An April Afternoon

by Philip Wylie

  Dry, shrill, and terrifying, came the rattle of a snake. I was still watching Connie, and I saw instant relief come in her features. Barney was only calling to a rattler which he was trying to kill. Boyish, no doubt--but the scene abruptly made sense to her.

  To me it did not. Not the scene upon which we had arrived or what happened afterward. For at that moment I saw the snake. A big one, thirty feet or so beyond the place where Barney stood. It had turned and was coming fast toward the man who had harassed it.

  And Barney yelled at it, "That's silly, my fine friend! The biggest mistake of your life--and the last!" He bent down and picked up another stone. He drew back his arm and waited--waited while the distance between him and the snake decreased to a few feet.

  I knew that Barney was grinning, and, as if the snake also knew that there was something unnatural about the behavior of the man, it slowed down, stopped, coiled indecisively, and felt the air with the inadequate gauge of its tongue.

  "Come on!" Barney yelled, and his voice was high.

  The snake struck tentatively, seemingly trying not to hit Barney, but to frighten him because it was also frightened.

  Barney laughed and the rattler coiled again and rattled again and finally became stock-still. Not the prey but the preyer seemed hypnotized.

  Then Barney threw a stone. The snake's back snapped and it rolled over and over with a broken, corkscrew motion, showing alternately its diamond-marked back and its creamy-belly.

  Our horses had quivered under us. Now mine plunged, and I almost fell. Barney turned and saw us. Whatever had been in his face fled quickly. But I guess Connie did not see what that had been, for she laughed weakly and slid down from her saddle and ran across to him, saying, "Oh, darling, I was petrified!"

  Barney took her by the arms and kissed her and said, for my benefit, "Just having a little fun with astray diamondback! Bad customers to have around a place like this where kids ride, and people go on picnics."

  Having a little too much fun, I thought.

  And I wished that I could have ridden home alone, because I didn't want to talk to Barney Colby that morning. However, we made our way back together. It was nearing lunch time. Other cavalcades were riding in from the desert. The hot noonday was filled with hoofbeats. Smoke rose from the cookhouse chimney. The air around White Water Stables smelled of bacon. Song came from the barroom.

  "When the round-up days are over

  There'll be pastures white with clover

  For you, old faithful pal of mine."

  CHAPTER XV

  All three of us had probably wondered and worried a good deal about Christmas. I know that I had--and I'd wished more than once that I had picked any other time of year to make my pilgrimage to Connie. Moreover, after that morning on the desert, Barney and I were unable to be as casual and as amiable with each other as we had been previously. He met the unhideable remnant of squeamishness in my occasional glance by robust mirth or by stalwart excursions and dangerous rides. But neither effort was real, and he knew it. And I knew it. And he knew that I did.

  There was something pent up in him at all times. And the fact that he was free to come and go as he pleased, to do what he pleased, to act as he pleased, did not alter the frustrated look which I sometimes saw in his eyes. I suppose the wanderlust and the bloodlust, like all other lusts, is close to mania, or mania itself--only most of us have mild or negative subjects for our lusting, and that terrible force expresses itself in people like myself, for example, only as nostalgia--as longing unutterable for things to be different, for things that never were or could never be.

  I do know that we were all three afraid of our Christmas because between us there had risen such a complexity of strains and stresses that it needed only one more quantum of pressure to burst the whole relationship. And Christmas--Barney's first with her--her first away from home--Christmas with my too-knowing interpolation had become a ponderable hazard, a dreaded day.

  Then, to my surprise, Barney solved the dilemma. Or seemed to solve it. "Let's get the gang," he said one morning, "and go down to Mexico for the holidays. This place is growing stuffy, and I think a change is indicated. How about Ensenada?"

  Connie sighed with relief. "It's the best idea since the invention of the cotton gin!"

  We drove down a few days later. . . .

  Everybody agreed that it was a hilarious Christmas Eve. Jack and Veronica Strokes, the Darlingtons, Lyman Wesley, and Harrison McLeod were in superlative form.

  I enjoyed it. Barney was happy. Barney, indeed, had become the life of the party.

  And certainly it was a magnificent setting for any occasion. A stupendous setting.

  The hotel was like a palace in Valhalla. It faced the almost closed curve of the bay; there was, between the water and its arched terraces, a long stretch of sand; its gardens were bright enough to hurt the eyes; inside was luxury enough for half a dozen ocean liners--

  paneled rooms, blue-tiled floors, frescoes, paintings in which the hot reds and yellows of Mexico were predominant colors, a vast dining hall that was like the inside of a cathedral, another imposing chamber dedicated to Chance, and everywhere music--the sound here of slow-exploding saxophones, pianos, violins, and in some other lush and subtle patio, the rhythm of maracas--swift, explicit.

  Only Connie did not seem quite to succeed, like the others, in a complete submergence of herself. She said the electric glitter of the miniature Christmas tree upon our table was unreal to her. And that the giant tree which was the parent of all others in and around the hotel and which had been dyed white (a Mexican acceptance of a California practice--as if green were not good enough, as if all things were better when removed from nature) was a "damned lily-gilding." Besides, though the white tree was beautiful enough--though its ornaments were conventional--it was less a Christmas tree for being more. I watched her put out a cigarette and stare at the bubbles in her champagne, rising as smoothly as incense--perhaps to Comus, the god of revelry. Comus would have liked this place. So would Saturn. A Roman emperor might have designed it.

  And I'm sure Connie did not exactly dislike it. She found it good, even amazing--

  but inappropriate.

  Maybe it was our drive down. The barren hills, the cliffs that looked craggy, and consisted, nevertheless, of crumbling materials. The cold thin air that had crept under the automobile rug, for California's atmosphere lacks body; it is a raw, unsatisfactory air. If the sun burns through it, then the sunshine is too hot, and when it is cold, its cold is acid and irresistible.

  Maybe it had been Los Angeles on the night before--the sight of thousands of homes where other Christmas trees, glimpsed through broad bay windows, were made doubly magnificent by no bleakness out-of-doors, but competed instead with green palms, green lawns, roses, bursting blooms of hibiscus--all the rainbow regalia of the sub-tropic winter season. I knew seeing it made me think that the sleigh of Santa Claus would be as inconceivable in such surroundings as the celebration of the Fourth of July in a blizzard. The whole thing was anomalous and deceitful: it was not the Temperate Zone, nor yet the tropics. Perhaps--the intemperate zone.

  "Oh, Connie!"

  She looked up. Harry was standing there with a woman. My mind immediately found the word for her--one which over--use has made banal, one which fitted perfectly: the woman was gorgeous.

  "Connie, I would like to introduce Leatrice Hardy."

  "Hello!"

  "Merry Christmas," the woman said. She held out her hand. She's older than she seems in the films, I thought. But not much older. Twenty-six. Looks a lot like Virginia.

  The woman--the girl--was sitting down, saying, "Merry Christmas," as Harry introduced her to the rest of us. I realized that she did look like Virginia--more, even, than on the screen. People had often commented on that resemblance. She was like Virginia gone astray. Virginia lost. Virginia brought up in less careful surroundings. Like a Virginia who had been allowed to be petulant--or one whom circumstances had encouraged to be cru
el.

  I wished I hadn't thought of Virginia, and, in so wishing, I suddenly realized that the disharmony in Connie's spirit was due not to white-washed Christmas trees or the incongruity of gardens in December, but to names and faces and good times she longed to recollect.

  Now, in the midst of orchestral fanfare, of showers of slowly circling colored light, I saw Connie fix her eyes upon the yellow coal of a fresh cigarette and I knew she was letting the tide engulf her: John and Virginia, Ivan and Larry. The whole weltering ache of them--and her own loneliness.

  She became lonely-looking as she sat there.

  "I'm going to call you Connie," said the blond alabaster girl. She smiled. "All right, Leatrice."

  "Isn't it fun!" "

  Isn't it."

  "I couldn't stand it in Hollywood. Yesterday morning my own house rose us and bit me. I was born in Arkansas, you know. A one-horse town, but that one horse used to pull a sleigh in Winter and there were bells on it. I got so doggone homesick! If my studio had only been making 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' I swear I'd have gone out to the set that had the ice cakes on it and spent the holidays there."

  Connie chuckled. "I guess I was thinking something like that myself."

  "Yup," said the actress. "We're in the loony bin. California isn't meant to be lived in. It isn't even meant to be looked at."

  ' Then, what's it for?" Barney asked jovially.

  "It's meant solely to be heard about," Leatrice replied, and everybody laughed.

  Connie had been regarding the girl with a great deal of interest. We'd all heard about the stupidity of picture stars--about their vacuity. Here was one who was bright, and if she had a deep, essential hardness, she carried it with gallantry and recognized it as a price. Connie was doubtless aware that Barney also was looking at the girl. He asked her to dance. They went away.

  Jack Stokes ordered some champagne. "Bring a case," he said to the waiter. And when the waiter frowned, "Bringo anothero caso champagno."

  The waiter went away dubiously. "Spanish is a very simple language," Jack said modestly to the company. Harry leaned towards Connie. I heard him say, "You like her?"

  "Quite a lot. I was surprised."

  His eyes came to rest on the dance floor; "So does Barney."

  She turned quickly. So did I. They were dancing close together and laughing.

  From above, people were throwing confetti so that it fell as thick as snow. I heard her respond. "I don't blame him."

  And he must have realized it was unchivalrous to keep watching Connie at that moment. So he looked away and said something under his breath. It sounded to me like,

  "Nice going!"

  I was glad when the music stopped. But glad for only a moment. I could hear Barney's deep voice as he escorted Leatrice toward the table. "--so I heaved my hammer at him. It was the only thing I could do under the circumstances."

  "Then?" The girl asked with excitement.

  Barney jabbed his brow with his finger, and said expressively, "Clunk!"

  I saw the flash of her eyes, admiring and measuring; I noticed how quickly those eyes moved from their appraisal of him toward Connie.

  Then Barney said, "I'm going to swipe Miss Hardy for a few minutes. She's the ninth biggest box office attraction--so we're going to give number nine a whirl."

  "Good luck!" Connie sounded casual--but I had an almost irrepressible impulse to add, "Try number thirteen, too."

  "Want to dance?" Harry asked Connie then.

  She nodded.

  They moved diagonally through the flamboyant crowd. I kept watching them.

  Something was going to happen--little or big, I did not know which. I knew only that all this had gone beyond human endurance; upon all of us sat an intolerable weight of variegated wrongnesses. I saw her lean away and smile and speak to Harry. He nodded, and they stopped dancing. She left him and fumbled through the crowd.

  I got up from the table then and went after her. Under arches, through arcades and corridors, across deep-carpeted rooms where great logs flamed in cavernous fireplaces.

  She hurried faster and faster--toward her own suite, I knew. She went in and closed the door without looking back.

  I hastened up to it and put my hand on the knob. But I did not turn it, for on the other side of the door I heard her saying stupidly over and over, "Oh, Lord! It would be this! It would be! He would do this! So beautiful!" Then she began to laugh. It was bad laughter, and I clung to the doorknob, listening miserably until it changed to sobs and bedsprings squeaked beneath her weight as she fell upon them.

  Then I turned the door handle. I thought that Connie was jealous. That she was crying about Leatrice. Leatrice and Barney.

  That was ironic and pitiful enough, but when I slowly opened her door I also slowly saw that it was not about Leatrice that she had been talking, but about something far less provoking--and unimaginably worse.

  In a great heap in the center of the bedroom was Barney's Christmas present to her--or rather, his Christmas presents. On top of the heap was a huge placard: "FOR

  CONNIE FROM BARNEY WITH ALL HIs LOVE," and underneath it--luggage, a mountain of luggage. Matched suitcases and an overnight bag. A trunk that matched.

  Hard, smooth leather dyed deep blue. And in brown cowhide, rifle cases, a shotgun case, cases for fishing rods. Laid out in boxes--leather breeches, leather puttees, a solar topee, shells, a revolver in a holster--all the accoutrements of future travel and safari.

  Connie lay on the bed face down, shaken by sobs. And I knew exactly why. His Christmas present meant more hotels. More trains. Boats. Planes. Automobiles. More thousands of miles between herself and another bay on another ocean--a less resplendent bay called Reedy Cove.

  Her lover had come from the ends of the earth and was carrying her back now to his dark dominion.

  No wonder Connie wept.

  She looked up when she heard me close the door, and there were tears in my eyes too, but Connie still would not accept sympathy. "I'm tired," she said. "Worn out, I guess."

  "Connie--"

  "I'm glad you came here, Frankie. I want to tell you something. I want you to go away and leave us. Your being here only makes things difficult. I know you'll understand.

  It was simply magnificent of you to come all the way out here, and I'll never forget that you did it. But now--"

  Words were boiling up in my mind, words of warning and exhortation, but I saw it would be useless to say them. So my answer was what she thought she wanted to hear.

  "Of course I understand, Connie. I just--stayed a little too long."

  "No hard feelings?"

  "Never, Connie."

  I said it was my work. Connie backed me up. Barney hardly noticed--he had just received a long telegram from some chap who was "jumping off" from Batavia in the Spring and would Barney go along. I tried to say goodbye, and he talked about komodo lizards. The others had bad hangovers and probably didn't realize I was performing my adieu.

  I got a limousine and a driver and plane reservations. I telegraphed further instructions for my alibi to the Weyburns.

  I rode over the icy prongs of the Sierras and the frozen vastnesses of the prairies--

  east--toward Connecticut.

  CHAPTER XVI

  There is one thing wrong with transcontinental air travel which can never be rectified by mechanical improvement: it is too swift for the spirit. To leave Lower California--Mexico--in the morning--and to be in Manhattan on the following day is a scientific marvel. It is a great convenience. But it is a shock to some essential part of an animal which has spent millions of years footbound to earth, and only a few score travelling faster than feet will carry him. I cannot accustom myself to it.

  Perhaps a generation born to the notion that the Atlantic and the Pacific are only a couple of meals apart will be reconciled to the phenomenon. But I watched air travel become possible, when I was a boy. And every time I voyaged through the overhead abysses I invariably leave a portion of myself behind.
For days after a long flight, when I awaken, I cannot at once determine where I am. My mind dwells more with those whom I've left than those around me.

  Besides, this speed of travel has destroyed the meaning of the seasons: they no longer belong to nature's rhythms--they have become regional instead of temporal. All that adds immeasurably to modern man's confusion--and nobody takes account of it. It infects those who stay on the ground almost as much as those who fly: when Columbus discovered the new world, it was not his opinions alone which were changed. It is alarming, I think.

  And thus the visible me reached Reedy Cove some thirty hours after leaving Ensenada. But my thoughts and moods still were fixed on Connie; where I expected to see desert sand were snowdrifts; chili con carne still burned the tongue that tasted cereal in Grand Central; I had made the leap physically--psychologically I was still three thousand miles away.

  Ivan--the most reserved of the Sheffields—was waiting for me at the station.

  Not Virginia.

  He waved and yelled. "Hi, Frankie!"

  "Hi, Ivan! How is everybody?"

  "Swell!" He was--as always--loading himself with my baggage. And I--as always-

  -protested and let him do it. "Larry's ice boating. John's in Bridgeport. Virginia's out somewhere with Bill. He came down the day after Christmas and is going to be here for a week. So I got delegated to pick you up--and I'm glad because I want to thank you for that microscope. "

  I said, "Hell," or something of the sort.

  He slammed a trunk lid over the suitcases and we hopped into the sedan. The heater had been going and it was warm.

  "No kidding!" It was unusual for Ivan to be so enthusiastic. "It's a beauty! When I get it back in school even the head of the lab will envy me! How in God's name did you know I wanted that gadget more than I want butter on my bread? You look great--!"