The Iron Cobweb

by Ursula Curtiss

  OF WHAT WAS ELIZABETH MARCH AFRAID? WAS IT OF HER HUSBAND’S STRANGE WAY OF SPYING ON HER?

  OR THE SUSPICIOUS ACTIONS OF THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE?

  WAS SOMEONE REALLY TAMPERING WITH HER SLEEPING PILLS? POISONING THE CHILDREN? FORGING HER NAME TO CHECKS? SETTING SMALL FIRES IN HER WORKSHOP?

  WAS IT A PLOT AGAINST HER—OR WAS SHE HERSELF SLIPPING DANGEROUSLY, MURDEROUSLY OUT OF CONTROL?

  THE IRON

  COBWEB

  URSULA CURTISS

  WALTER J. BLACK

  NEW YORK, N. Y.

  THE IRON COBWEB

  Copyright © 1953 by Ursula Curtiss

  All rights reserved

  One

  WHEN HAD she begun to feel afraid? Now, this instant, in this tiny shocking part of a November afternoon? Or a day, a week, a month ago, her brain hiding its own uneasy knowledge in a deep-down layer that consciousness didn’t plumb?

  Elizabeth March didn’t know, then or later, but she always remembered that crisp shuddery day. Branches restless against the sky, a threat of snow on the air. Her own long spacious comfortable living-room, walled in misty gray, curtained in red and green and white striped linen, firelit. The hands on the gilt wedding-present clock, miraculously preserved through five years, pointing to four o’clock. And, close and clear, the sound of a baby crying.

  She was on her feet instantly, wrenching the front door open on the icy air. The sounds were unmistakable now, small mewings followed by loud meowing wails. Elizabeth ran down the steps between cedars and found the source: three and a half year-old Maire, snow-suited in navy blue, lying nonchalantly back in her wagon and mimicking at the sky.

  Relief—and that was frightening in itself—turned to anger. “Maire!” she said sharply. “Stop that at once. What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

  The child tilted upright, pale curls that looked like chiffon escaping wildly from under the navy helmet. “That’s my baby,” she said, her voice as severe as Elizabeth’s. “My baby cries all the day long.”

  She wasn’t far removed from a baby herself; hang onto that. “Tell her from me,” said Elizabeth weakly, “that she’ll have to go up to her room if she’s going to make all that racket.”

  She left Maire scolding talkatively at the empty air; she went back up the steps and turned just in time to see Noreen Delaney, the children’s young nursemaid, rounding the corner of the house, her cheeks rosy with cold, her voice full of reproach. “Maire Ann March, I thought you were a nice big girl. Here’s poor little Jeep been looking for you, but he thought it was a baby on the lawn and not his sister . . .”

  She caught sight of Elizabeth then, and permitted herself a smile and an anxious, “You’ll catch your death without a coat, Mrs. March. I thought I might pull them once around the block in their wagon before supper.”

  “Don’t get too cold yourself,” said Elizabeth.

  “Oh, we’re all mittened. In you go. Jeep. . . .”

  Jeep, John Paul when he attained the age of dignity, climbed laboriously into the red wagon. At two, Elizabeth thought, watching, it must be quite a hazardous feat. He accomplished it safely, Maire shouted, “Take good care of my baby. Mama,” Noreen turned for a smile and a wave and they were gone, down the lawn and under the trees and behind the high privet hedge.

  Elizabeth, shivering, went back to the fire. She wasn’t really aware of physical cold; the chill was deep and inner. She blamed herself for her annoyance at Maire; the child was—what would the specialists call it at fifteen dollars an hour—compensating. And Jeep too, very possibly, because who knew what went on behind the wide wondering eyes of a two year-old boy? They heard talk about doctors and hospitals and a baby and apparently understood nothing, but when Elizabeth left in that white rigid hush, to be gone two weeks, they expected her to return with a baby.

  And so did I, thought Elizabeth leadenly, and so did I.

  Skip that, skip with every ounce of mental strength the thing that happened daily to thousands of women—the pain, the confusion, the submission; afterwards the serene and lazy wonder: a sister for Maire, or a boy to bounce and tumble with Jeep? And then her doctor at her bedside instead of a nurse; instinct told her the meaning of that, the dreadful final meaning. She still had to listen to his voice, ruffled out of its expensive calm, telling her that she must be brave, that she must think of the other children. . . .

  Extraneous, all of it, because that was six weeks ago and she was well again. She had rested obediently and swallowed quantities of capsules, and allowed herself to be caught up again in the hair-raising pace set by two small children. There were still the nights, long, merciless, loud with the things that Oliver, her husband, would not say. That if she had listened to him, if she had not been so illogically insistent upon flying to New York for the wedding of a friend, her accident on the way to join him at the airport could never have happened.

  If he had said it, if he had not turned his head away so sharply when she tried to say it, its echoes would have died away between them before this.

  But it was the days that you lived and gradually the sense of loss had dulled; little by little Oliver’s face had lost its quietly frantic look. After a while, with the help of a new nurse for the children and the efficient presence of a cousin temporarily-turned-housekeeper, it was almost as though the months of waiting and the final failure had never been.

  Except that there was something wrong, something as delicate and disturbing as motion sensed out of the corner of the eye. And it was this that made Elizabeth afraid.

  Somewhere in the house, branches scraped against a window. The wind was sharpening . . . were the children warm enough? But Noreen had said just around the block; they’d be back at any minute. Elizabeth left the hearth and crossed the room to the round gilt mirror and looked deliberately at herself.

  The glass distorted, and gave back a humblingly small image. Black cashmere, ringed at the throat with a strand of snowy buttons. Small creamy face above it, still a little too hollow in the cheeks, with hair the pale sunny color of Maire’s brushed shiningly close to her head. Indeterminate eyes—blue? green?—too wide in concentration under surprisingly dark brows.

  Afraid? asked Elizabeth of the searching eyes. Afraid of what? Nothing she could face. Like the motion caught or imagined in the tail of the eye, the uneasiness hid when she looked for it. Or, rather, it took on the color of any circumstance, like a defensive animal finding protection, so that it might be concealed in almost anything.

  It might be Oliver, with his new and disconcerting habit of watching her when he thought she didn’t notice. Watching almost clinically—and remembering?—so that when he would say casually. “Tired?” she marshalled her answer as carefully as though he were a visiting psychiatrist and not the man she had loved without guard for five years.

  It might be Constance Ives, Elizabeth’s second cousin, taking over—soothingly, quietly—any household affair requiring more thought than, say, a five year-old child could give it. Constance, in Massachusetts on a chance visit to the cousin she hadn’t met more than twice in her thirty-plus years, had been a rock in those first dream-like days after the hospital. She was a wall now, steady, reliable—and completely unassailable. Was there someone else behind the wall, someone who resented a lifetime of aprons and grocery lists, someone Elizabeth wouldn’t recognize if the wall ever cracked?

  Or the wrongness might be in Lucy Brent. Why, thought Elizabeth edgily, must I be carried off to Bonwit’s on shopping trips when there isn’t a thing I want? Or to fashion shows, which I loathe? Or on long drives, ending up with tea at some horribly quaint place, which must bore Lucy nearly as much as they do me? Is it occupational therapy, or what?

  She was ashamed of that ins
tantly because Lucy, bound by no ties at all beyond a friendship of two years’ standing, was merely doing her darting, dragonfly best to divert Elizabeth, and sacrificing, along the way, quite a few hours of her beloved high-stakes bridge. And Lucy had no children, and no recognition of children, so that she couldn’t know.

  Oddly enough, of them all, it was Lucy’s husband whom Elizabeth had felt most at ease with in the past few weeks. Steven Brent was shy and thoughtful and often inarticulate; where her cousin Constance Ives was a rock, he was a cushion, but in the buoyant and deliberate way that a life-raft is a cushion. Of them all, it was Steven who had said openly, “I wish we could help. But you’ll deal with it your own way,” and had then gone on treating her as a normal, intelligent woman.

  Normal.

  Voices on the frosty air. Maire’s: “Mama! Where are you, Mama? I found a duck!” Jeep’s, tearful: “Mine, MINE,” and then an outburst of rage and sorrow. The wagon rattled, Noreen’s voice threaded serenely through the altercation. Jeep’s sobs quieted. Elizabeth went to the door, feeling as though she had come out of shadow into sunlight, and soberly admired a wooden duck faded from countless rains. Noreen, brisk with zippers and mittens in the lighted kitchen, nodded at the duck and said conversationally, “Expendable, I think, as soon as possible? We had to take it along to avoid a scene.”

  She smiled at Maire as she said it. Countless other Delaneys had obviously followed Noreen into the world, Elizabeth thought gratefully. She said, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry, let them have it if they want it.”

  Jeep gave the duck a look of love. Maire, losing interest, put up a hand to Elizabeth’s and began to pull her toward the door. Noreen said doubtfully, “They say they don’t want scrambled eggs, Mrs. March. . . .”

  “Oh yes they do,” said Elizabeth with firmness, and caught Noreen’s eye. “This is the entering wedge, I warn you. About once a month they start fancying themselves as old Romans. Put your foot down fast.”

  The worried look vanished from the young too-thin face. Not the twenty-two she said she was, thought Elizabeth with a momentary qualm; probably not a day over twenty. But you could need a job and a home just as much at twenty as at twenty-two, and the girl was competent and seemed content. The children had taken to her instantly, and that was ninety percent of the battle.

  The grip of Maire’s hand grew more impatient, “I’ll tell you a secret, Mama—”

  The secret, Elizabeth knew, allowing herself to be escorted into the living-room, would be long and completely inaudible, with Maire’s pink-silk cheek pressed earnestly against her own and her lips moving soundlessly.

  In the instant before she sat down on the couch, Elizabeth caught a tiny sliding reflection of their two figures in the round mirror over the mantel. And the magic began to work again. How could she, how could any woman have the temerity to be afraid when her life had built itself up so beautifully around her? When she had a husband whom she loved, who loved her. Two healthy children who didn’t know the meaning of fear. If no staggering wealth, at least no financial worries. And her own health, snatched out of danger six weeks ago. If that was all she had salvaged on that dreadful morning, it was still a great deal.

  Any notion that things were somehow not what they seemed, that something was nibbling softly at the base of the structure, was nonsense.

  Solemnly, Elizabeth bent her cheek for Maire’s secret.

  “I suppose they’ll want cheese and crackers with their drinks,” said Constance, “or do you think sandwiches?”

  “The Brents?” Elizabeth was momentarily startled, because she and Oliver had never consciously entertained Lucy and Steven. It was always more a matter of sitting around, arguing amicably, until someone, usually Oliver, said around midnight, “What’s in the icebox besides the light bulb?” And then there was a general exodus into the kitchen, without the thread of the argument even trembling.

  But Constance Ives wouldn’t be a party to any such haphazard arrangements. The prop of an invalid mother for nearly twenty years, she had learned, along with infinite patience, that you could keep an iron-clad control of any social situation if things were arranged in advance. So many drinks, so much sustenance, offered with a sensible eve on the clock. After a suitable week or two had elapsed, you went to their house.

  She was waiting now, eyebrows lifted a little over the pale gray eyes. The lids were thick and white and drooping, as though she were facing a strong light. Or as though, Elizabeth had thought once, Constance stored her secrets under those pale lazy folds of flesh, and you mightn’t know her if she suddenly opened them wide and the secrets blazed at you.

  She brought her mind back guiltily to Constance’s question. “Oh —cheese and crackers, I suppose, isn’t that easier?”

  “It isn’t a question of that,” said Constance, burying a rebuke in good humor. “I wasn’t sure what you usually gave them.”

  “Cheese and crackers,” Elizabeth said mildly, zippering her dress, “because I’m lazy to begin with and it is easier.”

  Constance stood up and went slowly to the door of the bedroom, plainly wanting to say something, hesitating. Elizabeth said cheerfully, “Slip showing?” and Constance flushed and shook her pale brown head. “This is the first time you’ve really entertained at all since—I mean . . . do you think . . . black?”

  Distantly, downstairs, Oliver clattered ice into a bucket. Constance looked distressed. Elizabeth pushed back her involuntary anger and said, “I’ve always worn a lot of black. Heavens, you didn’t think it was mourning?”

  The flush in the long face deepened to red. Constance said wretchedly, “No, I just—I . . . I’ll see about things in the kitchen,” and fled, stumblingly.

  I’ll have to stop this, thought Elizabeth clearly, attaching earrings without looking at them. Or pretty soon I won’t be normal. . . .

  Later, the evening telescoped itself for her. There was Lucy’s face, small, bony, elegant; Lucy’s voice with relief under its animation: “Look at her, Steven, she’s blooming. What’s the penalty for malingering in this state?” There was Steven, smiling and quiet and somehow reassuring: “Of course she’s blooming. She’s going to do a book for us soon, aren’t you, Elizabeth? Been at your typewriter yet?”

  There was Constance, effacing herself expertly, giving precedence to talk and laughter just as she had given precedence to her mother’s illness and medicines. Most important of all for Elizabeth, there was Oliver, taking the brunt of the evening on his own shoulders, although you could only know that if you were married to him. Oliver glancing at the clock at close to midnight, and coming across to her as quietly and intently as though there were only the two of them in the room, and saying lightly, “Off you go. Doctor’s orders, at a hundred bucks a syllable.”

  Elizabeth hadn’t felt tired until then; she realized all at once that the thin betraying dampness had started along her forehead. There were goodnights and apologies, and upstairs in their room Oliver’s sudden kiss, almost angry in its intensity. “Take care of yourself, hear? I won’t have you pushing our luck. Wait a minute. . . .”

  He crossed the room to her bureau. Elizabeth, feeling bereft of his arms, said wearily and happily, “But I don’t want a pill, darling. Honestly.”

  “That’s what you think tonight.” Oliver went briskly into the bathroom, filled a water glass and returned, holding pill and glass imperatively before her. Elizabeth laughed at him. “You don’t want me to fall asleep taking off my dress? This zipper requires the clearest of heads. I’ll take it when I’m in bed, and look, you’d better go down, you’ve been gone much too long already. . . .”

  The bedroom was very peaceful: white candlewick on the beds, curly sea green rugs on the floor, toile curtains in ivory and burnt red shutting out the wild windy night. Elizabeth, prolonging the peace and the heavenly sensation of not being required to do anything at all, lay contentedly on her bed without undressing. Cigarette, shower, sleep . . .

  For the first time in weeks she could
laugh at herself, she could wake out of a disturbing dream to her own solid happiness. That was worth all the vitamin capsules in the world, all the sleeping pills—one of which she would presently take. . . .

  She finished one cigarette and absentmindedly lighted another. In the middle of that a motor started into life down in the driveway, shouted farewells echoed on the air. After a few moments the stairs creaked and careful footsteps approached, receded. Constance.

  Oliver would be coming up in a minute—or having a last brandy beside the fire. Elizabeth slid off the bed and smoothed her sheath of black. She thought. He must know I’ve been odd. It’s only fair he should know I’ve come to my senses, and opened her bedroom door and went down the stairs. They could still, after five years of marriage, with two children fathoms deep in sleep in the room next to theirs, come quietly and surprisingly to each other and find all the pleasure of the beginning.

  But Oliver wasn’t beside the fire. She caught a glimpse of his shoulder in the glass door that led to the sunporch. The shoulder swung out of sight, as though he had bent very suddenly. Elizabeth had her hand on the knob of the door when she heard, mystifyingly, the sound of Oliver’s voice. It was slow and bitter, wrenched from him. It said, “That’s all very well—and you know how much it means to me. But—” an impact as though a despairing palm had pounded down on leather “—what are we going to do about Elizabeth?”

  Two

  . . . WHAT INDEED will we do about Elizabeth?

  That crossed her mind like a sword thrust and was gone, because there wasn’t time now. In the immeasurably small interval between the moment she had touched the doorknob and the moment when Oliver’s words had split her consciousness, the knob had turned under her fingers. And creaked.

  Elizabeth pulled the door wide and stepped out onto golden rope rug. They must have sprung apart very nimbly. Lucy Brent was leaning against one of the built-in bookcases at the end of the long narrow room; Oliver, a chair away, was deadening a cigarette in an ashtray and looking up with an air of pleased surprise.