The Gun Fight

Chapter Twenty-six

“The butter, if you please,” said Agatha Winston and, without a word, her sister passed the plate across the table. “Thank you,” Agatha Winston said, in a tone that held no gratitude. She sliced herself another piece of bread and spread a paper-thin coating of butter on its porous surface. This she cut into four equal parts with two deft strokes of her knife.

Chewing, she eyed her sister, then her niece, neither of whom were eating.

“I thought you were hungry,” she said to Louisa.

Her niece looked up a moment and Agatha Winston saw the nervous swallowing in her throat.

“I . . . guess I’m not,” Louisa said.

“You’d better eat something or you’ll get sick,” said her aunt. She sliced off a thick piece of bread and dropped it on Louisa’s plate. “Put cheese on it,” she said. “It’s good for you.”

“I’m really not . . . not hungry, Aunt Agatha.”

“Eat it,” said her aunt and, after a moment, Louisa picked up her knife obediently.

“Why are you shaking so?” her aunt asked and Louisa started in her chair.

“I’m . . . cold,” she said, lowering her eyes. She felt the probing gaze of her aunt on her as she buttered the bread with nervous movements. She thought she knew what her aunt was thinking—cold; shaking; that time of the month; something not spoken of; preferably, not even thought of.

At any other time, knowing or thinking that Aunt Agatha was thinking that would have flushed Louisa’s cheek with shamed embarrassment but today it didn’t seem important. There was a clock ticking away the time in the hall and there was only one thing important—to get out of the house and find someone who could stop the fight. It was strange but there was no question in her mind about telling her aunt even when she believed that it would end the fight. She had to tell someone else.

After a few token bites, she put down the bread.

“May I be excused?” she asked, wondering what time it was.

“You haven’t eaten a thing,” said her aunt.

“Perhaps she’s . . . not well,” Louisa’s mother suggested timidly.

“She won’t be well if she doesn’t eat something.”

Outside, in the hall, the pendulum was swinging; one fifteen.

“I don’t feel well,” Louisa followed her mother’s lead. “May I be excused?” A plan was suddenly forming in her mind; the two of them at the kitchen table, the front door unguarded.

“You’d better go to your room,” said Aunt Agatha.

“Can’t I go for a—” Louisa cut off her impulsive words with a shudder.

“For what?” Aunt Agatha challenged.

“N-nothing, Aunt Agath—”

“I hope you have no plans for leaving the house, young miss,” Agatha Winston said suspiciously. “You know very well you can’t go out and you know why.”

Louisa swallowed, feeling the pulsebeat throbbing in her wrists. She shouldn’t have mentioned going out.

“All r-ight,” she faltered. “I’ll go up to my room.”

She pushed back her chair and stood, trying to keep her face composed, trying not to think of the consequences of running from the house against her aunt’s orders. “Excuse me,” she murmured, her hands cold and trembling as she moved around the table and started for the door.

“I think you’d better lie down for a while,” Aunt Agatha told her.

“Yes, Aunt Agatha, I will,” she said, then shuddered as she realized she was lying. I don’t care—she told herself as she pushed through the swinging door and moved along the hall rug toward the door—it doesn’t matter anymore what she thinks.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

At the sound of her aunt’s demanding voice, Louisa’s hand jerked off the door handle and twitched down to her side.

She stood there, white-faced, as her aunt stalked up to her.

“Where were you going, Louisa?”

“N-no place.”

“Don’t lie to me, Louisa!”

In the kitchen doorway, Louisa noticed her mother appear, her face confused and helpless.

“I was just g-going out on the porch,” she told her aunt

“Why?”

“I . . . just wanted some air; it’s so s-stuffy in my room.”

Agatha Winston looked at her doubtfully, her thin lips pinched together.

“I hope you’re telling me the truth, Louisa,” she said. “I hope so.”

“I am, I am.”

Agatha Winston gestured toward the staircase. “Go up to your room,” she said tersely. “We’ll discuss this later.”

“Yes, Aunt Ag—”

“Agatha,” Mrs. Harper said then and Agatha Winston turned. For a moment, the two women looked out at each other and a questioning expression flickered across Elizabeth Harper’s face. Agatha seemed to guess what her sister was thinking for she turned back to Louisa quickly.

“Your room,” she said.

When Louisa had reached the top of the staircase, Agatha Winston moved to where her sister stood.

“What’s the matter with you?” she challenged. “Do you want her to know? Isn’t there enough to worry about already?”

“But it doesn’t seem fair to—”

“Fair!” Agatha Winston burst out angrily. “Would it be fair to make her sick with worry? Would it?”

Elizabeth Harper looked at her sister and was lost in hopeless confusion. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Perhaps . . . you’re right. I . . . don’t know. If only my dear—”

“I do know,” snapped Agatha Winston and went back to the stairs to listen for the closing of the upstairs door.

Up in the hallway, Louisa stood leaning against the wall watching the clock pendulum move endlessly from side to side. And there seemed to be a pendulum in her chest too that swung and struck against her heart and her ribs. Back and forth hitting her heart—her ribs—heart—ribs—heart—time passing inexorably.

Her hands shook and there was a great sick churning in her stomach.

Suddenly she sobbed. “Robby!” His name fell like a shattered thing from her lips.

In an hour and a half . . .