“It’s so awful to say good night. Can’t I come in for a minute?”
“Yes.”
Sitting close together in a trance before the flickering, lessening fire, they were oblivious that their common fate was being coolly weighed by a man of fifty who lay in a hot bath some blocks away.
II
Tom Squires had guessed from Annie’s extremely kind and detached manner of the afternoon that he had failed to interest her. He had promised himself that in such an eventuality he would drop the matter, but now he found himself in no such humour. He did not want to many her; he simply wanted to see her and be with her a little; and up to the moment of her sweetly casual, half-passionate, yet wholly unemotional kiss, giving her up would have been easy, for he was past the romantic age; but since that kiss the thought of her made his heart move up a few inches in his chest and beat there steady and fast.
“But this is the time to get out,” he said to himself. “My age; no possible right to force myself into her life.”
He rubbed himself dry, brushed his hair before the mirror, and, as he laid down the comb, said decisively: “That is that.” And after reading for an hour he turned out the lamp with a snap and repeated aloud: “That is that.”
In other words, that was not that at all, and the click of material things did not finish Annie Lorry as a business decision might be settled by the tap of a pencil on the table.
“I’m going to carry this matter a little further,” he said to himself about half past four; on that acknowledgement he turned over and found sleep.
In the morning she had receded somewhat, but by four o’clock in the afternoon she was all around him—the phone was for calling her, a woman’s footfalls passing his office were her footfalls, the snow outside the window was blowing, perhaps, against her rosy face.
“There is always the little plan I thought of last night,” he said to himself. “In ten years I’ll be sixty, and then no youth, no beauty for me ever any more.”
In a sort of panic he took a sheet of note paper and composed a carefully phrased letter to Annie’s mother, asking permission to pay court to her daughter. He took it himself into the hall, but before the letter slide he tore it up and dropped the pieces in a cuspidor.
“I couldn’t do such an underhand trick,” he told himself, “at my age.” But this self-congratulation was premature, for he rewrote the letter and mailed it before he left his office that night.
Next day the reply he had counted on arrived—he could have guessed its very words in advance. It was a curt and indignant refusal.
It ended:
think it best that you and my daughter meet no more.
Very Sincerely Yours,
MABEL TOLLMAN LORRY.
“And now,” Tom thought coolly, “we’ll see what the girl says to that.”
He wrote a note to Annie. Her mother’s letter had surprised him it said but perhaps it was best that they should meet no more, in view of her mother’s attitude.
By return post came Annie’s defiant answer to her mother’s fiat: “THIS isn’t the Dark Ages. I’ll see you whenever I like.” She named a rendezvous for the following afternoon. Her mother’s short-sightedness brought about what he failed to achieve directly; for where Annie had been on the point of dropping him, she was now determined to do nothing of the sort And the secrecy engendered by disapproval at home simply contributed the missing excitement. As February hardened into deep, solemn, interminable winter, she met him frequently and on a new basis. Sometimes they drove over to St Paul to see a picture or to have dinner; sometimes they parked far out on a boulevard in his coupe, while the bitter sleet glazed the windshield to opacity and furred his lamps with ermine. Often he brought along something special to drink—enough to make her gay, but, carefully, never more; for mingled with his other emotions about her was something paternally concerned.
Laying his cards on the table, he told her that it was her mother who had unwittingly pushed her towards him, but Annie only laughed at bis duplicity.
She was having a better time with him than with anyone else she had ever known. In place of the selfish exigency of a younger man, he showed her a never-failing consideration. What if his eyes were tired, his cheeks a little leathery and veined, if his will was masculine and strong. Moreover, his experience was a window looking out upon a wider, richer world; and with Randy Cambell next day she would feel less taken care of, less valued, less rare.
It was Tom now who was vaguely discontented. He had what he wanted—her youth at his side—and he felt that anything further would be a mistake.
His liberty was precious to him and he could offer her only a dozen years before he would be old, but she had become something precious to him and he perceived that drifting wasn’t fair. Then one day late in February the matter was decided out of hand.
They had ridden home from St Paul and dropped into the College Club for tea, breaking together through the drifts that masked the walk and rimmed the door. It was a revolving door; a young man came around in it and stepping into his space, they smelt onions and whisky. The door revolved again after them, and he was back within, facing them. It was Randy Cambell; his face was flushed, his eyes dull and hard.
“Hello, beautiful,” he said, approaching Annie.
“Don’t come so close,” she protested lightly. “You smell of onions.”
“You’re particular all of a sudden.”
“Always. I’m always particular.” Annie made a slight movement back towards Tom.
“Not always,” said Randy unpleasantly. Then, with increased emphasis and a fractional glance at Tom: “Not always.” With his remark he seemed to join the hostile world outside. “And I’ll just give you a tip,” he continued: “Your mother’s inside.”
The jealous ill-temper of another generation reached Tom only faintly, like the protest of a child, but at this impertinent warning he bristled with annoyance.
“Come on, Annie,” he said brusquely. “We’ll go in.”
With her glance uneasily averted from Randy, Annie followed Tom into the big room.
It was sparsely populated; three middle-aged women sat near the fire. Momentarily Annie drew back, then she walked towards them.
“Hello, mother… Mrs Trumble… Aunt Caroline.”
The two latter responded; Mrs Trumble even nodded faintly at Tom. But Annie’s mother got to her feet without a word, her eyes frozen, her mouth drawn. For a moment she stood staring at her daughter; then she turned abruptly and left the room.
Tom and Annie found a table across the room.
“Wasn’t she terrible?” said Annie, breathing aloud. He didn’t answer.
“For three days she hasn’t spoken to me.” Suddenly she broke out: “Oh, people can be so small! I was going to sing the leading part in the Junior League show, and yesterday Cousin Mary Betts, the president, came to me and said I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because a representative Junior League girl mustn’t defy her mother. As if I were a naughty child!”
Tom stared on at a row of cups on the mantelpiece—two or three of them bore his name. “Perhaps she was right,” he said suddenly. “When I begin to do harm to you it’s time to stop.”
“What do you mean?”
At her shocked voice his heart poured a warm liquid forth into his body, but he answered quietly: “You remember I told you I was going South? Well, I’m going tomorrow.”
There was an argument, but he had made up his mind. At the station next evening she wept and clung to him.
“Thank you for the happiest month I’ve had in years,” he said.
“But you’ll come back, Tom.”
“I’ll be two months in Mexico; then I’m going East for a few weeks.”
He tried to sound fortunate, but the frozen city he was leaving seemed to be in blossom. Her frozen breath was a flower on the air, and his heart sank as he realized that some young man was waiting outside to take her home in a car hung with blooms.
“Good-bye, Annie. Good-bye, sweet!”
Two days later he spent the morning in Houston with Hal Meigs, a classmate at Yale.
“You’re in luck for such an old fella,” said Meigs at luncheon, “because I’m going to introduce you to the cutest little travelling companion you ever saw, who’s going all the way to Mexico City.”
The lady in question was frankly pleased to learn at the station that she was not returning alone. She and Tom dined together on the train and later played rummy for an hour; but when, at ten o’clock, standing in the door of the stateroom, she turned back to him suddenly with a certain look, frank and unmistakable, and stood there holding that look for a long moment, Tom Squires was suddenly in the grip of an emotion that was not the one in question. He wanted desperately to see Annie, call her for a second on the phone, and then fall asleep, knowing she was young and pure as a star, and safe in bed. “Good night,” he said, trying to keep any repulsion out of his voice.
“Oh! Good night.”
Arriving in El Paso next day, he drove over the border to Juarez. It was bright and hot, and after leaving his bags at the station he went into a bar for an iced drink; as he sipped it a girl’s voice addressed him thickly from the table behind:
“You’n American?”
He had noticed
