Chapter 14
Gayle reached the house, and stood for a long moment in the shelter of the trees that bordered the edge of the terrace where she had left the door unlocked. She had forgotten that she had locked the door from the outside and taken the key with her, to prevent a servant locking her out. But when at last she tried the knob and it did not turn, she swore under her breath and then slid the key into the lock, turned it and went in. She was too angry to be very careful of making any noise as she went up the stairs. She just hoped some son-of-a-witch would be aroused and dare to challenge her as she went up the stairs and down the corridor to her own room.
She felt physically bruised and battered as though she had been swimming upstream against a powerful current and when she opened her door and saw Sue, very much at ease on the chaise lounge, Gayle saw red.
"Hello," said Sue sweetly before Gayle could master her angry surprise to speak. "So he threw you out. Funny, I thought that was exactly what he would do. So I waited for you."
"Well, get the hell out-I'm busy," snapped Gayle savagely, and she went to the closet and yanked her traveling bag out of its built-in nook.
Sue watched her meditatively for a moment and then she said sweetly, "Going some place-I wouldn't wonder?"
"I'm going, of course-I suppose you thought I'd hang around here to keep that damned wedding of yours from collapsing?"
Sue stared at her in child-like amazement, and then laughed silkily.
"For Heaven's sake! Do you honestly think that your leaving could affect my wedding in any degree? Oh, Gayle, what a damned fool you are!" she carolled gaily.
Gayle straightened and stared at her suspiciously.
"Don seemed all hot and bothered about me staying until the final words were said-he seemed to think a maid of honor was important-"
"A maid of honor? Well, perhaps-but for goodness sake, Gayle, you don't call yourself a maid of honor, do you? You couldn't even spell the word 'honor'-"
"And you could, I suppose!" snapped Gayle sourly. She wished that she didn't remember with such painful clarity the tone of Harlan Kramer's voice when he had substituted "shameless hussy" for "maid of honor."
"We-e-ell, maybe not 'honor' too much. Discretion is one of my pet words," drawled Sue, deeply amused as she watched Gayle folding dresses and cobwebby lingerie into the capacious maw of the big wardrobe case. "Though of course women like you-kept women and common street-walkers-probably never heard of the word discretion, I suppose."
Gayle straightened slowly, and her hands were clenched tightly at her side, and her eyes blazed as she took a single slow step towards Sue, menace and fury in her every line and movement.
"What the hell do you mean by that crack?" she asked huskily.
Sue's pretty, airy eyebrows went up a little.
"Oh, now, really, Gayle, don't be childish-it's not your role-don't you suppose I've known, almost from the first, what you really are?"
Gayle stood very still, her hands still tightly clenched, her head tilted just a little, her eyes narrow and blazing.
"Okay. I'll bite-what am I?" she asked at last, hel voice thin with the effort she was making at self-control.
Sue looked her over calmly, judicially from tip to toe and then she made a little gesture with the hand that held her cigarette and answered with casual gaiety.
"Oh, you're still young-reasonably-and very beautiful and-well, I suppose glamorous is the word, though it's a loathesome word," she drawled sweetly. "So I'd say that you were probably the very well-kept mistress of some rich and probably dull old man who is glad to provide for you as long as you please him. But, of course, you can't expect that to be for long; so gradually, you will become the mistress of some man who has less money to spend and so on down the line, until with your lack of brains, I imagine you'll wind up in a two-dollar house, don't you?"
It was said with such gentle reasonableness, such sweet logic that for a moment it took Gayle's breath away and she could only stare at Sue, and hate her with a savage hatred.
Sue waited, amused, obviously enjoying herself, and when Gayle was unable to speak for a moment, Sue went sweetly on.
"Of course I don't blame you for making passes at Don, though it was stupid of you!" she said. "You'd have been much smarter to concentrate on Clyde. Oh, I grant you Clyde isn't too exciting a lover-still, he's not too bad-and he is what's known in my circles as a good provider. So I think I can afford to endure a certain amount of boredom with him, in return for the security he will give me. And after all, there are usually men like Don around, for an occasional bit of excitement, provided one is reasonably discreet-as I assure you I and my friends are-we have to be if we want any fun out of life."
Gayle sat down on the edge of a chair and reached a shaking hand for a cigarette, and until she had it lit and drawing well, she did not speak. But then she slid back in her chair and with the feeling that Sue was some almost terrifying stranger on whom she had never set eyes before, she eyed her.
"So all that I'm a virgin' and 'bride's jitters' business was just a gag," she said at last, her tone low and not entirely steady.
Sue tipped back her pretty head and her laugh was as gay and artless, as musical as that of an amused child.
"Oh, my goodneess, Gayle," she protested absurdly, "don't tell me you were taken in by that act. Good heavens, I thought you were laughing up your sleeve at me. Do you honestly believe that in this day and time, any woman reaches the age of fifteen or sixteen without-shah we be delicate about it and call it 'sexual experience'? Don't you read any modern books? Don't tell me you're still curling up with the latest 'Little Elsie' volume?"
Gayle studied her for a long moment and suddenly the taste of her cigarette was bitter in her mouth, against the hatred and self-disgust that she was feeling; she scrubbed it out, her eyes on it, as though all her attention was centered on the small task.
"Well, I'm damned!" she said at last, very softly.
"No doubt, unless you mend your ways and stir up your brain-" Sue began.
"Never mind my brain-what I'm wondering about is-why the act? With me? I mean what did you gain by-making a sucker out of me?" demanded Gayle at last.
Sue was gaily amused and casual.
"Oh, I was curious about just how dumb you were," she drawled. "I wondered how much you'd swallow-and I almost laughed in your face when you were giving me such good advice-bride's jitters and stuff. Oh, Gayle, what a fool you are!"
Gayle drew a long deep breath and her teeth were clenched hard above the oath that struggled in her throat
"You're telling me!" she managed at last in deep self-disgust.
Sue, as thought she had grown tired of baiting Gayle, stood up and yawned like a sleepy kitten and stretched silkily.
"So now I'll run along to be-alone, for the last time, I hope," she said sweetly. "And of course you'll be leaving early in the morning-there's a train around nine, I think-"
Gayle grinned wickedly.
"Oh, I wouldn't think of leaving before the wedding," she said pleasantly, cheerfully. "I wouldn't spoil the pretty picture your mother has been working on."
There was swift alarm, uneasiness in Sue's eyes.
"Oh, but you needn't bother-" she began hurriedly, anxiously.
"It's no bother," Gayle assured her cheerfully. "I wouldn't miss your wedding for the world-it ought to be-a hell of a lot of fun."
Sue took a swift step towards her, making no effort to conceal the sharp, angry anxiety in her eyes.
"Gayle, if you try to-bitch things up-" she said through her teeth and Gayle crowed inwardly with delight at the realization that she had the upper hand-briefly, perhaps, but undeniably.
She widened her lovely eyes elaborately, surprised hurt.
"Oh, but dah-ling," she protested reproachfully, "how could little old me possibly bitch up anything as carefully planned as the most important social event in Claresville' history? I just want to see you well and truly married that's all."
For a long moment the two women eyed each other Sue, uneasy, worried; Gayle very much "top-dog" at the moment and getting a little of her own back. Sue and Don had really taken her over the bumps; well, now she had very small chance to even the score at least in part. Le Sue spend a sleepless, uneasy night; let the little witch d some worrying. At that moment Gayle hadn't the slightest idea as to how she was going to get even with them al Common sense told her she never could, of course. But a least she'd get in a few digs, though at the moment she wasn't just sure how!
Sue drew a deep breath at last.
"Well," she admitted reluctantly at last, "I don't suppose there is any way I can stop you from being in the wedding party-"
"I don't suppose so either," said Gayle happily.
"But I'll be watching you-"
"That'll be nice."
Sue stared at her for a long moment, and suddenly her lovely face was twisted and malicious with hate and anxiety. Gayle wondered if Clyde or Don had ever seen her like this and was quite sure they hadn't. Nor would they ever believe that Sue could look so much like a cornered, spitting cat, snarling and unlovely.
"I wonder why I was ever fool enough to ask you here in the first place," she spat at last.
Gayle chuckled happily.
"D'you know, I wonder about that too," she admitted cheerfully. "But now that I am here-I'm afraid you're stuck with me, sweetie-pie-until after the wedding anyway."
Sue turned and with her head held high, her eyes blazing stalked out of the room and Gayle subsided in her chair, laughing triumphantly. She'd bet a plugged nickel the little witch would get very little sleep tonight! And while she had no idea what she could do to make things as unpleasant for her as possible tomorrow, she was darned well going to think of something, she promised herself firmly.
She thought briefly of Don and for a moment her mouth twisted in bitter self-derision. Hadn't she been the double-barrelled, copper-riveted brass-bound sap of all time, to imagine herself in love with the bastard? In love! Like any damned fool school girl who didn't know what was the matter with her when a summer moon hung low in the sky and the captain of the football team caressed her clumsily and passionately. Going all dewy-eyed and starry over the thought of marriage! Marriage! A sentence to prison, drudgery, being compelled to sleep with the same man over and over again. She put down, with savage loathing, her own eager heart that tried to tell her sleeping with Don for the rest of her life would be more joy, more exquisite delight than she could ever hope to know!
Her love-all the starry-eyed rapture of the cockeyed dream-had been of such brief duration and so imperfectly founded in fact that it had been easy for it to turn into hatred. She had never hated a living creature in all her life as much as she hated Don Randolph! Unless it was Sue Leslie. Damn them both! Damn them to hell! Living safe and secure and smug in their own little gold-plated, platinum-decked world, and daring to turn up their noses at her, who had been kicked out into the world and forced to shift for herself the best way she could. Despising her, because she had earned her living by the sale of her body, instead of by the labor of her hands and whatever brains she possessed. Damn them!
Hatred and loathing were so bitter in her heart that the taste of it in her mouth made her crush out her cigarette with savage distaste and yearn once more for the drink she needed so badly and which she knew she could not have here in this damned joint where the butler carried the keys to the cellar and the bar was locked except when there were guests in the house. She dared not slip down stairs in search of a drink, since she already had learned enough of the customs of the house to know that she could not find one, anyway.
She sat for a long, long time staring straight before her, her mouth a thin bitter line, her eyes cold and calculating and speculative as she searched through the torturous mazes of her mind for some devastating manner in which she could turn the tables on Sue and Don, and in some small measure avenge the insults they had heaped upon her.
The dawn light was creeping into the room when at last she chuckled and her eyes narrowed a little with a growing plan. And when at last she rose and made ready for bed, she was no longer in any doubt as to what she would do tomorrow-today, now-to spoil Claresville's most beautiful wedding.