned down and touched it lightly with his lips. She was his wife, and between man and wife there was a bond which never could be broken. He might condemn her utterly — and love and defend her still.
She slept for hours unmoving, but then her lips began to twist and writhe distressfully, and to utter low tormented sounds, and he called the nurse.
‘She’ll wake and be sick, Mr. Harland,’ the woman predicted. ‘But I’ll take care of her. You’d better go to bed now. I’ve had my rest. It’s almost two o’clock, you know.’
He said in helpless solicitude: ‘She’s been through a lot, these last few days.’
‘She’ll be fine,’ she assured him, and — as Ellen began to wake — turned him toward the door.
Ellen was ill for three days, weak and shaken, able only to smile and cling to his hand as though she would never let him go. When she was well enough, with a sense of escape, Harland took her away to Boston. It was a relief to leave Quinton so far behind.
8
ELLEN, explaining to Harland her reluctance to have a baby, had always pretended this feeling was temporary, assuring him that it arose from her fond wish to keep for a while all his devotion. But actually she was determined never to submit to the folly of long months of discomfort, to a climactic hour
of torment, and then to further years of slavery when she would be bound down to the service of a helpless infant.
But in the half-panic of those hours after Danny’s death, she reached out for motherhood, sure it would bind Harland to her. She was right. Whatever his thoughts, he was always during the months that followed solicitous and attentive. When they returned to Boston, he urged her to consult a physician at once; but since she could not yet be sure of her pregnancy she insisted that there was no hurry. Even when she knew certainly, she still delayed for weeks. Completely uninformed about this mystery in which she now would play her part, she was afraid her condition might somehow betray to the doctor’s expert eye that the history she meant to give him was untrue. Only when she was doubly certain did she consent to make an appointment.
She chose when the time came a man she did not know except by reputation. Harland had suggested Doctor Saunders, a general practitioner of the old school, who had been his mother’s and his father’s reliance in times of stress. Ellen knew him, for it happened that he was also her mother’s family physician and had been called for her own occasional indispositions; but she dared not go to him, remembering more than one occasion when he had accused her of malingering. There had been a time, before she learned to rely on subtler weapons, when to get her own way she often vowed that she was sick; and she had suffered more than one defeat at his hands.
But she did not explain this to Harland, said instead: ‘He’s not an obstetrician.’
‘He can tell you who to see,’ Harland argued.
‘Oh, I know who to see,’ she assured him, and went to Doctor Patron.
He was a tremendous, bushy-browed man with sleepy eyes; and as though he saw the nervous tension under which she labored, he began by telling her a mildly bawdy story, chuckling like jelly as he did so. She smiled politely, and he held her in casual talk until she began to feel at ease before he came to the business in hand.
She answered his questions warily, but he accepted her statements at face value, and dismissed her at last with a reassuring word. ‘Tell your husband I’ve read his books,’ he said. ‘hook forward to meeting him.’
That frightened her. What would he say to Richard? And also, she had after that day another concern. Doctor Patron had told her that her baby would be born in May. She knew he was wrong. It would arrive a few weeks later than he thought. But — if the baby were born in June instead of May, would not that fact tell Harland she had deceived him? How surely could a birth-date be fixed? Were babies ever born too soon, or too late? She wished to ask Doctor Patron, but dared not risk rousing his curiosity; so she went to the library and sought information in unfamiliar volumes there, guiltily and secretly, afraid of meeting some acquaintance, afraid her purpose might be read.
She found no sure answer to her questions; and as the months passed the baby within her began to wear in her thoughts, like a character in an old Greek play, the mask of Danger. Doctor Patron had told her to see him at regular intervals, but — fearing he would suspect the truth — she did not go to him again until the baby quickened. His questions seemed to her alarmingly persistent. Also, as the baby assumed a life of its own she saw in it an approaching peril from which there was no escape, and she was afraid; and because it was Harland’s discovery of her deception which most of all she dreaded, she was afraid of him, too. When the shape of her body began to change, she sought to avoid him. After lunch she might bid him leave her and seek entertainment elsewhere; and if he proposed that they go together to call on her mother and Ruth, she refused. She knew he went frequently to see them; yet she felt no resentment, glad of any diversion which took him for a while away from her.
So as winter drew toward spring she spent many hours alone — alone except for that living presence in her womb which was implacably preparing the ultimate betrayal. Nameless terrors haunted her, and the child growing in her body came to personify them all.
– II –
Mrs. Berent’s health that winter rapidly failed, but in mid-March she came with Ruth one day to see Ellen. To climb the half flight of steps which led from the street up to the front door made her breath come pantingly, and when they were admitted she was still trembling. Ellen saw her exhaustion and protested:
‘You ought to be in bed, Mother; not paying calls.’
‘You hadn’t been near me for six weeks,’ Mrs. Berent retorted. ‘People were beginning to wonder why. If you wouldn’t come to me, I decided to come to you!’
‘I don’t go anywhere,’ Ellen assured her. ’I don’t care to see anyone.’
She waited, hoping they would accept this rebuff and depart; but Mrs. Berent sat down — without invitation — and she asked sharply: ‘Why not? What is it you’re ashamed of? Are you afraid to face people?’
Before Ellen could speak, Ruth said with a quick, appeasing smile: ‘Now, Mother! Anyone would think you’d come to quarrel!’ And she told Ellen: ‘It was such a pleasant day, the first day that’s really felt like spring, I thought it would do Mother good to get a little fresh air.’
‘The air in this old house is always stale,’ Ellen commented. ‘No matter how many windows you open.’ She walked restlessly across the room, feeling that they had come to spy upon her and wishing to drive them away; but to do so might excite her mother’s shrewd curiosity, so she put a curb on her tongue, forcing herself to play a welcoming part. ‘But I’m glad to see you,’ she said.
‘We might all go for a drive,’ Ruth suggested. The big car was waiting at the door.
Ellen shook her head. ‘I don’t go out.’ She spoke to Mrs. Berent. ‘I remember your saying, Mother, that in your time, when ladies were going to have babies, they never went out of doors in daylight.’
‘You show it surprisingly little.’ Mrs. Berent examined her with an appraising eye. ‘Considering that you’ve only two months to go.’
Ellen felt a quick constriction at her heart, for this was almost like an accusation. She tried to speak easily. ‘Doctor Patron says I’m built for it.’
Mrs. Berent cleared her throat with a mumbling sound, and Ruth said gently: ‘You’re more beautiful than you ever were, Ellen, it seems to me.’
‘Don’t be idiotic! I’ve still a mirror, you know.’
‘I think there’s always a special beauty in a woman who’s going to have a baby.’
Ellen laughed shortly. ‘You sound like Richard. I had to have one, to keep him in love with me.’
Mrs. Berent tossed her head. ‘Richard’s a fine young man, Ellen! You were lucky to get him.’
‘You tried hard enough to prevent it!’
‘For his sake, not for yours.’ The old woman’s tone was harsh. ‘You’re not good enough for him!’
Ruth spoke quickly: ‘Hush, Mother!’ She smiled. ‘You always were a barking dog. You don’t fool us, you know.’
‘Richard’s like a simple, decent boy,’ Mrs. Berent remarked, half to herself. ‘Completely trusting and credulous.’ Ellen looked at her in sharpened apprehension, but the older woman only said, half pleadingly: ‘See that you keep him so, Ellen. Don’t ever mock the things he cherishes.’
‘I’d do anything for Richard,’ Ellen assured her. ‘You know that!’ She met her mother’s shrewd eyes, but she could not support that searching glance, turned hurriedly to Ruth. ‘You mustn’t let Mother get too tired,’ she suggested, hoping they would go. But Mrs. Berent said:
‘Fiddlesticks! Where’s Richard? I’d like to see him.’
‘At the club, I think,’ Ellen told her. ‘He’s never here in the afternoon.’
Ruth said: ‘He sometimes drops in on us. We’re always so glad to see him. He does Mother good.’
Ellen did not speak, but Mrs. Berent said crisply: ‘And we do him good, too. You’re making him pretty unhappy, Ellen, by the way you’re carrying on. I’ve given him some good advice, but he doesn’t take it!’
Ellen’s voice hardened and her cheeks were hot. ‘I can just hear you all talking me over, over your
teacups, like three old gossips!’
‘It isn’t that, Ellen,’ Ruth assured her. ‘Dick’s just a bewildered young father-to-be, you know.’ Her tone was affectionate. ‘Imagining all sorts of dreadful things. And he can’t talk about them to you.’
‘Why not?’ Ellen’s eyes were icy. ‘Why can he say things to you he can’t to me? Whose husband is he, mine, or yours and Mother’s?’ Abruptly her simmering rage at them and at the world overflowed, ‘Of course I know you were always in love with him yourself!’
Mrs. Berent came furiously to her feet. ‘You ought to be smacked!’ she exclaimed. ‘You insufferable little...’
But Ruth hushed her, and she said to Ellen gravely: ‘You’re right, Ellen, but not in the way you think. Mother and I are both fond of Dick. We love him dearly. And Ellen — we all — all three of us — love you!’
Ellen bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m — I don’t know what I’m saying, half the time.’
Mrs. Berent adjusted her fur piece, turning toward the door. ‘Come along, Ruth, she said indignantly. ‘Good-bye, Ellen!’
‘Wait,’ Ellen urged. ‘I’ll give you a cup of tea.’
‘Thanks, I can get tea at home!’
Ellen looked appealingly at Ruth. ‘Make her stay,’ she begged. A moment ago she had wished to be rid of them, but now she was suddenly afraid of being alone. ‘I didn’t mean it, Ruth. Make her stay. Richard will be here soon.’
So at Ruth’s intercession Mrs. Berent was persuaded to sit down again, and tea came, and they talked polite commonplaces for a while; but Ellen was appraising Ruth with a thoughtful eye, remembering something half seen in the other’s face a moment ago. When Harland presently appeared she watched Ruth greet him, and she caught her lip between her teeth, her fingers digging at her palms. She had flung the bitter taunt blindly, seeking only to hurt at any cost. ‘You were always in love with him . . .’ She had spoken without thought, but her own words produced the thought. Perhaps they were true! Perhaps Ruth had always been in love with Richard — and was in love with him today!
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