A good woman

by Louis Bromfield

When Mabelle had gone, he could think of nothing else.

Since the morning after the slaughter in the park, he had never returned to the stable. The place which he had once thought of as belonging to himself alone was spoiled now: it had been invaded by Lily Shane and poor Naomi, and even by Mary ... even by Mary. There were times when he resented her having come there, and times, too, when his remorse over Naomi made him feel that Mary had come deliberately, to tempt him, that what they had done was not a beautiful, but a wicked thing, which would torment him until he died. The place was spoiled for him, since it had come in a ghastly way to stand as a symbol of all those things which he believed had driven Naomi into madness.

But he knew, too, that he must return one day to the stable. It was filled with his belongings, the sketches pinned to the walls, the unfinished canvas of the Flats at night on which the paint must long since have caked and turned hard. (He knew now that it would never be finished, for he could never bring himself to sit there again by the window, alone, watching the mists stealing over the Mills.) After Mabelle had gone, he kept thinking that Naomi was the last one to enter the place. It was as if her spirit would be there awaiting him.

And then all at once there came to him a sudden terrifying memory: he had gone away that morning leaving behind unwashed the dishes he and Mary had used at breakfast. He had sent Mary away, promising to wash them himself, and then, troubled by the remorse of the gray dawn, had gone off, meaning to do it when he returned. They were still lying there—the two plates, the two coffee-cups, the very loaf of bread, turned hard and dry, and nibbled by the mice. And Naomi had gone there, “crazy for fear something had happened” to him. She had seen the remnants of that breakfast. In all the uproar and confusion he had forgotten.... She had known then; she must have known before she ran away....

For a moment he thought, “I must be careful, or I shall go crazy. It must feel like this to lose one’s mind.” He thought, “It was I who did it. I drove her away. I killed her myself. She thought that I was lying to her all along. I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t lying. I was telling her the truth.... It would have been the truth, even now, to the end, if Mary hadn’t come then. She must have been crazy. Both of us must have been crazy.”

And then, after a time, he thought, “I’ve got to be calm. I’ve got to think this thing out.” There wasn’t, after all, any reason why there shouldn’t have been two plates and two cups. Any one might have been having breakfast with him ... any man, Krylenko, or even McTavish. Oh, it was all right. There couldn’t have been anything wrong in that.

And then he thought bitterly, “But if it had been Krylenko, Naomi wouldn’t have believed it. She’d be sure it was a woman. She’d think it was Lily Shane ... Lily Shane, who wouldn’t have looked at me. She was jealous of Lily Shane.”

None of it was any good—none of this self-deception. It wasn’t a man who had had breakfast with him. It was a woman—Mary Conyngham, only Naomi had believed it was Lily Shane. Thank God! It wasn’t the same as if he and Mary together had driven her away to death in that horrible rooming-house. He’d never have to think of that after he and Mary were married. Naomi had believed the woman was Lily Shane.

Suddenly he pressed his hands to his eyes, so savagely that for a moment he was blinded. “I’m a fool. It’s just the same, even if she did think that it was some other woman.”

The stable began to acquire for him a horrid fascination, so powerful that he could no longer stay away from it. He had to return, to see the place with his eyes, to see the tell-tale cups and plates. Perhaps (he thought) some miracle had happened. Old Hennery might have removed them after he left, or perhaps he had himself washed them and put them away in the harness-closet without remembering it. Such a thing could happen.... In all the tragedy, all the confusion, the ecstasy of those few hours, he might have done it, without knowing what he did. Or afterwards, in all the stress of what had happened, he might have forgotten. Such things had been known to occur, he told himself, such lapses in the working of a brain. There were, after all, moments of late when he was not certain of what was happening—whether he was alive or dead, or whether Naomi had really killed herself, praying by the side of that wretched bed....