I Married A Dead Man (4 page)

               
She jumped to her feet with alacrity.

               
He immediately soft-pedalled her with the flats of both hands, in comic intensity. "Sh! Don't give it away! What are you trying to do? Act indifferent. Act as if you weren't going anywhere in particular, were just getting up to stretch your legs."

               
She smothered an impish chuckle. "When I'm going to the dining-car, I just can't act as if I weren't going anywhere in particular. It stands out all over me. You're lucky if you hold me down to a twenty-yard dash." But to oblige his ideas of Machiavellian duplicity, she exaggeratedly arched her feet and tiptoed out into the aisle, as though the amount of noise she made had any relation to what they were trying to do.

               
In passing, she pulled persuasively at the sleeve of the girl beside her. "Come on. You're coming with us, aren't you?" she whispered conspiratorially.

               
"What about the seats? We'll lose them, won't we?"

               
"Not if we put our baggage on them. Here, like this." She raised the other girl's valise, which had been standing there in the aisle until now, and between them they planked it lengthwise across the seat, effectively blocking it.

               
The girl was on her feet now, dislodged by the valise, but she still hung back, hesitant about going with them.

               
The young wife seemed to understand; she was quick that way. She sent him on ahead, out of earshot, to break trail for them. Then turned to her recent seat-mate in tactful reassurance. "Don't worry about--anything; he'll look after everything." And then, making confidantes of the two of them about this, to minimize the other's embarrassment, she promised her: "I'll see that he does. That's what they're for, anyway."

               
The girl tried to falter an insincere denial, that only proved the surmise had been right "No, it isn't that--I don't like to--"

               
But her new friend had already taken her acceptance for an accomplished fact, had no more time to waste on it. "Hurry up, we'll lose him," she urged. "They're closing in again behind him."

               
She urged her forward ahead of herself, a friendly hand lightly placed just over her outside hip.

               
"You can't neglect yourself now, of all times," she cautioned her in an undertone. "I know . They told me that myself."

               
The pioneering husband, meanwhile, was cutting a wide swath for them down the center of the clogged aisle, causing people to lean acutely in over the seats to give clearance. And yet with never a resentful look. He seemed to have that way about him; genial but firm.

               
"It's useful to have a husband who used to be on the football team," his bride commented complacently. "He can run your interference for you. Just look at the width of that back, would you?"

               
When they had overtaken him, she complained petulantly, "Wait for me, can't you? I have two to feed."

               
"So have I," was the totally unchivalrous remark over his shoulder. "And they're both me."

               
They were, by dint of his foresight, the first ones in the dining-car, which was inundated within moments after the doors had been thrown open. They secured a choice table for three, diagonal to a window. The unlucky ones had to wait on line in the aisle outside, the door inhospitably closed in their faces.

               
"Just so we won't sit down to the table still not knowing each other's names," the young wife said, cheerfully unfolding her napkin, "he's Hazzard, Hugh, and I'm Hazzard, Patrice." Her dimples showed up in depreciation. "Funny name, isn't it?"

               
"Be more respectful," her young spouse growled, without lifting his forehead from the bill of fare. "I'm just trying you out for it I haven't decided yet whether I'll let you keep it or not."

               
"It's mine now," was the feminine logic he got. "I haven't decided whether I'll let you keep it or not"

               
"What's your name?" she asked their guest.

               
"Georgesson," the girl said. "Helen Georgesson."

               
She smiled hesitantly at the two of them. Gave him the outside edge of her smile, gave her the center of it. It wasn't a very broad smile, but it had depth and gratitude, the little there was of it.

               
"You've both been awfully friendly to me," she said.

               
She looked down at the menu card she held spread between her hands, so they wouldn't detect the flicker of emotion that made her lips tremble for a moment

               
"It must be an awful lot of fun to be--you," she murmured wistfully.

5

               
By the time the overhead lights in their car had been put out, around ten, so that those who wanted to sleep could do so, they were already old and fast friends. They were already "Patrice" and "Helen" to one another; this, as might have been surmised, at Patrice's instigation. Friendship blooms quickly in the hothouse atmosphere of travel; within the space of hours, sometimes, it's already full-blown. Then just as suddenly is snapped off short, by the inevitable separation of the travelers. It seldom if ever survives that separation for long. That is why, on ships and trains, people have fewer reticences with one another, they exchange confidences more quickly, tell all about themselves; they will never have to see these same people again, and worry about what opinion they may have formed, whether good or bad.

               
The small, shaded, individual sidelights provided for each seat, that could be turned on or off at will, were still on for the most part, but the car was restfully dimmer and quieter, some of its occupants already dozing. Patrice's husband was in an inert, hat-shrouded state on the valise that again stood alongside his original seat, his crossed legs precariously slung upward to the top of the seat ahead. However, he seemed comfortable enough, judging by the sonorous sounds that escaped from inside his hat now and then. He had dropped out of their conversation fully an hour before, and, an unkind commentary this on the importance of men to women's conversations, to all appearances hadn't even been missed.

               
Patrice was acting the part of a look-out, her eyes watchfully and jealously fastened on a certain door, far down the aisle behind them, in the dim distance. To do this, she was kneeling erect on the seat, in reverse, staring vigilantly over the back of it. This somewhat unconventional position, however, did nothing whatever to inhibit her conversational flow, which proceeded as freely and blithely as ever. Only, owing to her elevated stance, the next seat back now shared the benefit of most of it, along with her own. Fortunately, however, its occupants were disqualified from any great amount of interest in it by two facts; they were both men, and they were both asleep.

               
A ripple of reflected light suddenly ran down the sleek chromium of the door that had her attention.

               
"She just came out," she hissed with an explosive sibilance, and executed an agitated series of twists, turns, and drops on the seat, as though this were something vital that had to be acted upon immediately. "Hurry up! Now! Now's our chance. Get a move on. Before somebody else gets there ahead of us. There's a fat woman three seats down been taking her things out little by little. If she ever gets in first, we're sunk!" Carried away by her own excitement (and everything in life, to her, seemed to be deliciously, titillatingly exciting), she even went so far as to give her seat-mate a little push and urge her: "Run! Hold the door for us. Maybe if she sees you there already, she'll change her mind."

               
She prodded her relaxed spouse cruelly and heartlessly in a great many places at once, to bring him back to awareness.

               
"Quick! Hugh! The overnight-case! We'll lose our chance. Up there, stupid. Up there on the rack--"

               
"All right, take it easy," the somnolent Hugh grunted, eyes still completely buried under his obliterating hat-brim. "Talk, talk, talk, Yattatta, yattatta, yattatta. Woman is born to exercise her jaw."

               
"Man is born to get a poke on his, if he doesn't get a move on."

               
He finally pushed his hat back out of the way. "What do you want from me now? You got it down yourself."

               
"Well, get your big legs out of the way and let us by! You're blocking the way--"

               
He executed a sort of drawbridge maneuver, folding his legs back to himself, hugging them, then stretching them out again after the passage had been accomplished.

               
"Where y'going, in such a hurry?" he asked innocently.

               
"Now, isn't that stupid?" commented Patrice to her companion.

               
The two of them went almost running down the aisle, without bothering to enlighten him further.

               
"He takes a thirty-six sleeve, and it doesn't do me a bit of good in an emergency," she complained en route, swinging the kit.

               
He had turned his head to watch them curiously, and in perfectly sincere incomprehension. Then he went, "Oh." Understanding their destination now, if not the turmoil attendant on it. Then he pulled his hat down to his nose again, to resume his fractured slumbers where they had been broken off by this feminine logistical upheaval.

               
Patrice had closed the chromium door after the two of them, meanwhile, and given its inside lock-control a little twist of defiant exclusion. Then she let out a deep breath. "There. We're in. And possession is nine-tenths of the law. I'm going to take as long as I want," she announced determinedly, setting down the overnight-case and unlatching its lid. "If anybody else wants to get in, they'll just have to wait. There's only room enough for two anyway. And even so, they have to be awfully good friends."

               
"We're nearly the last ones still up, anyway," Helen said.

               
"Here, have some?" Patrice was bringing up a fleecy fistful of facial tissues from the case; she divided them with her friend.

               
"I missed these an awful lot on the Other Side. Couldn't get them for love nor money. I used to ask and ask, and they didn't know what I meant--"

               
She stopped and eyed her companion. "Oh, you have nothing to rub off, have you? Well, here, rub some of this on; then you'll have that to rub off."

               
Helen laughed. "You make me feel so giddy," she said with a wistful sort of admiration.

               
Patrice hunched her shoulders and grimaced impishly. "It's my last fling, sort of. From tomorrow night on I may have to be on my best behavior. Sober and sedate." She made a long face, and steepled her hands against her stomach, in mimicry of a bluenosed clergyman.

               
"Oh, on account of meeting your in-laws," Helen remembered.

               
"Hugh says they're not like that at all; I have absolutely nothing to worry about. But of course he just may be slightly prejudiced in their favor. I wouldn't think much of him if he wasn't."

               
She was scouring a mystic white circle on each cheek, and then spreading them around, mouth open the whole while, though it played no part in the rite itself.

               
"Go ahead, help yourself," she invited. "Stick your finger in and dig out a gob. I'm not sure what it does for you, but it smells nice, so there's nothing to lose."

               
"Is that really true, what you told me?" Helen said, following suit. "That they've never even seen you until now? I can't believe it"

               
"Cross my heart and hope to die, they've never laid eyes on me in their lives. I met Hugh on the Other Side, like I told you this afternoon, and we were married over there, and we went on living over there until just now. My folks were dead, and I was on a scholarship, studying music, and he had a job with one of these government agencies; you know, one of these initialed outfits. They don't even know what I look like!"

               
"Didn't you even send them a picture of yourself? Not even after you were married?"

               
"We never even had a wedding-picture taken; you know how us kids are nowadays. Biff, bing, bang! and we're married. I started to send them one of myself several times, but I was never quite satisfied with the ones I had. Self-conscious, you know; I wanted to make such a good first impression. One time Hugh even arranged a sitting for me at a photographer, and when I saw the proofs I said, 'Over my dead body you'll send these!' Those French photographers! I knew I was going to meet them eventually, and snapshots are so-- so--Anyway the ones I take. So finally I said to him, 'I've waited this long, I'm not going to send any to them at all now. I'll save it up for a surprise, let them see me in the flesh instead, when they finally do. That way, they won't build up any false hopes and then be disappointed.' I used to censor all his letters too, wouldn't let him describe me. You can imagine how he would have done it. 'Mona Lisa,' Venus on the half-shell. I'd say, 'No you don't!' when I'd catch him at it, and scratch it out We'd have more tussles that way, chase each other around the room, trying to get the letter back or trying to get it away from me."