AT SEVEN O’CLOCK the noises in the street roused Amy. She cautiously moved her cramped limbs and turned to see if he were awake, but he was still deeply asleep, breathing heavily with arms flung behind his head, looking exhausted and young. She slid carefully off the couch and went into the kitchen to put the coffee on over a low current, then to the bathroom to take her shower. All the time she was washing and dressing she thought of nothing but being quiet, for he was so tired! he must have his sleep out; but while she was brushing her hair in the bedroom a muffled shout came from the next room, and she dropped the brush and ran in to him, her black hair floating loose.
“What is it—what’s the matter?” she gasped.
He was crouching on the divan, staring at her dazedly.
“Do you feel bad?” She knelt beside him and put her arm round his shoulders.
“I dreamt I was fighting,” he answered hoarsely, and turned his face against her breast. After a silence he sighed deeply and said:
“I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“That’s all right. Are you better now?”
He nodded, smiling faintly up at her. She moved away and got off the divan.
“I’m so hungry again. Sorry.”
“The coffee’s nearly ready.”
“Don’t you have tea for breakfast? I know English people usually do.”
“Oh, I like coffee sometimes. This morning I’ll have it.”
While she spoke she was twisting up her hair, holding the pins in her mouth, and he was leaning back, watching her with eyes that were still dazed from his nightmares. Suddenly he said:
“I know who you are now, you’re the Swimming Girl, of course, that’s who you are.”
“Pardon?” said Amy, dropping a coil of hair and staring at him, while her voice, in her alarm, went straight back into the thin polite cockney accent of twelve years ago.
“It’s all right. Nothing; I guess I was still dreaming,” he answered more naturally but with a little embarrassment. “Can I take a shower now, if you’ve had yours?”
“Oh, yes, and then breakfast’ll be ready,” she answered, and was making for the kitchen to finish dressing herself and sort out her feelings in solitude, when he picked up a tress of her hair and kissed it without looking at her.
“Please kiss me, will you?” he muttered and suddenly put his arms round her.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help it, you’ve been such an angel to me, you’re so sweet and lovely,” he said, kissing her mouth and eyes and hair.
“It’s all right——” she said breathlessly, “I—I like you to, as a matter of fact——”
“Do you? Oh, darling!” And he lifted her off her feet.
“The coffee’s boiling over!” Amy twisted round quickly, suddenly overcome with shyness and fear. “Oh, please let me go!”
He let her go at once.
“You aren’t mad at me, are you?”
“Oh, no,” said Amy, retreating backwards into the kitchen, “only you see, nobody ever kissed me before and—and it’s all a bit strange at first, that’s all,” she ended in a mutter, snatching the coffee off the stove.
“Oh, I guess I frightened you, then. I’m sorry. You just tell me another time when I’m kissing you too much and I—well, I guess I’ll take my shower now.” And he turned away. Amy continued to pour milk into a saucepan, staring at it.
“That doesn’t mean you won’t ever want to kiss me again, does it?” he asked, lingering at the door.
“Oh, no! I said I liked it—only do please go and have your shower now!” she implored and still without looking up she waved the empty milk carton at him. He went off to the bathroom, and then the telephone bell rang.
“Miss Lee,” announced the cheerful voice of Myrtle, “mah sister’s done had twins!”
“Oh, Myrtle! Is she pleased?”
“She sho’ is, Miss Lee, only mah brother-in-law, he’s on Relief just now, so they won’t have much fo’ the babies. They’se lovely babies, Miss Lee, they done weigh seven pounds each!”
“Fancy, Myrtle! I’m so glad.”
“Thank you, Miss Lee. Miss Lee, Ah was wonderin’—there’s such an old muss-up down here, all the little ones hoppin’ about without their breakfasts ’cause me and mah brother-in-law we been up all night at the hospital—Ah was wonderin’ if you could manage without me this mornin’? So’s Ah could stay with the little ones?”
“Oh, yes, Myrtle, that’ll be all right, I can manage,” Amy answered eagerly. Indeed, she was relieved, for the tocsins of Mrs. Beeding had suddenly sounded in her memory, and what would Myrtle think if she arrived and found a young man breakfasting there? (People Are Always Thinkin’ Somethin’ had been one of Mrs. Beeding’s warnings. There may be nothin’ in it, but People Always Get Talkin’.) Amy shrank from having herself and Bob talked about.
“You call me up again, will you, Myrtle, if you can’t come in to-morrow?” she added.
“Mighty kind of you, Miss Lee, Ah surely will. How will yo’ manage fo’ yo’ marketin’, Miss Lee?”
“Oh, I’ll call up the delicatessen, I’ll be all right. Good-bye, Myrtle,” and she hung up the receiver.
She finished getting the breakfast, moving about with light steps in a happy dream. She had not known that it was possible to be so happy. She did not want to talk, not even to him; she only wanted to move about, lightly and silently, preparing the breakfast and feeling happiness in herself and all about her.
Presently he called from the bathroom:
“I wish I had a razor. Boone hasn’t got one stowed away, has he?”
“I don’t know. There are some drawers and cupboards locked up. I should look, if I were you.”
After a pause filled with the discontented rattlings of drawers—
“No.”
“Can’t you get a shave at the shop over the way after breakfast?”
He did not answer.
“You might let me lend you a dollar!” cried Amy, coming exasperated into the living-room with the grapefruit, and meeting him face to face as he came out of the bathroom, “Lou could pay me back this afternoon. Won’t you?”
“Not a cent,” he said firmly.
“Well, I owe you five cents, anyway!” she said recklessly, putting down the grapefruit on the table. “You might let me pay you back what I owe you!”
He stood in the morning sunlight and stared at her.
“You owe me five cents? What the heck do you mean? How can you owe me five cents?”
“Well, you gave me a five-cent piece in mistake for a shilling twelve years ago, and I’ve still got it,” she cried, shaking from head to foot. “It was at Kenwood House in England one very cold Saturday afternoon in 1928, and it was my birthday and I asked you to lend me sixpence to get home with and you said you’d give me a shilling for a birthday present. But it wasn’t a shilling, it was five cents, with an Indian and a buffalo on it and I was so disappointed, I thought you’d done it on purpose. But you didn’t, did you?” she ended imploringly, standing on tiptoe and gazing up at him.
He sat down heavily on the edge of the divan, and demanded:
“Are we both crazy? I know you’re my Swimming Girl, and now you say——”
“Wait—wait—I’ve still got it—I’ll show you——” and away she flew into the bedroom, leaving him staring after her.
In a minute she was back at his side, eagerly showing him something cradled in her hand. He bent his head, taking her hand in his own to steady it, and saw with an ever-deepening astonishment an Indian’s head five-cent piece, dulled with age. It lay in a piece of crumpled paper on which was written, in a hand that he recognized as a more youthful version of the one he had seen last night on Amy’s manuscript:
American coin given to A. Lee as a birthday present by Robert Somebody, an American boy from Vine Falls, Paul County, New Leicester, America, on the said A. Lee’s birthday, October 31st, 1928.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” she demanded.
“We certainly were in London in 1928, but I can’t remember—where did you say it was?”
“At Kenwood House,” she said eagerly. “It’s a big historic old house on Hampstead Heath, just outside London.”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember a thing about it, but it must have been me, because there couldn’t have been two of us, could there?”
“And the address is right, isn’t it? I couldn’t catch your other name so that was why I put Robert ‘Somebody’.”
He was silent for a little while, studying the coin and the paper while she wistfully watched his face.
“I do wish you could remember if you gave it me for a joke,” she said at last.
He smiled, still looking at the coin as if he were trying to make it show him the past, and put his arm around her.
“It’s no use, I’m afraid I don’t remember at all. But what were you like, all that time ago?”
“Oh, sort of little and thin and I had a white tam-o-shanter and I was very lonely and miserable.”
He held her closer and said decidedly: “Then I’m sure I didn’t mean it as a joke. It was just a mistake. My mother always made us behave properly when we were kids and my father lammed the daylights out of Boone and me if he caught us hazing Stebby (that’s my cousin).”
“So you wouldn’t have done a thing like that to a girl, would you?”
“No, I don’t think I would. I was probably a fresh sort of kid, but I wouldn’t have played a lowdown trick like that on a little girl, especially a miserable little girl,” and he drew her gently to him and kissed her cheek.
“Oh, I am so glad,” she murmured, “I’ve always wondered about it. Now you tell me why you said I was the Swimming Girl—oh, the coffee’ll be cold. Let’s have it now, and you can tell me while we’re having it.”
“It’s so darned queer,” he muttered, pulling up a chair for her. “This time yesterday I’d never even seen you, and now I seem to have known you for ever.”
“Do you take sugar?” said Amy quickly, looking across at him where he sat, a big, gaunt drawn-faced young man, opposite her. “I feel like that about you, too,” she added. “And—and I like being with you very much, as well,” she ended shyly. She suddenly felt so happy that her happiness must find expression, and the only way she could show it was in this prim and childish phrase.
“So do I.” He was staring at her as if he could never tire. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, being with you after the last weeks.”
“I wish you’d tell me what you did after you left Dan. My mother used to say it did people good to talk about things.”
“Oh——” He drank some coffee and began to eat. “I walked about the streets all that day. I had ten dollars I’d won playing poker. Then I joined up with a man who was hitch-hiking to Saint Louis looking for work. He was very religious; every time we thumbed a car he prayed it would stop! Then I caught him trying to get away with money one night.”
“What did you do?”
“Shook him.”
“I hope you hurt him,” she said fiercely.
He glanced at her, a little surprised. “Well, I was pretty mad. But he was’t a bad little rat. We got on all right after that.”
“After he’d tried to steal your money?—”
“Surely. We got to laughing about it. You get like that when you haven’t anything. I kind of despised him because he was a small time crook and he didn’t like it because he said I hadn’t any use for religion, but we got along.”
“You don’t seem to hate anybody!” she burst out, clasping her hands together and raising her voice. “I can’t understand it! If anybody’d been beastly to me, the way Dan has to you, and that man, trying to steal your money, I’d—”
“You can’t be mad at people when you haven’t got anything. You both feel helpless together, and weak, somehow. I can’t explain it. It’s just the other side of the fence, that’s all. One side, you can be quite sure what’s right and what’s wrong, but on the other side it isn’t like that. I can’t explain properly, even to you, because you haven’t been on the other side.”
“Well, I haven’t always had a lot of money, you know.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No. My father used to earn six pounds a week. That’s quite a lot, but I didn’t get any of it.”
“Thirty dollars. What did he do?”
“He was in the advertising department on a boys’ paper.”
“I thought—well, you’re so elegant, I thought you’d always been rich.”
“Oh, no. I was very poor. Mrs. Beeding brought me up; she’s the baker’s wife, whose house we lived in. I worked in an office when I was fifteen.”
“Did you?” he said gently, studying her. “Wasn’t there anyone to look after you?”
“Oh, well, there was Mrs. Beeding and the girls, but I was fearfully lonely. As a matter of fact, I still am.” And Amy hastily drank some coffee.
He said nothing, but continued to look at her as if he had not heard what she had said and as if he had forgotten that she was a human being, who could respond to his look with surprise at its length and intensity. Amy spooned the last drops of juice from her grapefruit without once looking up, but she was very conscious of his look, and at last she said:
“I wish you’d tell me about the Swimming Girl.”
“Oh!” Bob filled his mouth so that he need not answer at once. Then he said:
“Well, it’s mighty queer, but you’re exactly like a girl I’ve dreamt about ever since I was a kid. We were always swimming together in a very blue sea.”
“How lovely” she said dreamily.
“It certainly was.” He drank some more coffee, deciding not to tell her that the Swimming Girl was naked. He could still see the fine black hair floating across her breast, sprayed out under the blue water. “I used to wake up very happy from those dreams.”
“It’s all awfully queer, isn’t it?” Amy, turning quite pale, suddenly put down her fork. “Our meeting like that at Kenwood all those years ago, and my always remembering you, and your dreaming about someone just like me. It makes me feel rather frightened.”
“It’s the queerest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he answered in a low voice. He suddenly looked deadly tired. “But don’t let it scare you. I’m glad about it, it makes me feel as if we belonged to each other.” He stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry, I guess I’ll have to lie down again for a while. I don’t feel——”
He got up unsteadily and went over to the divan and lay down on his face. She half rose from her chair, but did not go over to him; she stood there, troubledly watching him, wondering what to do. Presently he lifted his head and smiled at her.
“It’s all right. But I haven’t been leading a very healthy life lately, and I’m still starved. It’ll take time to get me right again.”
“Oh!” she cried with a radiant face, clasping her hands. “Then you’re going home!”
He nodded, watching her, smiling faintly.
“Yes.”
She came over and sat beside him, looking earnestly down at his fair untidy head.
“Oh, I can’t tell you how glad I am! Now everything will be all right.”
“Will it? I’ll be a mighty queer kind of doctor, if ever I get through my examinations.”
“You’ll be a very good doctor,” she said confidently. “Because you’ll know how those poor people feel without any work and any homes.”
“And the gangsters. I’ll know how they feel. And I’ll know that all the people with jobs and homes are just lucky, not hard-working or good. So what’ll be the use of trying to be hard-working or good, when it’s all luck?” he asked, his smile changing to a mocking one while he watched her.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, shocked. “It isn’t luck. God looks after the good people and punishes the wicked ones.”
“You’re mighty down on the wicked ones yourself, aren’t you?”
“People shouldn’t be wicked,” said Amy.
“Hardly anyone is.”
“Not even Dan?”
“Dan! I told you, Dan’s all right. It’s all luck. No-one’s bad and no-one’s good. That’s the worst thing I’ve found out in these last weeks. That’s why I haven’t anything to hang on to now, except my work. People always get sick, and they’ve got to be cured. I don’t know why. I just feel that they have.” He was speaking half to himself, staring down at the cover on the divan.
“Well,” said Amy, thinking hard, and also frowning down at the red cover on the divan without in the least realizing that it was red, as was the cushion under Bob’s shoulders, “if I were you, I should just hang on to that. That’s something you feel.”
He nodded and moved a little towards her. “Right now I’m so tired I can’t feel anything except that you’re lovely.”
Amy put her arm round his shoulders. “Let’s sit here quietly for a little while,” she whispered, putting her cheek to his.
There was a long silence. Sounds came up clearly from the streets already burning in the sunlight, but the room, as it had been last night, was hushed as a tower in a fairy tale. The pictures on its white walls—a black and red lyre, some pale stone ruins where horses caracolled, a plate of dim fruits—glowed strangely with a life of their own, uncomforting, like windows opening on to uncanny landscapes. The real window, that had given last night on a witchlike panorama of quivering crimson lines and glittering symbols, now showed only ordinary roofs and walls against a dull hot sky where an aeroplane droned. It was nine o’clock in the morning in a modern city, where fear and money ruled the people as they have always ruled, yet along the hot ugly streets, side by side with the fear and the power of money, beauty and mystery walked as they have always walked, and at any moment a human being might step aside into them and stand still to dream, as Bob and Amy were dreaming now. But they only knew that they were in the midst of peace and silence and that it comforted them to be together.
At last Bob moved, sighing, and said:
“When did you say Lou was coming?”
“I don’t know. She said she’d telephone me this morning about ten o’clock to arrange things.”
“It’s a quarter of ten now,” he said, glancing at the electric clock. “I’ll speak to her when she does call up, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, do! It’ll be such a lovely surprise for her!”
He laughed for the first time and asked, surveying her:
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-three in October. How old are you?”
“I was twenty-three in January.”
They looked at one another for a moment, then Amy glanced away and said:
“I’d better wash up. Myrtle can’t come in, her sister’s had twins.”
“Don’t you want to write?”
Amy shook her head. Never had she been less anxious to write.
“I’ll help do the dishes.”
“You’d better rest, hadn’t you? There isn’t much to wash up, really.”
“No, I’ll help.”
While they were washing up the telephone bell rang, and Bob went quickly across to answer it. Amy came and stood at the kitchen door, with a cloth and a half-dried cup in her hands, and listened. A girl with knowledge of the conventions would have stayed in the kitchen, and a girl with natural tact would have found some task to occupy her in the bedroom, but it did not occur to Amy that she should not stand and listen, for Lou was about to have her delightful surprise; it was a happy occasion, not one for hiding in the kitchen.
“Lou?” said Bob, and then Amy heard an excited exclamation at the other end of the line, sounding clearly in the quiet room.
“Yes it’s me,” said Bob. “Yes, I’m all right.” His voice went on, replying in monosyllables to her questions, sounding tired and discouraged in contrast to his sister’s excited high tones. He did not turn to smile at Amy, and she began to feel that the occasion was not so happy as she had thought it would be.
At last he hung up the receiver and turned to her. “They’re coming right over,” he said. “Helen too.”
“I’m glad.”
“Sure. I want to see them both. And then I can fix about going home.” But he began to wander round the room, looking at the dim or brilliant pictures as if he were not really seeing them, and Amy went back into the kitchen and went on with the drying-up. She was trying to control her jealousy. She did not want to share Bob with anyone, for it seemed so long since he had knocked at the door last night that she felt she had always known him; she had forgotten that he had once been only a childish memory, and it seemed so natural for him to be alone with her that she dreaded the arrival of other people, even the members of his own family.
Soon he came and stood by her as she was polishing the last plate.
“I want to ask you something.”
“All right,” said Amy, beginning to tremble as she carefully put the plate on to the dresser. She kept her back turned to him because she was afraid to look round, but he gently put his hands on her shoulders and turned her about until she faced him and stood looking up seriously into his serious face.
“It’s so queer about you and me,” he said in a low tone, “that I can’t begin to talk about it, there’s so much to say. We’ll have to talk about it some time soon. But never mind that now. I must ask you something. I’ve never felt about anyone like I do about you. Do you feel like that about me? As if we belonged to each other?”
She nodded. He looked at her for a moment, and then he put his arms round her and gave her a kiss.
It was so wonderful a kiss that she felt it to be a gift, even in the confusion that filled her mind. Forgotten memories of her mother’s good-night kisses came back to her, as if they were the breath of spring flowers rather than thoughts; and memories of the long afternoons when she had been contentedly alone in the little room at school, writing with the solemn moon looking in at her; she remembered rare moments as a child when she had felt safe and surrounded by love; and moments after she was grown-up when she had been sure that one day she would be happy, as if an angel had told her so in a dream. Peace and sweetness came to her from the gentle embrace in which he held her and the firm tender touch of his mouth on her own; and as she shut her eyes she felt veils falling and falling away in her mind and heart and soul, revealing deeper beauty and peace. These veils were years, she suddenly knew, falling and falling away into the past, and in each year he and she would belong to one another, and in each one they would learn to love one another more. And they lived happily ever after came into her mind; the lovely ending to all the fears of the fairy tale, the desire of the world. And they lived happily ever after. She opened her eyes, and she was crying.
“Darling, it’s all right. Don’t cry. I feel it too. It’s real. Whatever happens, you and I belong to each other, don’t we?”
“Oh, yes, yes!”
They held one another in silence for a little while, and then he said:
“Now I can go home and try to work. I had to ask you.”
“I’m so glad you did. Oh, I am so happy! I didn’t know people could be happy like this.”
He smiled, murmuring to her and kissing her. “Neither did I. But it’s real—can’t you feel it is?”
The bell of the apartment rang, making her start, and he gently released her from his arms.
“That’s Lou. I’ll go.”
He went quickly across to the door, Amy following him more slowly, wiping her eyes.
When he opened the door she had an instant’s impression of the two girls standing there on the landing in the dusty sunlight pouring through the windows, both of them bending forward eagerly; and then the picture broke up as Lou came forward and put her arms round Bob’s neck. The other girl, who was staring at Bob, did not move but her handbag fell to the floor. Amy picked it up, and the other girl made an uncertain little movement with her hand. “Thank you,” she said, slowly turning her eyes away from Bob and looking at Amy. “Oh, thank you.” They looked at one another for a moment and then Amy said: “You’re Miss Viner, aren’t you? I’m Amy Lee. I expect Lou told you—”
“Yes, she did. I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Lee,” said Helen, smiling; and as she spoke Bob put out his hand to her and drew her towards him.
“Hullo, Helen. I’m glad you——”
“Bob,” she said, as if to herself, and they exchanged an affectionate kiss; then all moved forward into the room and Amy shut the door.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said at once to Lou, beginning to pull up chairs for everyone and to hand cigarettes with a natural wish to make them feel more at ease; the moment was so full of emotion that no-one found it easy to begin talking, and they sat down amid half-finished remarks and polite little exclamations of “Let me——” “No—you sit here——”
“I’m glad to see you, too. I’ll sort everything out presently,” answered Lou, leaning back and lighting a cigarette. “In a minute or two, I expect, only I’m so knocked endways over Bob. It certainly is good to see you again!” she ended cheerfully, turning to her brother. But Amy, with her perceptions made more sensitive than usual by the experiences of the morning, could tell that she was so deeply shocked by Bob’s appearance that she found it difficult to talk to him naturally; and when she stole a glance at Helen, while busily mixing drinks at a side table, she saw on her face, uncontrolled, the same shocked, incredulous look that Lou was trying to hide.
Of course, she thought, shaking the mixer, I don’t know what he was like before he went away, but he must be dreadfully changed, to make them look like that.
“I came to borrow twenty dollars from Boone,” said Bob, leaning back on the divan with his arms behind his head and beginning to talk with an effort. “I had a job in Harrisburg, playing the piano, but I walked out of that and hitch-hiked here. Miss Lee very kindly asked me to stay.”
“We thought you were with Dan,” murmured Lou, wondering how soon she could get a doctor to him.
“So I was, until three weeks ago.”
“Have you called up Mother yet?”
He shook his head.
“She’s been away with Dad on a trip, but they get home this afternoon.”
“All right; I’ll call them later. Where are you staying?”
“The Abraham Lincoln, on Lexington Avenue and Twenty-third.”
“I’ll come back with you, if they’ve got a room? Is it very full?”
“No. They’re sure to have one. When are you going home?”
“When I’ve talked to Dad. To-morrow, if I can.”
The conversation between the brother and sister went on in quiet tones, as if they were in a sick room. Bob was very tired. He lay back with his head on the red cushion, looking wearily at Lou, or sometimes turning to smile at Helen, and then moving his head to watch Amy as she went about the kitchen getting crackers out of the cupboard. Lou continued to question him cautiously about his plans and to make arrangements for his return, but she found it difficult to talk naturally, as Amy had seen, partly because she was so shocked at the change in him and partly because she was fascinated by the red cushion behind his head! She kept staring at it and noticing every detail of its appearance; the thick white fringe that decorated it, the different shade of whiteness in Bob’s cheek, the dent his head made in its fullness. In this state of her feelings she was grateful to Amy for busying herself calmly with the ordinary duties of a hostess and thus helping to create a more natural atmosphere in the room, and she unconsciously began to think of Amy as less of a child and with more respect.
Helen sat in silence, sipping her drink while Lou and Bob talked. All the time their quiet conversation went on, her eyes were moving slowly about the room; from the white matting on the floor to the Spanish leather screen, then to the picture of the caracolling horses, past them to the window with the dull view of roofs and distant walls. Her gaze went searching desperately, like someone dying of thirst, for one drop, one sparkle, of beauty to comfort her. For weeks, ever since Bob disappeared, beauty had been her only refuge; and now that he had come back and she had seen how he looked at Amy, she knew that she was going to need its help (but she had not thought that possible!) more than ever.
At last her eyes rested on a Japanese painting of water and moonlit islands, and slowly the pain lessened until it was bearable once more.
She managed to smile naturally and to answer Amy’s shy question as to how she liked New York, and gradually the conversation grew more normal, as Lou joined in with comments on Amy’s trip to Illinois. Presently a discussion was going on, and they were even smiling a little over Amy’s discoveries about America. But in spite of their efforts the atmosphere was a strange one, subdued and almost exhausted, as if these four handsome young people under twenty-five had just escaped some peril of which they did not wish to speak. Each one of them, too, was busy with strong feelings to which they could give no expression, and their voices were slightly absent-minded and their glances kept straying.
I’ll go crazy with curiosity if I can’t get her alone and hear all about it soon, thought Lou. It’s the weirdest thing, his turning up here—and yet I suppose that’s perfectly natural, really; why shouldn’t he come to Boone’s for money? It’s those dreams of hers, and that red cushion! Oh, that cushion! If she hadn’t had the dreams she wouldn’t have recognized me at the party; and if she hadn’t told me about them I shouldn’t have advised her to take the flat; and if strangers had been here, instead of Amy, Bob would have gone away without knowing that we were going to be in New York to-day, and we should none of us have been here now. Everything goes back to those dreams of hers. It’s getting creepier and creepier, like an Alexander Woollcott story, and I don’t like it, decided Lou, the calm climate of whose mind had no natural sympathy with “creepiness.” It’s grand to have him back, of course (though I’m afraid Mother will get a shock when she sees him) and I like that funny little number better every minute. But it is creepy! I’m glad I didn’t tell Mother about those dreams.
She was also conscious that Helen was suffering, and this gave her pain. She was the only one of the Vorsts who had guessed the depth of Helen’s feelings. Though the rest of the family had always vaguely thought that “it would be grand if Bob married Helen,” and had realized that Helen and Bob had a special feeling for one another, they had never become aware that Helen loved him. But Lou had known it since she was a child, and now that she, too, had seen how he looked at Amy, she knew how Helen must feel, and she could not console herself by thinking easily, “Oh, she’ll find someone else.” Helen was beautiful and good and men loved her; she would certainly marry, but Lou was sure that she would not find someone else.
“I’m sorry, I feel bad,” said Bob suddenly, during a pause in the talk. “It’s nothing much, don’t worry.” But he looked so ill that Lou said rather quickly to Helen:
“I should think he’d better come back with us now, hadn’t he? And he can rest in the hotel while I call up Mother and break the news to her.”
“He could stay here, if you like?” suggested Amy timidly, seating herself upon the edge of the divan with her little hands locked over one another, and looking at him in deep distress. The innocent possessiveness in her voice, the look with which he met her glance, made their feelings about one another so plain that Lou hastily glanced away from Helen’s face.
“No, I’ll come with you,” he said decidedly to his sister. “And I’ll call up Mother, too; I’m not so sick as all that. Then I shan’t be any more trouble to you,” he added to Amy.
She shook her head.
“I’ll get a taxi,” said Helen suddenly, going over to the telephone.
While she was dialling the number and Lou was painting her mouth in front of the mirror, Bob said to Amy:
“I’ll call you up later. Will you be in?”
Again she moved her head, looking at him.
“I must go with them now,” he went on in the same low voice, “because there are so many things to fix up, now I’m going home to get on with my work. I want to stay with you, but I can’t, I’ve been crazy enough. But don’t feel bad about it, darling, it’s real, remember. And I’ll call you up to-night.”
In the midst of a little pause during which they looked steadily at one another Helen announced that the taxi was coming round the block. Bob got up and they all moved towards the door.
“I’ll call you up early to-morrow,” said Lou meaningly to Amy, as they all went down in the lift. “Maybe we could meet for coffee in the morning?”
“I should love it,” replied Amy, but without enthusiasm.
She did not want to talk about what had happened; it was already sacred. Lou gave her a dry look which she did not see, and thought, Relatives Keep Off. Well, I’m glad it’s her, for it might have been Francey Carr or something from the Ecstasy Club. All the same, she must know where he’s been and everything, and to-morrow I am going to have a bare outline. I don’t want to probe their feelings, but a bare outline I must and will have. Myron will want to know all about it when Bob gets home and of course Bob won’t tell him one thing and probably he won’t tell us much, either. If I don’t tell Myron something when I get home he’ll make it all up as he goes along, and people will be talking quite enough, without Myron’s help. Besides, I want to know.
The lift stopped in the lobby and they went across to the door. Bob took Amy’s hand for a moment and smiled down at her and said, “Good-bye,” and the girls made friendly farewells, and then the three Americans went quickly down the steps to the waiting taxi.
Amy was startled for a second; the contrast between the girls in elegant dark summer dresses and the big fair young man in broken shoes and stained jacket made the group look so dramatic as to be unreal. They’re going, and I shall never see them again! she thought. But the taxi driver scarcely glanced at the three, for the Village was the Village, and full of odd sights; and as the taxi drove away Bob leant out of the window and moved his hand to her. while the girls waved and smiled.
She went slowly back to the lift, seeing nothing but his smiling white face, and the little movement of his hand. She stood quite still as the lift climbed to the sixth floor, staring at the wall and feeling desolate, for suddenly the events of yesterday evening were no longer real; and she already knew that her heart was a prisoner and could only be comforted by realizing that the words he and she had said to one another, the slumber they had shared on the red couch, were true.
In the apartment, cigarette smoke lingered on the air and the glasses stood about on the arm-trays of the chairs. The sunlight poured in with a steady look, as if it would burn the walls and floor. She moved from room to room emptying ashtrays and tidying the glasses away, plumping the cushions and arranging the chairs, while an aching lump grew in her throat and a painful feeling of confusion and loss, as bodily as a headache, slowly overcame her. Presently, while she was getting out her manuscript and putting her glass of water ready, she began to cry, and though she sat down and prepared to write she could not stop crying. She got up and wandered round the room, rubbing the tears from her eyes, and at last lay down on the divan, still impressed by his body, and cried for a long time. It was while she was lying there, wearied out, that a large box of pale yellow roses arrived, with a card:
“For my Swimming Girl”
An American courtship had begun.
“She isn’t a bit what one expects a writer to be, is she?” said Helen suddenly, as she and Lou were going up in the lift to their room, having left Bob asleep in his.
“No. Most writers are nuts,” answered Lou, not aggressively but as one who refers to a fact. “She’s inclined to be jittery but she’s not nuts. Did you like her?”
It was the natural question to ask and therefore Lou asked it, for she was determined that there should be no meaningful silences, no sympathetic glances, between herself and Helen. She knew that if they were distasteful to herself they would be unbearable to her cousin.
“There’s something striking about her, but I can’t truthfully say I liked her,” replied Helen, going pale but also speaking naturally. “She has that very unforthcoming British air—you know. It doesn’t attract me. But if I knew her well I should respect her. She’s single-minded, I should think.”
“Knows what she wants, do you mean?”
“No. I meant that she only likes a very few things and people, and is faithful to them. Most people have so many loyalties and interests that they’re all tangled-up. She’s restful, somehow.”
The words what she wants—faithful—lingered on the air with a faint sadness after they were spoken, and for a moment both girls were silent, thinking about the same thing, of which they would never speak to one another. Then Helen added:
“She doesn’t sparkle at all—”
“Thank God.”
—“And her books don’t either, do they? I was surprised by the one you lent me, it was so childish.”
“It was a swell story, I couldn’t put it down.”
“But only a story, Lou. No deep psychological problems or social analysis, and nothing mature.”
“It did make you feel you were in the story yourself, though,” said Lou thoughtfully, as they walked down the corridor. “I really felt I knew that queer old house in whereisit—”
“… Lambeth. In London, south of the Thames.”
“… and that creepy old guy and his cats. I got a kick out of it.”
Helen shook her head.
“I guess I’m too old for fairy tales,” she said gently. It was the first bitter sentence Lou had heard her speak in the twenty years they had known one another, and she had to resist an impulse to take her arm and give it a loving pressure, but she did resist it, and they went into their room in silence.
I must get away, thought Helen, beginning to brush her hair. Miles away to California, or Florida—and stay there. If I’m to make anything of my life, if I’m not to go rotten with dreams, that’s what I’ve got to do, and quick.
It’s tough on her and she’s being grand about it, thought Lou, sitting on her bed and carefully examining her stockings for runs. I wonder if Mother and Dad put Bob off by dropping hints? That’s what everyone has always done to me and Stebby. Maybe we’ll walk in married one of these beautiful Spring mornings, we must be pretty attracted or we wouldn’t fight the way we do, but I’m darned if I marry Stebby—the fresh thing!—until the old folks give up hoping I will. Nudge—hint—wink, until I could howl like a timber wolf!
She walked over to Helen’s bureau and looked at a photograph of Helen’s dark, slender, conceited brother while she took off her hat. Pleased with yourself, beautiful? She made the faintest face at his laughing face before she turned away.
This time last night he was here. Amy was sitting at the table late that evening trying to write, but every few sentences she stopped and began to draw doodles on the blotting paper, while her mind went spinning away into memories and dreams. This time last night he was here. She was also waiting for the telephone to ring. (Ah, that sound! which is usually an accursed nuisance but can be romantic as any lieder) and fearing that soon it would be too late, for it was ten o’clock, and in the circles in which she was most at home in London people did not ring up after ten o’clock, any more than they sent telegrams unless something was wrong.
Then it rang, making her start violently. It sounded actually beautiful to her, and she had come so far in self-examination that she thought how strange that was, as she took up the receiver, clumsily, because she was trembling.
“Hullo there?” said a young man’s voice, unrecognizable.
“Hullo?”
“Is that—? This is Bob.”
“Oh, yes! Your voice sounds different.”
“So does yours.”
“Are you—how do you feel now?”
“Much better. I’ve been—”
“Oh, I’m so glad. I was—what did you say?”
“I only said I’ve been asleep ever since I left you.”
“I’m glad. That’ll do you good.”
Pause.
“I called up my mother. I’m going home to-morrow morning.”
“Oh. I’m—that’s good. Isn’t your mother glad?”
“Yes. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m all right. I was just writing.”
“I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“Oh, no! I wasn’t really doing much—only just—”
“Have you got the lamp on the table?”
“Yes. Oh—and the roses! Oh, I meant to thank you! Thank you very much. I never saw anything so beautiful!”
“I’m glad you liked them.”
“The stems are so long! I never saw—”
“Listen, I want to ask you something. Will you come and stay with us?”
“Stay—?”
“At home. In about a week? Lou says you’re going to Marydale. That’s only fifty miles from Vine Falls. I could come and meet you.”
“Oh, yes!”
“I’m sorry. I’ll have to come by the bus. I mustn’t drive a car, you know.”
“I don’t mind a bit. It would be simply lovely.”
“All right, then. I’ll write to you as soon as I get home and fix it up.”
“Wh—what time are you going to-morrow?”
“Half after seven.”
“Oh. That’s very early, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Maybe I could call you up at six, if that isn’t too early? Just to say good-bye.”
“Yes. I was hoping—”
“I will, then. Just to say good-bye.”
“Yes.”
Pause.
“Amy.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the first time I’ve said your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Say mine.”
“Bob.”
“Amy, I only wanted to tell you that all the things we said were real.”
“Oh, I am glad you said that! I’ve been feeling bad, because—”
“I know, so have I. I’m glad you felt like that too. When you come to visit, we can talk.”
“Yes.”
Pause.
“Amy.”
“Yes … yes, Bob.”
“I—you’ve made me much happier. I’m feeling better about things—you know.”
“I’m so glad. You—you’ve made me much happier, too.”
“I wish I could see you.”
“Yes.”
“But I’ll call you up at six to-morrow.”
“Oh, yes. I’ll be awake.”
“Well. Well, good-night.”
“Good-night.”
“Good-night, darling.” The word came softly over the wires.
“Good-night. Oh—good-night—” She heard a faint click.
Slowly, as if it were something sacred, she replaced the receiver.