Another Woman's House

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  Willie came back, apologetic, panting, without the stick. Richard stooped to find another, and threw it, not so hard this time and Willie scrambled after it.

  He had never talked of Alice and the thing that had happened in the gracious, charming room they had just left. Why, she thought with a dull sense of something like anti-climax, did he do so now? The portion of her life which like a thread had been caught and woven briefly into the pattern and fabric of the house that stood above her, pink and lovely against the twilight sky, had come to an end. Another life lay before her now and Richard was to be no part of that life.

  Again an airplane came from the north and Myra could see it riding high. Its lights were like small meteors hurtling through the quiet evening sky. Richard said then, suddenly and harshly, “What I’m trying to say is that I’m discovering, only now, that there is no past. It is always here, in the present. We are never free.” He tossed his cigarette toward the slowly breaking waves. “It is inescapable. It is a part of life. Forever.”

  Because he still loved Alice.

  She had never thought of that. It was incredible that she had not, for she had thought of everything else. So how could she have been so stupid, so childish as not to realize that Richard, naturally, was still in love with Alice!

  And why not? They had married; she knew little of that marriage except that they had both been very young, but he must have loved her then and he was not a man to change.

  That, of course, was why the beautiful and gently smiling bride in her pearls and her lace veil, Alice’s portrait, still hung in the gold-and-ivory drawing room! Richard still loved the bride, and the woman she had become.

  And then the inevitable, logical corollary of that thought caught at her as if it had hands and it too was a question.

  Was it possible that Richard believed Alice innocent?

  She tried to marshall facts. He had been loyal to Alice all during the trial and appeals. He had never, so far as Myra knew, admitted her guilt, but he would be loyal, he would never have admitted Alice’s guilt, whether he accepted it in his heart and mind or rejected it. No matter what he really believed he would do exactly as he had done. And would continue to do.

  Yet Alice couldn’t be innocent; she had been tried and convicted; she’d been seen in the very act of murder. How could Richard really believe her innocent?

  She would not think of that; it lay in the pattern of life which she must leave, and must forget.

  The last glow was leaving the sky; the water looked gray and cold and desolate. She pulled her coat up around her throat and Richard saw it and said quickly, “You’re cold. We’ll go back. I’m a selfish son of a gun. But the fact is …”

  They had stopped. He was facing her and, without intending to, she met his eyes. He said, “I’ll miss you, Myra.”

  A wave broke with a little soft whisper against the sand. Willie, digging somewhere, diverted, gave a sharp bark. Myra dug her hands into her coat pockets to stop their trembling. The airplane was almost overhead, its droning engine like the beating of a pulse that could not be denied.

  Richard said, “Myra—I don’t want you to go.” And took her in his arms, all at once, strongly, holding her tight to him. She moved her head and his mouth came down warm and hard upon her own and the regular beat of the airplane engine became her own heart, his heart, all life beating around them.

  Willie barked sharply. Richard let her go. He looked out across the gray water.

  “I didn’t mean to do that. I didn’t mean to say that. Forget it—will you, Myra?”

  “Forget …” Forget his arms, forget his mouth upon her own? Forget that in an instant’s time so much had changed?

  “Forgive me, Myra—I suppose we’d better go up to dinner.” He went away from her. He made Willie a pretext and walked toward the dog who was still digging furiously in the sand. His compact, solid body, his dark head seemed to recede from her forever into the twilight.

  Shadows were gathering now everywhere, turning the water darker, robbing it of its rosy light. The shore of Long Island was an indistinct dark line along the horizon. The sky was deeper blue; the evening star above his head was brighter but very cold, very distant. It was nothing you could touch, nothing you could reach up to and pull down into your embrace. Into your heart.

  The airplane was passing on, the beat of the engine was already a distant drone and the havoc and tumult of the instant or two that had accompanied it was passing too. Up above them a light would shine from the house. Alice’s house.

  “Come on, Willie,” said Richard in the distance. He bent again and scooped up the little dog who resisted, flailing his short, black legs, and came back toward her. “Well—you’re shivering. We’d better go up to the house.”

  There were words that must be said, now. There was no time to debate whether or not it was better for them to be forever unspoken; there was only a strong compulsion to hurry, to get something that was very important said, something clear before it was too late. Before Richard himself put a seal upon words. She put both hands on his arm and Willie bent to put his chill little nose against them.

  “Richard—Richard,” she said, “you see why I must leave.”

  The throbbing sound of the airplane diminished altogether. There was only silence, and the gathering night and the man before her, looking down into her face.

  He said at last, “You’ve known …”

  “About myself. Yes, Richard.”

  “That’s why you were leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  Another long moment passed while they stood there, searching each other’s eyes. Then Richard said, “Yes, I see. You’re right, of course. There’s nothing else for us to do.”

  She thought for an instant that he was going to take her in his arms again; she wanted him to do so with every vein in her body.

  He didn’t. He put his hand rather gently under her arm. They turned together and started along the sandy stretch toward the path through the rocks.

  Dinner would be waiting. It was very nearly dark.

  The sand seemed heavy and cold and clung to her pumps. The water was darker and a little menacing with sudden night. The rocks loomed up white and barren ahead of them. They could not from there see the lights of the house.

  When they reached the path through the rocks Richard’s hand tightened under her arm. He swung her around toward him.

  “I’m going to divorce Alice.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “RICHARD!” THE LAST LIGHT of the evening was clear upon his face, and she could read nothing in it. He did not speak, he only stood there before her, holding the little black dog in the crook of his arm.

  “You can’t divorce Alice!” she said unevenly.

  “Why not?” So many reasons, all of them tragically valid. She cried, “Richard, it’s impossible!”

  “Nothing is impossible. I love you. I’ve known it for some time. I’m not going to talk like a boy about it. We both know what it means. Until tonight I was not willing or resigned to losing you, but I had yielded to the situation. Accepted it. But now, if you meant what you said—if that is really why you felt you must leave …”

  “That is why, Richard.”

  “Well, then. Things are different. I’m going to divorce Alice.”

  How easy it would be to say yes! Only a breath, only an instant and the thing was settled. She didn’t dare look into the vista one word, one gesture would open before her.

  He said, “Listen, Myra. You know about Alice. You know the whole story.”

  Her heart was pounding in her throat. All at once the question of his belief in Alice’s guilt or innocence was terribly important. If he believed her guilty then there was in a quite definite sense a measure of justification for their love, hers and Richard’s. If he believed Alice an innocent and tragically wronged woman, that was different; everything was different. She said, “We read the papers you sent. We may have missed some—the mails were lost occasionally during that
time. But I suppose I know what everybody else knows.”

  He waited a moment, his eyes still seeming to search her own. Then he turned to look out again toward the darkening water. “The main facts were in the papers. I was glad, really, that Aunt Cornelia couldn’t come until it was all over. We’ve never talked of it. She never asked me and I didn’t want to talk of it. In a way I’ve always rather felt it was my fault.”

  “Oh, no, Richard!”

  “I mean—well, I was away. Alice was alone. If I’d been there it might not have happened. It was the servants’ night out, too; there were only Barton and his wife and a maid, Francine, in the house. They’d all gone to a movie.”

  His profile was clear and white against the gathering night. He shifted the dog a little, and said, “I got home about midnight and the police were already there. Jack Manders’ body was in the library, just before the fireplace. They’d covered it with a rug but hadn’t taken it away yet. Alice had told them the story of what happened; she was in the dining room, sitting at the table, and somebody had fixed coffee for everybody. She was quite cool and collected and never deviated in any detail from what she told them then. I remember she had on a white dress, a thin, long white dress and there were small streaks of blood, down the front of it. Where she’d knelt beside Jack. To see if she could help him, she said, after she’d heard the shots.” Willie gave a wriggle and he set him down carefully on the path.

  “And then, of course …” his voice was flat and weary. “Then, of course, the business of the gun came out—my gun. Alice stuck to her story, naturally. She was advised to do so even after she was convicted and sentenced. The point is that everything that we could do for her failed. There is no possible recourse. Alice is in prison for life.”

  But did he believe her guilty? Did he believe her innocent?

  He turned. “Look at me, Myra. You must understand. There is nothing more that I can do for Alice.”

  “You can’t divorce her.”

  “Why not?” he demanded again and repeated it almost angrily. “Why not? What’s wrong about it? Who’s to say anything against it? We have our lives ahead of us. I—want you, Myra.”

  “No …”

  “I’ll phone our lawyer. I’ll let him tell her. I’ll ask her to get the divorce. I’ll phone Sam tonight.”

  “Richard …” The tears she kept from her eyes were in her voice. He stopped his headlong, defiant rush of words. “What is it? Myra, are you crying?”

  “No, no. I—listen, Richard. You supported her all through the trial. You did everything for her. You would never admit her guilt. You were loyal …”

  “She was my wife.”

  “But don’t you see! It’s you—it’s your code—it’s Richard. You could not desert her then. You cannot now …”

  He stopped her, suddenly and sternly. “We’ve got to have things clear. I’ll say what I’ve never said to anyone, not even to Sam. It’s about—Alice.”

  Her heart tightened. Strangely, though, there was a matter-of-factness, a lack of barrier between them, so his look, his words, were all at once clear and unemotional.

  “Actually, whether or not Alice is guilty of murder makes no difference to our situation, yours and mine. Nothing can change that; she has been convicted of murder and imprisoned and there is no further appeal. But in another way, it does make a difference between us. I do not mean as justification; there is nothing in my love for you that requires justification. I only feel that the truth, as I know it, must be known also to you.” He paused. “Yet the trouble is, of course, I never really knew the truth—about Jack, I mean, and Alice. You knew, everyone knew, that if she killed him there was only one conceivable motive. That motive had to have its roots in some sort of more or less violent affair between them. Mere friendship does not give rise to murder. Only violence breeds violence. Yet if that was true”—he paused again and took a long breath—“I never knew it. And no one else knew it. In all the tangle of evidence and investigation there was never one shred brought forward which really supported that theory, except for his presence in the house while I was away and that could equally well have been, as Alice said it was, a completely innocent and insignificant happening. They saw each other often, but we saw a lot of people. It is true that he was a sort of special—oh, escort if I happened to be away; he could always fill in as extra man at dinner parties. But bachelor friends are likely to be popular in that way. If there was ever anything serious in his certainly constant but apparently perfectly open friendship with Alice, there were no special indications of it. So, if that motive existed I did not know it. If she killed him I do not know that either.”

  The lack of barriers, the new candor between them made it possible for her to ask the questions she must ask.

  “What do you believe?”

  But she had been wrong to ask it; the moment of close and clear understanding seemed to retreat. His eyes clouded. He replied promptly, but it was with a kind of effort, as if he wished to retain that closeness and frankness and yet could not. And he said, “The slugs that killed him were fired from my gun. They proved that. A man may have a gun all his life, practically, and never use it, but Sam and Tim and I had been target snooting, only a few weeks before the murder, down here on the beach, as a matter of fact. The slugs matched, all right. It was my gun that killed him. And then my gun disappeared. She was alone in the house with Jack. And Webb Manders saw her do it.”

  He had not really replied. But he would never reply to that question; he would never say “I believe she murdered him.”

  That was because he was Richard; and then she saw that the road they had traveled was a circle, that they had come back to the exact point at which they had entered it. Richard Thorne being Richard Thorne, he would never say, “I believe my wife committed murder.” And he would never, as long as Alice lived, be able to withdraw in her terrible need the support of his name and his loyal relationship.

  Perhaps she, Myra, could not let him do so.

  She said, blindly choosing trite and inadequate words, “You cannot change your own sense of loyalty, of your own creed and code. It’s bred in your bone; it’s part of your body.”

  He understood all the argument below it. He understood too that it was a fundamental argument in her own heart. His eyes deepened, searching her own. He said suddenly, “Myra, you must see this sensibly; you must be realistic and …”

  “Oh, Richard, Richard!” She cried despairing, and put her head against his shoulder.

  He would not yield. He would not take her in his arms. But she felt his acknowledgment, his gradual surrender. He said at last in a tired voice, “It’s so silly, Myra. You and I—it isn’t as if she were ill or an invalid. It isn’t as if—really in our hearts we could ever hope for release. She’s young and, in spite of her fragile look, she’s extraordinarily healthy.”

  “Don’t …”

  “I don’t want her to die. I didn’t mean that! But it’s so horribly unfair, Myra.”

  “We cannot change it.”

  He didn’t move; still did not so much as touch her.

  “I don’t want to have an affair with you. I want you for my wife.”

  On the fringe of her thoughts she had considered that, desperately, perhaps, yet quite coolly and sensibly, too. It probably could be arranged; probably no one would know and, if they did know, nobody was likely to blame them too much. Even Aunt Cornelia who could not fail to see all those intangible things that link a man and a woman who are lovers, even she would not blame them.

  No, it could be arranged. In a way they could share the life and the years that lay ahead of them. And it, too, was simply, flatly impossible. She knew it. Richard knew it.

  She said, her head still against his shoulder, the quiet and stillness of the chill spring night all around them, “Is there no way, Richard? I mean—a new trial—an appeal … ?”

  “Impossible. We always came up against the same three, cold, hard facts. I told you what those were a
moment ago. She was alone in the house with him when he was shot and nobody could ever prove that anybody else was there. The slugs that killed him were fired by my gun and my gun was gone from the drawer of the table where it was kept and was never found. And, of course, the main, the clinching evidence was that Webb Manders said he saw her shoot him.”

  “What do you think happened to the gun, Richard? What could have happened to it?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody ever knew; God knows they looked for it—tore the house apart. But the disappearance of the gun was our big argument. It saved her life. Otherwise she’d have got the death sentence.”

  His voice was hard and dry. He’d lived with the thing, turning it over and over in his mind, twisting it around, seeking loopholes. He was silent for a moment. She knew his mind was groping back into that dark and ugly labyrinth of Alice’s trial and conviction. He said at last, “I was right when I said there is no past. It’s still here; it may hurt you sometimes. I’ll try to prevent it. I may not always be able to. But there’s the future, Myra. For you and me.”

  So easy, so easy to say yes! Two lives instead of one; she and Richard on one side of the balance—Alice, frail and delicate and lovely, on the other. Alice’s life was a living waste, in any case. It had been so since the night she had killed Jack Manders. There was nothing that Richard or any of them could do about that; so why not take the happiness that offered itself for her, for Richard?

  He put his arms around her, hard and tight again, defiantly really, and she clung to him, allowing herself one moment out of time.

  But the defiance admitted the truth.