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

Dwight’s crisp intelligent eyes bored into him like awls; you could almost see the look spiraling around and around and around as it penetrated into the sawdust. You could almost see the sawdust come spilling out.

It’s not the substitution itself, I thought; it’s the insult of such a substitution.

The wait was just long enough to have a special meaning; you could make of it what you willed. Finally Dwight shook his hand. “You’re a very lucky — young fellow, young fellow.”

I wondered what word he would have liked to use in place of “young fellow.”

“I feel like I know you already,” the husband said sheepishly. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“That’s very kind of Bernette,” Dwight said dryly.

I wondered where she’d got him. He had the dark, slicked-back good looks that would hit her type between the eyes.

Then again, why differentiate? They went well together. They belonged together.

The line of distinction didn’t run between him and her; it ran between her and Dwight. And part of her, at that, belonged on one side of the line, and part belonged on the other. The mink coat and the pearls and the diamond clips belonged on Dwight’s side of the line, and she herself belonged on the other side of it. She wasn’t even an integrated personality. The husband, with all his cheapness and callowness, at least was.

Dwight introduced the rest of us, introduced us, after I already knew her better than he ever had or ever would, with a pitiless clarity that he would never have.

Jean might have aroused her antagonistic interest, I could see that, but the married title deflected it as quickly as the introduction was made. Then when it came to myself, one quick comprehensive look from head to foot, and she decided, you could tell, there was nothing to worry about there.

“Drinks for Mr. and Mrs. — ” Dwight said to Luthe. He couldn’t get the name yet. Or didn’t want to.

“Stone,” the husband supplied embarrassedly, instead of letting the embarrassment fall on Dwight, where it rightfully belonged.

She at least was perfectly self-possessed, knew her way around in this house. “My usual, Luthe. That hasn’t changed. And how are you, anyway?”

Luthe bowed and said coldly that he was all right, but she hadn’t waited to hear. The back of her head was to him once more.

Their drinks were brought, and there was a slow maneuvering for position. Not physical position, mental. She lounged back upon the settee as though she owned it, and the whole place with it; as she must have sat there so very many times before. Tasted her drink. Nodded patronizingly to Luthe: “As good as ever.”

Dwight, for his part, singled out the husband, stalked him, so to speak, until he had him backed against a wall. You could see the process step by step. And then finally, “By the way, what line are you in, Stone?”

The husband floundered badly. “Well, right now — I’m not—”

She stepped into the breach quickly, leaving Jean, with whom she had been talking, hanging on midword. “Harry’s just looking around right now. I want him to take his time.” Then she added quickly, just a shade too quickly, “Oh, by the way, remind me; there’s something I want to speak to you about before I leave, Billy.” And then went back to Jean again.

That told me why she’d dragged him up here with her like this. Not to flaunt him; she had no thought of profitless cruelty. The goose that had laid its golden yolks for one might lay them for two as well. Why discard it entirely?

“Where’d you go for your honeymoon, Bernette?” Dwight asked her.

She took a second, as though this required care. She was right, it did. “We took a run up to Lake Arrow.”

He turned to the husband. “Beautiful, isn’t it? How’d you like it?” Then back to her again, without waiting for the answer he hadn’t wanted anyway. “How is the old lodge? Is Emil still there?”

She took a second. “Emil’s still there,” she said reticently.

“Did you remember me to him?”

She took two seconds this time. “No,” she said reluctantly, mostly into the empty upper part of her glass, as though he were in there. “He didn’t ask about you.”

He shook his head and clicked with mock ruefulness, “Forgetful, isn’t he? Has he done anything about changing that godawful wallpaper in the corner bedroom yet?” He explained to me, with magnificent impartiality: “He was always going to. It was yellow, and looked as though somebody had thrown up at two-second intervals all over it.” He turned and flicked the punch line at her. “Remember, Bernette?”

It was now she who addressed the husband.

“We were both up there at the same time, once. I went up there on my vacation. And Billy went up there on his vacation. At the same time. And the room that Billy had, had this godawful wallpaper.”

“At the same time,” I thought I heard Dwight murmur, but it wasn’t a general remark.

“I know, you told me,” the husband said uneasily.

I saw the way his eyes shifted. It’s not that he doesn’t know, I translated; it’s that he doesn’t want to be forced into admitting publicly that he knows.

I watched them at the end, when they were about to go. Watched Dwight and her. When the good-bye had been said and the expressions of pleasure at meeting had been spoken all around — and not meant anywhere. They reversed the order of their entry into the room. The husband left first, and passed from sight down the gallery, like a well-rehearsed actor who clears the stage for a key speech he knows is to be made at this point. While she lingered behind a moment in studied dilatoriness, picking up her twinkling little pouch from where she had left it, pausing an instant to see if her face was right in a mirror on the way.

Then all at once, as if at random afterthought: “Could I see you for a minute, Billy?”

They went over to the side of the room together, and their voices faded from sound. It became a pantomime. You had to read between the attitudes.

I didn’t watch. I began talking animatedly to Jean. I didn’t miss a gesture, an expression of their faces, a flicker of their eyes. I got everything but the words. I didn’t need the words.

She glanced, as she spoke, toward the vacant gallery opening, just once and briefly.

Talking about the husband.

She took a button of Dwight’s jacket with her fingers, twined it a little.

Ingratiation. Asking him something, some favor.

She stopped speaking. The burden of the dialogue had been shifted to him. He began.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly. You could scarcely see him do it. But not uncertainly, definitely. Refusal. His hand had strayed toward his billfold pocket. Then it left it again still empty.

No money for the husband.

The dialogue was now dead. Both had stopped speaking. There was nothing more to be said.

She stood there at a complete loss. It was something that had never happened to her, with him, before. She didn’t know how to go ahead. She didn’t know how to get herself out of it.

He moved finally, and that broke the transfixion.

They came back toward us. Their voices heightened to audibility once more.

“Well — good-night, Billy,” she said lamely. She was still out of breath — mentally — from the rebuff.

“You don’t mind if I don’t see you to the door, do you?” He wanted to avoid that unchaperoned stretch between us and it, wanted to escape having to pass along there alone with her, and being subject to a still more importunate renewal of the plea.

“I can find the way,” she said wanly.

She left. I had him all to myself for a moment, at least the exterior of him.

Not for long, just between the acts. It wasn’t over yet. Suddenly, over his shoulder, I saw she’d reappeared at the lower end of the room, was standing there.