“And that time might come for you?”
“Mightn’t it for anyone? Except for happy you, of course. And even happy you had a thing with Stephen before you married him. Don’t try to kid me.”
“I shouldn’t dream of it. Of course we had an affair. But Tyler might be more tolerant than my ‘ex’ was. You and he might have some kind of civilized arrangement. The way we’re always hearing the French do.”
“Not he. He’d lay low until he had the goods on me and then divorce me without a settlement.”
“Would you, Tyler?”
He was coming up the stairs towards them.
“Would I what?”
“Edith and I were discussing how husbands behave to wives who take a little fling. I said you’d be civilized about it.”
He scowled at Edith. “That depends on how you define ‘civilized.’”
“Well, if it means who makes the most money out of it, we’d know how you’d behave,” his wife retorted.
“I came to ask my loving spouse to dance, but that changes my mind. Will you dance, Natica?”
On the floor she tried to follow his shuffling lead.
“Where’s Stephen?”
“He had to go to Boston. He’ll be here later.”
“Business?”
“Not what you’d call business.”
“If you call it that, I will. I hear your shop’s going great guns. It was smart of you to remember what I said about Aunt Angelica’s marriage settlement. You’d never have got the money out of Uncle Angus.”
“Oh, I knew that.”
“He didn’t like your going around him, though. Watch your step with him, Natica.”
“What can he do to me?”
“There’s no telling. My Hill uncles are all three alike. They can never get over the fact that it was their father and not they who made the money. They dole it out to their handsome wives and feckless offspring, but under a strict condition: that Daddy, however small and bald and silent, is always boss. That condition has not been met by a certain daughter-in-law.”
“Even if my store is a success?”
“I’m not sure that doesn’t make it worse. They’re not like me, you know.”
“No, with you success is the total answer.”
“It’s my credo. I’ve never denied it.”
And then she saw Stephen. He was standing by himself in a corner of the conservatory, properly dressed in a tuxedo, watching her. Or rather staring at her. As they danced towards him, she saw that it was a baleful stare. He did not wave or even smile.
She excused herself to Tyler and went over to him.
“Is something wrong?”
“I must talk to you. Shall we go home?”
“What will we tell your mother? Can’t we do it here?”
He glanced about the room and shrugged. “I don’t care, if we can find a place.”
He followed her up to the third floor where they found the family living room vacant. She took a chair by the unlit fire before which, after closing the door, he took a rather ominous stand.
“How did you find Tommy?”
“Unexpected.” His tone was grating. “He said he had planned to stand me up, but that curiosity had got the better of him in the end.”
“To learn what you proposed to do for him?”
“To learn how much I’d pay to clear my conscience.”
She had never seen his eyes so hard. Whatever he had discovered, things were not going to be the same between them again. Very well, then, things would not be the same. She was beginning to be irritated. “What did you offer him?”
“I offered him the chance to start his own school.”
“And how, pray, were you going to do that? When you couldn’t even afford to start one of your own?”
“I was going to beg, borrow or steal the money! I was going to tell my mother if she didn’t give it to me, I’d put a bullet through my head!”
“Don’t be melodramatic, dear.”
“I’ve never been more serious! I was even willing to sell your sacred store, which you’d have taken much worse. But you needn’t worry. Your first husband made it very clear that he would never take a penny from your second. Not if he was starving!”
“I told you he had his pride.”
“But there’s something else you didn’t tell me.”
It was curious, now that the dreaded crisis was at hand, that she was conscious only of a cold detachment. She simply waited for him to continue.
“I felt I couldn’t leave him without giving him some excuse for my conduct towards him. I told him I’d felt obligated to save my child from being aborted.”
“I don’t suppose that was an argument that carried much weight with a mari trompé.”
“Don’t use French, phrases to me, Natica. He threw in my face that it was his child!”
“And what gave him that notion?”
“That you’d been sleeping with him all the time that you and I were lovers!”
“It’s a lie!”
“He’s a minister. A man of God. And I believe him.”
She had not expected this argument. She changed her tactic. “Anyway, it was only once. He was horribly jealous of you, and it was the only way to keep him quiet.”
“Only once! You expect me to believe that? When you swore he had never touched you after we first came together? Oh, Natica, the truth isn’t in you. You knew I’d have agreed to an abortion if there was any doubt whose child it was. How could an honest woman not have told me?”
At this she got up and approached him, her fists clenched. She was even angrier than he. “How did I know you’d pay for an abortion if you thought it was Tommy’s child? I had no experience with this sort of thing. All I knew was that two men had taken their pleasure with me and that one of them was damn well going to have to pay!”
“And which one did? The one with the money, of course. Oh, you were willing enough to have the abortion. You couldn’t wait to get rid of that offending foetus. But when I, sentimental idiot, wanted to save the infant I was naive enough to believe my own, you saw a rich husband falling right into your lap. Poor Tommy! He was cast off like an old shoe and I was picked up like a new one. Well, I know where I stand from here on.”
“You’re a fool, Stephen. I’m the best thing that ever came into your life, if you could only see it. And I still could be, if you’d let me. But no, you’d rather stuff your head into the big downy pillow of your own self-pity. Go ahead and enjoy it. But don’t expect anything from me until you’re ready to offer me a full apology for the outrageous things you’ve said tonight.”
“An apology? You have your nerve. It’ll be a month of Sundays before you get anything like that. I’m going home now.”
“And I’m staying at the party!”
“I’ll be sleeping in the spare bedroom.”
She left him without another word and went downstairs where she found her mother-in-law at the buffet.
“How is Stephen? I thought he looked tired.”
“He is. He’s going home.”
“Actually, my dear, I think he often looks tired these days. Has he been working too hard at the store?”
“I think that’s it. He’s been working too hard at the store.”
“Maybe he should take a vacation and go hunting or fishing.”
“I think I’ll suggest that.”
“And you’d go with him, of course.”
“I’m afraid I can’t leave the store just now. But it won’t matter. I think he needs a rest from a lot of things. Perhaps me included.”
20
STEPHEN LEFT home in the morning without speaking to her. He made no appearance at the store. That evening, when she was having a solitary cocktail, he walked into the apartment and took a seat across the living room from her.
“I’m not coming to work anymore. You can run the shop any way you like. I’ll turn the accounts over to you. And I’m moving to the Yale Club.”
> “You’re leaving me, then.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve got to think things over. I’ve got to think my whole life over. I just don’t know about you and me. We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Of course you realize that I consider myself completely guiltless in all this.”
“All I realize is that I don’t know you anymore. And I wonder if I ever did.”
His bland, steady stare seemed to put an unbridgeable distance between them. She began to wonder if her own knowledge of him might not be equally limited.
“I hope you won’t tell your mother of your doubts about the paternity of the child we didn’t have.”
“Why? Because you’re afraid she might not agree about your guiltlessness?”
“Yes.” Her tone was defiant. “She belongs to a stricter generation. Leave me her friendship, Stephen. Don’t take everything from me.”
“I’m taking nothing from you. And I certainly shan’t take that. If I had doubts about that poor little baby it’s nobody’s business but my wretched own.”
When she got up the next morning he had already left, but a note informed her that he had changed his mind about the club and would be staying in the gardener’s cottage at Redwood which Angelica had refurbished for their weekends.
Her life in the next two weeks followed the same routine. She spent long days at the store and usually dined with her parents-in-law, who assumed that Stephen was taking the vacation that had been discussed and found it entirely natural that he should go back to his beloved Hudson for fishing and shooting. They weekended at Redwood irregularly and did not happen to go there at this time. But Janine, who also had a cottage on the place, reported privately to Natica that she had gone over to call on her brother and found him very sour and aloof. She had not stayed more than half an hour.
“What’s eating him?”
“Oh, it’s just a mood, I guess. He’ll snap out of it.”
“No, Nat, this is different. It’s more like one of the depressions he used to have as a boy. If I were you, I’d go up there.”
“But I have a business to run!”
“Even so. I’d go. I don’t like the look of it.”
And then Giles Woodward quit without notice. He simply walked into the back office one morning and told her he was going on a trip. When she protested that he should stay at least until she found a replacement, he curtly refused. At last she lost her temper.
“You might remember that I took you on without a reference and without asking embarrassing questions.”
“Oh, you knew what you were doing,” he retorted with a brazen laugh. “You were getting a first class man for a serf’s wages. I’ve watched you operate from Averhill days. Don’t think you can play the high and mighty with old Giles!”
She gaped at his insolence. “Good day, Mr. Woodward!”
Stephen’s other sister, Susan, still unmarried and with little to occupy herself, volunteered to take Giles’s place at the store, and though enthusiastic, she was not a great help, sometimes forgetting what books her friends had purchased. But she was cheerful, and Natica was in a mood to appreciate that quality. One morning, a week after Giles’s departure, Susan came in, breathless and late as usual, but bearing a message from her mother.
“Mummie’s coming to the store at eleven,” she announced in the tone of conveying important news that Angelica’s daughters were apt to use in her respect. “She said to tell you she had to consult you.”
Natica had her eye on the door when Angelica appeared. That her mother-in-law was prompt could only mean that the matter was serious.
“Can we go to your office, my dear?”
The bookkeeper fled as the lady she knew had bought the shop came in with the proprietor. Angelica, seated, leaned across Natica’s desk, her lovely features clouded with concern.
“You know that Stephen is still at Redwood?”
“I assumed so. He hasn’t written or telephoned.”
“And do you know why? Do you know who is with him?”
“Oh.” So that was it. She noted the way Angelica’s black, skull-fitting hat came down in a triangle over the top of her high brow as if to point to the beauty below. “Is it Giles Woodward?”
“So you did know. Then you can hardly be aware of what sort of creature he is.”
There was a hint of spark in Angelica’s serene blue gaze.
“Well, I believe he was in some sort of trouble in college.”
“He’s a pervert, Natica! Angus spoke to his dean. He was considered the leader of a small gang of decadents. Have you had any reason to suspect that Stephen was ever inclined that way? No? Then that horrid creature is up there preying on his melancholy. For Janine tells me he is melancholy. His father and I hadn’t known, of course. The whole thing must be stopped at once!”
Natica was silent. She even found herself wondering why she should care so little. The same thought struck Angelica.
“My dear, don’t you mind?”
“You may find it odd, but somehow it doesn’t seem really to concern me. Men do such funny things. I wonder if they don’t basically prefer each other. All those sports and clubs and fishing.”
“Well, you’re very tolerant, I must say. I don’t feel that way about it the least tiny bit!”
“If Stephen leaves me, should I much care who he leaves me for?”
“Oh, my child, do you really think he’s left you?”
“Hasn’t he? And isn’t it my fault if he has? Why should I throw the blame on the wretched Giles?”
She suddenly wanted to tell Angelica about the aborted abortion. It was the same impulse that had come over her on their first meeting at the Crillon in Paris. She repressed it, but only with a sigh of something like despair. For the truth would always stand between her and this wonderful woman, whether or not it was known. She did not, after all, “belong” to Angelica’s world or to Angelica’s family, and the brief moment of euphoria she had experienced at the spring ball while talking to Edith had been only the airiest of bubbles. Angelica continued now:
“Angus and I are going up to Redwood as soon as he returns from Chicago where he and Tyler are inspecting some plant. I wanted to go myself now, but he was very emphatic on the telephone that it was not the kind of thing a woman should undertake alone and that I must certainly wait for him. Will you come with us?”
“Do you really think that would be wise?”
Angelica hesitated. Perhaps she was considering that it might indeed be better if one of such pernicious broad-mindedness should be absent from the disciplinary scene.
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you’d better leave it to us. But you can count on our sending your erring husband straight back to you!”
Their meeting was on Thursday. On Friday morning the impudent Giles himself loomed over her desk. He did not even greet her.
“I’m just back from Redwood. You’d better go up there, Natica.”
The name startled her. He had always addressed her formally. “Is Stephen ill?”
“He’s in the worst sort of depression. A really black one. Those can be dangerous, you know. And his parents are coming up to the big house this weekend. He kicked me out. He can’t face them with me there. I’m not sure he can face them without me.”
“I take it, then, their suspicions are justified?”
“They would think so, anyway. They’d hardly make distinctions in these things. I was trying to console Stephen. To cheer him up. What we did didn’t amount to much. I’m not sure he isn’t even basically a womanizer. With him it was more like a return to boyhood, a kind of desperate nostalgia, if you like.”
“I don’t like it at all, thank you very much. How was it with you?”
“Well, I was always hot for him at school. He was my hero. I couldn’t believe I’d ever have him. And then suddenly there he was, alone and miserable. Anyone could have had him. But he’s not really my type. I guess nostalgia may have played a role for me, too.�
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“I wonder you have the gall to stand there and talk this way to his wife.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Natica. We both know why you married him. At least I wanted him.”
She suppressed a retort. What was the use? Would such a man understand that a woman’s motives could be mixed? But at least he respected her intelligence.
“There are things I could say to that. But let’s stick to Stephen. I take it you think there’s danger of suicide.”
“There’s always that danger with these things.”
“Then, if I’m such a mercenary bitch, why should I care?”
“Because he’s worth more to you alive than dead. I read that piece in Fortune about the Hill trusts.”
She could not restrain a gasp. “I take a lot from you, Woodward.”
“Oh, you’re a tough girl, all right. Don’t think I don’t admire it!”
“I’ll take your advice, anyway. I’ll drive up tomorrow.”
***
The first thing that was wrong was the police car at the gate. But the officer made no move to stop her and she drove over the blue gravel down the long winding road through the trees to the white columnar front of the big house which she had to pass to arrive at the cottage. But she did not pass it. She had the shock of seeing some twenty or thirty persons gathered on the lawn of the turnaround. Her heart beat heavily as she pulled up under the porte-cochere to find her parents-in-law standing by the door.
Angus Hill turned away, but his wife went up to the car as Natica got out.
“You’ve heard already?”
“Oh, my God, what?”
“Stephen hasn’t been in his cottage since yesterday at noon. One of the gardeners saw him go out then with his gun, and the maid who cleans there says his bed has not been slept in or the kitchen used.”
Natica noticed the trembling of Angelica’s upper lip.
“Where do you suppose he’s gone?”
“He may have had an accident. We’ve called in the neighborhood. We’re going to search the woods. You had better stay in the house, my dear. There’s coffee in the dining room.”
The Lady of Situations Page 22
