Tim threw himself wholeheartedly into the plans for the ball. He saw to it that his own guests had first choice, made the rental arrangements and himself picked out Amanda’s costume. It was of black velvet embroidered in pearls and sequins, the bodice cut low across the breasts and a wide, knee-length skirt over black ruffles. There were also black net stockings and black satin slippers with red heels. This creation represented a “dance-hall girl” of a western mining camp in the eighties and Amanda was enchanted. The dress made her feel frivolous and abandoned and it showed off her beautiful legs. By seven o’clock, when she was just leaving her cottage to join the rest of their group for cocktails, a bellboy tapped at her door and delivered a bulky letter.
As Amanda took it in her hand, her knees went weak and her heart started beating violently. At last—cried a voice inside her. “Oh, thank God.... And this violent emotion seemed unrelated to her brain or to the pleasant thoughts she had been thinking. From some deep unsuspected lair it jumped on her without warning. Then she looked at the writing on the envelope. It was Tim’s.
She sat down on the bed, staring at the envelope.
After a moment, she looked at the phone. She put her hand on the receiver and then her fingers loosened. Her hands fell to her lap.
“Call me if you’re ready to come back.” No, he had said “when” but the “if” had been there. He had put it there, not she. And that night, so long ago in feeling, when they had fought about the lost mine, it was he who had said, “Do you want to go home? Shall we call it quits?” The love she had been so sure of, then it just didn’t exist, perhaps it never had. He didn’t care enough to lift a finger to keep her. What was the use of trying to fool herself? She sat for a long time staring at the telephone and it seemed that something tight and hard came into her breast. The hardness flowed over her mobile face and aged it.
She picked up Tim’s envelope and ripped it open. There was a sheet of notepaper which said—
A bauble for Amanda’s hair,
She needs no jewels to make her fair,
But if on her head my heart I see
I’ll know that she will marry me.
To the paper there was pinned a large heart made of tiny diamonds encircling a ruby.
Amanda laughed—a sharp, bitter sound. “Well, there it is—” she said out loud. “Jean’ll be so pleased. Unless, of course, it’s an April Fool joke.” One never knew with Tim. Nor did it matter. He loved her as much as he could love anyone, she knew that. I don’t love him but that doesn’t matter either. No doubt Jean was right and there was no such thing as “love.” Nothing but various delusive forms of physical desire. She picked up the diamond heart and held it in her hand.
Divorce, she thought quite dispassionately. Reno. Tim will pay for it. Honeymoon abroad. Paris. The Riviera. Cocktails. Tennis, swimming and riding—just like here. And I’ll adore it. We’ll be an enchanting couple. Golden girl and Golden boy.
She raised the hand with the diamond heart to her hair, then stopped. She pinned it instead to the black velvet shoulder of her costume.
“What does that mean?” asked Tim, eyeing his jewel when they met in his patio. “My poetic effort certainly stipulated in the hair.”
“It means yes and no,” said Amanda lightly. “It means thank you very much for your gorgeous heart but tonight just let’s have fun with no commitments. Do you mind, Tim?”
“Why no. I’ll bear with your modest backings and fillings until tomorrow and that’s sweet of me.”
“Very,” said Amanda smiling.
It was nearly dark on the patio, the low-hanging stars not so brilliant as they would be later. The only light streamed from the windows of Tim’s cottage and she peered uncertainly at his costume. He wore high shiny leather boots, navy blue corduroy pants, a checked silk shirt and a large black felt hat turned up on one side, a la Robin Hood. He had pasted a curling black mustache above his mouth and there was a small gilded pick stuck through his belt.
“Cowboy?” she asked.
“Good lord, no. Nothing so banal. I’m a hard-rock miner from Tombstone and I leer at dance-hall girls.”
“Oh. Well, leer away. I see there’s plenty of us.”
Kitty Stevens and the other little divorcee were both dressed like Amanda in short ruffled can-can costumes which exhibited all their charms. Jean and George had come as an aristocratic Spanish couple. Jean looked pretty enough in her satin gown and high-combed mantilla, but George was resplendent in the Chicago costumer’s version of a Spanish Don, all velveteen and embroidery, white ruffles and a round hat with a dashing chin strap like the the ones Valentino used to wear. He looked happy too.
Lora, the movie starlet, and her boy friend were Indians in red-fringed beaded cotton, with quantities of feathers in their hair and a whole battery of clanking shell wampum around their necks. Lora had been pursuing liquid relaxation all afternoon and had now reached a stage of exuberance. “Me—Minnehaha—” she kept saying winsomely. “Him Big Chief Ha Ha!” And then she put her little hand over her mouth to emit a ululating series of whoops. These were answered by yodels and yippees from the other men of the party who were cowboys or prospectors or gamblers. The Martinis flowed fast. Tim kept his phonograph turned on full blast, playing “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” and “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” and “Night and Day.” While this last was playing he came over to Amanda who had been sitting a little withdrawn from the shrieking group, trying to avoid the advances of one of the St. Louis husbands who had turned suddenly amorous.
“This is our piece, my love—” said Tim, pulling her up from her chair. “Remember I wrote you.” He put his arms around her and hummed, “Night and day you are the one—it’s true, you know.” He put his hand over the diamond heart and pressed it against her shoulder, his hand fumbled downwards to her breast. “We’ll get rid of that guy—Dartland—What made you want to go and marry him for anyhow—except to make me find out I couldn’t do without you? Was that it, baby?—You introduced a little complication—little set-back to excite me....”
“Let me go, Tim,” said Amanda quietly. “You’re getting pretty tight.”
“All right—Andy—anything you say. But you don’t have to shove. Everybody knows we two are—are—oh, come on, have another drink. Unlax.”
I might as well, she thought. Everybody else is getting plastered. Who am I to be unique?
By ten o’clock the ball was in full swing and nobody could deny that the management had spared no pains to re-create the atmosphere of the Old West. The ballroom walls were hung with painted canvas to represent the rough board interior of a dance hall. At one end there was a huge mahogany bar, a mirror behind it, sawdust on the floor, and a mustachioed barkeep who dispensed setups for use with the guests’ own flasks. There was a sign over the bar, “Kum ’n git it, folks! Grub ’n’ moonshine fur the axin'!"
At the entrance stood the manager dressed as a comic Indian, with feathers and a fearsome painted mask. His function was to keep out anyone without a costume and to collect an entrance fee from people who had driven over from Tucson. Above his head there was another large sign. “Park yore cayuse ’n’ six-shooter at the door with Chief Running Nose. Him heap good Injun!”
The band, imported from Los Angeles and dressed as Mexican vaqueros, interspersed fox-trots with jigs and reels and sentimental ballads like “Sweet Betsy from Pike” and “Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage,” sung by the band leader. These bored Tim who rushed up to the orchestra waving a ten-dollar bill and demanding “Night and Day” at intervals.
Amanda, though dancing continuously, amidst a murmur of compliments from all her partners, found that the gaiety everyone else seemed to be enjoying still eluded her and it was with an emotion no warmer than resignation that she saw Tim cutting in for yet another dance. His false black mustache disturbed her. It gave to his narrow face a ludicrously sinister appearance under the curving felt hat and he had reached a stage of exhilaration where he thought it funny to
hook at passing shoulder straps with his little gilded miner’s pick.
He held Amanda so tight she couldn’t breathe and she objected. He rested his cheek on her hair. “Andy doesn’t like to be squeezed? But Kitty likes it. Little Kitty just loves to be squeezed——”
“I don’t give a damn what Kitty likes,” snapped Amanda, half laughing. “Tim, I’ve never seen you so pie-eyed. Please stop nuzzling me.”
“I’ll nuzzle if I want to. I’m the best nuzzler north of the border. I’m a——”
Amanda did not hear him. She stiffened in his arms, staring over his shoulder towards the entrance. A tall man in an ordinary gray suit was leaning against the wall in the shadows just outside the ticket table.
She gave Tim a sharp push. “I’m sorry but I want to see something.” She left him expostulating on the middle of the floor and edged her way among the swirling dancers. The man did not move until she reached the edge of the floor. Then he straightened and stood waiting.
“Dart...” she whispered, “Oh, thank God!” She ran past the manager into the hallway. She raised her arms. “Oh, my darling, you came for me—I’ve been so unhappy not hearing from you—so unhappy——”
“Unhappy?” he repeated. His cold gray gaze traveled slowly over her, rested a moment on the diamond heart on her bodice. “You astonish me.”
Her arms dropped. Terror struck through her but she spoke fast. “You’ve been watching the dancing? That doesn’t mean anything. Tim’s just tight and I thought you didn’t care—Dart—darling—please ... why did you come if you’re going to—to——”
“I came because your mother telephoned me and begged me to.” After a moment he added without expression, “She said you needed me.”
“Mother...!” She stared at him stupefied. She had seen little of her mother during the last days, and tonight Mrs. Lawrence had already gone to bed. “Well, I’m glad she did....I couldn’t call you because I thought you didn’t want me ... Dart, can’t we go someplace quiet and talk?”
“I like it here. It’s an interesting sight. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
There was no anger in his voice, no sarcasm. He spoke as though she were a casual intrusive acquaintance. He spoke as he had that first night on the boat when she had tried to persuade him to join their party. Oh, what’ll I do? she thought, standing there unnoticed beside him. What’ll I do? His dark rugged profile was turned toward her, the part in his stubborn hair a little crooked as it usually was. Standing there so aloof and tall, in that gray suit, the one he had been married in, he was a stranger.
“Do you want to go in and dance, sir?” asked the manager in the painted Indian mask, leaving the ticket table and walking up to them. “There’s still some costumes left in the card room. Mrs. Dartland can show you where.”
“Why, no, thanks,” said Dart.
The manager went back to his table.
Amanda stood there rooted beside Dart in a kind of drugged despair. Tim was now dancing with Kitty, they were jigging and kicking their heels and Kitty was brandishing the miner’s gilded pick. Amanda looked at them all in there under the bright lights; the bogus Indian braves and squaws in costumes sent from Chicago, the dance-hall girls, the old prospectors and synthetic cowboys, the hard-rock miners with fake mustaches and papier mache picks, and she looked back at Dart—the only real hard-rock miner here, and the only one with Indian blood; and not allowed to join them because he had no costume.
“Oh, dear God,” she said below her breath, and she began to laugh in small broken sounds.
“Something funny?” said Dart, glancing at her then back to the ballroom.
“Yes. Funny. Very funny. But don’t condemn them, Dart—or me. Don’t you see how hard they’re all searching for something? Just because you’re strong and real, you mustn’t be so harsh.” She spoke with a desperate earnestness, no longer pleading. As she stood there in the dance-hall costume she suddenly showed some of Dart’s own coolness.
The muscles of his face tightened, he turned and stared down at her. He started to speak and he was stopped by Tim who came stumbling through the barrier into the hallway, having just discovered Amanda’s whereabouts. “Good sweet Jesus—” whispered Tim, swaying slightly. “Look what blew in! He been making trouble, Andy?” He raised his hand uncertainly and flung the fake mustache to the floor. “He been—making trouble?” he repeated. “We’ll get the boys to throw him out.”
“He has not been making trouble,” said Amanda. “On the contrary. He seems to be enjoying himself.”
“What’re you doing here, D-Dartland? Spoiling the fun. You can’t have her back, you know. It’s all—all settled.”
“Oh, but yes, Tim,” said Amanda. “He can have me back if he’ll take me. I’m sorry.” She unpinned the diamond heart and since Tim, staring at her, made no move to take it, she slipped it in his pocket. “Give it to Kitty,” she said.
“But look here, honey—” Tim shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut and opened them. “I’m kind of fried, I know—I don’t get this.” Suddenly he turned on Dart. “Why in the name of sanity don’t you say something?”
Dart folded his arms. “Because I’ve been listening with natural interest to what Amanda’s been saying.”
Tim licked his lips, he stared from one to the other of them. “What’s the matter with him”—he muttered querulously—“standing there like a graven image. You want to fight for her—is that it? Western stuff, is that what you want?”
Dart laughed. “I’m willing, if you wish it. But I don’t see what it would prove. Rather theatrical gesture. After all, the lady must make her own decision.”
Tim frowned, he teetered back and forth glaring up at Dart from under the curving black felt hat. “I don’t get it. You’re supposed to be a western he-man, you’ve even got Apache in you. Why aren’t you raising hell?”
Because he’s real and you’re a phony, thought Amanda, with a blinding insight. Because he has a truer sense of values. He knows what the real issue is and you don’t know anything except to grab like a child for everything you think you want.
“Dart, will you take me back?” She did not look at him. She raised her chin and looked past him into the bright-lit lobby.
“I’m leaving at once. The Ford’s outside on the drive. I have to be back to go on shift.”
“Yes. I know. I’ll pack very fast.” It’ll all begin again, she thought. All the things I hated. I don’t know if I can take it. A part of him is hard and ruthless. But I must go with him. The music dimmed in her ears, Tim’s face, the costumed dancers in the ballroom, all dimmed and faded, she felt only Dart standing beside her like a tree, like a tower solid above the floating mists.
“Good-bye, Timmy,” she said gently. “Thank you for all you’ve done. I’m so sorry to leave like this.” She put her hand on his arm a minute.
He looked from her to Dart, then suddenly he shrugged. He picked the mustache up off the floor and stuck it back above his mouth. “Two turndowns is too much, even from you, Andy,” he said. “You’re a little fool.”
He swiveled on his heel and walked, not without dignity, past the ticket table and into the ballroom.
Amanda packed fast, throwing her things into the suitcases, while Dart stood silently by the door of Mariposa watching her. At last he spoke. “This is indeed a comfortable little nest Merrill provided for you. Did the twin beds come in handy, too?”
She raised her head from the suitcase. She straightened her back and her blue eyes held his steadily. “You know better than that, Dart.”
His eyes returned the gaze for a long moment and then he nodded. “Yes, I do. Or I wouldn’t have come.”
They were silent again. She closed the suitcases. “I’m going up to say good-bye to Mother. I’ll be right down to the car.” He picked up her two bags and the fitted dressing case and preceded her from the cottage.
She ran across the main patio, glancing up at the shrouded windows of the ballroom. The music fl
oated out upon the still air, and the thud of stamping feet. She hurried across the deserted lobby and up the main stairs, knocked at her mother’s door.
Mrs. Lawrence was in bed, reading. She put her book down and stared at her daughter anxiously. “Oh, what is it—darling?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d called Dart? Why did you do it?”
Mrs. Lawrence sighed. “Because I thought you were drifting into something—something wrong. Because Dart’s not the kind of man to wag his tail and beg for scraps. I knew he wouldn’t make the first move. Maybe that’s wrong, maybe he’s too stiff-necked. But he’s your husband.”
“Yes,” said Amanda. She knelt down by the bed and put her arms around her mother. “I don’t know if it’s going to work. I can’t seem to stay all of a piece. I change and I can’t help it. But I’ve got to try.”
Her mother stroked the golden head. The struggle for maturity, she thought—never-ending struggle. The courage to lie in your bed after you’ve made it. “But you love him—” she said. “And he loves you. Hold fast to that.”
Amanda kissed her mother. “Bless you.” She got up and smiled wryly. “Jean will be livid. George, too. I hate to leave you to all the mess.”
“Never mind, dear. I’ll manage—” She looked at the flushed beautiful girl seeing the baby toddler with the flaxen ringlets and the trusting blue eyes, holding out a broken toy. “Andy break it, Mommy fix.” She and David had not fixed, they had bought her a new perfect one instead.
Mrs. Lawrence’s eyes filled with tears. Oh, did I do right to call Dart? Can she possibly be happy? Why isn’t love enough to give one wisdom, to make one sure? “Take care of yourself, my dearest child,” she said quietly. “I’ll be so anxious for your letters.”
CHAPTER NINE