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  Then he went on to the plant. He called Stephen and told him that Melinda had had an early appointment to go shopping with a friend in Wesley, but that she ought to be back by noon, and that he would call him again. Vic called home at eleven and at twelve. She was in at twelve, and he asked her, in a perfectly ordinary voice, how she was, and then told her about Georgianne. Georgianne was pregnant, six or seven months pregnant, Vic thought. Stephen had had a doctor for her, and they didn't think it was going to be a miscarriage, but Georgianne needed somebody with her.

  "Sure, I'll be glad to go," Melinda said. "Tell Stephen I can be there in about half an hour."

  She sounded very willing to go, both to expiate her sins of last night, Vic supposed, and also because she really did like doing things for people, doing errands of mercy. It was one of the nice things about Melinda, perhaps one of the curious things, that she loved taking care of people who were sick, anybody who was sick, loved helping a stranger in distress—someone with a flat tire, an uncashable check, or a nose bleed. It was the only direction in which she showed her maternal instinct, toward the stranger in distress.

  Melinda's staying out all night was not going to be mentioned, Vic thought, but Charley De Lisle would be just a little different the next time Vic saw him, because De Lisle hadn't the aplomb to be quite the same. He'd be a little more servile and furtive. It was the fact that De Lisle would dare to face him at all that angered Vic.

  The evening at Tanglewood had come two days later, and Vic was very calm and amiable that night, even paid for the refreshments in the intermission, though the Van Allen family had provided the tickets, too. Mr. De Lisle seemed to be feeling very pleased with himself A pleasant summer job in the delightfully cool Berkshires, a made-to-order mistress whom he didn't have to pay for—on the contrary, she paid for him, bought him liquor and took him food—and didn't have to be responsible for, because she was married. To top it all, the husband didn't mind! Mr. De Lisle's world must have been a very rosy one indeed, Vic thought.

  On Friday of that week Vic ran into Horace Meller in the drugstore and Horace insisted on their having a quick drink together before they went home. Horace wanted to go to the Lord Chesterfield bar. Vic proposed a little beer parlor known as Mac's two blocks away, but Horace remarked that it was two blocks away and they were right across the street from the Chesterfield, so Vic agreed to the Chesterfield, thinking it would look odd if he argued about it.

  Mr. De Lisle was at the piano when they went into the bar, but Vic did not look his way. There were people at four or five tables, but Melinda, Vic had noted with a quick glance as he came in, was not among them. They stood at the bar and ordered Scotch and soda.

  "We missed you at the club last week," Horace said. "Mary and I putted around the first couple of holes all afternoon. We kept thinking you'd turn up."

  "I was reading," Vic said.

  "How's Melinda? I haven't seen her lately either."

  "Oh, she's fine. She's been doing some swimming with Trixie at the club. Just not on Sundays, I suppose." She'd taken Trixie once to the club pool, after a lot of begging on Trixie's part.

  Mr. De Lisle stopped playing, and a few people applauded. Vic was aware of De Lisle standing up, bowing, and stepping off his platform, going through the door into the lobby beyond.

  "I'm glad she's coming around," Horace said. "You know—I hope you'll forgive me for talking to you sometimes in the past—about Melinda, I mean. I never meant to meddle. I hope you know that, Vic."

  "Of course I know, Horace!" Horace had leaned closer to him, and Vic looked into his serious brown eyes, framed by the bushy eyebrows and the little wrinkling pouches below. Horace was around fifty, Vic realized. He should know a lot more than he himself did, at thirty-six. Horace straightened up and Vic could see that he was embarrassed, that it had been a speech Horace had thought he ought to make, and Vic tried to think of the right thing to say now.

  "I just wanted you to know—and Mary feels the same way that we knew things would straighten out and we're awfully glad they have."

  Vic nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Horace." He felt a sudden, frightening depression, as if his soul, somewhere, had slid down a hill into darkness.

  "At least I assume things are straightening out," Horace said.

  "Oh, yes, I think they are."

  "I thought Melinda looked awfully well the night we came over. The night of the club dance, too."

  The night the Mellers had come over had been only two nights after the dance, Vic remembered. There had been an evening since, when the Mellers had invited them to hear some new records Horace had bought, when Melinda had been too tired from an afternoon with Charley De Lisle to go. The Mellers hadn't seen Melinda and Charley together yet. It'd take them only two minutes, if they ever saw them together, to know what was happening. Melinda had been considerably more gracious to people during the time the town had been debating the McRae story. That was all Horace meant by her straightening out.

  "You're very thoughtful tonight," Horace said. "What's the next book going to be?"

  "Oh, a book of poems," Vic said. "By a young man called Brian Ryder. I think I showed you a couple one day in my office."

  "Yes, I remember! A little metaphysical for me, but—" Horace smiled. There was a silence, and then he said, "I hear the Cowans are going to treat us to a big outdoor party soon. They want to celebrate Phil's book. He's just about to finish the second draft of it. Evelyn says she feels they've been cooped up and have had to neglect their friends, so she wants a big outdoor affair with lanterns—and I think costumes." Horace chuckled. "I suppose we'll all end up cooling our heads in the swimming pool."

  Mr. De Lisle was now offering "The Song from Moulin Rouge." Light and gentle and sentimental. Melinda had been playing it lately, trying to imitate Charley's style. Have you met Charley De Lisle? Vic wanted to ask Horace. You will. Probably before the Cowans' party.

  "What do you think of the new pianist?" Horace asked. "Makes our old hostelry practically like New York."

  "Pretty good, isn't it?" Vic said.

  "I'd rather have silence. Lesley's business must be good this year. I hear the rooms are all taken, and there's a pretty good crowd here today" Horace had half turned and was watching De Lisle, who was in profile to them.

  The man had a date with my wife this afternoon, Vic wanted to state in a firm voice. I don't want to look at him or hear him. "Know his name?" Horace asked.

  "No idea," Vic said.

  "He looks like an Italian." Horace turned back to his drink. He did look like an Italian of the worse type, though Vic didn't think he was, and it was an insult to the Italian race to assume that he was. He resembled no particular race, only an amalgamation of the worst elements of various Latin peoples. He looked as if he had spent all his life dodging blows that were probably aimed at him for good reason.

  "Time for the other half?" Horace asked.

  Vic woke up. "I don't think I have, Horace. I told Melinda I'd be in about six-thirty tonight."

  "All right, you be there:' Horace said, smiling.

  Vic insisted on paying the bar tab. Then they walked out into the fresh air together.

  Chapter 9

  The Cowans' party was a costume party. People were to come as their favorite hero or heroine, fictional or factual. Melinda was having a hard time deciding who she should be. She wasn't quite satisfied with Mary Queen of Scots, or Greta Garbo, or Annie Oakley, or Cleopatra, and she thought somebody else might go as Scarlett O'Hara, though Vic said he doubted it. Melinda went through them all, imagining the costume for each in detail. She felt there should be some character more appropriate for her, if she could only think of her.

  "Madame Bovary?" Vic suggested.

  She finally decided on Cleopatra.

  Charley De Lisle was going to play the piano at the Cowans' party. Melinda had arranged it. She told Vic with naïve triumph that she had persuaded Charley to do it for fifty dollars instead of the hundred he had
wanted, and said that Evelyn Cowan hadn't thought that was a steep price at all.

  Something in Vic stirred with revulsion. "I assumed he was going as a guest."

  "Yes, but he wouldn't have played. He's very proud about his work. He says no artist should give his work away. In a room full of strangers, he wouldn't touch the piano, he says. It wouldn't be professional. I can see what he means."

  She could always see what De Lisle meant.

  Vic had made no remarks about De Lisle lately, or the time Melinda spent out of the house. The situation had not changed, though De Lisle had not come for dinner anymore, and Melinda had not stayed out all night a second time. Neither had they been to any social affair to which Melinda might have dragged Charley, so perhaps none of their friends suspected anything yet, Vic thought, though Evelyn Cowan might by now. And everybody would certainly know after the Cowan party, which was why Vic dreaded it. He longed not to go, to beg off somehow, and yet he knew his presence would have a slightly restraining influence on Melinda, and that logically it was better if he did go. There were many times when logic was of no comfort.

  Xenophon was printing. Stephen stood at the press all day, banging a page out at fifteen-second intervals. Vic relieved him three and four times a day while he rested by changing his task. Stephen's wife Georgianne had given birth to a second son after her seventh month of pregnancy. She and the child were doing well, and Stephen appeared happier than he had ever been, and his happiness seemed to pervade the shop in the month of August. Vic set up the other press so that he could print along with Stephen. They could set only five pages at a time, as they had no more Greek type, but the twenty pages alone would have taken Stephen more than a month without Vic's help. They were printing a hundred copies. Vic could match Stephen in endurance at the press, and he loved to stand in silence, hour after hour, the only sounds the final impacts of their platens against paper, with the summer sun streaming through the open windows and falling on the freshly printed sheets. All was order and progress in the plant in the month of August. At six-thirty or seven every evening, Vic stepped out of that peaceful world into a chaos. Since he had started the printing plant he had always stepped out of it in the evenings into something less peaceful, but the two worlds had never contrasted so profoundly before. The contrast had never before given him a feeling that he was being torn apart.

  Vic did not think about his costume for the Cowans' party until the day before it, and then he decided on Tiberius. The costume was simple, a toga made from one of the oatmeal-colored draperies that had used to hang at the living room windows, heelless house slippers with leather straps that crossed over the toes, two cheap but classic clips that he bought himself rather than use any of Melinda's, and that was that. He thought for decency's sake that he should wear a T-shirt and some walking shorts underneath instead of merely underwear.

  The party was on a Saturday night of a particularly warm weekend, but since it was never really warm in the Berkshires in the evenings, the lanterns set around the edge of the Cowans' lawn and around the swimming pool suggested festivity and not an unpleasant warmth. Vic and Melinda arrived early, at a quarter to nine, so that Melinda could be on hand to welcome Charley, who was coming at nine, and to introduce him to the Cowans. Only the Mellers were there as yet, sitting with the Cowans on the side terrace where there were more lanterns and a huge bowl of punch that stood on a low table surrounded by glasses.

  "Hello, there!" Evelyn greeted them. "Well, look at Cleopatra!"

  "'Good' evening," Melinda said, slinking up the terrace steps in her trailing green dress, puffing on her serpentine cigarette holder which she carried on a forefinger. She had even put a henna rinse in her hair.

  "And Cicero?" Horace said to Vic.

  "It could be," Vic admitted, "but that's not what I intended." "Ah, Tiberius," Horace said.

  "Thank you, Horace." He had mentioned to Horace that he was interested in Tiberius lately, and was reading all he could find on him. "And you?" Vic peered with amusement at Horace waistline that had been enlarged with a pillow. "A Venetian Santa Claus, perhaps?"

  Horace laughed. "You're way off! I'll let you guess."

  But Vic was distracted from guessing because Evelyn was pressing a glass of punch upon him.

  "It's the last you'll 'have' to drink, if you don't like it, Vic, darling, but you've got to drink one tonight for luck!" Evelyn said.

  Vic lifted his glass to Phil Cowan. "Here's to 'Buried Treasures,' Vic' said. "May they be uncovered."

  'Buried Treasures' was the title of Phil's book. Phil bowed and thanked him.

  The MacPhersons arrived, got up as a couple of Vikings, costume that was singularly fitting for Mrs. MacPherson's tall sturdy figure and her broad, fat, faintly pink face. The MacPhersons were in their fifties, but they had been sporting enough to wear knee-high skirts and sandals with straps that crisscrossed up their respectively fat and skinny calves, and they looked extremely pleased by the roar of laughter they caused as they came on to the terrace.

  Evelyn put some music on the phonograph, and Phil and Melinda started to dance in the living room. Two more cars arrived. Two couples walked up the lawn, followed by Mr. De Lisle in his white dinner jacket. He hung back from the advancing group, looking around for Melinda. Vic pretended not to have seen him. But Melinda, hearing the hubbub of greetings, came out on the terrace, saw Charley and rushed to him, taking him by the hand.

  "You might at least have come as Chopin!" Melinda cried, a sentence she had probably made up days ago to say. "I'd like you all to meet Charley De Lisle!" she announced to everybody. "This is Mr. and Mrs. Cowan, our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson—" She waited for De Lisle to mumble his "How do you do?"—"Mr. and Mrs. Meller—the Wilsons, Don and June—Mrs. Podnansky and Mr—''

  "Kenny," said the young man who was one of the young men Melinda had danced with at the Fourth of July dance at the club.

  "Mr. De Lisle is going to play for us this evening," Melinda said.

  There was a murmur of interest and a small patter of hands. Charley looked uncomfortable and nervous. Melinda got him a glass of punch, then took him into the house, pointing out the piano at the back of the living room as if the house were her own. The Wilsons also looked a bit ill at ease, standing near the punch howl. Wilson was probably too hot in his raincoat, tightly belted with its collar turned up, and he also wore a hat with its brim pulled down. Some detective story writer, Vic supposed. He had not taken much trouble with his costume, but he was rather shamefacedly carrying a pipe, and his scowl perhaps went with whatever character he was trying to portray. His slender blond wife was barefoot and dressed in a sleazy something like a short nightgown of pale blue. Either Trilby or a sharecropper, Vic thought.

  Vic felt awkward and bored from the start, and he was utterly sober at the end of his first glass of punch, though he had joined Melinda, at her insistence, in a stiff one before they left the house. It was one of those evenings when he was going to stay stone sober the whole night, even if he had several more drinks, and when every moment between twelve-thirty, when De Lisle would return from Ballinger, and five or whenever Melinda chose to go home, was going to drag, and was going to be excruciating as well because of having to listen to De Lisle's scintillating piano from twelve-thirty onward.

  Mr. De Lisle was at the piano already, grinding it out, and Melinda was leaning over him, beaming like a mother showing off a prodigy. Vic could see them from the terrace through the tall picture windows of the house. He moved toward the terrace steps,

  passing the Wilsons, who were talking with Phil at the punch bowl.

  "How are you?" Vic said to both the Wilsons, making himself smile. "Glad to see you."

  The Wilsons acknowledged it timidly. Maybe their main trouble was shyness, Vic thought. At any rate, they were infinitely preferable socially to Charley De Lisle, who, Vic had just realized, had not even looked at him when Melinda had been introducing him on the terrace, though Vic had been looking at him. W
hich reminded Vic that both De Lisle 'and' Melinda were retaliating for his not having spoken to De Lisle the day he was in the Chesterfield with Horace. Melinda had reprimanded Vic for it the next day. 'I hear you were in the Chesterfield bar and you didn't even speak to Charley!'. Vic lifted his head and took a deep breath of fresh air as he strolled out farther on the lawn. The air was sweet with the honeysuckle that grew on the Cowans' low stone wall at the edge of the lawn, but as he passed a gardenia bush, the gardenia became stronger. Vic turned and walked back toward the house. It was only nine-thirty. Another full hour before there would be a respite from De Lisle. Vic marched up the terrace steps toward the living room door, braced to find anything going on inside.

  But Melinda was dancing with Mr. Kenny. "Mr. Van Allen," said a woman's voice beside him. It was Mrs. MacPherson. "You're such a scholar. Can you tell me what people wear under their togas or do they wear anything?"

  "Yes." Vic smiled. "I've heard they wore underwear." No use telling her the Latin name for it, he thought. She'd think he was stodgy. He added, "I understand that when orators orated and wanted to show the populace their honorable scars, they left off their underwear so they could lift up their togas and show the people whatever part of the body they wanted to."

  "Oh, what fun!" Mrs. MacPherson squealed.

  She was the daughter of a wealthy Chicago meat packer, Vic recalled. "Yes. I don't suppose I'll be much fun tonight. I've got on walking shorts and a T-shirt underneath."

  "Oh-ho!" she laughed. "Horace told me you're going to publish the most beautiful book this summer."