"Where's everybody?" she asked.
"In with Grandy."
"Oh." Mathilda got herself coffee from the stove. She hoped it was good and strong. She had awakened in a cold sweat. She wondered if she was coming down with something. She felt numb and confused and as if a lowering cloud hung over the world, something
black and terrifying, ominous, threatening, as if there was worse to come. Perhaps it was only that Althea was dead.
Oliver was lighting another cigarette. He glanced at her nervously as she sat down. "The funeral is this afternoon," he blurted out. "They've released the body. Grandy says get it over with."
Mathilda shivered. What could she say? Nothing to say. It was simply stupid to open your mouth and say, "I'm sorry." Oliver put out his cigarette and lit another. He didn't seem to know he was doing so.
“This accident stuff is all right for publication,” he blurted, "but it wasn't any accident."
"What do you mean, Oliver?" Tyl put out her hand and touched his. She did feel sorry for him. There must be a way to let him know it.
"Because she must have eaten them! Eaten them!"
"Eaten what?"
Those pills. By the handful."
"The sleeping dope?"
"Yes, because, listen, Tyl, Doctor Madison knows damn well how she used to love to take a lot of junk. He fixed her up with some extra-mild ones. He told me so, when I worried about it. He knew she'd take too many, too often. He said the effect was mostly psy-
chological, anyhow. Tyl, for her to die, she must have eaten a whole bottle. So she must have wanted to die. Don't you see?"
"I can't believe—"
"You'd better believe it."
"Oliver, you didn't have any stronger pills in there, did you?'
"Never touch the junk. No. Nothing."
Mathilda shook her head. She could feel the cloud, that heavy depressing, shadowing bulk that seemed to exist in the back of he consciousness, ready to come down and swallow her up in despair She was afraid. She drank more coffee hastily.
"I can't stop going over that fight we had." Oliver stared at he with reddened eyes. "I can't stop."
"You mustn't do that," said Tyl. She, herself, felt that this was an unsupported statement. If he had asked why not, she couldn't have answered.
"I know," he said. "I know, but I can't stop. 'Burn tenderly.' What does that mean to you?"
"What does what mean?"
"'Burn tenderly.'"
"I don't know. I never heard such a thing."
"Wouldn't you guess it was love stuff? Wouldn't you think it came out of some lousy poem? Or some fancy speech in the movies? 'My heart burns tenderly."*
"Maybe" she said.
"Yeah."
"What's the matter? Why are you worrying about that?"
Oliver put his head down, and for once his forelock fell over his eyes without the self-conscious boyishness with which he had been known to let it fall. "Althea wouldn't talk that night. Night before last. Not at first. She just wouldn't talk to me at all. But then she
laughed and said that out loud. I don't think she meant to, but she said, 'Burn tenderly.' Tyl, I thought she and Francis must have been talking that way—you know, love stuff. Reading each other poems or something. I was mad. I told her what I thought. I said that proved it. She tried to tell me it was something some cook had said on the radio."
"Cook?"
"Yeah. Do you believe it?"
"I don't. . . know."
"I asked her how she'd happened to remember some dumb thing a cook said on the radio, especially at a time like that. She had a story. She said it was because she turned the radio up in the middle of a program. She'd turned it down on account of Grandy coming in, and then she turned it up, and the guy said those two words just out of a clear silence. It sounded funny. She said she'd been telling Francis about it"
“Telling Francis?"
"Do you believe that?"
“It sounds crazy."
"That's what I thought."
"Why should she be telling Francis what some cook said on the radio?"
"Yeah, that's what I wondered. I think-I still think- Oh, I don't know what I think. Suppose she did carry on with him. Tyl, I'm sorry." His eyes looked desperate. He was lost in this anguish of new honesty.
"That's all right," she said weakly. "Oliver, don't keep beating yourself. She couldn't have been enough involved with Francis to kill herself. Anyhow, Althea wouldn't have killed herself for any such kind of thing. Do you know what I mean?"
Oliver nodded. He seemed to relax a little. "I know," he said. “She was . . . flirtatious, I guess you'd say. She liked to get men interested. That was what interested her. And it would have gone on all our lives.”
"I expect it would," said Tyl sadly. It was true. Althea would never want what she had, but would always have watched with her silver eyes for her chance to step in and take what somebody else wanted. It was the act of taking away, the use of her power, that she had savored. Poor, restless, envious, uneasy Althea. Could she have seen herself and, with sudden clarity, known she must never grow old?
"Such a mess," groaned Oliver. "Everything gone wrong. From the minute we married. You got lost. Rosaleen did that . . . thing. Then Francis came, and she— He's very attractive."
"Yes," said Tyl.
"Now, this. I'm talking too much. I'm taking my troubles out on you. Tyl, you're swell. Sometimes I think I played a pretty dirty trick on you too. If I did, I hope you've forgiven me."
"Yes," she said with a shrinking feeling. "Don't talk about it."
"You know, Tyl, your money's a bad thing."
"I know," she whispered.
"I mean"—his eyes begged her to understand—"it works out a way you probably don't realize. Althea was so beautiful, and there was your money, and I kept thinking, 'Am I fooling myself? Is it the money I care for?'"
“I suppose you would," she said painfully.
"It's easy to fool yourself. I've been fooling myself all my life. I don't know how to stop, either "
"Oliver, don't."
"So when Grandy said Althea would never have anything but love to make her happy—"
"Grandy?"
"You see, I didn't notice what was going on. I guess I just couldn't believe that Althea would—well, get interested in me that way. And of course, I didn't know the way you felt, either."
"The way I felt? What way, Oliver?"
"Oh, I mean the way it was. I'm the old-timer around here. You could be sure of me. I mean, you had to be so careful some ordinary fortune hunter didn't try to play up to you. Grandy told me you had a dread of that."
Mathilda hung on to the edge of the table. The cloud was coming down. It was going to get her. She felt sick with fear.
"He cleared that up," Oliver said. "He explained how your love for me was a gentle, friendly feeling, because you felt sure of me on that score. Not real love."
She thought she'd faint. She fought against it.
Tyl-"
She managed to murmur something. "Everything's been awful this morning. I didn't sleep well." But I did, she thought. I slept too hard and too long.
"It's been awful. I know." Oliver brooded. "Dear old Grandy, of course, wanted us all to be happy. He was right, wasn't he, about you? I asked you right out that day-you made a wisecrack. I thought—I mean—"