Romance Classics
Peggy Gaddis
Avon, Massachusetts
Chapter One
The big factory lay silent in the September midafternoon. It was Saturday and only in the big office in a corner of the building was there the sound of voices. The huge outer office with its thirty or more desks was deserted, the typewriters hooded, desks neat and orderly. But in the General Manager’s office a man and a girl were still at work.
Behind the mahogany desk, Phil Donaldson, General Manager of the big textile plant, signed his initials to a long, neatly typed report and laid it in the wire basket beside him. Geraldine Parker looked up at him and smiled. And when she smiled, she was no longer merely a pretty girl; her smile made her beautiful. It was obvious that Phil enjoyed looking at her, for he returned her smile warmly.
“There!” he said, flexing tired fingers. “That’s the last of them. And you were awfully good to help me out.”
“But isn’t that what secretaries are for — to stand by in an emergency?”
Phil studied her: the warm burnished brown of her soft hair, the clear-cut oval of her delicate face, lit by the clear cool gray of her eyes behind gold-tipped lashes, and the warm scarlet of her mouth.
“You’re more than a secretary,” he told her, and there was a note in his voice that brought a fan of carnation-pink into her usually pale face. “You’re my right hand — and the better part of my heart.” His voice deepened and the color burned in her face as her eyes fell without conscious intention to the narrow platinum band of her third finger, with its blazing guard of a beautiful solitaire above it.
There was a moment of silence and then Phil said briskly, “And now, since we only had a sandwich and a glass of milk at lunchtime, why don’t we ride out somewhere where it’s cool and have a real meal? A late luncheon or an early tea or a combination of both. I’m starved, aren’t you?”
Grateful for the change of tone, for his easiness that broke the moment of tension, Geraldine said lightly, “Since you mention it — I am.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” demanded Phil.
“Well, I suppose we’re waiting for me to wash my hands and do things to my face,” Geraldine laughed.
“A scandalous waste of time,” he protested. “The hands — well, maybe — carbon paper smears badly. But the other? That would be gilding the lily!”
She laughed at his labored witticism, avoided the warmth in his eyes and went out of the office.
Phil stood staring at the door through which she had passed. There was a look of strain about his lean, taut face and his blue eyes were tired as he ran his fingers impatiently through his crisp reddish-brown hair. He thrust his hands deeply into his pockets.
“Steady, you fool,” he told himself harshly. “Take it easy! She’s been through a lot, you know. You don’t want to add to it, do you?” Geraldine came back looking fresh and dainty.
She and Phil walked across the long outer office and down the steps to the parking lot.
Phil helped her into the car. He slipped his tall body beneath the wheel and they drove through the quiet streets immediately surrounding the big mill buildings. They turned into Main Street and drove slowly through the Saturday afternoon crowd: farm people in town for their one shopping day of the week; boys and girls from the mills strolling in their best finery, scuffling and laughing; housewives intent on tomorrow’s heavy midday dinner and the shopping necessary for it.
As the green car slipped through the traffic, people glanced at it and Geraldine felt her cheeks warm a little again as she caught some of the glances. But she only sat a little straighter, answering the greetings of her friends with a little casual gesture and a smile.
Through Main Street and on into the residential district, Phil drove without speaking. But when at last they were in the open country he relaxed a little. He smiled down at her.
“There! That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Geraldine answered.
“I feel sure you do,” Phil replied. “I’ve been trying to date you for the last three months and you’ve turned me down flat. I know that you don’t actually dislike me and that you would have gone out with me, except for your fear of public opinion. And that, of course, is more than just slightly silly. After all, you are a widow — ”
“The widow of a man who is the town’s idol, its favorite hero,” she reminded him.
“But you’re not going to be foolish enough to let that keep you from living a normal life,” said Phil. “Let’s see, how long has it been?”
“Nineteen months.”
“And how long had you been married?”
“Ten days.”
“And — you were how old?” Phil asked very gently after a little silence.
“Eighteen,” she answered. “We were married on my birthday.”
And then she turned to him swiftly.
“Only you mustn’t think that it was just a wartime marriage,” she went on. “We’d grown up together and from the time we were children we had known we were going to be married some day. If it hadn’t been for Vietnam, we’d have waited until he finished college, only there wasn’t time.”
Phil kept silent until she had blinked back the tears and steadied her soft mouth. At last he spoke gravely.
“And ever since the day you were notified by the War Department that your husband had died when his ship was torpedoed and sunk, you have gone in mourning and felt that life was over for you.”
It was a statement, almost an accusation.
Geraldine winced a little and then she lifted her head proudly.
“I went into the mills to work,” she said clearly, “to keep my mind occupied. I wear black because it is considered both smart and practical for a business girl — almost a uniform.”
“And the rest of what I said? That you feel life is over for you?” he persisted with a strange ruthlessness.
She hesitated a moment.
“I don’t quite think that is true,” she said at last, choosing her words painstakingly, speaking slowly. “At first, maybe — oh, of course I felt I could never live again. That I didn’t really want to. You see, I loved him very much.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Phil gently.
Ahead of them there was a break in the leafy green woods and he turned the car into that break, along a narrow, winding country lane through woods ever so faintly touched with the first hint of coloring that would deepen to glory as the autumn advanced.
The lane came out at last into a wide, tree-shaded car park beside a charming big old-fashioned brick house. It was two-storied, wide-galleried, neat and fresh and cool looking, perhaps because of the wide yellow river that curved lazily at the end of the lawn. There was no indication that this was not a private home, save for the small white-covered tables that filled the screened porch overlooking the slope of lawn to the river. A gay border of blossoming petunias broke the edge of the lawn, like a wave of color flung up from the water itself.
The car turned in among half a dozen others parked beneath the wide-spreading live oaks. A waiter in a spotless starched white coat came to the screen door and held it open, bowing as Phil and Geraldine climbed the wide stone steps.
Despite the number of cars in the parking lot, the screened gallery was unoccupied save for two loitering waiters, murmuring in a corner. But there was the buzz of feminine voices and laughter, and Phil asked, puzzled, “Where is everybody?”
“Playing bridge, Mister Donaldson, sir,” explained the waiter, escorting them to a choice table in a corner of the gallery, from which the view was especially good and where one might hope for a vagrant breeze.
“I see,” said Phil and smiled across the small table at Geraldine. “Then we have a little time to ourselves.”
He ordered and when the waiter had departed, he smiled and asked gently, “Feeling better?”
“Of course,” said Geraldine, deliberately misunderstanding him. “It’s lovely here and the thought of a drink and a meal is very pleasant.”
They sat in silence for a while, savoring the quiet and the beauty, the hint of coolness emphasized by the green lawn, the flowers and the shadow of the giant trees, with the glint of the river beyond. Phil spoke again, after they had been served.
“I suppose it seems a bit odd to you — perhaps even cruel — for me to have pried into your emotions as I did,” he said slowly, frowning a little as though he sought out his words with great care. “But believe me it was not mere curiosity.”
“I never for a moment thought that,” she answered swiftly, and was startled to discover that her heart was beating faster.
His smile was warm and grateful.
“Thank you.” he said simply and she knew that he was deeply pleased. “It’s just that ever since I came to the factory in March as General Manager and you were assigned to act as my secretary, you’ve been — a very special person to me. I’ve known about your husband, of course, from the first.”
Her lovely mouth was wry, her eyes shadowed.
“Of course, it’s a romantic story. Everybody in Marthasville loves to tell it. All about the town’s ‘beau ideal’ whom everybody loved, and the girl who was of no importance until he married her.”
Phil studied her curiously as her voice died.
“Don’t feel so bitter, darling.” His hand covered hers.
For a moment the breath in her throat hung suspended and her heart slowed its beat.
Darling!
He’d called her “darling!”
Almost fearfully she lifted wide gray eyes to his, and Phil smiled faintly.
“You see,” he told her quietly, “what I’m trying to say is that I love you very much and want more than anything in the world to marry you.”
Speech was, for the moment, denied her. She could only sit very still, her eyelids lowered, not daring to let him look into her eyes and see the truth there. His hand was on hers, warm, comforting, yet undemanding. All she had to do was make the smallest, slightest gesture and be free of that touch.
But she did not want to be free. She had a crazy, almost frightened feeling that he must have known of the sickening lurch of her startled heart that had begun to beat hard and painfully.
If she turned to Phil now and said, straight from the depths of her heart, “I didn’t love Tip — not as I love you. I was a child. I’d never grown up. Tip was the only beau I’d ever had; I had no one to contrast him with, to help me judge. From the first, I was foreordained as Tip’s wife; I thought that was love. I thought so until last March when you came to the plant and I worked with you. It’s you I love, Phil. I’ve never really loved anyone else.”