After the Ball

A Candy-Candy Vignette

by Josephine Hymes

The following is a companion vignette for a previous mini-fic entitled "During the Concert". The two vignettes show our two protagonists dealing with the pain of their frustrated love on the same night on October 1922.

A translation to Spanish of this Vignette is available here

Translations to Italian are available at:

https://amicicandy.forumfree.it/

https://klin.forumfree.it/

The following piece by Chopin is highly recommended while reading "After the Ball"

After the Ball

By Josephine Hymes

An evening in October 1922

The sound of the door closing after her lingered in her ears as she finally could liberate the breath she had been holding. The elegant mint-green bedroom was submerged in shadows. In the midst of such darkness, the shy crescent moon of October was having a hard time chasing away the gloom. She rested her head on the door, closing her eyes, wishing that everything that had happened that evening would simply vanish in the dustbin of her discarded bad memories.

She wished that unsavory kiss could be just a figment of her imagination, but it was all too real, a real and disappointing fiasco. How did she allow that to happen? It was even worse because he hadn’t forced himself on her. It was with her consent. She had purposefully sent all the signs to let him know that she was expecting it. Isn’t that something that is supposed to happen at the end of a date? But Christ! The second it started, she wished those lips away from hers.

“You truly are an idiot, Candy” she said out loud, still reclined on that blasted door, watching how the moonlight fell on the mirror of her dressing table. Yet the darkness was still reigning in the bedroom.

With a sigh, more charged with fatigue than relief, the young woman began to move away from the door. Walking towards the center of the bedroom, she began to liberate her feet from the high heels she was wearing, tossing them away. Walking over the Persian carpet, she reached the four-posted bed, and collapsed on the mattress.

“It was the most disastrous date of my entire life” she thought with a bitter chuckle that did not transfer into a smile, “and considering my depressing love-life, that is to say a great deal.”

Her eyes wandered around, looking at the silken canopy over her, as it were a screen on which she could replay the events of the previous weeks.

Annie had insisted on her attending the McNamara’s Gala with this new friend Archie had met in the Chicago Yacht Club. The man belonged to the wealthy Stager family and was one of the most coveted bachelors that season. In fact, she had met him a couple of times before, danced a Charleston or two with him in one of Annie’s parties, and met him for tea in some other occasion. That was all. True, he was handsome, with a devilish pair of hazel eyes and a roguish smile that reminded her of another . . . albeit not the same. It was perhaps that half smile of his that had persuaded her to accept his invitation to escort her to the gala. She thought that perhaps this time, just this once, Annie’s pick had not been so outlandish.

“I’m such a fool” she told herself inwardly and, raising her body to sit on the bed once again, she started to roll down her stockings.

Moving her head right to left, silently disapproving her own behavior, she undressed with lazy movements. While each garment was carelessly dropped on her white and pink striped loveseat, she made a mental note to mind about the mess the following morning. But each piece of clothing coming off her body did not contribute to make her feel lighter. On the contrary, the young woman felt the weight of her disappointment pressing her shoulders even more than before.

She opened her closet to extract a silk robe that she lazily put on, before she sat in front of her dressing table. Suddenly, as soon as she sat on the ottoman, her shoulders began to shake, releasing a sob while her tears rolled down her cheeks. Instinctively, she opened one of the drawers to find her prayer book. There, amidst her favorite prayers, lay his photo.

For a second, she couldn’t bring herself to look at the faded image of his bright eyes. She felt as though that night she had cheated on him and the pain of her guilt was pungent. However, after her initial resistance eroded under the pressure of her need to see him again, she caressed with her eyes every line of that beloved face.

“No man compares to you, my arrogant fool,” she whispered with just a tiny stream of air running through, from her lungs to her throat.

She placed the opened book on her dressing table, leaving her hands free to proceed to take off her make up.

“How did I ever imagine that awful boor could be anything like you . . .” she thought, wiping off her tears with a cotton ball, “I mean, you can be a boor yourself at times, but that’s just the surface, whereas him . . . what an insufferable clown, talking about money, cars, and yachts the entire evening! I should have run away since he opened his mouth”.

As she looked at herself in the mirror, for a second that seemed to last an eternity, the man whose’ face she could not forget seemed to emerge from the darkness.

“And you let that idiot kiss you! I will never forgive you, Freckles!” a voice as deep and masculine as the one that hunted her dreams penetrated the silence, sounding like a cello vibrating in the silence of the night.

She looked at him, recognizing that cold glare in his eyes, blue as the sea in a stormy morning.

“Can you reproach me for trying to live again, dear Terry?” she retorted, looking into his eyes, half happy to have conjured his memory and half afraid of his reactions now that the ghost of his memory had decided to visit her again.

“But you made such a fuss when I tried to kiss you, and now you accept these dates, this man . . . are you truly trying to forget about me . . . about us?” the image in the mirror responded, still morose.

Candy lowered her eyes, dipping the cotton ball in cold cream to wipe the eye liner that was running down her cheeks, mixed with her own tears.

“Please, try to understand. I wish I could honestly explain to you what I felt then . . . after the May Festival . . . what your kiss truly meant for me . . . you have no clue of the many things I wish I had said to you . . . but it is too late . . . as for now . . . I must forget, yet I just can’t! I just can’t!” she thought, her ideas becoming a confused mixed of regrets, wistfulness, and frustration.

The image of his eyes on the mirror looked at her compassionately, communicating with her in that way he used to command so well, a wordless code she could understand. However, those looks that said “I’m with you . .  . I feel what you feel” only reinforced that connection that gave her pleasure and pain at the same time. Had it not been for the latter, she would have never wished it away.

“Why wouldn’t you release me, Terry?” she asked in almost a reproachful moan, “It is as though your hands had never released my waist, and my soul, that night at the hospital. What did you do to me? What sort of spell did you cast on me that not even time and my best efforts to forget can counter?” she questioned him in her thoughts.

“Well, perhaps you would get better results countering my so called spell if you found more acceptable replacements. By Saint George, Freckles, that joke of a man you picked tonight was outrageous! How can I forgive you for this offense?” the man on the mirror responded with a hint of a crooked smile curving his lips that did not disguise his reproachful intent.

“No, I won’t allow you to go there!” she replied in her thoughts, “You, arrogant fool! You know too well that you have no challenger in my heart. And I should know by now that a simple physical attraction cannot compare to the irresistible force of the passionate love that you, despite my good judgement, still inspire in me. But, please, please, try to put yourself in my shoes”.

“That is what you want from me now?” he asked wistfully.

“Oh Terry, I wish you could find the generosity to forgive my feeble attempts to find love somewhere else, in someone else, even if that one is not half the man you are”.

The face on the mirror seemed to soften, while she proceeded to undo the intricate hairdo Annie had helped her create for that evening.

“Don’t you see that I’m trying to live up to the promise I made to you that night but failing miserably at that? Today was yet another example of my constant failures”, she continued her apology.

“Perhaps you’re not trying hard enough . . .  perhaps you are bad a keeping promises”, the imaginary Terrence suggested with that challenging tone she knew so well.

Candy saw her curly mane now falling freely over her back and with a sigh she responded:

“I only wish you are far better at that than I will ever be, Terry. You’re happy with her, aren’t you?” she asked with a throaty voice.

The man in the mirror did not respond this time. Instead, he lowered his eyes.

“Don’t worry, Terry,” she talked to him, trying to engage him in that imaginary conversation once again, “All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy, even if I cannot see it with my own eyes,” the young woman said, with great honesty.

“Do you really want to see me happy? . . . Why didn’t you come to see me that time when you had that ticket?

She could hardly believe that he was reproaching her for that decision.

“I just . . . I just couldn’t do it” she mumbled, “You see, I can wish you the best, hoping that you two are happy together, but please, don’t ask me to witness it. Don’t ask me to see you from a distance, or even worse, up close and pretend you are nothing to me.”

This last avowal brought tears to her eyes again.

“You were everything to me . . .” he whispered, and the words were like daggers cutting her heart.

“Please, Terry, don’t say those things. You’re away, planning a wedding with another woman, and I stay here, watching this preposterous parade of men whose eyes do not shine as yours, whose smiles are opaque compared to the slightest twitch of your lips, whose voices do not ring in my ears before I fall asleep. . . how can I keep my promise when I have no heart to give to another because you, silly man that you are, forgot to return it to me?

His eyes saddened, full of concern for her.

“I’m sorry Freckles. Perhaps you need to create a new heart, a new you . . . to go on . . . or perhaps find happiness in a different manner . . . unless that you still hope that we . . .”

“No, let us not hope in vain. Shall we?” she said, shaking her head, while eyeing her long curls over her shoulders, “But you’re right. If I’m sick of this trial-and-error charade. I must stop it at once. I will create a new me, a new Candy . . . one that does not care anymore about finding love with a man by her side”.

And with this last resolution, Candy opened one of the drawers of her dressing table, extracting a pair of scissors. Before she could stop to consider what she was about to do, she turned on the table lamp next to her, grabbed one of her tresses, and cut it just beneath her ears. A few minutes later, a pool of blond curls flooded the dressing table and floor around the ottoman.

With tears still running on her cheeks, Candy looked at herself and said audibly:

“All right! No more senseless dates. This is me . . . Candice White Ardlay: Spinster!”

If Terry had truly been there to witness how the golden tresses he loved so much had been discarded so unceremoniously, he would have also wept with her.

Two months after this night . . . Susannah Marlowe passed away.