The Mulberry Bush (16 page)

Oh, why didn't the plane go faster?

And until morning—so many hours!

Virginia sat tense as a strung wire, every nerve tuned, sending out vibrations desperately to Mike. I'm coming—I'm coming—on my knees—and all this that we quarreled about is so pitifully unimportant, so shamefully small. Love is what matters—and I did pick it to pieces, looking for flaws, when there were so many flaws in my own heart.

She was out of the plane almost before the steps were let down. She looked around frantically for a taxi and started running when someone called, “Here, Virginia.”

It was Bruce Gamble. He came hurrying up, took her bag from her hand.

“Mary thought you might come in on this plane, so I waited. My car's over here.”

“Oh, thank you, Bruce. I am in a hurry. I have to go to Florida as soon as possible in the morning. Mike's there—he's sick. I must go. Will you take me to the office, please? There are some things I can do there tonight—so I can get away early.”

“So he's in Florida? And you're going?”

“Yes, I'm going, Bruce. Nothing else is important now—except that I'm going to Mike. Will you take me to the office?”

“I'll take you to the office—and then,” he said steadily, “I'll take you to Florida.”

“Oh, but Bruce—I have to fly to Florida. I have to get there quickly. Mike may be—terribly ill.” She choked a little and thrust away the gray fear that had haunted her all the way from New York.

“You can fly. Have you forgotten that I fly a plane? And I have one ready—the plane that we use on long, quick trips. I was planning to leave in it early tomorrow, for Mexico. That's how I happened to be out here—and then I thought you might be coming. I wanted to see you again, so I waited.”

“Bruce, you're too good to me. But—I can't leave very early. I have to wait till the bank opens. I have to have some money. Mike may need—a lot of things. I don't know what I'll find when I get there.”

“I can take care of that, too,” he said. “I'll lend you some money. Will five hundred be enough? You can send it back to me later.”

“Bruce—if you go on making things easy for me—I don't think I can bear it. I'm—shamed enough now.”

“You'd do it for me, wouldn't you—if I were in trouble—if you could help me, wouldn't you do it?”

“Oh, yes—but—”

“You think that because I fell in love with you—and I'm not promising to get over that very quickly—that I should forget how to be a friend?”

“I think you're the finest person that I know, Bruce,” she said sincerely.

He left her at the office, after he had gone up with her, unlocked the door, and turned on the lights.

“Can you be at the airport in two hours? And will you mind coming in a taxi? I'll have to store my car. And is that coat warm enough? This cabin job we have isn't heated, and it's cold high in the air.”

It was nearly morning when she arrived at the airport. Bruce was there, loading equipment and baggage into a small cabin plane, and with him was another quiet young man, dressed in flying clothes.

“This is Parke Harford,” Bruce said. “We're flying together. Mexico first—then perhaps California, Texas, Oklahoma—wherever they're hunting for oil.” He swung her bags in and buckled her belt for her. Then he sat down beside her, spread a map across her knees, and with a flashlight plotted their route and decided on the practical landing place for the plane when they arrived. “Too bad this isn't an amphibian. We could set down right there on the spot,” he said, “but we'll do our best.”

She saw the sun come up over the sand hills of Carolina, and with the growing golden light her heart lightened, too. Then farther south a gray sea of cloud thickened below them, and rain began to rattle on the low wings like shot, streaking past the windows. It was bitter cold, and she pulled her fur collar up and wrapped the robe close around her, but with the cold and the rain and the odd, detached feeling of being so far from the earth, her depression returned again. In all the world, only herself and those two bent, leather-covered heads in front of her—and heavy thoughts returned to torture her.

What if Mike looked at her again with anger and distaste in his face? What if he did not want her anymore? And here a still more bitter idea intruded—had Bruce Gamble counted on something like that? Was he doing this to—cure her, show her how hopeless it was?

“I must be—horrible—to be thinking things like this!”

Warm day broke upon them, over the pine woods of Georgia. The sun shimmered off the wings, blue rivers slid underneath, they were flying near the sea. Bruce turned and grinned at her, his eyes hidden behind his goggles, pointed with a gesturing arm toward the eastern horizon, where a low feather of grayness drifted.

“Ship,” he shouted over the roar of the engines. “Going south.”

Going south! A hundred miles an hour—and faster—she was going south. Work forgotten, everything forgotten except that she was going to Mike. She sent a sort of wireless message to brave Harriet Hillery. “I will hold him—and I will set him free. He'll be mine—and he'll be free!”

With waning afternoon, the patterned terrain of groves and highways and little towns was lost in a jade-green vastness dotted with lost lakes, cut with canals. And then they were slowing, and there was a little city, sitting beside blue water, toy towers and buildings, toy cars and people, toy sailboats—and they were going down. The airport was a gray cross upon a vague field of green. She did not stiffen her body and hold her breath—she let herself fall with the plane, down swiftly like an arrow, lifting a little, swinging, straightening, dropping smoothly—they were there!

Bruce got down stiffly, pulled off his headgear, reached up a hand to her.

“I'll wait, Virginia,” he said. “You'll have to take a bus from this point—or a car. If you want me to get a car and drive you down—”

She shook her head. “No, Bruce—I have to go alone.”

“But I'll wait here—till you learn how—things are,” he insisted.

“Don't wait, Bruce. Please don't wait. I don't want anything behind me—unfinished, waiting—when I go.”

“I see. But—I'd rather be sure—”

“I'm sure. I'll make it—sure. And thanks for everything—more than I can ever tell you. I owe you now more than I can ever pay.”

“Let me keep the debt, Virginia.” He gave her a little rueful smile, and her heart winced a little at having to deal Bruce this hurt. “Let me keep that much,” he said. “It's all I'll have.”

“Goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, good friend.”

“Goodbye—and good luck.”

The car that carried her south rattled and swayed. Along the way, rushes leaned over canals, and white ibises lumbered up, long legs dangling, from the marshes. Blackbirds perched on leaning stakes and warm air made her lay her coat aside. Then quick darkness fell, with thousands of stars very near and very bright, and in the reedy dusks, the shrillness of little creatures unseen.

They passed little towns, lighted and bright, and then the car swung off the highway, into a shell road, narrow, with a deep, dark stripe of water on either side and bushes leaning in close. A wooden bridge rattled under the car, and she saw the ghostly white of a sailboat, moored and dipping while men took down the sail. She smelled salt mud and fish and the brinier freshness of open water. And then there was a gate, and a light—windows in a golden pattern, and the car stopped with a squeal of brakes.

A woman in slacks came down some steps, carrying a flashlight.

“I'm Mrs. Paull,” Virginia told her. “Is my husband—”

“Oh—that writer?” said the woman. “Yes, he's here. The doctor wanted to take him to the hospital up at Naples—but he wouldn't go. He's upstairs—first door to the left. You going to stay?”

“Yes, I'm going to stay. Till he's well again.”

“You'd better register, then. Fritz—bring in the lady's baggage, she's going to stay.”

The big front room was warm and smelled of soup and coffee; beyond the windows was the black shine of water. Over the desk hung an enormous stuffed fish. Two children leaned against the desk on either side of her and watched absorbedly while she signed her name: Mrs. Michael Paull.

“I've never written it before,” she was thinking.

And then she was going up the stairs. A wooden door, standing open—dimness beyond, the pale outline of a bed, the pale mound of a quiet shape—.

Her throat tightened. Her voice was little more than a croak.

“Mike?”

There was a wild upheaval and two bare feet were flung in air, and then swung over the edge of the bed. Mike sat up, all his hair standing out around his face, his flushed, swollen face—.

“Ginny!” It was a breathy rasp. “Ginny!” he said again and held out his hands.

She flew and gathered him close, his arms reached for her, his hot fingers moved over her face.

“Mike—I didn't know—I came—as fast as I could.”

He leaned against her weakly. He was like a child in her arms.

“I—didn't think you'd come, Ginny. I didn't think you'd come!”

“I'm here, Mike. I'll take care of you. Lie down now—you're so weak—”

“I'm not weak, just a little malaria—I've had it before. I just—got tired—and I didn't care what happened to me—and then the bug bit me. I—you came, Ginny—you came!”

All that had been—all the doubts and uncertainty—all were ended. The darkness took them, the warm wind carried them away. This was Mike—her lover, cracked lips trying to smile, fevered breath on her face, hot arms holding her—this was heaven.

“I'll take care of you, Mike—and then we'll go home.”

“I'll be all right—tomorrow—you'll see. Temperature's down today—I'll be well tomorrow—doc gave me some shots—the devil, Ginny, I'm well now!”

“Not quite well, darling—but you'll get strong now.”

“Strong—feel that grip? I'm strong. And I'll be well tomorrow—see if I'm not. I knew I'd be all right—if you came, but I thought you wouldn't want to come—I thought you were sick of me—”

“Oh, Mike—we've been so silly—and so blind!”

“Don't go, Ginny. Don't let go my hand. I'll—never let you go. Never any more. Wherever I go—you're going with me. I've—been through hell, Ginny—without you!”

Wherever I go—she saw them then, the far horizons, the strange, wild places—and Mike would go. She sighed a little and then drew a long breath and flung back her head.

“All right, Mike,” she said. “Get well first. And when do we start?”

He sat lip, shaking back his rumpled hair. He grinned, and in the dim room the grin was like a torch lighted.

He said, “Ginny, angel—let's go tomorrow, if the doc will let us. Ginny, I'm sick of this place. I've been here—a thousand years. A thousand awful years I I'm sick of it—I never want to see this place again. It's just another mulberry bush. And you know, I never did like mulberries!”

American novelist
Helen Topping Miller
began writing as a young child and penned more than forty novels and three hundred short stories for both adults and children during her career. A long-time resident of the South, Miller's works include
White Peacock,
Blue Marigolds,
and
Splendor of Eagles,
as well as numerous historical romances set during the Reconstruction period and a series of Christmas novels for children. Miller, a member of both the Authors League of America and the Daughters of the American Revolution, died in 1960.

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