Some Came Running (132 page)

From the look on his face, it was plainly a moment of great triumph for Shotridge. Of course, the triumph didn’t last long. But there wasn’t any way he could get inside the slip, and after a bit dissatisfaction made him withdraw his hand and try to try the other route. But Dawn’s sense of timing came to her aid there: It was too soon yet, and she stopped that.

Foiled there, looking nonplussed for a moment, Shotridge came back to the blouse, obviously expecting to be halted at any moment. But Dawn did not stop him; instead, she kissed him back lovingly, giving the impression she was unaware of what he was doing. After the blouse was unbuttoned, Shotridge paused perplexedly for several moments. But finally inspiration came to his aid, and he reached around behind her. Dawn waited patiently.

Finally, he made it, and Dawn’s sense of timing told her it was time to speak. “Oh, Shotridge! Please don’t!” she whispered.

Of course, he ignored her. Just putting the “please” in it assured that.

“Please, Shotridge!” she said again, and once again he was foiled.

Shotridge stared at her hopelessly. “Dawnie—?” he said miserably. “Dawnie, I—” The words trailed off into perplexed silence.

Dawnie ran her fingers along the back of his head smiled at him tremulously. “Turn off the lights,” she said.

“Dawnie!” Shotridge said, his large eyes seeming to bulge. “You mean—? You mean you
will
?”

“No. I don’t want to, Shotridge,” Dawn said, lowering her eyes. But before she could say more he had leaped off the couch and run to the light switch, as if he had suddenly realized his mistake in ever asking her any questions she could say no to. A breathlessness at her own audacity, and at what she was going to have to do next, suddenly assailed her. It was, in some ways, probably the greatest role she would ever play.

In the dark, she took off the rest of her clothes, and went and lay down on the bed. In the dark, she could hear his shoes hit the floor.

“Dawnie! Dawnie, where are you?!” he cried suddenly, his voice high with near panic, from the vicinity of the couch. He apparently hadn’t realized she had left it.

“Here I am, Shotridge,” she said, making her voice low and embarrassed.

“Oh,” he said, with tremendous relief. Then there was a long silence.

What happened then was in some ways almost weird. It was as if she were standing outside of herself looking back down at her there on the bed, as she cried out and tried to jerk herself away. And yet away down deep inside of her, part of her—no, all of her—meant those things—wanted to cry out and get away. Wanted nothing to do with him, or with any man. And yet all the time, she was also coolly standing off and analyzing it as if she were critically watching a stranger do a role.

It very nearly frightened Shotridge off entirely. But then, apparently, some ancient old male instinct, of cruelty, or of forcefulness, an instinct that had been forced underground in him, first by his mother and then by his father and then by just about everybody else, came to his aid.

“I can’t help it, Dawnie!” he cried miserably. “I got to!”

“I know you do,’’ Dawn whimpered. “I know you do. It’s all right.”

And in a way, it was true for both of them. In an odd new way, Dawn had never felt before.

Afterwards, the two parts of her stared at each other closely through the plate glass running down the center of her head. Both knew that one of them would be saying goodby forever to the other one, in just a little while. “You go on to the bathroom,” she whispered. Silent with an almost tangible guilt, Shotridge got up and paddled to the bathroom in his bare feet and shut the door. This part had been planned a long time before. Dawn reached for her purse, which she had been careful to see was lying on the bedside table, and opened it and took out some tissues and a bottle of mercurochrome. She slipped to the bathroom door and opened it slightly, said: “May I come on in?” and went inside. Shotridge staring at his face anguishedly in the mirror above the lavatory. He started.

“Gee, Dawnie!” he said. “You should have told me. I’d have dressed.”

Dawn smiled at him, a feeling of great love welling up in her. “It’s all right, Shotridge. I just had to come in,” she said. She turned toward the wastebasket with the tissues, and smiled at Shotridge brimmingly.

“Oh,
Dawnie
!” Shotridge cried, and made as if to throw his arms around her; but then he stopped. “Oh,
Dawnie!
I’m sorry!” He stared at her miserably.

“Don’t be sorry,” Dawn said softly, and meant it. “I guess it’s as much my fault as it is yours. I’ll be all right in a while.

“You get out of here now and let me have this place for a minute,” she said embarrassedly. “I’ll be all right in a little while. And don’t ever be sorry!” she said.

Shotridge stared at her dumbly, his face filled with regret, and yet not without a certain triumph, underneath the look of love.

“Now you go on,” Dawn said. And without a word, he went out and closed the door.

She stayed in the bath quite a while and took a boiling hot shower and when she came out, he had the big light on and was fully dressed and had lit a cigarette and was sitting, kneading his knuckles together miserably.

“I’m sorry I did it to you, Dawnie,” he said as soon as she came through the door. “I didn’t mean to do it. I—I don’t know what came over me. It must have been the liquor. I guess. I just want you to know that I would never have done something like that to you. I love and respect you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Dawn said. “I’m not sorry, Shotridge. I guess in a way I’m even—glad.”

“You are?” Shotridge said.

“Well, now we—we belong to each other,” Dawn said, and could actually feel herself blushing. She smiled at him lovingly.

“That’s true,” Shotridge said, his eyes wide with thought. “Well, I just want you to know I . . .” He went on, a long breathless stream of talking, and Dawn sat down across from him in a chair noting that even as he talked so anguishedly, his eyes were ogling her. Finally, he stopped, and just stared at her guiltily.

“When are we going to be married?” Dawn said bashfully.

“Whenever you want!” Shotridge said, his face lighting up. “Gee, you mean you’ll really marry me, Dawnie? We’ll tie the old knot whenever you say the word.”

“Well,” she said, “let me think about it a minute.” She got up, arching her back in the thin slip. “Gee, but I’m sore! You must be a pretty virile man, Shotridge. Now you turn your back while I get dressed. Don’t look at me; please!” she said, and went over to her clothes.

Dutifully, he turned his back; and while she dressed Dawn noted that, as she had expected, one of those two of her was gone. Where the two of her had stared at each other so intently, one was gone now. The other gradually moved across and took over the whole area. A tremendous, swelling, poignant love for Shotridge welled up inside of her until she thought she might have to cry. When she was dressed, she sat down in the chair again.

“You can look now,” she said softly.

Shotridge swung back around, his face anxious. “Gee, you’re beautiful, Dawnie. Dawnie,” he said, and took a deep breath, “you don’t hate me, do you?” he said anxiously.

“You couldn’t help what you did,” Dawn smiled. “I understand about men. I know what it’s like with them.”

“Do you?” Shotridge said. “Do you really?”

She nodded, smiling maternally. “That’s why it’s the woman’s place to—to put on the brakes. But I was afraid you’d think I was—”

“No!” Shotridge said quickly. “Oh no! I know you better than that. Why, what just happened with us proves it. Listen,” he said anguishedly; “I have a confession to make.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been out with other women before.”

“You have? Where?”

“Over at the whorehouses in Terre Haute,” Shotridge said, and stared at her anxiously.

Dawn smiled, sadly. “Well, I suppose that’s just like most men,” she said. “But I guess I don’t really care. I love you anyway.”

“You do? And you really don’t care?” Shotridge said.

Dawn smiled and shook her head. “I guess I really don’t care about much of anything, Shotridge, wherever
you’re
concerned.”

“Listen,” Shotridge said. “What were you going to say about getting married.”

“Well,” Dawn said. “I think we should get married Easter.”

“So soon?!” Shotridge said, his eyes bulging. “That’s an awful short engagement!”

“Well, I’m a little afraid of something happening; you know?” She looked at him shyly, and she was not acting. “They say you never can be sure, even with those—those things you use. And that’s why I say Easter; I think it would be safer. It’s only a month away.”

“Gee, I never thought of that,” Shotridge said, his eyes widening. “Well, it’s okay with me. But what about school?”

“Well, here was what I figured,” Dawn said. “We get married at home, on Easter vacation. Everybody will know we’re married then and it will be all right then. Then we’ll both go back to school until after June finals. Then next year, I’ll transfer to Illinois so we can be together, and we’ll set up housekeeping there someplace. Lots of kids are doing that anymore. It’s not like before the war—when you had to wait till you were out of school for it to be proper. Why, they’re even having” —here she almost blushed— “babies, and still going on to school.”

“Gee!” Shotridge said. “You suppose we’ll ever have any babies, Dawnie?”

“I want lots of babies,” Dawn said. “Lots and lots of babies.”

“Well, by God, we’ll have them then!” Shotridge said. “Gee, Dawnie! You don’t know how much I love you. I’ve loved you all my life.”

“After the wedding, you can still keep on coming over here weekends whenever you want,” Dawn smiled. “Only then, it’ll be all right. Because we’ll be man and wife.”

“Gee, Dawnie! Well, that sounds fine with me,” Shotridge said. “Gee, Dawnie!”

“Of course,” she added blushing, “You can keep on coming over before the marriage, too. If you want to.”

“If I want to!” Shotridge cried. “Gee, Dawnie, you don’t know how much I want to. And it—it
feels
so good,” he confessed embarrassedly. Suddenly, he got up and came over to her and put his arms around her tenderly, and Dawn put her arms around him, too, and it was this same story and this same plan that she told her parents when she went home the next weekend, the last weekend in March.

“I love you so much, Dawnie,” Shotridge whispered, holding her. “I’ll always cherish you.”

“I love you, too, Shotridge,” Dawn whispered back, and pressed his head against her. “Dear Shotridge. Dear,
dear
Shotridge.”

After this tender scene of such powerful emotion that it very nearly made them both weep, they sat back up and discussed the wedding plans some more. This was on Friday, and the next day instead of going out pub crawling after dinner and a show, they went straight up to his room in the Hollenden to have several drinks and make love and afterwards talk about the marriage. By the time he left Sunday evening, they had everything pretty well worked out. Dawn would go home the next weekend to tell her folks. Shotridge was going to call his folks from Champaign and tell them the news. Dawn, in her turn, would have her mother call his parents from Parkman.

Which was exactly what she did. After she and Agnes had sat at the secretary that Sunday morning in the last week of March working out a rough sketch of plans for over an hour, she had her call up Eleanor Shotridge. They, Eleanor and Harry, had already heard from Shotridge late last night, it turned out. At first, they hadn’t known whether to believe it or not, Eleanor said; not that they weren’t pleased. Then she feared to call Agnes about it, for fear she had not heard about it from Dawn yet.

“She’s right here,” Agnes said. “Yes; we’ve been sitting here all morning trying to work out some kind of plan. She only got home late last night,” she lied.

Dawn, sitting beside her, nodded vigorously.

“And we’ve been talking wedding plans ever since,” Agnes said, without mentioning the arguments. “What? Yes, it is. Awfully short. I wanted them to wait till June, too. But I guess nowadays, since the war, they do things differently than when you and I were young. They don’t want to wait.”

There was a pause while she listened a moment.

“What?” she said. “A party?”

Dawn shook her head “no” vigorously.

“No, I’m afraid we can’t. She has to be leaving right away to get back to school in time,” Agnes said. “She says Jimmy didn’t come home because he has so much studying. He’s been flying to Cleveland almost every weekend for the past two months. Yes; imagine that? No, they didn’t court us like that when I was in school, either!” She laughed into the phone. “Yes; I’ll bet you did wonder where his allowance was all going. Well, now you know. No,” she said wistfully, “it looks like we’ll have to do without a party entirely. But you and Harry and Frank and I will have our own little party. You’re hereby invited for tomorrow night. And tomorrow, I want you to come down here and spend the day with me, Eleanor. We’ve both got a lot to do, and only twenty-one days to do it in! And Frank says they’re going to have the best
damned
wedding Parkman’s ever seen!

“Yes.

“All right.

“Tomorrow then. Goodby, Eleanor.”

She hung up and Dawn, forgetting her newly acquired adult status, grabbed her around the neck. There obviously was not any need for her to worry about the wedding as long as Agnes was handling it. Suddenly, everything in the world seemed so safe now. This was the way a person’s life ought to be lived: reasonably, and safely, without suffering. A husband, and a home, and your own sweet darling little children, and a solid safe well-off family behind you you could always depend on.

From the phone, after she had been hugged, Agnes looked at her, speculatively, and a thin film of censorship slid slowly down over Dawn’s mind. It kept nothing back she did not want kept back, and it allowed everything to come through. For a moment, Agnes appeared to be about to say something. Then she thought better of it and turned back to the secretary, and Dawn knew, suddenly, that from the date of the wedding on Agnes, in privacy, would be checking the calendar. To satisfy her own curiosity more than anything else. Well, that was all right. Let her check. Because there wasn’t anything
to
check.