Shadow of Guilt (3 page)

“Don Saxby?”

“He’s the most marvelous man I’ve ever met. George… I think I’m in love with him.”

Although I’d had every warning, I felt an unaccountable stirring of foreboding.

“How does he feel about you?”

“How can I tell? He knows I’m going to marry Chuck. He’d never, never say anything.” She came to me, putting her hands on my anus, her young face tragic. “George, what am I going to do?”

“About Chuck?”

“I never told you. I wanted to desperately but something seemed to have happened between us. I felt kind of shy with you. George… I’ve never been really sure about Chuck. Oh, I like him, of course I do. I think he’s good and kind and I know he’s crazy about me. But—well, it was Connie really.”

“Because she wants you to marry him so much?”

“It isn’t that. It’s just—well, this sounds like a terrible thing to say, but I felt I simply had to get away from her. I couldn’t stand being bullied any longer and I thought if I did what she wanted and married Chuck at least I’d be free. That’s really why I was doing it—to be free from her.”

I’d known, of course, that Ala chafed under Connie’s relentlessly Corliss guiding reins, but I’d never realized that she had felt as violently as this.

As I stood looking at her, feeling a mixture of tenderness and guilt, she said, “George, tell me. What am I going to do? Marrying Chuck if I don’t really love him—I mean, it’s rotten for him, too, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

“But how can I possibly break it to her—when she’s so crazy about Chuck—when all the wedding plans are arranged and everything? Oh, George, will you do it? Please, George, please. I can’t… I simply can’t… I’m scared of her.” Scared of her! I thought of how Connie would feel if she’d heard that. Once again, when I was least able to cope with it, a corroding pity came for my wife. Poor Connie, poor admirable Connie plodding on, organizing everyone for his own good.

Ala was looking at me desperately. “Please, George, you’ve got to help me. It’s the most important moment in my life. It isn’t just Don. Maybe he doesn’t care a hoot for me. I’d be a fool to assume he does. But I couldn’t marry Chuck any more—at least not yet. Not until I know…”

“Listen,” I said, saying the only thing that seemed to be sayable, “don’t do anything now. Just let the weekend take its course… and, well, if you let Don know how you stand with Chuck, maybe it’ll all resolve itself. Then, when you come back and if you’re sure you don’t want to go through with the wedding right now… I’ll explain to Connie.”

“Oh, George.” She hugged me. “I knew I could depend on you.”

Ala went off for the weekend the next day, ostensibly to Rosemary Clark’s. I felt a little uneasy about it, but there it was. Usually there were all sorts of social things to cope with over the weekend; boring enough but things that got Connie and me through somehow. But that weekend, with a disastrous sense of timing, Connie had decided it would be nice for us to have a little spell in which to relax together. All Friday evening she tried to be sweet and cozy. She merely succeeded in making me feel a suicidal hypocrite.

On Saturday morning, Lew Parker called. A Brazilian tycoon whom Consolidated had been wooing for their expansion program in South America was unexpectedly stopping off in New York the next day on his way to California. I handled most of the South American contacts; I’d even met this man on a business trip to Sao Paulo last year. Lew wanted me to pick him up at Idlewild at eleven, drive him to his hotel and bring him to the Parkers’ for lunch.

“I could send Bob Driscoll, George, but this is important and you’re the only one I can trust to give el Senhor the V.I.P. treatment. Hope you don’t mind working on a Sunday.”

“Of course not.”

“And don’t let Connie murder me. Send her my love.” Connie was completely understanding. She always made a point of putting my work first. We had a supposedly relaxed lunch together, and then, around three o’clock, she had a phone call from which she came back smiling delightedly.

“It was Chuck,” she said. “The poor boy, they’re keeping him an extra week in Chicago and he’s so lonely for Ala he’s flying back right now just for today and Sunday. He’ll have to take a night plane out again tomorrow. Isn’t that touching of him—to come all this way?”

I stood looking at her.

“He’ll be here around seven,” she said. “I’ll call Ala this minute. There’ll be plenty of time for her to get in from Westport.” She started for the phone in the hall.

I said, “Don’t call Westport, Connie.”

She turned. “Why ever not?”

“Because Ala isn’t there. Some people she met at that party invited her and Don Saxby out for the weekend in Massachusetts. Ala was crazy to go and she knew you’d put your foot down. So I said…”

I might have known she wouldn’t make a scene. If only Connie had ever got mad and yelled at me, the barrier between us might not have grown so impregnable. For a long moment she merely looked at me, her eyes very bright and scrutinizing.

“So!” she said.

“It’s hardly the end of the world,” I said. “I simply felt—”

“Since you’re so deep in this conspiracy,” she cut in, “presumably you know the name and address of these people in Massachusetts?”

“It’s Green,” I said. “Thomas Green—in Stockbridge. They’re all right, a daughter at Miss Porter’s, all the okay things. But, Connie, she’ll be enjoying herself. She can see Chuck tomorrow. At least let her stay on tonight.”

“With people we don’t know? With Don Saxby? Are you quite out of your mind?”

She turned her back on me and marched out of the room into the hall. I sat down on the arm of a chair. I could hear her on the phone in the hall. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could hear her voice’s clipped, social timbre. Then there was silence, the clicking of her heels—and she was back again.

I had expected the same expression of outraged authority, but she looked shockingly different. Her face was falling to pieces.

“She’s not there,” she said. “They arrived last night, but they left today after lunch.”

“Then they’re probably headed home,” I said.

“Home? They told Mrs. Green they could only stay Friday night, that they had somewhere else to go. It was all planned. He’s taken her off alone.”

She came to me. She grabbed my arm. To me, it was absurdly overdone—Lady Gwendolyn learning of her daughter’s ruin.

“You fool!” she said. “Suddenly trying to play the understanding parent. Look what’s come of it. She’s gone away with him. Don’t you see? They’ve gone off together.”

Whatever I was feeling, the exasperation was uppermost—an exasperation which overwhelmed any sense of responsibility for what had happened or any real worry. Connie was still clinging to my arm. I half dragged her over and made her sit down on the gold brocade couch.

“For God’s sake,” I said, “don’t you have any confidence in Ala’s good sense? Why shouldn’t she go off for a while alone with a man? He’s about the only interesting man you’ve ever let her meet. I know you love her, but she doesn’t understand. You’ve always ridden her so hard. She thinks… God knows what she thinks, but, because she was too scared to tell you about it all, she came to me, and thank heavens she did. You know she hasn’t run off with Don Saxby or anything melodramatic. Obviously they wanted a little time to be alone, to find out how they feel. Maybe Don’s the right man for her—he seems to be intelligent, honest and decent—or maybe it’s all just a flash in the pan. But whatever way it turns out, you wouldn’t want her to marry Chuck unless she’s absolutely sure, would you?”

My wife was sitting very straight on the couch, looking directly in front of her.

“Don Saxby—the right man!” she said. “A man she’s only known for a few days, a man who hadn’t even gotten around to looking for a job at twenty-eight, wandering down from Canada, playing around with being a painter. Your own niece, your adopted daughter—and you calmly hand her over to a man like that!”

I resented that dissociation of herself, that brushing off of Ala as “your own niece, your adopted daughter.”

“Don Saxby was perfectly good enough for you, it seemed,” I said.

She turned on me fiercely. “I can take care of myself.”

“So can Ala.”

“Ala?” She rose and stood in front of me, looking down at me. “If you knew…! If you had the faintest conception!”

That was the moment the Rysons chose to call. They came into the room, Mal in his black banker’s chesterfield, Vivien all mink and diamond earrings.

She glided over to Connie, kissing her effusively.

“Darling, we’re not going to take off our coats. We’ve just popped in for a second on our way to the Plowdens’. Chuck called. Isn’t it exciting? He said he was headed right here, so we thought maybe you’d invite us all over for a lovely family supper party.”

“There’s something else, too,” said Mal. “Something I felt I should come around and tell you in person. It’s about that Mr. Saxby.” Mal was studying Connie solemnly, as if she were a board meeting. “As you know, I was impressed with him when I met him in Canada. I was even more impressed the other night. I thought I might be able to use him in the bank so I wrote to my friend Reggie Fostwick in Toronto, purely as a routine check-up on the young man. The news I’ve received is rather disquieting.”

Connie had moved to the window. She was standing there, examining her nails, saying nothing.

“Reggie Fostwick’s wife happens to know a great deal about him. It seems she has some friends in Toronto who have an eighteen-year-old daughter. Last spring, apparently, Mr. Saxby wormed his way into the family as a sort of protégé of the wife and, before anyone realized what was going on, he and the daughter had eloped. Luckily, the parents managed to catch up with them in the nick of time, just as they were checking into a motel as man and wife. There was quite a scene. The girl was hysterical, wildly in love, and Saxby pretended to be very genuine and apologetic. But the father had summed him up. He told Saxby he could choose between their disowning the daughter or accepting a check for ten thousand dollars to leave the country immediately. He chose the ten thousand dollars.”

He paused. Connie was still examining her nails. Vivien’s silly, pretty laugh tinkled. “Isn’t it dramatic? Of course, we can’t be sure it’s true. Whatever happened, it was all hushed up and I’ve always thought that Mrs. Fostwick was a terrible old gossip.”

“Reggie Fostwick is a responsible citizen,” Mal said. “I can’t believe he’d pass on any information unless he was certain it was true. So, Connie, since in a way it was through me that you met him, I feel it’s my responsibility to…”

It went on from there, for hours, it seemed, but finally we got rid of the Rysons. Somehow we got out of the family supper party, too. I knew it didn’t make sense to hope that Mal had been fobbed off with some idle rumor. It had, almost certainly, to be true. I saw what a disastrous fool I’d made of myself, and I was half nuts with worry for Ala. I wanted to call the police instantly, but Connie, icily level-headed, vetoed it.

“And have the whole thing spread across the front pages?”

“What about Chuck? He’ll be here in a few hours. What are we going to tell him?”

“The truth,” said Connie. “What else can we tell him? I said on the phone that Ala was at Rosemary’s. He’ll find out that isn’t so, and he knows all her other friends. Besides, we can’t lie to him about something as important as this. Just now you were being so high-principled about letting her make up her own mind. What about Chuck? If he’s going to marry her, don’t you think he has a right to know the sort of thing she’s apt to do?”

“Apt to do!” I repeated. “She doesn’t exactly do it every day of the week, does she?”

“Well, she’s done it now, and it’s hardly something you can hold me responsible for. God knows, I’ve done everything I can to turn her into a…”

“Into a Corliss. A meek, priggish little consort for the Ryson heir apparent.”

We were glaring at each other. Then I remembered how little I’d bothered with Ala lately, how thoroughly I’d left her to be Connie’s problem.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

My wife’s eyes didn’t relent at all. “Being sorry isn’t going to do much good now, is it?”

Chuck arrived from the airport around seven. He came hurrying in with a brief case, all blond crew cut, grin and excitement. Seeing his blissful, scrubbed young face, and watching it change as Connie told him, made my feeling of guilt and idiocy almost unendurably powerful.

“But a guy like that…” Chuck looked as if he were going to throw up. “Connie, she loves me. I know Ala loves me. She couldn’t change in a week. If this bastard…” He spun around to me, looking as nearly contemptuous of me as he dared to look. “You let her go. You’ve got to help me find her.”

“How?” I said.

“Call these people in Massachusetts again.”

“But, Chuck dear, they don’t know.” Connie put her hand on his arm. “No, Chuck, there’s nothing we can do at the moment. Look, dear, you’d better just go home and wait. I wouldn’t tell your father or Vivien, though. We don’t want them worried unless we can’t help it.”

“God, no.”

“Just say Ala has a cold or something. Then when she comes, we’ll call.”

“But, Connie—please let me stay.”

“Dear, it isn’t likely she’ll be back tonight, is it? In any case, it’s better for me—for George and me to be alone when she does come, so we can get it all straightened out.”

“Then—then if you don’t call, I’ll be around first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, dear.” Connie kissed him. “Try not to worry too much. I’m sure it’s all going to be all right.”

When I awoke next morning, Connie’s bed was empty. It was just after nine. I shaved, showered and dressed and went downstairs. Neither Mary nor the cook, Connie’s doddering old Corliss retainers, worked Sundays. I found my wife in the dining room, sitting with a cup of coffee.

Without looking up at me, she said, “You’ve only got about an hour if you’re to be at Idlewild by eleven.”

I’d forgotten all about the Brazilian tycoon. “I’ll call Lew and get him to send Bob Driscoll.”

“Lew specially wants you to do it, doesn’t he?”