"It's her stopping you, I know it," said Madeleine. "Grandmother won't let me have what's rightfully mine."
"Madeleine, I just don't feel right about opening it," Quentin said. "Can I help that? If it's so easy, you open it, not me. I want you to, really. I'm just not part of this. Open it."
She slapped at him, though she was too far for her hand to reach him. Bursting into tears she screamed, "Why did I marry you if you can't do the one thing I want most for you to do!"
"Look, I'll open it!" Quentin said. "But I hope you know this isn't the most attractive you've ever looked in your life."
"Open it!" She was frantic now, almost panicked.
Quentin touched the box again. It was so warm. His ringers tingled. This whole business is turning me into a basket case, he thought. Obviously this box was far more important to her than she had let on. And yet she had kept it a secret from him through their whole engagement and these months of marriage. Plotting and planning. It meant that he had been manipulated and he hated that. Hated manipulating and being manipulated.
"Mad, I really think this isn't a good time to open the box," Quentin said. "You're upset and I'm upset and we need to have a talk about this first."
She wailed at him, sinking to her knees. "There's nothing to talk about! It's mine!"
"I know it's yours. But it's waited all these years, can't it wait till we talk this out?"
"Do you think talking will help?" she retorted. "She's stopping you. She's getting her way and I hate her for it! I'll kill her, I swear it."
"She's not stopping me, for heaven's sake, Mad!" But in a way she was, those fingertips on the box, those piercing eyes.
"What do you know about it!" Madeleine wailed. "All this work, all these months, I'm so tired! All for nothing!"
"I hope you're not referring to our marriage," said Quentin, trying to sound like he was joking. But of course he was not joking. He was frightened.
"If you loved me," said Madeleine, rising again to her feet, her face a mask of fury. "If you loved me like you say, you would open this box right now. This minute. This second."
Quentin turned to the box again, put his hands on the lid. The box trembled. "My hands are shaking," he said. "I don't think—right at this moment, Madeleine, I'm wondering—you make me wonder if our whole marriage is a sham, just so you could get me to open this box. Tell me that isn't true, Mad. This whole thing is so crazy, it can't be true."
"Open," she whispered, her face a mask of fury. "The. Box."
Quentin took his hands away from the trembling box and pressed them to his face. "Mad. Mad, what's happening to us?"
She screamed. Not the scream of a child in tantrum, but a high wail that sounded like a woman keening with grief. He turned to her, reached out his hands in pleading. She recoiled from him, spun around, and ran, staggering, from the room.
Confused and frightened and hurt, Quentin turned back toward the box. "I'll open it, Mad! Come back, I'm opening it, see?"
But Uncle Paul's hand was on the box now. "Not without Mrs. Fears in here, Mr. Fears," he said, smiling. "It's in the will."
Quentin looked around the room. Somehow, without his noticing it, all the others had slipped out of the room. Well, he wasn't surprised—this hadn't been a pleasant scene to watch. Only Uncle Paul and Grandmother remained, both of them touching the treasure box. Quentin looked Grandmother in the eye. "Doesn't she love me, Grandmother?" he asked.
The old lady's lips began to move. Slightly, no sound coming out.
"I should follow her," Quentin said. "I'm going to follow her and bring her back and we'll open the box and then we'll get out of here and everything will be all right. That's what I should do, isn't it?"
Her lips moved again. He leaned close, to hear her.
"Babbling old woman," murmured Uncle Paul, but he removed his hand from the box and stepped back out of the way.
Grandmother, almost nose-to-nose with him now, whispered to him. "Find me," she said.
It made no sense at all. The woman was senile. She was no more in control of this house than Quentin was.
Madeleine. Somehow she could explain it all. She could make sense of it. She was his wife, after all. She loved him, he loved her, they had everything in common, they had their lives together, she was his and he was hers forever. This was just some insane quarrel, some stupid misunderstanding.
Where was she? He ran out of the parlor into the entry hall. He checked the library, the drawing room, the dining room. The door to the back portico was open, the winter chill already skimming the floor so his feet went cold as soon as he entered the room.
He ran to the French doors leading out to the portico. She wasn't there. He cast his gaze out across the lawn of snow just in time to catch a glimpse of her, her hands at her face, as she ran awkwardly into the walled graveyard.
Immediately he took off after her across the snow.
8. Footprints
Quentin couldn't see her in the graveyard. He ran among the headstones, looking left and right, but she wasn't kneeling anywhere, wasn't standing behind anything. There were bushes, but all of them were leafless. If she was within the graveyard walls, he would see her.
There was no other gate. He ran to each of the far corners of the enclosure, to see if her footprints led to the wall, if by some chance she had climbed it.
How absurd! She was wearing a dress, she was angry, upset—why would she climb a wall?
But then, where was she?
He must have looked away as he ran toward the graveyard. While he was watching his footing in the snow she must have seen him coming and slipped back out again, wanting to avoid him. And maybe she was right. Let her calm down, let him calm down. They could face this problem rationally. She had warned him that there would be problems when she went home. She had told him that she didn't like the person she became when she was here. Well, she had been right all along. He didn't like the person she became, either. But the person she was outside of this place, the person she really was—he loved her, and they could get away from this place and go back to their life and this would become a half-funny memory, to be told to no one. It would become in-references between them. They would call some longstaying visitor a "friend of the family" and both of them would think of Simon. Someone would be obnoxiously formal and they would wink and whisper, "Uncle Stephen." Someone would say something foolish in the attempt to be wise, and they would say, "Athena," and remember this breakfast and the dear foolish spinster aunt who sat at table with them.
But they would never joke about Grandmother. Or Uncle Paul. Or the treasure box. There was real pain there, and if Quentin ever understood it, fine, but if he never did that was also fine, as long as he had his Madeleine and they never had to come back to this place.
He had run the circuit of the graveyard, looking for her footprints. They weren't there. She hadn't come in here after all.
He stood in the entrance, looking down at the snow. Only one set of prints led into the graveyard. His own.
But he had seen her run in here. From the portico he had watched her before he ran across the lawn to meet her here.
He looked out onto the lawn. There were the footprints the two of them had made that morning, the distant ones leading down to the bluff, the near ones that marked their return journey. He walked over to the near prints. Only one set of shoes had broken the crusty surface of the snow. Again, they were his.