Chapter 3
In the morning she waited decorously in the club car for his arrival until the dining car porter came through with the last call for breakfast. And then, her eyes amused, she went along to the door behind which last night she had known such exquisite delight. He had overslept after last night-and would she twit him with that!
She knocked smartly, her mouth curved in a little teasing smile that vanished abruptly as a porter opened the door and she saw that he was cleaning the stateroom
"The-Mr. Murgatroyd-the man who was here last night...." she began, stammering a little in her shock.
"He got off at Richmond, ma'am," said the porter politely, but in his eyes she saw a cynical wisdom and wondered frantically if there was in the room any indication that a woman had shared this room last night for awhile.
"Oh," she said flatly, and turned away unable to say anything more, to mask her confusion, her anger and her sense of a terrible loss. Yet she felt the porter's too wise eyes upon her as she made her way back to her own quarters.
So that was that, she told herself, sitting very still, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, her teeth sunk hard in her lower hp. And a disgust, a fury of bitterness surged through her that shook and sickened her. She had been taken for a ride like any cheap little two-bits worth of fluff that makes her living "picking up" men in trains and railroad stations. She had taken it big; she had felt that it was something very wonderful and precious that must not be destroyed ... she, the sophisticate, the wise gal, the party gal-she, the cool, calm gal who was going to take men and get their money and give nothing-had abandoned herself to this man like the sappiest little witch ripe for seduction!
Her shame, her fury, her humiliation was so bitter that it made a foul taste in her mouth....
It was four in the afternoon when her train came in to Claresville, and she stepped from it, suave and lovely and looking as though not a hair was out of place, though she felt inwardly rumpled and shamed and soiled; not because she had shared a few hours with a man she would never see again; she had no scruples about that; she had wanted it, so had he. So who was to say that it mustn't be? Her shame was that she had been damned fool enough to expect it to be anything more than just a night's party and because of that she couldn't forget it.
A small whirlwind descended upon her and became a very pretty laughing blonde girl in a powder-blue suit and a suly little hat; a girl who hugged her joyously and then stood off a little and eyed her with delight.
"Oh, Gay, Gay-you darling! You did come! I was so afraid at the last moment that you wouldn't-and honey, you're the most beautiful thing I ever saw in all my life. Isn't she beautiful, Clyde?" the girl whirled to a tall, pleasantly rugged-looking young man who stood grinning a little behind her.
"She surely is," said the man, grinning and folding Gayle's hand in his. "Welcome to our town, Gayle. This imp beside me never bothers about proper introductions. I'm Clyde Owens, who's finally given in and agreed to marry the gal-but she had to work for it, I can tell you!"
Gayle laughed, eying him with shrewd appraisal, liking what she saw, yet scorning Clyde's disarming boyishness. She liked her men grown-up.
"Where's Don?" demanded Sue of Clyde, her hand holding Gayle's tightly. "He's going to be Clyde's best man, honey. He was supposed to come down on the train with you and I asked him to hunt you up and see to it you had a pleasant trip down-and then the hound got held up somehow on business and had to fly down! He got in this morning-a couple of hours before noon."
She turned, scanning the platform, and then she laughed and waved.
"Hi, slow poke," she called, "here's Gayle-now aren't you sorry you did not come down on the train as I wanted you to?"
"I surely am," said a voice that for a moment riveted Gayle in her tracks so that she could not manage to turn her head. But when she did, she looked straight into the darkly brown, almost black eyes of "Mr. Murgatroyd."
"If I'd known anything as lovely as Gayle was on that train, I'd have made it even if the whole business had smashed."
Gayle met his eyes straightly, and the gleam of laughter in them added one final hot coal to the fire of her fury. But she kept her teeth shut hard, until Clyde had taken her baggage checks and he and Sue went off to arrange to have the baggage sent out to the house.
"Hello," said the man tentatively.
"You-stinkin' son of a bitch," said Gayle, very softly, but very clearly, her tone of burning malevolence making the man's eyes widen just a little.
"Oh, come now," drawled the man coolly. "You're not going to put on the outraged virtue act, surely? Don't try to pretend I-er-robbed you of your-er-jewel of chastity! After all-it was fun, wasn't it?"
"You-knew all along that I was coming here? You recognized me?" she asked at last, watching Sue and Clyde the length of the platform away at the baggage desk.
"Of course. Sue, bless her, wanted me to see to it that you had a pleasant trip down. I do hope I gave-er-satisfaction?" he asked gently.
Gayle drew a long, hard breath, her hands clenched tightly.
"I suppose I may as well take the next train back," she said huskily at last. "I'm quite sure you won't permit me to stay now...."
"As long as you behave yourself, of course you can stay."
His tone was quite pleasant, low pitched but his eyes told her he was in deadly earnest.
"That's-big of you," she said through her teeth.
"I think so," he agreed pleasantly. "Of course, you're not fit to breathe the same air with a girl like Sue; but she loves you and wants you here and after all, it is her wedding and nothing must be done to spoil it. Nothing!"
She looked at him sharply and her lovely mouth thinned a little.
"Could be you're pretty fond of her yourself," she flashed.
His eyes met hers steadily.
"She's the only woman I've ever met that I'd marry if I had the chance," he told her evenly. "It just happens that she's crazy about Clyde. And he's the right man for her. So I intend to see that she gets what she wants. Do I make myself clear?"
Before she could answer him, Sue and Clyde were back within sound of their voices, and Sue was bubbling with happiness, linking her arm with Gayle's, chattering like an excited child as she drew Gayle towards the waiting car, the men following exchanging amused man-to-man glances about the charming silliness of the whole race of women.
The car was an expensive convertible, which Sue explained joyously was a wedding present from her parents, but which she insisted that Clyde drive, so she could sit curled up in the front seat beside him, keeping up her excited chatter to Don and Gayle, behind them, as the car rolled through the downtown streets and out to the Hill section.
Gayle, lending part of her attention to Sue's chatter, took in the town as they drove through it. There had been many changes. Claresville had grown, expanded; there were more business places; handsome, modern new stores and shops. But as they began to climb the hill towards Claresville's most fashionable residence section she saw that there were few changes here. Nor could there be. Claresville's history went proudly back to the days of Oglethorpe's colonization of the state more than two hundred years ago. Some of the fine old homes were nearly as old, having been built in the days of slave labor and opulent plantation living. Stately homes surrounded by acres of beautifully kept grounds, so that there was no room for the building of modern ranch type homes, or jerry-built bungalows.
Once, when she had lived down on Mcintosh Street, shabby, down-at-heels, Claresville's equivalent to a slum, the Hill had seemed to Gayle just a step this side of heaven itself. When, capriciously, Sue had singled her out for her "best friend" during grade school days, and their friendship had lasted throughout high school, Gayle had been privileged to visit in the Leslie home, she had met some of the other Hill residents and been treated with cool, pleasant friendliness that had made it plain that only Sue's almost fierce sponsorship permitted her presence here. Her mouth tightened a little at the memories that came flooding back as the car swept up the winding curve that circled the Hill, and came at last to the tall, sandstone pillars with their wrought-iron gates eternally open since the grass had grown up about their lower bars and now they could never be closed. Along a winding drive bordered by azaleas and tall old oaks, a semicircular drive bordered a velvety lawn that was more like a stage prop than actual grass, and then the house. Two storied, with a double staircase arising from the drive to the front door with its beautiful old fan-light.
As the car stopped, a white-coated houseman and two maids in crisp plum-colored chambray uniforms beneath spotless white aprons, tiny caps on their heads, came down the steps, and Sue jumped out of the car and turned eagerly to Gayle.
"Does it look familiar? Had you forgotten what Sundown looked like?" she asked eagerly as Don handed Gayle from the car with an almost ceremonious air that lit a spark for a moment in Gayle's storm-cloud eyes.
"I could never forget Sundown," said Gayle lightly, and Don gave her a swift, almost suspicious glance as though he found more to the tone of her voice than to her words.
The white-coated houseman bowed them up the stairs to the front door, and took out Gayle's hand luggage. Gayle's mouth quirked with a tiny smile as she saw the houseman take her Pullman case, one of the maids her smallest case, the other follow with a hat box. She supposed, she told herself drily as she was swept into the house on a little gust of laughing welcome, that if she had had an extra package the size of a bar of soap, it would have required still another maid to bring it into the house.
"Mom and Pop are on the terrace, I know-that's where they always are at this time of the afternoon," said Sue and led the way across the long, wide living room, through French doors that opened on a flagstoned terrace.
At one end of it, bulwarked by a beautifully appointed tea table, sat Mrs. Leslie; exactly as Gayle remembered her, not changed in so much as one frankly graying hair; smartly dressed in what Gayle thought an almost offensively simply gray cotton frock with a jewelled pin at the square cut neck. Mr. Leslie, a few pounds heavier, a Utile more ruddy, a man whose appearance proclaimed both his delight in good living and his feeling that, being a Leslie of Claresville, he was so very important that he could afford to allow people to pretend to forget it. There were several other people, but Gayle paid them little heed, so tense was she for the greeting of the Leslies.
If Mrs. Leslie resented her daughter's insistence on having Gayle in her wedding party, she did not display it by so much as a glance. She greeted Gayle with pleasant, friendly hospitality, and Mr. Leslie assured her of his delight at seeing her again; and the other guests were politely interested and amiable.
"Do have a drink before you go to your room, won't you, Gayle?" suggested Mrs. Leslie hospitably. "You must be very tired after that long train ride-what would you like? Tea or something stronger?"
"Tea, thank you," said Gayle in her most lady-like voice, with her prettiest, gentlest smile.
She felt Don's eyes on her, amused, satirical and her color rose as she took the tea and accepted a wafer-thin sandwich and tried not to look at Don. Damn him, did he think she'd ask for a highball, even if she did want one? Did he think she was going to make a fool of herself and get herself thrown ignominiously out of this charmed circle even before she'd had time to take her hat off?
There was light talk, and laughter and at last Sue jumped to her feet and came over to Gayle.
"Honey, I know you're tired out, so come along and let me show you your room," she said eagerly. "And there are scads of things we want to talk about-excuse us, people!"
As she passed Clyde, her hand touched his shoulder for just a moment and Clyde's eyes were worshipping and for a moment Sue's eyes were radiant. And then she and Gayle were going up the stairs together and along a wide hall, with a faded Aubusson carpet that Gayle remembered well; and to a white-painted door which Sue opened.
"You're here, honey, right next door to me," said Sue gaily. "And if you haven't everything you want, all you have to do is ring-"
"That's taking in quite a bit of territory, isn't it?" Gayle drawled mockingly.
Sue laughed. "Oh, you know what I mean," she dismissed it. "Gayle, isn't he wonderful? Isn't he a lamb?"
Gayle, removing her hat, touching delicate fingers to straighten her hair, looked into the mirror of the dressing table to meet Sue's eyes and laughed.
"I take it you mean Clyde!"
"Well, of course!" laughed Sue youthfully. "Oh, sure, my sane common sense tells me he's just a guy, like a thousand other guys-only he's my guy and I'm pretty darned crazy about him!"
"He seems to think quite highly of you, if one can judge by appearances, so all I can say is 'bless you, my chillen,' " said Gayle lightly.