Pride's Folly

by Fiona Harrowe

  We had been home a fortnight when I felt I could no longer postpone coaxing Roger to my bed. On the evening that I had chosen to carry out my plan, he did not appear for supper. Nevertheless, I decided to wait up for him in my room. I had Marigold prepare a bath, sprinkling it liberally win an aromatic rose essence. After luxuriating in it for a half hour, I put on a new nightdress, a creation of pink-and-cream silk with a low neckline and open sleeves. Marigold was brushing my hair, the long black tresses crackling and popping under her ministrations, when I heard the outer door slam below. Quick footsteps crossed the foyer and hurried up the stairs. Marigold, who knew her master’s footsteps as well as I, paused, her eyes growing round, the hairbrush poised in her hand. A few moments later my door was angrily flung open.

  Roger, his eyes wild, pointed to Marigold and shouted, “Out! Get out!”

  She scurried forward, sidling past him. He banged the door after her so hard it shivered on its hinges.

  “Roger . . . ,” I began, half-rising.

  “Shut up! I don’t want to hear a single, lying word from you. So! So, you did not go to Wildoak. You have had nothing but a cousinly relationship with Page Morse! You— you bitch!” He hit me across the face, a stinging slap that jerked my head back. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  “Roger, I—”

  “You went to see Page. You have been corresponding with him through Burke the bookseller.”

  “You are mistaken.” I could feel the red welt rising on my cheek.

  “I got suspicious when my man said you had a fondness for books, especially Burke’s,” he went on, his fists clenching and unclenching. “But I put the thought aside. Then when I found that you had lied to me at Fairchild—never mind who told me—I paid Mr. Burke a visit. A few words about revoking his city license and he was willing to talk. Not only did he babble, but he gave me this into the bargain.”

  He threw a folded piece of notepaper at me. It fell at my feet, but I made no move to retrieve it.

  “A love letter,” he said venomously, “from your lover. Aren’t you going to read it?”

  I sat there carved in stone, the void beneath my heart growing deeper and blacker.

  “Allow me,” Roger said, stooping, picking up the paper. “ ‘My darling Sabrina . . .’ Incidentally, it is dated February eighteenth, the day before we went to Fairchild. Couldn’t he wait to see you?”

  He began to read again. “ ‘My darling Sabrina, I long to see you again, sweetheart. I am sitting here by lamplight dreaming of you, your hair, the way your eyes shine, so blue, nothing in heaven . . .’ What pap!” He tossed the letter aside with a look of disgust. “You’ve not only been writing to him but seeing him as well. Haven’t you? Answer me! Haven’t you! When? Where?”

  He grabbed my arm and, twisting it cruelly, lifted me from the chair.

  “Don’t!” I cried. “The servants . . .!”

  “I’ve told them all to stay downstairs on pain of death— yes, death. Because that is what I have on my mind.”

  He strode to the door, yanked it open, and went across the hall to his room. I heard him crashing about, the slam of a drawer, a string of expletives.

  I should have seized those few moments to run downstairs or at the least to lock the door against him. But frozen into immobility, I remained at the dressing table, my mind plunging downward. The calamity I had feared was upon me. Now I would never be able to pretend the child I carried wasn’t Page’s. What could I do? Oh, dear God, what was I to do?

  Roger stormed back, his eyes glittering. He had a gun in his hand. He said, “I’m going to kill you.”

  The moment he spoke a strange thing happened. My mental turbulence vanished and in its place I felt a deadly, fatalistic calm.

  “Go on,” I said evenly. “Shoot me. They will hang you.”

  “Not for ridding the world of an adulteress.”

  “Even so, there will be a trial, newspaper stories, a scandal that might mean the end of your ambitions.”

  He came up to me and pressed the gun to my temple. “Say your prayers.”

  In that one moment I knew I was going to die and yet I was not afraid. I cannot explain it. It was as though the events of the past few months had prepared me for it. I had finally met the reality of my worst fears, the tomorrow I had fled from in my nightmares. This was it. Perhaps it was the best way— sudden, quick, a bullet to the brain.

  “Well. . .?” Roger asked, drawing out the word as he glared at me.

  “Do as you wish,” I said.

  A long, an eternal moment. I closed my eyes.

  “Bitch! Shooting is too good for you.” He lowered the pistol. “Slow torture, perhaps. Something no one will be able to detect.”

  “Like heart pills? Or hiring someone to kill me, as you did with Florrie Stokes?”

  His face clouded over and he grabbed me by the throat, then let go as I screamed. He pulled me to the door and over the threshold, dragging me along the corridor to the attic stairs.

  “I’m going to get Page Morse first! The dirty, scurvy rat!” he muttered, hauling me up, scabbling at the trap door. “I’m going to riddle him full of holes.”

  He had to let go of me to open the door, and I braced myself to keep from tumbling down the stairs. Even in my terror—for now I had become mortally afraid—I feared for the child if I should fall. Roger could kill me and we would die together, Page’s baby and I; but if I was to live, I would do everything I could to protect that scrap of life inside me.

  The door finally gave. I was drawn roughly up into the musty attic. A match flared. Roger looked about him like a madman, his hair hanging over his forehead, his eyes like a wild dog’s falling on a candle stuck in ajar. Holding me with one hand, he lit the candle with the other. When I began to struggle in his grasp, he gave me a blow that sent me reeling against a wall.

  “Stay there,” he warned, “or I’ll stomp you to death.”

  He rummaged through the attic litter, dusty boxes, cases, a trunk. Grunting, he found a rope. He threw me into a chair and tied me securely, chuckling, muttering to himself. Those guttural sounds unnerved me more than the gun he had pressed to my head or the hands that had curved around my throat. He bound me to the chair, then whipped a handkerchief from his pocket and gagged me.

  “You’re going to stay here, Sabrina. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll ride to Wildoak and shoot that bastard like the snake he is.”

  He went out, taking the candle with him, shutting the door with a loud bang, leaving me in stygian darkness. I knew there was a gabled window—I had seen it from the walk below—but it was covered with a curtain, and no light shone through. It was cold in the attic, too; I wore only my nightdress, and gooseflesh pricked my uncovered arms. I felt a patch of warmth emanating from some spot close by and realized it came from the chimney. By twisting and moving, I managed to push the chair closer to the heat.

  I sat there shivering, tears oozing down my cheeks, dampening the gag. No fatalistic acceptance now, only despair and a new anxiety overriding my own personal fear. Would Roger make good his threat to shoot Page? No. He was too much the coward. By the time he got to Wildoak he would have thought of the scandal, of Page, a man not easily ambushed or cowed, and would have lost his nerve. What would he do to me? Starve me to death? How would he explain my absence then? He was insane. Perhaps insane enough to kill both Page and me.

  I don’t know how long I worried over these things, torn between the certainty that Roger would commit his acts of violence and the hope that he would not, before exhaustion finally claimed me and I slept.

  I was awakened by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The trap door inched open. It was Hazel. She came up carrying a jug of coffee and a roll on an enamel tray. My cape was slung over her arm.

  She set the tray down on the floor and untied my gag.

  “You must release me, Hazel,” I said. “My husband is—is not himself. He’s imprisoned me here!”

  Her face impassive, she d
rew the cape around my shoulders but did not untie me. She found a rickety stool and set it down opposite me. Then reaching for the jug, she brought it to my lips.

  I turned my head away. “Untie me first.”

  She continued to hold the coffee, her eyes wary. Finally the aroma overcame my will to argue. I sipped at the brew, feeling the heat coursing down through my throat and chest.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. “You have been made to participate in an unlawful confinement.”

  She remained silent.

  “If the police catch you, you will be punished along with Mr. Prescott.”

  I went on in this vein, but nothing moved her. She, like the other servants, was loyal to Roger, whether out of fear, habit, or inertia did not matter. What threat from me—an outsider— could be worse than possible retribution from Roger?

  I drank the rest of the coffee and ate the roll from Hazel’s hand.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  She got up from the stool and looked around. Her eyes lit on a cracked chamber pot resting on a pile of gray bed pillows. She pulled it out.

  It was the final humiliation. “I will not use that! You will take me to the lavatory, do you hear?”

  She thought about it for a few heavy moments. “All right. But if’n yo’ try to git away, Mr. Roger says I can give yo’ a whack.”

  She picked up an iron poker lying next to the chimney and tapped it on the floor in an ominous way.

  “I promise.”

  She unbound the ropes. My feet were so numb I had to rub them before I could stand. With the poker still in her hand, Hazel climbed down the ladderlike stairs and marched behind me to the door of the lavatory.

  “You’re not coming in with me, Hazel. There’s nowhere I can go.”

  I slipped inside and silently turned the key. She shouted, “Yo’ better not—yo’ better not!”

  I leaned against the door. The room was small, hardly bigger than a broom closet, taken up with a large zinc tub, pipes painted a muddy brown, an enamel basin and toilet. One tiny window high in the wall let in a feeble, marbled light.

  I stayed there until Hazel called George, who threatened to break the door down. As I emerged, Roger came along the hallway.

  “What’s all this commotion?’’ He spoke to Hazel, ignoring me.

  “She want to go to the lavatory,’’ Hazel explained.

  “And why is she untied? I told you she is quite mad, that she can be dangerous to herself as well as to others.’’

  The blood rushed to my face. “I am not mad. It’s you who are!’’

  “Take her back!’’ Roger shouted.

  I was alone again. Warmer, fed, but still bound to the chair. I had asked Hazel to open the window curtain, but she had played deaf.

  It was the uncertainty that gnawed like a rat at my nerves. What would Roger do? How long would he keep me locked up? Would he tell everyone I was mad, as he had obviously told Hazel, and leave me to languish here in this room? And Page ... If Roger did not shoot him, would he find a way to injure him, perhaps use his influence to ruin him financially?

  I had no idea what time it was. Morning gone into noon? The silence in the attic was broken only by the sound of an occasional gust of wind under the eaves. The room was long. It ran perhaps for a quarter-length of the house, but the raftered ceiling was low, giving me a feeling of claustrophobia. In the shadows I could perceive the dim outlines of an accumulation of cob webbed discards, a chipped enamel pitcher painted with pink thistle flowers, a ladder-back chair with the caned seat missing, rolled-up carpets, a dressmaker’s soiled dummy.

  Would Hazel bring my lunch? I wasn’t hungry. I knew I had to eat because of the baby, but mostly I wanted to see a human face, even a hostile one, for my mind was beginning to play tricks on me. It seemed that the walls were moving in, closer and closer as the minutes passed. I knew it was only an illusion and I scolded myself for giving in to it, closing my eyes to block my fantasy out.

  Soon I dozed off, only to be brought fully awake by the murmur of voices. Then someone, with startling clarity, said, “But didn’t she get my letter?’’

  It was Papa!

  His voice seemed close, yet distant, and for a moment I thought I had really lost my mind. But then I realized that the voices were coming from the chimney. Apparently the flue went straight down into the parlor, and if the speaker was close enough the sound traveled up to the attic.

  Papa! I bent forward, listening.

  Roger said, “No, Mr. Falconer. You say you wrote twice? How odd! She said nothing to me.’’

  It’s a lie! I wanted to scream. You withheld those letters! I worked frantically, rubbing my chin against my shoulder, trying to remove the gag. But Hazel had tied it with grim care, and it would not budge.

  Papa said, “We changed our minds about Baden-Baden and decided on White Sulphur Springs instead. Mrs. Falconer has gone up ahead of me. I thought I’d drop by and see if Sabrina might want to join us, and now you say she’s left for Petersburg.”

  “Yes, to visit the Hodges, cousins of mine. She has struck up quite a friendship with Rosaleen Hodges—they’re both of the same age. Rosaleen has been ill, and Sabrina went to see if she could be of some help to her.”

  Rosaleen Hodges? I had never heard of her. She must be a pure invention. The lying weasel! I tried again to get free of the gag, wriggling in the chair, twisting and arching my body.

  “I could telegraph her,’’ Roger was saying.

  Oh, yes, yes! But Papa said, “No. We’ll be at the springs for quite some time. I’m sure to see Sabrina later on.’’

  How? Will you? Oh, Papa, Papa! I'm up here. Save me!

  “Perhaps you’ll stay for lunch?’’ Roger asked.

  “No, thank you, Roger. I’ve people to see and must be running along.’’

  “I’ll write to Sabrina and tell her you were here.’’

  “Yes, please do.’’

  They moved away. I strained my ears, hearing a distant mumble, then silence. Had Papa left? But I was too far up to make out the closing of the outer door or footsteps on the drive.

  A half hour later, Hazel came up with the tray. She had brought me cold chicken, slaw, hot rolls with a pat of butter, and a cup of weak tea. In addition to taking off the gag she undid my hands.

  “That was my father who came to call,” I said.

  She gave me a startled look. Then, quickly regaining her chill composure, she said, “No one come to call.”

  “It was Mr. Miles Falconer. My father.” I thrust my head forward, staring into her eyes. “I’m psychic. Hazel. I can see a lot of things other people can’t. I can see you in jail.”

  “Yo’ can’t see nothin’,” she said, but her voice seemed to lack its iron conviction.

  “Where’s Marigold?” I asked.

  “Gone. She ain’t here no mo’. Mr. Roger tole her to go.”

  “Why? Because she might help me?”

  Hazel did not answer.

  I ate in silence, not tasting the food. I did not feel that Roger would do anything drastic now, like shooting or strangling me. My father’s visit, his remark that he expected to see me later, would make Roger hesitate before he resorted to outright bloodshed. But there were other means, as he himself had suggested. Poisons, for instance. Some poisons, I understood, worked slowly, insidiously, giving their victims the symptoms of acute dysentery or causing a heart seizure that might easily fool a doctor.

  I set the fork aside.

  “Finished?” Hazel, I noticed, no longer addressed me as “Mizzuz Prescott” or “Miz Sabrina.”

  “Yes. The chicken. Taste it.”

  She looked at the sliced chicken breast. “What’s wrong? Seem all right when I had some fo’ lunch.”

  “Taste it.” And when she didn’t I said, “Has it been tampered with?”

  She gave me a weird, half-frightened look. “Yo’ is crazy!” She removed the tray and was tying me up again when Roger came in
to the attic. He watched while Hazel jerked the last knot of the gag into place.

  “Good,” Roger said. “You may go.”

  He stood looking down at me, a smug smile on his lips. “For the first time since we’ve been married I can talk to you without having you answer back. I should have done this long ago.”

  I glared at him, anger and loathing welling up in my eyes.

  “My beautiful Sabrina,” he said sarcastically.

  “Mmmmfadder . . . I mumbled behind the gag.

  “What?” he asked, putting his hand to his ear as though he were hard of hearing. “Say that again.”

  I wanted to shout, to weep, to scream. But nothing came out except those horrible gargling sounds.

  “I thought I’d let you know that I haven’t forgotten about Page.” He slipped the revolver out from under his belt, grinning like a cat toying with a mouse, enjoying my torment. “I’m going to kill him, just as I promised.” He hefted the revolver from one hand to the other. “And you, my pretty, will be next.”

  I threw him a look of pure bile.

  He laughed. “Good-bye, darling.” He leaned over to kiss me, and I shrank back.

  “Never mind. It will make what I have to do all the easier.”

  I heard him climbing down the ladder, and then his steps were swallowed up by the hall carpet below. He was going to kill Page. I knew it then. He would ambush him, probably in the dark, waiting for him in the shrubbery, shooting him from under cover. Roger was too cowardly to do it any other way. Page had to be prepared, warned. If only I could get to him! I must! Unless I reached him before Roger did, he would die, shot down without a chance to defend himself. But how was I going to get to Wildoak, bound and gagged and utterly helpless? Oh, damn Roger! Why was such a craven monster ever born? Damn him!

  I began to struggle, pounding my feet on the floor. This went on for a few minutes, until I realized my efforts were futile. Who could hear me, except the servants? Marigold was the only one who might help me, and she was gone. I looked about, peering through the shadows for some instrument I could use to rub my tied wrists against with the hope of cutting the rope. Several dusty wineglasses sitting on top of a chest gave me an idea. Broken glass could be as sharp as a knife.