“Dare we … open the door?” She touched his cheek. Gently, wonderingly.
Bill gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Relative evaluations were emerging. “Can we honestly do less?” His voice was perplexed.
“Are you sure we shan’t lose something?”
“I’m sure of nothing,” Bill told her. “Don’t expect me to make any fantastic promises. You’re as capable as I of deciding. It has to be mutual. That, I know. Let’s not delude ourselves.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” Blanche said in a muffled tone. She leaned forward and let her head rest upon Bill’s shoulder. “I have deluded myself before. And you, Bill, make it so damnably easy for a woman to fool herself.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Bill said. “I’m holding on to myself with every fibre of strength God gave me.”
“That’s what makes it so hard. You don’t give me anything to fight … save myself!”
“Why fight?” Bill asked. He would not let his gaze drop to the glint of gold which was the moonlight upon her hair.
“Because passion has deceived me before!” she cried out distractedly. “Because it’s wrought such horror in my life.”
“This is more than passion,” Bill told her.
“Are you sure?” She lifted her head to gaze at him.
“Aren’t you?”
“Is there more?”
“Tonight has proved there is.”
“To you?”
“Yes,” Bill acknowledged, still without looking at her. “To me. You’re less than I thought,” he went on, “if you don’t let this night prove it to you also.”
She shrank from his tone. “I don’t want to be less than you thought,” she protested.
“Then … for God’s sake! let’s do something!”
“All right.” Her tone was subdued. “Kiss me.”
Bill dropped his eyes to her face. Her lips were very close. Parted in a tremulous smile. He steeled himself to speak:
“If I kiss you … it can’t end there.”
“I want you to make me not want it to end there.”
Bill lifted his hands from the steering wheel and placed them on her shoulders.
Then he kissed her. That kiss removed all small traces of doubt from their two minds. Both knew it had been extremely foolish to waste so much time and so many words.
Bill started the motor and put the car in gear. Blanche nestled against him as he drove swiftly back to the cottage by the bay.
Not a word was spoken until he stopped in the driveway.
“I’d forgotten about Pete,” Bill said.
“I think he’s out for the count,” Blanche said. “Besides … he doesn’t matter.”
“No,” Bill agreed, “he doesn’t matter. Wait here,” he directed as he got out of the car. “There’s moonlight in the garden. I’ll bring a blanket.”
He disappeared within the house, and Blanche waited. He carried a folded blanket when he returned.
“Come on.” He opened the car door and took her arm. They went together through the grass to an open place lit by the moon.
Bill spread out the blanket. Blanche sat down and kicked off her slippers. Bill watched while she peeled silken hose from slim legs. She looked up at him and smiled.
Two hours ago he had stood in this same garden and felt very aged, and very weary. Two hours ago he had stood here with Nip, realizing how glorious had been his youth, and the illusions of youth.
Now, he had recaptured youth and illusions … all that had seemed lost to him before. With Blanche he sensed an impending rapture transcending all the trivial heights of pleasure the past had given him.
He was not disillusioned. So often we are disappointed when we expect so much. So often there are physical limitations which act as impenetrable barriers to the realization of expectancy.
Not so this night. Together, they achieved a fusing of the spiritual and the physical which makes gods of men … and must make the gods strain toward mortality.
Together side by side in the moonlight. Blanche’s hair was golden. Her lips were red. Breasts of dull amber. Limbs of ivory. Her body a slim flame, exquisite, calling forth wild ecstasies of rapture in the riotous garden spot—mystic with moonlight and drugged with desire.
Enough! One hour of love for which the world were well lost.
“What price perfection now?” Bill asked as they drove back along the road to St. Augustine.
“I don’t want to ask myself anything,” Blanche told him as she rested against his shoulder. “Not yet. I simply want to carry this with me in the secret places of my heart for a time. Later, when reality obtrudes again I’ll take my emotions out and rejoice in the fulfillment you have given me.”
Bill drew up again in front of her hotel. It was nearing day. A faint glow suffused the eastern sky.
“And now?” he questioned.
She touched his cheek with her finger-tips. “We must part.”
“Do you want that?”
“I do, Bill. I have the courage to want it now. You know I’m right. I don’t want to see you again, my dear.”
Bill didn’t say anything. He lit a cigarette instead. “This is a mad world,” he offered.
“A mad world,” she amended.
“It isn’t right, of course. We shouldn’t part like this.”
“You know it’s right,” Blanche kept her voice calm by a supreme effort of will. “We’re not children, you and I. We can’t let ourselves lose what we have by going on and clutching at impossibility.”
“No,” Bill agreed. “We can’t.”
“We have this memory to walk with us always. We’ll keep it. Cherish it. Hold it as something apart. I want it removed from all the bitterness I’ve known … my most loved one.”
Bill didn’t answer her. He couldn’t answer her.
“God give me strength to do this,” she whispered.
Bill bent down and slipped his hand beneath her chin to lift her face to his. Then he kissed her lips.
Her eyes thanked him as he slumped back behind the wheel.
He did not move or speak again as her fingers fumbled with the latch and opened the door. His eyes followed her figure as she passed into the hotel without looking back.
He sat there for a long time without moving. The eastern horizon was alight. Then he took a package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. His fingers fumbled with the pack while his thoughts searched to find a basis for readjustment.
He sighed after a time, then started the motor and drove to the cottage to change and go to the office. He knew he would never see Blanche again.
And he knew this night he had glimpsed the bared soul of a woman.
Bill was something of a philosopher. Life had taught him to make necessary adjustments.
He had need for all his philosophy as he drove slowly toward the cottage on the bay.
Perhaps he never wholly understood. Perhaps no man could have wholly understood.
CHAPTER SIX
LONELY NIGHT
The first thing Vergie did when she arrived in St. Augustine was to buy a local newspaper and scan the column advertising room and board. She sat on one of the benches in the depot waiting room, and removed her dark glasses to enable her to read the small print more easily.
Half-way down the column she stopped and nodded. This seemed to fit exactly.
COMFORTABLE room and meals in private home for single lady. No other roomers. Very low rates. Mrs. Tucker.
There was an enlarged map of the city tacked on the waiting room wall. Vergie went to it and checked the address in the advertisement. It proved to be on a side-street, well in toward the center of the city, convenient to many of the points of historical interest she wished to investigate. And it was only a short distance from the depot.
Vergie decided to check her two bags while she walked out to engage a room. She would have to have her trunk hauled, she reminded herself, and it would probably cost no more t
o have the bags brought at the same time.
It was a very pleasant afternoon. Vergie looked about with intense interest as she made her way along the shaded walks. Her heart beat a little faster as she noted the quaint architecture of many of the public buildings. The cozily narrow streets with overhanging balconies almost touching above. The somnolent hush which charmingly pervaded the drowsy streets.
St. Augustine has an inexplicable attractiveness for the newcomer. So much of the ancient to remind one of bygone glories, and so much of the modern to form a particularly vivid contrast.
She found the Tucker residence without difficulty. A two-story frame dwelling, spick and span with a coat of white paint with soft green trimming. The lawn and shrubbery were neatly kept, Vergie noted approvingly as she went up the flagstone walk. There was a bronze knocker on the door which appeared to be a genuine antique.
Brisk footsteps followed its thump, and Mrs. Tucker confronted Vergie when the door was opened. Mrs. Tucker was plump and spry. Her face was unlined, though it broke into a myriad of wrinkles when she smiled.
“I came to see about a room,” Vergie explained.
“Yes. Do come in.” Mrs. Tucker studied her for a moment, then beamed. “Do come in,” she urged.
It was cool inside the house. Cool and neat and clean.
“Right this way,” Mrs. Tucker directed, leading the way to a narrow staircase. “The room’s upstairs. Southeast exposure. Breeze from the bay every minute of the day and night.”
“It seems delightfully cool,” Vergie murmured as she stood inside the large room. There were rag rugs on the floor. A four-poster bed with a beautifully crocheted spread. Chintz curtains at the windows which fluttered in the gentle breeze.
An inexplicable sadness took possession of Vergie. This was so like her old room in Random. She felt suffocated for a moment. She crossed the floor swiftly and leaned out the window.
Of course, she told herself remorselessly, there was no escape for her. Last night she had decided to put such thoughts away from her. Yet it seemed so final to move into this room so like her own. She felt the bonds slipping back upon her soul. Of course. There was no escape. Best bow to the inevitable.
“How much will the room be … with board?” she asked Mrs. Tucker.
“Well now, I would like to have you,” Mrs. Tucker said. “You seem just the sort of body I hoped might answer my ad. I hesitated so about advertising this room. You never know what kind of fliberty-gibbets will come right into your own home. And one can’t be too careful with a young girl in the house.”
“I know.” Vergie assented. “You have a daughter?”
“Just eighteen. She’s so hard to understand.” Mrs. Tucker sighed. “Poor dear,” she went on, lowering her voice, “She’s sleeping in her room down the hall. She’s not at all well today. Nervous indigestion, she says. I say her liver needs touching up.”
“Eighteen is a … precocious age,” Vergie said.
“Oh, you simply don’t know until you have the responsibility of guiding one through all the dangers of this loose modern mortality.” Mrs. Tucker compressed her lips firmly.
“I daresay,” Vergie murmured. “How much did you say?”
Mrs. Tucker hesitated and calculated. Vergie did not look like one who could pay a great deal. Neither did she appear to be the type who would demand a great deal. Very sensibly dressed. Mrs. Tucker thought, and the dark glasses were a final genteel touch which won her heart.
“Would ten dollars a week be too much?” she asked in a very quiet, timid voice.
That would be all right. Vergie told her. They went downstairs where Vergie paid the first week’s rent in advance, and made arrangements to have her luggage brought from the depot. Then they talked together for awhile, and Vergie told her something of her plans for the coming month.
She had some writing to do, and would need a typewriter. Mrs. Tucker recommended a local firm who would rent one.
Vergie went out after a time, to arrange for renting a typewriter and to buy a supply of paper, then to wander about the city until dinner time.
Tuck came down stairs and met Vergie at dinner. She was white and wan-eyed, wholly disinterested in the food set before her. She paid Vergie little heed, mentally classing her as a frump, and dismissing her from her mind.
Vergie, on the other hand, took an immediate interest in Tuck. She thought it was too cute for words when Mrs. Tucker told her about Tuck’s twin, of the clever nicknames, and of the exciting race to see which would be born first.
Tuck excused herself when the meal was half over, and wandered back to her own room. She had been in bed most of the day and had seen none of her intimates. Events of the preceding night were rather vague in her memory, but she had reason to believe she had acted very foolishly. She didn’t remember anything after the strip poker game started.
Mrs. Tucker had hired a maid to help with the housework after Vergie paid her rent in advance, so she and Vergie went into the parlor together after dinner. She talked while Vergie picked up the paper and glanced over the headlines.
She found an item on an inside sheet which she read with great interest. Columns of statistics which tended to prove the ineradicable influence of the Spaniards upon the Isthmus of Florida. It dealt with great detail upon the landing of Ponce de Leon at St. Augustine, and the writer stressed the importance of the Spanish influence that could still be noted throughout the state.
“Are you through with the paper?” Vergie asked after a careful reading of the article. “There’s an item here I should like very much to cut out.”
“Oh yes. I’ve read it,” Mrs. Tucker told her. “Here are some scissors.”
“Thank you.” Vergie took the scissors and clipped the item. Then she folded the paper and laid it on the table.
“I’ll ask you to excuse me,” she said, arising. “I must go up to my room and unpack. And I have a little writing to do. I hope it won’t disturb you.”
“Not at all,” Mrs. Tucker assured her.
The typewriter and a package of white paper had been delivered to the house before dinner. Her trunk and bags were standing in the center of the floor, not yet unlocked.
Vergie closed the door behind her, and uncovered the typewriter and set it on a small stand. Then she arranged the paper by the side of the typewriter and sat down before it.
She was very tired, and her heart rebelled at the task to which she set herself. But she sought some escape from intruding thought. Each time her mind was unoccupied it was flooded with memories of the debacle in Savannah. She wanted to forget what had happened.
She wanted to put all her mad desires behind her. She was Vergie Whidby. She clung desperately to the necessity of re-entering the placid flow which had been her life until yesterday.
Listlessly she typed a heading on a sheet of paper:
Impressions on arriving in the
oldest settlement in the U. S.
She spread the clipping out before her and re-read it without interest. Then she leaned her elbows on the table and rested her forehead in her hands. Fleeting thoughts made merry in her mind. What did anyone care about her impressions about St. Augustine? Mrs. Bascom would read it from the rostrum of the Historical Society in Random, and the ladies would applaud genteelly. Later they would gather about for sandwiches and tea, and discuss the author of the impressions in pitying tones.
Vergie felt sure they would pity her. She was very certain any rational person would pity her. Spending the first evening of her vacation in her room writing “Impressions”.
She sat up and stared at the typewriter in grim-lipped hatred. Then she rolled the sheet but, crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket.
The breeze coming in from the open windows was soft and caressing. She felt that her clothes were stifling her.
She decided she would unpack and make the room tidy. She unlocked the trunk and bags, and threw them open. She would leave all her Savannah purchases in the trunk, she decided
. There was a large closet in one corner of the room, with a great many hangers on the horizontal bars.
The closet still looked bare after she had unpacked and hung out all the clothing she had brought from Random. She sighed and drew up a chair to sit by the trunk and let her hand slip lingeringly down to fondle the alluring softness of the new things.
Then she drew out one of the sport dresses and looked at it appraisingly. She decided she might as well unpack them all and hang them up since there was so much room. She would never wear them, she told herself decisively, but her thrifty soul rebelled against leaving them in the trunk to mildew.
She felt better when they were all stowed away in the closet to the rear of her other garments. She arranged the shoes neatly where they would not be seen, and left the cosmetics locked in the trunk.
She had brought several books with her. A biography of Ponce de Leon, and two autobiographies of men who had played a part in the development of Florida. There were also three of Valerie Ware’s books. Penthouse Passion and Elixir of Sin, both well-thumbed, and the new volume, Shamless Sinner.
Vergie defiantly took the three Ware books from the trunk and laid them on the bedside table. She would read them later on and perhaps restore her confidence.
Then she undressed slowly. A sudden lassitude had descended upon her mind and her body. She wanted to escape from everything, herself, her thoughts. Here in the sanctuary of a rented room she need not pretend. Tomorrow she would have to pretend. The rest of her life would be shallow pretence.
She laid her clothing away, and started to take down one of her old nightgowns. But she hesitated. Hesitation was fatal for good resolves.
A rose chiffon nightie with a wide fringe of hand embroidered lace about the bottom beckoned her. It caressed her flesh as she slipped it on.
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