“I fell in love with you,” she said suddenly, startlingly.
“Nobody can fall in love in a night.”
Audrey laughed. “Can’t they? I’d like to know what you call what’s going on inside me! I didn’t sleep all night! I shook! I have a feeling like being on fire! I’ve done ages of, not thinking, but knowing about you since last night. Since you were so decent about—Ellen. I know all about you, everything—what you’d say if you were really making love to me—how you’d act if you drank too much—how you’ll look when you’re an old man—what you dream about when you sleep—what you want and what you hate, and what you believe in your heart! I know all that, and I know I will never get over this! Never, never, never.”
Jimmie was aghast. He wanted not to look at her—but he looked. She made no pretense of being composed. She was, indeed, shaking. She still resembled Ellen a great deal; but Ellen had been tranquil and self-possessed. Ellen would never have made such a statement. Not even in years of intimacy. Audrey was like a wild Ellen, an Ellen mixed with violent forces, a berserker, pagan Ellen. A cannibal Ellen, he decided.
He pushed in the lighter, preparatory to smoking a cigarette of his own. “I’ve been in England a long time.” It was lame, and he knew it. “I’m not accustomed to—”
Audrey interrupted him. “Have I asked you for anything? I will—but I haven’t! I’m not a kid, Jimmie. I’ve been living in this town a good while, and going to Chicago and other places, in a big, social way. I have been very much excited about a great many men.
Don’t mistake that. You show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you one that’s had a lot of men in her life, in one sense or another. I know about my looks, my pale-brown eyes—they aren’t blue, people just think they are—and my bucketful of gold hair, and my figure.
I intend to use them on you for all they’re worth. I dressed three times this afternoon before I started over here. I have good taste—which most people out here do not have. I’m not in the least virtuous—but I am a swell prospect for virtue. I’m not frigid—but I could be, if I were disappointed someday.”
Jimmie said, “Hey!”
She smiled, briefly, almost gently. “You can read my diaries, if you want. I’ll mail them to you. You must know all about me, personally. Right a way. Then we won’t get into any farcical scenes later on.”
He put his fingers between his lips and whistled. It made an ear-splitting sound in the coupe. Then he grinned.
Audrey laughed happily. “All right! I’ll shut up. I just want you to know.”
“Like Hitler! Where the blow will be struck—when and how.”
“Yes. Exactly. And you’ll be paralyzed into submission by the very fact that you do know. At first you’ll love me because I’m a nice dish. After all, hard work, long winter evenings, the need for relaxation, Muskogewan morals, coupled with the fact that the boys are all away and the town is loaded with dashing daughters who will bar no holds even to monopolize you for an evening. I mean, there’s bound to be somebody so it might as well be me—”
He raised his hands to whistle again.
“Don’t stop me. I am too concentrated to be jealous. You will find the daughters are delightful. I have only one problem.”
“I’m glad there’s just one. I suppose it’s—my acquiescence ?”
“No. That isn’t a problem. That’s a pleasant prospect. The thing is, my family has absolutely forbidden me to see you—ever. Except, of course, in public, when it’s unavoidable. And there is nothing whatever in the way I feel that will make seeing you in public of any use to me at all!”
He exhaled slowly. “Look, Audrey. I don’t know what you’re really trying to say to me. I don’t know how much of this is a game and how much is genuine. Or seems genuine to you now. I doubt if many guys have sat through a session like this—unless they’ve sat through it with you. If it’s a line—believe me, it is nonpareil! If you think you mean all this, then for heaven’s sake think some more! I kissed you last night. I enjoyed it. Any man who didn’t enjoy it should be exiled from human society! I have come here to work. Nothing about me matters except that work. Every hour I spend in Muskogewan makes my job harder to do. You’re hell-bent to add more than your share of difficulty—”
“I’m not. I’m hell-bent to see to it that you do your job—whatever that really is—to see that you realize yourself.”
“I’m a chemist. I am working on several secret formulas and ideas—all of which are calculated to get the United States deeper in the war, in an indirect sense, and to make America that much more formidable when she fights.”
“I know that. Everybody knows that.” She was half abstracted. “You go right ahead. I’m sure you must be very inventive. What do you think is the best way for me to cheat?”
“Cheat?”
“Cheat my family, you ape. About seeing you. We’ve got to have a system.”
“Do we?”
“I think—well, I think my best plan is to ‘take up’ something. I thought painting, at first. But that needs daylight. So I guess it’ll be music. We’ve got a pretty marvelous pianist over at the High School, and I can take two hours from him, evenings.
Wednesdays and Fridays. Starting at nine. He’s quite a love. He was very fond of me—the way a high school teacher can be of the banker’s daughter, which is a kind of distant and worrying way. I introduced him to Adele—because I knew Adele was just made for him—and they’ve been married for two years. Mother won’t think that’s especially odd, because I’ve been talking for ages about going on with my music. And Dan’s busy all day. That gives us two dates a week—not many, but we can stretch it from nine to midnight, or after. So you meet me at Dan and Adele’s next Wednesday. I’ll send the address along with the diaries—”
“What shall I wear?” he asked with irony.
“Gray slacks, and a reddish brown tweed coat—very woolly. You’ll look nicest in that. Brown shoes, and a greenish tie—maybe about the color of my skirt.”
“I see.”
“Then it’s a date? Wednesday?”
“You couldn’t just tell your family that you were going to see me, willy-nilly? I mean, granting that I give you permission to see me, which I have not yet done?”
“I could,” Audrey said. “Yes.”
“But you don’t want to?”
“I don’t want to have my allowance stopped, my housekey taken away, my car impounded, my bank account closed, my clothes locked up, and maybe my face slapped, besides. Father’s old-fashioned.”
Jimmie was startled. “He wouldn’t turn you out—just for going around with me?”
“Wouldn’t he?”
“But that’s—why, that’s so damned Victorian!”
“Dad is a Victorian—the worst kind. He is a deacon too. He knows all the definitions of right and wrong—has them down pat, like your father. He’s a sadist besides, because his marriage was always such a nagging bore to him. And he could never figure out how to put a stop to it. Not only that—I refused to marry the man he picked out for me. He won’t say so—and people don’t realize he’s like that—but he believes a daughter is a chattel. My brother ran away long ago. When he was fifteen. We’re one of those families that ‘hasn’t heard since.’ Dad thinks, of course, that Larry’s a gangster by now.
Probably dead. Or in prison. Dad forced an apple-cheeked ass on me—a blond boy from the top drawer of some Chicago bank—and I spit in his eye. He’s got that against me. And he’s got the war and Roosevelt. He has to spoon the foam out of his mouth every morning when he wakes up. He’s nuts. He hasn’t enough employees, and servants, and relatives, for whipping boys. And yet the good people of Muskogewan still go around believing that he is a very solid citizen.”