Experiment in Springtime

by Margaret Millar

  “Martha! Martha, it’s me!”

  She didn’t hear him, there was too much noise. He followed, but he couldn’t catch her. He kept stepping on soft, warm, sticky things like little animals newly born and newly dead.

  She didn’t look around, she didn’t see him doing all his wonderful tricks for her. He stood on his head, he clapped his hands, he pirouetted on his toes like a ballet boy, he took off his clothes, he jumped, he cleared a hurdle six feet high, he burned his wrist with a cigarette, laugh­ing; he screamed and screamed.

  Someone was pounding on the door. He got off the bed. He went over to the door and said, without opening it, “Who is it?”

  “Everything okay in there?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Lady next door phoned down she thought you was being murdered.”

  “I must have been dreaming.”

  “Okay then.”

  There was a sound of receding footsteps. He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. His wrist was sore where he’d been lying on it and his throat was raw from shouting in his sleep.

  He lit a cigarette and sat down in the chair beside his bed. He was shaking with relief that his dream was over. No bomb, no Martha, no burned hole in his wrist. He knew there wasn’t a chance that he’d resume the dream if he went back to sleep, but he sat in the chair for an hour before he finally undressed, put on his pajamas and went to bed.

  8

  The next morning he woke up with a plan laid out in his head. Like most of the ideas that came to him early in the morning and that later turned out unfortunate, this seemed to be a good one. He would go and see the house that Martha lived in. Not Martha herself—he was no longer interested in her; she bore practically no resem­blance to the girl he’d been engaged to. She was a matron now, she looked like one, she talked like one, she dressed like one, and she had that exasperating air of smugness found in the best matrons. It was a class he didn’t care for.

  No, it was not Martha he wanted to see. It was the house itself. He liked houses, he was interested in houses. Once he wanted to be an architect; what was so funny about going to see a house instead of a woman?

  Right after breakfast he took a cab out to Balby Point. On special dates with houses you couldn’t very well take a bus, so he sat back in the cab and watched the people on the streets who didn’t get ideas in the very early morning.

  Balby Point was the section of the city where every Sunday afternoon the $4,000-a-year people drove around to see what kind of homes the $40,000-a-year people had built for themselves. Most of the houses were in the Colonial tradition, rambling, inconvenient, with unex­pected steps and Hepplewhite furniture in the drawing room which haughtily denied the old gas stove in the kitchen and the broken spring in the maid’s bed. They were staunch, conservative people who considered that pampering a servant was the first step toward communism.

  But there were a few modern American houses. People weren’t accustomed to them yet and they still looked more like magazine illustrations than places where human beings lived.

  Steve paid off the cab driver at the corner of Gilchrist and Jane. (Pearson, Charles H., 132 Gilchrist Ave., Hum. 5-2366.) He began to walk slowly up the hill. There were only four houses on the street and he couldn’t miss the Pearsons’. It was at the top of the hill and it was the only house that had corner windows set in glass bricks. It was perfectly square and flat (they’ll probably have trouble with the roof leaking, I hope). He might have been seeing it from the wrong angle but the place looked a little cockeyed to him. He wondered whether it was wise to try and build a perfectly square house on a hilltop.

  The garage was a couple of hundred yards from the house, with servants’ quarters built above it. There was room for three cars, but the doors of the garage were shut and there didn’t seem to be anybody around.

  He stepped onto the driveway, his shoes scrunching against the white pebbles. The driveway, bordered by a low cedar hedge, swooped up the hill, jogged off toward the garage, and then up the rest of the hill in an erratic, but dashing, course to the front door of the house.

  He stopped suddenly. Now was the time to go back. He had seen what he wanted to see, he had it out of his system. The house was just what he had imagined it to be, a rather badly planned modern. It was time to leave.

  He leaned down and picked up a pebble from the drive­way. He meant to throw it idly over the hedge for the sake of something to do or because pebbled driveways annoyed him. But when the stone left his hand, it swung viciously through the air and hit a window of the garage. The window cracked and its smooth face wrinkled as if sud­denly overcome by age.

  Someone shouted, “Hey! Hey, you!”

  He turned and saw a man hurrying toward him across the lawn, lugging a garden sprinkler. The sprinkler ham­pered his progress but it didn’t seem to occur to him to put it down. He was tall and spare, with a bald head that glistened in the sun like an egg in isinglass.

  He said, breathlessly, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  Steve looked surprised. “Who, me?”

  “You broke a window. I saw you.”

  “Did I?”

  “You can’t go around breaking windows.”

  “I didn’t try to break the window. I was aiming at the door.”

  “Well, what in hell are you aiming at anything for? This is private property. I’ve a good notion to report you. I’m the one that’s going to get blamed for that window.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for that,” Steve said honestly.

  “She’ll think I did it as sure as God made little green apples.” Brown threw the sprinkler on the lawn. “I get blamed for everything around here. If a couple of bugs get on her flowers, she thinks I had them imported espe­cially from South America.”

  “If there’s anything I can do.”

  “Since Mr. Pearson left day before yesterday she’s been worse than usual. She goes around . . .”

  “Oh,” Steve said. “Has Mr. Pearson left?”

  Brown became cautious. “What’s that to you?”

  “I’m an old friend of the family.”

  “You are, eh? I’ve been working for Mr. Pearson for a long time and I’ve never seen you before.”

  “You haven’t been looking in the right places. I’ve been away. My name’s Ferris.”

  Brown studied him a minute in silence. “Ex-army, aren’t you?”

  “Air Force.”

  “I was a corporal in the last war. Funny thing. Some people can remember all their war experiences and tell them over minute by minute. But all I can remember is being confused and shot at.”

  “That’s enough,” Steve said. “About this window I broke . . .”

  “Forget it. I’ll tell her a boy broke it.” Brown grinned. “An ex-boy.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’ll tell her myself. Is she in?”

  “She’s in, all right. She can’t go out. Mr. Pearson took the chauffeur with him and she doesn’t trust me with the big car.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Me, I should care.”

  “Mr. Pearson on a holiday?”

  “Yes. This way, if you still want to see Mrs. Pearson.”

  Brown started up the driveway. He walked as if he owned the place, or, at least, as if he was pretty sure of his position.

  Steve followed him. “Nice lawns.”

  “Not bad.”

  “Do you look after them yourself?”

  “When I feel like it.”

  He said nothing more until they were inside the house. “Mrs. Pearson’s in the front room. Go on in.”

  “Thanks.”

  Brown began walking away.

  Steve said, “Don’t you think you’d better tell her I’m here?”

  Brown grinned again, slyly. “Why should I? She’ll find out when you walk in.” />
  He disappeared, chuckling to himself. Steve was left in the hall alone with the conviction that he had just made a complete fool of himself. He had acted on a lousy im­pulse, he had broken a window like a kid, and he was in the house of a woman he didn’t want to see and who didn’t want to see him. Sweet Jesus, let me out of here, he thought, and began tiptoeing toward the front door. He had it halfway open when he heard Martha call out, “Brown, come here a minute.”

  He got out and closed the door in a hurry. Then, with­out giving it a second thought, he put his hand on the doorbell and pressed it.

  Martha opened the door herself. She didn’t say, “Hello,” she said, “Well!” There was a great deal of feeling behind the word, of exactly the kind he had expected.

  He wanted to get it over with in a hurry, so he said, in a fast monotone: “I broke one of your garage windows. Some man saw me do it and didn’t want to be blamed. So I came to tell you about it myself.”

  “Well,” she said again.

  “Whenever I see a pebbled driveway I want to throw pebbles. It’s a compulsion neurosis. I’ll be glad to pay for the window. I guess that covers everything.” He added dryly, “In case you’re wondering whether I can afford to pay for the window, the answer is yes. At least, I can if it was just made of ordinary glass and not encrusted with rubies, diamonds and other precious gems. How much?”

  Her bewilderment gave place to anger. “You have no business breaking windows. What were you doing here anyway?”

  “Oh, hell, Martha, let’s forget it,” he said wearily. “No reason. Will five dollars cover it?”

  “The money isn’t important. I only want to know why you came here.”

  “Okay.” He leaned against the door jamb and put his hands in his pockets. “I was sightseeing.”

  “Why?”

  “I dreamed of you last night and when I woke up this morning I wanted to see the house you lived in.” He added carefully, “Not you. Just the house.”

  There was a long silence. She said finally, “You always did do crazy things. If you really want to see the house, come in and see it.”

  “Thanks.” He stepped into the hall.

  “Of course it’s not looking its best right now. We decided to get the housecleaning done while Charles was away. He’s on a holiday, you know.” She spoke with nervous little pauses between phrases. “I . . . This is the hall.”

  He gazed solemnly up and down the hall, nodding his head slightly in a professional fashion.

  “The table over there and the lamp and ashtray on it are myrtle wood. Myrtle wood is very l-light, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, it is.”

  He went over and picked up the ashtray. “So it is,” he said soberly.

  She glanced away in confusion. “The—prints on the wall are by Borein. Charles loves horses. At—least I think he does.”

  “It seems to me to be an easy thing to check. If a man talks about horses, rides horses and associates with horses in a general way, he probably loves horses.”

  Her mouth tightened, but she went on, in the manner of a guide in a museum. “The drawing room is in here. Do you want to see it?”

  “I’d like to.”

  She led the way into the room, walking with jerky little steps like a marionette. “The two davenports are built in. The slipcovers were designed by a friend of Charles’s, and the . . . I wish you’d go away. You didn’t come to see the house, you came to make trouble for me.”

  “All right, I’ll leave.” But he removed himself only as far as the doorway. There he turned back again and said quietly, “I didn’t come to make trouble for you, Martha. I told you the truth. I dreamed of you . . .”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. It’s—bad manners.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Steve said with a smile. “I’ll have to learn to stay awake. Aren’t you curious at all, Martha? Don’t you want to know what I dreamed about you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing that would offend your pure ears. In the dream, you were ignoring me. That’s all.” He brought out a pack of cigarettes. “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Do you mind if I have one? I’d hate to waste that myrtle wood ashtray. Where did Charles go?”

  “Away.”

  “You’re quite happy with him, are you?”

  “Yes, I am. Very happy.”

  “I’m glad of that,” he said with no conviction behind his words. “I had the notion that when I left, you were rather upset. I see it didn’t last long.”

  “You are romantic.” She had recovered her poise. She was looking at him now with frank appraisal. “You really have no right to feel so bitter about me. I don’t about you.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “We can at least act civilized. Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Have you started your book yet?”

  “No. I can’t start until I find a place to live.”

  “It must be difficult.”

  “Yes.”

  “They say the housing shortage is very bad.”

  “I’m not worrying so much. If I get stuck I can stay at Beatrice’s. Remember my cousin, Beatrice Rogers?”

  “Yes.”

  “She wants me to stay there. She has a house out in the west end.”

  “Oh. She’s quite pretty, isn’t she?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I remember her as being quite pretty. Did she ever get married?”

  “No. She asked after you, by the way. She knows your husband slightly, I believe. Well”—he made a half-turn—“I’d better be going. Don’t worry about me bothering you anymore. I won’t.”

  “You were no bother at all,” she said with false bright­ness. “I hope you find a place to live.”

  “Thanks.”

  “If you don’t, Charles and I might be able to help you. There’s an apartment over the garage. It’s vacant right now. Forbes is away. If you really can’t find anything—just as a temporary arrangement, of course—you might use it.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” Steve said. The offer had come so unexpectedly he didn’t know whether it was serious or not. He glanced at her with suspicion. Martha was certainly looking serious. More than that, she was looking downright noble, and it suddenly occurred to him why. As soon as she’d found out that Beatrice had offered to take him in, she had to make the same offer.

  “Very generous,” he repeated, but in a different tone.

  She was sharp enough to catch the change in tone. She said flatly, “We intended to rent the place anyway, since we don’t know how long Forbes will be gone. Months, perhaps. It seems a shame to waste an apartment when they’re so scarce. I asked Brown yesterday to put an ad in the paper about it.”

  Check with Brown, he thought. “May I see the place?”

  “Certainly.”

  She rang for Brown. When he appeared she said in­differently, “Show Mr. Ferris Forbes’s apartment. Did you put the ad in the paper?”

  “Not yet, Mrs. Pearson. It slipped my mind.”

  “It may not be necessary.” She held out her hand to Steve. “I hope you like the apartment, Mr. Ferris. The rent is fifty dollars a month.”

  There was a deliberate warning emphasis on the Mr. Ferris.

  “Very kind of you, Mrs. Pearson,” Steve said. “I’m sure I will.”

  There was an outside flight of stairs at the side of the garage. Brown went up and unlocked the door.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  “All right.”

  They entered a small square hall. The floor was of composition done in ivory and black half-circles. The walls and woodwork were ivory and out of each wall sprouted four transparent plastic ho
rns.

  Brown touched one and smiled a bit grimly. “Coat hangers. Can you beat it? It took Forbes, the man who lives here, a couple of months before he had them figured out. Look.”

  He twisted the horn and half the wall swung out to reveal a shallow cupboard with several rows of shelves. The shelves were filled with bottles, nearly all of them empty gin bottles.

  “I wouldn’t show this to everybody,” Brown said.

  “Why pick me?”

  “You don’t look like a Baptist.”

  “I have an aunt who’s a Baptist.”

  “Oh, we all have,” Brown said easily. “You wouldn’t let it affect you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell a hangover a mile away. You’ve got one.”

  “Well?”

  “Well,” Brown said and closed the wall again carefully, “this cupboard’s important to me. I want to rent this place to the right kind of person.”

  “I thought Mrs. Pearson was renting it.”

  “It was Mr. Pearson’s idea in the first place. Do you know him very well?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he’s got a wonderful social conscience. He’s always bothering about other people. For instance, he wouldn’t let this apartment stand vacant when he knew a hundred people would be glad to have it, especially veterans like yourself.”

  “Kind of him,” Steve murmured.

  “He wants everyone to be comfortable and to have enough of everything. This being impossible, it makes him nervous and he gets hives. I’ve known him since he was a boy and that’s what always happens when he gets nervous. He gets hives, on the skin or in the eyes or in his throat.”

  Brown appeared willing and able to continue with a clinical report on Charles. Steve changed the subject. “Could I see the other rooms?”

  “Certainly.”

  They went into the main room of the apartment. It had the same kind of walls and floor as the lobby, but here there were several round, fluffy yellow rugs strewn around. The windows were wide, with Venetian blinds and red and ivory chintz drapes. There were two deep armchairs with slipcovers to match the drapes, and a cherry-red love seat.

  “Bed pulls out of the wall,” Brown said. “Want to see it?”