Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

Audrey said, “You know, you’re pretty fascinating—in spite of your British bias.”

“Thanks.”

She surveyed him teasingly. “Tall, dark, and handsome. A glint of red in the retreating hair. Old enough to—well, old enough. I don’t mind telling you that when you walked into the bar, my not-too-maidenly heart skipped several beats.”

“I’m glad to know it’s beating, anyway.”

She pretended to be amused. “Are you in love?”

“No.”

“You don’t mind if a girl tries—?”

“I have a rule about that. It depends on the girl.”

“Me, then. I have your mother’s permission.”

“You’ll find my mother is uniformly generous—with things that don’t belong to her.”

Audrey paused. “Have you ever been in love? You don’t sound as if you had. You sound like the strictly cold-science type. But you look—well, amenable.”

“I’ve been in love,” Jimmie replied steadily.

Audrey laughed with a rich laughter. “That’s something, anyway. Tell me about it!”

“Rather not.”

“Please!” She wrinkled her nose. “Pretty please!”

Jimmie sank in his chair till his chin was on his chest. He looked savagely into the girl’s eyes. “She was English. Her name was Ellen. In some ways—ever so many—she reminds me of you. Rather, you remind me of her. It was a shock when I saw you. She was bright blonde, like you, and tall and slender and she had one of those stagey voices that can make a man shake all over with a single syllable. About your age. Twenty-three?

I thought so. I was very fond of Ellen, though I never did see enough of her. Yes. I’d say I was in love. We weren’t engaged—”

“Sissy! ”

“It didn’t seem worth being engaged until—this mess was over.”

“Oh.” Audrey pouted resentfully. Then she said, “And so—what happened to this great romance? Did some other more dashing faster-working lad barge onto the scene and steal her away?”

“Yeah,” Jimmie answered. “A German pilot.”

It was a brutal thing to do to anybody. Jimmie had thought it over for a fraction of a second before answering. And he had decided to say it as he had said it. Audrey deserved it for being so facetious about anything so private and unknown. His mood demanded it. He was brimful of disappointment. He loved his family. In all the years of his absence he had carried an awareness of them in his mind with a secret relish that had made every hour of his life pleasanter. His favorite fantasy—at Oxford and afterward—had to do with coming home and settling down near Muskogewan. But, now that he had come home, he found his family suspicious of him, estranged, bitter at his attitude, hectically opposed to everything for which he stood. In that mood he had struck back at the dreadful opening inadvertently made by the gleaming girl. He had not reckoned the consequence.

Audrey sat perfectly still. She had a pink-tan complexion, unusual in. a girl so blonde. The pink faded to pallor and the memory of a summer tan turned yellowish. Two tears formed in her eyes, filled them up, overflowed, and ran down her cheeks. Her shoulders contracted with the beginning of a sob, and contracted further, in an effort to stem the convulsion. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even try to touch the tears on her cheeks.

Jimmie rose nervously and walked three steps away and three steps back. He stared out at people pushing and babbling in the foyer and he looked at Audrey again.

“Sorry.”

She whispered, “I asked for it! Practically begged!”

“That doesn’t exuse me.”

“I think—I’ll leave. If you’ll go to the checkroom and get my wrap.” Her fingers fumbled shakily with a small gold evening bag.

He took the bag, opened it, and extracted a brass check. He flipped it, caught it, and looked at her. She was repairing the damage done by the tears. “I wish you wouldn’t go,” he said.

Audrey smiled unsteadily. “Only thing to do, I think.”

“No. No, it isn’t, Audrey. I hurt your feelings fearfully—and I’d like to make amends. You hurt mine—and you want to hide. I know how that is. But I’ll give you a challenge. If you, also, want to make amends you’ll stay here. We’ll sit in this little room and bicker for a while. Then I’ll take you back to those clowns, the guests of my family.

You and I will dance and have fun and that will help me infinitely to avoid the many mokes.”

She was still half smiling, but she shook her head. “It’s no good. We disagree so terribly about everything. And you must despise me—besides.”

“I couldn’t despise you, whatever you thought,” he answered. “Two reasons. You look so much like Ellen, for one. And the other is the way you cried when I—struck you—just now. It was as mean as a blow, anyway—”

“It wouldn’t do any good, honestly.”

“On the contrary. Lemme see.” He grinned charmingly. “I’ll appeal to you in an abstract way. You’re probably up to your ears in various kinds of social work. Bundles for Britain and whatnot?”

She nodded. “It’s so silly, so trivial—”

“Well, here I am, a civilian veteran. Home on a sort of pseudo furlough. In the case of veterans they usually turn out the town’s prettiest girls as dancing partners, companions, whatnot. Suppose we say that I requisition you? We’ll be—by all odds—the handsomest couple on the floor. You’d raise the index so much—”

Audrey was recovering. “You’re pretty sporting, Jimmie. You have nerve. I think I was mistaken about you. All right. You requisition me. I’ll do a little bundling for Britain—”

He chuckled and broke off, looking at her in a startled way. Then he chuckled again. “Jolly old reconciliation, ho! What? As I never heard an Englishman say!”

“Which reminds me to note that you don’t talk so awfully much like an Englishman, considering how long you lived there. A little. I mean, you’d know you’d been exposed to the accent—”

“Two reasons, Audrey. One, I was always proud of my native vernacular. My pronunciation was the bane of the dons. All Oxford shivered whenever I opened my mouth to speak. Two, it was a long trip home—grimy weather, no diversion on the boat-and I spent the time refreshing my memory of the provincial tongue. Listening to several Americans from Chicago—steel men—who shared the bar with me a good deal of the time.”

“We might stop by the bar, on the way back. The floor show’s still going on, that M. C. is practically inexhaustible.”

He offered his arm, with a mocking ultraelegance. “I’d imagine that it’s his audience that gets exhausted. M. C.—master of ceremonies, I presume. A new phrase, since my day.” They walked toward the club bar. “Audrey. Tell me something. Why did my handsome and all-pervading mother appoint you to pursue me?”

“You ought to be able to guess.”

“Ought I? Lemme see.” He helped her hike up on a bar stool. “Pounds, crowns, shillings?”

“On the nose! My father is president of the Second National. The other big bank here.”

“It was always the old man who talked about mergers. Habit’s catching, evidently.”

Audrey ordered a highball. He nodded for the same. She turned toward him. “And now, it’s quite out of the question. That’s funny. I mean, my mother and yours have been fiddling around with this meeting of you and me for months. I was pretty thrilled, myself.

I, well, do you mind if I say that I still am?”

“Nope. But it’s out of the question, is it? What’s the matter? Has the fact leaked out that the Baileys come from a long line of lunatics and pirates?”

“My mother,” she replied, “is local president of the America Forever Committee.