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

She got very little sleep that night, but her sleeplessness wasn’t due to anticipations of coming happiness.

And in the candy-store all the next day the problem rode her back like a monkey, whispering first in one ear, whispering next in the other, whispering now yes, whispering now no.

And even when she was with him that evening, it wouldn’t let her be, making her smile less, making her miss things that he said, taking the edge off her contentment at being with him. Until finally he noticed it himself, and asked her what it was, and whether she regretted her decision.

“No,” she said fervently. “No. Oh, no.”

In the meantime all their little preparations, which to them were not little at all, were going on apace. They went apartment-hunting, in the evenings and on Sundays, which was the only free time they had, but finally had to give it up. Most of the places they looked at were priced too high for them to afford, and those that weren’t were sordid. They finally temporized by agreeing that he would give up his own room, which was the smaller of the two, and move in with her, but he insisted that he take over the rent.

They even did a certain amount of window-shopping for furniture, and when they passed for instance a glossy walnut dining-table with a bowl of wax fruit on it, would stop and say “We’ll get something like that some day,” even though they knew it would be a long, long time before they could afford the eighty-nine-fifty that was asked for it. “Let’s see how we’d look at it.” Then they would both dip their knees a little and crouch down, standing out there on the sidewalk, so that their reflections on the showcase-glass seemed to be sitting down at the table.

“Did you see the faces of any small kids peeking up over the edge of the table just then?” he asked her.

“I saw one,” she said. “How many did you see?”

“I saw two,” he said.

She smiled, and took his arm more closely than before.

They took out the license, took their blood-tests, were okayed, and everything was in readiness for the coming Saturday, and still she hadn’t told him.

Now that she had a deadline to meet, the problem became insupportable, crushing. She almost couldn’t breathe with the weight of it. It was taking the joy out of what should have been some of the happiest days of her life. She had even considered going to a priest and asking his advice, although she had no formalized religious beliefs and had never been a churchgoer. But instinctively she realized that the decision must come from her, she must be the one to make it, for it would be lacking by that much in grace, less worthy by that much of remission, of indulgence, if it came only at the behest of some stranger of the cloth and not from the depths of her own heart.

If she had had a week’s grace more, she probably would have taken that week, that much more time, trying to make up her mind, and still not have succeeded. But there was no more time left. This was Thursday, and they were being married Saturday. The shortness of it forced the issue. It had to be tonight or not at all. She couldn’t wait until the very night before they were married to tell him; there would have been something indecent about doing that. And unfair to him, not giving him time, curtailing his power to make a decision.

It was settled, then. In both regards. She was going to tell him, and she was going to tell him tonight, this very night.

When they met at their usual place, which was still the bus-stop of their early days, and he made some remark about dinner, she quickly put him off.

“No, not just yet. I want to tell you something first. We can eat later on, if we cat at all.”

“Go ahead, tell,” he grinned amiably.

She looked around her at the teeming foot-traffic. “Not right here.”

“Let’s go in someplace and get a cup of coffee, then.”

But she felt she needed something stronger to brace her, to see her through this ordeal that lay immediately ahead. She had drunk only sparingly in her old life, and since then not at all. But she needed courage, a back stop, to face what she had to do now.

“I could use a beer instead,” she told him. “It might help to — lubricate my throat.”

They found this pseudo-German bierstube. Or possibly it was authentic, but it overdid itself being Teutonic. The waitresses all wore dirndls and laced bodices and had flaxen braids, whether real or fastened-on, hanging to their waists in front. The place was packed at that hour, but they managed to get one of the plank tables set into benched partitions along the walls by slipping in almost as the last occupants were extricating themselves.

The first glass of beer became two, the two became three, the three four. First there was the uphill climb toward courage. Then when courage had been attained in a topaze-amber glow, it became a matter of hating to shatter the ambrosial mood they were sharing together, eyes meeting eyes, smile meeting smile, hand meeting hand in tender rapport across the table.

In one way it had a good effect, in one way a bad. It took away the jagged edges of her fear, all right. Made it easier to tell him, easier to say. But on the other hand, it lulled her, made it seem less urgent, less crucial, whether she told him at once and got it over with, or waited a little while longer. Or even didn’t tell him at all.

His smile at her was uninterrupted, never leaving his face, and if it was a little fatuous, it was nevertheless honest, and warm and sweet as freshly given cow’s milk. Some of his syllables were becoming a little mushy around their edges now and then.

He gave no other signs than that.

She knew she couldn’t wait any longer, or what she had to tell him might not only not be adequately told, it might not even be fully understood. But first, as one last reflex, she decided to retouch her face, to give herself that much better a chance, to make herself look that much better when his suddenly knowing eyes sought her out about to pass their judgment.

She raised the flap of her handbag, which had a mirror glued to the underside of it, and brought out a lipstick. But she was nervous with the imminence of the long-deferred moment now at hand, and her fingers weren’t steady. In trying to unscrew the cap, the little cylinder slipped from her grasp, fell to the table, and started to roll. Her hand went after it, but not quickly enough. It went over the edge, dropped to the floor, and rolled some more down there, out of sight.

He jumped right up, went around to the open, outer side of the banquette, and crouched down under it, to see if he could get it for her.

She heard him strike a match and saw its submerged glow coming from below.

Then she heard him say, “I see it. It’s right by your foot. Don’t move, or you’ll step on it,” and he blew the match out.

He must have extended one aim out before him to reach for it. In doing so he unwittingly stretched one leg still further out in back of him, so that it lay across the aisle.

At this moment one of the hefty Brünnhildes came bustling along with a trayful of empty schooners on her way back to the bar drain-board with them. Her toe stubbed into his leg, and she started to go sprawling forward, her waitress’ instinct causing her to hold onto the tray for dear life to the very last. It struck Don on the rump, the only part of him that wasn’t protected by the overhang of the table, with a calamitous impact. It was lightweight, some sort of composition, but evidently resilient, for it continued to reverberate for moments afterward. The schooners went rolling all around like ninepins, but they were so sturdily made not one of them broke. The girl went down to one side of Don and tray, but managed to stay up on one elbow.