A World Apart Read online

overlookingthe majestic Hudson, he wondered how he could put his foreknowledge touse. There was the market, of course. And he could recall the upsetfootball win of Yale over Princeton in 1934, the Notre Dame last-minutetriumph over Ohio State a year later, most of the World Series winners.On the Derby winners he was lost....

  When the meal was over and they were returning to the library with itssnug insulating bookshelves and warm cannel-coal fire, his mother said,"Banny, it's been so nice _hav_ing this talk with you. We haven't had_many_ lately. I _wish_ you'd stay home tonight with me. You really _do_look tired, you know."

  "Sorry, mother," he replied. "I've got a date."

  "With the _Law_ton girl, I suppose," she said without affection. Then,accepting a cigarette and holding it before lighting it, "I do wish you_wouldn't_ see quite so much of her. I'll ad_mit_ she's a perfectlynice girl, of course. But she _is_ strange and people are be_gin_ning totalk. I hope you're not going to be _fool_ish about her."

  "Don't worry," Coulter replied. Since when, he wondered, had wanting agirl as he wanted Eve Lawton been foolish. He added, "What's wrong withEve anyway?"

  His mother lit a cigarette. "Lamb, it's not that there's anything_real_ly wrong with Eve. As a matter of fact I be_lieve_ her family isquite distinguished--good old _Linc_olnville stock."

  "I'm aware of that," he replied drily. "I believe her great, great,great grandfather was a brigadier while mine was only a colonel in theRevolution."

  His mother dismissed the distant past with a gesture. "But the Lawtonshaven't _man_aged to keep up," she stated. "Think of your schooling,dear--you've had the _ve_ry best. While Eve ..." With a shrug.

  "Went to grammar and high-school right here in Lincolnville," Coulterfinished for her. "Mother, Eve has more brains and character than any ofthe debs I know." Then, collecting himself, "But don't worry,mother--I'm not going to let it upset my life."

  "I'm _ve_ry glad to hear it," Mrs. Coulter said simply. "Re_mem_ber,Banny, you and your Eve are a world apart. Besides, we're going to takea trip a_broad_ this summer. There's _so_ much I want us to seeto_gether_. It would be a shame to ..." She let it hang.

  Coulter looked at his mother, remembering hard. He had been able tostymie that trip on the excuse that he'd almost certainly lose his joband that new jobs were too hard to get in a depression era. He thoughtthat his surviving parent was, beneath her well-mannered surface, ashallow, domineering, snobbish empress. Granted his new vista of vision,he realized for the first time how she had dominated both his father andhimself.

  * * * * *

  He thought, _I hate this woman. No, not hate, just loathe._

  He glanced at the watch on his wrist, a Waltham he had long since lostor broken or given away--he couldn't recall which. He said, "All thesame, mother, a date's a date. I'm a little late now. Don't wait up forme."

  "I shan't," she replied, looking after him with a frown of pale concernas he headed for the hall closet.

  It took a few minutes to get the Pontiac warmed up but once out of thedriveway Coulter knew the way to Eve Lawton's house as if he had beenthere last night, not two decades earlier. The small cold winter mooncast its frigid light over an intimate little group of apple tapiocaclouds and made the snow-clad fields a dark grey beneath the blackevergreens that backed the fields beside the road.

  As he slowed to a stop in front of the old white-frame house with itsgraceful utilitarian lines of roof and gable, he found himself wonderingwhether this were the dream or the other--the twenty years that hadfound him an orphan. That had given him enough inherited money to strikeout for himself in New York. That had seen him win success as ahighly-paid publicist. That had seen him married to wealthy ConnieMarlin and a way of life as far from that of Lincolnville as he himselfnow was from Scarborough and Connie.

  * * * * *

  Eve opened the door before he reached it. She was as willowy and aliveas he remembered her, and a great deal more vital and beautiful. She putup her face to be kissed as soon as he was inside and his arms wentaround her soft angora sweater and he wondered a little at what he hadso cavalierly dismissed and left behind him.

  She said, "You're late, Banning. I thought you'd forgotten."

  He kept one arm around her as they walked into the living room with itsblazing fire. He said, "Sorry. Mother wanted to talk."

  "Is she terribly worried about me?" Eve asked. Her face, in inquiry, waslike a half-opened rose.

  Coulter hesitated, then replied, "I think so, darling. She was afraidyour stock had gone to seed. I had to remind her that your great, great,great grandfather outranked mine."

  The odd, in her case beautiful, blankness of fear smoothed Eve'sforehead. She said, her voice low, her eyes not meeting his, "Yesterdayyou'd never have noticed what she was thinking."

  "Yesterday?" He forced her to look at him. "Yesterday I was anotherman--a whole twenty-four hours younger." He added the last hastily, soas not to rouse suspicion. Eve, he both knew at once and remembered, washighly sensitive, intuitively brilliant.

  "I know," she said simply, and for the second time since the amazingtransformation of the afternoon he felt the tight grip of terror.Watching her as she turned from him and began to stoke the fire, hewondered just what she did know.

  The album rested on the table against the back of the sofa in front ofthe fireplace. It was a massive leather-and-parchment tome, withimitation medieval brass clasps and hinges. He opened it carelessly,seeking reassurance in idle action.

  He flipped the pages idly, in bunches. There was Eve, a lacy littlemoppet, held in the arms of her drunkard farming father. A sort of localmad-Edison whose inventions never worked or, if they did, were promptlystolen from him by more profit-minded promoters. Her brother Jim,sturdy, cowlicked, squinting into the sun, stood at his father's knee.He wondered what had happened to Jim but didn't dare ask. Presumably heshould know since Jim shared the house with his sister and an ancienthousekeeper, doubtless long since asleep.

  He flipped more pages, came to a snapshot of Eve in a bathing suit atLake Tahoe. Bill Something-or-other, Lincolnville High School footballhero of five years before, had an arm around Eve's slim, wool-coveredwaist. Two-piece suits and bikinis were still a long way in the future.He said, "What's become of Bill?"

  She said, "Don't you remember? He was killed in that auto crash cominghome from the city last year." There was an odd questing flatness in hervoice.

  Coulter remembered the incident now, of course. There had been a girl inthe car, who had been disfigured for life. Plastic surgery, likebikinis, still lay well ahead. He and Eve had begun going together rightafter that accident....

  Something about Eve's tone, some urgency, disturbed him. He looked ather quickly. She was standing by the fireplace, watching him, watchinghim as if he were doing something important. The fright within himrenewed itself. Quickly he turned back to the album, flipped furtherpages.

  He was close to the end of the album. What he saw was a newspaperclipping, a clipping showing himself and Harvey MacIlwaine ofConsolidated Motors shaking hands at a banquet table. The headline abovethe picture read, AUTHOR AND AUTO MAGNATE CELEBRATE BIOGRAPHY.

  Above the headline was the date: _January 16, 1947_.

  With hard-forced deliberation, because every nerve in his body wassinging its song of fear like a banjo string, Coulter closed the album.The honeymoon, if that was the right term for it, was over. He knew nowwhich was the dream, which the reality.

  He said, "All of this is your doing, Eve." It was not a question.

  She said quietly, "That's right, Banning, it's my doing." She looked athim with a cool detachment that added to his bewilderment--and to hisfright.

  He said, "Why, Eve? _Why_ have you done this?"

  She said, "Banning, do you know what a Jane Austen villain is?"

  He shook his head. "Hardly my pitch, is it?"

  "Hardly." There was a trace of sadness in her voice. Then, "A JaneAusten villain is an attractive, p
owerful, good-natured male who ridesthrough life roughshod, interested only in himself, completely unawareof his effect on those unlucky souls whose existences become entangledin his."

  "And I am a Jane Austen villain?" He was puzzled, disturbed thatanyone--Eve or anyone--should think of him as a villain. Mentally hebegan to search for kindnesses, for unselfishnesses. He foundgenerosities, yes, but these, he supposed with sudden dreadful clarity,had been little more than balm to his ego.

  "You are perhaps a classic example, Banning," she told him. Her face, inshadow, was exquisitely beautiful. "When you left Lincolnville