The sun had come out, drawing the lunch-time crowds into the avenue. The women’s gay new clothes looked appropriate for the first time this spring. The men were in light-coloured suits. The shop fronts invited admirers, and the pace on the broad thronged sidewalks was leisurely. Taxis and private cars edged along the crowded road, jostling for position with the large green and white buses.
They crossed the Plaza, scattering the pigeons. The miles of park ahead of them lay covered in bright green. The rocky crags and fields and lakes and winding paths were hidden by the trees, now in full leaf. The new grass had spread over the earth. Fruit blossom and flowering shrubs added their round clusters of white and pink.
“Too many people around,” Scott said suddenly, halting. “We’d have to walk a couple of miles to leave them behind.” It was true. The paths leading to the zoo and to the lake were both crowded. All the benches were filled with people relaxing for a brief hour in the sun. “We’ll go for a ride,” he said, and led her back towards the rank of horses and carriages standing along Fifty-ninth Street.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” he said angrily, and he took a firm grip of her arm. “What’s wrong? Afraid I’ll make love to you?”
Rona didn’t answer him.
The cabby had seen them coming. The blanket was already drawn off the horse, the door of the carriage was held open. The horse looked round, watchfully, as if calculating their weights.
“Take you as far as you like. Nice drive round the Park. See the magnolias and the cherry trees. Take you ten miles if you want that.” The cabby’s smile was broad, partly toothless. He was a round-faced elderly man, with a red-veined nose. At the moment, he was trying to look romantic, helped by his top hat and tightly buttoned topcoat. The carriage, if not elegant, was clean, and the wheels had been recently given a coat of white paint.
“Only a short ride,” Rona said.
The round face looked disappointed. “On a nice day like this?” Then he shrugged his shoulders and climbed up to his seat with scarcely a creak from his stiff legs. Still, a short haul was better than none at all. He clucked his tongue, and the horse began its leisurely walk, its polished harness jingling, its fat haunches gleaming in the sunlight.
Scott was watching Rona’s face. “This isn’t exactly the way I thought you’d welcome my news,” he said with a touch of bitterness. But even that didn’t rouse the girl sitting beside him. He caught her waist and kissed her.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Scott!”
“What’s the trouble? Tell me.” He kept hold of her hands. She said, “Oh, why wasn’t it you who came to Peggy’s last night, why wasn’t it you who took me home?”
He watched her face, suddenly realising that whatever troubled her was more serious than he had guessed. “I tried to see you, yesterday,” he said gently. “I went round to your apartment before I met my father for dinner. You weren’t at home.”
She didn’t answer. Her face tightened. She was thinking, why does he lie? To be kind to me? For the note she had left for Scott, the note she had tucked securely into the hinge of her letter box downstairs, had still been there when she returned home with William Ettley last night.
Scott said, “What on earth has my father been telling you?” He was angry now.
“Don’t blame him. He talked to me very kindly, very worriedly. But, from his questions, I suddenly saw myself as you must see me. Why did you talk to your father as if I had already broken off our engagement?”
“I didn’t! Good God!—When I met my father yesterday, I was sick with worry. He noticed it. He jumped to the wrong conclusions. I probably wasn’t very coherent. You see, I’ve been worried for some time, worried about—well, worried about what I’m doing with my life. I’ve been trying to work out a solution for about six months. Perhaps even longer than that. Then, yesterday, everything came to a head. I made the decision to—to join the Clarion, after I left my father last night.” He slipped an arm round her shoulders and held her firmly. “And that is all, honey. When a man gets worried about himself, he isn’t good company. I’m sorry if I gave my father the wrong impression about us.”
She was watching his face now. “What does your father think about your decision to work on his paper?”
“He’s pleased, of course.”
“But wasn’t he surprised?”
“Yes—at first. But he understands.”
And I don’t, Rona thought unhappily. She looked at the shabby seat facing her, at a patch of leather peeling off a widening crack.
“Well live in Staunton,” Scott was saying.
She listened to the natural voice; so calm, so assured. She remembered how he had hated Staunton; he had talked contemptuously of its smugness, its small town snobberies, its bourgeois pretensions, its double standards. She glanced up at him sharply. But he was smiling, looking so confident and happy that she could say nothing.
He said, “Yes, we’ll leave New York. That will solve a lot of problems.” The meetings... The visits to Orpen... Paul Haydn... Yes, Staunton would solve a lot of problems.
“Not all of them,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Because there’s something wrong somewhere.” She bent her head. She lowered her voice still more. “I just can’t—I just can’t understand. The more you explain, the less I understand. You say you’ve been worried for months. Well, so have I been worried. There’s something—oh, I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t even know what it is that gives me this feeling of belonging to you less and less. Perhaps it’s because you really don’t belong to me at all. Do you?”
He stared at her, his face pale, the lines at the side of his mouth deepening. “What do I belong to?” he asked at last.
She shook her head. “We’ve said enough!” She opened her purse.
“No we haven’t.” The intensity in his low voice startled her. She looked up and met his eyes. “What do I belong to?” he asked again, gripping her hand.
“To yourself,” she said.
Suddenly, he laughed outright. He released her hand. “Do I never do anything that I don’t want to do?” he asked mockingly.
Only if it suits you, she thought. But she found she couldn’t say it. She bent her head and searched in her purse and grasped the ring in its box. She put it into his hand, and looked away. On the track beside the road, a fat woman in a heavy sweater cycled determinedly. On the grass beyond, a young couple sat with their arms around each other under the trees. A gaunt man lay stretched on his back, his shirt opened at the neck, his shoes off, staring at the white clouds above him.
Scott looked down at the box, neatly wrapped and decisively addressed. Then he caught her left hand and stripped off its glove. “No,” he said, “no, Rona! Not after what I’ve been through to get you. No, you don’t!” He ripped the paper and string from the box, crushing them into a tight ball. He lowered his voice. “I need you, Rona. I want you. You know that.”
“I don’t even know that, now.” Then she raised her voice and called to the driver, “We’ve gone far enough. Please turn back.”
The red face looked round at them in surprise, but only for a moment. He noted the tears on the girl’s cheeks, the angry white face of the young man. They weren’t an advertisement at all for a romantic drive under the chestnut trees. He turned the horse and let it have its head. It broke into a fast homeward trot.
Scott Ettley said slowly, “Is this all because of Paul Haydn? You can’t find the courage to tell me the truth?”
She shook her head. “I love you, Scott.”
“Then why—”
“Because it takes more than love to make a marriage, that’s why. Love, yes. But there are other things, too. Trust, for instance, that isn’t abused. And loyalty that’s fully returned.”
“You never criticised me until Haydn came back,” he said bitterly.
“No,” she protested. “Weeks before he came back, I began to—Oh, stop this talk about Paul H
aydn! You’ve hurt me enough.”
“He won’t get you.”
“Stop this!” She was angry, now. And in her anger, with the tears still on her cheeks, her large dark eyes widening in indignation, her lips parted, her skin alive with colour, it seemed to him that she had never been more beautiful.
He said tensely, “I’m not going to lose you. You’re mine. If I lose you, no one else is going to get you. You’re part of my life.” He gripped her left wrist, and thrust the ring back on her finger. She gave a little cry of pain. He held her hand so that she couldn’t free it.
Under the trees, on the paved path, a man walked with his jacket folded over his arm, hat in hand, his eyes on the leaves above him. A woman held a tight leash on a terrier straining for a squirrel. Two girls and two sailors had paired off. A boy raced on skates. A mother pushed a large baby up the steady hill. Two old men sat on a bench with a chessboard between them, dappled in the shaded sunlight.
Scott said, “You say I’ve hurt you. Now you’ve hurt me. All right—we’re quits on that. Well start from there. We’ll forget today, well forget this last week-end. We’ll remember only the ones we used to have.”
The buildings were coming near, the tall shapes pointing into the sky, the masses of grey and yellow and white and silvered stone. A flight of pigeons turned, wings gleaming in the sunshine. Up there, on the pinnacle of a high roof, a hawk lived.
“We’ll remember last summer,” Scott said. “Well start from there, again.”
The carriage rolled briskly out of the Park, round General Sherman’s little square. The tulips were massed in deep rows of pink and white. Men and women, sitting on the statue’s steps, their faces turned toward the sun, were motionless as the flowers. Others, walking quickly back to the offices and stores, clustered at the corners to wait for a break in the constant stream of cars and buses.
“I’ll come to see you this evening,” Scott said. “As soon after six as I can make it. We start from there.” He smiled and his face softened. He released her hand. The carriage had stopped, the driver was descending to open the door.
“That’s five dollars,” the cabby said, his eyes now business-like.
Scott pulled his wallet out, and counted the notes. No good complaining. These old sharks knew all the tricks.
“There you are,” Scott said, handing over the exact amount. The man was watching him with amusement. Scott turned quickly. Rona had gone.
“Your hat, sir,” the cabby said, with mock politeness, and picked it up from the cracked leather seat. He stood, hands on hips, watching the well-dressed back of the young man who was pushing his way through the crowd. Good-looking young fellow, too. Well fixed. Plenty of everything except tact. “Making a girl cry in the Park,” he said to his horse as he fastened on the feed bag. “That’s no way to behave in our carriage, is it, Snowflake?”
Then he climbed up on to the dashboard and sat there, tilting his hat forward to shade his eyes, his legs crossed to show grey wool socks wrinkling over tight-laced boots, while he measured the passing prospects with a careful eye.
16
“Congratulations, Miss Metford.”
Rona halted as she walked through Trend’s reception room and looked inquiringly at the smiling girl behind the desk.
“I hear you are getting married in June.” And wouldn’t Guttman’s nose be out of joint, the girl thought. Pink bathtubs and puce doormats and monogrammed artichokes.
Then the ’phone rang, and the pretty receptionist was saying, “Yes, Mr. Pillsbury. No, Mr. Pillsbury,” and Rona could escape into the corridor.
Most of her department were still out to lunch. Phil Arnim was wandering around though. He came in to sit on the edge of her desk and chat about their new assignment. He had got an angle at last, something to group his ideas around. What about Rona?
“I’ve done very little,” she admitted. “I’ll work late.” Then she remembered Scott. “I’ll have to work late tonight,” she repeated. It was one solution, not a very brave solution.
“Had a good lunch?” Arnim asked curiously. On his way back to the office, he had seen Rona and Ettley on Fifth Avenue.
She shook her head.
“I thought so. You look just the way my wife does when she begins dieting for summer. The minute she stops wearing a fur coat, she starts saying she doesn’t want any lunch.”
Rona half-smiled.
“It’s a fact,” Phil went on. “I’ve timed her each year. Regular as a Capistrano swallow.”
“Oh, Phil!”
“She is too. I got up some courage this spring and asked her why. And you know what she tells me? She can look at herself in a store window when she’s wearing a fur coat, and where she begins and the coat ends doesn’t matter much. But when she wears a suit and looks at herself when she’s passing a window—that’s the warning bell. Know those lonely little buoys that swing with the waves way out in the Narrows? That’s what she hears, seemingly.” Phil swung himself off the desk. “Well, this way I don’t pay the grocer’s bill. I’ll go back to bringing the cherry trees into the living-room, and I’ll leave you to splash round your little Roman fountains. Have fun.”
But at least, he thought, I left her smiling, which is better than I found her. “Rona’s got some kind of a battle on her hands,” he confided to Harry Jimson who had just returned from lunch.
“Who hasn’t?” Harry asked sourly. But then, he had just been through a disagreeable hour. His mistress—a nice shy little blonde she had been, last year—was now wanting an apartment, no less. And why should she have to go on working in the night club while his wife just sat around a house all day?
The sun filtered in through the south windows, the offices filled up once more. Down the corridor came the clatter of typewriters, the hesitating voice raised in dictation, the click of urgent heels on polished floors, a sudden laugh, the ring of telephones, a sharp discussion, the banging of the washroom door... The afternoon’s work had begun.
* * *
At five, when the last frenzied rush to clear up the day’s business was starting, Rona ’phoned down to the Coffee Shop for a sandwich, coffee, cigarettes and an evening paper if they’d got hold of one for her. She was relaxing at her desk, opening the brown paper bag which the delivery boy had just brought up, when Phil Arnim looked in to say good night.
“It’s going pretty well,” she told him, pointing to the litter of notes and diagrams on her desk. “Tomorrow, I’ll be ready for some field work at the Metropolitan and the Frick. Then you and Harry and I can get together and really start the job moving.” She unfolded the sandwich from its neat waxed-paper wrapping, spread the paper napkins on the radiator cover, and laid out the cardboard container of coffee, the wooden spoon and the cubes of sugar. “Have a pickle?” She offered him the last item in the paper bag.
“Give it to the pigeons,” Arnim suggested. “Well, glad everything’s under control. Don’t work too late.” He gave her a cheery grin and left.
Silence began to fall over the floor of offices. A few solitary noises—a single typewriter, a fit of sneezing, someone whistling off-key, occasional hurried footsteps—told Rona that others were working late too. She finished the sandwich quickly for she was hungry, wished she had ordered two, and then lighted a cigarette while she sipped the coffee. She picked up the newspaper. Something called the Amerasia case was going to be reopened. Strange, she thought, I was here in New York when it all happened and I don’t remember a thing about it. What does that make me—too preoccupied with my own life or just plain stupid? Or perhaps that’s the same thing... I bet I’m not the only one who’s a little bewildered by the newspaper tonight, and most of us will say, “I can’t believe this, surely it’s all exaggerated!” and we’ll throw the paper aside and try to forget it.
She folded the newspaper and put it away, persuading herself that she had indeed her own problems and she couldn’t even worry about them or she’d never get this job done. She rose and began clearing t
he napkins and container and pickle into the brown bag, keeping herself from thinking about Scott by making her movements brisk and decided, by feeling business-like and ready to face another couple of hours of work. It was six o’clock now. She sharpened her batch of pencils afresh, found some more paper, and settled at the desk once again. She began reading and making notes.
Footsteps came down the corridor and entered the main office. Then they stopped. The silence seemed to deepen. Rona, looking up from her work, listening in spite of herself, called, “Hello, there!”
Paul Haydn answered, “Hello, yourself!” He dropped the magazine that had caught his attention back on Phil Arnim’s desk, and came toward Rona’s room. He was as surprised and as embarrassed as she was. “Hello,” he repeated. He held out a manuscript. “I came along to leave this with Burnett. It’s a good article, I think, but it’s more in your line than mine. Would you have a look at it?” Then he saw the books on her desk. “No, I guess this is the wrong time to ask you,” he added with a smile.
“I’ll have a look at it tomorrow,” Rona said. She took the typescript and saw the neat memo clipped on its title page: Would Miss Metford please check on the facts in this? Many thanks. P.H. She smiled, too.
He turned to leave. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“About what?”
“About June. I hear you are getting married then.”
“Oh,” Rona said, and the smile left her face. “That’s just another false rumour. Now.”
He noticed then that the ring on her left hand was missing. He didn’t know what to say.
The telephone rang. Rona glanced at her watch. Six-thirty. Scott. It was probably Scott, calling to see why she hadn’t reached home yet.
Paul Haydn stretched out his hand to answer it.
“No!” she said. “No, Paul. Please don’t.”
He looked at her, making his own guesses. She turned her head away from him, pretending to look out the window at the roofs and penthouses and water towers. The ’phone kept on ringing, as demanding and insistent as Scott’s own voice. It is true, she was thinking, Scott only belongs to himself. His way is the only way, his decisions are the right decisions. There is something almost ruthless, terrifying and ruthless, in his single-mindedness. Even when he hesitates, even when he seems to be arguing with himself, there’s never any real doubt in his mind about what he will choose to do. It’s odd, she was thinking, that I must have felt this all along, that I must have smothered all these fears because they seemed so disloyal; it’s odd that, suddenly, during this last week-end, they couldn’t be smothered any more. What happened in these last few days to let my fears all take shape in my mind at last? Or has this hideous climax been a personal crisis for Scott, and I’ve felt it? Oh, ridiculous, stupid... Perhaps I’m a fool.