“Edward,” she had said, and her voice had broken off as she stared at the green paper in his hand. Then she had taken it from his fingers and tucked it in her bag, saying, “Shall we go?”
Descending in the elevator he had noticed that her eyes were shining and her face was flushed. She did not explain, and he had asked no questions, but he had thought, which one was it? Was it Rice or George or Larry or the other one, the one in between, whose memory was kept verdant in the Greenvale Cemetery.
During dinner that night he had tortured himself. He should have asked her outright, he had thought. After all, an explanation was due. He hadn’t pried. The letter had fallen to the floor, and he had naturally picked it up. But since he’d seen it, the least she could do was explain. He had to know which one it was.
As he lit cigarettes for them both on the way home in a taxi she had said lightly, “Edward, do you know I haven’t a commission? Not a single commission.”
“Oh, one will come along.”
“Not that. I mean for the first time since we were married I’m free. I haven’t a commission and I can do what I want. Edward, I’d like to do a head of you.”
Edward had been pleased. Her work had always been something apart, and he had been happy to be included in it, flattered that she should wish to do a bust of him.
“So, darling, let’s get up early,” she had said. “I want to get started on it first thing in the morning.”
It was fascinating, he thought now to see the sureness of her strong fingers molding the clay. She was a small woman, with a high-bridged nose that gave her thin face a sharp, flat perspective in profile, and her gray eyes held a light of watchful perception, like a cat’s. It was surprising, he thought, that her work should be so powerful, almost monumental.
The first day he had been enthusiastic as he watched his own head taking shape in the clay in massive, oversize planes. But the following morning something had gone wrong and she had mashed his clay nose, saying, “That’s all for today, Edward.” She had left the studio and he had not seen her again until dinner, when she talked little. He had been depressed and kept thinking of the letter from the Greenvale Cemetery.
As they were having coffee he had asked her bluntly, “Elaine, why the bill from a cemetery?”
Her eyes had met his for an instant, with a gleam of anger. “Edward, what do you mean by going through my pocketbook? Really, I’ve had enough of your prying.”
“It fell out on the floor when you took the pencil. I simply picked it up. Darling, I wasn’t prying into your affairs.”
“Very well. Then let’s not talk about it.”
“But I did see it, Elaine, and I’m curious. Why the cemetery plot? No reason why you can’t tell me about it, is there?”
“But I won’t tell you, Edward. I simply will not encourage your morbid curiosity. We’ve talked this all out and you promised not to pry.”
“We also said no secrets. Remember?”
She had risen to her feet and the angry shine of her eyes was almost hatred, surely contempt. She had said sharply, “Edward, we can’t go on like this. Really, I think you’d better do something about it. See somebody. How about that man Betty West goes to, Doctor Lewis? Why don’t you see him, Edward?”
He had banged his fist on the table. “I don’t need a psychiatrist. That’s a pretty shabby means of evasion, Elaine. That’s no answer to a direct question.”
“You need medical attention more than you realize, Edward,” she had said quietly. “And I don’t intend to answer any questions put like that. Good night.”
Now Edward frowned at the faun, rigidly holding his pose. It was the bottle of Scotch he had opened last night, after she left, that had given him the headache. He had known then, while drinking the Scotch, as he was sure now, that there was nothing wrong with his mind, that there was nothing morbid about his curiosity. Perhaps it was unhealthy to keep thinking about those three and the other one, the in-between one, but if she would talk about them openly and honestly he’d be able to get them out of his head. And that letter from the cemetery ought to be explained. He had the right to an explanation.
But her attitude had always bewildered him, her quick changes of mood. He had been surprised this morning when she prepared to work in the studio and came impatiently to ask if he was ready to pose. He had gazed at her, thinking that he would rather not sit another day staring at the high light on the faun, that he would rather not sit for his bust at all, and he had said, “Let’s skip it, Elaine.”
“Skip it? Why? I have a very good start, Edward.”
“I don’t feel so well, Elaine. I have a headache.”
She had come a step nearer him. “It will be restful just to sit there and relax. We’ll rest every five minutes, if you like.”
“But I simply don’t feel up to it, Elaine.”
She had examined him with hard, impersonal eyes, and there had been a strange authority in her bearing. All she had said was, “Please, Edward,” and he had shrugged his shoulders and followed her into the studio.
But now he thought uneasily that at some point in recent weeks their relationship had been reversed: he had taken the defensive and she had become increasingly dominant.
He stared morosely at the bronze faun, thinking that he must escape, he must free his brain of this absorbing doubt. If he was to be charged with prying, why not pry in earnest? Why not find out for himself? Go out to the cemetery and find out. Through the hours of posing he had become excited about it, and there was an anxious urgency in his mind that made him restless, unable to sit still.
“Time for rest,” Elaine said. “I’ll finish it by dark.”
“Finish it? Finish what?”
“The bust, of course.”
“Finish it this afternoon?”
“Edward, what’s the matter with you? Of course.”
“Nothing,” Edward said. “Nothing at all.” But he had a sense of dread. He could not wait; he must go at once. He could not wait for the bust to be finished. He said, “Elaine, I feel terrible. I’m going for a walk. Got to have some fresh air. I’ll be back in no time.”
He fled from the studio, caught up his hat in the hall. He found a taxicab at the corner and almost shouted, “Grand Central Terminal.”
On the train he was nervous and could not relax. As the afternoon sun sank lower he thought of Elaine in the studio, waiting beside the head of clay, the bust that would never be finished. Never, never be finished. Let her wait in the fading light of the studio with the shadows lengthening the planes of her face, he thought, until eternity. Maybe he was crazy, maybe he should have seen a psychiatrist, but he was determined that the bust would never be completed.
It was a quiet town and a golden glow lay over it as the sun’s rays slanted from just above the hills of the horizon. The caretaker was a strong old man with faded, incurious eyes and an irritating manner of deliberating over each word.
“The Peters plot? Don’t know it. Oh, Mrs. Edward Peters. Yes, Mrs. Rice that used to be. Just follow that path until you come to a big marble cross with the name Cowan on it. Turn right and the plot is along by the hedge, with dogwood around it.”
The Cowan cross loomed against the sunset sky. Edward turned right on the paved walk, his heels ringing loud in the graveyard. There ahead was the tall green hedge, to the left the grove of dogwood. He turned aside on a gravel path and came to a gladelike plot where the grass was very green and saw what he had come to see.