My American

by Stella Gibbons

  Amy made a faint sound in her throat. Her eyes were fixed on Mrs. Vorst imploringly, as if asking for mercy.

  Mr. Vorst came back almost immediately.

  “Myron’s gone to the movies,” he said angrily. “I’ll go.” He was tying the belt of his coat as he spoke.

  Mrs. Vorst said slowly—

  “Webster, I shouldn’t trouble. I’m sure he’s not down there with a twisted ankle. You’d better call up the police.”

  “The police! Don’t be crazy, dear!”

  “It’s you who are crazy!” she cried, losing control. “He’s been gone three hours—leaving her here without a word on her first evening! Of course there’s something wrong—he wouldn’t have done that unless there was something badly wrong—I want you to call up the police right away!”

  “I’ll call up Jacoby; I was playing golf with him this morning and talking about Bob. He won’t get talking all over the place——” Mr. Vorst muttered, and went out of the room. Mrs. Vorst went over and sat beside Amy.

  “Ah hate waiting for someone who doesn’t come. Ah do so,” she said softly yet violently, the Southern accent coming into her voice as it always did when she was moved. “Ah hate it worse than anything in this world. And when it’s mah own son and—Miss Lee!” suddenly putting her hand on Amy’s bare arm, “what is it? Are you sick?”

  Amy shook her head. She was shivering so violently that her teeth were chattering.

  “I’m all right,” she managed to say. “I’m only so worried. You don’t think Dan could have——”

  “Now, now, I don’t think Dan’s done anything,” said Mrs. Vorst, getting up and going over to the table. “I only said that because—well, Dan always was a mean creature and I wondered if he might be mad at Bob’s coming home—here, drink this; I’m going to have one, too,” and she held out the highball she had been mixing while she talked.

  Amy took it and sipped it, but instead of restoring her spirits and courage it went to her head and immediately swept her away into the dreamlike trance of horror against which she had been struggling. She sat there, turning the glass in her fingers and staring at Mrs. Vorst; and all she could think was that to-morrow they were to have gone to the woods, and now they would never go. They would never go.

  “Joe Murphy’s missing, too,” said Mr. Vorst, coming back with a white face. “His father called up the station an hour ago. He’s never been home!”

  “He was here this afternoon; Bob asked him up!” exclaimed Mrs. Vorst.

  “Did they go off together?” he asked.

  “Bob was by himself, when I saw him,” put in Amy, slowly.

  “Do you think they can be together, Webster? Perhaps Bob ran across Joe down in the wood and thought he’d better see him home.”

  “It doesn’t take three hours to get to Joe’s home.”

  “No.” Mrs. Vorst put her hand against her forehead. “I wasn’t thinking. … What are they going to do about Bob?”

  “Calling all cars to look out for him, and Joe too. That’s all they can do, for the time being. Both of them may turn up any minute. I expect they’ve gone to the movies.” Mr. Vorst spoke irritably to hide his alarm and dismay.

  “Well.” He sat down heavily, and stared at his wife, and then at Amy. “Now there’s nothing to do but wait. Miss Lee, will you smoke?”

  “No, thank you,” she whispered.

  Then for a while no-one spoke. A clock somewhere struck ten.

  Towards three o’clock Mrs. Vorst helped Amy upstairs and made her lie on the bed. She could not stop trembling, and lay shaking in silence while Mrs. Vorst found some sleeping tablets and poured out a glass of water.

  “Now I want you just to take these, honey. Just be a sweet good child. Come along.” It was the softest, kindest murmur. “Try to relax and get some sleep.”

  Amy obediently swallowed the tablets and drank some water, never taking her eyes from Mrs. Vorst’s worried face.

  “I’m going to sit up with Mr. Vorst, just in case there’s any news. But I want you to call me at once if you feel bad. Will you?”

  Trying to stop trembling, Amy nodded.

  “I’m sure Myron’s gone to look for Bob. If anyone—I’m sure he’ll find him, too.”

  Again Amy nodded. Her lips moved and Mrs. Vorst bent nearer. She caught a murmur—

  “… so sorry … such a nuisance … so worried——”

  “Ah, never mind about that.” She gently arranged the eiderdown over Amy’s shoulders. “Just try to sleep. Shall I sit with you for a little while?”

  On Amy’s grateful nod and murmur, she turned out the lights and seated herself in a low chair by the radiator. Presently she got up and crept over to the bed. Hurried breathing told her that Amy had fallen asleep, and she went quietly out of the room.

  The hall was still except for the loud slow ticking of the clock, and the flowers looked unreal in the electric light. Her husband had fallen asleep in his chair with his mouth open and looked an old, tired, weak man. She sat down opposite him and shut her eyes, but was at once compelled to open them again: it was impossible to rest. Presently three o’clock struck. She sat quite still, staring about the room with her hands clasped together, and the night crept on.

  Amy slept only for a little while. Suddenly she started awake, as if aroused by a shout, and in the very instant of waking, without pause or mercy, fear leapt upon her and she began to tremble uncontrollably. He hasn’t come back. He just went out to post a letter and he hasn’t come back. The police are looking for him. It’s true. I forgot it while I was asleep, but it’s true.

  But her mind would not accept the truth; her mind rushed away terrified, down corridors of hope, of fantasy, of memory. To-morrow perhaps we’ll go to the woods after all, if he isn’t too tired. Perhaps he’s come in while I was asleep. No, they promised to wake me up. But perhaps he said no, don’t wake her, let her sleep. Then they wouldn’t have told me.

  Was that the front door?

  Someone talking in the hall?

  She started up in the darkness, shaking so violently from head to foot that the bed trembled under her. The room was utterly silent. A line of light lay under her door, but downstairs there was not a sound. She felt as if the house was alive, and waiting, in a timeless trance of horror, for one who would never come.

  She lay down again and dozed uneasily for a little while, half-dreaming, half-remembering, the Hurrying People and the Lady Ligeia’s Entombment and all the fears of her childhood, and while she was seeing them she forgot Bob. And then for a few blessed moments she would fall dreamlessly asleep—but always at intervals of half an hour or less, she started awake, again, trembling, and at once in the grip, without pause or mercy, of fear.

  She did not know how long this went on. Sometimes she heard the clock chime but she lost count of the hours. Fear raced after her terrified mind and seized it and swung it round to face the unbearable fact that must be borne. The only expression she could give to her agony was the ceaseless trembling that shook her body. She lost all sense of time, she could remember nothing. There was nothing in the world but darkness, and fear without pause or mercy, and the shaking of her cold body huddled on the bed.

  When footsteps came quickly up the stairs and hurried along the passage just before sunrise, she had fallen into a stupor and could not hear.

  “Dan? Hullo there!”

  Suddenly the door of the hut was jerked open and a dark figure stood there, motionless, glaring at Bob, with one hand steadily holding a gun against its side. For a moment they confronted one another across the clearing filled by the dim rays of the moon, and Bob heard the noise of the water very clearly and noticed how white Dan’s face was; so white that it seemed to draw upon itself all the light in the heavens. Then Dan let his arm sink to his side, dropping the gun into his pocket, and lurched forward.

  “How in hell did you get here?” he said hoarsely, and passed his hand across his forehead. “I was asleep. And I heard someone calling ‘
Dan’. Why didn’t you call’ Silk’? No-one calls me Dan now.” He wiped his forehead again.

  “I thought you might know it was me if I called ‘Dan’,” said Bob, beginning to smile. But as he looked more closely at Dan the smile died. He wore one of his thick dark overcoats closely buttoned round him and the scarf of violet silk that Bob remembered so well, and his hair was disordered and on one cheek was a wide smear, black in the moonlight.

  “That’s right,” Dan said, as if to himself. “I did know. I knew your voice. I was dreaming we were kids again, shooting together. The woods, I guess. Being in the woods again.” He stopped, and stared down at the ground for a moment, then suddenly lifted his face and stared up at Bob.

  “What do you want?” he demanded loudly. “How in hell did you get here? Who sent you? No-one knew except Gloria.”

  “Gloria’s dead,” said Bob, and he took one uncontrollable step backwards. “Francey sent me.”

  “I told her I’d kill her if she squealed,” said Dan in a low voice. “Of course—I meant Francey. Sure, Gloria’s dead. I meant Francey. Why’d Francey——?”

  “She’s scared for you. She’s afraid they’ll lynch you for kidnapping Joe,” said Bob, slowly and clearly. While he was speaking he glanced, without moving his head, over Dan’s shoulder at the hut. The door was slowly swinging to in the wind and as he watched, it slammed.

  “Ah!” Dan sprang round, his hand on his gun.

  “It’s only the door. You’re jittering,” said Bob, and put his hand towards his pocket for his cigarette case.

  Then he stopped dead, staring. The bulge in Dan’s coat swung round and covered him.

  “The first lesson you learn is alone,” said Dan, softly, “and the last. The psychology of the superman is solitary. Trust nobody. You’ll be crucified if you trust anyone. Like Gloria.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Dan,” said Bob quietly. “I haven’t got a gun, anyway; and I came to get Joe back and get you out of this mess too, if I can. Is the kid inside?”

  “In the cellar. I had to dope him.”

  “Is he all right?” Bob controlled a movement towards the hut and tried to speak naturally.

  “You’re lying about the gun, aren’t you?”

  Suddenly the white face was close to his own and he smelled the sickliness of drugged breath, while two strong, violent hands clapped against his pockets and sides, searching. There was the extreme of horror in this abrupt bodily contact, as if an animal had pounced on him. When Dan stood back, Bob was trembling with disgust and rage.

  “Jesus, it’s true,” breathed Dan, staring. “You bloody mug.”

  “I didn’t think I’d need a gun. I came up here to get some sense into you, not to shoot you,” said Bob, trying to keep his voice calm.

  But already the trees against the sky, and the moon itself (now giving a light strong enough to cast their two shadows on the grass) and the bright stars, and the flowers on the little bush by the edge of the wood, were assuming to him that unspeakable beauty which only falls upon natural objects when the human eyes which look at them are in danger of death. In a few minutes, perhaps (he thought) I shall be dead. Oh God, please comfort her and keep her safe, and let Joe be saved. For Jesus Christ’s sake, amen.

  Dan was silent, but on the white face lifted to Bob’s there was a faint smile, as if he were listening to something that gave him pleasure.

  “The bulls’ll get Francey and third-degree her and she’ll talk. Then they’ll get you,” Bob went on in the same quiet reasonable tone. “You can’t win, Dan. Let me take the kid back to-night. I’ll make up some story—say we’ve been for a drive together, or something.”

  Still Dan said nothing; only listened, smiling.

  “I won’t squeal. I give you my word.”

  “Go on talking,” said Dan.

  “I’m alone. I came up without telling anyone. If you give me the kid and let us go, you can make a getaway and no-one need ever know.”

  He was interrupted by a deep noise that he did not at first realize came from the back of Dan’s throat. It began as an actual snarl and slowly turned to words.

  “Ah-h-h-h! You—make—me sick! You came up here alone. You’ve got no gun. And so I’d admire your nobility and let the kid go. Now get this——”

  He stopped and put his hand to his head.

  “I forgot,” he said in his usual soft controlled voice. “The kid’s dead. I forgot.”

  After a pause Bob said—

  “Are you sure?”

  “I felt his heart. It didn’t move. He’s in there on the bed, in the cellar.”

  “Dan, let me look at him!”

  “I tell you he’s dead. It’s no use.”

  “You don’t know—you’re all in—you may be mistaken. Just let me look at him—for God’s sake——”

  He started forward as if to move to the cabin, but at once Dan’s gun covered his heart, and he stood still.

  “Not afraid, are you?”

  “Of course I’m afraid, you fool,” said Bob through his teeth.

  Dan shut his eyes and his shoulders writhed as if in pain while all the muscles of his face shuddered.

  “Blast you,” he burst out at last, lowering the gun. “You’re afraid and you don’t care if I know it. What can I do? I never had a chance. You had everything.” His face twisted, and suddenly he was choking with horrible tears. “You think you can come your Jesus stuff over me, trusting me—but I’m what I’ve made myself—beyond good’n evil——”

  The moon had risen above the trees and now sailed clear of cloud.

  “Do you know what?” Dan said, gulping. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Are you?” said Bob stupidly, after a pause. “What for, Dan?”

  “I’ve always hated you. Ever since we were kids. You had something I hadn’t. All the chances I wanted. Christ, I was glad when you killed that kid! I thought I’d get you that time. But you got away. You’ve always got away. Only this time you won’t, because——”

  He choked, and shook his head like a beast in a rage, writhing his shoulders again. “… but that’s not why I’m going to kill you, that’s not why——” he went on, speaking lower and faster and moving a little away from Bob and raising the gun. “Do you know why? It’s because you’re sorry for me, you damned Jesus of Nazareth, in spite of everything you’ve always been sorry for me——”

  A sharp crack cut across the inhuman raging voice. Dan screamed and flung himself, rather than fell, upon his face. As he fell he fired, and Bob saw a spurt of earth go up just beyond his outstretched hand on the grass.

  A man was coming slowly across the clearing, holding an old-fashioned revolver loosely in front of him in one hand and wiping his forehead with a large spotted handkerchief held in the other.

  He stopped when he came up to the body. It lay still, looking very dark against the silver of the moonlit grass. Black blood was slowly spreading over the violet silk scarf. Like one of the rocks of the Mooween it lay there; the body of a youngish, fattish man; dead.

  Myron touched one of the outflung hands with the tip of his shoe.

  “Jest like a bear’s paws,” he said. “He never did have no faculty.”

  CHAPTER THE LAST

  LETTERS FROM ENGLAND

  DOCTOR ROBERT VORST’S HOUSE IN Alva looked out towards the mountains. The glow of sunset was fading from the fields now beautiful under six feet of snow, and the blue shadows of the trees were fading too. Soon it would be night, lit by the holy-seeming stars of a Christmas Eve some years later.

  Amy was going into the living-room to rest, with a batch of unopened letters in one hand. She still had so much to do!—telephone calls to make, parcels to fix for to-morrow, letters to write, cooking, and a bit of her new story to write, and at any moment Lou would be here. She moved slowly across to her special chair, sat down with a contented sigh, dropped her letters down on the table, and shut her eyes for a moment. She felt very well. It was only to please Bob that she
took a little rest every day about this time. And to-day she felt particularly well and energetic; Christmas could not bring enough tasks for her; she felt like turning out the attics as well. Bob had nodded when she said as much at breakfast and had remarked that this was quite normal, the baby should arrive in a few days as expected. All the clothes were ready, and Doctor Lippmann was on call at Morgan, and a nurse from Vine Falls would arrive shortly. Bob had refused to attend Amy. He had supervised the waiting time, but he did not feel himself brave enough to bring his child into the world. Dr. Lippmann, aged sixty-three and deliverer of hundreds, could do that.

  “Oh, you’ll be perfectly all right,” Bob had said; he had said it several times before he went out on his round, and looked at her rather a long time when he kissed her good-bye and then said it again.

  I wish he’d come in, thought Amy, glancing out of the window at the darkening fields. Then she tried to check her thoughts (worrying was bad for the baby) and turned to her letters.

  There were some old friends in the room with her: the skating ladies, the red and blue Italian soldiers, the birds on their snowy boughs, but in this room for the first time in their lives they appeared at home. They had seemed too elegant for the flat at Highbury and too old-fashioned for the conventional smartness of the one at Hyde House, but here they looked serenely down upon old pieces of maplewood furniture and a green Chinese carpet and were no more than part of a restful room.

  Letters from England! Oh, good, thought Amy. Her heart was where her treasure was, in America, but she did enjoy her English mail! She sorted the letters, putting the dullest ones first, and then began to read. Her little hands, grown plumper in the past months, dutifully turned the pages of a long epistle from Mr. Aubrett concerned with contracts, money and translation rights; and then she passed on to some fan-mail (which she read with gratified murmurs, for Amy had learned to love her new public as much as her new public loved her). She put by some catalogues and advertisements to be dealt with by her little secretary, a local girl who came in every morning for two hours. And then, her duty done, she opened a fat letter with an English stamp and a Wimbledon postmark, switched on the lamp (for it was nearly dark and the snowy fields outside were one with the deep blue sky) and settled herself to enjoy the sound of Dora Beeding’s voice, from three thousand miles away.