The Golden Vanity (27 page)

In the morning she still felt nebulous but not ill. She managed to reach the dining saloon for lunch. Afterward, she went on deck. Matthews was there. Two young men were with him. She saw them instantly as a pair; it would be hard to tell which was which. It wasn't that their features were similar; one did not exactly observe their faces, only their sleek hair, the exaggerated Broadway cut of their clothes, their narrow heads and thin chests. As Matthews rose to meet Geraldine, the two young men moved away, keeping together.

It seemed as if a habit had already been established as Matthews sat down beside her. The afternoon passed lazily, ending as before with coffee and brandy in the smoking room. At seven Geraldine managed to stay awake, dress, and go to dinner. The young men were once more with Matthews, and again they removed themselves. "Weren't you busy?" she asked. "How?" Matthews said. "Oh, you mean Eddie and Spud—no, they've got nothing to do." He did not offer any further elucidation of Eddie and Spud. It was remarkable how little he could say and still seem friendly, even sociable. His black tie and pearl studs were obviously expensive; it was somehow not vulgar of him to be slightly overdressed. She thought, men used to wear ear-rings and gold chains and scarlet plumes and velvet cloaks.

She had put on a black crêpe dinner dress. For five years she had worn nothing but black for evening, through indifference and because it made her look slimmer. Now she had lost so much weight, her frock was falling off her shoulders; a silver girdle took in the waist. She did look ten years younger, slender and brilliantly flushed, with her blonde cendré hair curled by the damp. The tiny coppery freckles across the bridge of her nose had come out frivolously in the sun; her neck and arms were of that translucent whiteness which goes with red hair. An inconvenient complexion, immune to tan and subject to sunburn, but dazzling at propitious moments. Her sleepy smile was misleading. Matthews watched it consideringly. He asked her where she expected to stay in Havana. She looked in her handbag unsuspiciously and gave the name of a hotel which had been recommended to her as cheap enough and quiet.

After dinner they watched the dancing until Geraldine was once more overpowered by drowsiness. Matthews walked with her to the companionway.

"I suppose that lady in your stateroom turns in early?" he remarked.

Geraldine said: "I suppose so."

"I've got a bunkie too," Matthews said. "Would you care to take a turn around the deck?"

Geraldine thought it might blew the cobwebs out of her head. She wasn't expecting what happened. She had given him no provocation.

In a dark angle of the afterdeck, Matthews folded her in his arms and kissed her thoroughly. He was not rough but competent and unhurried. His vitality, as real as a magnetic current, dazed her, and she was shocked by her own acquiescence. Her bare arm slid over the soft broadcloth of his sleeve, and when she ducked her head the smooth satin lapel caressed her cheek. He lifted her off her feet and kissed her hair where it curled about her ear.

"Let me go," she gasped. "You mustn't—there are people—"

He set her down. She ran, but got back her wits before entering the lighted corridor. How ridiculous! As she paused to regain composure, Matthews was at her elbow. She couldn't say anything. He took her arm and escorted her to her stateroom. "Go away," she whispered. He nodded and obeyed.

The next morning she was ashamed of having slept again profoundly, almost happily. But why was she here, except to rest? . . . There was nothing for it but to avoid the man and forget the incident. She packed and went to lunch late. Matthews was not at table. When she ventured on deck he found her. She bowed curtly, without speaking or stopping.

"You're not mad?" he said.

"Don't be silly," she retorted. He reduced her to the elementary repartee of the elementary female. She was afraid she would be saying next that she wasn't that kind of girl! In spite of herself, the reflection made her giggle. "I was very much annoyed," she said. "I think you made a mistake." How idiotic—she mustn't argue with him about it.

"Don't stay mad. I kind of lost my head," he said. She could not imagine that he understood she was rebuking him for his careless choice of place and occasion; though he did. "I apologize."

"Very well." Drop it . . . The situation was resolved by the sudden discovery that they were in sight of land. Then there was luggage to see to, and the crowd on deck. She grew fatigued again in the prolonged bustle of passengers pressing to the rail, the tug and quarantine boat edging alongside, the tender standing by. That must be Morro Castle . . . The harbor was very blue, and Havana was a city, that was all . . . On the tender she was very shaky, and Matthews locked her arm in his; she was unable to resent it, since she would have sunk down in a heap on her suitcases without him. Nobody paid any attention; the dancing motion gave most of the passengers sufficient uneasiness on their own account. Geraldine surrendered temporarily. At the end of the confusion, Matthews was handing her into a cab with her belongings, outside the dock. Eddie and Spud had materialized silently. Matthews said: "Listen, Spud, I'll be along in about half an hour; you see if they got my reservations, and have my baggage sent up." Spud said: "O. K." Matthews stepped into the taxi beside Geraldine and gave the address of her hotel.

Powerless against an apparently natural sequence of events and enmeshed by circumstantial evidence, Geraldine perceived her cabin companion, Mrs. Carroway, watching her departure. She had not conversed with Mrs. Carroway, beyond the unavoidable forced civilities of their proximity; but she knew precisely what Mrs. Carroway must surmise. She protested: "Mr. Matthews, I'd rather you didn't—"

"Now don't worry; I'll just drop you at your hotel," he said calmly. She clutched at the fact that he had told Spud he would "be along in about half an hour." And he had reservations, doubtless at some more expensive hotel. "I couldn't leave you to get lost in a strange town," he said. ... In any event, she couldn't scream and jump out of the cab. At least, he had given the right address to the driver. In her bewilderment, she got no specific impression of Havana, except that there were street cars and business blocks such as one might see anywhere. When they drew up, she sprang out of the cab with no recurrence of her inability to walk. A porter took her suitcase. Though Matthews went with her into the hotel, he stood aside while she registered. He tipped the porter liberally; and when she said: "Thank you so much; good-by," Matthews said: "That's all right. Take care of yourself."

In her allotted room, she got rid of the porter instantly, bolted the door, and collected her mind.

The room was admirable for that purpose. For a bedroom, it was immense, at least twenty feet square, with a lofty ceiling, limewashed walls and a stone floor, clean enough and restfully bare except for a strip of brown rug. An iron bedstead with a white coverlet, a heavy dresser surmounted by a flawed ancient mirror, three wooden chairs, a writing table and a bedside stand comprised the furnishings. There was a large bathroom with old-fashioned marble fittings. Two tall windows with green Venetian shutters opened from the big room onto a narrow railed balcony. The austerity of the interior was contradictorily tropical. It suited her mood much better than elaborate luxury. After a bath she wrapped herself in a kimono and peeped out between the shutters. The afternoon was warm as spring, not a Northern spring, which is cool underneath the warmth; this air of the Antilles was warm underneath coolness, acknowledging the dominion of the sun.

The street was commonplace, yet essentially foreign, with stone façades and balconies and little shops. People sauntered along the pavement. Nobody hurried. The women were mostly dressed in black. As she pressed the shutters, they opened wider than she intended. A man stared and called up to her from the street. Yet nobody addressed the women going by; apparently custom permitted only a salute to a woman on a balcony. Conforming by instinct, Geraldine drew back hastily.

Thinking of Matthews, she told herself severely that she had been flattering herself with the pleasing terrors of sheer hysteria. As if she were an artless maiden pursued by a villain. The state of her nerves was her only excuse; the silliest aspect of her alarm was that she had never been alarmed when she really was an artless maiden. Matthews had kissed her. As a girl she had been kissed and mauled about by impulsive men, with or without provocation. She had flirted, being a normal girl, committed mild indiscretions, and escaped hastily with her hair pulled down and her dignity not quite redeemed by indignant reproaches. She had never given such trifles a serious importance. Men were like that. They ought to be. Life would be dull if they weren't, she was candid enough to admit. There was a line beyond which a girl must not go. An immemorial and cherished feminine tradition held— perhaps hoped—that men were dangerous if ... Up to that shadowy limit, girls had a firm presumption of being in the right. They need only retreat, and then ignore the incident ... At thirty-eight, it was preposterous to be indignant. The worst of being thirty-eight was that there was absolutely no danger. She had been so startled she had reverted to an attitude that was, in the cold light of reason, comic. He had been courteous enough to sustain her vanity with an apology. And he had validated it by taking care of her on the tender, driving her to her hotel. On the whole, he had behaved creditably. She had been glad enough of his company, when she was perishing of cold, solitude and inanition. The insignificant adventure on deck—why pretend otherwise?—had stimulated her drooping self-esteem. Women are like that.

To-morrow, she thought, she would be a tourist, find a sightseeing bus and view the prescribed objects of interest. For what remained of the afternoon, she rested in her spacious seclusion, dipping in Lethe. This was the purpose of her journey, this first strangeness; while it lasted, she needed no diversion.

Dusk fell suddenly. She would dine in the hotel. She put on an afternoon dress and hat, not to be conspicuous alone. When she was ready, she hesitated; she dreaded even the effort of crossing the threshold, as if grief were waiting for her somewhere.

A knock sounded on the door. It must be the room maid; who else? But she knew she was not genuinely surprised when she opened the door and saw Matthews.

"How about dinner?" he said. "I'd have asked you before, but I didn't know if I could get away; I had some business. You're not dated up?"

"No—that is, I wasn't—" She was not going to dine with him. "I'll wait for you downstairs," he said. She thought afterward, there can never be any Judgment Day. Even God could not sift out the truth. Nobody knows. One does things; and there is no going behind the returns, recapturing intentions, defining volition.

22

S
HE
thought that the next morning, waking in the lucid dark of dawn, the owl's light, which delayed in the large room as smoke may be held in a bowl. Color had not yet returned to the tangible objects; there were no shadows; the world was only a thought.

Matthews was asleep, with his cheek against her hair. She could barely hear his breathing. She knew where she was; she had known while she slept. She remembered everything; she could account for nothing; what had happened was a fact. She was here. Other facts existed elsewhere.

It must be clear daylight outside. Transverse lines of pale light crossed the ceiling above the windows, thrown upward through the slanted bars of the Venetian blinds. The greyness dissolved imperceptibly second by second. The air had grown deliciously cool, and his arm across her shoulders kept her comforted and warm.

When had she . . . Perhaps from the beginning, when she found his voice pleasing. Or when she had gone downstairs, where he was waiting.

They had dined at a café on the beach. Fantastically, with Eddie and Spud. Across the room several tourists from the boat occupied a table. She was aware that they recognized her . .. Sometimes in an absent-minded mood, on the street, she passed her destination or turned the wrong corner, and suddenly observed her surroundings. This isn't where I was going ... It was like that, sitting there with Matthews. And Eddie and Spud! They were very nearly incredible. They actually did talk out of the corners of their mouths, fortunately limiting their conversation to "Yeah" and "I'll say so" and "O.K." They handled their knives and forks carefully, and were equally circumspect toward her. On account of Matthews. They weren't making any breaks. . . .

Whatever had thrown her into this stranger's arms, it was not a superficial impulse. She hadn't been drinking. One Daiquiri cocktail before dinner, and another later. She had not even finished the second; she didn't need it. The sensation of a tight band around her head had vanished. Mysteriously, she recaptured the innocence of the mind and senses which belongs to youth.
The foreign ships and the foreign faces
... At eighteen or twenty, she remembered, it was enough merely to go somewhere, anywhere—to tea at the old Manhattan Hotel, to a banal play, a ten cent movie, to the beach—the simplest experience was colored with the enchantment of first impressions. Everything had been created fresh and new for one's delight. ... It was so last night. She could taste simultaneously the separate ingredients of the drink, sharp and sweet and cool and warm, the limes and sugar and rum. She felt no obligation to talk, and was glad of Matthews' taciturnity. Overhearing the conversation at a near-by table, she smiled to herself, discovering that the most commonplace phrases became original and significant in a strange language. Matthews was sufficiently observant to catch her listening. He asked, impressed and perhaps suspicious: What are they saying? She answered: Nothing much; they're only asking one another what will you have. Matthews said: You speak Spanish? She explained: Not really; I took a few lessons, because it's so beautiful. He agreed: That's so; no matter what a girl says to you in Spanish, it sounds like— He broke off abruptly.

So it does, she thought. Spanish is the speech of men and women. Of action and of love . . . And Matthews' voice was arresting, regardless of what he said, because it was distinctly a man's voice.