I Married A Dead Man (11 page)

               
She turned slowly and glanced at them one by one, as if at random. Mother Hazzard was deep in conversation at the far end of the room, looking up over her chair at someone. She hadn't heard. The flaxenhaired girl who had delivered the cautioning tap had her back to her; she might have heard and she might not But if she had, it had made no impression; she was not aware of her. Guy Ennis was holding a lighter to a cigarette. He had to click it twice to make it spark, and it had all his attention. He didn't look up at her when her glance strayed lightly past his face. The two girls with Bill, they hadn't heard, it was easy to see that They were oblivious of everything else but the bone of contention between them.

               
No one was looking at her. No one's eyes met hers.

               
Only Bill. His head was slightly down, and his forehead was querulously ridged, and he was gazing up from under his brows at her with a strange sort of inscrutability. Everything they were saying to him seemed to be going over his head. She couldn't tell if his thoughts were on her, or a thousand miles away. But his eyes, at least, were.

               
She dropped her own.

               
And even after she did, she knew that his were still on her none the less.

18

               
As they climbed the stairs together, after, when everyone had gone, Mother Hazzard suddenly tightened an arm about her waist, protectively.

               
"You were so brave about it," she said. "You did just the right thing; to pretend not to know what it was she was playing. Oh, but my dear, my heart went out to you, for a moment, when I saw you standing there. That look on your face. I wanted to run to you and put my arms around you. But I took my cue from you, I pretended not to notice anything either. She didn't mean anything by it, she's just a thoughtless little fool."

               
Patrice moved slowly up the stairs at her side, didn't answer.

               
"But at the sound of the very first notes," Mother Hazzard went on ruefully, "he seemed to be right back there in the room with all of us again. So present , you could almost see him in front of your eyes. The Barcarolle. His favorite song. He never sat down to a piano but what he played it. Whenever and wherever you heard that being played, you knew Hugh was about someplace."

               
"The Barcarolle," Patrice murmured almost inaudibly, as if speaking to herself. "His favorite song."

19

               
"--different now," Mother Hazzard was musing comfortably. "I was there once, as a girl, you know. Oh, many years ago. Tell me, has it changed much since those days?"

               
Suddenly she was looking directly at Patrice, in innocent exclusive inquiry.

               
"How can she answer that, Mother?" Father Hazzard cut in drily. "She wasn't there when you were, so how would she know what it was like then?"

               
"Oh, you know what I mean," Mother Hazzard retorted indulgently. "Don't be so hanged precise."

               
"I suppose it has," Patrice answered feebly, turning the handle of her cup a little further toward her, as if about to lift it, and then not lifting it after all.

               
"You and Hugh were married there, weren't you, dear?" was the next desultory remark.

               
Again Father Hazzard interrupted before she could answer, this time with catastrophic rebuttal. "They were married in London, I thought. Don't you remember that letter he sent us at the time? I can still recall it 'married here yesterday.' London letterhead."

               
"Paris," said Mother Hazzard firmly. "Wasn't it, dear? I still have it upstairs, I can get it and show you. It has a Paris postmark." Then she tossed her head at him arbitrarily. "Anyway, this is one question Patrice can answer for herself."

               
There was suddenly a sickening chasm yawning at her feet, where a moment before all had been security of footing, and she couldn't turn back, yet she didn't know how to get across.

               
She could feel their three pairs of eyes on her, Bill's were raised now too, waiting in trustful expectancy that in a moment, with the wrong answer, would change to something else.

               
"London," she said softly, touching the handle of her cup as if deriving some sort of mystic clairvoyance from it "But then we left immediately for Paris, on our honeymoon. I think what happened was, he began the letter in London, didn't have time to finish it, and then posted it from Paris."

               
"You see," said Mother Hazzard pertly, "I was partly right, anyhow."

               
"Now isn't that just like a woman," Father Hazzard marvelled to his son.

               
Bill's eyes had remained on Patrice. There was something almost akin to grudging admiration in them; or did she imagine that?

               
"Excuse me," she said stifledly, thrusting her chair back. "I think I hear the baby crying."

20

               
And then, a few weeks later, another pitfall. Or rather the same one, ever-present, ever lurking treacherously underfoot as she walked this path of her own choosing.

               
It had been raining, and it grew heavily misted out A rare occurrence for Caulfield. They were all there in the room with her and she stopped by the window a moment in passing to glance out.

               
"Heavens," she exclaimed incautiously, "I haven't seen everything look so blurry since I was a child in San Fran. We used to get those fogs th--"

               
In the reflection on the lighted pane she saw Mother Hazzard's head go up, and knew before she had even turned back to face them she had said the wrong thing. Trodden incautiously again, where there was no support.

               
"In San Francisco, dear?" Mother Hazzard's voice was guilessly puzzled. "But I thought you were raised in--Hugh wrote us you were originally from--" And then she didn't finish it, withholding the clue; no helpful second choice was forthcoming this time. Instead a flat question followed. "Is that where you were born, dear?"

               
"No," Patrice said distinctly, and knew what the next question was sure to be. A question she could not have answered at the moment.

               
Bill raised his head suddenly, turned it inquiringly toward the stairs. "I think I hear the youngster crying, Patrice."

               
"I'll go up and take a look," she said gratefully, and left the room.

               
He was in a soundless sleep when she got to him. He wasn't making a whimper that anyone could possibly have heard. She stood there by him with a look of thoughtful scrutiny on her face.

               
Had he really thought he heard the baby crying?

21

               
Then there was the day she was slowly sauntering along Congress Avenue, window-shopping. Congress Avenue was the main retail thoroughfare. Looking at this window-display, looking at that, not intending to buy anything, not needing to. But enjoying herself all the more in this untrammelled state. Enjoying the crowd of welldressed shoppers thronging the sunlit sidewalk all about her, the great majority of them women at that forenoon hour of the day. Enjoying the bustle, the spruce activity, they conveyed. Enjoying this carefree moment, this brief respite (an errand for Mother Hazzard, a promise to pick something up for her, was what had brought her downtown), all the more for knowing that it was a legitimate absence, not a dereliction, and that the baby was safe, well taken care of while she was gone. And that she'd enjoy returning to it all the more, after this short diversion.

               
It was simply a matter of taking the bus at the next stop ahead, instead of at the nearer one behind her, and strolling the difference between the two.

               
And then from somewhere behind her she heard her name called. She recognized the voice at the first syllable. Cheerful, sunny. Bill. She had her smile of greeting ready before she had even turned her head.

               
Two of his long, energetic strides and he was beside her.

               
"Hello there. I thought I recognized you."

               
They stopped for a minute, face to face.

               
"What are you doing out of the office?"

               
"I was on my way back just now. Had to go over and see a man. And you?"

               
"I came down to get Mother some imported English yarn she had waiting for her at Bloom's. Before they send it out, I can be there and back with it."

               
"I'll walk with you," he offered. "Good excuse to loaf. As far as the next corner anyhow."

               
"That's where I'm taking my bus anyway," she told him.

               
They turned and resumed their course, but at the snail's pace she had been maintaining by herself before now.

               
He crinkled his nose and squinted upward appreciatively. "It does a fellow good to get out in the sun once in awhile."

               
"Poor abused man. I'd like to have a penny for every time you're out of that office during hours."

               
He chuckled unabashedly. "Can I help it if Dad sends me? Of course, I always happen to get right in front of him when he's looking around for someone to do the legwork."

               
They stopped.

               
"Those're nice," she said appraisingly.

               
"Yes," he agreed. "But what are they?"

               
"You know darned well they're hats. Don't try to be so superior."

               
They went on, stopped again.

               
"Is this what they call window-shopping?"

               
"This is what they call window-shopping. As if you didn't know."

               
"It's fun. You don't get anywhere. But you see a lot."

               
"You may like it now, because it's a novelty. Wait 'll you're married and get a lot of it. You won't like it then."

               
The next window-display was an offering of fountain pens, a narrow little show-case not more than two or three yards in width.

               
She didn't offer to stop there. It was now he who did, halting her with him as a result.

               
"Wait a minute. That reminds me. I need a new pen. Will you come in with me a minute and help me pick one out?"

               
"I ought to be getting back," she said halfheartedly.

               
"It'll only take a minute. I'm a quick buyer."

               
"I don't know anything about pens," she demurred.

               
"I don't myself. That's just it. Two heads are better than one." He'd taken her lightly by the arm by now, to try to induce her. "Ah, come on. I'm the sort they sell anything to when I'm alone."

               
"I don't believe a word of it. You just want company," she laughed, but she went inside with him nevertheless.

               
He offered her a chair facing the counter. A case of pens was brought out and opened. They were discussed between him and the salesman, she taking no active part. Several were uncapped, filled at a waiting bottle of ink at hand on the counter, and tried out on a pad of scratch-paper, also at hand for that purpose.

               
She looked on, trying to show an interest she did not really feel.

               
Suddenly he said to her, "How do you like the way this writes?" and thrust one of them between her fingers and the block of paper under her hand, before she quite knew what had happened.

               
Incautiously, her mind on the proportions and weight of the barrel in her grasp, her attention fixed on what sort of a track the nib would leave, whether a broad bold one or a thin wiry one, she put it to the pad. Suddenly "Helen" stood there on the topmost leaf, almost as if produced by automatic writing. Or rather, in the fullest sense of the word, it was just that. She checked herself just in time to prevent the second name from flowing out of the pen. It was already on the preliminary upward stroke of a capital G, when she jerked it clear.