The Mulberry Bush (4 page)

“I'm going to bury this deep in a deposit box. And I'll get two keys—and arrange for you to open it if—something should happen to me.”

“Good Lord! You'll be making a will next—and picking out the inscription for your tombstone!”

“I've already picked out my inscription. It's going to be, ‘Here lies Virginia Paull, wife of Michael. She was a virtuous and well-favored female and a darned good businesswoman.' Do you know what this money is going to be some day, Michael Paull? It's going to be a little house for us, my lover—a cute little house somewhere—roses around the door and everything.”

“Gee whiz!” Mike, exclaimed, “I've never lived in a house since I can remember. Maybe it would be fun.”

“It would be heaven!” Virginia sighed. “I was born in a big wooden house with gingerbread trimmings all around the eaves and a bay window on one corner with a salt-cellar effect on top of it. There is green-and-purple-and-orange stained glass in the front door and fancy railings around the porches—and inside there is brown woodwork, and a railed shelf all around the wall where my Dad is always putting cans of tobacco, and sample bottles of pills, and corks with trout-flies stuck in them.”

“There,” said Mike, “is the man who is master in his own house! Does your mother take down the pills and tobacco with resigned and reproachful looks?”

“Oh, no—she doesn't bother Dad's things. She's very easy to live with. She puts things on the shelves herself—golf tees and letters she forgets to answer, and skate-keys, and ukulele picks that the boys leave around.”

“I hope,” Mike threw himself on the bed and stretched lazily, “that when we get this projected house, you take after your family. I'd hate to come home some night and find poor old Elvira banished to the woodshed, or maybe dolled up with gilt paint and pink ribbons.” Elvira was his typewriter. He abused Elvira fluently but was furious if anyone else criticized her—“She's my iron woman. I can cuss her all I like—but nobody else can.”

“I wouldn't offend Elvira for the world. After all, she earned all this money. We'll build a special soundproof room for her where she can rust into a calm old age in peace.”

“And what was I doing while Elvira was earning all this stuff, I'd like to know? Who makes her talk and say cute things that tough newspaper hombres will pay money for? Me! And do I get a soundproof room to enjoy my old age in? I'll bet I don't. Know what I'll get? The mortgage, and shaking down the furnace, and a nice, new, shiny lawnmower to push round and round and round!”

“And I'll get a sink-strainer with a green edge, and maybe a washing machine.” Virginia lay across the foot of the bed, untying Mike's shoestrings and tying them again in tidy knots. Trying not to remember that when he tied them again he would be—where? “Where will you be at four o'clock tomorrow, Mike?”

Mike twisted, reached for his coat, got out a colored folder.

“Here,” he showed her the dotted line that marked the route of the plane, “looking down into a green jungle, maybe—”

So far—so far! Suddenly she could not bear it. She began to cry a little, chokily, swallowing her sobs, winking back her tears. She tried to smile bravely at the same time and did badly at it.

“The world,” she strangled, “is just too big!”

Mike held her close. “Not so big, Ginny. Look—I'm in Miami in the morning—and the next morning I'm—away over here. And I can get back just as fast as that. Think how long it took the old sailing ships to make that trip—and even after they made the coast, it took weeks to get back into the interior, to places you can fly to now in three or four hours.”

“I know,” said Virginia breathily, “I'm trying to concentrate on the wonders of progress—but somehow all I can think about is all those miles of blue water in between.”

“Listen—do you know that if you want to, you can talk to me by telephone? I'll tell you—November seventh is my birthday—I'll call you up then—I'll let you know the exact hour.”

“November seventh—you mean you'll be gone—that long?”

“Only a little over a month, angel. I told you I haven't an idea how long I'll be down there—or where they'll send me from there. There's a rather ticklish diplomatic situation down there in those countries, right now—and serious need of consolidating goodwill before the penetration and propaganda from Europe get a foothold. Those countries could be alienated from the United States mighty easy—and a little publicity in American newspapers—decent publicity that will make tourists realize that they're interesting places to see, will help a lot. The papers are willing to overlook the advertising aspect of this stuff I'm going to do, to help along the relationship between the Americas—and they're willing to buy the stuff when probably they could get it free. So I think I'm pretty lucky.”

“I suppose so,” said Virginia patiently, “and I'm lucky to have so much work to do that I won't have time to brood and be desolate, except at night. But you will come back just as soon as you can, won't you, Mike?”

“Do you think you are the only person who is going to be counting the hours, gal? Do you think I'm going to be having fun down there—away from you? Well, then!”

And then it was the last hour.

Drizzling mist and darkness, and the plane for Miami standing on the runway at Newark, engine walloping over slowly, mailbags being stowed away, passengers, their faces greenish and wan in the floodlights, saying goodbye, climbing the little steps, waving.

Virginia stood close to Mike and looked up at the sky. So high, so lonely and aloof, so filled with secret darkness! Panic ran through her blood like white pain.

“Oh, Mike—Mike!”

“Ginny—darling!”

He held her, and then with a quick, crushing kiss, put her out of his arms and ran. The red and white lights of the plane became small, colored stars against the empty mystery of the sky as the plane roared upward. The people on the ground looked at each other dully and then went their ways.

Somehow, Virginia got back to the station, where her bags had been checked. Somehow, she got back to Washington and up the two flights of stairs to her little apartment. There, under the door, was a yellow envelope.

Her first thought was that Mike had sent a message to comfort her in her first loneliness, but she saw that the date-line was local, the message had, been sent the day before.

HARRISON HAD SERIOUS ACCIDENT STOP PLEASE SEE HER AS SOON AS YOU RETURN AT COLUMBIA HOSPITAL STOP IMPORTANT MARY GARGAN.

Mary Gargan was Teresa's secretary.

Virginia looked at her watch. Midnight. She couldn't see Teresa till morning. She opened her bags dully and put a few things away. She brushed her hair, put on an old pair of pajamas and put out the light, creeping into bed to lie there, emotionally spent, forgetting Teresa, forgetting to speculate about the calamity that had overtaken her employer, because her heart was flying southward with Mike.

Teresa Harrison lay on a fracture bed, a bar over her chest, on which she could raise herself a little, her face looking old and bleak under disordered hair, a white hospital gown buttoned up to her chin.

“Hello,” she greeted Virginia, “time you got back! Look at me—plastered up like something ready for the Smithsonian—and a million things to do.”

“What in the world happened?” Virginia bent to kiss the strained, colorless face. “I came in late last night and found Mary's message. I got here as soon as they would let me in.”

“That foul doctor who put bifocal glasses on me is to blame. I'm, not old enough for glasses and I told him so. My headaches come from something else entirely. But he insisted on my wearing the things out of his office, and of course the first pair of steps I went down, I missed my footing. Broke an ankle and a bone in my knee. Lord only knows how long I'll be here—and all the hotel contracts not closed yet for next summer's business.”

“You want me to write the letters? I'm so sorry about this—are you in any pain?”

“Plenty of pain—and my disposition is hellish. No—I don't want you to write letters. You can't get anywhere writing letters. I found that out long ago. You have to talk to people, see when they're bluffing and call their bluffs—and do a little bluffing on your own. There's psychology in it. And I don't know whether you've got it or not. But you're the only one I can send. You'll have to leave for Colorado tonight—and you'd better fly because this is the end of the season up there, and all the places will be closing up. I planned to leave Monday, and then this happened. Go to the office and get the Colorado file, and bring it here this afternoon. Get your reservation on the night plane and have Mary get the money ready for you. I gave her a power of attorney—I had to—nobody else here.”

“I hope I can handle it—I've never done anything exactly like that—only the old ladies who run tours—and the schoolteachers.”

“That was selling. But when you talk to hotels and sightseeing bus companies and guides, you're buying—they have something to sell. We're bringing them customers and we can be hard-boiled as the devil. It all depends now on how hard-boiled you can be. I'd have said last week that you hadn't a trick or a wile—but now I'm not so sure about you.”

Teresa's eyes had a resentful glare, and Virginia felt her own skin prickling uncomfortably.

“I don't understand, Teresa,” she began.

“I think you understand. I'd have sworn that you'd be honest with me—but it seems I was deceived. When I had this fall, I had Mary call up your family in Tennessee. They hadn't seen you since last Christmas and they had no idea where you were. I suppose it's that heel of a Mike Paull? Somehow I didn't expect that sort of thing from you, Virginia. Not that it makes any difference—as far as business is concerned. I'm a modern woman, I hope—but not too modern to have illusions yet, to look for fineness in a few people—”

“Teresa,” said Virginia quickly, knowing that this would have to be set right at once, “I was married to Michael Paull in New York—on Saturday. We planned not to tell anyone till Mike comes back from South America—so I didn't lie to you. It was a family matter, that took me away—marrying a husband is still a family matter, isn't it? But please don't tell anyone about it—not till we're ready to announce it.”

Teresa looked blank and her lips drew straight and dry. Then she laughed, her brittle, dismissing laugh.

“And I thought you were being cleverly wicked! And instead, you were merely being a fatuous, adolescent idiot! Mike Paull! Why didn't you marry the wind? It does stay in one place at least part of the time!”

“Mike is dear and fine—and we're going to be happy,” Virginia said firmly, “And I'll be very grateful if you won't be cynical about my husband, Teresa.”

“Good heavens! It's your privilege to tangle up your life in any absurd way you please—just so long as it doesn't interfere with my business. And I won't talk about it—not even to Mary. But you can't keep a thing like that quiet, you know—it always leaks out somehow—and what's the use of secrecy, anyway? If you're married, you're married. Get on back to the office now, and show up here promptly after lunch. Pack some fairly warm clothes—Colorado weather is tricky in October.”

Virginia had never flown before, and a cold, nervous clutch at her stomach did not relax when the plane lifted and she was high in the silent sky, with only darkness outside the windows and an occasional drifting wraith of cloud. So she sat stiffly, gripping the heavy briefcase Teresa had consigned to her, trying to remember all that she had been instructed to do.

Names first. Always call a man by his name. She had to memorize those. And the figures for last season.

“We sent you ninety people this year, Mr. Brown, as you may remember—”

Again and again she went over it all mechanically, trying not to listen to the motors, not to wait rigidly for something grim to happen. She got into her berth, making a show of not being nervous, a little embarrassed by the stewardess' anxious attentions. She hung up her skirt and blouse and took off her shoes, then crouched, wrapped in a robe, holding her breath when the plane descended, relaxing in brief relief when it was still, catching her breath and holding on when it rose again.

She was not airsick, that was something to be thankful for. And somewhere, far above the earth, too, was Mike. Flying unafraid, asleep probably, with these same stars shedding pale radiance on silver wings, with this same south wind moving past his window before it came to trail thin scarfs and sashes of pale mist past the dark glass so close to her shoulder.

“The two of us—high above the world—roaring away from each other as fast as we can,” she thought.

Life was strange. She had a feeling that for her it would always be strange. That the little house with the sink-strainer and the lawnmower and the mortgage would always be a dream house—and then she remembered that she had forgotten to put Mike's money in the bank and clutched up her purse in a panic, rummaging frantically until she felt the flat packet with the rubber bands again.

And then it was somehow morning, and the plane was going down somewhere in the Middle West, and the passengers began bustling their luggage together, when the stewardess came with in apologetic face.

“I'm sorry—this is an emergency-landing field. We're having a little engine trouble, and the pilots thought it best to land. But there will be only a short delay. We'll be picked up by another plane almost immediately.”

A very tall and very brown man with white sunlines around his eyes turned around and smiled at Virginia. He must have come aboard in the night, for she was sure she had not seen him before. She would not have forgotten that interesting, challenging face.

“We're lucky, at that,” he said, “landing right side up and nobody hurt. Like to see the St. Louis paper?” he asked as the plane jolted to a gentle landing. “We'll probably have a wait here—and not a hot-dog stand in sight.”

“Thank you.” Virginia took the paper and turned at once to Mike's column. But it was one he had written in New York, about immigrant women at Ellis Island, and she had read it before, fresh from the snapping teeth of Elvira.

But next to it was the column of a gossip-snooper whom Mike detested, and she ran her eyes rapidly over that. A squib halfway down caught her eyes, and she sat rigidly, cold all over, reading it:

The churchyard sparrows are tattling that a certain famous columnist got himself merged of a Saturday to a red-headed gal from the ol' South. What about that black-haired newspaper gal in New York? She has a ring. Tch! Tch!