Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [114]
May put her hand on his, and said with a quiet smile, “Do you want to make an honest woman of me, Willie?”
“I don’t know what else we’re going to do with our lives,” Willie said. “If you think I’m crazy, say so.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” said May. “Only I wish you didn’t look as though you were taking a dose of medicine like a man."
Willie laughed. He looked into her face for a long moment. “Well, what do you say?”
May looked away, and glanced around the sunny dining room. Most of the tables were empty. In a corner near a window the honeymooners in the bright ski suits were leaning toward each other, the bride feeding a bit of coffee cake into her husband’s mouth. “What do I say about what, Willie?”
“About our getting married.”
“I haven’t heard you propose.”
“I propose to you that we get married,” said Willie with extreme distinctness.
“I’ll think about it,” said the girl. She took her lip brush and rouge from her purse, then glanced up at Willie demurely. He wore a look of such pained surprise that she burst out laughing. “Oh, look, darling,” she said, putting her cosmetics on the table, and touching his arm, “this is terribly sweet of you. I’m sure it’s the best you can manage. But everything’s all wrong this morning. I can’t jump at your words and hold you to them just because you’re feeling sheepish, and sorry for me. If we’re going to get married, why, I guess maybe we will sometime. I don’t know. Talk about other things.”
Willie, in a fog of bewilderment, watched her skillfully paint her mouth. Every word that they had both spoken seemed printed on his mind, and as he scanned the interview it seemed to him an unbelievable exchange. He had often pictured proposing to May, but nothing he had ever imagined resembled this devious, inconclusive reality. The possibility had never occurred to him that, several minutes after allowing himself to speak the fateful words, he might still be free.
May, for all her apparent calm, for all the steadiness with which she traced the carmine outline of her lips, was as confused and dizzied as Willie. All her reactions and words had come to her unbidden. She had not expected Willie to propose, and even less had anticipated that she could fail to accept. Yet now the scene was done, and nothing had been solved. “I think I’d like to ride a horse,” she said, still looking in the mirror. “A nice gentle one. Would you like that?”
“Sure,” said Willie. “Hurry with that paint job.”
They rode sad old horses through the snow on bulky Western saddles, May clutching the saddle horn and laughing breathlessly whenever her nag gamboled forward in a brief trot. Willie was an experienced rider, and the diversion was tame for him, but he enjoyed the crystal air, and the awesome scenery, and above all the beauty and good humor of his girl. They were hungry at lunch time, and ate huge steaks. In the afternoon they went for a sleigh ride, nestling under horsy-smelling blankets and exchanging mild caresses while the garrulous old driver droned geological facts about the valley. Back at the hotel, they started drinking long before dinner, and wafted through an evening of dancing and chatter in a pleasant haze of affection and good feeling. Willie left May at her door that night, after a short but wholehearted kiss, and went upstairs, glowing with manly virtue and alcoholic exaltation.
The bus ride back to San Francisco next day was long. It was pleasant enough to look out of the window at the snowy thick-frosted peaks and gorges of the Sierras, holding hands and saying nothing. But when the bus rolled out into the San Joaquin Valley and sped quietly along U.S. 99 between endless plum groves and truck gardens, all wintry brown and bare, Willie became more and more aware that the time was at hand for serious talk. Not only San Francisco and the Caine lay at the end of this long straight macadam trail. There was also his mother. “Darling,” he said.
May turned and gave him an affectionate look.
“Have you thought about us?” Willie said.