by Anya Seton
He had answered in measured tones, “I think you want to go very much and that you should. I think that either the bond between us is strong enough to hold through any situation, or it isn’t. And one might as well find out.—Besides, you deserve some fun.”
“Oh, don’t be so damn logical! You don’t give a damn about me—that’s what it is—and Jean asked me if you were jealous!” At that moment she had seen a strange look in back of his eyes. “Oh, I don’t mean that exactly but darling, if you’d only come with me. We’d have such a good time. Come for a few days, surely you could wangle it at the mine.”
“No, Andy—you know I can’t. I’m sorry.”
They had parted quietly, when Dart went on shift that morning. He had said little in the way of farewell, except to suggest that she might phone the mine and leave a message when she was ready to come back; he would then help arrange transportation. And beneath the phrase, “when you’re ready to come back,” she had almost thought she heard a startling echo—an “if.” How had the rift between them boiled up so rapidly, and why should so simple a thing as a holiday with her family carry such painful overtones sounding a fundamental discord in their love? Was it because of Tim, though Dart would not say so? Was it because of Dart’s own stubborn pride and his self-sufficiency? She did not know, but she knew that they had suddenly lost each other, and that she had the unhappy sensation of having stepped down one branch of a crossroads, and that she felt, despite reason, the discomfort of guilt.
Her heart was sore as she sat on the back seat with her mother and watched the sheer rock cliffs go by on the Gila Canyon road to Winkleman.
She listened absently to her mother’s little shrieks of terror, to Jean’s driving advice and to George’s grunts, but she found that she had lost much of her own fear of these mountain roads, though George was by no means the driver Dart was. Dart. The thought of him gave her an aching emptiness in the pit of her stomach, and a growing resentment too. Iron man, she thought with anger; stoic. Won’t show emotion. Doesn’t need to relax. It’s the Indian in him. This indictment gave her a vicious satisfaction and she repeated it to herself, though part of her knew it to be unfair. It’s the Indian in him. But I’m not an iron woman and I’m not an Indian.
“You look very grim, Andy,” said Jean, craning around to the back seat. “If it’s George’s driving, I don’t wonder. When in the name of sweet heaven do we get off this horrible road?”
Amanda relaxed suddenly. What the hell, she thought. Dart will come around all right and I won’t think about him now. I’m going to have a good time and I’m going to have it! “Other side of Winkleman, I guess—” she said. “I’ve never been south. But, George, look out for the washes, some of them are probably running.”
“My God,” said George, “what a country. Never in my whole life have I put in a night like last night, mattress stuffed with straw, filthy sheets, mice, and every dog in the town yapping beneath the window. Drunks, too, in the next room fighting.”
“Well, it’s a western mining camp, a real one—” said Amanda laughing. “They’re not as romantic as the books say.”
Jean chortled. “And that’s the truth, little one. You certainly got plunged into something pretty rugged. It’ll do my heart good to see you back in—in civilization.” She had nearly said “back in circulation” but that would have been too crude as yet. Though Amanda was obviously ripe for rescue from a dreary and incompatible marriage, there was still the force of physical attraction to reckon with, the sex urge that had overpowered the girl in the first place. One could not argue with it—all psychologists agreed on that—but it might be diverted-to a more suitable object. Jean herself had never had any trouble diverting her urges, or at least restraining them so that they should not interfere with common sense. Amanda was of weaker clay and must thus be helped by those who were stronger. If I’d only known sooner that Tim was really so serious about Amanda, I never would have let her marry Dart, Jean thought, with a spurt of irritation at her mother who had not mentioned the true state of affairs in time. Muzzy and sentimental, her mother was, often childishly impulsive, like Amanda.
Mrs. Lawrence now corroborated Jean’s opinion by saying, “Oh, look, what lovely flowers! I had no idea the desert would be so beautiful. You know, I think the country is romantic, even Lodestone. Or could be if one shared it with somebody one loved.” And she patted Amanda’s hand. Since seeing Dart again, she had been growing vaguely uneasy. The perfectly natural little vacation no longer shone in its earlier light—“young people having fun together, and visiting Tim in Arizona is no different from visiting his family at Palm Beach or South Hampton.” It was a great pity Dart could not have come, too. Her thoughts went no further than that. She had long ago become adept at sliding away from unpleasant complications but she liked and respected Dart, no matter how inadequate a setting he provided for Amanda, and she was uncomfortable. Mrs. Lawrence, unlike her elder daughter, believed in love.
At five o’clock in the afternoon they finally arrived at El Castillo and Amanda, electrified by impact with the lost world of luxury and play, put aside all disturbing thoughts of Dart or love and plunged herself determinedly into the present glittering moment.
The enormous hotel was built of pink stucco along the lines of the Alhambra, and in its grounds plentiful irrigation had produced tropical gardens. There were palm trees and camellia bushes and orange trees and hibiscus and half an acre of emerald-green lawn. There was a marble swimming pool and along its margin a row of pink cabañas with red tile roofs, that sparkled in the aquamarine waters. There were detached cottages, too, set here and there in the grounds beneath the palm trees and bearing Spanish names like Paloma and Mariposa and Encarnación.
A half-dozen bellboys dressed like toreadors rushed for the car as George drew up under the porte-cochére. They were all ushered into the tiled and gilded lobby by a bowing gentleman in a morning coat who said he was the manager and that Mr. Merrill had made arrangements for them. Mr. Merrill, not knowing their exact arrival time, was playing tennis on the farthest court but he would be notified at once. In the meanwhile, perhaps they would like to go to their rooms. They would. Amanda in particular wished very much to make certain repairs to her appearance before seeing Tim. She glimpsed several pretty women playing bridge at the end of the lobby and lying sipping drinks in deck chairs in the patio, women in pale crépe de chine pastels, with pearls in their ears and shining waved hair.
Mrs. Lawrence retired to a room upstairs in the hotel but Tim, it seemed, had reserved two adjoining cottages for the Walkers and Amanda.
Amanda’s was “Mariposa,” the butterfly. This theme appeared on the green painted door and was stenciled on the furniture and seemed to the excited girl to be a charming omen. The minute the door had closed on the toreador bellboy, Amanda shed her twenty-one years of dignity, kicked off her shoes and danced around the two luxurious rooms. Both the bedroom and sitting room had fireplaces with fires ready laid, both had views of the tropical garden and distant Catalina Mountains, both had telephones—and the bathroom, bluetiled and crammed with warmed thick fluffy towels! My God, thought Amanda, turning on both taps full tilt, I haven’t had a real hot soaking bath since I married!
She enjoyed herself so much and took so long to dress that the phone between the beds rang while she was still fastening the snaps on her powder-blue crepe dress. She jumped and then giggled. It had been a long time since she had heard a phone ring. She picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”
The once so familiar drawling voice said, “Darling, you don’t have to get all that beautiful, do you? I’ve been waiting hours to see you. Can I come right down?”
“Oh, Tim—” she said laughing. “I’ve been having such fun—” She hesitated, but after all, she had a private sitting room. “All right, come on. I’m dying to see you, too.”
She watched from the window as he came running down her little graveled path, in white tennis flannels; white silk shirt s
howing bronzed throat, the straight sleek fair hair, narrow cleft chin, exactly as she had seen him a thousand times before. But he looks shorter, she thought suddenly. I suppose because I’m so used to Dart. The thought of Dart was unwelcome. She rushed to the door crying, “Hail” and found herself close in his arms being kissed.
“Hey, wait a minute—” she said, backing off and laughing, “I’m married, remember? No more dalliance.”
“Force of habit. Pardon, lady.” Tim threw himself down on the chaise lounge and stared up at her smiling. “But as a matter of fact, why not a little dalliance? Here you are and here am I. Besides, I’m your host, droit du seigneur.”
“Oh, Tim, don’t be difficult, and stop making those heavylidded bedroom eyes at me. They don’t impress me.” This was the sort of thing they had always indulged in, half-playful sparring with just enough sex in it to be interesting. But he had never stirred her, their kisses had been light and meaningless to her. This kiss he had just given her was no different from the others but it would be embarrassing if she had nevertheless put herself into an untenable position in coming here. But I can handle him, she thought. I always could.
“You look toothsome as always,” said Tim, examining her, “but a trifle blurred, my darling. I prefer the ultra-golden locks and that’s the wrong shade of lipstick, should be darker.”
“Thanks.” She tried to hide her hands from the impish hazel eye, which never missed a detail of a woman’s appearance. “I always knew you didn’t love me for myself, and Jean has already bewailed the lack of beauty parlors in Lodestone, so we can skip that one.”
“Well, there’s a Vanitie Shoppe here at the hotel. You can go and have fierce feminine fun.”
Her lips tightened and her gaze moved from his face to the floor.
“Have them put it on my bill, Andy,” he said with sudden gentleness. “We know each other too well for phony pride.”
She sat down in one of the carved upholstered armchairs. “Tim, why are you doing all this? Why have you saddled yourself with the whole raft of us here?”
He shrugged and sat up. “Only way I could get at you, honorably. I’m a very honorable young man. I even invited Dart, didn’t I? Though I’m enchanted that you didn’t bring him, my angel.”
Her eyes flashed, she spoke with emphasis. “I tried to. I wanted to. He wouldn’t come. He’s terribly busy.”
“Sure. Sure. I understand.” He gave her a winning and impudent grin. “Main thing is you’re here. Now that’s over with, come on up to my patio, we’ll have cocktails. I’ve asked a crowd to join us.”
That first cocktail party, under the stars and the palm trees in Tim’s patio, set the tone of the rest of the week. It was gay and noisy, enlivened by several flirtations and gilded for Amanda by Tim’s light and expert lovemaking. It duplicated many vacation times of her past life and she slipped back into the mood with ease.
There were only a dozen people, hand-picked by Tim from the sixty-odd hotel guests. Jean and George, of course. Then there were two charming little divorcees, Kitty Stevens and Mimi Todd, who were recuperating here from the Reno “cure” on their way back to Chicago. There was a movie starlet, Lora Morton and her boy friend, a sloe-eyed Latin gentleman who had perfect manners and spoke perfect English and was vaguely referred to as an actor. There were two youngish married couples from St. Louis and a pale languid bachelor of thirty named Waterman, who dabbled in the arts, and had come from Philadelphia to Arizona for his health. They were all wealthy,—one had to be to stay at El Castillo—and though they occasionally alluded gloomily to the depression and speculated with even deeper gloom upon the crackpot course outlined by the new President, it was apparent that none of them was emotionally involved in anything but having a good time. And Amanda, walling off Dart and Lodestone as much as she could, most willingly joined them.
It was not hard to wall off Lodestone, since none of these people had ever heard of it. They hadn’t heard of Gila County or Globe. They knew nothing of the present mining industry in Arizona, they had an idea that all that sort of stuff went on up in the Rockies or in Canada. For them Arizona contained the Grand Canyon, a few annoying nighttime stops on the Santa Fe’s Chief, and Phoenix and Tucson. Nor was anyone in the least curious. Except for horseback rides in the desert and a vague recognition that the air was dry and exhilarating, El Castillo and its inmates might have been transported intact to Florida or California.
Jean kept a contented eye on Amanda’s progress, when she was not playing golf with George and the St. Louis couples. She even managed to extract twenty dollars from George as a gift to Amanda who would not charge her session at the beauty parlor to Tim. Jean at first thought this finespun point of honor was idiotic. “My God, Andy, Tim’s crawling with money. It isn’t any different from accepting a corsage.... But still I don’t know but what you’re right. Play it cagey, my girl.”
“I’m not playing anything, any way,” snapped Amanda. “Don’t be disgusting. This is just—just an interlude.”
Jean raised her eyebrows. “Have you heard from Dart?”
“I don’t expect to. There’s no reason why I should.” Amanda flushed, for she had expected to hear from him, a phone call, a note, something to bridge that chill impersonal chasm which had opened between them.
Jean decided that the time had come for plain speaking. “You might as well face it, dear. Dart just isn’t the man for you. It sticks out a mile. And you’re not cut out to be a drudge in a hovel in the wilds. Especially not when there’s something better in view. A whole lot better.”
“I love Dart,” said Amanda, but her voice wavered. His image had blurred for her. Riding, playing tennis, dancing with Tim, she managed not to think of Dart. It was only at night, alone in her twin bed, that there would come a pain so sharp that she denied it instantly and her empty arms would go heavy and her eyes, staring into the darkness, would see his face but not the face of love. She would see him in the other aspect—grimly withdrawn—his gray look,—ironic and cold.
Mrs. Lawrence, too, kept an eye on the proceedings but hers was not a contented one. She seldom joined the younger group but she had found three bridge-playing cronies and from a nook in the lobby, she gained many glimpses of her daughter, Amanda’s lovely figure in a white bathing suit borrowed from Jean, as she shrieked and splashed with Tim in the aquamarine pool. Amanda in beige jodhpurs and a tricky little suede jacket borrowed from the movie starlet, looking coquettishly up into Tim’s eyes after he had lifted her down from her horse. Amanda at night in her own rose-flowered chiffon dinner dress, dancing with the starlet’s boy friend and flirting over his shoulder with Tim, who was being pursued by little Kitty, the divorcee.
No harm in all this, of course, thought Mrs. Lawrence. Young married people nowadays didn’t climb on shelves and cleave only to each other. For that matter, there had been quite a lot of giddiness and carryings-on in the Smart Set of her own early married days before the war. But I didn’t want to, she thought suddenly. I didn’t want to do anything I couldn’t share with David, and we were terribly poor, too, after the panic of 1907. I can’t remember that it mattered so much, we fought through it together.
And yet there was no denying that Amanda had bloomed into a new vital beauty during her days here. She showed no resemblance to the defensive unkempt little drudge who had so shocked her mother in Lodestone.
If this was what she wanted, why, oh why, didn’t she marry Tim in the first place? Mrs. Lawrence asked herself unhappily. If this marriage with Dart was only an infatuation, how could she so have convinced me that it was real love? Ah, no doubt she’d been a sentimental fool, as Jean said. One should have realized how young the girl was and how—spoiled. No, that wasn’t quite the word for Amanda. She was intrinsically too sensitive and gallant for that. There was a new phrase used by popular articles on psychology. “Over-protection.” Was that the trouble? David and she had loved the child so dearly. The sins of the parents—that was the constant theme of the n
ew books Jean read.
Mrs. Lawrence sighed, then jumped as her partner recalled her to the deal. “Sorry—” she said, “I was wool-gathering.” She gathered up the cards and pushed Amanda’s problem from her mind, but it returned half an hour later when she walked outside for a view of the gorgeous sunset glow on the Catalina Mountains to the north. She wandered to the swimming pool, deserted now since almost everyone had gone off to dress, and stood beside a clump of oleander to admire the ravishing rose and purple mystery of the desert beyond this oasis.
Then she heard Tim’s unmistakable drawl from the other side of the oleander. “Move over, honey, and I’ll share my flask with you.” There was a murmur and a gurgling sound. Amanda, thought Mrs. Lawrence. I wish she wouldn’t.
But it was not Amanda. A higher, lisping voice giggled, “Oh, Timmy, I didn’t think you’d ever have a moment for poor me, you’re so taken up with your blonde.”
Mrs. Lawrence backed hastily away. Actually, there was no reason why Tim should not flirt with Kitty Stevens if he wanted to. Amanda would be the first to agree, but, but ... Her pleasure in the sunset was spoiled. They should never have come here, put themselves in this—this parasitical position. It was not like visiting Tim’s parents as equals. If only Jean and George would leave now and Amanda go back where she belonged, or come home to New York, if she was really unhappy. But Jean and George showed no signs of leaving. They were having a wonderful time and George had wired his father there’d be a slight delay in closing the San Francisco branch. He had even taken to treating Amanda with a jocular respect since she was the tacit reason for this windfall. It was all wrong, sleazy somewhere, thought Mrs. Lawrence sadly, but what was there she could do about it? One might as well stop fretting.
On the night of Saturday, April first, the hotel was giving its big end-of-the-season ball. It was to be a costume party on the theme “Arizona Pioneers.” A hundred appropriate costumes had been sent in from Chicago for the guests and nobody would be admitted without one.
