Tomorrow Is Forever (22 page)

They got home. Kessler said to her, “Don't stay up to entertain me, Mrs. Herlong. I'll wait in the garden, by the pool.”

Elizabeth said good night, and went upstairs while Spratt drove over to the Sterns'. In her room she looked at herself in the mirror. Her face looked back at her, strangely ordinary. She had to speak to him now. It might be more sensible to wait till tomorrow, to be alone first and do some thinking. She could go to bed, and when Spratt came in she could pretend to be asleep; he would stop by her room, glance in a moment, and tiptoe to his own without disturbing her. That might be better. But she could not wait. That man in the garden was Arthur and she had to tell him she knew it.

She went downstairs through the quiet house, out of the back door into the garden. Kessler was there, but apparently he did not hear her footsteps on the grass.

He was sitting with his back to her, relaxed comfortably in a deck-chair by the pool, where a moon in its first quarter threw a faint rippling trail of light. The garden was cool and full of fragrance. Elizabeth halted a few feet behind him.

“Arthur!” she exclaimed sharply.
“Arthur!”

Did he give a start? There was not light enough for her to tell; besides, the back of his chair was between them. But he heard her, and turned. His hand sought his cane and he got slowly to his feet.

It seemed to her that it took him a long time to speak, though when she remembered the scene later she thought it might have seemed so because she was too distraught to have a sense of time. He only said,

“Were you looking for someone, Mrs. Herlong?”

For an instant she could not answer. That voice of his—that she could have heard it so often and not have known!

When she did not answer, he said, “There is no one but me in the garden.”

Elizabeth came toward him, and walked around to the edge of the pool so she could face his chair.

“Stop this nonsense,” she exclaimed. “I'm looking for you and you know I am. Arthur—why did you lie to me? Why didn't you come back before?”

She was looking at his face, but she could not see its expression. Even the faint moonlight came from behind him. Again it seemed to her it took him a long time to answer.

“Mrs. Herlong,” he said, “you are making a puzzling mistake. I don't know what you are talking about.”

“You don't know!” she repeated. “Of course you know. Stop this, won't you?”

“Stop what?”

It might have been her fancy, or it might have been agitation on his part, or merely his German accent, but his words sounded so thick she could barely understand them.

“I didn't know you before,” she exclaimed. “All of a sudden tonight I knew. Arthur, please,
please
stop it!”

He stood like a dark shadow against the stars, his shoulders bent as he leaned heavily on his cane. That figure as she saw it was not like Arthur, who had been erect as an Indian. A vague shadow of doubt flitted across her mind, but it was gone as quickly as it had come. No, she was right, this man was Arthur.

“And please sit down,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Stop being so exasperatingly polite, I'll sit down if you want me to.” She jerked up another deck-chair and dropped into it, twisting her hands in her lap. He sat down too. Now she could hardly see him at all.

“Mrs. Herlong—” he began, but she interrupted him.

“Why don't you call me Elizabeth? You know me well enough!” She began to laugh, and checked herself. “Don't tell me I'm under a strain from Dick's going away, or that I've had too much to drink. They're both true, but they don't matter right now. Maybe it took that to stir up all the old memories that suddenly tonight showed me who you were. So stop this idiotic pretense, can't you?”

Elizabeth did not know it, but her own talking had given him time to get control of his emotions. Kessler was thinking now that all the time he had been assuring himself that she would not recognize him, he must have been unconsciously expecting this, for he was more ready for it than he knew. His fierce grip on himself made his voice very low when he replied.

“Mrs. Herlong, I repeat that I don't know what you are talking about. You think I am somebody else. My name is Erich Kessler.”

“Your name is no more Erich Kessler than mine is. Please, please—I can't bear this! Tell me the truth!”

“I can't tell you more than I've told you,” he answered.

Elizabeth wet her lips. “Were you shell-shocked?” she asked incredulously. “Did you lose your memory? Don't you know what I'm saying?”

“No, I was not shell-shocked, and there is nothing wrong with my memory.” In the dark she could barely see him restlessly poking at the grass with his stick, as he had done before.

“Listen to me,” she exclaimed. “You are Arthur Kittredge, you were born in Chicago, you came to Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a research chemist for the Lerith Oil Company, in 1916 you married a girl named Elizabeth McPherson, in 1917 you joined the army—don't tell me you have forgotten!”

Kessler's answer, when he spoke, was like the answers he had given her that other time they had sat outside in the dark talking to each other—steady, rigidly controlled, his only evidence of agitation that restless poking at the grass with his stick.

“I have not forgotten,” he said.

Elizabeth sprang up. “Then you do remember me, Arthur!”

“No,” he returned quickly. “Sit down, Mrs. Herlong.” He spoke so forcefully that she obeyed him. “You interrupted me,” he went on. “I was about to say I have not forgotten anything that happened to me before the war. My name is Erich Kessler, I was born in Berlin. I was in this country many years ago, but I was never in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in my life, and I never saw you until your husband brought me here for dinner one night last October. Now believe me.” He spoke to her earnestly. Elizabeth sat listening, half convinced by his insistence. “You told me,” he continued, “that I reminded you of someone you had once known, and you couldn't remember who it was. Now you have remembered; something about me—I don't know what, since I never saw him—calls your first husband to mind. Tonight, under a great strain, you suddenly realize who it is I recall to you, and your surprise is so great that you are even persuaded not only that I have some traits in common with that man, but that I am that man.” He paused a moment, then resumed his argument. “Talk to me about it now, if that will be any relief to you. But there is one thing I beg of you.”

“What?” she asked breathlessly.

“Don't say anything to your husband about this.”

“Good heavens above, you sound as if I were a lady in a crinoline!” She heard herself beginning to laugh again, and again made herself stop. “Do you think I'm sitting here aghast at the notion that my second marriage isn't legal, that my children—I'm not such a fool as that. There's nothing wrong with my present marriage, Arthur. You're legally dead, the United States Government says you are, they even wanted to pay me a pension. That has nothing to do with it. But you're you.”

“Yes, I am me,” he returned with an attempt at lightness. “But I am not that other man.”

“Then where did you get his eyes, his voice, his mind? I know you, Arthur. My God, man, I loved you, I was married to you—”

“You were nothing of the sort,” he interrupted her harshly. “And if you don't get this illusion out of your mind you're going to be miserable the rest of your life. There is nothing I can do but deny it—no, there is something more I can do, and I'll promise you to do it.”

“What else?”

“I'll go away. You'll never be troubled by me again. If I had dreamed this was going to happen no power on earth could have brought me here to destroy your peace. If you say the word, I'll go tonight.”

“No!” she cried. “That won't change anything.”

“Very well,” said Kessler. “But you will make me a promise too.”

“What is it?”

“That you will not trouble your husband with this. For it would trouble him, more than you can imagine in your present state. He'll be here in a few minutes. Your first impulse will be to blurt out words that tomorrow morning you'd give half your life to take back. Will you promise?”

She did not answer, and he added,

“If you don't promise, I'll leave Beverly Hills tonight. I will not be the means of wrecking your peace or his.”

“You've wrecked mine pretty thoroughly,” she said half under her breath.

“For the present. Tonight you can wreck it for good if you want to. Mrs. Herlong, you said this evening in the restaurant you would come to see me tomorrow. Will you swear to me you will not mention this idea of yours to your husband before we have talked to each other again?”

“Yes,” she said faintly, “I promise that. But you haven't convinced me. Everything you've said—I know you.”

They heard a car. Spratt was coming into the driveway. His voice called cheerily,

“Kessler! Ready to go?”

“Yes indeed, Mr. Herlong. I was waiting for you.”

Kessler stood up and started for the car. Without paying much attention to what she was doing, Elizabeth was following him.

“Hope I wasn't too long,” said Spratt. “Why Elizabeth, what are you doing here? I thought you'd be asleep by now.”

They had reached the side of the car.

“Mrs. Herlong was just about to go upstairs to bed,” Kessler said. “She is very tired. She'll probably be sound asleep before you come back.”

“I hope she is.” Spratt leaned across the door. “Then good night, Elizabeth.”

He kissed her. For an instant it was as though a stranger had kissed her, and then suddenly it was not. Dear Spratt. He was her husband. This other man—but he
was
Arthur. Or wasn't he?

“These nights are really cold,” Spratt was saying to Kessler as he backed the car. “The days have been bright lately, but as soon as the sun goes down—”

His voice trailed off. Elizabeth turned and went back into the house. Tonight she would say nothing to Spratt. She had promised. Later, should she or shouldn't she? Right now she could not tell. But at least, she would be asleep when he came home, or he would think she was.

Upstairs in her room, she got mechanically through the routine of undressing. In her state of turmoil it was easier to move than to sit still. That man
was
Arthur; he could deny it forever but it would still be true. “Good Lord,” she said aloud, “don't I know my own husband?”

Looking around, she saw her bedroom as though she was seeing it for the first time, her fragrant, luxurious room full of beautiful objects that Spratt had given her. The room was as eloquent of his personality as of hers; Spratt was her husband, he was the father of her children, she loved him, but now it was as though she could hear herself talking as she had talked twenty years ago. “What I feel for you—it's strange to call it love, because it's so different. I can't give you what I gave Arthur, because I haven't got it to give. It's just not there any more.”

Elizabeth stopped in the middle of the room. “What have I done?” she exclaimed in fright. “What would Spratt do if I told him? Shall I tell him? Can I live here the rest of my life and not tell him?”

She sat down on her bed, and suddenly she felt more tired than she had ever felt in her life. Her body ached in every muscle, her emotions were strained past the point of feeling anything more. She was utterly spent, too tired to know anything but her own exhaustion.

It cost her a great effort to make even the trivial movements of putting out the light and getting into bed. She lay there in the dark, unable to think coherently of anything except of whether or not she was too nervous to go to sleep. There were some sleeping-capsules on her bathroom shelf. The dentist had given them to her last year when she was undergoing some painful treatment. Tonight one of them would do her good, but she was too tired to get up and take it. Underneath her thoughts of the sleeping-capsules the rest of her mind was turning in rings, suggesting all sorts of vague fantastic possibilities: herself saying nothing more to Kessler, but telling Spratt that he was Arthur and leaving the rest up to them; Kessler telling her Arthur had had a twin brother from whom he had been separated in infancy, as happened in old romances; Kessler, Arthur, Spratt—she heard Spratt's footsteps in the hall outside.

Elizabeth turned over and closed her eyes and made herself breathe deeply. She could not talk to him now.

Spratt opened her door softly. “Asleep?” he whispered. She lay quite still. He tiptoed over to the bed, stood an instant looking down at her, and carefully drew up the blankets to cover her shoulder. He bent and kissed her forehead, very lightly so as not to wake her, and slipped out again, closing the door silently behind him. Elizabeth moved, covering her face with her hands as though she were going to cry, but she was too tired to cry. She said to herself, “I must get that capsule, I've got to have some rest.” Then all of a sudden she was asleep, and she slept heavily, weariness closing her in like a drug.

In the room adjoining hers, Spratt was undressing quickly, opening and closing the closet doors with care so as to make no noise. He was glad Dick had not waited to join the Marines. What he was getting into was mighty tough for a kid, but when something had to be done, the longer you waited to do it the tougher it was. And having him actually in it was going to be easier on Elizabeth than these months of looking forward to it had been. Easier on himself too, for that matter. After all, no matter when your youngsters left home it seemed too soon. You knew they were going to find life a lot harder than they expected to find it, and you dreaded it for them. But you did your best to teach them to be honest, to have a sense of responsibility and to take what happened with their chins up, and beyond that there wasn't much more you could give them. Dick was a good kid. He'd be all right. Elizabeth would be all right too. She sometimes cringed before a hard job, but she always got through it and came up smiling. He was glad this fellow Kessler had turned up. Knowing Kessler had been good for all of them.