* * * * *

When she finally reached the Douglas house she had to dig away snow with her hands before she could get up the steps to the kitchen door. Dolly was dead, her eyes peering under discolored half-closed lids with an opaque maliciousness. Marcia had stood looking down at her, and the fire in the round black stove made a cackling sound. “Cosy,” said Marcia.

She had gone back to the kitchen, to strip off mackinaw and boots, to wipe sweat from throat and face, to lay birch sticks on the coals in the range, to set a kettle of water forward where it would heat. She tried, now, to stop her recollection at that moment, but for all she lifted her head to look across at the sunlit varicolored slope, she saw instead that supper table, with dishes on the red-checked cloth, she felt in her muscles the wary haste with which she had cleared the table, she felt on her cheeks the heat from the fire as she scraped remnants of food from the plates into the blaze. She could feel the knot, a kind of concentrated nausea, at the pit of her stomach when, as she dropped the lid into place, the door opened, and the doctor and Stan came stamping in.

“She—is she—” Stan had cried out. Marcia had nodded. “Oh, my poor Dolly! I shouldn’t have left her. I didn’t know what to do!”

The men had hurried into the bedroom, and Marcia had gone stolidly on clearing up the kitchen, not even trying to overhear. It wasn’t till the next morning that Dr. Kirk had asked her that question about the patent medicine. “Are you quite sure, Mrs. Barrows?” Some symptoms of arsenic poisoning, he had said. “She had an idiosyncrasy for arsenic,” he had added, to Stan not to Marcia. “I tried it in her tonic and discovered she couldn’t take it. I thought I’d made it clear about that damned nostrum.”

Marcia lifted her head again, she pressed the palms of her hands against the warm granite, her throat swelled in a deep breath of the sweet air. She had heard a twig snap underfoot. She listened. He was coming at last! She moved to her feet, a swift supple upflowing of her body, shaking off the past, and turned.

She had thought, in all her dreaming of this day, that he would come striding toward her with an ardor to match her own, with the swift rush of wind and water and high spring tides. Her first glimpse of him, as he emerged from the shadow of the pines, altered the rhythm of her body; her nostrils widened, she lifted her head apprehensively. He walked as if he dragged a weight, no resilience in his step, no eager searching for her in the angle of his head. He was sick, or overtired, or—had Dr. Kirk said something? What was there to say? Oh, it must be only her fancy, because she had let herself brood over what was dead and done with. Not any feeling of guilt. Whatever she had done was justified.

Now he stood beside Marcia, beautiful, looking at her, and Marcia clenched her fingers into her palms because she was weak with longing to lay her hand against his chest, there where the fair hair curled crisp in the V of his open shirt.

“Well,” he said deliberately, looking away from her over the blueberry land. “Fine day, isn’t it?”

“Did you come out here to tell me that?”

“No.” He was frowning, brows drawn down. “Let’s sit here, on this rock.” He sat beside her, not touching her. He leaned forward to pick a sprig of blueberry, small creamy bells of blossoms hanging along the stem between new coppery leaves.

“They’re in bloom,” said Marcia. “Oh, what is it, Stan?”

“All winter I’ve been waiting for today. It might be I was too eager. Your skin’s like that blossom, smooth and creamy, your eyes are the color of a ripe blueberry.”

* * * * *

Marcia made a quick movement, sliding nearer to him, reaching for his lean brown hand.

“No!” He did not move, but she drew back, holding her breath, every sense alert. “When I woke up, I said today’s the day! I was r’aring to come! I went rushing through the chores. I’d ’a’ been here hours ago, waiting for you, but the doctor drove in just as I was starting.”

“Oh, him!” Marcia’s fear lashed out as scorn.

“I hadn’t seen him since Dolly went.” Stan spoke slowly, as if the words, or the thoughts behind them, were so strange to him that he could only fumble over them, wondering at their possible use. “He said he wasn’t ever satisfied about her dying. He’d got in touch with the firm that makes that patent medicine, that elixir poor Dolly sent for. He threatened trouble for them. They wrote him Dolly never ordered any more, not after that bottle I kept from her last fall, and I busted that. And they said they never had any order from Marcia Barrows.”

“He suspected I’d sent for it?” cried Marcia.

“He said somebody gave her that—or something else with arsenic. He said he had no proof. He wouldn’t make a scandal of it. He knows I’d have died before I’d let Dolly be hurt.”

“He’s trying to turn you against me! Don’t you see? Filling your head—”

“But why should he?”

“Why?” Marcia’s thoughts whirled on padded feet, swift, fugitive, seeking escape. “Because he’s jealous, that’s why! I never told you—Do you think he liked it when I wouldn’t have him? He thinks he can get any woman he wants. It was after Bill died—”

Stan turned his face toward Marcia, the vein swelling on his forehead, the cords of his throat taut. “Is that it?” he asked hoarsely.

Marcia nodded, teeth set in her lower lip, tears brimming her eyes.

“‘Keep your hands off me,’ I said. He tried to frighten me. You’d never suspect the kind of man he is, Stan. You’re good. He said he’d spread it around that I goaded Bill into starting off that night with the truck when he was drunk. Maybe he told you that, too!” She let the tears roll down her flushed cheeks, she was innocence and helplessness.

“He said you were unscrupulous,” said Stan slowly. Marcia could see the way his anger washed against the foundations of an old loyalty. “He’s done so much for me all these years Dolly’s been sick. If he—even if he couldn’t have you, why should he try to do this to us? He was my friend.”

“What else did he say? Tell me,” urged Marcia.

“I said to him that I meant to marry you. And he said, ‘Ask her first why she was in such a hurry to clear away the supper table. Ask her what she burned up in the stove that night.’”

Marcia pressed her knees together, tight; under them, in the hollows of the sockets, the skin crawled. But her voice was clear, almost mocking. “Was he hinting I put poison in the tea, maybe? I hope you told him I hadn’t been near your place for days.”

“I told him. I told him what we had for supper, pancakes and sausages and Dolly wanted something sweet, and the syrup jug was empty, so I got her a comb of honey from the cellar. A fresh comb; it hadn’t been broken, I was sure of that.”

“Did he think I should have saved a cold pancake?” asked Marcia boldly.

“He said didn’t you keep bees, and I said yes, I guessed so, but I didn’t know as the honey was yours, and anyway it was a fresh comb.” Stanley stared at her, his face contorted in a queer despairing rage. “Why would he do this, trying to come between us? He has his own wife—My head will burst, trying to—” He twisted his long body suddenly, flinging himself to his knees beside her, thrusting his head down on her lap.

Marcia bent over him, drawing him up a little so that his face pressed her breast, laying her hand strongly against his neck, and her eyes were wide and brilliant with triumph.

“There,” she murmured. “There!”

* * * * *

He shivered once, and then was quiet. Very quiet. The wind had dropped as the sun rose, and all about them was quiet. Not a sound, not even a bird’s call. Marcia felt a change in the pressure of his body against her knees, a slight lifting of his head, a tension, a listening, and then he pushed away from her, his face white and strained.

“A year ago,” he said, “when I kissed you, the air sang with bees, there was a humming like a thousand violin strings in the air around us, and now it is as still—as still as death.” His face was level with hers, his eyes had a premonition of horror. “All last summer,” he said, “I’d sworn I wouldn’t think of you, I’d get you out of my blood. And then—bees in the clover as I worked the garden, bees in the syringa bush outside the bedroom window, in the hollyhocks at the door, and before I knew I’d heard them, I’d be sick with longing. I came to dread the sound, it stirred me up just when I’d got hold—This spring, when I heard the bees first in the apple trees, I wanted to shout! I had been faithful, I had given Dolly a few months extra.” He got to his feet, retreating. “And now—as still as death!”

“Must you have bees buzzing before you can kiss me?” Marcia stumbled up from the rock. She wanted to throw herself against him, to warm his hard cold mouth; but her body was pinned to the earth with the bright lance of fear. “Are you crazy?” she shrilled.

“I’m troubled. What makes you look so scared?”

“All these months I’ve waited for you, not complaining. And when you come, instead of loving me, you talk about dreadful hints the doctor spoke, you talk about Dolly, and now bees! What woman could stand it?”