Leave Her to Heaven by Ben Ames Williams

her. He was her ally against her mother, and for the moment this was her only concern.
    She expected to go to New Mexico alone to do her errand there; but this proposal Mrs. Berent flatly rejected, and with the invincible inflexibility to which weak people may by long persecution be provoked, she insisted that she too — and of course Ruth — would see her husband’s ashes to their last resting place. Robie, in response to Ellen’s letter, said business this year would keep him from the ranch till late June. He fixed a date for their coming, and hospitably suggested a fortnight’s stay. This would cause them to miss part of the summer at Bar Harbor, and Mrs. Berent fretted at this disturbance of her routine; but when Ellen repeated that she could quite as well go alone, her mother retorted:
    â€˜Nonsense! I’m ready to do my duty! Of course, I’ve never been west of Philadelphia!’ Her tone confessed the confirmed Bostonian’s misgiving at venturing into the hinterland. ‘But I’m prepared for some discomfort, and I’m sure Mr. Robie will make things as easy for us as he can.’
    â€“ II –
    During the weeks of waiting, while spring came to Boston and tulips bloomed in the Public Garden, Ellen refused to re-enter
with Ruth and her mother their familiar ways, telling herself that by resuming their weekly attendance at Symphony, by going sometimes to the theatre or to the moving pictures, they proved themselves heartless and callous. She spent her time sorting her father’s papers and possessions. He had converted to his own use the topmost floor of their Boston home, putting a skylight in the roof, building moth-proof cabinets around the walls to hold his sets. She cleaned the scalpels and dissecting scissors and needles, put the spools of thread in their rack and the rolls of cotton on the shelf, set the jars of arsenic and of plaster of Paris and the tray of assorted glass eyes in order, labelled and put away some unmounted skins. She devoted long hours to this self-imposed task, and one day the glass jars of arsenic caught her attention. She took up one of them and poured a little of the white powder into her hand. For years the poison had been to her just one of the materials which she and her father used in their work together, but she remembered now that it was deadly stuff. If she swallowed even a little of it she would die; and she imagined Ruth and her mother finding her here lifeless, and she heard them say sorrowfully: ‘She loved her father so!’ Her eyes misted with wistful tears and she pitied herself profoundly — but she poured the arsenic from her palm carefully back into the jar and covered it again.
    A week before their prospective departure, Quinton came to Boston to see her. He arrived on Saturday, and suggested that they spend Sunday together. ‘I’ll hire a car and we’ll drive down to the shore,’ he said, and Ellen indifferently agreed.
    At the appointed hour he called for her, slick and shining, perspiring with delight, and she felt a brief distaste; but she took her place at his side. He drove to the tip end of Cape Ann. When they left the car to walk down to the rocks he produced from the rumble a magnificent picnic basket fitted with thermos bottles, paper plates and cups, plated knives and forks and spoons, and canisters for salt and pepper and sugar, with a compartment for ice, and neat aluminum containers for sandwiches. He showed her all these wonders with a pride which hid his misgivings.

    â€˜Oh Russ, you shouldn’t!’ she said reproachfully. ‘It’s so extravagant!’
    â€˜It’s a start toward furnishing our house!’
    â€˜It’s a whole dining room in itself,’ she declared; but later, while they lunched on the rocks above the shore, she saw his almost miserly pride in this treasure. Maliciously curious to see what he would do, sweetening her coffee, she allowed