THE MAN IN THE BROOKS SHIRT
341
Jmall
present, and it must not, on any account, be jewelry, she said, not
knowing precisely why she imposed this latter condition.
As they moved into the last hour of the trip, the occasion took on an
elegiac solemnity. They talked very little; the man held both of her
bands tightly. Toward the end, he broke the silence to say, "I want you
to know that this has been the happiest day of my life." As she heard
these words, a drowsy, sensuous contentment invaded her; it was as if she
bad been waiting for them all along; this was the climax, the spiritual
orgasm. And it was just as she had known from the very first: in the end,
be had not let her down. She had not been wrong in him after all.
They stood on the platform as the train came into Sacramento. Her
luggage was piled up around them; one suitcase had a missing handle and
was tied up with a rope. The man made a noise of disapproval.
"Your father," he said, "is going to feel terrible when he sees
that.';
The girl laughed; the train slowed down; the man kissed her pas–
sionately several times, ignoring the porter who waited beside them with
a large, Hollywood·darky smile on his face.
"If
I were ten years younger," the man said, in a curious, measured
tone, as if he were taking an oath, "fd never let you get off this train.'' It
~unded,
she thought, like an apology to God.
In the station the air was hot and thick. She sat down to wait, and
immediately she was damp and grubby; her stockings were wrinkled; her
black suede shoes had somehow got dusty, and, she noticed for the first
time, one of the heels was run over. Her trip home seemed peculiarly
pointless, for she had known for the last eight hours that she was never
going to marry the young man back in New York.
On the return trip, her train stopped in Cleveland early in the morn·
ing. In a new fall suit she sat in the club car, waiting. Mr. Breen hurried
into the car. lie was wearing a dark-blue business suit and had two pack–
ages in his hand. One of them was plainly a florist's box. She took it
from him and opened it, disclosing two of the largest and most garish
purple orchids she had ever seen. He helped her pin them on her shoulder
md
did not appear to notice how oddly they harmonized with her burnt
siena jacket. The other box contained a bottle of whiskey;
in memoriam,
be
said.
They had the club car to themselves, and for the fifteen minutes the
train waited in the station he looked at her and talked.
It
seemed to her
that he had been talking ever since she left
him,
talking volubly, des–
perately, incoherently, over the long-distance telephone, via air mail, by
Western Union and Postal Telegraph. She had received from him several
pieces of glamour-girl underwear and a topaze brooch, and had been
disappointed and a little humiliated by the taste displayed. She was glad
now that the train stopped at such an outlandish hour, for she felt that he
cut
a ridiculous figure, with his gifts in his hand, like a superannuated
age·door johnny.
