by Helen Wells
Cherry said hastily, “Besides, what about Tom Heaton?”
“Tom is very nice but he’s a mere high school boy,” Midge announced coolly.
“After all your labors—you’re not interested in Tom now?” Cherry exclaimed.
“I’ve decided he’s too young.” Wade cleared his throat embarrassedly and Midge added, “I’ve just decided that.”
“Well, I never! All along you’ve been palpitating over Tom!”
“I was behaving very youthfully, wasn’t I? But a girl can learn a lot by—by meeting new people, can’t she, Captain Wade? No, I want someone older—someone more—”
Wade choked. Cherry interrupted quickly.
“It was nice and friendly of you to come over, Midge. Good night, now.”
“Ah—I—uh—” Midge said. Then she talked fast. “I have a perfectly fascinating book on flying, Captain Wade, you ought to see it, I’ll bring it over tomorrow—”
“Good night, Midge!” Cherry said firmly.
Midge disappointedly stood up. “ ’Night.” She trudged down the steps into the shadows. “And never mind that book about flying.”
“Good night, Midge,” Wade called, with a chuckle.
“Oh, yes! Good night to you, Captain Wade!” The girl waved and backed away as slowly as possible. It took her three minutes to get to the corner and turn it.
Then Wade laughed and put his hand over Cherry’s. “Hello, pal,” he said and kissed her.
“Hi,” Cherry said. Wade’s kiss was as friendly as a puppy dog’s. He tugged her black curls into the bargain.
“Sure is good to see you,” he said comfortably.
He gave a push with his foot and they went gently rocking in the swing.
“This is kind of different from the old days,” Cherry sighed. “Remember?”
“I didn’t travel all the way up here to talk over old times.”
“You came to discuss the political situation,” Cherry teased.
“I came to ask you to marry me,” Wade said point-blank.
He stopped the swing. There was a moment’s silence.
“Why, Wade,” Cherry said. She could feel his arm about her trembling a bit. “I never dreamed you were serious.”
He did not say anything, just looked at her.
“Why won’t you believe I’m serious?” he demanded.
“Because—oh—you don’t seem ready to settle down yet,” Cherry said honestly. “You’re awfully young and—and—I even wonder if you are genuinely in love with me! Or whether it’s just—”
“Just what?” Wade was indignant.
“Well, you may be in love with love. Or in love with the general excitement of our war adventures together. Or in love with the springtime.”
“Well, I like that!” Wade took his arm away and sat up very straight. “Boy tells girl he loves her and she won’t believe him!”
“I know you from the old country,” Cherry kidded him gently. “I know what a scapegrace you can be. I remember how you fell in and out of love with me. How you deserted me for a beautiful plane.”
Wade ran his hands through his brown hair. “I’ll prove to you I’m serious!” he exploded. “I’ll make you believe me—” He waved his arms.
Cherry giggled in spite of herself. Wade looked more like an excited boy trying to hit a fly ball than a grown man ready to assume marriage and all its responsibilities.
“All right, Wade,” Cherry said more quietly. “You prove to me if you can that you’re serious about me and that you’re ready to settle down in matrimony.” She evaded his embrace and another giggle escaped her. “And I’ll prove to you that you’re not!”
“Agreed. How’ll we start?” he said crossly.
“Haven’t you any suggestions?”
Wade thought. “I’m dying to dance with you. But that isn’t serious and sober enough, is it?”
“Well, what else?” Cherry’s black eyes sparkled in the shadows.
“I thought it would be kind of fun to drive for miles and miles to nowhere in particular. The car’s just humming. I’ve got gas,” he said hopefully and then stiffened. “But I suppose having fun wouldn’t prove I’m serious and settled.”
“Haven’t you one more little idea?”
Wade muttered, “Was going to buy us steaks and fixin’s, after we’d danced all night and got good and hungry. But that won’t prove to you—”
Cherry relented. “Wade, you old darling, those things sound wonderful! Let’s do every one of them!”
“Honestly? All right! What are we waiting for?”
He pulled her out of the swing and into the car in a hop, skip and a jump. They went zooming down the moonlit street on two wheels, with Wade singing at the top of his voice.
The next day, Saturday, Cherry offered to put Wade to the most horrible test she could think of. She took him shopping.
They were both pretty tired from the evening before, which had been strenuous if not romantic. Cherry’s feet ached from dancing and from Wade’s stepping on them. Wade definitely had indigestion from having eaten in the middle of the night. He stood beside Cherry at the stocking counter, grumpy but determined, rehearsing the role of family man. Cherry almost felt ashamed of herself for teasing and doubting him. Maybe this impulsive boy was serious, at that.
“How do you like this color, Wade?”
“Lovely.”
“Or this color?”
“Lovely.” He yawned.
“Which color do you like best?”
“Both lovely. Heck, buy ’em all and let’s get out of here.”
Cherry paid for her stockings and marched him down the street to a grocery. She wandered around the vegetable stands, meditating over brightly colored squash, carrots, broccoli, tomatoes.
“What vegetables do you like, Wade?”
“I hate all vegetables.”
“Well, which vegetables do you hate the least?”
“Spaghetti.”
“A fine helpful cooperative husband you’d make! And a fine example you’d set the children, not eating your carrots.”
Wade blinked. “What children?”
“Ours, of course.”
Wade glanced around, down on the sawdust floor, as if expecting to see half a dozen toddlers or so. He grinned. “With me for a father, it’d be useless to try to make ’em eat carrots. Just feed ’em spaghetti.”
It was Cherry’s turn to blink. So Wade was handing her back her own blows.
The dry cleaning shop was next. Cherry waited while her cleaned raincoat was taken off the racks.
“Who takes your clothes to the cleaner’s, Wade?” Cherry asked, thinking he would say he always took them himself.
“I dunno who takes my clothes over. I just leave them in my room on a chair or on the floor or somewhere, and sometime later they turn up hanging in my closet all cleaned and pressed. Surprise!”
“I guess that’s the little brownies at work. Or your mother.”
“I expect it’s the brownies. Why?”
Cherry said primly, “Just curious about your sense of responsibility in small things.”
“Listen, I’m so crazy about you, I’ll take my own clothes to the cleaner’s and yours too.” He yawned again.
“If you remember.”
“Aw, shucks. Don’t do this to me. There’s always the brownies.”
Saturday lunch meant Mr. Ames was at home, too. The four of them had a pleasant visit over the meal. For once Velva was unobtrusive, except for pouring iced tea all over the tablecloth because she was staring so rapturously at Captain Cooper.
Lunch over, a sleepy, warm Saturday afternoon pall settled over the house and, indeed, over most of the town. The weather was not yet warm enough to go swimming. There was a ball game out at the Old Soldiers’ Home but Wade, to Cherry’s relief, did not want to go. Cherry called up the McClays to see if she and her guest could play on their tennis court, but the court was being rolled. That left the Golf Club, where Mr. Ames played
not golf but bridge, and a walk through the woods, in the line of sports.
“Thumbs down,” Wade decided. “Let’s go out in the yard and loaf on the grass.”
So they stretched out in the sun on the grass and watched a robin hopping around and indulged in the most luxurious sport of all: wasting time.
“Bored, dear?” Cherry asked wryly. “This is married life, y’know.”
“Not bored a bit. I’m having a lovely time—Mrs. Cooper.”
And they did have a lovely time, lazing away the long balmy afternoon. Wade talked to her for a while, but presently he fell asleep. Not long after, Cherry fell asleep too. They awoke full of ants and cricks in their backs and grass stains to find Mrs. Ames standing over them. Wade struggled politely to his feet.
“The McClays telephoned,” she said. “They’ve just decided to have a party tonight and you two are invited.”
“Nice,” said Cherry. “I’ll wear my new summer beige dress. It’s regulation but it’s come-hither silk.”
Wade groaned. “Do we have to go to that party?”
“Married life, you know! Wife usually runs the family’s social life.”
Wade helped her to her feet muttering something about “this is a racket.”
By eight-thirty that evening Cherry was freshly bathed, dressed, coifed, powdered and perfumed. The silk dress and highheeled slippers made her feel frivolous, keyed high for a lighthearted evening. She danced around the living room by herself to the music of the radio, waiting for Wade to appear in his dress uniform.
Mrs. Ames came in and put the evening paper on the table. “Where are Wade and your father?”
“Dad was lending Wade his electric razor and explaining its engineering principles, the last I heard,” Cherry replied. “Madam, may I have this dance?” She held out an arm with exaggerated formality.
Mrs. Ames dropped a curtsy and said, “Charmed, Sir Percival, I’m sure.” Cherry danced her mother around the living room until they were both out of breath and laughing.
“Oh, I can’t wait for this party! Go-ing to a par-ty! Where is that Wade?” Cherry went to the foot of the stairs and whistled.
No answering whistle sounded.
“That boy is certainly taking a long time,” Mrs. Ames obesrved. “Do you suppose he has locked himself into a closet, or fallen asleep again?”
“He’s just primping.” Cherry stood at the hall mirror and put a final pat of powder on her nose. Then she glanced at the paper. Then she halfheartedly listened to a radio program. By this time the clock’s hand stood at nine o’clock.
Mrs. Ames called from upstairs, “Wade isn’t anywhere up here. Nor Dad. You’d better go look for them.”
As a posse of one, Cherry headed for the garage. There were the two men on their knees, tinkering around with machinery and talking. Cherry gingerly stepped over oil cans and avoided greasy rags, in her best clothes.
“Have you heard there is now a female of the species?” she inquired. “A new invention.”
Wade and Mr. Ames looked up absent-mindedly.
“Oh, hello,” Wade said. “You weren’t waiting for me, were you?”
“No. Only giving an imitation.”
“Well, you just run back to the house. Be right with you.
“That’s right,” Mr. Ames said soothingly. “You wouldn’t want to get that pretty dress greased up out here.”
Cherry made a short speech on the subject of social obligations but nevertheless had to retreat to the living room. She waited another fifteen minutes. The McClays telephoned. Cherry put more powder on her nose. Then she heard the sound of a car. She ran out to the porch in time to see her father and Wade drive off. They waved to her, maddeningly.
“Men!” Cherry fumed. “Men and machinery!”
Ten minutes later they pulled up to the curb.
“Terribly sorry,” Wade said, bounding into the house. “I’ll change—got oil on me—be right with you—”
He raced up the stairs, four steps at a time. Mr. Ames hastened after him.
“That razor ought to work now—I think we bought the right part for it—”
Cherry sat down alone in the living room and resigned herself. If they were going to repair the electric razor, she knew she would have a long wait. She had a very long wait. Mr. Ames made two more trips to the garage and back upstairs. Apparently they were fixing other things too, for Cherry heard hammering from above, and two interested masculine voices. The clock now said ten minutes to ten.
“At least,” she thought disappointedly, “Wade is enjoying himself, even if I’m not.”
At ten o’clock, Mrs. Ames told Cherry she was going to bed and read. At ten-fifteen, Wade leaned over the banister and called:
“You still down there, Cherry?”
“Yes,” she answered in a small woebegone voice.
She heard her father and Wade in guilty whispering. Then Wade saying distinctly:
“Gosh, women are a responsibility, aren’t they?”
At ten-forty, Cherry went to bed, angry, forlorn, and disgusted.
Sunday morning, Wade was only faintly triumphant and truly sorry.
“We’ll have our own party,” he promised. “That will be nicer, anyway, just you and I. We’ll have a—a picnic, a grand one, since this is my last day in Hilton.” He added gently, “And our last day together.”
They would take his car, he said, and drive out to the loveliest meadow they could find. Wade insisted on going downtown and buying the picnic lunch at a restaurant, despite Mrs. Ames’s offers. He brought little gifts for everyone, too, from the drugstore. “And I’ll show you I can be romantic, Cherry. Forgiven?”
Cherry could hardly stay angry with a handsome young man whose brown eyes gleamed with mischief—who was trying so hard to please her.
It was a glorious day: they would picnic until the sun set. Actually they had been lazing in this peaceful meadow all afternoon, until now the sky was a fiery riot of red and gold, and their picnic lunch was still tucked in the basket.
Cherry spread out the cloth on the grass, as the sleepy birds twittered their last calls of the day. Wade was leaning against a tree trunk, watching her. The spreading oak made a leafy roof for them, a house of their own.
“This is what I mean, Cherry. If we could do these things together, always, for years and years.”
“You mean not just playing,” she said softly.
“I mean it.” He came and sat down in the long rippling grass beside her. “Don’t you see?”
Cherry almost saw, and believed, at that moment. Her hands trembled as she lifted food out of the basket. A lark sang one more song above them.
“Come eat your supper, Wade,” she said gently, not knowing quite what else to say.
“No Midge, no relatives, no trivial distractions, now,” Wade said pointedly. He filled a paper plate for her. He brought his sweater from the car’s rumble seat and laid it over her shoulders against the cooling air.
They ate in dreaming silence. If this was love, Cherry thought, she wanted it, very much. Perhaps Wade was the one for her. Perhaps.
“There’s one more thing I want to do, besides have you say yes,” Wade said.
“What is it?”
“Go out on the water. There’s a canoe on that river bank and a paddle. I don’t think anyone would mind if we borrowed it for a little while, do you?”
Hand in hand they pushed through the deep grass and clover. Wade helped her down the crumbling bank, untied the fragile shell of canoe from a tree trunk, and they cautiously slid out onto the river.
Blueness was all around them—the high fading day blue overhead, the dark purple-blue of approaching evening lowering over the trees, the profound blue of the deep river.
Wade started to sing, not one of his usual ditties, but quietly, a love song four centuries old, stately and tender. His rich voice filled the song with his own feelings and echoed over the water:
“Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise,
Doth ask a drink divine—”
Cherry could barely see his face in the gathering dusk. He could not see her either, for he was saying gently, “Cherry! Cherry—”
He rose and crawled forward in the canoe toward her, and lost his footing. The boat careened. They seized each other and the next second they were splashing, struggling, in the dark water.
“Cherry! Cherry! I’ll get you! I’ll save you!”
Cherry kicked furiously with her feet, and with one hand seized the paddle and sent it skimming toward the canoe. She swam to the overturned canoe, still treading water, and managed to force the canoe on its back. Breathless, she looked around in the near-darkness for Wade.
He was thrashing wildly and going down.
Now she was really frightened. Wade was much bigger, heavier, than she was. His lashing arms struck her as she swam around him.
“Wade—Wade—lie still—stop fighting—!”
She dove under water, trying to grasp him about the waist, and lost him. All her Army nurse training came back to her, her muscles obeyed without her thinking. She dove again, found the choking flyer this time, and with a few mighty kicks got his head above water.
With one hand under his chin, she slowly swam toward shore, dragging Wade by floating him at her side. In knee-deep water he got to his feet and they walked onto the bank.
“Whew!” she sputtered. “Lie down, Wade, so I can pound your back and force some of that water out of your lungs.”
“A fine thing—can’t swim—ashamed of myself”—he coughed, as she gave him swimmer’s first aid—“was going to save you!”
“Go back to the car and wrap yourself in everything dry and warm you can find!” she ordered and, kicking off her shoes, she splashed back into the water.
“Where are you going?” he wailed after her.
“To catch that canoe and paddle and tow them back!”
She had quite a struggle to find them in the dark. But they were light in weight, and Cherry took it slow and easy pushing them back. She would almost have enjoyed her swim, except that now here she stood at the car, dripping and bedraggled and her feet squishy in wet shoes. And except for the fact that Wade was highly insulted.