Virgin's Holiday

by Halliday, Brett;

  “Hello?” The feminine voice at the other end of the phone was plainly puzzled. “I don’t quite get the message.”

  Mr. Nipperson grasped the receiver more firmly and spoke in a voice of thunder:

  “Yes! You should have known! It’s your duty to know. By heaven, Porter. I don’t know what to say to you. Mrs. Nipperson and I feel we’ve been grossly insulted. Do you understand? Grossly insulted. The paper is besmirched. We’ll print an apology tomorrow, Porter. I’ll write it myself. Not a word now. I’m thoroughly aroused. Why I … I could fire you for this, Porter. Very well. I accept your apology this once. Though I warn you, Porter. I warn you that my temper is aroused. Consider that your position hangs by a mere thread. I will not countenance any such filth in the columns of the Argus. Very well.” He slammed the receiver down indignantly and turned toward his wife.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he apologized. “But I saw red there when he attempted to offer some weak excuse.”

  “You were magnificent,” Mrs. Nipperson assured him.

  In the office of the Daily Argus a stenographer hung up the receiver with a bewildered expression.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ’TWAS EVER THUS

  The second reverberation from the newspaper article occurred just after dinner that Sunday. There had been a great deal of discreet whispering and a certain amount of blatantly mouthed denunciation going the rounds of St. Augustine that morning.

  Certain households had seethed with activity, and certain persons had busied themselves upon affairs which were distinctly not their own.

  These circumstances may or may not have had something to do with the long telephone conversation which busied Mrs. Tucker after the mid-day dinner. A conversation in which she played the role of listener and of agreement.

  Vergie was sitting on the front porch while the conversation was taking place. She felt drowsily content. No prescience of threatened evil had come to her. She had not the slightest idea of the chaos which the article had created. As a matter of fact she was slowly leaning toward a smug acceptance of the onus of authorship.

  By a curious mental distortion of fact, she convinced herself that it was really what she had intended to say. Perhaps she had phrased it differently, but somehow she convinced herself that Bill had not done so much changing after all. This was a comforting thought, and her mind seized upon it actively.

  Subconsciously she realized it was the sort of article she wished she had written. From that subconscious realization it was but a simple step to conveniently forget what she had really set down on paper.

  Then Mrs. Tucker hung up the receiver and walked out to the porch where Vergie sat. Her lips were set in a prim line, and her face expressed the determination of one who knows her duty and will not be swerved from the path of right.

  She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She opened her lips to speak, and snapped them shut as Vergie voiced a brooding thought:

  “It’s heavenly here on your front porch, Mrs. Tucker.”

  “It is?”

  “Why yes.” Vergie looked at her in slight surprise.

  “I’d say it was queer that you could sit quietly with the weight on your conscience,” Mrs. Tucker said.

  “What do you mean?” Vergie stared at her.

  “I think you know what I mean right well enough. Bringing disgrace and shame on my house as you’ve done.” Mrs. Tucker did not look at her.

  “I don’t understand,” Vergie said.

  “And I with burden enough to raise my one child in decency and trying so hard to keep her from carnal knowledge.” The words came out in a thin stream, and Mrs. Tucker continued to look the other way.

  Vergie stood up. “I … I don’t know what you mean,” she gasped.

  “Oh, don’t you?” Mrs. Tucker had succeeded in working herself up to the requisite pitch of wrath to say what needed to be said.

  “You’ll understand that I’m asking you to give up your room here immediately,” she said. “Goodness knows what terrible ideas you’ve poured into my innocent little girl’s ears already. Vergie, Whidby indeed! A wolf in sheep’s clothing! Entering like a viper into my decent home and teaching my poor lamb the terrible things you get paid for writing!”

  Vergie wilted before her accusatory eye. She turned away and went into the house. Packing was a dreary business. She refused to think about anything as she stuffed her things into trunk and bags. She had changed her mind so often during the past week that she felt she would go mad if she had to formulate another opinion.

  She went downstairs to telephone for a taxi and a transfer truck. Her only thought was of escape. Escape from everything. From the haunting thoughts which numbed her shame.

  Mrs. Tucker bustled in as she turned away from the phone. “Here,” she said. She offered Vergie some bills and silver.

  “I don’t want anything that’s not rightfully mine,” she snapped. “I calculate you’ve got that much coming after paying for your dinner today. I don’t want it.” She dropped the money into Vergie’s hand as though it were a hot ember.

  “Thank you.” Vergie was very composed. Her cheeks were stained with a deep scarlet as she took the money and turned away.

  She sat on the porch until the taxi and transfer man came. After making arrangements to have all her things moved to an obscure hotel whose advertisement she had found in the paper, she got in the taxi and directed him to drive her there.

  She entered the lobby of the hotel with her head held high, but no one seemed to pay her the slightest heed. It was evident that her terrible secret had not filtered down to this stratum of society. She was exceedingly thankful for that.

  The room assigned to her was small and stuffy. She did little unpacking after her baggage arrived. Perhaps she would not stay here long. She felt terribly apathetic about it all. Nothing seemed to matter. It might be well for her to go back to Random at once.

  She sat by the small window and stared out over the inlet until dusk fell and obscured the view. Every thought seemed to revert to Bill. It was strange, the peace which enveloped her when she finally made her decision.

  She must see Bill. The desire to see him tormented her. She must talk with him. He must make her decision.

  She loved Bill. That was clear to her now. Love for him lodged in her breast and seemed to expand and lift her spirits.

  She didn’t turn on the light as she got up and walked from the room. She didn’t care how she looked. She loved Bill. That answered everything. Her love was so strong that she could not doubt he would return it. She walked down the stairs steadily and hailed a cab loitering before the hotel. The man knew Bill Porter’s cottage. He would drive her there.

  Bill opened the door to her knock. He dodged back quickly as he saw who it was, and made as though to parry a blow. This bit of humorous by-play was lost upon Vergie. She faced him with a strained smile.

  “Come in,” Bill said. “You haven’t a gun concealed about your person, have you?” he asked.

  “No,” Vergie did not smile. She stepped into the room and Bill motioned her to a seat. He wore a pair of faded dungarees, a worn white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and three buttons missing at the top, battered slippers on his feet.

  “Forgive this shocking appearance,” he said, “but I really didn’t know my hovel was to be so honored.” He was puzzled by her appearance and actions. She moved as though in the grip of a strange coma. Her eyes seemed to be clouded and staring.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry about the hoax. I concede that I was hopelessly dumb about it all. But after the thing had gone that far, what was I to do?” He spread out his hands helplessly. “With our readers waiting for words of wisdom in the inimitable manner of Valerie Ware … I couldn’t bear to disappoint them.”

  “That’s all right,” Vergie said.

  “Well, that’s my apology.” Bill sat down and lit a cigarette. “It won’t happen again,” he assured her. “Now
that you’ve proved to me that you’re not Valerie Ware, the contract is, of course, void.”

  “Do you really believe what you wrote?” Vergie asked.

  “I certainly do. Do you believe what you wrote?”

  “I did … when I wrote it.”

  “May God have pity on your soul,” said Bill. “I didn’t suppose there was a mature person in the United States who believed that sort of slop.”

  Vergie winced at that.

  “I’m sorry,” Bill said. “That was below the belt. Of course you’re entitled to your opinion. But I assure you sex isn’t quite as horrible as you persist in believing.”

  “I’ve always … wondered,” said Vergie. She felt at a horrible loss for words. Bill seemed so assured. Riding but in the taxi she had rehearsed a little speech which she had believed would set everything aright. But the situation had got away from her somehow.

  “I suppose, you’ve heard the story of the old maid … who died wondering?” Bill asked.

  Vergie shrank from his tone. “No,” she said. “I never heard the story.’”

  Bill got up and paced the floor. “You’re all befuddled about this thing,” he said. “You’ve repressed and stifled every normal instinct within your body until you’re just a husk of a woman. I believe, now, what you told me at first. You’re Vergie Whidby, of Random, Virginia. All right. Let’s go on from there. Why don’t you find out what life’s about? Let some man show you. Let me show you.” He stopped in front of her.

  “I thought … you were going to the other night,” Vergie faltered.

  “So I was. But don’t forget that I believed you to be Valerie Ware. And I thought you were playing me for a fool when you started to talk about love.”

  “Is it so foolish to talk about love?” Vergie drew in her breath sharply.

  “It’s wholly unnecessary to mix love and sex,” Bill told her. “I admit that one leavens the other to some extent. But I’m out of it when you talk about love. That’s always the cry of the fearful woman when she wants to set up bonds to hold a man. Start out by wailing about love … then when passion dies and the embers grow cold … the woman is remindful that her great love betrayed her to make the fatal misstep … and the man is supposed to be noble and do something about it.”

  “And you … don’t care to be noble?”

  “I refuse to be noble. I don’t crave to warm over the dregs of something that was splendid and glowing once. I see love only as the natural outgrowth of passion. Desire comes first. After that’s fully appeased—if there’s anything left—call it love.”

  “You don’t believe love can come until … desire is appeased?”

  “I don’t. I think it’s always physical desire misconstrued as love. Women have a trick of rationalizing desire and sublimating it by pretending a great soul disturbance.”

  Vergie didn’t say anything. She couldn’t think of anything to say. A protestation of love now would be futile. Bill would jeer at her. Would think she sought to entrap him.

  Bill stood before her quietly and sought to interpret her silence. He wondered why she had come to his house after all that had happened. There seemed only one answer.

  “Stand up,” he ordered.

  She stood up.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and let his fingers slide down to her waist. She trembled.

  “Good God,” said Bill. “I’d like to be the man to wake up all the frustrated passion you’re carrying concealed beneath a poised exterior. You’re like a volcano. You’ll explode some day.”

  He tilted her chin up and kissed her lips. The length of her body was pressed against him.

  “Come on, let me show you the rest of the house.”

  He held his arm behind her back, and his fingers caressed her as he led her toward the other room.

  Vergie walked with him submissively. He halted in the doorway and pulled the cord of floor lamp.

  “No misconceptions?” he asked.

  He tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes.

  “Swear you don’t love me,” he said. “Swear it by all you hold holy.”

  His eyes held Vergie’s. All of her resistance seemed to melt before the humorous appeal she saw there.

  “I do love you,” she gasped. “I … I couldn’t be here if I didn’t love you. Oh, why must you make it so common? So … so cheap. You’re unreasonable, you’re brutal!” She sobbed violently, and beat at him with her doubled fists.

  Bill shook his head. “’Twas ever thus,” he muttered.

  He turned back into the other room and picked up his hat. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you home where you belong.”

  Vergie shrank back in the corner of the front seat and sobbed as Bill drove her to Mrs. Tucker’s.

  She didn’t bother to tell him that Mrs. Tucker had put her out that afternoon. It didn’t seem to matter. She was too exhaused to talk.

  She got out at Tucker’s front gate without a word, and let him drive away. Then she trudged through the darkened street to the hotel.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  UNDERSTANDING

  Vergie wrote her first paper for the Random Historical Society that night. And then slept soundly for ten hours.

  When she arose the next morning she had decided to forget all that had happened since leaving Random. She would simply put it from her mind. Pretend it was all a grotesque nightmare and refuse to let it dwell within her consciousness.

  For days Vergie moved about the picturesque streets of St. Augustine in a species of coma. She enwrapped herself in the musty atmosphere of the past, and succeeded in creating an illusion of importance to newly discovered facets of by-gone glories.

  It was, in one sense, a very remarkable demonstration of the power of a tenacious will over the call of physical necessity. During these days she exhibited a resistance and a fortitude which she viewed with a sort of awe at the moments when she let her mind stand on the sidelines and watch the struggle. A struggle which grew more intense as the days passed and her work did not bring the expected surcease.

  During this interval she was entirely cut off from all of the personalities whom she had contacted upon her arrival.

  She had last seen Nip and Tuck early on Sunday morning when they invaded her room to talk about the article. Bill had seemingly driven away into a void when he left her at Mrs. Tucker’s gate Sunday night.

  It was, Vergie told herself repeatedly, the very best thing that could have happened. Bill had doubtless told Nip and Tuck about the hoax. They must know her for an imposter, and thus did not care to seek her out.

  And Bill! He had, of course, gone his way with a certain measure of relief. There had been something akin to fight in Bill’s eyes when he looked at her as they stood together at the door of his room.

  Vergie had not realized it at the time. As her perceptions became sharper during the days while she strove for forgetfulness, she gained more and more toward an understanding of the struggle he had faced at that moment.

  She might have acted differently had she understood then. She realized, now, the effort it had cost Bill to live up to his own stern demands which were an outgrowth of his peculiar moral code.

  She had seen a demanding passion in his eyes which frightened her as she recalled it. She had seen his strong body tremble as he forced it to do what his personal integrity told him was the honest thing.

  The anger and hurt she had felt toward him was subtly transmuted to a fine glow of thankful understanding. She could not wholly accept his code. But she could understand it. And she did credit him with a splendid strength in taking what he believed to be the honest course.

  All this ratiocination was accompanied by a certain measure of pain, and was not wholly conducive to mental ease. In that it was conducted entirely on an inward plane, she refused to let it color her outward actions.

  This very factor of repression served to intensify the mental instability experienced as a result of her clear analysis of Bill’s motives.r />
  As the days dragged into weeks she felt that she stood upon the brink of a precipice. She dared not look downward, yet she dared not continue blindly because of the certain knowledge of disaster which walked with her.

  She endured three weeks of this before she met Mrs. Tucker on the street late one afternoon.

  Vergie had just spent two hours in the medieval atmosphere of the aged and grim Fort San Marco. Thence, she walked slowly northward, following the contour of the Matanzas River, drinking in the clear breeze from the bay, and absorbed in meditations.

  There is a small inlet from the river a few blocks north of the fort. On the other side is a neck of land which contains La Leche Cemetery. Beyond is the Fountain of Youth Park.

  Vergie met Mrs. Tucker near the western tip of the inlet. The meeting was wholly unpremeditated on the part of both.

  Only a half block separated them where they saw each other simultaneously. The street was deserted save for the two.

  Vergie’s first thought was to cross the street and avoid the awkwardness of a meeting, but she decided that would be foolish and pointless.

  So she lifted her chin and prepared to pass Mrs. Tucker with a bare nod of recognition. But Mrs. Tucker would not have it so. Her face was flushed and her eyes flew distress signals as they neared each other. She stopped and clutched Vergie’s arm.

  “Oh, Miss Ware,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Is that so?” Vergie was determined to be frigid.

  “Oh, my yes. So glad. I supposed … of course … that you had left when …” Her voice broke.

  “Why don’t you say it?” Vergie asked in cold anger. “When you tried to drive me out. No.” She set her lips in a thin line.

  “Please,” Mrs. Tucker cried. “I’m so sorry. I’ve felt perfectly miserable about it all. You must let me apologize, Miss Ware.”

  Vergie looked at her queerly. Miss Ware! That was the second time Mrs. Tucker had used the name. She, at least, had not learned of the hoax.