Children of the Ritz

Chapter Six

Angela got up from the table, leaving her melon untasted upon its mound of shaved ice, and went into the next room. Dewey half rose as if to follow, then sank back to resume the newspaper he had been staring at.

Angela’s picture was on the front page, and underneath it, in a small circle, his own. He recognized it as a photo he had had taken more than three years ago in connection with his driver’s license, very unprepossessing, showing him wearing a cap and looking like a gangster. “All For Love,” was the cryptic heading.

He tossed the paper aside and opened another. “Society Bud Weds Family Chauffeur” stared at him in huge black lettering across the face of the page, which in this case happened to be a pale pink. The same picture of himself was featured, only Angela this time was shown in a riding habit standing beside her horse. Underneath he read: “Bride’s Father Prostrated. Love Birds in Seclusion.”

A third daily he picked up shrieked: “Sensational Love Match,” and spoke of them as “the runaway pair.” There was a great deal to the effect that “youth calls to youth” and “Cupid will not be denied,” and a long interview with Margie Haines was printed, quoting her as saying, among copious other things, “I know Angela intimately well. She is a dear, sweet girl and we all think the world of her. This necklace I have on now was given to me by her. I am sure she and my brother were meant for each other. I had that feeling all along, and was in the confidence of both of them. I think a girl should follow where her heart leads her to, don’t you?”

The following day, incidentally, she received seven proposals by mail, including one from a Greek.

Dewey stood up clutching the paper tightly in one hand and almost upsetting the breakfast taboret in his excitement. He went in to show it to Angela. She was standing at the window, peering out through the closely drawn curtains.

“The sidewalk down there is jammed with people waiting for us to put in appearance,” she said. “Why can’t they go home and mind their own business? To-day’s going to be worse than yesterday — they’re starting earlier. Oh, Dewey, I wish we were out of New York!”

“I could kill that sister of mine,” he said bitterly, handing her the paper. “She ought to have more sense than to break out in print at a time like this. The next thing you know, Ma will be airing her views on marriage in the Police Gazette.”

Angela threw it down without reading it. “I guess she thought it was too good an opportunity to miss. I’d give anything to know how the blamed thing leaked out in the first place.”

“Most likely that maid of yours at the house spilled it to the first reporter that came along.”

“I forgot to tell you,” said Angela, “she disappeared the day after we were there, and so did a valuable emerald ring of Mud’s. That’s gratitude for you. As though we haven’t troubles enough!”

“Who told you?” he wanted to know.

“Lyle mentioned it over the phone. She rang up late in the afternoon, just before we had the telephone service disconnected. She wanted to let me know they’re in town, stopping at a quiet hotel on Central Park West until the storm blows over. She was so worried that some one might be listening in that she insisted on our speaking French to each other over the wire. She said the place out there was beseiged by reporters. They had to send the car out in one direction while they sneaked out the back and piled into a taxi. Imagine, my poor father just out of a hospital!”

“The public sure take the cake,” commented Dewey disgustedly, “when it comes to losing their heads over something. To-day it’s us. What’ll it be to-morow?”

“Look at them,” she said with bated breath, “they’re as thick as flies.” She turned to him and her hand crept up the side of his face, silk fingered. “And all because my father had a lot of money not so long ago and you drove his car. This crazy world. Kiss me, dear,” she murmured almost inaudibly. “We should care.”

But Dewey, holding her close to him, peered through the curtains at the crowd of sensation seekers waiting hour after hour in the street below and shook his head mistrustfully. “Other fellows spend their honeymoons alone with their wives. I spend my honeymoon with six million people sizing me up night and day and reporters sitting all over the bed.”

She insisted on going out later in the day. She came out of her room drawing on her gloves and met his surprised stare with the calm observation: “Might as well make a break now as any other time.”

“You’re not going out, are you?”

“Why not? Most of them have gone by now. I just looked.”

“But, darling, you’ll get mobbed in no time. You ought to know this city by now.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said; “no one will recognize me.”

“Pull your hat down well over your face,” he suggested, doing it for her.

It irritated her somehow. “Leave it!” she fairly screamed at him. “What do you want me to look like, a fright?”

He had never heard her like that before. His eyes widened and he stood staring at her.

“It’s my nerves,” she said gloomily, after a slight pause, “and these pastel cloches smear so easily; they show every finger mark. I’m sorry,” she said a moment later.

He murmured something about understanding how she felt and that there was no need to apologize to him, ever.

“I’m not,” she said candidly. “If I had known how it was going to turn out I never would have gone through with the thing.”

She hesitated, and bit her lip.

“More papers were sent up while you were inside,” he said, indicating two armchairs full of them. “The later editions are worse than the earlier ones.”

“I bet there isn’t a vaudeville show in town that won’t crack wise about us to-night,” she sneered, picking out a pattern on the carpet with the tip of her shoe. “I wish another war would break out and give them something else to think about. Well, I’m going out for a little. I’ve been cooped up in these rooms long enough.”

“Don’t you think I’d better go with you?” he asked anxiously.

“The two of us together would never get by,” she told him. “No, not on your sweet life. I wish I could have a detective along with me, though.”

“That’s a horrible idea,” he remarked, screwing up his eyes.

“Well, it’s a whole lot better than being mangled.”

She got as far as the door. She studied the faceted knob for a minute or two. “Oh, and by the way,” she said, “I was thinking, when is my ring going to be ready? I feel lost without it.”

“It isn’t even ordered yet,” he admitted. “I want to wait until the shouting dies down. If they ever catch me going near a jeweler, can’t you picture the headlines to yourself? ‘Sweetie Buys Diamond Ring.’ ”

“Our love,” said Angela slowly, putting an arm about his neck and lilting on her toes, “is above diamonds.”

“Absolutely,” he answered, kissing her in the middle of the word so that the pronunciation was flattened out against her lips.

“Be careful, dearest, won’t you?” he pleaded. “If you’re not back here by five I’ll call the police reserves out.”

She laughed, her lower lip drawn gayly down into a bright V. “Can I have some money?” she said, pounding her fist behind her.

He slipped his hand inside the lapel of his coat, brought out his wallet and handed her two twenty dollar bills. She looked at them and kept her hands resolutely behind her.

“I asked you for money,” she said, laughing more than ever, “not car fare. Put it away.”

His brows went up and he puckered his mouth humorously.

“How high does it have to go before it stops being car fare — to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, there’s car fare ’way out to Frisco, you know.”

“Well, how much do you count on getting, little Jesse James?”

“Five hundred,” she said calmly, adding: “You shouldn’t put me in a position where I have to ask you for it like a servant girl.” The most remarkable part of this was he could tell she was perfectly serious about it.

“You really want five hundred?” he said in amazement. “Talk about Frisco, that would get you to Honolulu!”

She stood facing him squarely. “That’s what I asked for, isn’t it?” she reminded him. “And do I have to have a geography lesson with it?”

“I haven’t that much with me in cash. Will a check do?”

“Why not?” she said pleasantly, her hands clasped demurely before her.

He sat down at the desk and scratched out a check. Then he dried it by waving it slowly up and down. It was like a red rag to a bull as far as Angela was concerned. She could hardly wait until she had her paws on it. Then suddenly she discovered something. It was made out for two hundred and fifty. She stuffed it angrily inside her lizard-skin bag.

“You’re positively insulting,” she said, and went out slamming the door.

She took a taxi and went about from place to place, shopping in the places where she had always shopped in the days before the present catastrophe. In most of them she was already known, and the slight current of added excitement her visit created was kept discreetly veiled. Other women, their attention drawn to her by the whispered remarks of the shop people, would turn and slyly look at her over their shoulders, nothing more. One mannequin in a fashionable modiste shop, who had known her almost since her finishing school days, summoned up courage enough to remark as she ambled past and around her:

“Poor dear. Isn’t it dreadful the way some people are!”

Angela gave her a wan smile of recognition. “Things could be worse,” she answered, fingering an edge of the metallic tissue the model was displaying. “Not much, I’ll admit, but still they could be.”

“Look at that fat thing over there,” remarked the mannequin, revolving gracefully in a complete circle, “staring at you through her lorgnette. You could have her arrested for doing that.”

Angela looked up quickly. The woman immediately pretended to be absorbed in the gown on display.

“Did you see that?” laughed the mannequin. “She wasn’t quick enough.”

“Baby elephant,” murmured Angela vindictively.

Unfortunately, wind of her presence in the establishment had got abroad in some way or other, so that when she came out through the heavy revolving glass door she found the sidewalk solidly banked with people who were doing their best to peer through the glass show cases into the interior. The doorman of the modiste shop, with the aid of a policeman, had managed to keep a narrow lane open for her to the taxi that was waiting at the curb, but several young women had merely used the cab as a stepping stone to get a better view of her and were standing on it, their necks craned above the rest of the crowd.

“Are you really Angela Pennington?” a young thing chewing gum wanted to know, and a mother in the background lifted her five-year-old child above every one’s shoulders, remarking plaintively, “My little girl wants to see her.”

A hand reached out and pulled one of the tassels from Angela’s wrap-around. “To remember you by!” said a voice.

Angela screamed and darted toward the taxi, her cheeks white with fright. The starter held the door open for her, crowding a number of young women off the running board. One of them turned her ankle and screamed. Angela scurried into the cab, sobbing convulsively, and tried to draw the shades, but they flew stubbornly back. The crowd came milling after her, wedging the machine in. Hundreds of curious, blank faces stared in through the window at her. Faces without pity, emotionless. It was agonizing.

“Is this your husband?” a small boy asked, indicating the driver. A laugh went up on all sides at that, a laugh that rang in Angela’s ears for months and years afterward. She hid her face in the crook of an arm and the car started at last, nosing its way out through the packed throng, who were being driven off by the threatening clubs of no less than three patrolmen by this time.

It was a very different Angela who returned to the sanctuary of the hotel. Dewey, sitting in the inner room at the desk, going over the bills that were already beginning to flock in, heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” he said, without raising his head.

Their tasteful little salon was suddenly inundated with people. The gray plush of the rugs disappeared under countless feet.

Dewey jumped up so suddenly that he upset the chair. Angela was brought in between two plump, stylishly dressed women, her eyes half shut, her skin the color of the big pearls in her ears. Voices were heard clamoring, “Get some aromatic spirits of ammonia.” “Give her whisky.” “Loosen her clothing.”

“Angela!” he gasped, his face stricken instantly almost as white as hers. He ran to her, bending his knees to stoop to her face.

“Your wife became hysterical in the lobby downstairs,” they told him.

Her lips quivered. “Dewey, make them go away.”

They sat her on the edge of the bed, and one of the stout women solicitously raised her feet from the floor and unstrapped her slippers for her.

“Don’t you think you ought to have a doctor?” she said, turning to Dewey.

A bell boy, at some one’s suggestion, had brought up a cup of hot tea. The two bediamonded matrons sat on either side of her, one chafing her hands reassuringly, the other giving her sips of the tea.

“Poor child,” they cooed, “it’s pitiful.”

Angela, hearing them, had another violent fit of crying, while Dewey ushered every one else politely but firmly out of the suite.

“Dewey,” she gasped when he came back to the room, “I want my sister. Please tell Lyle to come over and s-s-stay with me a little while.”

“That’ll be the best thing to do,” agreed the two comforters, nodding their heads wisely. “Some one from her own family. She’s just a baby yet.”

“The number is Endicott 2330,” said the baby tremblingly.

He had to go down below and send the call in through one of the public booths, the service to their rooms having been discontinued at their own request in the effort to obtain a little privacy.

“Lyle Pennington, please.”

“There is no such party registered here,” was the immediate answer, too quickly given to be genuine.

“This is a private call,” urged Dewey, who had not foreseen that the Penningtons also might have put themselves beyond reach of annoyance by curiosity mongers.

“I’m sorry,” came the reply, “there isn’t anything I can do for you.” They hung up.

Dewey stepped over to the desk and wrote out a telegram on one of the blanks provided for that purpose.

“Five P.M. Angela prostrated. Wants to see you. Please come at once. Haines.”

When it had been filed at the counter he went back up to the rooms. A number of people were still lingering in the corridor outside, chatting in low tones. They glanced at him surreptitiously as he went by, and the sound of their voices was like the humming of a swarm of bees. He closed the door on them, giving them a last defiant scowl over his shoulder.

He found one of the women gone and the other one ready to depart, her curiosity or sympathy or whatever it was that had prompted her to intrude like this sufficiently sated.

“Oh, there you are,” she said. “I think it’ll be all right if I go now, don’t you?”

He did. He bowed her out, thanking her with a hypocritical smile on his face that went no deeper than the gums.

“I am Mrs. Courtland-Greer, 603, on the floor above. You and your wife must come and have tea with me when she’s feeling better. Good-by.”

He almost shut the door in her face, so anxious was he to get rid of her.

“To-night,” he said to himself, “she’ll tell all her friends how Angela fainted in her arms and what kind of shoes and stockings she had on, and another little ripple of muddy water’ll go all over town.”

He sat down by Angela’s side. Her head was resting on one arm. She straightened the hem of her skirt slightly with the other.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “What did they do to you?” he crooned tenderly. “Poor little soul, poor little fellow, not able to go anywhere without being hounded.”

It was seven before Lyle arrived. She came in without knocking and closed the door softly behind her. Dewey looked out from the other room to see who it was.

“You’ll pardon my coming in like this, won’t you?” she said. “I didn’t want to disturb her by knocking.”

“She’s all right now,” he told her; “she’s telling me about all the clothes she bought.” He laughed. “Some clothes. Was she always that extravagant?”

“It depends on what you consider extravagant,” Lyle said, passing him to go and talk to Angela, who was sitting on the bed in criss-cross fashion, indulging in a cigarette.

“What’s it all about, Angela?”

Angela waved her hand disgustedly. “Don’t ask me to tell you about anything. I want to forget it. One of those inane crowds, that’s all. Got me all upset. I’ve been on this bed for two solid hours. Dewey wouldn’t let me get off.”

“Why, she seems all right,” Lyle expostulated, turning to him.

“Does she? You wouldn’t think so if you had seen her when she first came in here.”

“Well, can you blame me? Any one would be,” remarked Angela, getting off the bed and feeling for her pumps with her stockinged toes. “Let’s go inside; I have loads to talk to you about. You can come too if you want to, Dewey.” This last very graciously, as if to an inferior being.

“Thanks,” said Dewey, “I’m busy checking up on our expenses.”

“I ordered a beautiful dinner dress,” Angela went on, not paying any attention. “Wait’ll you see it. Old gold with black chrysanthemums—” She put an arm about Lyle’s waist, and her voice trailed off into the other room, where they lit the orange globes on the wall and sat with cigarettes in their hands, avidly discussing clothes.

Meanwhile Dewey in amazement was opening envelope after envelope and extracting the neat little itemized statements they contained. It seemed as though nothing had been paid for; she had charged everything, largely on the strength of her father’s credit before her marriage. And then, coming to one headed “Maison Ira,” and marked “Paid,” he understood. “Dinner gown,” it said, “286.00; Feather fan — 25.00.”

The whole check he had given her gone at one fell swoop. No wonder she had charged the rest. Dewey bit his lip and smiled out of the corner of his mouth. Finally there was the hotel bill. This, as he had expected, was perfectly exorbitant, considering the length of time they had been there. But in addition to that there was a neat little memorandum signed by the management to the effect that they regretted to inform him that the occupancy of suite 500 had been reserved beginning at noon the following day.

He took it in to Angela. She was saying: “She showed me something else, in lipstick velvet, draped around at the side with a little patch of these glycerined ostrich feathers over one hip, that I couldn’t see anything to— Dewey, I wish you’d send down for some coffee and sandwiches; we’re both terribly hungry and I haven’t had any dinner.”

“Read what I just got,” he said, thrusting it at her.

“Oh, it’s from the hotel,” she said, scanning it. “I thought it might be one of these anonymous letters. Why, it’s nothing. Some one had this suite reserved before we came in, that’s all—”

“No,” he said broadly. “No. You don’t get it at all. They’re asking us to leave, as far as I can see.”

“Let me have a look at it,” Lyle said. Her lips moved hurriedly as she read it. “Why, of course,” she told Angela when she had finished, “it’s perfectly obvious. Probably if you were to ask for other accommodations they’d say there weren’t any.”

“But I don’t understand,” wailed Angela; “what’ve we done?”

“They’re sick of all this publicity, that’s what it amounts to,” remarked Dewey, striding restlessly about the room. “Probably other guests are beginning to leave on account of the people standing around outside on the sidewalks and staring at every one that comes out, hoping it’s us. I read in one of the papers that some of them even brought their lunches and babies with them and stayed all day, counting on it that we’d come along sooner or later.”

“Oh, I hate them,” exclaimed Angela fiercely; “they’re just driving me mad!”

“Really,” said Lyle coolly, “it’s so hard not to say what is on one’s mind. Why didn’t you think of all this before you got married?”

“Don’t let’s bring that up now,” said Angela, crushing out her cigarette in a crystal dish. “I’m not in a mood for propaganda.”

“Let’s get out of here to-night,” suggested Dewey suddenly; “we won’t have any crowd to contend with. Don’t let’s wait until noon.”

Angela, always eager to be on the go, brightened perceptibly. “Where could we go, though?” she asked, leaning forward with her hands on her knees, ready to jump up at a minute’s notice.

“Don’t let that worry you,” he told her; “we’ll find some quieter, less gaudy place for a day or two and meanwhile we’ll be looking around for an apartment of our own.”

“Not a bad suggestion,” Lyle said, watching Angela to see how she would take it. “Really, I should say that this—” she indicated their surroundings with a lordly gesture of finality, “—is more than you can afford right now.”

Angela snapped her fingers elatedly. “Great!” she squealed. “Great!” She sprang up and hurried into the next room, calling out, “Want to come in and help me get ready, Lyle?”

Lyle, as she got up and followed her, found time to say to Dewey in an indulgent undertone, “You’re getting her trained, I see.”

He didn’t know just how to take that.

Even before she began to pack her things Angela found time to remark: “I’m glad you’re not mad at me, darling.”

Lyle laughed and squeezed her affectionately about the waist. “Mad?” she said. “To hear the child talk you’d think I was Ophelia.”

“Don’t you think Dewey and I will be happy together?” Angela proceeded, delicately wrapping an atomizer in a piece of silk lingerie and then dropping it four feet into an open valise.

“No,” was the unexpected answer, in that cool, reflective voice Lyle could manage so well, “I don’t.”

“What!” Angela seemed almost ready to cry. “You don’t mean that seriously, do you?”

“I do,” Lyle told her. “I don’t think you’re suited to one another.”

“You’re horrible,” said Angela, “but you’re entirely wrong.”

Suddenly in the very midst of her distress something happened to take her mind off it.

“My gold dinner dress!” she gasped with a stricken look. “It’s coming here, and we won’t be here.” She ran to the door.

“Dewey,” she called anxiously, “what’ll we do? My gold evening gown. We can’t leave — I’d die without it.”

Dewey looked at her, thinking what fools women are. “Telephone the place,” he suggested unhesitatingly.

“Oh,” said Angela, sinking weakly into a chair, “I never thought of that.”