“This won’t do! Let me feel of your feet. Soaking! Take off your shoes and stockings. I’m going to rub your feet.” He did so vigorously. “Why didn’t you tell me you were cold? Relax. Give me your hands.”
She managed somehow to place the jerking members in his. For the last hour her muscles had been threatening her with this trembling state, but not until help was at hand did she lose control of them. She tried to tell him how ashamed she was, but her chattering teeth prevented speech.
“Take off your overcoat. Your suit coat, too. Why, you’re soaked to the skin! Look here, I’m going to pound your shoulders till you cry out for mercy.” He did so. Then, stopping abruptly, “What have you got in that suitcase?”
“Nothing but a thin silk dress,” she replied, “which I put in, in case you gave me a chance to change before dinner,” she managed to explain.
“Well, I’ll give you a chance now. Then you’re going to have a stiff drink of whiskey. Understand? I’m going to have a drink, too. Afterwards we’re going to roll up like a cocoon in the laprobe, pile our overcoats and those strips of carpet on top of us, and pray our two heat units will keep us from freezing to death.” He struck a match and raised the cover of the suitcase.
It was a fitted case, a going-away present from Lisa. The silver and crystal of the toilet articles scintillated in the puttering light of J.D.’s match. He examined its meager offering. Black suède pumps, fawn-colored stockings, a cherry-colored print dress, a folded article of tea-rose silk and lace. A slip.
“Take off that wet waist, and put on all this dry stuff,” he ordered brusquely, and tossed the articles into her lap.
The match went out. The shift was made in darkness, J.D. assisting with the stockings, slipping them onto her feet like mules and pulling the inverted tubes over her heels. “Stick out your legs.”
She obeyed. He wrapped something around them which recalled wool leggings, warmed by a radiator. The leggings were J.D.’s suit coat warmed by his body.
“Here’s the whiskey; you’ll have to drink it straight.” Striking another match which he held between his teeth, he poured a generous portion into Giuseppe’s empty coffee-bottle, then drank from the flask himself. “Come on, now, we’ll wrap up.”
Throughout this performance J.D. was as impersonal as if he had been called in to give first aid. As she lay against the warm wall of his chest, she was convinced she was no more to him than an inanimate object which he was patiently holding from flying to pieces. She, too, felt a similar suspension of the personal relationship. He had become simply a source of much-needed heat. As the jerks gradually diminished, she drew in a deep breath, and closed her eyes. A permeating drowsiness stole over her.
The improvised couch ran up into a right-angled corner beneath the roof. J.D. had placed Charlotte’s suitcase across the corner. Leaning against this solid support, he helped her firmly and easily. It gave him great satisfaction when he felt her body gradually relaxing. She lay, finally, limp and confiding in his arms. In his mind’s eye he could see exactly how those long black lashes of hers looked, folded down on her ivory-smooth cheeks.
She had fallen asleep almost as soon as the twitching had ceased. He didn’t, however, loosen his arms. Leaning his head back against the rolled-up seat covers on top of the suitcase, he closed his eyes, and five minutes later also fell asleep. . . .
Charlotte was the first to awake. Her sensation was of warmth—delicious, luxurious warmth, even to her toes and fingertips; her second, of complete relaxation, no less delicious; and her third, of silence. She could hear no hail, no rain, no blustering wind. She could hear nothing at all but a deep, muffled thud, thud, thud, like a measured drumbeat far away. Never before had she listened to the beating of a heart three inches beneath her ear.
She lay perfectly still, keenly aware of all the details, but, oddly enough, unamazed, unperturbed, as calmly curious as if she were lying in a bed at home reading of this situation in a novel. Her companion was asleep. Both his arms had fallen away from her. Only the laprobe held them together now.
Very cautiously she raised her head and looked around. The sky was filled with scudding clouds through which the moonlight was filtering. It was light enough now to see the outline of her hand. She looked up at J.D. His head was thrown backward and had fallen a little sidewise. His lips were slightly parted. His breathing was that of profound sleep.
For a long minute or more she gazed at him. So that was how they looked! So off-their-guard, ungroomed and unaware. His overcoat was pulled grotesquely askew showing his bare, defenseless neck. But he wasn’t repulsive to her, not even when he made a little puffing sound occasionally when he let out his breath. He was like a child asleep—like the little boy “Jerry” whom he used to be, she imagined. What presumption! What did she know about a little boy? What manner of woman was she, anyway, to prolong such intimacy a moment longer than was necessary? Now that she was warm and fit again, she should wake him instantly and ask to be released. Instead of which she laid her head back, closed her eyes, and in five minutes was asleep again. And this time dreaming.
When she awoke the second time, his arms were no longer limp and listless. In fact it was their pressure that woke her. She had been dreaming about Leslie again. She did not struggle to escape the unmistakable embrace. Instead one hand groped upward and grasped his shoulder. His arms tightened, and halfsitting up, he leaned down and kissed her! On the lips! As Leslie used to do! She returned it as she used to do, as if there had been no interval between Leslie’s last kiss on the deck of a boat, and this next one on the top of a hill.
Afterward he unwound the laprobe that bound them and stood up. Leaning down he arranged it over her, shoved the seat covers beneath her head, and extricated his coat, explaining gently that he would walk up and down outside for a while. No, he wouldn’t go far away. She must go to sleep again. Which she actually did!
The next time she awoke, it was to an apricot-tinged sky, and to a cheery voice calling down from the roof, “Morning’s here! Time to get up!”
She struggled to a sitting position and swung her feet around to the ground. The patch of hilltop which she could see was yellow-brown. Slowly the events of the night returned to her as she pulled on her heavy shoes and leaned down to tie their stubborn laces.
How much had been dream, how much reality? Had he held her in a tender embrace for five minutes or half an hour? Had he kissed her once, twice, or three times? Had he kissed her at all? She had been dreaming about Leslie. Perhaps Leslie’s personality had merged into his, as had happened in her dream two nights ago. But as her consciousness cleared, she knew better. Once fully awake, one knows beyond all shadow of doubt what is dream and what is fact, unless one’s mind is deranged. That was one consolation.
These were Charlotte’s thoughts as she dragged on her damp skirt and pulled on her coat. J.D. was already dressed, even to the wet tie knotted into the semblance of a four-in-hand. He scanned the surrounding landscape which had emerged. There were olive trees not many feet below the hilltop, here and there the pointed tops of cedars and cypress, and rectangles of cultivated terraces. Walls appeared, terra-cotta–colored roofs, and chimneys. And finally a chimney with smoke curling out of it!
“I can see the smoke from the fire where our coffee is brewing,” he called out gaily. “Nearly ready?”
“Nearly,” she called back, drawing the comb through her short black hair, and arranging it in the mirror of her fitted suitcase as best she could.
When finally she joined him, he exclaimed, “How marvelously you look on the ‘morning after,’ Camille.” A flippant remark, as if to imply that whatever had happened in the night, it was not to be taken seriously.
“I was lucky in having my suitcase, Armand! I even put on lipstick!” She could also be flippant.
As they stumbled down the steep road, he carried her suitcase, she his camera and her shopping bag. Whenever possible they shortened their descent by short cuts. It was rough going; th
eir remarks were brief, and jerky. They stopped at the first habitation and in their best Italian asked for a cup of hot coffee, a pail of hot water, and the privilege of drying their clothes before the kitchen stove.
But there were no such luxuries as hot coffee and kitchen stoves at the first habitation. Instead, they were offered a bowlful of the family’s breakfast porridge, and ate it with relish, while a group of black-eyed children stood by and stared. Afterward they were given a jug of hot water and a basin placed on a three-legged stool before a stone hearth with something that looked like roots smoldering on it. Laughingly they took turns putting to good use the oval French soap in the suitcase, also its brush and comb, clothes brush, and even a nail file.
By the time they had finished their breakfast and ablutions, and were on their way again, seated in a two-wheeled cart drawn by a donkey, the sun was high and warm, and their clothes were fast drying on their backs. As they joggled along the road, still no reference had been made to the events of the night. It occurred to Charlotte that if she had questioned how much had been reality, and how much dream, was it not possible that it all had been a dream to J.D.? A dream of which he had no memory as yet? Well, certainly she must show no knowledge of it.
When they had stopped the donkey cart and inquired of the driver his destination, he had replied, “Mercato.” Neither had heard of Mercato. “Grande mercato! Molto grande!” the driver had explained, as they demurred. It must be a town of some importance, then. So they had accepted the seat he offered them on the top of a box in the back of his cart.
There were open cleats on the front of the box through which glimpses of gray feathers and yellow beaks could be seen. Every little while the driver stopped at a farmyard and disappeared, returning with an armful of feathers, which he shoved into the box through a trapdoor. The meaning of mercato finally dawned on J.D. Their drive was going to a market.
“Another jobber,” he smiled at Charlotte as they waited outside a farmyard gate. And then abruptly: “How are you standing it? You must be just about all in after last night.”
“I don’t know why I should be all in. I had several hours’ sleep.”
“Were you asleep all the time?”
“Practically all the time.”
“I thought you were probably just dreaming.”
“I thought you were, too.”
He grasped her hand eagerly. “I was! The most beautiful dream! And woke up and found it was true! You do remember, then?”
“Vaguely. I don’t know what you can think of me. It was because of that strong drink. I’m not accustomed to it.”
“Well, I am! I’ve no such excuse to offer. So what can you think of me! Married. Tied hand and foot to a situation I’ve got to go back to.”
“Well, don’t let it worry you. I’ve got a situation I’ve got to go back to also. I don’t see that any harm was done to your situation or to mine either. A kiss or two! Over now. Soon forgotten. In case your conscience may be troubling you, you’ve probably done me a good turn. Doctor Jaquith once suggested that a flirtation would be excellent for me. It’s a very effective measure for pulling one out of a depression.” She turned and gave him one of her twisted, sarcastic smiles.
“Don’t, please,” he said shortly.
Before she could reply, their driver returned, stuffed another squawking contribution into the box, and jumped up onto the narrow board in front.
12
ON THE BALCONY
J.D. dropped Charlotte at the Excelsior Hotel in Naples shortly before noon. From the donkey-cart they had transferred to a Salerno-bound bus, from the bus to the most reliable automobile available, and had returned to Naples by the same route they had come, covering the thirty-odd miles speedily and uneventfully.
After dropping Charlotte, J.D. sought the American Express Office, not delaying long enough even to change his clothes and get a much-needed shave. He felt a distinct wave of love for his country when he entered the doors of this American haven-ofhope, and a tall young man with a charming smile asked him if there was any way he could be of use to him.
His story elicited not only the quick interest, but the quick efficiency, too, of the entire office staff. J.D. had taken the number of the overturned car, and was able to draw a fairly accurate map of its present location on the hilltop. The young man said he would take care of all details connected with it; also would inform the cruise ship by cable of Miss Vale’s safety. When told she would like to rejoin the cruise, he delved into folders, consulted schedules, and announced that there was a liner due in Naples a week later, sailing straight to Alexandria. It could drop Miss Vale at Alexandria, where her own boat would be lying at dock while its passengers were in Cairo and Luxor. He wasn’t sure whether he could obtain space for Miss Vale, but he would look it up immediately and let Durrance know at his hotel.
J.D. called Charlotte on the telephone and reported, adding he would be at her hotel around four o’clock to tell her the result of the young man’s investigation.
Charlotte was waiting for him in the lounge, seated at a writing table by one of the long windows that look out on the Via Partenope that skirts the bay, and she caught a glimpse of him as he drove up to the hotel. He was seated in the back of still another automobile, behind a chauffeur in visored cap and uniform.
She still wore the olive-green suit, but it had been pressed, and the brogans shone like polished copper. She wore a new blouse beneath her suit-coat, new light sheer stockings, new light chamois gloves, and, as a last touch, had added a dash of Quelques Fleurs to her ensemble.
“Good gracious! I don’t know you, Camille!” were J.D.’s first words when he found her.
“Same here, Armand.” For he, too, had been visiting the shops, and was smart in a fawn-colored gabardine coat and an almost flashy tie.
He drew up one of the big armchairs, and sat down on its extreme edge. “It’s all right about your reservation on that boat. I told the American Express chap to go ahead and engage it for you. Then I asked him how he’d advise you to spend the week you’ve got to hang around in this vicinity. He suggested Ravello. I told him I was an architect and had got to see that abbey for business reasons. He advised a reliable car and driver, and suggested that I take the reverse route this time, via Sorrento and Amalfi. The road to Ravello branches off at Amalfi. It just occurred to me that I could drop you off there. As a usual thing I wouldn’t indulge in an automobile, but I’ve got to spend my Monte Carlo winnings somehow.”
Charlotte remarked prosaically, “I’ll go halves on the automobile.”
“You’ll go to Ravello?”
“Well, I’ve got to kill time somewhere.”
“I have the car at the door!”
“You have? Of all the things in the world!”
“And all my stuff is in it! Can you come immediately? Are you packed?”
“Am I packed? No! There are still my two hatboxes and shoe trunk to do. But I’ll tell my maid to hurry.”
“Razz me to your heart’s content! I love it! Come on, let’s get started. We’ll have our dinner party in Sorrento yet!”
The hotel at Sorrento was built on top of a cliff. The windows of the dining room were almost flush with the cliff. The table they occupied was placed close to the window, so they ate their ravioli and drank their white Orvieto looking out over the edge of a natural seawall which fell several hundred feet to the water below.
It wasn’t until they were drinking their black coffee that J.D. broached the subject of his own plans for the night. Was there any objection in his putting up in Ravello until morning? Of course he could go to another hotel in Ravello, but it didn’t seem to him that anybody could question the propriety of two victims of the same disaster traveling in the same car behind the same chauffeur en route to the same popular resort, and once their signing their own names on the same hotel register.
She demurred in silence.
“I promise to sit at a different table in the dining room,” he pursue
d, “and say, ‘Good morning, Miss Vale, I hope you slept well,’ so people can hear me and never guess I’m head-overheels in love with you!”
Banter, of course! His play-instinct was irrepressible! “Honestly, I feel old enough to be your mother sometimes,” sighed Charlotte.
“Do you? Well, then, please let me come with you, Mother. Anyway, don’t say, ‘No.’ Say, ‘I’ll see.’”
“I’ll see,” she acquiesced with an indulgent smile.
“Adorable Mother! Don’t we have fun!”
Darkness had fallen by the time they were again on the road, following its snake-like convolutions cut into the cliffs that bind the scalloped shore-line between Sorrento and Amalfi. They were both too impressed by the unearthly effect of the nightshrouded panorama for continuous conversation on any subject. The young new moon had been shrouded in clouds when they started, but on the first height where they stopped, she emerged from her filmy draperies—nude, luminous, and lovely.
“Like a young girl on the way to her bath,” J.D. suggested, as he observed her reflected in the sea. A “suggestive” remark, Isobel would have called it.
Charlotte was silent for a moment, as if reflecting. “No,” she said finally. “She is not on the way to her bath, but on the way out of it. She glistens so.”
“You win!” J.D. exclaimed, conscious of another of those thrills of companionship.
It was nearly midnight when they rolled into Ravello’s little flat, mesa-like square. It was wrapped in darkness! A sleepy porter appeared at the door of the automobile when it came to a halt, to guide the expected guest to her hotel. No automobile or even horse-drawn vehicle could proceed beyond the square. Narrow passageways with intervals of steep steps led to the houses above. Charlotte’s hotel was located near the town’s peak. Oh, yes, the porter assured J.D., there was plenty of room at the hotel for the signor too.
The hotel had once been a palace. The contrast between its steep, narrow approach and its spacious tiled vestibule was impressive. Once inside the hall, a smiling little woman, alert as a robin, appeared from somewhere in the rear. She spoke English with a strong Scottish accent. She knew all about the automobile accident and the missed boat. The American Express young man had told her over the phone. Such a shame! But she had a lovely room all ready for Miss Vale, and had lit a fire in its grate. Yes, she had other unoccupied rooms. Why, certainly she’d be delighted to accommodate the gentleman too. In fact at this hour of night it would be folly for him to push on. Now if they’d just register.
Now, Voyager Page 11
