“I’ll bring her back safely, Mrs. Prescott.”
The Promenade Deck was almost deserted. Scraps of paper littered the carpet; the trash cans and ash receivers were overflowing. Outside, the sky was brilliant over a glittering sea.
“Let’s sit down here,” said Julie. Her face looked drawn. “Do you want to see me again?” she asked after a moment.
“How can you ask?” Stevens bent toward her, put a hand on her arm.
“Please.” She moved away slightly. “I just want the answer. If it’s yes, that’s all right, and if it’s no, that’s all right too.”
Stevens studied her curiously. There was a change in her; she was less vulnerable and somehow more interesting. He had not stopped to consider whether he really wanted her; now he discovered that he did. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Let’s go to my room.”
Afterward she said, “It isn’t the same, is it?”
“No.”
“I don't love you, you know. It’s better with love.”
“And when did you realize that?”
“After I was sick. I didn’t love you before, but I thought I did. What were you after, my parents’ money? They haven’t got much.”
Stevens got a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “Julie, I am not a fortune hunter.”
“You’re not a member of Gallard Frères in New York, either. I called a friend of Dad’s.”
“Did you say Gallard? It’s Ballard, dear, with a B.”
“Don’t lie,” she said. “What's the point of lying?”
And indeed, he could see that it was only a habit, a part of the game he had been playing so long that he had forgotten there was any other way to live.
“You know,” he said, “I really wish I could tell you all the truth about myself.”
She looked at him. “Do you know it all?”
“Does anyone?” He turned and put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want us to go on meeting?”
She smiled faintly. “Yes. Why not?”
After she got well, Malcolm insisted on their leading as normal a life as possible; he could not bear the thought, he said, of keeping her cooped up in a stateroom after what she had already been through. “It’s foolish to take the chance,” she said. “I’ve had the disease, but you haven’t.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Malcolm.
He had been frantic with worry, especially after she was found in another man’s stateroom. When she explained why she had done it, he wept warm tears on her cheek. Never, he said, had any man had such a companion.
They ate in the restaurants that were still open, walked on the Promenade Deck, lounged beside the open-air pool. He was tender and solicitous, because, he said, she still hadn’t got her strength back; but that was not the reason.
One day at lunch Norman Yeager came up to their table, smiling, diffident, in his worn blue jeans and his funny little hat. When she introduced them, she could tell that Malcolm, in an excess of magnanimity, was about to invite him to sit down. She warned him under the table, and after a few moments of shifting from foot to foot, Yeager went away.
“He seems perfectly harmless,” Malcolm said afterward. “We could have been a little more cordial, don’t you think? After all, he did you a tremendous favor. And he’s probably smitten with you—why not?”
“All the more reason,” she said. “Honestly, Malcolm, did you ever really think—?”
He smiled and took her hand across the table. “Only because I was out of my mind,” he said.
They had met at a party in the Village. After a few words, Malcolm had gone away and come back with a bunch of grapes, which he handed to her. “I wish they were emeralds,” he said.
She smiled. “That’s Charles MacArthur’s line.”
“I know, but I mean it as much as he did. More.”
Then it had all been so quick, so natural and easy. Malcolm was a lawyer, not a Perry Mason type but a sweet, gentle man. Others had told her how pretty she was, but he was the first who made her believe it. She had loved him with a pure devotion, loved him more than her life. She remembered, as if it had happened to someone else, how she had left him the moment she knew she was infected. That was reasonable, because she believed she was going to die anyway, but she had not done it because it was reasonable. If she had been able to choose between her death and his, she would have chosen unhesitatingly. That was what seemed so extraordinary to her. She still loved him, because he was dear and familiar, and loved her, but would she give up her life for his? Probably not.
That was what she had to conceal from him, the change in her, and it was more and more difficult because he knew something was wrong and would not ask.
28
On days when he had business in the passenger section, Higpen usually managed to drop in on Newland for an hour or so. Once or twice they had lunch or dinner together. Hal Winter was always present on these occasions, and sometimes a young couple, Julie Prescott and John Stevens, who had been in the hospital at the same time as Newland.
At first Higpen made allowances for their recent illness, but as time went by he grew more and more uneasy. There was something odd about all three of them; he was sure that Winter scented it too.
He told himself that part of the problem was that he simply did not care for John Stevens: he was too perfectly polite, too charming, and at the same time too ironic—the sort of young man Higpen instinctively mistrusted. He felt more sympathetic toward Julie Prescott, who seemed to be making an effort to be more cheerful than she felt. But it was the change in Newland himself that disturbed him most. Newland was as gracious as ever, his conversation as fascinating, but Higpen had the eerie impression many times that he was playing a role. Furthermore, among the three of them there seemed to be some unspoken understanding, some secret agreement that excluded both him and Hal Winter.
Once, when they were alone together for a moment, he said, “Paul, how are you feeling?”
“Very well. I’m all right.”
“No aftereffects?”
“No. Not physical ones, at any rate. A philosophical fallout, maybe.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain. The other day I woke up thinking about an exchange I had with a young woman in the audience at one of my lectures. That was, oh, four or five years ago, in San Diego. I don’t know why I suddenly remembered it. She stood up and asked me why I thought it was important to build cities in space, or for that matter in the ocean. We already had cities on land, she said; why not spend the money to make them better?”
He smiled at Higpen. “Well, I put her down with two or three well-chosen phrases. I said that we hadn’t got where we are by settling for what we had. We’ve always been an exploring animal; we’ve gone everywhere it was possible for us to go, and done everything it was possible for us to do. That’s what made us great, I said.”
“Good.”
“Yes, and she sat down, but the other morning I seemed to hear her voice saying, ‘Why do we have to be great?’ And I couldn’t think of the answer.”
“Well,” said Higpen uncomfortably.
“You see, you can’t think of it either.”
Hal Winter came back into the room and sat down. “Hal, maybe you can tell us—why do we have to be great?”
Hal looked wary. “Great in what way?”
“You know, building pyramids, climbing Everest, going into space.”
Hal crossed his legs. “Lots of people don’t.”
“No, that’s true, but think where we were a hundred thousand years ago and where we are now.” He turned to Higpen. “Do you remember the Tasaday?”
“In the Philippines? Yes.”
“A little tribe, what was it, about twenty people, absolutely isolated in the jungle. They were still living in the Stone Age. They didn’t know there were any other people in the world.”