TheWill of the Dead
The story of a hate that was strong enough to strike back from the grave—
an unusual weird tale of a mother's malign resentment
of her son's wife
Evelyn Hay Lane knew, at the moment she met Alexandra Lane, Stephen's mother, that she had found a mortal enemy. Not that she hadn't been prepared; Steve's half-hints, veiled suggestions, air of nervous expectancy, had let her know that this first meeting was fraught with difficulty.
"Look here, Stephen" she said. They were driving rapidly over a quiet, moon-patterned road; at the end of the road loomed this meeting and dinner with Alexandra in her vast rich house that perched above the Hudson like an eagle's nest on a mountain top. The mausoleum, Stephen had called it once.
"Yes, what, sweet?" he said, juggling the car expertly past a lumbering truck.
"Am I to understand you haven't told her yet? And I want to know, is she Medusa or something? Am I going to be turned into stone when she looks at me?"
"I wouldn't be surprized." Stephen moved his hands on the wheel in a sudden impatient gesture. "Lord, Eve, you've never been up against her! It's like battling a boa constrictor—you just get wrapped around and smothered. And I've been her whole life since Father died, and that was twenty years ago."
"But you haven't told her?"
They had been married five months; they had filled an apartment with new furniture like any newly-weds—they had been man and wife for three week-ends, but Stephen had not yet left his mother.
"This is terribly funny!" Evelyn began to laugh, a curious shaking expression of something that was not real mirth.
"No, I haven't told her, and I know we can't go on like this. It's not really being married, and together. But she's got rid of every other girl I ever was interested in—somehow, by hook or by crook." He put his hand on hers, coiling strong warm fingers up to her wrist. "I was afraid that might happen to you. Do you think I'm scared of being disinherited or something?"
No, she had not thought that, well aware there was no weakness, no flaw, anywhere in Stephen except in this queer relation to his mother.
"I know better," she said. "But what is it?"
He fumbled at his cigarette case with one hand, got a cigarette out and lighted it elaborately with the lighter on the instrument panel, as though he were postponing the moment for explanation. Then he sighed and said suddenly, "Don't ask me, Eve, because I can't answer—I don't know. She has a queer kind of power over me, as over everyone. I don't understand it. Perhaps you'll see tonight. At any rate"—he snapped the case shut with a sharp, definite sound—"I'm going to tell her this evening, even if The Gables fall in ruins about my ears! And here we are!"
