He didn’t move. “To death?” he asked.
“I can’t remember exactly. You said ‘condemned,’ I know... But doesn’t that mean death?”
He still didn’t move. An animal rustled in the bushes behind her. The trees stirred in the night breeze.
And then she knew. She said slowly, “Is Orpen the traitor?”
She waited, but he didn’t speak. “A traitor to what?” she asked fearfully. She was remembering Scott’s words in her living-room. Suddenly, sense came out of them. A sense that was nonsense. It’s the darkness, she thought, this blackness that blots us out. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. She turned to run.
An arm caught her neck, choking her. A knee twisted her body to the ground, forcing her over on her back. “Scott!” she tried to scream, but the hand that fell over her mouth wasn’t Scott’s. She struggled violently. A strange rough voice said, “She’s a wildcat,” and someone behind her laughed. “More fight than he has,” the laughing voice said.
She let herself fall limp. Then she bit the hand that held her lips, bit savagely and screamed as it fell away from her mouth for a brief moment. The man cursed and tightened his grip on her throat. Someone had seized her arms, pinning them back to the ground. There was a weight on her legs that she couldn’t shift. The smell of sweet hair oil and rancid sweat suffocated her.
And then, suddenly, there was a shot. Shots repeated, echoing, splitting the shadows. A cry of warning. The weight was lifted from her body. The hands had left her. Feet were running. Shouts. A whistle blew, piercing, shrill.
She lay in the darkness, crying. Then she sat up slowly. Someone helped her. A man said kindly, “You’re all right now. You’re safe. Take it easy. Easy. That’s it.”
“Sick—I feel sick,” she said. The smell of hair oil and sweat, the groping hands...
“Take it easy,” the man’s voice said gently. And then, later, “Now, here’s your coat.” He tried to fasten the torn coat round her bare shoulders. “You’re all right now,” he said again. He waited until she had covered herself, and then he switched on a flashlight, turning the beam away from her.
“Scott...” she said. “Scott?”
“He’s all right, too,” the voice said, but there was a subtle change in it. Slowly, painfully, she looked up. Scott was sitting near her, motionless, his head bowed, his face covered by his hands.
Then she looked at the stranger who knelt beside her. His grey hat was pushed to the back of his head, his dark-browed face was watching her anxiously.
A clatter of feet came over the rocks, and a man in filthy tattered clothes appeared, carrying a heavy flashlight and Rona’s handbag.
“Don’t worry. He’s a disguised cop,” the man beside her said. “He’s the one who fired the shot.”
“We got one. The other two we’ll get later,” the Park policeman said. “They dropped this.” He held up the handbag, smiling reassuringly. “Guess they didn’t have enough time to take anything.” He turned the light he carried on Scott Ettley. “Next time you want some necking stay where it’s safe, will you?”
“Yes,” the man beside Rona said. “If she hadn’t screamed, we’d never have reached her.”
Scott Ettley raised his head and stared at him. “So you were following me?” he said.
“I wasn’t following you a goddamned bit,” the man said. He glanced at Rona, and helped her to rise. “Okay?” he asked her, steadying her.
She nodded.
“That’s the way,” the man said encouragingly. Goddammit, he thought, I nearly mucked up this assignment. Keep an eye on her, they said. So I did. Three days and nothing happens. And then this boy-friend comes along and practically ends her career for her. What would that have looked like on my report?
Scott Ettley rose slowly. “Rona,” he said.
She only looked at him.
“Are you all right, Rona?”
She began to laugh. And then, just as suddenly, she fell silent. “Yes,” she said at last. “I’m all right. Are you disappointed?”
The two men beside her exchanged glances. Hysterical, they seemed to say.
“Are you disappointed, Scott? Isn’t this what you wanted?” She turned away from him. “Please take me home,” she said to the strangers.
Scott Ettley moved over to stop her. “Rona...”
“What he can’t have he destroys,” she said, looking at him and yet talking of him as if he weren’t there.
“Look, Bud, let us handle this,” the policeman said quietly to Ettley. “I guess you aren’t too popular around here at the moment.” Not even hurt, he thought as he watched the young man’s white face, not even a scratch on him that shows. What the hell had he been doing? You couldn’t blame this girl for the bitterness of her words. “We’ll get to the station and you can give us a description of your wallet. I don’t suppose you could identify the men?”
“Easy now,” the man with the grey hat was saying. His arm was round Rona, helping her toward the path. The policeman in the tramp’s clothes hurried ahead to shine the flashlight on the ground before her feet. “I’ve sent a patrol car,” he said. “We’ll get you home soon, miss. See, there it is down at the gate.”
Then he turned to make sure that the young man was following. But there was no one behind them. He swung his lamp back over the hillside. There was nothing to see except the dark stretches of the Park, now silent, innocent.
22
That Friday evening was a quiet one at the Tysons’, for the end of the term was approaching, and Jon’s students were putting in a few last despairing hours at their lecture notes. Paul Haydn was the only visitor to arrive. He came at nine o’clock as he had promised, and tried to hide his disappointment when he discovered that Rona wasn’t going to be there.
“She had some work to finish,” Peggy explained.
“Did you tell her I was coming up to see you?” Paul asked with a smile.
“Of course not,” Peggy said, but she didn’t lie expertly. She looked round for help. There was none—Jon had gone through to the kitchen to struggle with the ice tray. She watched Haydn’s face for a moment. Then she said, “Paul, did you ever think that Scott Ettley might blame you for the end of his engagement to Rona?”
“I’m flattered.” He looked at Peggy with amused disbelief.
“But Scott always has to blame something. I’ve never yet heard him blame himself. And Rona wouldn’t want to encourage any suspicion he has about you.”
“In case we had a fight on Fifth Avenue?” Paul asked.
“Well, Scott can be very hot-tempered.”
“He’s a cold fish to me.”
“You’re prejudiced, I’m afraid.”
“Sure, I’m prejudiced.” And this is one prejudice I’m not going to lose, either. He said suddenly: “Do you like Ettley?”
“This isn’t a good time to ask me that. At the moment, I’d like to shake him until his teeth rattled.”
“He has a fine set of teeth to rattle,” Paul said. “Or to have knocked down his throat.”
Peggy began to laugh. “You and Jon agree, then. I’ve never seen Jon so mad as he has been this last week.” She paused, and the smile left her face. “But perhaps this will all blow over, perhaps this will all come out right in the end.” She studied the rug at her feet. She reached down and picked up a forlorn alphabet block that was hiding at the edge of the couch.
Paul said, “You mean they may still get married?” He hadn’t thought of that. Yet it could happen. If Ettley had any good sense, it would happen. He searched gloomily for a cigarette and seemed to be concentrating on lighting it.
“I don’t know,” Peggy said frankly. “After all, you don’t love a man for almost three years of your life and then slip away from him in one week. I suppose you keep thinking that it’s all wrong for three years of your life to mean nothing at all. And so you keep hoping that everything can be changed back to the way it was when you were happy.”
“But can peopl
e change back?”
Peggy didn’t answer. She was listening intently, her head tilted slightly, her brow worried. Then, reassured, she said, “Sorry—I thought that was Bobby calling. What did you say, Paul?”
“I wondered if people could change back.” He marvelled at the way a woman could worry on two different planes at the same time while she carried on a conversation at a third level.
“No, I suppose they can’t,” she admitted. “Not unless they can unthink all the thoughts they’ve had, or undo all the actions they’ve taken.”
“Or untie all the knots in your oratory, honey,” Jon said, carrying a tray of drinks into the room. “What’s this all about anyway?”
“Scott Ettley, mostly,” Peggy said.
“Oh!” Jon looked around for a place where he might set the tray. “How do you like Peggy’s new dress, Paul? She put it on when she heard you were coming here tonight.”
“Now, Jon,” Peggy said, embarrassed, rising to clear a space on the coffee table. “We’ve always got so much stuff lying around here,” she added, almost to herself.
“Sorry, I forgot,” Jon said, rescuing his books and periodicals to carry them to his desk. “But what’s a table for, anyway, if it isn’t to dump things on?”
“It’s a very smart dress,” Paul said tactfully. “Green suits you.”
“It used to,” said Peggy, “but one of the depressing things tonight was that I’ve decided I look awful in green now.” And I worked so hard on this damned dress, she thought. Nine dollars and seventy-five cents for the material. Nearly ten whole dollars.
“Well,” Paul said, looking round the quiet room, stretching himself comfortably in his chair, and trying to look as undepressed as possible, “this is a cosy place. I envy you both. And you’re wrong about green, Peggy. You look good in it.” He raised his glass.
Jon acknowledged. “Here’s tae us! Wha’s like us? Gey few. And they’re a’ deid.” Then he grinned. “Haven’t thought of that in years. I learned it from a Scotsman who once tried to teach me philosophy. Moral philosophy, naturally. Do you remember old Abernethie, Paul?”
“Sure,” Paul said. He turned to Peggy. “Old Abernethie used to come into the classroom, look around us all, throw down his lecture notes on the desk, blow aside his whiskers and say, ‘Good morning, fellow-sufferers!’ And how right he was; we knew little about life, then. But translate for us, Jon. He never gave me the benefit of any toasts. I wasn’t one of his star pupils.”
“Here’s to us. Who’s like us? Very few. And they are all dead,” Jon said. He reflected on the fact that translation, as always, lowered the blood pressure of the original.
Peggy said, “Cheerful little jingle. It’s almost enough to sober up a man.”
“That may have been the idea. The Scots invented whisky, but they are strong on moral precepts too,” Jon said. “Now cheer up, Peggy. You can stop worrying about your dress, or about Bobby, or...” He didn’t finish.
They all avoided looking at each other, thinking of Rona.
Paul said quickly, “What’s wrong with Bobby?”
“Nothing,” Peggy said. “That’s the trouble. I wish I knew what was wrong with him.”
“The doctor says he seems to be all right,” Jon said, but he was worrying too, now.
“Today, he’s been so listless,” Peggy went on. “I took the children out to the playground this afternoon, and Bobby had his new gun with him—the one you sent, Paul—and do you know, he didn’t even play with it. He just sat on the bench beside me and let the other boys use it. I ask you!”
“By the way,” Jon said, changing the subject determinedly, “I was talking to Milton Leitner today. I told him you were coming to see us tonight, so he may drop in on us this evening if he gets ahead of his work. He’s been having an amusing time with that chap in your office, the one who works in advertising and spouts politics at parties.”
“Murray?”
“Yes. Murray’s been doing some heavy arguing with Milton, and Milton has been stringing him along just to see how far he would go. But this week, a great change has come over Murray. He’s scared stiff about something, Milton says. Something to do with the death of that fellow who jumped out of a window. Rumours are starting, of course. A reporter—he’s a friend of Milton’s—got some information about the ‘goings-on’ in that household from one of the maids, but he couldn’t print it. Libel, I suppose.”
“The greater the truth, the greater the libel.’” Paul quoted.
Peggy said, “Rona seemed very upset about the man who jumped out of the window.”
“About Charles?”
“Yes. Why was Rona upset, Paul? She only saw him once, didn’t she?”
“He was a pathetic kind of figure.”
“Tragic. An incurable drunk, wasn’t he?”
“No,” Paul said. “I don’t think he was that.”
Jon was watching him. “I don’t suppose the true story will ever come out,” he said, giving Peggy a warning signal to stop questioning.
“If it does,” Paul answered, “it won’t seem to bear any relationship to Charles. The poor guy won’t even get that credit.”
So that’s the kind of story it is, Jon thought. He was interested, but he began a conversation about summer plans and other problems that troubled no one too seriously. Peggy needs a holiday, he was thinking as he listened to her talking to Paul. She’s worrying too much about everything. We’ll scrape along somehow, this year, even if I don’t earn any money by teaching in summer school. And I’ll finish that book of mine, and that will ease things a little. A book meant promotion, promotion meant more money; and that meant more chance to keep next summer free too from teaching, more chance to start writing another book. It’s a spiral; either you go up, or you slip down.
“What’s wrong?” Peggy asked suddenly, interrupting her remarks to Paul.
Jon looked up. “I was just thinking you don’t grumble as much as you should,” he said frankly.
Peggy gave her husband a warm smile. And watching them, Paul suddenly felt as if he were shut out of the room. Peggy may have sensed that, for she said to him, “I had a fit of grumbling this evening just before you arrived. When I tried on this dress and looked at myself in it—oh, well, why bring that moment up again? Anyway, I was thoroughly stupid and bad-tempered.” She rose and went over to Jon as she spoke, and she gave him a quick, tight hug. “I’m sorry, too,” she said softly, and retreated hastily to the door as the bell rang. “Probably Milton,” she called back cheerfully.
Jon looked after her and then around the room. “Sometimes I think I chose the wrong profession,” he said gloomily.
Paul looked at him in surprise. “You’re pretty good at your job, I hear.” And heaven only knew that we needed good teachers, now more than ever.
“Except when it comes to finding the cash to pay the bills,” Jon said angrily. “Sometimes I think I’ll give up the struggle, and go into business. Or perhaps teachers should be monastic: a cell and a cowled robe—that’s just about all they can afford these days.” Then his face and voice softened as he added, “But I couldn’t teach well if I hadn’t Peggy to keep me human.” He rose and turned to the door, for Milton Leitner, followed by Joseph Locastro and Peggy, was coming into the room.
Paul noted the way the two students greeted Jon, the warm smile he gave them. He began to wonder why a man should be penalised for doing an essential job. If the best brains were to leave teaching to the stupid and ill-trained, what would happen to the Milton Leitners and the Joe Locastros? That thought gave him the beginning of an idea for a series of articles: the economic exploitation of the teacher by his students, their parents, and the good citizens who liked to talk of culture but hated to pay for it. That would just about hit every man jack of us, he thought. Then he pigeonholed the idea for tomorrow’s brooding and rose to shake hands with the two young men.
“We only came in to say hello,” Milton Leitner said. “We’re hitting the books toni
ght. Exams are breaking out all over.” He handed a couple of heavy looking volumes over to Jon. “These have been hit, I’m glad to say. Thought I’d better return them before they got lost in the shambles I call a room at the moment.”
“And Joe came to give us some news,” Peggy said, her eyes smiling as she watched her husband to see his reactions. “He’s—no, you tell it, Joe!”
“I’ve got that part-time job,” Joe said, unable to control the grin of delight that was spreading over his thin aquiline face. “I can work it in with my classes next semester. So we are all set.” He turned to Paul and explained. “I’m getting married this summer. I think you met Edith here, didn’t you?”
“And Edith—” prompted Peggy.
“Edith is leaving Vassar but she’ll finish her degree in New York. She’s got a part-time job, too, in an advertising office. We’ll manage.”
“Good for you,” Jon said, and shook his head warningly once more. “And good for Edith. But I never thought you’d get around Edith’s people.”
“Oh, they turned out to be human,” Joe said cheerfully. “But they are still a bit dazed, though.”
“Then that’s your first bond in common,” Milton Leitner assured him. And then as Joe began telling Peggy about a room he had found to rent, this afternoon, and Peggy was promising to go round and see it and report back whether it was a reasonable bargain and practical for housekeeping, Milton drew nearer to Paul.
“There must be something to this love business,” Milton said. “In spite of the divorce rate, people keep on trying.” His fine eyes watched Paul thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t think, to look at Joe, that he’s taking on enough work and worry to paralyse him for five years, would you?”
“Looking at Joe; I think I’d risk that. He’s a good propagandist.”
“Better than I am in my line,” Milton admitted wryly. “Bob Cash—remember he was up here that last evening we met?—he’s fallen hard for Thelma’s little parties and all the bright lights he met there.” He made a quiet gesture toward the other end of the room, and together, he and Paul drifted in that direction leaving Jon and Peggy listening to Joe.
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