toward the door with the doctor.
Alice sat down in a straight chair beside the bed. She couldn t understand Innes and his mother when they were together. There was something sad and wrong about them.
'You won't leave me, Alice?'
He looked ridiculously boyish in his pajamas, like a little old boy with a mustache. He looked weak and scared. Thoroughly scared. He twitched with it.
'What is it, Innes? What makes you afraid?'
Innes swallowed. 'It's Gertrude '
'Gertrude?'
'You don't know. And people forget. But she never forgot. Alice, it was my fault she went blind.'
'Oh, no! What do you mean?'
'I was only about seven years old, and they told me to hold the horse. Well, I didn't. I was only a child. I didn't realize. Besides how could any one know what was going to happen? The horse ran with her in the buggy. Threw her. She was sick for a long time. After that, she was blind. She always blamed me. I knew that. Everybody did. Father tned to be kind, but he blamed me, too. I always felt that. Mother didn't. She thought I was too young to be blamed for anything, but, of course, she didn't count'
Why not? thought Alice.
'They all blamed me. Gertrude blames me to this day. Naturally her life was ruined. I suppose if I'd done what I was told It wouldn't have happened. I don't know. But I've always known she'd like to hurt me, Alice. I know that.'
Alice felt his forehead. Surely he was feverish.
'Try to go to sleep,' she said. 'Is there anything you want?'
'No, no, the doctor isn't through with me. How can I sleep? I want Fred. Alice, you'll stay by me, won't you? You and Fred?'
'Of course,' said Alice. 'Don't worry about it, Innes. Well be here.'
'Don't let Gertrude come in,' he whispered, and subsided into a silent drowsy state.
Alice sat still. She tried to think of Gertrude, the pale woman, as a young girl with eyes. But she couldn't. A long past, locked in Innes's memory. A long past she'd never imderstand, though now guilt, sown into Innes as a boy, had pushed forth from the old roots, bearing fear for its fruit.
When the doctor came back, Fred was with him, carrying things. The doctor preferred to manage alone, so they went to stand outside the door.
Alice said, 'He wants you and me to stick around. He's scared.'
'That so?' Fred lounged against the wall.
'You don't seem surprised.'
'That's because I'm not,' Fred said.
'Well, of course he's had the darnedest luck . . .'
'Yeah? Doc Follett told me he went over the pit road tonight just after dark. And the detom: sign was in the right place then.'
'It probably was,' Alice said. 'What about it?'
'Well, it's funny, don't you think? Also, what made that lamp fall? I don't know. Do you?'
'Oh, nonsense!' cried Alice.
A door opened at the end of the short branch of the hall. Isabel came out of her room and smiled her half-hoop of tight-lipped smile when she saw them. 'Let me just show you where you are to sleep,' she said. 'Someone has to think of these things. Fred, you must put up with a cot here in the lumber room. Alice, my dear, the little guest room, of course. It's terrible, isn't it? Poor Innes. Poor boy.'
Alice's flesh crawled.
'But so lucky,' Isabel said. 'So lucky you weren't all killed.'
''Sure was, Miss Isabel,' Fred said. 'Dumb luck, that's all'
'I do hope you'll be comfortable,' Isabel said with her odd way of running off the subject 'This is all so unexpected.'
When Dr. Follett left his patient at last and was passing through the hall downstairs on his way home, Maud stopped him. She summoned him mto the sitting room and spoke for some time. She hadn't finished when he came out, pale, with his lips compressed, and made for his car as if the furies pursued him.
8
By eleven o'clock the house was quiet. Innes slept. Alice came quietly away and closed his door. She sat down beside Fred on the top step of the backstairs that ran down just beyond the door to Papa's room, between that room and the one bathroom on that floor. He was just sitting there. Alice was very tired, spent, in fact. But not sleepy. She didn't relish the thought of sleep. The old house was uneasy, and she uneasy m it. It seemed very natural to drop down there beside him. He gave her a cigarette. They talked in whispers, keeping their heads turned, to listen down the hall.
'Gone bye-bye?'
'At last,' Alice sighed.
