VI
In the course of her twenty years Madeline had not shed so many tears as during this one night. There was time for a deluge, for it was surely the longest night that had ever covered the earth. It had the interminable confusion of a dream; and, like a dream, it was made up of vivid and apparently unconnected flashes.
First there was herself leaving Compson’s with a not very genuine air of composure, entering Bradley’s car, and settling herself by his side, determined not to be impressed or perturbed either by his magnificence or by the rakishness of the small car.
Then there was the flight through the bejeweled and marvelous city—a delight seriously marred by her companion’s sinister silence. Not being a driver herself, she had mistaken his preoccupation with traffic signals and so on for a grim and alarming determination. She had, as etiquette required, tried to talk, but he scarcely answered.
Then they shot out into the country—a world dark and unfamiliar to her. Almost the first thing Bradley did was to draw up the car by the roadside and produce a pocket flask. He had been surprised and amused at her indignation, and not overawed by her firm principles. She had said that she wished to go home, but he had been so very persuasive about the supper agreed upon that she had yielded.
She had regretted her weakness. The road house was an awful place. It was like the “haunts of vice” that she had read about in the Sunday newspapers. The prices on the menu appalled her, and the dancing was beyond imagining. Bradley knew some of those people, and had danced with a girl, leaving Madeline alone and unprotected at their table.
He said that what he had to drink was ginger ale, but she didn’t believe it. Ginger ale couldn’t have made him so flushed and silly; and when at last, after he had sat there smoking cigarettes and dawdling, they rose to go, she had noticed that his gait was unsteady. He had grown talkative, too, and never had she heard such silly conversation.
And now here they stood, on the brow of a hill. It was dark, but the dawn was already tingeing the sky. The birds were awake all about them, each one giving his own note—a reedy quaver, a chirp, a clear, exultant carol, each one indifferent and independent, but part of a glorious orchestral symphony. It was dawn, and here they were, for the graceless Bradley had lost his way in the dark.
They had gone jolting up lanes that ended in walls and fences, they had rushed across bridges, they had turned this way and that. Bradley made inquiries, but was not quite capable of profiting by them. Moreover, Madeline’s tears and reproaches had made him frantic. Dawn, and here they were! So fair and tranquil a dawn, it might have inspired to poetry the most insensitive soul; but to poor Madeline it meant only another working day. It made her think of Compson’s.
“Oh, my!” she cried. “Oh, what shall I do? Oh, how could you do such a thing?”
“I’m very sorry,” was all that the sobered young man could say. “I didn’t mean to.”
“My aunt’ll never let me in the house again!” she lamented. “Somebody’s sure to come from Compson’s and ask where I am, and my aunt’ll say she don’t know. I wish I was dead!”
“But can’t you explain?” Bradley asked patiently.
She was amazed at his stupidity, but the poor chap was quite unaware of the villainous aspect he had in the eyes of Compson’s staff. He had never considered himself a villain—certainly not where Madeline was concerned. He was very grateful to her, and he had tried to show his gratitude. That had not been at all difficult, because she was so pretty; but, thought he, what an awful temper!
Bradley was used to girls who concealed the most fiendish rages when in his company, and he believed that all girls were amiable. Ritchie would have understood Madeline’s outbreak. He might perhaps have quarreled with her, but all the time he quarreled he would have been terribly moved by her plight. Bradley couldn’t see that there was any plight. If she hadn’t been so terribly upset, he would have thought the thing a joke.
“Explain!” she cried. “Who do you think would believe me?”
He was about to speak, but when he looked at her, he could not. Some faint comprehension of her point of view came[Pg 99] to him. The more he looked, the better he understood.
Grief had dignified her. Her tear-stained face, her brimming eyes, her trembling lip, distressed him beyond measure. He was an honest and kind-hearted fellow, and even something more than that. In his way, he was chivalrous. He felt deeply ashamed just then to remember that only a few hours before he had thought it rather comic to be taking out a waitress. He regretted the harmless but not very decorous jokes that he and his friends had made about the episode. He wished he had shown his gratitude in some other way. She wasn’t a waitress—she was a forlorn and miserable girl whom his ill-behavior had got into a situation which she regarded as serious.
“I’ll make it all right,” he said earnestly, wondering how this might be done.
“Well, you ought to!” she replied.
She didn’t mean to be ungracious or unkind, but she was in anguish. Neither she nor any of the people she knew could take such things lightly. She saw herself irretrievably disgraced, her haughty respectability forever tarnished. She knew so well what the girls at Compson’s would say!
She had been so proud of her discretion, of her superiority! She had been so very cautious about “strange gentlemen”! And to be away from home all night! She couldn’t bear it. Grief and resentment drove her to tears again.
“Don’t!” entreated Bradley. “Please don’t! I’ll make it all right, somehow—I give you my word I will!”
What he meant was that he would fly to some sympathetic feminine spirit, who could and would make it right for him.