Children of the Ritz

Chapter Four

“And we’re here at Chin Toy’s,” said Margie into the receiver, “and we want you to come down. Yeah, right away. We have some wonderful news for you. No, I’m not kidding. I’d rather not tell you over the phone. Ma’s here with us. Hold the wire a minute. Here, you talk to him, Ma. He doesn’t think he can break away.”

Mrs. Haines stepped vigorously into the booth, crowding Margie out automatically by the very force of her presence.

“Hullo!” she bellowed into the mouthpiece.

“Ow!” said Dewey. “Go easy! that hurt.”

“Dewey lad, listen to me. Are you listenin’?”

“Sure I’m listening.”

“It’s your mother talkin’ to you this time,” she warned him.

“I know it’s you, Ma. Your sweet voice almost gave me shell shock.”

“In that case,” she directed dryly, “see that ye’re down here inside of the hour. We’re all waitin’ for you. We have a gra-and surprise—”

“I can’t, Ma. I told Margie to tell you.”

“Is it on account of the job? Or is it on account of one of those hivvy dates of yours?”

“It’s on account of the job, Ma. Honest it is.”

“Well, tell them ye’ve quit. Ye’re nobody’s chawffer from this day on. And see that y’ get here,” she concluded crisply. And as she came out of the booth, her face red from the close confinement, her maternal chin was still working majestically.

“Will he come?” asked Margie anxiously, hovering just outside the glass casing.

“Sure he will,” said her mother vigorously; “I told him to.” She seemed to swell with her own authority as she said it. And yet face to face with him she would be humbler than a dove. But Margie must never be allowed to suspect how in reality he lorded it over her. For he was a son and Margie was merely a daughter, and consequently there was all the difference in the world in her attitudes toward them.

And as Dewey at his end of the line hung up, faintly amused, he turned around to discover Angela leaning against the lintel of the door with her hands clasped behind her head.

“Pardon me,” he said mildly.

“Oh, that’s quite all right,” she taunted. “I happened to be inside there—” She indicated the other room by a negligent turn of the head, “and I couldn’t help wondering who the sweet young thing was that called you up.”

“It was my mother,” he said quietly.

She had been constantly on the offensive these last two days, persistent as only the young can be, with almost an undercurrent of hate in her adoration. While he, sometimes bored and at other times willing to meet her on her own ground, waited for the game to play itself out, never dreaming it meant anything more to her than an adolescent flirtation of the chocolate fudge sort.

Her brother Gilbert had them like that, he knew. Silly letters, valentines, snapshots passed back and forth, silly rendezvous in the sunlight and the moonlight, silly caresses, silly words and whispers, smirks and giggles; life to them was like a garden overrun with wild fragrant sweetpeas.

But Angela by now was definitely out of the chocolate fudge stage, without his realizing it. Because her hair was cut like a boy’s and because her hands were usually in her pockets was no sign that she did not know what she was doing. She knew exactly, in this case as in all others. She wanted to be amused, wanted it with desperate intensity. And a great fear was creeping on her now that the days of amusement were numbered. The bright golden cocoon that had been woven about her was breaking in pieces. The bottom was falling out of her life, had already fallen since the night of her talk with Lyle. She wanted the life of amusement to continue; she wanted pleasure desperately, as never before.

And meanwhile there was Dewey. The conquest was far from complete; no one knew that better than she did. And something within her stronger than herself, some inner greed or pride or vainglory, would never let her rest until she was sure of him. After — well, thinly veiled contempt would have the upper hand. She had never had occasion to notice it until now, tireless until she had what she wanted, then tiring almost at once. Cruel to look forward to.

She stood there in the doorway facing him, having just “tapped” the wire to listen to his conversation. He a chauffeur in the employ of her father. She despised herself.

“It was only my mother,” he repeated.

Angela smiled. “That was never your mother’s voice,” she said knowingly; “that was the voice of a girl my age. There’s an extension in the other room. I got on by mistake.”

“By mistake,” he echoed whimsically.

She smiled again. “Well, perhaps,” she admitted, “perhaps not.” He would be angry. It might take a minute or so for him to react, but he would be angry.

“Well, then, it was my sister you heard,” he agreed impatiently. “She spoke to me first. It was a private conversation, you know. At least it was meant to be.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with false humility.

He became tensely formal. “Will I be needed any more this evening? I’d like to go in to town.”

“You would?” she emphasized. “Well, hem, let me see. I think I would too. You may drive me with you.”

She paraded to the stairs, giving him a triumphant look over her shoulder. Under the circumstances Haines decided to drop the pretense of formality, which she had repeatedly disregarded whenever it suited anyway.

“I won’t,” he said in a low voice, “you’re not going.”

With one foot already on the lowest step Angela stiffened into immobility. “What’s that?” she cried, in undisguised astonishment. “What’s that you said?”

“I said I’m not going to take you,” he repeated.

She whirled about. “I’d just like to see you try and stop me!” she challenged. “Why, if I ever told my mother, she’d discharge you. What do you mean?”

“All your engagements have been canceled automatically,” he reminded her. “You’re expected to wait at least until the situation here is cleared up a little.”

“If I want to make further engagements,” she flared, “what business is that of yours? You’re still employed by me.” She ran hurriedly up the stairs, her say said. “See that you wait until I’m ready,” she called back.

“Angela,” said Lyle, opening the door, “what is all the noise out here? Mother has a headache,” she added, “she wants to see you a minute.”

“Be right back,” said Angela, continuing up to her own room.

She shut the door behind her and tiptoed to the window without putting on any of the lights. She looked out. The car was down there. The question was, would he wait? She went back and lit up the room, thoroughly and completely, even the lights under the old rose taffeta-petaled dolls. A tender rosiness diffused itself everywhere, the room became like an apple orchard in full bloom.

Angela, in a gigolo hat and a little purple silk suit, stood before three full length mirrors while she fastened one choker of beads after another around her throat. She finally decided upon a collarette of amethysts and crystal. She had never been in a gayer mood. “If he doesn’t wait for me,” she said to herself. “If he doesn’t wait for me.”

She nodded her head and ran out of the room, capturing a long narrow batik neck cloth from a little table as she flashed by. She tramped joyously down the stairs, humming under cover of the noise she made and resisting an inclination to slip backwards down the stair rail. Suddenly she remembered Lyle and tiptoed the rest of the way down in guilty meekness, arriving at the bottom undiscovered. She ran across the polished floor and as she neared the door slid on her heels. She had put her arms out before her to brace herself, when the door opened and Haines walked into them. They collided. He had to catch her to prevent her from falling. “That,” she remarked slangily, “was a lucky break.”

“You might have turned your ankle,” he agreed.

“You know I didn’t mean that,” she said. “You belong at the foot of the class.”

He laughed. “You talk,” he said cheerfully, “as though I were one of your school friends. Five minutes ago you reminded me I was employed by you or your mother, I forget which.”

She put her hand on his shoulder. “He’s mad,” she murmured, “because I insisted on coming.”

“Was it diplomatic,” he remarked, “to listen in on my conversation the way you did just now?”

“Where do you get some of those words?” she wanted to know. “That’s a mighty big word for a chauffeur. Now I ask you, now I ask you,” she mocked.

“Well, was it even friendly, if diplomatic’s too big a word for you?”

“It wasn’t friendly, certainly not,” she admitted. “Do you want to know what it was? It was jealousy.” She leered at him. “Je-e-ealousy.”

His eyes strained after the golden motes the beams of the headlights held suspended in mid-air.

“Yes. Oh, don’t try to act so innocent all the time. Some day some one will knock you off that pedestal of yours.”

He turned to her suddenly. “Did any one ever tell you,” he said, “that still waters run deep? Well, watch out.”

“Do you think I’m the kind that ever has to be told anything?” she flashed back. “You don’t get me at all.”

It was on his mind to say, “I don’t want you.”

“Where to?” he said wearily, when they had reached New York.

Angela looked surprised. “Who, me?” she wanted to know. “Why, I thought it’d be nice to meet your — ahem — sister.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” he assured her. “You’re afraid the appointment is with some one who isn’t my sister, and you have the gall to think you have a right to stop me.”

“Oh, well, if you want to put it that way,” she said carelessly. In reality she was delighted at what she considered her strategy.

“All right, we’ll go there,” he announced sullenly, giving the wheel a turn.

Chin Toy’s was on Seventh Avenue, near the Vanities. So close that on quiet nights you could hear the show music in the air, like some disembodied melody. But Saturday night was never a quiet night and this was it. Also Chin Toy’s had music of its own, brassy, blaring music that killed all competition. It was on the second floor, like most Chinese restaurants.

Mrs. Haines, like a pirate or a gypsy in her bright orange shirtwaist, sat alone by the window in a teakwood compartment. Before her, untouched, lay a bowl of rice, a bowl of chicken chow mein, and a teacup without a handle. Mrs. Haines was supremely disgusted. She sat with her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, looking out at the electric garter sign across the street. The third side of the teakwood partition had been left open, but it was effectually sealed by a compact mob of dancers who barely seemed to move, so wedged in were they. Even the waiters had to flatten themselves against the walls like shadows to get by. One of them, bolder than the rest, now ventured to approach the discontented Mrs. Haines, whether attracted by the color of her blouse or not it is difficult to say.

“You no like chick chow mein?” he gabbled excitedly.

She turned to him with a belligerent stare. “No,” she said definitely, “me no like.” She motioned with the backs of her hands. “Take um ’way. Take um ’way. Phooey!”

“What you like?” he persisted, gently insinuating a bill of fare before her eyes.

Mrs. Haines considered a moment, pulling at her chin. “Have ye got any pork chops with Brussels sprouts?” she said at last.

“Golly!” said the waiter involuntarily.

Dewey and Angela now appeared on the scene. They forced their way through the dancers toward where she sat, eliciting many unfavorable side remarks from those whose progress they had temporarily interrupted. He had Angela by the hand, her gigolo hat pushed down over one eye in the scuffle, and she staggered after him, the narrow hem of her purple suit clutching her about the knees too tightly for any but the shortest steps. High color was in her face from the long night ride, and a dimple pinched one cheek. She was adorable to look at.

Mrs. Haines’ face lit up at the sight of Dewey, and she forgot all about the terrible teacup without a handle which had been agitating her until now.

“What, all alone here?” exclaimed Dewey. “What doing? Aren’t you afraid of the heathen Chinee?”

“Margie is out on the floor with Gaffney,” his mother explained, “and I’m being poisoned here with slow starvation and with cups ye have to swallow whole to find out what’s in ’em.”

They kissed vigorously, as they always did, whenever and wherever they met. Angela found herself abnormally interested in watching every move they made.

“Ma, this is Miss Pennington.”

“How do ju?” A look of reverent awe spread over his mother’s easily read countenance. “Mr. Pennington’s daughter?” she asked him, round-eyed with amazement that this should happen.

Dewey laughed. “His youngest,” he told her.

“I’m glad to meet Dewey’s mother,” said Angela.

She was perfectly well aware that certain tabloid newspapers, the sort that a person like Mrs. Haines would be likely to read, had played up her father’s recent incident to the fullest extent. She had read a great many of the lurid and exaggerated details herself, out of sheer curiosity, had seen his bedroom window marked with an X on front page photographs, had been a little amused and intensely disgusted. But to thousands of people who believed that everything they read was nothing less than gospel truth, it was unquestionably real. Consequently Angela found herself in the position of being a near-celebrity in Mrs. Haines’ eyes, almost on a par, it would seem, with the young girl who had been adopted by a millionaire not long before.

Mrs. Haines, having studied Angela to the last detail, groped for a suitable topic of conversation. The most obvious immediately suggested itself to her.

“I been reading all ab—” she began.

“Sh, Ma,” cautioned Dewey tactfully. He turned to her. “Won’t you sit down, Angela?”

She sat down and removed her hat. “It’s all right,” she said frankly; “I know what you mean. I’ve read some of the articles myself about us. Isn’t it terrible?” She laughed good-humoredly.

“Poor dearie,” sighed Dewey’s mother sympathetically. “Let me see, was it chloroform he took or—”

“Ma!” repeated Dewey sharply.

Angela continued to laugh, at herself, at the world in general. She had come out for this precise purpose, to be amused, and she found it all as amusing as she could wish, the atmosphere, the people, and the manners. She turned her attention to the dancing that was going on, tapping her foot contentedly under the table.

“Bless me!” cried Mrs. Haines in a slightly lower voice, “I’m forgetting all about what I’m to tell you, Dewey. Think of it, boy! You can give up your job with them—” She gave Angela a quick look, but Angela was absorbed in what was taking place out on the packed floor. “—and buy yourself a taxi, or rent one of them filling stations where they sting you so much for gas—”

She would have gone on that way all night, but he interrupted with fierce intensity.

“Quick — where’s Gaffney!”

“He’ll be back when the music’s through.”

Dewey took her by the shoulders. His eyes snapped with pleasure. “Is that straight goods! Did my horse walk in?” he demanded wildly.

“Not walked in, ran in,” corrected his mother, jealous of the dignity of this legendary horse of theirs. “He won a race with the rest of them, the darlin’. Stop it, do ye want to tear a brand new four ninety-eight shirtwaist, you devil?”

“What was its name, for God’s sake,” he begged. “What was the horse’s name?”

But there she failed him. “I can’t remember for the life of me,” she admitted, hooking a finger to her teeth. “Was it now — no, it was somethin’ else—”

“Get Gaffney,” he said excitedly; “I’ve got to know.” He ran to meet them just as they were coming off the floor, the band having quieted down at last. Margie threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Dewey, isn’t it great!” she rejoiced. “I saw it with my own eyes this afternoon.”

Gaffney shook hands. “Whaddya know, eh?” he greeted him breezily.

“Come outside, will you?” Dewey said, linking arms with him. “Let’s have it, for the love of Pete.”

Margie returned to the table alone. At the sight of Angela, who was occupying her former seat, she paused uncertainly. Angela looked up.

“You’re Dewey’s sister, aren’t you?” she said affably. “You look like him, you know.”

“This is Miss Pennington, Margie,” volunteered Mrs. Haines.

“Pleased t’meetcha,” said Margie, sitting down opposite her. “Gee, that’s a swell necklace you’ve got on there.”

“Oh, this?” said Angela, more than ever amused but not daring to betray it. “Oh, it’s nothing, just a trifle.” She fingered it without self-consciousness, a thing Margie could never have done.

“Maybe it’s just a trifle,” echoed Margie, with a touch of hoarseness in her voice from too much dancing, “but I priced ’em at Macy’s and they weren’t anything like it; they wanted sixteen dollars for ’em. I said, who do I look like, Peggy Hopkins Joyce?”

“This isn’t from Macy’s,” said Angela innocently. “I don’t believe I’ve ever gone there.”

Mrs. Haines’ mouth dropped loosely open at this. “Never been to Macy’s, girlie?” she gasped. “Well, of all things!”

Margie chimed in. “Of course not, Ma, what did you think?” She couldn’t keep her eyes off the necklace, Angela noticed. These people were so deliciously ill-bred one could have forgiven them anything. “She’s dying to try it on,” she thought, “and I’ll make her ask me for it first.”

“It goes awfully well with that suit,” Margie remarked, as though she had read her thoughts. And then she said, “I wonder how it would look on me. Mind’f I try it on?”

“Oh, no,” said Angela, bored, reaching to the back of her neck and unfastening it. She handed it across the table to her new acquaintance. It caught the light and gleamed, rippling from her fingers like violet ice.

“It’s beautiful,” Margie murmured adoringly. “Look, Ma, isn’t it beautiful?”

“Here come my pork chops at last,” was all the practical Mrs. Haines had to say. “What took you so long?” she remarked as the waiter approached, grinning celestially. “I thought you got muscle bound or somethin’, I did.”

“Sh, Ma!” laughed Margie, throwing a hasty glance in Angela’s direction. Angela only smiled. “I think your mother’s a dear,” she reassured her.

Dewey and Gaffney came back. Dewey’s face was flushed and he kept putting the back of his hand up over his eyes, as though dazzled by the freak of luck that had befallen him.

“Poor kid,” exclaimed Margie in a sympathetic undertone to Angela, “he won fifty thousand dollars in a lick. Some shock. We should have broken it to him easier.”

“Still, I don’t see anything to grieve about,” remarked Angela. For the first time she understood what all the talk about the horse meant. Her chin drooped and she bit her lip. So he was to be on the other end of the seesaw, was he, going up as she went helplessly down. He, the man who had been her chauffeur a little while ago, who still was for that matter. Going up, up, into the golden glint of the sunlight that had been hers alone, breathing the free air she had known, while she went down into shadow and knew the bitterness of dust for the first time.

Dewey was standing by the table with his palms outstretched, gripping its teakwood edge, talking to them all but with eyes focused far ahead, out over the lights of the city that could be seen through the open window, eyes whose wildest dream had come true. “And they say there are no miracles,” he murmured.

“Don’t you believe it, sonny, me boy,” bawled his mother in a voice that carried above the roar of the jazz band and made people turn around to look at her.

“I can’t get over it,” said Dewey softly. “It’s happened this time. It may never have happened before, and it may never happen again, but it’s happened just this once — to me. To me.”

“Eat something!” commented his mother, a pork chop bone at her busy lips, and she pushed a dish of Brussels sprouts toward him with one hand. They smelled like a steam laundry. “What,” Mrs. Haines would have commented, “would you have them smell like — something they weren’t? Dandelions, for instance?”

Something suspiciously like tears of vain regret were forcing themselves to Angela’s eyes. She got to her feet abruptly.

“Where’s Angela going?” said Mrs. Haines with a familiarity bred of the new-born prosperity. She waved the mangled chop bone at her to indicate whom she meant.

“I’m going out to telephone,” Angela answered. “Be right back.”

She pushed her way around the crowded dancing space and found an alcove for ladies, fitted out with divans and shirred pink and gray lamp shades. A cheap incense lingered about the place from some previous fumigation, and the noise outside sounded unreal and far away, ghost music, as though it throbbed its way through many walls and doors before it could touch the consciousness of the living. She sank back against one of the cushioned lounges and shut her eyes. She needn’t have run away from them out there. The tears weren’t going to come after all; she wasn’t built that way, it would seem. But the feeling was there just the same. This was all so — so cheap. The lamps and the incense and that crowd out there. His sister was cheap, and what was her friend but a professional bookie? They fitted into this atmosphere perfectly, she recognized. Poor Angela had nibbled her own bait, was caught in her own trap.

She picked up the telephone and called her home. It wouldn’t be hers very much longer, she realized. They were already speaking of giving it up. The car would have to go, too. Paradise was crumbling. She could see it in the shape of big round golden dollars, rolling away like shining cartwheels and disappearing in all directions. What was that saying about “Over the hill to the poorhouse”? She had heard it once or twice, one of those ugly red flannel proverbs. But that was supposed to be when you were old. She was young yet. What right did such a thing—

A maid answered the telephone. The Japanese had left them already. Very clever, these Japanese.

“Marie? This is Miss Angela.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Angela,” said the maid, “they telephoned to say your father will be home tomorrow, some time during the day—”

“What did they say about him?” she asked eagerly. “Is he much better? Will he—”

“Oh, no. He’ll have to be watched very closely,” repeated the maid like a parrot. “He’ll be an invalid for weeks, maybe months. He’s not to have any business worries, the doctors say.”

“Oh, how horrible,” she answered faintly. Brown spots danced before her eyes. It really was all over, then, as far as they were concerned.

“Did you wish to speak to any one, miss?”

“No, never mind. Don’t say I rang up.”

She let the receiver fall into the hook and flung her head back against the cheap lounge. Her eyes narrowed to threadlike slits. She took out a tiny silver-laced handkerchief and held it tightly to her lips. No more expensive clothes, no more car, no more theaters, no more orchids in gold foil. Now she would cry, now, right now. Luxury was the most desirable thing in the world at the moment. It even outweighed love. How was she to do without it? In the intense quiet that suddenly reigned her sobs were like the cooing of a lovesick dove.

Outside the jazz band had stopped. Stunned by the noise it had lately made, the establishment seemed in a trance. The red velvet hangings parted and Margie Haines appeared, her merry face creased with laughter.

“Stay where you are,” she said over her shoulder; “you’re not coming a step further. My pan needs powdering.”

An indistinct murmur came from beyond the hangings, and the tip of a yellow oxford could be seen protruding underneath them.

“Sure, I’ll be right back,” answered Margie. “Ain’t my word as good as gold?” Her face dipped between the folds for a second, in what was evidently intended for a kiss of temporary farewell. Then she turned on her heel, humming loudly and gayly, and met Angela’s serious gaze.

“So this is where you’ve been keeping yourself,” she said cheerfully. “I thought you’d gone back on us.” She read distress in Angela’s eyes and considerately altered her mood. She rested a hand on her shoulder and bent over her solicitously. “What’s th’ matter? Got a headache, dear?”

Angela smiled wanly. “Sorta,” she said, trying to talk as much like Margie as possible.

“That’s too bad,” sympathized the warm-hearted Margie. “Want me to send out for a bromo seltzer?”

“Yeah,” replied Angela. She was beginning to enjoy all this. It was like a new game. At the same time it was her revenge.

Margie stepped to the curtains and parted them slightly with one hand. She addressed the person evidently lingering just outside. “Hey, good-looking, be useful as well as ornamental. Tell one of the waiters you want a headache powder and a glass of water.”

Again the reply was unintelligible except through Margie’s brisk retort. “No, but I ought to have, the way you stepped all over my feet a little while ago.” She came back and sat down beside Angela. Glowing with good humor, she informed her: “One thing that Gaffney fellow can’t do is dance. The sooner he realizes it the better. I think I’ll take my shoes off long as I’m in here.”

Once this was done there was no place else to put her stockinged feet except across Angela’s lap, which she did, remarking, “ ’F it bothers you just say so.”

Angela, however, preferred subtler tactics to rid herself of the unwelcome burden. She tickled one of Margie’s soles with her fingernail. Margie bounced to her knees and shimmied irrepressibly.

“Ooh!” she squealed, “that sends cold shivers up and down my spine. Ah, don’t; that’s not fair.”

Suddenly they threw their arms about each other and embraced, in token of mutual confidence and loyalty.

“You’re a sweet kid,” said Margie.

“I’m wild about — about Dewey,” Angela admitted, hiding her face on her new friend’s shoulder.

“I’ll help you all I can,” Margie promised, wondering what any one could see in her brother.

“You can have the necklace,” breathed Angela.

“Oh!” squeaked Margie ecstatically, “can I? It’s a darling!” Her hands fluttered joyously about her own neck, arranging and rearranging the cut crystals. “Oh, baby,” she sighed contentedly. “This’ll knock Mamie Callahan’s eye out.”

A disembodied hand bearing a glass of water forced its way abruptly through the curtains that screened the entrance to the alcove. “Here’s the seidlitz,” a muffled voice informed them.

“Gee, I’d forgotten about it!” laughed Margie, putting on her shoes after having breathed heavily on the paste buckles to polish them. She brought Angela the glass of water and dissolved the powder in it. It sizzled, like beer.

Angela made a face. “Ough, it’s nasty.”

“Finish it. Didn’t you ever taste one before?”

“No,” said Angela, “I don’t believe I want to either.”

She emptied the rest of it into a potted plant that stood at her elbow and put the empty glass down. “There,” she laughed, “my head feels much better already. How much d’you want to bet that rubber tree dies before morning?”

“Oh, you!” grinned the broad-minded Margie, flapping a knowing hand at her. “It’s dead already, or why would they bury it in all that dirt?”

The jazz recommenced, whipped to a frenzy by the hot-headed players. One could feel rather than see every one getting up and pushing back chairs in their haste to be out on the floor.

“Does zat make your headache feel worse?” asked Margie. “I should think it would.”

Angela shook her head. “Clears it. Makes it feel better.” She winked provocatively.

Margie’s gay laughter rang high above the racket they were making outside. They walked out with their arms about each other’s waist, discussing matters of vital import.

“I’m going to get an orchid organdie to match this necklace,” Margie was saying. “It’ll go grand.”

“Don’t bother,” Angela replied, “I have one home I’ll let you have. Only it isn’t organdie, it’s georgette.” She was thinking of one she had kicked across the room one evening in a fit of temperament because of a cigarette burn she had found on it.

“So help me Hannah,” said Margie, giving her a squeeze, “you are a jewel!”

The dancers, at all conceivable angles, moved by in front of them, half turning this way and half turning that way, dipping and ducking and bobbing up again, wheeling and prancing and shaking like leaves.

“Stay here,” Margie murmured, “I’ll send him to you.” She watched for an opening, then insinuated herself between two couples rapidly closing in on one another. In a moment the crowd had swallowed her up. Angela stood there, quite taken by the novelty of Margie’s personality. Whether or not the effect would last was another matter.

The music stopped and all the people stood still. Their arms dropped from one another’s shoulders, but they remained face to face, not talking, not doing anything, just waiting for it to begin over again. Where before there had been movement, fantasy, a jostling and mincing of feet, there was a cessation of all life. Thirty or forty statues stood there in the middle of the room, paired off. Then jazz descended once more, brought down in full blast from mid-air apparently, since it seemed to have neither beginning nor end. Arms sought shoulders again and they all started off together on the same note, which was very badly split by the way.

Dewey was at Angela’s side now, comely and very hard not to like, especially when one was not used to denying oneself one’s little fondnesses.

“Oh, there you are,” he purred. “You’ve been away a long time. You weren’t offended at anything, were you? Come on back.”

“Not just yet. Are you a good dancer, Dewey?”

“Not — very,” he said hesitatingly.

In her inexperience she had thought all boys and men were, since the ones she had met invariably turned out to be when put to the test. She didn’t give them very much credit for it at that, since all they had to do was lead, and consequently they knew exactly where they were going and all they had to do was see that they got there in fox trot time.

But when it came to Dewey she found out that he had meant what he said when he said it. He was not an expert dancer. He pinned his faith to a straight unadorned walk, and when they came to corners he went out of step each time, and looked up at the ceiling for inspiration. She began to wish the room were round instead of square. But he was very punctilious about not crushing her feet, and she was so good herself — it was like second nature to her — that they had no difficulty other than the monotony of his leadership and the frightful impasses they got into in each of the four corners.

“I’ll have to coach you some time,” she said frankly.

“What for?” he answered her, equally frank. “I don’t care enough about it.”

She started to say something and changed her mind.

The band stopped short again, with a tum-tiddy-tum-tum.

“There,” she said, “it’s all over, if it’s such a bother to you.”

“I didn’t say anything about it being a bother. It’s a pleasure when I’m with any one like you. But I never dance—”

“Oh, forget it,” she shrugged; “let’s go down and sit in the car.”

“Let’s go back first — I think they’ve ordered something for you.”

“Oh, what if they have?” she said, more and more out of sorts. “Who said I was hungry? I’m going home I guess.”

“Now, come on, won’t you?” he coaxed. “We can’t leave them like this.”

“Too bad about them,” she said under her breath.

She surrendered, feeling he would have let her go alone had she insisted. She took him by the arm and they went back to the table, which was now loaded with bottles of ginger ale and dishes of smelly Chinese food. Margie and Gaffney were allowing it to stand there and get cold, so taken up in each other were they, staring into each other’s eyes with their chins almost touching and their lips very anxious to.

Mrs. Haines was sipping a bottle of red soda water through a straw,

“Why aren’t you eating the foo yung?” Dewey wanted to know.

His mother took the straw from her lips long enough to remark, “If it tastes as nasty as it sounds, who wants to take a chance?”

“Which is Angela’s?” he said, pushing her chair in for her. She gave him a grateful look over her shoulder. He rapped his sister familiarly on the arm, telling her to “Snap out of it, daughter, this is no park bench.” The sarcasm of this managed to penetrate Margie’s roseate daydreams somehow.

“Who are you calling daughter?” she wanted to know, “I’m this sweetheart’s daughter,” she said, putting her head affectionately onto her mother’s shoulder.

“Get out!” said Mrs. Haines heartily, not one to be cajoled, even by her own offspring. The vicious red of her bottle had descended to a faint pink ring around the bottom by now. She put it aside with the sigh of an epicure.

“Eat your noodles, Angela,” remarked the clownish Gaffney.

Angela treated him to a cold, biting look, the like of which he had never experienced before, one that a girl like Margie could never have given him. His familiarity made Angela furious. She felt like asking him by whose leave he had dared address her at all, but then she caught Margie’s eyes anxiously fixed on her and softened into a smile. At her, by no means at Gaffney. She liked her. Margie’s own smile quickly answered hers.

Margie and Gaffney got up to dance again, at his suggestion, not hers. As they left the table she threw Angela a humorously terrified look, and pretended to limp. Gaffney, turning around to see if she were following him, caught her in the act. “What’s trouble, honey?” he said, blind with devotion.

“I... I stepped on something,” she answered hypocritically.

Mrs. Haines began to doze off after her feast, her chin dropping lower and lower, with occasional jerks and temporary readjustments that did little good.

Angela pushed her plate aside indifferently.

“You didn’t eat a thing,” Dewey accused, putting his arm protectingly over the back of her chair.

“Did you hear him call me by my first name before?” she babbled indignantly. “I want that to stop!”

“Oh, he didn’t mean anything by it. That’s just a way of his. He’s an ace.”

“Well, I’m Miss Pennington to him, ace or not. I want that understood.”

“Shall I tell him for you?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Of course not. But if it happens again, I will.”

He had to laugh. “Don’t get so excited, Miss Pennington,” he whispered in her ear.

“With you it’s a different matter altogether,” she said seriously.

“I can’t figure you out,” he said; “you have me baffled.” For the first time the expression in his eyes matched hers. It was Angela’s hour at last, here in all this noise.

“You say it as though you mean it, but are you sure you do?”

She laughed scornfully. “Why so cautious? Why can’t you trust me if I can trust you? Haven’t I given you proof enough already? What have you to lose that I haven’t?”

He bit his lips and didn’t answer.

“Do I know where you stand?” she cried heatedly. “Hasn’t every move come from my direction? I’ve taken the step forward when it was you should have taken it. And at my age, believe me, pride counts for more than at any other time in life. Sometimes I might have been talking to a wooden image. If you think very many others would have had the patience— And yet you seemed to care.” She relapsed all at once into the vernacular, a sign of forgiveness if he had only known it. “Oh, Dewey, I’m so sore at you!”

“Angela,” he said, patting the back of her hand, “you’re sweet. Any one can tell that. All they have to do is look at you. I want to kiss you all the time just looking at you because your mouth is shaped that way, but I know better than that and I don’t.”

“I know you don’t,” she said wistfully, “and I can’t see why, when I want you to.”

“It’s because you’re playing a game,” he informed her with a decisive nod. “And it’s a game you’ll go on playing all your life. I’m the first, because you’re still a kid yet—” He saw her smile at that, as though she thought of herself in terms of a woman of thirty. “—but it’ll be the same with others as time goes on. Did you ever hear of Narcissus?”

“Narcissus who?” she said facetiously.

“Never mind Narcissus who,” he replied; “you know more about those things than I do, but I’m just reminding you. Narcissus saw himself in a pool of water and fell in love with what he saw there. The difference between you and Narcissus is that he didn’t know it was his own reflection he had seen, but you will in a little while. Every time a new face comes along you’ll fall in love with yourself all over again.”

“Are you trying to make me believe I’ll turn out to be one of those vampires on leopard skin couches you see in the movies?” she said cuttingly. “Please be a little sensible. I have no ambitions whatever along those lines. Only the feeble-minded could be intrigued—”

“Nobody said anything about feeble-minded vampires. Vampires aren’t sincere and they know it. But you think you are, that’s the worst part of you. I can read it in your heart. You’ll go in for it strong while it lasts, and then it’ll be all over with. And all the time you’re just playing a game, in love with your own reflection in some poor bird’s eyes.”

“And how,” she said haughtily, “do you happen to know all this, Hawkshaw?”

“I’ll tell you how it is with me,” he said. “I believe every mother’s son of us has a gift given us as we’re born into the world. Some are born handsome and some are born lucky, and some are born so that they can sing. I haven’t any of those. But I have a funny little catch or latch or indicating valve some place down in here—” he put his hand to his chest, “and it won’t let me go very far wrong.”

“Life must be very uncomplicated,” she remarked sarcastically, “for you.”

“It doesn’t work for horses,” he told her, “or for cars; it wouldn’t tell me which road to take if I lost my way out in Orange County. But when it comes to getting stuck on some one this thing seems to work overtime.

“Three years ago I was in love with a girl that lived in our old neighborhood. She was the belle of the block and as popular as sin, and with it all she seemed to care more for me than for any of the others. I was just starting to work for Mrs. Craig at that time and I didn’t have much money, but I wanted to get married right away. And when I told her she seemed as willing and as tickled as I was about it. So we planned a little longer and we planned a little longer, and there wasn’t anything to stop us, but that was the first time I noticed this.

“Something in my heart wouldn’t quite open to her the way my mind and all my hopes did. And it would keep saying, ‘Don’t get too set, now. Don’t get too set.’ But I didn’t pay any attention to it and I went ahead and got terribly set on her, and at the last moment she walked off and married some one else, some politician’s son. I was cut up over it for about eighteen months, but one thing I’ve learned: that the day this little catch opens wide is the day for me, and all I hope is it doesn’t pick some one like Gloria Swanson who wouldn’t listen to reason.”

They each laughed a little at this last thought, though her laughter was without appreciation and his without conviction. Then a long silence fell between them, a silence that the very noises about them seemed to emphasize more than ever. Dewey stared gloomily straight before him, to where the polished teakwood cut across his line of vision. Angela’s eyes were fixed on the tablecloth; she fluttered her fingers at the edge of the table as though it were a piano keyboard. Mrs. Haines slept profoundly, if a trifle raucously. Neither waltz nor fox trot nor even the stamp of the Black Bottom sufficed to disturb her slumbers.

But buried under the heavier tones of the music, the Sh! Ch! of countless mincing feet caressed the air and gave it a drowsy quality that the pistachio-green and jade-blue jumbo lanterns did nothing to dispel. For it was midnight now, and the direct overhead lights had been put out, and the saxophones grew muted under gold and silver derbies, that were neither derbies nor gold and silver, but only looked that way.

Angela had been reproaching Dewey, arguing, pleading with him, for the past six or seven minutes without a single syllable having escaped her lips. She turned and spoke to him at last.

“And won’t it let you — let you — care for some one?” In the half light her eyes were melted blue honey.

There was a big azure lantern over their heads the size of a pumpkin, and there was a little apricot shaded table lamp that lit her throat and chin from below, and there was music, and her mouth was one of those mouths — oh, you know the mouths I mean.

“Sure it will let me care; it better not try to stop me this time,” said Dewey, kissing her. Only once, but very lengthily, not at all like the first time out in the car. All of which goes to show what a lot of difference just a blue lantern and a snatch of tune can make, especially when one is eighteen, or, for that matter, twenty-six.

“It isn’t my not caring my heart’s worried about,” he told her, “it’s your not caring.”

“Tell your old heart,” she said, “to let my heart do all the worrying from now on.”

“Tell your old heart,” said he, “there isn’t going to be any worrying.”

“My heart has heart trouble,” she admitted. “I think you’re to blame.”

Presently, somewhere in the dim background, a waiter dropped a trayful of dishes, and the crash woke Mrs. Haines up at last.

“Dewey,” she said, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Right under me own eyes too!”

He only laughed, “You had no business to wake up right then,” he told her.

“I should time myself to suit ye, eh?” she said scornfully. “At that rate I’d be asleep here another two hours yet. Where’s Margie? I’m going home.”

“Margie must have left quite a while ago,” he answered, “unless she’s still dancing. I haven’t seen her.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she agreed ironically; “ ’tis no wonder, at the rate you were going.”

“Ma!” he bleated.

“Ma,” piped Angela after him.

“Save us,” exclaimed Mrs. Haines, “so that’s the way the wind blows.”

Dewey and Angela turned to look at each other as though the same thought had occurred to them simultaneously. “Why didn’t we think of it sooner?” they seemed to say. “It’s a good idea.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Angela; “it’s getting late.”

“Do you want to stay overnight with Ma?” Dewey asked.

His mother was trying to signal him that there wasn’t room enough, but he persisted in ignoring her.

“You’d be perfectly welcome, you know. Wouldn’t she, Ma?”

It didn’t require a magnifying glass to discover the dismay on Mrs. Haines’ candid face. “Well, now—” she said hesitantly.

“Thanks a lot,” interrupted Angela, “I can’t tonight. Let’s be going, Dew. This place’ll chuck us out pretty soon.”

“Dew” sounded good. They exchanged one of those quick glances of mutual appreciation the young dote on. Mrs. Haines, ever picturesque, was twining a skinny feather boa around her plump throat.

“Where’d you get that rat?” her son wanted to know, eyeing it dubiously.

“Hold your fresh tongue,” she said good-naturedly, “Mrs. Sims lent it to me. I’m worried about Margie,” she announced a little later, preceding them down a flight of sticky marble stairs to the sidewalk, her voice echoing cavernously behind her, as it always did. “Wait’ll I lay my hands on her. She won’t be in such a hurry to go gallivantin’ off next time.”

“She’s with Gaffney; it’s all right,” Dewey said, his arm about Angela’s shoulder.

“Fat lot of sense the both of them have put together,” came the reply.

“Mind if I drop Ma at the flat?” he wanted to know, in the special tone of voice they were already reserving for one another.

“Of course not,” Angela said, wishing his mother at the bottom of the sea, and what’s more, securely fastened there.

Mrs. Haines gathered her skirts about her and settled herself in the rear seat. She was looking at the buildings on the other side of the street with somewhat of a settled melancholy, as though her thoughts were elsewhere.

“Sad on such a night, Ma?” rallied Dewey as he got in next to Angela. “Our worries should be over.”

“Ye bring children up,” replied Mrs. Haines without looking at either of them, “and when they’re of an age to be some comfort to you they run off the first thing and leave you in the lurch.”

“Who’s leaving you in the lurch?” he demanded in astonishment.

“Who’s running off?” Angela wanted to know with a touch of defiance.

Mrs. Haines heaved once or twice. Her tears began to flow without visible effort or undue agitation.

“I can see it in your faces,” she sniffed. “You don’t have to tell me. I can feel it coming on.”

“That’s more than I can,” thought Angela. “Maybe she’s right at that.”

“Now, Ma,” said Dewey, starting the car ever so gently.

“Ye’re just like cruel young birds, the lot of you,” his mother proceeded.

Dewey whistled a few bars with calculated inattention.

“It’s just self-pity,” cautioned Angela in a subdued voice. Whether he heard or not she couldn’t tell. A moment later she was sorry she had said it; it wasn’t considerate, she realized. But he seemed to pay no attention.

They shot up Amsterdam Avenue, with its miles of six and eight story flats all looking exactly alike in the dark, the window front of an occasional all-night delicatessen or lunch room bleaching the sidewalk in front of it. Dewey stopped at the doorway he knew so well, and hopped out and held the door for his mother as though she were the grandest dowager that ever rode in an electric barouche.

“She isn’t in yet, the devil,” said Mrs. Haines, glancing up at the dark windows. The moon reflected itself on one of the panes like an aura of powdery frost.

She held out her hand abruptly. “Good night, girlie.” She was deliciously arresting, in her box-coated suit with the rag of fur clinging to her throat.

Angela leaned out of the car and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, Ma. See that she gets upstairs, Dewey.”

The black doorway swallowed them. Angela could hear his mother saying, “I know this hallway by heart, no matter how dark it is.”

Angela sat and waited. Presently the moon’s ghost vanished from the window up there and a bar of electric light, jauntily yellow, showed at the bottom of the drawn shade. A minute later Dewey came out of the door, having descended three steps at a time. “I nearly broke my neck in there on the way down,” he related.

“They ought to leave a light at the landing,” she protested.

“It isn’t their fault. The kids steal the bulbs for ammunition when they have war games. I remember I used to do it myself.”

“She’s waving to you,” said Angela, looking up. The shade had been lifted out of the way and Mrs. Haines’ famous cherry-red blouse occupied its place. She raised the sash and leaned out.

“Good night to ye.” Her voice seemed to echo for blocks. “Let me hear from you, Dewey,” she pleaded. “Don’t keep away too long, now, will you?”

“She’ll have the whole neighborhood aroused,” Angela chuckled.

They waved to her and started off down the street, but when they had gone only a short distance Dewey parked the car again. He turned to her and said: “Do you want to go home now, Angela?”

“No,” she answered.

She thought of her mother’s tearful sighs and deeply ringed eyes of the past few days, out there, over the thread of water to the east. The moon seemed to hang directly over it. Her old Long Island home. The thought made her smile wryly.

Her father an invalid for months to come most likely, house-ridden, a shadow of his former self in a dressing gown, eating his heart out with the knowledge that he was ruined, that something had gone wrong and he had failed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dollars, dollars, always dollars. Her sister’s future tainted, and more irreparably than any of them could have foreseen, by the lurid publicity that the sensation-mongering tabloid papers had given the affair. Her brother already a disappointment in many respects, young as he was, unfitted for responsibility, and now faced with the problem of striking out for himself in a society in which male orchids were as numerous and as foolhardy as female orchids.

And Angela herself? Serene until now in the consciousness that she had been made for furs and musical perfume bottles, that her destiny was to tread on petals of roses and to snatch at the stars from a tall tower set high above the world, she had proceeded nonchalantly on her way. As a little girl she had always felt that God had made her in one of His very best humors, on one of His very best days, as a dessert that came after every one else had already been fashioned. And as a big girl she wasn’t very different from the little girl she had been. Now for the first time her life had been intruded upon. Shame, mediocre circumstances, illness. Three ghouls. No more gayety with these around, no more extravagance so dear to the heart. No, she didn’t want to go home. She no longer felt as though she had any home. Her heart kept saying no in hushed intensity. Miles away from her own world, sitting there in the car, she buried her dry eyes in her two hands and leaned forward.

She felt him gently disengage her fingers, she felt his kiss upon her cheek once more. Her head sought his shoulder, finding a resting place if only for a little while.

“Angela, I do love you. You must be the one. My heart knows it.”

“Dewey, don’t leave me,” she murmured, “will you, Dewey?”

“I won’t leave you,” he said, brimming with a sympathy that was utterly misplaced.

The car moved a little forward. There was a pause again.

“Shall we get married, Angela?”

“Dear,” she said gratefully, and they went ahead, straight ahead this time, out of the long narrow city into the neighboring state of Connecticut where marriages are easy. And somewhere beyond lay Canada, if they went far enough, and beyond that the North Pole, and on the other side of the Pole, where there was sunlight just at present, the world started all over again. As though they cared.

They were married toward five in the morning up in Greenwich by a justice of the peace whom they had unmercifully got out of bed.

Their wedding breakfast, eaten standing up at a lunch counter at six o’clock surrounded by Italian workmen, consisted of fresh coffee and June strawberries that had been kept soulfully on display all night under an electric bulb in a glass case. Angela and Dewey brushed paper napkins across their lips, got back in the car, and headed for New York, the New York that drew them like a magnet no matter where they were.

As they drove down the quiet street, lined with trees whose tops were beginning to turn bluish in the dawn, she reached in back of her and slipped the square beveled-edged mirror out of the pocket that held it across from the rear seat.

“I want to see just what kind of a blushing bride I make,” she exclaimed, bending over it.

At that moment the car lurched as Dewey turned sharply at right angles onto the main road, the mirror fell between her feet, and when she looked it was nothing more than six or eight splintered knives of glass. In the face of this evil presage they turned stricken eyes upon each other, and Angela pressed her hands to her cheeks in choked dismay.