I don’t mind my inside stateroom-and-no-bath at all. And nobody else seems to mind it either. Perhaps it hasn’t leaked out. At least the waiters have treated me all right so far, and the deck steward deigns to speak when spoken to. By which I do not mean it would do for you and the girls. I know it wouldn’t. And that’s how Mr. Littlejohn feels too. His wife and daughters occupy an outside cabin two decks above. Mr. Littlejohn is my roommate. He is a Baptist, a Republican, a Rotarian, and a teetotaller. He hasn’t got any bad habits that I might pick up, except one—competing with the fog horn—
Here the letter stopped. He studied the last sentence then rubbed it out. Isobel found any attempt at humor irritating, when she was feeling injured. She felt injured most of the time, true, but the degree fluctuated. Mrs. Littlejohn, he now continued in pencil, weighs about two hundred pounds, doesn’t know how to dress, and, briefly, is an awful frump. He frowned as he surveyed this sentence. He liked Mrs. Littlejohn. She was so genuine. But derogatory remarks about another woman always had a salutary effect on Isobel’s positive self-feeling. So he let it stand. It wouldn’t hurt Mrs. Littlejohn any.
The two daughters are replicas of mama. The only time I’ve graced the ballroom floor was last night when I divided a waltz between them, as they had no partners whatsoever. It was agony for all concerned.
I cabled you from Gibraltar when we arrived this morning. As you told me, Gibraltar has little to offer of worth-while interest. We arrive at Majorca tomorrow. I shall have a look at the cathedral, but I understand there is not much else to see on the island, except scenery. Your advice that I waste no time around Nice, but go straight to Paris and make the most of my ten days doing all the “cultural” sight-seeing I can get in, is sound I guess. But it’s pretty late to do much about my culture now. I’ll probably never come over again. It’s your turn next, Isobel.
Don’t tire yourself all out with your church work. Your strength has always been limited, you know, and you must be careful not to overdo. I hope you’re having better nights. I know what a hard row you’ve had to hoe all these years with me, Isobel. I wish it might have been different. Perhaps it will be sometime. I shall do my best to make it so. Much love to all four of my harem.
Affectionately, Duveaux.
He had always been “Duveaux” to Isobel. The difference between Isobel’s “Duveaux” and the old college crowd’s “J.D.” was as great as between two contrasting characters in a monologist’s repertoire. To the old college crowd J.D. had always been the most straightforward, single-minded fellow in the world—one character under all conditions. But Isobel had developed in him a dual personality. Whenever in her company he was perpetually trying to be, or to appear to be, the kind of man she wished he was. But whenever she was absent, he resumed his instinctive one-tracked personality. At first he had been bothered by the necessity of constantly being a hypocrite, or constantly hurting his wife, but experience had long ago taught him that tact and hypocrisy were first cousins. However, he still drew a line between the two.
For instance, now re-reading his letter, he felt sure it would disappoint Isobel. She yearned for expressions of affection. He added dear to the first Isobel, then rubbed it out. It rang too false in his conscience. He added instead, my dear. There was all the difference.
He also added this postscript: I was sorry to leave Tina in tears. I know how terribly difficult she is these days, but she is very highstrung, and punishment is not good for her. Be patient with her till I come. I’ll drop her a line. D.
He folded and slipped this letter in an envelope and put it in the rack. On a fresh piece of paper he wrote the following:
Dear Tina, Get out your calendar and put a big circle around May 15. That’s the day you and I start for the woods, with old clothes, two fishing-rods, two painting-kits, and one cooking-kit. My mouth is already watering for fried trout, scrambled eggs, and flapjacks. What about yours? Only a few weeks more and we’ll be off for the sticks. Stiff upper lip, Tina old girl. Daddy.
This, too, he folded and slipped into another envelope. Then he proceeded to prepare for one of his chief delights—reading in bed. There was a row of books on an inserted shelf at the head of his bunk—a worn copy of the Oxford Book of Verse, two Modern Library volumes, The Education of Henry Adams, Conrad’s Victory, a shabby Baedeker, and a bright-jacketed detective novel. He selected Henry Adams, rolled his two pillows into a more compact mass, jammed them behind his head as close to the dim reading light as possible, wriggled his shoulders down into the correct location, leaned his book against his raised legs and drew in a deep sigh of contentment.
Isobel had never liked to have him read in bed. She couldn’t go to sleep until his light was out, even when he covered it with a dark paper and put a screen between their beds. Once or twice he had suggested separate rooms, but each time it had thrown her into one of her injured moods for days. The twin beds had become a symbol to Isobel of their marital relationship to which she clung with fervor. She resented even the screen between their beds, the evening paper if he held it too high, closed doors, or a lowered tone over the telephone. Often, when he hadn’t been aware of any recent act of exclusion, she would remark, with that combination of self-pity and condemnation which always filled him with compunction, “I feel just like a widow!”
Again he felt a prick of the old compunction and his face clouded. It didn’t seem right for him to be luxuriating in freedom, while Isobel was back there in her old despised rut, imprisoned in the out-of-date house of which she was so ashamed, on the unfashionable street which he had never been able to change for her, and definitely excluded from his activities. Between their beds now there loomed a screen that couldn’t be moved—a barrier consisting of wood, steel, a strip of Mediterranean Sea, a bit of Spain, the Rock of Gibraltar, and miles and miles of Atlantic Ocean, against which his compunction was powerless. So he dismissed it, according to the philosophy he applied to all unpleasant emotions which were futile.
He nuzzled his shoulder blades more comfortably into the pillows and opened Henry Adams. But he didn’t immediately begin to read. Instead he took off his glasses a moment and closed his eyes, to sense more keenly the details of his liberty. Mr. Littlejohn was outdoing the air-conditioner at present. He could hear the throbbing rumbles of the engines, the shrill squeak of a loose joint in the partition beside his pillow, and the vibration down here was terrific. But not one of these features annoyed him, for not one threatened his freedom. In fact they seemed to safeguard it—like a thick pile of sandbags. No telephone bell could get through such a din. He could read in bed all night if he wished. He could smoke in bed all night if he wished. And tomorrow he could explore an unknown island in the middle of the Mediterranean with an unknown lady, if he wished!
He put on his glasses, opened Henry Adams, found the place where he had left off on page 203. These words flashed up at him at the beginning of the next paragraph: Thus he found himself launched on waters he had never meant to sail.
When Charlotte hurried down the corridor to her room, her expression was too tinged with a glow. When she opened the door and turned on the light, she too surveyed herself critically in the mirror, and though she didn’t murmur “Hell,” a caustic grimace obliterated the glow. Camille! Picked out of the blue to go with Beauchamp! It no more went with her than Renée’s butterfly cape, or those red lips and slender brows. The brows were so far apart that it gave her a young, eager, hopeful look, absolutely out of character with herself—with Charlotte Vale, embittered and resigned. One cannot evade one’s personality by running away from it. Not at her age, anyway. She possessed neither the skill nor the resources with which to return the friendliness offered her by her companion today. No children to compare with his, no friends who might prove mutual, no marriage relationship in common. No sorrow even to make her understanding and sympathetic. And only one faded memory of ever having been wanted by a man. And that a bitter memory.
She rose abruptly and prepared for bed, pu
lling off her dress, her shoes, her stockings, with jerky, impatient motions, and tossing them carelessly aside to give vent to her displeasure. She thought that episode with Leslie had spent its strength. But evidently her system would never be rid of it. Like one of those fevers one sometimes contracts in the tropics, she would always be susceptible to a possible attack, such as had leaped out of the past tonight there in the ballroom. That fortnight with Leslie and the whole horrible summer that had followed was part of her forever. “We are what our memories are.”
She slipped her nightgown over her head, her thoughts pursuing old ruts like a flood of water in a dried river bed. Again she fell to visualizing herself with Leslie in their various trysting places on the ship that summer long ago.
Her mother’s cold had developed into an attack of the grippe, which had kept her in her stateroom for the first two weeks of the ocean voyage, so drugged most of the time that Charlotte could slip in and out without her mother’s keen awareness. Once outside the room discretion had been necessary, however, because of Leslie’s position on the ship, and their courtship had been carried on in concealed places which he knew about. Several times they had crawled into a lifeboat covered with canvas, so that Leslie’s brass buttons could not be seen in the moonlight. They would sit crouched in the bottom of the boat with their arms around each other. It had all been new to her. She hadn’t wanted Leslie to know how new. When he told her he’d rather have her than any girl on board, or any girl he’d ever known, because she was so responsive, she was anxious to live up to his expectations.
There had been a girl from New York on board the boat who had been attracted to Leslie and he to her, before that night he first kissed Charlotte on the deck, but the New York girl’s wiles were like a silly schoolgirl’s compared to her warm, generous, gorgeous love-making. No man had ever told her such a thing before. She didn’t know what he meant by “gorgeous” exactly, but she wanted terribly to deserve his adjective.
One of their favorite trysting places had been on the freight deck among the crates and canvas-covered automobiles. On the fatal night when her mother had appeared with a ship’s officer and a flashlight, she and Leslie had been concealed in the shrouds of a Packard limousine. Her mother had had dinner in the dining-salon that night for the first time since her illness. She had retired early, leaving Charlotte in the library to finish a novel with the understanding that she would follow within an hour. Her mother hadn’t been gone five minutes when she had missed her glasses. She returned to the library immediately in search of them. Charlotte wasn’t there! She couldn’t be found anywhere! Her mother sent for an officer finally. Her daughter might have fallen overboard!
Neither Leslie nor she heard the officer and her mother approach. When she saw the outline of her mother’s figure above her, silhouetted against the night sky and an instant later felt the stab of the officer’s flashlight she was struck dumb. But Leslie had been superb. He had told her mother, then and there, right in front of the other officer, too, that he wished to marry her daughter. He had said that they were already secretly betrothed. It had been the proudest moment of Charlotte’s life.
Her mother had sent her off instantly to her room, but that unhesitating declaration of Leslie’s had sustained her, kept her eyes dry, and her chin high, not only for that night, but during the ordeal that followed. All her life she had submitted to her mother’s opinions, and cowered beneath her will, but Leslie had placed her upon a throne (and before witnesses, too!) such as she had never occupied before. It gave her courage, strength, and confidence, not only in herself, but in Leslie too. His announcement proved how sincere he was, how fine, how brave, how all things admirable. And, above all, how much he loved her! Such had been her thoughts while she was a prisoner in the stateroom, or seated in icy silence beside her mother in their steamer chairs on the promenade deck. She had been filled with fierce tenderness for Leslie, which had grown fiercer with each hour of separation. Her determination to marry him had hardened like cement.
When her mother found that her opposition alone was ineffectual, she had a talk with the captain, delivering the spoils of her interview to Charlotte with the comment that the facts about Leslie would be more effective, perhaps, than her opinion. Leslie had never been to college or to a university. He had never been to an English public school! His parents were people without means or advantages. They lived in some little suburb on the outskirts of Liverpool. When their son became interested in the sea, did he offer his services to the English navy, her mother had demanded. No! Not he! He preferred the ease and luxuries of a commercial ocean liner! And what a name! Trotter. Why, it was simply humorous—Leslie Trotter! Her mother had always made effective use of ridicule.
But nothing her mother did or said had any effect on Charlotte. She had gone on quietly repeating Leslie’s statement to her mother, “We are engaged to be married,” and quietly adding, “and someday we’re going to be married.” Nobody could make a dent in her resolve. Nobody, that is, except Leslie. And nobody did. Except Leslie!
6
THE BRIGHT MORNING
She got into bed and turned off the light. She closed her eyes. But sleep would not come to her relief. She and her mother had remained on the ocean liner only three days after the discovery on the freight-deck. When her mother became convinced that her daughter would listen to neither reason nor ridicule, she decided to disembark at the next stop, and spend the summer in England. Her mother hadn’t told her of the plan till an hour before the liner docked. She hadn’t allowed her to see Leslie, warning her that if she even attempted to do so, it would cost young Trotter (she never referred to him as anything but “young Trotter”) his already endangered position on the boat. But Charlotte had managed to write him a hasty goodbye note.
The note began by assuring him that she loved him with all her mind and soul and body. It went on to say they were still engaged, and that she would marry him, in spite of her mother, whenever he said. She enclosed careful instructions as to how he might safely communicate with her during the summer. She and her mother were going first to London. They usually stayed at Almond’s or Brown’s. Never by any chance at The Savoy. Therefore, he was to write her at The Savoy. When she left London she would instruct the mail clerk at The Savoy to forward her letters to General Delivery in the various cities where her mother decided to go. She would not return to Boston with her mother in the fall, but would meet him whenever and wherever he said. And again she assured him of her undying love. This letter she had sealed, addressed, and slipped into the steward’s hand with a $5 bill when her mother’s back was turned.
Leslie had also written a goodbye note. Her mother had delivered it to her in that bleak little hotel in Norway where they had had to wait for three days for a boat to take them back to England. Charlotte could see herself now seated in their bedroom staring out of the window, not speaking unless spoken to, still calm, still tearless, still determined to marry Leslie, still confident that Leslie was determined to marry her. Leslie’s letter was unsealed, her mother explaining that it was understood that she should read it first.
Charlotte had never destroyed Leslie’s letter. She had hidden it in a deep pocket of her traveling portfolio, and had re-read it many times. It was at this moment in the drawer of the writing table across the room, unless someone had emptied the portfolio without her knowledge.
When Lisa had packed her trunk, she had gone to her room on Marlborough Street and collected a few personal articles which she thought would be useful on the cruise. Among them had been the portfolio, still in excellent condition. She had used it only that one summer. Charlotte had run across the portfolio this morning when dressing for shore. She had shoved it into the desk drawer, without giving a thought to the letter buried in one of its pockets.
She now rose, snapped on the light, and procured the portfolio. She shoved her hand down into the deep pocket. Yes, here it was! Written on the ship’s stationery in the small, slanting, precise script of
the name and address which Leslie had written in her address book the second day of their courtship. This is what the letter said:
Dear Charlotte,
This is to tell you your mother has had a talk with me and I think she is right about you and I. She has told me about your life and family, and I see now we should never of thought of anything serious. The captain has had a talk with me too, and told me I made a great mistake. I want to apologize to everybody for making so much trouble.
You will receive this after you leave the boat. I would like to of seen you, but I have given my promise to your mother and the captain that I will not. Anyway it would only be harder. Also I have promised your mother I will not write to you. Our friendship was very short and now it is quite all over and I am sorry for my mistake.
Sincerely yours,
John Leslie Trotter.
“Such misuse of words will, I hope, show you how unsuitable young Trotter would have been for you, my dear,” her mother had said, as she had sat staring at the letter, offering this comment as a palliating factor. But oh, it hadn’t been the words Leslie misused that had struck Charlotte so hard. But the words he omitted. Love, marriage, even engagement, all were absent. Over and over she had read those few lines, searching for some recognition of his declaration on the freight-deck. It had been like looking for water in an empty river bed when she was very thirsty.
As she stared now at the letter, ten, twelve, fifteen years later (No, longer still), she felt the old anguish, or was it pity, for that defeated, demoted, deserted girl, lying face down on that big ugly double bed in the bedroom in Norway, cut off from her source of supply of courage and confidence, reduced finally to uncontrollable weeping, while her mother, with that patronizing gentleness which always accompanied one of her victories, brought her hot milk and bromides, and laid wet cloths upon her head.
Now, Voyager Page 5
