Hasty Wedding (3 page)

At ten minutes to eight Sophie at last took the tray and went away.

“I’ll see to Cary,” she said. “She’s in bed already; had dinner on a tray and has a full supply of new magazines and a sleeping powder. Anything you want?”

“Nothing,” said Dorcas, watching the clock.

“Oh…Well, good night, my dear.”  The door closed. Dorcas jumped to her feet.

Her hands flew; a comb through her short hair, which brought back the wave. Street shoes, brown oxfords with her own cold fingers trembling a little as she tied the laces. She took off her flannel coat; afterward she thought that if Sophie hadn’t left the suit in the room she wouldn’t have gone. But it was there, temptingly near at hand.

It took only a moment or two to pull on sweater and skirt and long, warm tweed jacket. Somewhere was a green hat for it; she found it and put it on. She did pause then to look at herself in the mirror and she knew in that moment that the thing she proposed to do was all wrong. It was not only foolishly weak, childishly and falsely romantic but it was dishonest. She would be in a few hours time the wife of another man and she owed him, at least, loyalty.

And quite deliberately, with a frightened determination, she stifled that small voice with a specious argument.

It was the last night of her own. The last night she was to be Dorcas Whipple, responsible only to herself. After the wedding ceremony she would be a good and faithful wife. But never again for all the rest of her life would she be entirely free and entirely herself. Therefore why should she not see Ronald?

It was specious and she knew it. She fumbled at the fastening of the red fox collar that rose high around her face and might have taken off the coat. In that instant not only her own destiny but that of at least three other people hung in balance.

And she caught a glimpse in the mirror of her bare left hand. Tomorrow there would be a wedding ring there; a band that would bind her tightly from then on to her own ideas of decency and honesty. After tomorrow Dorcas Whipple would be Dorcas Locke—a different woman.

It was like losing her own identity. And Ronald, a part of that old, familiar life, was waiting in the rain and darkness. Waiting only to say good-by to her.

She turned swiftly from the mirror and out of the room. She went quietly so no one would hear and question. There was no one in the hall and a light burned beyond the old-fashioned transom above her mother’s bedroom door.

She went down the stairs and still there was no one. The servants probably were busy in the back of the house. Her own latchkey was in a little drawer of the Jacobean chest near the door. She took it and let herself out and walked rapidly down the shrublined sidewalk and out the tall iron gate.

Her real distress was shot with a trivial embarrassment; she was stealing out to a clandestine meeting on the very eve of her wedding. She ought to have felt ashamed but actually she felt only rather silly and childish. As if she were acting in some play and doing it badly.

Why hadn’t Ronald simply come to the house and demanded to see her? But he couldn’t of course. Cary would have known and stopped it.

Her heart gave a leap into her throat, however, as she saw him—a shadowy, slender figure in an overcoat with his hat pulled down over his face. He heard her footsteps and ran lightly to meet her.

“My darling,” he cried, “I knew you’d come,” and took her hands and held them to his lips.

A car passed them rather slowly, its tires swishing. Dorcas was only vaguely aware of it.

His face was hot, his lips shaking a little. Without intending to she pulled her hands away abruptly.

“I only came to say good-by,” she said lamely. “I——”

“One little hour,” said Ronald. “That’s all I ask. All I shall ever ask. The taxi’s waiting around the corner. You can’t stand here in the rain——”

“I can’t stay. I must go back now. I only came——”

“You came,” said Ronald in an exultant, breathless whisper. “That’s enough.”

They were at the corner and a taxi was there, its lights dimmed so they made wan streaks along the wet pavements. A dash of rain struck her face sharply as they crossed to the curb, then they were in the taxi.

“But, Ronald——”

“Hush, dear.” He leaned forward. “Thirty-six Schumanze Court. And hurry.”

The taxi jumped ahead.

“No, no, Ronald. Tell him to stop. I must not stay——”

“Hush, darling. You don’t want him to hear everything we have to say to each other.”

“But——”

“Don’t be silly, sweet. I’m not going to abduct you. But I must talk to you a little alone. Don’t deny me that small thing, Dorcas. I’ve gone through such hell. We’ll go up to my apartment; there’s no one there and we can talk a little. I’ll take you back at nine. I swear it, Dorcas. That’s one hour for me to remember for the rest of my life. One little hour——”

“This is all wrong, Ronald. Useless.”

“An hour of farewell,” he said. “Farewell to yourself, Dorcas. After tomorrow——”

If he had touched her, if he had taken her hands again, if he had seemed in any way unresigned, she would still have gone back.

But he did not.

Later she wondered about it.

It was perhaps a fifteen-minute ride. Later, too, she remembered the dusk in the taxi, the swish of tires, the sense of waves along the breakwater and of fog-haloed lights when they turned onto Michigan and crossed the bridge. He said almost nothing and once she felt actually and for a fleeting moment as if the man seated there beside her in the dusk were a stranger. He seemed in the flesh and in the twilight of the taxi different, indescribably changed from the man who during the past few weeks had been so constantly in her mind. Well, now she could tell him she had been unjust; tell him how deeply she regretted any pain she had caused him, wipe the slate clean or any bitterness between them. Yes, she could do that and they would remember each other pleasantly and with friendliness. Without pain.

She sat in the dusk, planning.

Ronald’s apartment was in a roomy, oldish building just off the Drive and around the corner of Schumanze Court; she had been there before to cocktail parties and to occasional small dinner parties of eight or ten, served by a caterer, for his only servant was a Japanese who came in by the day. There was a smallish and rather shabby hall, an elevator and a narrow flight of stairs. The rent was probably exorbitant. The building did boast, too, a doorman, who ran to open the door of the taxi as they stopped and then, obviously torn, left them abruptly to hurry toward another car which drove up slowly behind them.

The little elevator was in use and they walked up the stairs to the second floor. Ronald’s apartment was on the corner, overlooking during clear days a small slice of blue lake, a garage immediately below, and above and against the sky heaped cliffs of apartment buildings. The corridor itself was rather narrow, stretching away past a transverse corridor on which the elevator opened, to a dim red light at the far end indicating a fire escape. Ronald took out keys. The door was painted white and had a plain, old-fashioned lock—the kind which is not, when you close the door, self-locking.

“Do you always remember to lock the door from the inside?” said Dorcas idly, watching him insert the key, and was to remember it later.

“No,” said Ronald and smiled a little bitterly. “But I have so little to steal. Come in, my dear.” He closed the door behind them. “I promise to watch the clock. Let me take your coat. It’s always hot in here.”

She looked at him a little shyly in the white glow of the modernistic lamps. She had been wrong; he was exactly the same—clear, incredibly handsome profile, bright eyes, wavy blond hair, small, delicately curved mouth. “A weak mouth,” Cary had said. “One look at that mouth ought to convince you, Dorcas.”

Her mother’s words floated into her memory as she turned and let him take her tweed coat. She pushed the memory away; besides, it didn’t matter and was not important, for after tonight she would never see Ronald Drew again.

He took the coat and put it down on a white divan. His own followed it. He hesitated, reached for a white cigarette box with tiny mirrors set in it, then put down the box and came back to Dorcas.

His eyes were very bright.

“I lied to you,” he said. “I lied to you to get you here. Now I’m never going to let you go.”

Before she could move or even sense what he said he took her tightly, almost feverishly in his arms.

S
HE WASN’T FRIGHTENED.
Even as he bent her head back, kissing her, she wasn’t at all frightened, for the curious sensation of playing a role in some vague, unrehearsed play returned to her. She felt, however, very uncomfortable and very much ashamed. After all, said a small, cold voice inside her even as she pulled abruptly away from him, after all, she had invited it.

But she didn’t like it.

“Don’t,” she cried violently and heard her own strangled voice with a kind of surprise at its agitation.
“Don’t!”

She was fairly strong herself; slender muscles hardened by swimming and tennis. She wriggled away from him and stood there facing him, trying to steady her breath while he watched her. There were two scarlet patches in his cheeks; his eyes were still bright and had something in them she had never seen there before.

“You needn’t scream,” he said rather sulkily and unsteadily. “I won’t eat you.”

Had she screamed?

“That was silly. I’m going now.”

For an instant she had the fantastic notion that he was going to put her out himself—angrily, throwing her coat after her. It was fantastic; it flickered across her mind as irrationally as a hot little wind might have done. For immediately he was all apology.

“No, don’t go, Dorcas. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry. It’s just that I—I love you so,” he said pleadingly. “I won’t do it again. I promise. But we can’t part like this. Can we, darl—Dorcas. Wait. Sit here on the divan. I’ll go across the room.”

Again he didn’t touch her or attempt to lead her to a chair. Instead he pleaded with her, abjectly, throwing himself again on her mercy.

“I love you so, Dorcas. I love you so and it’s the last time I shall see you. You promised me——”

“You promised
me
,” said Dorcas and went to the divan and took her coat in her hands.

In the mirror above the deep divan she caught a glimpse of his face and the sheer, stark dismay that flashed upon it. A dismay so lost, so terrified that it was as if a drowning man had missed in his last desperate clutch for a rope. It was poignant, it was sharply real; it was nothing short of despair. The uneasy feeling of playing a part in a futile and slightly tawdry, theatrical performance dropped suddenly away from her. She turned in honest contrition.

“I’m sorry, Ronald. I’m desperately sorry things have happened—just this way. I—I shall always value your friendship and—and remember …” She meant exactly what she said but she found the words difficult, for he looked as if he did not understand her and as if he were thinking of something else.

“Dear Dorcas,” he said flatly and added abruptly: “I need a drink. Wait a second, Dorcas. I—I won’t bother you again. Honest. We’ll have a drink and a smoke and I’ll take you back home. One last little talk together for the sake of—of all our good times.”

It was exactly as if he had reverted to the lines of the play; as if she groped for her cues but he knew them all, so again the feeling of unreality, of cheap theatricalism swept over her. Yet what he said had exactly the right tone of friendliness, and she had seen that look of bitterness and pain in his face and that was real.

He turned rapidly and went out before she could reply. She sat down rather limply in the deep white divan. She was at the same time confused and angry; contrite and pitying. Well, she would go at once.

She could hear him moving about in the small kitchen down a narrow passage. Mirrors everywhere observed her from dull blue walls. White furniture; white rugs with black stripes, great soft white cushions. Mirrors in tables; tables in mirrors. Accustomed to the comfortable Victorian clutter of the Whipple house, the room seemed to Dorcas vaguely unpleasant, the blue walls pasty, the whites dead and somber, the spaces too empty. Her plain green tweeds were curiously out of place.

As she was out of place. Well, Ronald would be back immediately. They would have a moment or two of amicable understanding and she would go home. Odd how depressing all that white was. It was so quiet that the sudden sound of a car in the garage below, starting with a series of backfires, seemed near and loud.

Other times when she had been in the apartment there had been gayety, voices, glitter. Now there was nothing of that. Queer how the mirrors watched her. It was a small apartment. There was a fairly large living room, a bedroom and bath, a narrow hall running parallel to the bedroom wall back to a small kitchen, where just then, unexpectedly, there was a sound, repeated, as if a door had opened and closed.

Without any reason at all it startled her and she listened. It was not repeated but certainly there was another sound—whispering? No. The sound became more distinct and it was only ice being chipped and dropped into glasses. It must have been the refrigerator door that opened and closed. She sat back again.

And knew she must go. Then. That very instant. It was the strangest and strongest compulsion, as if someone had spoken to her—urgently and with knowledge.

Her coat was beside her; it was only a few steps to the door. Departure now would bring things to an end and would spare her any danger of a further scene with Ronald. But she did want desperately to part with him honestly and with friendliness.

So she hesitated and Ronald returned. He had a tray and glasses filled with ice, a three-cornered bottle and a seltzer bottle.

He put the tray on the low table before the divan and filled the glasses.

“One highball,” he said, smiling at her over the seltzer bottle. “One cigarette, then I’ll take you home. Here’s to you, Dorcas. And I—I only want you to be happy.”

She took the glass he put in her hand. He lifted his own, looked brightly at her over the rim and drank thirstily. “Drink it, Dorcas.” He poured himself another glass, went to the door leading to the passage and closed it and returned to look down at her.