REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I met Andy,” said Marian, lying on her left side where it did not hurt so much, “it was at Caroline Meigs’s tea for him just after his first book came out. She had a little house over by the river with a big garden. There were trees and we were all so surprised at weeds and trees in a New York back yard. There was a table of sandwiches and fruit punch. It was just before we got into the war.”
“Andy hated going to that party,” said Effie.
“I was terribly excited about meeting him. I’d been in New York a year at the League and I hadn’t met anyone famous. Andy of course wasn’t known much then but at least he had been published,” said Marian. “He was sitting on one of those rustic benches she had around, glowering at everybody. His hair—it was terribly thick and there was something noble about his big head—”
“Everyone always spoke of it,” said Effie. “Sculptors were always after him to pose.”
“He had on the dirtiest blue shirt I ever saw in my life and no tie and he was tight as a tick,” said Marian.
“He started when that bad review came out in the Times and got worse because he detested Caroline Meigs,” said Effie.
“I was crazy to meet him,” said Marian. “I’d bought a new hat, a red one, with the money my mother was sending me for my League expenses and a red jersey silk coat. Then when I saw you I thought, oh dear, if his wife dresses so quietly that must be his taste so I turned the blue side of my coat out—it was reversible, but there weren’t any buttons on the blue side and it must have looked funny. You stood in a corner with a big fat woman and very young pretty boy with such a white face and charcoal eyes—”
“The Glaenzers,” said Effie. “He wasn’t over twenty-one or -two then.”
“I met them later,” said Marian. “There you were with everyone around saying ‘Isn’t that Mrs. Callingham distinguished-looking?’ and you never took your eyes off Andy, though he was yards away. No one introduced me to him—I guess I wasn’t important enough, just a friend of a friend of a friend. Presently I couldn’t stand it any longer and I went up to Andy, ‘Let me get you a sandwich,’ I said. He had very odd gray eyes, sea-gray. He looked me over very sourly—he says now he was only trying to figure out whether my breasts were as fine as they seemed. ‘No, I don’t want any more of those goddam sandwiches or any more of this swill to drink,’ he said. I was so startled. Caroline could hear him. She was right beside us.”
“He never cared who heard him,” said Effie. “He was always perfectly honest.”
“I sat down beside him. He hadn’t asked me to and it was pretty bold of me,” said Marian, “and before I knew it I was saying ‘My, it must be wonderful to be a writer.’ I said how much I admired his work, and did he write at night or in the daytime and did he write from life or imagination. I really did. I said all those things. And he gripped the arm of his chair as if he was going to throw something but all he said was ‘exactly.’ ‘Exactly,’ he’d say. I was so thrilled. I thought he was brilliant. And he thought I was. Actually. Finally he said, ‘Thank God, there’s one intelligent woman here, what do you say we clear out and go someplace decent?’ Can you imagine?”
“It was odd I didn’t notice you that day,” said Effie. “I was only wondering if he would run out after a while with that tall blond girl and how I could make it look perfectly natural so people wouldn’t talk. I was always doing that.”
“Later on that summer I got to visiting a girl from the League who lived out at Cold Spring Harbor where he kept his boat,” said Marian. “I would see him at the station sometimes or when we were out sailing. He always looked like a tramp, bearded, dirty dungarees, sometimes a battered old sunhat with the crown kicked out, likely as not shelling peanuts on the village streets and eating them as he went along, some detective story sticking out of his pocket. I thought he was wonderful. Sometimes I saw you out on the deck of the launch on Sunday mornings when we sailed by. You’d be washing your hair or just lying in the sun. You had lovely hair, Effie. Every time I’d see you out there with your yellow hair flying about I’d go back to town determined to have my hair dyed or get a permanent wave or something. You know it’s still lovely, too—no, don’t put your hat on yet, please. Andy still speaks of your hair. He loved it.”
“I know,” said Effie.
“Do you know I remember Andy so clearly before we got to be friends, isn’t it funny? I mean I remember the wanting to know him, the terrible hoping I’d run into him, the wondering what I’d say to him and what he’d say to me next time we met, much clearer than how it all finally happened?” said Marian. “Isn’t that extraordinary? Pretty soon you and he and I were going places together, and on Sunday nights back in town eating at Mouquin’s, both of us laughing at everything Andy said and me drawing pictures of Dubois, the waiter, and trying to hear what the Pennells were saying at the next table. Andy always had a favorite waiter—not Dubois—but—I’ve forgotten the name now—”
“Ernest,” said Effie.
“You were the serious one, always,” said Marian. “You didn’t see how we could be so silly with war so near. Andy was a ferocious pacifist. I was shocked at first but afterwards of course I respected him for daring to be one. I sometimes wonder what would have happened to him if we’d stayed in America till war was declared. He would have been jailed or killed. And there wouldn’t have been any me in his life. It was lucky our deciding to go to China instead of to Europe as we first planned. You stayed right on in New York until the Armistice, didn’t you, Effie?”
“Yes,” said Effie. “There wasn’t much else for me to do.”
“Do you remember the three of us that Fourth of July at Coney Island, Effie? The astrologer … the description she gave of our true mates … Andy’s and mine fitted,” said Marian, “and I was so thrilled over that till I looked at you—”
“I hadn’t even noticed it,” said Effie. “I didn’t pay any attention to those things.”
“But I felt so guilty over being thrilled, you see, and I suddenly hated Andy for being so wonderful that two fine girls had to fight and suffer for him, so all the rest of the day I stayed beside you and I wouldn’t dance with him or go in the loveboat or do any of the things I wanted to do most. He got angry, remember, and left us and at Feltman’s when we were eating later on he came up with two awful little tarts and a sailor he’d picked up on the Boardwalk. They all came back to town with us and we could never get rid of them.”
“Andy was always doing things like that,” said Effie.
“We did have good times,” said Marian, closing her eyes. “Wherever we went we had fine times. I never knew who Andy would bring up to our room in Shanghai or Tokyo—” she went on, leaving Effie alone now in New York and taking Andy far far away forever, “some British earl or some Viennese dancer. At first he was always in the dumps thinking maybe you were having a bad time of it alone and you never wrote—”
“There was nothing to say,” said Effie, “and I was getting along all right. I was perfectly all right.”
“I told him that. If it had been me in your place,” said Marian, “I would have died. I would have killed myself, I would have jumped out a window. My heart would have absolutely broken, but, Effie, you were so calm, so sane, so marvelous, you were such a swell person, we always said that, Effie, Andy and I always said so. And you had told him to do just as he thought best, go if he must. I couldn’t have said that. I couldn’t say it last fall when this new woman came in—I couldn’t bear it for a minute, oh, I couldn’t stand it, it killed me, it did, it killed me. I had to run away just seeing them laugh at each other across the room or saying silly things to each other the way we used to do at Mouquin’s—I went out of my mind. And I hurt so—this thing hurt me so.… Effie, do you believe he’s still with her? Don’t you think when I ran away he got afraid of losing me altogether and sent her off? I’m so sure he did. I can’t stand thinking about it—but after all he does love me—we did have good times, he will come when he hears I’m here sick, and he will laugh at me for being so silly as to run out. You sent the cablegram?”
“He’ll come,” said Effie. “Don’t worry, dear.”
“He will. But when? Where is he now?” She was silent for so long that Effie, turning toward her, saw that her cheeks were graying and rang for the nurse.
“She’s gone again,” she whispered.
The nurse shook her head gravely.
“It can’t be long now. If her husband could only get here in time!”