Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

me and he had drawn me up against him close and he was murmuring against my hair. "Jan — Jannie, dearest — " His voice was choked as if it hurt him to say the words, because he wasn't one to use expressions of endearment easily. "Jannie, do you think I don't wish we'd had a little while, anyway, to be hap Py?" , ■» "Then let's not wait any longer! I cried out suddenly, wildly. "Let's get married now!" D RUCE pushed me away from him roughly, stood me off to stare into my face. "Jan," he said wonderingly, his voice slightly hoarse, his eyes unbelievably bright. "Jan, do you know what you're saying?" "Yes," I whispered, above my racing, uneven breaths. "Oh, yes, I know. I know we've waited three years, and it's been too long! We should have married and had this time together, had our happiness, ^nd maybe babies, and then you wouldn't have had to go at all!" "Jan," he reproached me gently. "Jan, you know I think I ought to go. I've got to gel in this thing and do my share." "Yes." I sobered up then, a little. He was right, he was always right. "I wouldn't want you to feel any different. 1 want you to be just the way you are. But — Oh, Bruce, I want you!" I hardly knew what 1 was saying, the tears were wet on my face and on his, and my words just came with the tears. We had never talked this way before. His arms tightened then as if they'd crush me, his heart was pounding against my shoulder with a crashing beat. "Dearest," he whispered against my lips. "My love, my dear, I never loved you before the way I do this minute. I never wished for anything as hard as I'm wishing now that we could do what you say, have what little time there is left — together." "We can!" I protested urgently. "We can — " But he was shaking his head, his mouth sweet and smiling still but his eyes that clear blue I knew so well. "Jan, you know I wouldn't do that to you — " "Do what to me?" I asked fiercely, my arms holding myself tight against him. "Give me the happiness I've been waiting for all this time? Let me have what every girl wants, to live with the man she loves?" He set his teeth and spoke almost grimly. "That's just it," he said. "The better it is while we have it, the harder it will be to give it up." His voice came so hard now that it was almost a groan. "For me it would be worth it. Worth anything But for you— think, Jan, you d just have to stay here and wait. Just plug along, waiting, maybe years— No Jan, I won't tie you up like that for God knows how long. I tell you I won't — " But I knew right then that I was winning. Something about his voice, maybe, the unsteady huskiness of it, and his breathing and the way his heart was pounding again in his solid chest. More than anything, I knew by the way he kept insisting. He was not trying to convince me, he was trying to convince himself. The more he talked, the more I knew he wasn't certain. I looked up at the sweet curve of his mouth and the blood beating red in his cheeks, and I said, "Darling, don't bother. Don't keep on saying you won't marry me. You needn't, if you won't, I'll just go along with you, wherever you go, whatever you say. Like one of those camp followers in the books. And there isn't a thing in the world you can do about it. Honey — " I was laughing now, with the tears pouring down "honey, you're stuck with me!" I don't think he knew that my tears were soaking his collar and jacket. I don't think he knew anything except that my body was there against his own, and it was his. In that moment I belonged to him. But it had to be that moment that Dr. Dale arrived at the office. I heard his step, the outer door nening, and there was a little blank few seconds when I knew he was very carefully putting away his expensive, immaculate white Panama hat. In that time Bruce and I separated, our hands dropping empty to our sides — terribly empty. I had never felt such an aching sick sense of loss, such a miserable slow deflation from the glorious tension of the minute before, as when we stood there trying to get our breaths and make our hearts quiet down to normal, hoping Dr. Dale wouldn't notice our emotions. What a hope, under a glance as experienced as Dr. Dale's! You could tell he knew exactly what had happened, by the very tactful way he did not seem to look at us, but settled his spectacles on his nose with a much too business-like frown and riffled through his papers so elaborately. It would have been funny if anything could have been funny to me right then. "Mmmm . . ." he murmured with a great pretense of absent-mindedness. "Oh . . . Good morning, MacDougall. Excuse me if I seem to plunge into the maelstrom of duty. You see, these days are busy for those who make even a feeble attempt to offer common sense to a worid so sorely in need of it." His benign voice lifted slightly, waiting for the laugh his little jocularity was meant to evoke, and I gave it. Bruce never could respond the way he ought to, to Dr. Dale, and now he just made some kind of mutter meant to be respectful but accompanied by a dark, uncomfortable frown, as I eased him to the door. Dr. Dale was too smooth for Bruce, I guess, too fluent with his words, and any man who isn't very articulate himself distrusts those who are. "The darned old mealymouth," Bruce whispered in the corridor. "Don't you let him start handing you any of his common sense." Funny, Bruce said that, when the same thought had just come to me. "Why should he?" I asked, and gave him a quick kiss on his rough shaved cheek just before the elevator door opened. "See you after work." His eyes were suddenly very bright and happy as the door clanged shut. But I felt queerly nervous as I took my notebook to Dr. Dale's desk and sat down. I waited, dreading his first words like a guilty child with a teacher. I smoothed my skirt and lifted my hair from my hot neck so that the breeze from the harbor could cool my damp skin. I held my lips together, tensed against what Dr. Dale might say. We were good friends, close friends, Dr. Dale and I, the way a secretary and her boss must grow to be in years of working together. I laughed to myself, sometimes, at his funny, school-teacherish way of talking, but just the same I admired him deeply for his truly unselfish wish to do good in the world. Not everything he did brought in such high returns in money as his radio program. He interested himself in other causes, making speeches for different kinds of war relief and serving on committees to help refugees and other people made homeless by the war. He was exactly right for this benevolent role. TTIS voice was deep and softly resonant and his figure in his beautifully tailored suits was firmly rotund. His face was as pink and smooth as a baby's, perfectly barbered, and he always brought into the office a pleasant fragrance of bath soap and talcum powder and freshly laundered expensive linen. But today I felt an unreasonable wish to get away from him. I wanted to rush out of the room before those quizzically pursed-up lips of his should open and he should start to speak to me. And I wished, very much, that I hadn't told him, long before now, so much about myself and Bruce. He was a long time beginning. Usually he had no trouble finding words, having studied the letters at home and decided ■ on his advice. But today Continued on page 74 19