forced the issue and it turned out there was no innocent explanation. That would mean he would have to leave Ellie. No man and wife can go on living together after one has been caught committing adultery.
Why not, he asked himself miserably. Why did it matter so much? Would Ellie be a different person just because she was in bed with another man tonight? Would there be any physical change in her? Wouldn’t she still be the same Ellie he had loved for ten years? The mother of his child. Would one physical contact with Harry Wilsson change Ellie so much that he couldn’t live with her afterward?
And he answered himself with an emphatic NO to all those questions. Yet he knew there would be a disastrous change in their relationship if he walked into the house and caught her in bed with Harry. All three of them would have to react to that. Marvin did not know why this was so. He didn’t understand why people had to react to a situation like that. But he knew that each of them would. He knew that three or four or five lives would inevitably be smashed into little pieces if he went into the house and found his wife and Harry Wilsson together intimately.
He couldn’t take a chance on doing that to himself and Ellie and Sissy. He couldn’t, God help him, do that to Harry and Minerva. He could not take the risk of going inside his own house.
But he could not, either, go away from the house without knowing for certain. Even though, God knew, he wanted to go away from there.
But that, he could not do.
Yet all the time he did not actually believe in his heart that there was anything wrong. He knew he was getting it all wrong and that there must be an innocent explanation. That is, he tried to know. He willed himself to know. But the inner knowledge was not strong enough to force him to take the ultimate step.
He knew it was a weak thing to do, and he despised himself for his own weakness as he crouched there in the shadows with his hands over his face and did not dare to enter his own home.
But he wondered how many other husbands would have been stronger than he? Oh, he knew a lot of men who would have dashed into the house at the first intimation that his wife might be unfaithful, waving a gun and shouting that his honor must be avenged. But in his heart Marvin believed that sort of man was in the minority.
What does a man’s honor have to do with it, he asked himself. It is his life that is at stake. His future. Everything that he holds dear. Should a man smash that up in one instant of jealous rage which he will regret the rest of his life?
Oh, he was jealous all right. He was writhing and aching and seared with jealousy. He simply could not allow himself to visualize Ellie and Harry in bed together. It was too monstrous. If he just didn’t have to see it with his own eyes.
So he stayed there seated on his suitcase in the shadows and he waited. And kept his face buried in his hands so he could not look up to the dim light in the bedroom. Their bedroom. Ellie’s and his. The bedchamber he had brought her to as a bride and where her maidenhead had been broken. Where Sissy had been conceived.
He did not know how long he sat there. It seemed like many hours, but he knew it was probably less than one. He did not know what caused him to finally lift his head and gaze dully at the house again, but just as he did so he saw a light come on inside the frosted glass upper portion of the front door. That meant to him that the stairway light had been switched on from above and that someone was coming down the stairs.
The bedroom light remained lit.
He remained hunched back, hidden in the shadows, and waited, scarcely drawing a breath, his gaze fixed on the front door of his home with terrible intensity.
The door opened inward and for one brief moment the figure of Harry Wilsson was silhouetted against the hallway light behind him. Then he pressed the switch and the light went out, and he stepped out and closed the door solidly behind him.
Marvin Blake did not move as his friend and neighbor circled around the front of the convertible and got in the front seat.
The bedroom light remained on while Harry pressed the starter and his motor hummed into life and the convertible glided down the driveway in the starlight.
Watching him go, Marvin saw that he rolled downward slowly without turning on his headlights to betray his leaving until he had turned into Lily Lane.
As though he had practiced that secretive method of departure often, Marvin thought with anguish.
And he could not help wondering how often he had.
The paramount feeling of which he was aware at that awful moment was one of unutterable sadness. He was numbed beyond any other emotion. There was an empty sickness in his stomach and he hugged his arms tightly about himself and trembled. Everything was over. Everything that had been good in life was now shattered.
He knew, with that sickness inside him, that he and Ellie could never pick up the pieces of their life again. No matter how hard they both tried. She was upstairs in their bedroom, lying in the bed that was still warm from their love-making.
He did not know what to do next. Now that Ellie was alone he could go in without, at least, causing a melodramatic scene. But it was too late in the night to pretend to Ellie that he had just walked up from the station after getting off the late train and had no idea he had been cuckolded during his absence. He looked at his watch and saw it was fifteen minutes after eleven. More than an hour since the train had stopped to let him off. He tried to think of some plausible story he could tell Ellie to explain the lapse of time, but even as he did so he knew it wasn’t feasible.
With her sense of guilt, Ellie would never believe him. And, in truth, he didn’t believe he’d be able to carry it off even if she allowed him to do so. In his heart he knew he couldn’t go in and face Ellie now and pretend he knew nothing.
However, he could, perhaps, go in calmly and without anger, and explain to Ellie that he knew she had been closeted in the bedroom with Harry Wilsson, and listen to her tearful and shamefaced explanation of how it had happened. How Harry had just dropped in casually after dinner to keep her company during Marvin’s last evening away from home, and how they’d had a few drinks together. And how the drinks had hit her unexpectedly and how it happened. Without her anticipating it. Without her wanting it. With her so tight she hadn’t really known it was happening until it was all over. And how terribly ashamed she was and disgusted with herself, and how she still loved him dearly in spite of everything and if he could just find it in his heart to forgive her and to forget…
He knew that was the way it would be if he went in now and told Ellie what he knew. And he didn’t know whether he could stand that or not. Forgive Ellie?
He didn’t know. When a man says he can forgive a person, exactly what does it mean? He can go through the outward motions. He can say the word out loud. But will he really mean the words he speaks aloud? Is true forgiveness honestly possible?
Certainly, he told himself, he could never forget. Never in all the world could he do that. Would it be possible to go on living together with the memory of this night always with him? He told himself firmly that he should try, for Sissy’s sake. At least until the child was older and didn’t need both parents so much. Then, if the situation proved to be unbearable, a quiet and unemotional separation could be arranged.
He had actually picked up his suitcase and started across the drive toward the front door when he stopped suddenly. He knew he could not do it. Not right then. Not while Ellie was still flushed from the caresses of her lover. He needed time to think things out and get a firm grip on himself. To evaluate what had happened, and to calmly plan the future.
He turned slowly and went down the winding driveway, carrying his suitcase with him. There was a southbound local due in a couple of hours that stopped at Sunray. No one need notice him get aboard it, and no one need know he had been in Sunray at all that night. He could go back to Miami, now that he knew the truth, and simply come back on the afternoon train as planned. By that time he would have things thought out clearly, and he would find a way, somehow, to go on and make a life with Ellie.
He felt awfully sorry for himself as he walked slowly and listlessly back down the driveway which he had walked up so blithely and happily only an hour before. He seemed to be standing off on the sidelines and looking at the pathetic figure of Marvin Blake wearily shuffling away from his home in the silence and loneliness of the night, and his heart bled for the man he watched.
Why had they done that to him? His wife and Harry Wilsson. How could they have done such a thing to a
