The Accused - Harold R. Daniels (best novels for students TXT) 📗

Dodson had been looking around the room. “This is more like it,” he said.

Morlock, analyzing his own mood, missed the elation that had been there the previous night. Anticipation there was—there were any number of pretty women in the room—but it was not a lustful anticipation. Further, there was a cynical facet to his character; he had long ago recognized it. If it controlled him this night he would find himself on the sidelines, not dancing, criticizing the dancers with a sardonic smile on his face. The cynicism, he supposed, was a form of sour grapes.

Snapper became expansive. “I told you there’d be plenty of women here,” he said. “Most of them will be looking for rides home when this is over. Thing to do is move in early. Let’s go downstairs to the bar and get a drink.”

Morlock had promised himself to drink very little. He had had too much the previous night and for once it had not made him sick. Miracles were seldom repeated. But Snapper bought a round and Dodson and then it was his turn.

The glow came and he danced, starting with the younger girls in the crowd. Dodson, he noticed, avoided the younger and prettier women and selected the older, less attractive ones—who could be expected to be grateful, Morlock thought, and remembered wryly that it had been Ben Franklin who had originally advised such selection.

In between dances they drank. To do this they held, by right of first possession, a table in the bar. There was another table jammed against their own and he became aware of two women at the table. They smiled each time he returned to the table from the dance floor. After a third or a fourth smile they acquired, by force of repetition, a relationship of sorts which Dodson noticed. After several dances he said, “I think we’ve, been missing something, Al. Let’s ask them to dance.” He sounded patronizing, Morlock thought. Dodson had been having a fine run of luck, not having been once rejected as a partner. As a result he had taken on a jaunty confidence and his offer to dance with the neighboring women was made with a princely condescension.

“Go ahead,” Morlock agreed. “Ask one of them. I’ll ask the one that’s left.”

Dodson, drunk with himself, rose and walked toward them. He held a brief conversation with the two women at the table. One of the two got up and linked her arm in Dodson’s. When they moved away from the table Morlock covertly studied the second woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties and her face was quite attractive. Her figure, what he could see of it, was full blown with a disciplined firmness that suggested corseting.

He stood up, a shade uncertainly, and walked to her table.

“Hello,” he said, “are you having a good time?”

She smiled. Her teeth were white and perfect. “Very,” she said. “Won’t you sit down?”

He was grateful; he had been alarmed over the loss of perfect control of his legs. “Let me buy you a drink,” he said. “My name is Morlock.”

She acknowledged the introduction with a nod and another smile. “Mine is Louise,” she said. “Louise Palaggi.”

“Hello, Louise,” he said dashingly.

When Dodson came back to the table, towing the other woman whom he introduced as Rose but mentioned no last name, Morlock was already deep in conversation with Louise Palaggi. She seemed greatly interested in everything he had to say and demurely declined Dodson’s offer to buy another round. When Snapper joined them with a woman of his own, she refused his offer of a drink too. Morlock didn’t, and as he drank he recognized with wonderful discernment the difference between her and the other women who were loud, raucous, and superficial.

He told her of his job at Ludlow and let her guess that he very seldom came to places like this but that sometimes he got so fed up with ignorant students…

He indicated the loneliness of a sensitive man.

He had never known a woman to listen to him with such perception and sympathy. He told her this too.

He was quite drunk.

Louise told him, for her part, that she was lonely too. She had devoted the best part of her life, she let him guess, to the care of her father and her brothers, keeping up a home for them. She let him know, wistfully, that she was ignorant herself—she had had to leave high school in her second year to make that home—but that it was wonderful to be in the company of an educated man and she regretted that she knew so little.

He told her gallantly that she was one of the most intelligent women he had ever met—in a sense he was quite right—and that he could hardly believe that she had so little schooling.

She told him that she read a great deal.

Snapper and his woman and Dodson with his Rosie became aware, after a while, of the detachment of the couple. Rose thought it was cute; she said so, shrilly referring to them as lovebirds. Morlock, who would have been sickened ordinarily, smiled sheepishly while Louise protested; becomingly, he thought.

When the band played the last number and they got up to leave, Snapper suggested that they go to an after hours club where he was known. Morlock was watching Dodson, who seemed to be afraid of a refusal from his Rosie. He saw Dodson’s face light up with relief and joy when Rosie was loudly enthusiastic at the plan.

Louise said shyly, “Well, I shouldn’t—” but protested no more when Morlock was masterfully insistent.

After the club closed in its turn, they drove back to the hotel, Morlock and Dodson sitting in the back seat with Rosie and Louise. Dodson and Rosie were making love, openly and grotesquely. Morlock was embarrassed. Louise Palaggi, with what he thought a charming and ladylike reticence, ignored them completely.

They would, it was agreed, go up to Dodson’s room for a final drink.

She was diffident about it but she went with them. In the elevator Morlock began to regret that he could not go to bed. He’d had, for him, a tremendous amount of liquor. The surging lift of the elevator made him aware of it.

When Dodson had fumbled open the door of his room, he went at once to the bed with Rosie, falling on the mattress in animal abandon. Snapper and his woman found a chair. Morlock said unsteadily, “Let’s go next door to my room.”

He was physically and mentally aroused by her presence, by the woman smell and softness of her. In his room he fell on the bed and reached for her, pawing at her breasts and trying to pull her down beside him.

“No,” she said, and pulled away from him. She didn’t seem angry. “No, Alvin.”

And then he was sick.