I had Alexis on my mind. I thought I understood how she saw me, what I was in her life. I needed to negotiate the merger of romance with marriage, and I didn’t kid myself that it would be easy. She did find me attractive; in my manhood, I attracted her. We talked easily; I could make her laugh; there was a savoring quality to her good-night kisses. If she would love me, it would go forward without a hitch, I thought.
Love is the point where a woman balks. For a woman, marriage is a natural step after love, so she quite wisely hesitates at love. At this stage, everything I didn’t know about Alexis could make me ineffective, or could lead me into an error that would enable her to step back, clear of love, to step clear of me. I feared risking the error but also feared not seizing the chance.
I was debating this, once again, as I returned home with the ingredients for a coq au vin. Miss Sarah and her boyfriend occupied the stoop, where they seemed to have taken up permanent residence. This time, paper bags and plastic wrappers revealed a picnic lunch—eaten one-handed, since he seemed to have welded his right hand to her left. Miss Sarah slid even closer to Mr. Wycliffe to give me passage. “Hi, Gregor.”
She had the look. They both had it. They were aglow with happiness.
The young man stood up, brushing crumbs from his sweater. “Hello, Greg.”
Reluctantly, I was glad to see them so happy. I couldn’t imagine myself ever having looked so young and happy, even though I knew I had. I gave them fully half my attention. “I see you’ve eaten.”
“Brad has something he wants to ask you.” Miss Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off the young man.
“Yes,” he said. He reached down a hand to grasp hers again. “Yes. In point of fact, I want to marry your sister.”
That got my attention. “Mi—?” I stopped myself. “Sarah?”
“She’s the only sister you have, so I guess it must be her,” he said, and then laughed at his own humor.
“I guess it must,” I agreed. “Is this what you want to do?” I asked her.
“Oh, yes.”
I tried for wordless communication but she was unavailable, as if she believed in the fictional role she had herself created. What could I say to them? It wasn’t my place to say anything. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Your blessing is what we’d like. You’re not going to forbid it?” Mr. Wycliffe at least noticed the expression on my face.
“It’s all so sudden.”
“It doesn’t feel sudden to me,” he said. He thought he understood my hesitation and spoke from the heart, sincerity personified. “It feels to me as if I’ve known Sarah all my life, but I lost her. And now I’ve found her again.”
“Oh,” Miss Sarah breathed.
I myself had nothing to say.
“And I want to marry her,” he declared.
“I don’t know what Mr. Mondleigh would think.” I was asking her for help.
“What business is it of his?” Mr. Wycliffe asked.
“You know I’m twenty,” Miss Sarah reminded me.
“And don’t need anyone’s consent, is that it?” I stood thinking. Both watched me. “Well,” I said, deciding there was no harm in it, “you met, you fell in love, Brad proposed and you said yes, so now you’re engaged. I think I can give my blessing to that.”
“You sound pretty darned cool about it,” the young man said.
“Gregor,” Miss Sarah said, and she was the cool one if he’d only known, “we don’t mean getting engaged, we mean getting married.”
“Getting married?” There was no need to involve me. She might well be costing me my job, which didn’t seem to concern her.
“In Maryland,” she explained.
“We’ll have a honeymoon sometime later. I’ve taken so many vacation days this week—I couldn’t have concentrated anyway, but—We’ll be living at my place,” Mr. Wycliffe explained.
“Getting married today?”
“Tomorrow, actually.”
“It seemed like the best way to celebrate our first anniversary,” he told me, as soppy as she was.
“First anniversary?”
“It’s a week today that we met,” he said.
“What about your family?” I asked him.
“They’ll love Sarah. How could they not?”
I didn’t love her.
“I’m going upstairs, to pack,” Miss Sarah said, gathering up the remains of the picnic. She ran away, up the stairs and into the house, abandoning us together. I don’t know how she knew that I wouldn’t give her away.
“I can understand your concern,” Mr. Wycliffe said to me.
I clutched the grocery bag to my chest. “Can you?”
“Of course. But it’s all right, Gregor. My family is Wycliffe Industries. So she’ll be well taken care of, I can promise you. She’ll never want for anything.” I could only nod my head dumbly. “Greg, I never believed in love like this, just hitting you over the head and knocking you out. But now it’s happened to me, and—”
I cut the rhapsody short. “Would you think of waiting a little?”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“Your family might well object, and I can understand why they would.”
“Don’t you see? That’s why a fait accompli is the best way. Then they’ll have to band together, for the sake of the family, for family honor. They might be difficult, a little, at first. I won’t try to kid you about that, Greg. But I’m not worried. I promise you, I’m no Teddy Mondleigh. I don’t sleep around like he does. I’ve had only two serious relationships in my life, and this isn’t like either of them. With Sarah it’s different. If I’d known what the real thing is like, I wouldn’t ever—But I’m clean, Greg, I’m healthy. You don’t need to worry about that.”
I decided to try talking sense to Miss Sarah. “I think I’d like a word with my sister,” I said, and he nodded his chin at me, appreciating my need, approving of it.
I left the groceries on the floor in the hall and ran up the stairs. Miss Sarah’s room looked like the shirt scene in Gatsby, clothes all over the place. She had a small suitcase open on the bed. “I’d only have one suitcase, wouldn’t I?”
“Miss Sarah—”
“I know what you’re going to say and you can save your breath, Gregor. Can’t you understand? If I had to, I’d trade the whole rest of my life just to have the night with him.”
If she was going to be that way about it, there wasn’t much I could do. I tried anyway. “Has it occurred to you, Miss Sarah, that you seem to rush around headlong?”
“I love him.”
“Not enough to tell him the truth about who you are,” I pointed out. But I didn’t know why I should worry about it, worry over it.
“I will. I intend to. When it’s the right time.” As long as she got her way in the present moment, she was willing to promise to be reasonable at some future time.
“What about your parents?”
“I’m not a little girl. I can’t spend my life pleasing my parents, the way Prune has, and I don’t want to. Look at what her life is like. You’ll tell Theo for me, won’t you?” She held up a nightgown, lace and silk. “Does this look too expensive? Just for my wedding night, it isn’t, is it? Would a man notice?”
“I couldn’t say, miss,” I told her. After all, I thought, I might have better luck talking sense to Mr. Wycliffe. I went down the stairs, slowly.
“I can’t help thinking you’d be wise to wait,” I said to him. “Just another week or two, not long. I can’t help thinking you don’t know one another very well.”
He laughed and clasped my shoulder in a fraternal gesture. “You don’t expect me to give her up, do you? Relax, Greg. You see her like a brother. You probably can’t imagine how I feel about her.”
That at least was true. He was not, however, to be moved. I went back inside, back upstairs.
“What if I tell him the truth?”
That got her attention. “No, Gregor. Oh, please don’t. Don’t you have any sympathy for me? Haven’t you ever been in love? It’s not as if he’s the wrong kind of man—He’s someone they’d want me to marry, if they knew. Isn’t he?”
“But not this way, miss. Suddenly. In secrecy like this. Leaving everybody else out of it.”
“That’s the way love has happened to us.”
Love answered everything.
“Will you take my suitcase down?”
“If you were my sister—”
“But I’m not.” She was tired of the game and eager to be on her way. “I’m your employer’s sister. I’ll deny it, Gregor, if you say anything. I’ll deny it and he’ll believe me.”
I followed her down the stairs.
Outside, Mr. Wycliffe took the suitcase from me, as tenderly as if it were Sarah herself. “My car’s around the corner, Sarah. Well, Greg, I look forward to knowing you better.”
He meant it. He just didn’t know what he meant. “Thank you, sir.”
“Good-bye, Gregor,” Miss Sarah said. “Wish me well?”
The girl should have gone into acting. “I wish you all happiness,” I said, an appropriately ambiguous line. She stood up on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek. It was prettily done.
I watched them walk away, arms around each other. They had already forgotten me. I couldn’t imagine what Mr. Theo would say, when I had a chance to tell him the news.
“She what?” Mr. Theo demanded.
I had told him as plainly as possible. He had been sitting at his desk, looking at the mail.
“They what?” On the last word, he rose. His nostrils flared.
I passed him his scotch on the rocks. “Yes, sir.”
“What is she thinking of? She never met him before, did she?”
“No.”
“It’s only been a week, then.” He drank and sank back into his chair. “For God’s sake. Why didn’t you tell me she was seeing him?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You should have stopped her.”
“I did try, sir.”
“Not very hard, apparently.”
I left the room. Butler I was, cook, valet, housekeeper, occasional chauffeur—but not scapegoat. By the time Mr. Theo came out into the kitchen, I was making a salad, the greens spread out on the counter, crisp romaine, dark spinach, soft-leaved Boston. He brought me a glass of wine, a peace offering.
“I’m sorry, Gregor. She’s my responsibility, not yours.”
It was handsomely done, and I took the glass from him.
“The parents were wild enough that she’d left school. This will about finish them.”
He watched me chiffonade the spinach. He lifted his glass and drank, with the muted sound of ice on heavy crystal.
“ I don’t know how Wycliffe could do this, after the crap he threw at me about his sister.”
“He thought she was my sister,” I told him.
“How could he think that?”
“It came about because of what you told her not to say, that first night.”
“It just gets worse and worse,” Mr. Theo said. “But what can I do?”
I couldn’t advise him.
“Why did they elope? Why elope?”
“It’s faster.”
“What’s their hurry?”
“Love, they said, sir.”
“Love, my left foot. It’s sex and they just don’t know any better.” He paced the kitchen. “Oh well, there is a bright side. It’s not as if she’s run off with some rock star or the chauffeur or some weedy Frenchman after her money. And do you know what I did today?”
I turned to look at him, to shake my head. He might as well have asked if I cared what he’d done. Looking proud and foolish, he pulled a small, square velvet box out of his pocket. He opened it and held it out for me to take. It was impressive, the diamond probably three or four carats, the emeralds that flanked it at least two each, I don’t know very much about gemstones. It glittered and shone.
“I’m going to do it,” Mr. Theo announced. “Propose. This weekend, if I get a chance.” His face was resolute, Saul after Damascus. His voice was firm, ready to hear the doctor’s diagnosis.
The phone rang then. Mr. Theo shook his head, directing me not to answer. He wanted me to continue admiring the ring. The answering machine cut in, and there was silence while the recorded message played. “I hope the young lady says yes, sir,” I said.
“Why shouldn’t she?” Mr. Theo asked, a rhetorical question.
The beep sounded, and the familiar throaty voice spoke. “Mr. Bear?” Mr. Theo looked at me. I was impassive. “It’s been a few days, and last time you said call to remind you I was alive. I’m alive, Mr. Bear.”
By that time he had the phone off the hook. “Hi, hello, I just got in. Yes, hello to you too. I’ve been meaning to call. What, tonight? I don’t know if…But I do need to get out, I’ve been working too hard. Yeah, it would be fun. An hour and a half, is that too soon for you?” He laughed. “Hold that thought,” he said. “Yeah, me too.”
He hung up the phone and held out his hand. I returned the ring to him. “If I know Prune, she’ll say yes. Her parents are all for it. So are mine.” He put the ring back into his pocket. “Why else would she have put up with all this? So I’ll marry her, live in Connecticut, settle down. It’s time I settled down. How do you think you’ll like living in the country, Gregor?”
“I won’t know unless I try it, sir.”
“Isn’t that the way with everything,” Mr. Theo said. For a second, I wondered if he meant the idea to be discussed; certainly it was an idea worth some discussion. “I’d better shower; dinner in half an hour?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“And my little sister is getting married too, tomorrow. Wycliffe thinks he’s marrying beneath him, doesn’t he? I’d like to see his face when he finds out who she is.”
He left the room laughing.