Эд Макбейн - Strangers When We Meet

Eve nodded. Watching her mother, looking beyond her mother to Lois, she felt like weeping herself. Everything suddenly seemed so confused and puzzling, and she did not want to be a part of it. And yet Linda was her sister and had always been her favorite. But sitting opposite Mrs. Harder, Eve told herself, I don’t want to get involved. I mustn’t. And she felt like weeping.

“Did you call Sam?” Mrs. Harder asked.

“I called Sam,” Mr. Harder said.

“Well, where is he?”

“This is Saturday. Even lawyers take a day off every now and then.”

“Is he coming?”

“He said he would.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Will he know the state laws?”

“He’s a lawyer. I imagine he will know the law.”

“How could she do this to me?” Mrs. Harder asked. “How could she do a thing like this?”

The way Linda Harder could do a thing like this was relatively simple.

In a sense, though Mrs. Harder was the staunchest objector to the marriage, she had been in no small part responsible for it. She had raised Eve to believe that a girl should enter her nuptial bed a virgin. Eve had chosen to ignore her mother’s advice, but Mrs. Harder remained blithely ignorant of this fact. In her eyes, she had done an excellent job with Eve and so she turned to the twins with the same vigor and the same admonitions never to sit on a boy’s lap. If the warnings were wasted on Lois, they were not wasted on Linda. Mrs. Harder had successfully drummed into her the concept that a good girl waits until she is married. And so, watching her rising passion with Hank, Linda was faced with the dilemma of either becoming a bad girl or becoming married.

Her dilemma was enforced by Hank MacLean’s attitudes on the subject. He was in many respects much like Mrs. Harder — a comparison he would not have particularly relished. In his mind there were good girls and bad girls and you didn’t marry the bad girls. He had no desire to transform Linda Harder, the girl he loved, into a bad girl. Cautiously, both he and Linda had sounded out their parents on the topic of marriage. In both families, the response had been identical.

“Wait. You’re still kids. Linda isn’t even out of high school yet. Hank may be drafted. Wait.”

Well, they couldn’t wait. It was as simple as that.

On Wednesday morning, August twenty-first, Linda Harder left the cottage at Easthampton. She had told her mother she would be spending the next few days with a high-school chum named Sissie Carlisle in the city. Mrs. Harder had not objected. Girls visiting girls was a commonplace she had come to accept as the mother of two teenagers. She knew that Linda was a good girl who could be counted on to keep out of trouble. She kissed her daughter warmly, and, suitcase in hand, Linda left. Mrs. Harder didn’t know it but the next time she saw her daughter it would be on almost equal terms of womanhood. Indeed, even when she left the cottage that day, Linda looked more womanly than she ever had. Full-breasted, ample-hipped, wearing a tailored suit, with brown calf pumps, her hair back off her face, she seemed far older than seventeen.

She met Hank in New York and together they started the trip to Elkton, Maryland.

Hank had wondered whether a loose interpretation of the Mann Act could make it seem he’d transported her over a state line for immoral purposes. They seriously decided between them that marriage could never be considered an immoral purpose, and then the conversation swung around to the bottleneck again — and the bottleneck was Linda’s age. Marriage in New York had been out of the question. The state was a stickler for observing the letter of the law, and they were certain Linda would be asked for a birth certificate. As the train sped southward, they weren’t even sure that Linda wouldn’t be questioned in Elkton.

“How old do I look?” she asked him seriously.

“Eighteen, at least.”

“Nineteen?”

“Maybe.”

“Twenty?”

“I guess.”

“If I say I’m eighteen, they’re sure to ask me for proof. But if I say I’m twenty, maybe they won’t think I’m lying. Who would lie by three years?”

“I guess you’re right,” Hank said.

“Well, it’s really only two years and two months.” She paused. “We could wait the two months, if you like. Then there wouldn’t be any trouble. I’d really be eighteen. Do you want to wait?”

“No. Do you?”

“No. I want to marry you.”

They discussed the Maryland state law as it had been transmitted to them piecemeal by people they knew who’d eloped and been married there. As they understood it, they had to be twenty-one and the girl eighteen. If they were not they needed written and notarized permission from their parents before a marriage license would be issued. The state required no blood test but would not perform a ceremony before a forty-eight hour period of residence had been established. The ceremony, by state law, had to be a religious one. Sitting side by side on the train, their suitcases on the rack overhead, they talked in whispers, plotting the perjury Linda would commit.

Elkton was not a big town, and it did not boast of a large railroad station. When they arrived, they discovered that only one car serviced the station, and they had to walk the length of the train to disembark. As they moved up the aisle with their battered suitcases, they were aware of heads turning, of the whispered words, “They’re eloping.”

When they got off the train, Hank took her hand and squeezed it. “You all right?” he said.

“I’m fine.” She grinned. “There’s nothing wrong with getting married, is there?”

“There certainly isn’t,” Hank said. “Let’s get the license.”

In the taxi, they rehearsed.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“When were you born?”

Over and over again, they repeated the data in whispers, lest the cabbie should overhear them and spoil the plot by informing to an official. In truth, the cabbie didn’t seem very much like an informer. He was a round little man who said as they got out of the cab. “Look me up when you’re ready. Joe that’s my name. I’ll take you where you can get a nice ceremony.”

In the clerk’s office, Hank whispered, “Think you ought to light a cigarette?”

“No,” Linda whispered back.

They filled out the license application and handed it to the clerk.

“You’re twenty-one?” he asked Hank.

“Yes, sir,” Hank said.

“Any proof of age? Birth certificate? Baptism papers?”

“Yes, I have it in my bag,” Hank said. He stooped and began unfastening his suitcase.

“Never mind,” the clerk said. He looked at Linda. “You’re twenty, little lady?”

“Yes,” she said. She smiled easily.

“Mmmm,” the clerk said, still studying her. It seemed ridiculous to Linda in that moment that this hawk-eyed clerk could, by completely arbitrary will, either ask or not ask her for proof of age, in which case she would either be or not be married.

The clerk was reaching for stamp and stamp pad, still studying Linda.

His face slightly bored, he stamped the application.

“Forty-eight-hour wait before you can get married,” he said. “No civil ceremonies allowed. Would you see the cashier, please, young man?”

As they left the office, Linda became aware of the other people in the room for the first time. All of the girls, it seemed to her, looked much younger than she. In the corridor, she looped her arm through Hank’s.

“What time is it?” she whispered.

He looked at his watch. “Two-twenty,” he said.

“By this time Friday we’ll be married.” She paused. “Do you really have a birth certificate with you?”