19

The trees above her rose in arches, their branches in ascending tiers. And though there was no moon now the pattern of sky that appeared between the leaves held a pale light and a few fuzzy shapes of stars. The road ran around the lake’s edge, and in spaces where the screen of shrubbery fell and the trees opened, she could see the water, flat and leaden-looking and unmoving, with clumps of cat-tails rising from the shallow places along the shore. The sound of her footsteps in the gravel stilled the voices of peepers and croakers as she passed.

She had been walking with a rhythm; some sort of little quick march had been playing in her head. It was the rhythm, actually, of the little ball, bouncing up and down on the rubber string, and it made her walk faster than usual, with a kind of impatience, her hands deep in the pockets of her light trench coat. She had tied a bright yellow silk scarf around her throat, for confidence—confidence, because it was printed with bright French sayings: Allo? Allons-y, Comment ça va? Ooh, la-la! And she had put on a gay print cotton dress that tied at the middle with a belt composed of ceramic squares. For comfort, and confidence, too, she wore flat-heeled shoes. She walked as she might walk to a summer cocktail party, or barbecue, the kind that were given on back-yard terraces in Locustville, the kind where the host wore a chef’s hat and apron that said, ‘Look Who’s Cookin’,’ and though the trees and the darkness blotted her out, made her feel ectoplasmic, she knew she looked this way. Actually, a curious thing had happened to her mood in more than two hours since Barney had spoken to her in the garden. She no longer truly felt confident or sure or buoyant, convinced of anything. She had become less and less sure of herself, of her relationship to him, of what, if anything, she was going to do about it. She walked through the trees, exploring her feeling. They would have a little talk, perhaps (‘Now Barney, we must be sensible …’). Or perhaps she would let him kiss her a few times and see how she felt about it then. Or perhaps she would not let him kiss her, or even touch her hand. But really she was no longer certain of anything, of the kind of person he was, or—a more disquieting thought—of the kind of person she was. So in place of the confidence and knowledge she had had earlier was now nothing but the excitement of not knowing. It was this peculiar excitement, nothing more, that made her walk quickly along the dark road toward the guesthouse, the excitement of going to a party where you knew none of the people.

Suddenly she came out of the trees. Ahead of her was the wide stretch of grass and the dark shape of the house itself, with the screened porch running around it, just a few hundred feet away, and everything stopped. The march music stopped and the bouncing ball stopped and the night suddenly seemed enormous and she stepped back into the shadows, terrified. Something hot and unbearable welled and throbbed in her throat. She leaned back against the trunk of a tree, feeling dizzy. She thought: Why have I come here?

Why had she thought of the guesthouse? What curious chain of thought, what sequence of long-ago things had worked their way together so quickly in her mind to suggest, all at once, the guesthouse? Then she remembered the broken dollhouse and she thought how queerly the things that happen to children, one after another, reassemble themselves long afterward.

It was a huge, elaborate dollhouse, elaborately furnished. It had a front door that opened on real hinges and the windows had real glass in them. The green painted shutters could close, and inside—when the back of the house was swung open to reveal the little rooms—the windows had real curtains made of gauze and real roll-up shades. The bathroom even had a tub made of china for dolly’s bath. She remembered once hearing Sylvia Sturgis ask her mother in a whisper, admiringly, ‘How much did it cost, Edith?’ It was not a question that most people asked about things the Woodcocks owned, but Sylvia Sturgis was a straightforward woman and a good friend. She asked, ‘How much did it cost?’ not to imply that the cost was the most interesting thing about the doll-house, but in a businesslike way, as she might ask a sales clerk how much a thing cost. Edith, who understood the frank money-question, answered her frankly. ‘Ninety-eight dollars,’ she said. ‘Preston and I are trying to interest Peggy in more feminine toys. She’s turning into such a tomboy!’

It had been a funny day, the day Peggy’s dollhouse arrived, a summer day like today, warm and hazy and restless. Barbara was fourteen and Woody had come to the farm that day for his swimming lesson. After the lesson, she and Woody went into the house and she showed him the dollhouse. For a long time, in Peggy’s room, they admired it, opening the little doors, rolling the little window shades up and down, arranging and rearranging the furniture. Then Peggy came in, ordered them imperiously to leave the dollhouse alone, and so they walked out on to the lawn, barefoot and bored, and presently they conceived their scheme of kidnapping Danny. In whispers, they plotted it.

Danny was beside the pool, stretched out on the walk on his stomach, asleep in the sun. He was a vain boy, and when his lesson-giving hour was over, he spent his time working on his tan, lying on first one side, then the other, rubbing himself periodically with a dark and unguinous liquid that he had prepared from Skol, coconut oil, and iodine. ‘It’s what all the life guards use,’ he said airily. Already this ritual had had its desired cosmetic effect; it had turned his skin a dark, chestnut shade, the colour of brandy, and with his dark hair and eyes, had given him a singularly Latin look. Barbara and Woody looked at him, rigidly asleep with tricklets of perspiration gleaming along the bronzed curve of his back. Then they went into the laundry yard, found two lengths of clothesline to tie him with and a linen handkerchief to use as a gag. Their plan was, as he slept, to bind his hands and feet securely—Barbara working at one end and Woody at the other—and then, when he was immobilised, to tie the gag around his mouth to silence the screams that would no doubt emerge. Beyond this stage, they had not planned. They didn’t know, precisely, what they would do with him when they had him. But they would probably take him away somewhere and enslave him. He had angered them when, a week before, they had asked him to run away to New Haven with them, and he had said witheringly, ‘What? I wouldn’t be caught dead in New Haven with you two creeps!’ He had said the wrong thing. The time for sympathy was past. The time had come, as Woody said, for action. He would be sorry. They would make him grovel at their feet. They would make him call them ‘sir’ and ‘madam,’ or perhaps, ‘master’ and ‘mistress,’ or ‘your lordship’ and ‘your ladyship.’ But, in any case, some day when he had suffered enough they would release him, and let him be their friend.

But their plan misfired. Woody was to tie his feet and Barbara his outstretched hands. Woody got his rope encircled about Danny’s crossed ankles and got it knotted, but Barbara’s job was harder, pulling the hands together from the distance at which they lay, three or four feet apart. In attempting this, she woke him. He sat up quickly. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he yelled. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He jumped to his feet, hopped around crazily in his bonds, yelling and shouting, and toppled into the pool. He came up sputtering and screaming, ‘Mrs. Wood-cock! Mrs. Wood-cock! Help! Help!’

Barbara and Woody were convulsed with laughter. But when Edith Woodcock came running from the house to see what was the matter, and found Danny that way struggling and shouting in the water, they stopped. She helped Danny out of the pool and helped him undo the wet line that tied his ankles. ‘Jesus Christ, Mrs. Woodcock!’ Danny said. ‘Look what those brats did! They tried to drown me, they pushed me in the pool!’

Edith was very angry, ‘Woody,’ she said, ‘go to the front steps of this house and sit there until your mother comes. I’m going to telephone her right now and tell her what you did, and have her come and get you. Barbara, go to your room and don’t come down until I tell you to.’

Angry and humiliated, she went upstairs. Peggy’s room, as she passed, was empty, and in it stood the abandoned dollhouse. From the door she gazed at it. Then she stepped inside the room, went to the dollhouse, and leaned on it. It was simple and arbitrary at first, then systematic, as she smashed it. With the end of a wooden clothes hanger, she punched out each glass window. She shredded the curtains and crushed the furniture, shattered the little porcelain bathtub and wrenched the shutters from their hinges. Then she left the room.

She went out into the hall to the top of the stairs. She looked down at the hall below. It was empty. After a while, she heard Mary-Adams deWinter’s car drive up for Woody, and, for another while, she heard fragments of talk as her mother told Woody’s mother the story of Danny and the pool. Then Mary-Adams drove away. Her mother came into the house and disappeared in one of the rooms downstairs. Barbara felt disappointed then. She had wanted the tumultuous climactic scene now. Instead, her mother was going to make her wait for it. She went down the stairs slowly and out the front door.

A little breeze was blowing. The haze had lifted now and the sky was blue and clear and the thick maple leaves on the trees on the lawn were astonishingly green. The grass beneath her still bare feet was rough and dry and warm, and she walked slowly and thoughtfully across the gravelled driveway, lifting her feet gingerly from the hot pebbles, across the lawn beyond the drive and under the trees. She walked to the stable and found Charlie Muir, the groom, sitting on the bench inside the door, in the sunlight, cleaning his fingernails with the blade of a jack-knife. She smiled at him. ‘Mother says I may go for a ride,’ she said.

He folded the knife and stood up. ‘All right,’ he said and smiled at her. ‘Shall I go along with you?’

She considered this. ‘All right,’ she shrugged.

He saddled both horses.

They rode out. No one saw them go except Emily, who waved from the kitchen window. They took the back path, behind the garden, through the cluster of hemlocks, toward the road that led around the lake.

They said nothing. She had heard, a few weeks before, about the thing that Peggy and Charlie Muir sometimes did when they rode together; she thought of this now and began to wonder idly if Charlie would want to do the same thing with her, or if he was thinking about it. And when they reached the deep shade of the wood road and Charlie reined in his horse ahead of her and stopped, she came up beside him and stopped, too, curious to see what he would do next. He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lighted it. He said, ‘Want a drag, Bobbie?’ He held the cigarette toward her, its end wet from his lips.

She shook her head. ‘No thanks.’

‘Your little sister likes a drag now and then,’ he said.

‘It’s very naughty of her to smoke,’ Barbara said primly. ‘She’s just a child and smoking will stunt her growth. Daddy’d be very mad if he knew you let her.’

‘Aw,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t tell him, would you, Bobbie?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But still you shouldn’t do it.’

He chuckled softly and rested one hand on her horse’s rump. She was riding the chestnut gelding who, because he had been a Christmas present, had been named Blitzen. Blitzen raised his head and shook his dark mane. For a while Charlie rested this way, smoking, and then she realised he was looking at her and she looked at him. His was a sly, somewhat questioning look and she looked quickly away, nonchalantly, through the trees. Then Charlie said, ‘Peggy and I’ve got a little game we play.’

‘Yes,’ Barbara said. ‘So I’ve heard.’

He straightened up and looked hard at her. ‘She told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘She tell anybody else?’ he asked sharply. ‘Did you tell anybody, Bobbie?’

‘No,’ Barbara said. ‘Why should I?’

His shoulders eased. ‘Just wondered,’ he said. And then, ‘Want to try it? What do you say, Bobbie?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Why not, Bobbie?’

‘Because I’m not a child,’ she said. ‘And it’s a very childish game.’

‘Then how about a kiss, Bobbie?’

‘No.’

‘What harm’s a kiss?’ he asked.

She considered this. ‘All right,’ she said.

He reached out then and, awkwardly, circled her waist with his arm and instead of offering her lips to him, she turned her face away and let him kiss her cheek, and for a moment or two, swaying slightly on the horses’ impatient and quivering backs, they balanced, leaning together, and when she felt his other hand reaching for hers she pressed her heels gently into Blitzen’s soft sides and pulled away from him, trotted a few yards ahead.

She remembered feeling an overpowering urge to laugh out loud, but they continued on, Barbara in the lead, under the sheltering trees, in silence. It was true, she decided, that only a child, only someone like Peggy, would find anything interesting, or even darkly fun, in what she did with Charlie. Only a child—or a man, like Charlie, because men, after all, were children too, weren’t they?

So she had concluded at fourteen or so.

She felt superior to Charlie—superior in knowledge and understanding, and superior in position because he was, she reminded herself, a servant. Still, she knew that riding with him like this might be dangerous and it was reassuring to feel Blitzen’s smooth, strong back beneath her. By simply digging her heels into Blitzen’s sides she could break away from any danger, and escape.

Men, it seemed to her at fourteen, had so many curious, contradictory problems, so many crazy wishes and wants! They derived their intensest pleasures from the silliest things! And yet she did not regret having let him kiss her just now, that way, on the cheek. It had helped her to discover some of the interesting facts she was discovering. And discovering facts was a part of growing up.

They came to the guesthouse.

‘Let’s go in there,’ Charlie said.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Aw, Bobbie, why not?’

‘Because I don’t want to.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’

‘What do you mean, because?’

‘Just because.’

‘Aw, come on, Bobbie. I’ve got the key.’

She hesitated. ‘All right,’ she said. It was as though the simple fact that he had the key was enough to change her mind. She got off her horse and tied the reins about the trunk of a sapling. She waited, then, until Charlie had tied up his horse and unlocked the door. They went inside and Charlie closed the door behind her. The room was dark, its curtains drawn, and smelled damp and musty and unused. She stood in the centre of the room and Charlie stood facing her, a few feet away. She studied him. Then, in his face, she saw again the crafty, questioning look.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said. He stepped closer. ‘You won’t tell your ma,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Promise? Swear to God?’

‘Swear to God.’

‘Swear to God that if you tell your ma or your father or anyone the devil will come and throw a burning sword right through your stomach? Swear to God that if you ever tell a single, living creature …’

‘What are you going to do?’ She was suddenly wary, hearing the sound of her voice asking this uncertain question. She looked at him and his eyes were bright slits. A phrase, as they stood there facing each other, came to her head. It was a phrase—a term, an expression—that she and Woody had come across in a newspaper and had speculated about, wondering what it meant. The phrase was ‘statutory rape,’ and they knew, from the dictionary, what rape was, but what ‘statutory’ meant applied to it they couldn’t imagine, unless, as Woody had decided, it meant rape that was committed from a standing position. It flew into her head now, and she asked him, ‘Are you going to do statutory rape to me?’

He drew back, his shoulders hunched, his eyes suddenly wide and frightened. ‘What’re you talking about?’ he asked her. ‘What’re you talking about? Listen to me—I never—look here, I never said—’

She turned and ran. She ran out the door, down the steps, untied her horse and jumped on the horse’s back. She dug her bare heels into Blitzen’s soft sides and rode off under the trees. She had discovered that all men were cowards, too.

She did not tell her mother. But it was not because she had sworn to God or feared the devil’s sword. She had gone to the guesthouse for revenge against her mother; she felt that she had had her revenge now, for her mother punishing her, treating her like a child.

Her mother had punished her like a child because she had acted like a child. She had wanted to punish Peggy, too, for having the dollhouse. So, like a child, she had destroyed it. Like a child—but like a woman, too—she had gone to the guesthouse with Charlie; that way, she had punished them both. And of course later, when the broken dollhouse was discovered, she herself was punished again. What that punishment had been she couldn’t remember now, and it hadn’t mattered. Punishment, as it often seemed to her, was circular. It hadn’t mattered because it simply completed the circle.

But was that why tonight—fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years later—she had suddenly thought of the guesthouse? She wondered whom she was punishing now. It had been all right then, long ago, with Charlie because she had been only a child, it had been only a part of growing up. But now she was thirty years old.

She stepped out of the dark shadows and walked slowly across the intervening space of grass, up the steps and unlocked the door. Immediately the remembered damp, closed, unused smell assailed her as she stood inside the doorway and groped for the light switch. Her hand found the switch and it was only then, all at once, that she remembered: she and Carson had come there, too! How queer to have forgotten! How queer to have forgotten that she and Carson had come there too, so many times!

At one o’clock, Peggy awoke. She turned on her side and saw the empty bed next to hers. She had fallen asleep in her clothes, in the white shorts and shirt, and after looking at the dark and empty room for several minutes, hearing no sounds in the house, she decided to get up and look for him.

She tiptoed down the hall and down the darkened stairs. She turned on no lights. Downstairs, the house was dark also. She went out the door and into the garden.

She found him standing beside the pool, looking at the water, a solitary figure against the shadows of the shrubbery.

‘Barney?’ she called softly.

He turned quickly.

‘It’s me—Peggy,’ she said. She came toward him. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.

‘I went for a walk,’ he said.

‘What are you going for a walk for? It’s after one o’clock …’

‘I couldn’t seem to sleep.’

‘Why don’t you try? Why don’t you come to bed?’

‘I wasn’t tired. I thought a walk would help.’

‘You’re always going for walks!’ she said. ‘You went for a walk last night, too.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Is something bothering you, Barn-Barn?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You’re always running off—trying to be alone.’

‘I’m sorry.’

They were both silent. Then she said, ‘Come for a walk with me.’

‘No thanks,’ he said.

‘Oh, please. Come on.’

‘No …’

‘Why not? Please.’

‘No, I’m tired, now. Let’s go in, Peggy.’

‘Please!’

He looked for a moment across the still water. Then he shrugged. ‘All right. Whatever you say …’

She linked her arm in his. ‘Where do you usually walk?’ she asked.

‘Just—anywhere,’ he said.

‘Let’s walk down to the lake.’

He hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘no—let’s walk out to the drive and back.’

‘The lake is so pretty at night,’ she said.

‘No—it’s too far to go.’

‘Oh, come on!’ she said roguishly. ‘What’s the matter? Scared of the dark?’

They started up the steps.

‘I’m sorry about tonight,’ she said. ‘Really, I shouldn’t have lost control like that.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said.

‘It isn’t all right. I hate to lose control. But I’ve been thinking—I was wrong to insist that we stay here, at the farm. It was my mistake. I thought at the time it would be easier—to work at close quarters. But it was wrong. Do you know what I’d like us to do? Let’s move out of here, Barney. Let’s get a little apartment in Burketown, or—what do you think, Barney?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t have lost control tonight! If we hadn’t been living here with them, it wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have made a scene like that. I hate to lose control, you know that.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I still can’t believe it, what Daddy said. If it’s true—if it’s really true—then it’s one hell of an awful blow. All our plans. If it’s true—well, I really don’t know what we will do …’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Can you imagine it? What sort of—idiocy—could have made him agree to it! I really think we should have him declared an incompetent! I can’t see any other course. He is an incompetent! Non compos, half the time, with drink! Everybody knows it. He should be put away.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you agree?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said.

When they reached the terrace, he stopped. ‘This is far enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back.’

‘Let’s go to the lake.’

‘I want to get to bed, Peggy.’

‘Oh, come on! Don’t be such a sissy. It’s just down the hill. It’ll be pretty—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go any farther.’

‘Please!’

‘No.’

She looked up at him. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you want to go down there?’

‘I just don’t want to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m tired, I want—’

‘Barn-Barn,’ she said, ‘what’s the matter? You’re acting very funny. What’s going on?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then come on. I want to talk. I’ve got things I want to get off my chest.’

‘Let’s go upstairs and talk.’

‘I want to walk down to the lake,’ she said. ‘There’s some reason you don’t. What is it?’

He stood stiffly beside her, saying nothing. Then quietly he said, ‘All right. Let’s go.’

They walked across the terrace, her hand in his arm, toward the path that led past the clump of hemlocks to the curve of the hill. They went down the path. She kept hold of his arm, walking toward the sloping lawn, toward the water, saying, ‘What do you think? Think we could ever get him committed? You’re the business school graduate. Would that work?’

Then suddenly she gripped his arm and stopped him. ‘Barney!’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Look!’ she pointed. ‘There’s a light in the guesthouse—see it?’

He didn’t answer her.

‘Who in the world?’ she whispered. ‘Barney!’

He stood absolutely motionless beside her.

‘See it? There’s somebody there! Shall we call the police, or—’ She let go of his arm. ‘Or—no. No,’ she breathed, and she turned to him slowly. ‘Is it Barbara? Is it? Oh, of course! Of course!’ She drew back from him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Of course it is! Why didn’t I guess? Of course—the guesthouse—that’s where she always takes them!’

‘Who?’

‘Her men. And last night, too—of course, that’s where you’re going. You met her there last night, too, didn’t you? Oh, of course!’

He started quickly down the hill.

‘Stop!’ she commanded, and when he didn’t stop she ran after him and seized his arm again. ‘It is Barbara, isn’t it? It’s been going on all along …’

He walked rapidly and she stayed beside him, holding his arm, trying to stop him. ‘It is Barbara! It is! Tell me!’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘I should have known! That damn bitch! That bitch!’

He kept walking, faster now, down the hill.

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Listen to me. Listen to me!’ But he continued, pulling her beside him. ‘Listen,’ she said savagely, ‘don’t be a fool! Don’t go to her! Don’t be taken in by her! Listen. I know her. She’s a rotten little bitch, a whore, she only wants you for one thing—listen to me—’

At the edge of the lake, he stopped. He looked across, then turned and stepped down to the sandy strip of beach. ‘Listen to me,’ she repeated. ‘Let me tell you what you’re doing, listen—’

He jerked his arm away from her, but she ran after him. ‘Where are you going?’ she demanded. ‘Wait. Listen to me—’

He walked to where the old canoe lay, the Bobby-Boo, its bottom-side up, on the bank. He lifted it and turned it, and the paddle inside it rattled against its thwarts. He began pulling it toward the water.

‘Are you going in that?’ she asked. ‘Listen to me, Barney—please—for a minute. Be sensible. Look, maybe you and I are through—I’m willing to admit that. But don’t do it for her! Don’t be such a fool, Barney. Don’t be more of a fool than you’ve already been!’

‘I’m sorry, Peggy,’ he said.

She stopped and stood still, watching him. He pulled the canoe across the sand. Then she said quietly, ‘That canoe is full of leaks. You’ll never make it.’

‘I’ll make it,’ he said.

‘You’re an idiot. It will sink twenty feet out.’

‘It will take me farther than that.’

‘Listen to me, Barney,’ she said. ‘What are you trying to accomplish?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said simply.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, her flat voice seeming to grow flatter. ‘What good will it do you? Going to her. Do you love her? What good will that do you? Do you think she’ll marry you? She won’t. She’s no fool. She has Carson and her children. They’ll always come first with her, no matter what she tells you. She’s really just not a very nice girl. It’s that simple. And if you go to her now you’ll lose both of us. And you’ll be throwing over a damn good deal, my dear. Because you can marry one Woodcock girl. But not two.’

In the darkness, he seemed to watch her thoughtfully, though his face was turned away. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost inaudible. ‘It’s always the Woodcock girls, isn’t it? It never changes. Well, Peggy, you may be right.’

‘Then come back to the house.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He turned, seized the canoe and slid it into the water.

Peggy came two steps closer. She seemed to reach out for him, then lowered her hands. ‘Barney!’ she cried.

‘What?’

‘I thought you were a leader!’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not a leader. I’m one of the led. I always have been. I let you lead me to this place, don’t forget, to the farm. And I’ve let her lead me. I’m always being led.’ He stepped nimbly into the canoe, took the paddle and pushed off.

‘Stop!’ she commanded again. But he moved swiftly away, the shadows closing around him, and disappeared into the darkness. She could hear only the receding sound of his paddling.

She stood on the shore for several minutes, staring across the dark water. Far away, through the trees, was the little waiting light. Then she turned and started slowly up the path toward the house.

She was about halfway up the hill when she stopped and for several minutes more she stood very still, statue-like. She listened. She heard only night sounds, crickets and peepers from the marshy shore, and the faint, high sound of an airplane passing overhead, bound for New York.

She knew that the canoe would not make it across the lake. It could not. She had kicked her toe against it, many summers in the past; the bottom was like paper, full of wormholes and rot. From one shore to the other was more than five hundred yards, more than a quarter of a mile. The canoe would never make it, he could not swim, and the lake was deep. Very well.

She stood there. Her mind was filled with several images, which seemed to come all at once. In one, she heard herself screaming, running back to the house. In another, she saw water bubbling quickly through the bottom of the canoe, the lake rising swiftly about its sides, as he paddled. Then she saw Barney’s body, white, long, like a piece of sunken sculpture, at the bottom of the lake, in the brown weeds under the clean water. She saw him lifted, icewhite, dead, his face bloated and horrible and disgusting. She turned now and faced the lake. She stood and watched, and waited, and listened. Very well.

The little light still glimmered through the trees—far, very far, away. She smiled at it.

She would hear his cries. As the canoe foundered, as he thrashed helplessly in the water, he would cry out for her and she would hear him. She waited for a long time, waiting for the cries, hearing only the crickets and the peepers, waiting and thinking: I’ll decide then.

She waited, but there were no cries. Eventually—it was a little while later—she was struck with the thundering knowledge that he was dead, that he had sunk into the lake without uttering a single sound. And it was this, perhaps—the realisation of this final, intolerable cheat, this ultimate robbery of her life—that he had gone like a thief, depriving her of even the sound of his cries—that started her screaming. She screamed until her throat hurt. Running, stumbling, screaming and sobbing wildly, she started up the hill again, crying, ‘Help! Help!’

In the guesthouse, things were as she remembered them. But the ruffled chintz curtains were limp with age and a thin, even film of dust lay over everything. She wandered through the rooms. In the bedroom, on the table beside the bed, she picked up a copy of the Reader’s Digest. She turned its pages; they were brown and brittle, and she noticed that it was an issue dated February, 1946. She put it down. She opened the closet door. The closet was empty but, on the inside wall, someone—a child, evidently—had carefully written ‘Hello’ in red crayon. She studied this strangely silent greeting for a moment, then closed the door. She turned off the bedroom light.

In the little, musty kitchen, neat rows of cups hung from the glass cupboard doors. She opened the refrigerator. In it were ice trays, thick with frost, a small can of tomato juice and a bottle, three quarters empty, of prepared Martini cocktails, left from some house party long ago. She removed the bottle, forced loose one of the ice trays and, in a little round glass pitcher from the cupboard, she fixed drinks.

She filled two glasses and carried them into the living room, where she placed them on the rustic cocktail table. She started to sip one, thinking it might give her courage, but then she put it down, knowing that it would do no good. Nothing would do any good. She sat back quickly and closed her eyes, her temples throbbing. She sat for a long time in the dirty, stale-smelling little room.

She opened her eyes and then she began to laugh, a little hysterically, at the absurd sight of two Martinis floating palely in the stemmed glasses on the dusty table, looking like two faded and foolish little flowers, and at the absurd sight of herself looking at them. She laughed until tears streamed down her face and then, wondering if she was truly going out of her mind, she stopped. She knew then that it was useless, that she would not and could not go through with it. And she felt suddenly much better, knowing this. She would go—run, just as she had run from Charlie Muir.

She stood up and started to go.

Then she heard distant sounds. She went quickly to the door and stepped outside. The sounds were cries and, far off, across the lake, where the house stood in shade behind the trees, she saw lights appear—first one light, then another, and presently the whole house was ablaze with lights, and there were more sounds, more cries. She grabbed her coat and ran down the steps, across the grass, down the road through the trees.

Everyone had gathered at the lake’s edge—her mother, her father, Emily and John, Peggy and Nancy. She ran toward them.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

Everyone was shouting.

‘The canoe, in the canoe—’

‘The Bobby-Boo—’

‘Call the police—’

‘Oh, no—not the police!’

‘It’s got to be the police!’

‘What is it?’ she cried. ‘What happened?’

‘In the canoe—drowned—’

‘Who? Who?’

Her mother suddenly seemed to notice her and turned to her. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Where have you been? What are you doing here? Get out of here—up to the house—into your room! Get out of here!’