Another Woman's House Read online

  She said now, “Not too well. My headaches again and not sleeping …” She sighed and then brightened. “Dr. Haven always tells me to get out and get more exercise. See more people. Really sometimes I think he’s getting too old to practice. But father liked him.” She thrust the lilies of the valley into Myra’s hands.

  Miss Cornelia said, “Do sit down, Mildred. Did you walk over?”

  “Oh, no; I wasn’t quite up to it!” She sat down in the ruby-red chair. Her colorless light hair was tightly waved; a heavily marked line accentuated her mouth; she adjusted her rather long brown tweed skirt and gave a bleak, shrinking look around her. “You always use this room!” she said distastefully.

  Miss Cornelia’s lips tightened, but after a second or two she replied quietly, “Certainly. Why not?”

  She knew, of course; everyone knew why not. Mildred’s pale eyes returned to meet Miss Cornelia’s direct gaze. She did not reply. She said instead, “How are you now, dear Lady Carmichael? How is Richard? How is …?” She cleared her throat and said distinctly, “How is Alice?”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE SWEET FRAGRANCE OF the lilies was as delicate and gentle as the image of Alice that Mildred’s question evoked.

  And the lilies gave Myra an excuse to get away. As she went toward the hall she heard Mildred say again, “How is Alice?”

  People, as a rule, did not mention Alice; but then so few people came to the house. Certainly Mildred had been, as Aunt Cornelia had said, faithful and constant in her visits to a house a less faithful friend might wish to avoid; certainly she had been devoted to Alice. Alice, indeed, had been one of Mildred’s few friends. Mildred was older than Alice, yet they had been in school together and, after Alice’s marriage, they had been neighbors. She had every right to ask questions.

  The great hall was empty. Myra walked back along it, across the stately dining room with its dim portraits and mirrors and sparkling chandelier, to the little room off the butler’s pantry where Alice had so faultlessly arranged her flowers.

  The small chromium sink glittered; the vases stood in orderly rows. She selected a low, pale-green bowl for the tiny fragrant stalks—pulled off unevenly, as if Mildred had jerked at them quickly and impatiently.

  The first step had been taken; she had told Aunt Cornelia.

  Now to tell Tim; to explain that she wanted to live with him; that they could take a tiny apartment; that she’d do the cooking and cleaning and see to him; that their expenses really wouldn’t be much. Tim loved her in his own rather incalculable way; he might not understand her action but she could count on his affection. In any case, she’d get some sort of job.

  How much had Aunt Cornelia seen and guessed? How much did she know of the truth?

  Myra stood for a long time looking at the lilies.

  She was indeed so lost in thought that when at last she roused herself it was with an abrupt sense of much time having passed. And when she took up the bowl and went back to the library, dreading Mildred and her inevitable talk of Alice, Mildred had gone.

  And Richard had returned.

  He was standing before the mantel, talking to his aunt, his hands thrust into his pockets. Both of them looked up as Myra entered. “Hello, Myra,” said Richard.

  He was a mediumly tall man with a compact, solid body. He did not at all resemble Miss Cornelia; he was too hard and masculine, but he had her forthright manner of speech and direct eyes.

  “Mildred’s gone,” said Miss Cornelia. “She said she could only stay a minute; she had so much to do. I can’t imagine what. Poor thing, she’d be happier if she did have something to do. The flowers look very nice, my dear.”

  The last time, thought Myra—the last time. Suddenly she hoped that Aunt Cornelia would remain in the room, stay downstairs to dinner; permit no moment for Myra to be alone with Richard.

  She put the low green bowl down on a table near by. Barton came in with the tray of ice and glasses, soda water and decanters. He moved toward the ruby-red chair and lowered the tray to the table that stood beside it. “Anything else, sir?”

  “That’s all, thank you.”

  Barton moved a decanter a fractional inch, eyed it scrutinizingly and, satisfied, went to put on a fresh log. Miss Cornelia said wearily, “I think I’ll go upstairs now, Richard. Barton …”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  The two men made a linked cradle of their arms, and Miss Cornelia, leaning on Myra, slipped from the chair in it. She said, with a rather subdued twinkle, “I like all the attention I can get. Myra, if Tim phones tell him I insist on his coming.”

  “Comfortable?” said Richard, looking down at the face so near his shoulder.

  “Oh, quite.” She waved at Myra, and the butler and Richard, walking slowly and carefully with their light burden, carried her out of the library.

  Myra went to the French window and looked out across the terrace. It was late; the clear glow of the spring afternoon was leaving.

  Perhaps it would be better not to talk to Richard at all.

  But he came back almost at once, striding swiftly along the hall and into the room, and he already knew. He came directly toward her.

  “What’s all this about leaving, Myra?”

  She met his eyes for an instant and looked quickly away, but it was curious how, even when she didn’t look at him, when she wouldn’t look at him, she could still see him so clearly, the hard, compact lines of his face, the expression of incredulity—and question—in his eyes. Her throat was tight; she put her hand up against it. He said, “You can’t be serious! Aunt Cornelia needs you. This is her home and yours.”

  He was wrong; it was Alice’s. Myra moved away, toward the ruby-red chair and the table with the glasses and decanter. “You’ve made me more than welcome, Richard,” she said stiffly.

  Richard made a swift, impatient gesture. “Good Lord! You and Aunt Cornelia—well, you ought to know, you must know what it’s meant to me to have you both here.”

  “She wished to be with you, Richard.”

  “She came to stand beside me,” he said bluntly. “She came as quickly as she could. She’s like an army with banners, bless her. So are you, Myra.”

  It was going to be even more difficult than she had expected. She said slowly, “I love her, Richard. I needn’t tell you that.”

  “But then why … ?” he broke off abruptly, stared at nothing for a moment, then came to pour drinks for both of them. He put a glass in her hand, and said, “Let’s talk it over a bit. I don’t see—well, sit down.”

  So she sat again in the ruby-red chair where she’d sat for, now, so many evenings. He rubbed one hand through his hair impatiently, and frowning, went to his own arm chair opposite.

  “Look here,” he said, and stared at the fire and drank slowly and repeated, “Look here. Why do you want to leave?”

  Truth put itself into words: Because I discovered, only a few days ago, that I love you. Because you are Alice’s husband.

  Myra did not, of course, speak the words which truth so swiftly chose. She said, “Aunt Cornelia is much better. I’m going to live with Tim.”

  Richard’s face was in the shadow of the wing of his chair, but she knew that he glanced at her quickly and then looked back into the fire.

  The house—Alice’s house—was very quiet. By this time Aunt Cornelia was having her own sip or two of sherry and listening to the radio in the big, comfortable corner room upstairs; the room she had had as a child long ago. The radio would be drawn up close to her sofa, the door closed. Servants, quiet, deft, trained by Alice, were busy in the back of the house. Presently, as the twilight grew deeper, Barton would paddle back into the room to draw crimson curtains across the French windows, to offer the evening mail and papers on a silver waiter, to glance efficiently at the table before Myra in case the ice needed replenishing, or to put another log on the fire.

  Her heart seemed to close against a sharp little stab of pain. How strange it was that in a few months one could grow to love a
house and all its customs. Or a man! How did love begin and when? All at once, fully, with deep sudden tide, or little by little, small currents adding themselves together gently and so secretly that by the time it took on its real identity and was recognizable as love it was too late to do anything about it.

  She knew exactly when she had recognized the thing that had happened; there was nothing, however, that was dramatic about it. It was, in fact, rather silly because she’d been brushing her teeth. Brushing and thinking of the day ahead of her and suddenly it occurred to her to wonder why an ordinary, pleasant but merely routine day should be in prospect so touched with an anticipatory excitement, something mysterious and gay and promising.

  It’s like Christmas morning, when I was a child, she thought. And then, instantly: I’m in love with Richard.

  It had disclosed itself to her like that, absurdly, between one brush and the next. Why do I feel like this? Because I love him. She had stopped automatically, struck with it. An absurd figure, too, not romantic with her dark hair curled up from the shower and twisted in a tight knot on top of her head, and her face shiny from soap, toothpaste on her lips, and an enormous white bath towel wrapped tightly around her. It was a ridiculous Greek statue effect; she’d seen that, absently. And thought: it cannot be true, what am I thinking!

  But it was true.

  And if there had been no beginning, there had to be an end.

  A useful old phrase stirred in her consciousness. It would have to be nipped in the bud. But it wasn’t in the bud, unfortunately. It was in full bloom.

  Richard had been silent for a moment or two. He said gently, “You are smiling.”

  Smiling? At herself, then; wryly, at her own expense. She said, avoiding a reply, “Another drink?”

  “No—yes.” He rose and came to her and poured it, standing tall and square before her, his solid body outlined against the glow of the fire. Again she would not look up into his face; she watched his hands on the glass decanter, the clear amber pouring into the glass. He added soda and ice and went back to his chair opposite her and sat forward, elbows on his knees, twirling the glass in his hands absently. “He said abruptly, “Myra, please stay.”

  She had not expected that. She said, confused and also abrupt, “No, I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. Tim needs me. Aunt Cornelia has given me already more than I can ever try to repay.”

  There was another deliberate second or two before he spoke. He said then, “Your reasons are mixed. Aunt Cornelia loves you. She needs you. And I …” he stopped and looked at the glass in his hand.

  What had he been about to say? I want you? Suppose he had said that! Her imagination raced irresistibly on—suppose he’d said, “I need you—I want you—please stay. Not to take care of Aunt Cornelia; not to see to the household orders; not even to sit with me during this lonely, haunted hour before dinner, but because I want you.”

  She swirled the cold glass in her hand so the ice tinkled lightly. Richard did not complete his half-begun words. He said instead, “Of course Aunt Cornelia feels that you must be free to do what seems best to you. She said that when she told me, just now.”

  Myra leaned forward quickly. “She has done everything for me, Richard. You know that. And for Tim. It seems ungrateful, selfish, to leave her now. I realize it, Richard. But I …” She checked herself, dismayed. What had she been about to say? That she must go; there were reasons—a reason?

  Richard said gravely and directly, “You and Aunt Cornelia are too close, you mean too much to each other for there to be any talk of obligations between you. If she’s been like a mother to you, you’ve been a dearly loved daughter to her. But if you feel Tim needs you, you must go, of course. When were you planning to leave?”

  So the short, small battle was over.

  Suddenly, now that her purpose was accomplished, it seemed incredible that she had undertaken it; incredible that she had voluntarily given up all the things that were so deeply and so blindingly dear to her. How could she have made an irrevocable choice! How could she have said words that would remove her from that house, from Richard, from the satisfaction of being in the same house with him, eating at the same table, meeting him like this for an hour or so alone before dinner? In doing so she had prepared her own heartbreak.

  But heartbreak for her was already prepared; it came with love for Richard. It was an inextricable part of it, and to love him was to accept it. It struck her briefly that it was strange to describe anything that had to do with Richard in melodramatic terms; melodrama did not go with Richard’s saneness, and matter-of-factness.

  Was it possible that now for the last time she sat with Richard during that quiet hour of dusk before a fire?

  But her decision had been made. “Tomorrow, Richard,” she said.

  “Tomorrow! That’s very sudden!” His eyes sharpened. “Tim hasn’t got himself into any trouble, has he?”

  “No, no.”

  “He seemed to me a little jumpy when he was out here last week-end. There’s nothing on his mind, is there? Any—worry, I mean. Money or …”

  “Oh, I don’t think so, Richard. I’m sure he’d tell me.” She thought soberly of Tim. Her preoccupation with her own problem had distracted her from the problem of helping Tim to settle quietly into civilian life. She realized, rather guiltily, that Tim had not seemed quite himself on the previous week-end, or, indeed, since he had returned from China. She said, “He does seem very quiet. Aunt Cornelia said morose. But I don’t think there can be any special reason for it, except the aftermath of war. I think he’d tell me. And he likes his job. He particularly wants to do well at it, because you got it for him.”

  “He will,” said Richard reassuringly. “Don’t worry about the youngster, Myra.”

  She looked at him gratefully and then saw the closed, withdrawn look she now recognized settle over his face. Because of Tim, of course; he was remembering; the thing had happened during Tim’s last leave before he went overseas. Timothy Lane had been, in fact, a witness.

  Myra said quickly, to divert Richard’s thought, “I’ll be in New York, only forty-three minutes away, if you want me”—her tongue slipped there; her own private interpretation of the phrase made her momentarily shy and self-conscious; she went on hurriedly—“if anything goes wrong, I can come back. In any case, I’ll come back often to see Aunt Cornelia.”

  “And me, I hope,” said Richard, and leaned back in his chair.

  There was an air of conclusion about it. So she had got what she wanted. Or rather not what she wanted; but what she must have. Naturally she didn’t want it. How long did it take to get over loving anybody?

  Already she knew regret. No longer to listen for Richard’s car about dusk, for the excited bark of the Scotch terrier, for the sound of the door, for the murmur of words with Barton and then the quick, hard steps along the hall, back past the stairway, to the library where he’d find her and a fire and flowers with, now, the cool spring dusk outside the French windows.

  Well, it was done; she couldn’t change it. The glass felt cold in her hands, as if its chill could creep into her body and remain. The beauty of the room was dulled; the fire had lost its warmth and glow. She put down the glass and clasped her hand around the ruby silk of the chair, soft and smooth to her touch. And thought of Alice who had chosen it; Alice with her beauty, Alice with her fair skin and hair; her soft and fragile loveliness.

  Richard said, from the shadow of the wing of the chair, “Is it the house, Myra? Is it—this room?”

  Even though she had been thinking so strongly of Alice, for an instant she did not see the significance of his question. Then she sat upright quickly. “No!—Richard, no!”

  “You and Aunt Cornelia have been here so long that I didn’t think you minded. That is, not now. But I expect some people do rather—mind.”

  Had they too looked at the Capo di Monte cupid and wondered what it had seen and what it could tell and what worse it had he
ard? Particularly the words it had heard? No one had even known that.

  And Richard had never in all those months spoken to her even obliquely of Alice.

  She did not wish the silence to last. “It is a very beautiful room,” she said quietly. “The whole house is beautiful.”

  Again he seemed to glance at her sharply from the short triangular shadow.

  “That’s not why I stayed here,” he said and got up and went to stand before the fire, facing her. The lamps were not lighted. Barton would light them, going quickly from one to the other, when he came to pull the curtains. The thin soft April twilight lay now in the room; the sky was lemon and blue beyond the windows; the firelight behind Richard silhouetted his dark head and solid figure but his face again was slightly shadowed. He said, “I love the place. I’ve always known it was to be mine, naturally; I had no brother. I was trained to see to it; as I was trained in business, and the responsibility that goes with money. The house is too big; in these days nobody would build a place like this. But considering the vast houses that were built at about the same time this house was built, when there were no taxes and little regulation of business, this place isn’t really bad; it could have been worse. It is still practicable to live in. But the point is, it is my home.”