Court! The word caught the woman in the middle of a long, ascending surge of triumph. So this was it. This was what the old man had prophesied. And it was good, not bad.
She felt a brief, ferocious rage at the old fool for having frightened her so badly – but the banker was speaking again:
“I understand you have a letter from your sister-in-law, asking you to look after Phyllis and the farm. It is possible such letter is not absolutely necessary, as you are the only relative, but in lieu of a will it will constitute a definite authorization on the basis of which the courts can appoint you executrix.”
The woman sat very still, almost frozen by the words. Somehow, while she had always felt that she would in a crisis produce the letter she had forged, now that the terrible moment was there—
She felt herself fumbling in her purse, and there was the sound of her voice mumbling some doubt about the letter still being around. But she knew better.
She brought it out, took it blindly from the blank envelope where she had carefully placed it, handed it toward the smooth, reaching fingers – and waited her doom.
As he read, the man spoke half to himself, half to her: “Hm-m-m, she offers you twenty-five dollars a month over and above expenses—”
The woman quivered in every muscle of her thick body. The incredibly violent thought came that she must have been mad to put such a thing in the letter. She said hurriedly: “Forget about the money. I’m not here to—”
“I was just going to say,” interrupted the banker, “that it seems an inadequate wage. For a farm as large and wealthy as that of the Wainwrights’, there is no reason why the manager should not receive fifty dollars, at least, and that is the sum I shall petition the judge for.”
He added: “The local magistrate is having a summer sitting this morning just down the street, and if you’ll step over there with me we can have this all settled shortly.”
He finished: “By the way, he’s always interested in the latest predictions of old Mr Wainwright.”
“I know them all!” the woman gulped.
She allowed herself, a little later, to be shepherded onto the sidewalk. A brilliant, late July sun was pouring down on the pavement. Slowly, it warmed the chill out of her veins.
It was three years later, three undisturbed years. The woman stopped short in the task of running the carpet sweeper over the living-room carpet, and stood frowning. Just what had brought the thought into her mind, she couldn’t remember, but—
Had she seen the old man, as she came out of the courthouse that July day three years before, when the world had been handed to her without a struggle.
The old man had predicted that moment. That meant, in some way, he must have seen it. Had the picture come in the form of a vision? Or as a result of some contact in his mind across the months? Had he in short been physically present; and the scene had flashed back through some obscure connection across time?
She couldn’t remember having seen him. Try as she would, nothing came to her from that moment but a sort of blurred, enormous contentment.
The old man, of course, thought he’d been there. The old fool believed that everything he ever spoke about was memory of his past. What a dim, senile world that past must be.
It must spread before his mind like a road over which shifting tendrils of fog drifted, now thick and impenetrable, now thin and bright with flashing rays of sunlight – and pictures.
Pictures of events.
Across the room from her she was vaguely aware of the old man stirring in his chair. He spoke:
“Seems like hardly yesterday that Phyllis and that Couzens boy got married. And yet it’s—”
He paused; he said politely: “When was that, Pearl? My memory isn’t as good as it was, and—”
The words didn’t actually penetrate the woman. But her gaze, in its idle turning, fastened on plump Pearl – and stopped. The girl sat rigid on the living-room couch, where she had been sprawling. Her round, baby eyes were wide.
“Ma!” she shrilled. “Did you hear that? Grandpa’s talking like Phyllis and Charlie Couzens are married.”
There was a thick, muffled sound of somebody half choking. With a gulp the woman realized that it was she who had made the sound. Gasping, she whirled on the old man and loomed over him, a big, tight-lipped creature, with hard blue eyes.
For a moment, her dismay was so all-consuming that words wouldn’t come. The immensity of the catastrophe implied by the old man’s statement scarcely left room for thought. But—
Marriage!
And she had actually thought smugly that Bill and Phyllis – Why, Bill had told her and—
Marriage! To the son of the neighboring farmer. Automatic end to her security. She had nearly a thousand dollars, but how long would that last, once the income itself stopped?
Sharp pain of fear released the explosion that, momentarily, had been dammed up by the sheer fury of her thoughts:
“You old fool, you!” she raged. “So you’ve been sitting here all these years while I’ve been looking after you, scheming against me and mine. A trick, that’s what it is. Think you’re clever, eh, using your gift to—”
It was the way the old man was shrinking that brought brief, vivid awareness to the woman of the danger of such an outburst after so many years of smiling friendliness. She heard the old man say:
“I don’t understand, Mrs Carmody. What’s the matter?”
“Did you say it?” She couldn’t have stopped the words to save her soul.
“Did I say what?”
“About Phyllis and that Couzens boy—”
“Oh, them!” He seemed to forget that she was there above him. A benign smile crept into his face. He said at last quietly: “It seems like hardly yesterday that they were married—”
For a second time he became aware of the dark, forbidding expression of the woman who towered above him.
“Anything wrong?” he gasped. “Has something happened to Phyllis and her husband?”
With a horrible effort the woman caught hold of herself. Her eyes blazed at him with a slate-blue intensity.
“I don’t want you to talk about them, do you understand? Not a word. I don’t want to hear a word about them.”
The old man stirred, his face creasing into a myriad extra lines of bewilderment. “Why, certainly, Mrs Carmody, if you wish, but my own great-granddaughter—”
He subsided weakly as the woman whipped on Pearclass="underline" “If you mention one word of this to Phyllis, I’ll . . . you know what I’ll do to you.”
“Oh, sure, ma,” Pearl said. “You can trust me, ma.”
The woman turned away, shaking. For years there had been a dim plan in the back of her mind, to cover just such a possibility as Phyllis wanting to marry someone else.
She twisted her face with distaste and half fear, and brought the ugly thing out of the dark brain corridor where she had kept it hidden.
Her fingers kept trembling as she worked. Once she saw herself in the mirror over the sink – and started back in dismay at the distorted countenance that reflected there.
That steadied her. But the fear stayed, sick surge after sick surge of it. A woman, forty-five, without income, in the depths of the depression. There was Federal relief, of course, but they wouldn’t give that to her till the money was gone. There was old-age pension – twenty-five years away.
She drew a deep breath. Actually, those were meaningless things, utter defeats. Actually, there was only her desperate plan – and that required the fullest co-operation from Bill.
She studied Bill when he came in from the field at lunch. There had been a quietness in him this last year or so that had puzzled her. As if, at twenty, he had suddenly grown up.
He looked like a man; he was strongly built, of medium height with lines of dark passion in his rather heavy face.