A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The Bain boy, pursuing Jicky with phone calls and engagements in the weeks that followed, managed to get himself a little mistrusted by her. A suspicion came over her at times that perhaps he had been coached beforehand in the part he was to play, as far as tying her hands most effectually was concerned. Here was admiration and she didn’t want it; here was tenderness and it bored her. She was seeing very little of Scotty these days, and yet he was continually stopping in for a cocktail. It was all very puzzling, and then after a while it was not nearly so puzzling any more. She began to see things in their proper light.

“What do you think of Mother?” she asked him once.

“Remarkable looking, isn’t she?”

“Isn’t she, though! Everyone has always thought so—” All at once she stopped, as though someone had bored a little hole in her and let all her enthusiasm out. They never discussed Georgia between them after that.

And then one afternoon she wandered into the topaz-lighted room at the Madrid, and there was Georgia sitting over on the other side next to the wall. Jicky started across toward her, and just as she got about halfway, the waiter who had been arranging the tea things at Georgia’s table stepped to one side and revealed Scotty, all smiles as he leaned forward to say something more or less pleasant. Jicky stood still for a frozen half moment; then she turned around to walk out as though she had forgotten something. Georgia looked up just at the wrong moment. She came hurrying after her and stopped her just over the threshold.

“Jicky! Didn’t you see me sitting there?”

“Of course I did,” said Jicky, “but I thought—”

“What silly notions you get,” Georgia exclaimed. “Don’t make a scene like this. We’ve ordered another pot of tea for you.”

Scotty half rose and bowed her into her seat. “Marvelous to run into you like this.”

“Isn’t it, though,” she replied uncordially.

“We called up to have you join us but you had gone out,” Georgia said.

“No doubt,” answered Jicky with cryptic intent.

Georgia, seizing her opportunity, gathered up her purse and gloves. “Mind if I run along now? Some things I must do.”

Jicky, her teacup still filled, was held trapped. She stared resentfully as she saw Georgia go out the door.

“We happened into each other quite accidentally,” Scotty related, “so I suggested coming here.”

“Rather nice to meet you both.” This latter word sticking its head up like a thorn. She said very little else during the course of the next ten minutes. Her napkin reappeared above the table. “I’ll say goodbye. I have a headache.”

“If you must go,” he said.

She did a lot of thinking when she got back that afternoon. It is safe to assume she had never concentrated quite so wholeheartedly and painfully on any one thing in her entire life before. When Scotty called that evening, Georgia was not in. Neither was Jicky, sitting alone in the living room swinging her foot and humming in a carefully guarded voice. The sequence in which he had asked for them had nothing to do with it, she assured herself.

They sat facing each other at luncheon a day or two later, and Georgia unaccountably dropped her hand to her lap. Not quickly enough, however. “A new ring, isn’t it?” Jicky observed. She extended her hand and Georgia, disengaging hers, reluctantly submitted the tips of her fingers for examination.

“Isn’t it darling,” said Jicky in a hoarse voice.

Georgia laughed embarrassedly. “I hardly know what to say,” she admitted. “In fact I–I’m not free to say anything just now.”

In her own room a few moments later, Jicky took her glasses off for the last time. As a matter of fact, she threw them on the floor and dug her heel through them. She had a hairdresser and his assistants up and spent her afternoon undergoing elaborate rites of beautification that left her looking at least ten years older. Then when Russell Bain called up, she accepted the inevitable with what amounted to stoic philosophy.

As she crossed the foyer on her way out, she came face to face with Scotty, handing his hat to the maid. He took in the mandarin coat and rhinestone vanity case at a glance.

“Good evening,” she said briefly. “And by the way, allow me to congratulate you.”

He stared at her blankly. “What for?”

“Announce the gentleman to my mother, Leila,” she said, and closed the door on him. She went down in the elevator with the feeling that somehow her evening was definitely spoiled even before it had got under way. She caught the gleam of something liquid on her lashes in the beveled mirror facing her.

“Where to?” asked Russell, sitting waiting for her in the car with his stick between his legs.

“Don’t give me a minute’s time to think tonight,” she warned him, “or I’ll fold up on you and die.”

Two days later the count appeared. Georgia’s room meanwhile had become a bower of flowers overnight. “Count Riano,” she explained, weaving a pattern in the air with her atomizer. “A dear friend of mine from Paris. Won’t you come out and say how do?”