The dark fantastic (28 page)

"You're old enough to be looking for a wife. Will." After a few confidential chats Judith could talk to him as though she had his welfare at heart. "Those girls in Woodridge have served their purpose, but you don't want to be playing around all your life."

He grew very red and muttered something unintelligible, but she saw that the idea was not unpleasing to him.

"I think you should go to the next party, and if you don't like going alone why don't you ask Miss Ann to let you take Thorne?" Judith threw in this suggestion carelessly, expecting to meet with reluctance, if not actual rejection. To her surprise the idea was accepted with a promptness that startled her. Will said he would speak to his mother.

Ann Tomlinson, when approached, was likewise surprisingly co-operative. She seemed quite willing for Thorne to attend the neighborhood taffy pulls and sleigh rides with her younger son. And when Thorne, pleased and excited at the prospect of wearing her pretty dress wondered if Richard would approve, she was told to say nothing to Richard about it. Judith laughed to herself at the way the three of them, unwittingly and with conflicting purposes, conspired wth her to keep Richard in ignorance of what was going on.

Her health began to improve after that. Before long she was going out again with her husband. They were seen together at church on Sundays. They attended the midwinter lecture course in Woodridge. From time to time there were guests at Timberley, and no one was merrier than Judith. It would have seemed that the simple circumstance of young Will taking Thorne to a neighborhood party now and then was all that had been needed to restore her health and tranquillity. For Richard, when he learned of the parties, did not disapprove. He seemed only glad that Thorne was having fun like other young folks.

It was this outward semblance of peace, sanity, and good spirits which made the more shocking Judith's collapse when it came.

Since the night Otis Huse slept in the downstairs bedroom her mind had been teased mth. uncertainty as to whether he had made any discovery. During the autumn it was this desire to know if the doll was still under the floor of the closet and her lack of nerve to investigate which had made her ill. Now, fortified by her new feeling of security about Thorne, she determined to find out once and for all if the doll had been found.

She waited till an afternoon when Miss Ann had gone over to her daughter Jane's and Richard was in Woodridge. Will and Jesse Moffat were busy in the sugar orchard, and the children were at school. Judith was alone in the house except for Millie, whose presence in the kitchen was attested by the lusty strains of "O! Susanna" coming through the covered passage.

Judith went boldly to the downstairs bedroom and opened the door. Her nerves were as calm as though this were not the room in which she had seen bricks come through a window, only to disappear when they hit the floor.

The room was dusky with drawn blinds and cold with the chill of the fireless grate. She did not linger to look about her. She went straight to the closet door. As she passed the tall canopied bed she heard a sound like something whizzing through the air and the next moment felt a coil about her neck. She screamed, but her scream was strangled as the noose—or whatever it was—tightened, choking her until she lost consciousness. . . .

Cold air blowing across her face restored her. The outer door was open, and Richard was standing there. But the person bending over Judith, sponging her face with a wet towel, was Thorne. And on the floor beside Thorne was a jumping rope. She had been coming from school, she said, when she heard the scream and ran into the house through the dining room a few seconds before Richard entered by the outside door. He had heard his wife's scream as he rode up the lane.

Judith sat up, and as her strength returned words poured from her mouth, ugly venomous words, accusing Thorne of trying to kill her with a piece of rope. Richard paid no heed to her raving. He carried her upstairs to her room and dispatched Thorne for his mother. And when Will came in shortly after he was sent to Woodridge for the doctor.

Dr. Caxton was just sitting down to supper when Will rode up to his house. To the disgust of his elderly housekeeper, the doctor left his meal untasted (there would be a better one for him at Timberley) and went out to the stable where his horse stood, still saddled from the day's rounds. He wondered what in damnation was the matter with Richard's wife now. If it wasn't one pain it was another, and not a thing the matter with her (as he'd been telling Richard for years) that a baby wouldn't take care of. If you wanted to keep a woman healthy, keep her pregnant.

And then the doctor's aging memory clicked into place. He hadn't been telling Richard anything about this wife for vears. It was Judith—not Abigail—whom he was going to see.

Yet the feeling that he was repeating a timeworn procedure was still with him when he reached the house. As he puffed upstairs after Richard he said irritably, "Why'd you move her up here?" And when the answer came, ''Judith's room has always been up here," he felt all kinds of a fool. But when he sat down at the bedside he had a strange sense of having lived the scene before. The woman with the haggard eyes and restless hands plucking at the collar of her nightgown might have been Abigail, so familiar were the words which greeted him.

"I don't want a doctor. There's nothing the matter with me that a doctor can cure. Go away! I don't want anyone near me but Richard."

He asked, "How long has she been like this?"

"I found her in this state when I came home this afternoon."

"Had anything happened to upset her?"

"I'll tell you later."

He administered a dose of laudanum. Being unused to sedatives, the patient succumbed quickly to its soothing effect. Her mutterings ceased, her nervous twitchings quieted, her eyelids drooped. In a few minutes she was asleep.

Ann Tomlinson had come into the room. She offered to sit with her daughter-in-law while the two men went down and had their supper. How many times had Richard's mother performed this same service, when the woman in the bed had been Abigail instead of Judith.

Dr. Caxton determined to have a straight talk with Richard as soon as they were alone. But Will was likewise in the dining room, and Thorne was putting supper on the table for the three of them, so there was no opportunity to ask Richard what had happened to throw his wife into hysterics.

Thorne had eaten earlier, but at Richard's suggestion she slipped into Judith's chair and presided over the teapot with a quaint little air of importance, as though she felt her responsibilities as temporary mistress of the house. Richard, from the moment he sat down, relaxed noticeably. He did not speak of his wife's illness beyond asking the doctor if a good night's sleep wasn't the best medicine she could have. Being assured that it was, he accepted the steaming cup which Thorne handed him and began to talk of other things.

He talked about neighborhood matters, news of the town, books they had been reading, politics; he talked with a quiet zest, like a man who was at ease and feeling good. It occurred to the doctor that this was a strange way for a man to feel whose wife lay ill upstairs. It was as though he had been carrying a heavy load up a hill and had put it down for a moment to rest.

It came as a slight shock to Dr. Caxton, a little later, that Richard's curious relaxation stemmed from Thorne's presence behind the teapot. He could not have told how or why the idea presented itself, for Richard took no notice of her except to glance her way now and then, and Thorne did not join in the conversation, which was mostly man-talk. She busied herself with supplying the wants of three hungry males, and this she did as efficiently as Ann Tomlinson herself might have done. She refilled empty cups and replenished empty plates with a cheerful largess suggestive of a good housewife who likes to see her menfolk eat. If Thorne's hospitality lacked the polish which Judith had brought to the Tomlinson table,

it was somehow more in keeping with the farm atmosphere. Perhaps it was this absence of formahty which put Richard at his ease. Perhaps it was the knowledge that everything he did was correct in the eyes of the lady behind the teapot. If he violated all rules of etiquette by demanding maple syrup on his pie, Thorne not only refrained from censure but co-operated by supplying the syrup.

Suddenly the doctor was struck by a truth so simple it amazed him. All these years, when people had wondered at Richard's fondness for this child, they had missed entirely its significance. Thorne was probably the only person in the world with whom he was completely himself. A doctor might sit down to eat with these two every day for the next forty years and never once hear the word "nerves." For where a man and his wife know completion in each other there is no friction. Only Thorne, of course, was not Richard's wife. For a moment Dr. Caxton forgot her youth and thought irritably that she should have been.

The longer he watched them, the more he was struck with his unique discovery. Why hadn't Ann Tomlinson seen what to him was perfectly obvious: that this waif from a carnival was the only woman in the world who would ever be able to cope with the dreams, the inconsistencies, the lovable vagaries which were the sum and substance of her son Richard? Thorne would never require him to toe the mark of Abigail's dogmatism, nor fit into the mold of Judith's sophistication. Thorne would simply love him and let him alone.

Why hadn't Richard been able to see this and hold his patience for a little while? To an old man nearing seventy, two years was such a little while. If Richard hadn't made that damn-fool second marriage ...

So engrossed did the doctor become in his own speculations that it came as a second shock when young Will said to him, "Have you noticed how Thorne is growing up. Doc? I had the belle of the ball on my hands at Jennie Barclay's the other night." Great Scott! Will Tomlinson beauing the child? This would never do.

"How old are you, Thorne?" asked the doctor.

"Fourteen," said Richard promptly.

"Fifteen," corrected Thorne.

"You were ten when I saw you at the Bridgeton fair. Thorndyke's posters said so. That was four years ago."

"I had been ten on those posters for a long time."

"You think you are more than fourteen?" asked Dr. Caxton.

"Yes, sir. I'm sure I was at least twelve when I came here."

"That means you'll be sixteen this summer," said Will with a wink.

Richard's hand came down on the table with a force that rattled the dishes.

"She'll not be sixteen for another year, and I'll thank vou. Will, not to be putting ideas into her head. And you, Cricket, no fibbing about your age or I'll forbid you going to anv more parties."

Gone was the cozy peace of the supper table. Will pushed back his chair with maddening insouciance and had the impertinence to make deaf-and-dumb talk to Thorne as he left the room. Richard, black as a thundercloud, took his pipe to the chimney corner where he sulked in silence, Thorne alone seemed unperturbed by the brisk sortie. She pushed a chair to the hearth for the doctor, cleared the table, then took her place on a stool near Richard's feet. He looked down at her without speaking. Anger still rendered him inarticulate, but his brow cleared and he smoked in deep abstraction.

A tardy sense of professional duty reminded the doctor that he had a patient in the house.

"You were going to tell me about Judith," he said. "what happened to bring on this spell?"

Richard said to Thornc, "Isn't it time you were in bed?"

She looked at him with grave amusement. "Isn't it time you stopped treating me like a child?" To the doctor she explained, "Richard doesn't want to talk in front of me for fear of hurting my feelings. You see, Judith thinks I tried to strangle her."

The doctor said, "Great heavens!" and looked to Richard for confirmation.

"Judith had a bad scare this afternoon," said Richard. He related how they had found her and the strange tale Judith had told when she regained consciousness.

Thorne added, "I was the first person she saw when she opened her eyes. On the floor beside mc was a jumping rope."

The doctor had listened in silence to this point. Now he leaned forward, his rugged beak silhouetted against the firelight like a vigilant hawk's.

"Thorne, you're in a bad spot."

"I know it, Dr. Caxton." She was serious but calm. There was a womanly dignity in her tonight that was a far en' from the high-strung child whom Abigail had bullied. "Richard has only my word for it that I wasn't in the house when Judith screamed."

"Your word is all I need," said Richard, but the doctor waved him aside without taking his gaze from the child who this night, before his very eyes, had ceased to be a child.

"Judith hasn't complained of any disturbances around here for some time, has she, Thorne?"

"Not since the night she had that funny scare about the trundle bed,"

Richard, listening, felt a stab of relief that was near pain. She did not mention the ghostly hand which Lucius had seen at the window. That meant she had known nothing of it. That meant, to Richard, that she had not known of the doll hidden under the floor of the closet. She was innocent of everything, and he was freed from a dread that had gripped him ever since he learned of Otis Huse's discovery.

The doctor was saying to Thorne, "It might look to some people as though the witch that's been plaguing Judith had been quiet long enough. That she had to make Judith notice her again or be forgotten. Witchcs have to keep in the lime-light, don't they, Thorne?"

"I don't know anything about witches. I don't behevc in them."

"Then who do you think is frightening Richard's wife?"

"I don't know."

"You deny having anything to do with it yourself?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you swear to that on the Bible?"

Richard started angrily to protest. The doctor hushed him with a look and reached for a Testament on a near-by table.

Thorne laid her hand on the book and said, "I swear that I'm telling the truth. I've had nothing to do with any of the strange things which Judith has seen." She withdrew her hand and added childishly, "Except the magic tricks on Miss Ann's birthday."