“All right, Marcel, and let’s have a little cognac to warm us up, meantime.”
“Justement, monsieur.”
Her eyes a little more used to the gloom, Marjorie looked around at the disorderly empty chairs and tables. In the far corners were shadowy customers hunched over candles, three other couples in all. Noel pointed up at the wall beside them. “Can you make it out? Brillac did it. He committed suicide at nineteen. They say he’d have been another Picasso. Got full of absinthe and killed himself over a lousy little whore of a waitress.”
In the overlapping curves of yellow light from the two chimneys she could see a cubistic pair of laughing lovers, with pustular green-and-yellow eyes, and toothy purple mouths twisted up near their ears. “Not very pretty.”
“Not at all. Disturbing’s the word,” Noel said. “Of course that’s the intention. Brilliant little bastard, he must have been—”
A hand fell on his shoulder. “Mon ami. Mon cher ami.”
Noel covered the hand with his, looking up. “Bertie! Marjorie, Monsieur Bertie.”
The proprietor looked like any other middle-aged Frenchman, roly-poly, shrewd, sadly ironic, mustached. “Mademoiselle Marjorie, how do you do, and welcome. Alors, mon ami—et Mam’selle Elaine? Et Monsieur Bob? Et Madame Mildred?”
Noel and Monsieur Bertie talked in French until the cognac came. There was much sighing, with eloquent shrugs and shakes of the head, by both.
“Well,” said Monsieur Bertie, as they drank the cognac, which was very good, “Mam’selle is a little hungry, maybe? A little bifteck, Monsieur Noel?”
“Two biftecks, what else, Bertie? A little salad, the usual, Madame’s dressing,” Noel said. “Champagne meantime, yes? Is there any of the Dom Perignon ’11 left? I guess not—”
“There is not, monsieur,” Bertie said. His eyes twinkled. “But for you maybe a bottle turns up, maybe we overlooked a bottle, hm?” He put his hand on Noel’s shoulder and said to Marjorie, “He is one of the true people. There are not many of the true people left.” He went away, sighing.
Noel told her all about Monsieur Bertie. He had been a flier in the World War. He was a poet. Several of the great French actresses had been his mistress at one time or another. He was an intimate of cabinet ministers, and of the leading modern painters.
Then he stopped talking and just looked at her. He looked straight at her for a long time, with a meaningful little smile. He played affectionately with her fingers. He lit two cigarettes at a chimney and handed her one without asking whether she wanted it. He kept looking at her face, as though trying to assure himself that she was really there opposite him. The little smile, the narrow-eyed purposeful look, never left his face.
Marjorie, though thrilled by the look, was also disturbed and a bit panicky. She could hardly doubt what was coming and she was unsure of herself. After five years, at the end of the long, long road, she was still in a quandary about Noel Airman! She was stimulated, quite waked up, by the tightness of the moment; yet she also felt somewhat trapped, almost as she had at the Villa Marlene with George Drobes so many many years ago, in the instant before he had pulled out the two rings.
And now Noel’s hand was going to his pocket! In a half-thrilled, half-alarmed instant she thought she was going to be confronted with a ring again; instead, he brought out an envelope, and passed it to her. “I think you ought to read this letter—if you can, in this sepulchral light.”
The envelope bore the address of the J. Walter Thompson company. She took out the letter, held it awkwardly sideways so the candlelight fell directly on it, and read it, squinting. It was from Noel’s former superior at the advertising agency:
Dear Noel:
If you’re really serious about coming back, that’s good news. We all understand your urge for one more year in Paris before bending your neck permanently to the harness. If not for our wives and kids, half of us here would do exactly the same thing, and we envy you.
Let me know when you’re coming back to the States. I can’t speak formally for the firm, of course. But I really think you can return to your job here when you’re ready. Everyone feels you did top work while you were here. And if, as you say, a stable secure future is what you are really interested in now, this is the place for you, and this is what you ought to do. You have a genuine flair for writing advertising copy, as I told you many times, and the bigwigs are fond of you, which never hurts. I hope we’ll hear from you soon.
She slipped the letter back in the envelope and handed it to Noel. He said, “How do you like them apples, sister?”
“This time you’re serious, Noel, aren’t you?”
“This time I’m serious. Yes indeed.”
The waiter brought champagne, and served it with grave ceremony. When he was gone Noel held his glass up to the candlelight, and gently swirled the wine. “Well, this is the best champagne left in our disintegrating civilization. The one fit wine, I think, for the toast I’m about to make.” He raised the glass. “It’s come, my darling, it’s really come, hasn’t it? To Mr. and Mrs. Noel Airman. Long life, and every happiness.”
He put the glass to his lips. Marjorie hesitated. Still holding her glass, smiling nervously, she said, “Who’s the lucky woman, Noel?”
His grin was confident and lively. He set down his glass, reached across the table, and took her hand. “Fair enough. You’ll teach me yet not to take you for granted! I haven’t proposed, have I? Well, Marjorie, the lady in question is the lady I’m with—the only girl I’ve ever really loved, the girl I want from now on—the only girl who holds any interest for me, my darling—now, henceforth, and forever. Marjorie, will you marry me?”
For five years she had waited to hear those words spoken by this man. She had dreamed of them, daydreamed of them, prayed for them, despaired of them. Now they were spoken at last, in a dark Paris bistro, by the light of two smoky candles, with all the sincerity and earnestness of which Noel Airman was capable. The picture was complete. And now, and not a moment before, Marjorie knew beyond any possible doubt what the answer was.
She was a little scared. But she withdrew her hand with gentleness, and the words came clearly and calmly. “I hope you’ll believe, Noel, that I wasn’t being coy. On my word of honor, I had to hear you say it to be absolutely sure. The answer is no, Noel. I won’t marry you. It’s impossible. I’m terribly sorry.”
The cab ride to the hotel was an ordeal of silence. He slumped all the way down in the seat, his thighs sticking bonily forward, his coat open and dragging. Once, with a faint echo of his usual sardonic gaiety, he roused himself and said, “An old English proverb keeps running through my head, do you know?
He who will not when he may,
When he will, he shall have nay.”
Not knowing what to answer, she said nothing.
He got out first, and helped her alight. He held her hand, peering into her face by the dim light of the bulb over the hotel entrance. “You should have come a week later, Marjorie.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered, Noel, honestly.”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Leaving Paris.”
“How? Plane, train?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I’ll see you off.”
“No. Thank you, but don’t.”
“I’m not giving up, you know, Marjorie. I’m coming home after you.”
“Don’t, Noel, don’t. That’s all I can say. Don’t. Good night.”
He bent to kiss her mouth. She thought of turning her cheek to him, then she accepted the kiss on the mouth. He looked hard at her, his face rather angry. She returned the look steadily. His right arm came up, and he hugged his deformed elbow. The anger faded from his face. A faint bitter grin broke through, and he nodded. “Good night, Marjorie Morgenstern.” He turned and got into the cab. His voice sounded jaunty, if anything, as he told the driver, “Quarante deux, Rue des Sts.
Pères.”
The fat desk clerk was slumped asleep in a chair in the lobby under a red light. Marjorie went up in the squealing cage to her room, undressed and tumbled into the high ancient brass bed, and slept like a child.
Chapter 47. THE MAN SHE MARRIED
When Marjorie finally did get married, it happened fast.
Not that she was expecting it, or looking for it, when it came to pass. Quite the contrary, she was in another time of dull despair, worse in a way than what had gone before, because there was no dream of recapturing Noel to brighten the future.
Yet she never regretted refusing Noel. Once that tooth was out, the hole rapidly healed. He sent her a lot of eloquent letters after she returned from Europe. Some she read, some she tore up without reading. She answered none, and after a month or so they stopped coming.
Mike Eden filled her thoughts during the homeward voyage, and for a long time afterward. She nurtured a hope that he would somehow turn up again, and she even took a volunteer job with a Jewish refugee-aid committee; partly influenced by all that Mike had told her, but partly in the selfish hope that she might pick up news of him. Months passed. The hope began to fade, and she kept on with the work for its own sake. Most of what she did was routine typing and mimeographing. Now and then she helped a family find a place to live, or guided girls to jobs. She didn’t exactly enjoy the work, but the emptiness at her heart went unnoticed while she was doing it; and at night she slept, untroubled by the sense of exasperated futility that had broken her rest during her years of haunting Broadway and battling with Noel.
Once she bought a drug trade journal and wrote to some of the companies that advertised, inquiring after Mike Eden. He had been careful to withhold from her the name of the firm he worked for. She had no luck, and she gave up the attempt; there were hundreds of such companies. After four or five months—especially after Hitler invaded Poland, and the headlines and radio bulletins filled everyone’s conversations and thoughts, and the refugee work grew tumultuous—her interest in Mike lost substance. She still daydreamed and worried about him, and wondered whether he was alive or dead. But he began to seem almost like someone she had heard or read about rather than actually known.
One Friday evening early in November, Seth came home from school in the blue and gold uniform of the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. It was the first the family knew of his having joined. As if this were not shock enough for his sister and parents, he announced at the dinner table that he intended to become engaged to Natalie Fain, the Barnard freshman whom he had been dating regularly for a year. Seth was a few weeks short of being nineteen. Poland had already been crushed, and the queer lull called “the phony war” had ensued in Europe; there was hope that real fighting might never break out. All the same it chilled Marjorie to see her gangling baby brother in military garb, the pink pimply razor-nicked face ridiculously stern under the white cap with gold insignia. If fighting came, this child would have to fight! As for his becoming engaged, they would all have laughed at him, and Mrs. Morgenstern would perhaps have told him to go wipe his nose—if not for the uniform. It blasted grown masculinity at them; it would not be denied.
The Friday-evening dinner at the candlelit table was different from all the hundreds of Sabbath meals that this little family had eaten through the years. The stuffed fish was as tasty as ever, the chicken soup with noodles as boring as ever, the pot roast and potato pudding as fat and satisfying as ever. But time had struck a brazen gong in the Morgenstern home. The father, whose round face had lost many worry lines when Marjorie returned from Europe cured of Noel, kept glancing at his son, and the worry lines came back, with some new ones. Mrs. Morgenstern relieved the mournful silence with brave jokes about seasickness and child marriage; and she addressed Seth all evening as Admiral, but her face was far from merry. As for Marjorie, she was simply stricken dumb. She could hardly eat. A picture haunted her: Aunt Marjorie, her wan face without makeup, her graying hair pulled straight back in a bun, serving as babysitter while Seth and Natalie in evening clothes went off to the opera; Aunt Marjorie, the querulous fat spinster in steel-rimmed glasses, reading “The Three Pigs” to a couple of pudgy children in yellow pajamas.
Next morning she telephoned Wally Wronken. He seemed extremely pleased to talk to her, and readily made a date to meet the following day at twelve-thirty in the lobby of the St. Moritz Hotel, where Wally now lived, and to have lunch at Rumpelmayer’s.
Marjorie came five minutes early for the date, dressed exactly as she had been for her meeting with Noel in Paris. She was aware of this, and slightly bothered by it; but the black and pink outfit was the best she had, and there was no point in looking anything but her best. She sat in a lobby armchair and smoked a cigarette, swinging her ankle; uneasy, almost distraught, more than a little ashamed of herself. The admiring glances of men sitting near her or walking by gave her no satisfaction. She knew by now that she was reasonably good-looking, and that it didn’t take much to win stares from men; neatly crossed legs in good stockings were enough.
She was uneasy because Wally had been, if anything, too pleasant, too smooth, too glad to hear from her, too willing to take her to lunch. She greatly feared she had heard condescension in his voice. He had, of course, every right to condescend. He was the success, the young man of twenty-three with a hit on Broadway; not a smash hit, true, nothing that presaged a major literary career, but still a comedy that was in the fourth month of its run. Wally had sent her a pair of matinee tickets; she had seen the play with Seth. There had been several empty seats in the house, and she had not particularly liked the play, but the audience had laughed and applauded solidly. It was a farce about the radio broadcasting business, full of echoes, she thought, of successful farces of the past ten years. Her objections to Wally’s writing remained in general what they had been at South Wind. It was commercial, mechanical; he was too eager for success, too ready with cynical imitation. But she had to acknowledge his competence; cheap and slight though Wally’s play might be, it was superior to Noel’s Princess Jones, with its precious and pallid whimsey, which she had, in her lovesick blindness, mistaken for high wit. Wally’s reach was at least proportioned to his grasp. Moreover, he had set out to break into Broadway as a writer, and he had done it, while her own dream of being Marjorie Morningstar had blown away like vapor. She had not found it hard to write him a note of warm congratulation. He had answered with warm thanks, and there things had rested between them until she had taken the initiative and telephoned him.
The clock over the hotel desk crept past twelve-thirty. Her uneasiness mounted. She was regretting the impulse that had led her to call him up; she had in fact been regretting it ever since she hung up the receiver, disagreeably suspecting him of condescending to her. What was she doing, really? Was she trying to change things between them at this late date and get him to marry her, now that he was a success? It was nothing so definite or so stupid. She wasn’t at all sure how she would feel when she saw him. More than anything else, she wanted to be reassured that she was still attractive, and Wally had always done that for her during the racking years with Noel.
Her conscious intention had been to tell him about Seth, and about her own fears of being an old maid. She wanted to laugh with him over the nightmare picture of herself baby-sitting for Seth’s offspring, and so get herself back into good humor. But Marjorie had come a long way in self-knowledge. She couldn’t be blind to the fact that she also was vaguely hoping for something more to come of this lunch, if not with Wally, then with somebody else, somebody successful and interesting, somebody whom she might meet by starting to go around with Wally again. It was this not very admirable notion that lay at the root of her uneasiness, and that made her shame and humiliation increase with each passing minute after twelve-thirty.
Those minutes lengthened. She lit another cigarette, promising herself to leave when it was smoked out. Disordered miserable thoughts possessed her. As a drowning man is said to do, she saw year
s of her life tumble past her mind’s eye. She saw herself in other hotel lobbies, in bars, in grills, in cars, in restaurants, in night clubs, with men—George Drobes, Sandy Goldstone, Wally Wronken, Noel Airman, Mike Eden, Morris Shapiro, and dozens of others who had come and gone more casually. It was a strange set of customs, she thought, that drove a girl to conduct the crucial scenes of her life outside her own home; usually in a public place, usually over highballs, usually when she was a little tight or quite tight. As girls went nowadays, she was probably respectable, even a bit prudish. Yet this had been her story.
It occurred to her too, as the cigarette went from white tube to gray ash, shrinking fast, that whatever subconscious hope she had of winning Wally was not only nonsensical but almost depraved. She had been Noel’s mistress. She knew that Wally, Broadway-wise though he was, somehow had convinced himself that this was not so. He had said things to her that left no doubt in her mind what he believed. At the time she had seen no point in undeceiving him, so she had lied by omission, by saying nothing. Evidently he had found it necessary or pleasant to idolize her; she had felt herself under no obligation to disillusion him with uncomfortable confessions.
But how could she possibly marry him, or even take to dating him again, without telling him the truth? How much of a liar was she? And yet, how could she ever tell Wally Wronken that she had been Noel Airman’s bed partner, after all? How could she face the moment that would follow the shattering of his picture of her—the one good girl in a world of chippies? The fact that he made free with chippies—it was obvious that he did—had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t supposed to be pure; she was. It might not make sense, but that was exactly how things stood.