Chapter 6
She was very much on her good behavior the next few days. With the wedding set for the twenty-ninth of the month, she had to move very carefully if she were going to stop it. And she was determined to stop it! Determined to take Sue's place beside Clyde, and let Sue shift for herself, which, she reminded herself grimly, Sue would be able to do with all ease for Sue was the kitten who would always land on its four paws!
Mrs. Leslie was courteous but slightly cool, like gently iced wine. Gayle knew that Sue must have put up a stiff battle in order to have as her maid of honor a girl from her childhood days, instead of one of the socially correct and acceptable girls from her present life. And so, being very careful never to raise her voice in the slightest; to wear her most conservative gowns, even while she ground her teeth helplessly at the daring cut of gowns worn by Sue and her friends; taking pains to be very sweet and flattering to the older men, very casual with the younger ones; and most of all to be respectful and gentle with the older women, Gayle prided herself as the days slid by that she was making good progress. Mrs. Leslie's manner warmed a little to her, and Mr. Leslie was almost fatherly in his manner.
About Don, Gayle wasn't so sure. Now and then he looked at her as though a little puzzled. As though not quite sure about her. There could be no doubt in his mind, of course, that she was a hussy, an easy woman. He had demonstrated that soon after meeting her. But when she continued to be sweetly lady-like, completely circumspect, she thought he relaxed just a little and she laughed softly and hugged herself when she was alone in her room.
Late one afternoon when Gayle was resting in her room after a strenuous afternoon of tennis and drinks at the small, but very cherished Country Club Leslie and his friends had built, Sue knocked and thrust her head into the room.
"Are you asleep, honey?"
Gayle's mouth twisted a little.
"Of course not, child. Granny's old and her bones are creaking but she hasn't yet come to the point where she has to have an afternoon nap," she said drily. "Come in and park the body."
Sue laughed and dropped down on a chaise lounge and Kt a cigarette. Gayle, sprawled in a deep, comfortable wing chair, her feet on a matching stool, eyed her speculatively.
"How are the bride's jitters?" she asked at last when Sue showed no disposition to begin whatever it was that she had come in to say.
Sue blushed painfully and could not quite meet Gayle's eyes.
"Getting no better fast, I'm afraid," she confessed wryly.
"Time's a-wastin', Honey-lamb," drawled Gayle. "Eight days from tomorrow and it will be too late for you to pick up your pretty little skirts and fly away to a nunnery!"
Sue seemed to shrink a little from the thought and her color deepened, and her hand shook a little as she knocked the ash from her cigarette.
"Don't I know it!" she breathed and shivered a little. And then as if the subject were one too painful to be pursued, she asked hurriedly, "Don't you flunk Don is grand?"
Gayle dropped her eyelids lest a small gleam of excited triumph that might emphasize the leap of her heart should reveal itself to Sue.
"Very virile and masculine and everything," she derided almost gently. "Now if you were facing the 'ordeal' of a wedding night with Don, my girl, you'd have something to jitter about!"
Sue gasped a little and her eyes flew wide.
"That's-a horrid thing to say!" she breathed shakily.
Gayle grinned drily.
"Don is a fellow who has taken his fun where he found it, for a long, long time and I have an idea he would be none too gentle-especially with a virgin like you, pet!" she pointed out acidly.
Sue asked breathlessly, "Do you think Don would want a girl if she wasn't a virgin?"
Gayle raised herself a little in her chair as though to study Sue at closer range, as though to be sure that Sue was in earnest.
She bit back an oath just in time. An oath that would have shocked Sue to the toes, and after a moment when she could trust her voice, she said thinly, "I think Don would want-and take-any woman between six and ninety that he could get!"
Sue caught her breath, shocked and repelled.
"Gayle! That's a horrible thing to say about him!" she protested, outraged.
Gayle studied her for a long moment, her brows raised a little. And then she leaned forward and selected a cigarette and lit it carefully, while her busy mind worked swiftly.
"You-kind of like Don, don't you, pet?" she asked softly, carefully.
Sue's eyes brightened and her color was pretty.
"Oh, I think he's just simply marvelous!" she cried eagerly.
"Then why not marry him instead of Clyde-if you can?" suggested Gayle, and was secretly furious at herself from the sharp jab of jealousy that bit through her at the thought.
Sue blinked as though she had received a blow and her color faded as her eyes widened until they were enormous and dark.
"Why, Gayle!" she gasped, outraged. "He's Clyde's best friend!"
Gayle once more smothered the impatient oath, and tensed a little, so that she could speak with an air of coolness.
"So what? If you're in love with Don-"
"But-oh, Gayle, I'm not!" There was panic in her voice that gave the he to the words.
Gayle shrugged and once more turned her eyes away lest something in them betray her secret exultation. This was too easy! This was taking candy away from a baby-and substituting an almost lethal sleeping pill!
"Don's mad about you," she offered gently.
That took Sue's breath and she seemed to shrink just a little, her face quite pale, her eyes almost luminous.
"Oh, no, Gayle-he can't be-" she stammered, in a tone that tacitly begged Gayle's reassurance on that point.
Gayle smiled slightly, lifted her shoulders in a small shrug and spread her pretty hands palm upward in a little gesture of dismissal.
"Oh, well, have it your way," she drawled sweetly. "After ah, I could be wrong-I suppose he could be, too-"
Sue stammered breathlessly, "Gayle-do you mean oh, but you couldn't mean-that he--he said-"
"That he was in love with you?" Gayle obligingly put it into words for her. "How else could I have known it? Mind-reading, unfortunately, isn't one of my accomplishments."
Sue considered that for a moment, the color coming and going in her pretty face, and Gayle found one more mark against Sue in the long and rapidly mounting score; that Sue's complexion should be so perfect was another reason for disliking her!
"I-can't believe it," she whispered at last, her voice small and shaken, but deep within it a hint that she would like tremendously to be convinced.
"Then you're not as smart a gal as I thought, pet," said Gayle drily. "I knew it ten minutes after I got in town. Anybody not blind or a fool would know it, just by seeing the way he looks at you, and hearing his voice when he speaks to you and watching him when he touches you. Take it from me, pet, the guy's raving mad about you-no less!"
Sue's hands were twisted tightly together so that the knuckles were small white mounds, and her mouth was thin and twisted a little. She looked like a child trying hard not to cry and as she blinked, there was a moisture in her eyes that matched the tremulous tone in her voice when she spoke.
"But-oh, Gayle, I've known Clyde ah my life-I've always expected to marry him-oh, since we were children-I couldn't-I couldn't walk out on him now!"
Gayle felt like shrieking with delight because the poison was working, just as she had planned it should.
"Then you can't be very much in love with him if you were contented to wait this long to marry him," she pointed out quietly. "If you were terribly in love with him, you'd want all the intimacies of marriage that frighten you now when you only think about them. How do you feel about sharing your charms with Don?"
Sue caught her breath and was starry-eyed, her face flooded with color and before she could check herself, she stammered, "I'd-love it!"
And then, realizing what she had said, she gave a little stricken moan of embarrassment and put her face in her hands and shuddered.
"Oh, Gayle, what an awful thing for me to say! You must be terribly shocked!"
Again Gayle with difficulty smothered the impatient and shocking oath that tried so hard to get itself spoken in her voice.
"There's only one thing you could do that would really shock me, pet," she drawled acidly. "That would be to marry Clyde, when you feel like this about Don. It would be a terrible thing for you to do."
Sue's hands dropped and now there were tears on her cheeks.
"But, don't you see, Gayle? I've known Clyde-"
"Sure, sure, sure-all your life, and you're used to him, like a pair of comfortable old shoes! But damn it, girl, who wants to wear a pair of comfortable old shoes all her life? There are times when you want to step out in something new and fancy and smart-even if it is-a trifle uncomfortable!" snapped Gayle.
"But-how can I be sure that what I feel for Don is being in love? Not-not just-well, a physical attraction?" stammered Sue miserably.
Gayle's mouth was thin and curved in a little almost contemptuous smile.
"There's only one sure way that I know of," she drawled.
She studied her, shrinking a little. "What-what-" she stammered. "The same way I advised you to cure your bride's jitters," Gayle pointed out.
Sue shrank from her in horror and panic.
"You-you mean I should-should-have an affair with Don?" she stammered, outraged.
"Oh, for-" Gayle bit back the word just in time, and after a moment was able to go on more smoothly, "Look, Sue, I don't know why you seem to consider me nothing less than a fount of wisdom; I'm not even sure it's very flattering. Sounds a hell of a lot like you thought I made my living by playing around here and there-"
Sue was horrified and protesting.
"Why, Gayle honey!" she gasped. "What an awful thing to say! Golly, I never thought anything of the kind-would I have asked you here to be my maid of honor if I'd thought anything so awful?"
Gayle studied her grimly, intently.
"Wouldn't you?" she asked, not without a trace of suspicion.
"Oh, Gayle, darling, of course not!" She cried eagerly. "It's just that-well, you're sophisticated and a New York career girl-"
"I could as easily as anything take that as an insult," Gayle warned her curtly.
But Sue rushed eagerly on as though she had not spoken.
"And all the girls I know here are so dumb-like me! And there isn't anybody else I can talk to, or ask for advice-can you imagine me going to Mother and asking 'Do you like the things Daddy does to you when you are in bed together?'" She burst into a little treble of laughter. "Oh, Gayle, can you imagine what she would say?"
"Probably shriek for the man with the butterfly net to carry you away to the nut house to cut out paper dolls," Gayle grinned, amused at the picture.
"And if I tried to tell her I wasn't sure I wanted to sleep with Clyde, she'd be horribly embarrassed, and say, 'Oh, darling, no nice woman enjoys sex-but because men do, women have to endure it! It's-not at all nice; ifs very undignified, and messy and even-painful. But it's a part of marriage-the bad part and there isn't anything we can do about it.' "
Gayle studied Sue with sudden shrewdness, and there was a gleam of mirth in her eyes.
"That sounds like a quote," she observed, amused.
Sue flushed and grinned like an impish child.
"It is, of course," she admitted frankly. "Isn't it funny how mothers always think their daughters are just a little too pure to understand the facts of life?'"
"Mothers are funny people, I suppose," admitted Gayle politely, trying not to remember her own who had been a good-natured slatternly creature who had welcomed men with a generosity that had finally led to her leaving town hard on the heels of an irate husband armed with a gun. Neither the mother nor the father had returned to Claresville and Gayle had come up the hard way under the stern and unyielding hand of a grandmother who was disgusted both with her daughter and her daughter's child, who showed signs of growing too beautiful for her own good.
Sue was thoughtfully silent for a moment and when she spoke again, there was a speculative gleam in her blue eyes that were usually so candid and child-like.
"Don's a darling," she said lightly. "And scandalously rich-but he's a pretty wary bird. I imagine women have been setting traps for him since he was in long pants."
"Probably before," agreed Gayle grimly, remembering and hating herself for remembering the ecstasy and de-light she had known in Don's arms.
"Do you honestly think he-well, likes me?" asked Sue shyly, lowering her eyelids prettily.
"No," said Gayle flatly and Sue's eyes widened a little. "I don't think he likes you worth a damn; but I think he's so crazy about you that he would give his right arm to have you. Whether on a permanent basis or not, would be, of course, up to your reaction to his love-making."
Sue blushed prettily and would not meet Gayle's eyes.
"I-don't seem to be a bit frightened at that-" she admitted as though puzzled that this should be so.
"Then you're a greater fool," Gayle commented acidly.
But Sue seemed not to hear her as she stood up.
"Being a woman is sort of complicated, isn't it?" she confessed and before Gayle could manage an answer to that, Sue gave her a brilliant smile and left the room.
Gayle sat still for a long moment, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She wasn't quite sure just how far she could go; how far she dared go; without bringing the whole shaky house of cards down upon her head. But she flattered herself that she had made a good beginning. She had stirred things up, anyway; she had all three of them running in circles. But whether any of the circles would surround her, to her own benefit, was at the moment anybody's guess.