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

But in spite of all this she would have been beautiful in any generation.

They stood there terrified together, hand clasping hand low at their sides, as if trying to hide this bond from the world.

One of the peripatetic bellboys appeared. “Take your luggage in, sir?” he inquired.

The boy could only nod mutely, too stricken to speak. He paid and tipped the coachman, with considerable agitated fumbling of hands.

“Thank you kindly,” the coachman said. “Lots of luck to the two of you.” He touched whip to horse-flank. “And may all your troubles be little ones,” he added.

“I wonder how he could tell about us so easy?” the girl whispered with a nervous titter.

“They like to tease a lot,” he said soothingly. He curled her hand protectively about his arm. “Shall we go in?”

They went up the still-new entrance steps of the St. Anselm and into a marble-floored lobby that had, for the present occasion, been turned into almost a jungle of potted palms, ferns, and floral good-luck offerings. Most of these would be removed within a day or two, but at the moment it was almost like picking your way through a hothouse greenery.

“This way, sir, if you’d care to register,” the bellboy called helpfully to them. He was visible only above the waist, where he stood, and their baggage, presumably on the floor, had disappeared completely.

They approached the desk.

“Mr. Graham, please!” the bellboy called, addressing banked flowers.

Mr. Graham, the desk clerk, peered out at them from one side of a huge horseshoe of pink roses that partially screened his domain. They shifted over to the side he was on, since they had been erroneously standing over at the other side of the obstacle until then. Mr. Graham, however, had sought to adjust himself to them at the same moment as they did to him, so he had shifted back to the first side, by the time they left it and reached the second. Immediately, both parties corrected their mistake. Mr. Graham returned to the second side, his left; they returned to the first, their right.

Mr. Graham found a way of stopping the pendulum-like fluctuation at last, before it continued any further and died down of its own momentum. “Just stand there where you are now and wait for me,” he suggested wearily. “I’ll be right over.”

“I made a reservation,” the young man said timidly, when equipoise had been re-established. “John Compton.” He corrected himself. “Mr. Compton.” He corrected himself a second time, and far more all-embracingly. “Mr. and Mrs. John Compton.”

The girl dropped her eyes for a moment at this point, both pleased and shy.

The young man leaned forward. “The — er — the special suite,” he said diffidently.

“Oh, the bridal suite,” blurted out the insensitive Mr. Graham. “Yes, of course. We received your reservation. I have it right here.”

The girl picked at one of the marginal roses on the horseshoe as a cover for her self-consciousness.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Mr. Graham said. “If we’d only known where to reach you in time—”

“Why? Is something wrong?” the young groom demanded tautly.

“There was a hitch,” Mr. Graham apologized. “We’ve been doing everything we can to be ready on time, but those things will happen. Well, the fact of the matter is, Mr. Compton, it’s not quite finished yet. I wouldn’t feel right about putting you in there, on an — on an occasion such as this.” He bestowed a glance on the dewy-eyed bride, which sent her back to rose-leaf plucking again in a hurry. “Won’t you let me put you elsewhere just for tonight, and then I promise you the suite will be yours, without fail, tomorrow?”

The young pair looked at one another.

“Do you mind?” he murmured.

“Do you?” she breathed back.

The two deferring questions should have neutralized one another and brought them right back where they were, but he already seemed to be able to translate her meanings without any difficulty, inexperienced husband though he was. “Well, all right,” he said, “if you’re sure we can have the other tomorrow.”

“I give you my word,” Mr. Graham promised. He turned to the rack behind him. “I have a lovely room, up on the ninth. I’m sure you’ll find it satisfactory.” He handed a key to the bellboy. “Nine-twenty-three for Mr. and Mrs. Compton, Richard. Will you sign here, please, Mr. Compton?”

The groom bent over and wrote: “Mr. and Mrs. John T. Compton, Indiana.” He looked at it tenderly when he’d finished. Then he looked at her lovingly. “First time together — on paper,” he whispered.

She nodded eagerly, and clung closer to his arm, both her hands now clasped around it.

They went over and joined their waiting luggage and the bellboy in the brand-new elevator, its trellis-like ironwork still glistening with freshly applied gold-leaf.

The boy ushered them off at the ninth floor, stopped at a door, keyed and opened it, reached in. Some brand-new electric lights went on in bright welcome.

And at this point the story of Room 923 begins.

They followed him in and looked around.

“Oh, it’s nice, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” he agreed.

The bellboy bustled around, trying to make unnecessary actions look like highly necessary ones. Then he retired to the door and came to the crux of the matter. “Will there be anything else, sir, for now?”

“No, thank you.” Young Compton put something in his hand a little self-consciously.

The boy eyed it with widening eyes. “Thank you. Thank you very much, sir.” He backed out, closed the door, and they were alone.

The slightest of pauses followed.

Then she asked, “Did he bring everything up?”

“Yes,” he said. Then he contradicted himself by amending, “Wait, I’ll count,” and told off each separate piece with outpointed finger. “One, two, three — and that little one. Yes, he brought everything up.”

Another sliver of pause came between them; under other circumstances it would have been scarcely noticeable as such, but now they were acutely aware of every momentary silence that occurred between them.

“Don’t you want to take off your hat?” he suggested with an odd mixture of intimacy and abashed formality.

“Yes, I guess I may as well,” she assented.

She crossed to the dressing-table and seated herself at the glass. He remained where he was, watching.

“Gee, I always did think you had such pretty hair!” he blurted out suddenly with boyish enthusiasm. “The very first time I met you, I noticed that about you.”

She turned her head and smiled at him, equally girlish to his boyishness for an unguarded moment. “I remember, I’d just washed it that day. And Mamma had helped me put it up afterward. I told her that night how lucky it was we had.”

She turned back to the glass and looked at it intently in there. “It must be terrible to grow old and have it turn gray. I can’t picture that; the same hair, like it is now, should turn gray and still be on me.”

“But everyone’s does when they get old enough.”

“Yes, other people’s; but to have it happen to your She peered at herself more closely. “I can’t imagine it ever happening to me. But when it does, it won’t be me any more. It’ll be somebody else.” She touched her fingers to the sides of her face. “An old lady looking out of my eyes,” she said wonderingly. “A stranger inside of me. She won’t know me, and I won’t know her.”

“Then I’ll be a stranger too,” he said thoughtfully. “Two strangers, in a marriage that was begun by two somebody-elses.”

For a moment they were both frightened by this thing their nervously keyed prattle had conjured up. Then they both laughed, and the imminent fright went away.