They Call Me Patrice

“No — this is the time, and this is the place. Before we go a step further. I’ve waited too long to tell you. I won’t move an Inch over that doorstep. Bill, I’m not entitled to your protection—”

“I’ll pick you up and carry you out of here, if I have to!” His hand suddenly clamped itself to her mouth, sealing it. His other arm gripped her waist, viselike, as he forced her toward the door. Her eyes strained at him in mute pleading, above his stifling hand.

“I know,” he said almost impatiently. “I know what you’re trying to tell me. That you’re not Patrice. That you’re not Hugh’s wife. Isn’t that it?”

He swept her through the doorway with him.

“I know that already. I’ve always known it. I think I’ve known it ever since the first few weeks you’d been here.”

Chapter Ten

She heard the brakes go on, and felt the car stop. She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked up. He took his sheltering arm from around her.

He’d stopped in front of their own house. His own. How could it ever be hers again, how could she ever go in there, after what had happened tonight?

“Bill,” she whispered, “I didn’t— You don’t think I—” His face swam before her eyes. She struggled to suppress her sobs. “How can I expect you to think otherwise—? I went there, and you found me—”

He took something out of his pocket, on the side away from her, something she couldn’t see. A hollow click sounded. Then he put it away again. “I know you didn’t, Patrice. I’ve been spared that added complication, at least. This gun’s been empty for years. It’s just a stage-prop, left around to make Mother feel more secure.”

She turned toward him with desperate urgency, forcing her voice to be steady. “Bill, you simply must listen to me!”

“Sh, Patrice,” he said soothingly. “You’ll wake them up in there.”

“My name isn’t Patrice. Bill, don’t stop me. I can’t go in there again. I can’t go in that house. It’s too late now, but at least let me tell you. Patrice Hazzard was killed on the train. I’d been married to this same man Georgesson—”

Again his hand went over her mouth, as it had in Steve’s apartment. More gently now. “I don’t want to know, I don’t want to hear,” he said stubbornly. “Can’t you understand, Patrice?” He looked around him helplessly. “This is no time for love-speeches, I know. Didn’t it mean anything to you, what I tried to tell you that night in the garden? What difference if there was another Patrice, a girl I never knew, some other place, some other time? A girl named Patrice came into my life one day. She would have only begun then — for me — no matter what her name was. I’m not in love with a name on a birth certificate, I’m in love with a girl who’s Patrice to me. My love calls her Patrice, and my love doesn’t want any other name.”

Suddenly he swept her to him violently. His lips found hers.

“You’re Patrice. You’ll always be Patrice. You’ll only be Patrice. What more can I say?”

“Bill, you knew, and you never—”

“Oh, not right away, in a flash. Life doesn’t go that way. It’s a slow thing, it’s gradual. I think I was pretty sure within a week or two. My first reaction was resentment, hostility. I didn’t say anything, because of Mother. And I wanted to see what your game was. I thought if I gave you enough rope — I gave you rope and rope, and there was no game. You were just you. And every day it became a little harder to be on guard against you, a little easier to look at you, and think of you, and like you. Then that night of the will—”

“You knew what you did, and yet you let them go ahead and—”

“There was no real danger. Patrice Hazzard was mentioned, and it would have been easy enough to prove— The law isn’t like a man in love, the law values names. But what it did for me once and for all, was show me there was no game, no ulterior motive. Patrice, the fright and unwillingness I read on your face that night couldn’t have been faked. That gave me the answer, the key. I knew from that night on what it was you really wanted — safety, security. It was on your face a hundred times a day. I’ve seen it over and over. Every time you looked at your baby. Every time I saw that look, it did something to me. And I loved you a little more than the time before.”

He stopped a moment, and then he added in a low voice. “And I wanted you to have that permanently, as my wife. And I still do.”

“I can’t now,” she said brokenly.

“You can, but we won’t talk about it any more tonight.” Abruptly he asked her: “What was he doing to you, Patrice?”

“Money.”

“I’m glad he’s—” he said grimly. He didn’t finish it.

“Bill, he made me re-marry him tonight — at Hastings.”

She saw his hand tighten up on the wheel-rim, until it seemed to be trying to wrench it apart.

“Did you give him any money?”

“A check, a month ago.”

He was talking more tauntly now. “You destroyed it, after it cleared?”

“It never came back, He must have it over there some place.”

She saw by the convulsive start he gave that she’d frightened him.