The thought was worse than prison. Something of my misery must have shown in my face, for at first she looked astonished, then annoyed.
“What an odd, unsatisfactory child you are. I can’t make you out. Don’t you realize that at home girls in your position without any money can have the grandest fun? Plenty of boys and excitement. All in your own class. You can have your own little set of friends, and needn’t be at my beck and call as much as you are here. I thought you didn’t care for Monte?”
“I’ve got used to it,” I said lamely, wretchedly, my mind a conflict.
“Well, you’ll just have to get used to New York, that’s all. We’re going to catch that boat of Helen’s, and it means seeing about our passage at once. Go down to the reception office right away, and make that young clerk show some sign of efficiency. Your day will be so full that you won’t have time to have any pangs about leaving Monte!” She laughed disagreeably, squashing her cigarette in the butter, and went to the telephone to ring up all her friends.
I could not face the office right away. I went into the bathroom and locked the door, and sat down on the cork mat, my head in my hands. It had happened at last, the business of going away. It was all over. Tomorrow evening I should be in the train, holding her jewel case and her rug, like a maid, and she in that monstrous new hat with the single quill, dwarfed in her fur-coat, sitting opposite me in the wagon-lit. We would wash and clean our teeth in that stuffy little compartment with the rattling doors, the splashed basin, the damp towel, the soap with a single hair on it, the carafe half-filled with water, the inevitable notice on the wall “Sous le lavabo se trouve une vase,” while every rattle, every throb and jerk of the screaming train would tell me that the miles carried me away from him, sitting alone in the restaurant of the hotel, at the table I had known, reading a book, not minding, not thinking.
I should say goodbye to him in the lounge, perhaps, before we left. A furtive, scrambled farewell, because of her, and there would be a pause, and a smile, and words like “Yes, of course, do write,” and “I’ve never thanked you properly for being so kind,” and “You must forward those snapshots,” “What about your address?” “Well, I’ll have to let you know.” And he would light a cigarette casually, asking a passing waiter for a light, while I thought, “Four and a half more minutes to go. I shall never see him again.”
Because I was going, because it was over, there would suddenly be nothing more to say, we would be strangers, meeting for the last and only time, while my mind clamored painfully, crying “I love you so much. I’m terribly unhappy. This has never come to me before, and never will again.” My face would be set in a prim, conventional smile, my voice would be saying, “Look at that funny old man over there; I wonder who he is; he must be new here.” And we would waste the last moments laughing at a stranger, because we were already strangers to one another. “I hope the snapshots come out well,” repeating oneself in desperation, and he “Yes, that one of the square ought to be good; the light was just right.” Having both of us gone into all that at the time, having agreed upon it, and anyway I would not care if the result was fogged and black, because this was the last moment, the final goodbye had been attained.
“Well,” my dreadful smile stretching across my face, “thanks most awfully once again, it’s been so ripping…” using words I had never used before. Ripping: what did it mean?—God knows, I did not care; it was the sort of word that schoolgirls had for hockey, wildly inappropriate to those past weeks of misery and exultation. Then the doors of the lift would open upon Mrs. Van Hopper and I would cross the lounge to meet her, and he would stroll back again to his corner and pick up a paper.
Sitting there, ridiculously, on the cork mat of the bathroom floor, I lived it all, and our journey too, and our arrival in New York. The shrill voice of Helen, a narrower edition of her mother, and Nancy, her horrid little child. The college boys that Mrs. Van Hopper would have me know, and the young bank clerks, suitable to my station. “Let’s make Wednesday night a date.” “D’you like Hot music?” Snub-nosed boys, with shiny faces. Having to be polite. And wanting to be alone with my own thoughts as I was now, locked behind the bathroom door…
She came and rattled on the door. “What are you doing?”
“All right—I’m sorry, I’m coming now,” and I made a pretence of turning on the tap, of bustling about and folding a towel on a rail.