Atlanta Daily World

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE light over the door flashed on and Gale came running down the steps. "Doctor-how nice of you to bring Dooley home. Do come along in out of this wretched wind. I declare, it seems that winter is going to hang on forever!"

She gave Pete her hand and bestowed a little hug on Julia.

There was the fire, leaping cheerfully in the chimney. A bowl of japonica, opening pink petals, was on the table. Thelma appeared at the pantry door, grinning her welcome.

"Get warm, both of you." Gale pulled up chairs. "Dooley, you're thinner. It's becoming, though. Doctor I'm sorry I can't offer you a cocktail, but since taxes got so ruinous I've simply stopped buying the stuff. We do have some good homemade tomato juice, though."

"Tomato juice is bursting with vitamins." He smiled at her.

"Dooley could use some vitamins."

"Why, I'm simply popping with energy," protested Julia. "If I weren't I'd have dropped in my tracks long since, trying to keep up with you when you yell. You should hear him, Gale-Simon LeGree in a mask and gown!"

"I'd better see to the coffee," Gale said. "Thelma always drowns it."

"I'll come too. I want to help."

Julia followed her into the kitchen.

"Make yourself at home, doctor. The paper's around somewhere, I think."

In the kitchen Julia said: "Not even a glass of wine for Pete. Gale?"

Her mother's face tightened and a worried line cut between her brows. "Dooley, you don't know . . . I haven't wanted to tell you . . . I know." Julia said quietly.

More than you, perhaps, she was thinking hoping that her mother had never heard the story of that sordid Christmas Eve.

"She's trying She's doing better. John-Mark helps. I think I should have given up but for John-Mark. He keeps Ravel steady."

Julia jerked her mouth straight. John-Mark was keeping Ravel scared. "Where is she?" she asked.

"Out at the stable."

"How is Johnny? I haven't seen him in ages." Not since Mama Harriet's abortive little attempt at matchmaking.

"Johnny's terribly busy."

Gale arranged three glasses on a tray, cut slices of lemon and included a salt-cellar. "I declare, my mother would be mortified to see me offering any guest this stuff. But I vowed I'd never again put temptation in Rav's way. John-Mark and I agreed that it was the only thing to do Somehow he makes her like it. He has that way with him-makes a joke of it I suppose that's healthy, really ! don't know what would happen to her if it weren't for Johnny."

The cage, Julia was thinking. Here was the cage for the lady tiger, bars to keep her safe and the hand to feed her. The hand of John-Mark.

Long ago she had been right. Always it had been John-Mark who was right for Ravel and suddenly all her schemes, her cleverly laid plans, seemed preposterous and futile. Even fantastic, the idea of clothing Pete Marshall with the allure of the already appropriated to set Ravel's raiding instincts to work, so that eventually Ravel would loose her hold on John-Mark, free him without any rending of her own heart to turn again to Julia.

Why was she so stupidly confused? Why, Julia asked herself couldn't she make up her mind, be sure of her own feeling about Johnny?

Meddling! And no doubt Pete had seen through her maneuvers. Or were his sly remarks just another repetition of his trick of planting viruses in people's mind to see what would happen? Was he sitting on the side lines now, watching her, complacently amused because in three months he would be on his way off to some lonely job concerned with nerves and reflexes but not with hearts or emotions?

A curious loneliness came over her, mixed with a kind of incredulous dismay. What if that same loneliness lay ahead for her? Yesterday she had been so smug, so arrogant even, in her thinking. Two men she had thought, and she had only to make a summoning gesture when she had made up her own mind! Even today she had felt a glow of generosity because she had been willing to concede Pete Marshall to Ravel. Obliterated, Pete had said. Had she, in her involved contriving, obliterated herself?

Ravel came in then, wisps of chaff clinging to her clothes.

"Hi!" She tossed her cap on the table, ignoring Thelma's irritated grunt. "Gosh, I'm hungry. Who's Gale talking to, in there?"

"To Pete Marshall."

"Oh, Pete." Ravel's face changed a little. "How's the old flinty-hearted scoundrel? I wasn't going to change but maybe I'd better. Johnny will be along in a minute. I told him you were due to check in. I may as well make it plain, Dooley. You may have a toe in the crack over there but I'm holding the door!"

Julia looked at her sister levelly.

"You're holding the door till you change your mind," she said; "till you see some other woman's man who looks exciting. Then if you've been able to make Johnny fall in love with you, you'll break him with no compunction at all."

No flash of fire came into Ravel's eyes. "Johnny fell in love with me when I was 16 years old." she said. "Don't waste your time making plans, Dooley. It will be utterly futile."

She kicked off her boots.

"Give me time to dress, Thelma. I'll have to shower, too."

"Got to wait on Mr. John-Mark, anyway," muttered Thelma when Ravel had gone. "Maybe it ain't goin' to last, Miss Dooley, but she done changed her ways right smart lately."

How could it last? A cameo did not change. It showed a flat beauty to the eye, but underneath was the rigidity of stone. It was adornment only and by that bright insolence it prevailed. The minute she looked at Pete she'd begin practicing all her tricks again, Julia was certain.

But here again all her schemes and predictions failed. When Ravel came down, brushed and shining, in a jonquil-yellow blouse and soft tan slacks, a crisp and brittle hostility appeared to crackle between her and the doctor, like static.

Pete's eyebrows did mocking acrobatics; Ravel parried with subtle shafts at him-on the defensive, Julia decided. Was Ravel daring him to remember anything that had been between them?

Gale was getting nervous. "I don't see why John-Mark doesn't come," she worried. "Call him, Ravel, and tell him Thelma's rolls will be ruined."

Ravel went to the hall and Julia, feeling a little angry at Pete, was tempted to urge him not to bait her, but that, she realized, would be transparent too.

"Johnny has an unexpected guest-Sewell," Ravel said when she came back. "He'd just dropped in so I told Johnny to bring him on over."

"I'll set another place at the table." Julia went quickly to the dining-room. Ravel followed her out, took an olive from the dish and stood gnawing at it while Julia shifted silver and napery.

"Why did you bring Pete out here?" Ravel demanded abruptly.

"To remind me of the one time I made a fool of myself, cold-sober?"

Julia counted spoons calmly.

"There was a rumor that you were in love with Pete. Terribly in love' was the way it was reported to me."

"I got over Pete. Had you forgotten that I gave him to you for a Christmas present?"

"You never really give things away, Rav; you know that. Only lend till you discover that they are important to somebody else. Then you snatch them back again. Are you ever going to grow up and know your own mind?"

"Why should I-when there are always people around to manage me sweetly? You were smart, Dooley. You got clear away. Nobody around to hover watchfully and see that you don't dash your foot against a stone. You're free. You don't wear hobbles. Everything you do is inferred to be perfect. You don't account for any of your actions."