The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page B

“would you marry me? If I were to ask you again?”
    She nodded gravely. “I would.”
    â€œAfter all I’ve said?”
    â€œAfter all you’ve said.”
    There was a pause, an interminable pause. Then he suddenly smiled and put his hand on hers. “Well, nobody would be able to say,” he said, “that we were rushing into this thing without having given it thought. And yet, somehow, I feel that’s just what we would be doing.”
    She took out her handkerchief at last and wiped her eyes. “We’ve tried waiting,” she pointed out. “And that didn’t work.”
    He laughed.
    â€œWell, I’m game,” he said. “I’m always taking chances with my future in these days. I might as well take a fling with my past.” He put his hand suddenly around her shoulder. “Poor little Maud,” he said, smiling. “Poor helpless little Maud. This is only the second time you’ve trapped your victim. But don’t worry. You won’t be able to get out of it this time.”
    â€œThe only thing I’m worrying about,” she observed, with an eye on the diminished bottle, “is getting you back to your quarters sober.”
    â€œI see you’re starting right,” he agreed more cheerfully. “Well, I asked for it. Or did I?”
    How it would have worked out they never were to know, for Halsted was killed two days later when his reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cherbourg. They had met only once in the interval, at lunch, for Halsted had been in conference or flying day and night in preparation for the great invasion of France that took place only a week after his death. Into the blackness of Maud’s heart there is no need to penetrate. It was fortunate for her that her work increased in intensity during those days.
    A few weeks later her club mobile unit crossed to France, where it operated just below the front. A friend of Halsted’s sent her a note that he had placed in an envelope marked “Maud Spreddon, Red Cross” just before he had taken off on his last flight. It was simply a line: “Maud, dearest, never forget. You’re all right, and you’re going to be all right. With me or without me.” She had folded the note and placed it in a locket which she wore around her neck and which she never afterwards reopened. She did not tell her parents or even Sammy that she had seen Halsted again before his death, or what had passed between them. Such a tale would have made her a worthy object of the pity that she had so despised herself for seeking. It was her sorrow, and Halsted would have admired her for facing it alone.

 
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GREG’S PEG
    1950

1
    I T WAS in the autumn of 1936 that I first met Gregory Bakewell, and the only reason that I met him then was that he and his mother were, besides myself and a handful of others, the only members of the summer colony at Anchor Harbor who had stayed past the middle of September. To the Bakewells it was a period of hard necessity; they had to sit out the bleak, lonely Maine September and October before they could return, with any sort of comfort, to the Florida home where they wintered. To me, on the other hand, these two months were the only endurable part of Anchor Harbor’s season, and I had lingered all that summer in Massachusetts, at the small boarding school of which I was headmaster, until I knew that I would find the peninsula as deserted as I required. I had no worries that year about the opening of school, for I was on a sabbatical leave, long postponed, and free to do as I chose. Not, indeed, that I was in a mood to do much. I had lost my wife the year before, and for many months it had seemed to me that life was over, in early middle age. I had retreated rigidly and faithfully to an isolated routine. I had taught my courses and kept to myself, as much as a headmaster can, editing and re-editing what was to be the