Shadow of Guilt

by Patrick Quentin

  Her hand, very small and pretty, was lying on the table. I put my own hand on it.

  “Where shall we go for the honeymoon?” I said.

  I knew I was breaking every rule; we were both superstitious about tempting providence. But I didn’t care, and as Eve turned quickly to me, her face warming with her wonderful, unexpected smile, I knew she didn’t care either.

  “What’s your mood?” I said. “Europe? Mexico? What about the Caribbean? Jamaica? Tobago?”

  “Tobago!” As she repeated the word, Eve’s eyes were sparkling as if Tobago were the Elysian Fields. She looked about two years old. Our faces were almost touching. I leaned toward her and kissed her.

  That was when I heard a voice saying, “Good evening, Mr. Hadley.”

  For a split second I froze. Then I sprang away from Eve. Don Saxby was standing in front of the table.

  Of all the people in the world! I thought. But then I saw that his smile didn’t have a trace of an I’ve-caught-you-out smirk. It was a friendly, even diffident smile.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I was sitting across the room. I wouldn’t have come over, but—well, there’s something I think you ought to know. Ala’ll be here any minute. We’ve got a dinner date.”

  I glanced at Eve. I could tell she was wishing the floor would yawn and engulf her.

  “Mr. Saxby—er—Don,” I said, “this is Mrs. Lord. She works at my office. I mean, this is most embarrassing. It isn’t… well, I think I ought to explain…”

  “Please don’t explain.” Don Saxby shifted his smile from Eve to me. “I’m extremely uninterested in other people’s business. Live and let live. That’s an old Saskatchewan proverb.” As he spoke, Ala came in and at once saw all three of us. She hesitated, obviously surprised, then she hurried toward us.

  “Does she know?” asked Don Saxby.

  “No,” I said. “For God’s sake, no.”

  “Okay.”

  Ala reached the table then.

  “Hi,” I said. “Mrs. Lord and I have been getting a bite to eat after our labors at the office.”

  Ala turned to Don Saxby. “Oh, dear, what a catastrophe. We’ve been caught out.” She looked at me dubiously. “George, you’re not going to tell Connie, are you?”

  “I don’t get it,” Saxby said. “What’s a catastrophe and what’s Connie got to do with it?”

  Ala gave an exaggerated shrug. “There was a ghastly scene after the party on Tuesday. I’m not supposed to see you again. If you knew the complications! I had to tell Connie I was going out with Rosemary Clark. Oh, dear…”

  She was still watching me, her young face half apprehensive, half coaxing. Don Saxby was watching me, too. The smile in his eyes was as friendly as ever.

  He said, “I don’t think Mr. Hadley’s going to rat on you, are you, Mr. Hadley?”

  His eyes moved from mine after a second, but the second was long enough for me to realize that he was indicating not a threat, which he might well have done, but merely a neutrality pact. It was a plea I could hardly reject.

  “Of course I’m not going to rat,” I said. “In fact, let’s have a drink and a little togetherness.”

  We ordered drinks, relaxed and talked. Gradually I began to realize something which made the intricate situation more intricate. Ala was crazy about Don Saxby, and I was almost sure he was fascinated with her. He was mature enough, of course, to be able to play it cool, but Ala was far too young to hide anything. It was in her eyes, her voice, even in the line of her neck as she turned to talk to him. She had never looked even remotely like this with Chuck Ryson.

  My God, I thought, where do we go from here?

  As though on cue Don Saxby said, “It’s too bad Connie’s suddenly turned against me. I can’t really see why she should, but it’s loused up my plan.” He turned to Ala. “Remember that couple you met at the party—Tom and Marian Green? They were very taken with you. They’re giving a big party up at their place in Stockbridge this weekend. They called this morning and wanted to know if I wouldn’t bring you up tomorrow. Now I guess I’ll have to put them off.”

  Ala looked at him, stricken. Then she turned to me. “Oh, George, couldn’t I go?”

  “Hardly, if Connie objects to me,” Saxby said.

  “But George, the Greens, they’re frightfully rich and respectable, with a daughter at Miss Porter’s, all the Connie things. I could tell her I was going out to Westport with Rosemary. Her parents are still in California. Rosemary wouldn’t tell. Connie would never know. Oh, George…”

  As I looked at her, I realized that in the tangle of my own problems I’d never really come to grips with the great Ryson wedding, never really faced the fact that Ala was only nineteen, that she’d been pushed relentlessly for years toward an engagement which was resolving everything for Connie but perhaps was resolving nothing for her. What was Chuck to her, anyway, when she could look at Don Saxby like this? Just Connie’s choice? The good solid kid who’d worshiped her for years—the obvious future?

  Saxby said, “I’d hate to do anything Connie wouldn’t like. She’s been wonderful to me.”

  I looked at him, realizing that if he were a smooth operator he could so easily be forcing our hands, but he wasn’t trying at all. What’s more, Don Saxby wasn’t the point. He could have been Joe Doakes or Ted Jones or Sam Smith. I knew the idea of Ala going off to a week-end house party with a man, any man, would horrify Connie, but what the hell was wrong with it? What harm could it possibly do to give her a chance to find herself a little before Connie inexorably slammed the door of the wedding shut on her?

  “Okay, Ala,” I said. “If you really want to go…”

  THREE

  I got back to Sixty-Fourth Street just before eleven. Connie had gone to Carnegie Hall with Milly Taylor, one of her committee secretaries who adored her. They arrived soon after me, Connie very grand and formal, Miss Taylor looking dowdy and, as always, a little too grateful.

  “Hello, dear.” Connie crossed to my chair and bent to kiss me. An instinct, born of frayed nerves, warned me she was going to run her hand across my hair, one of her few demonstrative gestures. I was right. “I’m so sorry we’re late. Have you been home for hours?”

  “Not too long,” I said.

  “I do hope you’re not exhausted. Ala’s out with Rosemary Clark. Thank God she’s got at least one sensible friend. Darling, do fix Milly a nightcap.”

  I fixed Miss Taylor her nightcap. Miss Taylor enjoyed her nightcaps. She settled down to it, babbling as usual about how wonderful Connie was. Around midnight, Ala dashed in exuberantly. Soon, with a smoothness which impressed me, she said, “Oh, Connie, Rosemary wants me to go out to Westport with her tomorrow for the weekend. Is that all right?”

  “Of course, dear,” said Connie.

  Soon Miss Taylor rose to leave, and Connie went out with her into the hall. Instantly Ala swept over to me.

  “George darling, come up in about five minutes. Please.” She ran out into the hall, calling, “Good night, Miss Taylor. Good night, Connie.”

  Connie came back into the living room.

  I said, “I’m beat. I think I’ll go up to bed.”

  “All right, dear. I’ll just straighten up down here. I hate leaving a mess for Mary in the morning.”

  I went upstairs and tapped on Ala’s door.

  Ala was still in the untidy stage. Not only were her jazz records scattered around the floor of the room, but there were all sorts of discarded garments strewn over chairs and tables. The chaos reminded me of how young she was—how absurdly young to be married in a month.

  “George.” She jumped up from the bed where she had been sitting next to a dreadful old wool elephant which I’d given her the first year she’d come to us. Her eyes were round and shining with the wonder of everything. “Oh, George, you do like him, don’t you?”

  “Don Saxby?”

  “He’s the most marvelous man I’ve ever met. George… I think I’m in love with him.”

&
nbsp; Although I’d had every warning, I felt an unaccountable stirring of foreboding.

  “How does he feel about you?”

  “How can I tell? He knows I’m going to marry Chuck. He’d never, never say anything.” She came to me, putting her hands on my anus, her young face tragic. “George, what am I going to do?”

  “About Chuck?”

  “I never told you. I wanted to desperately but something seemed to have happened between us. I felt kind of shy with you. George… I’ve never been really sure about Chuck. Oh, I like him, of course I do. I think he’s good and kind and I know he’s crazy about me. But—well, it was Connie really.”

  “Because she wants you to marry him so much?”

  “It isn’t that. It’s just—well, this sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I felt I simply had to get away from her. I couldn’t stand being bullied any longer and I thought if I did what she wanted and married Chuck at least I’d be free. That’s really why I was doing it—to be free from her.”

  I’d known, of course, that Ala chafed under Connie’s relentlessly Corliss guiding reins, but I’d never realized that she had felt as violently as this.

  As I stood looking at her, feeling a mixture of tenderness and guilt, she said, “George, tell me. What am I going to do? Marrying Chuck if I don’t really love him—I mean, it’s rotten for him, too, isn’t it?”

  “I guess it is.”

  “But how can I possibly break it to her—when she’s so crazy about Chuck—when all the wedding plans are arranged and everything? Oh, George, will you do it? Please, George, please. I can’t ... I simply can’t… I’m scared of her.” Scared of her! I thought of how Connie would feel if she’d heard that. Once again, when I was least able to cope with it, a corroding pity came for my wife. Poor Connie, poor admirable Connie plodding on, organizing everyone for his own good.

  Ala was looking at me desperately. “Please, George, you’ve got to help me. It’s the most important moment in my life. It isn’t just Don. Maybe he doesn’t care a hoot for me. I’d be a fool to assume he does. But I couldn’t marry Chuck any more—at least not yet. Not until I know…”

  “Listen,” I said, saying the only thing that seemed to be sayable, “don’t do anything now. Just let the weekend take its course… and, well, if you let Don know how you stand with Chuck, maybe it’ll all resolve itself. Then, when you come back and if you’re sure you don’t want to go through with the wedding right now ... I’ll explain to Connie.”

  “Oh, George.” She hugged me. “I knew I could depend on you.”

  Ala went off for the weekend the next day, ostensibly to Rosemary Clark’s. I felt a little uneasy about it, but there it was. Usually there were all sorts of social things to cope with over the weekend; boring enough but things that got Connie and me through somehow. But that weekend, with a disastrous sense of timing, Connie had decided it would be nice for us to have a little spell in which to relax together. All Friday evening she tried to be sweet and cozy. She merely succeeded in making me feel a suicidal hypocrite.

  On Saturday morning, Lew Parker called. A Brazilian tycoon whom Consolidated had been wooing for their expansion program in South America was unexpectedly stopping off in New York the next day on his way to California. I handled most of the South American contacts; I’d even met this man on a business trip to Sao Paulo last year. Lew wanted me to pick him up at Idlewild at eleven, drive him to his hotel and bring him to the Parkers’ for lunch.

  “I could send Bob Driscoll, George, but this is important and you’re the only one I can trust to give el Senhor the V.I.P. treatment. Hope you don’t mind working on a Sunday.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And don’t let Connie murder me. Send her my love.” Connie was completely understanding. She always made a point of putting my work first. We had a supposedly relaxed lunch together, and then, around three o’clock, she had a phone call from which she came back smiling delightedly.

  “It was Chuck,” she said. “The poor boy, they’re keeping him an extra week in Chicago and he’s so lonely for Ala he’s flying back right now just for today and Sunday. He’ll have to take a night plane out again tomorrow. Isn’t that touching of him—to come all this way?”

  I stood looking at her.

  “He’ll be here around seven,” she said. “I’ll call Ala this minute. There’ll be plenty of time for her to get in from Westport.” She started for the phone in the hall.

  I said, “Don’t call Westport, Connie.”

  She turned. “Why ever not?”

  “Because Ala isn’t there. Some people she met at that party invited her and Don Saxby out for the weekend in Massachusetts. Ala was crazy to go and she knew you’d put your foot down. So I said…”

  I might have known she wouldn’t make a scene. If only Connie had ever got mad and yelled at me, the barrier between us might not have grown so impregnable. For a long moment she merely looked at me, her eyes very bright and scrutinizing.

  “So!” she said.

  “It’s hardly the end of the world,” I said. “I simply felt—”

  “Since you’re so deep in this conspiracy,” she cut in, “presumably you know the name and address of these people in Massachusetts?”

  “It’s Green,” I said. “Thomas Green—in Stockbridge. They’re all right, a daughter at Miss Porter’s, all the okay things. But, Connie, she’ll be enjoying herself. She can see Chuck tomorrow. At least let her stay on tonight.”

  “With people we don’t know? With Don Saxby? Are you quite out of your mind?”

  She turned her back on me and marched out of the room into the hall. I sat down on the arm of a chair. I could hear her on the phone in the hall. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could hear her voice’s clipped, social timbre. Then there was silence, the clicking of her heels—and she was back again.

  I had expected the same expression of outraged authority, but she looked shockingly different. Her face was falling to pieces.

  “She’s not there,” she said. “They arrived last night, but they left today after lunch.”

  “Then they’re probably headed home,” I said.

  “Home? They told Mrs. Green they could only stay Friday night, that they had somewhere else to go. It was all planned. He’s taken her off alone.”

  She came to me. She grabbed my arm. To me, it was absurdly overdone—Lady Gwendolyn learning of her daughter’s ruin.

  “You fool!” she said. “Suddenly trying to play the understanding parent. Look what’s come of it. She’s gone away with him. Don’t you see? They’ve gone off together.”

  FOUR

  Whatever I was feeling, the exasperation was uppermost—an exasperation which overwhelmed any sense of responsibility for what had happened or any real worry. Connie was still clinging to my arm. I half dragged her over and made her sit down on the gold brocade couch.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t you have any confidence in Ala’s good sense? Why shouldn’t she go off for a while alone with a man? He’s about the only interesting man you’ve ever let her meet. I know you love her, but she doesn’t understand. You’ve always ridden her so hard. She thinks… God knows what she thinks, but, because she was too scared to tell you about it all, she came to me, and thank heavens she did. You know she hasn’t run off with Don Saxby or anything melodramatic. Obviously they wanted a little time to be alone, to find out how they feel. Maybe Don’s the right man for her—he seems to be intelligent, honest and decent—or maybe it’s all just a flash in the pan. But whatever way it turns out, you wouldn’t want her to marry Chuck unless she’s absolutely sure, would you?”

  My wife was sitting very straight on the couch, looking directly in front of her.

  “Don Saxby—the right man!” she said. “A man she’s only known for a few days, a man who hadn’t even gotten around to looking for a job at twenty-eight, wandering down from Canada, playing around with being a painter. Your own niece, your adopted daughter—and you
calmly hand her over to a man like that!”

  I resented that dissociation of herself, that brushing off of Ala as “your own niece, your adopted daughter.”

  “Don Saxby was perfectly good enough for you, it seemed,” I said.

  She turned on me fiercely. “I can take care of myself.”

  “So can Ala.”

  “Ala?” She rose and stood in front of me, looking down at me. “If you knew…! If you had the faintest conception!”

  That was the moment the Rysons chose to call. They came into the room, Mal in his black banker’s chesterfield, Vivien all mink and diamond earrings.

  She glided over to Connie, kissing her effusively.

  “Darling, we’re not going to take off our coats. We’ve just popped in for a second on our way to the Plowdens’. Chuck called. Isn’t it exciting? He said he was headed right here, so we thought maybe you’d invite us all over for a lovely family supper party.”

  “There’s something else, too,” said Mal. “Something I felt I should come around and tell you in person. It’s about that Mr. Saxby.” Mal was studying Connie solemnly, as if she were a board meeting. “As you know, I was impressed with him when I met him in Canada. I was even more impressed the other night. I thought I might be able to use him in the bank so I wrote to my friend Reggie Fostwick in Toronto, purely as a routine check-up on the young man. The news I’ve received is rather disquieting.”

  Connie had moved to the window. She was standing there, examining her nails, saying nothing.

  “Reggie Fostwick’s wife happens to know a great deal about him. It seems she has some friends in Toronto who have an eighteen-year-old daughter. Last spring, apparently, Mr. Saxby wormed his way into the family as a sort of protégé of the wife and, before anyone realized what was going on, he and the daughter had eloped. Luckily, the parents managed to catch up with them in the nick of time, just as they were checking into a motel as man and wife. There was quite a scene. The girl was hysterical, wildly in love, and Saxby pretended to be very genuine and apologetic. But the father had summed him up. He told Saxby he could choose between their disowning the daughter or accepting a check for ten thousand dollars to leave the country immediately. He chose the ten thousand dollars.”