The Mulberry Bush

by Helen Topping Miller

  “It isn’t Mike altogether, Teresa. I’m so mixed up in my mind.”

  “Mike Paull’s at the bottom of it, and I’ve known that young lunatic longer than you have. Mike wants what he wants—for himself. He’s not thinking of you—except as something that he wants. He never thinks of anyone but Mike Paull.”

  “Mike isn’t as bad as that, Teresa.”

  “I know how bad Mike is. Oh, not wicked—I don’t mean that, exactly. Probably he’s decent and fairly honest—as far as newspapermen go—but he’s completely mad. No more to be depended upon than the wind. If he gets an idea, he chases it till he tires—or another one comes along. So the quicker you tell him to get the hell out of your life, the better for you.”

  In the end it was Teresa’s hostility to Mike that decided Virginia. In defending him to Teresa, she had found herself defending him also to herself. Taking Mike’s side, conceding his gentleness, his devotion, and admitting, too, that there was a warming thrill in knowing that Michael Paull, who was already an international figure at twenty-nine, loved her—Virginia Warfield, a pale girl from Tennessee, who had a job and a few friends but little else, besides bright hair and a deep loyalty toward the people whom she loved.

  And then had come the night of storm, of wild rain and violent wind, following an afternoon of sullen, menacing, unseasonable heat, when the air pressed close and the sun went down in sulphurous smolder.

  Virginia had taken the bus back to her apartment, and from the bus stop to her door she went at a run, but the rain caught her and drenched her to the skin.

  She climbed the two flights of stairs, dripping, shaking wetness from her new hat ruefully, the coloring of her purse staining her wrist and her glove, her shoes leaving damp prints on the stairs. Outside, the storm shook the old house, and darkness descended like a hot blanket, so that she groped along the unlit hallway to her door. And when she opened it, there was light, and music from the radio, and a delicious smell of coffee—and Mike.

  He came out of the kitchenette, grinning at her, one of her rubber aprons over his clean shirt, his cuffs turned back.

  “Gee gosh, Ginny—get those wet things off, quick!”

  “How on earth,” demanded Virginia angrily, “did you get in?”

  “No trouble.” He laid two knives and two forks out on the card table. “These old locks—open ’em with a bottle opener. That’s what I did. Change your clothes before you take cold. Why didn’t you take a taxi?”

  “The rain began just as I left the bus. Mike—can’t you see that you mustn’t do things like this? What will the people in the house think? They’ll think I gave you a key.”

  “Didn’t see a soul. Nobody saw me come in. Stop paging Emily Post and Mrs. Grundy, Ginny, and get those wet shoes off. We have steaks and mushrooms and mock turtle soup. You should have seen me carrying up groceries like a well-tamed husband.”

  “Oh, Mike—what am I going to do with you?”

  “I could answer that, but it would be the same old answer. Hurry up—I’m putting the steaks to broil.”

  She shut herself in the bathroom and sank on the edge of the tub, leaning her forehead on the cold porcelain of the washbowl. Her brain was throbbing, her heart hurt to agony. She did love Mike. If she sent him away, she knew her heart would go, aching, after. That only a shell of her would be left—a brittle, wooden thing that would go on hollowly, saying, “Yes, Teresa. No, Teresa”; go on folding circulars and addressing envelopes and writing alluring sales letters to Oklahoma oil people and the deans of girls’ schools, go on being bereft and dead forever and ever!

  Mike shouted, “Hey, there—get a move on!” and she got up stiffly and shed her sodden garments and hung them on the shower rod to dry. Then she scrubbed her chilled flesh with a towel, put on some boyish pajamas of yellow silk and a green-flannel robe and slippers—and opened the door.

  And there stood Mike. Without the absurd apron, with his coat on and his hair brushed back.

  He opened his arms and in a choked, shaken voice, said, “Oh, Ginny! Oh, Ginny!”

  Blindly, heedlessly, knowing that this was madness, this was sweet danger, and not caring at all, Virginia went into his arms.

  After an interval that never came quite clear in Virginia’s mind later, they ate the steaks, and the soup that had simmered until there was only a scant bowlful left, drank the coffee and looked at each other with eyes that were still a little dazed. And then Mike, gathering Virginia up in his arms, rocking her in a big chair with her head tucked down against the hard feel of his collarbone, told her his news.

  “I have to go to South America, Ginny. Bill telephoned this morning—Bill Foster, my boss—syndicate manager. I’ll have to go. And I can’t take you with me. But I’ll have three days in New York and I can take you there. Three days, Ginny darling—a three-day honeymoon!”

  “But Mike—South America! You’ll be gone—how long?”

  “Only God and Bill Foster know—and I’m not sure that Bill knows. But the minute I’m free I won’t wait for a boat—I’ll come flying back to you.”

  The minute he was free! Mike, who had always been free. Who was holding tight to his freedom now—she shut her heart grimly against the sour, stern pessimism of common sense.

  She packed a bag and wrote a note to Teresa—a vague sort of note telling Teresa that some family matters had called her away for a few days. She could not bring herself to tell Teresa the truth. She had to come back and face Teresa’s eyes and hear her carping voice. And after all, marrying Mike was a family affair—so she had told the truth. Mike would be her family—legally and forever she would belong to Mike, And no one, not even Teresa, not even Bill Foster, could undo it.

  So she married Mike in the little church, with the first thin sun of morning coming in through the windows, jeweling the minister’s vestments and the benign pinkness of his bald head, the ribald mosaics of red and blue, and the pigeons teetering and curtsying on the windowsill, and an anxious little acolyte in a red cassock lighting two candles for them. Two candles burning bright! One for her and one for Mike.

  Every hour of those precious three days, she told herself, “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry.” This Mike she had married was a man that neither Teresa, nor Bill Foster, nor any of the sophisticated crew Mike knew, would have recognized at all. This was a gallant, tender and understanding lover—a Mike who was all her own.

  Somehow, cannily, Mike kept the report of their marriage out of the papers.

  “If that mob I know up here ever found out about it—good night!” he said. “We’d be hauled around to cocktail parties and photographed and have gags pulled on us—we don’t want any other people, do we, Ginny? I want you and you want me—and that’s enough for us.”

  He took her to quiet places for dinner, avoiding name bands and floorshows—all the café haunts of the other writers. They walked till they were weary and shopped in big stores for the lovely, useless things that caught Virginia’s eye, and for clothes that dazzled her. If she so much as admired a thing in a window, Mike was on his way inside instantly.

  “Try it on. Like it, Ginny? All right—send it.”

  Mr. and Mrs. M. C. Paull. Mike’s middle name, she learned, was Cato.

  “Irish, Roman, and Dutch. That’s goulash for you. My mother was Irish, bless her bright eyes. She left me her imagination and that dramatic, emotional thing they get from their wild, mystic air. And my father was a Dutch shipbuilder’s son, born in Hoboken. He’s living somewhere around there—we’ll look him up some time.”

  “Mike—you don’t know where your own father lives? Mike, that’s dreadful.”

  “Oh, he gets along. He’s a substantial old chap. Getting old now, too. He was middle-aged when I was born. We agree perfectly—he never worries about me and I never worry about him. He married again, ten years ago.”

  “My father married again, too,
but I adore my stepmother. We’ve kept very close—even though I’ve been away seven years. I ought to write—”

  “After I’m gone you’ll have time.”

  After Mike was gone—and he could speak of it so casually! All that last day she tried not to let him see. Fought to be calm and gay-hearted, too. As though three thousand miles or more of land and water and empty air were nothing at all—only a little space, only a little time.

  All that day it was like dying a little, inch-by-inch, hour-by-hour. The strain of it was in Mike’s face, too, and Virginia seeing it, comforted herself in her own desolation with fierce gladness. Mike was suffering, too.

  They did not talk very much. They went about woodenly, eating meals, packing Mike’s bags, putting a new ribbon in the typewriter and extra ones in the grip, putting in quinine for malaria, and flea powder, and a spray for Mike’s sensitive throat.

  But whenever they came near to each other, Mike’s arms would open, and Virginia would creep into them, and they would cling together silently. And if Mike looked over her shoulder and saw far places and the old excitement touched him, at least she did not know.

  She said, “Mike—I’m not going to tell Teresa that we are married—not yet. I’m not going to tell anyone—not even my family. Not till you come back. My father’s a country doctor—he’s old-fashioned—he’d think this way we are going to have to live for a while was outrageous. Let’s not tell till we can begin living—like people—it will make things easier—for me!”

  Mike frowned into the distance. He seemed about to begin an argument—and then to think better of it, and his face brightened.

  He said, “Well, after all—we know we’re married. Who else matters, really? Nobody!”

  “Don’t forget, then—when you write to me—after all, a lot of married women keep their own names when they’re in business.”

  “It won’t be much fun—addressing letters to Miss Virginia Warfield. But I’ll try to remember.”

  “Oh, but it will be fun—because you’ll know what a joke we have on everyone.”

  “About money now—you are my wife, aren’t you?”

  “I hope I am. If I’m not—well, this is pretty awful.”

  “Okay—that’s settled then. Here—” he took out a thick roll of bills, snapped a rubber band around them. “I never could figure out what to do with money. Now I know. I’ll earn a million for you, Ginny. I’ll write my book—take a crack at the radio maybe—this is swell! Now I’ve got something to work for.”

  “Mike—I can’t take all this!”

  “Why can’t you? Did I hear that Reverend chap say something about worldly goods, or didn’t I? Well, there’s my worldly goods—and I hereby thee endow. Stick it in a bank or something. It rains darned easy in this climate.” He laid the money in her hands, closed her fingers tight over it, and then kissed her taut knuckles. “But for gosh sakes, don’t get held up,” he warned. “Ugly women have been tossed off bridges for less than you’ve got in that wad—and I’d hate to think what could happen to a pretty one.”

  “I’m going to bury this deep in a deposit box. And I’ll get two keys—and arrange for you to open it if—something should happen to me.”

  “Good Lord! You’ll be making a will next—and picking out the inscription for your tombstone!”

  “I’ve already picked out my inscription. It’s going to be, ‘Here lies Virginia Paull, wife of Michael. She was a virtuous and well-favored female and a darned good businesswoman.’ Do you know what this money is going to be some day, Michael Paull? It’s going to be a little house for us, my lover—a cute little house somewhere—roses around the door and everything.”

  “Gee whiz!” Mike, exclaimed, “I’ve never lived in a house since I can remember. Maybe it would be fun.”

  “It would be heaven!” Virginia sighed. “I was born in a big wooden house with gingerbread trimmings all around the eaves and a bay window on one corner with a salt-cellar effect on top of it. There is green-and-purple-and-orange stained glass in the front door and fancy railings around the porches—and inside there is brown woodwork, and a railed shelf all around the wall where my Dad is always putting cans of tobacco, and sample bottles of pills, and corks with trout-flies stuck in them.”

  “There,” said Mike, “is the man who is master in his own house! Does your mother take down the pills and tobacco with resigned and reproachful looks?”

  “Oh, no—she doesn’t bother Dad’s things. She’s very easy to live with. She puts things on the shelves herself—golf tees and letters she forgets to answer, and skate-keys, and ukulele picks that the boys leave around.”

  “I hope,” Mike threw himself on the bed and stretched lazily, “that when we get this projected house, you take after your family. I’d hate to come home some night and find poor old Elvira banished to the woodshed, or maybe dolled up with gilt paint and pink ribbons.” Elvira was his typewriter. He abused Elvira fluently but was furious if anyone else criticized her—“She’s my iron woman. I can cuss her all I like—but nobody else can.”

  “I wouldn’t offend Elvira for the world. After all, she earned all this money. We’ll build a special soundproof room for her where she can rust into a calm old age in peace.”

  “And what was I doing while Elvira was earning all this stuff, I’d like to know? Who makes her talk and say cute things that tough newspaper hombres will pay money for? Me! And do I get a soundproof room to enjoy my old age in? I’ll bet I don’t. Know what I’ll get? The mortgage, and shaking down the furnace, and a nice, new, shiny lawnmower to push round and round and round!”

  “And I’ll get a sink-strainer with a green edge, and maybe a washing machine.” Virginia lay across the foot of the bed, untying Mike’s shoestrings and tying them again in tidy knots. Trying not to remember that when he tied them again he would be—where? “Where will you be at four o’clock tomorrow, Mike?”

  Mike twisted, reached for his coat, got out a colored folder.

  “Here,” he showed her the dotted line that marked the route of the plane, “looking down into a green jungle, maybe—”

  So far—so far! Suddenly she could not bear it. She began to cry a little, chokily, swallowing her sobs, winking back her tears. She tried to smile bravely at the same time and did badly at it.

  “The world,” she strangled, “is just too big!”

  Mike held her close. “Not so big, Ginny. Look—I’m in Miami in the morning—and the next morning I’m—away over here. And I can get back just as fast as that. Think how long it took the old sailing ships to make that trip—and even after they made the coast, it took weeks to get back into the interior, to places you can fly to now in three or four hours.”

  “I know,” said Virginia breathily, “I’m trying to concentrate on the wonders of progress—but somehow all I can think about is all those miles of blue water in between.”

  “Listen—do you know that if you want to, you can talk to me by telephone? I’ll tell you—November seventh is my birthday—I’ll call you up then—I’ll let you know the exact hour.”

  “November seventh—you mean you’ll be gone—that long?”

  “Only a little over a month, angel. I told you I haven’t an idea how long I’ll be down there—or where they’ll send me from there. There’s a rather ticklish diplomatic situation down there in those countries, right now—and serious need of consolidating goodwill before the penetration and propaganda from Europe get a foothold. Those countries could be alienated from the United States mighty easy—and a little publicity in American newspapers—decent publicity that will make tourists realize that they’re interesting places to see, will help a lot. The papers are willing to overlook the advertising aspect of this stuff I’m going to do, to help along the relationship between the Americas—and they’re willing to buy the stuff when probably they could get it free. So I think I’m pretty lucky.
”

  “I suppose so,” said Virginia patiently, “and I’m lucky to have so much work to do that I won’t have time to brood and be desolate, except at night. But you will come back just as soon as you can, won’t you, Mike?”

  “Do you think you are the only person who is going to be counting the hours, gal? Do you think I’m going to be having fun down there—away from you? Well, then!”

  And then it was the last hour.

  Drizzling mist and darkness, and the plane for Miami standing on the runway at Newark, engine walloping over slowly, mailbags being stowed away, passengers, their faces greenish and wan in the floodlights, saying goodbye, climbing the little steps, waving.

  Virginia stood close to Mike and looked up at the sky. So high, so lonely and aloof, so filled with secret darkness! Panic ran through her blood like white pain.

  “Oh, Mike—Mike!”

  “Ginny—darling!”

  He held her, and then with a quick, crushing kiss, put her out of his arms and ran. The red and white lights of the plane became small, colored stars against the empty mystery of the sky as the plane roared upward. The people on the ground looked at each other dully and then went their ways.

  Somehow, Virginia got back to the station, where her bags had been checked. Somehow, she got back to Washington and up the two flights of stairs to her little apartment. There, under the door, was a yellow envelope.

  Her first thought was that Mike had sent a message to comfort her in her first loneliness, but she saw that the date-line was local, the message had, been sent the day before.

  HARRISON HAD SERIOUS ACCIDENT STOP PLEASE SEE HER AS SOON AS YOU RETURN AT COLUMBIA HOSPITAL STOP IMPORTANT MARY GARGAN.

  Mary Gargan was Teresa’s secretary.

  Virginia looked at her watch. Midnight. She couldn’t see Teresa till morning. She opened her bags dully and put a few things away. She brushed her hair, put on an old pair of pajamas and put out the light, creeping into bed to lie there, emotionally spent, forgetting Teresa, forgetting to speculate about the calamity that had overtaken her employer, because her heart was flying southward with Mike.