“Sally,” Mrs. Peel said, in amazement, looking into the room to see if she were ready. Why, Mrs. Peel thought, Sally is getting prettier and prettier: some women are lucky that way; while others, as lovely as Mimi when they were young, either faded or coarsened. “You could have used the long mirror in Prender’s room, or have you forgotten he has gone?”
Sally had. She had forgotten almost everything.
“Well, I’ll serve dinner,” Mrs. Peel said philosophically. “That dress was made for nothing more arduous than tossing a salad.”
“I’ll put my trust in one of Mrs. Gunn’s enormous aprons,” Sally said. “Now let’s go downstairs. Do I look all right?”
“Very much all right. You know, it must be an awful gamble to be a man and marry a young girl for her looks. You’ll never know what you’ll get by the time she’s forty.” Sally wasn’t really listening, though, so she wasn’t as baffled by Margaret’s way of speaking only half her thoughts as she might have been. Sally had heard Jim come into the house. She hurried Mrs. Peel by the arm towards the staircase.
Jim was waiting in the hall. He turned to look up at her as she came downstairs. He smiled, and there was a mixture of admiration and pleasure in his eyes. Then he noticed her dress and the gold slippers. She is half-way to Chicago, he thought, and the happiness left his eyes. And Sally felt it. What had gone wrong? Everything had been right. When he waited for her at the foot of the stairs everything had been all right. Then suddenly, without warning, it had gone wrong. She could have wept.
* * *
After dinner they went into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Peel had arranged another cheerful fire. She left them there, with some pretext that sounded almost reasonable. It didn’t matter, anyway, Sally thought. Everything was so wrong since that moment in the hall when Jim looked at her and then stopped looking at her that Margaret’s subterfuge didn’t embarrass her in the least.
It was all so matter-of-fact to sit here and make conversation and be a polite hostess. She wasn’t happy any more. She was back to normal. And angry, angry with herself. It’s my fate, she thought, to be romantic and silly, and then to be angry. Angry and ashamed. Women have too many false hopes, too many bitter disappointments. If men could only see into our hearts, how pitying and amused they’d be. For women, right from the day they went to their first party, always hoped too much: how many dances, seemingly successful, had been grim failures covered over with a smile; how many invitations accepted became invitations regretted; how many plans and dreams had become stupidities; how much pretence that all was well when it wasn’t? We are too personal, she thought, in the way we interpret a look, a tone of voice, a smile. How lucky to be a man and never pay attention to the little things: how fortunate to take people as they are, and not to suffer from taking them as you would like them to be. How terrible it is to be a woman, to feel the difference between the dream and the reality, and yet to keep on dreaming in spite of reality.
She was looking at the flames leaping gaily round the neat pine logs. She was talking about Robb. “We didn’t tell anyone about his poem,” she was saying, as if she had no other thoughts. “Ideas like Robb’s are best left alone, not talked over, until they come alive on paper. Our guests might have killed his idea with their enthusiasm and interest. And the cowboys might have killed it with good-natured amusement. Prender Atherton Jones, of course, was quite useless to approach; he only likes folk epic when it belongs to certain languages, certain centuries. But we have a problem, Jim. Robb ought to stay here this winter, when there isn’t much outside work to take up his time. But how can we help him without seeming to help? He’s so independent.”
She lifted her head and looked at Jim. Why didn’t he answer? He was sitting opposite her, watching her, silent.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly. “Do you think Margaret and I are being just—just silly? But you know there’s a real poet in Robb. Don’t you, Jim?” Why didn’t he speak? He wasn’t the kind of man to laugh at poetry. When she had gone riding out with him, in those far-off pleasant evenings before Mimi ever arrived on the scene, he had a way of describing a mountain or a trail or a fragment of history so simply, so vividly, that she had been amazed and delighted.
“Yes,” he said at last.
“Then you are on our side,” she said. “But there is something puzzling you. Don’t you see why we want to help Robb?”
“It’s you that’s puzzling me. I thought I knew you. And then, tonight, I suddenly realised I don’t. Why are you going to Chicago?”
“What brought that up?” she asked, startled.
He looked at the elegant dress and slippers. “You’re halfway there now.”
“I—why, Jim—I—” She looked down at her dress. I was only trying to look my prettiest, she thought. But she couldn’t say that.
“Why Chicago?” he insisted. “Or New York, or Paris? You can’t forget the cities?”
She stared at him; and then, out of relief and of the happiness that came surging back into her heart—women, she tried to tell herself, women keep making the same mistakes over and over again—out of relief and renewed happiness she said, “Does that matter?”
“Yes.” He rose, leaned an arm on the mantelpiece, and looked down at her.
“There’s a job in Chicago,” she said.
“But why? Are you bored here, or what?”
“Money,” she said.
“You’ve money enough,” he said, suddenly angry. He hadn’t been able to keep the bitterness of his disappointment out of his voice.
“But we haven’t,” she said protestingly.
“You haven’t?” He was amazed. And then it seemed to her he was pleased, still puzzled, but pleased.
“It has a way of disappearing,” she said, trying to make a joke out of it. “I’ve been looking for a job for the last two weeks. There’s one in Chicago that I could take. The money from that, along with the little income I have from my cookbooks, would be enough to keep both Margaret and me. She could live here for most of the year and do her writing—yes, she’s started writing again, didn’t you know?—and I could come to Wyoming for my summer vacation. You see, Jim, I owe a lot to Margaret—not just these years we’ve travelled together, but— well, other things... She, well, without being dramatic about it, it’s simply this: she saved me at one time. She saved my life. That was how our friendship really began.”
Sally hesitated. I must tell him, she thought. I must clear up all the shadows now. “I was in love. No, I didn’t think I was in love. I was in love. And he seemed to be in love with me. Just nine days before the wedding—he—well, he left Paris with my best friend, and that was that. I was sort of intense, I suppose, about things in those days. I had given him so much of myself that there didn’t seem anything left... That was when I decided to kill myself. I was trying to get up enough courage—it takes a lot of courage, Jim—when Margaret arrived to see me. Just accidentally, about nothing important.” She paused, as if she were remembering. “Well, I got over that bad patch in my life, and I went on living. People said I took it very well.” She laughed. Then she said, half surprised, “That’s the first time I’ve laughed at it, though.” And the first time I’ve ever talked about it, either, she thought. “I’m glad. I’m glad I told you,” she added, and there was relief in her voice. And then, without warning, her eyes filled with tears, and her head drooped, and her lips trembled.
He stepped forward, and reached for her hands, and pulled her slowly to her feet, pulled her towards him until she stood against him. “I’m glad too,” he said gently, and then he kissed her.
At midnight Mrs. Peel gave up all hope and went to bed. “From now on,” she told herself, “you are going to have a lot of evenings by yourself. You may as well start getting used to them, Margaret Peel.” She adjusted the pillows comfortably behind her back, tucked the blankets tightly round her waist, and buttoned up her warm bed-jacket. Sally, when she came in to say good night, would be disappointed if sh
e were asleep. Sally would want to tell her the news that was no news. Margaret Peel opened the detective story which she hoped would keep her awake. She read for an hour. In spite of two sudden deaths and a third to come at any moment, her eyes began to close.
Sally came in as the book was slipping to the floor.
“Hello,” Margaret Peel said, opening her eyes. “Had a nice walk?”
“Wonderful.” Sally’s eyes were as bright as the stars in the sky outside. “Jim and I went up towards Snaggletooth.”
“Where he first met us... And how he shouted, remember?” She looked at Sally’s golden slippers, now dust-covered and streaked with grass. “I suppose they were expendable. And your dress, Sally! What a pity... I rather liked that one.”
“Margaret, guess what’s happened?”
“I couldn’t possibly.”
Sally laughed. “Oh, you knew after all!” she said.
“And did you accept?” Mrs. Peel tried not to smile, but it was difficult. “Well, darling,” she said appeasingly, “I’m really very happy that you both came to your senses. How on earth did that happen? I nearly threw hysterics at dinner tonight.”
“Something to do with Chicago and the big cities, something to do with living in Wyoming, something to do with the fact that I’m not rich, something to do with me bursting into tears like a fool. I don’t know. It was just all sort of mixed up.”
“It usually is,” Mrs. Peel said. “And you don’t make it any clearer. Was he actually worried about asking you to live here? Why, if his job were in Alaska, or Pittsburgh, or Rio de Janeiro, it would have been all the same to you. When are you getting married? Christmas weddings are charming.”
Sally laughed. “We’re getting married in four weeks.”
Mrs. Peel said, “Well!” Then, regaining her breath, she added, “Why wait even four weeks?”
“By that time all the cattle will have been driven down to the railway. That’s a busy time for everyone on the ranch, you know. Now, what’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing.” Mrs. Peel managed to control her laughter. “If your Jim heard you he wouldn’t be worried about making you a rancher’s wife. Now I’ve teased you enough. I’m very, very happy. Go to bed, darling. You can tell me in the morning how wonderful he is, and how handsome, and how wonderful. He is, you know. You’re a lucky girl. Good night, Sally.”
Sally put out the light. “Margaret,” she said thoughtfully, “about tomorrow—do you think I ought to wait until Mimi leaves before I spread the news?”
“Look,” Mrs. Peel said angrily, sitting up in bed, “do you think for one moment that she would have spared your feelings? Besides, do you think for one moment that Jim is going to keep this news from the boys? And he never gave a serious thought to Mimi, so don’t go embarrassing him. He only admired her as all men admire a pretty face. There would be something rather odd about us all if we didn’t.”
“But Mimi is young.” Sally’s voice was expressionless.
“So are a hundred girls in Upshot County, all as pretty as she is. You saw them today. Sally Bly, are you forcing me to tell you how pretty and attractive you are? You are one of the prettiest women I have ever met in any country. If that’s all you needed to reassure you I could have told you that two months ago.” She lay down, drawing the blankets closely about her frozen shoulders.
Sally said, “Good night, Margaret,” and closed the door quietly.
Women, Mrs. Peel thought, what strange creatures we are, always worrying and wondering and hoping and being afraid. And men? They were just as much a set of contradictions in their own way. It was a miracle that the human race had done as well for itself as it had, in the fifty thousand-odd years it had complicated this world. No doubt, at this moment, Jim was pouring a third drink and pacing about his room, wondering what he had done to deserve Sally. And Sally would be brushing her pretty hair, and looking at her charming face in the mirror, and forgetting all about the warmth and sincerity that lay within, and wondering what she had done to deserve Jim. That being the case, and Mrs. Peel decided it would be, then this was going to be a very happy marriage. Tomorrow Jim would be round here first thing to see Sally, to make sure that everything was all right, that tonight hadn’t been a dream. That was the pattern, Mrs. Peel thought sleepily, and it was the best pattern in all the world. “Sentimentalist,” she chided herself, and smiled, and fell asleep.
29
MEMENTO FROM THE WEST
It was the last day, a day made perfect with the very best Wyoming weather.
Everyone seemed so unwilling to pack that Mrs. Peel was almost moved to ask them to stay a week longer if they could arrange it. But Sally said, “Now, be careful!” And Mrs. Peel, remembering her genius for complicating life—not only her own life, which was hers to complicate if she chose, but also the lives of others who didn’t want them complicated at all— was careful.
The ordeal of packing had been left to the afternoon, when lunch was over and they felt unhurried. But after one of Mrs. Gunn’s most inspired meals they felt so completely unhurried that they drifted out of their rooms into the garden, leaving opened bags and suitcases to yawn hungrily on littered beds. Somehow they found themselves grouped round Mrs. Peel and Sally in their favourite place near the creek. The men lay on the grass, but Carla and Mimi, conscious of their city clothes, sat more decorously on chairs.
“I’ve got the labels written,” Carla said. “And it won’t take me so long to pack once I do begin. I know where everything goes. I hope.”
Mrs. Peel said, “I didn’t know how tanned you all were until you put on your city clothes.”
Mimi looked round at them all. “We look disgustingly healthy,” she announced. “And in two days we’ll be back in New York. Humidity and all. You know, I’ve forgotten how it is to melt in New York heat.”
“So have I,” Carla said. “And I bet we are bewildered by all the traffic at first, and we’ll leave our purses and gloves all over the place, and the men will be hobbling around on their flat heels.”
“Then, after a few days, you’ll look round and say ‘New York!’ And there will be affection and amazement in your voice,” Mrs. Peel reminded them.
“I’m already beginning to say it,” Mimi admitted. “I loved being here, of course, but—”
“I know,” Mrs. Peel said, with a smile. Sally looked at her quickly. You don’t have to say that, Margaret, she thought: Jim and I are not going to chase you away from here. Or was Margaret getting restless? Perhaps the sight of all the city clothes and opened suitcases was having an unsettling effect.
“I don’t know,” Grubbock said unexpectedly. He sat up and moved his shoulders irritably under the restricting jacket of his suit. His clothes were much looser on him, especially round the waist and hips, and that had pleased him. But they were damned uncomfortable all the same. “A city is a hard place to take when you haven’t got much money. You begin to think that money is more important than it is. Either your standards get twisted or your own mind gets twisted.” He glanced for a moment at Karl Koffing.
“Cheer up, Karl,” Mimi said. “You’ll soon be back where you can get your own newspapers on the day they are published. What a relief that will be for you!”
Robert O’Farlan smiled in spite of himself. He had been depressed all day. But he took himself away from his own worries to look at Karl. The others were laughing good-naturedly, and Karl had the sense and the control to say nothing. They were laughing good-naturedly—for they had liked Karl—and yet with a touch of uneasiness, as if they were now worried by him. As well they might be, O’Farlan thought. Karl had made them all politically conscious—conscious of Karl’s politics. And the more the others had a close look at them the less they liked them.
Koffing, keeping a smile on his face, decided he would go to finish his packing. But not yet; in a couple of minutes. He out-stared O’Farlan. To leave now would be to look like retreating. But how had they all changed as they had? O’Farlan h
ad never liked him from the first. But Mimi, Carla, Grubbock? Who was to blame? He looked at Sally and Mrs. Peel. Well, they didn’t manage to bribe me, he thought. I’m as free and independent as when I came here. I’ve kept that, even if I got no work done. A wasted month. Nothing gained from it. But they didn’t bribe me with kindness, as they hoped to. They didn’t change me, and won’t. I’m stronger than any of them. A thousand of us are stronger than a million of them. They don’t know how strong yet. This time his smile was genuine.
“That,” Mimi said, “was a long silence. What were you thinking, Karl?”
“That it was a pity Sally and Jim didn’t have their wedding when we were here. I’ve always wanted to see a real old-fashioned feudal wedding with all the trimmings. I suppose they’ll be riding in for miles around?”
Sally coloured, and tried not to look at Mimi. Carla and Mrs. Peel both began talking at once.
But Mimi looked at Karl, quite self-contained and even smiling. Then she looked up at the sky and studied the shapes of the white clouds. I don’t need Sally’s pity, she thought. I was in love, and I am in love, but I don’t need pity. Some day I’ll even congratulate myself on my escape. I would never have made a rancher’s wife. For on Saturday I sat for five hours at a rodeo and watched the people around me. I would have had to change me, inside and outside and every which way, to be like them, to be happy with the things that made them happy. And when I had finished with that change? I wouldn’t be Mimi. I’m young, and I’ve a lot of life to live and a lot of places to see. That’s my choice. Bob O’Farlan would say it was my character that had made that choice. Bob’s no fool. The more you know him the more there is worth knowing.
She closed her eyes. How lucky for me, she told herself, that Jim didn’t fall in love with me. How lucky for him that he didn’t give me the chance to accept him. Ah, well...
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