The Rose Garden Read online

  “I’ll do it again, and I’ll do worse than that, Leona,” George said, “unless you say after me now, ‘Nice George.’”

  Leona stared at him and then spoke quickly. “Nice George,” she said.

  “Keep smiling, children,” Charles said brightly. “Remember, it’s all just a little joke. Don’t let them guess there’s anything wrong.”

  “Now, Leona,” George said, “say, ‘Rich, handsome, good George.’”

  “Rich, handsome, good George,” Leona gabbled.

  George looked pleased. “‘Popular George’?” he suggested.

  “Popular George.”

  “Good enough,” George said. “Now Charlie—‘Nice George,’ please. If you don’t say ‘Nice George,’ Charlie, I’m coming over there and twist your ears, one to the front, one to the back. ‘Nice George.’”

  “Nice George,” Charles said, sneering. Leona, Lewis, and Dolly, all three turned their gaze uneasily from him.

  “Stop making faces, Charlie,” George said good-humoredly. “Now all together—‘Rich, handsome, witty George, good George, nice George.’”

  “Rich, handsome, witty George,” they chorused feebly, “good George, nice George.”

  George took out his flask. “‘Pleasant, popular, able George.’”

  “Pleasant, popular, able George.”

  In the swollen peace that followed, Leona and Dolly smiled stiffly at each other. “I really never felt so much of a fool in my life,” Dolly said.

  “We can leave in about an hour, don’t you think?” Charles said.

  “An hour, Charles, yes, let’s say an hour at the most,” Leona agreed fervently.

  They continued to sit, smiling. Behind them, having tasted heaven, George slept. Before them, the dance went on.

  Next morning, Charles awoke as usual at nine-thirty, but he did not immediately open his eyes. He waited, lying very still, breathing calmly and deeply, until his first impression of uneasiness, of being on guard, had passed into a determined surge of good spirits, and then, to his delighted surprise, into a playful well-being that carried him out of bed and across to the table where his notebook lay. He lifted the book, admiring the neatness—that is, he thought, the dispassionateness—of last night’s entries. He had stayed awake almost until dawn, sitting here in silence until his temper was cool enough to let him write as he knew he should write. Now it was all in hand. The day was full of promise. He was going into battle, and his adversaries, meager enough in their normal state, would all have horrifying hangovers.

  “George,” he murmured, and read. It was disagreeable stuff, but he absorbed it bravely. George was easy game. George would learn his lesson well. Thinking of the awakening George must at this moment be enduring with Leona, Charles could almost find it in his heart to be sorry for the poor wretch. Edward would squirm, too. That would all be perhaps too easy.

  But then came the difficult part, because already, at the memory of the evening, Charles was beginning to rage again. He was churning with rage. He could burn the memory of his own ludicrous part in the whole business from the minds of the others, by turning their derision back on them, but could he forget it himself? Because if he did not forget it, or destroy it, its damage would show, and the others would know for certain that he had been as vulnerable as they to the general humiliation. “They must not know,” he said aloud. “It must not show,” he said. “Today will prove what I am—a man above all this petty frenzy. I am different from all these people,” he told himself angrily. He stood up and strode barefoot around the room.

  Suddenly he stopped in the center of the woolly white rug and, gazing down at his untidy bed, clutched his head with both hands. “I simply must remember that I am an observer,” he said. The image that had come to him again and again last night as he sat on the dais returned once more: He saw himself before leaving for the dance, posturing in front of this very pier glass, taking the attitudes of the waltz, actually dancing backward with the hand mirror, watching the swing of his coat and the curve of his trouser legs. “I cannot bear this!” Charles said wildly, and started to catalogue the shame of the others. Dolly’s net stockings, he thought, and that absurd rose. Leona’s open chagrin. Lewis’s deathly embarrassment. And George with his sad little flash of courage. And Tarnac—why, he had enough gibes prepared to keep Tarnac reeling for a year.

  Gradually Charles’s head grew quiet. He opened the curtains. Another perfect day. It might be yesterday—but he thrust that thought quickly out of sight. He sat in the chintz chair and permitted himself an unusual indulgence: he smoked a cigarette before breaking his fast. Then he rang for Bridie, and when she appeared, he stared at her in amazement, for even he could not ignore the extraordinary violence she brought with her into the room.

  She handed him his orange juice and poured the hot milk and coffee. He eyed her curiously as he sipped the orange juice. Her face was actually twitching with some emotion. Something must have upset her last night. He felt he could not bear it if she left the room before he knew what it was.

  “A very pleasant party last night, Bridie,” he said smoothly. “Very pleasant indeed. The girls looked so pretty in their little best dresses.”

  “I suppose they did, sir.” Bridie hurled herself at the window curtains, and snatched them apart with such force that the whole inside window frame was left naked, ruining Leona’s lovely draped effect. Charles frowned in surprise. More here than meets the eye, he thought, and wondered how best to approach this maddened woman.

  “Poor dear Mr. Tarnac,” he said tentatively. “Pathetic fellow, I’m afraid he’s had a bad time these last few years. A pity, really.”

  “Mr. Tarnac is all right,” Bridie said. She stared at him, and it seemed to Charles that for the first time that morning she remembered who he really was. “Oh, Mr. Tarnac’s a lovely man,” she said spitefully. “The girls all think he’s God’s gift to the women. They’re all head over heels in love with him.” She had rehearsed this speech the night before, as she sat watching the dance and watching the watchers on the dais. She got little satisfaction from it now. She wondered if anything would ever happen in the world again that would be awful enough to satisfy her.

  Jealousy, Charles thought, with disgust. This laughable monolith fancies herself in love. He picked up his notes, dismissing her. “The girls’ opinion is always of immense interest to me. I must tell poor Mr. Tarnac what you said when I see him at lunch.”

  “You won’t see him at lunch, nor at dinner either,” Bridie cried, “for he went off back to town with the rest of that crew. They were all mad to get back to the city. The way they drove off, I wouldn’t be surprised if the half of them were found dead, and I wouldn’t be sorry, either.”

  “Who went back to the city? What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Tarnac went back with all the fellows that were up here for the dance, and a few of the young ones that are working here, too. A lot of use they’ll be around here today, if they ever come back here at all.”

  Charles laughed. Really, it was too good, that sodden fool Tarnac dashing around with a carful of drunken servants.

  “And where on earth did these wild young things go, Bridie? To some dance hall, perhaps?”

  Bridie took a deep and unsteady breath. “Oh, great God,” she said, “when I heard of it! I could have dropped dead, so I could. I could have killed them.”

  “What did they do, Bridie?”

  “Oh, Mr. Runyon, wait till I tell you. I had a nice chair that I sat on the whole evening, between the door where you come into the hall and the door where you go into the bar. Near the stage, I was. A couple of us sat there, and then from time to time other girls would come along and sit with us a minute or two. You know the way it is. And you know the way you talk. The boys would bring me a little drink now and then. Not that I took much, but you know, Mr. Runyon, I’m not accustomed to it. Oh, Mr. Runyon, the things I said. Things I wouldn’t want repeated. I won’t have a friend in the place when it gets ou
t. I don’t know where to go or what to do. I’m nearly mad, thinking about it all night long, and praying to God the records would be broke by the time they got back to town.”

  “What records, Bridie?”

  “The records they made at the dance. Didn’t one of the young fellows in the band—a radio mechanic he is, bad luck to him—rig up one of them wire-recording things right behind where I was sitting. Every word I said. If they’d only have given me a hint. But of course nobody knew, only the young fellow himself, the young blackguard, and a couple of his friends that helped him fix it up. Things I wouldn’t have repeated for the world—I—”

  “And that was why they were in such a hurry to get back to town, to play the records over?”

  “Why else. All laughing they were—”

  “And Mr. Tarnac was with them, and some of the girls from here?”

  “Josie next door, for one. Lazy young lump, she—”

  “Bridie, please pay attention. Tell me, did they put recorders anywhere except behind your chair?”

  “In the bar, they had one. I wouldn’t have minded that, I wasn’t in there. And one in the vestibule as you come in, but I hardly stopped there at all. And another one under the platform you and Mrs. Harkey and Mr. Harkey were on. I wasn’t near there.”

  She stopped suddenly, astounded, listening to what she had just heard her own voice say. And to think that I missed that, she thought, and realized how far she had drifted from her moorings in these last few hours.

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s right. There was one under where you were sitting, too, Mr. Runyon.”

  Staring greedily into his eyes, she saw and recognized what she had never hoped to see again—a chagrin as hot and as bitter as her own.

  The Bride

  At seven o’clock on the evening before her wedding day, Margaret Casey finished her packing, locked her suitcase, and sat down on the edge of her bed to catch her breath. Her room was on the top floor of the house in Scarsdale where she had worked as a maid for ten years. She was alone in the house. The phone was shut off, the refrigerator was disconnected, the windows all were locked, and all the beds, except hers, stripped for the summer. The family had early that morning driven off to their cottage in the Berkshires, where they would remain until October. Margaret had dreaded the moment of their departure, fearing her own tears, which fell easily, but at the last minute she smiled brilliantly, and waved, and saw the car disappear out onto the road calmly enough, although for a moment there she felt she must cry after them to come back, come back, if only for an hour, and not leave her by herself at a time like this.

  Of course, it was her own idea in the first place to get married the day after they left for the summer. Summer had seemed a comfortable, indefinite time away the night last February that she had given in to Carl’s persistence and given him her promise. She liked Carl, but she wasn’t much inclined to marry him. All that night, she lay awake in a panic, thinking of ways to break with him. It would be heartless to tell him straight out that she had no use for him. Crafty, she decided to do one thing at a time. First she would give Mrs. Smith her notice, and then she would just steal away to another town and find a new job and not let Carl know anything about it. But when she went in, when they were having breakfast, and gave her notice, the sight of Mrs. Smith’s stricken face was too much for her, and to ease her guilt she blurted out that she was going to marry Carl, and settle down, and stop working, and have a home of her own. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were astonished and delighted at her good fortune, and their pleasure made her so generous that she embroidered the case a little, describing the house (not yet built) that Carl hoped to buy, and telling about his plan to go into business with his brother someday, not right away. Mrs. Smith said she hoped Margaret would let her give a little wedding breakfast here in the house after the ceremony, but Margaret quickly said no, that her plans were made to be married the day after they left for the summer. After some argument, Mrs. Smith gave in to her, and laughed, and said that after all Margaret was the bride and it was only right she should have things her way. Back in the kitchen, Margaret sat as astonished as though they had ordered her out of the house. All I wanted to do was give notice, she thought, and here I’ve gone and committed myself.

  Still, July seemed a long time off. There would surely be some way to free herself. She could pick a fight with Carl, or she might confide in Mrs. Smith and ask her advice. But it grew harder and harder to speak up. Anyway, she found herself growing fond of Carl. It was the first time in her life she had ever had anyone of her own, and he was very considerate of her. He was coming along now in a few minutes to take her out to dinner.

  She contrasted this evening with the evening, twelve years ago in Ireland, before her sister Madge was married. That evening, Madge never stopped posturing around in her wedding dress of blue silk, showing off before the neighbors while her mother sat in the middle of the room crying because she was losing her big girl and the family would soon be all scattered. “Next thing little Margaret will be leaving me,” cried the mother, and Margaret had darted to her mother’s side and protested that no, no, she would never leave, and the neighbors nodded approvingly and said that was a good daughter, that one. Still, good daughter and all, it was Madge who was the favorite, and when, after a year, Madge decided to economize by moving back into her old home, Margaret felt very out of place with the perpetual fuss over Madge’s baby and Madge’s husband and Madge’s aches and pains. Margaret was already out working by then, and when her uncle in New York wrote offering to lend her the passage over, she accepted at once, believing up to the last minute before she left that the mother would come to her senses and forbid her to go. But the mother appeared delighted to see Margaret get her “chance,” and there were fewer tears shed over Margaret’s departure for a foreign land than over Madge’s decision to marry a boy she had known all her life.

  Margaret had found great satisfaction in the money orders she sent home weekly, knowing the power they gave her mother over the household. After the debt to her uncle was paid off, she sent more and more money home, stinting herself to send as much as she could. She always meant to start saving her fare home, but she really believed that when the time came for her to see her mother again, the money would turn up somehow. She wanted to go back there and best Madge, once and for all. She had a dream of saving up enough to go back and start a little business, enough to support her mother and herself, or to go back with a comfortable nest egg and find some good man to marry. None of her hopes had come true. All of her hopes had turned into regrets; only the hurt, strained feeling in her heart was the same. Everything had turned out wrong. The mother was five months dead now, and there no longer seemed any way to get back at Madge, sitting triumphant there in possession of all the old bits of ornaments and furniture and everything that remained of the old home. Not that Madge had offered to send her anything—not even a few of the old photographs—and it would be too bitter to reveal her jealousy and longing by asking for them. Madge had known what she was doing, all right.

  If only God had given Margaret the strength to wait a while longer, something might have turned up. She might have won the Sweep, or some old lady might have turned up who wanted a companion to travel to Ireland with her, or somebody—her uncle, maybe—might have died and left her a legacy. There was no limit to the things that might have happened, if she’d only had patience. But the night she heard her mother was dead, Carl was so sympathetic that she committed herself further than she had ever meant to. It was the way he put his arm around her that undid her, the closeness of his body giving her a warmth she had forgotten since her mother’s lap. How well he knew the time to take advantage of me, she thought angrily. His persistence had put her off the first time she met him. She should have been firm then, and got rid of him for good. That was the German in him, enabling him to hang on until he got what he was after. He would never fit in with the crowd at home. They would laugh at him behind his back and say he was
thick. Madge’s cruel eyes would cut clear through the smart American clothes to see the soft, good-natured, easily hurt fellow underneath. Madge would laugh to hear Mr. Smith say that Carl was a fine, steady fellow who would always be a credit to the community. Mr. and Mrs. Smith had been very nice about the whole thing. Mr. Smith had given Margaret three months’ salary as a wedding present, and Mrs. Smith gave her her wedding outfit. Her dress, a jacket and skirt of navy-blue shantung, hung now in the closet, with the new shoes in a box on the floor underneath and the new hat in a box on the shelf above. Except for her rosary beads, she had nothing old and familiar from Ireland to bring with her into her new home. Madge had stolen everything, and without even lifting a finger.

  One time, when Margaret was a little girl, before her father died, her mother and father had gone for a ride in a charabanc, out into the country. When they came back, they talked about the hotel where they’d had tea, and about the woods and rivers they had seen. They promised that Margaret would have a charabanc ride one Sunday, and she believed them and began to go every Sunday to watch the buses fill up with passengers. A lot of young people used to go, laughing and pushing and jostling each other to see who would get the best seat. Margaret had her seat all picked out—the one up in front near the driver—but she never had the chance to ride in it. There was always some excuse to keep her from going. Sometimes one of the charabancs went on a mystery tour. The driver of the charabanc knew where he was going, but the passengers had to guess, and never could be sure of their destination until they arrived there. The people going off on the mystery tours seemed even gayer than the usual charabanc crowds. Margaret longed to go with them, although she had a half fear that the mystery charabancs never came back at all. She might just as well have gone on one and not come back, for all the good she had made of her life.

  A joyful shouting came from downstairs, and Margaret ran out onto the landing. It was Carl. He had let himself in by the back door. He was accustomed to back doors, being a plumber. When he reached the second-floor landing, he looked up and saw her.