So Helen stopped playing with the pencils, turned and stood still, boldly and frankly, looking down at him.
Now he was just coming in the door. He was a good-looking young man, an eligible bachelor. She knew nothing else about him, except in a dream.
Now, he paused to speak to Mr. Copely. Copely bobbed his head. Copely resented the young heir but needed to please him. The young heir was a little afraid of Mr. Copely.
Helen felt astonished. A strange thought came to her. Were most other people as shy, as uncertain of themselves, as anxious as she? Could this be true? Even good-looking people?
Helen sat down at the desk again. Now was the time.
Very well. His feet were on the stairs.
She was a young woman of twenty-six, sitting at this desk with her hands clasped. He was a young man of twenty-nine, coming up the stairs. They were strangers. They were here.
Now he was entering the offices. Helen did not turn her head to give him her too-nervous, birdlike nod and pipe up in her too-shrill twitter to say, “Good morning, Mr. King.” She sat still. She heard him say, “Good morning, Miss Fielding.”
She turned her head now. She looked at a face she had not really seen for some time. A handsome face, yes. The eyebrows were endearingly crooked. The brown eyes were, of course (she knew this), seeing some image of Helen Fielding that existed behind them but not necessarily elsewhere. Why, he could not possibly be seeing through … but she was. She was seeing a young man who was walking softly, trying to edge himself into this organization without offending anyone or giving himself away. A young man who was not earning enough money, who was only an apprentice … Her old image broke up. Prince Charming was not here, just now. She saw Anthony King.
Helen knew, and it was the first time that she had perceived this, that she was, to him, another old-timer. She had been in this place before him. So he walked softly with her, rather automatically, of course. With her, he had never needed to bother, beyond politeness, because she had never bothered him. A scrawny little female who huddled over her books and bobbed him one nervous good morning a day, fearing lest she seem to flirt or wish to be noticed. Of course she faded into the walls.
Now was the time, however. Today was different. So Helen said, “Hello. What a lovely morning.”
It was the first time she had spoken to him on a level. But she was a young woman and he was a young man and to exchange greetings was nothing to agonize over.
Now he was looking at her and he saw her. He smiled and said, “Wonderful. Good weekend?” She nodded. He lifted his right hand in a half-wave and. went on by.
She began to do her work. “Now is the time.” Must keep remembering. Had given her word.
At ten-thirty, there would be coffee. Ah, drama! Every day the burning question was, Will he take coffee with us today? Whenever he did, Helen had never been able to talk to him. She had always been frozen to timid, self-conscious silence.
Today, on this strange and nowish day, when Helen had almost finished her coffee, now, he came. She did not fade into the wall. She said to him, “Do you think you are going to enjoy being in the bookselling business, Mr. King?” She wanted to know and now was the time to ask him.
His cup clattered to his saucer. “I’m not sure,” he said to her. “I honestly don’t know enough about it, yet.”
“Does it startle you to see how commercial it is?”
His head moved sharply. “Yes, it does,” he said alertly. “Will I get over that?”
“Books are still meant to be read,” she said slowly. “I suppose you have to remember what they are for.”
Mrs. Peaseley was lost, and she snorted. She said she had better get back to work. Her fearful eye flicked at Helen Fielding. It said, “Better watch your step.”
“Do you like reading, too?” asked Tony.
“I used to,” said Helen, speaking slowly and honestly. “But I sometimes feel as if mountains of books hang over me. They never stop. You can never catch up. It seems hopeless.”
“Ninety percent of them don’t matter,” he said quickly.
Helen looked at him thoughtfully. “Doesn’t it make you nervous?” she inquired. If now was the time, then you said what you thought, now, and if it was dull and uninteresting—you couldn’t have fooled anybody, anyway.
Tony King let out a sigh. He said, “I wish you’d come and have lunch with me, Miss Fielding. I’d like to talk. I must admit I feel a little lost. I am supposed to know so much more than I do know. Would you take pity?”
Helen, the plain, the shy, said boldly, “I’d like to talk, too. Most of the time,” she told him, “I feel as if I had a gag in my mouth, and cotton in my ears. There is so much I wish I could say and so much I would like the chance to listen to.”
He said eagerly, “The best fun in the world is to talk—” He cast a sideways glance to make sure that Mrs. Peaseley had gone. He said, “I am so tired of tiptoeing round this shop, seeing things I don’t understand, seeing things I’d like to change … but I can’t be sure. Please, let’s talk. When? Lunch? One o’clock?”
“Now would be nice,” said Helen, “but one o’clock will have to do.”
She knew her eyes were alight and she knew that her eyes were the windows into the person behind the not-very-pretty, totally accidental arrangement of features that was only her face.
In the accidentally pleasing arrangement of features that was his face, she now saw that there were windows, too.
“Make it a quarter to,” said Tony King, “please?”
He was shy. He was anxious.
When Mary MacCleery came home at six o’clock as usual, that Monday, she found her son, Kevin, standing in the kitchen. He said to her in a lively voice, “Mother, I won’t be having supper with you tonight.”
Her hand flew to her throat in an old-fashioned gesture.
“I’m giving a party for the girls and Elyot, up in Elyot’s room. You don’t mind, Mother?”
“Of course not.” She was afraid to say more.
Kevin said, “I want you to look at this food I bought.” He opened the refrigerator.
“But how—?”
“Oh, I went out and got it. Tell me—”
“You’ve had a haircut!” his mother said.
“Looks better, doesn’t it?”
It did. So did he. He had his suit on. His tie was crooked. She loved him. Her throat ached.
“What do you think? Is this going to be enough?” He was taking paper bags out of the refrigerator. Mary MacCleery didn’t know what to think. His posture, his voice, his aspect were all so changed.
“Mother—” He seemed to have seen her hand at her throat, her teeth sharp on her lip. “Don’t worry. Probably I’ve had my stupid head in the sand long enough.” He was smiling. Her throat had closed.
He went on, urgently, “Please help me, Mother? I’d like all this food set out on a big tray. We’ve got one, haven’t we? Mother, would you do it? I’d like it to look pretty. And could you make coffee? And help me carry it all upstairs?”
“Of course, dear. Yes, dear.” Help him! Her eyes stung. She began to unwrap a parcel. “You could feed a regiment,” she said, almost hysterically. “You went out and bought all this?”
“That I did, Mother, I think I’ll learn Braille.”
“Oh?”
“And another thing. I want to go to church with you, on Sunday. Talk to the choir leader. No reason why I shouldn’t sing, is there?”
“No reason at all,” she said, rather shortly, lest she sob. “I’ll just get down the big …” She could not say another word. Her tongue licked in one fat, silent tear.
Kevin said, just as if he could see, “Lick the salt. That’s it. That’s what you used to tell me.” His tone was gentle and teasing, with the dear and condescending teasing of the healthy young. “Maybe we’ll look on the bright side now, the two of us?” he said.
Mary MacCleery began to weep with all the noise that her heart required.
&
nbsp; They were in Elyot’s room with the fire going. The great spread of food had been admired, attacked, and was now depleted.
Kevin MacCleery had been doing most of the talking. He had explained what had happened to the experiment. Helen (who had already phoned him during the afternoon and already received this news with no particular excitement) now kept smiling. Sonia drew in one sharp breath, but made no comment. Elyot seemed wrapped in thought. “Well, it was a shame!” Kevin had said. “All your fine sentiments, burned in the fire!” Nobody had taken the occasion to complain.
“But how was my mother to know? She can’t be blamed. What she found in the wastebasket …” he had continued. “Well, I had been practicing on the typewriter. I couldn’t tell whether I had typed anything, legible or not. Evidently I had. ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.’ Why is that you always use that line for typing practice?”
Nobody knew.
Kevin kept on being talkative and quite gay. “‘Of the party’ was the motto I got,” he told them, “so eat, drink and be merry. This is the party.”
It was Helen who spoke up responsively. She sat on her favorite cushion. There was a new quality of confidence about her. She teased Kevin, just a bit, and they laughed.
Sonia was not talking … not eating much, either. The richer foods simply did not appeal to her. Elyot kept munching thoughtfully. He hadn’t said much.
Then came the moment when Helen stopped in the middle of a sentence. She glanced at her watch and sighed and it was as if a bell rang. “Eight o’clock,” she said softly. “Motto Day is over.”
“Is it, then?” said Kevin in melodious regret.
Elyot stirred. “Wait. You don’t mean that you’ve been doing this? The rest of you, too?”
“I certainly have,” said Helen. “And if you want to know what the results are, Elyot, I say they’re fine. I say they’re wonderful.”
“But what-in-the-world motto …?”
Sonia said quickly, “We don’t have to tell.” (She couldn’t bear to tell; it had meant too much). “Results, that’s all we promised to tell. So I’ll just agree.” She couldn’t help beaming fondly upon him. “It was a terrific experiment, Elyot.”
Elyot stared like an owl.
“None of those scraps had any business making sense,” said Kevin, in his new and robust manner. “Mine doesn’t sound like a motto at all, does it? But it worked out, you know … It worked out very well.”
Helen said, “Didn’t yours, Elyot? You don’t have to tell us what it was.”
“Oh. Yes. Well. I … uh.” Elyot rubbed his skinny arm. “Say, Mac,” he croaked feebly, “how did you happen to put the letters AID in caps?”
“Now, did I?” said Kevin blithely. “I didn’t know that. I can’t see, remember?” But he could in his way. He’d go to that branch library tomorrow. Oh, he’d get there. And he’d learn Braille, faster than anybody ever learned it before. And he had better earn himself one of those dogs, somehow, and singing lessons, too. Not a minute to waste, had he. Not one.
“I did a damn fool thing,” said Elyot provocatively. He hadn’t had sense enough to know that his motto made no sense. But his mind was half suspecting that somehow sense had been made. He rather wanted to know what they would think. Maybe they would comfort him with logic. But nobody pressed him to tell.
Helen was staring gravely into the fire. She was thinking, We must talk and talk some more. It’s the best fun in the world. But we’ll argue. Tony just can’t do what he thinks he ought to do. He can’t go for the cake and skip the bread-and-butter. He has to remember the business side, and I’m going to make him understand. There’s my kind of bookkeeping, too. It’s not enough—just to dream. No, it isn’t.
In the hush, Elyot’s wits began to revive. He got up and began to prowl. A theory sprouted. “This is ve-ery interesting,” he announced. “What’s happened, here? We committed ourselves, we thought, to something from outside. Some old race wisdom.”
“My motto has been around for centuries,” said Helen, with a little sigh. “But I hadn’t tried—”
“That’s it!” crowed Elyot. “That’s what I was saying in the first place. But see here? Did it matter what the motto was? Didn’t we stir up something from our insides? Something surprising, that was always right there? For instance …”
He stopped. My blood, he thought, and sat down suddenly to attack another piece of cake. After what he had been through he needed strength. Bodily strength? He began to think about what Moran had told him concerning this physical culture course. But would he go for that? Did Elyot really want to know how it would feel to walk around on strong legs? Was he going to risk the acqusition of muscles and tamper with his personality? He didn’t know.
“It shook me up, all right,” he said sheepishly.
Sonia had crossed her arms and was holding her shoulders. “It was dangerous, all right,” she said. But her voice had taken on an eerie sound, the sound of joy.
The little fire roared along, softly, softly.
Then the blind man, seeming to know exactly what to do now, tipped his head up and began to sing an old song.
Mary MacCleery, passing in the hall, heard their ragged chorusing, and then their laughter.
6.
The Weight of the Word
There is a strip of carpet, red as blood, that runs from the foyer of the Pearl City Club, across the middle of the square dim cocktail lounge, to the dining room. Tiny spotlights, embedded in the low ceiling, shed light upon this crimson path. All around the walls, in near-darkness, people sit on padded benches, sipping, watching who comes and who goes.
But the cocktail lounge of the Pearl City Club is not just another bar. Everyone who is anyone in town proves it by being a member, so that the eyes that watch, here, are connected with power, the ears that listen are wise in local lore, the voices that murmur are never boisterous. Nothing that could be called rowdy had ever happened in this room.
At a little after eight, on a Saturday evening in May, the lounge was filled, dim shapes bent heads all around. Up the two steps from the brighter dining room came a party of three. These were Mr. and Mrs. John Martinelli, and their only daughter, Teresa. The little spotlights had a pink tinge; the carpet threw up rosy reflections, flattering to faces. John Martinelli was not very tall but he carried himself like a giant. His hair was white, rising to a crest. His face was fine-featured with a small beaked nose. His father and his grandfather before him had been somebodies in Pearl City; he had done better than they. He walked proudly. Alicia, his wife, was an inch taller than he, a fair woman, with elegant bones. She had been someone all her life, too. She walked with grace; the light was kind to the patient sweetness of her face.
But the watchers did not watch these two; they watched the girl, slim, dark, beautiful and mysterious. Teresa was wearing a dinner gown of a deep and brilliant blue. Moving above the red, the hem was empurpled.
Now, on the other end of the carpet, two men came in from the foyer. And the fairest flower of Pearl City, watching, caught breath. The Hustons, at this moment! Mark and his brother, Charles, who did not count. But Mark Huston!
Breath caught because two months ago Teresa Huston had gone from the hospital to her father’s house and was still living there. So the murmuring sounds suffered a failure in volume. It was not that the good people stopped talking, rudely, in order to look and listen. But voices lost emphasis; ears that had been listening lost interest.
Obviously, the two parties of people must meet in the very center of the room. There might be some clue given, some emotion hinted, some attitude betrayed. Something might be revealed when the beautiful young woman in blue must pass the tall young man in the dark suit … two who had been joined together (at great expense, with champagne flowing) and who were now asunder.
The brothers broke step, just momentarily, but quickly recovered the rhythm of their pace. The Martinellis had not visibly faltered. As the groups drew together, Jo
hn Martinelli nodded. Charles Huston said, “Good evening, ma’am. Evening, sir.” None stopped moving.
It seemed that nothing was going to be revealed and Pearl City, although with the tiniest ruffle of nervous disappointment, approved. But then the taller and the thinner of the two young men stopped walking. “How have you been, Teresa?” he said to her gently.
The girl in blue lifted her face. She was smiling. She said, “Splendid.”
The thin young man grew suddenly taller. He lifted his right hand and slapped her hard across her pretty face. The sharp crack of flesh on flesh was like a gunshot in this place.
The father turned his head, the neck corded. The mother whimpered. A soft roar of shock and protest began to run around the four walls. The brother, Charles Huston, took Mark’s arm in a rought hand and turned him, forced him, shoved him back along the way they had come, out into the foyer, out of the building, and away. Joseph Jasper popped like a jack-in-the-box from the manager’s office, for he had extra senses to tell him when or if anything went wrong in the Peal City Club. He took the mother’s arm. The father took the daughter’s. She was smiling. They were whisked away into the private offices, leaving the audience gasping at an empty stage.
The good people of Pearl City had been to the motion pictures, had read books. They knew that for a man to slap a woman was not unheard of in this century. But to have done such a thing here, out of the blue, for no cause, in public, and in this public …! Well! Young Mark Huston had just committed social and economic suicide.
And some sighed for the pity of it, and some for the excitement, and all with the certain knowledge that young Mark Huston had done it now. Oh, he was through. There would be a divorce, surely. And he would go elsewhere. Oh, he was finished. John Martinelli would see to that.
In half an hour, Joseph Jasper came out of his offices and left the door open as if to say, See, nothing in the box. He had smuggled them out another way. The audience sighed. “No Second Act,” said the Judge’s wife. The Judge, sitting in the corner, thought to himself, That was the Second Act curtain. The Third Act will be in Reno. I won’t hear it.
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