Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Let’s go outside,” Scotty suggested at eleven-thirty.

Nights of unforgivable neglect had taught Jicky nothing, however.

“I don’t think I should,” she said coyly.

He took her at her word.

There was a telegram waiting for her when she got back. She crossed the corridor with it and knocked on the door. “Aunt Pauline,” she said, “are you up yet? We’d better pack. We’re to go back to New York in the morning. Mother’s coming in Wednesday on the Aquitania.”

They had been back about six weeks when the telephone interrupted their breakfast one morning. Georgia, who had an extension beside her bed, immediately got on. A moment later she called Jicky into the room. There was a note of surprise in her voice. “Oh, I’m sorry. It was meant for you, dear.” This was something new to her.

Jicky arranged herself on a chaise longue, giving a very inept imitation of the way Georgia did it so often herself.

“Ye-es?” Her voice rose, musically tremulous. She tried to prop a cushion over her shoulder and the receiver fell into her lap.

Georgia bit her lip to cover a smile. “Relax, dear, relax,” she suggested.

“Been meaning to call you,” Scotty was saying in Jicky’s tingling ear.

“Oh, dear, how nice,” she said inanely.

Georgia curtained herself behind a sheer of cigarette smoke, doing her conscientious best not to be present. She felt too deliciously lazy to get up, and there was a cup of coffee-and-chocolate on her knee to be considered.

Jicky hung up and kept the telephone in her lap as though she couldn’t bear to part with it.

“It was Scotty,” she said. “The one I told you about. Wait. I think I have his picture inside.”

“Oh, is that the kind he is?” remarked Georgia facetiously.

“No, no,” Jicky hastened to assure her. “I cut it out of a sporting magazine. He does a lot of tennis. And what do you suppose he does with the cups?” Her eyes grew enormous. “He uses them to put his old razor blades in.”

“How extraordinary of him,” breathed the satirical Georgia.

“He’s coming up Friday to dinner. I want you to meet him,” Jicky exclaimed vibrantly. “Oh, he’s simply dandy.”

Friday at half past eight she made her entrance by stumbling over and lifting the edge of the jade-blue rug. “Mother, this is Mr. Tryon,” she heard herself saying a trifle nervously.

Georgia, in the decorous instep skirts of the second empire, was trying her best to be motherly, was ready to forego all restful crossing of the knees that evening for Jicky’s sake. She held herself demurely in the background, doing things with a little jet fan she had brought out with her and eyeing the cigarette dish longingly from time to time.

Jicky was frozen with shyness and shrilly voluble by turns. No one had ever had an effect like this on her before. During dinner she upset her wineglass and the stem snapped. She sighed gloomily. Georgia and Scotty were too deeply engrossed by this time to have noticed anything. Every other word of his was addressed to Georgia and every other word of Georgia’s was directed toward Jicky in what began to look like a desperate attempt at keeping the balance of conversation even.

Georgia excused herself at ten, and a half hour later Jicky found her in her room nestling in chiffon and devouring cigarettes.

“Why didn’t you come back? I’m sure he thought it was strange. He asked what had become of you once or twice.”

“Wouldn’t have intruded for anything,” murmured Georgia, going ahead with the book she was reading.

“Now I’ve told you you weren’t; why do you keep saying that?” said Jicky. “How did he strike you?”

Georgia, feeling that some comment was expected of her, did her conscientious best. “Oh, rather nice.” She had a vacant air about her, as though she were not paying strict attention to what she was saying.

Jicky gazed upward through her glasses in rapture. “I think so too,” she remarked. “I think he’s just dandy.”

He asked them to the theater shortly after, binding Georgia’s attendance by the announcement that it was to be a party of four. The friend, Russell Bain, was so patently cut out for Jicky by years if not by inclination that it seemed only natural for Georgia and Scotty to gravitate toward each other. Afterwards, at the supper club, Scotty danced the first number with Jicky, during which she got spells of rigidity and it became next to impossible to budge her, and all the rest with Georgia, who tried to minimize her performance by saying something to the effect that she had once had to earn a living at it.

It was with quivering eyelashes that Jicky that same night said the orchestra had been simply awful and she would have preferred remaining at home.

“So would I,” agreed Georgia with the sigh of a martyr.

The Bain boy, pursuing Jicky with phone calls and engagements in the weeks that followed, managed to get himself a little mistrusted by her. A suspicion came over her at times that perhaps he had been coached beforehand in the part he was to play, as far as tying her hands most effectually was concerned. Here was admiration and she didn’t want it; here was tenderness and it bored her. She was seeing very little of Scotty these days, and yet he was continually stopping in for a cocktail. It was all very puzzling, and then after a while it was not nearly so puzzling any more. She began to see things in their proper light.

“What do you think of Mother?” she asked him once.

“Remarkable looking, isn’t she?”

“Isn’t she, though! Everyone has always thought so—” All at once she stopped, as though someone had bored a little hole in her and let all her enthusiasm out. They never discussed Georgia between them after that.

And then one afternoon she wandered into the topaz-lighted room at the Madrid, and there was Georgia sitting over on the other side next to the wall. Jicky started across toward her, and just as she got about halfway, the waiter who had been arranging the tea things at Georgia’s table stepped to one side and revealed Scotty, all smiles as he leaned forward to say something more or less pleasant. Jicky stood still for a frozen half moment; then she turned around to walk out as though she had forgotten something. Georgia looked up just at the wrong moment. She came hurrying after her and stopped her just over the threshold.

“Jicky! Didn’t you see me sitting there?”

“Of course I did,” said Jicky, “but I thought—”

“What silly notions you get,” Georgia exclaimed. “Don’t make a scene like this. We’ve ordered another pot of tea for you.”

Scotty half rose and bowed her into her seat. “Marvelous to run into you like this.”

“Isn’t it, though,” she replied uncordially.

“We called up to have you join us but you had gone out,” Georgia said.

“No doubt,” answered Jicky with cryptic intent.

Georgia, seizing her opportunity, gathered up her purse and gloves. “Mind if I run along now? Some things I must do.”

Jicky, her teacup still filled, was held trapped. She stared resentfully as she saw Georgia go out the door.

“We happened into each other quite accidentally,” Scotty related, “so I suggested coming here.”

“Rather nice to meet you both.” This latter word sticking its head up like a thorn. She said very little else during the course of the next ten minutes. Her napkin reappeared above the table. “I’ll say goodbye. I have a headache.”

“If you must go,” he said.

She did a lot of thinking when she got back that afternoon. It is safe to assume she had never concentrated quite so wholeheartedly and painfully on any one thing in her entire life before. When Scotty called that evening, Georgia was not in. Neither was Jicky, sitting alone in the living room swinging her foot and humming in a carefully guarded voice. The sequence in which he had asked for them had nothing to do with it, she assured herself.