“All right, why?”
“Reaction — or something... I knew we weren’t going out, Jack. That we were just pretending. So I could blow smoke at you and muss up your hair — will you ever stop pasting it down like that? It would have a nice wave if you’d let it wave. I knew all that, but I never did anything like this.”
“Did you say children?”
“That’s different. And you never did, either. All right, I suppose it’s the worst insult you can offer a man, to insinuate, or even hint that he could be anything but an expert on the subject. Just the same, I know what I know. And I want it like this. It’s a lot sweeter that you come to me — as a little child might. As a little taffy-haired boy entering a new and beautiful garden, a little forbidden, and utterly mysterious...”
“Mrs. Lucas, what is your other name?”
“June.”
“June, come here... It’s all true, what you know.”
“Does it hurt, to admit it?”
“No.”
I told her about the car, the way Denny and I had chased girls, and the afternoon on the bay. She listened, then went to the window and stood looking up at the stars. Then: “Jack, I’m so glad it made you sick!... I guess I understand it, how those girls felt, how your friend felt — I wasn’t born yesterday. They want to be exalted but all they’re capable of is to be excited. What was it Wilde said? ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’—? Except that such people don’t kill it, they merely befoul it. I’m proud of you that you didn’t and couldn’t. Tonight is a night you can never have twice, and it’s wonderful you saved it — for me. I’m happy it’s me. And that it’s silly, romantic, and cockeyed. Can I give you one little ideal, I’d like you to keep?... Let it always be beautiful. Don’t ever befoul it.”
She kissed me then, and through the night spread the color of the moth.
8
The rest of that fall, I guess we played some football, but who we played and how it came out I wouldn’t know. I wrote her or wired her or sent her something every day, and then after the Hopkins game, which was played in Baltimore, I called up Doc Henry, that had tended me ever since I could remember, and got him to certify by wire to the college that I needed a little toe-nail-ectomy, something like that. Then without any more than calling up the house, I beat it for the station and took the train for Easton. I saw her a little sooner than I expected. I got in late at night, and next morning went down in the dining room and had breakfast, wondering if I could ever make the clock go around until it would be time to ring her telephone. But I had sent her a wire I was coming, and when I looked up, who should be there, following the waiter over to my table, but her, even younger-looking than she had been, with a little brown hat over her blonde hair, a fur coat, and a flower for my buttonhole. I was so glad to see her I could hardly eat my eggs. “Well, June, what would you like to do? I put a few lies on the wire and had a doctor send some, so I’m free till this time next week, if you are. I mean, we played our last game yesterday, and I’ve fixed it so I’m not due back to the kiddy-pen until after the Thanksgiving holidays.”
“Who won, by the way?”
“We did... And I have a suite. Would you like to see it?”
“... Jack, I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“For the same reason I’m here so early to head you off from coming to see me. So I won’t have to have you at my house... Jack, it happened. If it just took us by surprise so we had a lovely night — oh, all right, two lovely nights and a long, dreamy day — and I’m not ashamed. Life is like that, and it has little lyric poems in it, as well as other things. But a lyric is one refrain, and there’s no second verse. I loved you, for one week end, as beautifully as I’m capable of loving. But I couldn’t go on with it. And not here. I forgot to tell you, I guess. I’m prominent. I belong to clubs and things. I have friends, who wouldn’t understand. And you’d be most difficult to explain.”
“Why?”
“Well — who are you?”
“A guy in love.”
“Yes, but — they’d expect to know more.”
“All right, tell them more.”
“What, for instance?”
“A guy in love that you’re engaged to.”
“That wouldn’t do.”
“People get engaged, you know.”
“Grown women, with children, don’t get engaged to babies going to college — or if they do, they don’t expect anybody to believe it. What they get taken for is what they are, somebody’s sweetie. And that I won’t have.”
“All right, a guy in love, that you’re married to.”
“What?”
“They get married, too.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“The bureau’s not open on Sunday.”
“Then tomorrow.”
“Jack, please be serious.”
“I am.”
I began to lean on it, then, to get it through her head that I meant business. I told her about myself, the money I’d made singing, the way I was going ahead at the mechanical engineering, and all the rest of it. I said we’d sell my stock, if that was what we’d have to do, and she could come with her kids and live at College Park, or I’d come to Easton and make a deal with Lafayette to play football. Or, I said, I’d quit school and we’d start over, here in Easton or wherever. She looked at me sharp when I spoke of the stock, asked me some questions, and said I’d better check on it, as things had happened. Then: “Jack, I see I’ll have to tell you the truth. Let’s go up to your suite.”
So we went up there and she called her home and told the maid she wouldn’t be in until supper. Then she was in my arms and it was late afternoon before we did any talking. But when she started she hit it on the nose: “Jack, I think I’m going to get married.”
“To me?”
“No.”
“Well — that’s making it plain, so a guy can understand it. When did all this happen, or do you mind my asking?”
“It hasn’t happened.”
“You’re just considering?”
“Not even that. But — it’s being considered.”
“I see.”
“A woman knows, I suppose, when something of that sort is in the wind, and I’m quite sure at the proper time, in the proper way, I’ll be asked. I’ve done nothing with you I’m not free to do, nothing I’ll feel bound to mention, as it concerns nobody but ourselves. Just the same, it makes sense, and you don’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a baby, for one thing.”
“Just an infant. But why does ‘it’ make sense?”
“‘It’ was a friend of my husband’s, and he’s known me since I was married, and he’s fond of the kids, and they’re insane about him, and — I hate to bring this up, but it’s important: He’s very rich, and—”
“I got it now.”
“I don’t think you have.”
“Do you love him?”
“Not as I love you, here and now.”
“But, he’s rich—”
“Jack.”
“What?”
“Stop being offensive.”
“Am I?”
“Yes... If I were myself alone, and you asked me to do this mad thing, I don’t say I wouldn’t. I might. It’s mad enough, to be with you, like this. But I’m not myself alone. I have children, family, friends, position, all sorts of things to think of, that I will not give up. To have you I must give them up, for as you’ve said, it will involve a complete new start. With him, I do nothing much about it, and life goes on, pleasantly, sensibly, satisfactorily. And one other thing: When did riches become so loathsome?”
“All right.”
“They’re the foundation, at least moderate wealth is, of practically everything people want out of life, and this idea they’re so horrible, that a woman should never consider them, is just plain silly. Of course, that’s a man’s idea. No woman ever had it.”