The dark fantastic (36 page)

Like an overtone to this ecstasy was the rise and fall of Richard's voice beyond the bed curtains.

Then gradually this sweet delirium merged into a deep uneasiness. She could not have told when the change began; she had no prescience of its coming until suddenly it was there: that old horror which she had had so long and lost for a time, the consciousness of Something beside her. It was only an awareness, at first, of an inimical presence. But strive as she would, she could not shake off the thought or the image of her fear. She recognized it at last for what it was: Ahigail.

She had always known that someday she must have it out with Abigail. But for her to come now, when victory was within sight. To creep into her very bed and lie like this beside her, pretending that they two were sisters in defeat; that they had striven for the same prize and lost to the same opponent; that henceforth they must sleep forever side by side, the wives whom Richard Tomlinson had not loved. It was monstrous! Had the woman no sense, no shame, no delicacy, to be commiserating thus with a triumphant rival? Could she not see that Judith had won; that she had secured for herself everything which had escaped her predecessor? Then why must she pretend this loathsome sympathy and twine her emaciated arms round Judith's neck in suffocating compassion—closer, closer, tighter the embrace—until

God in heaven! It was no embrace—it was murder; the thin clutch about her throat was not a skinny arm—it was a band of velvet—twisting, tighter, tighter, tighter

''Richard!" she shrieked, and knew to her horror that she made no sound.

But the voices still came from beyond the curtains. She rose on her pillow to listen. She was not alone. They would not let her die like this. She would be able to scream when she had torn this band from her throat. Richard would come in a moment and waken her from this nightmare. . . .

And then she fell back on the pillows again as—incredible!—the band about her throat tightened, squeezing out her last breath.

In the chill dark hour before dawn the doctor roused from fitful slumber in his chair and went to his patient's bedside to see how she was resting. He found, to his shocked amazement, that she was dead. Death was due, apparently, to strangulation. The collar of her nightgown was ripped apart. Her throat was scratched as though nails had clawed it. Her face was the face of a sleeper in the grip of a terrible dream. But she was cold and still and lifeless.

He summoned Richard and Ann Tomlinson, but there was nothing to be done.

"I can't understand it." He repeated the words, be-wilderedly, over and over, "We sat here all night long. We never heard a sound, I supposed she was sleeping, so I never disturbed her "

Miss Ann said, "Were you awake all night?"

Both men admitted to dozing off shortly before daylight. They had talked for most of the night, Richard explained. They had talked to keep from going to sleep. If Juditli had called or made the slightest sound, he was sure they would have heard her.

The troubled old doctor said, "It must have been that the throat ailment she complained of was more serious than I realized—though damned if I could find anything organic. Maybe I'm getting too old to practice medicine. . , ."

What Richard's thoughts were, none present could have guessed. But a silent pressure of his hand exonerated his old friend from all blame.

They buried Judith one week from the day the big crowd gathered at Timberley. She was laid to rest beside Abigail, in the family burial ground between the poplars. People talked of it discreetly as they turned their faces homeward from attending the funeral. For the second time in two years Richard Tomlinson had stood by the newly made grave of a wife.

"Poor man! He's had enough to break him. No wonder he's leaving Timberley."

"Is he really going to California?"

"Starts tomorrow morning, I understand."

"Well, he always was a restless fellow. Never settled like his brother Will. Can't blame him, though, for wanting to get away. Hard on a man, burying two wives so close together."

FINALE

As the first pale promise of sunrise touched the waters of Little Raccoon, Richard rode his black horse down the lane and out through the grove to the turnpike. When he reached the rise of land he paused and looked back at the house where he was born. He could not see the faces of those whom he was leaving, but he knew that his mother's hair would be grayer, his children taller, ere he saw them again. He lifted his hat and waved—and said a prayer.

Then he turned his horse's head due west. Before him stretched a good rock road. Beyond that, miles of wilderness. And far ahead, by eight days' journey, a covered wagon. He did not know the route it had taken. He did not know the name of its occupants. He only knew that somewhere, someday, he would find Thorne, though he had nothing to follow except a ludicrous banner and a foolish song, slightly revised:

"Oh Susanna, oh, don't you cry for me, I'm goin' to California, my true love for to see...."