The dark fantastic (19 page)

"You know, Judith, I believe you're afraid of Abigail."

Her face went so white that had he not been intent on his own thought he might have been alarmed.

"What do you mean—afraid?"

"I think you're afraid I have tender memories. Well, you needn't be. I never loved Abigail. She wouldn't let me."

Rehef made Judith suddenly bold. She asked the question she had never dared ask before.

"Do you love me, Richard?"

His answer was appallingly frank. "I don't know."

She wished sickeningly that she had remained in ignorance.

''Don't know!" she spoke lightly. "Surely you know how you feel."

"I feel slightly drunk most of the time." He smiled. "And so far I've no desire to sober up."

He put his hands on the arms of her chair, and she raised her face to his. His mouth on hers was a lover's mouth. And with that she had to be content.

She watched him that night with the children. The fireside reading, which had been such a delightful feature of the previous winter, had been replaced by home tutoring in schoolwork. Judith herself, to her own chagrin, had brought this change to pass.

"I don't think, dear, that Thorne should be permitted to sit with us in the evenings until she has prepared her lessons for next day." It was during one of their bedtime chats, following an evening when Thorne had embarrassed the reading circle by asking for a definition of the word "platonic." "She should be studying her schoolbooks," said Judith, "instead of listening to you read aloud."

"I didn't know she had to study at home." Richard looked concerned. Judith pursued her advantage—a little too far.

"Arithmetic is difficult for her. I know; I taught her last year. I had to stretch a point to give her a passing grade. If she doesn't study at home this winter she'll never get through partial payments. You wouldn't like to see her fail, would you?"

Richard was alarmed. He questioned Thorne, who frankly admitted that partial payments were too much for her. Mr. Carpenter gave such long assignments that only the smartest boys in class could cope with them. She had given up trying to keep abreast of the others.

Richard promptly announced that the evening reading would be postponed until Thorne's problems were disposed of.

''That's unfair to the other children," Judith pointed out. "Ricky and Rodgie have to go to bed early. Let Thorne take her work into the dining room. There's a fire in there. She can study as late as need be and no one will disturb her."

But Richard had a better plan. "I'll help her with the problems. Then we'll get through in time for all of us to enjoy the reading together."

They worked every evening after that, Richard and Thorne at the dining-room table. The little boys, not to be left out of anything, brought primers and slates and joined the class in home instruction. And because Richard had that rare quality of inciting general interest in whatever he was doing, the lessons in the dining room soon became the focus of family attention. They usually ended in a hilarious romp about the time Jesse Moffat appeared with the bedtime basket of apples.

On the evening in question Thorne had been particularly cloudy on the subject of decimals. Stupid, Judith would have called her. But Richard's patience seemed inexhaustible. Over and over he explained, but every time the troublesome point came up in the wrong place. Thorne's face grew pale with weariness and strain and finally she burst into tears.

"Oh, Richard, I just can't learn arithmetic. You're wasting your time. Let me stay home from school and help Millie."

If there was one thing calculated to arouse him, it was the mere suggestion of Thorne occupying the position of a servant.

"Cricket! How can you say such a thing? You don't want to quit school like that silly Nancy Turner. What's come over you tonight?"

She could have told him that Judith's critical presence in the room was no stabilizer. But she answered nothing;

only sat silent, while her tears sponged the errors from her slate.

Richard put his arm around her comfortingly. "You're tired, dear. You should be in bed. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll let the lessons go tonight, and tomorrow morning you and I will get up an hour early and tackle them while we're fresh. How's that?"

"Oh, for goodness sake, Richard, stop babying her." Judith's annoyance burst from her at last. Thorne slipped quickly from under his arm and went upstairs.

In the morning she arose before daylight and went doggedly at her books again, but Richard did not join her. Judith saw to it that he overslept.

He was full of apologies at breakfast. Thorne did not reproach him. She had surprisingly got through the bothersome problem by her own effort. And as she walked to school that morning with Ricky and Rodgie she took herself sternly to task. Where had she got the idea that she had a right to be happy all her life? She had had last summer, hadn't she? That was more than some people ever had.

"Who're you talking to, Thorne?" asked Ricky.

Rodgie said, "You're not mad at me, are you?"

She laughed at their startled young faces and offered to race them to the horse steps.

CHAPTER 16

Thorne was at last reconciled to the passing of summer. Not by anything that had happened, but by the simple change of season that told her it was gone. There had been frost on the ground for a month now, and one or

two light snows had fallen. The corn was gathered, the hogs were butchered, the potatoes were dug. In the kitchen houseflies dropped dead from the ceiling and ice crusted the basins in the early mornings. The children had put on their long underwear, and shoes and stockings once more appeared in Timberley schoolhouse. The spicy sweetness of baking pumpkin was in the air, and the big turkey that had strutted so arrogantly all fall was meekly roasting in Millie's huge oven.

Then without warning, the day before Thanksgiving, she wakened in a sweat under a pile of blankets and dashed to the window to find the sky a warm summer blue. Cows trotted friskily down the lane as though it were spring, bells tintinnabulating. The creak of a pump handle, the brisk clucking argument of hens, the neigh of a mule in the pasture were again the sounds of summer. For a moment time flowed backward. She was racing to get dressed and out to the woods to gather berries for Richard's breakfast. Nothing that was had ever been. She had dreamed the last three months.

Then recollection stabbed her. This was only Indian summer, that sly deceiver that came every year to taunt you with false promises of spring long after spring was dead.

But the poignant joy of her awakening was with her all day. Nothing seemed quite real. She moved in a dream as unsubstantial as the smoky haze that softened the bare bleakness of fields and woods so that the loss of their verdure was forgotten. But underneath this ecstasy of unreality was a strange sense of foreboding.

The entire Tomlinson clan gathered at Timberley for Thanksgiving. Because of the extra company, Thorne slept downstairs in the trundle bed. She did not rest very well because Cousin Lutie, in the alcove, snored all night. Throughout the wakeful hours Thorne heard strange noises all over the house. In the room adjoining, the sound of someone moving about was so disturbing that once she cried out.

''Who slept in the south bedroom?" she asked at breakfast. "I heard somebody moving around in there in the middle of the night."

The visiting Tomlinsons exchanged shocked glances with the members of the household. It seemed that no one had slept in the downstairs bedroom. There had, in fact, been a slight argument over the matter, with both Turners and Mitchells declining to occupy the room in which their sister-in-law had died.

''You must have been dreaming, child," said Miss Ann, and there the whole thing would have dropped had not Judith interposed. She felt that Thorne should be made to retract her false statement.

Richard immediately took exception to his wife's remark.

"Thorne is not well. She's a bundle of nerves, and no wonder. She has no regular place to sleep. Whenever there's company and somebody has to be inconvenienced, it's Thorne who's made to sleep downstairs in a bed that's too short for her."

This was a direct thrust at Judith for her refusal to vacate the bird's-eye-maple room. No more was said. Richard opened the Bible for morning prayers.

He began reading at the fifteenth chapter of Luke, the eighth verse:

" 'Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?' "

Something dropped from the big limp book in Richard's hands and rolled briskly across the table. Everyone heard the metallic clink as it struck the butter dish and caught the gleam of silver. Every eye saw it lying bright and shining on the tablecloth. It was a fifty-cent piece.

For a breathless moment there was not a sound. Then there came a surprised gasp from little Rodgie: "Oh! that's one of Mami's silver pieces that she kept in her purse."

Millie, always present at morning prayers, groaned, "Oh Lawdy! That's what she was lookin' for last night," and rolled her eyes fearfully.

There was general commotion then. Children cried and adults talked excitedly. Even Richard changed color, and his wife was seized with a fit of choking—or was it laughter? It was some time before order was restored to the breakfast table.

Richard put the money in his pocket and told the children to finish their meal.

"This money didn't come from your mother's purse," he explained to his sons. "The chest is locked and I have the key in my pocket." And that was the end of the incident for the time being. .

But the following day Miss Ann decided to take advantage of the warm spell and ordered the chicken house cleaned. The oldest Schook boy was hired to help Jesse Moffat. It being Saturday, the children all trooped out to watch them work. The Turner boys, who were finishing the holiday week at Grandmother's, organized a game of Indian, with the log hen house for a fort. It was while scaling this bastion that Jimmie Turner made a discovery.

"Look what I found!" he cried. A pile of photographs had been tossed on top of the hen house. They were pictures of Ricky's and Rodgie's dead mother.

While they were exclaiming over their find, Peter Schook, within the house, called to Jesse Moffat. "Look here, will you? See what I found under these nests."

The children ran into the chicken house to join the two hired hands in as weird a treasure hunt as could be imagined. Photographs were found in all sorts of places: hidden under piles of straw, flung far back of the roosts, as though someone had been hastily bent on putting them out of sight. Tintypes, daguerreotypes, and some of a later school of photography mounted on cardboard, all were likenesses of Abigail and Abigail's relatives. All had reposed, until a few weeks ago, in the album on the front-room table.

"Ooooh! Wait till Father finds who did this!" said Ricky. Someone was going to catch it. Youthful faces paled with pleasurable excitement.

All but Thorne's. Thorne, who had been sitting on the fence with Nancy Turner, watching the game of Indian, had a premonition that she was going to be charged with this mischief.

As the dinner bell was ringing by this time, Jesse Moffat and the Schook boy dropped their work and went up to the house, the children at their heels like excited terriers.

"Look what we found in the hen house," said Jesse, and laid the photographs in front of Richard.

"Who did this?" he demanded sternly.

"We don't know," the children chorused loudly.

Judith came into the room at this moment. "What is it?" she asked.

"Here are the pictures I put away in the chest," said Richard. "Jesse found them out in the hen house."

Judith regarded the photographs without comment.

"Are you sure you locked the chest?" asked Miss Ann.

They went immediately to the south room and examined the chest. It was locked. On being opened, its contents appeared to be intact. But the album was empty. And the half dollar was missing from the purse.

Ann Tomlinson said, "Someone stole your key, Richard, and put it back later."

"How could they? The ring is never out of my pocket."

Judith said, very innocently, "Spiriting a key from your pocket, darling, would require a sleight-of-hand performance."

Richard's face flushed ominously. "Whom are you accusing, Judith?"

"No one, dear. I was merely making a joke."

Thorne sat down on a stool in the corner. They were back in the dining room now. It seemed to her that she had lived all this before! She had only to close her eyes and see, not Judith's firm ripe contours, but an emaciated figure in a challis wrapper screaming, "Now do you believe she's a witch!"

Judith was not screaming. She was smiling sweetly, but she had caused every eye to turn suspiciously on Thorne.

"Why not put a direct question to everyone?" she suggested to her husband.

Ann Tomlinson promptly added, "Now is the time to do it, son, while we're all gathered for dinner."

Richard, thus coerced, deliberately began with his own children.

"Ricky, what do you know about this?"

"Nothing, Father, except finding the pictures."

"Rodgie, have you been playing games with these photographs?"

"No, sir."

To Nancy, Jimmie, and Frank Turner, he put the same question and received the same answer. Even his brother Will was not passed by.

"Do you know anything about this. Will?"

Will said, "I didn't even know the pictures had been put in the chest," and gave his brother a sly grin, as though he guessed the reason for their removal.

"Jesse, you're usually the cutup around here. Is this your idea of a joke?"

On and on went the questioning. It sounded a little absurd now to everyone. It sounded absurd to Thorne, sitting wretchedly alone on her hassock, because of course no one believed these people guilty.

But Richard doggedly pursued his inquiry. "Peter, how about you?"

"As God is my judge, Mr. Richard, I never saw them pictures before."