Expertly-applied makeup had brought out the delicate lines of her face, and a splash of red lipstick made a flame of her full-lipped mouth. Her upswept hair and the harlequin glasses added the final touch.
I breathed, “Why, you’re beautiful!”
She clasped her hands and laughed as delightedly as a child.
I hadn’t seen the revolving door rotate a second time. My eyes had been too busy with Helen. But now at my side Mavis said in a grim voice, “I told her you’d say that when you saw her.”
I glanced at Mavis. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at Helen, and the expression on her face wasn’t pleasant.
The four of us had dinner in the hotel restaurant, as usual. Dewey looked astonished for about thirty seconds when he saw the transformation his sister had undergone, but then he seemed to adjust to it and accept it as a matter of course.
I wondered if an atomic attack would wipe the doltish expression off his face for any length of time.
Helen herself was a delightful mixture of glamour girl and child. She was by far the smartest-looking woman in the dining room, but her mannerisms were still those of an unsure youngster on her first date. For one thing, she had difficulty walking on her high heels. For another, she couldn’t quite believe her own transformation, and kept gazing surreptitiously at a mirror on the wall which reflected our table.
Evenings, the Croissant dining room had a three-piece orchestra consisting of a piano, drums and a horn man who alternated between a saxophone, clarinet and trumpet. The tables were arranged so as to leave a small space for dancing, and I asked Helen if she would like to dance.
She looked at me and said in a stricken voice, as though she thought I would immediately call off our wedding plans, “I don’t know how.”
It struck me as so funny that the most beautiful woman in the room had so successfully concealed her beauty for thirty-two years that she’d never even been on a dance floor, I laughed aloud. Helen looked so woebegone I had to apologize.
“I’ll teach you after we’re settled in Westfield,” I assured her.
Though Helen was two years older than Mavis, she gave the impression of being much younger. Not just younger than the prim, spinsterish woman Mavis was now, but even younger than Mavis was when dressed in feminine clothes and practicing all the tricks she knew. This wasn’t a matter of physical appearance so much as a difference in manner. Mavis, as her real self, left no doubt in any man’s mind that she was a mature, experienced woman of the world. Helen possessed the intriguing freshness of a teen-ager.
It occurred to me that it had been the similar quality of youthful innocence which had first attracted me to Mavis years back.
We didn’t do anything after dinner because of the full day ahead of us on Sunday. When we parted in the upper hall to go to our separate rooms, Helen whispered to me in a tone of confidence, “You know, Sam, I have a wonderful feeling that with you I’m finally going to begin to live.”
I thought wryly that it would have been more accurate if she had said she was finally going to begin to die.
The thought stuck with me long after I got to bed, and for some reason it made me restless. It couldn’t have been conscience, for I killed whatever conscience I had years ago. It just seemed a shame to have to destroy so much beauty after bringing it to life.
None of the others had been able to attain more than passable looks, even under Mavis’s expert tutelage. And some had verged on the edge of ugliness.
We were married at four o’clock Sunday afternoon, with Dewey and Mavis standing up for us. In her white knit suit Helen made a lovely bride. The J.P’s wife cried a little.
Afterward, we had a mild celebration in the hotel cocktail lounge, then dinner as usual. It was only eight o’clock when we left the restaurant.
In the lobby Mavis announced somewhat coolly that she was going to bed early and went upstairs. After a moment Dewey seemed to get the idea too, and went off also, leaving Helen and me alone.
Helen gazed at me in sudden panic.
Giving her a reassuring smile, I went over to the desk and had a few moments’ conversation with the clerk.
When I rejoined her, Helen asked fearfully, “What were you doing?”
“Canceling your room,” I said easily. “I registered you in mine.”
When she gazed at me wide-eyed, I said, “I explained to the clerk that we’d just been married. Don’t look so alarmed. It’s all quite legal.”
She gave me a tentative smile. “I’m not scared,” she said bravely.
With Mavis as a standard, the most repugnant part of my past lonely-heart marriages had always been the wedding night, for the women were invariably either fat or bony, and dreadfully inhibited on top of it.
Helen was as beautifully proportioned as a Greek statue, and while she was rather becomingly frightened at first, her inhibitions melted with astonishing speed. Once she was able to relax, I discovered a fiery passion in her which amazed me.
For the first time in the five years we had been married, I found myself comparing one of my temporary wives to Mavis and relegating Mavis to second place.
Another thing that surprised me, though it hardly disturbed me, was that Helen wasn’t a virgin. Few of my wives ever had been, which had often led me to the reflection that even the plainest woman is unlikely to escape at least some sex experience if she lives long enough. But it did surprise me in Helen’s case because of the isolated farm life she had lived. I wondered what drifting farm hand or itinerant drummer had been the lucky man, and what momentary dreams he had brought into her drab life at the time. Dreams which inevitably must have faded to the wry realization that she had served only as a temporary relief from boredom when the man moved on and she never heard from him again.
Chapter XVI
Early Monday morning we checked out of the hotel and started the long drive to Westfield, New York. I figured the total distance at nine hundred and twenty miles, and planned to make it in two days, stopping over approximately halfway at Indianapolis. Mavis and I had to alternate on all the driving, as both Dewey and Helen said they couldn’t drive.
Tuesday morning I sent a wire from Indianapolis to Herman Gwynn telling him that we’d arrive some time that evening. We reached Westfield about seven P.M. and had dinner in a restaurant on Main Street. I asked our waiter to recommend a hotel and he told us to try the Greystone a block up the street.
I suspected this was the only hotel in town, but nevertheless it proved an excellent suggestion. It wasn’t very modern, but it possessed a wonderfully homey smalltown atmosphere, and the rooms were immaculate.
After we were settled, I phoned Herman Gwynn at his home, told him we’d arrived safely, and made an appointment to see him at the store at nine in the morning.
I took Helen along with me the next morning. In the past I had always kept my temporary wives in the background as much as possible in order to discourage possible speculation as to why a man of my pleasing if not handsome appearance and my apparent sound common sense had ever taken such a colorless spouse. But I didn’t have to hide Helen. I found myself actually wanting to show her off.
Mavis had picked three dresses for her, plus accessories, including three pairs of shoes. Today she wore a plain blue wool dress a trifle more conservative than the white knit one, but still one that didn’t hide her figure. Neat suede pumps with lower heels than the shoes of her wedding outfit created a smart effect without making her wobble as though she were on stilts. A blue cloth coat and a cute little felt hat completed the outfit.
Mavis knew how to shop for clothes, and Helen’s transformed appearance bore little resemblance to the cost of the clothing. Mavis had picked items more for style than lasting quality, on the assumption that they wouldn’t be in use for more than a few weeks. The total outlay for Helen’s entire trousseau had only been about a hundred and fifty dollars.