The Mulberry Bush Read Online Free PDF

morning coming in through the windows, jeweling the minister’s vestments and the benign pinkness of his bald head, the ribald mosaics of red and blue, and the pigeons teetering and curtsying on the windowsill, and an anxious little acolyte in a red cassock lighting two candles for them. Two candles burning bright! One for her and one for Mike.
    Every hour of those precious three days, she told herself, “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry.” This Mike she had married was a man that neither Teresa, nor Bill Foster, nor any of the sophisticated crew Mike knew, would have recognized at all. This was a gallant, tender and understanding lover—a Mike who was all her own.
    Somehow, cannily, Mike kept the report of their marriage out of the papers.
    â€œIf that mob I know up here ever found out about it—good night!” he said. “We’d be hauled around to cocktail parties and photographed and have gags pulled on us—we don’t want any other people, do we, Ginny? I want you and you want me—and that’s enough for us.”
    He took her to quiet places for dinner, avoiding name bands and floorshows—all the café haunts of the other writers. They walked till they were weary and shopped in big stores for the lovely, useless things that caught Virginia’s eye, and for clothes that dazzled her. If she so much as admired a thing in a window, Mike was on his way inside instantly.
    â€œTry it on. Like it, Ginny? All right—send it.”
    Mr. and Mrs. M. C. Paull. Mike’s middle name, she learned, was Cato.
    â€œIrish, Roman, and Dutch. That’s goulash for you. My mother was Irish, bless her bright eyes. She left me her imagination and that dramatic, emotional thing they get from their wild, mystic air. And my father was a Dutch shipbuilder’s son, born in Hoboken. He’s living somewhere around there—we’ll look him up some time.”
    â€œMike—you don’t know where your own father lives? Mike, that’s dreadful.”
    â€œOh, he gets along. He’s a substantial old chap. Getting old now, too. He was middle-aged when I was born. We agree perfectly—he never worries about me and I never worry about him. He married again, ten years ago.”
    â€œMy father married again, too, but I adore my stepmother. We’ve kept very close—even though I’ve been away seven years. I ought to write—”
    â€œAfter I’m gone you’ll have time.”
    After Mike was gone—and he could speak of it so casually! All that last day she tried not to let him see. Fought to be calm and gay-hearted, too. As though three thousand miles or more of land and water and empty air were nothing at all—only a little space, only a little time.
    All that day it was like dying a little, inch-by-inch, hour-by-hour. The strain of it was in Mike’s face, too, and Virginia seeing it, comforted herself in her own desolation with fierce gladness. Mike was suffering, too.
    They did not talk very much. They went about woodenly, eating meals, packing Mike’s bags, putting a new ribbon in the typewriter and extra ones in the grip, putting in quinine for malaria, and flea powder, and a spray for Mike’s sensitive throat.
    But whenever they came near to each other, Mike’s arms would open, and Virginia would creep into them, and they would cling together silently. And if Mike looked over her shoulder and saw far places and the old excitement touched him, at least she did not know.
    She said, “Mike—I’m not going to tell Teresa that we are married—not yet. I’m not going to tell anyone—not even my family. Not till you come back. My father’s a country doctor—he’s old-fashioned—he’d think this way we are going to have to live for a while was outrageous. Let’s not tell till we can begin living—like people—it will make things easier—for