At least her spirit was there in the ground with his resting bones. Since his death, she had never been quite up to coping with life; and this affair about Louisa and Benton and Robby Coles and everybody else had completely unhinged her. Weeping, she regarded it, attempted to deal with it, able to think of how simple it would be if her dear husband were alive.
Louisa rolled on her stomach and gazed out moodily at the great tree in the front yard which stood etched against the moonlit sky like a black paper cutout. She rested her chin on her small hands and sighed unhappily.
Now she had to stay in the house until it was all settled. She didn’t mind not going to the shop, she liked that part of it. But not being able to do anything else at all, that she didn’t like; being cooped up with her doting, moist-eyed mother. And all because of that stupid story.
Louisa rolled on her back abruptly and squirmed irritably on the sheet. She raised up her feet and kicked off the blankets, her flannel gown sliding up her legs with a sighing of cloth as she kicked.
She didn’t pull it back down again but lay there in the darkness, feeling the cool air on her flesh. She closed her eyes and tried to summon up the vision of that ride again.
She couldn’t. Her aunt had ruined it, ruined everything. Whenever Louisa thought about it now, her aunt’s gaunt, accusing face would materialize in her mind, blotting out the dream. She couldn’t envision John Benton anymore without summoning up attendant visions of Robby, of Benton’s wife, of her mother, her aunt, of the glittering-eyed Mrs. DeWitt, Mrs. Cartwright and all the women who had come to her aunt’s shop to see her and gloat and imagine things.
Louisa felt her cheeks getting warm and she turned quickly and pressed her face into the cool pillowcase. Terrible women! She wasn’t going to be like them when she grew up.
She felt the air settle like cool silk over her bare calves and thighs as she lay there. It was such an awful thing, gossip. All she’d wanted to do was make Robby a little jealous, get him to do something besides talk in monotones and be boring. Granted, she hadn’t chosen her words too wisely but she hadn’t meant any harm. And now . . . Louisa blew out a weary breath and felt the heat of it mask her face.
What was going to happen now? she wondered. Aunt Agatha had spoken about someone paying but, after all, what could Aunt Agatha do? Of course, Robby had gotten very angry and maybe he’d do something. Nothing really dangerous, though. No one would dare try to fight John Benton, that was certain.
Relieved at the acceptance of that, Louisa rolled onto her back again and stared up at the ceiling. Oh, well, so she stayed home a few days. What difference did that make? At least she wouldn’t have to work in Aunt Agatha’s shop and be stared at by those awful women.
With child. The thought came suddenly and Louisa’s throat moved and, for a moment, she could hardly breathe. She knew whose child they meant and she knew how children were begotten.
“John.” She whispered it within the shell of dreams she suddenly withdrew to.
Chapter Nineteen
It was nearly midnight. The brass hands of the hall clock hovered a breath apart as Jane Coles closed the door behind herself and moved silently along the hall rug.
At the door to Robby’s room, she hesitated a moment, holding the robe closed at her throat. She stared down at her frail fingers curled around the cool metal of the doorknob and there was a slight clicking in her throat as she swallowed.
Then, after a moment, her hand slipped from the knob and fell against her leg and there was a loosening of muscles around her mouth. She turned away.
After a step, she hesitated again, her face tight with nervous indecision. She stood there silently in the cool hall, looking with hopeless eyes at the door to her and Matthew’s bedroom, visualizing the immobile bulk of her husband stretched out on the bed, his mouth lax, the firm authority of it gone with the teeth that lay submerged in water on the bedside table, his snores pulsing rhythmically in his throat.
Her lips pressed together suddenly and she turned back. Her fingers closed over the doorknob and, with silent quickness, she entered Robby’s bedroom.
The pale moonlight fell across the empty bed.
Jane Coles caught her breath and felt a sudden harsh sensation in her stomach as if her insides were falling. Then she turned and hurried out of the dark room and down the hall and stairs, a cold hand clamped over her heart.
In the downstairs hall she stopped, then, abruptly, leaned against the wall and listened with a drained weakness to the sound of Robby clearing his throat in the kitchen, the attendant sound of a cup being placed onto its saucer.
After a moment, she drew in a long breath and pushed away from the wall.
As she came through the swinging door, Robby looked up with a nervous jerk of his head, the dark pupils of his eyes expanding suddenly. She saw his Adam’s apple move and a nervous smile twitch on his lips.
“Oh . . . it’s you, mother,” he said.
Jane Coles smiled at the only person in the world she really loved, for some reason, never having been able to feel the devotion toward Jimmy that she did for her older son.
“Can’t you sleep, darling?” she asked, walking up to the table where he sat, seeing a thin drift of steam rising from the coffee cup in front of him.
Robby swallowed. “No, I . . .” He didn’t finish or pretend he had a finish for the sentence. He lowered his eyes and stared into the cup.
Jane Coles shuddered. She loved Robby so much and yet she could never speak to him nor get him to speak to her. There was always a barrier between them. Maybe, Jane Coles had sometimes thought, it was because Robby needed someone strong to love and encourage him and she was weak, vacillating, without resources. No wonder then he couldn’t confide in her and seek out her judgment. No wonder then he could do no more than love her as his mother and avoid looking for anything else in her.
“Are you hungry, son?” she asked.
“No . . . mother, I’m all right.”
She stood there, wordless, the smile fixed to her tired face, wanting desperately to speak to him, to have him need her sympathy and love.
Impulsively, she drew out a chair and Robby looked up in poorly veiled surprise as the chair leg grated on the floor. His mother smiled quickly at him and sat down, feeling the pulsebeat throbbing in her wrists. The sickness of despair was coming over her again. Robby was her own son, the only one she really cared for and yet she could not speak of a situation which might lead him to his death.
She swallowed and clasped her hands in her lap until the blood was squeezed from them. She had to speak of it.
“Son,” she said, her voice a strengthless sound.
Robby looked up at her. “What, mother?”
“You . . .” She looked down quickly at her white hands, then up again. “You’ve . . . made up your mind?”
“About what, mother?” he asked quietly.
She didn’t say anything because she knew he was aware of what she spoke about. She looked at him intently, feeling as if the room and the house had disappeared and there were only the two of them sitting in some immeasurable void together—waiting.
“Yes,” he said then and she saw how his fingers twitched restively at the porcelain cup handle. He opened his mouth a little as if he were going to go on, clarifying, explaining. “Yes,” he said again.
Mrs. Coles felt as if someone had submerged her in icy, numbing water. She sat there staring at her son, feeling a complete inability in herself, feeling absolutely helpless.
She blinked then, forcing through herself the demand to think, to act.
“Because of Miss Winston’s . . . visit?”
Robby turned his head away a moment as if he wanted to escape but, after a few seconds, he looked back at her briefly, then at his cup.
“Because of everything,” he said.
She stopped the trembling of her lips before she spoke again. “Everything?” she asked.
Robby took a long drink of the coffee and she watche
d the convulsive movements of his throat muscles. She was about to tell him not to drink coffee or he wouldn’t sleep but then she got the sudden idea that if he didn’t sleep and was exhausted the next day, his father might not demand anything of him. She remained silent.
Robby clinked down the cup heavily.
“Mother, it’s got to be done,” he said, his voice tightly controlled. “There’s no other way.”
The dread again, complete and overwhelming, like a crawling of snakes over her and in her. “But . . . why?” she heard herself asking faintly. “Surely, there’s . . .”
Robby twisted his shoulders and she stopped talking, feeling a bolt of anguish at the realization that she was only making it worse for him.
“Mother, there’s no other way,” he told her in an agitated voice. “If I don’t do it, Louisa will never be able to lift her head again in Kellville.”
That’s his father talking, the thought was like an electric shock in her brain. She stared at him helplessly a moment but then knew suddenly she had to go on because, if she didn’t, his decision would remain the same.
“But . . . John Benton didn’t admit to doing what . . .” her shoulders twitched nervously, “. . . what they said he did.”
“It’s not enough, mother,” Robby said, almost angrily now. “Can’t you see that? The whole town believes he did it and . . .” he punched a fist on his leg, “. . . and Louisa is suffering for it. I have to speak for her, mother, can’t you see that I have to?”
She sat in the chair shivering, staring at his tense young face, knowing that he was trying desperately to hang on to his resolve, feeling, in her body, a twisting and knotting of sick terror for him.
“No . . .” she murmured, hardly realizing it herself. In her mind a dozen different questions flung about in a weave of stricken panic. But you didn’t ask Louisa if it were true, did you? Why should John Benton do such a thing? Why do you believe everything they tell you? Why do you let them all make your decision for you? Robby, it’s your life! There’s only one! A rushing torrent of words she could never speak to him in a hundred years.
“What are . . . what are you going to do?” she asked, without meaning to.
They were both silent, looking at each other and Jane Coles could hear the clock in the hall ticking away the moments.
Then her son said, “There’s only one thing.”
Her hand reached out instinctively and closed over his as a rush of horror enveloped her.
“No, darling!” she begged him. “Please don’t! Please!”
Robby bit his lip and there was a strained sound in his throat as if he had felt himself about to cry and fought it away. He drew his hand from her quickly, his face hardening and, for a hideous moment, Jane Coles saw the face of her husband reflected on Robby’s pale features.
“There’s nothing else, I said,” he told her tensely.
“But not with—!” She broke off suddenly, afraid even of the word.
“Yes,” he said and she could see clearly how hard he was trying to believe it himself. “There’s no other way a man like him would understand. It’s all he deserves. He won’t apologize or . . .” He saw the straining fear on her face and his voice snapped angrily. “I believe Louisa! She wouldn’t lie to me! Not about something like this. It’s my duty to . . . to defend her honor.”
“Oh dear God!” Jane Coles slumped over, pressing her shaking hands to her face. “Dear God, it’s your father talking, it’s not you. It’s him, him! Oh, dear God, dear God . . .” The tears ran between her trembling fingers.
Robby sat there stiffly, staring at his mother with half-frightened eyes, desperately afraid that he was going to cry too. He leaned back in the chair looking at her with an expression in his eyes that shifted from resolution to pitying contrition and back to resolute strength again.
“You don’t have to cry, mother,” he said, feeling a twinge at the cold sound of his voice. “I’m not afraid of John Benton. I . . . I’m not a little boy anymore, mother, I’m twenty-one.”
His mother looked up with an anguished sob. “You’re not old enough for this!” she cried, almost a fierce anger in her voice. “You mustn’t fight him, son, you mustn’t!”
She kept crying and, for some strange reason, Robby felt suddenly remorseless and cold toward his sobbing mother. There was no strength in her, the thought crept vaguely through his brain, there was only weakness and surrender. He was a man now and he had a job to do. He was going to do it no matter what happened.
He wished it was morning so he could buckle on his gun and get it over with. He found to his astonishment that he actually wasn’t afraid of Benton now, that he wanted only to get the job over with. Louisa was his intended bride; someday she would be his wife. His father was right; he had to defend her, now and always, it was his responsibility. When men stopped fighting for their women, the society would fail, he was certain of it.
“Go to bed, mother,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone, “there’s nothing to cry about.”
Jane Coles sat slumped on her chair, still weeping, her thin shoulders palsied with sobbing. Robby sat looking at her as he would look at a stranger. He felt cold inside, hollowed out by determination, drained of fear, empty of all but the one resolution he knew he had to obey.
He had said tomorrow. Tomorrow it would be.
Slowly, consciously, his fingers closed on the table top; they made a hard, white fist.
Twelve twenty-one, the end of the second day.
The Third Day
Chapter Twenty
Julia was just putting the rack of loaves into the hot oven when the hound began barking outside the kitchen door at the muffled drumming of hoofbeats. Pushing up the oven door, she moved quickly across the floor toward the window and looked out.
A sudden weakness dragged at her and she caught at the windowsill, her heart suddenly pumping in slow, heavy beats as she saw who it was.
The chestnut gelding was reined up to a careful stop before the house and stood there fidgeting while the hound cringed nearby, ears back, head snapping with each hoarse, excited bark it gave.
“Benton!” Julia heard Matthew Coles call out and her stomach muscles shuddered at the sound.
“No,” she murmured without realizing it, gasping to draw breath into her lungs.
“Benton!” Coles shouted again, his voice sharp and demanding. Julia stared out at him, hoping desperately that he would think no one was home and ride away.
Then Matthew Coles started to dismount and she pushed from the window and opened the door with a spasmodic pull.
Matthew Coles twitched back, face whitening.
“I am unarm—!” he started to cry out, then broke off with a tightening of his mouth when he saw it was her.
“Where is your husband, Mrs. Benton?” he asked quickly, trying to cover up his momentary panic. The hound dog backed toward Julia as she stood in the doorway.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked, weakly.
“Mrs. Benton, I expect an answer.”
She drew in a shaking breath. “He’s not here,” she said.
“Where is he?”
She swallowed quickly and stared at him, feeling sick and dizzy.
“Mrs. Benton, I demand an—”
“Why do you want to know?”
“That is not your concern, ma’m,” said Matthew Coles.
“It’s about Louisa Harper, isn’t it?” she asked suddenly.
His face hardened. “Where is your husband, ma’m?” he asked.
“Mister Coles, it isn’t true! My husband had nothing to do with that girl!”
“I’m afraid the facts speak differently, ma’m,” Matthew Coles said with imperious calm. “Now, where is he?”
“Mister Coles, I beg of you—listen to me! My husband had nothing to do with Louisa Harper, I sw—”
“Where is your husband, Mrs. Benton?”
“I swear to you, Mister—”
“Where is he, Mrs. Benton??
?? Matthew Coles asked, his voice rising.
“Why won’t you listen to me? Don’t you think I’d know?”
“Mrs. Benton, I demand an answer!”
“What are you trying to do—kill your son?!”
The hint of a smile played at Matthew Coles’ lips. “I don’t believe it’s my son you’re concerned for,” he said.
“Who else would I be concerned for?” she answered heatedly. “You don’t think he’d have a chance against my husband, do you? For the love of God, stop this terrible thing before—”
Matthew Coles turned on his heel and lifted his boot toe into the stirrup.
“Mister Coles!” Her cry followed him as she took a quick step into the morning sunlight, face pale and tense.
He said nothing but swung up into the saddle and pulled his horse around.
“You’ve got to believe me!” she cried. “My husband didn’t—”
The rest of her words were drowned out by the quickening thud of the gelding’s hooves across the yard.
“No!” She screamed it after him.
Then she stood there in the hot blaze of sunlight, shivering uncontrollably, watching him ride away while the hound dog stood beside her, whining.
Suddenly she started running for the barn on trembling legs, breath falling from her lips in gasping bursts. Then, equally as sudden, she stopped, realizing that she didn’t know how to hitch up the buckboard for herself. She stood indecisively, halfway between the barn and the house, her chest jerking with frustrated, frightened sobs.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Well, them damn churnheads is in the bog again,” was the first thing Joe Bailey said as Benton and Lew Goodwill rode up to him.
“Oh, for—!” Benton hissed angrily. Then he shrugged. “Well . . . stay here with the rest of the herd and Lew and I’ll fetch ’em out.”