He was early and he walked past Clare’s house, as far as the corner and stood under the big elm there, smoking the rest of his cigarette, thinking bleakly.
There wasn’t anything to think about, really; all he had to do was say good-bye to her. Two easy syllables. And stall off her questions as to where he was going, exactly how long he’d be gone. Be quiet and casual and unemotional about it, just as though they didn’t mean anything in particular to each other.
It had to be that way. He’d known Clare Wilson a year and a half now, and he’d kept her dangling that long; it wasn’t fair. This had to be the end, for her sake. He had about as much business asking a woman to marry him as—as a madman who thinks he’s Napoleon!
He dropped his cigarette and ground it viciously into the walk with his heel, then went back to the house, up on the porch, and rang the bell.
Clare herself came to the door. The light from the hallway behind her made her hair a circlet of spun gold around her shadowed face.
He wanted to take her into his arms so badly that he clenched his fists with the effort it took to keep his arms down.
Stupidly, he said, “Hi, Clare. How’s everything?”
“I don’t know, George. How is everything? Aren’t you coming in?”
She’d stepped back from the doorway to let him past and the light was on her face now, sweetly grave. She knew something was up, he thought; her expression and the tone of her voice gave that away.
He didn’t want to go in. He said, “It’s such a beautiful night, Clare. Let’s take a stroll.”
“All right, George.” She came out onto the porch. “It is a fine night, such beautiful stars.” She turned and looked at him. “Is one of them yours?”
He started a little. Then he stepped forward and took her elbow, guiding her down the porch steps. He said lightly, “All of them are mine. Want to buy any?”
“You wouldn’t give me one? Just a teeny little dwarf star, maybe? Even one that I’d have to use a telescope to see?”
They were out on the sidewalk then, out of hearing of the house, and abruptly her voice changed, the playful note dropped from it, and she asked another question, “What’s wrong, George?”
He opened his mouth to say nothing was wrong, and then closed it again. There wasn’t any lie that he could tell her, and he couldn’t tell her the truth, either. Her asking of that question, in that way, should have made things easier; it made them more difficult.
She asked another, “You mean to say good-bye for—for good, don’t you George?”
He said, “Yes,” and his mouth was very dry. He didn’t know whether it came out as an articulate monosyllable or not, and he wetted his lips and tried again. He said, “Yes, I’m afraid so, Clare.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t make himself turn to look at her, he stared blindly ahead. He said, “I—I can’t tell you, Clare. But it’s the only thing I can do. It’s best for both of us.”
“Tell me one thing, George. Are you really going away? Or was that just an excuse?”
“It’s true. I’m going away; I don’t know for how long. But don’t ask me where, please. I can’t tell you that.”
“Maybe I can tell you, George. Do you mind if I do?”
He minded all right; he minded terribly. But how could he say so? He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t say yes, either.
They were beside the park now, the little neighborhood park that was only a block square and didn’t offer much in the way of privacy, but which did have benches. And he steered her—or she steered him; he didn’t know which—into the park and they sat down on a bench. There were other people in the park, but not too near till he hadn’t answered her question.
She sat very close to him on the bench. She said, “You’ve been worried about your mind, haven’t you George?”
“Well—yes, in a way, yes, I have.”
“And you’re going away has something to do with that, hasn’t it? You’re going somewhere for observation or treatment, or both?”
“Something like that. It’s not as simple as that, Clare, and I—I just can’t tell you about it.”
She put her hand on his hand, lying on his knee. She said, “I knew it was something like that, George. And I don’t ask you to tell me anything about it.
“Just—just don’t say what you meant to say. Say so-long instead of good-bye. Don’t even write me, if you don’t want to. But don’t he noble and call everything off here and now, for my sake. At least wait until you’ve been wherever you’re going. Will you?”
He gulped. She made it sound so simple when actually it was so complicated. Miserably he said, “All right, Clare. If you want it that way.”
Abruptly she stood up. “Let’s get back, George.” He stood beside her. “But it’s early.”
“I know, but sometimes—Well, there’s a psychological moment to end a date, George. I know that sounds silly, but after what we’ve said, wouldn’t it be—uh—anticlimactic—to—”
He laughed a little. He said, “I see what you mean.”
They walked back to her home in silence. He didn’t know whether it was happy or unhappy silence; he was too mixed up for that.
On the shadowed porch, in front of the door, she turned and faced him. “George,” she said. Silence.
“Oh, damn you, George; quit being so noble or whatever you’re being. Unless, of course, you don’t love me. Unless this is just an elaborate form of—of runaround you’re giving me. Is it?”
There were only two things he could do. One was run like hell. The other was what he did. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Hungrily.
When that was over, and it wasn’t over too quickly, he was breathing a little hard and not thinking too clearly, for he was saying what he hadn’t meant to say at all, “I love you, Clare. I love you; I love you.”
And she said, “I love you, too, dear. You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” And he said, “Yes. Yes.”
It was four miles or so from her home to his rooming house, but he walked, and the walk seemed to take only seconds.
He sat at the window of his room, with the light out, thinking, but the thoughts went in the same old circles they’d gone in for three years.
No new factor had been added except that now he was going to stick his neck out, way out, miles out. Maybe, just maybe, this thing was going to be settled one way or the other.
Out there, out his window, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them his star of destiny? If so, he was going to follow it, follow it even into the madhouse if it led there. Inside him was a deeply rooted conviction that this wasn’t accident, that it wasn’t coincidence that had led to his being asked to tell the truth under guise of falsehood.
His star of destiny.
Brightly shining? No, the phrase from his dreams did not refer to that; it was not an adjective phrase, but a noun. The brightly shining? What was the brightly shining?
And the red and the black? He’d thought of everything Charlie had suggested, and other things, too. Checkers, for instance. But it was not that.
The red and the black.
Well, whatever the answer was, he was running full-speed toward it now, not away from it.
After a while he went to bed, but it was a long time before he went to sleep.