The New York Stories of Elizbeth Hardwick by Elizabeth Hardwick Page B

It was thought by Mr. Miller and some town people, “civic groups,” that she ought to study something and they took up the money for it.
    “Well, you’re all set, huh?” Russell said.
    Marianne considered. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you, with the kind of wonderful help and all I’ve had?”
    It tuned out that Marianne, after her unbelievable journey, her extraordinary opportunity, after the confidence of the man who owned The Fair Store, felt it had all been wasted, that she had chosen the wrong work. She was crushed by guilt and regret. “Very, very few people, as I see it now, can make it as a fashion designer.”
    Russell grunted sympathetically. He looked with perplexed interest on this little person with her doubts and what almost seemed to be grief. He felt called upon to lighten the scene. “With eyes like yours you could make it as the Queen of Sheba, in my opinion,” he said giddily.
    She did not seem to hear this and went on thinking about her work, her future. “It’s not your fault,” Russell insisted, pardoning her as quickly as he would have pardoned himself. “You did what you thought was right at the time and more than that hardly anyone would expect,” he added sententiously.
    “Yeah?” she said, gloomily weighing his words. For a moment, Russell was unnerved by the attention she gave to his thoughts, but he soon put all of this out of his mind because of his consideration for Marianne’s soft, wavy hair, her small, thin ankles. He loved the high heels and the narrow wool skirt she was wearing and admired the fact that she could wear them in what he thought of as an interesting manner, like a student in a secretarial school, or a receptionist in an insurance office.
    Marianne looked about the shop. “There are some nice old things in Kentucky. Country antiques,” she said with a sigh. Russell gave a professional nod.
    A week passed before Marianne came in again. Russell had been thinking about her and expecting her. He had known that she would come back and felt a little hurt that she hadn’t come sooner. She sat down with him at the back of the shop, at the worktable, sat with her hands in cream-colored gloves folded in her lap. He was full of wonder at her stillness, her stubborn concentration. Her body, in its desperate repose, excited him. He smiled at her, summoning what he hoped was an interesting hint of boyish protectiveness. He supposed her to be failing in school, but, no, she was doing very well. The trouble was that she would need to go to New York if she meant to have a real success. New York frightened her and her sense of obligation weighed her down. There was something plaintive and rural about Marianne that made Russell uneasy. Patches of cornfield on the hillside, played-out seams of coal, grange and union halls, mountain laurel in bloom, miners’ wives at a dress sale: she gave it all to Russell, who whistled through his teeth with a peculiar embarrassment before these memories. Nervously, he became jaunty and flirtatious.
    “I guess I better not tangle with you. I hear those mountain people can hold on to a grudge. Their aim with a pistol’s pretty good too, huh?”
    Marianne took this seriously. “My family is strictly against guns and always has been.”
    Russell was trapped. He kept on smiling and waited for a new thought to rescue him. “I love your little shop,” Marianne said, responding at last to Russell’s jaunty smiles.
    He warmed. “It’s not Fifth Avenue...just a little place with a few nice items. The man who owns it has other outlets.”
    A blurred mirror lay on the worktable. A wooden rosette had fallen off the carved frame and Russell, in his wandering, stiff-fingered way, had been struggling to tie it back in place with a piece of wire.
    “Here, I bet I can fix that thing,” Marianne said. A rush of pleasant feelings came over Russell as he watched her blue eyes squinting at work.
    “There, you’ve got it!” he said after a