What sort of life did she have with Tompkins? Was she happy, he wondered?… But before that, long before that, Daisy had intervened. Ah! Yes. Daisy. Suddenly this new adventure, this new wonder, this new delight, and on a different social plane—it was all so absurd, so false! Merely because she came of a good family, and belonged to Sewing Circles and things, and had been to college, and was totally and blindly innocent—and grasping—good God. And by degrees he had gone to see Eunice less and less often. From every night it had dropped to every other night, from every other night to twice a week, once a week, once in two weeks—it had been shameful, and he had felt terribly ashamed. He had thought it was the best thing to do. What else was there to do? Could he tell her that he had fallen in love with another girl? That he wanted to marry? Hardly. It had been very awkward, and he had begun to feel dishonest. But then he had remembered all that they had said at the beginning, their agreement to make the affair a light and bondless one, their mutual assurance that whatever else they did they would never be so absurd as to fall in love, and had felt a little better about it. Eunice was a good egg. She wouldn’t mind, when he finally told her—of course she wouldn’t. She had never liked his spending money on her—wouldn’t accept presents—made no claims—had even, once, said that if ever anything went wrong, and they had a child, she would simply disappear. Disappear. He would never hear from her again. She knew, she said, what a struggle he was having, and the last thing she wanted to do was to put any sort of extra burden on him. If such a thing were to happen, she would take the entire responsibility herself. She would go quietly away, have the child in some remote part of the country, see that it was properly adopted—or even adopt it herself—and never again communicate with him in any way.…
And when he did, finally, tell her—what a brick she had been! She merely put her handkerchief to her mouth, laughed, and said that she had guessed it for months. He remembered that she had got a little tighter than usual—and she had asked him a great many questions about Daisy. Natural enough. And he had told her everything there was to tell, and with what an enormous sense of relief! The confession had done him good. Was she tall? short? blonde? brunette? younger than herself? intellectual?… He described his first meeting with her, at a tea party, in detail; Eunice was fascinated. She had wanted to know all about the tea—who gave it, where it was, how many people were there, what was served. Was there dancing? Yes, there was dancing. It had been a sort of bazaar, as a matter of fact, with a fortune-telling booth, and he had had his fortune told by a pseudo-gypsy. She told him that he would have ten children and die at thirty-five, in complete bankruptcy. All his ten children would be girls. “A harem of your own,” Eunice had said.
And then she had astonished him, when they were about to rise from the table, by saying that he was not to come home with her. It was finished. She would have dinner with him, if he liked, from time to time, but the rest of it was finished. Once more, then, they had walked along the Esplanade, talking, arguing, sitting on benches, rising to walk on again; but this time, when they arrived at Newbury Street, the door was barred. She was gay, amusing, even frivolous about it, but she was adamant. There was just a moment, when he had tried to push her ahead of him into the hall through the open door, when she showed for a fraction of a second a flash of anger; gone as soon as seen. They had stared at each other, stood, his hand on her blue taffeta wrist, smiled—and then he had come away. Dear Eunice—how perfectly right she had been. So right, and he himself had been so convinced of it, that for months he hadn’t seen her at all; not, in fact, until after he had married, and returned from his honeymoon in Bermuda, and moved to an apartment in Cambridge. Several months passed, and one day, when he was walking with Daisy along Tremont Street, he saw Eunice in the distance. He had felt a curious confusion in himself, a something not right, a loss of balance—what was it? And at once had begun planning to see her again, as soon as Daisy should have gone off to the country for the summer.
And this had happened the day before Prohibition went into effect. As soon as he had seen Daisy off on her train for Burlington, he had called up Eunice. “Hello?” “Hello!” “Is this Mrs. Charles the Second?” “No, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number. This is nobody you know.” “Oh yes, it is!” “Well, I admit your voice is familiar!…” And then the little laugh, perfectly unchanged, with which he could visualize the handkerchief, and an agreement to meet for dinner at the Avery—with the proviso that she would have to return home immediately after dinner.
But in this, unfortunately or fortunately, Eunice had left out of account the fact that it was the night before Prohibition. For that matter, so had he. It was only when he stopped at the Raleigh for a Lone Tree cocktail, on his way to the Avery, that he had first realized that it would be a wild night. It had been almost impossible to get into the bar. Everybody was already drunk, fighting drunk. Tin horns were being blown in the streets as if for a holiday. It would be no sort of occasion for Eunice to be knocking around by herself, and he regretted that he hadn’t arranged to call for her in Newbury Street. There was nothing to be done about it, now, however, so he went quickly to the Avery, and Eunice turned up unharmed, but excited. This had been rather a good thing—it diverted attention from what might otherwise have been a rather embarrassing meeting. As it was, the public fever communicated itself to them, and they drank twice as much as usual, and both of them became quite recklessly cheerful. They were glad to see each other; frankly and delightedly so. And Eunice was wonderful—simply wonderful. She wanted to know, without the slightest hesitation, whether the honeymoon had been a success. Had it been a success? Well, it had been a moderate success, a moderate success. But these voyages to Bermuda!—he could remember just how he had said that, shaking his head. And Eunice had at once been hugely amused, and everything had begun to go as if there had never been an interruption. They had drunk each other’s healths in champagne, and then more champagne, while the band played, saying “For the last time!” “For the last time!” and looking at each other—ah—with as deep an affection as ever. Strange! Why hadn’t he seen that at the time? Anyway, he hadn’t. But what he had, at the time, seen, was that Eunice was in a state in which she was easily persuadable. If he put her into a taxi and took her to Cambridge, to his own apartment, without telling her where he was going—
And this, after the coffee and the Benedictines, he did. They both swayed a little as they crossed the floor, pushing through streams of late arrivals who also themselves swayed, and delicious it had been to feel once more the small delightful warmth of Eunice, now so strange and remote, after this long interval become so unfamiliar, moving against his arm and side. She too had felt this, and when they were seated in the taxi, and the taxi had turned, snarling with increasing speed, toward Scollay Square and Cambridge, they had again once more fallen into each other’s arms, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which it was. As they crossed the salt-box bridge, at which they had so often looked at night from a bench on the Esplanade, a momentary misgiving had crossed his mind—was it right to take Eunice to his wife’s apartment? Was it right? But this had passed like a cloud, and in no time at all they were there. They climbed the stairs, opened the door, turned on the lights—got out the gin and the ice and the glasses—and then, of course, he had had to show Eunice round the apartment.