He grinned at her and patted her hand.
“That sounds like the Gerry I know,” he said contentedly. “So that’s settled. And we don’t have to argue about it any more.”
• • •
They reached Marthasville late in the evening. Beth was still at St. Simons, but Tom was at home, and her first sight of him, through the lighted window, brought a little lump into Geraldine’s throat. He looked so lonely, and somehow, older.
She ran to him and threw her arms about him, hiding her face against his shoulder. Startled, Tom’s arms went about her and held her close, and above her head, he looked with sharp suspicion at Tip.
“What have you been doing to her?” he demanded.
Tip said quietly, “We have some news for you, Tom. I hope you won’t be — too shocked.”
Tom’s eyes sharpened. “Oh, I don’t imagine I will. You and Gerry have found that your marriage isn’t working out, haven’t you?”
Geraldine stared at him, tears drying on her cheeks.
“Why, Dad,” she gasped, “how did you guess?”
Tom all but snorted.
“Guess, my eye! I’ve suspected it from the day Tip came home. I knew you two kids were breaking your hearts trying to make a brave show of being happy, but I hope I have sense enough to scent a pretense when I see one. I think it’s high time you were behaving like grown-ups.”
Tip said eagerly, “Then you aren’t shocked that Gerry and I are deciding on a friendly divorce?”
Tom’s eyebrows went up a little.
“Are people still shocked by a divorce? I hadn’t heard that. I thought the world had grown up enough to realize that a divorce is the only sane solution to a marriage that doesn’t work out. Regrettable of course, but after two people have tried, and failed, then what else is there?”
“Right,” said Tip, and grinned his relief. “I appreciate your taking that view. Gerry tried with all her heart — so did I; I’d like you to believe that.”
“Of course, of course,” said Tom as though that did not need to be said.
He looked down at Geraldine for a moment, and then he smiled warmly at her and patted her shoulder.
“You trot upstairs to your own room and tuck yourself into bed and get a good night’s sleep. You look as if you could use one. And in the morning, I’ll turn over the store to Jenkins and we’ll run down and see Beth! She’s been lonesome for you,” he said, and Geraldine kissed him with tears in her eyes.
She had not expected to like Nevada, but once the necessary preliminaries were over and she was free to depart for the dude ranch out of town where she had elected to spend her six weeks’ waiting period, she found a strange sort of peace.
The ranch was as comfortable, as luxurious as the most modern hotel. The guests were a rather conglomerate crew: several young, pretty women who wore levis and shirts and boots with an air no cow-country girl would ever have thought of attempting; one or two plump, middle-aged women who risked unwisely the wearing of slacks or the inevitable dungarees, but who dressed lavishly for dinner.
At first there were a few attempts at confidences, getting acquainted; but when Geraldine did not show a willingness to confide, the would-be confidantes shrugged and left her alone.
The chambermaid who looked after the two-roomed cabin, luxuriously appointed, for all its self-conscious “atmosphere” eyed Geraldine covertly when she was making the bed that first morning, and said with Western frankness, “Guess you’re new around here. Your first visit?”
“Yes,” answered Geraldine.
The chambermaid nodded.
“I can always tell a firstie,” she said dryly.
“A firstie?” Geraldine repeated.
The chambermaid grinned.
“A first divorce. Kinda want to keep yourself to yourself, and ain’t runnin’ around tellin’ the rest of ‘em your troubles, and singing’ songs o’ hate agin all men,” said the chambermaid cheerfully, banging away at the pillow she was inserting into a crisply immaculate slip. “Kinda tough, the first time, ‘specially if you kinda like the guy you’re sheddin’ — or mebbe you got another feller waitin’, like the others?”
Geraldine flushed, but there was something friendly and kindly about the maid, for all her frank curiosity.
“No — that is, my husband fell in lote with another girl while he was in Vietnam.” She stammered and was ashamed of the little involuntary attempt at confidence.
The maid nodded with understanding.
“Yep, that’s the way it happens, lotsa times,” she said briskly, attacking the shining floor with an oiled mop. “ ‘Course, you had a chance, too, didn’t you, to pick yourself another feller?”
Her friendly curiosity was as inoffensive as the tail of a clamorous pup.
“Well, in a way; only someone else came along,” she admitted reluctantly.
The maid straightened her tall, gaunt body and rested her work-reddened hands on almost non-existent hips.
“Say, now, that’s a real shame,” she said, warmly sympathetic, eyeing Geraldine from the top of her burnished brown hair to the tips of her sturdy brown brogues. “But you ain’t got no cause to worry. I always say they’s just as good fish in the sea as ever been caught, and you’re the right kind o’ bait. Betcha ten minutes after you throw your ring in the river, some feller’ll come along.”
Geraldine repeated, puzzled, “Throw my ring in the river?”
The maid chuckled.
“You ain’t up on the customs of the country, are you?” she asked cheerfully. “Sure, the minute you walk down the courthouse steps with the papers in your hand you’re supposed to walk out on the bridge over the Truckee, take off your wedding ring, and say ‘Here goes nothing’ and chuck it into the river.”
Geraldine looked down at the narrow band of platinum and diamonds that was guarded by the square-cut solitaire Tip had so proudly placed there.
“Oh, but I couldn’t do that!” she protested.
“You better. It’s bad luck if you don’t.”
She shouldered her armful of fresh linen and her cleaning implements, and with a cheerful “So long” went her way, leaving Geraldine a little breathless at the breeziness and frankness of her confession.
She looked down at the diamond and platinum band on her slim third finger, and with sudden decision she slipped them both off, and that afternoon she rode into town and mailed the package, registered, to Tip. He would not want to use them again, perhaps; but she could not bear to throw them away. The idea was absurd. And what if it did bring her bad luck, refusing to follow the custom! She had lost Phil, and beside that blow, any other bad luck would seem slight.
She had been at the dude ranch a week, when she came out of the dining room after breakfast and found a little heap of mail waiting for her. She skimmed through it hastily; a thick letter from Beth, several from friends back home, and one from Betsy Hammond that had been sent air mail.
She retired to her cabin to read them quietly and peacefully. When she had finished Beth’s determinedly cheerful letter, she picked up Betsy’s, looked at it curiously, and slit the envelope. Reading it, Geraldine felt as though she could see Betsy and hear her soft, eager voice.
Gerry, my lamb, get yourself settled in a nice quiet place and bend your ears back, honey, because I’ve got some news for you that’s going to set you back on your heels, but good! All set? Then here it is: Phil and little Sal did NOT get married, after all! There! Take a deep breath, sniff the smelling salts and relax while I unfold the tale!
After you left that afternoon, we were sitting around wondering how we could manage to get ourselves called back to town on urgent business; Mrs. Parker was still “prostrated,” bless her, and we were feeling about as unnecessary as a fifth wheel or a third arm, and wishing that we were anywhere but there — when a car turned in at the drive, and out of it stepped Phil and Sal. We braced ourselves, all set to stick a smile on our silly looking faces and yelp “Congratulations and we hope you’ll all be very happy,” when Sal, with a face like a thundercloud, stalked past us and into the house and the screen door banged behind her with a thud that could have been heard in the next county.
Phil just stood there for a minute, looking like a man hag-ridden — and of course, thinking he had married our Sal, we couldn’t be surprised at that — when, like the bright-eyed little goop I am, I said as warmly as I could under the circumstances, “Well, Phil, me lad, congratulations and stuff.” He looked at me as though somebody had kicked him, but
good!
and said grimly, “I don’t know what you mean.” And being me, I said blithely, “Oh, Sally telephoned that you were on your way to the county seat to be married.” He looked as if he’d been kicked again, only harder. “Oh, she did, did she?” was his brilliant rejoinder, which sort of held up proceedings for a bit.
Well, anyway, he finally said pretty sharply, “We did have some idea, but when we got to the county seat and found that all the offices and stores were closed, because it’s a half-holiday, and when we couldn’t find anybody to do the job — well, we sort of came to our senses and realized we’d been a bit hasty.”
And with that he stalked into the house, and there was another bang of the screen door audible at least a quarter of a mile away. I didn’t write you then. I wanted to go to the telephone and call you, only Ted made me shush, on account of he knows Sal pretty well, and reminded me that she was “a bit devious.” I can think of a better word to describe her, but if I did, it would have to be written on asbestos notepaper and I’m fresh out of same — and that if she’d made up her mind to marry Phil, which we all knew she had, Phil was practically a dead duck, and the only hope he had was of submitting graciously.
Well, came the dawn, to coin a phrase, and we all took off for town, almost as relieved to get away as Mrs. P. was to see us leave. Phil and Sally drove off together, poisonously polite to each other, and we made bets between ourselves that before they got back to town they’d be man and missus. But it seems we were wrong! They reached Marthasville, still unwed — and an hour ago, my lamb, came the electrifying news that Our Sal has eloped — but not with Phil! Remember old Jerome Anderson, the tight-fisted banker who is said to have a mortgage on nine-tenths of the real estate in a radius of fifty miles? Well, that’s the unlucky man! poor devil! Anyway, Phil is still free and unattached! And let me be the first to tell you the news. Come on, pal, get home fast and take up your option!
Geraldine sat for a long, long time, staring with wide eyes at the letter. Phil was not married to Sally, after all! Phil was still free. Maybe even — Phil might still care for her! It was a thought, it was a warm and lovely thought that brought the color to her cheeks and a new light to her eyes.
• • •
The days passed somehow. She spent long hours in the saddle, riding the mountain trails, usually with a party, sometimes only with one of the dude wrangler guides — she had learned to call them that, and not cowboys — occasionally over familiar trails alone; at night she read, or sat around the camp fire listening to the pseudo-Gene Autry singing pseudo-cowboy ballads, in which the guests would join lustily on the chorus. And each night before she went to bed, she checked off another day on her calendar.
Until a morning came when six weeks had been checked off. This was the morning she was to appear at the courthouse and ask for her freedom. She had finished her packing last night. The trim beige suit, with brown hat and gloves and alligator slippers was waiting; she dressed with hands that shook a little, and when she went into the dining room, the other guests greeted her with cheerful applause, reading the message conveyed by her traveling clothes.
One of the dude wranglers drove her in to her attorney’s office, where the attorney and his secretary were waiting. The whole thing went through with a speed that dazed her; she came down the steps in the bright sunshine, a little later, saying bewilderedly, “Is that really all there is to it?”
The lawyer smiled formally, his mind already occupied with the next case on his calendar.
“That’s all, Mrs. Parker,” he assured her, shaking hands with her. “Practically painless, wasn’t it?”
“Quite,” said Geraldine and managed a smile for him.
He and his secretary went back towards the office, where already other matters were claiming his attention. A middle-aged woman, passing, eyed Geraldine with envy and said pleasantly, “The Truckee is just down this way, my dear. Be sure you throw your ring as far as you can.”
“Oh, but I’m not going to,” Geraldine protested.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the woman and went her way.
She walked a few steps, before she jerked to a halt as a car slid to the curb and a voice that would be remembered as long as she lived, called her name.
She stood rooted to the spot, staring with incredulous eyes at the man who came swiftly towards her, his car illegally double-parked, his hat in his hand, his eyes shining with delight.
“Phil!” she felt as though she shouted it, but in reality it was only a small, shaken whisper that barely reached his ears. “Phil — Oh, how did you happen to come now?”
“I have a calendar,” he told her simply. “I’ve checked the days off. I left Marthasville in my car two weeks ago; I’ve dawdled along the way — picked out some marvelous spots for a honeymoon, and I’ve got a month’s leave of absence from the mills. I … didn’t have the courage at first to ask your address.”
Her hands, small and cold and shaking, were in his now, and she sensed the tremor that sped over him as he held her so.
“My darling,” he said at last, his voice very low, shaken.
And all she could say was “Phil — oh,
Phil!”
But it seemed quite enough, as he turned and helped her into the car and slid behind the wheel.
“Where to?” he asked, smiling a little, his eyes adoring her.
“Anywhere — so long as it’s together,” she told him radiantly.
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
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