The Lonely (14 page)

Her crying now was like that of a fear-stricken child calling wildly in the darkness. She beat on the mattress with her fists and called: “Jer-
reeeee,
Jer-
reeeeee
! Please, Jerry . . .” She cried for him to come before it was too late and take her out of the darkness that was engulfing her. “Oh, please, Jer-
reeeee
! . . .”

The lights in the house on the other side of Severn Avenue exercised a kind of compulsion upon Jerry as he stood by the window of his room and stared across the quiet, deserted street, letting his thoughts wander where his feet would not go, across the few yards separating the two Long Island homes.

He had been standing there thinking for a long time. The hour was past eleven. Through the summer-green curtain of trees he had seen the lights in Catharine’s house shift from the ground floor to the upper storey. Soon they would blink out, and then he would feel rather than see the dark mass as he had all through his boyhood.

It was there, with its white-painted shingle sides and dark, slanting roof with the square, flower-bordered balcony over the conservatory with the New England wing featuring the huge studio window opening out from the end on to the bordered brick walk. For the moment it was inescapable. It was as firmly implanted in his mind as it was affixed to its foundations. He knew every beam and stone in it as he knew his own. It had acquired a living personality through having sheltered Catharine, and, through her, his hopes for so long. He had lived and grown with this house from the day, so many years ago, that the Quentins had moved there.

It was there he had gone to play, first as a child, later as an adolescent. Inside those walls he had attended Catharine’s first birthday party after her arrival. From that day on, a glamor had settled upon the house that had never been dispelled.

Jerry remembered Catharine on her seventh birthday—he had been eight—and how she had looked in her blue organdie dress, puffed at the shoulders so that she seemed like a winged angel. Her shining hair hung down to her waist and was tied with a big blue bow.

These were the pictures, recollections, and sensations that filled his mind now with startling clarity and vividness, and he felt again something of the thrill and sweetness of that day when he had experienced the first faint tap of manhood upon his shoulders, and the world was filled with lovely creatures, all pink and blue and white and scented with silken hair and starched ribbons and soft dresses, candlelight and games and good things to eat, and above all the fairy presence of the dearest and most enchanting of them all—Catharine.

There had been a new and wholly unforgettable emotion encountered when, with the almost imperceptible yet unmistakable signals of childhood, Catharine had singled him out as her favorite at the party. With a shy glance, or a momentary return to the present he had brought her, or in the way in which she manoeuvred when sides were drawn for the games, she managed to let him know she liked him best and wanted him near her.

For days afterwards Jerry had walked on air. He lived and dreamed on Catharine’s radiance and the bright, rosy memories of each crowded minute he had spent in her presence. Day and night were devoted to the rearing of glorious battlements in the sky and the rescuing of Catharine in fantasy from magnificently invented and horrible dangers. He dwelt upon the time when he would grow up and marry her, and saw her always at his side, unchanged in her blue dress with the angel-wing sleeves, her heavy, gleaming hair swinging, as she moved her head, or brushing softly against his face or hand.

During the long years of his journey from childhood to adolescence there had been other interests, and girls had drifted temporarily into the background, but even in that period when, outwardly, girls were beneath his notice, he would sometimes in his mind steal back to the day of the party and recapture the glow and the sweet dizziness that had beset him. And always her house was standing there so comfortably across the street. He saw it every day as he went to school and came home.

The memories persisted. Jerry could not bar them from his mind, because every object that surrounded him, even the light and shadow of the gentle night, was a part of them. He was home; he was doubly home, and the spirit and the presence of Catharine were something living, beckoning across the tiny gulf of the asphalt street, calling with a thousand voices to which he could not close his ears. It was on just such a summer’s night as this in Westbury, when the elm leaves were rustled into changing their shadowy patterns on the ground by a cool breeze from the ocean side, and there had been soft starlight, distant music, and distant laughter, that he had first dared to kiss her.

He was seventeen then. She had not kissed him back, but, after a moment of silence, had got up from the swing on the porch and gone into the house, and he knew that he had offended her. He remembered the hell through which he had gone, how he felt that he had placed himself beyond the pale by offering her a mortal insult, and had tortured himself until she forgave him and they had made up.

Rooted there by the window in his room, Jerry found himself reliving, step by step, emotion by emotion, his romance with the girl across the way, until it seemed more and more fantastic that he should be there and she so near him, separated only by the width of the darkened street.

But for all the memories, the yesterday still ached powerfully in his heart, and Jerry found himself confused and baffled by the presence of the two emotions. For Patches, even though he could not see her clearly, was not so much a memory as someone who had come to live within him and whose absence created a void that nothing could fill.

It was this recollection of the feeling that a union had taken place between them—something beautiful, strong, harmonious, and indissoluble—that turned his disturbed mind to summoning her again, if only she would come. Why was it he could not place Patches beyond the misery and dulled yearning that permeated him? Why were there only fragments of her to be snatched at—the straight line of her back, the tender slope of her shoulders, the way her eyes would steal a look at him when she thought he wasn’t watching, her little skip when she was happy, or perhaps no more than the deep breath she drew in before she began to tell something important—when every detail of Catharine was as clear as though she were standing there in the room beside him?

Could it be true, as his father had intimated, that in the end he would never regret marrying Catharine, and that as he grew older, lived and prospered amongst his own people and his family, the strains of Patches would become fainter and fainter and in the end die away, that he might some day speak of her as his father had of Adrienne?

Jerry went over to his desk and opened a drawer, searching for a moment until he found what he sought—a newspaper clipping, with a picture of Catharine, announcing their engagement. It was the same photograph of her that stood on his bureau, and her clear, level gaze was upon him as he reread the short paragraph:

Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Quentin, of No. 15 Severn Avenue, Westlake Park, Long Island, announce the engagement of their daughter Miss Catharine Rowland Quentin, to U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lieutenant Gerald H. Wright, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harman Wright, of No. 12 Severn Avenue, Westlake Park. Miss Quentin attended Rosemary Hall and the Seton School, of Noroton, Conn. She is a member of the New York Junior League and is prominent in Red Cross and blood-donor work in Westbury. Before enlisting in the Air Forces, Mr. Wright graduated from Westbury High School, and was attending Williams College where he was a member of the football and track teams, the Ionian Club, and the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. He is leaving for advanced training at Camp Stickney, Texas.

The small slip of paper Jerry held in his fingers was like a chain that bound him indissolubly to Catharine. He remembered how beautiful and glorious and right the world had seemed the day it was published. Now it haunted him. Everyone had seen it, had read that he and Catharine were promised to each other, had looked upon her picture. It had happened. It could not be erased . . .

The pain of Patches was a misty longing, as though a grey veil had descended between them. She was there. He could feel her presence, but he could not reach her. And confronting him was the visible, public proof of what had once been his heart’s desire. He stood there, wearily looking at the clipping, no longer seeing the type, and not knowing what to do. He was too tired to think any more.

Harman Wright was in the library, waiting and smoking quietly when his wife came in. Her eyes were swollen, and she looked like a wraith. The shock of the domestic disaster had really made her ill. She was torn between love for Jerry and love for Catharine, the desire to see and be with him, fear and hope, the disruption of all her plans as well as by the change in Jerry. Harman went to her at once.

“Helen, my dear . . . You shouldn’t have come down. You’re—”

“Harman . . . I had to know. Where’s Jerry? Has he gone out? Has he gone over to see . . .” She couldn’t finish the expression of fear that was so painful to her.

“To see Catharine? No, I don’t think so. He went up to his room to think things out. I haven’t heard him come down.”

Helen began to cry nervously. “Harman, I want to go to him. He’s my baby. I haven’t seen anything of him since he’s been home. He needs me . . .”

Harman Wright said: “Wait, Helen. Let him be a little longer. He has to work this out by himself.” His eyes went quickly to the wall clock. It was past eleven. Every second that ticked by made it more certain that Jerry would not see Catharine that night. In his heart he felt the danger was over and the victory assured. He was sure that once Jerry got past this hurdle he would come to his senses.

Helen sank into a chair and continued to cry bitterly. “I’m so afraid, Harman, Jerry’s different. Something has happened to him. I can feel it. I’m his mother. We mustn’t let him do it, for his own sake. It’s only Jerry I’m thinking about now . . . I don’t know what to do . . .”

Harman said gently: “He’s growing up, Helen. War does that. But he’s still our boy. And when he was in trouble he came home to us. Jerry will do what is right. He won’t try to see Catharine tonight. When it came to the point where he was leaving to go over there, he realized by himself that he couldn’t do it. I had a little talk with him. I told him . . .” he checked himself. “He knows how much it would hurt you . . .”

His quiet manner had a soothing effect upon Helen, and made her turn more strongly to him for comfort and reassurance. She cried: “How could he say he loved this other girl? Catharine was meant for him. We’ve made everything so right for him, for both of them. It’s his whole future . . .”

Harman said: “He knows he loves Catharine. Things like the other girl sometimes happen to boys when they’re away from home and under the stress of war. When they have the stuff in them that Jerry has, and the right background, they come through.”

He put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “See here, Helen, buck up. Years from now, when Jerry and Catharine are married and have kids of their own, we’ll look back on our carryings on tonight and laugh . . .”

“Harman . . . promise me . . .”

Helen was so eager and pathetic in her trust of him that Harman almost smiled. He patted her hand. “I don’t think you need worry too much. I’ll promise you that Jerry is a hundred percent. It’s getting late. I’ll go upstairs for a moment and see how he’s making out. Wait here . . .”

“You promised, Harman . . .”

He went up the stairs not quite at ease but hoping strongly that things would come out as he had said. These hopes rose when he knocked on the door of Jerry’s room and went in. Jerry was standing by an open desk drawer with a newspaper clipping in his hand. As his father came in he dropped it quickly into the drawer and closed it. Harman had seen that it was his engagement announcement to Catharine, but he wisely refrained from alluding to it. But the very fact that Jerry had got it out . . .

He said: “I just thought I’d look in, Jerry, and see how things were . . .”

“Come in, Dad.” Jerry was glad that there was no longer any anger in his heart against his father. He asked: “Is it late?”

“Eleven-thirty.” Harman Wright came into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed as he used to when Jerry was a little boy. He lit a cigarette and smoked silently for a moment, waiting for Jerry to speak, but when his son said nothing, he came to the point.

“Have you made up your mind what you think you’ll do?”

“Be on that ship when she takes off at two in the morning,” Jerry replied with a kind of grim decisiveness that made his father smile.

“I can see your point.” Harman glanced at his watch again. “And Catharine? You can hardly—”

Jerry said briefly: “There’s no use in my seeing Cat tonight, the way things have turned out . . .”

“I think you’re being very wise, Jerry . . .”

Jerry did not feel wise, but it was curious that he could not help feeling good when his father praised him. It had always been that way. He said: “I don’t know about that, sir. I just know I’ve got to be on that plane if I don’t want the book thrown at me. I’ve done a lot of figuring until I just can’t think any more. I’ve got to go back and I’ve got twenty more missions, and that’s that.” He hesitated, and then went on: “I’d rather Cat didn’t know I’d been here. I’d just like to skip the whole thing—”

He had been about to add: “—for the time being,” but his father interrupted him with a lusty: “Good boy, Jerry!”

To Harman’s wishful mind it was Jerry’s final decision as he had hoped for it, and he did not notice the sharp way his son’s head came up, or his look. He sprang up from the bed and took him by the arm. leading him towards the door. “We’ll have a drink on that. And your mother will be very, very happy. She’s waiting downstairs . . .”

When they came into the library Helen arose with a little cry: “Jerry, darling . . .” and came to him.

Moved by her appearance and her unhappiness, Jerry took her in his arms and held her, letting her cry, patting her shoulder tenderly, and saying: “Aw gee, Mother, don’t cry so!”