“They’ll never ask us again,” she said almost inaudibly. “It was our one chance. To start making friends, to...” Her eyes were on him in a supplication that was almost haunting. He’d never seen an expression like that in them before.
He was already at the phone. “Central, give me...”
She stood there a moment at his shoulder. “Press,” he heard her whisper, “don’t do this to me.” And then she did an odd little thing; she let her hand stray in a tender, sketchy way up the side of his arm, from above the elbow to a little short of the shoulder and no higher. Somehow he sensed its meaning perfectly, he was always so good that way with her; it was not a bribe, a caress to induce him to relent. It was quite the opposite, it was a little gesture of forgiveness, ahead of time, for what she knew he was going to do anyway, for what she knew she couldn’t dissuade him from doing. Then without another word she went on into their bedroom, and without latching the door entirely, allowed it to drift semiclosed after her.
A man’s voice, Wise’s voice, was suddenly sounding aggressively in his ear. “Hello? Hello? Who’s there?”
“Is this you. Wise?” he said. “Just a minute.”
He left the ear-piece dangling at the end of its cord, and went to the bedroom door, and widened it.
She was lying across the bed, face down. She sensed that he was looking at her, although he’d made no sound. She quickly raised her head.
“I’m not crying, Press,” she quickly comforted him. “I’m not crying, really Fm not. Just — resting here a minute or two. I’ll be out shortly and finish up those dishes.”
He knew, though he couldn’t see them from where he stood, that it was true, that her eyes were dry.
But the tears that never reach the eye at all, he thought sorrowingly, are the bitterest tears of all.
He knew a little braveness, then, for one of the few times in his life. Some men know a lot, and some men know very little; but when it comes to those who knew it very seldom, perhaps it’s even a braver braveness than when it comes to those who know it often.
He turned without a word and went back to the phone.
“Wise,” he said. “This is Marshall. I just wanted to tell you that we’re leaving now, we’ll be at your house in about half an hour.”
19
They rang the bell, and then side by side they both went through a brief flurry of harried, last-minute fidgetings and adjustments, highly similar in performance, but each stemming from a totally different incentive. For her concern was for her appearance, but his was for his personal safety. Thus he worried at the knot of his necktie, and pulled and plucked at the cuffs of his shirt, and reshaped the fit of his coat collar across the back of his neck. Thus she loosened her hair in this place, tightened it in the next; drew her fingers across the top of her envelope-handbag, as if to shape it more concisely; fluffed at the frill that hung from the neck of her dress, to have it fall more fully spread out.
“Ring again,” she said after an unendurable moment. Unendurable to him, at any rate.
Before he could discover whether or not he had enough courage to (and he felt that he didn’t), it had become unnecessary. A woman of approximately forty-eight to fifty stood there, smiling welcome to them. She was fairly small in body, and considerably shorter than Marjorie in height. Her eyes were light, and though they were kindly and cordial at the moment, there was an impression of experienced wisdom in the configuration of lines about them, that did nothing to reassure him or make him think he had jumped to the wrong conclusion.
She’s some sort of policewoman, he repeated to himself; she’s never his wife.
Her hair was a mixture of pale gold and silver; the gold having evidently been a partially artificial assistance that had been discontinued for some time past now, but was not yet entirely effaced by the encroaching silver. She wore a dress of peach chiffon, with a string of pearls about her throat. She was totally lacking in that softness and fineness that were Marjorie’s whole aura. Her movements were brisk, almost spasmodic. Too much so. The briskness of one who follows instructions in every move she makes, and need never falter, has them committed too well to heart ever to be in doubt as to what is expected of her. It was like standing too close to someone giving a performance on a stage, without yourself being in the play; being right up on the stage beside them, so that all illusion was lost, and every artifice stood out with unnatural, with magnified, clarity.
“Well!” she said too loudly. “Well! So here you are! Glad to see you! Come right in. We’ve been waiting for you!” And sought for, and lifted, and wrung Marjorie’s hand. Too vigorously, too enthusiastically. “I’m Jeanette Wise.”
“This is my husband,” Marjorie said demurely. Her voice, he thought, was like a chiffon whisper after the other’s ringing tones.
Mrs. Wise’s look at him was too prolonged. He seemed to feel it across his whole face, like the slow tingling impact left by a slap. “Oh, I know all about him!” she said strenuously. Her eyes never left him. “From Bill,” she added.
I don’t doubt that, he concurred inwardly, with a sinking feeling.
“Well, come on in! Don’t stand out here like strangers,” she admonished. She slung her arm about Marjorie’s opposite shoulder, marched her forward in advance of him.
He wanted to reach out and pull it off, from behind. What others had it rested on like that, he wondered; what shoplifters, and disorderly drunken women, and even worse? And the girl who had once entered the most restricted drawing rooms in New York, as an intimate and an habituée, was now going into this place, with that on her shoulder. Thanks to him.
Wise came forward.
“This is his wife, dear,” Mrs. Wise said.
Even that minute turn of speech was detected by Marshall. She hadn’t said “Mrs. Marshall” or “Mr. Marshall’s wife.” “His” wife. A pronoun like that was used when the noun it referred to was so well understood by both parties it needn’t be repeated; when it had been recently and thoroughly the subject of discussion between the two of them. And this, you might say, was an involuntary continuation of the discussion, a postscript to it.
Last-minute instructions, last-minute outlining of strategy; and then: “This is his wife, dear.”
Wise was considerate and cordial to Marjorie; scrutinized Marshall a little searchingly, Marshall thought. It might have been no more than the thought: Higher-class than you are. How did you happen to get her?
Marshall preferred to translate it: How much does she know about you? How much have you told her?
They shook hands a trifle restrainedly.
There was no one else there. There was to be no one else there. That soon became apparent. A bridge table had been set up, with four chairs about it. On it a deck of cards, a pencil, a score card.
Marjorie and Mrs. Wise had gone into a bedroom. They returned now, Marjorie without hat and gloves.
“Well, anyway, you found your way all right,” Mrs. Wise proclaimed. “We didn’t have to send out a patrol car.”
Marshall’s symbol of thought was a stunned exclamation point.
They had gone past that point, conversationally, by the time he recovered.
“—I said, ‘Now Mr. Wise, now that I’m here I’m not going to live like a hermit, just you make up your mind to that.’ (They love to keep you in solitary, these men.)—”
Why does her mind unconsciously run to illustrations like that? Notice?
“—So the first thing he said was, ‘Why don’t you ring up Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, have them over?’ ”
What more do I need? The first name he suggested to her. The only name he suggested to her.