She locked both hands behind her.
What had Sophie told her to do? Oh yes, sort out the last minute odds and ends she intended to take with her.
She did so slowly. A sweater coat that would go in the trunk. Cold creams and bath sponges and powder to go in her dressing case. A little heap of things which Sophie might make use of—a tweed suit, a white velvet evening gown, two afternoon dresses; she folded them neatly and put them on a chair near the dressing table.
What else now? She glanced around the room and went to the boxes which had that afternoon arrived, and opened them. Stacks of underclothing, handmade with tiny, delicate stitches. She must pack them. Her trousseau.
She stood looking at them and after a moment thrust the lids back on the boxes again and turned away.
She paused at the dressing table; sat down and leaned forward to look at herself in the mirror. There might have been times when she could have thanked the Lord for a straight nose and fine skin and lovely, deep eye sockets. For deep blue eyes and a gay smile. For a soft masking of the firm Whipple chin. For glancing, evanescent moments of spiritual beauty. But it was not one of those times. She was pale and tired and lifeless looking. Beautiful bride indeed! She reached for powder puff and rouge; took up a new stick of lip paste and spread it heavily on her mouth. It was too deep a crimson, she thought, scrutinizing the face that now looked back at her from the mirror. She reached for blue eye shadow. And the telephone rang. Her own phone, there on the table. That meant the call was for her.
Who? Jevan or one of her bridesmaids.
But for a moment she did not move. And when she did get to the telephone and took it in her hand that hand was trembling. She said unsteadily: “Hello …”
It was Ronald. She had known it would be.
“Dorcas,” he said. “Dorcas. Oh, my darling, I must see you. I’ve got to see you. Now.”
CHAPTER 2
THE GUTTERING BLACK WINDOWPANE reflected her eerily. Painted mouth and wide dark eyes; short rumpled brown hair; a green flannel housecoat wrapped tight around her. A telephone clutched to her breast.
She said almost in a whisper: “Ronald …”
“Darling, I’ve got to see you. I must see you. I can’t bear it. Just one more time, Dorcas.” Words poured feverishly into her ear. “Listen, dear; I’ve got it all planned. No one need know. I’ll be at the corner of the house with a taxi at eight. Meet me there, darling. I’ll bring you back any time you say. I won’t—I won’t beg or plead or—I won’t do anything, my darling, but look at you. I’ve got to see you. Don’t you understand, Dorcas? Just once more. Before you belong to another man.”
It was like Ronald. Boyish. Impulsive. With anguish in his voice. But she couldn’t meet him; it was impossible.
“You must come, Dorcas. I’ll be there. I’ll never ask another thing of you. Never. But I must see you.”
“No. No.”
“Why?”
“I——”
“Why not, Dorcas?”
She didn’t answer and his voice acquired a sudden eagerness. “Are you afraid to meet me, Dorcas?”
Afraid? That was admitting—admitting what? she had asked Sophie, and Sophie had looked at her slowly and said: “Nothing.”
“No, I’m not afraid. But I can’t——”
“You can. You must. I’ll be there, darling. At eight. Oh, Dorcas, it’s so little I’m asking; only a crumb. To last me for the rest of my life.”
The telephone clicked and was silent and he was gone.
She put it down slowly. She was excited, filled with a confused sense of exultation, dismay, guilt. And mainly of acute perplexity. She had, she knew now, longed for him to telephone, longed for him to make one last effort to see her. Now that he had done so she realized that to meet him would be the very height of folly.
She had seen him only once since her engagement was announced, so it was strange that her feeling toward him had so changed as her wedding drew near. But it had changed, for lately he haunted her thoughts, walked in her dreams, smiled at her, pleaded with her. Loved her.
But she couldn’t meet him.
She found herself again at the window, shading her face with her hands and peering down at the street. He would be at that corner at eight; waiting in the shadow of the great oak trees in the rain. How long would he wait? An hour, perhaps, and turning hopefully at every sound.
She went back to the chaise longue and was sitting there, huddled tightly in her flannel coat, staring at the carpet when Sophie came in with a tray.
“I brought your dinner, honey,” she said. “I’ll finish packing while you eat. Then you can have a hot bath and go straight to bed and no one will bother yon till morning.”
She set the tray on a table and pulled it close to Dorcas and took the cover off a soup dish.
“Now then, eat your dinner,” said Sophie briskly. “And tell me what to put in your bags.”
Later Dorcas remembered that hour of indecision. Thinking of Ronald’s words, of his voice; replying to Sophie’s questions. “I must see you … darling … a crumb. To last me the rest of my life.”
“Powder, Dorcas? This box? Rouge?”
“That’s right. No, not that lipstick, it doesn’t suit me. The blue eye shadow.” Her own voice replying while Ronald repeated almost as if he were there: “Are you afraid—are you afraid—are you afraid——”
And all the time she was eating her dinner and listening for the gusts of rain against the glittering black windows. Once Sophie paused and went to the window and put her hand on the rope to pull the curtains and Dorcas stopped her sharply. “No, don’t. I—I like the sound of the rain.”
Sophie paused, gave her a surprised look, shrugged and went back to packing. Dorcas nervously touched her lips with her napkin; Ronald when he came would see the light from her windows. Ronald …
“Never mind packing the green suit,” she said “I’ll leave some things here for you, Sophie, if you can make anything of them.”
“Of course.” Sophie glanced at the green tweed suit. “I can do with that suit, Dorcas. Thanks… Well, that’s about all.”
The little clock on the dressing table said twenty minutes to eight when Sophie at last closed and locked the trunk. Dorcas’ eyes were drawn to the clock again and again as if it were a magnet, and she was possessed by consuming impatience for Sophie to finish and leave. She wasn’t going to meet Ronald; no. But it was important for her to be alone.
At ten minutes to eight Sophie at last took the tray and went away.
“I’ll see to Cary,” she said. “She’s in bed already; had dinner on a tray and has a full supply of new magazines and a sleeping powder. Anything you want?”
“Nothing,” said Dorcas, watching the clock.
“Oh…Well, good night, my dear.” The door closed. Dorcas jumped to her feet.
Her hands flew; a comb through her short hair, which brought back the wave. Street shoes, brown oxfords with her own cold fingers trembling a little as she tied the laces. She took off her flannel coat; afterward she thought that if Sophie hadn’t left the suit in the room she wouldn’t have gone. But it was there, temptingly near at hand.
It took only a moment or two to pull on sweater and skirt and long, warm tweed jacket. Somewhere was a green hat for it; she found it and put it on. She did pause then to look at herself in the mirror and she knew in that moment that the thing she proposed to do was all wrong. It was not only foolishly weak, childishly and falsely romantic but it was dishonest. She would be in a few hours time the wife of another man and she owed him, at least, loyalty.
And quite deliberately, with a frightened determination, she stifled that small voice with a specious argument.
It was the last night of her own. The last night she was to be Dorcas Whipple, responsible only to herself. After the wedding ceremony she would be a good and faithful wife. But never again for all the rest of her life would she be entirely free and entirely herself. Therefore why should she not
see Ronald?
It was specious and she knew it. She fumbled at the fastening of the red fox collar that rose high around her face and might have taken off the coat. In that instant not only her own destiny but that of at least three other people hung in balance.
And she caught a glimpse in the mirror of her bare left hand. Tomorrow there would be a wedding ring there; a band that would bind her tightly from then on to her own ideas of decency and honesty. After tomorrow Dorcas Whipple would be Dorcas Locke—a different woman.
It was like losing her own identity. And Ronald, a part of that old, familiar life, was waiting in the rain and darkness. Waiting only to say good-by to her.
She turned swiftly from the mirror and out of the room. She went quietly so no one would hear and question. There was no one in the hall and a light burned beyond the old-fashioned transom above her mother’s bedroom door.
She went down the stairs and still there was no one. The servants probably were busy in the back of the house. Her own latchkey was in a little drawer of the Jacobean chest near the door. She took it and let herself out and walked rapidly down the shrublined sidewalk and out the tall iron gate.
Her real distress was shot with a trivial embarrassment; she was stealing out to a clandestine meeting on the very eve of her wedding. She ought to have felt ashamed but actually she felt only rather silly and childish. As if she were acting in some play and doing it badly.
Why hadn’t Ronald simply come to the house and demanded to see her? But he couldn’t of course. Cary would have known and stopped it.
Her heart gave a leap into her throat, however, as she saw him—a shadowy, slender figure in an overcoat with his hat pulled down over his face. He heard her footsteps and ran lightly to meet her.
“My darling,” he cried, “I knew you’d come,” and took her hands and held them to his lips.
A car passed them rather slowly, its tires swishing. Dorcas was only vaguely aware of it.
His face was hot, his lips shaking a little. Without intending to she pulled her hands away abruptly.
“I only came to say good-by,” she said lamely. “I——”
“One little hour,” said Ronald. “That’s all I ask. All I shall ever ask. The taxi’s waiting around the corner. You can’t stand here in the rain——”
“I can’t stay. I must go back now. I only came——”
“You came,” said Ronald in an exultant, breathless whisper. “That’s enough.”
They were at the corner and a taxi was there, its lights dimmed so they made wan streaks along the wet pavements. A dash of rain struck her face sharply as they crossed to the curb, then they were in the taxi.
“But, Ronald——”
“Hush, dear.” He leaned forward. “Thirty-six Schumanze Court. And hurry.”
The taxi jumped ahead.
“No, no, Ronald. Tell him to stop. I must not stay——”
“Hush, darling. You don’t want him to hear everything we have to say to each other.”
“But——”
“Don’t be silly, sweet. I’m not going to abduct you. But I must talk to you a little alone. Don’t deny me that small thing, Dorcas. I’ve gone through such hell. We’ll go up to my apartment; there’s no one there and we can talk a little. I’ll take you back at nine. I swear it, Dorcas. That’s one hour for me to remember for the rest of my life. One little hour——”
“This is all wrong, Ronald. Useless.”
“An hour of farewell,” he said. “Farewell to yourself, Dorcas. After tomorrow——”
If he had touched her, if he had taken her hands again, if he had seemed in any way unresigned, she would still have gone back.
But he did not.
Later she wondered about it.
It was perhaps a fifteen-minute ride. Later, too, she remembered the dusk in the taxi, the swish of tires, the sense of waves along the breakwater and of fog-haloed lights when they turned onto Michigan and crossed the bridge. He said almost nothing and once she felt actually and for a fleeting moment as if the man seated there beside her in the dusk were a stranger. He seemed in the flesh and in the twilight of the taxi different, indescribably changed from the man who during the past few weeks had been so constantly in her mind. Well, now she could tell him she had been unjust; tell him how deeply she regretted any pain she had caused him, wipe the slate clean or any bitterness between them. Yes, she could do that and they would remember each other pleasantly and with friendliness. Without pain.
She sat in the dusk, planning.
Ronald’s apartment was in a roomy, oldish building just off the Drive and around the corner of Schumanze Court; she had been there before to cocktail parties and to occasional small dinner parties of eight or ten, served by a caterer, for his only servant was a Japanese who came in by the day. There was a smallish and rather shabby hall, an elevator and a narrow flight of stairs. The rent was probably exorbitant. The building did boast, too, a doorman, who ran to open the door of the taxi as they stopped and then, obviously torn, left them abruptly to hurry toward another car which drove up slowly behind them.
The little elevator was in use and they walked up the stairs to the second floor. Ronald’s apartment was on the corner, overlooking during clear days a small slice of blue lake, a garage immediately below, and above and against the sky heaped cliffs of apartment buildings. The corridor itself was rather narrow, stretching away past a transverse corridor on which the elevator opened, to a dim red light at the far end indicating a fire escape. Ronald took out keys. The door was painted white and had a plain, old-fashioned lock—the kind which is not, when you close the door, self-locking.
“Do you always remember to lock the door from the inside?” said Dorcas idly, watching him insert the key, and was to remember it later.
“No,” said Ronald and smiled a little bitterly. “But I have so little to steal. Come in, my dear.” He closed the door behind them. “I promise to watch the clock. Let me take your coat. It’s always hot in here.”
She looked at him a little shyly in the white glow of the modernistic lamps. She had been wrong; he was exactly the same—clear, incredibly handsome profile, bright eyes, wavy blond hair, small, delicately curved mouth. “A weak mouth,” Cary had said. “One look at that mouth ought to convince you, Dorcas.”
Her mother’s words floated into her memory as she turned and let him take her tweed coat. She pushed the memory away; besides, it didn’t matter and was not important, for after tonight she would never see Ronald Drew again.
He took the coat and put it down on a white divan. His own followed it. He hesitated, reached for a white cigarette box with tiny mirrors set in it, then put down the box and came back to Dorcas.
His eyes were very bright.
“I lied to you,” he said. “I lied to you to get you here. Now I’m never going to let you go.”
Before she could move or even sense what he said he took her tightly, almost feverishly in his arms.
CHAPTER 3
SHE WASN’T FRIGHTENED. Even as he bent her head back, kissing her, she wasn’t at all frightened, for the curious sensation of playing a role in some vague, unrehearsed play returned to her. She felt, however, very uncomfortable and very much ashamed. After all, said a small, cold voice inside her even as she pulled abruptly away from him, after all, she had invited it.
But she didn’t like it.
“Don’t,” she cried violently and heard her own strangled voice with a kind of surprise at its agitation. “Don’t!”
She was fairly strong herself; slender muscles hardened by swimming and tennis. She wriggled away from him and stood there facing him, trying to steady her breath while he watched her. There were two scarlet patches in his cheeks; his eyes were still bright and had something in them she had never seen there before.
“You needn’t scream,” he said rather sulkily and unsteadily. “I won’t eat you.”
Had she screamed?
“That was silly. I’m going now.�
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For an instant she had the fantastic notion that he was going to put her out himself—angrily, throwing her coat after her. It was fantastic; it flickered across her mind as irrationally as a hot little wind might have done. For immediately he was all apology.
“No, don’t go, Dorcas. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. It’s just that I—I love you so,” he said pleadingly. “I won’t do it again. I promise. But we can’t part like this. Can we, darl—Dorcas. Wait. Sit here on the divan. I’ll go across the room.”
Again he didn’t touch her or attempt to lead her to a chair. Instead he pleaded with her, abjectly, throwing himself again on her mercy.
“I love you so, Dorcas. I love you so and it’s the last time I shall see you. You promised me——”
“You promised me,” said Dorcas and went to the divan and took her coat in her hands.
In the mirror above the deep divan she caught a glimpse of his face and the sheer, stark dismay that flashed upon it. A dismay so lost, so terrified that it was as if a drowning man had missed in his last desperate clutch for a rope. It was poignant, it was sharply real; it was nothing short of despair. The uneasy feeling of playing a part in a futile and slightly tawdry, theatrical performance dropped suddenly away from her. She turned in honest contrition.
“I’m sorry, Ronald. I’m desperately sorry things have happened—just this way. I—I shall always value your friendship and—and remember …” She meant exactly what she said but she found the words difficult, for he looked as if he did not understand her and as if he were thinking of something else.
“Dear Dorcas,” he said flatly and added abruptly: “I need a drink. Wait a second, Dorcas. I—I won’t bother you again. Honest. We’ll have a drink and a smoke and I’ll take you back home. One last little talk together for the sake of—of all our good times.”
It was exactly as if he had reverted to the lines of the play; as if she groped for her cues but he knew them all, so again the feeling of unreality, of cheap theatricalism swept over her. Yet what he said had exactly the right tone of friendliness, and she had seen that look of bitterness and pain in his face and that was real.
Hasty Wedding Page 2
