“I think so,” said Marshall demurely.
“Saw you from my window just now, when I was getting dressed. All alone on the beach. You’re not...?”
“Not what?”
“Nothing, none of my business.”
“No, go ahead. Not what?”
The other man rallied him briefly by the arm. “Don’t worry too much about — anything, son.”
Marshall flashed him a taut look.
“Oh, I know. I know. I was a groom myself once. We all go through that. What you’re going through right now. Every man jack of us. They don’t know. They’re not supposed to, anyway; wouldn’t be right if they did. That’s our part of the bargain. New responsibility, added expense. Wonders if he can make it. If his prospects are good already, wonders if they’re good enough. If they’re not so good, wonders how in the world he’s going to better them.”
Marshall let him think it was that. He nodded. The nod was one of relieved enlightenment, but he let it be taken for one of tacit confirmation: that the other man had correctly diagnosed what his trouble was.
“Look, son,” Ponds said, putting a paternal hand to his arm for a minute. “I like you. I’m quick that way. Maybe too quick. Mother always says. I like you: maybe because you’re newly married, and when I look at you I can see myself, just as I was twenty years ago. Or I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m just a soft-hearted slob anyway; Mother’s always telling me that too. But anyway, whatever it is, I’m going to make you a proposition here and now. Anytime you feel like coming out to—” he mentioned that faraway town again — “there’s a job waiting for you in my office. Clerical work. Forty-five a week.”
He was getting fifty in New York.
“Oh, I’m not risking anything,” Ponds excused himself, as if hastening to avert a charge of undiluted sentimentality, though no such charge had been made, except by himself, perhaps unheard. “You must be all right. A girl like you’ve got yourself there couldn’t have picked herself the wrong kind of a fellow. I’ve been watching her even more than I have you. You just take your time, think it over, and let me know before we leave here. Now go upstairs to her, where you belong. And just remember, from now on there’s no more call for you to sit brooding on the beach by yourself at crack of dawn.”
Forty-five a week, Marshall said to himself. In a faraway town. Far away from New York. Safe from New York.
He went in, noncommittal. But somehow, the other man had stopped being boring all at once.
16
“And not go back to New York?” she said.
There was something akin to fright in her voice. The first time he had ever heard it there. It must have been the first time, for it was he who had put it there.
“And not go back to New York,” he answered.
They had the room dark. He’d wanted it to be that way when he told her. It made it easier for him that way. He hadn’t wanted to see her face, see her eyes, when he told her. She was back there where the bed was, somewhere; standing by it, sitting on it. He was over here where the window was, looking the other way, looking out, keeping his back to her. Counting each wave below on the beach as it licked up onto the moon-gray sand. Counting, counting, to keep his mind from her, to keep his mind from giving in.
“But your job—”
“This is a better job. With this man I’ll be somebody. You met him tonight at dinner, you saw how he likes both of us. There I’ll just be a cipher, a blank.”
“But the flat that’s been picked out for us... the furniture that Father wanted to—”
“We’ll have a flat wherever we are. Furniture wherever we are. Of our own, that nobody has to give us.”
“But all my things... my wedding presents—”
“Wherever we are, they can be sent after us.”
“But not even for a day? So sudden. He didn’t say we had to do it that way. He said we could come on after.”
“After may be too late. He may change his mind.”
“But don’t we have to go back anyway, to take the train from there?”
“We can go straight from here, through Philadelphia instead.”
She’s taking a long time. Will I win? Or will I lose?
Wave number seventy, fresh from the silversmith’s, hammered and lustrous, delicately filigreed. Then, as he watched, already tarnishing into pewter dinginess, already crumbling and corroded and breaking into pieces all up and down the sand. That silversmith did poor work.
Wave number seventy-one, wave number seventy-two, wave number seventy-three.
“Is this the way you’d — rather do it?”
“This is the way I’d rather do it.”
Wave number eighty.
Wave number eighty-one.
Wave number eighty-two.
She is coming toward me now. I can’t hear it, but I can tell it; I know it without looking around.
I must have won, for she is coming toward me, I am not going toward her. Don’t turn my head yet; one moment more, and I have won. There...
Her arms crept down his shoulders from behind, and linked, and held him in placative embrace.
“Then this is the way I’d rather do it too. Then — there isn’t any other way than this. Whatever you want to do, that’s the way I’d rather do it. Wherever you want to go, that’s where I want to go too. Wherever you’d rather be, there is no other place in all this world for me to be. I am no other one, just you. I’m not even your wife, just you.”
And her kisses of submission were scarcely cool upon his lips, than, somehow, still holding her to him, he already had the phone in place between them.
“Give me Mr. Ponds’ room, please. He’s in four-o-five. I know it’s late, but he won’t mind. I have to reach him tonight, he’s leaving the first thing in the morning.”
Two
Some Faraway Town
I
She took the head of the dishmop and squeezed it dry between her fingers. Then she stood it upside down, beside the water faucet. She sighed, and lowered her head a trifle, to an inclination of despondency. Her hand went through her hair, and coaxed it back, above the forehead. Then she sighed again; and looked about to see if there was more to do; and saw that there was no more to do. And sighed once more, almost as if she regretted that, rather than rejoiced in it.
Then, becoming aware that his eyes were on her, that he had been watching her all this while, everything she did, she smiled at him. She smiled for him.
It was just for him to see. It wasn’t from the heart, it wasn’t from joy. He could tell the difference.
He got up and went over closer to her. “What is it?” he said softly over her shoulder. “Are you tired?”
“I don’t do enough for that.”
“Are you lonely?”
“You’re right here with me,” she answered that.
“Are you blue?”
She shook her head, but the very act of negation was in the mood that she denied.
He nodded slightly, in confirmation to himself; unseen behind her. He went to the window. He looked at her appraisingly from there, a look she did not see. Then he began to talk for her benefit, as when you try to draw a person’s attention to something they would not notice of themselves.
“It’s beautiful out. You ought to see it. What a night. The moonlight’s all over the whole sky, like spilled milk. Shall we go out and see the town? Shall we go out and see what the town is like?”