“Mercy sakes,” said Maria, coming to the door. “What . . . OH! EBEN!” And she raced to him as he was getting down and threw her arms about him, beginning to cry.
He pried her off, not ungently. “Here, here. No need to cry. I got home didn’t I?”
“Oh, Eben!” she wept. “I am so glad to see you! Five whole months and no word from you—”
“Five months!”
“Yes, five months! Oh, Eben, I th-thought you were d-d-d-ead!”
Eben looked about and saw for the first time that the fresh green of spring and not the dying green of fall was in the fields.
“Good gosh!” said Eben. “And without any plowing done!”
“I just knew something dreadful was going to happen when you left. What did happen?”
“I traded off my vegetables,” said Eben. He put the ring and the bracelets in her hand. “These are for you. Now get me some dinner and let me get at this plowing. Good gosh! March and no plowing done!”
Borrowed Glory
Borrowed Glory
HUMAN beings,” said Tuffaron, familiarly known as the Mad Genie, “are stupid and willful. They derive intense enjoyment from suffering or else they would not bend all their efforts toward suffering.”
He sat back upon the hot rock this hotter day and gazed off into the dun wilderness, stroking his fang to give himself an air of contemplation and wisdom.
Georgie bustled her wings with resentment. Her lower lip protruded and her usually angelic countenance darkened. “Know-it-all!” she taunted. “Conceited know-it-all!”
“That is no way for an angel to talk, Georgie,” said Tuffaron.
“Conceited, bloated know-it-all!” she cried and then and there felt a growing desire to kick his huge column of a leg. Of course she wouldn’t, for that would not be exactly an expression of love for everything. “Prove it!” she demanded.
“Why,” said Tuffaron, the Mad Genie, in his most lofty tone, “human beings prove it themselves.”
“You evade me. You are the stupid one!” said Georgie. “I dare you to put that matter to test. Human beings are very nice, very, very nice and I love them. So there!”
“You are under orders to love everything, even human beings,” said Tuffaron. “And why should I exert myself to labor a point already too beautifully established?”
“Coward!” said Georgie.
Tuffaron looked down at her and thoughtfully considered her virginal whiteness, the graceful slope of her wings, the pink of her tiny toes showing from beneath her radiant gown. “Georgie, I would not try to trifle with such proof if I were you. Besides, you have nothing to wager.”
“I am not allowed to wager.”
“See?” said Tuffaron. “You are afraid to prove your own point, for you know quite well you cannot.”
“I’ll wager my magic ring against your magic snuffbox that I can prove you wrong,” said Georgie.
“Ah,” said Tuffaron. “But how do you propose to prove this?”
“The outer limit of my power is to grant anything for forty-eight hours.”
“Certainly, but according to the law, if you grant anything for forty-eight hours you have to have it back in forty-eight hours.”
“Just so. A human being,” declared Georgie, “is so starved for comfort and happiness that if he is granted all for just a short time he will be content.”
“My dear, you do not know humans.”
“Is it a wager?”
“A sure thing is never a wager,” said Tuffaron, “but I will place my magic snuffbox against your magic ring that if you give all for forty-eight hours you will only succeed in creating misery. My precept is well known.”
“The wager is stated. I shall grant all for forty-eight hours and even though I must take it back at the end of the time, I shall succeed in leaving happiness.”
Solemnly he wrapped his huge black hand about her dainty little white one. She eyed him defiantly as they sealed the bargain. And then she leaped up and flew swiftly away.
Tuffaron barked a guffaw. “I have always wanted an angel ring,” he told the hot day.
It was not warm in the room and one might have kept butter on the ancient radiator. A trickle of bitter wind came in under the door, gulped what warmth there was to be found in the place and then with a triumphant swoop went soaring up and out through the cracked pane at the window’s top.
It was not warm but it was clean, this room. Patient hands had polished the floor with much scrubbing; the walls of the room bore erasure marks but no spots of smudge. The tiny kitchenette might not have a quarter in its gas meter but it had bright red paper edging its shelves and the scanty utensils were burnished into mirrors; the tea towels, though ragged, were newly washed and even the dishcloth was white—but this last was more because there had been nothing with which to soil dishes for many days. A half loaf of bread and a chunk of very cheap cheese stood in solitary bravery upon the cupboard shelf.
The little, worn lady who napped upon the bed was not unlike the shawl which covered her—a lovely weave but tattered edges and thin warp and a bleach which comes with time.
Meredith Smith’s little hand, outflung against the pillow, matched the whiteness of the case save where the veins showed blue. It was a hand which reminded one of a doll’s.
She slept. To her, as years went on, sleep was more and more the only thing left for her to do. It was as though an exhausting life had robbed her of rest, so that now when she no longer had work to do she could at least make up lost sleep.
From the age of eighteen to the age of sixty she had been a stenographer in the Hayward Life Co. She had written billions of words in letters for them. She had kept the files of her department in neat and exact order. She would have had a pension now but Hayward Life was a defunct organization and had been so for the past six years.
Relief brought Meredith Smith enough for her rent and a small allowance of food but she was not officious and demanding enough to extract from the authorities a sufficiency.
But she did not mind poverty. She did not mind cold. There was only one sharp pain with her now and one which she felt was a pain which should be accepted, endured. It had come about three years ago when she had chanced to read a poem in which old age was paid by its memory of love and it had swept over her like a blinding flood that she, Meredith Smith, had no payment for that age. The only thing she had saved was a decent burial, two hundred and twenty dollars beneath the rug.
She had worked. There had been many women who had married out of work. But she had worked. She had been neither beautiful nor ugly. She had merely been efficient. At times she had thought to herself that on some future day she must find, at last, that thing for which her heart was starved. But it had always been a future day and now, at sixty-six, there would never be one.
She had never loved a man. She had never been loved by a child. She had had a long succession of efficient days where her typewriter had clattered busily and loudly as though to muffle her lack.
She had never had anyone. She had been a small soul in a great city, scarcely knowing who worked at the next desk. And so it had been; from eighteen to sixty. And now . . .
It was easier now to sleep and try not to think of it. For she would die without having once known affection, jealousy, ecstasy or true pain.
She had been useless. She had run a typewriter. She had been nothing to life. She had never known beauty; she had never known laughter; she had never known pain; and she would die without ever having lived, she would die without a single tear to fall upon her going. She had never been known, to be forgotten. Yesterdays reached back in a long gray chain like pages written with a single word and without punctuation. Tomorrow stretched out gray; gray and then black. A long, long time black. And she was forgotten before she was gone and she had nothing to forget exce
pt emptiness.
But the hand which touched her hand so warmly did not startle her and it did not seem strange for her faded blue eyes to open upon a lovely girl. The door had been locked but Meredith Smith did not think of that, for this visitor was sitting upon the edge of the bed and smiling at her so calmly and pleasantly that one could never think of her as an intruder.
“You are Meredith Smith?” said the visitor.
The old lady smiled. “What is your name?”
“I am called Georgette, Meredith. Do not be afraid.”
“I am glad you came.”
“Thank you. You see very few people, I think.”
“No one,” said Meredith, “except the relief agent each week.”
“Meredith Smith, would you like to see people?”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Meredith Smith, would you like to see people and be young again and dance and laugh and be in love?”
The old lady’s eyes became moist. She smiled, afraid to be eager.
“Would you like to do these things, Meredith Smith, if only for forty-eight hours, knowing that you would again come here and be old?”
“For forty-eight hours—to be young, to dance, to laugh, to be in love—even if only for forty-eight hours.” She was still afraid and spoke very quietly.
“Then,” said Georgie, “I tell you now,” and she had a small stick with a glowing thing upon its end, “that for forty-eight hours, beginning this minute, you can have everything for which you ask and everything done which you want done. But you must know that at the end of the forty-eight hours, everything for which you ask will be taken back.”
“Then,” said Georgie, “I tell you now,” and she had a small stick with a glowing thing upon its end, “that for forty-eight hours, beginning this minute, you can have everything for which you ask and everything done which you want done.”
“Yes,” said Meredith in a whisper. “Oh, yes!”
“It is now eight o’clock in the morning,” said Georgie. “At eight AM day after tomorrow, all things I gave you will have to be returned, save only memory. But until then, Meredith Smith, all things you want are yours.”
It did not particularly surprise Meredith that her visitor did not go away as a normal person should but dissolved, glowed and vanished. Meredith sat looking at the imprint on the bed where Georgette had been seated. And then Meredith rose.
YOUTH! BEAUTY!
In her mirror she watched and her fluttering heart began to grow stronger and stronger. Her hair turned from gray to soft, burnished chestnut. Her eyes grew larger and longer and brightened into a blue which was deep and lovely and warm. Her skin became fresh and pink and radiant. She smiled at herself and her beautiful mouth bowed open to reveal sparkling, even teeth. There came a taut, breath-catching curve in her throat and the unseen hand which molded her flowed over her form, rounding it, giving it grace, giving it allure and poise—
YOUTH!
A gay darling of eighteen stared with lip-parted wonder at herself.
BEAUTY!
Ah, beauty!
She was not able to longer retain the somber rags of her clothes and with a prodigal hand ripped them away and, naked, held out her arms and waltzed airily about the room, thrilled to the edge of tears but laughing instead.
“Meredith, Meredith,” she said to the mirror, posed as she halted. “Meredith, Meredith,” she said again, intrigued by the warm charm of the new voice which came softly and throbbingly out of herself.
Ah, yes, a young beauty. A proud young beauty who could yet be tender and yielding, whose laughter was gay and told of passion and love—
“Meredith, Meredith,” she whispered and kissed herself in the mirror.
Where were those dead years? Gone and done. Where were those lightless days? Cut through now by the brilliance of this vision she beheld. Where was the heartache of never having belonged or suffered? Gone, gone. All gone now. For everything might be taken back but this memory, and the memory, that would be enough! Forty-eight hours. And already those hours were speeding.
What to wear? She did not even know enough of current styles to ask properly. And then she solved it with a giggle at her own brightness.
“I wish for a morning outfit of the most enhancing and modern style possible.”
CLOTHES!
They rustled upon the furniture and lay still, new in expensive boxes. A saucy little hat. Sheer stockings so thrilling to the touch. A white linen dress with a piqué collar and a small bolero to match. Long white gloves smooth to the cheek. And underthings. And graceful shoes.
She dressed, lingering ecstatically over the process, enjoying the touch of the fabrics, reveling in the new clean smell of silk and leather.
She enjoyed herself in the glass, turning and turning back, posing and turning again. And then she drew on the gloves, picked up the purse and stepped out of her room.
She was not seen in the hall or on the stairs. She wrinkled a pert little nose at the sordid street.
“A car,” she said. “A wonderful car, very long and smooth to ride in, and a haughty chauffeur and footman to drive it.”
“Your car, mademoiselle,” said the stiffly standing footman, six feet tall and his chin resting on a cloud.
For a moment she was awed by his austerity and she nearly drew back as though he could look through her and know that it was a masquerade. But she did not want him to see how daunted she was and so she stepped into the limousine. Still frightened she settled back upon the white leather upholstery.
“The . . . ah, the park—James.”
“Very good, mademoiselle.” And the footman stepped into the front seat and said to the chauffeur, “Mademoiselle requires to ride in the park.”
They hummed away and up the street and through the town and soon they were spinning between the green acres of Central Park, one of a flowing line of traffic. She was aware of people who stopped and glanced toward her, for it was a lovely car and in it she knew they saw a lovely girl. She felt suddenly unhappy and conspicuous. And it worried her that the chauffeur and footman knew that this was a masquerade.
“Stop,” she said into the phone.
The car drew up beside a curbed walk and she got out.
“I shall not need you again,” she said.
“Very good, mademoiselle,” said the footman with a stiff bow, and the car went away.
She was relieved about it, for not once in it had she felt comfortable. And standing here she did not feel conspicuous at all, for people passed her by, now that the car was gone, with only that sidelong glance which is awarded every heart-stirring girl by the passerby.
Warm again and happy, she stepped off the walk and risked staining her tiny shoes in the grass. She felt she must walk in soft earth beneath a clear sky and feel clean wind, and so, for nearly an hour, she enjoyed herself.
Then she began to be aware of time slipping away from her. She knew she must compose herself, bring order to her activities, plan out each hour which remained to her. For only in that way could she stock a store of memories from which she could draw upon in the years which would remain to her.
Across the drive was a bench beside the lake and she knew that it would be a nice place to think and so she waited for the flow of traffic to abate so that she could cross to it.
She thought the way clear and stepped upon the street. There was a sudden scream of brakes and a thudding bump as wheels were stabbed into the gutter. She stood paralyzed with terror to see that a large car had narrowly missed her, and that only by expert driving on the part of its chauffeur.
A young man was out of the back and had her hand, dragging her from the street and into the car with him. She sat still, pale and weak, lips parted. But it was not from fright but from wonder. She had not wished for this
and yet it could not have been better had she wished for it.
“You are not hurt?” he said. He was shy and nervous and when he saw that he still held her hand he quickly dropped it and moistened his lips.
She looked long at him. He was a young man, probably not more than twenty-five, for his skin was fresh and his eyes were clear. He radiated strength and this shyness of his was only born from fright at the near accident, fright for her and awe for her beauty as well. He was six feet tall and his eyes were black as his hair. His voice was low and showed breeding.
“Is there . . . there any place we can take you?”
“I . . . wasn’t going anywhere in particular,” she said. “You are very good. I . . . I am sorry I frightened you so. I wasn’t watching—”
“It is all our fault,” said the young man. “Please, may I introduce myself? I am Thomas Crandall.”
“I am Meredith Smith.”
“It . . . it isn’t quite proper—to be introduced this way,” he faltered. And then he smiled good-humoredly at her and they both began to laugh.
The laughter put them at ease and took away the memory of the near fatality.
They drove for a little while, more and more in tune with each other, and then he turned to her and asked, “Would I seem terribly bold if I asked you to have lunch with me? I at least owe you that.”
“I would be very disappointed if you did not,” she answered. “That . . . that isn’t a very ladylike speech, I know, but . . . but I would like to have lunch with you.”
He was flattered and enthralled and smiled it upon her. Most of his lingering shyness departed and he leaned toward the glass to tell his chauffeur, “The Montmaron, please.”
“You know,” he said a little while later as they sat in the roof garden at a small table, “I was hoping that something like this might happen. Last night, I was hoping. Do you believe in wishes? I think wishes come true sometimes, don’t they?”
She was startled that he might have read her secret, but she smiled at him and realized it wasn’t so. The softness of the string music failed, after that, to wholly dispel a fear which had been implanted in her heart.
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 11