Seducer (8 page)

T
HE PARTY
, which Brad had expected to be dull, was worse. But this may have been due largely to the fact that he was not in a mood for any party at all, let alone one of old Norton’s deadly variety.

Indeed, all the elements were pretty much the same as they had been on other occasions, including the guests. There was a fire in the huge barbecue pit, of which Norton was inordinately proud, and Norton himself in an apron and high chef’s hat was the hearty host presiding over a standing rib roast.

There was a table spread with other food, from which one was supposed to help himself, buffet fashion, and there was a second, smaller table supporting a variety of bottles from which one was also supposed to help himself. The result of this was about thirty people broken up into small groups, all balancing plates and glasses and cups in precarious positions, sitting and standing and leaning, and conducting conversations which were severely handicapped by the conditions imposed, for it is difficult, naturally, to be animated or impressive when your mouth is full half the time and you do not have proper use of your hands.

There had been an early trying moment directly after Brad and Madelaine had arrived. Cornelia, already there, had greeted Madelaine with effusive gayety that had the effect, under the circumstances, of deliberate needling. But of course Cornelia didn’t know the circumstances that had been established by the private detective’s report, and so she really could not be suspected of brazenly flaunting her status upon the other woman, which was what she seemed to Brad to be doing.

Anyhow, Madelaine had met the situation admirably with cool and courteous scorn that Cornelia had failed utterly to recognize as anything other than rather snobbish good manners. Ever since his survival of that first meeting, Brad had been carefully avoiding them both.

This maneuver was not without its problems, especially in the case of Cornelia, and he wished to God that he had not been forced to submit to the false and exhausting reconciliation that now made it necessary to start all over again with the dreary business of getting rid of her.

He wished to God also that he could go home. But Madelaine was perversely enjoying herself and not inclined to leave. He was glad, after a while, that she wasn’t, for it was later that he found Maggie sitting on a stone bench in some shrubbery.

She wasn’t supposed to be there, but there she was. Brad’s finding her was purely accidental, for he had been wandering from group to group with no particular direction except that it was away from Madelaine and Cornelia, and it was on impulse that he slipped around a juniper to get away from all the others too.

The stone bench was behind the juniper, and Maggie was on the bench. Having visited the smaller table frequently, he was at first inclined to think that he was being tricked by a light head, that she was not really there at all, but she smiled as if she were, and spoke as if she were, and gave the impression of expecting to be considered as real as anybody else.

“Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come along. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How in the devil did you get here?” he said. “Do you know the Nortons?”

“Nortons? Who are they?” Her question was blandly innocent, her shrewdly knowing eyes naive in their inquiring stare.

“Dr. Norton is the head of my department, and he happens to be your host,” Brad told her.

“Well, he’s not properly my host, when it comes to that, for I’m not properly a guest.”

“You mean you weren’t invited?” he asked.

“Yes. I’d scarcely be invited to a party by someone who doesn’t even know me, would I?”

“It seems reasonable that you wouldn’t. It also seems reasonable to wonder, in that case, why you came.”

“That’s easy to explain. I came because I knew you were going to be here. I thought I might be able to see you and talk with you. And that, as you see, is exactly what has happened.” Maggie smiled in almost childish triumph.

“So it has. May I ask how you knew that I was going to be here?”

“Oh, well, that wasn’t quite the truth, but it seemed the simplest way of saying it. The truth it, I saw you and your wife leave your house and start walking this way. I guessed you weren’t going very far, or you wouldn’t have been walking, so I just followed along behind.”

“How did you happen to be outside our house when we left?”

“I didn’t
happen
to be there. I was there on purpose. Do you remember how it was when you were a child? You got a crush on someone, and you stood all by yourself and looked at his house just for the excitement of being close to where he lived, or you waited on a corner or some place just for the excitement of seeing him pass by. That’s why I was deliberately outside your house this evening when you left, although I’m not a child any longer, of course, and what I have is not merely a crush.”

Brad regarded her with an uneasy mixture of delight and foreboding. He was pleased by what she had done, and intrigued by what she might do, but he was surely in no position to add to the problems he already had.

Knowing quite well that he had better send Maggie away, or turn and walk away himself, he sat down beside her on the stone bench and somehow came immediately into possession of her near hand. He couldn’t remember later whether he had taken it or received it.

“I’m not so sure that you’re not a child any longer,” he said. “At least you have done a childish thing. Suppose someone else had found you here? What would you have said or done?”

“Oh, I haven’t attempted to remain hidden or anything. That would have been a mistake. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to several people and had something to eat and a couple of drinks. The man in the chef’s hat brought me a plate and was very considerate.”

“Good God! That was old Norton himself. Didn’t he even wonder who you were?”

“Apparently not. That’s an amusing thing about situations like this, you know. No one knows you, but everyone assumes that you were brought by someone else. Sometimes you are asked difficult questions, of course, but it’s easy to evade them if you are careful and clever. Dr. Norton had been drinking quite a lot, which helped. People who have been drinking always accept odd things more readily than people who haven’t.”

“What helped most is that the old idiot is in an early-stage of senility,” Brad stated acidly. “If you have been out mingling with the guests, why didn’t you come and speak to me?”

“I wanted to, but I didn’t think it would be wise.”

“Why not?”

“Because it may be safer later if no one knows we are even acquainted. Outside of class, that is.”

“What’s the harm in being acquainted?”

“Perhaps none. It will depend on what we decide to do.”

“You’re a very cryptic young lady, I must say. Why should we decide to do anything?”

“If you can’t resist me and
want
to do something, I mean,” she added gravely.

He laughed aloud, feeling the strongest urge to do something at once, right there on the stone bench behind the juniper. There was in the feeling a wild sweetness and excitement that he had not experienced for a long time — or had never, rather, with his limitations, experienced at all.

He did not quite know how or why he now felt as he did, except that he had never before known anyone quite like Maggie, whose strange candor may have been the expression of incredible innocence or subtle device or simple immunity to inhibitions. He didn’t know which it was precisely, but he was reasonably certain that it was not the first, and whatever it was, it was exhilarating even though it might be dangerous.

“Are you sure you know just what you’re saying?” he said.

“Certainly. I’m not very smart or a good student or anything exceptional, as you know, but I’m at least capable of knowing what I mean and saying it directly.”

“I’m inclined to think that your capabilities are considerably more extensive that that. In some respects, you strike me as being positively precocious.”

“Precocious? Doesn’t that mean advanced for your age?” she queried, her eyes directly meeting his.

“Yes, that’s what it means.”

“Then I’m not precocious at all. There’s nothing I can do or want to do that shouldn’t be expected in almost anyone as old as I am.”

“Excuse me. You’re quite right. Precocious
isn’t
exactly the word for you. What I meant was that you are apparently capable of doing things that are not expected at any age whatever. How old are you, by the way?”

“Well, I’m older than you think, because I look younger than I am.”

“I’d guess you to be about twenty, then, because you look about eighteen.”

“You see? And all the time I’m actually twenty-eight.”

“Nonsense. You couldn’t be.”

“I could, and I am,” Maggie insisted.

“What class are you in?”

“You mean junior or senior or what? I’m not certain, to tell the truth, because I haven’t gone along a class a year as most students do. I’m not truly a student at all, when you come right down to it.”

“If you aren’t a student, what are you?”

“Nothing especially. I just got started going to college, almost accidentally, and I discovered that there are a great many advantages to it, and so I’ve kept going one place and another. It’s a kind of way of life, if you know what I mean. But I suppose I’ll have to give it up eventually, even though I do have the advantage of looking younger than I am.”

“Probably. One can hardly go to college forever. Do your parents support you in this way of life?”

“I don’t have any parents. They’re dead. At least my father is, and I suppose my mother is, although I don’t know certainly. She ran away from my father and me when I was a child. About two or three. I can’t even remember her.”

“That’s too bad. It must have made things difficult.”

“I don’t think so. According to my father, it rather made things easier. He was apparently happy to be rid of her, and I never felt any need for her later. My father and I got along fine. We understood each other, and he was very interesting to live with in spite of not being always responsible about things liks food and shelter and clothing.

“He was a kind of operator in this and that, whatever came up and looked like a good bet. Sometimes we had plenty of money and everything we wanted, and other times we didn’t have any money at all. We moved around a lot, and I went to many different schools and always managed to get along pretty well, although I can’t remember that I learned much.

“I kept thinking I might run off and try things on my own, but I never did. Finally, when I was nineteen, we were in this little town where my father had something going, and all of sudden he died. Fortunately we had had a fairly long run of good luck, and he had quite a lot of money — about five thousand dollars — that became mine.

“There was a little college in this town that wasn’t too strict about letting you in, and I didn’t have anything else to do, or anywhere in particular to go, so I thought I’d try it for a while. As it happened, I liked it. Not the studying, or anything like that, but just the general conditions.

“As I said, there are advantages to going to college. You can always find decent places to live for not much money, for it seems to be understood that college students don’t have much to pay, and you can eat well at the cafeteria or one of the places around the campus for less than you could eat elsewhere.”

“Are you saying that you’ve been going to college since you were nineteen?” Brad asked, incredulous.

“Not regularly,” she replied seriously, her fair features pretty and serene. “Off and on. I’d get tired of it and try something else for a while. But I always came back to it. I never carried a full load of classes, and so I didn’t get ahead very fast. Besides I was forever losing credits by moving from one college to another. That doesn’t matter, however, for I don’t particularly want a degree. I can’t see the value of it.”

“You certainly haven’t lived all this time, since you were nineteen, on about five thousand dollars,” Brad hastened to point out, his surprise and bewilderment growing apace.

“Oh, no. I didn’t say I had. There are always ways you can pick up money if you need it. You become quite good at it if you are forced to learn by circumstances. Besides, there is almost always someone who is willing to help if you approach him in the right way.”

Brad started to ask her how she had picked up the money and solicited the help, but then decided it wouldn’t be advisable. Watching her with a strange sense of fantasy, he assured himself that she was real, flesh and bones and the breath of life, but he found it incredible. It crossed his mind that she might be a constitutional liar.

Standing, he said, “It’s chilly sitting here. I must get back to the party, and I think you had better leave before you get into trouble.”

“Would you like to walk with me a way? I’d be pleased if you would.”

“I’d like to, but I won’t.”

“Why? Because you wife might miss you?” She asked, staring up at him.

“Not only that. There are others reasons.”

“I can’t think what they would be. You’re only making excuses.”

“Not at all. As you put it a few minutes ago, it might be unwise in view of what we may decide to do later.”

This was something he had not intended to say, and he wondered afterward why he had said it. On her face in the shadows, he thought, there was an odd little smile of satisfaction, as though he had said, intentionally or not, exactly what she had anticipated.

“Well,” she said, “You go on back, then. Never mind me. I’ll sit here a little longer, I think, before I leave. Do you mind? If I were to leave this minute, I’d have the feeling of being sent, and I wouldn’t like it. Perhaps it’s unreasonable, but I have the strongest feeling against being sent away from anywhere.”

She sat on the bench with her hands folded in her lap, smiling and not moving, and so there was nothing left for him to do graciously except say good night and rejoin the party, which he did.

When he looked behind the juniper a quarter of an hour later, she was gone. He felt, seeing the empty stone bench, a ridiculous urge to cry out her name and call her back.