“I will,” she promised, knowing that once she had started back she’d burn up the roads from before dawn until midnight every day.
The operator said, “Your three minutes are up,” and Dorothy said, “ ’By, lover,” and hung up.
From that point on, events seemed to march through Dorothy’s consciousness with the sense of unreality which characterizes a dream so unreal that even in sleep one knows it must be a dream.
There was the big old-fashioned house on Chestnut Street, the moment of anxiety while she stood on the porch, which she had seen so often in pictures, the feeling of panic as she pressed her finger against the button on the doorbell and listened to the reverberating chimes.
Then Mrs. Lennox was answering the door in person, greeting her with a cordial clasp of icy fingers and the hard kiss of thin lips. “My dear, I’m so glad to see you! You’re one of the family, and I know you so well, and yet, my dear, this is the first time I’ve seen you. You’re just like your pictures!
“Children! It’s Dorothy!”
Mrs. Lennox put a thin arm around Dorothy’s waist and led her through the door into the spacious interior of the big frame house.
3
Standing in her bedroom, after everyone had said those first good nights, and with the door safely closed, Dorothy, thinking back over the events of the afternoon, could not help feeling that the whole thing had been symbolized somehow by that first greeting — the cordiality of an icy hand, the kiss of hard, thin lips.
Dinner had been an ordeal of formality, as though the family, while consciously trying to put its best foot forward, made an attempt at polite small talk which sounded strained, coming as it did from a group where the intimacy of family life prevailed.
It was as though some politely decrepit old man had seated himself in front of a mirror, bowed to his reflected image, and from time to time engaged in attempts to interest his mirrored self in comments, lending a polite interest to his statements on current events, laughing with attempted spontaneity at his own labored jokes.
But all the time there had been peering eyes, an unremitting appraisal. Dorothy might have been a butterfly impaled upon the pin of an anxious curiosity. Had Horace chosen someone who would be able to carry on the family traditions? Watch — watch the way she picks up her fork, the way she handles that salad fork... “Yes, indeed, Dorothy, we’ve heard so much from Horace — and weren’t you terrified, driving alone? But of course you haven’t been sheltered as, say, Moana... You must get Moana to show you her heirlooms. Do have some more of the roast.”
And so the meal had finally drawn to a close, leaving Dorothy with an impression of Mrs. Lennox which was exactly what she had anticipated. Steve Lennox had possibilities, once he could break away from the cramped environment of that household. Moana was a puzzle to Dorothy, a green-eyed blonde who should have been vivacious and wasn’t. She might have been actuated by some inner mechanism which was wound with a key, guaranteeing so many times to lift the spoon or fork, so many cuts with the knife, so many smiles of polite interest.
With the door of her bedroom closed and locked, Dorothy suddenly began to wonder about Horace.
Dorothy Clifton hated artificiality. She loved spontaneity, natural reactions, and originality. Horace had been inducted into the Army at a time when he had been only a little older than Steve was now, and foreign service, the masculine life of the Army, the exacting requirements of aviation, had, or at least should have, torn his roots free from the family soil and enabled him to transplant himself to an environment where his individuality could find some way of expressing itself.
But, after all, Horace had been raised in this atmosphere, must have absorbed a large part of it. Dorothy knew now that his fondness for his family was partially a pride in its impregnable respectability. Despite the fact that he himself had warned her that his mother was one who lived in a little world of her own, and insisted that everyone who penetrated into that world should conform to the plan of architecture laid out by its creator, Horace himself must have absorbed a lot of that in his boyhood. Would it crop out when he had a home of his own?
The night was warm and balmy, drenched with moonlight, and, acting on some impulse, and because she felt far too apprehensive to sleep, Dorothy switched out the light and went over to sit by the window.
She was looking down on the driveway, a driveway blocked by her own car, almost directly beneath her window.
Mrs. Lennox had insisted that the car be left there. She had said no one was going out that evening, but on the slender chance that it might become necessary to remove one of the cars in the garage, Dorothy could leave her keys in the car so it could be backed out of the driveway. It was, she had explained, perfectly all right to leave keys in the car. There were never any thefts from Madison City driveways. Of course, a car left uptown might be “borrowed” for a joy ride, but there were no criminals who would steal cars from driveways. Fortunately, Madison City was thoroughly respectable, a nice place to bring up children. Here, houses were homes, not simply parking places. She did so wish Horace would have returned to the home town to open his office.
The moon, which was nearing the full, shone down on white stucco houses, turning them into silver, casting inky black shadows along the well-kept lawns. The air was warm but dry and clear. The night seemed romantic, mysterious and hushed.
Abruptly, Dorothy jerked to attention.
The house below-stairs was dark now, but a figure came gliding noiselessly out from the shadows of the house, a figure which seemed to have emerged from the house and which moved directly toward Dorothy’s automobile.
For a moment, swift contrition gripped Dorothy Clifton. She knew she shouldn’t have left the automobile there in the driveway, despite the fact that Mrs. Lennox had assured her no one would be going out.
Now someone wanted to go out, and her automobile was in the way and would have to be moved.
Dorothy decided she’d run down and move the car herself.
She rose from the chair and at that moment the figure below looked back toward the house, then up at the window of Dorothy’s room.
The moonlight which filtered through showed the face as only a white oval, not even blurred features. Dorothy could not even approximate a guess as to who the person was, but there was something about the furtive poise of the figure which caused Dorothy to halt the impulse to run down and back her car out into the street.
Apparently having become satisfied from the dark room that Dorothy was in bed, the figure opened the car door, cautiously slipped in behind the steering wheel, took off the brake and slipped the gearshift into neutral.
The car, due to the slight elevation of the driveway, began inching slowly back, a silent, noiseless, gradually accelerated retreat down the driveway.
Once as the person in the car touched the brake pedal, the driveway became flooded with red from the brake light, but it was only a brief flicker, then the brakes were released, and the car glided back to the street. The driver turned the steering wheel sharply, and then, but not until then, did a pressure on the starter throb the motor into life. The headlights were switched into brilliant streamers.
Dorothy, at first puzzled by the manner in which her car had been eased out of the driveway, suddenly laughed, said aloud to herself, “Don’t call the cops, goosie. Someone merely wants to be courteous and keep from disturbing you. It’s simply a matter of parking your car at the curb in order to get another car out, and...”
But the driver didn’t park Dorothy’s car at the curb. Instead, the clutch was slipped in and the automobile purred smoothly down the street in the direction of the business district.