The Mulberry Bush

by Helen Topping Miller

  “He thinks he’s sixty or seventy top-rate daily newspapers,” Harriet punched the elevator button, “and he’s right. I’m going to work for him.”

  “You’re going to write—for Bill?”

  “He thinks I can do it. Women’s angle. Not quite so political as Dorothy Thompson and not so feminine as Mrs. Roosevelt. Stuff women will read. Do you mind taking me to lunch, Mike? I had to get you out of there some way, before you blew up and ruined everything. Bill’s right, of course. And you can’t kick your job in the face.”

  “I’d like to kick him in the face—the fat lug!”

  “Pinches, doesn’t it, Michael the Great? It’s always a jar to discover that the king can do wrong. That’s the worst about hitting the top—you have to stay there, and sticking is a slippery business. That’s the only thing I’m dubious about—so far I’ve been doing pretty well, slogging along in my comfortable little rut.”

  “You’ve been doing swell. I’ve been watching your stuff.”

  “Have you?” Her eyes came up for a minute, and something odd showed in them briefly, something like pain. Then she was airy again, brittle, her head high. “I’m flattered.”

  Mike was puzzled. She was proud, of course—but all this was exactly as if nothing had happened.

  “Let’s go in here,” she suggested. “There are always interesting people here at lunch time, though we’re a trifle early. I have to lunch early to get my copy out in the afternoon.”

  Though it was still early, there were men there whom Mike knew.

  He nodded to them briefly, pulled out Harriet’s chair. But, before she sat down, she was waving to a tall, sandy young man, sitting alone.

  “Hello, Piggy,” she greeted. “Come on over. You know Mike Paull? This is Piggy Branton. He’s U.P.”

  “How are you, son?” Mike shook hands with Piggy, who was quick-eyed and eager, and under twenty-five.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Paull. Been down south, haven’t you?” Piggy jerked out a chair and swung a leg over the back. “Garçon—bring my chow over here. I’m dining with all the famous people. Well, how’d you make out, Harrie?”

  “I sewed him up, Piggy. Two thousand words a week to start—Sundays only. It’s a beginning.”

  “I’ll say it’s a beginning,” Piggy gloated. “To crash that hard-boiled outfit is more than a beginning. It’s being halfway there. Of course, it wouldn’t look like much to Mr. Paull, here, but to type-lice like you and me, Harrie—pretty elegant! And you can do it. You’ll be up with the big ones in a couple of years.”

  “Well, the Lord knows I’ve worked,” sighed Harriet, scanning the menu. “I want an omelet with jelly, Mike—and some hot tea.”

  “I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Mike told the waiter heavily. He felt old. He felt somehow lost. Sitting here, with the enthusiasm of these young things crackling around his head like sparks, he felt sunk and tired and bitter. Bill Foster—his rage stirred again. If he thought he could rake Mike Paull over the coals—talk to him as though he were some raw cub reporter with fringe on his pants and needing a neck-shave—.

  Harriet said, evenly, letting her lovely eyebrows drift, “Oh yes, don’t let me forget, Mike—I must give you back your ring.”

  Piggy looked disturbed, sensing something personal and private. Mike got his breath with a sick gulp and shiver, as though some one had hit him in the stomach.

  He said, with some indignation, “But that ring was a present. I finagled all over Europe to get it for you. It’s yours.”

  “Oh, was it a present?” She kept her cool detachment. “I haven’t been wearing it lately—I think it is unlucky. Anyway, I’ve had marvelous luck lately—several kinds of extra fancy luck.”

  “That’s fine.” Mike caught himself before the sixth lump of sugar went into his coffee. What was the matter with him? Here he’d been dreading seeing her—and now she was taking it like this and still he felt all wrong.

  “She worked for her luck,” said Piggy fervently.

  “Sure, she worked for it.”

  “Oh, there’s Dade!” Harriet exclaimed. “Call him over, Piggy. I want to tell him about Bill.”

  Dade was older, he had another name, but Mike could not remember it. He was handsome, and it was apparent immediately that he admired Harriet intensely. Mike slumped in his chair while they talked across his head. The young men were deferential, too darned deferential. They called him Mr. Paull. They treated him as though he were elderly and pontifical. Mike stood it as long as he could and then made his final gesture. He picked up the check.

  He said, “Well, goodbye, kids. See you all again sometime. Goodbye, Harriet.”

  “Goodbye, Mike—and, oh yes, congratulations and everything.”

  “What did he do?” asked Piggy, before Mike was out of hearing.

  “Oh, he married a girl—some girl,” said Harriet coolly.

  “My gosh!” muttered Mike dazedly to himself as he went out, “she didn’t care—she didn’t care at all!”

  All his carefully rehearsed speeches, all the excuses, the pleas, all the nervous alibis he had made up, were so much wasted nervous energy. She just didn’t care. She had sent him away with a wave of the hand, just another man—just another moth attracted by the flame—of her black eyes. Mike felt sick with fury. He went back to his hotel room and threw himself on the bed. He did not unpack Elvira. He did not write.

  Bill Foster wanted four thousand words, but Bill could go to hell. Something deep and bright and living in Mike Paull’s soul had been violated, something cocksure and confident had been slain. He had no experience by which to gage the pain of this outrage. He had been good, he had been one of the best. He had swaggered and laughed his way through life, taking its gifts blithely—and now life dealt him a dirty blow under the belt, a blow at his over-stimulated pride.

  Copy—by Michael Paull—in the wastebasket! And Bill Foster saying his stuff was rotten!

  He stirred himself, later in the afternoon, and began to gather his belongings together. He’d get out of this foul town. Let them look for him. Let them burn the wires up. Let them beg him to come back. He was Michael Paull.

  There was some little brightness left in a black and putrid world. There was Ginny. His Ginny. He would still be important to Ginny, he would still be a person. He was her husband. Ginny believed in him. He ached for her suddenly, in every fiber of his heart and brain.

  The plane he took was too slow. It was dark when he landed in Washington, and a bleak wind was blowing down the Potomac, dragging the naked boughs of the trees along the Basin, making the street lights dance and sway.

  But to Mike the city wore a look of enchantment, because Ginny was in it. Up there, on that historic height was a room, and the windows would be bright with welcome.

  She’d have on that little green apron, perhaps, and her hair would be out of its prim curls and shining in the light. Mike breathed so deeply that it hurt. This was coming home. He’d never really come home before. He hadn’t had a home to come to—not for years. He felt young again, like a boy returned to his mother. The taxi seemed to crawl.

  The ancient bricks of the narrow, uphill street jolted the springs. And there was the house—but the windows were dark.

  Mike slid forward on the edge of the seat, his hand on the door handle. He was out almost before the taxi stopped. Dark—but she was working late, of course. She’d written him about Teresa’s illness.

  He went up the stairs. One flight—two flights. He opened the door—with a bottle opener. Mail lying on the floor. He picked it up, snapped on the light. The glare of it shone on the bleakness, the emptiness of a place that appeared not to have been lived in lately.

  Rust in the sink, dust on the furniture, the refrigerator empty, its door left open.

  And on the dressing table, limp and wilted in a glass of yellowed water, one green orchid. />
  Chapter 17

  While Mike was chafing and fretting in Lima, affairs at the bureau of Harrison Tours were growing more and more frantic, tilt Virginia’s nerves were tightened almost to the breaking point.

  Mary Gargan was still in the hospital, her overwrought nerves and weakened body reacting very slowly from the overdose of the drug. She was still too weak to sit up, she had difficulty in retaining food.

  Ryder had come to the office the morning after Mary’s attempted suicide, and though he had looked more washed-out and thinner than ever, his vague face had been set in a mask of decision.

  “I’ve moved out, Miss Warfield,” he said. “I’m not going back. I told her she could divorce me for desertion—and that she could sue for alimony if she wanted to—and that if she didn’t do it soon, I’d file papers myself.”

  “And that means,” Virginia said kindly, “that Mary won’t be coming back here anymore, I suppose?”

  He turned his hat nervously in his hands. “She—wants to keep on working. She says she wants to help me get out of debt—get ahead a little.”

  “By all means, let her help you then. That is what a marriage ought to be—sharing and helping each other.”

  A half-dozen girls had come and gone, trying and failing to carryon Mary’s work. Virginia was at the office late at night, she came down before eight, she closed her desk sometimes so tired that her hands shook and her sight was blurred. Bruce Gamble waited for her often, took her to quiet places, made her eat. His manner was gentle and paternal, he did not repeat his passionate outburst, he was merely there, patient and thoughtful and protective. She found herself depending upon him, dreading the day when she would have to send him away forever.

  For of course that day was near. She was married to Mike. She held stoutly to the certainty that, ultimately, things would be settled between herself and Mike. She fought down her doubts and uneasiness, even when days passed and no more letters came. She was too overworked, too desperately hurried, too dull with weariness at night, to try to write letters—and she reminded herself that undoubtedly Mike was weary too.

  The Cuban contracts were in a muddle. Someone would have to go—she studied the list of college men that Teresa employed sporadically, trying to decide which one it would be safe to send on such an important mission, and she was dubiously weeding out the prospects when the door opened and a small, gray, elderly man walked in.

  He was slight and stooped and vaguely shabby in a genteel way. His small mustache was white, his eyes blue, and his face anxious and gentle. He wore a gray suit and an overcoat a trifle shiny at the seams.

  “How do you do?” Virginia said briskly. “Something for you?”

  He licked his lips nervously. “Could I see Mrs. Harrison, please?”

  “I’m sorry. Mrs. Harrison is ill. She is not allowed to see anyone. Can I do anything for you?”

  He came and stood beside the desk, looking around uncertainly. He cleared his throat before he spoke.

  “I don’t know.” He seemed confused. “I wanted to see her. You see—I’m Oscar Harrison.”

  Virginia looked at him in astonishment. She had almost forgotten Teresa’s husband in the tension of the past days. Now she studied him keenly. Certainly there was nothing furtive or unpleasant about this man, who was probably sixty or more. He had a good face, a pleasant voice, a face that was patient though there was little grimness of purpose in it. His eyes were kind and a little bewildered.

  “Is she seriously ill?”

  “Quite ill. It’s her heart.” Virginia explained about Teresa’s fall and the attack she had had. “So, even if she wanted to see you, I’m afraid—” she hesitated.

  He spoke quietly. “She wouldn’t want to see me. She has definitely refused to see me—for years. But—I was in town—I thought perhaps—” he faltered, and his eyes darkened a little.

  “If I can help you in any way, Mr. Harrison-” she said, “I’m Virginia Warfield. I’ve been here nearly six years. And just now I’m running the office alone. It’s a trifle strenuous.”

  “I know how strenuous it can be,” he said. “I started this business.”

  “I didn’t know that. Please sit down, Mr. Harrison. Hang your overcoat over there. Do you smoke?” She offered the box of cigarettes always kept for customers. He took one, said, “Thank you,” gravely, seated himself in the chair she indicated.

  “I’m—in a peculiar position, Miss Warfield,” he said. “I haven’t discussed it with anyone, of course—but the truth is, I still own the controlling interest in this business. Ever see the original charter?”

  “No, never. Mrs. Harrison never discussed anything but—contemporary problems with me.”

  “We started this bureau—Mrs. Harrison and I,” he went on, flipping ashes into the wastebasket. She saw that his nails were very clean, though the edges of his cuffs were slightly frayed. He had nice hands, slender, facile, sensitive hands. “I was handling tours for the railroads then—I had to be away from home a lot and Mrs. Harrison didn’t like it. She didn’t like the way we had to live and, of course, I couldn’t blame her. So I sold some property I had in Pennsylvania, and we launched this business on our own. It was a success from the first. She made it a success,” he added.

  “She’s very capable. She has a genius for organization,” Virginia said loyally.

  “Yes, she has a genius. And I—couldn’t keep up,” he said with a little rueful smile.

  “So you let her go on alone?” Virginia asked helpfully.

  “It came to that,” he said. “It was her choice. I was to give her a free hand—stay clear away—and I was to receive a third of the net profits.”

  In his embarrassed, twitching smile, in his eyes, Virginia could read too clearly what had happened. Teresa, ruthless, vain, inordinately proud of her ability and her success, had enjoyed, with vainglorious feminine cruelty, keeping this gentle little man in a state of dependency; doling out money to him as she chose, more and more grudgingly, no doubt; keeping his very existence from her friends. It was not a pretty picture.

  She said, “Mr. Harrison, I may as well be very frank. Your wife—she is still your wife, I suppose?”

  “Yes. We were never divorced. I didn’t want a divorce—and I guess she was always too busy, or maybe she thought it would be bad publicity or something. I never troubled her. I worked at various things till times got so bad.”

  “I was going to say—she may never be well again. She has worked too hard, lived too intensely—driven herself without mercy. I’m doing the best possible—but our secretary is in the hospital. Mrs. Harrison gave me power of attorney—reluctantly—but it was impossible for me to go on without it. And now I’m not allowed by the doctors to consult her at all, so things are rather—frantic here.”

  “I wasn’t asking for an accounting—anything like that,” he put in quickly. “And I don’t ask you to accept my word—I have identification here,” he brought out a worn wallet, laid a half-dozen cards, a poll-tax receipt, and a driver’s license before her. “You can communicate with the bank here—they know me. Or you could call the bank in Philadelphia.”

  “You’re entitled to an accounting, Mr. Harrison. We’ll have some one go over the books immediately. But I wasn’t thinking so much of that, just now. I was thinking—that so long as Mrs. Harrison isn’t able to handle her affairs—I was wondering if you might be willing to help me? You say you know this business.”

  “Anything I can do—” he flushed a little, and an eager, wistful light came into his faded eyes.

  “Would you go to Cuba for us? There are some contracts down there which must be closed within the next two weeks.”

  His eyes brightened—and then his face fell. “I—Mrs. Harrison wouldn’t like it.”

  “Perhaps not. But she isn’t going to like having to cancel four Cuban tours either, and three of them are
already completely sold. I must send someone down, by the first of next week. Would you be willing to try it?”

  “I’d be glad to go. The only trouble—” he flushed a little, “I couldn’t finance any sort of trip just now.”

  “I’ll arrange all that. You’ll know what to do—you know the contacts we have to make down there, hotels, transportation, sightseeing companies, guides—I’ll get the file.”

  “Oh, yes, I know all that.” His grayness seemed to vanish. He straightened, was alert, suddenly shrewd. When she spread out the contents of the file, he knew even better than she, exactly what had to be done. “I know Plantamora,” he said. “I took several parties down there—the last one in ’29, just ahead of the crash. Had to rush them all back again, scared to death for fear they had lost everything. You’ll—explain to my wife about this?”

  “No explanations will be permitted just now. She can’t be told anything. Any worry—any agitation would be very dangerous for her.”

  “She’d be very much agitated if she knew I was having any part of this business.” He smiled again, but this time there was no apology in it.

  “I’ll arrange a drawing account for you at once, Mr. Harrison.” Virginia forbore to look at his shabby clothes, but she was thinking of Teresa’s bulging wardrobes, her costly rugs, the expensive liquor that was wasted on her chiseling friends.

  “I could use another shirt,” he said dryly.

  “I suppose I’ll be fired as soon as Teresa’s strong enough to hear about this,” Virginia told Bruce Gamble later, “but I like him. He seemed such a fine little man—and not resentful at all.”

  “Not a bad idea—your getting fired. I’m for the dependency of women—all for it,” Bruce said.

  “You’re a primitive. You go back to the cave.”

  “No, I’m merely a man—in love with you.”

  “Not giving up yet?”

  “Never giving up. Not till you belong, definitely, to some other man.”