And she would laugh at such extravagance and agree to see him. For a while he could banter only over the telephone, and would dry up in her presence; but he became a little freer after spending several evenings with her. Once he embarrassed her by coming uninvited to a Vagabond rehearsal; he might have been the son of the director, so young did he look in that group. She scolded him, but allowed him to come out for coffee with her afterward, and she was struck by the shrewdness of his comments, especially on her own playing. He completely grasped what she was trying to do with her part.
“You have lots of sense—about some things,” she said, raising her voice over the clatter of cutlery. They were in an Automat. She had insisted on paying for her own coffee, and there was a little soreness between them.
“I’m brilliant.” He bit a doughnut in half as though he were angry at it.
“Or very conceited.”
“Both. One trait doesn’t exclude the other. Look at Shaw.”
“Well, don’t be so obvious about it, my boy, at least till you’ve got a beard like Shaw’s. It’s not attractive in you.”
“Don’t you call me ‘my boy.’ Do you know the exact difference in our ages? One year, three weeks, and five days.”
“That might as well be ten years, Wally, when the girl’s the older one.”
He slumped over his coffee, a picture of gloom. “It’s true. But it shouldn’t be, Marge. It’s a miserable trick of time, a mistake in simple arithmetic by the gods. It shouldn’t mean anything at all.”
“If you behave we can be very good friends. I like you. Don’t look so tragic.”
“Well, all right, I’m willing to play Marchbanks to your Candida—for the time being.”
“No, thanks. Candida at nineteen, indeed! You’d have to be four years old, at that rate. Sometimes you act four. Just be yourself and let me be myself. Don’t get silly ideas about me, that’s the main thing. I’m just another girl.”
He looked at her, his head tilted in Noel’s way. “Okay,” he said, “you’re just another girl. I’ll have to remember that.”
The Vagabonds did their last show early in April, and after that Marjorie had nothing to do with herself but go to school and wait for life to begin again at South Wind.
College was beginning to seem a worn-out game to her. She was bored, bored in her very soul, with the overheated classrooms, the scarred chairs with one bloated arm for writing, the gongs ringing at the dragging end of dragging hours, the smell of chalk dust, the cramping weight of textbooks under an arm, the corridors full of giggling freshmen with smeary lipstick, the frumpy teachers nagging forever about numbers and words. She had been going to school since she was six. In the dismal routine of the free city colleges, which squeezed out graduating classes like sausages every six months, she would graduate next February. Several of her classmates were getting married, and did not intend to return after the summer for the last half year. She would have done the same gladly, had she had someone to marry.
She was invited to a few of the weddings. Each time it was a shock to see a Hunter senior transformed into a bride floating in a white brilliant mist, on the arm of an awkward trapped-looking young man in formal clothes. It made Marjorie feel that time was closing a vise on her. She could not help comparing the bridegrooms to Noel Airman, and the comparison made them seem pretty poor prizes; but what consolation was that? She meant nothing to Airman.
Several of the Vagabonds kept calling her for dates, but it was so dull to be with them that she could hardly stay awake; she much preferred to sit at home reading. She went through all the novels at the nearest lending library and then began reading old novels, just to have something to read; and she was rather astonished to find that books like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary were spellbinding. Perversely, perhaps to prove to herself that the indifferent marks in her college work had been a matter of choice and not of ability, she worked hard at her studies, though she had never been less interested in them. She took a grouchy satisfaction in accumulating a number of A’s.
She went for long walks on Riverside Drive. The soft April air blowing across the blue river, the smell of the blossoming cherry and crab-apple trees, the swaying of their bunched pink branches, filled her with bitter-sweet melancholy. Often she would slip a book of poetry in her pocket, and would drop on a bench, after walking far, to read Byron or Shelley or Keats. Her yearning for Noel had opened her heart to the magic in these old words, which had been so dryly chopped up and rammed down her throat all her life by the inhuman hags who taught English.
Sometimes she walked over to Central Park. Every yellow splash of forsythia reminded her of Marsha, and the wonderful first months of their friendship. The horseback riders splattering by on the muddy bridle paths brought back the picture of herself, a scared and foolhardy seventeen, bumping along on Prince Charming, and then falling off. She could remember how wise and mature and desirable a man Sandy Gold-stone had seemed; she could remember just as clearly how he had dwindled to an ineffectual fool. She would stare up at the windows of her old apartment in the El Dorado, and wonder if some bright-eyed girl of seventeen was standing behind the white curtains in a nightgown, gloating over the golden look of the world.
Wally telephoned one May morning after a long silence. “Ever been to the Cloisters?”
“No. What’s the Cloisters?”
“The Cloisters is heaven on earth. Let’s drive up there tomorrow morning. The lilacs are in bloom. I want you to see the lilacs.”
Tomorrow was Saturday. She felt that Wally should be discouraged, but this was hardly a date, a Saturday-morning drive to look at lilacs. “Well, sure, Wally. It’s nice of you to think of me.”
Next morning it was pouring rain. She perched on the window seat of her bedroom in a lounging robe, reading a new novel greedily. It was a very agreeable way to pass the time, with rain clattering on the panes and the blue-gray light of a storm falling across the page. The hero of the novel looked like Noel Airman, even to the red-blond hair, and he was the same kind of dashing reprobate. When the doorbell rang she paid no attention to it. In a moment her mother poked her head into the room. “That boy Wally is here. Says you have a date to go driving. Is he crazy, coming out in this rain?”
“Oh, Lord. Tell him to wait a minute, Mom.” She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror on the closet door. Her hair was combed, but her face was wanly empty of makeup, and the robe was simply a maroon wool thing, not quite covering the frilly bottom of her nightgown. To show herself in this condition to a date was impossible; but she hated to get all dressed and painted just to tell Wally to go home and stop being an idiot. She decided that Wally wasn’t a date, exactly, more like a younger brother; and she went out into the living room tying the belt of her robe more closely. He was sitting at the piano in his yellow raincoat, gaily playing one of Noel’s songs. “Wally, sometimes I think you have no sense. D’you expect me to go driving in this weather?”
“Why, sure, Marge. This rain is a break. We’ll have the Cloisters all to ourselves.”
“You’ll have it all to yourself, boy. I know enough to stay in out of the wet if you don’t.”
The narrow shoulders sagged; the big head drooped; the long nose seemed to grow longer. She had seen dogs make this instant change from frisky joy to deep gloom, but never a human being. “Oh, look, Wally, I’m glad you came, just give me a minute to put on some clothes. We’ll sit around and drink coffee and talk about the summer.”
“Okay,” he said mournfully.
When she came out again, hastily dressed as for a school day, he was slouched in an armchair, still wearing the raincoat. “What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“Marge, I guess you haven’t ever lived in the country. The best time to look at flowers is in the rain.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever smile again,” she said, laughing, “if we don’t go to see those lilacs.”
“Well, I do believe you’ll like them.”
?
??What the devil. I’ve done stupider things. Let’s go.”
As often happens, Marjorie was glad Wally had dragged her out, once they were driving along the river. She had forgotten how snug and exciting it was to roll through a rainstorm in a car, especially a new powerful one like Wally’s father’s Buick; to be dry, and cushioned at one’s ease, while the storm whistled at the windows and beat on the roof, and the windshield wipers danced to and fro, wiping patches of clarity in a blurred gray world. She accepted a mentholated cigarette and curled on the seat. She did not have the habit of smoking yet, but mentholated cigarettes always seemed less sinful to her, almost medicine or candy. “This is fun,” she said. “Sorry I was a slug about it.”
“This is nothing,” Wally said happily. “Wait.”
They passed under the colossal piers of the bridge, turned away from the bubbling black river, and drove through an arch and up a steep rocky road. “See?” he said, as they pulled into a deserted parking space. “Saturday morning, but we have it to ourselves.”
The medieval museum on the bluff overlooking the Hudson was new to Marjorie. Strolling through the Gothic corridors, she said, “How on earth did you discover this?”
“Fine arts course.”
Their steps echoed in the dank stone galleries. The gorgeous tapestries, the great wooden saints and madonnas, the jeweled swords and suits of armor, the vaulted halls, all woke in her mind the atmosphere of the novel she had been reading; she could picture turning a corner in one of these empty corridors and coming on the tall blond hero. Wally, shambling along in his flat-footed way, with his hands in the pockets of his yellow raincoat, and the straight black hair falling over his eyes, was a comic misfit in this setting. But she was feeling very kindly toward him, all the same. He was giving her the kind of explorer’s pleasure Marsha had first opened to her when they had gone to concerts and art galleries together.
They had coffee in a bleak empty dining room. “Game for a walk in the gardens?” Wally said. “I think the rain’s letting up.”
“Sure, I’m game.”
The trees were dripping copiously, so that it still seemed to be raining; but when they walked into an open space among the flower beds they saw that the storm was over. White clouds tumbling and rolling overhead were uncovering patches of blue. Rich perfume rose on the damp air from purple banks of iris, and across the river a shaft of sunlight was whitening the great cables of the bridge. A quiet breeze stirred the flowers, shaking raindrops from them. “Ah, Lord, it’s beautiful, Wally,” Marjorie said. He took her hand and she allowed him to hold it; if a palm could feel remote and respectful, Wally’s did. He led her around a corner of thick bushes into a curving shadowy path filled with a curious watery lavender light.
It was an avenue solidly arched and walled with blooming lilacs. The smell, sweet and poignant beyond imagining, saturated the air; it struck her senses with the thrill of music. Water dripped from the massed blooms on Marjorie’s upturned face as she walked along the lane hand in hand with Wally. She was not sure what was rain and what was tears on her face. She wanted to look up at lilacs and rolling white clouds and patchy blue sky forever, breathing this sweet air. It seemed to her that, whatever ugly illusions existed outside this lane of lilacs, there must be a God, after all, and that He must be good.
She heard Wally say, “I kind of thought you would like it.” The voice brought her out of a near-trance. She stopped, turned, and looked at him. He was ugly, and young, and pathetic. He was looking at her with shining eyes.
“Wally, thank you.” She put her arms around his neck—he was taller than she, but not much—and kissed him on the mouth. The pleasure of the kiss lay all in expressing her gratitude, and that it did fully and satisfyingly. It meant nothing else. He held her close while she kissed him, and loosed her the moment she stepped away. He peered at her, his mouth slightly open. He seemed about to say something, but no words came. They were holding each other’s hands, and raindrops were dripping on them from the lilacs.
After a moment she uttered a low laugh. “Well, why do you look at me like that? Do I seem so wicked? You’ve been kissed by a girl before.”
Wally said, putting the back of his hand to his forehead, “It doesn’t seem so now.” He shook his head and laughed. “I’m going to plant lilac lanes all over town.” His voice was very hoarse.
“It won’t help,” she said firmly, putting her arm through his, and starting to walk again, “that was the first one and the last, my lad.”
He said nothing. When they reached the end of the lane they turned back, and paced the length of it slowly. Rain dripped on the path with a whispering sound. “It’s no use,” she said after a while.
“What?”
“It’s fading. I guess your nerves can’t go on vibrating that way. It’s becoming just a lane full of lilacs.”
“Then let’s leave.” Wally quickened his steps, and they were out of the lane and in the bright open air again.
They drove downtown in sunlight along a drying roadway, with the windows open and warm fragrant air eddying into the Buick. “Come up and have lunch,” she said when he stopped at her house.
“I have to go straight to the library, Marge. Term paper due Monday. Thanks anyway.”
“Thanks for the lilacs, Wally. It was pure heaven.”
She opened the door. Suddenly his hand was on her arm. “Maybe not,” he said.
She looked at him. “Maybe not what?”
“Maybe it wasn’t the last. The kiss.”
With a light laugh, she said, “Wally, darling, don’t lose sleep over it. I don’t know. Maybe when we find such lilacs again.”
He nodded, and drove off.
She walked into an explosion when she entered the apartment. Her mother, sitting on the edge of a chair in the living room, stood as Marjorie came in. “Hello. I hope you had a nice time.”
“Very nice,” said Marjorie, kicking off her overshoes. A battle alarm rang in her mind at her mother’s tone and manner.
“You generally manage to have a nice time,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, approaching with her arms folded.
Folded arms were serious. Marjorie searched vainly in her mind for the provocation. She had really been unusually passive and sinless in recent weeks. “I try,” she said as she hung up her coat.
“Try. I’ll say you try. You’ll try anything. You’ll even try to go to Sodom if I’ll let you, which I will over my dead body.”
Now Marjorie saw on the foyer table the ripped-open envelope with the South Wind emblem in the return-address corner. She sighed. “Mom, I thought we settled long ago that you weren’t to read my mail.” She picked up the letter and walked into the living room. It was a mimeographed notice, signed by Greech, of a meeting of the social staff.
“I opened it by mistake. I thought it was a circular. How should I know you’re getting letters from Sodom?”
“Well, as long as you opened it by mistake, why not pretend you didn’t open it, and we’ll all be happy? I’m hungry—”
“Is it true or isn’t it?”
“Is what true, Mom?”
“Are you or aren’t you on the social staff of Sodom?”
“Isn’t that my business?”
“Excuse me, it’s my business if my daughter decides to go to the dogs. At least I should be notified.”
“Nobody’s going to the dogs.”
“If you intend to go work in Sodom you’re going to the dogs.”
Marjorie faced her mother. She was a couple of inches the taller of the two. Mrs. Morgenstern was looking up at her with her nose wrinkled, arms stiff at her sides. “Please, Mom, won’t you come out of the Middle Ages? South Wind is not Sodom. It’s a perfectly respectable summer place, much more respectable than the Prado, if you want to know. You were perfectly willing to take me to the Prado, where more damn necking goes on night and day, and those divorcees in tight corsets are always flirting with the damn musicians, kosher or not kosher—”
“W
here does all this language come from, Marjorie? Damn, damn. Did you pick that up at Sodom? Or from Marsha?”
Very wearily Marjorie said, “I haven’t seen Marsha in nearly a year and you know it.”
“Yes, and when I said you’d get tired of her, what did you say? She would be your dear bosom pal for the rest of your life, I was an old fool from the Middle Ages, I was this, and I was that. Well, who was the fool? I was right about Marsha and I’m right about South Wind. It’s no place for you, Marjorie. All right, some decent people may go there—older people, people who know how to handle themselves—you’ll be a babe in the woods, you’re only nineteen—”
“Nineteen and a half and I’ll be nearer twenty in July. You were married at eighteen.”
All the lines in her mother’s face pulled down satirically. “You’re comparing us? I was on my own at fifteen, earning a living. When I was eighteen my hands were rougher than yours will be when you’re fifty. I went bleeding and yelling in a taxi, from a sweatshop on Spring Street to the hospital, when you were born—a sweatshop where I broke my back sixteen hours a day and made three dollars a week—”
“What’s all this? Would you rather I hadn’t gone to college? Plenty of girls I knew in high school are working now. I’ve done what I thought you wanted, nothing else—”
“Darling, of course we wanted you to go to college. Papa and I want you children to be everything we couldn’t be. That’s why I don’t want you to be broken to pieces at nineteen in Sodom.”
Marjorie passionately launched the argument that to become an actress she needed the training she would get at South Wind. But Mrs. Morgenstern was at her most irritating. “Actress, my eye. A good husband and children is what you’ll want in a year or two, darling, once you’ve had a taste of dragging like a tramp around Broadway.” Seeing her daughter’s angered look, she added hastily, “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’re another Ethel Barrymore. All right. Let’s say so. Did Ethel Barrymore have to go to a place like South Wind? When she was nineteen there were no such places. She still became a great actress.”