The Frightened Fianc?e

by George Harmon Coxe

  “To him?”

  “Yes.”

  He heard her answer clearly and later, looking back on what happened after that, he found no credit to himself beyond the fact that he kept his voice down, its cadence controlled.

  “Why?” he said, giving her arms a gentle shake and seeing now the frozen whiteness of her face. “Why, Tracy? You said you’d wait. Thirty-one days you said. Did you know then what the answer would be?”

  He said other things, accusing her now in his deadly calm voice of using his trip to Chicago as an excuse, and all the time some small part of his brain was warning him that this was not the way, that he had been taught to accept life’s rebuffs, even when you were sick inside, with dignity and self-control, hiding hurt feelings behind the veneer of civilized conduct. The trouble was he had already gone too far along the opposite path. He did not feel adult or even civilized. Her arms were cold and limp in his hands and he found himself shaking her, not roughly but unconsciously, as if to give emphasis to his words, to force some denial from her.

  “Please, John,” she said, her eyes wet with unwanted tears.

  Then there was a hand on his shoulder, and Drake said, “Take it easy, pal.”

  Holland was not sure what happened then. Because he was so upset and miserable he only knew that the hand tightened as he tried to continue to Tracy. Unable to shake off the other’s grip he heard the voice again, cold, deliberate, and threatening.

  “I—said—take—”

  Holland heard that much and suddenly the outraged anger which had been churning in him flared blindly. He spun about with the pressure and lashed out at his tormentor.

  “Please!” Tracy said again. “Oh, please!”

  But now it was too late. For though Drake was no bigger than Holland he was smarter and carried no burden of anger. He blocked the swing neatly and Holland, finding now a concrete target, swung again, an amateurish attempt that was both futile and childish. Almost at once he felt the jolt on the side of the head, and though there was no pain at the time he found himself instantly on the seat of his pants, wondering how he got there.

  He heard Tracy’s muffled sob as she said something to Drake, but his brain remained fuzzy and he did not know what it was. Then he caught a glimpse of her twisted face as she swept past and ran along the pier in the gathering darkness. Drake followed silently. Holland sat there watching him go and only when his head had cleared could he feel the shame which came finally to temper his anger.

  Slowly then he came to his feet and his knees shook, not from any effect of the blow but from the emotional reaction inside him. He sank down on the bench, feeling spent and utterly hopeless. He lit a cigarette and tried again to find some answer for this thing that had happened, then tried not to when the results became too discouraging.

  The gentle breeze that had been bringing the heat out of the southwest all day died out as darkness fell, and as Holland’s breathing grew more regular he could feel the perspiration on his face, the trickle of it inside his shirt. He blotted this by tapping the shirt; he used his handkerchief on his face as he looked out across the water. Diagonally to his right the two lighthouses on the Saybrook shore blinked their warning, and somewhere behind him a glow in the sky marked the Baldwin Bridge. Overhead there was a moon, well hidden now by slow-moving clouds, and Holland did not glance up but watched the flat calm waters until he had himself in hand. When he was ready he stood up and moved back along the pier toward the shore.

  Now for the first time he was aware of the two smaller cottages that stood half hidden by the trees to the right of the main house, both of which showed lighted windows. But it was the house itself that held his attention. He thought he saw shadowy figures on the porch as he drew closer and he wondered if there was some way he could circle the place without being seen.

  This, however, was but a fleeting thought and just why he discarded the idea he was never sure. He did not think of the long walk back at the time, or consider the physical problems involved; he only knew that regardless of provocation he had behaved badly. Having done so he was forced to accept the consequences and he had no intention of slinking away in the darkness like a whipped animal.

  Already moving up the slope and remembering that old Mrs. Allenby had asked him to stop and see her before he left, he straightened his jacket and felt his jaw, finding a growing lump on the hinge of it. Crossing the porch he was aware of the others there, but he kept his eyes straight ahead until he swung into the drawing-room where the floor lamp now burned by the windows.

  “Come in,” Fanny Allenby said in her blunt tones. She lowered the folded newspaper, her brown eyes busy. “Do you always react so violently?” she asked, indicating that she had seen what had happened on the pier.

  “You could have told me,” Holland said.

  “That Tracy was going to marry Roger Drake?” She paused, fingering the cameo pin at the neck of her dress as she lowered her glance. “Yes, I suppose I could have.” She regarded the puzzle another moment and spoke without looking up. “Sit down a minute, Johnnie. Over here. Now give me a six-letter word meaning to fry.”

  “Grille,” Holland said automatically and it came to him then that the word was too easy to stump an addict, that she had picked out something to put him at ease and break the spell of his depression. He sat down, and she looked at him, a gleam of understanding in her level gaze.

  “I guess you didn’t know, did you?” she said.

  Holland sat hunched over in his chair, elbows on knees, regarding the pattern in the hooked rug as his mind went back to other things.

  “How long has she been engaged?”

  “Nearly a month. I know it was a Friday that she came back from New York and told us. Mr. Drake came up the next week-end to be presented.”

  She went on to explain how Drake had come on other week-ends, arriving finally to spend the last week here in the guest cottage, but Holland was not following her words. He was working out a schedule of his own and from it he thought he had an answer. Not one he could yet believe or understand but the only one that made any sense.

  For he had said good-by to Tracy on a Thursday. Friday she had come here to announce her engagement to Drake. Therefore she must have known even as she kissed him good-by that her mind was made up. She had asked for a month’s time for her answer, and had he waited before trying to see her as he had promised, he would have been faced with the accomplished fact of her marriage to Roger Drake. But why? he asked himself. Why should she do it this way? Because she could not bring herself to write and tell him the truth? Or was it something that happened between the Thursday night he went away and the following day when she had announced her decision?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, aware that Mrs. Allenby had spoken and was reaching for her cane.

  “I said let me take your arm.”

  He stepped to her side at once for now she was on her feet, her glasses dangling from a ribbon around her neck, the folded newspaper in her free hand. As she put her weight on the arm he offered he saw that her hair was more platinum than blond, a color that had been brought about by age and the fading of hair that had once been white. She was taller than he had thought, and straight-standing for one of her age, the lines in her face softly molded. Only her voice seemed blunt and direct.

  “Rheumatism,” she said. “In spite of the fancy names they give it nowadays. Damned annoying, too.”

  They went through the doorway to the dimly lighted hall where a wide stairway lay against the far wall. Flat against this wall on the inner side of the stairs and mounting diagonally upward was a metal rail from which a seat was suspended. When Fanny Allenby had folded this down into position she perched herself expertly upon it, touched a lever, and began her ascent, moving slowly but easily upward along the wall while Holland walked along with her. When they reached the upper hall she dismounted and folded the seat out of the way.

  “An unsightly contrivance if I ever saw one,” she said, taking his arm again,
“but most convenient. This way, Johnnie.”

  She turned right, and he saw then that the rear side of the hall was mostly windows overlooking the court. Three rooms opened from the hall toward the front of the house and at each end was an alcove off which other rooms gave. The alcove on the right through which they went presented two doors on opposite sides, both open. Though unlighted he could tell the room at the rear was a large bedroom, and then the woman flicked a switch and led the way into another bedroom on the right, continuing on through an open doorway to a sitting-room overlooking the front lawn and the water. When she turned on the light he saw that it was tastefully done with antique tables and stands, two wing chairs, a Boston rocker, a sofa, a Governor Winthrop desk. There were bookshelves along one wall, a fireplace. At the front were French doors which she asked him to open.

  When he had done so he found her seated in one of the wing chairs. She motioned toward a cabinet between the side windows. “Pour yourself one, Johnnie,” she said. “You look as if you could use it. If you don’t find what you want on top, look underneath.”

  The cabinet was of antique maple, but stocked like a cellarette. There was Scotch and bourbon on top, along with glasses, an ice bucket—recently filled—soda, a pitcher of water. He did not examine the underpart but reached for a glass and the bourbon bottle.

  “Later,” she said when he asked if he could get something for her. “I like to think I drink on the doctor’s prescription. A strong highball before bed instead of a sleeping-pill. Two Martinis before dinner. A prescription, I might add, of which I highly approve. Now,” she said when he sat down. “Tell me. Are you in love with Tracy?”

  “I was.”

  “And you obviously didn’t know she was going to marry Roger Drake. Did you think she might marry you?”

  “She was going to give me her answer Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  “I’ve been away,” he said and explained briefly about his Chicago trip and how he happened to come back early.

  “Have you known her long?”

  “Four or five months.”

  “You knew she had been engaged before?”

  “To the best friend I ever had.”

  “George Vanning?” Fanny Allenby’s hands tightened on the chair arms, and he noticed she wore no jewelry other than a plain gold band. “Then you know how he was killed.”

  “He was shot,” Holland said. “The police say it was a case of mistaken identity.”

  “That was two years ago.” She fixed him with her brown eyes. “He was your best friend and yet you’ve only known Tracy four or five months.”

  The feeling of despondency and bitterness which had been temporarily broken by the woman’s interest and questions settled heavily upon him again.

  “I work for Eastern Oil,” he said. “I was in South America on a two-year contract when it happened. I got a letter later from Tracy because I was George’s friend and she’d heard him speak of me. She wasn’t sure I knew what had happened. I looked her up when I got back to New York because I wanted to know the truth. That’s how it started—between Tracy and me,” he said.

  Fanny Allenby’s eyes were busy again and her lips worked silently before she spoke. “I think you better move your things here, Johnnie.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She reached for the telephone beside her and flipped a switch. “No use staying at the Mansion House when we have room here. I think we have some talking to do, Johnnie. Some things you can tell me and perhaps some I can tell you.”

  Holland shook his head and fashioned a smile. “No, thanks, Mrs. Allenby. It’s better if—”

  “Nonsense.”

  “No, really.”

  “Let an old woman have her way, Johnnie. I can understand why you want to get away from here but you certainly don’t approve of Roger Drake and neither do I. It may be too late to do anything about it but—well, I like you and I wish—” She broke off and spoke into the telephone. “Yes, Walter. Please bring the station wagon around.… Yes. Mr. Holland wants to move his things here from the Mansion House. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  Holland sighed and swallowed the rest of his drink. About to continue his protest, some process of mind or reasoning suddenly silenced him. He did not fully understand his change of heart. It was no masochistic impulse, a desire to suffer bravely and silently his disappointment in the same house with Tracy; rather it was some combination of pride and perverseness that now made him want to stay and show her that it did not matter after all, that he could watch the wedding if necessary and make no outward display of his disappointment and bitterness.

  “All right,” he said, and then glanced up as a man came into the room, the same one who had met the copper-haired girl from the train.

  “Come in, Arthur,” Mrs. Allenby said. “This is Mr. Holland, a friend of Tracy’s—Mr. Baldwin, Tracy’s uncle.”

  Holland nodded, noting again the thinning sandy-gray hair, the tanned face, the well-tailored sport coat. The nod he got in return was perfunctory, for Arthur Baldwin’s attention came quickly back to the woman and his tone was deep and annoyed.

  “I’ve had a phone call from a friend in New York who’s been doing a little checking on Roger Drake and if the man’s a lawyer like he says there certainly isn’t any record of it.”

  He strode to the side windows and came back before the woman spoke.

  “Have you told Tracy?”

  “I haven’t been able to find her. I left word she was to come up here when she came in.”

  “You can’t believe it will do any good, telling her that.”

  Baldwin’s mouth twisted and he grunted impatiently. Holland had an idea that over the years it was a vocal mannerism that Baldwin used frequently, for there was something precise and meticulous about him that suggested he had very little patience with those who disagreed with him. If you needed a haircut, he was the lad to tell you about it; if you happened to be a waiter, taxi driver, or telephone operator it would be better not to argue.

  “Probably not,” he said. “She’s of age, she can marry whom she chooses, though why she has to pick a—” He checked himself to get his annoyance in hand; then said, more moderately, “All I want to do is to see that she knows the truth and isn’t taken in by someone who pretends he’s something he’s not.”

  Holland, watching the older man pour a small drink, wondered vaguely why Baldwin should seem more upset about the situation than Fanny Allenby did. Before he could think much about it the telephone rang.

  The woman answered it and said, “Thank you, Walter.” She nodded to Holland. “You know how to get to the drive. And will you please stop here when you return? You may want another drink, and by that time I’ll be ready for my nightcap.”

  three

  WHEN HE HAD PAID his bill at the Mansion House and stowed his bag in the station wagon John Holland asked Walter if there was a bar or tavern anywhere around. Walter said there was and drove presently to a neon-lighted, stucco building at the side of the road where he pulled into the gravel parking-space and stopped.

  “Will you join me?” Holland asked.

  “No, sir. I don’t go much for hard liquor any more.”

  “A beer, then?”

  “There’s plenty of beer in the icebox at home,” Walter said. “Thank you just the same.”

  And so Holland went in alone, had his double bourbon with a water chaser—an unusual procedure since he normally drank very little—and was back in the station wagon inside of three minutes, the whisky still burning his throat. He lit a cigarette as the car got under way, not knowing yet whether he felt better or not, and gave his attention to the man who drove.

  Walter—Holland never found out what his last name was—was a gaunt, grizzled man in his late fifties with a salt-and-pepper mustache and leathery, weather-beaten skin. Neither garrulous nor unduly reserved—perhaps because it was not often that a guest offered to buy him a drink—he gave friendly answers to Holla
nd’s casual questions in the fifteen-minute drive, questions inspired partly by curiosity and partly because of a desire on Holland’s part to keep from thinking too much about Tracy.

  He heard again of the hurricane in ’thirty-eight which wrought its destruction on Hawk’s Point and of the lesser one in ’forty-four which induced the heirs of earlier settlers to sell their land to Mr. Allenby. He learned that for the past two years Fanny Allenby had lived year-round in the house with Walter and his wife, closing off the larger part of the building after the others had gone for the winter. He discovered that Arthur Baldwin was a lawyer in Boston and that he was engaged to the copper-haired girl of the train, whose name was Nadine Winsor; that the blond Frances Erskine had a husband named Keith and that for one reason or another—Walter did not speculate—Frances’s bedroom adjoined Fanny Allenby’s at the rear while her husband slept in the opposite wing.

  Holland did not speak of Tracy or her fiancé, or of the wedding which was to take place on Sunday. Instead he watched the headlights circle the drive until they stopped opposite the wide steps; then he stood aside while Walter took his bag, following the other into the hall and up the stairs until they came to the first room on the right, beyond which was the alcove with its open doors to Frances Erskine’s bedroom and Mrs. Allenby’s suite. The light was on here and he could hear voices, but he followed Walter into this other room with its pale-green walls, waiting while the man put his, bag on a luggage rack.

  When the door closed he felt the heat again. In the car the air had seemed cool and pleasant; here, whether from the liquor inside him or sheer humidity, the perspiration began to come and he went to open the French doors which overlooked the balcony that ran the full width of the house. He was there, looking out at the water when the tap came at the door. As he called, “Come in,” and turned, Walter entered, his manner apologetic.

  “It’s Mrs. Allenby, sir,” he said. “She asks you to come to her rooms.”

  Holland nodded reluctantly and wiped perspiration from his face. When he had straightened his tie and jacket he went along the hall and through the alcove and bedroom to the sitting-room beyond. In the first moment or two he was aware that Fanny Allenby still occupied the wing chair, that Arthur Baldwin stood near by. He automatically acknowledged the introduction to the slim blond woman he had first seen in the lower hall and to a man he did not know; after that his glance went to Tracy Lawrence, who sat on the edge of the sofa with her chin up and her legs braced under her as if she were about to rise and flee.