Escape the Night (2 page)

And then, thinking it all out beforehand, covering every possible contingency and argument in her mind in advance, Serena had told Aunt Jane that she intended to leave. She was going to New York. She was going to get a job. Aunt Jane should have her usual allowance from Serena’s half of the family estate; she and Amanda had divided the estate equally between them a few weeks before Amanda’s marriage. Serena had taken the house; she had wanted it, for she loved it, and Amanda’s home was now the Condit house on the mountain slopes at the other side of the bay. Amanda had taken, rightly, by far the major share of invested stocks; still, there had been enough for Aunt Jane, and Serena had almost at once got and held a job.

Aunt Jane had been willing enough; she listened to Serena’s plan, thought it over and sensibly agreed. They closed the house; covered the furniture; sent the old flat silver to the vault; locked away linens and china; hired a caretaker to come along occasionally to make sure things were in order and to air the house.

Serena went to New York. She was then in love with Jem, with all the devotion, the unquestioning belief, the painful and unanswered dreams of nineteen. Eventually of course she’d conquered the pain; she’d enjoyed life; she’d filled her mind with new places, her affections with people. She’d known other men, too; had gone out with them and liked them—one or two enough to question seriously just how deep and strong that liking might grow to be. But it had never grown quite deep enough.

She thought that rather wryly, smiling a little. Never quite deep enough. That was because of Jem and her memory of him.

Well. Now she would discover how much that memory actually meant.

For Leda had told her that, too; it was, as a matter of fact, the only thing that had emerged as clear and sensible from the welter of half-hysterical, half-frank and half-evasive, altogether unpleasant plea that Leda had thrust at her during that hour at the Plaza. Leda had said, incidentally, merely by chance, that Jem was back. “He’s been there for several weeks. You remember him, don’t you, Serena? Jeremy Daly?”

Serena hadn’t answered. Not, at least, with her lips, or in any way that Leda could observe but actually it was at that instant that she decided to come home. Back to California; back to the peninsula and the brown hills and the blue sea and the black rocks. It was really as if the decision had been made for her, deeply and instinctively and at once. She only knew she was coming, and it was not because of Leda’s hysterical begging, nor what she said—except that she had said, too, that Jem Daly was there.

And she had come.

Of course, he might not even remember her. There was that—a sobering thought.

But she would know.

She hadn’t thought much, really, of any of the other things that Leda had said; Leda was inclined to exaggerate, she had been upset and, certainly, hysterical.

They approached the slip and the Ferry building. Well-remembered landmarks suddenly rose ahead of her, and the air and the blue sky and steep hills of the city all seemed to rush to meet her.

Serena March put up her head and took a long breath of the air she loved. She was at home; she was a woman now, no longer an uncertain child; and she would either lay the ghost of the love that had been so young and yet so real, or—or what? She asked herself.

And then suddenly, gayly smiled.

She unsnarled her baggage from the waiting stacks, managed to get a taxi and went up the hill to the Mark Hopkins. She had a bath and a mild drink by herself at the Top o’ the Mark—up on the twentieth floor with the sweeping view of the city and the bay and the hills that San Franciscans love. And then she phoned Amanda.

Amanda answered. “Darling! But this is too divine. I had your telegram. We’re expecting you. I can’t wait. Look, darling, you’re coming down on the afternoon train, aren’t you? It gets here about eight; you’d better get off at Del Monte. I’m having a party at the Lodge tonight; stop there and we’ll be waiting for you. Don’t mind how you look; you won’t have a chance to change. I’m simply dying to see you, darling. I …” There was a break in her voice; then she spoke, apparently to someone in the room near her. “It’s only Sissy. Well, you can listen if you want to.
For Heaven’s sake, put that down!”
The connection was so good that Serena could hear a quick gasp as if Amanda caught her breath hard. There was a muffled sound of motion at the other end of the wire. But before any time had elapsed and before Serena felt more than a question as to what Amanda could be doing, or what was happening, Amanda’s voice came in her ear again She was a little breathless but that was all, and she said: “I’ll see you then, darling. I can’t talk now. I’ve got to fly. Oh, yes, I may not be able to meet you myself at the station, but I’ll send someone. Good-bye …”

The receiver clicked as Serena said, “Good-bye.”

Amanda’s voice had changed very little; it was still rich and full of vitality. It was rather odd, really, that the sisters had not managed to see each other in four years’ time.

Certainly Leda Blagden couldn’t have had nearly as much reason for her hysterical outburst in the Plaza bar as she’d fancied. Serena was glad she hadn’t given it too much weight; if anything had been really wrong, Amanda wouldn’t have sounded so natural and so welcoming.

She did wonder, but briefly, who was with Amanda when she’d talked and, but even more briefly, what whoever it was had been told to put down.

And she wondered who would meet her at the little Del Monte station. Suppose—well, just suppose it were Jem.

A
LL ALONG THE WAY
south into the Monterey peninsula there were familiar things, well remembered. She went to the Third Street station, made her way to the train and found to her delight that Oliver, the porter who had presided over the lounge car for many years, was still there, greeting his passengers as if they were guests in the house of which he was major domo. Oliver was as pleased to see her, she thought with a warmth in her heart, as she was to see him. He escorted her to a chair as if she’d been visiting royalty. She remembered the long curve by which they left the city; the enchanting glimpses of bay and mountains; and an hour or so later the occasional sight of palm trees and the warmer air that somehow found its way gently into the lounge car.

She looked out the windows eagerly, and, as the lines of the country began gradually to change and, to Serena’s welcoming eyes, to seem a little wilder and a little more rugged, she began to realize how desperately heartsick she had been for her own country.

As the sun began to drop out of sight and the shadows of the land crept nearer around the little train, Oliver brought her tea.

He brought her gossip, too; the war had made changes. Lots of the men had gone or were going. There was the balloon barrage over the bay; had she noticed it? And he had to pull the curtains soon; he always did it at sunset for they were so near the coast. Everybody there was strongly conscious of the war with Japan. There were always rumors, of course, but they were now strongly defended; everybody said so. There was a dimout at night; cars could use only parking lights and the little towns along the coast were blacked out almost completely. But it was only a question of time and the war would be over, said Oliver, and indicated that if she would like a second packet of sugar with her second cup of tea he had some of his own that she could have.

The place was full of the army and navy, he went on; Fort Ord, of course, was near; and had she heard that the Del Monte hotel had been turned into a pre-flight school for the Navy aviation cadets?

“No!” She thought of its gardens, its swimming pool, its luxuries, the dances in the long lovely Bali room with the moon shining down upon the gardens outside and the paths among them, and the orchestra playing always for the last dance “It happened in Monterey—a long time ago …”

The lilting soft strain sung itself in her memory. “It’s a wonderful place for the boys,” she said aloud. “The best isn’t too good for them.”

Oliver agreed. “The war can’t last forever,” he said again. “Your brother-in-law, Mr. Condit, he’s been trying to get in the service, but he say they found out he’s got a weak heart.”

“Sutton?” Amanda hadn’t told her that; but then they wrote seldom and Amanda’s enormous vigorous handwriting really told very little. “I didn’t know that.”

“I guess it ain’t very serious. Dr. Seabrooke’s going—into the army, I hear. Leaves soon. You remember him, Miss Sissy?”

“Of course.”

Dave Seabrooke was one of the tight little group of friends; Dave and Sutton, and Ashley Sayers, and Bill Davidson, and Bill Lanier. As boys they had spent their summers largely at the Condit ranch, working along with the other ranch hands; the Condit place was then in its heyday, running thousands of head of cattle; there were now, she knew from Amanda, only a farmer and his wife and two or three ranch hands. The boys who had grown up together were adults now, yet always friends. She asked about them by name and Oliver knew exactly what had happened to each; Mr. Sayers was in Naval Intelligence, somebody said in Egypt; Mr. Davidson was in an office in Washington. He hesitated over Bill Lanier and then said he’d heard Mr. Lanier had gone to war too, but he didn’t just know where or in what branch of the service and if Miss Sissy would excuse him he had to see about some bags for a passenger getting off at the next station. He went away rather quickly, leaving what must have been an entirely erroneous impression of embarrassment. There was nothing in an inquiry about Bill Lanier to embarrass anybody; well, probably she would soon see his wife, Alice Lanier, and hear all about him and about Alice and about everybody. She suddenly longed with almost a passion to fit into a place again in the small group, and into the beautiful, rich land she loved so much.

Just before Oliver came to draw the shades, she had a rather curious experience, curious because she remembered it so long, and it stirred her so deeply. Yet it was nothing, merely a glimpse of a valley opening upon the sea and sky.

She’d been watching for that valley, for it always had seemed to her that it was like a gate to the fabulous, Shangri-la world of the Monterey peninsula. When they reached it the sun was almost gone; they entered the deep darkness of the valley and twisted through it with still darker shadow below; and, after moments, while she watched, almost suddenly they reached the end of that passage. There was the open sky and beyond the ocean, and that night all at once it was incredibly beautiful—and, at the same time, queerly and unexpectedly threatening. The sun lay golden with promise deep in the west, but there were black drifts of clouds streaking heavily across that farther gold; the shadows of the canyon-like valley were, by contrast, unfathomable and deep around them and somehow menacing; the mountains on either side made black shapes which were too close; a few bent cypress trees on the cliff top were sharply, blackly outlined against the stormy sunset sky.

It was a view from another world; yet it was her world that she loved; it was dark, it was threatening, it was subtly and strangely beautiful. And, above the black shadows, beyond these black cloud streaks opening from that enclosed valley, lay something that beckoned, that promised, that yet threatened—something that all at once she seemed to want and yet, obscurely, fear.

It was an unusual and unexpected impression; it was strong and had something that was so touched with the atavistic (as if she recognized it with her feeling and instinct rather than with her reason) that it startled her. She stared and watched, a constriction in her throat, until suddenly they came from the dark valley and turned; and the threat and the distant glory changed and shifted and all at once the valley lay behind them; dark mountains rose to the east; the sun was merely a golden rosy light sinking out of sight behind a bank of clouds. And Oliver came apologetically to draw the shades so the lights of the moving train should not show possibly to any Japanese submarine out there in the darkening, vast Pacific.

The view was gone; the memory, however, of a remarkable, a deeply moving and, again, oddly threatening experience remained.

Then darkness dropped down upon everything; she couldn’t see it because of the drawn shades, but she knew it was there, reclaiming, as darkness does, its hold upon an ancient land. The train was a little tunnel of light plunging through that blackness.

Eventually the little train began to make short stops. Monterey was so dimmed that it was scarcely visible from the train, for Serena pulled out the shade beside her a fraction of an inch and looked; there were small halos of street lights, very small and very faint, so the outlines of the old Spanish houses loomed up solidly. Then they went on, and Oliver, smiling, began to take her bags to the end of the car, and she put her short fur coat around her shoulders. She took out her compact and put some powder on her face and used her lipstick, and then looked at what she could see of her face in the tiny mirror, with a little tightening along her nerves. Suppose Jem Daly did come to the train.

Well, she wasn’t bad looking. She had Amanda’s slender face with its slight shadows below the arched black eyebrows, which deepened her eyes; her hair, worn high and smooth, accentuated the March look of race in her face. Amanda, however, was all color and dash; her black eyes gave her fire and vivacity; Serena’s eyes were sometimes gray and sometimes blue. Like the sea, somebody had told her once and, although she took it merely as the compliment it was obviously intended to be, still she remembered it with a little feminine satisfaction; she looked now rather anxiously at the one eye she could see in the mirror, but it didn’t seem to have any color in particular, it was just bright and dark with excitement. Her mouth was all right though; she could always be sure of her mouth; so she added some more lipstick on the principle of making the most of a good point and then rubbed some of it off; she didn’t put on her hat but sleeked up the pompadour of her dark, soft hair. And the train was stopping at the tiny Del Monte station. Her heart gave a pitch of excitement. Home. The damp, sweet night air. Perhaps Jem.