The Hunter and Other Stories Part 14

"You don't think I'm going back there to be the b.u.t.t of the town, do you? You don't think I want to see your grinning face every time I put my head out of the house, do you?"

"Aw, don't be a chump!" he remonstrated. He sat up and took her arm. "Suppose we pretend you knew about him all the time? That both of us were stringing him along trying to get the goods on him?"

She pulled her arm away.

"That would be wonderful! I'd enjoy spending the rest of my life at your mercy, listening to your private jokes whenever I couldn't keep out of your way, and knowing that you could make me the laughing-stock of the town whenever the notion happened to strike you."

She stood up and smoothed her coat.

"And, besides, how many people would be fooled? No, thanks! I'm going to say good-bye to Robson. I've already said it. I'm away and I'm going to stay away. I'm sorry to spoil your little joke, but you know how contrary and pig-headed I am."

The young man held out a foot and looked at it, and as he looked, scowling a little, his face slowly reddened. His mouth jerked twice before words came out, but they came carelessly enough at last.

"If it'd do you any good, Joan, you could marry me and take me back to Robson."

She was standing with her face toward the Library, across the Civic Center. She looked at him without turning her head, a sidewise moving of the green-brown irises that crowded them into the corners of her eyes. He did not look up.

"That would serve both of us right," she said scornfully. "But exactly what possible good could it do me?"

He turned his foot so that more of the shoe's toe came into the field of his intent vision, and he spoke with an absence of enthusiasm that could hardly have been managed except consciously.

"Everybody knows that only lovers save maidens from villains." He chuckled here with mild derision. "Married to me, you'll be the rescued heroine of a romance-instead of a comic character." The second chuckle was harshly derisive. "And in a couple of days you'll have yourself believing the same thing. Then you'll have the advantage over me that a woman always has over a man who went to much trouble to get her. You'll be safely on top. Any joking I try to do about Hannibal will fall flat. You'll be firmly convinced that I turned myself inside-out trying to save you from him so I could win you for myself."

Her eyes burned darkly. She caught lip between teeth and jerked around to face him. He would not look up from his shoe. Her eyes narrowed. Coldness replaced the heat in them. She left off biting her lip and her mouth became straight and firm.

"You're sure it will work out that way?" she asked calmly.

"Sure!" He was studying the other foot now. "All these downtrodden husbands you see got that way from putting a high value on their wives in the early days, and letting their wives find it out. It's sure dynamite."

"Are you sure"-her voice was soft but her eyes were not-"that m-marrying me won't inconvenience you?"

"Hardly any." Now the young man looked up at her, and his face was without guile. "Old Ahearn fired me this morning, and I've got nothing special to do until I find another job."

"Well," her voice was pleasantly polite, and as free from any other expression as her face, "if you're sure it won't be a bother. . . ."

"Nothing to speak of," he a.s.sured her as he got up from the bench.

They went leisurely across Polk Street to the Munic.i.p.al Building again.

In the lobby no elevator was immediately at their service. They did not wait the necessary few seconds, but began to climb the stairs, climbing quite breathlessly before they had gone six steps up. Both of her hands were on his forearm. His other hand held them there.

WEEK--END.

On the bed Mildred had piled the things she intended taking with her: a mound of silks and crepes and laces, glowing under the room's one electric light, here pink and salmon, there flesh and cream, streaked irregularly by deeper ribbon-colors. Now Mildred, looking anxiously at her wrist watch, began moving the mound from bed to bag, packing with breathless care, with the infinite pains of a window-dresser.

The door opened and Mildred's mother came two steps into the room. She was a gaunt woman in her late forties. Ill-fitting teeth pushed her thin lips awry. Her pallid eyes protruded disapprovingly.

"A person would think you were going on your honeymoon," said she.

The pink in Mildred's face deepened. She bent low over the bag that the flush might seem to come from packing efforts. Envelopes, nightgowns, camisoles on the bed seemed confessions. The cream of several Christmases and birthdays, heretofore too fine for wear, they had an obscene eloquence. Their profusion underscored the confession: they exceeded two days' possible requirements, but they were soft and fine and would go easily into the bag; she had yielded to the temptation to take them all-a holiday gesture.

"No use letting them rot in the drawer." She did not look up. "I might just as well wear them and get some use out of them."

She went on packing, with exaggerated slowness now, hoping her mother would leave the room before she was done. The elder woman watched her daughter's preparations with severe pale eyes. When the last thing had gone into the bag and Mildred had looked through the bureau to make sure she had forgotten nothing, her mother spoke again.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're thinking of, running off after this Harry Kenney. Seems to me a young girl with any shame about her would wait for her young man to come see her." Her voice, aping resignation, achieved whining hostility. "And taking a day off from the office, and drawing two weeks' pay, when we need so many things. Fred has got to have shoes, and the dining-room couch is falling to pieces. I declare, I don't know what's got into you!"

"I don't care what we need. I'm tired of always scrimping and sc.r.a.ping and never having anything. I'm going to see Harry before he goes east if it's the last thing I do. I'm going to do something I want to do once."

"Oh, you'll have your own way, I know! There's no use of me talking. But I do hate to see you getting yourself talked about and doing things that a modest girl wouldn't do, after all the trouble I've gone to to bring you up right. Do you think your Harry will ever marry you with you running after him every time he crooks a finger? Likely!"

Mildred winced.

"How do you know I want to marry him?"

Her mother's lips writhed back between machine-trimmed teeth-edges.

"Look out you don't have to," she said harshly.

At a little after eight Mildred left the house, though her train did not go until half past nine. She stopped at the corner drug store for a box of someone's seasickness preventative. She never felt well on trains and the pills had been recommended by one of the girls in the office.

She reached the station a little before eight-thirty-an hour's wait. After taking two of the pills in the dressing-room she bought a magazine and sat on a bench near the iron gates that opened into the train shed. She was not so excited as she had expected to be, not nearly so much so as she had been the last two days. She looked at the pictures in the magazine, peering every few minutes at the clock across the concourse, comparing it with her wrist watch.

Presently hunger reminded her that she had not eaten since noon, had neglected the evening meal for dressing and packing. At the station lunch-counter she ordered a sandwich, a slice of pie, a cup of coffee. She had no appet.i.te for them when they were set before her. She ate a mouthful of the sandwich and half the pie, was.h.i.+ng the food down with coffee.

Excitement returned to her. When the gates were opened she was nervous, fl.u.s.tered, unreasonably afraid she would get aboard the wrong train. She asked three uniformed men for directions during her walk down the long platform. When she reached her car her berth was already made up. She got into it at once.

The night was interminable. The air was heavily odorous. She could not adjust her body comfortably to the berth. The other pa.s.sengers were oppressively near. The rattling and rocking made her head ache. She was nauseated and from time to time took more of the pills, swallowing them difficultly without water. Switching on the light, trying to read, she found darkness preferable. When she dozed the jarring halts and starts at the frequent stations shook her into wakefulness. After dawn she lay looking out the window until the whirling country brought giddiness. She lowered the blind and tried to sleep until it was time to get up and dress.

The hurry and bustle from train to ferry in Oakland stimulated her. A light drizzle was falling. She felt unclean: the water in the train had been cold and she had been unable to do much with the small quant.i.ty the bowl held. But as she stood in the broad bow of the boat crossing the bay the damp salt wind washed away the taste and smell of cinders and smoke. The buildinged hills of San Francisco were gray in the rain, an inviting and cordial gray until she thought perhaps Harry wouldn't be there to meet her, then the approaching city was cold, hostile.

The crowd swept her through the ferry building toward the street. Harry, standing beside a flower stand, saw her, pushed through the crowd. He was short-barely an inch taller than Mildred-and, while he was not young for his thirty years, his mouth and eyes were boyish. He took her bag and led her toward a row of taxicabs, telling her the while how glad he was to see her, how fine it was of her to come all this distance to see him.

"Can't we walk, Harry?" she protested. "I'm tired of riding."

"Sure." He guided her across the Embarcadero.

The rain came down harder, but she did not mind. She had not eaten on the train, had eaten only a few mouthfuls since the previous noon. Now hunger came. In a restaurant in O'Farrell Street he smoked and talked over his coffee while she ate fried ham and waffles.

"We'll get a room and then I'll show you everything in the city," he promised. She had not been in San Francis...o...b..fore.

"Now, listen, Harry," she said. "I know you're glad to see me and everything, but I came on my own account and I'm going to pay my own bills while I'm here. I mean it."

"Nonsense!" he laughed smokily. "But we'll fight that out after we get up to our room."

"Harry!" Mildred's face was suddenly rosy. "I couldn't!"

"Couldn't what?"

"We can't have a room together! That wouldn't be right!"

"Wouldn't be right? Nonsense! I'm going away and maybe we won't see each other again for months. I'm not going to fumble the only chance I've ever had of having you all to myself for two days. Be reasonable!"

"No, no! We couldn't." Mildred shook her head. Her eyes were frightened. "It wouldn't be right. You can come up to my room, but-"

"It'll be great," he insisted, "whether it's right or not, and I'll sit here and battle with you all day before I'll let you swindle me out of this chance."

They argued. The principle on which she based her refusal to share a room with him was too obscure for adequate defense: the objection did not extend to those intimacies to which that sharing would be a means. Her opposition presently was smothered by repet.i.tions of "Nonsense," a favorite word of his.

They went to a hotel in Ellis Street, where she pretended interest in a framed map of California on the wall while he signed the register, George Burns and wife, Los Angeles. In their room she bathed and he made her lie down and try to sleep while he went out to see a fellow. Her headache returned. She tossed restlessly on the bed until Harry came back. Then they went out for luncheon.

The rain continued. She decided she would rather go to a matinee than sight-seeing. The music and lights made her head ache more violently. After the performance they returned to the hotel.

Later in the evening they went to a cabaret in Mason Street. She had never been in a cabaret before and momentarily expected some vague horror. The food was not bad and nothing exceptionable happened, but she was not comfortable, sat primly and disapprovingly straight on the edge of her chair. Harry looked disappointed, almost bored, though he talked gaily, volubly. Two tables away a woman lighted a cigarette. Mildred averted her face as from a shameful spectacle, and though Harry chaffed her good-naturedly about it she would not look in that direction again. They left early and went back to the hotel.

Harry had bought some magazines and the Sunday papers. He lay across the bed smoking and reading to her. She wondered with how many women he had spent days and nights like this. The matter-of-factness that made it bearable for her testified, she thought, to familiarity with the situation. But that, of course, was all right. He had never disguised his att.i.tude toward this part of life. Perhaps that was why he had always had his way with her. She would have liked to have had him more ardent now, but that was not to be expected. He had never seriously said he loved her-not like that. He was not like that.

After a while he stopped reading and jumped into bed. She was long going to sleep. The street noises kept her awake. Her head ached, ached, ached. The thought that Harry had not wanted to see her before he went east came. She sat up in bed.

Harry rolled over, ran the back of a hand across his eyes, asked sleepily, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said and kissed him.

Though the windows were wide the room was intolerably stuffy. She perspired. Accustomed to sleeping alone, every time she turned she b.u.mped against Harry. He woke once or twice, talked drowsily, went back to sleep. The night dragged through.

Rain was still falling in the morning. Mildred fidgeted in bed until Harry opened his eyes. He grinned jovially under his tousled hair. The stubble on his chin sc.r.a.ped her face when he kissed her.

"h.e.l.l of a day," he said lazily, looking at the gray windows. "What say we eat up here?"

He telephoned for breakfast and got in bed again, to lie on his back with the ash from his cigarette sprinkling down on the sheets. She liked this, this lying beside him in the gray morning, with his rumpled hair and bearded cheek against her arm, smoke in little swirls overhead.

When breakfast came she had an appet.i.te for it, and her head did not ache so much. The boat connecting with her train left at five. They staid in the hotel room until after two. Then, the rain having stopped, they went for a walk, had dinner, and went to the ferry. Harry kissed her good-bye.

Mildred took two of the pills on the boat and two more a little later. She had the porter make up her berth as soon as possible, got into it, and slept until daybreak. After she woke she took two more pills and tried to go back to sleep, but she could not lie still. A muscular pain in her side brought familiar fears. Crying a little, she tried to pray, but had to give it up: Harry's face, and the face of the woman who had smoked in the cabaret, intruded. She turned on her other side and the pain diminished.

She wondered what Harry was doing now, if she would ever see him again. She would get letters from him for a while anyway. The deception of the George Burns and wife, Los Angeles worried her. Hadn't Harry really wanted to see her before he went away, or hadn't he been able to come? But he had seemed glad. She had let him pay for everything after insisting on paying her own share. The miserable night on the train going to San Francisco. . . . the sleepless night in the noisy hotel room. . . . this night. . . . she cried softly until time to get up.

The train reached her station at seven-thirty, giving her time to go home for breakfast before reporting at the office. Kissing her mother, she found none of the elder woman's hostility gone.

"Well, I suppose you had a wonderful time," her mother said bitterly.

Mildred halted with a foot on the stairs.

"Oh, it was lovely!" she cried.

Her mother sniffed.

Mildred changed into office clothes and went down to the kitchen for breakfast. Her mother set dishes before her in silence that held until Mildred began to eat.

"I only hope"-the elder woman's tone held nothing of hopefulness-"that you didn't do anything to bring shame on your family."

Mildred put down the piece of toast she had been about to bite.

"I should think you'd be ashamed to say such things to your own daughter, or even think them. You talk as if a person couldn't have any fun without being-being what you mean. I had more fun than I ever had in my life before, and if you want to think things about me I can't help it. Go ahead and think what you want. I'm glad I went. I had more fun than I ever had in my life before."

Hurrying down Park Street toward the office, Mildred repeated to herself, tentatively, "I had more fun than I ever had in my life before."

ON THE WAY.

A Brief Cinematic Interlude Enacted under Western Skies He lowered his newspaper and turned his browned lean face toward her. His smile showed white, even teeth between hard lips. "Click?" His voice was metallic, but not unpleasant.

"Clicked," she said triumphantly and took her hat off with a flourish and threw it at the green sofa. Her eyes were enlarged, glowing. "Two fifty a week for the first six months, with options."

"That's swell." He opened his arms to her, the newspaper dangling by a corner from one of his hands. "Up the ladder for you now, huh?"

She sat on his knees, wriggled back against his body, thrust her face up at his. Her face was happy. Her voice, after they had kissed, was grave, saying: "For both of us. You're as much a part of it as I am. You gave me something that-"

His eyes did not avoid hers, though they seemed about to. He patted her shoulder with his empty hand and said awkwardly, "Nonsense. You always had things-just a little trouble knowing what to do with them."

She squirmed in his lap, leaning back a little to peer more directly into his eyes. The slight puzzled drawing together of her brows did not lessen the happiness in her face. "Are you trying to back out?" she demanded with mock severity.

He grinned, said, "No, not that, but-" and cleared his throat.

She stood up slowly and stepped back from his arms curving out to enclose her. Playfulness went out of her face, leaving it solemn around dark questioning eyes. She stood in front of the man and looked down at him and uneasiness flickered behind his grin.

"Kipper," she said softly, then touched her lower lip with the end of her tongue and was silent while her gaze ran down from his eyes to his naked ankles-he was a long, raw-boned man in brown silk pajamas under a brown-striped silk robe-and up again.

He, somewhat embarra.s.sed, chuckled and recrossed his legs. The movement of the newspaper in his hand caught her attention and she saw the "s.h.i.+pping News" folded outside.

She looked levelly at him and asked levelly, "Getting restless?"

He replied slowly, "Well, you can get along all right now you've got a foot on the ladder and-"

She interrupted him sharply, "How much money have you got left?"

He smiled up at her, shook his head from side to side in answer to the question behind her question, and said, "I've got a grubstake."

She was speaking again before he had finished. Her words tumbled out rapidly, her tone was indignant. "If it's money, you're insulting me. You know that, don't you? You carried me long enough. We can get along on two hundred and fifty a week till you get something. You know yourself both F-G-B and Peerless have sea pictures coming up and you're a cinch for a technical job on-"

He smiled again and shook his head again. "Cross my heart it's not money, Gladys." He crossed his heart with a long forefinger.