Hunter's Green

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I started toward the broken doorway and the path through the woods. “I’ll leave very soon,” I assured him. “Of course I shouldn’t have come.”

  He did not speak until I reached the opening in the broken stone wall. Then his voice stopped me.

  “I came here looking for you that day you left,” he said quietly.

  I stopped where I was, not turning.

  “Maggie told me you were going,” he went on. “She said you meant to walk about the grounds before you caught the bus, and I thought you might come here.”

  “I did,” I said, and knew that the moment was somehow potent, that what was said now held my future on a balance scale.

  Behind me Deirdre began to whimper, always sensitive to moods of the humans she loved. The tone of our voices worried her, and she began to run suddenly back and forth between us.

  “Stop it,” Justin ordered. “Sit down and be quiet, Mac old girl.”

  The dog obeyed him, sitting without question, but her whimpering went on, sounding almost like words, pleading, beseeching.

  “You had gone by the time I got here,” Justin said.

  Again I waited. If anything was to be offered, he must offer it. I had already said too much.

  He left the window ledge and crossed the grassy area of the chapel. Up and down he strode, moving restlessly until he finally came to a halt before the tumbled stones of the wall beneath which Old Daniel had died.

  “I blame myself for what happened here yesterday,” he said. “The wall should have been repaired without further delay. I was busy and let it be put off.”

  I let my held breath go. His choice had been made. Nothing I might say mattered now. I might as well talk about Daniel.

  “Do the police think it was really an accident?”

  “Of course—what else?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I saw him yesterday just before he died and he tried to tell me something about the rook’s play in the topiary garden. I haven’t been able to think what he meant or why he should tell me so urgently.”

  “Old Daniel’s been wandering in his mind lately,” Justin said. “He’s been hinting mysteriously and talking about old times in a maudlin way.”

  “Perhaps he knew something,” I suggested. “Perhaps he knew something about what has been happening around Athmore lately, and—”

  “Then he’d have told me.” Justin was curt. “Don’t let that wild imagination of yours get out of hand again, Eve.”

  I ignored the pricking of his words. “How was Daniel dressed when the wall fell on him? Can you tell me that?”

  “Dressed? Didn’t you see him when we brought him in last night? A jacket, corduroys.”

  “What about his head? What would he be likely to wear on his head?”

  Justin was growing impatient. “What are you getting at? If he had anything on his head, I suppose it fell off when the wall crashed.”

  “We could search,” I said. “If it’s around here—”

  Justin had endured enough of what he must regard as sheer whimsy. He looked down at me from his arrogant height. “Let’s not run on about Old Daniel. I didn’t come here to talk to you about him. I came to tell you that I don’t want you to stay on at Athmore. You’d better understand that Alicia is never going to be hurt by me again. Whatever happens, I shan’t let her—or myself—down. She is everything I want, and under the circumstances you can offer no opposition to my plans. I hope this can be managed as speedily and quietly as possible. There is no point in waiting any longer.”

  He snapped his fingers at Deirdre, who bounded to his side, and then brushed past me through the broken doorway. The dog went with him, but only for a little way. Hard though the choice must have been, she left him after a few yards and came back to me. She pawed at my dress and barked, as though she scolded me—as though she believed that Justin and I belonged together and could not understand why we had spoken angrily and moved so far apart.

  I went down on my knees beside her and held her tightly, past the time of tears, too frightened to cry. All the obstacles that had been set in my path were too large to be surmounted. Even the obstacle of my own sad-hurt-longing feelings were too much for me to overcome. There seemed no way to suppress or deal with them. If I had made a mistake about Alicia in that long-ago time, and if Justin had made a mistake about me, we ought to be able to say so. We ought to be able to admit our errors and go on from there. But “from there” was already gone in the past and it was too late.

  Those were the words that hurt more than any others—“too late.” They rang in my ears all the way back to the house. Everything had worsened and the way out seemed darker than ever, and more lost to me.

  Dacia waited for me on the terrace. “Did he find you?” she asked.

  “You shouldn’t have sent him looking for me,” I told her.

  She studied me shrewdly. “Put your foot in your mouth again, did you? You Americans are good at that. You’re always too touchy. When he asked me if I’d seen you, what could I tell him except where you were? I mentioned your yellow sweater, so if you moved about he could spot you through the woods. You know what he said? ‘She always liked to wear yellow.’ It wasn’t just the words. It was the way he spoke them—as if he remembered something he had a bit of a liking for.”

  I could only shake my head as I went up the terrace and into the house. Remembering wasn’t enough. It was only the present that counted—and the present was nothing. Nevertheless, I climbed the stairs to the top floor with Justin’s words running through my mind: “She always liked to wear yellow.” What a feeble straw for me to seize upon. But it was the only straw I had.

  When I reached the long gallery I crossed its width to pause before the portrait of Mr. Dunscombe. He looked a gentle, sad young man—someone who had accepted his fate and taken himself out of the fight. In a way we had something in common, he and I. Both had married Athmores, and both had lost out in the end. His solution had been a desperate one. Mine was more dogged, more stubborn. I couldn’t give up yet. There had to be a way to cancel out those hateful words “too late.” Surely, as long as one drew breath it was never too late. Not even when Justin told me that Alicia was everything he wanted. Even when everything pointed to this truth, my stubborn heart refused to believe, refused to accept.

  Perhaps it was time for me to go back and face what I had done to break up my marriage two years ago. Perhaps by reliving that dreadful time I could discover how to go on from here.

  As I turned my back on the picture in the long gallery I had only to face right instead of left in order to reach the green-velvet room, where that last miserable scene with Justin had been enacted. I took the right turn. I walked through the entrance to the south wing and followed the corridor toward the tower room that was the opposite number from my own blue lady’s room.

  The door of the green-velvet room was closed, but it opened readily at my touch. From wide-flung windows a breeze came to meet me. Nellie must have been airing out ghostly cigarette smoke.

  How well I remembered the central focus of the room—that great dramatic bed with its ornate coronet of a canopy, from which green cut-velvet curtains flowed to each of the four corners, and thence to the floor. Within the cave of the canopy and curtains a green-and-yellow tapestry of similar figure filled the wall behind the bed. On the other walls, covering them entirely, were green-and-gold tapestries depicting scenes from a stag hunt, which made this, I had always thought, anything but a restful room. A neutral gray carpet covered the floor, undoubtedly added in modern times, and across it were flung small East Indian rugs of rose and blue-green. Even the chairs were upholstered in green cut-velvet, grown shabby over the years. I remembered too the chest of drawers—of handsome English design with its mirror and serpentine front.

  For a few moments I was still, recalling the emotions of that rainy evening when I had last stood here in green gloom, with candles lighted in brass candlesticks on a corner stand, and the shaded lamp
on a center table shedding a pool of light. Marc had lit the candles before he brought me here. Marc, bent on mischief, playing on my jealousy, as I allowed him to do—his one purpose, as I later realized, to be rid of my presence at Athmore and break up my marriage.

  But I had been blindly unsuspecting then. Dramatizing my loneliness, believing myself neglected by Justin, I had not found Marc’s flattery altogether distasteful. If one brother did not value me enough, then it would serve him right if the other brother did—even though I cared for only one. I was too young to realize how foolish I was being, or how unlikely it was that so elementary a ploy would work with Justin. Or indeed where such a tactic could really lead.

  The thing had begun, not here in this room, but when we were leaving the table after dinner to go to the drawing room for our evening coffee. Oh—it had been months before, really, with Marc hinting to me about Alicia, so that I had confronted Justin with my knowledge of her, and of the fact that he still saw her from time to time—in fact, that we all saw her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I’d wailed to him. “How could you let me meet her so innocently, never dreaming what you two had been to each other?” I had been wildly dramatic in my accusations, and Justin had been cool, scornful.

  “Do you think I’ve lived no life of my own before I met you? There’s no reason why Alicia and I should cut one another when we live in the same community. I hope we may always remain friends. This has nothing to do with you.”

  Perhaps if I had not been so headlong and violent in my accusations, he would have been kinder, more reassuring. But having alienated him, I could not bear the results of my own actions. I could not accept reality. I did not want to share Justin with the past, I must own him wholly—as no man is willing to be owned. I began to watch him jealously, to question too much, to imagine constantly. What I wanted from him was a love as overwhelming and single-minded as my own—and Justin was not one to be overwhelmed, or to overwhelm anyone else.

  That last night at dinner I was edgy and suspicious. I knew Alicia had called him on the phone and that something was up. When we rose from the table and Justin announced curtly that he would not stay for coffee but was going out for an hour or two, Marc stepped behind me and put his hands openly upon my shoulders, looking past me at his brother.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, laughing at Justin’s glowering look. “I’ll keep you entertained, Eve dear. Justin’s business is important. So you must wait for him patiently.”

  Justin strode out of the room and Marc whispered in my ear, “Alicia’s called for help again, and Justin has gone to Grovesend. Let me ring her up in a little while and ask for him there. Then you’ll know for sure.”

  “Why do you hate him so?” I had asked, shrinking from this open betrayal, yet terribly, humanly, tempted.

  Marc only smiled at me. He could be as enigmatic as Justin when he chose.

  The tempting won, as it always had with girls named Eve. Marc rang up Alicia’s house while I stood by, hoping somehow that he would be proved wrong, that I would be reassured as Justin would not stoop to reassure me. But when Justin came to the phone, Marc held the receiver out so I could hear his voice. Then he replaced it quietly.

  “Of course Justin will guess it was you calling,” he said, mocking me, now that I could not undo the act.

  I ran away from him, hating myself as much as I hated Marc. I went to the library, where Maggie was talking quietly with Nigel Barrow. I took a book and sat far away from them, though I did not read. All my senses were keyed to listening for the sound of tires on the driveway that would mean Justin had come home. I did not know what I would do when I saw him. Would I fling myself into his arms and weep—an action he would detest. Or would I fling accusations at him instead and be equally detestable? Growing up did not occur to me. I did little of that until it was too late.

  By ten o’clock that night it had begun to rain and the evening seemed doubly dreary. But I did not want to go to the room I shared with Justin. I could not bear to get into that big empty bed and torture myself by picturing my husband wth Alicia Daven. When Marc came into the library looking for me, I still sat staring at unread pages.

  He was gentle now, as though he pitied me, and coaxed as if to distract me. “This is a perfect night for our Athmore ghost,” he told me. “Wouldn’t you like to meet him?”

  “Ghosts walk at midnight,” I said grumpily.

  His face grew bright with mischief. “Not this one. He was husband to Cynthia, the most beautiful of Mrs. Langley’s daughters, and he knew he was being cuckolded. He was not much of a man, I’m afraid, since his way out was to hang himself from beneath the high canopy of the bed in the green-velvet room. Now and then over the years someone will see him looking out the windows of that room on a rainy night. Or servants will swear they’ve come upon him sleeping in the bed, and that he faded away as they watched. He’s a harmless enough ghost, concerned with his own troubles, which he seems doomed to go on enduring forever. Rainy nights like the one on which he died are always best for him.”

  Marc took away my book and pulled me from my chair. Maggie watched us doubtfully as we left the library together, and Marc called to her to tell Justin, if he came, that we had gone to visit the Athmore ghost.

  The room waited for us with rain whispering at the panes and the bed lost in canopied green darkness. A draft crept in from closed windows and the candle flames dipped, setting long shadows to bowing. Marc turned off the lamp, leaving only pale candlelight.

  “Our ghost doesn’t care for too much illumination,” he said.

  That night I had felt the mood of the room in my very flesh. I had sensed its aura of old despair, of futility, of black hopelessness, and these things became my own. Knowing what I must see, I stepped close to the bed and peered between flowing curtains. Was there a pale, lost face looking out at me? Did cavernous eyes burn from those greenish shadows? Suddenly I knew there was danger for me here. My happiness, my very life, was threatened and I must get away from all this somber green velvet as quickly as I could. If a misty face watched me, that was its message. Mr. Dunscombe would know that we were kin in despair.

  But when I turned from the bed, Marc caught me in his arms and held me close as if to still my trembling. In the beginning I was scarcely aware of him, except as comforter to my distress. All my being was given to an inner listening, a sensing that was paramount. When I heard the sound of a distant door it was with an inner ear, as much as with an outer. When Marc began to make love to me, I fended him off almost absently. How could he think I would turn to him when it was Justin I so obviously loved? Not until his mouth forced itself upon my own, did I begin to struggle. I was to blame for this, but I wanted it not at all.

  Then, quite suddenly, before I could break the grip of Marc’s arms about me, he raised his head and I saw his gaze move toward the door. His look told me exactly what I would see if I turned my head. But when I would have stepped free of Marc’s clasp, he whispered in my ear, his lips barely moving: “Here’s your chance, sweet. Here’s your chance to make Justin suffer too.”

  He put his lips upon mine, and I stood angrily still for his kiss, hating it, but filled with a savage desire to hurt Justin as much as he was hurting me. If he could go to Alicia—! I let my arms creep about Marc’s neck.

  Justin walked into the room—not raging, but utterly cold and arrogant. Not jealous, but disgusted. When Marc released me and I turned about with my mouth bruised, my eyes angry, Justin nodded toward the door.

  “Get out,” he said to me.

  I think even Marc was a little frightened, but I dared not stay to see what might happen. I ran all the way—through the dark reaches of the long gallery, down the stairs, slipping in my haste, through the library, empty now, and finally to Justin’s room. It had always been Justin’s room—never mine. I ran through it to the small adjoining dressing room where there was a chaise longue that I sometimes used for napping. This place, at least was my own, and I spent
the night there, sleeping not at all.

  Justin never came. Perhaps he went out of the house and back to Alicia, who was conveniently alone at Grovesend.

  The next morning there seemed only one thing to do. I packed a suitcase and told Maggie I was leaving. It was sheer flight—a running away because I could not face Justin. No explanation could be given. How could I say, “I played up to your brother because I wanted to punish you for hurting me?”

  Before I left I wandered about the grounds, dramatizing my tragedy before I had learned what pain could really be. I said a tearful farewell to Deirdre and Maggie and went to London, believing that Justin would come for me and somehow solve the problem I could not solve for myself.

  Now, these years later, standing again in the green-velvet room, I faced all that had happened in its full appalling detail, and took upon my shoulders the blame I had never truly accepted before. By now I knew—through letters from Maggie—that Justin’s visit to Grovesend had been innocent enough. Alicia claimed concern about some business matters she had become involved in which were not turning out well, and she wanted Justin’s advice. He could hardly refuse her, whatever her motive might have been. It was Justin’s misfortune to have a wife with so little faith in herself and her husband.

  I shivered now with the chill of self-blame, and went to close the windows upon bright daylight. Then I stepped before the serpentine bureau and looked wonderingly into its mirror. My face did not look so very different from three years ago when I had first come to Athmore. I still looked ridiculously young with that pointed chin, wide brown eyes and softly youthful hair. Yet there was a difference. About my eyes, about the set of my mouth, there was a difference. Gaiety was gone, and all the old eagerness that had won Justin to me. The eyes of the girl in the mirror seemed more watchful—they doubted me. I did not like what I saw, but I did not know how to change what was happening to me.

  The glass of the mirror was slightly crazed and it seemed to impose itself mistily between real face and reflected one. How long had this glass reflected this room? I wondered. Once it had mirrored me in Marc’s arms and shown Justin behind me. Beyond my own figure I studied the reflected room. I could see the canopied bed and I knew the glass must have beheld other, more dreadful acts which had occurred in this room. Yet the mirror continued to give back only innocent pictures of the present, unmarked by all it had seen in the past. The human face was not like that. It changed and carried in itself the tarnish of all that was experienced.