She leaned against the damp rain on the garage door, gasping with her emotion.
“You said you wouldn’t go.”
“Seems I can’t.”
“You told me you’d wait.”
“I have to. One of the washers took my car out for a joy ride, and broke a wheel. It’ll take two days to get another.”
Roger Clark’s car was being driven out of the garage—Atlanta still had many things to say, but there was no time. All she could think of was:
“Women must come easy for you if you can do this. I don’t think you like women—you pretend to, but you don’t. That’s why you can do what you want with them.”
She heard Prout’s “Halloo!” from in front of the hotel. That was her signal and she went quickly.
All day, as they worked, she planned and planned. But it was like a condemned criminal planning to escape, but always distracted from his schemes by the sound of keys turning in locks around him—or by the hope that reprieve would come from outside, with no effort on his part.
Plans are difficult at such moments—Atlanta could only wait for an opportunity. Nevertheless, clouds of fragmentary possibilities were around her head. Perhaps Carley didn’t have much money—maybe he would be glad of a chance in Hollywood. He had been a rich jack-of-all-trades—perhaps he could be placed as a specialist in an advisory capacity.
Or, failing this, she could go East and try for a big part on the stage, train with a famous teacher—there she would at least be in touch with Carley.
Her reasoning came to wreck upon the single rock that he did not love her.
But the full force of this didn’t come home to her until she got back to the hotel in the evening—and found he was not there. Before the end of dinner she went to her room, and cried on her bed. After half an hour her throat hurt and no tears started unless she forced them; then she turned on her back and said to herself:
“This is what’s called infatuation. I used to hear about it, how it was just love without any sense to it, and the thing to do was to get over it… But just let them try it…”
She was tired; she called her maid to rub her head.
“Don’t you want to take one of these pills?” the maid suggested. “The ones that made you sleep when you had the fractured arm.”
No. Better to suffer, to feel the full poignancy of the knife in her heart.
“How many times did you knock at Mr. Delannux’s door?” Atlanta asked restlessly.
“Three or four times—then I asked downstairs and he hadn’t come in.”
—He’s with Isabelle Panzer, she thought. She’s telling him how she’s going to die for love of him. Then he’ll be sorry for her and think I’m just trivial—a little Hollywood pet.
The thought was intolerable. She sat bolt upright in the bed.
“Give me some of the sleeping stuff after all,” she said. “Give me a lot of it—all that’s left.”
“You were only supposed to take one at a time.”
They compromised on two and Atlanta sank into a doze, but waking now and then in the night, she was haunted by a dream—of Isabelle dead, and of Delannux hearing the news and saying:
“She loved me enough—so much that the world wasn’t good enough for her afterwards.”
Next morning found her with a hangover from the sedative—she had no energy for her usual dip. Dressing in a state of lethargy she rode to location without a thought, realizing that the others were looking at her with the concern reserved for people who are “upset.”
She hated that, and contrived a more cheerful front through the morning hours, laughing at everything, though it seemed as if all of her was dead except her heart, and that was pumping her bloodstream around at a hundred miles per hour.
About four they went down to the restaurant for a sandwich. Atlanta was raising hers to her mouth when Prout made his unfortunate remark.
“Delannux got the wheel for his car,” he said. “I saw it arrive when I went for the carpenter.”
In a moment she was on her feet.
“Tell Roger I’m sick! Tell him I can’t work to-day! Tell him I’ve borrowed his car!”
She dropped down the corkscrew to the main road at the speed of a roller coaster, and drew up at the hotel three minutes later—almost beside the bus from Asheville. And there, disembarking, dusty and hot and tired, was Isabelle Panzer. Atlanta caught up with her on the hotel steps.
“Can I speak to you a minute?”
Miss Panzer seemed taken back by the encounter.
“Why, yes, Miss Downs, I suppose so. I came to see Mr. Delannux.”
“What does a minute more or less matter now?”
The two women sat facing each other on the verandah.
“You love him, don’t you?” said Atlanta.
Isabelle broke suddenly.
“O God, how can you ask me that—when it’s you he loves now—it’s you he left me for—”
Atlanta shook her head.
“No. He doesn’t love me either.”
“Neither of you mean anything when you talk about love.”
To be spoken to like that by a child—a girl who had endured less in all her nursing course than Atlanta had sometimes endured in a day.
“I don’t know what love means?” she exclaimed incredulously.
She felt a sound in front of her eyes, like a miner’s lamp exploding. Something must be done about the whole matter immediately—
And then Atlanta knew what to do: she must make words real at last, put into action all she had ever thought, dreamed, pretended, been ordered to do or tempted to do, justify all that was superficial or trivial in her life, find the way to supreme consecration and consummation at last. It was plain as plain.
Deliberately she went over to the other girl and kissed her on the forehead. Then she went down the steps, climbed into Roger’s car, and drove off.
Chimney Rock restaurant was empty after the session of the day’s traffic—and, as she had hoped, there was no sign of the picture outfit.
She left the key in the car and started to leave a note but she did not know any longer exactly what she had wanted to say—anyhow she had left her purse at home with the pen in it.
Her feet and legs were stiff from the day’s climbing—well, she would leave her shoes behind like the evil queen in the Wizard of Oz who had been all burned up except her shoes. She kicked them to one side and put her foot experimentally on the first step—it was cool to her foot—it had seemed warm in the afternoon even through her soles.
As she began to climb she became increasingly conscious of the rock looming above. But maybe it would be like jumping into a basket of many colored skies.
VI
Roger came up on the porch less than five minutes after Atlanta had left. Isabelle was sitting there.
“Good evening,” he said. “Waiting to see Delannux off?”
“Something like that.”
—Why didn’t she say anything? he wondered. Why did she sit like that? Was there a pistol in her handbag?
There was a bustle of departure in the lobby—in a moment Carley Delannux and baggage came out on the porch.
“Goodbye, Delannux,” Roger said, without offering to shake hands.
“Goodbye, Clark.” He seemed scarcely to notice Isabelle—a car stopped at the door and he went forward to meet the mechanic.
“How’s the wheel?”
He broke off. “Excuse me, I thought it was someone else.”
“This is Delannux,” cried Isabelle suddenly.
There was a moment of confusion. Then the man who had come up the steps reached forward, tucked a white sheet in Carley’s pocket and said:
“This paper is for Mr. Delannux. Don’t bother to read it. I can tell you what it is. It’s a Capias ad Respondum. That means I’ve got to take you North with me on a little matter of director’s responsibility.
Carley say down suddenly.
“So you got me,” he said. “And in about four more hours you couldn’t have served that paper.”
“No sir—not after midnight to-night. The Statute of Limitations—”
“How did you find me? How did you even know I was in North Carolina?”
But suddenly Carley stopped, knowing very well how the process server had found him—and Roger realized too. Isabelle gave a broken little cry and covered her eyes with her hand.
Carley threw her an expressionless look, without even contempt in it.
“I’d like to see you alone,” he said to the process server. “Shall we go up to my room?”
“All right by me, but I warn you I’m not for sale.”
“It’s just to arrange certain things about leaving.”
When they had gone Isabelle wept on silently.
“Why did you do it?” Roger asked mildly. “It’ll ruin him, won’t it?”
“Yes. I guess so.”
“Why did you want to do that?”
“Oh, because he was so bad to me, and I hated him so.”
“Aren’t you a little sorry?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought for a moment.
“You certainly must have loved him a lot to have hated him that much.”
“I did.”
He was terribly sorry for her.
“Don’t you want to go and lie down in Atlanta’s room for awhile?”
“I’d rather lie on the beach, thank you.”
After he watched her depart he still sat there. She turned and called back to him.
“You’d better look after your own girl,” she said. “She’s not in the hotel.”
VII
Roger sat alone rocking and thinking. He loved Atlanta, no matter how little she had given him to love lately.
—She’s not here, he said to himself.
He sat there thinking and thinking; with a mind accustomed only to technical problems.
—She’s a fool. All right then—I love a fool.
—Then I ought to go and find her because I think I know where she is. Or
