by Peggy Gaddis
In the living room, she curled up in one end of the chesterfield while Terry mixed the drinks. He came into the room with two tall amber glasses, handing hers to her with a kiss. She patted the seat beside her and said lightly, “Sit down, Terry—I have something to tell you. I waited.”
In swift alarm, Terry protested. “Oh, now, be reasonable. I’ve apologized, I’ve groveled. Rutledge is a dear, good, sweet guy and the salt of the earth.”
She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. He closed one hand about her slender bare ankle where she sat with her feet tucked up on the chesterfield.
“It’s not that, pet—it’s that we have to stop seeing each other like this,” she began gently.
“No, Phyl—have a heart. Phyl, I’ll do anything—”
“Terry, you blessed idiot!” she tried to silence him. “It’s only that I have a guest coming—a visitor—my cousin from a little town down south. And until she can find a place to live, she will have to stay with me. And, well, she’s a nice girl and we mustn’t shock her.”
“Shock her? She sounds like something out of the Gay Nineties. What the blazes made ‘em gay, I’ve often wondered? And why do we have to start being strangers just because the kid is going to be here? After all, I’ve got an apartment, too—not as fancy as yours, but still, it’s home! You can visit me.”
Phyllis laughed at him, and let him kiss her.
“Who’s the little twerp from down south? I never heard you mention any relatives down south,” he said curiously.
“I haven’t many. My grandmother died three years ago, and she left her house to this cousin, Anice Mayhew,” Phyllis explained. “I haven’t seen Anice since the funeral. She was seventeen then—that would make her twenty now.”
Terry grinned.
“Probably only eighteen—and she won’t thank you for remembering any different,” he warned her cheerfully.
“No, I suppose not.”
“What’s she like—the little twerp?”
“She’s not a twerp at all—the man doesn’t live who could call her one,” protested Phyllis. “She’s a blonde—exquisite. Like, oh, like Dresden china. Silky yellow hair and great blue eyes and a heart-shaped face. A nice young girl, entirely unspoiled.” She broke off and was silent for a moment and added thoughtfully. “And I have never met anyone I disliked more.”
Terry’s eyebrows traveled upward in surprise.
“Then why in heaven’s name have her as a guest?” he demanded frankly.
For answer Phyllis picked up a telegram from the table beside her and held it out to him. Puzzled, Terry unfolded it and read it.
Coming to New York to live. Will spend a few days with you until I find an apartment. Love. Anice.
“Well, for gosh sakes—no ‘if I may’ or ‘by your leave’ or ‘will it be convenient,’” he protested.
Phyllis grinned at him wryly.
“As I remember Anice—and I do remember her, for she was terrified that I would protest the claim she had on poor Grannie’s house—she is not one to ask permission,” she admitted. “It just never occurs to Anice that anybody could be otherwise than completely charmed to have her as a guest as long as she cares to stay.”
“You could lock up your apartment and come and stay with me until she gets discouraged and goes somewhere else,” he suggested, not too hopefully.
“And when finally I came home, I’d find Anice had charmed the superintendent into unlocking my door, and she would be in residence and I would be the guest—very much on sufferance,” said Phyllis.
“One of those, eh?”
Phyllis nodded. “She’s—well, she’s a thoroughly nice girl. Her motto in life is: ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.’ Only she cheats a bit. She’s good—aggressively so—but she’s clever, too. Clever at seeing that everything goes the way she wants it. She tells the truth and shames the devil, and if it happens to be a painful truth that hurts someone rather badly—well, after all, it was the truth—it almost always is—and she’s wide-eyed and hurt that you could mind.”
“I’m beginning not to like Anice a good bit,” observed Terry.
Phyllis smiled at him.
“Oh, but you’ll like her when you see her. She’s lovely,” she told him dryly.
“I resent the suggestion that I’m a sap to be taken in by a pretty face with naught behind it,” he told her haughtily.
Impishly she grinned at him.
“You’ll see,” she warned him.
“And so will you, my pretty!” he told her firmly. “How the hell could I be taken in by such a repulsive creature, when I belong to you from hairpins to shoelaces, and always will?”
Phyllis kissed him lightly. “You’re sweet.”
He thrust her away from him and stood up.
“Stop treating me as though I were a six-months-old cocker spaniel not yet housebroken,” he said harshly. “I know all this that is between us is just a stopgap—some sort of safety valve for you. That I could walk out of that door and within a month you wouldn’t remember my name—or give a damn. As long as you can be around Kenyon Rutledge you don’t care two pins in hell for anybody else. But it’s different with me. You’re the only woman I ever loved or wanted to marry.”
Distressed, she said swiftly, “Terry—please!”
“Oh, sure, I know. You’re kind to me and you think I ought to be contented to sleep with you when you’ll let me, and then pick up my marbles and run along and play. Well, dammit, I can’t! Being with you like this—now and then when you need me—it’s not enough. Phyl, it’s not good enough. I want you always in my arms. I don’t want just to sleep with you—I want to live with you, to love you, to take care of you, to have a family, yours and mine.”
“Terry, I won’t listen. Terry, you know how I feel.”
Terry’s smile was thin-lipped and bitter.
“Damn right I know how you feel. And I know, too, that if I don’t close my trap and get the hell out of here before I say any more, I’ll be lucky as hell if you ever speak to me,” he told her harshly. “So I’m going, not because I’ve said all I want to say, but because if I don’t get out now, you won’t let me back in again.”
He turned and was gone, and Phyllis heard the door close hard behind him. There were tears in her eyes and her hands were shaking. She was a fool, she knew, admitting it as she had admitted it before. A fool to go on eating her heart out for a man to whom she was no more than an amazingly efficient piece of office equipment. Kenyon Rutledge was conscious of her about the office; but not as a woman—young, lovely and desperately in love with him. It would never have occurred to Kenyon to look upon an employee in his office as a woman to be loved, or married to. When the time came for him to choose a wife—and he was beginning, at thirty-six, to realize that the time was now—he would look about him and select a woman from his own world; the world of wealth and luxury and society.
Phyllis’ lovely mouth tightened a little as she remembered some of the women—debutantes, young widows and some post-debbies—who called him, who came into the office to bear him off to lunch. It was part of her duties to look after his social as well as his business engagements, and in the last few months she had seen the name of Letty Lawrence appearing with increasing frequency in his social engagement calendar. Letty was twenty-seven and looked a fresh and luscious nineteen. Her husband had been killed overseas. They had been married six months; he had left her a fortune to add to the one she had inherited from her parents and a stray aunt or two. Letty was definitely “top-drawer”—an ideal mate for him.
Phyllis got up at last, her mouth set and thin, and went back into her bedroom. But it was a long while before she fell asleep, and she had forgotten Anice Mayhew before that time.
CHAPTER THREE
AS USUAL, PHYLLIS WAS ALREADY at her desk in the small office that adjoined Kenyon’s larger, handsomely furnished one when her employer arrived. Tall and handsome and distinguished, wearing excellently cut clothes
, affable in his manner toward his employees, pleasant to his very efficient secretary, Phyllis’ uncontrollable heart did the usual acrobatics as he entered and summoned her from her office to his. As usual his first business of the day was to dictate a memorandum of the flowers to be sent to various feminine acquaintances. The inevitable dark red roses for Letty, of course. That was a daily order; but Kenyon never forgot to mention it, to Phyllis’ secret though carefully hidden resentment.
She bent her head attentively above her notebook, but glanced now and then at Kenyon’s hands. At every glimpse of his long and carefully tended hands she felt herself go weak with desire, and the shame of that colored her face with a burning blush.
They were halfway through the morning’s dictation when the telephone rang and the receptionist from the outer office said carefully, “Mrs. Lawrence is calling. She says her business is urgent and she must see Mr. Rutledge.”
Holding the telephone, Phyllis passed the message on to Rutledge and felt her heart curl a little with despair at the frank pleasure on his face.
“Ask her to come in, of course,” he said swiftly.
And a moment later, Letty entered. Letty never merely came into a room; she made an entrance. And Letty could afford to, for she was beautiful. Sleekly groomed; exquisitely dressed in something thin and dark and cool, perfect for summer in the city; gardenias no less fresh and dainty than herself tucked into the narrow belt of her gown, beneath the gentle swell of one lovely breast.
Kenyon greeted her with every evidence of delight and Phyllis gathered her pencils and notebook to make an unobtrusive departure from the office.
Letty said radiantly, “Good morning, Miss Gordon—how’s the perfect secretary this morning?” And without waiting for Phyllis’ answer, she turned to Kenyon and said, “Darling, I think I’m terribly broad-minded to permit you to have such a beautiful secretary! Miss Gordon is lovely!”
And Phyllis, closing the door behind her, heard Kenyon say lightly, “Is she? I haven’t noticed.”
Phyllis stood stock-still just outside the closed door, and the bitterness of that was a pain that she could not fight down. Of course he had never noticed her; he didn’t know whether she was aged and ugly or young and lovely, because he didn’t care. She set her teeth and made herself go on to her own office.
She was at her desk, forcing herself to concentrate on the heavy accumulation of mail, when Kenyon, with the lovely Letty at his elbow, looked in to say cheerfully, “Can you handle things alone today, Miss Gordon? I find I have an important appointment.”
Letty laughed like a pleased child and slipped her gloved hand through his arm.
“You have an appointment with Mr. Duncan about that merger at twelve, and a luncheon engagement with the directors of the bank at one,” Phyllis reminded him.
His face darkened a little. Letty murmured something and he looked at her fondly.
“Oh, well, call ‘em and say that I’m tied up—change the appointments for tomorrow,” he said recklessly. “Mrs. Lawrence wants my opinion on a house she is buying in the country.”
“And I’m such a dunce about business, Miss Gordon,” pleaded Letty gaily, tightening her pressure on Kenyon’s arm slightly. “And you’re so clever—I’m sure you can cope with the bankers and the Duncan person.”
Kenyon grinned warmly at her, and a moment later they went out together. Phyllis jabbed a pencil ruinously into her nice new desk blotter for a long moment before she took up the telephone and began to “cope,” using all her tact and ingenuity, with the two broken appointments….
It was a grueling day. She refused to admit even to herself that the day was made harder by the thought of Kenyon and Letty somewhere in the country having fun together. When she left her office and came down in the elevator to the street, she had only one thought in mind: home to a cool shower and a salad for dinner out of whatever might be in the icebox. But as she walked toward the street through the lobby crowded with office workers, Terry fell into step beside her.
“Mad at me?” he asked boyishly.
“Of course not, idiot,” she told him swiftly, and forced herself to smile at him.
“I had a good day—sold a block of stock and picked myself up a couple of hundred bucks,” he told her happily. “I thought we’d step out and blow it on a binge.”
“Why not put it in the bank?” she suggested lightly.
He shuddered. “What a gruesome thought. I’ve got five hundred dollars in the bank and I wouldn’t think of having any more. I don’t want to become a ‘feelthy reech’ capitalist,” he told her firmly.
As always, her tired spirits rose a little at Terry’s badinage. He was such a grand person. They had had so many wonderful laughs together. Much better to go out with Terry and forget Kenyon for a while than to sit home and brood.
“I’d love it, Terry,” she told him quickly. “But I’ll have to go home and dress.”
He nodded and whistled for a taxi and was astounded when one slid to the curb. He helped her into it, grinned warmly at her and said cheerily, “While you change, I’ll shake up a couple of drinks to fortify us for our rounds.”
He took her hand and laced his fingers between hers and looked down at her adoringly. “Tired?” he asked gently.
“A little—it’s been a beast of a day,” she admitted.
“We won’t think about it,” he comforted her. “We’ll have dinner some place where they don’t have an orchestra, and then find a nice, silly play, and a bistro that’s amusing.”
Insensibly she relaxed a little from the tension of the day. She was so fond of Terry. What a fool she was not to be in love with him. Terry was with a brokerage firm in the building that housed the Rutledge firm. He earned an excellent living, and if he threw it away as fast as he made it—well, that was only because he had no incentive to save it. If he were married, with a wife and children and a little house in the suburbs—
Phyllis gave herself a mental shake and told herself to snap out of it. She was tired and depressed and in a dangerously sentimental mood when she began to dream of a tiny cottage covered with roses—and the inevitable mortgage.
Terry was taking no apparent notice of her depression. He had launched into an amusing story of the day’s activities and his effort to unload the block of stock, and when the taxi reached her apartment house, she was laughing.
They went up in the elevator, and she gave him her key and he fitted it into the lock. As he swung open the door, they were both startled to see that there was a light in the living room.
As they came into the tiny foyer and paused at the two shallow steps that led down into the living room, a girl appeared at the door of the kitchenette; a young, blond, delectable girl in a blue frock with a ruffly coquettish white apron tied about her slender waist and a long, red-handled kitchen fork in her hand.
“Hello, Cousin Phyllis. I’m so glad to see you. Dinner is almost ready—” she began, and then saw Terry. She flushed and said with pretty confusion, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were alone.”
Phyllis said quietly, “Hello, Anice. I didn’t expect you quite so soon. Your wire said nothing about the time of your arrival.”
Anice looked distressed, and wrinkled her pretty brow.
“I didn’t? Oh, what a dunce I am. I’m terribly sorry, Phyllis. I wondered why you weren’t at the station. My train was late though, and it was after three when it got in,” she apologized anxiously.
“And being a business gal, I was chained to my desk until after five, so I couldn’t have met you anyway,” said Phyllis. She presented Terry, caught the fascinated look on his face and all but grinned derisively.
Anice had accepted the introduction shyly, and then she turned anxiously to Phyllis.
“I do hope, Cousin Phyllis—” her voice put a bridge of years between them, and Phyllis felt that she should have gray hair and at least a touch of arthritis “—that you don’t mind my just barging right in and making myself at home. I explained to
the superintendent and he said you never got home before six and he didn’t see any reason why I should have to sit in the lobby and wait. So he let me in and I unpacked and changed. And then I thought it would be nice if I had a good, home-cooked dinner all ready and waiting for you when you came in, and so I went out and got some broilers and things and they’ll be all ready by the time you’ve washed your face and hands.”
The words tumbled out in a childish stream that made Anice seem very young and appealingly anxious to please. But Phyllis, being feminine herself, did not miss the very faint hint of appraisal that Anice gave herself before she turned to Terry and added shyly, “There’s plenty for three, Mr. McLean, and I’d be so glad if you would stay.”
Phyllis stiffened a little. After all, it was her apartment, not Anice’s, even though Anice had cooked dinner. However, Phyllis reminded herself curtly, there was no point in getting her back up over the obvious fact that Anice had dug herself in nicely and was about to take over completely.
“Phyllis and I were dining out,” Terry began, because he, too, had not missed the fact that Anice was smoothly taking over and that the invitation should have come from Phyllis.
“Oh—oh—I’m so terribly sorry. I—I guess it was presumptuous of me to expect to stay. I mean—well, after all, my first night in New York, I shouldn’t have taken it on myself to provide dinner, even if I was just thinking that maybe Phyllis would be too tired to go out.” Anice’s words stumbled and her face was flushed and she blinked her blue eyes hard to keep back the tears.
“I’m sure the dinner you’ve prepared would be much better than anything we could get in a restaurant,” said Terry swiftly, comfortingly, “so why don’t we have dinner here and then do the town—the three of us?”
“Oh!” Anice didn’t clap her hands and jump up and down as an excited child might have done, but she gave the impression that she barely restrained herself. “Oh, but that would be marvelous—I’d love it.” And then she looked swiftly at Phyllis and it was as though a sponge had washed across her face, removing all its bright joy. “But of course I couldn’t think of—thrusting myself on you. I know you two want to be alone.”
