Children of the Ritz

Chapter Eight

Dewey returned to find Angela gone. Every light in the place had been turned on and left that way, in typical Angela fashion. And entering the bedroom, still pervaded by the expensive scent she had used, he saw a large uncovered cardboard box, lined with pale blue tissue paper, thrown carelessly against the wall. He examined the cover, which lay on the bed. “Maison Ira.” It was the box her famous gold evening frock had originally come in, the day after they left the hotel. He remembered the name. Yes, that was the place all right. The dress she had had on when he had last seen her was hanging lifelessly over a chair.

He rested his hand on it for a moment. She was in this gold creation that he had never seen but had heard so damned much about. And you didn’t wear things like that to go out by your own sweet self, or to walk down the street in either. Two-timing was what they called that, when a wife went out in other company. He began to get pale around the lips and grow cold around the wrists and something started in to thump behind his ears. War signals.

He twitched open the wafer-like green-gold drawer of her Louis XVI toilet table and rummaged blindly in it, ferociously determined to find something compromising, no matter what it was, to prove that he was right about her. Cigarette coupons, rouge-stained handkerchiefs, an orange tin of incense cones, a stick of old-rose sealing wax black at the tip, a buffalo nickel, and a ring with the stone missing from it. Not a thing. He tried to shove the slab in again and it jammed. The whole table quivered gracefully and the mirror blurred, and the liquid contents of the toiletry bottles flung themselves up into corners and streamed down again along the inside faces of the glass. Blank knickknacks.

He left it the way it was, went into his own room, sat down, flung one knee across the other, and scowled at the wall opposite. Two minutes passed and he was on his feet again, restlessly tramping back and forth between their two rooms. He went to the door of the apartment, opened it, and stood looking out, childishly expecting her to bob up in the elevator as though summoned on the instant by the lamp of an Aladdin. What he got instead was much less satisfactory. The taunting sugary strains of a lament much beloved of the day and hour crept out through the door on the right like honey oozing over smooth stones. “Sweetie went away and she didn’t say where, she didn’t say when, didn’t say why.”

A thunderous crash and Dewey was back in his own apartment again behind closed doors. But not for long. In less than no time the door was open again and he was on his way down the carpeted corridor, hatless and taking determined strides. He rang for elevator service and waited, about as peaceful as Vesuvius.

A few minutes later one of the colored operators, who prided themselves on being the eyes as well as the ears of the entire building, stood before him, cap in hand. This would have done Margie’s heart good, to see her brother who had been a private chauffeur a few slim weeks before, now play the jealous lord and master.

“Did you see my wife go out?”

“Yessa. Long about six-thutty.”

“Any one call here for her?”

“Nossa. She gat a telephone call and went out alone.”

“Did you take the message up to her?”

“She came downstairs and talked from the switchboard on the main floor. Phone in your apartment ain’t been connected yet.”

“Didn’t happen to notice whether it was a lady’s voice over the wire or not, did you?” This very casually, as though it was the last thing in the world that mattered.

The youth shook his head. “Gentleman,” he said.

“I see,” said Dewey, tipping and dismissing him, and a little ashamed of himself in spite of everything. “Thanks a lot.”

“Anything else, sah?”

Dewey gulped. “No... uh... wait, get me a ham on rye. I’m staying in this evening. Don’t feel good.”

The erring wife, meanwhile, sat in her famous gold gown enthroned in a speeding taxicab. She was proud of the way she looked to-night, and she wished Dewey could see her. And yet deep down in her heart she had to admit it was nice to be able to get away from him for a little while. Life wasn’t all honeysuckle and roses, especially not when he called her to account over a mere matter of chocolate milk shakes. She felt abused and encouraged the feeling.

Each street light as she was carried by it threw a silver mask over her face which quickly dropped below her chin and vanished as the wheels of the cab progressed. She wondered what he, Gil, had meant when he said he had some one with him who was dying to meet her. A conventional enough phrase, that, but something kept warning her insistently: “You know, you’re married to Dewey now and it’s different.” To which she replied haughtily: “Who said anything about flirting? Mind your own business.”

She was glad Gil had called up, just the same. It had relieved the monotony of crying by oneself in one’s bedroom, and given her a chance to break out in her new gown, which was of one of those perishable vogues that had to be used quickly or it would go out of style and into the family album.

The taxi came to a halt in front of the Frivolity, and there they were, waiting for her outside the door. They both bolted forward, but while Gil contented himself with greeting her effusively, his companion was busy paying the driver his wages of sin.

She hadn’t seen her brother since before her marriage. They gave one another a double handshake.

“Angela! In person, not a motion picture.”

“Gil, you little rounder, where’ve you been hiding lately?”

The taxi drove away. “Oh, by the way,” Gil said, now that it was safe to turn around, “I want you to meet a friend of mine.” Bringing them face to face, he said, “This is Jerome Wilder. My sister.”

He was about thirty-eight or forty, the risky age she had heard it called. He was extremely good-looking, in a mature sort of way that didn’t strike out at you as it would in the case of some college sophomore or motion picture juvenile. He had unusually large brown eyes that held so steady they seemed scarcely aware of you at all. The mouth was one of these unfortunate mouths that are born shaped into a smile, and turn everything that is said into mockery by their very expression. And while she was looking at him, and he at her, a little pang stole into her heart, that might have been a premonition of the unhappiness he was to cause her.

He answered Gil’s introduction with a slight bow. “Miss Pennington.”

She laughed. “Mrs Haines now,” she corrected.

“I bet he never reads the newspapers,” Gil said to her.

“We didn’t think there was any one who hadn’t heard about it by now,” she explained.

“I knew he had two sisters,” Wilder answered ingeniously. “I thought it was the other one all along. You don’t look old enough to be married.”

“She isn’t,” said Gil, “but she went ahead and did just the same.” He turned to her. “Have you heard the latest? The inmates of the old men’s home are going to get together and bake you a wedding cake.”

“Stop it, egg,” she answered quietly enough, but giving him a vicious dig in the side with her elbow. “When I want humor I’ll get it from the funny papers.”

“Let’s go in,” suggested Wilder tactfully; “your friend will think we’ve been run over out here.”

There was some one else then, was there? “Competition is what I’m fondest of,” thought Angela.

“I can’t stay long,” she remarked, leading the way downstairs, “or my husband’ll think I’ve been kidnaped.”

“Where is the old ball and chain?” Gil wanted to know, and then quickly added, “Don’t tell me, I want to guess.”

“Clown,” remarked Angela under her breath.

A revue was going on as they entered, six or eight ponies going through their paces and a hoofer doing the split on the floor in front of them. A young woman who was sitting at a table by herself, a black Manila shawl hanging over the back of her chair, motioned affably to them. That must be the friend they had mentioned. “She can’t have much of it,” thought Angela, “she couldn’t even keep Gil at her side, and anything with fluffy hair and a smile is enough to nail him down these days.”

She went over to where the girl was sitting, one of the men on each side of her, and the lights shining down on her from the edge of the dance floor picked out her dress until it flashed as distinctly as a lump of gold in a bed of clay. The other girl looked up and Angela’s shadow, falling over her shoulder, seemed a forerunner of the oblivion that was about to overtake her.

“Angela Haines, Lorraine Driscoll,” chanted the facile Gil. Wilder drew out Angela’s chair for her, dispossessing a waiter. “Thank you,” she murmured.

“Really,” Lorraine was gushing, “you can’t imagine how I’ve been looking forward to this. Gil has spoken about you so often that I felt I must know you or else my life wouldn’t be worth two cents.”

“How nice of you,” said Angela. (“I bet she’s been rehearsing that while she sat here waiting for us.) I hope you’re not disappointed?”

Without giving her time to answer she turned to Wilder. “And now,” she felt like saying, “let’s begin target practice.”

Lorraine, crestfallen by the cool reception she had got, kept her eyes on the dancers. Gil was preoccupied in buttering and folding a morsel of soft white bread which he held between his thumb and forefinger. Angela shifted two of the gilt legs of her chair around and clasped her hands soulfully before her on the table. “Tell me something,” she urged, half shutting her eyes as though she were in a trance. “Oh, anything — as long as it’s well told.”

“Let’s go dance,” said Gil, swallowing his bread and taking Lorraine by the wrist as though it were a duty rather than a diversion.

She seemed anything but pleased.

“You always think of the funniest things,” she complained querulously.

They sat together all evening while Gil and Lorraine had one dance after another, and when Gil and his Lorraine, utterly danced out, returned to the table, the two of them got up with one accord and went into the half embrace that the law of technique allowed them. Without realizing it, they already wanted to be alone together more than anything else. They were not saying a word, just dancing. That was what floors were for, to dance on. But a lot of little extras go into dancing that one can’t always be held accountable for. Angela had never been on smoother paraffin, had never walked to better music, had never been guided so skillfully before, not even at proms and fraternity houses. He danced exquisitely. Not a bit like Dewey in that respect.

“Is it over,” she said when they stopped, “or have I been dreaming?”

“No, I’m the one’s been doing the dreaming,” he replied.

“About what?” she asked prettily.

“You’re the kind that would know without being told,” was all he said.

They were standing there alone in the middle of the room. Every one else had gone back to the tables, leaving them sole occupants of the floor. Every one was smiling and passing remarks about them.

“Say, get this, will you? Look at those two out there holding a convention.”

“That girl in the gold layout has a bad case on.”

“I bet they think they’re still dancing. They don’t notice the difference. That’s what love’ll do for you.”

“Love? That isn’t love going on out there, that’s hypnotism.”

“That sister of yours is loaded with sex appeal,” observed Lorraine morosely.

“Like a channel swimmer covered with grease,” Gil agreed.

The musicians, amused, suddenly burst out in a bedlam of noise, without rhythm, without reason, and without restraint. They hit it up among the kettles and the Chinese gongs. Shrieks, roars and crashes filled the air. Angela and Wilder jumped guiltily and quickly sought shelter at their own table. The chaos stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

“Well,” remarked Lorraine, trying to look sympathetic and not succeeding very well, “did it take that much noise to wake you two up?”

“We... I—” said Angela.

Wilder laughed, easily and without embarrassment. She liked that about him.

“Oh, sure, we... I,” mimicked Gil. “Don’t cry about it.”

“Well, I really must go,” she said. “Dewey won’t know what to think. It must be after eleven.”

“After eleven!” echoed Gil raucously.

“Where’ve you been the last few hours?” He took out his watch.

“Quarter past two,” he announced, enjoying her dismay.

Her evening’s pleasure dropped away from her like the petals of an overluxuriant rose. She stood there like Cinderella listening to the fatal midnight chimes, a look of horror on her face. Everything silver turned at once to lead. What would Dewey say? She couldn’t face him, she had stayed out so late she was afraid to go home.

“Oh, Gil,” she wailed miserably, “you’ll come with me, won’t you? So that he’ll see we’ve been together.”

“Punch the clock, that’s a good girl, punch the clock,” said Gil resentfully, and Wilder with almost ungodly accuracy touched the one spot in all her heart that she most wanted touched when he leaned close in helping her on with her wrap to murmur, “Poor Cinderella.”

They lingered in the dim hallway downstairs, she and Gil, sitting face to face in an upholstered window seat talking things over after Wilder and Lorraine had said good night and left them. The lights on the wall, shining a muddy amber behind their brackets, struck an occasional gleam from Angela’s gold dress where it strayed below her wrap. They both spoke in low voices with a touch of music to them that rang true every now and then in their sibilant undertones.

“Who is that Lorraine friend of yours?” she wanted to know.

“Met her last year. Beautiful and dumb, mostly dumb.”

“I guess you mean beautifully dumb,” she snickered.

“What do you think of my friend Jerry?” he went on enthusiastically. “Isn’t he a peach?”

She clutched him by the wrist. “Gil, you’re my brother,” she said, “and I can tell you this, a thing I wouldn’t tell any one else for love or money. Everything might have turned out differently if I had met his type a — a month or two ago.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, patting her arm reassuringly. “I was thinking that myself when I saw you two standing out there on the floor to-night.”

She clasped her hands about one knee and gazed rapturously up at the ceiling.

“He’s very well-to-do,” Gil went on. “Otherwise, naturally, you wouldn’t find me in a place like the Frivolity any more these days.” He gazed thoughtfully at the backs of his hands. “Angela, is there a little money you could let me have?”

“Oh, my Lord, no,” she said. “I would if I had any, but I’m on my knees begging for it all the time myself. He wants to know where every dollar goes. You can’t imagine how much importance he attaches to what I spend on clothes. Why, right this evening we had words over some chocolate drinks I— Aren’t you doing anything, Gil?” she asked suddenly.

He slumped down a little lower against the onyx casement. “I’ve been looking around. My friends all promised to do what they could for me, but all I get is advice. ‘Why don’t you do this, old man?’ and ‘Why don’t you do that, old man?’ and that’s as far as it ever goes. I’m beginning to think they mistrust my ability.”

“Well, I should think they would,” she exclaimed. “The only time any one ever sees you you’re dancing or ginning up all night in one of those places. You can’t expect to get a position through any of your friends on those credentials. Why, with the hours you keep, you’d make a good night watchman, and that’s about all.”

“And you make a good Fourth of July orator as far as I can see. I ask you a favor and I get a bedtime story thrown at my head, with the animals left out. What kind of a comrade do you call yourself?”

She smiled soberly.

“You’re right at that. I guess I’m the last one. I shouldn’t throw stones.”

“I’ll say,” he grunted with offended dignity.

“How about Wilder?” she suggested, finding a slight catch of pleasure in her throat at the name: “wouldn’t he be likely to help you out?”

“He has already,” Gil admitted. “Several times.”

He was just the kind that would, she had felt that about him. A faint sense of satisfaction took possession of her.

“Is everything squared off between you?”

“No,” he told her, “and that’s one reason I can’t go to him again until I’ve settled it. It makes me feel cheap. I’m under obligation to him enough socially without that. Every time we’ve gone anywhere it’s been his party. Sometimes six or eight of us.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Gil,” she remonstrated. “It gives you a bad name.”

“He understands how it is with me,” he went on, becoming more despondent. “Of course he does. But even if he thought I was doing it purposely, I think he’d let me get away with it; he’s that kind of a fellow. I almost slapped a girl friend of mine in the face one night for calling him a butter and egg man to the rest of us behind his back. I think the world of Jerry.”

“I think I’m beginning to, too,” thought Angela without saying anything.

“These cheap Broadway actresses come along and immediately get the wrong impression,” he continued bitterly. “They think they’ve found an easy mark and they start digging for gold. They don’t realize that he’s wise to them, and a little too good for them at their own game. They say, ‘Call me up some time, real soon, now,’ and brush a little dust off his collar that isn’t there at all and he’ll wink to me on the side and answer, ‘By and by,’ and that’s the end of it; that particular smarty is never invited out again.

“He’s dead on the level. I’ve been around with him long enough to know that. And they’re all playing the same game, every one of them, débutantes and demi-reps alike, I don’t see the difference. Every nut with henna hair that comes along thinks she ought to be staked to a star part in a Broadway show. You should hear him on that subject alone. Laugh? He’d bring tears to your eyes.” There was admiration and friendly envy in the way he said all this. “He can read them like a book. If there’s anything he doesn’t know about the game, it’s because it hasn’t been thought of yet.”

“Ever married?” She had been waiting to hear herself say this, never dreaming that she actually would. As Margie had said about her engagement, she had felt it coming on for a long while.

“Who, Jerry?”

“Of course Jerry,” she said slowly, almost drawlingly, to hide the interest she felt should not be there. “Of course Jerry. Who then?”

“Once,” he said. “Ages ago.”

“Only once,” she murmured almost dolefully, “a man as attractive as that?”

“They’ve been separated the past ten years. He told me he’d heard she remarried.”

“He tells you everything, doesn’t he?” she said enviously. “He’s so much older than you are, Gil.”

“You wouldn’t think it,” Gil said. “Swims and skates and all that. Crazy as a kid about handball.”

Involuntarily the thought: “I swim and skate too. I oughtn’t to neglect those things the way I have lately.”

She stood up. “Well, Gil, thank him for me. Say it was a lovely party. And I’ll see what I can do about getting you some money.”

They kissed briefly, an unwonted occurrence.

“Good night, dear. Keep in touch with me. You’re all the family I have now. Lyle won’t come near me as long as I stay under the same roof with him.” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling to indicate whom she meant. “And Mud is off me for life, I suppose.”

She stepped into the elevator cage and the glass screen slipped between them, shutting her off from him in a blaze of gold at the end as she unwound her cape preparatory to entering her own apartment upstairs.

Her heart beat a little faster as she took out her latchkey and put it to the door. But when she had stepped inside she found Dewey asleep, his head on the table resting on his folded arms. She stole past him into her own room and shut the door softly.

It came to her, then, how little they knew each other after all. It seemed incredible that she should still feel at times as though he were a stranger to her. She wanted to go out there to him, wake him up, and order him out of the apartment. She caught herself slyly turning the key around in the lock of her door, and then took her hands off it and let it stay that way.

She shuddered and passed the back of her hand across her brow. She looked at the gold evening dress nestling on the bed like a pool of melted sunbeams. She picked up one of her gold sandals from the rug and kissed it. Holding it pressed to her, she went to the open window and sat sidewise on the ledge, leaning her head against the wooden framework like some medieval saint in a stained glass niche. There was one star out, like a silver beauty patch on some immense blue-talcumed cheek. She fixed her eyes on it and tried to read its thoughts, scintillating messages that beat down upon her. “Angela,” it seemed to say to her, “Angela, Angela, Angela.” The thin silk of the window hangings flirted past her face from time to time, caught on the faint breeze that betokened morning. The façades of the tall cliff dwellings opposite were unrelieved by a single light, the canyon-like street below was deserted except for an occasional wandering taxicab, night bound and winking with green eyes.

This gold sandal she held crushed to her heart had strayed after him so obediently, so willingly, only a little while ago, going wherever he cared to go, taking its cue and its mood from his. She felt suddenly as though something that had borne her down for a long time were gone. She wondered what elated her, what made her interested once again in stars and breezes and golden slippers after so long a time. “Jerry,” she thought, and the piercing sweet-sadness of it was almost more than she could bear, “I love you. It’s too late, but I’m afraid I love you.”

Weeks later, when the apartment was at last complete, they gave their first party. Angela sat for several hours each morning with a pad of paper on her knee, scribbling a list of possible candidates for the honor of being invited. “If Lyle would only come,” she sighed, “then all her friends would come too, and we’d have a houseful of just the right sort of people.”

“That depends,” Dewey remarked cynically, and added, “she must have very loyal friends.”

“In a case like this,” she said, “they’d all be bound to follow her lead. People are like sheep, you know.”

“Then we seem to be pretty well ostra—”

“Dewey, don’t try to use that word,” she cautioned earnestly. “The last time you said it, you made it sound like ostrichized. I don’t want to have to laugh all the time.”

“All right, I’ll go to night school for my grammar,” he vowed. “Would you like me to take up toe dancing too?”

“Your dancing could be improved on, you know,” she said sweetly.

“You’d like me to be a he-butterfly, like that brother of yours,” he replied savagely. “I know.”

“He’s coming,” she said. “He’s the only one in my family who has a loving disposition. And when you hear him play the piano, you’ll wish there were a few more butterflies like that around.”

“I bet the people under us won’t, though,” he commented.

“I’ll try Lyle once again,” she determined, disconnecting the telephone. “She’s already refused me twice. Lord, I have no pride.”

“I’d say you have a little too much at times,” her husband remarked, slipping his hands in his back pockets.

“Please go inside,” she said irritably. “How can I talk while you’re standing there staring at me like that?”

He went into the living room and sprawled down on a heap of cushions that littered one of the divans, carefully pushing aside the clusters of grapes that ornamented them. Presently he got up and went over to the piano. He stood looking at it, picking out stray notes. So Gil was a good piano player too, was he? He had often watched the diamond on Angela’s one hand, and the square-cut emerald on her other, like frantic fireflies in the lamplight, sparkling and leaping over the keyboard when she felt in the mood for a little jazz. Then she might break off in the middle of it and whirl around, and say something particularly spiteful and uncalled for, such as, “Don’t you wish you could, too?” and he would look at her and wonder what he had done.

He ran his fingers through the deep fringe of the Chinese shawl that fell partly over the instrument, spilling poppies and chrysanthemums and wistaria in gaudy profusion down its sides. A dragon incense bowl glowered at him through eyeless sockets. Well, they were a talented family, but they were hard to get along with, it seemed.

She came in to him, still holding the pad in her hand. There was a pout on her lips, adorable but for the fact that she pouted now more often than she smiled. She walked to the middle of the room and turned her back, tapping her small gold pencil against her chin and seemingly not noticing him. But she began to speak, as though to the room at large.

“She refused again,” she said disappointedly. “Refused pointblank this time, without trying to plead other engagements. I know she hasn’t got any, anyway, because they’re keeping very quiet this fall on account of Father. She said it wasn’t on her own account, but out of respect to mother’s attitude toward me. She was willing to relay my invitation to her friends, and do what she could toward persuading them to accept, but she admitted it wouldn’t be of very much use when they found out she herself wasn’t going to be there. So, now it looks as if we’re stranded. Of course, Gil and all his friends will come, but they’ll be mostly men, because Gil’s lady friends are out of the question. You wouldn’t want to associate with them yourself.”

“Thanks,” he said coldly.

“As for my own set,” she went on, speaking like a dowager of seventy, “I can count on the wild and woollier ones — they’ll come, if only because they know their people will disapprove. But I don’t like to mix my set with Gil’s; his is so much faster. It doesn’t look right.” She perched on the edge of an armchair, swinging her leg to and fro. “That’s all, I guess. You don’t mind, do you, if we have another party later on for your sister and her friends?”

“I don’t see the object of that.”

“It really doesn’t matter,” she said, brushing her nails. “I simply thought you might feel hurt. But then you know how people look at those things.”

He pulled out the piano bench and sat down astride it. “If all this rigmarole is because you’re leaving my mother and sister out,” he told her, “you’re not. I’ve already asked them.”

“You’ve what?” The pencil flew out against the opposite wall and the pad with it, dropping to the floor with the flutter of a wounded white bird. He stared after them fascinated, then smiled a little.

She tried to speak calmly, but her voice almost choked her. “Couldn’t you leave things to me? Wasn’t that supposed to be my job, the inviting? Why are you so mean? You know very well it’s impossible for your sister, and, above all, your mother, to mingle with my friends and my brother’s friends. Now you’ve spoiled my party. We may as well cancel it right now.”

“I don’t see why,” he objected. “That’s a terrible insult to my people, calling it off on account of them. Not only that, it’s an insult to me.”

“Well, let it be,” she flung out violently. “What do I care?”

“Call it off, if you want to,” he said, “but remember one thing: any party that’s given here, my people are going to be right on the spot.”

“And I suppose that disgraceful fiancé of your sister’s too,” she said tearfully. “I never heard of anything like it!”

“Disgraceful?” he parried. “What’s he done? Anyhow, don’t let him worry you; he’s not going to be here. He can’t come that night; he has an engagement.”

This was too much for Angela. “You have the — the audacity to tell me that!” she wailed, jumping up. “That truck driver, that, that has an engagement! Oh, I’ll never forgive you for this.” She ran from the room, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders working convulsively.

Dewey turned and resumed the picking of notes on the piano with one finger.

The night of the party, Dewey’s mother came an hour sooner than she had been expected, carrying a large basket on her arm with a napkin spread over the top of it. Dewey, fortunately, was the one to go to the door, as the maid — they had one now — was busy assisting Angela to dress.

“Well, hello!” he said, spreading his arms to welcome her, “and I thought it was flowers or a telegram or something.”

“Don’t say a word,” she whispered, shutting the door carefully, as though some one were following her. “I sneaked away from Margie, to come over here and help you get ready. I made these sandwiches all myself; they’re freshly made this morning, and there’s some different cakes and wafers in here with ’em.”

He laughed. “You’re a dear,” he said, taking the basket away from her, “but Angela’s having it catered.”

“Is she now,” she said doubtfully, “and what’s that?”

“Let me look at you,” he said, touching her on the elbows, and standing off. “You look great, Ma, honest you do.”

“I went and did it,” she said darkly.

“Went and did what?”

Suddenly she whipped off the small hat she had on. Her hair was like a choir boy’s.

“Bobbed!” he gasped, making sure that the wall was on each side of him.

“Margie made me do it. She promised not to call me Betty any more if I had it done. I’d do anything to get rid of a name like that. She says she’s proud of me now.”

“You look cute, Ma,” he said. “You look like a cherub.”

“Don’t be calling your mother names, young man. Show me where the layout is so I can spread these sandwiches around.”

He took her into the living room, just managing to get her by Angela’s door before it opened and she called out, “Who came, Dewey?”

“More refreshments,” he called back deceitfully.

“So this is your place,” said his mother, setting the basket on the piano and looking about her. “It’s a grand place you have here, Dewey.”

“It’s Angela’s,” he amended ruefully.

“But what in the name of heaven is this?” she asked, picking up a bowl of stuffed dates. “Out with it and make room for some real food.”

“The caterers left that, I guess,” he said. “Watch out Angela doesn’t catch you doing anything to her arrangements. You’ll have to sit here a few minutes while I get dressed. You can play the radio if you want.”

“Radio!” she sniffed disdainfully. “Jack in the box!”

When he had gone, she began to deposit the eatables she had brought with her in various convenient places about the room, in each case taking away the dainties that were already there, with the result that substantial rye bread sandwiches took the place of paté de foie gras, and slices of orange and tomato supplanted liqueur bonbons. Then, when her work was done, she picked up the basket from the piano. Unfortunately the shawl, caught on a nail, came off with it. There was a crash, and candies and olives rolled over the floor in all directions. Mrs. Haines, terrified, ran for the vacuum cleaner.

Angela came out, a beautiful apparition in tiers of gauze, somewhat like a ballet dancer, newly powdered and freshly combed and curled and scented.

“What fell?” she demanded.

Dewey and the maid appeared at their several doors. Dewey was saying his prayers inwardly. The maid, of course, had to tell. He could have wrung her neck.

“The stout lady must have dropped something. She was in here a minute ago asking me for the vacuum.”

“Stout lady?” said Angela, mystified. “What stout lady?” She went in to look. A whirring sound like a small motor or dynamo was coming from the living room. Mrs. Haines had the vacuum cleaner attached to one of the lights and was guiding it around in concentric circles, gathering up olives and candies, also fragments of chinaware and pottery.

“Who told you to do that?” said Angela, white with anger. “That’s the maid’s work.”

“You’ll ruin the vacuum,” the maid said, jerking it out of her hands. “Don’t you know it isn’t meant for things like that?” She detached it and carried it out with her, giving her a vindictive look.

“What are these horrible things?” said Angela, picking up one of the sandwiches between her thumb and forefinger.

“Some sandwiches Ma brought with her,” Dewey hastened to explain.

“I made them myself,” Mrs. Haines said proudly. “I know you’ll like ’em.”

Angela dropped it back into the dish, carefully brushing her hands.

“Florence,” she called to the maid, “take these things out with you. You’re welcome to the lot of them if they appeal to you.”

“Thank you,” said the maid stiffly. “I don’t believe I care for them.”

“Then put them down the bin,” directed Angela, pointing toward the kitchen.

Mrs. Haines began to cry. Dewey’s face was white. “Hold on a minute,” he said, stepping in front of the maid. “They’re good enough for me. Leave them in here, Florence. The company can eat whichever they prefer.”

“And is that the respect I’m going to get from you?” fumed Angela, stepping up close to him. “We’ll see about that.”

She snatched the tray out of the maid’s arms and carried it into the kitchen herself. In less than a minute it was perfectly empty, and the food was on its way down the dumbwaiter chute. She set the bare tray down with a great clatter and returned to the living room, her mouth twitching with passion.

“It wasn’t necessary for you to upset my household, Mrs. Haines,” she heaved. “I didn’t ask you to come here for that.”

“You didn’t ask her at all,” interrupted Dewey. “I asked her, and I’m going to see that she’s treated right.”

“You better see to it that you treat me right first,” she flared back. “I’d like to know who comes first, your wife or your mother!”

“Sh, Dewey, please,” begged Mrs. Haines. “I’ll go if either of you say another word.”

“Ha!” scoffed Angela wickedly, “can we depend on that?” She stalked out of the room and shut the door of her room with a great bang that made small objects about the house quiver and sing out.

“Glory be!” exclaimed Dewey’s mother, sinking back exhaustedly into an armchair.

Fifteen minutes later a telegram came. Dewey signed for it and opened it. It contained regrets. The messenger boy had hardly turned his back before another one showed up. More regrets. “Not so good,” said Dewey to himself, stuffing them both into his pocket. Some sherry arrived in a stone jug carefully wrapped in newspapers. It was sampled both by Dewey and the person who had brought it to the door, this in token of hospitality.

But right on top of it and quite fatal to the peace of mind it tended to build up, came a long narrow box of roses on uncut stalks for Angela, sent by a young couple engaged to be married, and who evidently deemed it imprudent for the girl’s sake to appear in person and partake of the hospitality of two such notorious people as Dewey and his wife. The flowers, incidentally, never reached Angela. Dewey’s Irish getting the better of him, he emptied them disgustedly down the refuse chute, box and all, and they got stuck there, filling the air with a mysterious sweetness and raining petals and ferns on the astonished janitor below.

As the evening wore on messenger boys arriving at the door outnumbered the guests who came by about two to one. Practically every variety of excuse known to human ingenuity had been opened and read by Dewey before the evening was through. When the number of people inside the house finally warranted his coming away from the open door, he put a pencil in the maid’s hand and told her to stand there.

“Sign for them as they come along and chuck ’em in this drawer here,” he instructed her. “Don’t bother opening them, they’re all lies anyway.”

When the bell rang again she thrust out her hand blindly to take what she thought was going to be a telegram. However, it was Margie this time.

“Hope I’m not late,” Margie said affably, shaking the maid’s outstretched hand.

“Late?” said the maid scornfully. “Most of ’em haven’t even gotten here yet. It’s a frost, I tell you, a frost.”

Margie stepped jauntily in, nothing loath, frost or otherwise. “My, my, what a lovely place they have. I must have a mirror like that one of these days.” She puffed out her cheeks and breathed on it heavily. “Look. I love to watch the mist disappear, don’t you? It reminds me of magic. They say you can tell your future that way.”

She stopped short upon entering the living room. “Hello, Ma,” she shouted, “I see you got here ahead of me. You little rascal, you!”

“Easy,” said Dewey laconically, “take it easy.”

“I like your nerve,” said Margie, biting into a three-cornered sandwich. “I could have swallowed that whole,” she explained to the room at large, “but I didn’t want to show off.”

The telephone rang out in the foyer.

“The only thing that can happen now,” said Dewey philosophically, “is that we find ourselves evicted for not being Caucasians, or something of the sort. Even that wouldn’t surprise me.”

Florence came to the door, fanning herself with her handkerchief. “Mr. Gil Pennington and a few friends are on their way up,” she announced.

This had the effect of a pebble dropped in a pool of stale water.

“Get Angela,” he directed. “Tell her to come out here.”

They came trooping in at the door and milled about in the foyer, taking off their hats and leaving their sticks (most of them had sticks, Dewey noticed) up in a corner.

“Hello there, Haines,” said Gil, without offering to shake hands. “Pardon the intrusion. These are all my friends.”

Hearing her brother’s voice loud above the rest, Angela came out to them, her face innocent beyond belief.

“Gil,” she cried, taking him by the shoulders, and coyly kicking up one heel behind her. “So glad you didn’t disappoint me.”

“What, me disappoint you?” said Gil strenuously. “How about that, boys?”

A torrent of noise broke forth at that; they were all talking at the same time.

Some one tapped Angela upon the shoulder. “Let me introduce myself,” he said, taking her hand.

A bewildering succession of men’s names strove hopelessly to enter her memory.

“Never mind,” she said, “I’ll get you straightened out before the evening’s over.”

“What’s this,” said a competently shrill voice from the living room entrance, “a free-for-all out here?”

They all turned with one accord. There was something different about this voice; it had never been to a finishing school.

“My sister, Marjorie,” announced Dewey, a trifle uncertainly.

“Hail!” said Margie instantly, throwing up her hand and snapping her fingers high above her head.

“Doesn’t she remind you of Kiki,” some one said under his breath, “standing with her knees cocked like that?”

“All she needs is a feather sticking out of her cap,” some one else added, less cautiously.

Margie overheard it. “Well, if I do,” she snapped, “it isn’t a white one. There’s shaving soap behind your ears.” She was infinitely well versed in the art of repartee, her specialty being ungentle comeback. Her mother had once let it be known that she was a girl who had an answer for everything. This was underestimating her talent; she had two or three answers. On the present occasion she seemed to have made somewhat of an impression. They all gathered around her, their hands on each other’s backs.

“I’m going to call you Margie,” Gil said to her.

Dewey waited for the flare-up that never came.

“I’d love that,” she murmured meekly, “from you.”

“Hello, Marjorie,” said Angela deliberately, “I didn’t know you had got here yet. But then of course I’m only her hostess,” she laughed, turning to her brother. “I’m not supposed to know little things like that.”

“You only came out of your room this minute,” objected Margie. “I didn’t have a chance to say hello to you until now.”

“It’s really not important,” replied Angela airily.

Margie was not so insensitive but that she scented disparagement, yet she was prudent enough to let it pass. She wanted to remain on good terms with Angela above all things.

“Cocktails are inside,” exclaimed Angela gayly. “Come on, everybody, what are we waiting for?” She walked in ahead of them, and Margie would have hung diffidently back, but two of them offered her their arms, and accepting both, she entered between them, grinning complacently.

Whenever Margie sat down anywhere she was accustomed to pull the hem of her skirt as far down as she could manage to get it, not a very noticeable distance, to tell the truth. She watched Angela, though, and saw Angela sink back against a big upholstered chair and cross one leg over the other, letting her skirt flare up as much as it wanted to. That must be stylish, then. Margie immediately swung one knee above the other, and without daring to look down, had a feeling that she had left them both very unprotected. A moment later her mother, who had been eating salted almonds in a corner, unnoticed by any of them, called over in the too audible voice she was blessed with:

“Margie! What’s the matter with you?”

Margie jumped as though something had bitten her. “Were you speaking to me?” she simpered.

“Pull down the shades,” her mother told her, “ye’re over seven.”

Cigarettes were passed around. The maid offered them to Mrs. Haines too, and afraid to hurt the maid’s feelings, she took one and put it in her lap. Dewey lit Angela’s, Gil lit Margie’s, and another young man, without thinking, went over and offered Mrs. Haines his lighter. She drew back. “What is it?” she said suspiciously, looking up to detect any possible mischief in his face. The young man, not knowing what to make of her, continued to stand there, holding it open almost under her chin, its tiny blue flame scintillating.

“Maybe the lady doesn’t want to smoke,” said one of his friends, to cover his obvious embarrassment.

Margie immediately jumped up and went over to her. Bending over her solicitously, she slipped the cigarette between her mother’s lips before the latter had a chance to say anything in her own defense, took the lighter from the youth with a murmured “Thank you so much!” and applied it. Mrs. Haines’ face was that of a person expecting to be burned at the stake. The dot of flame went out.

“Don’t breathe on it,” said Margie, relighting it. “In heaven’s name, get it over with. You can hold the cigarette in your hand afterwards if you don’t care for it.”

Mrs. Haines began to cough violently and tears came into her eyes.

“Pull on it,” Margie instructed her, trying to get in front of her so that no one would see what was going on.

“I don’t have to,” her mother said quaintly, whipping it out of her mouth, “it comes out easy enough without that.” She held it up to show it to her.

“Mrs. Haines,” gasped Angela, patting her on the shoulder, “really, my dear, you are the most original person I’ve seen in years.”

They danced, while Gil rendered fox trot after fox trot in his brilliant yet slovenly fashion, pausing every so often only long enough to empty the latest recruit to the row of empty cocktail glasses that stood facing him on the piano. Dewey and Mrs. Haines sat looking on, Dewey perched on the arm of his mother’s chair.

Angela was in her element, since the disproportionate number of young men necessitated an almost continual cutting-in on her. She passed from one to the other with little twirls and skips. Margie, who was not used to this system got out of step, shuffled her feet at times, and stumbled at least once during the proceedings. To make things worse, the youth who happened to have been the cause of this, grinned foolishly and asked her: “You’re not falling for me, are you?”

“Say!” said Margie emphatically. “Sa-ay!”

Only one thing was lacking to make Angela’s happiness complete. She broke away without a word to her partner and went over to the piano to hover about Gilbert, finally sitting down beside him on the bench and slipping an arm through his.

“Gil,” she said, keeping her voice discreetly under the musical accompaniment, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“I know what it is already,” her brother guessed shrewdly. “No, I haven’t seen Wilder lately — not since the night you were out with us.”

“I must have had a good effect on him,” she sighed dismally.

“There’s no telling,” he answered nonchalantly.

“I think you might have brought him with you,” she pouted, playing chopsticks at the higher end of the scale with her free hand.

“This is my piece and I wish you’d quit messing it,” he remarked, crowding her with his elbow.

“There’s plenty of room for improvement, anyway,” she told him, giving the back of his head a push as she got up to go.

When the music and the dancing had petered out, some one suggested that they play a game called Will Power. Mrs. Haines, who had begun to grow sleepy meanwhile, went in to lie down at Angela’s suggestion. The way Angela put it, it would have been rather difficult for any one to refuse. “Of course we’d be glad to have you stay if you want to, but I’m afraid this wouldn’t interest you much. You see, we all have to concentrate, and just one person in the room who isn’t concentrating is liable to throw every one else off.”

When she had gone the game began.

“Oh, I remember this,” said Gil loudly, “this is a good game. All the lights go out.”

Every one laughed.

“Now, Gil,” Angela insisted, “this is supposed to be taken seriously. No petting.” She went to the door. “I’ll be the first one to leave the room,” she announced. “Put out all the lights, even your cigarettes. Call me when you’re ready. And no one is supposed to make a sound.”

She went out.

“Here’s the idea,” said Gil, in a low voice. “Let’s take this dish of peppermints on the table. Now the thing is to get her to go to that in the dark and hit it with her ring, without saying anything to her. The way to do that is to concentrate. Now remember, everybody concentrate on the little dish of peppermints. Just get that fixed in your mind and hold it there. You and I stand on each side of Angela when she come in, Haines, so that she’ll get the thought waves closer. Her mind is supposed to be as open to suggestion as she can make it. Shut your eyes, everybody. Here go the lights.”

The room was suddenly plunged in darkness.

“Angela,” he called.

Seven of them sat in a strange intensity of silence, bent forward, their hands for the most part, clamped to their eyes.

Angela came in, and Gil and her husband led her to the middle of the room. They stood alongside of her, two hands lightly pressed to each of her shoulders, their chins resting on their hands. When Angela’s slight footfalls had stopped, an absolute deadening silence took possession of the room. The trivial peppermint dish shone with unwavering intensity in nine imaginations. It began to hurt. At last Angela took a step forward. Gil and Dewey moved noiselessly with her. A long time passed. She took another, then still another, like a person walking in her sleep. Margie, who had never concentrated to such an extent in her life before, thought she would go crazy thinking about the dish of peppermints. Angela’s footfalls continued rhythmically, minutes apart. Then suddenly they stopped. There was an interval of seconds only, and then a piercingly clear note rang out, loud as a cymbal in the stillness. Angela had struck the dish with the diamond on her finger. Another slight interval and then the sound of a heavy fall.

“Lights,” cried Gil in a hoarse voice. “Why didn’t you hold on to her, Haines?”

Everybody stood up at once without doing anything very definite. Strange colors danced before their eyes when they first opened them in the darkness. There was confusion, a shifting about of feet.

“Don’t move, any of you,” Gil’s voice again, “she’s on the floor.” In an agony of impatience he shouted, “For God sake, isn’t there a man among you? Somebody turn on the lights.”

The lights went up, with Dewey over by the door, his hand on the switch. Angela lay inertly on the floor, her head resting on her brother’s arm. She was pale as a corpse.

“What happened?”

“She fainted,” snapped Gil; “it was too much for her.”

They lifted her from the floor and put her in a nest of cushions on one of the lounges, and tried to get her to swallow a cocktail. Presently she opened her eyes.

“She had a spell on the order of this at the hotel the last night we were there,” related Dewey.

“I thought you had hold of her,” said Gil brusquely; “you were right there and you let her fall.”

“I was dizzy myself toward the end,” Dewey admitted. “Funny how a thing like that gets you. How are you now, sweetheart?”

“Feel any better, dear?” murmured Margie, patting her head.

“Did you know what it was we wanted you to do?” some one else asked her curiously.

“I don’t remember what I did,” she said “or what happened.” She sat up. “ ’S a dangerous game,” she smiled weakly.

“I wonder what it feels like,” said Margie.

“Feels as though you’re walking on clouds,” Angela told her. “Why? Do you think you’d like to try it?”

Margie clasped her hands enthusiastically. “Gee, I’d love to!” she exclaimed.

“Go right ahead,” said Angela dryly; “you’re welcome to the job.”

“Let’s try it just once more,” one of the others suggested.

“Don’t you think we’ve had enough for one evening?” objected Gil.

Angela winked, indicating Margie by a slight motion of the head. “Once more,” she said evenly, “before we call it quits. It can’t hurt me to sit here quietly.”

“I’ll go outside this time,” offered Margie eagerly, going toward the door.

When she had made her exit, Angela called them all around the lounge she occupied. “I’m afraid we couldn’t concentrate on anything very successfully after what just happened,” she murmured; “at least I know I couldn’t. Let’s fool her and sit here quietly without thinking about anything in particular, just to see what she does.”

“That’s hardly fair,” remarked Dewey.

“Oh, it’s just in fun,” she snapped. “Why not be a sport about something for once in your life!”

“Go ahead,” he said immediately, “I don’t care what you do.”

Margie, waiting nervously outside in the foyer, heard her name called. She entered the darkened room, and immediately Gil and another young man came up to her and rested their foreheads sorrowfully on her shoulders, as per formula. Margie, squinting her eyes horribly in the dark, endeavored to make her mind as blank and as receptive as possible. Her foes might say she had a good head start in any case.

She stood waiting, aware only of the darkness and a silence as of suspended animation. Nothing happened. No thoughts came to her that were not suggested by herself. She began to think she wasn’t cut out to be a very good medium. And it had looked so easy. She tried to guess the object they had decided upon for her to touch. It wasn’t likely to be the peppermint bowl a second time. And what else was there in the room? The only thing she could think of was the piano, and she hated to take a chance on that. She had sense enough to realize that it was too conspicuous to reflect much credit on her psychic powers.

Then she had an inspiration. Angela had fainted because of a too sensitive imagination. The charming thing to do in a case like this was faint. Was she going to let them suppose that she, Margie, had an imagination any the less sensitive? Not so you could notice it.

She waited until she felt a rug under her feet, then she exclaimed “Oh! catch me!” in a weary voice and collapsed intricately to the floor, arranging herself after the manner in which she had first seen Angela when the lights went on. Again there was confusion. There were a number of suppressed shrieks here and there about the room.

“Turn on the lights,” she heard Gil say calmly. And he added: “Pass around the ammonia once again.”

People were making peculiar sounds in their throats and noses. Angela though, was genuinely hysterical, laughing from sheer nervousness, it would seem. If by laughter one could designate the animal squeals she was emitting.

“Belasco ought to hear about her,” some one said.

Margie was helped to her feet, although she had given no indication of life as yet.

She opened her eyes, like a slow motion picture of dawn. She pressed her hand to her head.

“What — what happened?” she asked. “How did I get like this?”

“You fainted,” said Gil. “It seems to be catching.”

“What was I supposed to do?” she wanted to know. “I couldn’t have stood it another minute. Those vibrations—”

“That’s strange,” said Angela, in at the death with a gleaming smile, “because we weren’t concentrating at all. I know I was thinking of a certain hat I saw in a shop downtown.”

“Oh—” said Margie, crestfallen.

“I was thinking of some money I owe somebody,” Gil snickered.

“Oh,” she said again.

“And I was thinking what a cheap trick it was to play on any one,” Dewey told them.

“Oh,” said Margie for the third time. “I guess I understand.”

“Cocktails!” exclaimed Angela, suddenly vibrant. “More cocktails, everybody! Come and get them.”

Mrs. Haines, having napped her nap, now came upon the scene once more. She found them all bent over, busily scribbling on slips of paper in the colorfully inadequate light of several lamps. “Mercy,” she exclaimed, “here it’s every bit of one o’clock, Margie. Hadn’t we better be going?”

“Not yet, Ma,” said Margie, wetting the point of a pencil between her lips, “wait’ll we finish this game we’re playing.”

“The saints preserve us,” grumbled Mrs. Haines, “maybe you’d like to wear hair ribbons again, would you?”

Gil went about collecting the pieces of paper, which he deposited in some one’s derby and shook vigorously.

“Is it a raffle?” Mrs. Haines wanted to know.

“Sit down and listen,” Margie told her. “It’s a game called Opinions. We all wrote down what we thought of Angela, and now she has to come in and have them read to her and try and guess who wrote them.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Mrs. Haines. She leaned over and murmured in her daughter’s ear, “What’s she doing, fishing for compliments? Let me have that pencil, I’ll give her one.”

“Are you in this too, Mrs. Haines?” Gil asked, seeing her jot something down.

“Am I!” she exclaimed, handing him her slip of paper. “Wait’ll you see!”

They called Angela in to face her critics. At first she held her ears, dodged imaginary blows, and pretended to be very much alarmed. She put her hand in the hat, pulled out a folded wad of paper and handed it to her brother. He opened it and sang out in a loud voice:

“Old Lady Jazz.”

She laughed with them and pointing accusingly at him, said: “You wrote that, Gil, and don’t deny it.”

“Right,” he admitted.

The next one was a bit more sugar-coated.

“They sure turned out a good job when they made you.”

“Dick,” she said, bowing, “thank you.”

When they came to the third one, it bore the unkind message: “Baby vamp, only not so baby.”

Angela made no pretense at amiability. “There’s only one person in the room could have written that,” she said, keeping her eyes obstinately away from Margie, “and I’m not going to mention the name.”

She reached for another paper.

And on top of this came the fourth and deadliest of them all. Even Gil, when he unfolded it, remarked: “I don’t think I’d better read this.”

Angela insisted upon hearing it, her good nature already soured by the one before.

“It says here,” Gil announced apologetically, “‘Did you marry him or the horse?’ I think that’s going a little too far,” he commented, crumpling it and throwing it away.

Angela’s color had grown a shade deeper. “I’m sure none of your friends wrote a thing like that, Gil,” she told her brother. “Only a person without education could.”

She whirled on Dewey. “That’s what comes of having your people among us!” she cried hotly.

“How do you know my family did it?” he demanded. “You have no right to jump to conclusions.”

“They’re the only ones would be capable of insulting a hostess in her own home,” she flared. “People with breeding don’t do things like that.”

“Let’s go, boys,” said Gil, buttoning his jacket.

“It’s the truth that hurts,” said Mrs. Haines, speaking up suddenly. “I’m the one who wrote that, if you must know, my dear young lady.”

“Keep still, will you, Ma,” pleaded Margie.

“I knew one of them did it,” said Angela, ignoring them. Then suddenly changing her tactics, she turned to them and said: “I won’t have you in my house after to-night. Now leave.”

“We’d better go, Ma,” said Margie quietly. She unfastened the necklace Angela had once given her and flung it down. It broke and the stones scattered over the floor like rice.

Gil and his friends were filing past her, shaking hands. “Wait a minute, boys,” she exclaimed. “I’m coming with you. We’ll all go somewhere and dance. Florence, get my shawl.”

“Come along,” she said, taking two of them by the arm. They all went out together and the closing of the door cut short the murmur of their voices.