MacVeagh himself was loomed over by Mrs. Front, who gave her own interpretation of the general’s interpretation of the plans of the High Command. He noddeci dutifully and gave every impression of listening, while he saw and heard and felt nothing but Laura Hitchcock across the table.
Every man dreams of Helen, but to few is it ever given to behold the face that can launch a thousand ships. This is well. Life is complicated enough, if often pleasantly so, when we love a pretty girl, a charming girl, a sweet girl. But when we see beauty, pure and radiant and absolute, we are lost.
MacVeagh had been lost since he first arrived in Grover and old Jonathan Minter sent him to cover Laura’s coming-out party. After that she had gone east to college and he had told himself that it was all the champagne. He couldn’t have seen what his heart remembered.
Then she came back, and since then no moment of his life had ever seemed quite complete. He never knew how he stood with her; he never even knew what she was like. He would begin to get acquainted with her, and then she would be off to visit her aunt in Florida or her cousins, before the war, in France. Since the war she had stayed in Grover, busy with the various volunteer activities entailed by her position as H. A. Hitchcock’s daughter. He was beginning to know her, he thought; he was beginning to reach a point where—
And then came the murder and the quarrel with Hitchcock. And this was the first time that he had seen her since then.
She smiled and seemed friendly. Evidently, like her father, she looked upon MacVeagh with a new regard since he had begun his mysteriously spectacular climb to success.
She even exchanged an intimate and shuddering glance with him after dinner, when Mrs. Manson began to sing American folk ballads in the drawing room. MacVeagh took courage and pointed to the open French window behind her.
His throat choked when she accepted the hint. He joined her on the lawn, and they strolled quietly over to the pond, where the croaking monotone of the frogs drowned out the distant shrilling of Mrs. Manson.
“What gets me,” MacVeagh grunted, “is the people that call all that wonderful stuff‘ballads.’ They’re just plain songs, and good ones. And where they belong is a couple of guys that love them trying them out with one foot on the rail and the barkeep joining in the harmony. When the fancy folk begin singing them in drawing rooms with artistically contrived accompaniments—”
“I guess I’ll just have to do without them then,” said Laura. “I can’t see myself in your barroom.”
“Can’t you?” There must have been something in the moon that stirred MacVeagh’s daring. “Why not? There’s a good, plain, honest bar not a mile from here that I like. Why don’t we ditch the party and go—”
“Oh, John. Don’t be silly. We couldn’t. We’re not bright young people, and it isn’t smart to be like that any more. Everybody’s serious now; this is war. And besides, you know, you have to think more of the company you’re seen in now.”
“Me?”
“Of course, John. Father’s been telling me how wonderfully you’re coming on. You’re getting to be somebody. You have to look out for appearances.”
“I’m afraid”—MacVeagh grinned—“I have congenitally low tastes. Can’t I be a big-shot editor and still love the riff and the raff?”
“Of course not.” She was perfectly serious, and MacVeagh felt a twinge of regret that such perfection of beauty was apparently not compatible with the least trace of humor. “You have to be thinking about settling down now.”
“Settling down—” he repeated. This was so pat a cue, if he could get that lump out of his throat and go on with it. “You’re right, Laura. At my age—” His voice was as harsh a croak as the frogs’.
“What’s the matter, John?”
He harrumphed. “Something in my throat. But it’s true. A man needs a wife. A man—”
“Marriage is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? I’ve only just lately been realizing how wonderful.”
He leaned toward her. “Laura—”
“John, I feel like telling you something, if you’ll promise not to go printing it.”
“Yes—”
“It’s a secret yet, but—I’m going to be married.”
There was a distant patter of applause for Mrs. Manson, and the frogs croaked louder than ever. These were the only noises that accompanied the end of the world.
For a moment there was a blankness inside John MacVeagh. He felt as though he had received a harder blow than any taken in the fight with Hitchcock’s stooges. And then came the same reaction as he had known to those blows: the lust for battle. The lump in his throat was gone and words were pouring out. He heard the words only half-consciously, hardly aware that his own brain must be formulating them. He heard them, and was aghast that any man could lay bare his desires so plainly, his very soul.
They were pitiful words, and yet powerful—plaintive, and yet demandingly vigorous. And they were finally stopped by Laura’s voice cutting across them with a harsh “John!”
“John,” she said again more softly. “I— Believe me, I never knew you felt like this. I never would have—You’re nice. You’re sweet, and I like you. But I couldn’t ever love you. I couldn’t ever possibly marry you. Let’s go back inside, John. Mrs. Manson must be through by now. What’s the matter? Aren’t you coming? John. Please.”
But John MacVeagh stood motionless by the pool while Laura went on back to the big house. He listened to the frogs for a while and then he went to the good, plain, honest bar not a mile away and listened to some “ballads.”
After the third whiskey the numbness began to lift. He began to see what he had to do. It must be Phil Rogers she was marrying. But he was her cousin,
