I didn’t know what was wrong with Chris, or what she’d wanted to tell me. I didn’t know what the whole miserable tangle was about. And I felt charged with enough dynamite at the moment to set off a few explosions in my own right
It was then I heard Monty’s step in the corridor. I raised my head, steeling myself for resistance. I knew Monty. I knew those charming ways of his and how his soft-spoken words could sometimes disarm and betray, and this afternoon I wasn’t having any.
This was the meeting I’d been dreading since early morning. This was the moment.
2
Michael Montgomery came into my office with his usual assured stride. He came straight to my desk and stood there, tall and blond, looking down at me with a face that revealed both the strength of tenacity and the weakness of sensuality. In spite of his forty-three years, he had kept the vitality of youth.
“You wanted to see me?” I asked quietly.
His brown eyes held a warm appeal. When he looked at a woman like that she was apt to forget that his chin had a softness of line and his mouth was a little cruel.
“I don’t know how to begin,” he said. “I’ve spent hours during the last two weeks planning what I’d say to you, and now that you’re here before me, I can’t say any of it.”
“Do you have to say anything?” I asked. “Why not just let the whole thing go? We both have our jobs to do and there’s no need for personalities to enter in.”
But he had too much vanity to let me go as easily as that. He didn’t want me. He’d married another woman. But he wanted to convince himself that I was still properly subjugated.
“There will always be personalities where you and I are concerned,” he told me, dropping his voice to what I’m sure he considered a fascinating huskiness. The sad part was there’d been a time when I’d considered it fascinating too. Which didn’t flatter my intelligence. “You can’t escape me, any more than I can escape you, Linell. I’ve hurt you cruelly, but—”
I was a little surprised at the sharpness of my own voice. “No! No, Monty. You haven’t it in your power to hurt me. My pride, perhaps. But not me. You’re very charming, when you want to be, and for a little while I was foolish enough to believe in the surface. But I’m quite free of you now. I don’t understand what you did, but I don’t care any more that you did it.”
He went right on, as if my words had no meaning. “Linell, sweet, I think this is the first time in my life I’ve loved a woman as I love you.”
Gracious, I thought, was he going to stand there and weave his spells until I was compelled to believe him? He was really very good at it, but I suppose he’d had a lot of practice.
“One thinks that each time, I imagine,” I said. “About never having loved as one loves now. But just how do you reconcile such a depth of emotion with the fact that you dropped me without warning and went suddenly off to marry Chris?”
“That’s what I want to tell you about, Linell. That’s why I’m here. To ask you to have dinner with me tonight.”
I felt so strong an aversion that I pushed back my chair and gathered up some papers from my desk.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “there are some things I must attend to.”
I walked by him to the door, but he came after me and put a hand on my arm.
“Linell! You’ve got to give me a chance to tell you, a chance to—”
I withdrew my arm with a shrug of distaste. “If you won’t think of Chris—of your wife—I will. I’m very fond of her, very sorry for her. The last thing I’d do would be to have dinner with her husband.”
He started to protest, and to stop him I said something I hadn’t meant to say.
“While we’re on the subject,” I told him, “knowing that you have a wife, I think it might be wise to avoid being seen in intimate conversation with women like Carla Drake.”
To my surprise, he didn’t display his usual swagger.
“There’s nothing between Miss Drake and me,” he assured me. “I barely know the woman.”
But it seemed to me that he protested a little too earnestly and I couldn’t forget his hands upon her shoulders. I didn’t stay for further discussion.
I went out the door and down the narrow corridor to where the floor widened to meet the elevators. I was shaking inside and I was angry with myself for letting him infuriate me. But what he was going to do to Chris, what he had undoubtedly done to other women, was wicked and cruel. And Chris was so young, so dreadfully, agonizingly in love.
It was then I realized something. The encounter I’d been dreading all day had come and gone. There had been no real explosion, only a cold severing of last ties, yet my nervous tension had not relaxed. If anything I was more taut than before, as if thin strong wires drew me step by irrevocable step toward something which lay in the future.
I shrugged impatiently and glanced at the papers in my hands, copy I was planning for signs which would be used throughout the store to advertise the style show starting Saturday. I might as well go down to fourth and talk to Owen Gardner about the affair. Perhaps I’d find Chris there with her father, and could discover what was troubling her.
Fourth was my favorite floor. A floor of luxury and fashion. Huge glass showcases displayed rare furs and exquisite gowns. Deep pile carpets sank beneath the lightest step, lights were soft, cunningly arranged to reveal the perfection of the merchandise, and to flatter the beauty of women who came to buy.
This floor was Owen Gardner’s pride and he gave to it all the creative genius of an artist. Which was odd, considering that he looked like a dull little man who would be more interested in Sunday golf and week-day market reports, than in the trappings of the fashion world. But I could remember one day when I’d come upon him lovingly stroking pudgy hands over a length of Chinese brocade. In that moment he had ceased to be merely a hot-tempered little man with a mind bent on bringing dollars into his department, and I knew he had made a success of the fourth floor because he loved luxury and beauty as passionately as any woman.
Miss Babcock, the buyer for better dresses, nodded toward the merchandise manager’s office. “His highness is in conference, but you go right on in. It’s only one of the models.”
Things were evidently not going well with Miss Babcock today. But then, things were seldom going well with Miss Babcock. She liked it that way.
I could hear a low, indistinguishable buzz of voices as I approached the door of Owen Gardner’s office, but the buzz stopped at my knock, as if the speakers did not want to be overheard.
I put my head in the door. “Miss Babcock said you weren’t too busy to be interrupted. May—”
“Come in, come in,” Owen Gardner said a little too hospitably. “Of course I’m not too busy to see you, Linell. Uh—you know Carla Drake, don’t you?”
I did indeed. Since her name had been so recently on my tongue, I looked at her now with more than ordinary interest.
She turned toward me slowly, with fluid grace that seemed to have little to do with prosaic matters like joints and bone-
structure.
“Hello, Miss Wynn,” she murmured in a low, whispery voice.
She was exotic, breathlessly lovely. Not young, certainly. Ageless. Her face was as unlined as a girl’s, but her shining, shoulder-length bob was silver-white and her body had a full-blown maturity.
Gardner went on, explaining where there was no need. “I was just talking to Miss Drake about the gowns she’s to model for the style show. That will be all now, Carla. I’ll speak to you again later.”
I found myself raising a mental eyebrow. What went on here? Had I imagined it, or was there a certain hurried uneasiness in the way Gardner had dismissed the model? Carla merely bent that startling, shimmering head submissively and glided toward the door. “Flowed” was the word, really, I thought, looking after her.
It surprised m
e a little when the model turned back for an instant at the door, one delicate hand pale against the mahogany panel, her blue eyes dark and sad as they rested briefly on me. Then she was gone and the door had closed softly behind her.
There it was again, even from this woman I scarcely knew—that look of pity beneath which I was beginning to cringe.
I went over and spread my papers on Owen’s desk. “I wish you’d glance through these suggestions when you have time. Has Chris been here? I thought I might find her.”
He looked up at me sharply and to my dismay I saw cold fury in his eyes.
“She was here,” he said. “Crying.”
I could understand how he felt. The way Gardner adored and spoiled his only daughter was obvious to everyone. Sometimes I’d even been a little sorry for Susan Gardner, his plump, self-effacing little wife, because of the way all this affection seemed to pour out on Chris. Owen’s dislike of Michael Montgomery, and the feud between fourth floor and window display was already a legend in the store, so it must have been a stunning blow to Chris’s father when the girl ran off with Monty. And now, if Monty was making her unhappy, Gardner must be wild with anger.
“That’s why I came down,” I told him. “I thought I might find her here. She wanted to talk to me, but there were so many interruptions upstairs. Do you know where she’s gone?”
“Down to the waiting room to meet Susan.” He closed his eyes and with the anger hidden, looked a little gray and broken. But there was suppressed violence in his words as he went on.
“Montgomery’s no good. He’s rotten clear through where women are concerned. And now he’s going to break up Chris’s life the way he’s broken the lives of other women. If somebody doesn’t break him first.”
There was such hatred in his tone that I was alarmed.
“Please be careful,” I said. “You mustn’t do anything that would hurt Chris even more. Perhaps it will work out. Nobody’s bad all the way through. He wouldn’t have married her unless he cared something about her—”
“That’s it!” Gardner pounded his fist hard against the desk. “That’s just it—he didn’t give a damn about her. It’s my fault, but I didn’t dream—”
He broke off and I turned hastily toward the door. Everything I said seemed to excite and upset him more.
“You mustn’t worry.” I tried to sound encouraging. “I’ll see her as soon as I can. I’ll talk to her.”
He didn’t hear me. He said, “I could break him. I could end this once and for all. Perhaps I will.”
His eyes were fixed blindly on the wall and I’m sure he didn’t notice when I left the office.
I went upstairs, more worried and concerned than ever. What a day! One thing piling on top of another, building up emotion and conflict until it seemed that the lid must surely fly off. Something had to explode under all this pressure. I was beginning to feel that all I wanted was to be out of the way when it happened.
When I got back to my office I found a tall young man with blue, humorous eyes sitting on the corner of my desk. He grinned at me engagingly and nodded toward Keith, who was answering the phone.
Keith grimaced and held out the phone to me. “It’s Tony Salvador and he’s whopping mad.”
This was life in a department store. I suppressed a sigh and took the phone. Tony was Monty’s first assistant in window display.
“Shut up, Tony,” I said. “This is Linell.”
I didn’t expect him to shut up and I wasn’t disappointed. But at least he brought his voice down a couple of octaves and slowed his words to a more intelligible pace.
“Look, Linell, I’m through. I quit. I’m not taking any more from Montgomery. Not any more at all. See?”
“Yes, of course, Tony,” I agreed. “But you’d better go home and sleep on it before you do anything drastic.”
“I don’t need to sleep on this,” Tony went on furiously. “I’m through. For good.”
There was no use trying to talk to him over the phone. Obviously he’d had a drink or two, and he never made sense on a telephone anyway.
“Where are you now?” I asked. “Window display? All right, you stay there. I’ve some work to finish and then I’m coming over. I want to talk to you.”
I hung up before he could protest and shoved the phone away from me.
“Oh, for a nice quiet madhouse,” I murmured. Then I looked up at the young man who’d perched himself on my desk, “Hello, Bill Thorne. Tony’s scrapping with Monty again and I suppose I’ll have to go over and calm everybody down.”
Bill transferred himself to a chair. “Cunningham’s little angel of mercy! I’ll bet it’s that phonograph attachment I rigged up while Monty was away that’s causing the trouble. Tony tell you about it?”
I shook my head. “Not a word.”
“Well, Tony had a brainstorm. He wanted a mechanical bird to sit on a tree branch in the golf window. It moves around and ruffles its wings, while a hidden phonograph whistles Welcome, Sweet Springtime. A loud speaker will broadcast it on State Street. And don’t look at me. I only take orders.”
I wrinkled my nose. “For once I don’t blame Monty. Tony can pull some awful stuff sometimes.”
“The trouble with window decorators,” Bill said, “is that they’re such snobs. Now if Dana O’Clare* did it at Lord and Taylor’s, stores out in Podunk would be copying next week. Anyway, Tony has the courage of his convictions.”
“But we’re not Lord and Taylor,” I pointed out, “and Tony isn’t Dana O’Clare. Not that I don’t appreciate the spot he’s been in ever since Monty took over. Tony expected to be put in as display manager when Gregory left. He had a right to expect it. But here he is still assistant, though he produces most of the ideas while Monty takes the glory. And Tony really is good most of the time.”
“Have you seen Chris?” Bill asked without warning.
I glanced at him quickly. He was looking at one of the color photographs above my head and I had a chance to study him for a moment.
I liked Bill Thorne. He had an easy-going good nature, a friendly grin and swell sense of humor. I liked the little kindnesses he was always performing unobtrusively. He was tall, compact, and well-knit. His blue eyes could twinkle. And I liked the fineness of his long slender hands.
He was a little of everything, Bill Thorne. Artist, sculptor, inventor, mechanic. He’d inherited the Universal Arts Company out on West Madison Street from his brilliant father, and he supplied the million-and-one needs of show windows all over the country. Anything from a plaster fawn to a hundred-and-fifty dollar mannequin could be produced at Universal Arts. If a window decorator wanted a Grecian column or a paper weight Bill was there with the answer. On the side he had a little electrical shop which flourished at Christmas time when animated toys for show windows were in demand.
And Bill Thorne had been especially kind to Chris Gardner.
“She was up here just a little while ago,” I told him. “And feeling pretty miserable too.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Bill’s voice was dry. “She’s a nice kid. Talented. She had a real career ahead of her, I think. But I suppose she won’t be coming back to Cunningham’s now.”
I shook my head. I was remembering how Bill had helped Chris so often with her drawings when he dropped into the store, and how he’d sometimes taken her out to lunch or dinner. And I was wondering just how hard Chris’s marriage had hit Bill Thorne.
“Well, I’ll be running along,” he said. “I’ve a date with Montgomery, though he doesn’t know it. A date to punch his head. I’ll come back and let you know how it turns out.”
This was getting almost funny. I left my chair in a hurry and caught him at the door.
“Bill, don’t be an idiot! There are enough people in this store mad at Monty. He’ll get what’s coming to him sooner or later, without any help from you.”
> He grinned at me. “I should think you’d be all for the idea. Though I must say you don’t look like any broken blossom to me.”
“I’m not,” I told him. “And if I were, I’d keep it to myself.”
“Good girl,” he said, and I liked the way he looked at me. There wasn’t any pity in his eyes. Just an acceptance of the fact that I could take what I had to take.
“When I get through,” he went on, “I’m coming back to take you to dinner.”
But I didn’t want that. Not then.
“No, Bill. This has been—well, quite a day. I’m going home tonight and go to bed. If you see Tony, tell him I’ll come over as soon as I finish here.”
“Okay,” he said. “Another time maybe. We, the jilted, ought to get together.”
He waved a hand at me and went off down the hall.
“We, the jilted”? Had he been so seriously interested in Chris, then, I wondered? Or had he, perhaps, been trying to make me feel that I wasn’t quite alone in what had happened to me? He was a nice guy, Bill.
* * *
* Dana O’Clare is now a Corporal with the Army Air Forces First Fighter Command.
3
I was tired. Achingly tired. While I’d been talking to Bill, everything had returned almost to normal, but now the tautness was back again, the queer sense of momentum carrying me along. It wasn’t through yet. It wasn’t ended.
That horrid sulphur light still pressed against my window, but it had started to rain again and the drizzle came straight down through the yellow glare. As I went back to my desk I was conscious once more of Keith watching me furtively, and I’m afraid I snapped at him.
“Get those letters typed and forget about me,” I told him.
I pulled a sheet of paper across the desk and looked at it wearily. It was the sign copy for the series of red windows Tony had been planning for State Street. He’d worked hard on those plans, with Sondo doing the backgrounds and contributing ideas of her own. I knew it was his intention to put in something so spectacular while Monty was away that he’d completely outshine him. Now, no matter what Tony did, the plans for those windows would have to go ahead.
The Red Carnelian Page 2
