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Part 32

He began picking up booklets and waving them at me. “I don’t know. Bermuda, Cuba, Florida, New Orleans.”

“You blessed idiot,” I said. “Why not around the world?”

He looked at me as if I had produced two full sized rabbits from the small hat on the table.

“My God,” he said, “I could go ’round the world.”

“Wait a moment, darling, and I’ll mix you a drink to help you get used to the idea,” I said. “You must promise to send me postcards of mosques and things.”

I was tired, and had a cold, and wished I could summon more enthusiasm about it, because Nat was such a pleasant person.

“Don’t mix a drink yet,” he said. “I want to tell you something . . . I want you to come along with me.”

I stared at him. He began to talk very fast. “I want you to marry me, I mean. Oh, I know you’ve never thought of that—I mentioned it just once when I was tight, I think. Perhaps I am not passionately in love with you, but if you don’t mind that, we might have fun. You are very gay to go places with . . . it would be lovely to have you along on a trip ’round the world, and I should be very lonely, by myself. I am fond of you, you know.”

I still stared at him. I said: “I am fond of you, too . . . I suppose I like you better than any man I know, nowadays.”

His voice was more confident than it had been. “Better come along then, Pat. And that’ll be that.”

I remembered having heard someone say that his father made decisions fast.

“Nat, dear, just a minute.” I felt very tired.

I wanted to say—to God or Noel or someone who would understand: “I have travelled such a long way, all the way through youth, I think, and I am so tired. You must not blame me too much, for taking what shelter offers, now.”

I smiled at Nathaniel and I said, “I’ll be able to talk in an instant, darling. Is that all right?”

“Of course, Pat, child,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I looked at my hat, lying on the table, beside an unread copy of the “Times.” I looked at the dark outside the windows. Rain was splashing hard against the panes. I wished that I were not too tired to think.

And a wave of remembrance of Noel swept over me. Vividly, as if I had seen him an hour before, I could remember his smile, and the exact shade of his hair, and the way his mouth felt when he bent down to kiss me. Noel—who had lifted me, for a while, to the level of his strength. . . . Remembrances enfolded me warmly—ebbed, ebbed and were gone. I stood alone, in a room with Nathaniel.

I said, “Nat, how about my gaudy past? I am supposed to have had one, you know.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Would have had one myself, if I’d been you, no doubt. That doesn’t bother me. I’d as soon not know the details, though.”

I said: “All right. I’ll marry you, Nat dear. Thank you for asking me.” We both laughed; he kissed me; and we went to dinner.

Lucia was very pleased.

We were married one April afternoon at the Municipal Building, where, long ago, someone with the same name as I, had married Peter. A phrase in the ceremony seemed vaguely familiar.

“Do you promise—to cleave to him only, forsaking all others, as long as you both shall live?” Well, this time, it might be true.

Because Nathaniel’s father had died so recently, we had no other celebration.

We were sailing that midnight—going around the world.

All our friends came to the boat, to wish us bon voyage. I said appropriate things, in answer to their felicitations, until my throat hurt from talking and talking.

Bill was ill and could not come to the boat, but he sent us a case of champagne, by his own bootlegger, a very large Italian who appeared suddenly, made a flowery speech wishing us long life, and gave us a detailed account of his difficulties in getting the champagne aboard. It was excellent champagne.

We began to drink it immediately—when it was almost all gone, people began saying “good-bye.”

Lucia drew me aside, and said: “Do you like your ermine wrap? I helped Nathaniel choose it for you.”

I said: “It’s a beautiful one. Why did he want to get me an ermine wrap?”

“Ever since he read ‘The Green Hat,’ Nat thinks ermine wraps are robes of romance. Pat, he’s a grand person.” She hesitated, then. . . . “It’s none of my affair, Pat, but are you thinking that Asia is a large place, or a small one?”

We regarded each other. I said: “It is a large place, Lucia. Still one never knows. . . .”

Lucia said: “That’ll be all right, I suppose.” She ran her finger down the ermine cloak. “It might be labelled ‘Success in the American edition,’ Patricia.”

We smiled at each other. She went away. Everyone else was gone, except Nathaniel.

He said, “Patricia, I’m going upstairs to send a wire or radio or whatever one sends at the last minute, to Bill, to thank him for the wine. Then I’ll come back to take you on deck, so that we can watch New York go by.”

“All right, darling. I want to put on some fresh make-up, anyway.”

The steward was clearing away the champagne bottles and glasses from our livingroom. I went into our bedroom. Champagne bottles and glasses were all over the place. I put on fresh lipstick and powder and perfume. I felt warm with champagne, and interested in going around the world.

There was a long mirror on the door of the bedroom. I walked toward it, and stood still.

In the mirror, a small, slim young woman stood. She had black straight shining hair, grey eyes, and a curved red mouth. Around her eyes, there were faint shadows, that would be lines in ten years, but not for ten years. She wore a rose-coloured net dress. One side of its ruffled skirt swung out like a half-opened fan. She wore an ermine wrap, negligently, over her shoulders. They were creamy shoulders—that many men had kissed—and that now, only one man would kiss, probably.

She did not look happy or unhappy. She looked a little tired and a little amused.

I wondered what she was like, underneath her attitudes. But I knew now, that neither I nor anyone else would ever be sure as to that.

She and I bowed to each other gravely, and I went to join Nathaniel.

Nathaniel and I stood silent. The ship moved smoothly down the river, and we watched New York move past. Nathaniel put a friendly hand on my shoulder.

Slipping past, slipping past, the lights of city skyscrapers, and with them all my life. Peter, Patrick, Kenneth, Lucia, Noel—voices and sounds of people and things I used to know.

Nathaniel spoke. “You won’t be lonely, Patricia?”

“No, my dear.”

He flung his arms out toward that fantastic skyline.

“We shall come back, Patricia, and build a skyscraper or two . . . then we’ll go on again . . . I want to see all the cities of the world. Capetown, and Budapest and Moscow,—Canton and Calcutta and Yokohama . . . I love the sounds of their names.”

His voice grew graver.

“I mean to be very good to you, Patricia.”

It was easy to slip an arm through his, it would be easy to be very good to Nathaniel, always.

“What are you thinking, Patricia?”

“That I mean to make you a perfect wife, Nathaniel.”

He smiled down at me, happily.

I did mean it.

Yet I shall hope, through all my youth, through all my life, that in some far city I shall find my love again.

New York lights blurred behind us. . . . That was a shining city.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Part 32

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