The fear of Dick’s imminent death having lifted, Jane Mallory enjoyed the drive to Lilac Hill. Barton Wayne was an excellent driver. Jane felt amused that Barton Wayne was the character in South America who wouldn’t sell the old Wayne House to Sarah Mallory. She had imagined some old curmudgeon. He had been home four weeks, he said, and had another month’s vacation before he had to go back to his job. He was a petroleum engineer. He had taken his job in tropical Venezuela because the money was good and he certainly needed plenty to put Wayne House back in shape. He’d do nothing about the land, he said, at this time. That must wait until the future.
“I love that place,” he said. He laughed at his own enthusiasm. He had a quick and merry laugh which was very endearing. “I’m due for another three-year stretch in that God-forsaken jungle and then I’ll come home to stay. A good part of the Wayne farm has already been sold to Cousin Sarah, but there’s a couple of hundred acres left and I think I can make a living with horses and tobacco.” He laughed aloud again and said, “Slim pickin’s, maybe, but what the hell? I’m happy in this country.”
“Does Mrs. Mallory still want to buy Wayne House?”
“She’d grab it in a minute. It’s an obsession. She already owns more of this world’s goods than most people could handle, though. She’s a wonder, Jane.”
Jane didn’t like to discuss the family with one of themselves, but she said, “It’s all somehow to no purpose, with Dick … ill, and Amelia … the way she is. Mrs. Mallory is getting on, Bart.”
“Cousin Sarah will live to be a hundred, Jane. And she has never given up the hope that …”
Bart left the statement unfinished. Jane added, “That Dick will marry Denise Clarke?”
“You knew?”
“Yes. Of course. But Dick could marry her at once if he would agree to divorcing me. That’s something I have to talk over with him again while I’m here. Poor Amelia! How is she, Bart?”
“Same as ever. Dim.”
“She’s not so dim as her mother pretends. She’s scared. How’s Uncle Victor?”
“Happy as a lark with his spiders. I’ve promised to send him some tropical specimens when I get back.” Barton laughed again. “What a hobby! Did Uncle Victor ever tell you how he started to collect the things? He wanted to live in that old cabin at the back of the yard built long ago for servants. It was vacant. Cousin Sarah wouldn’t permit it because she thought people would talk. So Uncle Victor collected black widows and kept them in jars in his room. Every now and then he would let one go free around the house and that brought Cousin Sarah around. The cabin is quite a place. I’m keen on Uncle Victor. I’d never seen him till I came home this time.”
Jane chuckled. Amiable Uncle Victor bore his utter dependence on Sarah Mallory with perfect aplomb. He never had a penny unless some kindly disposed member of the family slipped him something now and then, but he never complained. He was a tiny, elegant man and almost a legend before he had to come to Lilac Hill because he was old and broke.
“He says he’s going to write a book about spiders,” Bart said. “He says he’ll do for the spider family what Fabre did for the ant. All power to him. He’s a great old guy, Jane.”
“Are you related to him, Bart?”
“No. Sarah was my father’s cousin, you know. I would be calling Uncle Victor Cousin Victor if he had been around, but nobody saw hide nor hair of him for years and years. Now everybody, even the housekeeper, calls him Uncle Victor. He sold out his part of the estate to Cousin Sarah during Prohibition. At that time there seemed to be no future in bourbon. Uncle Victor spent his life in hot spots all over the globe. He made several fortunes gambling and married a couple of rich women during his career, but he wound up broke. Now he lives in a cabin built a long time ago to house the Negroes who were the Mallory house-servants. But you must know all this? You were here a year, weren’t you?”
Jane nodded. Bart took a turning to the left and they soon passed Wayne House. Like most of the country places in this area it stood on a lightly wooded knoll a little higher than the fields around it. It was a colonial house with roof-high massive pillars. It gleamed with a coat of fresh white paint.
“Painted it myself,” Bart said.
“That does wonders,” Jane said. “I remember it as an old gray thing with a cracked porch.”
“Just you wait, Jane.”
They traveled at a comfortable speed along a black winding road. On each side were stone walls and locust trees. Locusts come into leaf late and were only beginning to show cognizance of spring. Wild flowers grew in the grassy banks below the walls. Before they came to the lane which led to the Mallory house Jane caught the scent of lilacs.
The Mallory house also stood on a wooded knoll. It was a Victorian house with fussy porches and bay windows. Tall white chimneys at each side of the main wing gave it a special distinction. A limestone creek wound halfway around the house. It had eroded a steep bank which was planted lavishly with tulips and narcissus. Natural wild flowers mingled with the bright-hued planted flowers and the effect was one of great loveliness.
Lilacs made a hedge along the north end of the yard and marched behind the house so that Uncle Victor’s cabin was not visible from the front. The top branches of two rows of massive white lilac bushes formed an arcade from the side entrance of the house to the lane.
The Mallory family always parked to use the side entrance; visitors parked in front.
“Let’s go in by the front door, Bart, shall we? And please leave my bag in the car.”
“You really mean to use the hotel?”
“I do.”
Bart circled the front drive. Jane got out before he could come around the car to hold the door for her. She walked ahead of him until he called to her to wait. “Let me go in first, Jane.” He went in advance and without ringing opened the front door.
Sarah Wayne Mallory was sitting in the wide front hall. She wore black. Denise Clarke, in a fluffy blue cocktail dress, sat across the hall table from Sarah Mallory.
Neither woman spoke, but Denise gave Jane a wide-eyed glance, half-rose, and then looked at Sarah Mallory and sat down again.
“You go up with her, Bart,” Sarah said bluntly.
“Yes, Cousin Sarah.”
Bart touched Jane’s elbow and stepped back so that she would go ahead of him. Upstairs he said, in a low tone, “Don’t let her bother you, Jane. Cousin Sarah’s pretty upset.”
The snub had been deliberately planned. They didn’t need to sit in the front hall.
“She sent me the telegram,” Jane said. “It was Mrs. Mallory who asked me to come, Bart.”
“Never mind,” Bart said gently. “You know her, I guess.”
In the upper hall, which was as wide as the one on the ground floor, Jane caught a glimpse of Amelia Mallory. The tall pretty woman put her head out of her room, smiled timidly, and then ducked back inside. The gossip about Amelia flicked across Jane’s mind. Dick himself had told her that Sarah was said to have beaten her daughter almost to death because she fell in love with a farmhand and that from then on she had never been “right.” She was a shadow in this house, an aimless gentle creature, past forty now. Nobody had paid her the slightest attention except Uncle Victor, and Jane, when she had been here.
Thoughts of Amelia passed swiftly. Jane, at Dick’s door, had a fresh rush of feeling that she could hardly control. Bart, sensing it, said, “I’ll go in ahead of you, Jane. Dick might—well, let me go first.”
“Thank you,” Jane murmured. She felt a different kind of fear now. She no longer feared that he would die. She was afraid of how he would receive her. Dick’s moods had been unpredictable. He might be polite this time. He might hand her a haymaker.
The room looked the same. It was a big high-ceilinged room papered in yellow. A vast rosewood four-poster bed stood with its head in a deep bay-window. The windows overlooked the white lilac arcade from the drive to the side entrance. A window was open and the room was perfumed with lilacs. The late sunshine came in the west window and illumined Dick Mallory’s ruined face as he sat up in bed against a stack of white pillows. His eyes were closed. There was a nurse in uniform standing beside the chest of drawers over to the right. She was writing something.
Jane barely noticed the nurse for the sight of Dick upset her very much.
All his good looks were gone. His face was bloated and his skin was the color of old wax. He needed a haircut. There was a grayish stubble of beard on his cheeks.
Tears came to Jane’s eyes as she approached the bed and stopped at the foot. What a pitiful creature he had become! Could anything ever save him?
Jane was hardly conscious of the nurse walking past and the door closing as she went into the hall.
Bart Wayne came back to her side after bending over Dick.
“He’s asleep, Jane,” he whispered. “I’ll leave you now.”
Jane nodded without speaking. Bart went out and shut the door after him.
Jane took off her hat and laid it with her bag on a chair. She drew another close to Dick Mallory’s bedside. She sat down. Almost at once he opened his eyes. They were bright and sparkling, and they were friendly.
“Hello, Jane.” His voice was weak.
“Hello, Dick.”
“You came.”
“Of course I came.”
“I’m glad. I was all kinds of a jerk, dear. I want you to forgive me.”
“Of course. I’ve forgotten all that.”
He was quiet for a moment. He seemed to drop asleep again. Then he put out one hand. She took it in both of hers. It felt limp, lifeless, a little cold. He spoke again, his words spaced apart, as if from weakness. “I hate … my … goddamned mother. I hate … Denise.”
Jane’s voice caressed him as if he were a child.
“Never mind that now, Dick.”
“The way we rode herd on you, dear! It was awful.”
“Please. Don’t think of that.”
He was looking at her again, the midnight eyes blackblack.
“Are you happy, Jane?”
“Yes.”
He frowned. His hand stiffened between hers.
“The way we were happy?”
“Of course not, dear.”
“Is there somebody else?”
“No.”
Suddenly his hand slipped out of hers and in seconds was gripping both her wrists. His thin hands were like steel. His eyes danced. His lips shaped a devilish v-shaped grin. All weakness was gone when he accused her.
“You’re lying. But I knew I’d get you back. It took some doing but I fooled them all. Mother and Denise and that horsefaced nurse, who lives in, and even old Dr. Seth Godwin.”
Seth Godwin wasn’t old and he was a very first-rate doctor and presumably an old friend of Dick’s.
“You had a crush on Seth, Janie dear,” Dick sneered.
Jane remembered that Dick had been suspicious of Seth.
“What nonsense!”
She felt panic. She tried to get her hands free. She tugged with all her strength. She felt his nails digging into her flesh. She uttered a little cry and began to beg him to let her go. Dick ducked his head and set his teeth into the fleshy part of her right thumb. Before she felt the pain blood flowed. When he lifted his head, still grinning, there was blood from her hand on his teeth and his unshaven chin. It was horrible. He yanked her into his arms and started kissing her madly. Jane kept struggling, but she was helpless against his maniac strength.
Suddenly his grip slacked. She was free.
“The medicine. Quick!” he muttered.
“I’ll get the nurse,” Jane gasped.
“No. It’s right here. Give … it … to me.”
There was a white capsule on the bedside table, a carafe of water, a glass and a spoon. Jane knew those capsules. They were mild sedatives which Dr. Seth Godwin prescribed to be given Dick when he got excited or upset. Swiftly, she put the capsule in the spoon, gave it to him, and held the water to his lips.
Dick sipped only a little and then settled against the pillows. He spoke softly.
“Jane, darling, come back. I’ve got my money again. Mother let me have control of it because I made her believe that if I had my own money I would marry that silly Denise. We’ll be happy, Jane. I won’t ever drink again.”
Jane had moved out of his reach. She was patting her wounded flesh with a handkerchief.
“We can talk about that later, Dick.”
“You’re leaving me?” he cried.
“For now. Please …”
“You can’t like working in an office again?”
“Yes. I do like it.”
Jane turned away to pick up her hat and bag. There was lipstick on Dick’s face. Her own lips were bruised and burning from the rough stubble on his face. She ought to cream off the lipstick on his cheeks but she was afraid he would seize her again. She started to leave the room.
“Who’s keeping you, kid?” he croaked.
His voice was strange. The sedative, she thought. She made no reply to his insult. He had not changed. That was plain. She opened the door, crossed the hall to a bathroom, washed her hands and face. She repainted her lips and, looking at her scratched wrists and bleeding hand, put on her gloves to hide them. She walked down the stairs.
Sarah Mallory sat in the same place. Denise Clarke, too, had not moved. Barton Wayne stood tall in the tall parlor door. His face had an expression of compassion when his eyes caught Jane’s. Quickly she looked away. She didn’t want sympathy. That would make her cry and she wasn’t quite letting Sarah Mallory and Denise Clarke see her in tears. The nurse was coming through the hall with a tray and, rudely, she didn’t wait for Jane to come all the way down but brushed passed her without apology on the stairs.
“I’ll drive Jane to the hotel, Cousin Sarah,” Bart said.
Mrs. Mallory did not speak. Bart opened the front door and held it for Jane to leave the house. He had not yet closed it when the nurse screamed from upstairs.
“Get Dr. Godwin. Quick. He’s dead. He’s dead.”
“You killed him!” Sarah Mallory shouted at Jane Mallory.