Tansy cursed fluently. It did him good to hear her.
"Make you want to take up conjuring again?" Hold on! He shouldn't have
said that.
She looked at him closely.
"How do you mean that?" she asked.
"Just a joke."
"Are you sure? I know you've been worrying about me these last few
days, ever since you found out. Wondering if I were going totally
neurotic on you, and watching for the next symptoms. Now, dear, you
don't have to deny it. It was the natural thing. I expected you'd be
suspicious of me for a while. With your knowledge of psychiatry, it
would be impossible for you to believe that anyone could shake off an
obsession so quickly. And I've been so happy to get free from all that,
that your suspicions haven't bothered me. I've known they would wear
off."
"But, darling, I honestly haven't been suspicious," he protested.
"Maybe I ought to have been, but I haven't."
Her gray-green eyes were enigmatic and serious. She said slowly, "Then
what are you worrying about?"
"Nothing at all." Here was where he had to be very careful.
She shook her head. "That's not true. You are worrying. Oh, I know
there are some things on your mind that you haven't told me about. It
isn't that."
He looked up quickly.
She nodded. "About the chairmanship. And that some student has been
threatening you. And about that Van Nice girl." She smiled briefly,
as he started to protest. "Oh, I know you aren't the type who seduces
love-struck and innocent mimeograph operators." She became serious
again. "Those are all minor matters, things you can take in your
stride. You didn't tell me about them because you were afraid I might
backslide, from the desire to protect you. Isn't that right?"
"Yes."
"But I have the feeling that what you're worrying about goes much
deeper than that. Yesterday and today I've even felt that you wanted to
turn to me for help, and somehow didn't dare."
He paused, as if thinking exactly how to phrase his answer. But he was
studying her face, trying to read the exact meaning of each little
familiar quirk of expression around the mouth and eyes. She looked very
contained, but that was only a mask, he thought. Actually, in spite of
everything she said, she must still be poised close to the brink of
her obsession. One little push, such as a few careless words on his
part--How the devil had he ever let himself get so enmeshed in his own
worries and those ridiculous projections of his own cranky imagination?
Here was the only thing that mattered--the mind behind this smooth
brown forehead and these clear, gray-green eyes; to steer that mind
away from any such ridiculous notions as those he had been indulging
in, the last few days.
"To tell the truth," he said, "I _have_ been worried about you.
I thought it would hurt your self-confidence if I let you know. Maybe
I was unwise--you seem to have sensed it, anyway--but that's what I
thought. The way you feel now, of course, it can't possibly hurt you to
know."
It occurred to him that it was easier to lie convincingly when you
loved someone, provided the lie were for that person's sake.
She did not give in at once. "Are you sure?" she said. "I still have
the feeling there's more to it."
Suddenly she smiled and yielded to the pressure of his arm. "It must be
the MacKnight in me--my Scotch ancestry," she said laughing. "Awfully
stubborn, you know. Monomaniacs. When we're crazy on a thing, we're
completely crazy, but when we drop it, we drop it all at once. Like
my great-uncle Peter. You know, the one who left the Presbyterian
ministry and gave up Christianity on the very same day he proved to his
satisfaction there was no God. He was seventy-two at the time."
There was a long and grumbling roll of thunder. The storm was swinging
back.
"Well, I'm very glad you're only worried about me," she continued.
"It's complimentary, and I like it."
She was smiling happily, but there was still something enigmatic
about the eyes, something withheld. As he was congratulating himself
on carrying it off successfully, it suddenly occurred to him that
two could play at the game of lying. She might be holding something
back herself, with the idea of reassuring him. She might be trying to
protect him from her own blacker worries. Her subtlety might undercut
his own. No sane reason to suspect that, and yet--
"Suppose I get us a drink," she said, "and we decide whether or not you
leave Hempnell this year, and look for greener fields."
He nodded. She started around the bend in the L-shaped room for the
sideboard.
"--and yet, you could live with a person and love a person for fifteen
years, and not know what was behind their eyes."
* * * * *
There was the rattle of glassware, and the friendly sound of a full
bottle set down on a table.
Then, timed to the thunder, but much, much closer, a shuddering, animal
scream of anguished fear. It was cut off before Norman had sprung to
his feet.
As he cleared the angle of the room, he saw Tansy going through the
kitchen door. She was a little ahead of him down the back steps.
Light fanned out from the windows of the opposite house into the
service yard. It revealed the sprawled body of Totem, head mashed flat
against the concrete.
He heard a little sound start and stop in Tansy's throat. It might have
been a gasp, or a sob, or a snarl.
The light revealed a little more than the body. He moved so that his
feet covered the two prominent scuffs in the concrete just beyond the
body. They might have been caused by the impact of a brick or heavy
stone, perhaps the thing that had killed Totem, but there was something
so suggestive about their relative position that he did not want
Tansy's imagination to have a chance to work on them.
She lifted her face. She was never one to show much emotion.
"You'd better go in," he said.
"You'll--"