Virgin's Holiday

by Halliday, Brett;

  “Wait,” she called faintly.

  Eill did not hear her. He continued to walk toward the gate.

  “Please!” Vergie called. “Wait.”

  She jumped up and ran across the lawn as Bill turned to face her. Her forgotten glasses lay on the grass where Bill had tossed them. Her face was flushed and her eyes glistened.

  “Don’t go like this,” she said when she stood before Bill.

  “How shall I go?” he asked.

  Vergie smiled. The St. Augustine sun upon her face had done certain things to her.

  “About tonight,” she murmured.

  “Oh yes. About tonight.” Bill grinned. “About seven?” he suggested. “I know a place down the coast where they actually serve food. And I’ve got a balky old red automobile that’ll take us there and bring us back … maybe.”

  “The ‘maybe’ sounds intriguing,” Vergie said. She hesitated, seeking to think of the sort of thing Valerie Ware might say under the same circumstances. It sounded so easy when you read it in books. But it was hard to put the words together when you faced a young man who waited with an attentive smile.

  “I’ll expect you to prove to me that … that men aren’t necessarily satyrs or mincing fops,” she concluded.

  “Consider the matter attended to,” Bill said. “In every man there is a lurking desire to be what the woman of the moment desires most to find in him. That’s a good line,” he grinned. “You might develop that as a motif for a book.”

  “The woman of the moment?” Vergie tried to smile enigmatically as she repeated his phrase.

  “Of course,” Bill looked at her in surprise. “I know you hold with that theory,” he exploded. “I merely offered it to prove I don’t intend to argue with you further. I’m quite sure that if you believe anything it is that the fleeting moment is the only thing worthy of the slightest consideration. You couldn’t write the things you do if you didn’t believe that.”

  “Must one always … be judged by what one writes?” Her voice was a little uncertain.

  “To a certain extent. That’s one of my damnable traits. Every time I read something I find myself speculating on the personality of the writer.”

  “And you’ve thus formed an opinion of Valerie Ware?” She laughed.

  “I have. Very precise opinions. Which have been, to some degree, altered this morning.”

  “Perhaps this evening will … alter them a great deal more.”

  “I don’t think so. I hope not. I’m altogether bewitched by the personality as now evolved.”

  “I hope you won’t be … too disappointed,” Vergie faltered.

  “I have no fear,” he told her. “At seven-thirty.”

  She stood by the gate and watched him disappear toward the business section of the city.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IDEAS OF FLIRTATION

  Vergie wandered about the remainder of the day. She did not go to the headquarters of the local Historical Society to identify herself as their correspondent from Random, Virginia.

  She feared what the night might bring. She feared, more strongly, that her fears would mount to terror if she allowed them full sway, and might cause her to break her appointment with Bill. This last fear was predominant, and it was this which she stifled by viewing St. Augustine’s points of interest in a determined manner. Many of St. Augustine’s streets are narrow. The aged houses are typically Spanish. Quaint, mellowed by the ebb of passing years, and seasoned by the tropical clime. There is a certain atmosphere of enshrined memories as one strolls along the narrow ways which have endured since the sixteenth century.

  It is not difficult, in St. Augustine, for one to project one’s thoughts back along the pathway of the centuries to the days of the city’s glory. To the days when full-sailed galleons rode outside the harbor, and their crews sought amusement ashore in the arms of dark-eyed senoritas. These narrow streets can very easily seem to be thronged once more with, colorful figures from the brave past whose story is written in blood for succeeding generations to read with reverence.

  Vergie felt this influence strongly as she wandered from the ancient Huguenot Cemetery to the Spanish Cemetery with its air of quiet serenity, the lovely creeping vines upon the graves of departed heroes, the knowledge that here valiant men and beautiful women have found their final resting places.

  Vergie found herself interested, and moved away hastily. It would be so easy now to lose herself in the traditions of the past which she had taught herself to believe were important.

  This afternoon she didn’t want to believe them important. She ended her tour of sightseeing abruptly. There was a soporific quality about the interesting buildings which frightened her.

  She went swiftly back to Mrs. Tucker’s. It was four o’clock when she arrived. Not too soon, she thought, to begin preparations for what she hoped would prove to be a momentous evening.

  In her room she sat down to consider the matter of dress. She thought of the two evening gowns purchased in Savannah. One of them had been left at the hotel there. She considered the other one.

  It was of creamy satin, stately and very, very beautiful. She wondered if Bill would like it. Somehow this adventure did not thrill her as she had been thrilled in Savannah. That had been a mad gesture foredoomed to failure. This was more. Infinitely more than that.

  Vergie slipped off her sport suit and hung it carefully away. Then she opened her trunk and let her fingers revel in the feel of the soft things she had bought in Savannah.

  There came a tap on the door as she was thus engaged. She jumped up hastily and caught a negligee about her shoulders before opening the door.

  “May I come in?” Nip asked with a smile.

  “Of course,” Vergie said.

  She stood aside as Nip entered and advanced to peer into the trunk in wide-eyed amazement.

  “What perfectly gorgeous things,” Nip exclaimed. She bent over the trunk, and Vergie stood beside her.

  “Gosh, you’re lucky,” Nip said. “I never had more than two pairs of step-ins at one time in my life.”

  Vergie suppressed a smile. She wondered what Nip would say if she confessed she had never owned even one pair until two days previously.

  “I gave Tuck the slip and came up here,” Nip told her. “She’ll be sore at me for stealing a march on her, but she wanted to go out to the hospital to see Lee Pennel, and I put my foot down on going with her.”

  “Lee Pennel?”

  “You don’t know him, of course,” Nip said. “He’s a louse. Bill called him worse than that. I don’t see why Tuck doesn’t let him lie in the old hospital and die of boredom.”

  “Why is he in the hospital?” Vergie asked.

  “Bill put him there,” Nip chuckled. “He tried to make Tuck the other night at Bill’s house after she’d passed out, and Bill beat him up. Put him in the hospital. They say his jaw’s broken,” she ended hopefully.

  “Oh,” Vergie murmured. She didn’t have the slightest idea what Nip meant.

  “Bill? You don’t mean … Bill Porter?”

  “Sure,” Nip said. Then she rocked back on her heels and regarded Vergie in amazement. “How do you know him?” she asked pointedly. “Where did you meet him?”

  “Why … he came here this morning,” Vergie said. “Tuck introduced us.”

  “She did?” Nip frowned. “A swell friend she is. But … I don’t suppose you liked him, did you?”

  “On the contrary.” Vergie sat down and smiled at her. “I liked him very much. We’re … we have an engagement for tonight.”

  “You have?” Nip stared at her angrily. “And he told me he had to work tonight,” she said under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Oh! That’s all right.” Nip looked up and smiled at Vergie, blinking to keep the tears from coming. “I’m just a fool kid. But Bill really liked me till you came along.”

  “Till I came along?”

  “Of course. I’m not fooling myself that I’ve got a ch
ance if you crook your finger at him. Well, I hope you teach him a thing or two,” Nip said venomously. “He’s too damned sure of himself around femmes. But I bet you can handle his kind all right.” She gazed at Vergie admiringly.

  Vergie turned away, fighting back a mad impulse to burst into laughter. What a comedy of errors it was! This child, aggrieved because Vergie Whidby had stolen away her sweetheart!

  Vergie turned back to her as soon as she could control her features. “What do you mean by handling him?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know. He’s too cocksure of himself. He gives me a pain sometimes. Actually he does. I was practically through with him anyway,” Nip lied. “Always treating me as though I ought to be in kindergarten or something. He’s got all sorts of ideas about sex not being good for a girl till she’s thirty or something like that.”

  “I see.”

  “I bet you’ll make him sit up and take notice,” Nip said. “Maybe he’ll fall in love with you.”

  “Maybe,” Vergie laughed.

  “You’re used to that, I suppose. I hope you give Bill the runaround so that he comes to me with his pulse up to a hundred and ten. I’ll give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  “Yes,” Vergie said. “I … I suppose you would.”

  “Well, I’d better be getting along,” said Nip. “You’re probably figuring on dressing up to knock Bill cold.”

  “No,” Vergie said. “I think I’ll wear one of my oldest dresses.”

  “He’ll never notice what you’ve got on that figure,” Nip told her. “You sure have got the curves where they belong.”

  “Have I?” Vergie blushed beneath Nip’s admiring eyes.

  “I’ll say. Hollywood could get ideas from you. I’ve always heard that a girl gets soft and flabby if she lets the boys play around her too much,” she went on. “Is that so? You are as firm as anything.”

  “I’m … I’m sure I don’t know.” Vergie squirmed.

  Nip laughed. “No? I bet you don’t know. I bet you’ve done everything,” she went on admiringly. “I don’t see why everybody has to keep on treating me like a baby, do you?”

  “I certainly don’t,” Vergie told her. “It seems to me you are quite well-informed for one who has been treated as a baby.”

  “That’s because of my interest in literature,” Nip explained, grinning. “I read all of your … of … uh … of Valerie Ware’s books. There’s plenty of sex education in them so no growing girl needs to ask very many questions.”

  “Yes,” Vergie said. She hid her face in her hands as Nip sidled out the door. Nip didn’t know whether she was weeping or laughing. Her shoulders were heaving and strange sounds came from behind her fingers.

  Vergie hardly knew either. Perhaps she was doing both. There were tears on her cheeks a little later when she started to dress. And there was a reckless smile on her lips.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FOUNTAIN OF LOVE

  Bill came for her promptly at seven-thirty. She was waiting on the front porch, waiting for him. Bill looked very youthful and dashing in white flannels and double-breasted blue serge coat.

  He grinned at Vergie as he came up the path. Her dress was dark and severe. Rougeless, her cheeks looked pallid beneath the porch light. At the last moment she had put on her horn-rimmed glasses. It was an instinctive gesture. In the back of her mind was a faint shame in the realization that Bill was taking her out because he believed her to be Valerie Ware. She felt the only way she could justify herself was by dressing and acting as much like Vergie Whidby as she could.

  “The world’s a stage,” Bill laughed as he stood before her. “I see you persist in playing your role out. Where under heaven did you ever find such a dress?” he demanded. “I didn’t know you could buy them like that any more.”

  Vergie blushed. “Miss Patterson made this for me last year,” she said. “Miss Patterson’s our dressmaker in Random. She goes to New York every Fall to get the latest styles. She told me it was simply the last word when she made it for me.”

  “Oh yeah?” Bill shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve got the patter down too,” he acknowledged. “Come on.” He held out his arm formally. “You’re not fooling me a bit.”

  Vergie sighed and walked to the car with him. Bill opened the door and let her into the front seat, then he slipped around and sat beside her.

  “We’re off,” he said. Gears grated and the ancient motor roared. The windshield was broken and the soft evening air played havoc with Vergie’s carefully arranged hair. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and enjoyed the sensation of dashing heedlessly onward into the unknown.

  Bill talked disarmingly as he drove: “How are you coming along? Getting any local color?”

  “I visited the Huguenot Cemetery and the Old Spanish Cemetery today,” she said.

  “My God!” Bill whistled. “Just what kind of a plot do you expect to work up from that? Don’t tell me you’re going to disappoint your public by having a wraith for a heroine and a skeleton for a hero. My, my. Even with your undoubted skill in delineating postures of sensual delight, I don’t quite see how you can hope to do much with that sort of background.”

  Vergie simply didn’t say anything. It was useless to argue with him any longer. And she couldn’t take part in a conversation which he seemed determined to turn upon erotic subjects.

  The macadam road glistened in the glare of the headlights. A serpentine chasm between the winding walls of shrubbery. Bill drove the heavy car forward with careless ease. He seemed determined to talk, though Vergie remained silent.

  “After all, you owe a certain decent respect to your public,” Bill protested. “You’ve built up a following with a certain type of book. Whether it’s a good or bad type needn’t concern us now. It’s a good type in that it reaches the best-seller classification. But you’ll cut your own throat if you go literary on them. The people who read your books aren’t interested in literature. They’d flee in terror from a perfectly turned phrase. In your books they find a release from the rigorous conventions which hold them in passive servitude. In one sense, you’re an apostle of freedom, and as such, you deserve the highest praise in my very humble estimation.”

  He paused and glanced at Vergie. Her head rested against the back of the seat and her short hair swirled about her temples. Her eyes were closed, but the lenses hid that fact from Bill.

  “You see what I mean?” he Went on. “Why dig around cemeteries for atmosphere? Your readers don’t want ghouls. No, and by God! they don’t want warmed over historical bosh,” he said warmly. “They want present-day heroines who find sex glamorous. They seek a vicarious, erotic satisfaction in projecting themselves into the personalities you write about. You can’t disappoint them now.”

  “Please.” Vergie lifted her hand without raising her head. “Can’t we leave Valerie Ware’s books alone? I can’t stop you if you continue to believe I am she. But if I were Valerie Ware, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t want to spend the evening discussing my work.”

  Bill glanced at her admiringly. “You play the part to perfection,” he muttered. “I’ve known a lot of writers on this mundane sphere of sin, sunshine, and sorrow, but I’ve yet to cross the path of one who wouldn’t rather discuss his work with a sympathetic listener than taste the delights of any other pleasure mortal can devise. You know that as well as I do. Why keep up this farce?”

  “Please!”

  “Oh! All right,” Bill said. “Anything to please. I was fool enough to think you wouldn’t feel it necessary to pretend to me. But if you’re determined to be Vergie Whidby of Random, Virginia … all right.”

  He took his right hand off the wheel and half turned to slip his arm around her shoulders.

  “Let’s not miss anything,” he said. “Maybe you want some dope on technique. This is the approved position for the boy and girl who feel the mating urge sweep irresistibly through their otherwise lethargic veins. There. Your head on my shoulder. So. Now I can kiss you m
omentarily without taking my eyes from the road. Like this.” He kissed her briefly upon unresponsive lips. “Is that what you’re hankering for?”

  Vergie shivered. Bill felt her movement, but he couldn’t ascribe a motive for it. He found himself wishing to say tender things to her, but he grimly held them back. Anything he could say would sound stilted to her. She had written reams of dialogue about just such a situation …

  “We’re almost there,” he said after a time.

  Vergie’s cheek was pressed close to his shoulder. Bill’s arm was tightly about her shoulders. She sat thus, immobile, until he parked the car with a flourish before a one-story log cabin.

  Bill shut off the ignition with his left hand and looked down at her inquiringly.

  Then he muttered: “Okay.”

  He carefully removed her glasses and stared at her closed eyes. A peculiar sensation gripped him. She looked like a little girl, with her head pillowed thus upon his shoulder. He forgot for the moment that she was Valerie. Ware, authoress of risque best-sellers, one who had doubtless dominated a thousand situations more or less of this same nature. Her lips were slightly parted.

  He slipped his left hand beneath her chin and tilted her face up toward his.

  Then he kissed her.

  Vergie’s body quivered. Her lips were untutored. She had read about such kisses. Had thrilled to the reading. Her breasts throbbed with poignant desire. She wanted to open her lips: to give herself to him wholly.

  A nervous inhibition produced a reflex action which tightened her lips primly.

  Bill drew back and shrugged his shoulders.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I know what you want. I’m perfectly willing to keep the whole thing on a platonic plane. That’s the way I started out. But don’t think you’re going to pull any of your mental excitation on me and leave me gasping,” he warned.

  Vergie sat upright with a little gasp and turned away from him so he might not discover the tears in her eyes.

  Bill misinterpreted her action.