Stranger within the Gates (25 page)

But she was terribly hungry, and the door opening even only for a moment had let in the heavenly smell of roasted turkey. She wanted her dinner right away. It was going to be a wonderful dinner. She had been through the kitchen and seen some of the preparations.

She considered for a moment the idea of daring Rex and going down the way she was, anyway, but that might upset some of the plans she had been forming for the afternoon and evening. Rex would be furious, of course, if she insisted on going down this way, and would probably go off with the men somewhere, instead of taking her to some nightclub to dance as she wanted to do.

She marched over to the mirror and surveyed herself. Then indignantly, baffled for the time being, she went to work at her fingernails, ruining all that smart effect that she had labored so hard to produce, just to please a lot of would-be saints who couldn't stand modern ways.

When Rex came back for her, he could not find her anywhere, and when he frantically went downstairs, there she was talking quite affably to Rance Nelius, as if he were an old friend.

Relieved, he stood across the room and surveyed her, and caught a glimpse of her old self as he had seen her first, when she was trying to charm him, smiling with down-drooping lashes and pleasant near-shy glances as they conversed. What kind of a girl was she, anyway? He had married her and he didn't know yet which she was, a shy, sweet, worried child out in the world on her own and trying to do her best, or hard, petulant, spoiled little brat who didn't know how to behave decently and didn't want to know.

He looked at her lips and saw them guiltless of lipstick, showing her pretty white teeth with a winning smile. Rance Nelius seemed to be studying her courteously, trying to understand her. Rex looked at her hands, and amazingly those hideous red fingernails had disappeared, and her fingers were only rosy as nature might have made them. Well, he had conquered her for once. He hadn't really expected to. He had feared he was to have a battle, and dinner was imminent. He didn't want his mother to endure another scene at mealtime, with company present, too.

Florimel sat demurely talking, casting now and then a furtive glance at her silent husband. Only a glint of devilry in the depths of her narrowed gray eyes told her plans.

It was perhaps the stab to her own idea of her beauty that had gone deeper into her selfish soul than anything else. Rex had not thought her lovely when she had dressed up especially to charm him, and now she would pay him back. He was not being nearly as pliable as she had thought he would be. She had supposed in those first days that she would be able to do anything with him, just anything. But now with the family in the background, and all their absurd religious fads and ideas, he seemed to be formidable. But there were ways of breaking that down, and she would try them, soon. He and his precious family should learn that she was not to be daunted. She would have money, and she would wind that smug-faced woman and her two daughters around her finger or she would know the reason why.

They thought they were decent, did they? They thought she was indecent. Well, she would teach them in ways they did not dream of. She would rub their bland, smug faces in the dust. She would humiliate them. As she sat there scheming, she could think of even more ways to humiliate them than they could possibly find to annoy her.

So her eyes flashed a fire in their battleship-gray depths, and she continued to try her charms on Rance Nelius, just to see if she couldn't make that angel-faced Sylvia look jealous. And to smirk at even that high-and-mighty brother Paul, just to see if Marcia could be made to look jealous, too. Could it be that Marcia was the cause of his snobbishness at college? Maybe they were engaged. The whole family seemed to act as if they belonged together in some special way.

So Florimel, in her thoughts, continued her running line of comments on the people present and didn't even know that for the time being the family were as pleased with her as they could ever possibly be, just because she wasn't made up and was acting like an ordinary, pleasant individual. It was more than they had so far had reason to expect.

Then came the call to dinner, and they all went out.

The Christmas table was lovely. The guests all exclaimed at its beauty as they paused at the dining room door and surveyed it. Sylvia and Fae had been shut up in the dining room for some time during the morning, with Rance Nelius as soon as he came to help them, and had made it into a place of Christmas festivity.

There was a tiny tree in the center, not tall enough to hide the guests from one another, yet tall enough to partly conceal a goodly group of tiny packages done up in gala ribbons and papers. The tree was adorned with tiny lights, very tiny, and draped thickly with silver tinsel. It was a thing of beauty in itself. The packages were attached to small silver and red and green ribbons that wandered about and finally reached the different place cards. The place cards were the work of Fae and Stan. They were done in watercolors and inscribed with fitting sentiments, representing hard work and much thought. Some of them bore couplets that were really witty.

So, for a time after they were seated, there was so much to be examined and exclaimed over and delighted in that there was no opportunity for those long, embarrassing silences that the Garlands had greatly feared because of the new member of their household.

For the first time in her life Florimel found herself in a group of happy, well-mannered people having a very good time, of which she might be a part if she chose. She hadn't intended to choose to be assimilated, but somehow she found herself entering in without her own volition. The little packages under the tree were most engaging and alluring. She found herself wondering what would be in her package. For just a little while she forgot her role of belligerent daughter-in-law and really entered into the fun, laughing with the rest over the poetry and looking quite like a natural young woman.

Rex, watching her furtively with relief, decided that, after all, she might not turn out to be so dreadful. He did not realize yet that he was trying all the time to convince himself that she just didn't understand his family and that after she did she would love them and behave in a normal manner. He relaxed a little and was able to enjoy his Christmas dinner as much as anybody, with a degree of lightheartedness, rejoicing that he was at home again with those he loved. He was deeply interested in what Rance Nelius was saying about things in the university, and he was able to banish utterly for the time being the wonder that had been creeping into his mind, whether he ever had really loved Florimel at all, and if he didn't, what he should do about it. He couldn't do anything about it at the present moment, and if he could, what would there be to do, anyway? So why think about it? Perhaps all would go well after this beautiful Christmas occasion.

So the dinner went on to its delightful end, with mince pie and plum pudding both to choose from, and everything perfect as everything at home always was perfect on his mother's table.

They adjourned to the living room under the shadow of the great tree, whose lights were just beginning to shine forth and emblazon the dusk that was creeping into the room.

Florimel had her hands full of tiny articles--a Dresden shepherdess, an ivory elephant, three little china dogs, a little black cat with her back arched, an old-fashioned nosegay of roses framed in lace paper--each of which bore a tiny ring that could be fastened to a bangle bracelet. She was actually charmed with them. She sat down in a comfortable chair and began to string a little silver ribbon through their rings, fastening it around her neck.

Rex watched her anxiously. If she only would be like that all the time! If she only wouldn't act like a common girl with no manners. Oh, what should he do if she went into one of her frenzies while these two, Marcia and Rance, were here? He couldn't stand the shame of it! Marcia would probably report it all to Natalie Sargent, and he couldn't bear her to know that the wife he had married had turned out all wrong. Natalie, his old friend! Natalie who had been with them a year ago, a part of the merrymaking! And now she was trying to make a happy Christmas for her own family, with a sick father, an old grandmother, and a mother who was greatly distressed about their changed circumstances.

Suddenly he jerked himself up. He shouldn't be thinking about Natalie. Even if she was one of his very best old friends, a lifelong playmate, he should be thinking about his young wife who really was quite pretty now that she had taken off that hideous makeup and subdued those beastly finger claws! He shuddered at the thought that she might have come downstairs among them all looking like that. Perhaps she didn't really know that nice people didn't fix themselves up that way. Perhaps he must teach her. There was one more thing he wished he had cried out against, and that was those long, clattery earrings. He saw Fae watching her sometimes, with a smothered grin on her lips as if she wanted to laugh at them, and he half resented it, half wanted to laugh with her. Poor little girl! All this wasn't going to be very good for Fae, his little sister. And suddenly he saw that this thing that he had done not only affected himself but affected his whole family, and those were things he should have thought about before he let himself be persuaded into marriage so hastily. After all, a family had some rights. They had a right to be able to trust every one of themselves to bring no unseemly one among them.

However, he was married, and what was done was done. Was he going to have to regret what he had done all the rest of his life, or was Florimel going to turn out to be all right?

He watched her all the rest of the evening, while she sat there demurely, taking note of all that went on, taking little part except to play a game or two.

Oh, she was not backward. She was quite ready to take her part. But once or twice when they were playing charades and she was given a part, she grew somewhat hilarious, and her expressions were not all that might have been desired. The high color in his cheeks and the worried look upon his brows might have told her this if she had been alert to discern.

Then they settled down to rest, and the suggestion was made that each one sing a song or recite something or tell a story or do some kind of stunt.

The acts went all around the room. Even Mary Garland told a sweet little story of the first Christmas morning she could remember. And then it came to Florimel, and Marcia Merrill called out pleasantly, "Now it's your turn, Florimel! What will you do? Sing?"

Nothing loath, Florimel arose.

"Okay," she said carelessly. "I'll do a stunt. But mine takes a costume. There comes Selma with a tray of ice cream. I'll go up and get into my togs while you start eating. It won't take me a minute!" And she tripped merrily off up the stairs.

Rex, rousing suddenly to wonder what all this was about, called up the stairs to her, "I say, Florimel, do you need me to help?"

"Oh, no," she called back brightly. "You wouldn't know how!" And then they could hear the door upstairs shut and the key turn in the lock.

Florimel did some rapid work upstairs, putting on her makeup freely--daring red lips, ghastly white face, startling dark eyebrows, rosy red cheeks, mascara almost dripping from her eyelashes. There wasn't much time for the fingernails, but somehow she managed them. She stripped off shoes and stockings and other garments, slipped her feet into her silver sandals, and put on a brief garment made wholly of white chiffon and swansdown, about the size of a superlatively abbreviated bathing suit. Then with a farewell wave and a blown kiss to her image in the mirror, she turned and ran lightly, noiselessly down the stairs.

She had not planned all this without thinking of the details.

She had noticed the Victrola had been moved out into the hall near the foot of the stairs to make way for the Christmas tree. It stood in a curve of the stair near the lower step. Now as she paused, still out of sight, she quickly set a record of her own in place, calling out, "Here I come! Everybody! Hello, people!" Then she touched the control and the music whanged out blatantly, eclipsing all pleasant conversation, utterly taking the room by storm. A strange wild figure dashed into the center of the room right in front of the Christmas tree and began a series of whirls on the tips of her toes that sent billows of brief down-edged draperies whirling out in a perfect wheel parallel with her waist. Lifting a graceful sandaled foot to an incredible height, she whirled on, kicking high at most unexpected moments, as the debauched music of the Victrola dictated. She took the breathless audience so unawares that they all sat and stared in wonder; Mary Garland white and speechless at the sight. Could anything be so mad and abandoned as that little creature whirling on with her white limbs kicking higher and higher and her nimble feet, now a-tiptoe, and now in the air. She was like a bit of thistledown suddenly become alive, gifted with bare arms and legs of real flesh and blood.

For several seconds she held the stage and gave the most daring exhibition she knew. The roomful were speechless with frightening shame for their old friends, and most of all for Rex who really was so decent and fine at heart.

Then suddenly the lights went out as Rex marched into the room. It was utterly dark there except for the soft light of the blue star, which made the whirling dervish look like a thing of mist, unreal, a figment of the imagination. And then the star went out, and the tree, as Stan reached up and disconnected them. Stan was quick to catch the idea.

Rex had reached Florimel's side somehow in the darkness and gathered her near-naked little form into a firm grasp. Turning, he took long strides to the stairs and strode up. They could hear him going, his feet finding their way over the old familiar steps that were just as well known as if he were walking in daylight.

He pushed her from him into the room, with a force that sent her half across the floor and down on her bare, pretty knees. One single word he uttered in an angry tone, "
Shame!
" Then he slammed the door behind her, locked it, and hurried downstairs, not even waiting to take out the key.