Another Woman's House (6 page)

He had not really replied. But he would never reply to that question; he would never say “I believe she murdered him.”

That was because he was Richard; and then she saw that the road they had traveled was a circle, that they had come back to the exact point at which they had entered it. Richard Thorne being Richard Thorne, he would never say, “I believe my wife committed murder.” And he would never, as long as Alice lived, be able to withdraw in her terrible need the support of his name and his loyal relationship.

Perhaps she, Myra, could not let him do so.

She said, blindly choosing trite and inadequate words, “You cannot change your own sense of loyalty, of your own creed and code. It's bred in your bone; it's part of your body.”

He understood all the argument below it. He understood too that it was a fundamental argument in her own heart. His eyes deepened, searching her own. He said suddenly, “Myra, you
must
see this sensibly; you
must
be realistic and …”

“Oh, Richard, Richard!” She cried despairing, and put her head against his shoulder.

He would not yield. He would not take her in his arms. But she felt his acknowledgment, his gradual surrender. He said at last in a tired voice, “It's so silly, Myra. You and I—it isn't as if she were ill or an invalid. It isn't as if—really in our hearts we could ever hope for release. She's young and, in spite of her fragile look, she's extraordinarily healthy.”

“Don't …”

“I don't want her to die. I didn't mean that! But it's so horribly unfair, Myra.”

“We cannot change it.”

He didn't move; still did not so much as touch her.

“I don't want to have an affair with you. I want you for my wife.”

On the fringe of her thoughts she had considered that, desperately, perhaps, yet quite coolly and sensibly, too. It probably could be arranged; probably no one would know and, if they did know, nobody was likely to blame them too much. Even Aunt Cornelia who could not fail to see all those intangible things that link a man and a woman who are lovers, even she would not blame them.

No, it could be arranged. In a way they could share the life and the years that lay ahead of them. And it, too, was simply, flatly impossible. She knew it. Richard knew it.

She said, her head still against his shoulder, the quiet and stillness of the chill spring night all around them, “Is there no way, Richard? I mean—a new trial—an appeal … ?”

“Impossible. We always came up against the same three, cold, hard facts. I told you what those were a moment ago. She was alone in the house with him when he was shot and nobody could ever prove that anybody else was there. The slugs that killed him were fired by my gun and my gun was gone from the drawer of the table where it was kept and was never found. And, of course, the main, the clinching evidence was that Webb Manders said he saw her shoot him.”

“What do you think happened to the gun, Richard? What
could
have happened to it?”

“I don't know. Nobody ever knew; God knows they looked for it—tore the house apart. But the disappearance of the gun was our big argument. It saved her life. Otherwise she'd have got the death sentence.”

His voice was hard and dry. He'd lived with the thing, turning it over and over in his mind, twisting it around, seeking loopholes. He was silent for a moment. She knew his mind was groping back into that dark and ugly labyrinth of Alice's trial and conviction. He said at last, “I was right when I said there is no past. It's still here; it may hurt you sometimes. I'll try to prevent it. I may not always be able to. But there's the future, Myra. For you and me.”

So easy, so easy to say yes! Two lives instead of one; she and Richard on one side of the balance—Alice, frail and delicate and lovely, on the other. Alice's life was a living waste, in any case. It had been so since the night she had killed Jack Manders. There was nothing that Richard or any of them could do about that; so why not take the happiness that offered itself for her, for Richard?

He put his arms around her, hard and tight again, defiantly really, and she clung to him, allowing herself one moment out of time.

But the defiance admitted the truth.

“No.

“Why not? There's no reason …”

“Because you are you, Richard. If you were not I couldn't love you so much.”

“ ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more?' ” quoted Richard and laughed abruptly. And quite suddenly sobered and said flatly, “Well, all right then. This is to be all, is it, Myra? For all our lives? I can't come to see you, you know.”

“No.”

“We can't even meet in town, drive, have dinner together.”

A sense of recklessness caught her with swift argument. It was not possible, it was not right, to give up everything life promised. She cried, “We'll see each other. Sometimes …”

His arms tightened again around her. Over his shoulder she could see the evening star which was very bright now; a segment of sky was blue. In the far distance the peepers made a high shrill music. The scent of the spring night and of the sea lay all around them. She thought, this moment is mine. I can be sure of this.

Yet, it was farewell, too.

Richard lifted his head and looked at her slowly in the soft dusk and kissed her. The bright evening star and the tranquil darkening sky, the sound of the peepers and the scent of the spring night all drifted together and there was only the man who held her as if he would never let her go.

But he did let her go. And, as she stood there, holding to him, knowing that whatever he decided, whatever he said at that moment she would not have the will to resist, he said, “It's no good, Myra. I suppose I knew it from the beginning. There's not a chance for us. Where's the dog? Oh, yes, come on, Willie.” He whistled and the little dog scrambled into sight. Richard said slowly, “If we can't marry, we can't see each other. You should have a rich and full life, everything. Not in any sense a half life, a surreptitious, shoddy kind of thing. It's not good enough for you. I think …” he paused, studying the sandy path at his feet. Finally he went on, “I think if I asked you to, now, you'd undertake that kind of life. You're so good, Myra, and so generous. I think you'd take the secret, hidden kind of thing that would enable us to meet—at little quiet restaurants, hoping nobody we know would see us, a drive together along the country roads, hoping we'd not meet somebody who knew my car, who might catch a glimpse of you. There's Thorne—the man whose wife is in prison for life. Who's the woman with him? Myra Lane!' Everywhere we went, everything we did would be suddenly an evil sort of thing, distorted, not as we want it to be. You're not a worldly person. I don't think you realize what it would mean to both of us, but mainly to you. I've seen more of the world and of men and women than you have. You can't have that sort of life. You're too good for it. And I love you.”

“Do you mean I'm never to see you again?”

He said quietly, “Not like this. I ought not to have kept you down here so long. It's cold and it's late.” He slipped his hand under her arm again and turned her toward the house.

“But Richard …”

“You were right; I was wrong.”

They reached the path through the trees. How could this be the end of love? The end of Richard. The end of Myra.

Dried pine needles rustled under their feet along the path. A feathery branch touched her cheek like a ghostly hand. But everything was said. In that short time every argument had been advanced, every possible course explored.

She had to leave. Well, she'd known that from the beginning.

But suddenly, walking across the lawn now, with the lights of the house ahead of her, she thought: Richard loves me.

Nothing could take that from her. It was like the promise of a rock to cling to in a storm, a fire to warm her heart. If she never saw him again in her life, never touched his hand in greeting, never listened for the sound of his footsteps, she'd have that, always.

Richard had stopped. He caught her suddenly by the arm and pulled her around to face him. “Listen, Myra,” he said. “We've covered everything. We've argued against ourselves, we've talked and talked and none of it's any good. I suppose we had to talk and argue it out—if only to see how wrong we were.”

“Wrong?”

“Dead wrong,” said Richard. He laughed with a swift exultance and cried, “None of it is valid against you and me! There's just one thing that's really important. I'm going to marry you.”

He shook her a little, his face white against the night. “Do you understand? We're going to marry.”

His gaze was caught by something beyond her. He was staring up at the house. He cried, “All those lights! What the hell?” He broke off. He let her go and ran across the dark lawn. She followed. Willie scrambled after her. The house was ablaze with lights; they streamed out upon the terrace.

They reached the steps, Richard ahead. He was still ahead when he came to the French doors into the library and flung one of them open.

A woman was sitting in the ruby chair near the fire. She had tossed a fur coat on the table. She was smiling.

Her golden hair shone in the light. The fire crackled softly. She put back her head and said in a clear, high voice, “Darling, I've come back. I'll never leave you again.”

It was, of course, Alice.

I
F RICHARD MOVED OR
spoke Myra did not know it. She was vaguely aware of someone else in the room, too, a man who rose and came forward. She was vaguely aware of the fact, too, that he was speaking. She heard, or at least sensed, no words. Her whole consciousness was taken up with Alice. Alice's presence in that room. Her small face, her wistful, tired smile. Her fragile beauty.

She could not be there! It was unreal; it was a dream; it could not be true.

It was true.

There was the ruby-red chair in which Myra had sat so short a time ago. There were the papers and the mail Barton had placed on the table. The fire had been replenished and was burning brightly. She had an impulse to touch the table, touch something real and material—the fur coat that lay across the table was real, too; mink, in soft luxurious folds, tossed there by an accustomed hand. How had Alice had a mink coat in prison? Had it been stored somewhere? She had a sudden vision of Alice taking walks in a prison yard wrapped in mink. It was so sharply fantastic that it acted as a restorative. She roused from the first sense of incredulity. Alice had come home; Alice was sitting in the red chair that so set off her beauty; her fair head was dropping back wearily against it, her pansy brown eyes luminous and soft as if full of unshed tears. The man, the strange man in the room was talking. He was coming toward Richard, his hand out. Willie, pushing at her ankles, uttered a soft growl, and crept under a chair.

Richard still had not moved. The strange man, big and jovial in appearance, except for his shrewd and rather cold eyes, was smiling but looked nervous. Myra began to take in words. “… am sorry I could not have prepared you for it, Thorne. But it seemed the more merciful way for us to come as secretly and quickly as we could. Mrs. Thorne has suffered too much already from public pillory. I did stop as we came through the village and tried to phone to you but the man who answered said you were out. So we came on.” Richard's hand moved as if he had no awareness of it. The big man pumped it up and down.

Alice's voice was as high and sweet as a canary's. She said, “He means I'm free, Richard. He brought me here himself.”

Myra would not have said that she could have remembered Alice so accurately. It had been at least six years since she had seen her and then only briefly. But she did remember every curve of her fine, delicately featured face, her round white throat, her soft golden hair, drawn back now from her white low forehead to a large bun on the back of her neck. She wore somber black which set off the lovely curves of her figure against the red chair, and no lipstick. Her eyes looked enormous and there were shadows below them; her small soft white hands lay, palms up, helplessly along the arms of the chair; she was watching Richard.

The big man said quickly, “Webb Manders confessed to perjury this morning. His testimony against your wife was a lie and he has signed a confession to that effect. Consequently, legally, the basis for your wife's conviction was fraudulent. Thank God it lay within my power as Governor to free her, quickly and quietly. I cannot right a great and tragic injustice that was done; but I have done everything within my power to correct it.” He stopped and looked at Alice and said rather gently, “Perhaps you'd better take her upstairs, Thorne. She has been through an exhausting experience.”

“Yes,” said Alice. “Yes.”

Richard seemed still unable to move. The Governor said, “Take her, Thorne. I'll explain everything when you come down again. But first see to her. …”

Alice rose then, unsteadily, her small hands clinging now to the chair. She said, “My own home. My husband …” and held out her hands appealingly, like a child, looking up at Richard.

There was an instant of silence in the room.

Then Richard moving like an automaton went toward her. His broad shoulders blocked out the view of Alice. The Governor cleared his throat. But Alice did not put her arms up around Richard. He did not bend toward her. Myra wished to look away and could not. Alice slid her arm through Richard's and said in her high, sweet voice, unsteady now, as if near collapse, “Richard, I—I can't believe it. It seems like a miracle …”

The Governor cleared his throat again and said, “I don't want to suggest—I suppose the family doctor—that is, she's not ill, of course, but …”

“No, no,” said Alice. “I'll be all right. She moved and turned and Myra could see her now, leaning against Richard. Her small lovely face was very white. She said unsteadily, “I can't thank you, Governor. I can't tell you …”