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

Inside the flat she flung her purse down with a violent, explosive gesture. Immediately the light flashed on and her roommate sat up in bed suddenly.

“Hello, Ivy,” she said. “You woke me up. What time is it?”

“It’s the usual time,” said Ivy sullenly. “Not a minute later, not a minute sooner. Everything’s run according to a schedule with him, you see.”

“Have a good time with Walter?” her roommate yawned.

“Oh, gorgeous!” snapped Ivy.

“You don’t sound like it. What happened? Did you have a quarrel?”

“A quarrel would be something at least,” Ivy exclaimed, running a comb repeatedly through her hair in what looked like a vicious attempt at scalping herself. “He hasn’t even got spirit enough to quarrel with me.” This was said complainingly rather than admiringly.

“Why, Ivy!” the roommate admonished, sinking back on the pillow and ruffling her hair in time with Ivy’s frantic combing. “He loves you. What more do you want? A steady, reliable fellow who’s devoted to you and intends settling down with you. You have no kick coming!”

“That’s just it,” agreed Ivy dismally. “I certainly have no kick coming!” She abruptly snapped the light out.

The next day, in a starched muslin frock and a peaked white cap to go with the surroundings, she waited on tables. The final touch of old Holland, the wooden shoes, had fortunately been omitted as conflicting with the necessary rapidity of movement. In this atmosphere, redolent of such native Dutch dishes as griddle-cakes and shredded wheat, the long hours slipped past her. The evening of the second day was one of Walter’s Saturdays. A picture show on Tuesdays and Thursdays, dancing on Saturdays. That was as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. That they should go to a picture on Saturday, for instance, and dance together on one of the other two nights, why there was much more likelihood of the sun shining at midnight or snow falling in August than of that ever happening! Instead of feeling the way girls do a month or so before they get married, she thought rebelliously, I feel the way they do years afterward — all disinterested and blah! She was meanwhile preparing herself in a listless way to be ready at half-past eight, the hour when he would call for her, with no excitement and no anticipation.

All the faces would be the same, the tunes would be the same, for he always took her to the same place. And at the very same spot on the floor, where that thick post was set, he would go out of step again trying to get past it. It was difficult to recall, it seemed so long ago now, that she had once laughed about this, saying: “We’ll have to have that removed!” And that a week later, when the same thing happened, she said: “Here’s our old friend Mr. Post.” Now she no longer said a word. It was — well, just a part of Walter; it had to be taken for granted along with everything else that he stood for: good-hearted, reliable, devoted to her; altogether a calendar of virtues. But a calendar without a red-letter day for her. Her friend came in at eight, home from toil.

“You certainly are,” she remarked with a glance at the familiar pale-blue Saturday night dress, “getting your money’s worth out of that thing. Aren’t you afraid Walter will get tired of seeing you in it so much?”

“It’s just the other way round,” Ivy corrected her. “I wear it each time as a special favor to him; he’s asked me to time and again, doesn’t like me in new things. That night I wore the other one for a change, his face dropped and he said something about having to get used to me all over again.”

“Well,” observed her friend enviously, “he’s just about ideal. You don’t have to worry about what to wear to go out with him. Are you lucky!”

“So I’ve been told,” Ivy agreed desperately.

Eight-thirty came, then went again. Thirty seconds past, then a whole minute, then two — and for the first time in months the doorbell didn’t give its familiar ring. He had never been as unpunctual as this before.

“I honestly believe,” Ivy said hopefully, as though discovering a new trait to be admired in him, “he’s going to be all of five or ten minutes late. And yet it can’t be possible; it must be our clock that’s fast.”

“I’m not put out,” she was saying a quarter of an hour later. “At least for once he’s done something to break the awful monotony. It’s a habit should be encouraged.”

The telephone rang. It was Walter. He had been unavoidably detained. He was apologetic, almost abjectly so in fact. He was on his way now.

“Instead of your coming all the way up here,” she suggested, “I’ll wait for you at the place instead. That’ll save time.”

When she came back to the room, she remarked, “I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for months.”

“What?” asked her friend, slightly alarmed.

“I’m going down there alone to that place, ahead of him, and find out what it feels like to dance with somebody else for a change.”

“Ivy,” her roommate remonstrated, “you’re just doing this because you’re peeved at him. You don’t really want to go down there without an escort—”

“Don’t I!” said Ivy. “Don’t I? If you only knew! Listen,” she said intensely. “I have an enemy down there, and tonight is my chance to get even. Don’t get frightened,” she added as her friend’s eyes widened. “It’s only a post, but tonight for once in my life I’m going to get past that post without having a hitch thrown into my dancing!” Then she flung the door open and departed, leaving her roommate to close it after her with a puzzled look on her face.

Ivy bought her own way into the dance hall and seated herself in the first vacant armchair she came to. “No,” she said almost at once, over her shoulder, and then “No” again, and still a third time “No” with an added “Thank you” by way of afterthought. She hadn’t come there to indulge in flirtation; those who had noticed her on former occasions in the company of Walter and now approached with a doubtful, furtive air about them wouldn’t do at all.

“He’s got to come up and stand right before me, whoever he is,” she told herself, “not sneak up sideways hoping no one will notice.”

Her glance wandered across the sleek floor to the opposite side of the room. There’s someone, she thought, who would do nicely. Almost as though he had heard her, he started over, then and there, neither hurriedly nor yet slowly, cutting directly across the vacant floor with an air of assurance that was all to his credit. I shouldn’t have looked over at him, Ivy thought remorsefully, now that it was too late. She turned her face away. Even when she knew that he was standing there, she pretended not to see him.

“The next?” he said in a resonant voice.

“What would you have done if I had refused?” she asked curiously once they were out on the floor.

“Just what I’m doing now,” he said. “Dance with you anyway.”

“With somebody else, you mean?”

“With you, I said,” he corrected. “When I want to dance with someone bad enough to ask them, I dance with them!”

“Well!” she said, a bit rashly. “This is something, anyway! I have no kick coming so far.”

The famous post bore down on them. Instinctively she bunched herself together, waiting for the misstep that was to come. There was no misstep. Expertly he detoured in a half circle, and it receded harmlessly in back of them. There, she thought triumphantly. I’ve accomplished what I set out to do tonight — now I’ll leave him as soon as the music stops and wait for Walter.

She did leave him as soon as the music stopped, and the next time it stopped, and the time after that too. In fact, each and every time it stopped, she left him to wait for Walter, and each time it began, no matter how inconspicuous and out-of-the-way a refuge she had chosen for herself, he found her and dragged her out into the open again. She said “No” and “No more tonight, thanks,” and found herself dancing with him anyway.