Key was dumbfounded.
“Gil won’t know she’s going to marry him?”
“Oh, sure, that — of course. The divorce and marriage. But the reason for it, just now, and in all this rush!”
“I see; she’ll marry him and then drop dead on the wedding night! That’s my idea of a swell break for Mister Gil, if anyone was to ride upstairs on a policeman’s horse and ask me! Yeah. Swell. Has she thought of that?”
“Don’t be a fool — of course she has! And sure it’s crazy — don’t I know it? It might be unspeakably cruel to Gil — Christ, when you think of what happened to him in his first marriage, it’s everything you can say about it. I wanted to yell it at her — I almost did. I even wanted to beat her. But she won’t budge. She says she knows the risk, and will run it, and that Gil’s damned well got to run it, too.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yes.…”
They ate in silence. The little Italian newsboy came by as usual with his Evening Records, and Key bought one; the noisy party of undergraduates and girls at the long table got up, pushing back their chairs. They were all a little tight, and they looked cheap. Blomberg had noticed that the German girl at the end of the table, the one with the dog — its lead was fastened to her chair — and the young fellow who sat next to her, the only sensitive-looking face in the crowd, hadn’t spoken more than two words to each other in all this time. Shy? Or a quarrel? He glanced away from them, and briefly out over Stuart Street, thinking idly, even in this fleeting connection, of the wonderful multiplicity of life, its inexhaustible richness. Then he said, looking hard at Key:
“So now you see. What I said, that it’s an emergency. And the most extraordinary situation in which I ever got myself inadvertently involved. It’s an emergency, Key, get that through your mulish head. And it’s got to be gone through with. As soon as I realized that, I went to work. I’ve been to see everyone I know in Boston, that might be the slightest use, or telephoned to them, and I haven’t found a red cent. Not a cent. Even if we go in day coaches — which Noni insists on, the idiot — we’ll need another hundred bucks, at the very least. And Noni ought not to do it. She ought to go in a Pullman. Three and a half days — sitting up in those god-damned chairs—”
He shook his head.
“So I suppose you expect me to put up the hundred bucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Try and get it!”
“Once we get down there it won’t be so bad. It seems Gil’s got a friend, or friends, in Cuernavaca who will put us up.”
“What I don’t see,” and Key put his head on one side, and half closed his eyes, “is why you’ve got to go. Or what the hell Gil thinks you’re going for, if he doesn’t know the situation. Kind of a fifth wheel, aren’t you? Which will take a lot of explaining. Unless, of course, this Gil is the kind of guy who likes an extra man on his honeymoon!”
“Don’t make me moan, Key! Noni’s like that, that’s all. And I know it, and Gil knows it. Though of course Gil—”
“—doesn’t know a thing about it, the poor fish!”
“If only Noni hadn’t made me swear, I’d tell him.”
“I think you ought to. I don’t think he ought to be allowed to go, if he isn’t told. No, sir.”
“No, Key, it can’t be done.”
“Well, then, how are you going to explain your presence, may I ask?”
Blomberg hesitated.
“That’s up to Noni. She can say I’m a sort of chaperon — and there’s something in that, too — or that she’s suggested the trip a long time ago, and didn’t want to break her promise — or simply that I helped to raise the cash. Or a little of all of it. It might get by. I think it will. Gil, damn his funny puritan little soul — my God, Key, my blood boils when I think of him, not lifting a finger, while Noni and I sweat blood to make the whole thing possible — Gil is queer. Sometimes I don’t think he’s got any feelings at all. One of those cold-roast dry-cleaned Bostonians you read about in the books, who may be a roaring volcano within, but certainly never shows it. I suppose he’s been hurt so much that he waits a long time before he makes a move; so Noni says, anyway, and she may be right.”
Key, leaning forward on the table with his elbows, sat with lowered eyes. What was he thinking? The small face was composed and unreadable. Certainly the quick reference to the hundred dollars had come in rather too soon, and not too happily — and Key’s laconic “try and get it” hadn’t sounded too promising. But that he was interested and curious, even if incredulous and disapproving, was perhaps evident; there were even traces of sympathy. But what train would he be taking for Concord from the North Station? And how much time was left? Better not raise the point, of course. He said, feeling a little false:
“Yeah. I’m the money-raiser. They always pick a Jew when they want money! As I was saying to myself just before I met you …”
“And incidentally, what happens to your job, while all this goes on! Not to mention Gil’s. It seems to me your gal Noni expects quite a lot.”
“Easy. I’m only on piecework now, and I can always pick it up, any time. And Gil doesn’t get paid, anyway, not for his work with the Legal Aid; he volunteers. He’s got a little income; I don’t know how much. I could even take some reading down there with me — not that I’d get much done.”
“What does she look like?”
“Noni?”
“Yeah.”
“Noni.…”
He spoke the name as if in a sort of bemused, almost incredulous, evocation; then continued:
“Not pretty, Key — too irregular a face for that — cheekbones too high — but sometimes beautiful as all get-out. Medium height to smallish — slender;—very fair skin, very white hands. A Norse look about her; very blonde; eyes like the fringed gentian, if that means anything to you — bluest things you ever saw. But as a matter of fact you don’t know quite what she looks like, somehow, because what you always notice in her face is the movement, the light. The naughtiness, and the courage. She laughs simply delightfully; and when she does, she always turns her face just a little, just a little away from you, but keeps her eyes towards you — very shy and very bright. She is shy. But the shyness gives her a lovely abruptness and boldness. You feel that she’s got to see and tell the truth, or her feelings, or whatever — and she does. My God, what honesty! I’ve often thought, you know, that she’s the nakedest soul I’ve ever met.…”
“Good Lord, Blom!”
“What do you mean!”
“I’m beginning to understand. I think I’m beginning to understand.”
“I only wish you did, Key. She’s the sort of woman you’d do anything for. And I don’t know — it’s funny. That stuffy little house of hers has been like a home to me — and I guess it’s been that for a good many others. It’s alive. It glows. It’s got a heart. Everything in her life has gone into it, onto the walls — it’s all Noni, all the way from tomboy and pigtails, and Nonquitt in the summer, and dances and orchids at the Somerset, and the disaster with Giddings, down to the secretarial work, and the social service, and the music, and now the broken heart. She plays the piano very badly, but more movingly than anyone else I ever heard, bar none. Always Bach, nothing but Bach. Gil can play rings around her — Gil could have been a professional if he’d wanted to — but it doesn’t mean a thing by comparison. You ought to see her at a concert — her face opens like a flower — she clasps her hands flatly together, and leans her face sideways on them, and goes a million miles away. I just sit and look at her, it’s as good as the music. Better! How do some people do that — doesn’t seem quite fair, Key, does it, that some people have that astonishing integrity of living or loving, or seeing and feeling—really love and feel — while the rest of us poor guys have to wait and be told when to love. Not Noni. She goes to it like the bee to the flower, absolutely as if she and it were the same thing. I’ve stood outside the house in the dark, when she didn’t know I was there, and listened to her playing, without lights — and I can honestly say that it was about as near the pinnacle of happiness as I could get.… A pity you never would come down there, Key — you and your notions.”