The dark fantastic (30 page)

Richard began, "Judith, why did you put Thorne in the notion of going away to boarding school?" and without waiting for a reply, "Mother, did you know of these plans?"

"Why, yes, Richard. We've been working for three days getting her ready to go. I thought you knew."

"How could I know? No one told me. How do I know what you women are doing when I'm out of the house?" He looked sternly at his wife.

Judith met his gaze steadily. "I've seen very little of you, Richard, since you moved downstairs."

"You've seen me at mealtimes."

"There are always so many things under discussion then, trivial matters slip my mind."

"Do you call Thorne's leaving home a trivial matter?"

She dropped her eyes to the petticoat she was hemming. He turned again to his mother.

"Surely you. Mother, could have found an opportunity to tell me what was going on."

"Well, son, you were in Woodridge the day we talked it over."

"Who talked it over?"

"Judith and I--and Will."

"Will!" Richard reddened angrily. "What business is it of Will's?"

Miss Ann took off her spectacles, which she wore on the end of her nose so that she could see over them. What she was about to say troubled her; not for its import, but for the effect it would have upon her son. She knew that it would make him very angry, and that was what troubled her. For it was news which Richard should welcome if he had only Thorne's welfare at heart.

"Your brother Will," she said, and looked at Richard as though the two of them were alone, "is going to be Thorne's husband one of these days."

If a charge of powder had exploded at his feet he could not have been more stunned. He looked at his mother like a man out of whom all sense had been knocked.

Then he muttered, "What are you talking about? She's not old enough to."

"Not now. But Will is satisfied to wait. He's also willing for her to have a year at boarding school. It's what she needs to help her finish growing up. It will give her a polish—like Judith's."

Something within him cried, "I don't want her to have a polish like Judith's!" But he could not speak. He was stricken dumb.

His mother went on: "Thorne's age has always been uncertain. She says she will be sixteen her next birthday. But it doesn't matter. In her position, the earlier she marries, the better. My mother married at fifteen and was very happy." Miss Ann put her glasses back on her nose and picked up her work with a sigh of relief for having put a dreaded chore behind her.

Richard still stood like a man turned to stone. All this had been discussed and decided behind his back. They had done this to Thorne—his Cricket—as though it were something which did not concern him.

"But she's mine—she's always been mine—nobody else ever cared anything about her except me " He was stammering like a schoolboy in his pain.

"She's a woman, my son. She's not a stray kitten you brought home in your pocket from the fair. She has a woman's life to live."

That was the charge of powder that had exploded in his brain. Thorne—with a woman's life to live—and his brother Will. . .

"I'm the head of this house. Why didn't Will come to me about this business?"

"Because," said Ann Tomlinson, "I'm Will's mother and the nearest thing to a mother that Thorne possesses. Neither of them are of age."

"And you gave your consent. Mother, to anything as preposterous as her betrothal to young Will?"

"I see nothing preposterous," said Ann with dignity, "in any girl's betrothing herself to a Tomlinson. I was proud to do it. And both your wives, Richard, seemed glad of the opportunity."

Judith lifted her eyes from her work and smiled agreement with her mother-in-law. "If there's anything preposterous in this match, it is that a Tomlinson should be willing to take a wife who has no name except the one he will give her."

"Nay"—Miss Ann spoke quickly, before the gathering storm in Richard's eyes—"that makes no difference to Will. He loves Thorne for herself. And I've no doubt she'll make him a good wife—when she grows up a little."

"And what about her?" said Richard. "Has anyone considered her happiness?"

"Will is a hard-working boy. A much better farmer than you, my son. He'll always provide for her."

As if happiness were compounded of those ingredients!

"I mean, has Thorne been consulted about this?"

"Oh yes. That's why she was willing to go away to school."

A great light broke upon Richard. Here was the explanation of Thorne's desire to leave home. It had nothing to do with witch pranks. It was the urge to separate herself from young Will.

A tremendous lightening of his heart was followed by a surge of wrath against his brother for forcing his attentions on a lonely child. Now he understood the purpose behind Will's kindness in taking Thorne to all the candy pulls and neighborhood frolics this winter. He, Richard, in his dumb complacency, had never given it a thought. But who could tell what had gone on in the snug, close warmth of straw-filled sleighs and Thorne, poor child, afraid to say anything about it? In his rage Richard longed to lay hands upon his brother.

He heard his mother say, "There's been a lot of unkind talk about Thorne. But it will all stop, once she's the wife of a Tomlinson. That's what you've always wanted, isn't it, Richard?"

Oh God, yes! But not this way. . . .

He said aloud, thickly, "She's not going to boarding school. I just talked to her. She's changed her mind."

''That's what Will was hoping she'd do," said his mother.

He went into the south bedroom to wash. Since the night of Doc Baird's visit he had slept in the alcove and used the adjoining room for dressing. He was not afraid to sleep in the bed he had once shared with Abigail, but he preferred the one over the trundle. He could not have told why.

The water in the porcelain pitcher was cold, but he never felt the chill. He was stripped to the waist and vigorously scrubbing when Judith knocked at the door. She had brought him a kettle of warm water from the kitchen.

He paused in his ablutions and waited silently while she tempered the icy water in the bowl, then plunged his hands into the grateful warmth of the heated suds without even a word of thanks. He hoped she would leave the room.

But it seemed she had something to say.

"Don't you think, Richard, that you owe your mother an apology?"

There were times when the schoolteacher in Judith was still evident.

He waited to dry his face on the towel she handed him. Then he replied: "I said nothing disrespectful to Mother. I said what I thought about members of this family who have gone behind my back to make arrangements which they knew I would not approve."

"I suppose that includes me."

His silence indicated that if the shoe were the right size she was privileged to try it on.

"There was no reason," said Judith, "why anyone should consider your approval necessary."

"Except that I had already stated my objections to Thorne's going away to school."

"Oh no. You had stated your objections to her going to Kentucky."

Richard looked at his wife in helpless exasperation. The Machiavellian quality of her mind was almost frightening.

"Kentucky—boarding school—what's the difference? I made it plain I didn't want her leaving home."

"That's what I told your mother."

"When?"

"When I talked to her about this marriage to Will."

"Oh! It was you who broached the subject to Mother."

"Yes."

"No doubt you also broached it to my brother."

"No. He came to me about it. He asked me to speak to Miss Ann."

"And why should he have picked you as a go-between?"

"Because he knew I would be sympathetic. He was afraid he might have trouble with you—and your mother. He knew I would help him."

"Since when have you and Will been such friends?"

"We're not. It's just that our interests coincide. I've known for some time that Will was getting ideas about Thorne. And he knows nothing would please me better than to see her married."

"But why?" Richard's anger found vent in the nolent friction of the rough towel against his chest. "Why all this rush to marry off a child who has hardly outgrown her dolls.

Thorne doesn't love Will. She doesn't love anyone but "

He stopped short in his furious toweling with a startled look.

"But you, Richard. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?" Judith's voice was deadly cold. "Thorne doesn't love anyone but you, does she?"

He laid the towel on the washstand slowly and carefully, as though it were something which might break. He reached for his shirt and began putting it on, all without speaking a word.

"And you don't love anyone but Thorne, do you, Richard?"

"No." It seemed the most amazing circumstance of his life that he had never realized this simple truth before.

He buttoned his shirt and completed his toilet. Judith watched in silence as he combed his wet curly hair. There was nothing for either of them to say. The thing which had been between them all along, unacknowledged by the woman, unsuspected by the man, lay out in the open at last.

It was Richard who began to speak finally, as though striving to clarify for Judith something which only this moment had become clear to himself.

"I don't want you to misunderstand what I said just now'. About Thorne, I mean." There was touching earnestness in his voice, almost humble appeal. His anger had quite gone. "There's not a wicked thought or feeling in her heart, Judith. She's good and sweet. Her love for me is as pure as mine for my mother,"

"And is your feeling for her on the same high spiritual plane?" asked Judith bitterly.

Yesterday he would have answered without hesitation that it was. Now—since this business about his brother Will—he could answer nothing.

"How long have you felt this way about Thorne?"

How could he say? Always. Since that first day he saw her— at the fair. . . .

"Then Abigail was right when she said Thorne was the cause of her ill-health,"

"Judith—please " He looked at her imploringly, but

Judith went ruthlessly on: "It was really Thorne, then, who killed your first wife. If not by witchcraft, then by breaking her heart. It was Thorne, after all, who killed Abigail." She kept repeating this, as though there were some unction for herself in the thought.

"Why did you marry me, Richard? Why didn't you wait awhile and give your little peach time to mature? You needn't have waited long. She would have dropped in your hands at the first touch."

"Judith—don't talk like that! I tell you, I never thought of her that wav. She was a child—whom I loved as innocently as "

"As you loved your mother. I know. By the way, does she know?"

"Who—my mother?"

"No, stupid! The girl. Once you told her how you feel about her?"

He looked shocked and said. "No!" But almost instantly a curious look came into his eyes. Judith thought, "He doesn't have to tell her. She knows."

"Judith, you won't let this make any difference, will you?"

"Between you and me?"

He wasn't even thinking of that. That was all over anyway.

"In your attitude toward Thorne. She's innocent, Judith. She hasn't a thought that isn't a child's thought."

"I've seen her looking at you."

Suddenly Judith began to laugh softly, her whole body shaking with almost silent mirth.

"what are you laughing at, Judith?"

"At myself. What a fool I've been! It was for this that I planned and schemed and groveled and lied." There was something frightening in her strange, unseemly laughter. It mounted hysterically. "It was for this that I spent hour after hour in this sickening room with a whining invalid. It was for this that I "

She stopped as short as though a band had tightened about her throat, cutting off her breath. Her hands went to her neck, plucking at the velvet ribbon, but her body still shook with soundless mirth.

"Judith, stop it!"

Richard took her bv the shoulders and set her down in the low rocking chair. He did not like the look in her eyes. She had had that look a week ago, when it had been necessary to summon the doctor.

"Sit still while I get your smelling salts."

She looked at him mockingly. 'I'm not fainting, Richard. Not this time."

But he hurried away, alarmed and remorseful for what he had done.

Judith sat very still in the rocking chair. It was the same chair in which she had once sat by Abigail's bedside. She could almost see the emaciated figure propped up in bed, cutting out quilt pieces with a pair of sharp shears.

You dont believe me. You think I'm crazy. But you'll see. Someday.

The eerie voice was only a memory, but she could almost hear the clean sharp sound of the scissors as they cut through the pieces of silk.

She did hear it!

She sat up, tense, alert, listening.

The sound of scissors cutting briskly through fabric was quite distinct.

Cold seeped upward over Judith's body like the rising waters of an icy flood. This was the room in which she had seen the bricks fall. This was the room in which, only the week before, she herself had been seized in a weird attack.

She started to rise and leave the room.

She found she could not move from her chair.

Cold sweat poured from her body. The sound of scissors was very sharp and brisk now.

A voice called, "Miss Ann! Are you in there?" And Thorne appeared in the open hall door.

"Oh! I thought Miss Ann was in here." She seemed disconcerted at sight of Judith.

Judith looked at her in silence.

"What's the matter, Judith? Are you ill?"

"Stop it!" The words burst from Judith's stiff lips.

"Stop what?"

"The scissors."

"What scissors?"

"You know what scissors." Judith gripped the arms of her chair as though trying to rise. "Make them stop that noise."

Thorne stood very still, listening. "I don't hear anything."

To Judith, the sound of the scissors seemed amplified. She could hear them cut rapidly through a whole length of cloth. Then pause. Then start again. There was no one in sight but herself and Thorne. There were no scissors in sight at all.