Lost Ecstasy/Chapter 21
THAT night, although he had been sleeping extremely well, Tom slept very little. The car was closed, filled with the sour odor of old shoes, well-worn clothing and perspiring human bodies. The men slept heavily and noisily, and a track engine panted back and forth. Once he fell asleep, and dreamed that he was pointing cattle to the pens, and a switch engine had come along and scattered them. He wakened with the feel of the Miller still between his knees.
In the morning he made his way morosely to the lot. Yesterday's anger was gone, afid he felt only a deep dejection. What had he expected anyhow? She had shown him that she did not care for him, abandoned him to that bunch at the club and never come back. That call of hers from the street, that had been before she had time to think. She wouldn't follow it up.
He wandered to the dressing tent, promised his laundry to a waiting negress and went inside. When he had rolled it up he drew back the tent flap and handed it to the waiting figure.
"Here you are," he said gruffly. "And get it back tonight sure. We're leaving."
But the figure did not move to take it, and he stepped outside.
It was Kay.
He was too stunned for speech, and she too seemed to have nothing to say. She looked thinner than he remembered her, and her face was set and drawn. He stood there, staring at her.
"Well, here I am," she said finally, as if that explained everything.
And for all his later failures, that time at least he understood. He could not know what the step had cost her, or the finality of it. Perhaps he never did realize what that last twenty-four hours had been. But he looked from her to the dressing case at her feet, and he saw what she meant. She was there, to take or leave as he saw fit. He put out both hands.
"I've been waiting for you," he said, not too steadily. "Ever since" maybe he meant to say "since yesterday," but he changed it. "Ever since God knows when."
It was a curious wooing. Later on Kay was to question whether it was a wooing at all, on either side. It was more like a simple obedience to some natural law they neither of them understood.
They picked up a taxicab at the entrance to the lot, and started off. There was a license to secure, and the time was short. Tom put his hand in his pocket and counted his money. He had twenty-one dollars.
"I suppose that's enough?"
"I should think so."
All very matter of fact. Something inevitable to be done, so get it done. Not all the powers of earth could part them now. Time to think later; just now there was a schedule to be watched, a routine to be followed.
They had gone perhaps three blocks before Tom whipped off his big hat and turned to look at her.
"My God! You and me, Kay!"
There was very little passion in that first kiss between them. The situation was still too strange. They themselves were like strangers; during their long separation each of them had built up out of their memories a dream figure, and was now attempting to recognize it in this flesh and blood reality.
Now and then in the intervals Kay would find his eyes on her, almost furtively studying her, and Tom would find her looking at him with strange half-frightened eyes.
"Name, please?"
"Katherine Dowling."
"Your age?"
What was she doing? Giving herself to this strange man, deliberately binding herself to him. It was madness; it was incredible. But she looked composed enough. The clerk, filling in the blanks, looked curiously at Tom's big hat and colored shirt, and at her own small and elegant figure.
"Show people?" he inquired genially when he passed over the paper.
Tom stiffened slightly.
"I am. The young lady is not."
Show people! That was where she belonged now. She had cast aside her old world of luxury and dignity, and now she would belong to that strange traveling fraternity which lived in back lots under canvas and traveled in circus cars about the country. But one didn't do that. One went there for a lark, and ate peanuts and threw the shells on the ground and even drank pop out of a bottle, tepid sweetish stuff which made one thirstier afterwards.
She had her one panicky moment then, and as if he felt that recoil in her, Tom put out his hand and took hers as they went down the stairs to the street. The strength of his strong lean hand was what she needed. After all, that was life, not the other; a hand to hold to, a warm hand, a tender and loving hand.
"Not getting scared, are you, girl?"
"Just for a minute. You do love me, don't you?"
"Before God I do."
They were married by a clergyman, selected at random from the telephone book in a drug store, and they ate their wedding breakfast back on the lot. There was a new lift to Tom's shoulders, a pride in her that he made no attempt to conceal. At the door to the dining tent they were halted.
"Lady with you, Tom?"
"I'll tell the world she is."
Afterwards he placed a box for her in a sheltered place and hurried to dress. A goat, chained to a tent peg, came to sniff at her and remained to have his head scratched, the cowboy band, eying her with interest, lined up outside the double opening by the bandstand, and all around in the spring sunshine people in costume were emerging from their tents, mounting elephants or camels or horses, and falling into line for the "spectacular."
She waited, her hands folded in her lap. The sun shone on her narrow gold wedding ring, where Herbert's square cut emerald had formerly rested. She had left that at home. She had left practically everything at home, except the money in her purse and her grandmother's pearls. Those were hers; they could not say she had taken anything that was not hers.
She was aware that she was exciting interest, and she got her handkerchief and wiped the dust from her smart shoes. She felt untidy and the sun was hot. Her head was beginning to ache, too. She moved the box further into the shade, and heard Tom's voice just beyond the canvas.
"Just get this. Either she goes with me tonight, or I stay here."
"You know darned well she can't go with you. We car, get her on the train, perhaps, but the married cars are full up.'
"Then I'll go by another train."
"You'll get a day coach to that burg, and sit up all night. Now look here, Tom, you're up against it unless you do what I say. If you'll"
She moved the box back again. Her cheeks were flaming, and her head ached sharply. The thought that providing for her on her wedding night was a matter for an outsider shocked her, and it was her first lesson in her new life to force a smile when he came back to her, leading his horse.
"All right, girl?"
"Fine."
"And happy?"
"Terribly happy."
He put a foot into the stirrup, mounted, turned and looked down at her. And suddenly nothing else mattered but the two of them, there in the dust and the glare, loving each other, belonging to each other.
In the intervals of the performance when he could slip out and be with Kay he did so, sitting on his heels at her feet and turning the wedding ring on her finger while he held her hand.
"Sure funny to think of a little thing like that meaning all it does mean!"
"You're not sorry? You're sure you wanted me?"
"Wanting you's what I've been doing nothing else but, my girl."
But she had been doing some thinking, too.
"Will you want to stay with the—with the show?"
"I can't leave them in the middle of the season, Kay."
"Then I'd better learn to do something." She smiled at him. "I can't sit around on a soap box all day."
His quick pride was touched.
"If you're worrying about my being able to keep you, girl, forget it. I'm earning good money. Plenty. I can keep my wife without her having to lift her hand." His voice hardened. "I don't want any Dowling money either, girl. You know that, don't you? They're not going to come between us. You and I, we're going to steer our own boat from now on."
It was the first mention of her family between them, and her first real knowledge of his continuing resentment.'
"They can't come between us now. It's too late, Tom."
And that restored him to good-humor. He looked about, saw that they were unobserved, and quickly stooped and kissed her.
"You bet they can't. They can all go to—New Mexico!" he told her. But he smiled down at her boyishly. "You're going to like these people, you know. They're a fine lot. The world's best."
He swung easily into his saddle and rode off.
Later on he brought his particular cronies to meet her, cowboys like himself, gaily dressed, tanned, sheepish.
"Arizona, meet Mrs. McNair."
They came up, took her small hand in their great paws, dropped it and retreated. Only the little Cossack bowed from the waist, with his heels together, and then wandered off to survey the scene from a distance. It was a strange land, this America, where young ladies with real pearls—he knew real pearls—and plain very fine clothes from Paris, married cowboys. Truly, such was democracy; the rest of the world talked of it, but never would understand it.
Only one unpleasant incident occurred, and she did not recognize it as such at the time. An Indian in cowboy costume walked past her twice, surveying her with the impassive curiosity of his race, and the second time he spoke to her.
"You marry Tom McNair?"
"I am Mrs. McNair. Yes."
He smiled a little and Tom, coming out at that moment, swung toward him and confronted him.
"You keep away from that lady," he said menacingly, "and put all the distance you can between me and you, or"
The Indian moved away.
In the intervals Kay's thoughts wandered back to her people. What were they thinking? Or doing? She could not let them know yet; there would be scenes, trouble of all sorts. Already she knew that Tom would resent any attempt at interference, might even be violent with them. That night, just before the train left, she would send a telegram, but until then she dared not risk it.
The afternoon passed somehow. She had checked a suitcase at the railway station, and she sent a messenger for it. She was afraid to go herself. And later on it was taken to the train. At six o'clock she ate her supper in the tent. She was accustomed to her paper napkin by that time, to the narrowness of the board seat she sat on, to having her food set before her in small dishes, heavy and unbreakable. The news of Tom's marriage had spread about, and after the meal people gathered about them. Only the girls remained aloof, watching and discussing her. The older women were maternal and solicitous; they asked no questions, and she soon realized that her identity was a matter of no interest to them. They were prepared to accept her, a newcomer from an outer world infinitely remote.
"You mustn't wear pretty shoes like that around. You'll soon spoil them, my dear."
If, by her manner and the quiet expensiveness of her clothing they realized that the world she had left was even more remote than appeared, that too they kept to themselves. But they accepted her. They even asked her into the dressing tent that night, and she sat on a folding chair, uncomfortable and embarrassed, while they unself-consciously bathed and dressed before her.
They watched her surreptitiously. The strong odor of scented talcum powder, cheap perfume and burning alcohol from the lamps on which they heated their curling irons, mixed with the scents from the animal tents and the stables nearby, had turned her faintly sick, but she smiled at them.
But there was one breath-taking moment that night after all. With the performance over, and only the working lights left on the lot, the cowboys rode their horses to the railroad siding. And once again she heard the slow tired movement of horses' feet in darkness, the rustle of chaps on leather, the faint jingle of bridles and buckles.
The circus world faded away. Just so had she seen the men come in from the pastures on the range, sitting their saddles easily, swaying to the motion of their horses. They would go back, she and Tom, and pick up their lives where they had left them. This was an interlude; it was not life.
She plodded along behind them. Now and then she stumbled on the uneven ground; the high heels of her slippers turned. Once she stepped into a coil of wire and almost fell. Tom had arranged an escort for her, but she had wanted to be alone.
It did not occur to her that there was anything symbolical in that stumbling progress of hers, that blind following.
The men ahead began to sing softly. The day's work was over. Soon the horses would be in the cars. .A voice would call out.
"Jerry next."
"Jerry coming."
A shadowy horse would sniff at the runway, eye the oil flare with suspicion, and then with a thunder of hoofs dash up and into the car. The loading would go on, and when it had been finished there was the privilege car, and craps, or a poker game.
So they sang and Kay could hear Tom's voice above the rest, happy and exultant.
I'm a poor lonesome cowboy,
I'm a poor lonesome cowboy,
And a long ways from home."