Screenland (Jan–Jun 1948)

The Snake Pit Continued from page 35 a zoo, do you? I'm sorry for the animals locked up in cages." "Don't talk now," the blue-eyed girl whispered. "You know it's against the rules." The woman behind them cackled almost as if she were crazy. "You tell her, Grace," she said unpleasantly. "Grace?" Virginia made a note of the name. "Come on, ladies," the fire siren buzzed. "Step along. Keep moving, Virginia." Virginia looked at her resentfully. "People're friendly in New York, she thought. Or maybe just fresh. I've never seen her before and she calls me Virginia. What am I supposed to say: 'Hi, kiddo?' " They crossed through the cage and into the building. There was a large, oblong, bare room with benches and chairs pushed against the wall. "All right, ladies, we haven't got all day," the crisp voice said. "Keep in line, ladies!" Suddenly Virginia felt as if she were suffocating. "Why do we have to keep in line? I don't like regimentation." "Please, Virginia," Grace begged. "Please don't make any trouble." A door opened and there was another room even barer than the first had been. "The way they treat us," one of the aprons grumbled, "you'd think we were criminals." "Criminals!" Virginia screamed the word, her eyes staring wildly as the nurse unlocked a door at the end of the room and she saw the bars at all the windows. "A prison! That's it! A prison! I should've known it! How did I get here? I won't go in there! I won't stay in this place another minute. I want to get out!" "Hello, Mrs. Cunningham," a voice said, and it was the voice she was always hearing. Only this time a man belonged to it, a youngish man with dark hair and a nice smile. There was another man with him, an even younger man with sad eyes. He looked at Virginia as if he knew her, as if he expected her to know him. It was all so confusing. "Miss Hart," the voice said to the nurse, "we'd like to speak to Mrs. Cunningham for a minute." Then as the others filed on into the room and the door closed and there was the click of a key turning in its lock, the voice spoke again, "Don't be afraid, we're your friends. We just want to talk to you. Won't you sit down?' She was too smart for him. She wasn't going to sit down and be completely at his mercy. "Virginia," the other man said, and his voice sounded so sad she felt sorry for him. She even sat down, thinking that might make him feel better. But it didn't seem to. Something glinted in his eyes looking at her. Something that could have been tears. "How do you feel today?" the first man said. "Very well," she said. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't feel well?" "No, of course not," a smile had hitched itself onto the voice now. "Do you know who I am, Mrs. Cunningham?" "Of course," she said rigidly. "You're the warden of this prison. I'm writing a novel about prisons and I've come here to study conditions and take notes." It made her feel better realizing so suddenly why she was there. "And I'm going to leave now," she said. "Where will you go when you leave here?" the voice asked. "To your husband?" "I have no husband," she said. "Virginia!" It was the younger man who spoke again. He sounded as though she had driven a knife into his heart. "Virginia, look at me! Don't you know who I am?" He shouldn't have spoken, shouldn't have allowed his emotion to get the better of him like that. But he couldn't help it. It was so hard having her look at him as if he were a stranger. But he wouldn't do it again. Oh, he'd try so hard not to do it again, not attempt to force her, Robert told himself as Dr. Kik called publishing house in Chicago where he'd gotten a job as clerk right after he was out of the army. The editor had sent him out to return her rejected manuscript and she had taken it harder than other disappointed writers. It had been almost lunch time, and when he went downstairs to the cafeteria in the building she was sitting at one of the tables staring at her untasted food like a kid who'd been told to eat something she didn't want. That was when it began, and it didn't take them long to find out they liked the same sort of things. Music, and walking together, and chocolate ice cream sodas. She never said anything about herself and he never asked. For if things got personal at all she just seemed to freeze up. Then, it was sometime in early May and they were going to a concert together, and it was different from all the other times because he felt he had the right to tell her something he never had before. But he'd only begun telling her about the offer of a better job in New York when he saw her drawing away. "Robert, I can't go to the concert," she said suddenly. "Something's come up, something important. I was trying to tell you all through lunch." back the nurse and they left, leaving Virginia with her. Even in the doctor's office there were bars at the window reminding him this was no ordinary hospital. That was the worst of all, those bars everywhere you looked. "I know it's hard," Dr. Kik's voice cut across his thoughts. "Waiting so long without results. But in this sort of illness time is the important thing. Time and patience." He turned to a folder lying on his desk. "I've been going over the information you gave about your wife. We've seldom had a case history which tells so little." "She never talked much about herself or her family," Robert swallowed before he went on. "But when you love someone you're not looking for symptoms. Looking back now I see things that didn't seem important then." Now everything seemed important as he began telling of them. That first time he met Virginia when she came to the Tyrone Power, on good will tour, meets "Jacaranda Queen," Miss Elbie.Van Zyl, and Mayor D. P. Van Heerden in Pretoria, South Africa. Below, the Mayor's office staff line up for Ty's autograph. 54 SCREENLAND