The Mulberry Bush (13 page)

The office telephone rang and Virginia answered mechanically.

“Harrison Tours, Miss Warfield speaking.”

“Virginia,” said a quick voice, “this is Avis Andrews. I'm sending Bruce for you tomorrow—you're to spend the day with us.”

“Tomorrow—” Virginia reached for the calendar. All the days had run together lately. Tomorrow was Sunday. And this, couldn't be the fourth day of November—but it was! She had been married five weeks. “It's awfully hard for me to get away on Sunday, Avis,” she said.

“Nonsense—just run away. We want you,” Avis insisted. “Bruce will come about eleven. And he's talking of leaving—Mexico or some other horrible place—unnecessary, really. He's needed here in the laboratories but he's getting restless. I hope you can persuade him to change his mind. At eleven, then. Goodbye.”

Avis hung up without giving her a chance for further argument. And in the morning Bruce would arrive, prompt to the minute, and calmly ignoring her protests, carry her off in his masterly fashion.

This, Virginia knew, was the approach of the hour of reckoning. She had put off too long already what in honor she had to do. She had to tell Bruce about Mike. She had to confess that all these weeks she had acted a deception—a lie really. And she had to admit that she was married to a man whose ignoring kept her lying awake nights now, aching with puzzled unhappiness.

The unspoken implication in Avis's voice had been plain. Bruce was restless and it was the fault of Virginia Warfield. He was in love, and his desire for her was aided and abetted by his family. The gentle pressure would be applied more firmly. Bruce was in love with her—and couldn't she see how splendid he was, how honorable, how tender with women? Couldn't she see his kindness to his old mother, that his child adored him, that his dog went into ecstatic hysteria when he appeared, that he was substantial and steadfast—and good? She knew too well how it would be. Smiles and little meaning looks, gay conversation thinly masking subtle intent. She herself made one of them—part of the family, the pleasant Gamble family. And then she would have to tell Bruce that she was a walking lie. Not a deliberate lie—not in words—but a lie, just the same. The wife of Michael Paull.

She was married to Mike—but to Mike, what was she? Merely a brief and happy interlude, a light episode, another girl who had loved him? Before her, Harriet Hillery—and before Harriet, how many? Was she one of many—undistinguished, except for the fact that in a moment of excitement, Mike had married her? Was she just another mulberry bush? “Darling, darling, Ginny!” And after that, silence and loneliness and worry, torturing doubt and stabbing fear. She had to confess to that, look Bruce Gamble in the face and own that she did not know how she stood—so that he might not completely despise her. Confess that she had not even pride left—the pride that could walk away with head up and spine stiff as a poker!

Bruce was on time—he would be on time! He had too many virtues—he was smug with virtues, always around when trouble came, always ready and patient and understanding— Oh, that was unfair! Because she was hating herself and hating Mike a little, too, for this intolerable position in which she found herself, she need not hate Bruce, too. Because every nerve in her body was strung taut as a red-hot wire, and the back of her head felt as though it had been beaten with an iron bar, she need not vent her irritation on Bruce.

She must smile and wear a brown hat that made the amber of her eyes darker, she must think of gay, casual things to say, she must bend and kiss the shrunken, purpled face of Teresa Harrison and say lightly, “Bye, darling. Get well, now, before I come back.”

And then there was the twisting road through the woods—with holly trees beginning to gleam red, and the Patuxent River crawling between willow banks and, of course, Bruce would choose this quieter way, when there was a perfectly good broad highway so thronged with traffic that there would be no chance for intimate talk!

She talked—like a wild woman, she thought with self-contempt—leaving no small pauses, no intervals into which intimate thoughts could creep. Words—build a wall of them, build it high and glittering and cold and tough as glass. No doors, no windows, build it against the inevitable, the approaching catastrophe, the reckoning.

She heard her own voice, stimulated, almost babbling, and once she caught Bruce looking at her curiously—but he would think that all this was nervous reaction from the strain she had been under. Probably he was planning now to have Avis give her a sedative tablet later and see that she got some rest! He was planning to be kind and to keep her precious and cared-for—and that only added misery to torment. Why—why had she been such a fool? Why had she let things go on at all? She must be adolescent, as Teresa had said. Teresa was a hard woman, but her perceptions were swift and shrewd and she was seldom wrong.

The door of the brown bungalow opened upon the usual homey atmosphere—a little exaggerated today, Virginia's too-tight nerves warned her. Merry hugging her and chattering, the pup's excited yelps, Avis's enthusiastic greeting and, in a chair by the fire, old Mrs. Gamble beaming, reaching for both Virginia's hands and saying, “My dear girl—my dear, dear girl!”

There was dinner, in the middle of the day, with Bruce at the head of the table, carving with quiet efficiency, and old Mrs. Gamble sitting beside Virginia, being waited upon like a princess and being regally gracious and sweet. The old lady talked a great deal, emphasizing all her remarks by laying cold, small fingers on Virginia's wrist.

She said, “This great, stubborn boy of ours thinks he wants to go dashing off to Mexico or some other place a million miles away—and here are Thanksgiving and Christmas, practically upon us—no time for a man to be running away from his family. You help us out, my dear—you tell him he's not to go.”

“I'm afraid I wouldn't have much influence,” she said flatly. “Bruce and I are working people, you see, Mrs. Gamble. Most of the things we really want to do must be given up because the job comes first.”

“You're working too hard, Bruce tells me. A woman can't drive herself as a man does—and men shouldn't do it. Look at the men we read about who drop dead—almost every day I read of another in the papers. And for women it's so much worse. They haven't the endurance—”

Oh, holy heaven, endurance! As though any man or any sheltered and protected woman, anybody at all, could endure more than I've been living through lately, Virginia was thinking. She wanted to laugh, she wanted to put her head down between the crystal goblet and the silver bread-and-butter plate and cry. She wanted to scream and run, out into the wan sunlight of this November afternoon. Through the woods and down the quiet roads, away from people, away from herself! And she had to sit politely and say, “Yes, indeed,” and “Thank you, no more asparagus.” She had to butter little rolls, and pretend to eat, and feel Bruce's eyes upon her and Avis watching, and even the child, Meredith—and trampling nearer and nearer, black as storm, heavy as doom, that inexorable hour when she must destroy herself in their eyes.

Secretly married! How young, how silly—how cheap! They would never understand; they had been an old, proud family for generations, these Maryland Gambles. Old Mrs. Gamble, with her heavy gold chain and her manners of a spoiled duchess, and Avis, whose strong, pleasant face wore not one touch of make-up—and Bruce. They would be sorry and polite, but they would be outraged in private and angry because they had been deceived. And in the end they would despise her—and be kind! So properly kind. The sort of kindness they had for tradespeople and for the Negro servant in the kitchen and rheumatic, old, black Julius—the kindness that pressed the receivers down below their own proud plane and damned them to commonness and mediocrity forever.

Somehow, the day got itself over. Avis played, but today, commanded by her mother, she played Strauss waltzes, and gay bits of Schumann, and the Hungarian dances of Liszt.

“I'm very modern,” old Mrs. Gamble said, “till it comes to music. When I hear music, I want to hear a tune.”

Virginia did not walk with Bruce. She refused his invitation with a little lift of the eyebrows.

“I'm terribly tired today, and this fire is heavenly. Do you mind?”

She played an endless game with Meredith, jumping little counters around a board, shaking dice in a paper cup, knowing very well, that over her head the complacent eyes of the three Gambles were meeting in small, wise looks, telling each other that Virginia got on beautifully with children. And then, at last, it was dusk, and she could rise and sigh, and laugh a little and say, “This has been a lovely, restful day, but I do have to go. My patient will be waiting very impatiently to hear all about it.”

Her hat on, her coat buttoned, Avis hovering, Merry hugging her, pressing close against her, Mrs. Gamble's hands reaching.

“We all like you so much, dear girl. We feel that you're almost one of the family.”

And then the dusky road back to Washington, and Bruce sitting very straight beside her, his eyes on the road.

He did not speak at all for several miles, and then, sharply, he cleared his throat and said, in a quick, harsh voice, “Virginia—”

The road and the shadowy thickets of pine, the dusk and the wan, opal light in the west all seemed to be rushing up into Virginia's face, taking her breath, choking her. Her hands were so tight on her purse that her knuckles ached and there was pain at the roots of her nails. Here it was—the inevitable.

She heard her own voice, rasping a little, strange.

“Don't say it, Bruce!”

He turned and looked at her, and the car wobbled on the edge of the pavement so that he had to jerk it straight again.

“Don't say it, ever!” Virginia said again, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

He did not speak again. He drove her to Teresa's door in silence, and helped her out. She held out her hand.

“Goodbye, Bruce.”

“Goodbye, Virginia,” he said flatly. “This is goodbye. I'm leaving—Mexico, I think—”

“Good luck,” she said, and smiled at him thinly and walked through the door. She heard his car snarl to a sudden start. He was gone—and she had not told him.

Back at the Gamble house, Avis Andrews and her mother sat on opposite sides of the fire.

Old Mrs. Gamble rubbed one rheumatic hand with the other.

“If she doesn't take him, he'll go,” she said. “The trouble with working women is, they're so self-satisfied and so independent.”

“It will ruin his life,” said Avis gloomily. “He's never been like this before—altogether carried away. I'm going to talk to her, myself.”

“It's unwise to meddle. You'll be sorry,” warned Sally Gamble.

“She may not understand—that I'm marrying Dan Thomas, and that I'm taking Merry. She may be a bit overwhelmed by the Gamble family. I'll go to see her—tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's Monday.”

“Monday is as good a day as any.”

“She stays in that office all day.”

“I'll go at night. I know where she lives.”

Mike wandered aimlessly around the empty apartment. He looked at the mail he had put on the table. Circulars, a bill or two, a personal letter with a Tennessee postmark and a doctor's address on the back of the envelope. Hunter Warfield, M.D. That would be Ginny's father. He'd known, of course, that she had a family, but he'd never considered them. To him, she had been detached from the whole world, his Ginny, and even the claims of Teresa Harrison had irritated him.

He took the glass with the withered flower and poured the stale water into the sink and the pulpy ruin of the orchid with it. Orchids—women didn't buy orchids for themselves! They bought flowers past their first freshness from sad-looking old women on windy corners. Who was buying green orchids for Ginny? He'd find out about that! Then he remembered, with a returning depression, that his own situation was not too defensible. But all that had been cleared up, he recalled with relief. Harriet had been swell. She could have made things tough and unpleasant, but instead she had let him go, with a careless flick of her fingers and a casual goodbye.

It hit him with a dreary impact that, very likely, Harriet had decided that he wasn't worth bothering about. They had been talking about him, she and Bill Foster, just before he walked into Bill's office. And Bill's manner had been definitely nasty, definitely lacking in respect for a columnist who earned fat commissions. Mike's skin tightened and grew cold, and sweat popped out around the edges of his hair. What if Bill had told Harriet that Mike Paull was through? Thirty—the ending—came some time for every newspaperman. Thirty and good night! But not when a man was only twenty-nine, not when he had filched closely guarded secrets from hostile officials, not when he could write as Mike Paull could write.

“The devil—I am good!” he snarled to himself. Why didn't Ginny come? He pushed up
a window and leaned out. That old iron-face, Teresa, was working her to death. Teresa, lying up comfortably in her bed, with nurses and doctors dancing around, giving Ginny the tough jobs, grinding her youth and her loveliness down. He'd put a stop to that. He'd lay down the law, now, tonight, when she came. He'd talk like a husband and he'd mean every word. He had money yet, plenty of money. And there were other markets beside Bill Foster. He'd take a crack at radio, maybe.

“How would you like a bungalow in California, Mrs. Michael Paull? Roses over the door and a wolfhound on the mat. How would you like a husband who worked an hour or two every day, and took you out in his yacht in the mornings? How would you like a long, red car with white tires, and white leather inside, and your monogram in silver on the door?” The bus stopped. He waited tensely. He jumped and put out the light. Then he watched again at the dark window, but no Ginny. Only a tired man, trudging off under the street lamp, a bundle under his arm.

The bundle stirred Mike's imagination. Why hadn't he thought—he picked up his hat and dashed out, forgetting to lock the door, going back to do it and then realizing that he couldn't lock it, he hadn't the key. No matter. This was a quiet house. No danger of prowlers.

He had to walk blocks before he found an open shop where he could buy the things he wanted. He took a taxi back up the hill, bundle-laden, and noted immediately that the windows were still dark. That was all the better. Give him time. He panted up the two flights of stairs and pushed the door open.

The little green rubber apron still hung on the hook behind the door of the little kitchenette, and he poked his head through the neck opening and tied the strings, grinning impishly. Quickly he snapped twine and dumped food out of moist bundles and paper sacks. A thick steak, a roll of fresh butter, rolls, a can of coffee, a bottle of cream. A fat avocado, too, and a little paper container of salad dressing. And along with these, a coconut cake, a bottle of wine, and three big pink chrysanthemums.

He put the flowers into an empty milk bottle and set them in the middle of the card table. He jerked drawers open and found a little cloth and napkins, knives and forks and spoons. He lit the gas under the broiler, put Virginia's tiny kettle to boil, peeled the avocado and drenched its green flesh with the dressing.

The kettle hummed. He opened the can of coffee, sniffed its fresh fragrance. Where the heck did Ginny keep the cream pitcher? Sugar in the bowl—that was lucky. He'd forgotten to buy sugar.

The flowers looked wobbly, so he moved them to the dressing table, propping the blooms against the mirror. The hot smell of the heating broiler made the rooms stuffy, so he put up the window again and stood there watching for the bus. It did not come, and he turned down the flame, pushed back the bubbling kettle, looked at his watch. Almost eight o'clock. What did that old slave-driver mean anyway, keeping a tired girl on the job half the night?

Well, she could get her another girl tomorrow. His wife was through. He'd tell Teresa so himself and let her rage!

The bus came in sight again, and Mike put out the lights quickly, stood ready to flick the switch when Ginny opened the door. Surprise, Ginny—here's your long-lost husband! But the bus did not stop. It grumbled on past the corner, with a slow grinding of gears.

He turned on the lights again, stood glaring, his face set and worried.

What if she had gone out—to dinner, somewhere—what if she wasn't coming home? That orchid—he scowled at it, jabbed his foot on the lift of the garbage can, dropped the dead flower in. With sudden, piqued anger, he jerked the silly apron off, tossed it in the corner. Then he tensed again, for a car door had slammed in the street below, he heard the street door close and light feet come quickly up the stairs. No voices. She was alone. He did not put out the lights. He stood in the middle of the room, watching the doorknob, waiting for it to turn, his heart pounding a little.

The footsteps paused outside the door. But the knob did not turn. Instead, a light knock sounded on the panels.

Mike opened the door. A woman stood there, a tall woman he had never seen before, in a dark fur coat and a hat with no particular style.

She looked at him, a little puzzled.

“Miss Warfield's apartment?” she asked.

“Yes. She hasn't come back yet. Will you come in?” Mike opened the door wider.

“Thank you.” She walked in, looking around curiously—at the table set for two, at the flowers on the dresser. “I'm Mrs. Andrews,” she said. “I'm a friend of Miss Warfield's. She's rather late.”

“Yes.” Mike pulled up a chair for her. “She's late. I've been waiting some time. I'm Michael Paull.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Andrews, sitting down a trifle stiffly. Her face looked stiff, too, and suddenly Mike realized how it looked to an outsider, even to a friend of Ginny's. The table set, his hat tossed on the bed, cigarette stubs in the ashtray—.

“I,” he said quickly, “am Miss Warfield's husband.”

Avis Andrews jerked as though she had been struck. She got to her feet.

“What?”

“It isn't generally known.” Mike was enjoying himself. “We've been married—for some time. I've just gotten back from South America.” He saw that the name Michael Paull had meant nothing to this woman, and his vanity was a trifle touched, but the fun of watching shocked astonishment change her features made up for it. He'd try that technique on everybody—just a sudden cool statement—and watch them gasp and stare. He'd try it on Teresa. “And now where's the champagne you promised us, old lady?” he'd tease Teresa.

“I—can't understand—” Avis Andrews was fumbling her gloves uneasily, “why we weren't informed. Miss Warfield was a close friend,” she added, clipping her words.

“We're planning to announce it immediately—now that I've come back,” Mike said, breaking out his most practised smile, “so—you have the honor of being the first to know.”

Her face shut up like a fist, her eyes turned cold.

“I'm flattered, I'm sure,” she said crisply. “Will you tell your wife—that I called, please? On second thought—I may see her myself. She's employed at the Harrison place still, isn't she?”

“She runs the Harrison place,” Mike corrected, resenting her tone. “Good night.”

She did not answer. She went down the stairs, her heels thumping the boards viciously.

“Such nice people!” said Mike aloud, closing the door.

In the street, Avis Andrews jerked open the door of her car angrily. That girl—with her big brown eyes and that hair—she had done this to Bruce. And they had thought her so ladylike and so quiet, and all the while she had been merely—sly! Shameless—running around with other men!

“At least,” Avis jabbed her key into the switch and stepped on the pedal with fury, “she's going to know that I know! And she's going to know what I think!”

There was a personal quality in Avis's wrath. She had thought everything working out so smoothly—and now she'd have to delay, put Dan Thomas off again. She couldn't leave Bruce now—he'd be stricken with shock and disappointment. “Perhaps it will be a lesson to him,” she thought grimly. “He'll stop running around the country, picking up women on planes and in hotels.”

The door of the office of Harrison Tours stood open as Avis stalked down the hall, and she saw Virginia's bright hair bent over a desk, and beside her a gray-haired, stooping little man. They were studying a map and they did not look up till Avis was fairly in the room.

Then Virginia said, “Oh, Avis—” and stopped when she saw the strange, cold look on Avis's face. “Mr. Harrison—Mrs. Andrews.”

“How do you do?” Oscar Harrison murmured and withdrew to a file case, busying himself there.

Avis stood very straight. “I've just come from your apartment, Virginia,” she said. “And there—I met your husband!”

Virginia's hand groped for the back of the chair. Mike! Mike—in Washington!

“Why—” she began breathlessly, but Avis's eyes were like blades leaping at her.

“I—do not know why you have done this cruel thing,” she said frigidly. “Pretending—making my brother fall in love with you—”

“I did not make Bruce fall in love with me.” Virginia stood her ground, though her hands were shaking. Mike—Mike was here. Oh, go away, Avis—let me think! “I tried to keep Bruce from falling in love with me,” she went on quietly. “I told him I—loved someone else. I told him it was no use.”

“You did not tell him you had married someone else. I suppose you are married?” Avis said nastily.

Virginia threw up her head, and her cheeks flamed dangerously.

“Yes, I am married—to a man who is famous and successful—and fine I did not tell because we had an agreement not to tell and because—”

“Because it was her affair—and no one else's,” said little Mr. Harrison, quietly coming to her defense.

“It's the affair of our family—if she deceived my brother,” snapped Avis.

“It's undoubtedly his affair—but probably he'd prefer to settle that himself,” Harrison countered.

Avis got herself out of the office, her back and neck very stiff.

“Thank you,” Virginia said to Oscar Harrison. “I—have been foolish—but after all it is my marriage. I—could you finish this alone? My husband is here—”

“Certainly. Run along. I'll see to everything.”

The telephone rang as Virginia was putting on her hat. She frowned at it, then remembered that Mike might be calling, but Oscar Harrison had picked up the receiver first.

He spoke a few words, and she saw his face change.

“She—died, ten minutes ago.” He hung up the receiver.