«Of course not. It's wonderful how it holds up. Everyone says so. But you'll be up against that awful boy from California in August, you know.»
«I can take care of that pip-squeak without any monkey gland,» said Alan. «I must say I'm rather suprised you think I can't.»
«I don't think you can't, »said Caroline. «But …»
«Oh, there's a 'but' to it!»
«But you are six years older than I am.»
«Oh, listen! A man's got ten years at least on a woman.»
«Not every woman. It's true some women like going around with men old enough to be their fathers.» She studied him thoughtfully. «I think you'll look awfully distinguished with grey hair.»
Alan looked unhappily into the mirror. Then he looked at Caroline. «I can't imagine you with grey hair. So, you see, if I did drink it, just to please you …»
«I wish you would,» cried Caroline, whose basic goodness and kindness are a matter of record. «Alan, I won't see you get old, and ugly, and ill … and die. I'd rather it was me. Truly I would. Rather than have you die and be left without you.»
«And that goes for me,» said Alan, with just as much emphasis, but yet in a way that caused her to look at him searchingly.
«But you'd love me?» she asked, «even if I did get old? Wouldn't you?» Then, giving him no time at all: «Or would you?»
«Carrie, you know I would.»
«No, you wouldn't. But I would you.»
«If that's what you think,» said Alan, «you'd better take it yourself. It's obvious. Go on — take it. And let me get old.»
«I wish Humphrey had never given us the wretched stuff!» cried Caroline. «Let's pour it down the sink. Come on! Right now!»
«Are you crazy?» cried Alan, snatching the phial from her hand. «The only bottle in the whole world! From what Baxter said, a man died for the sake of what's in that bottle.»
«And he'd be awfully hurt if we threw it away,» murmured Caroline.
«To hell with him,» said Alan. «But after all it's a wedding present.»
So they left it right there on the mantelpiece, which is a good place for a wedding present, and their wonderful life went on.
The only trouble was, they were both becoming age-conscious to a degree which gradually amounted to an obsession. Caroline became extremely exacting at the beauty parlour. It was pathetic to see Alan hovering in front of the mirror, trying to decide if that was only a sun-bleached hair on his temple, or a grey one. Caroline watched him, and in the mirror he saw her watching him. They looked at themselves, and they looked at each other, and whoever looks in that way can always find something. I shall not describe the afternoon when Alan's birthday cake was brought in with the wrong number of candles on it.
However, they both tried desperately to be brave about it, and Caroline might have succeeded.
«It won't be so bad,» she said. «After all, we can grow old together.»
«A nice old couple!» said Alan. «Silver hair, plastic dentures … !»
«Even so, if we still love each other,» maintained Caroline.
«Sure! On a porch! With roses!»
It was that very night, in the middle of the night, Alan was suddenly awakened. Caroline had turned the light on, and was bending over him, looking at him.
«What is it? What's the matter? What are you looking at me for?»
«Oh, I was just looking at you.»
Most men, if they woke up in the middle of the night and found Caroline bending over them, would think they must have died and gone to Heaven, but Alan took it very peevishly. He seemed to think that she was examining him for enlarged pores, deepening wrinkles, sagging tissues, blurring lines, and other signs of incipient decay, and she found it hard to make a convincing denial, because she had been doing exactly that.
«I've a good mind to take that stuff and swallow it down right now,» said Alan in a rage.
«Yes, it's just the sort of thing you would do,» retorted Caroline.
It will be seen that a situation had developed in which almost anything that either of them did would be certain to offend the other.
Things went on like this until the last day of the tournament at Forest Hills. It was on this day that Alan encountered the boy-wonder from California. He saw, as he had seen before, that the stripling had a game very noticeably lacking in finesse. He had tremendous force and a great deal of speed, but no finesse at all. His reflexes were uncanny; it was impossible to fool him by a change of pace. But reflexes are one thing; finesse is quite another. «Why the hell do I keep thinking about finesse?» said Alan to himself before the first set was over. When the last set was done, the answer was there as big as the scoreboard. The stringy boy from California put his hand on Alan's shoulder as they walked off the court together. To a man who has been played to a stand-still, the hand of the victor is a heavy load to carry.
Nevertheless Alan took his defeat very well. All through the evening he firmly discounted the alibis that his friends invented for him. «The son of a bitch just plain battered me off the court,» said he with a rueful grin. Even when Caroline explained to everyone how tense and nervous he'd been lately, he showed no slightest sign of the rage and desolation which howled within him.
That night, in spite of his aching weariness, he lay awake long after Caroline was sound asleep. At last he got up and crept with infinite caution into the living-room. He took up the little phial, unscrewed the top, and drained the contents at a single gulp. He went to the little faucet behind the bar, and refilled the phial with water. He was about to replace the cap when a thought struck him, and he looked about among the bottles until he settled on some bitters. He added several drops to the water in the phial, and then put it back on the mantelpiece. Over the mantle-piece was a mirror; Alan took a long look in this mirror, and he smiled.
Now it happened that at this time Caroline was playing the part of a girl who was encumbered with an amiable fool of a younger sister. The girl who played this sister walked out in a fit of temper, and a new girl had to be found in a hurry. One of the producers, without even the excuse of a villainous motive, but out of sheer sottish good nature, nominated the niece of a friend of his. The girl had to be sent for and looked at, and at once everyone saw that she was the crazy kid sister in person, for she was nothing more or less than a long-limbed, wide-mouthed, dazzle-eyed version of Caroline in slang, so to speak, with a grin instead of a smile, and a stumble instead of Caroline's wonderful walk; and instead of that look of spring morning joy that beamed from Caroline's face the newcomer had an expression of slap-happy bewilderment, as if the world was playing a succession of highly diverting tricks on her.
Everyone thought she was charming, and everyone approved the choice, Caroline included. The first time she went on, Caroline stood in the wings to see how she took to it. She could see just by looking at her back that the girl lit up as she stepped into view of the audience. It hardly amounted to a premonition, but she stepped forward and watched attentively as the girl blundered through the agreeable little routine that the part called for. It was a scene that always drew a pleasant round of applause. This time, as the girl came off the stage: «My God!» thought Caroline, «that's my applause.»
She was perfectly right. The sound that was mounting out front was of a timbre discernibly more feverish, and with more of the humming undertone of the human voice in it, than the applause that rewards a good piece of acting. This was the sound made by an audience that has fallen in love. Caroline knew it well. She had heard it every night for a good many years, and she heard it that same night when, a few minutes later, she made her own entrance. But, rightly or wrongly, it now seemed to her that a certain amount was missing, and to Caroline's ear that amount was exactly equal to what had been bestowed on the gangling youngster.