All for the Love of a Lady

by Zenith Brown

  It was an effort for her to keep her voice evenly controlled.

  “Kind friends couldn’t wait to tell me. I’ve closed my ears and tried not to mind, because I knew very well I hadn’t thrown myself at him. I didn’t even know he was back when he called me up and asked if I’d have dinner that night. He said he was just off the plane, and I didn’t know he was calling from New York until he was late because the train was. I sort of figured Courtney was busy and he didn’t want to eat alone his first night back. Then bang in the middle of the ground beefsteak à la galloise he said, ‘I was going to send you this from Natal, a couple of months ago, but I thought you’d think I was crazy.’ ”

  She stopped for a moment.

  “I haven’t ever told anybody but Randy, because . . . well, I was so sure, you see. I thought, ‘Okay, let them talk—they just don’t know, and I do.’ Because it was a radio blank. It had the date and my name and address on it, and the pencil marks were blurred where it had been folded in his pocket. It said, ‘Molly, will you marry me as soon as I get back home? I’ve been wanting to ask you since the night I hope you remember too. My temperature’s normal. This is very serious, and the only important thing that’s ever happened to me.’—Just like that.”

  “Did you remember the night he meant?” I asked.

  “Of course. It wouldn’t sound very romantic to anybody else. There weren’t any magnolias in the moonlight, and I guess that’s one reason I didn’t question it was true. Or if I’d been beautiful, or had a lot of money . . .”

  She moved her hands in a light gesture, dismissing that.

  “It was just a game of checkers in the Abbotts’ game room, a few days before he left. Everybody else was playing bridge, and I didn’t have money enough to play for the stakes they do, so I didn’t want to cut in. Courtney said, ‘Cass, why don’t you play a game of checkers with the baby?’ So he did. We sat on the floor in front of the fire and had a wonderful time. At least I did. I was a little worried because I thought he was stuck with me and just being sweet because Courtney told him to—even when he let her go home with some people who live near her because we weren’t through with our game.”

  She stopped abruptly. “It sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Anyway, he took me home, because he lived out this way. We shook hands at the door and said good night. He started away and then he came back and said ‘Let’s smoke one cigarette before I go.’ So we sat on the porch and smoked a cigarette. Then he got up and said good night again. You know that funny smile of his? Well, the next day I was having lunch with Aunt downtown and I ran into Courtney waiting in the lounge. I don’t know what I said, but she laughed and said, ‘Darling, don’t tell me you’re like all the rest of them? He’ll be here in a minute. I’ll have to tell him he’s done it again.’ I realized then he’d just been making fun of me. He didn’t even look around the restaurant.”

  She hesitated again.

  “But he said she never told him I was there,” she went on. “But that doesn’t matter. I was so unhappy I could have died. I didn’t want him to think I was a fool, so I went to Virginia with Aunt, and when I got back he was gone. He’d been calling me up at the house, but I told the maid not to tell anybody where I was. Then that’s all I heard from him, except that he sent me a dollar and a half box of checkers from a toy shop in New York before he left—and a book of rules, because I don’t play checkers very well.”

  She looked at me anxiously.

  “Does this bore you sick?” she demanded. “It’s all so simple . . .”

  I shook my head.

  “No, it doesn’t, if you want to talk about it,” I said.

  “Well, I do, somehow,” she said simply. “Anyway, that night at dinner we talked for hours, until they closed the restaurant, and then we walked home in the rain and talked after two o’clock. I guess nobody had ever really made love to me before, except Randy, and he doesn’t count, and it all went to my head. He seemed to mean it. He was going away again, and . . . oh, I don’t know. Time seemed too important, and it took five days to get a license here, so we went to Virginia, and they got the blood tests through in a couple of hours and we were married. He said he wanted it that way. He was sure if I was. He didn’t want to go away without knowing completely that I belonged to him. It was all so quick . . . but I didn’t have any doubts at all. And in the last four months I’ve tried not to let any creep in when I’d hear . . .”

  She turned her head away quickly.

  “We had just four days together, but . . . but I guess that was enough. I . . . oh, I can’t bear it, Grace. I can’t, I can’t! I loved him so much! And now I hate him! I hate him! Oh, why did he have to——”

  I went over to her and drew her down by me on the sofa.

  “Stop it, Molly!” I said sharply. “Stop it right now. You’re just being a fool, a complete absolute fool. Cass knew you a long time before he played checkers with you, so it isn’t as if he’d run into you on a street corner and married you because he had a free Saturday night. You’ve certainly heard from him since he’s been away, and——”

  She shook her head quickly.

  “But I haven’t. He told me I wouldn’t, because nobody was supposed to know where he was. A couple of times people came through and brought me a message, but all he ever said was for me to brush up on my checkers and he was all right. But I didn’t mind that . . . but if he could let Courtney know . . .”

  “Look, Molly,” I said. “I’m going to the phone and call him now.”

  She was on her feet in an instant, her eyes blazing, her face pale, her fists tightly clenched at her sides.

  “No you’re not!” she cried. “If you do, I’ll go somewhere else. You don’t understand! I was right—in the very beginning I was right. He was making fun of me. Courtney knew it. Then he got down in the jungles and it looked different, and that’s why he thought he was in love with me. It’s Courtney he really loves—he always has. And she loves him. And I know it, and I hate them both!”

  I got up.

  “You go to bed,” I said firmly. “Tomorrow you can decide what you’re going to do——”

  “I’ve decided already.”

  She was perfectly calm again.

  “In fact, I’ve not only decided what I’m going to do—I’ve already done it. You may think it’s awful, but I’m going to show them both I can be just as cold-blooded as they are. You haven’t any idea what I’ve put up with from people around here the last four months.”

  Her eyes were blazing again suddenly, and as yellow as a topaz.

  I managed a smile.

  “Nobody’s likely to think you’re particularly cold-blooded, angel,” I said. “So go to bed, and go to sleep.”

  In the doorway she turned back.

  “I’m sorry, Grace,” she said. “I haven’t any right forcing my troubles on you and then acting this way. If you’d rather I’d go——”

  “All I want you to do is go to bed,” I said. “You’re welcome to stay. There’s a key in the top drawer of the desk over there, and you can come and go as you please. But do try to use your head. After all, Cass isn’t responsible for what Courtney——”

  I stopped. Sheila, lying on her stomach on the cool hearth bricks, gave a low growl and got to her feet. That usually meant someone coming up the front steps. I hadn’t heard anyone, and I couldn’t now, but she growled again, the hair on her back rising a little as she went through the dining room toward the front door.

  4

  “Is somebody coming?” Molly asked quickly.

  “It’s rather late for visitors.”

  I looked at the clock on the desk. It was twenty minutes to twelve.

  “I’m going up,” she said. “If it’s anybody for me, I’m not here. Please, Grace. And you don’t know where I am.”

  She slipped off her shoes and disappeared. I could hear the step half-way up that always creaks, and her door close softly, as I
waited for the doorbell to ring. Sheila gave an impatient high-pitched bark and scratched at the door. It wasn’t like her at all, and in that otherwise completely silent house it was a little disturbing. The doorbell isn’t hard to find, and if it were there’s a knocker there.

  I went out into the hall and switched on the overhead light. I tried to tell myself it was probably someone not wanting to ring the bell at that time of night if I’d gone upstairs, and I knew no lights were visible from the street, with the old-fashioned solid wood shutters locked and barred in the dining room windows. I turned on the outside light, however, and reached out to take down the chain Molly had put in place when Randy had gone. As I touched it Sheila gave such a savage growl that I dropped it instantly.

  It may be absurd to endow a dog with an intuition of danger, but when you’re alone—except for a colored cook wrapped in primeval slumber downstairs—you come to depend on their acuter senses. Anyway, it would have taken more courage than I had just then to have opened that door. I switched off the hall light instead, slipped into the dining room, unbolted the shutter on the farthest window, and opened the flap enough to peer out.

  There wasn’t anybody on the front stoop at all, or anybody that I could see in the radius of the light reaching out under the trees.

  I closed the shutter and went back to the front door. Sheila was still sniffing and whining. Perhaps it was just a cat she didn’t like, I thought. I turned the bolt and opened the door. She shot out in front of me, growling. I looked quickly along the street. The red tail lights of a car going a little on the diagonal straightened and went on as she dashed down the steps, nose to the bricks, following a scent that brought her to an abrupt stop at an open place on the curb four houses down. She sniffed around and came back to it, and back to the door again. I watched her, completely bewildered, as she went back to the curb, and suddenly lifted her head and howled. It was that long low howl that some people think is a warning of death . . . reeking in a dog’s nostrils before mortals are aware of its chilling shadow lengthening across the doorway. I don’t believe that, but I shivered a little, thinking that Lilac might hear it, and remembering her agony when a picture fell, long ago, one evening just at dusk, and the next day two little boys and she and I began to carry on by ourselves in that same house.

  I also found myself glancing down the block and across the street at the yellow brick house where Colonel Primrose lives. Seven generations of John Primroses have been born and lived in that house, but fortunately only one of Sergeant Bucks. I don’t know where he was born, or if he was born at all. It’s hard to imagine he was ever a baby lisping at his mother’s knee. It’s easier to think of him as hacked full-grown out of a stone quarry. Still, it was always rather comforting to know they were both just across the way.

  Or it was until I remembered they weren’t there. They’d gone out of town on account of the heat. Or that’s what Sergeant Buck told Lilac, and the newspapers ostensibly confirmed it. It was the first time, however, I’d ever heard of Colonel Primrose announcing his holidays publicly, and since his job is that of a special and apparently unofficial investigator for various of the Intelligence branches, it’s always a little hard to tell. All I know is that he once gave me a telephone number I was to learn and destroy, so that if I ever needed him and he didn’t appear to be at home I could get him. I’ve never used it, but I thought of it now as I whistled for Sheila.

  She came reluctantly back, and I pulled her inside and closed the door, double-locking it and putting the chain up, to keep something dark and amorphous that Sheila still felt—and that I was beginning to feel—out of our lives if I could.

  I turned off the sitting room lights and went upstairs. Molly’s door was closed. I opened it quietly, so she could get whatever conceivable breath of air might possibly stir a little later. There was none just then. I opened the door from the front bedroom through the bath into her room, and looked in. She was lying on top of the turned-down muslin spread, fast asleep, the moonlight from the open windows over the garden streaming full on her. My heart felt cold for an instant. Then I realized how jittery I really was. It was the silver glow of the moon that made her look so strange and not of this earth. The light that glistened on her upturned face was from the tears that hadn’t dried as she’d cried herself to sleep. She was still fully dressed, one shoe on and the other half falling off the foot of the bed. Her bag was still unopened on the luggage rack in front of the fireplace.

  I turned away. She might try to be as cold-blooded as Courtney Durbin probably was, and as Cass Crane appeared to be . . . but it was going to take a lot of the now classical blood, sweat and tears.

  Something half waked me once, after I got to sleep. It sounded like a shoe dropping, and I remember thinking vaguely of Molly’s shoe on the edge of the bed, and that I should have taken it off and put it on the floor, before I turned over and went back to sleep to the monotonous whirr of the electric fan out in the hall. Then something waked me again, I don’t know how long after. I opened my eyes and lay there listening, unable to sort out the disturbed realities of the borderline worlds merging into each other. Then I sat up. The downstairs phone was ringing. The one on my bedside table I’d turned off, so I could sleep in the morning when it was cool. I reached out, picked it up and said “Hello,” knowing, some way, before I did, that it would be Cass Crane.

  “Grace?” a voice said.

  It wasn’t Cass. It was Randy Fleming.

  “Look, Grace. Is . . . Molly all right?”

  With the illuminated hands of the clock on the table standing at ten minutes past three, not even the overtone of acute anxiety evident across the wire kept me from a sharp feeling of irritation. I could be sympathetic enough with Randy’s concern for her, and think it was sweet, in the daytime. To be waked up by it in the middle of a filthy hot night, with no telling when I’d get back to sleep again, was something else.

  “She’s perfectly all right,” I said, trying not to sound as annoyed as I felt. “She’s fast asleep, and so was I. Now will you please go to bed, and don’t worry.”

  Then I said, “Have you heard anything from Cass?”

  I don’t know why I thought he might have, or why I asked it, except that I was wide awake and curious.

  “Yeah,” he said shortly. “In fact, I’ve seen him. Sorry I woke you. Good night.”

  His voice couldn’t have been more abrupt, nor could the phone zinging away where his voice had been. I put it down and sat there, hot, sticky and pretty mad. I knew if I turned on the light and tried to read I’d have a thousand bugs sifting in through the screen, so I kicked off the sheet and lay down again. After a few minutes I sat up, something sifting in through the screens of my own mind. Whether it was the anxiety in Randy’s voice, or a feeling I’d been too short with him, I don’t know. Anyway, I got up. The phone might have waked Molly, and she might have heard Cass’s name.

  I turned on the light and went out into the hall. There was no sound except Sheila’s tail thwacking against the floor down the hall when she heard me. I looked at Molly’s door. It was closed, so she probably hadn’t heard the phone at all. I started back to my room. The heat was so oppressive, however, that I changed my mind and started downstairs, where it would be a little cooler.

  Perhaps it was the fact that Sheila was sitting in front of the door, when she usually spends the night sprawled out on the hearth stones, that made me notice the chain had been moved . . . or it may have been that the light glinted on its polished links hanging down instead of looped up in the socket. I stopped half-way down the stairs, looked up at Molly’s door, went back up, opened it quietly and looked in.

  The bed was empty and she was gone, her bag still on the luggage racked in front of the fireplace.

  That, I thought, was that. A couple of hours of sleep had done its job, and she’d gone home to Cass. I realized then that that was what I’d been counting on. And I was more relieved than I’d thought I’d be. It’s always such a mess getti
ng mixed up in other people’s domestic quarrels. And Molly belonged with Cass. She must have been acutely aware of it, waking up and lying there alone, before she slipped out through the darkened streets and back to him.

  The air probably just seemed fresher and lighter as I went back to bed. It was certainly hot enough the next morning. I woke up with the sun streaming through the windows and Lilac’s heavy step plodding up the stairs. She wasn’t muttering darkly to herself, so we were headed for a peaceful day, I thought as I sat up and looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to eight. I turned to smile at her polished ebony face in the doorway; and my jaw dropped, but literally, as I stared blankly past her.

  Molly Crane was there in the hall. She was dressed in her blue nurse’s aide uniform, with her hair brushed up on the top of her head, the curling tendrils around her neck still wet from the shower. Her suntanned face was fresh and lineless, her lips bright red and smiling. Her amber eyes were a little pale, but it could so easily have been the heat that for a moment I wasn’t sure it hadn’t affected me myself.

  She laughed. “Don’t tell me you forgot I was here. I tried to be as quiet as I could.”

  I didn’t know what to say, under the circumstances. She obviously had no idea I knew she’d been out, and apparently had a definite reason for wanting me to think she hadn’t. It was very confusing. But she didn’t wait for me to answer.

  “I’ve got to be at the hospital by eight-thirty,” she said. “If . . . anyone should call me, will you tell them I’ll be back after lunch? If I may come back . . . do you not mind, really?”

  Lilac stopped closing the outside shutters. “No, child, Mis’ Grace she don’ mind. It’s company for her. She like company in the house.”

  As I didn’t need to say anything, with Lilac taking over, I just smiled.

  “Goodbye, then—I’ll see you,” Molly said. She went out, Lilac following her.

  I poured a cup of coffee, turned on the portable radio on the table for the eight o’clock local news, and glanced through the comic strips waiting for it to come on. When it did come there wasn’t much I hadn’t heard the evening before. I turned to the gossip column. The last paragraph stood out from the rest of it.