A Life For A Life

Short Story by Doris M Holden

The first stroke of the clock dropped into the silence with the clang of finality. From her chair by the fireside Anne started up with a gesture of protest, her white lips framing the words "No, no!" Instinctively her hands leapt to her ears to shut out the sound, but, relentless, the strokes went on, each tearing through her brain. As the last note hung on the air and slowly died away, Anne dropped back, the protesting hands falling to her lap. 

 White and dazed, she stared at the stupid face of the clock, now serenely ticking on, forcing herself to face the fact that the impossible had happened, the incredible was true -- it was all over. 
  All over! They would be running up a flag now, she thought, and, visualising it, worried for a moment over its colour, Was it red or black - that flag which told the gaping crowd in the street that the last shred of sensation had been savoured, that the mills had finished grinding, that Will was dead? That gaping crowd! How it formed a background to the whole nightmare: Faces staring, fingers pointing, voices whispering: "That's her. That's Mrs. Forrest. You know , Forrest that murdered old Wyndham." That gaping crowd! Filling the streets, thronging the court, gloating over the repartee of counsel, as the net had been wound tighter and tighter round her man. Staring, always staring ~ as she was still staring at that great white face on the mantelpiece. 

 What a stupid face it had, that clock, thought Anne again, a fat, stupid face like the juryman who had sat at the end of the row. How clearly he stood out in her moving picture of recollection, sitting back in his seat, watch chain stretched over his broad stomach, his eyes far away, as if half his brain still served behind the counter of his shop, Anne had felt, as she answered counsel's questions, that her replies were not for the hatchet-faced figure in wig and gown but for that complacent one in the jury-box. Beneath her answers ran the silent undercurrent of pleading: 

 "Oh, please listen, you fat man over there. I'm talking to you. Do listen to what I am saying. It's so terribly important. Maybe your assistant will make a mess of things while you are away, but please forget it for a moment. This means a man's life. You see, I'm the only one who knows, really knows, that Will Forrest did not go out meaning to kill. Can't you understand, oh, can’t you understand that a man might kill in a moment of blind rage?" 

 He couldn't understand, of course. Simple, easygoing, how could a man like that understand Will's furious rages and desperate remorse's which had made of their married life a stormy passage instead of a quiet haven. Stormy, but wonderful, for the man of passionate rages could be the passionate lover, and, after ten years, he was her lover still. Her lover! How the pictures crowded, jostling each other in her mind, crowding out the grim figures in wig and gown. 

 A picture of confetti and roses ~- Will swinging her in triumph into the waiting car; a darkened room, with Will groaning desperately:"If I'd known you would have to suffer like this!" as she passed through the bitter way to fetch their son; a sunny garden with Will laughing with the boy, tossing him shoulder high to pick an apple, and, against that, the black picture of a child cowering against the wall, the red mark of a hand across his tiny face. 

 That was the first time that Anne had seen ungovernable rage turn a man into a beast, and it had sickened her, till she saw the anger fade away from his face and a strange dread and amaze dawn in its place. Then he was on his knees, the sobbing child in his arms, kissing the poor, bruised cheek, and, over the baby curls, his eyes sought hers, desperate, appealing. 

 “Anne, I didn't mean to do it … I swear I didn't.. I ought to be kicked. There, little chap.." Tumbling, remorseful, came the words and then: “Anne, forgive me. It shan’t happen again." 

 Ah but it had. Not often -- Anne knew how he had tried and she had agonised with him as he fought down that overmastering rage but, printed indelibly on her memory, was the day when she too had cowered before the beast. 

 Anne caught the memory back, shuddering. Not that picture now, not to-day -- and instinctively her eyes sought the clock again. Once more the fat face of the juryman confronted her and she saw the crowded court, the hatchet-face questioning, doubting: 

 "This revolver now. You mean to tell us that your husband had had it since the war, but not till this particular evening had he loaded it?" 

 ‘This particular evening’ : There she knelt, before the drawer which she had been clearing in the spare bedroom. It was funny, thought Anne, how much hung on little things. Suppose Beryl had not grumbled about her clothes being squashed and demanded an extra drawer for them, would any of this have happened? For it was as she cleared that she had seen the revolver, dark and ominous on its bed of linen and, with that queer shrinking from fire-arms which assails even the most sensible of women, she had called: 

 "Will, that horrid old army revolver of yours is still here. I thought you had got rid of it. Do take it away." 

 Will had come then, and stood over her, laughing. He had taken the weapon, tossing it gaily in the air and teasing her as she shrank back, then, suddenly serious, he had sunk down on his knees to show her the empty chamber. 

 “Perfectly harmless, darling," So he had reassured her, and then, burrowing in the drawer "There were a few odd cartridges about somewhere. I'll show you how to load her.” 

Across their talk had jarred the call of the telephone. 

 "Go quickly, it will wake the children!" 

 He had gone, bounding down the stairs three at a time; his voice had come up to her in anxious reply. She would never forget the look on his face when he returned, its gaiety all gone, worry and exasperation in its place. 

 "It was Mellows, about that Campbell affair. He has inside information that Campbell will go elsewhere if we don't make him a better offer by the morning. I shall have to see Wyndham again tonight, late as it is, and try to make him see sense. I argued the whole thing out with him this afternoon, but he would not give way." His face bad darkened. "They don't call him Pig-Head Wyndham for nothing, Anne, and he'll let the firm smash sticking out like this. If he'd only retire, curse him, I could save things even now. It makes me sick to see a good firm going down because he will hang on to the reins. "

 Between them, on the floor, the revolver lay where he had dropped it. 

 “Put it somewhere safe before you go," she pleaded. "Suppose the children found it." 

 Quickly he stuffed it into his pocket. 

 "If it bothers you so, I’ll hand it to the police in the morning," he promised, then, tilting her chin, kissed her, whispering ,"Mustn't have sweetheart worried, must we?" 

  Before the night was out, the revolver he had pocketed so lightly was in the hands of the police and a gruff but kindly constable was breaking to Anne the news that smashed her world to pieces. 

 “You say that he shot him?" she heard herself gasp. "Will shot him?" 

 "Through the ‘eart, mam, -~ or so it seems, I should say. Anyway, mum, the story is that Mrs, Wyndham heard a shot and found them as I said. They telephoned for us and we put him under arrest. There, mam, don't take it so hard, now -- maybe it was only self-defence." 

 Self-defence? How Anne had clutched at the straw, but only to reject it. Could that slow, stolid Mr. Wyndham possibly have attacked Will? Even if he had, would not Will, with his hands alone have been more than a match for the white-haired old man? No, it was an absurd theory, and, wide-eyed in the dark that first lonely night, Anne saw as plainly as if she had peen there how it had happened The old clash of new ideas on a stubborn mind, the bitter opposition of the impulsive, visionary young man who longed to march with the times and the unrelenting old man, rejecting each step as ‘new-fangled; hampering progress, yet resolved never to relinquish the helm, leadership. It had happened go often before, and Will had come home to her seething, muttering bitter words about ‘old men better dead. It had happened once too often, Will's black rage had overmastered him, his hand, clenched in his pocket, had found that all too ready weapon: 

 Anne stirred by the fire and made herself face it. It had happened and there was no shirking it. In the eyes of the law Will was a murderer. There, it had been said. Not a criminal, as she had imagined criminals in the past, not a villainous Bill Sykes, but just Will, who hated his bacon to be fat and who left his bath-towel in a sodden heap so unfailingly. Strange that from being Will Forrest, very junior partner in the firm of Wyndham and Forrest, he had become ‘the prisoner’, a man against whom powerful forces in wigs and gowns were arrayed, a man about whom typists gossiped, a man whom charwomen decided ‘ought to be ‘ung’, a subject of headlines, a murderer. 

 Searching for one ray of comfort in the dark, unfriendly pit into which her thought s had led her, Anne's mental vision conjured up the one figure which, by reason of its humanity, stood out with such startling clearness.--Mrs, Wyndham: 

 Calmly dignified in her widow's black, she had entered the witness box and incredibly, but unmistakably, constituted herself the prisoner's friend. Anne had lifted her eyes in amazement as she heard the gentile voice replying to counsel's questions, so sure it was, so composed. Unworthy suspicion darted through her brain. Had his own wife too found Pig-Head Wyndham intolerable? Quickly she put aside the suggestion. Her own suffering made her able to recognise the signs of grief in the other woman's face, in the tightly clenched hands resting on the rail. Mrs. Wyndham was telling again the story of Will's visit, of his interview with the murdered man alone in his study.

 “Yes," she replied, to the leading questions, "I was sitting alone when I heard a shot." 

 She had gone at once, she told, to find her husband collapsed over his desk and the prisoner holding a smoking revolver. Clearly she made the court see the dazed, broken man who confronted her, with quick surprise she denied the suggestion that she had telephoned for the police. 

 "Why, no,” she said, "that did not occur to me. I called the doctor. It was my maid, I believe, who so hastily telephoned for the police." 

 As she spoke her eyes met Anne's across the court and something passed between them that even now Anne found hard to understand. It was as if the older woman were trying to assure the younger that this was none of her doing, that all this majestic ritual of the law to avenge her loss had been put in motion by forces she could not control, that she herself would have understood and tried to forgive. It was a strange impression, and stranger still was it to Anne when at the end of the day she was wet et the Court door by a chauffeur who led her to Mrs Wyndhan's waiting car. 

 "May we drive you home, Mrs. Forrest?" asked the old lady and Anne, dazed and unresisting, let herself sink into the cushions and relax. She was too tired to think, too tired even to wonder, and Mrs. Wyndham let her rest in silence as the car slid through the city and out into the suburbs. 

 Then she began to talk, but Anne scarcely grasped what she said. An apology, wasn't it? An apology for having seen so little of her, for not having called - "the excuse of an old woman, my dear, London is so big nowadays that crossing it is too much of a journey for me." Then - but how could she? - she was talking of Will, talking as if he had not done this thing, of his ability. 

 "So able, I thought him. I was Glad about the partnership. I had hoped ..."

 Anne made herself reply, conscious that her answers were awkward and stilted. Then they fell silent and again Anne was aware of the unspoken message, so clearly that she turned as if it had been said aloud. For a moment their eyes met. It was sympathy that Anne read there; more, it was understanding, so real that impulsively she put her hand on the other's arm and gasped out; 

 “You do believe, don't you, that it was the truth I told? You do realise that never, never would Will have gone meaning to kill?" 

 The older woman nodded gravely. 

 "Yes, I understand, and I wanted you to know that I did. You see, I was with your husband afterwards. We had a few minutes alone before the doctor and police came. It was -" she hesitated for a word. "It was - very pitiful." 

 Anne's tense form relaxed. She knew that ‘afterwards' of utter shame and contrition, when Will, like a child, craved love and forgiveness; when she had drawn his heed to her breast, giving generously what he craved. She stretched her arms and, as they met empty, relief came in a storm of tears.

 It had seemed easier after that. Through the days that followed she had been increasingly aware of that figure in the background, never intruding, never forcing her confidence, but quietly sharing with her, by reason of her own loss, the growing strain She was a barrier between Anne and those staring eyes, her kindly face blotting out the cruel ones, her hand on Anne's arm drawing her to the shelter of the welcome car at the day's end. Anne had ~needed her support for, as the trial took its course, the noose tightened round the throat of the man she loved. 

 So easily had they disposed of her story - just a soft voice murmuring: "Gentlemen of the Jury, you will remember that this is the prisoner's wife." The smug faces had softened to a kind of tolerant pity, and juryman had looked at juryman with a look that said to Anne so clearly: 

 "Poor little woman! Lying to save her husband! Well, well, my wife would do the same, bless her:" 

 How could she blame them, when Roberts had taken the oath before her, Roberts who hated Will as an upstart, who had counted on the partnership himself. Coldly, unemotionally, he had told of bad blood between the men, of scenes, of threats to kill. Anne wrung her hands when she read his evidence. Oh, it was all true; Will had said things like that, but not as Roberts made them sound. They were just the hasty, ill-considered cursing's of a boy, not these cold threatening's. But Roberts was not alone. There were others who had over-heard Will's hasty speeches and were ready to relate them. Worst of all, there was that revolver, Exhibit A. to which Anne's eyes so often crept. Would a man, asked the Crown, carry a loaded weapon unless he meant to kill? Anne alone had given an answer, an answer so fantastic that it had been waved aside, She left the box haunted by that smile of kindly pity.

 Strange how the little things remained in one's mind , when so much of the talking passed over as a wave of sound. One juror's red tie, another's shock of hair, the trick a third had of stroking his beard. Their faces had danced before her eyes endlessly during that waiting time which came - was it days or only hours later? - that time when the clock ticked slowly steadily on, when the black hand climbed round its face and round again while somewhere behind locked doors the fat man and the thin, the red tie and the grey beard juggled with Will's life. When at last they filed back into court, their faces still danced before her eyes and as the dreaded words of their verdict cut across the silence, the dance overwhelmed her and she slid gently from her seat into welcome oblivion. 

 Memory was blurred after that, Life went on, and ‘Anne knew that she had taken up the reins again, though often she found herself with duster or saucepan wondering what power had given the order to her obedient body that it was continuing with its regular routine. Mechanically she soothed and comforted the little daughter whose friend had deserted her, realising, with a stab of compunction, how little her motherhood meant in face of this peril to her mate. For the first time she noticed the healing bruises on her son's face and refrained from comment, knowing that where the girl had sobbed, the boy had used his fists. 

 Dully she moved through her household tasks, her mind always with Will in his cell, counting the days ahead. He would appeal, of course; there was a chance. How much Anne had built on that chance she did not realise, until the calm, judicial decision shattered her castle to ruins. Even then, shorn of all hope, she had clung to the belief that something must happen, some miracle interpose. To other people she argued, such a thing might happen, but not to them, not to Will and her. Incoherently she found herself praying: "Don't let it happen. It must not happen." 

 The days had shortened to hours, the hours to minutes till suddenly across the silence of an ordinary room, a clock stroke had fallen, and she knew, beyond doubt, that it was the end. 

 “He is --dead," said Anne, and rose stiffly to her feet. The clock strokes had died away long since, but the echo so lingered in her ears that her brain could not realise that a new sound now rung through the room. So slowly did it grasp the significance that Anne found herself moving to the front door without being conscious that she was answering the bell. Motionless, she stared at the figure on the doorstep and Mrs, Wyndham, entering, took her arm and led her pack to her chair. 

 "Will you come away with me?” she asked in the gentle voice that Anne had learned to trust. "I have a tiny house by the sea; it is all that is left to us now that the firm has gone, and I want you and the children to share it with me for a time until we can plan our lives over again." 

 Monotonously she talked of commonplace things, of trains and tickets, of luggage and labels, giving time for the horror to pass. As she talked a new picture began to paint itself on the screen of Anne's mind, blotting out with its vivid blues and golds, the nightmare figures in black and white and the rows of staring eyes. It was a picture of a little red house set in a garden of flowers, looking over a stretch of yellow sand. The blue sea formed the background and white waves breaking on fronded rocks. Across the foreground ran two children, Beryl and Tony, barelegged and hatless and laughing in the sun. 

 Lips quivering, Anne rose to her feet and looked for a moment deep into the eyes that understood. Soul spoke to soul words which could never be spoken aloud. 

 “The Law, with its might and cruelty, that is man's creation, not ours. We - why, we are just two women whose men have been murdered. ‘That's why we understand." 

 The moment lengthened in silence, then 

 "Shall we pack?" said Mrs. Wyndham.