by Peggy Gaddis
Chloe laughed indulgently as at the pretty prattlings of a slightly simple child.
“Oh, my goodness, no man ever has anything to say about it when a girl really makes up her mind to have him,” she drawled.
- 9 -
To Scott, busy and absorbed and contented, the days slid by on velvet wings and he was scarcely conscious of them. He was doing a job he loved, and he was enjoying a modest success at it. Gradually his office hours were filled. The mornings at the clinic at River’s Edge were interesting and intensely rewarding.
Alice Mowbray had helped them find the ideal nurse to run the clinic. A friend of hers, a woman in her mid-fifties, who had found hospital work too hard for her years and her strength but who needed to work and who gave of her skill and her deep, human sympathy to the black people who came under her healing hands.
Doctor Searcy was interested in Scott’s work and accepted gratefully Scott’s offer to serve for an afternoon in the hospital’s out-patient clinic. More and more charity patients were coming to him, sent by welfare organizations, or coming humbly of their own accord, and assuring him awkwardly, embarrassedly that they would pay just as soon as they could.
Liss Hanover had been the first patient in his office that first morning. Slender and exquisite, superbly feminine in a crisp pink dress that did exciting things to her warm, suntanned skin, she had been waiting when he had arrived.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she had greeted him demurely.
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Hanover,” Scott had said for the benefit of Miss Henderson, who hid a small, secret smile but greeted him gravely.
In his office, Liss had strolled to the window, looked out, commented on the view and then strolled back to settle herself in the patient’s chair beside his desk, and to regard him with amusement in her lovely eyes.
“Well, Doctor,” she drawled, “have you decided on a nice, decorative illness I might contract?”
Scott eyed her shrewdly, though he smiled and pretended an amusement that matched her own.
“We might begin with a thorough physical examination,” he suggested.
Liss widened her lovely eyes and pretended to be shocked.
“Why, Doctor!” she protested.
Scott dropped all pretense at gaiety.
“What’s the trouble, Liss?” he asked gently.
She caught her breath and for a moment he saw her lovely mouth tighten.
“Don’t!” she said thickly, as though she spoke around tears that clogged her throat.
“Don’t what, Liss?” His tone was gentle, interested, sympathetic.
She drew a deep breath and flung up her head. There were tears in her eyes and her voice shook.
“Don’t use that soothing tone with me,” she said through her teeth. “I’m geared to anything but sympathy.”
“I’m sorry to upset you, Liss. And I am sorry for you.”
“Why should you be?”
“Because,” said Scott quietly, “I think you are pretty terribly unhappy, Liss.”
Her scornful laugh flung the words back in his face. “Unhappy? You aren’t a very good doctor, after all, are you? I’m just bored!”
“I’m not a psychiatrist, Liss. Perhaps that’s what you need.”
“I only need to sleep now and then. I can’t remember when I’ve slept, really slept. Oh, I fall into exhaustion sometimes, and have the most hideous nightmares and wake up wet with cold perspiration and afraid to go back to sleep. That’s what I want you to prescribe: something that will help me to get some decent sleep,” she told him harshly.
Scott studied her for a long moment, and then he lifted his shoulders in a little shrug of resignation.
“My prescription would be fewer parties and an interest in life. Perhaps a hobby of some kind, maybe a job — ”
“Oh, now, really, Scott, you’re supposed to be a doctor of medicine, not a parson curing souls,” she derided him bitterly.
“You’d be surprised how close the two are, Liss,” Scott told her evenly. “Look, this being bored to death, for a girl your age — ”
“My dear man! I’m almost twenty-five!”
“Quite a tired old woman, aren’t you?” Scott’s tone was lightly derisive.
“Two marriages, two divorces,” she pointed out dryly. “It adds up to quite a bit of experience, wouldn’t you say?”
Scott studied her for a long moment and then, his tone carefully light, he asked, “Are you fond of children, Liss? The nurses at the hospital are overworked, as almost all hospital nurses are. And the children’s ward is filled. The children get so bored, and if there was someone to come in and read stories to them, amuse them, seems to me it might be a rather rewarding sort of a job, don’t you think?”
For a long moment she sat very still. And then she pulled herself to her feet and without a word walked out of the office.
Scott sat still for a long moment after the sound of her heels had died away in the corridor. And then Miss Henderson looked in nervously, and said, “Doctor Etheridge, Mrs. Enslee and the children are here.”
“Send them in, Miss Henderson,” Scott said, and put Liss and her problems out of his mind….
Liss had come back again, this time to have a cut wrist dressed.
Scott had stared at the wrist sharply, and then at Liss, who had tilted her lovely face and said arrogantly, “Silly of me, wasn’t it? I was arranging flowers for the house, when the razor blade slipped.”
“Why should you be using a razor blade to arrange flowers?” demanded Scott, as he took three tiny careful stitches in the wrist and dressed it.
Liss widened her lovely eyes at such ignorance.
“Why, Doctor! Didn’t you know that all really interested gardeners prefer a razor blade to cut flowers?”
“Not being a gardener — ”
“Well, of course not. How could you be expected to be?” Liss was gay about it.
And by that time he had almost persuaded himself that he had been a fool to jump to the conclusion that the cut had been self-administered. Liss was too well balanced, too sane a person, he told himself. Yet he could not quite avoid a feeling of slight uneasiness about her, even though at the ceaseless parties to which he was always a most welcome guest, she seemed the gayest of the gay.
One night when he and Chloe were having dinner at the hotel, she beamed happily at him and said gaily, “Oh, this is fun! I still can’t believe that I’ve actually got that famous and charming young doctor, Scott Etheridge, all to myself!”
“Go ahead,” said Scott cheerfully. “Feed it to me out of a spoon; I love it.”
Chloe laughed. “Are you quite sure that you aren’t going to be paged and have to dash out somewhere a million miles from town and succor some dying person?”
“I’m not sure, of course. But I’m hopeful. All of my patients are in reasonably good shape; barring an emergency, I feel quite sure we will be able to see the movie all the way through.”
Outside in the warm summer night, she drew a deep breath as they stood beside his car and looked up at the moon, a vast yellow silken globe that was like a magic jack-o’-lantern stuffed with dreams.
“On such a night as this, Scott, it’s just plain wicked to be huddled in a movie!” she said impulsively.
“It is at that. Could I interest you in a nice drive instead?” suggested Scott.
She drew a happy breath and said warmly, “Oh, Scotty, a drive out to the old Duelling Grounds, and the bluff above the river. Heaven, Scotty, sheer heaven on a night like this.”
“Then why haven’t we got started?” said Scott, and held open the door for her.
He had been in Hamilton long enough to know that the winding yellow-sanded road, lightly graveled but unpaved, was the town’s local lovers’ lane. A few miles from its beginning lay the wide flat meadow that in Colonial days had been a favorate duelling ground. The meadow was silver with moonlight as Scott followed the winding road. A few century-old live-oaks dotted the expanse o
f ground, where the shadows were impenetrably thick. But when they had climbed the hill, and parked the car beneath a giant pine, there was only the river below them, and beyond, the fringe of willows that marked the other shore.
For a while they were both silent, as though touched by the beauty and the mystery of the night. Above them the tops of the pines were ceaselessly stirred by a wind so faint that on the ground it was not perceptible.
“I love the sound of wind in the pines,” said Chloe very softly, as though afraid her voice would break the spell of enchantment that held them. “It makes me feel — oh, sad and lonely, and yet hopeful, too, that something very lovely is about to happen.”
She tilted her lovely face upward. The moonlight felt its way through the pine needles, shredding into silver splinters, turning her hair to spun gold, lying like a gentle finger on her soft mouth. And Scott did the expected. He bent his head and set his head on hers.
The moment of enchantment was complete. Scott never quite knew how his arms went about her, drawing her close and hard against him; or how his kiss stopped being light and casual and became ardent, urgent, demanding. She was so warm, so fragrant, so exquisitely alive within the circle of his arms; she clung to him with a little exquisite gesture of nestling that set his pulses pounding. And for a long, long moment they were silent, wrapped in that lovely spell of tenderness and magic.
After an interval that might have been seconds, or might have stretched into moments, neither of them knew nor cared, she drew a little away from him, her face radiant beneath the gentle caress of the moonlight.
“Oh, darling, darling,” she whispered, her voice shaken, seeming scarcely strong enough to carry the burden of its ardor, “when did you first know you loved me?”
“The very first time I saw you, I think,” Scott answered her, his voice harsh with emotion.
“And that’s when I knew I loved you. Only I was so frightened you wouldn’t want me,” she told him, her voice a soft caressing laugh of delight. “I know I’m sort of a mental lightweight, darling, and maybe I’m not the world’s best choice for a doctor’s wife; but I’ll try so very hard.”
Scott had a moment of dazed incredulity. “Precious, are you trying to say you’ll marry me?” he all but stammered.
Chloe drew away from him, and she asked unsteadily, “But, Scott, don’t you want me to?”
“Of course, precious,” Scott heard himself say automatically, even while far back in his mind a tiny warning bell was ringing. Some instinct made it very hard for him not to say sharply, “No! I don’t want to marry anybody for a while.”
But Chloe seemed to find nothing in his voice save the deep assurance she craved, and now she crept closer into his arms and put her cheek against his.
The warmth and tenderness of her was like a spell that closed his mind to everything but the tenderness and the magic of her there in his arms. His mouth closed on hers and she gave herself sweetly, confidingly to his caress, radiant with delight.
When at last they drove back to town and Scott said good night to her beneath the shadow of the wide veranda, she clung to him and said huskily, “Oh, Scott, this is the moment I was born for. I love you so terribly. And I’ve never loved anybody before. Scott, please always love me! Promise, Scott, promise?”
And touched to a tenderness that was partly compassion, Scott’s arms tightened about her and his mouth claimed hers and after a breathless moment he said huskily, “Of course I promise, darling — always!”
“Good night, sweet,” she said at last, and kissed her fingertips and laid them against his mouth in a little butterfly of a caress before she slipped into the house and closed the door gently in his face.
Scott went back to his car and for a few moments sat there, slightly dazed, not at all sure just what had happened. He was engaged to be married, that was quite definite. But he still wasn’t quite sure how it had all happened. Nothing in the world had been farther from his mind when he had parked the car there beneath the pines above the old Duelling Grounds. He had known that Chloe liked him, but he had not dreamed that she was in love with him. And certainly he had not for a moment accepted the idea that she would be willing to marry him. He wasn’t even quite sure that he wanted to marry Chloe. Good grief, he told himself, appalled, he couldn’t afford a wife until he was more firmly established and had a little more income.
He rubbed a hand over his forehead as though to clear away a fog that had settled there. And the memory of Chloe, soft and warm and fragrant in his arms, her lips petal-smooth, flower-fragrant beneath his own, dispelled the slight feeling of alarm at the prospect of marriage. His blood stirred warmly beneath the memory and he told himself that he was being a fool to hesitate. After all, he told himself cheerfully, the right kind of wife could make all the difference in the world. Any ambitious man struggling for a foothold in life would go farther and faster if he had someone else to work for; someone small and endearing and adorable — someone like Chloe.
- 10 -
Stuart Parham looked up in amazement as Chloe came in to breakfast, glowing and lovely and obviously quite pleased with herself.
“Good heavens!” he said, thunderstruck. “What on earth are you doing up at this hour?”
Chloe laughed, blew him a kiss, sat down, and waited for Dora, the maid, to bring a plate and silver for her. When she had gone, Chloe looked at her mother, then at her father, and said gaily, “Well, I got him. And don’t think it wasn’t a fight! Right up until the last minute, I was almost sure Kate Ryan was going to take him away from me.”
She looked almost unbearably pleased with herself, and Parham and his wife exchanged swift, startled glances.
“We’re just a couple of thick-witted adults,” he said. “Suppose you put it in words of one syllable, so we’ll have some idea what you’re talking about.”
Chloe buttered a bit of toast, with that look of complete self-satisfaction that frightened her mother and that made Stuart uneasily conscious that there were times when this lovely fragile-looking creature seemed a rather terrifying changeling toward whom he could feel very little of the traditional filial feeling.
“I’m merely trying to tell you that Scott and I are engaged,” said Chloe happily.
Stuart dropped his fork and stared at her, his face going pale with anger.
“What? You and that nigger doctor?” His voice was thick with disgust.
Chloe flung up her head, and her own expression had altered until she bore a very close likeness to her father.
“Oh, he’ll give up all that nonsense once we are married. Once he’s free of that clinic, he’ll get a lot more people: people with money; women who can afford medical treatment for a lot of imaginary ills. Why shouldn’t Scott become ‘a society doctor’ with a fashionable practice?” said Chloe coolly.
“In Hamilton?” asked her father derisively.
“Of course not. In Atlanta, perhaps, or some other large city!” Chloe retorted.
Parham and his wife exchanged a significant, meaningful glance. And he shrugged.
“Oh, well, if you’ve made up your mind, I suppose there’s nothing we can do.”
“Oh, but there is. There’s an awful lot you can do,” Chloe assured him. “First of all, you might ask him to have lunch and give him a chance to break the news to you, don’t you think?” suggested Chloe sweetly.
“Don’t you think that would seem a little over-anxious?” he asked. “Or are your mother and I to let him think we’re delighted to wash our hands of you?”
Chloe lifted her eyes and looked from her father to her mother with a cool, deliberately measuring glance, and asked levelly, “Well, aren’t you?”
Mrs. Parham caught her voice on a small shaken breath. “Chloe, my baby, how can you say such a thing?” she wailed.
“If we have any such feelings,” said Stuart Parham quietly, meeting Chloe’s eyes straightly, “don’t you think you yourself may be at least partly responsible?”
And befo
re either Chloe or her mother could manage an answer to that he walked out, and a moment later they heard the outer door close behind him. And then the sound of his car as it drove away.
Mrs. Parham watched her, conscious of the tears in her own eyes, unable to conceal them or to steady her voice as she said huskily, “Chloe, baby.”
Chloe said savagely, “Oh, be quiet.”
Mrs. Parham stiffened and her head went up. But she only said quietly, “You were the loveliest, sweetest baby. What changed you, Chloe?”
“I grew up,” said Chloe through her teeth. “And I found out that if you were dirt-poor, you had to fight for things. And I learned to fight, that’s all.”
“But, darling, to marry a man who hasn’t a penny — how is that going to help?” pleaded her mother.
Chloe looked down at her coffee and a small smile curled her mouth, a smile that was not pretty and that made her mother shiver a little.
“Kate Ryan wants him,” said Chloe coolly. “And it’s the end and aim of my life to take anything away from Kate Ryan that I can. Especially something she wants as much as she wants Scott.”
“That’s a very poor basis for marriage, Chloe.”
Chloe laughed and stood up.
“Oh, I’m a modern, darling. Hadn’t you heard?” she drawled, and her eyes were bright. “And now I’m going to have a lovely morning. I’m going out to River’s Edge to tell Kate the glad news — oh, as a secret of course, just among the two of us, because, naturally, I won’t want to announce it until I get my ring.”
And she went out, moving gaily, swiftly, as her mother sat staring straight before her.
It was only ten-thirty but the mid-June morning was already blazing hot.
The small room opening from the library at River’s Edge had been furnished as an office. There was no nonsense about it. It contained a large, flat-topped desk near one window, a typewriter desk with an uncovered typewriter on it, and a typist’s chair before it. Steel filing cabinets lined one wall; the other had a sliding panel that concealed a thoroughly modern, efficient, and allegedly burglar-proof safe.