“I got bounced, Dad,” he said.
“What the hell for?”
“Too much drinking and girling, I guess.”
“Well, for Christ's sake!”
Leslie had gone at once to the headmaster at New Hampton and told him what he thought of a school that tried to prevent a youngster from sowing a few wild oats.
“I'm paying you to teach him a few academic courses,” Leslie had shouted, “not to worry about what he does with his free time. I'll worry about that.”
But Leslie Harrington had never been a worrier. It was stupid and profitless. He certainly did not worry about his son, for there was no scrape that Rodney could possibly get into that his father could not fix. It was natural for a healthy, red-blooded boy to get into a few scrapes. Leslie said often that he wouldn't give a nickel for a boy who didn't get into a fix now and then. He had a fine relationship with his son, who was a normal, healthy, good-looking boy. He and his son were pals, chums, and while they respected one another in the way good friends would, there were no binding father-and-son strings attached to their relationship.
“Apron strings are for women,” Leslie told Rodney often, so that when he was still very young, Rodney learned to love his life in the womanless house on Chestnut Street.
For all these reasons, Rodney, at sixteen, was not in the least afraid of his father. When he asked Betty Anderson what she thought his father would say about the trouble she was in, it was not fear which prompted him but, rather, a curious desire to know.
When Rodney left Betty Anderson on the night she told him she was pregnant, he went at once to his father. Leslie was sitting in the house on Chestnut Street in the room designated as “The Study.” The walls of this room were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves containing books in handsome, leather-bound sets, none of which had ever been read. The books had been bought by Leslie's father for decorative purposes and Leslie had inherited them along with the rest of the house. Twice a week, old Pratte dusted the book spines with an attachment which she hooked up to the vacuum cleaner. Leslie was seated at a table in front of a book-lined wall, doing a jigsaw puzzle.
“Hi, Dad,” said Rodney.
“Hello, Rod,” said Leslie.
The conversation which ensued after this exchange might have shocked and surprised an outsider, but it held neither of these elements for the two participants. Rodney flopped down into a leather-upholstered chair and flung his legs over the wide arm, while Leslie continued to work on the jigsaw puzzle.
“There's this girl down on Ash Street who claims I knocked her up.”
“Who's that?”
“Betty Anderson.”
“John Anderson's girl?”
“Yes. The youngest one.”
“How far gone is she?”
“She says a month, although I don't see how she can know for sure so soon.”
“There are ways.”
“She wants me to marry her.”
“What do you want?”
“I don't want to.”
“O.K. I'll take care of it. You want a drink?”
“O.K.”
The two Harringtons sipped whisky and soda, the father's drink only slightly stronger than the son's, and talked about baseball until eleven o'clock when Rodney said that he guessed he'd take a shower and go to bed.
On the following Monday morning, Leslie Harrington sent for John Anderson who worked as a loom fixer in the Cumberland Mills. Anderson entered Leslie's pine-paneled, wall-to-wall carpeted office with his cap in his hand and stood in front of Leslie's desk shuffling his feet.
“You got a daughter named Betty, John?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She's pregnant.”
John Anderson sat down on a leather chair without being asked. His cap fell on the floor.
“She's going around saying my son did it, John.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don't like that kind of talk, John.”
“No, sir.”
“You've worked for me a long time, John, and if you're having trouble at home I'd like to help you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Here's a check, John. It's for five hundred dollars. There's a note attached to it on which I've written the name of a close-mouthed doctor from White River, so that your daughter can get rid of her package. Five hundred will be more than enough, with a little bonus for you in the bargain, John.”
John Anderson stood up and retrieved his cap. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
“Do you like working for me, John?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That's all, John. You can go back to work now.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When John Anderson had left, Leslie sat down at his desk and lit a cigar. He buzzed his secretary to find out if his coffee was ready.
That same afternoon, Betty Anderson who had not only the morals but the claws of an alley cat, stormed her way past Leslie's secretary and into Leslie's office. Her face bore the marks of her father's rage, and her mouth was still twisted with the filthy names she had called Rodney. She flung Leslie's check down on his desk.
“You're not buying me off that cheap, Mr. Harrington,” she screamed. “It's Rodney's kid I'm carrying, and Rodney's going to marry me.”
Leslie Harrington picked up the check the girl had flung. He did not speak.
“Rodney's going to marry me or I'll go to the police. They give a guy twenty years for bastardy in this state, and I'll see to it that he serves every single day of it unless he marries me.”
Leslie buzzed for his secretary. “Bring my checkbook, Esther,” he said, and Betty flounced to a chair, a smile of satisfaction on her bruised lips.
When the secretary had come and gone, Leslie sat down at his desk and began to write.
“You know, Betty,” he said, as he wrote, “I don't think you really want to bring Rodney to court. If you did that, I'd have to call in a few boys as witnesses against you. Do you know how many witnesses it takes to testify against a girl and have her declared a prostitute in this state? Only six, Betty, and I employ a great many more than six men in the mills.” Leslie tore the new check from his book with a crisp rip. He looked at Betty and smiled, extending the check. “I don't think you want to take Rodney to court, do you, Betty?”
Beneath the red bruises, Betty's face was white and still.
“No, sir,” she said, and took the check from Leslie's hand.
With her back to him, on her way to the door, she glanced down at the paper in her hand. It was a check made out to her father for two hundred and fifty dollars. She whirled and looked at Leslie Harrington, who still smiled and who looked right back at her.
“Half of two fifty is one twenty-five,” he said quietly. “That's what it'll cost you to come back again, Betty.”
That night, Leslie and Rodney Harrington ate an early dinner so that they could make the first show at the movie theater at White River. They went in Rodney's convertible, with the top down, because it gave the kid a big kick to drive people around in his car.
♦ 14 ♦
The gossip about Betty Anderson was like a candy bar in the hands of children. That is, it was not allowed to linger overlong at any one pair of lips before it was passed on quickly to another. The talk was started on its way by Walter Barry, a hollow-chested young man who worked as a teller at the Citizens’ National Bank. It was to Walter that John Anderson presented his check from Leslie Harrington. Walter looked at the check curiously and immediately decided that something was up. Something being up was Walter's favorite phrase. It had connotations of mystery and intrigue otherwise missing in the circumspect Irish Catholic life which he shared with his aged mother and his brother Frank. Walter decided that something was up because his brother Frank worked as a foreman at the mills, and Frank had mentioned nothing at home about John Anderson receiving a bonus in the huge amount of two hundred and fifty dollars. At first, Walter, who was a reader of murder mysteries, was
struck by the thought that John Anderson was blackmailing Leslie Harrington for some dark, mysterious reason, but no sooner was this thought formed than his face reddened. The idea of anyone blackmailing Harrington was ridiculous. Walter smiled nervously as he counted out two hundred and fifty dollars in bills for John Anderson.
“That's a lot of money, John,” said Walter as casually as he could. “You planning to take a little vacation?”
John Anderson had a favorite phrase, too. His was that he, John Anderson, was nobody's fool, not by a damsight. He had expected questions at the bank, friendly, probing questions, but questions, nevertheless, which would demand answers. John Anderson had come prepared. It was not his fault that he had been born in Stockholm, a large, cosmopolitan city, and that in thirty years he had not learned the devious art of living in a small town in America.
“No vacation for me,” said John Anderson. “The money's for my daughter Betty. She goes for a while to make a visit with her aunt in Vermont.” John had lived in northern New England for thirty years. He pronounced it ahnt. “This aunt is sister to my wife. Old sister, and sick now. Betty goes to take care of her for a while. Mr. Harrington fine man. He loans Anderson money to send Betty to take care of sick aunt.”
“Oh,” said Walter Barry. “That's a shame, John. Will Betty be gone long?”
“No,” said poor John Anderson who was nobody's fool, “not very long.”
“I see,” said Walter pleasantly. “Well, here you are, John. Two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Thank you,” said John and walked out of the bank, secure in the knowledge that he had done very well with the inspired story of Betty and her maiden aunt in Vermont. He had even had the name of a specific place in Vermont picked out, in case anyone should ask. Rutland, he would say. That was far enough away to be safe. John Anderson did not know anyone in Peyton Place who had ever been as far away from home as Rutland, Vermont.
Walter Barry waited until the revolving door into which John Anderson had stepped was empty. Then he went immediately to Miss Soames who worked two cages to the left of Walter's.
“Did you hear about Betty Anderson?” he asked. “Gone to visit a maiden aunt in Vermont.”
The lenses of Miss Soames's gold-rimmed glasses gleamed. “You don't say!” she exclaimed.
All this took place between twelve and one o'clock in the afternoon, for John Anderson had come into the bank on his lunch hour. By five o'clock of this same afternoon, the word had fallen on the ears of people who remembered Betty's bruised face of the day before. It fell on the ears of Pauline Bryant, who was the sister of Esther Bryant who was secretary to Leslie Harrington. Pauline, who worked as a clerk in Mudgett's Hardware Store, telephoned to Esther, and Esther, proud of being the only one who was really in the know, as she put it, gladly related the true story about Betty Anderson. That evening, the true story about Betty Anderson was served, along with the meat and potatoes, at every supper table in Peyton Place. Allison MacKenzie heard it from her mother, who used it as a sort of hammer with which to drive home her reasons for chastity in young girls.
“You see what happens,” said Constance MacKenzie, “when a girl lets some fellow paw her. The result is what happened to Betty Anderson. That is the way cheap behavior pays off. In trouble.”
A few hours later, Allison and Kathy Ellsworth sat, tailor fashion, on Allison's bed.
“Did you hear about Betty Anderson?” asked Allison.
“Yes,” replied Kathy, who was dreamily brushing her hair. “My father told us at supper.”
“Don't you think it's just awful?”
“Oh, I don't know. I think it would be sort of exciting to have a child by one's lover.”
Allison rubbed cold cream into her throat with firm, upward motions as she had learned to do from an illustrated article in a women's magazine. “Well, I certainly wouldn't want to be shipped off to Vermont to live with a maiden aunt while my baby was being born.”
“Neither would I,” agreed Kathy. “Do you suppose Rodney was a good lover?”
“I suppose so. He's had enough experience. Norman was telling me about this book he read. It said in this book that knowledge alone would not make a good lover. It takes experience as well.”
“Rodney had that all right. I think he should have married Betty, don't you?”
“No. Why should he? People who have affairs should be intelligent enough to cope with them. Marriage is for clods, and if you go and get married the way you plan, Kathy, that will be the end of your artistic career. Marriage is stultifying.”
“What's ‘stultifying’?”
“Oh, confining, or binding, or something like that,” said Allison impatiently. She always became impatient when asked to define a word of whose definition she was not sure.
“Do you think your mother and Mr. Makris will get married?”
Allison lowered her cream-covered hands and wiped them carefully on a towel. This was a question to which she had given much thought. She knew it was perfectly acceptable for a widow to remarry. Her common sense told her it was entirely possible that her mother might consider marriage to Tomas Makris, but her emotions would not let her believe it. Her mother had been married to Allison MacKenzie, and in the mind of the daughter of Allison MacKenzie it was inconceivable that a woman who had been married to him could ever think seriously of doing anything other than mourn his loss for the rest of her life.
“No, I don't think so,” said Allison to Kathy.
“Wouldn't you like it if they did?” asked Kathy. “I think they'd make an adorable couple. He's so dark and she's so fair.”
Allison's stomach began to quiver. “No,” she said sharply. “I wouldn't like it a bit.”
“Why not? Don't you like Mr. Makris? When he first came here, you said you thought he was the handsomest man you ever saw.”
“I never said such a thing. I said that next to my father, he was the handsomest man I ever saw.”
“I think Mr. Makris is much better looking than your father ever was, if your father looked anything like that picture downstairs.”
“Well, he isn't,” declared Allison. “Besides, my father was good and kind and sweet and considerate and generous. Looks aren't everything, you know.”
“What makes you think Mr. Makris isn't?” asked Kathy.
“Please,” said Allison. “I don't want to discuss it any more. My mother won't marry him. I'll run away from home if she does.”
“You'd really run away?” asked Kathy, shocked. “You'd quit school, and your job on the paper and everything?”
Allison thought about her job. In the past few weeks she had done articles on Elm Street as it was a hundred years ago, the Peyton Place railroad station as it was fifty years ago, and several other pieces in the same vein. Her job was not at all what she had expected working on a newspaper would be. It was, to use Allison's currently favorite but inappropriate word, “stultifying.”
“Yes, I would,” said Allison decisively.
‘You'd leave your home and your friends and everything?”
‘Yes,” said Allison with a tragic sigh, for her friends included Norman Page with whom she fancied herself in love. “Yes, I'd leave everyone and everything.”
“But where would you go?” asked Kathy, who could sometimes be of a disagreeably practical mind.
“How should I know?” said Allison crossly. “New York, I suppose. That's where all writers go to get famous.”
“That's where artists go, too,” said Kathy. “Maybe we could go together and be bachelor girls in an apartment in Greenwich Village, like those two girls in that book we read. Of course, I don't know what I'd ever tell Lew.”
“Oh, Lew,” said Allison, dismissing with a wave of her hand the current love of Kathy's life.
“That's all right for you to say,” said Kathy in an injured tone. “Lew isn't in love with you. Maybe Norman doesn't excite you and thrill you the way Lew does me, but that's no reason for you to be jealous.”
> “Jealous!” exclaimed Allison. “Jealous! Why on earth should I be jealous? Norman is every bit as exciting as Lew. Just because he's quiet and isn't always giving me sexy looks the way Lew does you, is no reason for thinking he can't be very exciting and thrilling, because he can. Norman's an intellectual. He even goes about making love intellectually.”
“I never heard of intellectual love,” said Kathy. “Tell me what it's like. The only kind of love I know about is Lew's kind, and I like it fine. What's this other kind?”
Allison turned off the light and the two girls got into bed. Allison began to make up a story of intellectual love. Intellectual love differed from physical love, according to her, in that instead of merely kissing a girl, an intellectual first told her that her lips were like ruby velvet. Intellectual love was, in fact, full of similitudes such as, eyes like deep pools, teeth like pearls and skin like alabaster.
“If he talks that much,” said Kathy sleepily, “when does he have time to do anything else?”
Allison went to sleep after deciding that the next time she was alone with Norman, she would see if she could make him stop being an intellectual for a while.
At approximately this same time, Constance MacKenzie and Tomas Makris were sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Hotel Jackson at White River. She and Tom, Constance realized, spent quite a lot of time in restaurants and cocktail lounges. There was nowhere else for them to go. Constance would not go to Tom's apartment in the parsonage, and she did not like to have him at her house when Allison was at home. Nevertheless, as she lifted her second drink, Constance decided that she was rapidly growing sick and tired of cocktail lounges and restaurants.
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