The Dark Other, page 7
"What you so quiet about, Miss Pat?"
"I was just thinking."
"You get your letter?"
"Letter? What letter? Today's Sunday."
"Special delivery. The girl, she put it in the hall."
"I didn't know anything about it. Who'd write me a special?"
She slipped off the high stool and proceeded to the front hall. The letter was there, solitary on the salver that always held the mail. She picked it up, examining the envelope in sudden startled amazement and more than a trace of illogical exultation.
For the letter, post-marked that same morning, was addressed in the irregular script of Nicholas Devine!
13—Indecision
PAT TURNED THE ENVELOPE DUBIOUSLY IN HER hands, while a maze of chaotic thoughts assailed her. She felt almost a sensation of guilt as if she were in some manner violating the promise given to Dr. Horker; she felt a tinge of indignation that Nicholas Devine should dare communicate with her at all, and she felt too that queer exultation, an inexplicable pleasure, a feeling of secret triumph. She slipped the letter in the pocket of her robe and padded quietly up the stairs to her own room. Strangely, her loneliness had vanished. The great house, empty now save for herself and Magda in the distant kitchen, was no longer a place of solitude; the discovery of the letter, whatever its contents, had changed the deserted rooms into chambers teeming with her own excitements, trepidations, doubts, and hopes. Even hopes, she admitted to herself, though hopes of what nature she was quite unable to say. What could Nick write that had the power to change things? Apologies? Pleas? Promises? None of these could alter the naked, horrible facts of the predicament.
Nevertheless, she was almost a-tremble with expectation as she skipped hastily into her own room, carefully closed the door, and settled herself by the west windows. She drew the letter from her pocket, and then, with a tightening of her throat, tore open the envelope, slipping out the several pages of scrawled paper. Avidly she began to read.
"I don't know whether you'll ever see this"—the missive began without salutation—"and I'll not blame you, Pat dear, if you do return it unopened. There's nothing you can do that wouldn't be justified, nor can you think worse of me than I do of myself. And that's a statement so meaningless that even as I wrote it, I could anticipate its effect on you.
"Pat—How am I going to convince you that I'm sincere? Will you believe me when I write that I love you? Can you believe that I love you tenderly, worshipfully—reverently?
"You can't; I know you can't after that catastrophe of last night. But it's true, Pat, though the logic of a Spinoza might fail to convince you of it.
"I don't know how to write you this. I don't know whether you want to hear what I could say, but I know that I must try to say it. Not apologies, Pat—I shouldn't dare approach you for so poor a reason as that—but a sort of explanation. You more than any one in the world are entitled to that explanation, if you want to hear it.
"I can't write it to you, Pat; it's something I can only make you believe by telling you—something dark and rather terrible. But please, Dear, believe that I mean you no harm, and that I plan no subterfuge, when I suggest that you see me. It will be, I think, for the last time.
"Tonight, and tomorrow night, and as many nights to follow as I can, I'll sit on a bench in the park near the place where I kissed you that first time. There will be people passing there, and cars driving by; you need fear nothing from me. I choose the place to bridle my own actions, Pat; nothing can happen while we sit there in the view of the world.
"To write you more than this is futile. If you come, I'll be there; if you don't, I'll understand.
"I love you."
The letter was signed merely "Nick. She stared at the signature with feelings so confused that she forebore any attempt to analyze them.
"But I can't go," she mused soberly. "I've promised Dr. Carl. Or at least, I can't go without telling him."
That last thought, she realized, was a concession. Heretofore she hadn't let herself consider the possibility of seeing Nicholas Devine again, and now suddenly she was weakening, arguing with herself about the ethics of seeing him. She shook her head decisively.
"Won't do, Patricia Lane!" she told herself. "Next thing, you'll be slipping away without a word to anybody, and coming home with two black eyes and a broken nose. Won't do at all!"
She dropped her eyes to the letter. "Explanations", she reflected. "I guess Dr. Carl would give up a hole-in-one to hear that explanation. And I'd give more than that." She shook her head regretfully.
"Nothing to do about it, though. I promised."
The sun was slanting through the west windows; she sat watching the shadows lengthen in the room, and tried to turn her thoughts into more profitable channels. This was the first Sunday in many months that she had spent alone in the house; it was a custom for herself and her mother to spend the afternoon at the club. The evening too, as a rule; there was invariably bridge for Mrs. Lane, and Pat was always the center of a circle of the younger members. She wondered dreamily what the crowd thought of her non-appearance, reflecting that her mother had doubtless enlarged on Dr. Carl's story of an accident. Dr.
Carl wouldn't say much, simply that he'd ordered her to stay at home. But sooner or later, Nick would hear the accident story; she wondered what he'd think of it.
She caught herself up sharply. "My ideas wander in circles," she thought petulantly. "No matter where I start, they curve around back to Nick. It won't do; I've got to stop it."
Nearly time for the evening meal, she mused, watching the sun as it dropped behind Dr. Horker's house. She didn't feel much like eating; there was still a remnant of the exhausted, dragged-out sensation, though the headache that had accompanied her awakening this morning had disappeared.
"I know what the morning after feels like, anyway," she reflected with a wry little smile. "Everybody ought to experience it once, I suppose. I wonder how Nick—"
She broke off abruptly, with a shrug of disgust. She slipped the letter back into its envelope, rose and deposited it in the drawer of the night-table. She glanced at the clock ticking on its shiny top.
"Six o'clock," she murmured. Nick would be sitting in the park in another two hours or so. She had a twinge of sympathy at the thought of his lone vigil; she could visualize the harried expression on his face when the hours passed without her arrival.
"Can't be helped," she told herself. "He's no right to ask for anything of me after last night. He knows that; he said so in his letter."
She suppressed an impulse to re-read that letter, and trotted deliberately out of the room and down the stairs. Magda had set the table in the breakfast room; it was far cozier than the great dining room, especially without her mother's company. And the maid was away; the breakfast room simplified serving, as well.
She tried valorously to eat what Magda supplied, but the food failed to tempt her. It wasn't so much her physical condition, either; it was—She clenched her jaws firmly; was the memory of Nicholas Devine to haunt her forever?
"Pat Lane," she said in admonition, "you're a crack-brained fool! Just because a man kicks you all over the place is no reason to let him become an obsession."
She drank her coffee, feeling the sting of its heat on her injured lips. She left the table, tramped firmly to her room, and began defiantly to read. The effort was useless; half a dozen times she forced her attention to the page only to find herself staring vaguely into space a moment or two later. She closed the book finally with an irritable bang, and vented her restlessness in pacing back and forth.
"This house is unbearable!" she snapped. "I'm not going to stay shut up here like a jail-bird in solitary confinement. A walk in the open is what I need, and that's what I'll have."
She glanced at the clock; seven-thirty. She tore off her robe pettishly, flung out of her pajamas, and began to dress with angry determination. She refused to think of a lonely figure that might even now be sitting disconsolately on a bench in the nearby park.
She disguised her bruised cheek as best she could, dabbed a little powder on the abrasion on her chin, and tramped militantly down the stairs. She caught up her wrap, still lying where the Doctor had tossed it last night, and moved toward the door, opening it and nearly colliding with the massive figure of Dr. Harker! "Well!" boomed the Doctor as she started back in surprise. "You're pretty spry for a patient. Think you were going out?"
"Yes," said Pat defiantly.
"Not tonight, child! I left the Club early to take a look at you."
"I am perfectly all right. I want to go for a walk."
"No walk. Doctor's orders."
"I'm of legal age!" she snapped. "I want to go for a walk. Do I go?"
"You do not." The Doctor placed his great form squarely in the doorway. "Not unless you can lick me, my girl, and I'm pretty tough. I put you to bed last night, and I can do as much tonight. Shall I?"
Pat backed into the hall. "You don't have to", she said sullenly. "I'm going there myself." She flung her wrap angrily to a chair and stalked up the stairs.
"Good night, spit-fire," he called after her. "I'll read down here until your mother comes home."
The girl stormed into her room in anger that she knew to be illogical.
"I won't be watched like a problem child!" she told herself viciously. "I know damn well what he thought—and I wasn't going to meet Nick! I wasn't at all!"
She calmed suddenly, sat on the edge of her bed and kicked off her pumps. It had occurred to her that Nick had written his intention to wait for her in the park tomorrow night as well, and Dr. Horker's interference had confirmed her in a determination to meet him.
14—Bizarre Explanation
"I WON'T BE BULLIED!" PAT TOLD HERSELF, examining her features in the mirror. The two day interval had faded the discoloration of her cheek to negligible proportions, and all that remained as evidence of the violence of Saturday night was the diminishing mark on her chin. Of course, her knees— but they were covered; most of the time, at least. She gave herself a final inspection, and somewhere below a clock boomed.
"Eight o'clock," she remarked to her image: "Time to be leaving, and it serves Dr. Carl right for his highhanded actions last night. I won't be bullied by anybody." She checked herself as her mind had almost added, "Except Nick." True or not, she didn't relish the thought; the recent recollections it roused were too disturbing.
She tossed a stray wisp of black hair from her forehead and turned to the door. She heard her mother's voice as she descended the stairs.
"Are you going out, Patricia? Do you think it wise?"
"I am perfectly all right. I want to go for a walk."
"I know, Dear; it was largely your appearance I meant." She surveyed the girl with a critical eye.
"Nice enough, except for that little spot on your chin, and will you never learn to keep your hair away from that side of your forehead? One can never do a bob right; why don't you let it grow out like the other girls?"
"Makes me individual," replied Pat, moving toward the outer door. "I won't be late at all," she added.
On the porch she cast a cautious glance at Dr. Horker's windows, but his great figure was nowhere evident. Only a light burning in the library evinced his presence. She gave a sigh of relief, and tiptoed down the steps to the sidewalk, and moved hastily away from the range of his watchful eyes.
No sooner had she sighted the park than doubts began to torment her. Suppose this were some trick of Nicholas Devine's, to trap her into some such situation as that of Saturday night. Even suppose that she found him the sweet personality that she had loved, might that also be a trick? Mightn't he be trusting to his ability to win her over, to the charm she had confessed to him that he held for her? Couldn't he be putting his faith in his own amorous skill, planning some specious explanation to win her forgiveness only to use her once more as the material for some horrible experiment? And if he were, would she be able to prevent herself from yielding?
"Forewarned is fore-armed," she told herself. "I'll not put up such a feeble resistance this time, knowing what I now know. And it's only fair of me to listen to his explanation, if he really has one."
She was reassured by the sight of the crowded park; groups strolled along the walks, and an endless procession of car-headlights marked the course of the roadway. Nothing could happen in such an environment; they'd be fortunate even to have an opportunity for confidential talk. She waited for the traffic lights, straining her eyes to locate Nicholas Devine; at the click of the signal she darted across the street.
She moved toward the lake; here was the spot, she was sure. She glanced about with eagerness unexpected even to herself, peering through the shadow-shot dusk. He wasn't there, she concluded, with a curious sense of disappointment; her failure to appear last night had disheartened him; he had abandoned his attempt.
Then she saw him. He sat on a bench isolated from the rest in a treeless area overlooking the lake.
She saw his disconsolate figure, his chin on his hand, staring moodily over the waters. A tremor ran through her, she halted deliberately, waiting until every trace of emotion had vanished, then she advanced, standing coolly beside him.
For a moment he was unaware of her presence; he sat maintaining his dejected attitude without glancing at her. Suddenly some slight movement, the flutter of her skirt, drew his attention; he turned sharply, gazing directly into her face.
"Pat!" He sprang to his feet. "Pat! is it you—truly you? Or are you one of these visions that have been plaguing me for hours?"
"I'm real," she said, returning his gaze with a studied coolness in her face. She made no other move; her cold composure disconcerted him, and he winced, flushed, and moved nervously aside as she seated herself. He dropped beside her; he made no attempt to touch her, but sat watching her in silence for so long a time that she felt her composure ebbing. There was a hungry, defeated look about him; there was a wistfulness, a frustration, in his eyes that seemed about to tug tears from her own eyes. Abruptly she dropped her gaze from his face.
"Well?" she said finally in a small voice, and as he made no reply, "I'm here."
"Are you really, Pat? Are you truly here?" he murmured, still watching her avidly. "I—I still don't believe it. I waited here for hours and hours last night, and I'd given up hope for tonight, or any night. But I would have come again and again."
She started as he bent suddenly toward her, but he was merely examining her face. She saw the gleam of horror in his expression as his eyes surveyed the faintly visible bruise on her cheek, the red mark on her chin.
"Oh my God, Pat!" His words were barely audible. "Oh my God!" he repeated, drawing away from her and resuming the attitude of desolation in which her arrival had found him. "I've hoped it wasn't true!"
"What wasn't?" She was keeping her voice carefully casual; this miserable contrition of Nick's was tugging at her rather too powerfully for complete safety.
"What I remembered. What I saw just now."
"You hoped it wasn't true?" she queried in surprise. "But you did it."
"I did it, Pat? Do you think I could have done it?"
"But you did!" Her voice had taken on a chill inflection; the memory of those indignities came to steel her against him.
"Pat, do you think I could assault your daintiness, or maltreat the beauty I worship? Didn't anything occur to you? Didn't anything seem queer about—about that ghastly evening?"
"Queer!" she echoed. "That's certainly a mild word to use, isn't it?"
"But I mean—hadn't you any idea of what had happened? Didn't you think anything of it except that I had suddenly gone mad? Or that I'd grown to hate you?"
"What was I to think?" she countered, trying to control the tremor that had crept into her voice.
"But did you think that?"
"No," the girl confessed after a pause. "At first, when you started with that drink, I thought you were looking for material for your work. That's what you said—an experiment. Didn't you?"
"I guess so," he groaned.
"But after that, after I'd swallowed that horrible stuff, but before everything went hazy, I—thought differently."
"But what, Pat? What did you think?"
"Why, then I realized that it wasn't you—not the real you. I could feel the—well, the presence of the person I knew; this presence that was tormenting me was another person, a terrible, cold, inhuman stranger."
"Pat!" There was a note almost of relief in his voice. "Did you really feel that?"
"Yes. Does it help matters, my sensing that? I can't see how."
His eyes, which had been fixed on hers, dropped suddenly. "No," he muttered, all the relief gone out of his tones, "no, it doesn't help, does it? Except that it's a meager consolation to me to know that you felt it."
Pat struggled to suppress an impulse to reach out her hand, to stroke his hair. She caught herself sharply; this was the very danger against which she had warned herself—this was the very attitude she had anticipated in Nicholas Devine, the lure which might bait a trap. Yet he looked so forlorn, so wistful! It was an effort to forbear from touching him; her fingers fairly ached to brush his cheek.
"Only a fool walks twice into the same trap," she told herself. Aloud she said, "You promised me an explanation. If you've any excuse, I'd like to hear it." Her voice had resumed its coolness.
"I haven't any excuse," he responded gloomily, "and the explanation is perhaps too bizarre, too fantastic for belief. I don't believe it entirely; I suppose you couldn't believe it at all."
"You promised," she repeated. The carefully assumed composure of her voice threatened to crack; this wistfulness of his was a powerful weapon against her defense.
"Oh, I'll give you the explanation," he said miserably. "I just wanted to warn you you'd not believe me." He gave her a despondent glance. "Pat, as I love you I swear that what I tell you is the truth. Do you think you can believe me?"
"Yes," she murmured. The tremor had reappeared in her voice despite her efforts.
