“Oh, I’m perfectly safe,” said I brightly, “but thank you so much for your interest!”
No such luck was right, I reflected glumly as I went back to work. By nature I simply was not the kind of person to whom interesting things happen.
I’d mentioned to Mr. Tripp that I’d be much happier if my employer would give up his habit of suddenly appearing round corners and glaring at me balefully. Roger at once jumped to the conclusion that my nerves were shattered. He sympathized with me kindly, and explained that Mr. Caya didn’t mean anything by it, that was only his way of making tacit apology, perhaps studying me in view of promotion.
I found both these theories highly unlikely, but Roger said that could be laid to my Nerves. He’d see what could be done.
A day or so later he came round to whisper that he’d wangled me an extra holiday. The office would normally close on Friday, Lincoln’s Birthday, but the next day also could be mine for free. Why didn’t I go away somewhere—get away from it all?
This was extremely good of him, and fitted in well enough with my own ideas. I’d felt for some time that a tree would be a refreshing sight, and the week beginning February 7 had offered a breathing space between storms. The weather man was not sticking his neck out, but he hinted that we might have some sunshine, unless of course it should start raining again.
“Thank you, Mr. Tripp,” I said. We were still Mr. and Miss to each other, but I felt that any minute he might begin to call me Ronnie; outside the office only, that should go without saying. “I may do just that.”
“Good,” said Roger, obviously pleased. “Now, then. Have you any place in mind?”
I hadn’t quite foreseen this, and lacked the presence of mind to lie.
“Then I know a resort that would be the very place for you. It’s not expensive, it’s very quiet and decent, and we know the landlady. Mother has stayed there several times, and she recommends it heartily. It’s—really, it’s a home away from home.”
I made an indeterminate sound.
“Real country, too,” he pressed me, “though it’s not so very far away. The transportation is splendid. I can tell you just what buses to take; I believe the schedule is right here in my wallet.”
He was so eager, and meant so well, and his nice hazel eyes beamed on me so kindly, that I hadn’t the heart to reject these suggestions. Was that significant, that I should hesitate to hurt him?
On the other hand, maybe you’d like to make something out of my next impulse. This was to say, “Mr. Tripp, I intend to pass this weekend in a gambling hell, the croupier has been my friend for years. You may take your country hotel and your landlady and your bus schedule, and you may—”
But that was exceedingly coarse, and I was surprised at myself. He’s really sweet, I thought.
TWO
It Rains into the Sea
THE BOARDING HOUSE was all that Roger had said of it: respectable, safe and quiet. And oh, was it dull!
And oh, what weather! I could have done better standing under a waterfall. No doubt I’d brought that on myself, since at the last minute I had included a raincoat and rubbers in my luggage. But did I poke a hole in the roof right over my bed, so that on Sunday afternoon it sprung a disastrous leak? No.
Of course, nobody depends on dry weather in the middle of a California winter. I should have known better; but when you’ve nearly impoverished yourself for a country weekend, and it becomes a washout in every sense of the word, you have a right to grumble and to think that Salem, Oregon, was never like this.
The motherly woman who ran the dump said reasonably enough that she couldn’t get the roof fixed until the rain let up, and it was too bad that she had no other room to give me, but we could move the bed and put a tin pan under the leak, to catch the water as it came down drip drip drip.
I said no, thanks, that I’d go home on Sunday evening instead of the next morning.
Funny, funny, to think it was as simple as that.
As inducement to mental comfort, I do not recommend a mixture of guilt and morose annoyance. Those made up my frame of mind as, in a pouring rain, I waited for the bus. It’s worse than this in London, I thought; and the voice inside me, which is always arguing, shot back—How do you know?
The bus came, its wheels shooting up fans of water from a young lake in the highway, and I climbed aboard. When I’d paid my fare just sixty-seven cents was left in my purse, but pay checks were due the next day so I wasn’t worried. The rain coursed in streams off my hooded cellophane raincoat as I stumbled to a seat; all the other passengers must have been as wet as I, because the bus seemed to be filled with steam and scented with damp wool and rubber. It was dark. You couldn’t see through the misted windows, and nobody was talking.
Little by little, as we rode silent and swaying, my annoyance fell away and another mood took its place. Maybe you know how oddly disembodied one can seem on a long quiet drive through darkness. There isn’t any sense of time, and space is something that flows effortlessly under the wheels. Add to that the peculiar Sunday-night pause, when the week is being wound up so it can start ticking again the next morning, and with no effort at all you can feel like the little man who wasn’t there.
I thought dreamily about Caya’s, and the order system, and Roger Tripp, and began to wonder if any of them existed except in my imagination. If the thought of Roger had caused the least stir of my pulse, I’d have been sure he was real.
Come right down to it, was I real? Was this Cameron Ferris, here on this spot, or had I left my actual self with my family in Oregon? Here I had no background, no roots, no ties. This sycamore tree simply ceases to be, when there’s no one about in the Quad.
It was partly homesickness, I think; nostalgia for something I couldn’t go back to because it didn’t exist anymore. Everything ends sometime, including other people’s need of you. Of course they had done their best to pretend, Father and my nice new middle-aged stepmother in Salem, and the Crosleys in Portland—my lovely sister Merideth and her husband Jock and their three babies that I’d practically brought up to their present age. Both families had asked me to make my home with them. Naturally I couldn’t do it, no matter how deep and sincere our affection for each other. I’d wanted to get clean away.
But there’s lots of loneliness in complete freedom!
If I believed Roger really needed me, that would be something. I might—I might consider giving him some encouragement.
I never felt oppressed by my family’s dependence. We three Ferrises were very close together, from the time when Mother died of the flu and Father came home from the war. I was only six and Merideth nine, but Father, undismayed, took on our upbringing. Very early we learned to do our own thinking and make our own way. Anyone of Scottish, Irish and English heritage is not quick to let himself be pushed around, but I may say that we were tougher than most.
Father stood by us, and taught us to divide fairly and not to show it when we got hurt. We adored him and each other. It wasn’t duty that brought Merideth home from college when Dad’s real-estate business fell to pieces in the Depression; it was because we’d always shared everything that she insisted I should have my chance at the University, working my way through of necessity but free to do it because she was at home. No more was it duty that made me give up my teaching job, seven years later, and come home to nurse Father when his arthritis crippled him. It was, too, the most natural thing on earth that when Jock Crosley’s architecture firm folded he and Merideth and the two babies—with another one in the offing—should move for a time into the big Ferris house, that we’d kept because we couldn’t sell it. I had little chance for a life of my own, but because we all belonged together I didn’t mind.
Belonging to somebody once more might be all I needed. I’d be happy enough with the safety and security, the home and babies.
—Not anyone’s home! Not just anyone’s babies! the argumentative voice reminded me.
I told the voice severely that Roger wou
ld do very well indeed. Roger would be the answer to many a maiden’s prayer. Why not mine?
Maybe if my life hadn’t always been made up of safe routine, I’d appreciate him more. Maybe the gift of one thrilling moment, one bit of excitement that I hadn’t made laboriously for myself would show me life in its true proportion.
Five minutes later, to my utter astonishment, I thought the moment had arrived. I’d settled back with my eyes closed, trying to imagine Mr. Tripp in the bosom of our ribald family, when the bus pulled up onto a shoulder of the road and the lights abruptly went out.
I sat up hopefully. What was it? A flood? A holdup? My sixty-seven cents, I felt, would have been well lost in this latter cause.
That fancy was shattered before I’d fairly got going on it. The driver announced in a casual voice that the generator musta burned out; and indeed, it was even so.
Take that, Miss Ferris.
There was a brief flurry of alarm among the suddenly aroused passengers, which the driver, used to such emergencies, soon quieted. He plodded up the road to the nearest telephone, and inside of twenty minutes a relief bus came along and picked us up. The efficiency of this machine age may yet be the death of romance.
We were all awakened, though, by the change, and in the general reshuffle of travelers and luggage the trip took on a more social air. A billowy old lady stuffed herself into the seat beside me, and during the rest of the trip she babbled cheerfully at me without once stopping. I heard all about her home, and her family, and the visit she had just been paying to her daughter and her son-in-law, Joe. I could just see Joe. He’d be the counterpart of all the other men, besides Roger, whom I’d met in the past six weeks; middle-aged, heavy, good-natured, with lodge emblems in their buttonholes and snapshots of the Missus and the kiddies in their wallets.
My inner voice inquired if Roger might not be just like that in ten years’ time.
This Joe, it seemed, was something of a wag. Whenever she bought something new, said the old lady with a deprecating giggle not devoid of pride, he always teased her. This time it was just a little suitcase she’d picked up at a sale, but Joe got off on one of his killingly funny tangents and accused her of all sorts of crazy things. First he’d decided she must be the Barefoot Burglar who’d been harrying the East Bay residents. Then, when that joke wore thin, he said that maybe she’d accepted bribes from enemy agents and was preparing to become a spy. This was based on something he’d been reading in the newspaper. Had I ever heard of anyone as silly as Joe?
I made a gentle sound to indicate I hadn’t.
“They’re always talking about the Fifth Column, getting people all het up,” said my companion blithely. “I don’t believe a word of it—but it’s interesting reading. I told Joe, just for that if anyone tried to bribe me I’d give ’em the plans of his overall factory.”
Frisky old soul, I thought with a grin. She’d probably love it if she had the chance—Mata Hari at seventy-five. I had to admit, though, that Joe’s factory wasn’t in immediate danger.
She went on talking, talking. I lost the thread presently. The bus was hot, and there’s something hypnotic about an effortless flow of words; after a while you get deaf to their meaning. Her soft elderly flesh encroached more and more on my share of the seat.
And now the dream-like contemplation had left me, and I was suddenly awake and in discomfort. Crossly and unfairly, I thought—this is all Roger Tripp’s fault.
Real or not, I couldn’t keep the man out of my head, probably because he was the only one around. Very well, if he would haunt me, I’d blame him for this miserable trip.
It was especially unfair because he’d given me explicit directions about coming home. It wasn’t safe for me to go wandering through dark streets alone, late at night. There was a bus in the morning which would get me to Caya’s in time for work.
I’d said, “That’s cutting it rather fine, Mr. Tripp. I’d prefer to sleep in my own bed on Sunday night.”
“Please,” he’d said very charmingly, “do as I ask, so I shan’t have to—well, to worry about you, and wonder if you’re safe.”
Somewhat touched by this interest, I’d gone all weak and given him the promise. That was where my recent feeling of guilt had arisen.
“—As you know if you’ve been in San Francisco, dear,” the old lady beside me was saying. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was supposed to know. “Or—you don’t live there, do you?”
“Yes,” I said—my sole contribution to the evening’s talk.
She shook her head. “You don’t look it. I’d have said you were a farm girl, with those lovely pink cheeks of yours and all—so wholesome-looking.”
I turned inwardly livid; but you cannot paste old ladies in the snoot. It was with great relief that I saw we were now approaching the terminal.
“Well! We’re in, and what a short trip it’s seemed,” said she; and from under the seat pulled out the black leather dressing-case which, when the luggage was transferred, I had spotted as mine.
“See, this is what I told you about,” she cried. “This is what I bought at the sale, and they put my initials on it free.”
I gazed at it, blinked and gazed again. No matter how you look at it, my initials are not M. M.
There was no doubt that the case was hers, and I watched her trot off without even mentioning that there was any difficulty. All that the subsequent research and questioning and fuss established was that my small suitcase had somehow been overlooked in the transfer.
It gave me a sort of gloomy satisfaction. Aha, I thought, didn’t I tell you? That’s the only sort of thing that happens to me, ever. Fifteen pieces of baggage in that compartment, and mine was the one that got pushed into a corner. That puts the lid on this weekend.
—The Valentine’s Day Massacre, I added for good measure, and then realized with a start that these words had come out aloud, for the clerk who was taking down particulars jumped and stared at me reproachfully. This habit of talking to myself was one that I’d acquired only lately, and I had no doubt that someday it would land me behind bars.
Disentangled at last from the red tape of the claims office, I left the terminal, feeling oddly light and unburdened with only my handbag to carry. My face was lashed with rain as I walked the few blocks to Market, which seemed cold and deserted on this wild night, and caught an O’Farrell, Jones and Hyde cable car. It was ready to start; they held it for me while I ran the last twenty yards and scrambled onto the step. The cable, sounding impatient, clicked and grumbled in the slot beneath, and we went trundling off along the wet streets, their pavements shining with rain-blurred reflections of light. It was early yet, only about ten, and some of the liquor and drug stores were still open. The gay red and white of valentine displays had disappeared, and the druggists’ windows showed utilitarian designs of hot water bottles and cold cures. In a very few minutes we had come to the apartment district.
There were miles and miles of apartment houses, marching up and down these hills. They were much alike, four- and five-story buildings with regular corrugations of bay windows striping their facades. I looked at them through the rain-spattered windows. As usual, the houses looked back at me without rancor or welcome, without recognition.
I don’t like to admit that anything can get me down, but the city of San Francisco had come very near to doing just that. Its size and aspect were not too formidable, but what terrified me was its huge impersonality. The moment I left the office I became nobody. I had fallen here as a spatter of rain drops into the ocean, changing neither the tide nor the taste of the brine. I had, I thought, been absorbed without a ripple.
That phrase had a familiar ring. Wasn’t it what they said of persons who disappeared?
I got off the cable car and climbed the block and a half to my apartment house. The street was quiet even at this comparatively early hour. Very few automobiles were out tonight. In a darkened doorway across the street, a cigarette end glowed and faded and was flung down.
Here was my own door, and here was another small annoyance. The slip of card bearing my name had disappeared from its slot in the row of foyer mailboxes. If it had fallen out it could be replaced in a minute, but the box was empty and I decided not to bother tonight.
I let myself into the dimly lighted foyer of “El Central.” It was an apartment house like dozens of others. When I found my job at Caya’s and left the girls’ club, I had gone flat-hunting. In this region, on the edge of the business district, the available places were dismally similar, and after I’d inspected eight or ten identical velour chesterfields and fringed floor lamps, it had appeared to me that price was the only basis of choice. Mrs. Ulrichson, the landlady of El Central, had looked me over carefully, and for some unknown reason had come down on her first quotation of rent. I had searched no farther, only indicating a preference for the chesterfield and bargain-basement rug in 4-D over their twins in 2-D, two floors below and twice as dark. (The new gen’man in 4-C had felt the same way, said Mrs. Ulrichson; top floor or nothin’ for him.) The choice meant a climb every night, since there was no elevator in this house; the building next door had one, but charged five dollars more a month, which decided me at once.
The well-known Woman’s Touch had only slightly ameliorated the horror of the taupe velour, but my one room on the fourth floor back was not unpleasant after I’d unpacked my own lamps and pictures and hidden those of Mrs. Ulrichson’s choice in the depths of the dressing room. I knew exactly what I’d find when I opened the door of 4-D, and went to the left down the little inner hall, and switched on the light in the one large room which, with kitchenette and bath, made up my quarters. The picture of Merideth and her three boys would be waiting for me, and the bronze luster pitcher in which I tried to keep flowers, the four cactus plants in four little pots of sand on the windowsill, and my books and sewing basket.
Radios boomed from behind closed doors as I climbed the stairs, and I could figure the time with fair accuracy. The Richfield Reporter was just sandwiching a commercial between the halves of his fifteen-minute program, which began at ten. On my own floor, the top one, music flooded from 4-A at the head of the stairs. Two flights down I had heard it begin, “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne,” and could only suppose that Mrs. Pitman was too busy to turn it off. She was the only one of my neighbors to whom I’d ever spoken, and on the strength of our brief visit I fancied she would not care for that portion of the Ninth Symphony which is based upon the Ode to Joy. Sure enough, as I came level with the door, a glorious shout of “Freude!” was abruptly cut off. I could almost hear Mrs. Pitman moaning “Classical!” as she wrenched at the knob.
The 9 Dark Hours Page 2