Chapter 16

Eleanor Landers didn't even bother to spend Friday night at the DGT house, but collected her belongings in two suitcases, and painfully trudged over to Comstock Hall, where she managed to rouse the sleeping Suzy Mersh, for it was nearly one in the morning. The silver-haired blonde, rubbing her eyes and yawning, was adorable in yellow silk pajamas, but her somnolent state was swiftly dispersed when she heard the harrowing tale of Eleanor's ejection from the DGT house. And naturally the infuriated and vengeance-swearing redhead invented her own version of how her expulsion from the sorority had come about.

"Since I've been paying your rent here every month, Suzy, and the room's big enough for both of us, I'm moving back in," Eleanor declared. "Sure, Eleanor, sure, you don't hear me saying anything, do you?" Suzy assented. "Only for gosh sakes, please let's go to sleep right away-darn it, I was havin' the nicest dream about Sam Grunnerson when you started hammerin' at the door. I wanna get right back to it."

"No luck yet getting him to show he really loves you, Suzy?" Eleanor teased as she hastily unpacked her lingerie in the big chest of drawers, hung up her dresses and coats in the closet. Then she began to undress to bra and panties. Suzy was wide-eyed now; the thin white panties couldn't hide the angrily swollen hue of her chum's severely paddled seat, and she pointed with a gasp: "Oh migosh, no wonder you up and left them, Eleanor! They treated you just dreadful! I don't blame you for walkin' out on 'em! Why, if they'd 'nishiated me that way, I'd have told the dean of women and had them closed down, you can bet I would!"

Eleanor carefully crawled into the big comfortable bed, rolled over onto her stomach, grimacing; every movement sent waves of new torment through the chastised area. "I'll get even," she muttered, her eyes bright with cold, shrewd spleen, "not with those stupid girls, they only did what Deeana told them to! I'm going to make Kathy Edwards pay for the way they tortured me tonight, Suzy! Just you watch! Stealing my guy and then sneaking off to Deeana to spill the beans-the treacherous, vicious little sneak-I'll show her!"

The weekend was dismal indeed for Eleanor Landers, in keeping with the blustery weather of mid-November. Even Suzy Mersh had a date-with Sam Grunnerson on Saturday night, and Suzy gleefully informed her that Sam had asked her to a dance given in the American Legion post in Croyden, ten miles to the west of Marwell. "He'll actually have his arms around me, the lamb," the silver-haired blonde rapturously declared, "and even if it is in public, he ought to get the idea how crazy I am for him! Well, honey, I'm awful sorry to leave you all alone like this, but you know how it is."

So Eleanor stayed in her room over Saturday and Sunday, pondering on the cruel blows that fate had dealt her, and it was typical of her nature that she didn't consider herself at all to blame for their occurrence. She couldn't reach Deeana-though it had been vicious, she still felt, for the sorority prexy not to have let people know she was Mark Torrance's cousin-but it would be Kathy who would be the target for her revenge.

Yet she had to have one last showdown with Mark Torrance. Maybe Deeana hadn't really told him. Maybe Deeana was just saying that to scare her away, because she didn't want her to get Mark. The possibility served to brighten her black mood-but Monday afternoon robbed her of even that faint hope.

She hadn't taken her seat in the front row as usual, but selected one way at the back. How handsome Mark looked, his face grave and studious, and how she would love to run her fingers through that curly brown hair of his, she thought. And then he was discussing the work for the day, and then, just before the class ended, he remarked, "By the way, class, I thought you'd like to know that Kathy Edwards revised her short story and I've sent it in to an editor I know in New York. I think it's good enough for him to print, so let's all wish her luck." And there was applause, and from her distant seat, Eleanor could see brown-haired Kathy modestly bend her head and nod to someone beside her, and a slow wave of rage spread through Eleanor's system like a cancer. Yes, let's wish her luck, she thought, and let's change it for the worst there is.

Then the bell sounded, and she stayed in her seat way at the back till everyone had filed out, keeping very quiet and trying to make herself small in her seat so that Mark wouldn't notice. Kathy was at his desk now, and the rage grew inside her till it seemed actually to swirl in black spots before her narrowed green eyes, and her nails dug into her palms. And then Kathy was holding out her hand, and Mark was shaking it and beaming at that four-eyed sneak-tears of self-pity stung Eleanor's eyes. It was too much to be endured, after all she and Mark had meant to each other.

When she opened her eyes again, the classroom was empty, except for Mark sitting at his desk correcting papers. Slowly she got up and walked towards him.

"M-Mark?" she quavered.

"Yes, Miss Landers?" He didn't even glance up.

"Mark-can-can I talk to you?"

He put down the papers and looked up now. "If you like."

"Mark. I-I don't know what she told you, but I can explain-you can't judge me on what somebody else says-please-you and I-we were so happy that night-"

"I hesitate to discuss personalities in the classroom.

Eleanor, and you are due an explanation. It's true you couldn't have known that Deeana's my cousin. But then, ever since she entered Marwell, she's kept it to herself because she didn't want any privileges or advantages. It was just unfortunate that you had to boast of your ingenious little plot to her. But the fact is, I don't think she would have betrayed your confidence if it had been only that. It was what you tried to do to Kathy, because you hated to see her get ahead of you in class and you thought I might be getting too fond of her. That was why Deeana came to tell me about the tape recorder."

"But-but, Mark darling, I swear-"

"You wouldn't have needed that kind of guarantee to force me into marrying you. That night, it was wonderful with you. Yes, Eleanor. I was on the rebound after a girl I'd known for a very long time, a girl who just married someone else and who went to Europe to live, so I probably shan't ever see her again. And I thought I'd found that someone. I was thinking of marriage, I give you my word of honor, so I wouldn't have had to be coerced into it. But to hide Deeana's letter in Kathy's coat and then try to brazen it out so maybe the sorority would go hard on initiating poor Kathy-that shows a malice I can't possibly admire. And that, coupled with your boastful admission to my cousin and to your previous little scheme with Tom Jenkins, doesn't encourage me to think of planning a future with you, Eleanor. I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel."

"All right. But-but you can't blame a woman in love for being jealous, darling-"

He winced and held up his hand. "Stop it, Eleanor. I'm probably to blame more than you because I accepted your challenge. But I went into it with my eyes wide open-so I thought. I didn't seduce you or make any false promises to you. And when I told you that we could share the old Crozier place some day, I meant it sincerely then. But you were too greedy, too much in a hurry for things to happen. Well, they happened. But not the way you wanted. And I'm sorry for you, because your way of thinking is based on deluding yourself. You hurt yourself more than the people you try to hurt, if you only knew."

"I don't need a sermon from you on morality, Professor Torrance," she sneered, her face very pale. "And thanks for the night we had. But I think I'll survive. I'll bet I can find another man who'll accept me for what I am. He might be even more of a man than you."

"For your sake, I hope so, Eleanor. But be careful you don't find someone down at your own scheming level. He might not be so polite as I am when he finds out how you operate." He turned back to his papers. She stiffened at the implication. Then she turned and quickly went out of the room.

The next two weeks were torture for the sophisticated redhead. Deeana Mason had kept the story of her expulsion from Delta Gamma Theta a secret among the sorority members themselves, but Eleanor had boasted so of being invited to join while she had been staying at Comstock Hall that many of the girls there rubbed salt on the raw wounds by innocently asking why she wasn't living over at the DGT house. And Eleanor had had to fabricate a story that would cover the truth without losing stature among those first chums at Marwell.

And then there was Dave Vandenburg.

Exactly a week after the Hell Week debacle, the homely, gangling junior stopped her on the sidewalk outside Noyes Hall, just as she was going on to Professor Torrance's class for the final Friday session. "Hi, there, Elly! Well, I guess you can relax and have some fun now, huh?"

"What do you mean, Dave? I've got to get to class."

"Aw, come on, don't be so snooty, honey. Hell

Week's over, so it's okay for you to date. And you know you promised me one. Now, you gonna keep your word like a nice sweet girl? I'm mighty fond of you, Elly. I can show you a real good time if you'll gimme a chance. And I got dough too. None of this small-town stuff for me."

"What do you mean, you've got dough?"

He chuckled. "See, you never gave me a real chance to get better acquainted with you. My dad's a big real estate operator back in East St. Louis, and I'm going into business when him soon as I get my degree and then my license. He's loaded, and I'm the only kid he's got, so I never have no trouble about ready cash for good times. We could drive to Cairo or Peoria and have ourselves some fun this weekend-whatddya say?"

"I-I don't know you well enough to spend a weekend with you, Dave." She patted his burly shoulder. "But we can have a date around here, though."

"Great! How about my buying you supper at the Fandango? That's a night club out by Croyden. Pretty good eats and they got liquor."

"Sure."

"Where'll I call for you, huh, Elly?"

"Dave, I don't like being called Elly, you know that. If we're going to be good friends, be a name and call me Eleanor, please?"

"Sure, sure, anything you say, baby." He seemed to have a cocky assurance she hadn't noticed before; she remembered how brash he had been that afternoon in the company of the two seniors.

"Fine. Say six o'clock over at Comstock Hall? I'll come out in front and wait for you."

"Comstock Hall? I thought you were over at the DGT house, Elly-I mean Eleanor.

She flushed self-consciously. "No, I didn't like the girls over at the house, so I decided not to join, Dave. I'm a loner. I like it that way."

"Uh huh. So am I. We ought to get along fine, just fine. Well, see you at six then. Gosh, we're gonna have fun."

Before, she had looked upon him as just another admiring swain, one of many in the coterie of admirers, whom she could exploit and use to do her errands or dance attendance on her. But now there was something subtly different about Dave Vandenburg. The way he looked at her-not exactly with awed reverence like a mortal before a goddess, not the way he had used to when the semester had started. Still, she needed an ally. A scheme was vaguely being formed in her devious mind on how to get back at Kathy Edwards. What Kathy needed was a lesson, a roughing-up such as she herself had been subjected to in the basement recreation room of the DGT house. And the most humiliating thing about it all had been Kathy's being there to hear her being put through that damned inquisition by Deeana and the awful paddling that had accompanied it. She couldn't see or think of Kathy any more without remembering those moments of pain and shame and despair when her world, so carefully built brick by ingenious brick, had toppled down upon her...

Croyden was a little town of about six thousand inhabitants, but it boasted a movie house and the Fandango, the latter being little more than a tavern-restaurant with a three-piece combo at the far back and a small waxed floor for dancing. It was across the street from the American Legion building where Suzy Mersh had had her dance with idealistic Sam Grunnerson. And, this Friday night, in spite of inclement weather, it was packed to the rafters.

Dave Vandenburg was affable and garrulous, enjoying his new role as Eleanor's escort. He ordered the best steaks in the house, highballs before them and beer with them, and a brandy with coffee. Eleanor sat glumly listening to him boast about his father's real estate successes. They were, surprisingly enough, not un-like her own father's stock manipulations; the fast sell, the successful con game, the speculative risk, characterized both types of operation. Then, flushed and inordinately cheerful, he pushed back his chair at the end of the meal, and invited her to dance.

There wasn't any point in protesting, in being a spoilsport. So she resigned herself to being mauled on the narrow dance floor and jammed up against other couples. He wasn't too bad a dancer, she had to admit, but he liked to dance much too close and his hand had a way of slipping down past her waist and resting on one of her hips as if he were thinking of squeezing her. She could compare him, miserably aware of her loss, with Mark Torrance. He had an animal vitality, and strength in his hands. She wouldn't want him for an enemy, she knew. As a lover? That was even more unthinkable.

But if she was going to stay on campus and keep up appearances till she could talk Dad and Laura into bringing her back home where she belonged-and her grades would be good enough, she knew, to lull their fears that she had been gallivanting around, to use Dad's silly expression-she would need a steady date. And Dave Vandenburg was the handiest and most--likely candidate.

So, when the liquor he had consumed began to make him less inhibited and when his hand did finally apply an intimate squeeze now and then as they danced, she didn't upbraid him or wither him with her scorn. She giggled and pressed closer to him, and was rewarded by having him mutter in her ear, "Hey, Elly, you're all right. I figured you for sorta snobbish, a big city deb, but you're okay in my book. You and me's gonna hit it off just right."

So she agreed to a date the following Friday, and she let him park the car off the road midway back to Marwell and cup her breasts and squeeze her thighs and try to thrust his tongue between her lips when they kissed. It didn't mean anything to her and it was payment of a kind. If she didn't yield anything, he'd be disgruntled and the prospect of future dates wouldn't exist. And she needed him. She needed him as part of her plan to get back at Kathy. Yes, and at Mark too.

Kathy was a prissy, stick-in-the-mud virgin, she was willing to bet. She'd never go to that farmhouse alone with Mark Torrance and let him make love to her. And even if she did, she'd never in a million years be able to rouse the passion which Eleanor knew she had roused that never-to-be-forgotten night. She wondered what Kathy would do if she had to fend off a hulking brute like Dave Vandenburg, or those two friends of his. Probably faint. If they could throw a scare into Kathy, rough her up a little, humiliate and shame her, and maybe beat up Mark-

It was a wild scheme, and she knew it, but the visual images it created in her vengeful brain tempted and tortured her. It would have to be planned very carefully, and besides it had to be off campus, so that nobody would find out. She would have to talk Dave into it, and pretend it was a stunt, a prank. And she would have to promise him some kind of reward to do such a thing for her. She knew what she would promise. In the old Nash, just before she had playfully pretended that he was too much for her and would have to stop, he had whispered that he'd give anything to go to bed with her, yes, even marry her. Well, she could promise him that. Now that he had kissed and felt her, his adulatory homage for her had crystallized into the sharp goad of physical lust; she knew that. She knew so much more about men than that stupid little four-eyed Kathy. How Mark Torrance could possibly prefer Kathy to her-oh, it was damnable!

And so she made her plans, as craftily as she had done to bring off the coup with Tom Jenkins, to get her invitation to DGT, to get Mark Torrance to love her. The next Friday, they went back to Croyden, and again she let him maul her about the little dance floor, and then, in the car coming back home, slide his hands under her dress and French kiss her till he was panting with frustrated desire.

"Honey, we mustn't, not in the car," she murmured, flicking his ear with the tip of her tongue. "I want it too, as much as you do, but not here. Please, Dave darling."

"I gotta have you, baby, You feel it too, don'tcha?"

"Of course I do, Dave honey. A girl's got feelings just as much as a man. And I want us to be together. But you've got to wait. There's a favor I want to ask of you, Dave darling. But not yet. I promise it'll be soon, though. Please? Now take me home." It had taken all her feminine cunning to sidetrack his burning yen for her into a sort of morose obeisance to her wish. And when he had let her out in front of Comstock Hall, he'd grabbed her and kissed her hard on the mouth and muttered, "You just better not double-cross me, Elly baby. I get nasty when people cross me, specially dames. You know how nuts I am for you. And I told you I'd even marry you-what more do you want?"

"The time and the place, Dave honey. Now be a good boy and go back to the frat house and dream of me till next Friday. Yes, we'll have a date then. And by then maybe I'll have figured it out for us."

"Okay, okay, Elly honey. I'll be waitin'. "

She blew him a kiss as he got back into the car. When the car had pulled away, her fatuous smile faded and her lips curled with disgust. "The big, stupid animal," she murmured. "I'll figure it out, all right. You'll do what I want, Dave Vandenburg, and you'll take what I decide to give you and like it, too."