“Doctor, please don’t say that,” said his wife. “Chew your food is just as good a word. Well, shall we have a toast?”
“Yes, I think so,” said the doctor. He raised the glass. “‘God bless us, everyone,’” he said; and all momentarily serious and self-conscious, they drank their drinks.
IV
Caroline and Julian, in the car, waved to Dr. and Mrs. English, and then Julian slowly took his foot off the clutch and the car pulled away. The clock on the dashboard said 4:35.
Julian reached in his pocket and took out the Christmassy envelope, which had been on his plate, exactly like the envelope that had been on Caroline’s plate. He laid it in Caroline’s lap. “See how much it’s for,” he said.
She opened the envelope and looked at the check. “Two hundred and fifty,” she said.
“How much was yours?” he said.
She opened her envelope. “Same thing,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty. Really, that’s too much. They’re sweet.” She stopped herself and he looked at her without turning.
“What is it?” he inquired.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s just that they’re so swell. Your mother is such a darling. I don’t see how you—if she finds out about last night, your performance, do you realize how ashamed she’ll be?”
“She’s my mother,” he said.
“Yes, she is. It’s pretty hard to believe sometimes.”
“Am I going to be bawled out the rest of the way home?” he said.
“No,” she said. “What’s the use? What are you planning to do about Harry?”
“Harry? I don’t know. I could call him up,” he said.
“No, that’s not enough. I think the best thing is for you to take me home and then go to his house and apologize in person.”
“Fat chance,” said Julian.
“All right. But if you don’t, I go to no more parties with you. That means I’ll stay home from everything that we’ve accepted, and another thing, our party is off. If you think I’m going to make a spectacle of myself for people to talk about, going around to parties and having people feel sorry for me because of your behavior—I just won’t do it, Ju, I won’t do it, and that’s that.”
“If there’s anything I hate, it’s that’s that,” he said. “All right. I’ll go to his house. He’s probably forgotten about it, and my going there will bugger things up proper.”
“Please promise me you won’t bugger things up. You can handle him, Ju, if you’re just careful. I didn’t mean it when I said you couldn’t. You can. Turn on some of that English charm and he’ll fall for it. But please make it right so there won’t be a situation for the rest of the holidays. Will you, darling?” Her tone had changed completely, and her earnestness thrilled him. She was not quite so handsome when she was being earnest, but she so seldom wanted anything enough to be earnest about it that she became a new and rare Caroline.
“One condition,” he said.
“What?”
“Will you do it?” he said.
“I won’t promise till I know what it is. What’s the condition?”
“That you be in bed when I get home,” he said.
“Now? In the afternoon?”
“You always used to love to in the daylight.” He reached over and put his hand high on the inside of her leg.
She nodded slowly.
“Ah, you’re my sweet girl,” he said, already grateful. “I love you more than tongue can tell.”
She spoke no more the rest of the way home, not even goodbye when she got out of the car, but he knew. It was always that way when they were away from their home, and made a date to go to bed when they got home. When they made a date like that she thought of nothing else until they got home. She wanted nothing else, and no one else could take anything of her, not even the energy that goes into gregarious gayety. Always she seemed then to crouch a little, although she didn’t actually crouch. But whenever they did that, from the moment she agreed, to the ultimate thing, she began to submit. And driving away he knew again, as he had known again and again, that with Caroline that was the only part of their love that was submission. She was as passionate and as curious, as experimental and joyful as ever he was. After four years she was still the only woman he wanted to wake up with, to lie glowing with—yes, and even to have intercourse with. The things that she said, the words he had taught her, and the divining queries that they put to each other—they were his and hers. They were the things that made her fidelity so important, he believed; and when he thought of how important those things were, the words and the rest, he sometimes could understand that the physical act in unfaithfulness can be unimportant. But he doubted that infidelity is ever unimportant.
He stopped the car at Harry Reilly’s house, where Reilly lived with his widowed sister and her two sons and daughter. It was a low stone and brick house, with a vast porch around three sides. He pushed the bellbutton, and Mrs. Gorman, Reilly’s sister, came to the door. She was a stout woman with black hair, with a dignity that had nothing to do with her sloppy clothes. She was nearsighted, wore glasses, but she recognized Julian. “Oh, Julian English. Come on in,” she said, and left the door open for him to close. She did not bother to be polite. “I guess you want to see Harry,” she said.
“Yes, is he here?” he said.
“He’s here,” she said. “Go on in the living-room and I’ll go up and tell him. He’s in bed.”
“Oh, don’t disturb him,” said Julian, “if he’s still asleep.”
She made no answer. She went upstairs. She was gone less than five minutes.
“He can’t see you,” she said.
He stood and looked at her, and she returned his look without a word and her expression said, “It’s up to you.”
“Mrs. Gorman, you mean he won’t see me?” said Julian.
“Well, he said to tell you he can’t see you. It’s the same difference.”
“I came here to apologize for last night,” said Julian.
“I know you did,” she said. “I told him he was a fool to raise a stink about it, but you can’t change him. He has a right to stay sore if he wants to.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I told him what he should of done was give you a puck in the mouth when you threw the drink at him, but he said there were other ways of fixing you.” She was completely ruthless and honest, but Julian had a suspicion that she was a little on his side.
“You don’t think it would do any good if I went upstairs?”
“Only make matters worse, if you want my opinion. He has a black eye.”
“Black eye?”
“Yes. It isn’t much of a one, but it’s there. The ice from the drink. You must of slung it pretty hard. No, I guess the best thing you can do is go. You won’t get anywhere hanging around here now, and he’s upstairs waiting till you go so he can curse you out once you get outside.”
Julian smiled. “Do you think if I leave and he curses me out, it’d be all right if I came back then?”
Her face became a little angry. “Listen, Mr. English, I don’t want to stick my two cents in this one way or the other. It’s none of my affair. But I want to tell you this much. Harry Reilly is a sore pup, and there isn’t anything funny about it when he gets sore.”
“Okay. Well, thank you.”
“All right,” she said. She did not go to the door with him.
He did not look back, but he knew as well as he could know anything that Harry Reilly was watching him from an upstairs window, and probably Mrs. Gorman was watching with him.
He drove home, parking the car in front of his house, and went inside. He took as long as he could with his hat and coat, scarf and arctics. He walked slowly up the stairs, letting each step have its own full value in sound. It was the only way he knew of preparing Caroline for the news of Reilly’s refusal to see him, and he felt he owed her that. It would not be fair to her to come dashing in the house, to tell her by his footsteps that everything was all right and Reilly was not sore, only to let her down.