“Of course not!” she said, smiling. “I didn’t say much at all. He did all the talking.”
“About me?”
“No, silly, about me. That business we were talking about last Friday night, remember? That stuff Mrs. Medgar had told him?”
Dr. Ansel sat down limp. “Oh, yeah, that.” Remembering his manners, he stood up again.
“Well, it’s all cleared up, the rumors, everything. Mr. Frawley talked to her and explained. He thought she might make me go before the board and explain to them, but he changed her mind about that. Everything’s okay. I’ve still got a job. They’re not going to fire me.”
“Ah, that’s good!”
“I thought you might like to know. You were so nice about it, speaking up. I thought maybe—”
“I’m glad it’s cleared up. I mean it, I’m really glad!”
“So am I. Pretty, isn’t it, the light outside? I was just wondering....” She paused, looking at him thoughtfully. He stood there rigid, but no longer quite so miserable. Clean-shaven, vested and buttoned, he looked in fairly good shape. She swallowed and said, “I was thinking, that as long as both of us are going, we might as well go to the wedding together.”
His mouth opened slowly.
“If you wouldn’t mind coming by for me,” she said.
Staring, he said in a flat voice, “You—want me to take you?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t mind.” He came around the desk, catching his toe on the chair leg. “Heck, no, I’ll be glad to!”
“And it’s fine with me if you bring your mother.”
“Yeah, I’ll have to.”
“About three-thirty—would that be all right?”
“Three-thirty, that’s swell. Thanks a lot!” He was shaking her hand. “Thanks a whole lot. I’ll be there, Johnny-on-the-spot. Golly,” he said, pumping up and down, “I didn’t think you’d ever speak to me again after—” He stopped, letting her hand drop as he turned away from her. “Oh God,” he said. It came up from the depths.
“Don’t worry about it. You had too much to drink, that’s all. And I shouldn’t have let you eat candy. They don’t mix, you know.” She said it playfully, but he kept his back to her, shaking his head. “Except for that, you were fine—reading poetry and talking. You were just fine.”
“Allen—” He turned with a face full of humility and hurt. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I was blubbering, feeling sorry for myself.”
“We all do sometimes. You’re no worse than the rest of us. Look, I’ve got to run. See you tonight.”
“Yes,” he said humbly, “thank you.”
“I’ll be ready at three-thirty.”
“I’ll be there.”
It was a good feeling, restoring a man’s self-respect, some measure of it. It would help her. She wouldn’t mind so much being seen with him. She wasn’t wild about it, but he was so miserable, poor thing. And he was not a bad fellow. Maybe she could forget the embarrassing side and concentrate on the other. She ran down the steps, determined to try.
“Hey. Teach!”
She stopped like a reined-up pony and turned around. Toby and George were coming up from the front door.
“We were looking for you!” They came up the hallway at a trot, grinning all over.
“We were over at your house,” said George. “Where you been?”
“Upstairs,” she said in a shaky voice.
“You still workin’?” said Toby.
“Just getting ready to go home.”
“We’ll go with you!”
He said it so merrily. They were all lit up, high spirits spilling over around them.
“Well,” she said and hesitated. She was a teacher—moral responsibility—dignity—“I’m awfully busy.”
The boys glanced at each other. “We’ve got to talk to you,” George said.
“What about?”
Another glance between them. “Well, the other night,” he began, “at baccalaureate—”
Toby broke in. “When you leavin’ town?”
“Sunday.”
“Sunday!” Both of them said it.
“Jeez,” said Toby, “that’s right around the corner.”
“Can’t you hang around?” George said.
“I’m afraid not. Summer school.”
“Do you have to go to summer school?”
“Have to.”
“That’s crummy.”
“I don’t want to go!” She hadn’t meant it to sound quite so woeful and she added hastily, “But I’ll like it fine, once I get into it. I’m looking forward to it, really. I have lots of friends up there and, well, it should be fun.” She smiled. “Got to run now. See ya.”
But George had stepped in front of her, blocking the way. Pronouncing slowly, he said, “You aren’t going to be with the Phud again tonight, are you?” He said it in disbelief, as if the very thought were preposterous.
“We saw you with him at baccalaurate. Are you going out with him, like on dates? Gee whiz, Teach, he’s not one of us—I mean, you shouldn’t be—why do you let yourself in for that! Listen, we been awful busy. Term papers and all finals and that. And farewell parties—but—” He glanced desperately at Toby, who stood tongue-tied and wistful, of no help at all. “But jeezy, there wasn’t time for much fun. Like we used to have. It was—oh, what the hell, Teach, we miss you!”
“It ain’t the same without you,” Toby said.
The prettiest sounds she had ever heard.
“I got the scholarship.” George said.
Restraint forgotten, she gave a cry of delight and opened her arms to him, exultant. But before he could enter, she had drawn them back, clasping her hands together. “I knew you’d get it!”
“The letter came yesterday. I could hardly wait to tell you. We were saving it for tonight.”
“So we could celebrate,” said Toby.
They had come back! After all this time, after she had thought it all out, faced up to her foolishness, and stopped wanting them, here they were, sassy and serious and funny, just as they used to be. After she thought spring was over!
“Come on!” they said.
They had missed her and forgiven her.
But she had walked out of the dean’s office older and soberer and saved. She must go home now and press her black gown. Yet there they stood, in her way, expectant, young and alive, on the side of joy. Her decent, her rightful kin. Who cared that they were only schoolboys! She had been happier with them than with anyone else in her life. Oh, hell and damn, why did they have to come back now!
She drew in her breath and held it till her voice should be steady. “I’m afraid I can’t this time. Sorry.” And smiling, she walked away.
Twenty-five
The mortuary hush was broken by the swish of footsteps up and down the carpeted aisles and the low groan of the organ behind the tapers and banked lilies. Dim and stuffy, the church was lit with the jewel hues of the stained glass. The afternoon sun, shining through saints, cast a blue pall over heads and shoulders, streaks of amber and the crimson stain of the Blood over the pews. A feeble breeze came through the open lower half of the windows. Maxine’s wedding day had arrived clear and serene and hotter than a pistol.
From time to time expectancy rose to a murmur as the ushers went up and down, delivering guests to their proper places. The academic community—college, high school, faculty wives, and Dr. Ansel’s mother—sat as a group among the friends of the bride. Allowing for air apace between them, as much as they thought permissible, they took up several rows on the west side of the church.
Allen sat in the middle of the pew, behind Mr. Lord, Gladys on one side, Verna and Mae Dell on the other. They had let her in among them again. Wearing her new hat like a halo, she sat resigned and acceptant, with a feeling of beatification, as if through penance and sacrifice she had come close to sainthood. Or as close as sh
e was likely to get. At any rate, she was chastened and she had given up Toby and George. Though she had strayed, she was back now among the flock. And didn’t the Lord rejoice more in the one than in the ninety and nine? Well, maybe. Anyway, here she was.
She glanced along the row: Dr. Ansel on the other side of Mae Dell; beyond Gladys, the Pickerings, and nearest the window, the dean and Mrs. Frawley. Up and down, the alternation of flowered chiffon and Palm Beach suits. The earnest, professional faces, the accumulation there of study, hard work, penury, forbearance, and dedication. A genus to which she belonged.
The ushers in their white jackets and satin-striped trousers still passed back and forth. One of them she recognized as Maxine’s brother, looking like an altar boy grown too tall for his surplice. He had come down the aisle with a lady on his arm who, as she saw now, was Mrs. Medgar, wearing a dress of gray chiffon and a bouquet of a hat. A very beautiful hat it was, though long out of date. As the usher handed her in, she looked up to thank him and she smiled. Her cheek was touched lightly with rouge. The boy strode back up, young and tall and intent on his courteous task.
Glancing again at Mrs. Medgar across the aisle and one row up, Allen mused on that unexpected smile and the fluttery gray dress let out to accommodate a body no longer slender and young; the absurd girlishness of the face, its severity painted over. Out of a small round rouge box, she imagined, on an ivory tray with the brush and comb and the ivory hair-receiver. And nearby, in an ivory frame, a man with large, dark eyes. All that was left of her youth, hidden in a small back room. Joy lost, hope dead, love reduced to the tyranny of a hidden voice.
But she mustn’t romanticize, she reminded herself, nor let a little sympathy put her off guard. Life had not been kind to Mrs. Medgar, and on any who had not suffered as she had the lady would have her revenge. Though she had lost this round to Mr. Frawley, she would not lose another.
Nevertheless, Allen could not keep her eyes off the hat, nor her thoughts from that tinted smile. Last week Mrs. Medgar had buried her husband. (Called out of town, Mr. Frawley had said. It was Dr. Ansel who told her why. Ansel the omniscient, who had it from a seamstress who knew a lady who lived next door to Mrs. Medgar. The seamstress was a friend of his mother’s.)
The organ prelude throbbed to a close. There was a quiet stir among the congregation, and a few heads turned toward the door. But the organist faced them front again, and a soprano in blue ruffles began to sing.
The birthday of my life is come, my love is come to me.
Gladys put an elbow in Allen’s ribs. “Shall we sing ‘Happy Birthday’?” But there was no sizzle through the back teeth and Gladys sat quietly through the rest of the song and through “I Love You Truly.”
A doleful song, when you thought about it. Life with its sorrows, life with its tears, and sung like a dirge every time. Women always cried. Men squirmed. In the row ahead Mrs. Lord touched a handkerchief to her eyes, and Allen herself felt a spasm of sentiment. Weddings were like that. Even Gladys was sneaking a handkerchief to her nose. (Old sizzling Gladys—had she really, as Dr. Ansel said, been married once to some rotter with a few other wives? Or something of the sort. And were all her giggles and dumb little jokes a cover for a broken heart? If so, she was very brave about it. And whatever it was, she wept now about something.) Life with its tears indeed! Gone is the sorrow.... Like hell it is. Look at it all around. What a jumble life is, she thought in sudden exasperation, how treacherous and splendid and ridiculous all at once—as it was now, all this blest expensive pageantry, the air thick with women’s sorrows, lost youth and love gone by, and the church got up like a funeral on a hot June afternoon.
A laugh or maybe a sob or both caught her in the middle, and she felt another nudge in the ribs. “You’re chugging,” Gladys whispered.
The soprano finished. During the brief organ interlude the bishop appeared in the full dignity of his white and gold. There was a suspenseful pause. Then, with a blast that shook the windows, the opening bars of the processional resounded through the church. Every female head snapped to attention as the first bridesmaid stalked down the aisle, studiously keeping time. Three others followed and behind them, sweating like a pig, the maid of honor in blue dotted Swiss. Then, summoned by Wagner, the bride appeared, smiling, rose begirt, a cumulus on her father’s arm, trailing a drift of heirloom lace and delicate sweet scent. Maxine did not sweat. As the groom stepped forth to join her at the altar, a shaft of golden light through the stained glass fell across their shoulders.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here…”
Up and down the row the handkerchiefs were busy. Only Verna and Dr. Ansel’s mother sat unmoved, holding their pocketbooks. Allen leaned sideways to see around Mr. Lord and wondered if Mrs. Medgar had wept all her tears long ago.
“… and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate, instituted of God…”
Wedged between Gladys and Verna, with Lordy directly ahead, she could see very little. But the bishop had a fine, resonant voice that carried throughout the church.
“… not to be entered into inadvisedly, but reverently, discreetly, soberly, and in the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him speak now, or hereafter forever hold his peace.”
The bishop paused for a breath, long enough for Allen to think of Jane Eyre and the madwoman’s brother, half hoping that a voice would rise from the back of the church and interrupt this marriage. For a reason she could not put her finger on, it had begun to disturb her. The opening blast of the “Wedding March” had shaken loose some premonition of doom and disappointment.
But there would be none of that in this honorable marriage. Not unless Max … but what could possibly happen to Max? He would come safely home. And Maxine would be an honorable wife, happy and secure in the place she had chosen.
The heat was stifling. The to-and-fro of handkerchiefs made a nervous flutter all over the church. How could they stand it up there at the altar with candles all around them? How could they breathe? It was hard enough back here. The smell of wax and hothouse flowers was suffocating. She glanced longingly at the open window, many bodies away. Green grass and a strip of deep green shade. Maxine should have been married out there. The poor thing, trapped in ninety-eight yards of lace, and all those candles burning!
“Max Philip,” the voice was an admonition, “wilt thou have this woman … love her, comfort her, and keep her … so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will!”
“Maxine Olivia, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, comfort him, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will.”
“Who giveth this woman to be married…?”
Allen listened with a shudder. Did she know—Maxine, with her head full of dinner dances and pineapples on doilies—did she know what she was getting into? She had walked smiling down the aisle to be delivered into bondage, never to be her own woman again, but the property of another and, for all the honor and comfort, beholden to his laws. Did she know what she was doing?
The voices rose and fell, stating, repeating. “I, Max Philip… I, Maxine Olivia … so long as we both shall live… Till death do us part.” Till death…
There had been a time when she thought she might like to be married, someday, far in the future. But now as she listened, amid all the trappings of the wedding, it didn’t seem thrilling at all. The more she heard of the terms of wedlock, the more threatening they sounded. Thou wilt, or else! Thou wilt keep and cherish, forsake all others, honor, obey and bring a scuttle of coal, and thou wilt unto death. Her ear itched. The hat was too tight and her hair was sweating. In front of her, streaks of sweat ran down Lordy’s neck into his collar. The poor man was dying of the heat. They were all dying, all around her, upright and proper, all in a row.
> She looked out again at the cool, deep shade, the stir of leaves in a little wind, and pools of sunlight quivering like water. Out there the day was alive and breathing. If it weren’t for all the bodies in between, she could be out in a flash. And wouldn’t that be a fine old ruckus—Miss Liles, conductor of seminars, out the window and gone, with a kick of her heels and the back of her hand to Thou wilt unto death!
She could see herself now, clambering over all those knees, nipping over the sill, to the horrification of everyone around. It tickled her. She held her mouth tight to keep from laughing. She wouldn’t dare try anything like that. She would get stuck in the window. But it made her feel better just to think about it. There had been enough here of death and forever.
But now that the thought of escape had come, it would not go away. It hung on, teasing and wheedling, a voluptuous little thought, tempting as sin, that grew louder by the minute—as if some dissembling evil spirit were luring her with sweet sounds and delicious aromas away from safety and warmth. It was whispering slyly of adventures, new, bold, and possible, of all the serious heights she had imagined all her life. Telling her she did not belong in this place, that there within reach was all outdoors and a whole wide world full of roads not taken, and how would she know where they led if she didn’t go forth and look! There would be hell to pay if she did, and remorse such as she hadn’t known yet—fire and brimstone and blizzard and itch—and the road could end at the town dump. And yet, could she not go?
She looked hard at Lordy’s perspiring neck.
Up at the altar some business of the ceremony was going on in silence. A tingle crept down her spine like a spider trapped under her clothes. Then the bishop’s authoritative voice:
“Repeat after me: ‘With this ring I thee wed…’”
“With this ring I thee wed…”
“In the name of the Father—”
In the name of the Father, how was she going to get out of it now? She came to with a start. She had hoped and repented, even prayed a little, and promised all sorts of repayment in her heart, if only they would allow her to stay, and now that they had allowed it, she didn’t want to stay here at all. Her father had delivered her freedom from beyond the grave
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