A Young Man's Heart (11 page)

She frowned slightly and looked past him. “Then you’d rather not have the first dance with me yourself?”

“Of course I would, you know I would. That isn’t what he meant at all. You know their flowery language: ‘Compliment your lovely wife for me, and may I rob you of one of her dances?’ ”

She narrowed her eyes as though she were pleased, but by her answer showed herself to be anything but pleased. “Suppose I were to tell you I intend to dance every piece with you?”

Flattered, he nevertheless tried to point out a more reasonable course.

“You know I’m not terribly light on my feet. I’d rather sit and watch you enjoy yourself. Besides, I want you to know people.”

They locked their door and went downstairs, Eleanor, in her orange dress, a little in advance, like a slender brightly blazing torch that miraculously failed to char the walls she brushed against.

Serrano was sitting alone at a wicker table arranged for three, two of its chairs tilted forward in token of prospective occupancy. He rose by way of acknowledgment and stood behind his chair as they entered the patio, as Eleanor entered it, rather.

5

Blair returned at sundown. As he entered the room the sun’s reflection still played about the base of the walls, dyeing them waveringly orange. But his face, in the glow, seemed flushed more from within than without. Eleanor was sitting at the mirror. She hardly turned her head, but seeing him in the glass, spoke to him as though he were in front of her instead of behind her.

“I’ve been lying down until now. I had a bath. Is it still so terribly warm out?”

“Frightfully. Or at least it seems so to me now. I didn’t notice it at first. Then about half an hour ago a sickly wave of heat or something seemed to rise up all around me. I’ve been feeling it ever since.”

“Why didn’t you take a carriage? You should be more careful.”

“A little over half an hour ago I came across our friend Serrano sitting in front of a café. He asked me to sit down with him, and ordered some refreshment or other I don’t even remember touching. Then he insisted on paying for it, and brought out his wallet—” Something dropped in front of her. “Is this yours?”

She glanced down at the frivolous petal of handkerchief that had not been there a moment ago.

“Yes—no—I don’t think so—”

Ignoring the startled way in which she was now looking at him, he opened a drawer of the dressing table, which crowded her arm aside as it was brought forward, and took out a little flask.

“Is this the perfume you’re in the habit of using?”

“L’Origan,
yes.”

He shook it, amusingly enough (though she found that nothing was amusing at the moment), and held it to his nostrils.

“It’s the same as on the handkerchief. That’s what made me so sure, without knowing why. Scents, they say, do something to the memory. When he first opened the wallet, before I even saw it, you came before me from head to foot just as I see you each day.”

“How perfectly stupid,” she said with an injured air. “Hundreds of women use
l’Origan.”

“If it isn’t yours, of course, I owe him an apology. For a moment I nearly fought him about it. I openly asked, ‘Has my wife lost her handkerchief again? I see you have it in your wallet.’ He told me I was mistaken, it was someone else’s. I said, ‘But I am certain that is my wife’s handkerchief.’ He said he was certain it was not. ‘I am sure your wife would never want to claim she is the only charming lady in town who carries a handkerchief.’ ‘If you are so positive it is not hers,’
I
said, ‘suppose you let me show it to her. You’ll agree, won’t you, that she should be able to recognize her own property better than anyone else. I give this to you under protest,’ he said, ‘ask and convince yourself. She will tell you herself. Then
I
would like it returned to me in her presence with an apology.’ ”

“Whoever it belongs to,” she said, “really ought not to feel flattered at the way he tamely let you carry it off like a sample of goods to be matched.”

“He probably felt it was either that or come to blows with me about it. I had no intention of letting him keep it. Now I’m heartily sorry I didn’t. I’ll telephone and beg his pardon.
(Primer piso, numero cinco
—”)

“Wait!” she said, starting up, “ring off a moment, I want to tell you something. He’s already said it wasn’t mine. I could very easily say the same thing. I can see he evidently counted on my denying it. But I’m not going to. I had a handkerchief tied around my wrist the other day and he took it off and asked me whether he could keep it. I didn’t stoop to trying to get it back, which was probably what he wanted me to do. Instead, all I said was that a handkerchief was only a handkerchief to me, and would never be anything else.”

“What was his answer to that?”

“ ‘Sometimes a handkerchief can be more than a handkerchief.’ Pure pose on his part. We finished the set and I threw my racket down and walked off the court without another word.”

She rolled the object that had created the discussion into a ball and petulantly flung it on the floor.

“I’m sick of hearing any more about this handkerchief, and all others as well—or do you wish me to continue?”

He leaned over her and touched the top of her head with his lips. “Do you suppose I would care if you
had
given it to him, in a sentimental way or any other? I would be slighting myself to think twice about someone you know less than two weeks. And slighting you to think twice about any man, whoever he was. These little surface courtesies are nothing. Your heart isn’t tied up in your handkerchief. Any more than when I tip my hat to a lady it means I am thinking of love. Our cordiality toward the rest of the world was not supposed to disappear after we knelt together in the church that day and everything turned to a rosy blur before our eyes.”

Suddenly she had begun to cry. Quite inexplicably, she put her mouth to her clenched hand, and tears stood in her eyes.

“Blair, he kissed me. Oh, I don’t see how I could have.”

With his hand still resting on her shoulder he said, “He isn’t very brave, this Serrano.” He took a handkerchief of his own from his breast pocket and touched her eyelids with it.

“You love life so, Eleanor.”

“It was the time that old Mrs. Galbraith and I stopped to take tea together at a little summer-house. He must have followed us in another carriage. He sat down at our table without being asked, and then Mrs. Galbraith went away and left me. And they lit lanterns all around us and they played a tango and he showed me how it was danced. Then he taught me how to mix anisette with my tea. And the sunset made the sky all colors imaginable. You
know
I didn’t mean anything—and I didn’t let him see me back to the hotel, either.”

She turned around and realized he hadn’t been listening. He had left her and gone to the window, and was standing there gazing up at some stars again.

6

For two days after this Eleanor remained constantly at Blair’s side. He could not make out whether this was to prove her devotion to him or to avoid meeting Serrano alone. He did not ask her. She said nothing about it, one way or the other. Then on the second evening, after dinner, they both met him vis-à-vis. He was sitting in the patio with a neglected cup of coffee resting on the broad arm of his bamboo chair, and pretended to be reading a newspaper. Since he appeared not to see them, Blair was under no necessity of bowing to him. Furthermore, both men were hatless. A snub could not have been more painlessly arranged by both parties under any circumstances.

Owing to the patio’s limitations, Blair and Eleanor had to content themselves with chairs which remained in full view of him. A triple cat-and-mouse-play at once began. Serrano, over the top of his newspaper, stared at Eleanor as if to determine just how much she had admitted to her husband. Blair kept his eyes on Eleanor’s face to find out if she were looking at Serrano, and if any signals were passing between them. Eleanor gazed steadily downward into her own lap, and seemed to be absorbed in nervously twisting her ring about on her finger, now this way, now that. Finally, as though she could bear the situation no longer, she got up and went up to their room, saying she had forgotten her powder puff and would be down in a moment. Blair at once transferred his interest to Serrano, to see what move he would make. Their glances met and Serrano, as soon as Eleanor was gone, rose to his feet and idly sauntered over to him. He nodded his head in recognition and said, “I must be getting blind. I did not see you until now. And where is your wife this evening?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Blair said. “Perhaps she is taking her usual tea and anisette.”

Serrano gave him a disconcerted look and made as if to move on.

“About that little matter we were discussing the other day,” Blair proceeded, “if you still want the handkerchief, there is ample time for you to intercept the chambermaid who cleans our room. It was my wife’s, and she threw it into the waste-basket.”

Serrano arched his brows in mock inquiry.

“It is customary, then, for her to treat her handkerchiefs so?”

“Yes,” Blair answered, “you see with us, as she has already told you, a handkerchief is only a handkerchief, nothing more.”

“And what do you think it is to other people,” Serrano asked insolently, “a sacred symbol of salvation
?”

“Good evening,” Blair said, without moving from where he sat.

Serrano gave him a scornful look and walked on, his newspaper pinned under one arm.

Neither of them wished a scene, Serrano probably because of his infant diplomatic career and certainly Blair because Eleanor’s name was more or less involved, and yet both realized that in a moment more they would have rushed headlong into one. More than one of the costume-connoisseurs scattered about the patio at strategic spots reading books, playing solitaire, and deciphering anagrams, would look intently over at them from time to time whenever she thought herself unobserved. Serrano’s maneuver in not venturing to approach until after Eleanor was gone had been duly noted and had whetted their curiosity to the point of conjecture. From conjecture it was only a step to firm belief, though each one held to her own theory and was in no way loath to set it forth.

“She’s had a quarrel with him, and now he’s trying to curry favor with the husband.”

“No, I think it’s the other way around. Her husband’s smelt a rat and is keeping them away from each other, and the other fellow is trying to get information out of him.”

“It’s about time he found out, anyway. I saw the two of
them
drive back in a carriage one afternoon and he was wearing the same kind of flower in his buttonhole that she held in her lap, he’d evidently bought them for her.”

“And Mrs. Galbraith told me that one day she took tea with her outside the city and he suddenly popped up magically right under their feet, and when Mrs. Galbraith felt that the only thing to do was to leave,
she
stayed behind”—a suitable pause —
”alone
with him!”

The sum total of which was that Eleanor had gotten herself liberally talked about.

Meanwhile, since she did not return and it seemed to him he had remained an intolerable length of time surrounded by these cranelike women, whose necks appeared to lengthen each time they scrutinized him, Blair got up and decided to follow her to their room. Just before he had gained the stairs, however, he was forced to pass close to a white-haired woman with rakishly short sleeves whom he vaguely placed as the Mrs. Galbraith of the famous tea incident. As she had spent an afternoon in Eleanor’s company and as she now looked up from her mythical absorption in a book (not a page of which had stirred within the last half hour) to greet him, he had to consent to stop and chat with her a moment.