The Unsuspected (17 page)

“This accident stuff is all right for publication,” he blurted, "but it wasn't any accident."

"What do you mean, Oliver?" Tyl put out her hand and touched his. She did feel sorry for him. There must be a way to let him know it.

"Because she must have eaten them! Eaten them!"

"Eaten what?"

Those pills. By the handful."

"The sleeping dope?"

"Yes, because, listen, Tyl, Doctor Madison knows damn well how she used to love to take a lot of junk. He fixed her up with some extra-mild ones. He told me so, when I worried about it. He knew she'd take too many, too often. He said the effect was mostly psy-

chological, anyhow. Tyl, for her to die, she must have eaten a whole bottle. So she must have wanted to die. Don't you see?"

"I can't believe—"

"You'd better believe it."

"Oliver, you didn't have any stronger pills in there, did you?'

"Never touch the junk. No. Nothing."

Mathilda shook her head. She could feel the cloud, that heavy depressing, shadowing bulk that seemed to exist in the back of he consciousness, ready to come down and swallow her up in despair She was afraid. She drank more coffee hastily.

"I can't stop going over that fight we had." Oliver stared at he with reddened eyes. "I can't stop."

"You mustn't do that," said Tyl. She, herself, felt that this was an unsupported statement. If he had asked why not, she couldn't have answered.

"I know," he said. "I know, but I can't stop. 'Burn tenderly.' What does that mean to you?"

"What does what mean?"

"'Burn tenderly.'"

"I don't know. I never heard such a thing."

"Wouldn't you guess it was love stuff? Wouldn't you think it came out of some lousy poem? Or some fancy speech in the movies? 'My heart burns tenderly."*

"Maybe" she said.

"Yeah."

"What's the matter? Why are you worrying about that?"

Oliver put his head down, and for once his forelock fell over his eyes without the self-conscious boyishness with which he had been known to let it fall. "Althea wouldn't talk that night. Night before last. Not at first. She just wouldn't talk to me at all. But then she

laughed and said that out loud. I don't think she meant to, but she said, 'Burn tenderly.' Tyl, I thought she and Francis must have been talking that way—you know, love stuff. Reading each other poems or something. I was mad. I told her what I thought. I said that proved it. She tried to tell me it was something some cook had said on the radio."

"Cook?"

"Yeah. Do you believe it?"

"I don't. . . know."

"I asked her how she'd happened to remember some dumb thing a cook said on the radio, especially at a time like that. She had a story. She said it was because she turned the radio up in the middle of a program. She'd turned it down on account of Grandy coming in, and then she turned it up, and the guy said those two words just out of a clear silence. It sounded funny. She said she'd been telling Francis about it"

“Telling Francis?"

"Do you believe that?"

“It sounds crazy."

"That's what I thought."

"Why should she be telling Francis what some cook said on the radio?"

"Yeah, that's what I wondered. I think-I still think- Oh, I don't know what I think. Suppose she did carry on with him. Tyl, I'm sorry." His eyes looked desperate. He was lost in this anguish of new honesty.

"That's all right," she said weakly. "Oliver, don't keep beating yourself. She couldn't have been enough involved with Francis to kill herself. Anyhow, Althea wouldn't have killed herself for any such kind of thing. Do you know what I mean?"

Oliver nodded. He seemed to relax a little. "I know," he said. “She was . . . flirtatious, I guess you'd say. She liked to get men interested. That was what interested her. And it would have gone on all our lives.”

"I expect it would," said Tyl sadly. It was true. Althea would never want what she had, but would always have watched with her silver eyes for her chance to step in and take what somebody else wanted. It was the act of taking away, the use of her power, that she had savored. Poor, restless, envious, uneasy Althea. Could she have seen herself and, with sudden clarity, known she must never grow old?

"Such a mess," groaned Oliver. "Everything gone wrong. From the minute we married. You got lost. Rosaleen did that . . . thing. Then Francis came, and she— He's very attractive."

"Yes," said Tyl.

"Now, this. I'm talking too much. I'm taking my troubles out on you. Tyl, you're swell. Sometimes I think I played a pretty dirty trick on you too. If I did, I hope you've forgiven me."

"Yes," she said with a shrinking feeling. "Don't talk about it."

"You know, Tyl, your money's a bad thing."

"I know," she whispered.

"I mean"—his eyes begged her to understand—"it works out a way you probably don't realize. Althea was so beautiful, and there was your money, and I kept thinking, 'Am I fooling myself? Is it the money I care for?'"

“I suppose you would," she said painfully.

"It's easy to fool yourself. I've been fooling myself all my life. I don't know how to stop, either "

"Oliver, don't."

"So when Grandy said Althea would never have anything but love to make her happy—"

"Grandy?"

"You see, I didn't notice what was going on. I guess I just couldn't believe that Althea would—well, get interested in me that way. And of course, I didn't know the way you felt, either."

"The way I felt? What way, Oliver?"

"Oh, I mean the way it was. I'm the old-timer around here. You could be sure of me. I mean, you had to be so careful some ordinary fortune hunter didn't try to play up to you. Grandy told me you had a dread of that."

Mathilda hung on to the edge of the table. The cloud was coming down. It was going to get her. She felt sick with fear.

"He cleared that up," Oliver said. "He explained how your love for me was a gentle, friendly feeling, because you felt sure of me on that score. Not real love."

She thought she'd faint. She fought against it.

Tyl-"

She managed to murmur something. "Everything's been awful this morning. I didn't sleep well."
But I did,
she thought.
I slept too hard and too long.
 

"It's been awful. I know." Oliver brooded. "Dear old Grandy, of course, wanted us all to be happy. He was right, wasn't he, about you? I asked you right out that day-you made a wisecrack. I thought—I mean—"

"Don't stammer," she said sharply. "Grandy's always right. He knows me better than I know myself, almost."

She thought,
But I mustn't ever tell Grandy how wrong he was or what he did to me. It would break his heart if he knew. Besides, it's all over now, and it doesn't matter. He must have known it wouldn't last. Oh, Grandy must have known. And if I hadn't been so proud
 

and wanted to run away and hide everything, he'd have drawn out the sting long ago. I teas a fool. I should have trusted him.
She beat back her depression. She beat back fear.

Then she remembered the strange talk last night with Francis, about the will. The taste of fear rose in her throat. She thought,
What's the matter with me?
 

She left Oliver and went toward the living room.

"Don't look like that!' Tyl cried. "Don't!" Jane was in there, crouching against the wall by the study door, like an animal stiff with fear. Tyl's hands went up to her eyes. She thought,
No, I can't stand it.
 

“I'm awfully sorry," Jane said, straightening. "I don't know what's he matter with me."

“I'm sorry too," said Mathilda. "I don't know why I . . . screamed it you. I guess it's just nerves." She smiled faintly.

“I guess it's just nerves," Jane agreed. She smiled faintly back.

Tyl thought, watching Jane walk away, I need another girl to talk to. It didn't strike her that this was the first time Grandy hadn't seemed better than another girl to talk to.

Chapter Twenty-three

There was the funeral to face that afternoon. They made themselves sandwiches for lunch and snatched them in the kitchen, it was a queer, unsettled kind of meal, as if they were all just marking time, waiting time out until it should go by and bury Althea and release them to normal processes of grief and adjustment.

Francis wasn't there. The odd thing was that no one mentioned him. Grandy said nothing. Oliver was bound up in his inner struggle and seemed not to notice. It was not Jane's place, perhaps, to say anything about a missing guest But Mathilda kept expecting him or at least expecting someone to say a word that would explain where he was, where he had gone, for how long. She did not ask any questions herself.

When they set out in the chauffeured car lent by a friend, then were the four of them—Grandy, Oliver, Jane and Mathilda. The four of them got in and settled themselves as if no one were missing. Francis wasn't there.

Mathilda thought perhaps he would meet them at the chapel. He would be among the others and he would come back with them when it was all over. Nobody asked any questions. It was a little strange that Grandy seemed not to have noticed at all. Mathilda's

so-called husband was not where he ought to have been, even if he were only pretending. Not there, not by her side. Not there, as he had been yesterday. People would wonder.

Jane was quiet as a mouse. Jane didn't ask. Oliver didn't ask. Mathilda, herself, although the question was beginning to beat hard in her mind, didn't venture to ask. It would have been queer if she were the one to ask. She thought if she waited surely his absence would be explained. If she just waited.

The little chapel downtown in the small city was thronged with friends, the whole picturesque lot of them. Tyl sat beside Grandy and modeled herself after him in frozen calm.
Be a lady. Never betray an emotion.
 

The ceremony was only an ordeal. She thought, if only Francis had come. If only he were on her other side, where he ought to be. But that wasn't true. He had no place—no real place and no real obligation. He only pretended. Oh, but why wasn't he there, pretending, now? She counted the scallops in the frieze. This was not the time to feel what you really felt about Althea, or remember her as she was, or try to understand her life and her death.
Don't cry. Count the folds in the curtains. One, two, three, four.
 

When it was over, some few friends came back with them and there was tea, Francis wasn't there.

When people had thinned out, drifted off, finally gone, Oliver at last asked the question, "Say, where is Francis? Where's he been? He wasn't there at the chapel, was he?" Oliver's face turned to Mathilda for the answer.

Like throwing a ball,
Mathilda thought.
Don't they know!
 

"When he left us this morning, I believe he said he was going downtown." Grandy was mildly speculative. "Didn't he, Jane?"

Jane said, "Yes," faintly. "Yes, he did, Mr. Grandison."

"That is strange. . . . Tyl, do you know where Francis is?"

The ball had come back to her. "I don't know where he is" she said stiffly. “I don't know a thing about him. I never did. It's about time all of you knew lie isn't my husband."

Jane knew already that Francis was a fraud. That could be seen in the steadiness of her eyes and heard in the murmur she made, which was only polite.

But Oliver was shocked right out of his chair. Mathilda had to tell him the details, and he wanted to hash them over and exclaim and wonder and go around and around over the puzzle of Francis. At the same time, she thought she could see a kind of inner gleam, a repressed sparkle in his eyes when he looked at her. Tyl felt herself getting angry. She answered him in a series of grudging short phrases. She didn't want Oliver's gossipy rehash. She didn't want to hear Oliver's ideas of why people behaved as they did. She didn't want to hear Oliver wondering what made Francis tick. She felt he wouldn't know.

She was sick and ashamed of the emotional background to Francis' story. She couldn't tell them that, of course. How she'd been in such a weeping, wailing, brokenhearted, upset state over Oliver. But without that part the whole story sounded trivial and cold. Here was a man who claimed she had married him. Why had she? Presumably because she had wanted to. And then she forgot. No background of emotional distress to explain how it all might have happened. Her upset and her silly baby thoughts of revenge. Ridiculously, she found herself defending Francis. Of course, it was a lie, but it had been a good lie.

"You don't understand," she cried.

"My God, do you?" cried Oliver, and she was too angry to answer.

Jane said perhaps he'd run away. She said it looking at Grandy as if they two had secrets about Francis.

Mathilda said in anger, Tm going to bed." How had she got herself into such a temper?

Halfway up the stairs, a ring at the front door stopped her and sent her heart leaping. It was only someone to see Grandy. Might as well go up. But that voice? She stopped and looked down again. All she could see was the top of the man's red head. Francis had dark hair, not quite black. Francis hadn't come back at all; hadn't been seen all day.