Romance Classics

by Peggy Gaddis

  When the train halted at the Cypressville station, Cathy looked about her, quick with delight at the loved familiarity of the old, dingy station. Nothing had changed; it was all as she remembered it.

  Where was Bill? She had wired him the time of her arrival, taking it for granted he would be as eager to see her as she was to see him—yet he was not here.

  Behind her a warm, eager voice said, “Well, bless you, child, here you are—and I’m that glad to see you!”

  Warm arms enfolded her, and Cathy laughed and cried as the woman patted her back and kissed her cheek.

  “Well, well, if it ain’t a sight for sore eyes to see you again! Cathy, I’ve missed you—and land alive, the way I’ve worried about you!”

  It was Aunt Maggie Westbrook, big, kindly, warm-hearted; the woman who had taken a frightened, big-eyed ten-year-old girl, when her mother died, and given her a home. Aunt Maggie, who was not really a relative at all, but a neighbor who had known and loved Cathy’s mother and who had been unable to see the small Cathy go to an institution.

  Scooping up Cathy’s bag in one strong, ample hand, her other arm about the girl, Aunt Maggie sailed across the platform. “Sailed” was a good word, Cathy told herself halfway between tears and laughter, for though Aunt Maggie was big and heavy she moved with an astonishing lightness; her unfashionably long skirts billowed a little with the energy of her movement and gave the impression of a sturdy, dependable sailing ship in a strong wind.

  “Aunt Maggie”—Cathy paused beside the ancient car which Aunt Maggie alternately reviled and cajoled and abused—“where is Bill?”

  Aunt Maggie looked unhappy, but she said casually, “He’s out of town, chick. That old harridan sent him away yesterday on a business trip.” Aunt Maggie’s tone put quotation marks about the last two words.

  “But he knew I was coming home, I wired him,” protested Cathy.

  “Want to bet he never laid eyes on the message? Not if you sent it to the house. The old battle-ax would have hid it from him,” said Aunt Maggie grimly, as she inserted her ample body behind the wheel of the little car that she fondly called the Betsy-Bug.

  “Oh, but surely she wouldn’t do that!”

  “Look, chick, that Edith Kendall would do anything if she thought she could get away with it! I wouldn’t put anything past her! She’s so darned scared that her precious boy will snap her apron strings and find a life of his own—and a wife—where she can’t boss him around.”

  The Betsy-Bug made its sedate way at twenty-five miles an hour through a district that grew increasingly prosperous-looking until it came to a climax at an impressive yellow brick house that crowned a low hill, with a sweep of velvety lawn dotted with beautiful old trees. Beneath the warm touch of spring, the trees wore tiny leaves that were like curled baby fists, and there were borders of tulips and daffodils and hyacinths all along the graveled drive.

  “Look familiar?” suggested Aunt Maggie wryly, and jerked an inelegant thumb toward the house.

  “Very impressive,” said Cathy dryly.

  “What worries me,” said Aunt Maggie as the Betsy-Bug scampered past the impressive fieldstone fence with its grilled iron gates, “is how Bill stands living there. Like living in a jail— Oh, of course, with all modern improvements. But a jail just the same.”

  Cathy laughed unsteadily.

  “Darling, I’m beginning to suspect that you don’t like Mrs. William Kendall too much,” she said teasingly.

  “Like her? Does anybody?” snorted Aunt Maggie. “Anyway, she’d resent it furiously if anybody dared to like her. She’s much too important to be liked.” She wants to be known as the Lady Bountiful of the Manor—provided she doesn’t have to spend more than a dollar and a quarter befriending the poor.”

  The Betsy-Bug had left the yellow brick with its imposing grounds and was progressing steadily, if not speedily, a mile or so beyond, to where several cottages faced each other along the highway, each with its own garden plot and half an acre or so of farm land.

  A neat white picket fence enclosed one of these. It was a trim white cottage, freshly painted, hip-deep in blossoming shrubbery, its walk and drive blazing with spring flowers, the orchard at the back hung with scarves of palest pink and creamy white.

  Aunt Maggie turned the Betsy-Bug’s blunt nose through the gate, drove along to the back of the house, and heaved a sigh of relief as she pried herself from behind the wheel.

  “I’m either going to have to diet or stop trying to drive,” she said comfortably as she had said a thousand times before. “I starve myself, drop a few pounds—and then I laugh it back on again!”

  “If you lose so much as an ounce, I’ll—I’ll sue you,” Cathy threatened. “You’re just exactly the way I want you, darling!”

  “Then I’ll make an apple pie for supper, with lots of cinnamon and sugar,” said Aunt Maggie cheerfully, and put her arm about the girl and held her close. “It’s good to have you home again, chick.”

  “It’s good to be here, darling. I used to dream of the place—and of you.” Cathy kissed the plump cheek and looked about her. “But you’re terribly spruced up, darling. Fresh paint and the pickets all in place.”

  “Well, what did you think I was going to do with all that money you sent home—spend it in riotous living?” demanded Aunt Maggie. “I finished paying for the house, and then I put in some new furniture, and painted it—and made a deed out in your name.”

  Tears were very close and she finished tartly, “And now, for Pete’s sake, cut out the weeps and come on in. I know you’re worn out.”

  Aunt Maggie took her proudly through the house, and Cathy was deeply touched at the shining order, the freshness and undeniable charm of the little place.

  “This is your room,” said Aunt Maggie, and stood back to look at it. The cream-colored walls, the ivory woodwork, the honey-maple furniture, the glazed chintz draperies with the ruffled organdie looped back beneath them. “If you don’t like it, we’ll heave it all out and start over again.”

  “Like it? I love it! You’re a darling,” said Cathy warmly.

  “Phooey!” said Aunt Maggie, once more her brisk, vigorous self. “Your clothes are in the closet—the stuff you left behind. Maybe you’d like to get out of that uniform and into something cooler. There’s plenty of water for a hot bath. I can’t get used to the fact that there’s always plenty of water for a hot bath, with that new electric heater in there. And I’ll fix us some supper.”

  Chapter Two

  They had had supper and the dishes had been washed and put away, and Aunt Maggie and Cathy were on the wide, old-fashioned front porch when a car came swiftly out from town and skidded to a stop at the gate. A man leaped lightly over the low gate and came running up the walk.

  “Cathy!” said Bill. His voice was little more than a choked whisper, yet to Cathy it was like a great boom that made her heart turn over. “Cathy—oh, my dearest—is it really you?”

  He came to her, stumbling a little, and knelt beside her and drew her into his arms, holding her close and hard against him. Neither of them knew that at the first sight of him, Aunt Maggie had risen and left the porch. They had forgotten Aunt Maggie; they had forgotten everybody but each other.

  There was a long, blessed interval. It might have been moments, it might have been hours; neither of them knew nor cared. It was enough that after long, long months of waiting, they were together again. But when at last he held her a little away from him and could look into her eyes, Bill asked sternly, “What was the idea of just slipping home and not saying a word to me, Cathy? Why didn’t you let me know you’d be here today?”

  “I sent you a wire from Atlanta yesterday,” she told him.

  She saw his brows draw together in a puzzled frown.

  “You sent a wire? I didn’t get it,” he said then.

  “I sent it to the house, thinking you’d be more certain to get it there than if it went to the mill.”

  A look of bitterness touched his f
ace and he nodded.

  “I see,” he said after a moment.

  “Does she still dislike me so much?” asked Cathy hesitantly.

  “Don’t let’s think about her now, darling. Let’s just think about us. I’ve—I’ve missed you so, Cathy.”

  He kissed her hard and held her a little away from him. But the dusk had thickened now, and her face, though only a few inches from his own, was a pale blur in the darkness.

  “You’re thin, angel—and you look terribly tired,” he said and his voice ached with tenderness. “Darling, now that you’ve resigned—”

  She laughed a little, softly, a laugh that was a caress.

  “I haven’t resigned, my darling. One doesn’t ‘resign’ from the Army!” she reminded him.

  “Well, then, now that you have your discharge—”

  “I haven’t,” she interrupted quickly. “I have sixty days’ leave and after that I report for a check-up. For reassignment if I pass the physical; for a discharge if I can’t.”

  His arms tightened anxiously about her.

  “You were wounded?” he asked sharply.

  “No, of course not. I’d have written you, or had someone write,” she comforted him swiftly. “I’ve been ill—fever—nothing too serious. I’ll shake it off and pick up a few pounds and be in the pink by the time my leave is up.”

  She waited a moment, holding her breath. Here, if ever was the time for him to say, Don’t you suppose I want to marry you, Cathy? Ask for your discharge and we’ll be married. But he didn’t say it. There was a tiny, taut silence, as though he sensed what she was thinking and because he could not—dared not?—say that, he kissed her again.

  “Well, anyway,” he said roughly, “you’re home now and a lot can happen in sixty days. Cathy, my dearest, have you any possible idea how much I love you?”

  Cathy put down the small, uneasy fear in her heart that seemed, somehow, disloyal, and said eagerly, “Tell me about it!”

  But even as he held her close and kissed her and whispered into her ear all the lovely things she had so long dreamed of hearing him say, that little uneasy questioning feeling persisted.

  Bill shook her ever so gently after a while and laughed down at her tenderly.

  “I must have some pretty high-powered competition,” he teased. “All those dashing pilots and so on.”

  “You wouldn’t have had any competition if all the best-looking men in the world had been standing in line, suing for my heart and hand,” she told him with a small, shaky laugh. And contentment flowed into her heart beneath the hard, eager pressure of his kiss for which she had hungered so long.

  Everything was going to be all right! Going to be? She moved a little closer to him—everything was all right. She adored Bill, he loved her, and they would be married. She and Bill were grown up and there was nothing Mrs. Kendall or anyone else could do to prevent their marriage. Nothing! And she did not realize the over-emphasis of her thought that hinted at a fear buried deep in her mind.

  Chapter Three

  Cathy awoke to find her pretty room flooded with sunlight and was startled to see that the clock on the dresser pointed to five minutes past ten. She stretched luxuriously, then hopped out of bed, to stand for a moment at the window, looking out into the glorious spring morning, before she hurried into the bath for a shower. She got into slacks and a shirt and brushed her hair back from her forehead and tied a ribbon about it.

  When she entered the kitchen, Maggie was just coming in from the garden with a pan of new peas.

  “Well, now, you look like you had a good sleep,” said Maggie happily.

  “I did. Oh, it was glorious,” said Cathy happily. “Only you shouldn’t have let me sleep so late.”

  They were settling comfortably at the table, Maggie with a cup of coffee, Cathy with what she swore was enough breakfast for a day laborer before her, when the telephone rang sharply.

  Maggie listened and looked surprised.

  “Darn it, that’s our ring,” she said.

  It rang again—three short sharp rings—and Maggie went into the hall. A moment later she came back and said briskly, “It’s for you, but they wouldn’t give a name. I don’t know who it is.”

  “Well, don’t look so surprised. I do have a friend or two here, you know,” Cathy assured her loftily and went out into the hall.

  A cool voice said, “Miss Layne? Just a moment, please. Mrs. Kendall wants to speak to you.”

  Cathy stood quite still, shaken, until a carefully cultured, determinedly musical voice said, “Miss Layne! How nice you’re back. I’m sure you must have had some very exciting adventures. I do want to hear about them. Shall we say tea this afternoon? At four-thirty, I think. That will give us a chance for a bit of a talk.”

  “That would be very nice, Mrs. Kendall,” said Cathy when she had a chance to speak.

  “Then I shall expect you at four-thirty,” said Mrs. Kendall and the telephone clicked down.

  Cathy stood for a moment eying the telephone with frank suspicion before she went back to the kitchen.

  Maggie looked up at her and rose to pour fresh coffee.

  “So the Dowager Queen’s going into action—but fast,” she commented dryly.

  “But why? I mean, I’ve never been there to tea before. Mrs. Kendall’s never given me a second glance,” said Cathy, uneasy even while she admitted that such a feeling was absurd.

  “Well, maybe she never knew before that Bill’s intentions toward you were strictly matrimonial,” observed Maggie tartly.

  Cathy’s eyes widened a little.

  “You think maybe Bill told her that he wanted to marry ine?” she wondered aloud.

  “I think it’s highly likely, don’t you?” asked Maggie, and grinned impishly. “What the heck? Bill’s twenty-eight, and you’re twenty-four. I’d say there was nobody could stop you if your mind was made up.”

  Cathy laughed.

  “Oh, she can’t stop us, of course.” She dismissed the thought. “It’s only that—well, she has been good to Bill—”

  “Oh, she’s nuts about Bill, of course,” admitted Maggie. “Though I’d think some of it was conscience. After all, the Kendall money is only hers by marriage; she wasn’t born a Kendall, much as she’d like everybody to believe she was. I’ve known her since we were kids together, and I’ve never known her to do a warmhearted, generous thing in her life—unless she could get double value for it in return.”

  She rose to clear the table, pausing to say, “What have you got to wear this afternoon that will knock her eye out?”

  Cathy laughed. “Nothing, I’m afraid—unless you think my dress uniform might do it.”

  Maggie hesitated. “Umm—no, I think you’d better be a civilian. I guess we’d better go shopping. There’s a bit of money I’ve put by for you out of the checks you’ve been, sending home—there’s about six hundred dollars of it. Splurge the whole business if you have to, because I’ve got my heart set on you knocking her loopy when you walk in!”

  “Oh, now, really, Maggie—” protested Cathy.

  “Look, chick, I know what I’m talking about,” said Maggie firmly. “There’s just one thing that will impress Edith: that’s for you to look like something straight out of Vogue, and to be just as haughty and insulting as you can be. Come on, let’s get going.”

  At four-thirty Maggie stopped the Betsy-Bug at the entrance to the impressive yellow-brick house and Cathy got out.

  “I’d drive you up to the door,” explained Maggie, “only the Betsy-Bug might spoil the impression of that suit. You look like a million dollars. I’ll pick you up here in about an hour. Knowing Edith, I imagine an hour will be as much as you can take!”

  Cathy laughed and went through the entrance gates and along the drive. Her suit was a soft sage-green, deftly cut and smoothly fitting. There was a narrow band of mink at the collar and a matching touch of mink on the tiny hat that was of a shade darker green. Lizard-skin pumps, a large flat bag of lizard skin, and
supple white doeskin gloves completed the costume.

  Cathy braced herself as she rang the bell, and a maid in a black and white uniform showed her into a long, handsome room, with windows that looked out over the rigidly formal garden, riotous now with spring blossoms. The room had been decorated by a professional hand and it gave one the feeling that nothing must be changed, not so much as the line made by a chair set in place.

  Cathy had time to scrutinize the Kendall drawing room thoroughly before she heard the sound of footsteps and Mrs. Kendall’s voice in the hall. Then that lady came rustling in; a big woman, rigidly corseted, clad in a steel-gray dress that was severely cut in the hope of minimizing her weight. Her hair was steel-gray, too, swept up from her face in a fashionable, but unbecoming coiffure in which there were bluish lights denoting a very recent “blueing rinse.”

  “Good afternoon, Miss Layne,” she greeted Cathy formally. “So nice to see you.” She waved Cathy to a seat and settled herself in a straight-backed arm chair that had something of the appearance of a throne.

  “I must confess,” she said with a light, artificial laugh, “that when Bill told me you were back, and seemed so excited, I had some little difficulty in placing you!”

  “He tells me you have been away for some time,” said Mrs. Kendall politely, but her eyes were cold and watchful.

  “I’ve been overseas—in Vietnam,” said Cathy.

  “Oh—you were a Wae?”

  “I was—and am—an army nurse.”

  “Oh, then you haven’t been released?”

  “No,” answered Cathy, and was quite certain that Mrs. Kendall looked relieved. “I am on leave.”

  “I’m sure you are enjoying it—renewing old friendships, seeing your home town. I daresay it looks quite changed since you went away; there are so many new industries, new people. Cypressville is becoming quite important,” said Mrs. Kendall chattily. “I feel that the Kendall estate has good reason to be proud of having done so much for Cypressville.”

  “And then, of course, Cypressville has done a great deal for the Kendall estate,” said Cathy quietly.