Chiffon Scarf (4 page)

“That was in the bargain. We agreed not to ask and not to try to find out. Major Pace has been absolutely open and frank with us about that. And he has given us the best guarantee of his good faith he could possibly give. He’s deposited in escrow the money we’ve agreed on as the rice of the engine pending the success of the trial flight. The negotiations are finished. The deal’s closed. Or will be if the engine performs all right tomorrow.” He stopped suddenly, as if checked by a sudden thought, his small eyes narrowed till they be came suspicious, angry slits and he said: “And it’ll perform, Jim. Understand? No monkey business—”

“
Bill!
” cried Creda on a breathless, high note of protest.

Bill caught himself quickly.

“I spoke hastily, Jim,” he said with an air of bluff apology. “But business is business. We can make more out of the engine this way than in any other way. Now’s the time to sell. A year from now—two years from now, God knows what will have happened! Averill agrees with me. And Noel. If we didn’t want to be fair, we wouldn’t consult you at all—”

“I know, Bill,” said Jim. “You needn’t apologize. And you needn’t worry. Pace’s—money—the money from whatever country he represents—is as good as in your pocket.” He walked across the veranda and stopped beside Averill. “I’ll let you settle details. Will you come with me, Averill, for—for a walk in the garden?”

There was a little silence. Then she shook her head.

“I’d better stay here, Jim.” Her voice was perfectly polite and pleasant and Averill was angry. Furious because he had rebelled. Because he had gone against her wishes. Because he had held his own view. Eden, knowing Averill, knew that. She stood like a brooding queen in her white gown, with the great scarlet dragon blazed across her slender body like a sign of royalty and of despotism.

Averill had never graciously suffered being crossed.

Jim said pleasantly: “Very well—I’ll go for a smoke.”

He went down the steps, leaving a little, uncomfortable silence behind him. Then Averill moved toward the table. “Will you bring me a chair, Noel?” she said. “Now then—these are copies of the complete, revised plans. I telephoned to the office and asked Dorothy to make sure. They include everything—isn’t that right, Noel? Will you tell him—”

Noel’s pleasant voice took up the burden of it. And Eden rose quietly, went to the steps nearest her and, unobserved or at least not stopped by any one of the group around the fable, went down into the shadowy garden. She had seen the look on Jim’s face when he passed her and she wanted to be with him.

I
T WAS THE FIRST
time she heard Dorothy’s name; Dorothy—that enigmatic, self-restrained, pale young woman.

Dorothy. Eden, only half aware of it, noted the name and realized that she was connected somehow with the offices at the Blaine plant. That was all.

The thick shrubs below the terrace gave place to a wide strip of velvet lawn with steps at the end of it. These steps, again, led into a turf path, heavily bordered with shrubs, leading in its turn presumably to the garden. It was deep twilight now, with a few fireflies, and stars far above. She could barely see Jim’s broad shoulders and the light of his cigarette as it vanished into the deeper shadow of the path. She followed, her slippered feet quiet on the cool turf below them.

The path ran between hedges for a way and emerged into a garden—wide, oval, with turf paths among flowers. In the center, barely visible in the twilight, was a pool with a wide balustrade running around it and Jim stood leaning upon the balustrade, smoking.

“Jim—”

She was near enough to see his shoulders stiffen a little. Then he turned and said: “Oh—it’s you.”

“Yes.” She put her arms upon the balustrade; it felt cool to her skin. She leaned over to look into the pool which returned a dim, dreamy reflection of deep blue sky and stars and a blotch of shadow where she and Jim stood.

“Cigarette?” said Jim and held his case toward her. She took it and bent to a light, and as he held it she caught a glimpse of his face—fine and brown. He was frowning thoughtfully.

“Well,” he said, “I made rather a scene, didn’t I?”

“Rather. But why not? It’s your engine.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“You made it.”

“I was paid for making it.”

“But, Jim—wasn’t there any understanding about it? I mean—you’ve worked on it a long time, haven’t you?”

He hesitated and then said simply, “Yes. Old Blaine took me in as a kid, gave me an education, gave me a job—started to build airplane engines. This engine is almost literally the—sum of it. Well, I hate to sell it like this. That’s all.”

“What’s Pace going to do with it?”

Jim shrugged.

“It’s the armament race. It’s a good engine; it’s powerful, light-weight, air-cooled and cheap to manufacture—thus desirable. I don’t mean that if any war comes along this engine’s going to decide its outcome or any such nonsense as that. No one engine—no one machine—no one tank or gun design can do that. But the next war—if war there is, which God forbid—is going to be a war in the air. Trench warfare, heavy, massed armies are a thing of the past. The whole thing in another war will be mobility. Fleets of lorries and trucks, fast-moving units; planes.” He smoked for a moment and then began to talk again. “Defense is made up of one device plus another device, plus another device. It’s the old, weighty argument of the majority being made up of one plus one plus one—repeated the most times. Well—my engine is one of those devices. That’s all.”

“That’s—if there’s war?”

“That’s whether there’s war or not. I’m not alone in the belief that war will be fought or peace defended in the air.”

He leaned on the balustrade and after a moment went on as simply as if life together stretched ahead of them:

“Sometime we’ll go up in the air together. So you can look down with me upon the panorama below—the broad fields and the wooded mountains and silver rivers. Industry; homes; freedom; all material wants spread out freely, lavishly, for the taking. That’s America. My country,” said Jim Cady, “and yours.”

“You’re too young to have been in the war.”

“My father was. He was killed in the Argonne. I was old enough to remember it. But then, every generation of American families since the founding of the first American colonies has had to breed soldiers. I’m talking a lot.”

“Go on.”

“Oh, that’s all. It just seems to me to be common sense not to sell the thing—like this. Well, they’re going to get a good price for it.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred thousand dollars for all patents, all plans and the model itself. Free and perpetual and exclusive use of it from now on.”

“Are you—will you share in that?”

There was a little pause. Then Jim said in a voice that quite suddenly held reserve and a little strain in it: “Not directly.”

Eden waited. Instantly the complete and spontaneous understanding that made their talk possible vanished.

Jim said—again in a reserved voice, the voice of a stranger:

“Averill—is giving me a large block of stock. It—it sounds a bit odd. It isn’t, really. Old Blaine and I had a kind of understanding; he intended to give me a share in the company; he told me so and he told others many times. But he died and it wasn’t done. I didn’t urge it; I was busy—engrossed in work; I didn’t care. But it’s all right; I really have earned it and I know it; if Averill wants to turn it over to me in just that way, it’s all right with me. Noel and Bill both agree. It—it doesn’t really matter.”

Except, thought Eden with flash of comprehension, that Jim was going to be under obligation to Averill for something he had actually and really earned.

Jim went on rather abruptly:

“You’re awfully good, you know—to listen to all this. I—forgive me, won’t you. You see you came along at a time when I—” He stopped.

She turned toward him, waiting, and he was looking down through the dusk into her face. She started to speak—and forgot what she’d intended to say. There was a long, hushed moment, deeply expectant.

Then Jim moved and dropped his cigarette into the pool. There was a little hiss as it struck the water; a bird stirred somewhere in the shrubbery.

It happened suddenly, without warning.

Jim all at once leaned nearer, very close above her; instinctively, irresistibly, without knowing she was going to do it, she put up her mouth to meet his. Their lips met quickly and instantly drew apart.

It hadn’t been planned; it was an indescribably brief, impulsive gesture. It was less a definite, intentional act than it was a moment of reality, a moment of being off guard, a moment of surrender to a deep inner compulsion. So new a compulsion that neither of them had yet recognized and labeled it as forbidden and set up a barricade against it.

They drew instantly apart. Neither spoke. As if still moved by that mysterious compulsion they turned and walked slowly through the silent dusk together toward the path. Halfway along the path Jim said:

“Eden—please do believe me. I can’t apologize.”

He was right, of course; apology would be absurd. Explanation would be dangerous. Any possible words were better left unsaid.

“Of course.”

He swung around toward her, trying to see her face through the dusk.

“Eden—” She wished the brief touch of his mouth didn’t cling so warmly to her lips. She took a long breath and said abruptly:

“I know. Shall we go on?”

“I wonder if you do know.”

She caught herself on the very verge of swaying a little toward him, irresistibly again. As naturally as her breath came and her heart beat. She said a little unsteadily, almost frightened:

“Averill is waiting.”

Averill. And a wedding, four days away. Suppose they did feel that they’d known each other since the world was set in motion; that was all wrong. She and the man beside her had met for the first time an hour—two hours ago and he was to marry Averill.

And, now, Averill stood like a sword, like an implacable empress all in white, between them.

Jim said:

“Yes, of course. But anyway, thanks, Eden.”

“Thanks—”

“For being you. All right, shall we go on?”

Impulse, Eden told herself, walking beside him. Put it down to impulse and forget it.

But Averill couldn’t begrudge her so small, so brief a thing as that unheralded kiss, taking them both unaware and unarmed, had been.

Yet she walked beside him without consciousness, really, of anything but their nearness to each other, of the dusk holding them both, of the air they both breathed.

It hadn’t been the champagne at dinner. She hadn’t been the victim of a mad delusion. The fact was she loved him.

Queer, she thought presently, how little love concerned itself with time! Or for that matter with one’s will. With millions of men in the world, she’d had to fall in love with the man whom in four days Averill Blaine was to marry.

There was a kind of ironic humor in that, too. But it was no good trying to laugh about it, even to herself.

They reached the steps too soon. Averill, poised and certain of herself and of Jim, would be waiting.

However, no one really was waiting except Bill Blaine who was sunk in the depths of a lounge chair with his bulging shirt front showing dimly white in the dusk. Long areas of light from the library windows streamed out onto the terrace and the empty chairs.

“Where’s everybody?” said Jim.

“Creda’s strolling with Pace; you must have met them. Noel’s gone in to telephone the weather bureau again. Averill’s somewhere around.”

Jim walked over to the table; Eden hesitated and sat down in the shadow near Bill.

“Where are the plans?” said Jim.

“Averill took them inside. Looks as if we’d better make the flight pretty early tomorrow, Jim. Noel says there’s threatened rain and fog tomorrow.”

“It’s clear now. But you can make it any time. Engine’s all tuned up. Mike worked on her all day.”

“Mike’s a good mechanic. None better. Well, all differences between us aside, Jim, I’ll do my best to show off the engine tomorrow.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Jim dryly. “I’m going to turn in.”

“You’re staying here tonight, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The screened door to the library opened and Noel came swinging out from the band of light.

“It’s an early flight tomorrow,” he said. “Oh—you here, Jim? Or is it Pace?”

“It’s me,” said Jim. “What’s the latest report?”

“Girl says clear tonight; probably early morning. Showers or possibly fog by seven o’clock.”

“It’s an early start all right.” Bill heaved himself out of his deep chair and put down the end of his cigarette. “I’ll turn in, too.”

Noel found Eden in the shadow and came to her.

“Let’s stroll, Eden, shall we?”

He was smiling a little in the dusk and reached out to take her hand. It was with almost a start that she remembered why she had come to Averill’s. wedding. To see Noel; to—however one did such things—persuade him to fall in love with her again; to marry him—cold-bloodedly, purposefully.

And nothing was actually changed. She still needed Noel exactly as she had needed him three hours ago. She mustn’t allow herself to forget that.

But she said:

“I—I can’t, Noel. If we go to the field early to watch the flight—”

Noel said: “And that means early. All right, dear. See you in the morning.”

There was a general movement toward the stairs; it was still fairly early but a feeling of drama and suspense in connection with the flight had already caught at them. Whisky, soda water and glasses were on a table in the hall, and they stopped to drink. Averill came in from some room off the other side of the hall, told Jim that she had put the plans away and took a splash of whisky in a large glass of soda water. Curiously Eden found it almost impossible to look at Jim yet she was actually aware of everything he said and every motion he made. While they were talking in a desultory way of the flight and drinking, Creda and Major Pace entered from the front door.

Pace’s swarthy face was blank and impassive as always. Creda looked a little pale and took more whisky than Noel, pouring it, expected her to take for he gave her a quick, surprised look. Pace lifted his glass and said, smiling: