Romance Classics (141 page)

“I don’t deny it. Why should I?” he cut in sharply.

“You shouldn’t—I’d rather know it,” she said quietly. “But I couldn’t possibly be happy with a man who had so little faith in me, who believed in me so little that he could insult me by being jealous. That’s not love, Bill.”

“Oh, poppycock!” snapped Bill. “You know that if I turned up missing for a week, with some good-looking gal, you’d promptly think the worst.”

“It’s no good, Bill. We could argue from here to Doomsday and we couldn’t reach any sort of understanding,” she said wearily.

She drew off her wedding ring and laid it on the dressing table and picked up her bag.

“This is good-bye, Bill—for always.”

“You’d rather have it like that than to make an honest
confession? I could forgive you, Cathy, if only you’d tell me the truth,” said Bill swiftly.

Cathy stared at him.

“But I’ve told you the truth,” she protested.

“Like fun you have!” Bill was a stranger, ugly, almost frightening. “When did you see Graham last?”

“At the Officers’ Club in Honolulu the day before I shoved off for home,” she told him faintly.

“And you expect me to believe that there was nothing between you?”

She cowered from the stinging lash in his voice. And then she drew a deep, hard breath and straightened. Without a word she turned toward the door.

Bill said roughly, “Here—let me take your bag. I’ll see you to the station.”

But she evaded him.

“Thanks, no, Bill. I’d prefer it like this.” She went quickly out of the room and closed the door behind her with a finality that was a stab against her naked heart, and that had a sound of loneliness more desolate than anything she had ever heard in all her life.

Maggie was frankly and hearteningly glad to have her back. But she peered at Cathy sharply, once they were back in the neat little white house. “Looks to me like your vacation didn’t pan out any too well,” she said sternly. “You’re looking more peaked than when you left.”

“Civilian traveling is hard work,” Cathy answered.

“Could be at that. Me, I wouldn’t know,” said Maggie. “All the traveling I do is from here to town and back, and that’s the way I like it. Just a hick at heart.”

Later, when they were having supper, Cathy made herself ask the question she knew Maggie was waiting to hear. Mentally she braced herself, and her tone was elaborately cool and casual when she spoke.

“Has Bill come home?”

“Not so far as I know,” answered Maggie, and her own tone was more casual than usual. “Way I heard it, the Dowager Queen has gone up to Richmond to meet him and drive home with him. Taking along her house guest, of course.”

Cathy was a little puzzled by Maggie’s tone.

“Oh, has Mrs. Kendall a house guest?”

“Sure—I’d say she was the Dowager Queen’s selection for a wife for Bill—a
suitable
wife.” Maggie waited for Cathy’s answering grin as she emphasized the word.

For a moment Cathy sat very still and felt every drop of color drain out of her face. Maggie looked at her and then away and went on hurriedly.

“One of those ‘society gals’ with a capital S that the Dowager Queen dotes on so much. A blonde, with blue eyes and hair hanging down on her shoulders—and a disposition that would cut glass—so gossip has it. Several of the business people in town have felt the edge of it. Seems she put up quite a fuss in the drug store because Allen didn’t carry the kind of perfume she wanted—at fifty dollars an ounce.”

Cathy had herself under control now, and Maggie breathed a little more easily.

“She sounds—quite a person,” said Cathy.

“Oh, she’s a looker. Knock your eye out, and all that,” admitted Maggie. “But I’d feel a mite sorry for any fellow that married her—especially Bill.”

Cathy made herself laugh and said, “Oh, well—that’s Bill’s business. You and I don’t have to worry about it.”

“I don’t want to pry, chick,” said Maggie after a moment. “But—well,
have
you and Bill quarreled?”

Cathy was still for a moment and then she looked up at Maggie and said honestly, “Bill and I are through, Maggie. All washed up—finished.”

Maggie studied the girl’s white, set face for a moment and then she said gently, “Well, knowing how crazy you’ve always been about him, chick, I’m sorry. But I can’t help feeling like maybe you’re better off in the long run. With Edith Kendall dominating Bill’s life, and not liking you—being married to Bill would be a dog’s life.”

“So let’s just forget it, shall we?” said Cathy huskily. “I’d rather not talk about it any more.”

“Well, of course not. It’s forgotten,” agreed Maggie, and as
she rose to clear the table, she put her arm about Cathy and gave her a little hug.

It was inevitable that Bill and Cathy should meet in a town the size of Cypressville. Neither of them could have avoided it for long. It came about quite naturally on a Monday afternoon when Cathy and Maggie had finished grocery shopping and had stopped at the post office on their way home.

On the post office steps, Cathy came face to face with Bill. For a moment they were both still, silent, looking at each other; secretly each was searching for a sign of relenting, of weakening, in the other. But Cathy was on guard and Bill equally so. It was Bill who spoke first.

“Well, hello,” he said. “You’re looking very fit.”

“Hello, Bill,” said Cathy quietly.

There was a moment in which Bill looked embarrassed, uneasy, a little guilty. But the next moment the horn of his car was blown peremptorily, and Cathy glanced beyond Bill to see the girl who sat beside the wheel, where Cathy had sat so often.

“Aunt Edith’s house guest, Elaine Stovall,” Bill explained.

“Yes, I’ve heard she’s—lovely,” said Cathy, and added before she could stop herself, “and a bit impatient, I fear.”

“Look, Cathy—” said Bill swiftly, impulsively, but Cathy set her teeth and went past him down to where Maggie sat behind the wheel of the faithful little Betsy-Bug.

Knowing that Bill was back, and that the Stovall girl was in the house with him, with the approval and encouragement of Mrs. Kendall, hurt Cathy deeply. She knew she was jealous, and she tried to scold herself for it. But after all, she was Bill’s wife, and wasn’t Bill treating her shamefully in not acknowledging it? Wouldn’t he ever apologize? Cathy had known in her heart from the very first that she and Bill had been wrong in keeping their marriage secret. They should have faced Mrs. Kendall, announced their marriage, and dared her to do her worst. But even now, when she admitted that it had been a mistake, she tried to find excuses for Bill. The money meant such a lot to him: first, he felt that it was rightfully his; second, he had known years of the most grueling poverty, which had given him a false conception of the importance of money. At least, to Cathy, his conception was false; but humbly she admitted that she had never known the
sort of poverty he had experienced during the formative years of his boyhood. Perhaps if she had—

Her thoughts went round and round, and she was worn out with them. She went for a long walk into the country one afternoon, with no other idea than to walk until she was tired enough to sleep, instead of lying awake and thinking half the night as she had been doing.

It was dusk when she came back, very tired and very unhappy.

As she opened the gate in the white picket fence, she saw that Maggie was not alone on the porch, and suddenly her tired heart leaped up—and the next moment fell flat. For it wasn’t Bill who rose to greet her; it was a man, tall, lean, rangy, burned brown by tropic suns, and in the well-tailored uniform of an officer in the United States Army.

For a moment she stood rooted to the top step, staring with incredulous eyes as the man laughed down at her and said over his shoulder to Maggie, “See? I told you she’d be glad to see me—but I didn’t think she’d be struck dumb!”

“Captain Graham!” she gasped faintly, and put a shaking hand in the one he extended.

“Kindly stop demoting me, madam,” he said sternly, his eyes laughing at her, a warm, eager light in their dark depths. “It’s Major Graham,
if
you please!”

“So they finally realized how important you were and gave you proper credit?” Cathy rallied herself to answer. “But what in the world are you doing here in Cypressville?”

“Looking for you, of course—what else?” answered Mark Graham promptly. “You sold me on the charms of Cypressville—remember that afternoon at the Officers’ Club in Honolulu when you could talk of nothing else? You gave me the impression that it was a sort of combination paradise and Utopia. Well, naturally, when I found myself with a thirty-day leave on my hands and no place I cared much to see, I remembered Cypressville and it sounded like a right nice little place to see. I said to myself, ‘Darling will be bored stiff by now, among a lot of civilians, so I’ll give her a break—I’ll go see her.’ And here I am.”

Maggie was looking a little alarmed, and Mark grinned at her and said explanatorily, “You see, Darling was her nickname. The patients never had time to find out her real name, and they just called her Darling.”

“Nine tenths of the flight nurses are called Darling or Angel,” answered Cathy, still shaken with the unexpectedness of his appearance, and all that his being here in Cypressville would mean.

Maggie excused herself. Mark sat down in the old porch swing and patted the seat beside him invitingly. But Cathy dropped into the wicker chair Maggie had been occupying, and drew a deep breath. Mark’s eyes did not leave her face and there was a disturbing light in them. Somehow, crazy as it was, Cathy’s heart beat a little faster and she felt a tremor of uneasiness.

“What’s wrong, Cathy?” asked Mark quietly.

Cathy looked at him, surprised.

“Wrong? Why, nothing. It’s just that—well, I’m so surprised at seeing you.”

“You don’t mind my coming to Cypressville?”

“Mind? Why should I? I’m awfully glad to see you—truly.”

Mark nodded. “I’m glad of that. Funny, but after we got back from that little jungle episode, I felt I never wanted to see you again. Funny how sick we got of each other during that time, remember? We stumbled into camp, our clothes in ribbons, our bodies swollen and bruised and pocked by insect bites; and we were screaming at each other.”

“The people at camp thought we’d gone mad from the experience,” she remembered with a little wince.

“They weren’t far wrong, Darling. Another twenty-four hours—” He shrugged and went on after a moment, “Well, back at the hospital, I kept not liking you very much; but gradually I began to be able to look on it with more sanity. I realized that you had more courage than any two men I’d ever known. I began to remember—and you sort of crept into my thoughts—and my heart.”

“Don’t!”
Cathy cried sharply.

Mark looked at her curiously through the gathering dark.

“Don’t be frightened, Darling,” he said gently. “I’ve no intention of making love to you. I remember, Cathy, that there was a fellow back here in Cypressville who had a sort of priority on your heart and your mind. You talked about him a lot. Well, when the urge to see you hit me so hard that there was no resisting it, I stood myself in a corner and said sternly, ‘Now, see here, you! Cathy’s already married to her
beloved, and they’ll probably invite you to dinner—maybe not. So why don’t you use what few brains you have and stay away?’ But—well, there I was on the plane, and there I was taking a train in Atlanta. And the first thing I asked Mrs. Westbrook, when I’d tracked you down, was, Tell me, is she married?’ And when Mrs. Westbrook said, ‘No’—well, remember that morning when we stumbled into camp? That’s a little the way I felt—only better!”

“Mark—you mustn’t!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Darling,” said Mark. “I must—because the more I try to fight loving you, the more I fall in! But I thought if I came and saw you, I’d find you weren’t half as pretty as I remembered you; and maybe you really had a mean, spiteful disposition. I see now I was just kidding myself in thinking that I could knock myself out of being in love with you by exposing myself to your presence.”

“Mark—
please!
” she said huskily. “You mustn’t, because I’m not—not free to listen.”

“But Mrs. Westbrook said you weren’t married,” he protested, and then added quickly, in a different tone, “Sorry—I’ve no right to ask questions. Forget it. Only maybe it would help if I told you that I’m here to try to convince myself that I’m not in love with you. When I point out that while I’m attracted to you, you’re going to have a job on your hands landing me in a matrimonial net—well, that’s a challenge—and what woman can refuse to pick up a challenge?”

“Sounds like good thinking,” Cathy admitted.

“Sure—I’ve devoted a long and busy life to thoughts about the not so gentle and often very unfair sex,” he told her cheerfully.

Maggie came to announce that supper was ready, and as they settled at the table, she looked swiftly at Cathy’s face and then at Mark’s and smothered a little sigh of relief. Cathy didn’t look so haggard or so heartsick, Maggie told herself; Mark was going to be good for her. And with that thought, Mark stepped straight into Maggie’s affections.

He looked about at the bright, neat dining room with its crisply fresh curtains and its low bowl of roses in the center of the table.

“Boy, this must be what a home looks like,” he said contentedly. “I’ve always wondered. Some fellows seemed to set
such store by what they called home; but never having had one, I always wondered a little.”

Maggie stared at him.

“You haven’t any folks?” she asked.

“None,” said Mark, and added with a little gesture of dismissal, “oh, I’ve got a father or two and a couple of mothers scattered about, but I had them so briefly and I was always such a nuisance to them that I never had time to get very well acquainted with them.”

He looked at Maggie’s and Cathy’s face and grinned.

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad.” He hastily disclaimed any attempt at arousing their sympathy. “I was three when my mother decided she couldn’t bear the sight of my father any longer, and the feeling mutual, she hared off to Reno and had the usual. Her second choice was waiting for her, and they were married before the ink was dry on the decree. And Father wasn’t wasting any time, either. He took unto himself a bride within twenty-four hours. Neither of the new ‘steps’ was exactly thrilled at the prospect of being burdened with a youngster, so they took turns and—well, I was popped into boarding school the minute I was old enough to be acceptable. Almost before I got my breath, they’d both got tired again—and presto! I had a new set of ‘steps.’ “