CHAPTER SIX
From the start, Grace had in her favor one trait without which there would be no good salesmen and no good press agents. She had little consciousness of the unexpressed rights, wishes, and emotions of other people. Her personality was like a huge shadow going before her. She kept her eyes straight on it and never noticed what it encompassed in its circumference. An obstacle had to be very definite before she would see that the shadow suddenly ended, that it had been interfered with.
This trait helped her to seem competent and poised during the next few days, while all the time her mind was busily sorting her experiences into some sort of order for future guidance. She and Al had to "plant," that is to insinuate, as many items about Annabella's opening as possible into the dramatic columns of the papers for Monday. For Tuesday they had to get more and bigger stories; for Wednesday even more and even bigger stories. On Thursday, the day of the opening, the guns had to blaze full blast. The time before Annabella's debut was the time of most strenuous effort for them. If Annabella "made a hit," a certain amount of notice would thereafter come to her naturally and accumulate with slighter aid from the press agents. Otherwise, they would have to redouble their ingenuity to keep her name green during the latter period of her engagement. It was earnestly to be hoped that Annabella would be a success.
At the same time, they had to "plant the time stuff," that is, arrange for pictures and notices in weeklies and in Sunday sections which were made up long ahead. Grace had been instructed in some of the ramifications of Harry Strauss's business. He was not only Annabella's press agent, he was also her agent and would have to find work for her in future. He handled the publicity for the night club, too, Grace learned. This made their task more difficult, since they had to be sure to get the name of the club used in papers where it would do the most good, in papers read by people who presumably had money to spend on night clubs—and these were the very papers which pretended to be above them.
From her former vantage point on the Brooklyn Press, Grace had thought the work of press agents (publicity representatives they liked to call themselves, and soon, no doubt, they would be "publicists") easy and well paid. She had supposed that she would sit at a desk and telephone and send stories down by messenger or through the mail, as other of her press-agent acquaintances did. But Mr. Strauss made it a cautious rule to expect the impossible of his employees. Grace and Al had to go from paper to paper with folders of pictures and sheaves of stories, peddling their wares. Although Mr. Strauss had instructed them to work apart, they "made the rounds" together. Al insisted, and Grace, at first, thought he might be a help.
Standing in the outer rooms of the more formal editorial offices, where a boy transmitted their names, it appeared that Al had contacts everywhere, knew everyone—very well. He called everybody of importance on the papers by his or her first name. By his account, he had roomed with this one, played poker with that one, stayed up drinking half the night with someone else; had found a job for one, lent money to another. When, however, they finally arrived before the desk of the particular dramatic editor with whom Al had been so intimate, Al's face seemed to return to the editor's mind in a haze of the most indistinct recognition.
Grace, too, had met most of the people, but in their offices they seemed more hurried, more preoccupied, than they had seemed outside. Al might have been the cause. Some were curt with him.
Walking out of one office, he grabbed Grace's arm and made as if to spit. He relieved his feelings: "Y'd think he was Jesus Christ! The lousy bastard! And y'know how much that guy makes? Sixty dollars a week!"
They went from Vesey Street into the mold and under-elevated darkness of Church, turned down a street near the river, sunny, broken up with low, sagging structures, smelling of markets and horse dung and wagonloads of vegetables. A truckman clucked to his horses in front of the old Globe building, which had been a car barn. A sense of hollow, dusty wood, steeped in years of grime, a strong, sour odor, followed them up stairs which were not too solid under their feet. Al wanted to place a feature story here for Monday.
Between editions, the city room drowsed among its tatters. Even the A.P. and City News machines clicked sleepily near a circle of copy desk where men were busy with blue pencils and pieces of paper. A mild copy boy waited till they accosted him and then jerked his finger toward a desk. A young man with a face from which he had ejected all emotion rose and looked over their heads. He was in shirt sleeves and wore his hat. There exists no combination more hard-boiled.
Al's eyes became pools of yearning truth, his manner gentle, good-humored, even faintly rueful, but persistent. He edged up to the man. He began to explain.
"... Of course, it sounds like a press-agent yarn. But Annabella Arden says that she feels her husband's presence sort of always in the air with her. [Gestures] No—no ouija board, no spiritualism, but just his spirit around her."
Grace squirmed.
After a moment, the man said expressionlessly that he might be able to use an interview with Annabella in the early edition Monday. He would see about it in the morning. He sat down. He fastened his eyes to a length of white paper.
They were so astonished that they had reached the door before Al came to with a great start. He stopped a copy boy, demanded the hard-boiled one's name. They made a special trip back. Al took out a card and put it before the man. He fervently held out his hand. The hard-boiled one shook it. "I want you to meet Miss Kline, Mr. Wodehard."
As they went out, Al's face was serene with duty performed. He had made another contact.
"He's a good chap to know. Assistant city editor."
"Do you think he'll actually use the story?" said Grace.
"Why not? I betcha he sends a reporter up to-morrow. Why not? They gotta have something to fill up the paper Monday mornings. We gotta remind him, of course. I tell you when I get a hunch, Grace——"
Grace didn't believe it. She fancied there had been a gleam of shared amusement in the hard-boiled one's eyes when they had met her own. She would not have approached him like that.
She wondered why Mr. Strauss had made such a point of dividing the papers. To try her out? Would Al attempt to take all the credit for the notices which they were thus placing together?
"Now listen, Grace," Al assured her, "you can tell Harry you did it all by yourself! I wouldn't care. Say, I been working for Harry since he started out by himself. I got a ten per cent interest in the business. Harry's a hard guy to work for but I can get along with him. Every so often he gets a grouch on and lets out at me, but I got an interest in the business, so before he goes home he calls me in and we kiss and make up. Harry pays me $110 a week besides my profit—I guess I get more than you. Harry's told me what he pays you, and believe me you're earning every cent you get."
He looked at her acutely. She was about to say that she made only forty a week—the glance seemed to demand it—but saved herself in time. She did not yet know whether or not to believe Al.
After her silence he said, with some disappointment, "You don't talk much, do you?"
She made up her mind not to depend too much on his chatter and his good nature, to be on her guard.
It was twilight now. They were walking arm in arm across Columbus Circle from the Evening Journal, Grace exhausted, even Al dragging his feet.
Grace had still to return to the office. She meant to write a story about the six dresses which Annabella Arden would offer to poor working girls. As it was Grace's idea, Al had disregarded it in their brief encounters with the city rooms, but, seizing a moment and an assistant city editor of a paper which specialized in legs and actresses, Grace had managed to make the suggestion. He had grasped at it. "That's not bad. Are you peddling this around to all the papers or is it an exclusive story?" he demanded. Al opened his mouth. Grace said quickly, "Exclusive." "You get it to me Monday, with pictures, and I'll give you a five-column layout. Can't promise what day. Maybe Tuesday. But it's an exclusive story, now? You're sure of that?" Grace said she was sure. She was overwhelmed.
Outside, Al fell upon her. "Never promise an exclusive story!" he cried. "We coulda planted that all over town, all the front pages! And you go give it to him exclusive! Jesus Christ!"
"But a five-column layout!" said Grace.
They had argued about it, Al declaring that they must offer the story elsewhere, too; Grace repeating that it was poor business to go back on a promise to a paper. "Aw, promises!" said Al cockily. "If we gotta good story, they'll come eatin' out of our hands. To hell with 'em!"
It was the one bright spot in the long day for Grace. Now, when Miss MacAlister had left her typewriter, would be a good time to write it. She hoped that Mr. Strauss had left too.
On each of their sallies back to the office Harry Strauss had been sitting at his desk over a pile of canceled checks, dealing them out as if he were playing solitaire, shuffling them between thumb and finger as bank tellers shuffle and count paper money. Sometimes she had to use the telephone on Miss MacAlister's desk and she could feel him watching through the open door, counting each call she made. She knew he listened because once, while Al was arguing over the telephone with an advertising man (the office also placed advertisements for clients) Mr. Strauss had called in his resonant, decisive voice, continuing to deal his checks: "Hang up on him! Hang up on him!" He looked up at her whenever she entered the office but made no comment. Only, Al warned her, "Don't make too many phone calls. Harry don't like that."
Once she had dared to hint for a messenger. She was speaking to Al in the outer office. Mr. Strauss called through instantly and bitterly, "And who's going to pay for the messenger? You'd be surprised how easy it is to send stuff around by messenger, my dear, and how easy it is then to throw it in the wastebasket. I've been doing publicity for thirty years—I know."
He was not there now, thank goodness! She let herself in with Al's key, took her hat off her aching forehead, and laid her head against the wide black paper holder of the machine. It felt cool and smooth. She could do nothing but sit still for a while.
Later, she was still sitting before a sheet of yellow paper in the typewriter. Under the yellow stare of the electric light she typed feverishly, tore out the paper, crumpled it. Balls of crumpled paper fell, one after another, into the wastebasket. What was the matter with her? She had been accustomed to write quite easily items, interviews with actresses, but she had not counted on the paralyzing self-consciousness which seizes a press agent who must get a certain name into a story. The name was no longer one among many but the name in the whole world. No matter where she put it, it seemed to poke out, swell, and spread over the paper. How should she slip in the name of the club? "Slip" was the word. There was an element of guilt and stealth in it. The story must not sound like a press-agent yarn.
When she had finally pounded it out the story sounded to her like nothing but a press-agent yarn. She read it with eyes so exhausted that they stung and stuck. "Would any poor working girl like a new dance frock? ... awaiting her choice in the wardrobe ... of ANNABELLA ARDEN.... The dresses were put into the bottom of a deep trunk and forgotten, together with other souvenirs.... Now ANNABELLA ARDEN is making her return appearance ... at the CLUB MIRAFLORE Thursday night...." The name of Annabella Arden seemed to be on every line and that of the club on every other.
The back of her neck felt permanently bent and the soles of her feet burned as they touched the ground.
The next morning, Saturday, Grace thought there might be a lull. But she found Al lying in wait for her the moment she entered the office. He was sorting a mass of flimsy sheets on which were typed short, final announcements of the opening. Addressed envelopes flew toward him out of the stenographer's machine.
"Now, we gotta get these to everybody to-day," cried Al. "Come on, Grace, lend a hand. And listen, I gotta get ahold of that City News man. He'll send it over the wire."
"You don't really think City News will let that go over the wire?" said Grace involuntarily. Her eyes took in the slew of papers and envelopes. "And—how can we deliver all this to-day?"
"You watch me," said Al. "I'll show you."
In a daze, she began to sort the envelopes. She counted forty. Some, however, were addressed to different departments of the same papers. She put her hand to her head and exchanged a long look with the stenographer and Miss MacAlister giggled. In time, Grace would learn that the Harry Strauss system, the Broadway system, was to bite off everything within reach, regardless of whether or not it could be chewed; afterward, the undigested bits, unfinished matter, would be spewed about. She was still taking instructions too literally.
When this task was over, Al was lying in wait for her again.
"Now listen, Grace, one thing we forgot. We didn't get anything to Arch Seuer down at the Dress Daily. He'll give us a good break, and Harry's sure to put up a holler if we miss him. All the salesmen and buyers read that paper—go to night clubs. So you type a special note for Seuer and go down there right away—and grab all the envelopes you can and deliver all you can on your way—and meet me at the Sun at four."
Grace hastened down to the Dress Daily. She had meant to see Mr. Milford again anyway. It would be wise to thank him. Besides, he sometimes used sketches of actresses' clothes if they were decorated in a way to suit his column. Grace had seen some block-printed garments in Annabella's wardrobe. But she remembered something, something unpleasant, something that had pulled her shadow up short and forced her to take notice, in Mr. Milford's department. What was it?—oh, yes—that girl, his secretary. She certainly didn't like her, Grace. Grace had to pause and consider this. Unwitting, Anita Vestry had chosen a perfect path to Grace's interest. A person who didn't like Grace and was not afraid to show it disturbed her, even caused her some fear. What was it that they saw in her to scorn? Could they be holding some secret harm in store for her? Did they know—know about her?
Grace saw that Mr. Milford was not in. Miss Vestry stood by his desk with her back to the door. After Grace had done her errand she walked past again, and now Miss Vestry was typing. But she didn't look up. She wore the same brown tweed suit; her profile was just as stern. Grace halted by her desk and fixed large, worried, tentative eyes upon her. Miss Vestry waited for the other girl to speak.
"Do you think—that Mr. Milford," began Grace, swallowing nervously, "would use—any sketches of block-printed dresses? I'm—doing publicity for Annabella Arden, the dancer—and I saw some very unusual ones among her clothes."
Again Anita Vestry noticed the tenacious eyes, the halts between phrases, the curious way in which the girl's eyes advanced and the lower part of her face retreated as she talked. It was interesting to watch. She felt in better humor to-day and was a little ashamed of her pettish outburst at their first meeting.
"You'd have to ask him," she replied, yielding somewhat. "We haven't anything for next Saturday," she suggested.
"Would there be time—if I called up Monday?"
"Oh, yes. Plenty of time." She looked down at her hands on the typewriter keys.
Still Grace lingered. The other girl seemed so removed, regarding, but sealed against her. She searched for some way to penetrate herself into the other's consciousness. Suddenly she said, without really meaning to, "Look—Miss Arden opens Thursday night at the Club Miraflore. I—they say I can ask a lot of newspaper people. There'll be five tables. Wouldn't you—like to come?"
The hue of Miss Vestry's face softened into what was almost a blush and she gazed at Grace. In all the months she had been in New York, this was the first proffer of acquaintance, of pleasure, that had come her way, or that had come her way directly enough for her to notice. As luck would have it, she even owned a suitable dress; old, but seldom worn, it would do, and there was one man at her rooming house who, she thought, could serve as escort. But... Her mouth drew down again. She lowered her eyes to her hands, then raised them suddenly, frankly.
"I haven't got an evening wrap," she said, and grew red.
This was the best possible way to fix all of Grace's attention and sympathy. On this point of clothes Grace could enter at once into anyone's feelings. It was so engrossing, so sore a point with her. Didn't she herself have to—hadn't she had to as far back as she could remember—scrimp and plan and borrow and make over and make do? To her, too, any offer of amusement must bring as its first reaction the idea of what she could possibly wear. Perhaps that dress would do, but... Oh, yes! She knew. She reflected. She could wear her sealskin coat now. Letty—but Letty had been invited and would need her own wrap. Mrs. Kline, however, had an old cloth cape, gaily lined, which Grace had sometimes used for an evening cloak. She moved closer to Miss Vestry.
"I have a wrap I could lend you," she said. "Do come."
"Oh." Miss Vestry's face was wholly open, wholly grateful. "All right," she said, and smiled, a twinkling smile. She made a great concession. "I—I'll talk to Mr. Milford about those sketches."
"Oh, thank you!" said Grace. "Then that's settled. I'll—get the wrap down to you on Thursday. Good-bye."
On the way out she spent a few minutes concerning herself with this girl. She felt more than curiosity, a sort of imaginative wonder about her, which was unusual. What was her life? How did she manage? Whom would she bring to the club? Even—what were her thoughts? Grace felt pleased with herself, with her impulse and with its results, of which she could approve.
The envelopes she carried soon shook her out of reverie. She began to hurry and worry and close off her mind. She flew uptown, then she flew downtown. There was an engagement with Blake in the offing, one of the few evening engagements he could permit himself. She didn't mean to miss it, but she had to. When she met Al at the Sun not even her own share of envelopes had been delivered, and Al, as usual, recollected numerous additional duties.
They sped from paper to paper, from Dramatic Department to Dramatic Department, from one yellow, tiredly glaring, dusty city room to the next. From Park Place they walked across City Hall Park, black and quiet, with huddled figures on the steps of the City Hall; newspaper vendors, small oases of noise, shouting their wares down the wind. The tiny, tireless lights gleamed along Park Row. The Woolworth Building stood deserted, above it all, white and high, like a dream in youth. They went down several black steps, felt a black square about them, and there were the delivery trucks of the American, the hoarse, bare bowels of its building swallowed them. Men looked up at Grace from under green eyeshades with the instantaneous, naïve interest of newspapermen in a pretty girl, any girl. She made a moment to call Blake when he should have reached the restaurant and arranged to see him later at the theater. He was sulky, but it couldn't be helped.
She and Al walked arm in arm from outside darkness into yellow light, rush, and noise, then into darkness again, into the desert, with its small islands of power, which this section was at night; glad of each other's company, glad of a parallel effort against the forceful, whirring, harassed indifference of the presses, felt now in the dusky air, but neither heard nor seen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Club Miraflore was below sidewalk level; a few steps down, an office by the window, very wide, carpeted stairs leading farther down to the cloakroom and the dance floor. The owner, a tall and handsome Irishman, approved of Grace's looks, of the sort of plaintive simplicity with which she accepted orders then, when she was not yet habituated to these people. He did not sling her about as he slung Al. All the same, she understood why even Al disliked to work with night clubs. From the man at the desk, who noted reservations, to the proprietor, everyone's eyes had a hard gleam; everyone had a suspicious, calculating hospitality; everyone watched to see in whose back it would be easiest to plunge a knife.
Grace had been asked to come early Thursday night to receive the newspaper guests, so, still literal, she was the first to arrive. She entered nervous and worn.
Since Monday she and Al had been buying all the morning papers and all the evening papers (Harry Strauss wouldn't order or pay for papers) frantically scanning them, clipping and hoarding scraps of newsprint, little notices, and exhibiting them to Mr. Strauss. The "breaks" had been good, Al said. They had got in one journal a front-page story about the insurance of Annabella's legs. The five-column layout had appeared. But she could never tell whether Mr. Strauss was pleased or not. He sniffed at the small items and looked down his nose, cautiously, at the large ones. That morning Mr. Strauss had called them both in. On his desk lay the New York Times. He pointed to a box, front page, top column.
As they were not handling the publicity for Annabella's partner, they had carefully omitted his name from the announcements, but they had nevertheless, been obliged to attach it to the photographs of the new dance step. An evening paper, remarking that he had the same name as the son of a millionaire banker, had, without further ado, printed a half column about the banker's son acting as Annabella's partner. Al and Grace had seen this and congratulated themselves on the "break." Both Annabella's name and the name of the club held prominent places in the story. But the Times, which they had not yet examined, had taken the trouble to verify. The banker's son would not appear with Annabella; he had, in fact, changed his given name to avoid constant confusion with the partner.
There it was in a front-page box of the New York Times—acme of publicity. Annabella's name was mentioned once. The name of the club was not. The partner's name, however, was given several times.
Al and Grace drew a deep breath. They were about to burst with elation. Al, hushed, with eyes that bulged as at some act of God, read the notice over Mr. Strauss's shoulder, "Gee! Front-page box!"
"Who's responsible for this?" snapped Mr. Strauss. Grace and Al glanced at each other. Both would have liked to take the credit. Neither wished to admit that they were not responsible at all. It was just an accident—a glorious accident.
Mr. Strauss said quietly, cuttingly, "Puffed up with yourselves, aren't you?"
Al made excited gestures. "Jesus Christ! What the hell d'y'want us to do, Harry? Here we get a box in the Times——"
"Yeh. You get a box in the Times for that bastard," sneered Mr. Strauss. "Who's paying for this, the Miraflore or that lousy hoofer?"
"But what the hell d'y'expect us to do?" cried Al in despair. "Did we plant that story, Grace? You tell Harry. See! The Times got it themselves. What the hell can we do about it?"
"What the hell am I paying you for?" inquired Mr. Strauss. "To get publicity for Annabella and the Miraflore, or for a bum hoofer?"
They had walked out much subdued.
"We're all right," Al muttered. "Harry always expects the world. He promises the world. Gee! A front-page box with Annabella's name! I wish we were working for that partner, too. He's good—better'n she is. Who's Annabella anyhow? Just a dizzy blonde hoofer, that's all she is."
Publicity, Grace had noticed, had its first and fullest effect on Al. On the days when Annabella "got" little or nothing in the papers, his opinion of her sank; on the days when she "got a break," she rose in his esteem.
Grace and her mother were still barely speaking so she had not dared to ask Mrs. Kline to make a new dress. She wore to the opening an old dark brown lace, the color of her eyes, with a trailing orange sash. It was becoming enough, but, as usual, there was a wrong note to cause unease. Her short sealskin coat was not really an evening wrap, merely very obviously masquerading as one. When she had checked it she felt better.
Then, the five tables for the newspapers developed into one long table almost against the orchestra. And she and Al had invited so many people! Ought she to speak about that? She didn't know what to do. The orchestra was tuning up, squawking and piping. The round rows of tables were glassy white, ghastly; the waiters stood against the wall. Mr. Larchmont, the owner, came over and inspected her in one sharp glance from bare shoulders to tapered ankles.
"Everything all right?" he said. She nodded. "Now, all I ask of you is this—if any of these newspaper fellas show up not in evening clothes, please see that they sit away from the dance floor. This is an exclusive club, you know. Lots of society people will be here to-night. I don't want them to get the idea we let anybody in."
He snorted at the very thought. "Do you understand?" Again she nodded. "And if they want anything—a little—" he made a wide open motion of his hand—"just ask the waiter. They can't have the whole cellar, y'understand—but there's plenty of it." He gave her a brisk, charming smile, a smile of approval, and went away.
The next to arrive were Letty and Harold Moses. Grace had begged them to hurry. They were not newspaper people, of course, but whenever Grace could find a loophole to drag Letty in, to share anything with her, she did so.
Letty was giggling.
"Gee, we're the acrobats, we're opening the show. Harold almost died when he saw the empty tables. I couldn't get him in, almost. Where's Blake?"
"He wouldn't come so early."
"He's right," grumbled Harold. He was a man of thirty, dark, clean-shaven, well dressed. He looked steady. The idea of making himself conspicuous in any way, even as the first to arrive at a night club, bothered him.
Letty caught the eye of the orchestra leader and would have signaled. Harold put down her hand.
"I know he'd play for us if we asked him," said Letty, tapping a small, light foot. "Oh, Gee! Harold, the old spoil-sport. Is Blake really coming?"
"Yes. We—arranged that," said Grace. Letty always gave her composure and a feeling of maturity.
"Wife hasn't gone yet?"
"Not till next week."
Harold smoked and looked away. This business of running around with a married man. He disapproved of both Blake and Grace, but of Grace most. Letty never considered Blake's wife at all, but Harold, strangely enough, did. He felt sorry for her and in accord with her, as if, though he had never seen the woman, he realized that they shared a mutual trouble, that they were both on the side of the easily overlooked.
"Blake'll dance with me anyhow—if Harold won't."
Harold couldn't help looking alarmed.
"Who do you think called me up the other day? Paul! Yop. And I can't even see him, Harold's so mean about it."
Harold's lips shut in an unhappy line. He was determined at any rate not to be on the side of the deceived.
"He did! Can't keep away, can he?" said Grace, who knew very well that Letty would manage to see Paul. Probably her aid would be enlisted in the arrangement. At the same time, she sympathized with Harold and changed the subject. "My Gawd! Isn't anyone ever coming to this night club?"
People were straggling in, though very slowly. The orchestra played once or twice, the sad, calling notes of orchestras on empty dance floors. Without a human response, dance music was the loneliest music on earth, Grace thought.
After theater time, after eleven, the club began to seem appreciably warmer and warmer, gayer and gayer; there was talk now and the waiters flew, and the orchestra became cheerful with appreciation. Lovely dresses and lovely faces bloomed about them. Letty and Grace envied the corsages of orchids. Their table was rather silent. A newspaperman had appeared with a large wife, pathetically pleasant. The newspaperman drank. There was the photographer, Al's friend, with a girl from the Telegraph.
At midnight Blake walked in, very pale under the lights, and sat mutely by Letty, dancing only when she asked him. Grace knew that he disliked this environment. It made him feel poorer and shabbier than ever. He did not smoke and turned the water glass with his highball round and round in his hand. But Grace could not give him any attention. Two newspapermen, acquaintances of hers, had also come. She danced with one, then the other, then brought them to Letty. Letty rose to dance and Grace slipped into her chair. She had no time to talk to Blake, however; the wife of the newspaperman leaned over the table and preëmpted her. With her eyes, Grace beseeched Blake to dance with this woman, knowing it would be useless. He was comfortable, sitting there silent, and would be oblivious to all else.
At the same time, she had a glimpse of Miss Vestry with a quite presentable man in tow. They were weaving their way between tables and among dancers going and coming. Miss Vestry looked better than Grace had expected. She had pretty, short hair, reddish brown. Grace introduced her to Blake. She had to rise then to dance and, watching from the floor, she saw, over and under heads, that Miss Vestry was actually talking to Blake, very brightly. She brushed by Letty.
"Who is that girl?" said Letty.
"Go over and see if Blake needs rescuing," said Grace over her shoulder.
"He doesn't look it," said Letty swiftly, and tripped away in her partner's arms.
When Grace returned to the table Miss Vestry was on the opposite side, at the other end. Grace made a moment to lean over Blake and whisper, "Was it terrible? I'm sorry."
"Oh, she was telling me a funny story about a taxi driver," said Blake with a smile.
So Grace contemplated Miss Vestry across the table with a new curiosity. What was there to her? Blake was usually annoyed by strangers.
The fusion of the group no longer depended on Grace. The separate elements had been welded for the moment, in some way, into one note of enjoyment. Even the talk was unrecognizable by individual voices. The party had a voice of its own, confused and gay. Harry Strauss walked over from his table, his shock of hair more vigorously silver than ever, and patted her arm. "Everything all right? All the liquor you want?" Then Al burst upon them, holding tight by the elbow a lady in an orchid gown, expansive so that there seemed to be dozens of Als, whacking all the men on their backs and bending close to the bare shoulders of all the girls. He didn't know Blake but he slapped him on the back too. Blake flushed and sat up straighter.
"That fella on a paper?" said Al to Grace. "No? Gee, I thought I knew him. Oh, he came with you, huh?" he said with a knowing intonation. Grace had to remind herself that that tone of voice was habit. Al knew nothing, could know nothing whatever. "So only three showed up. Well, that don't mean a thing. All the fellas say they'll come and then nobody shows up. We—we're all right," he cried, putting his arm about the back of her chair in the excess of his spirits. "We'll make it. This is a good party." He spread the palm of his hand emphatically before her nose. "Wait till you see Annabella. Say, that baby's got something up her sleeve. She'll be a knockout."
"Where did you see her?" said Grace.
"I saw her. I saw her," shouted Al, and frisked away. Blake and Letty moved across several vacant chairs to her side. Everyone else was dancing. Directly opposite, Anita Vestry and Harold were in close conversation.
"I don't want to pry, but may I know what you and Harold can find to discuss so earnestly for half an hour?" called Letty above the noise of the orchestra.
Harold looked up and Miss Vestry reddened a little.
"We're talking about Trenton," she said. "I come from Trenton."
"Oh, my Gosh!" said Letty. "He's telling you about lace mills, then. I never knew anyone who talked more about lace mills."
Miss Vestry laughed. "No. We're talking about potteries."
"Potteries! Do I get potteries for breakfasts and dinners now?" It was a comic wail of despair.
Everybody laughed. And then, as she was talking, Miss Vestry noticed that everyone had been eliminated, everyone but Grace and Blake. Strange how, as she chatted with Letty Moses, she had also to be aware of what those two said. Perhaps it was the penetrating character of Grace's voice, the pause between phrases, which kept the ear subconsciously waiting, watching for the continuing phrase. Perhaps it was a curious tenseness of atmosphere. The pair seemed to gather the air around them and raise and hold it to some higher point where they alone sat. Or perhaps it was only because they seemed so utterly unaware of other people, looked and spoke and acted at and for each other. Anita Vestry could feel the three-cornered conversation waning, dying of its unimportance, as if the ears and attention of the others were also fixed elsewhere upon something more dominant. Yet Grace and Blake were saying little.
"When—must you leave?" Grace was asking.
"Two. I'm supposed to be working at Bill's house."
"Does Bill know it?"
"Mmm."
"Is she really going next week then?"
There was no answer. Grace desisted. She always knew just the moment to stop, had learned it patiently and profited by her experience. She said, "Anyhow, you'll have time to see our Annabella perform."
All the dancers were returning to their tables. The floor was cleared. A woman sang. Al had moved a chair between tables, regardless of the frowns of Mr. Larchmont and of the waiters, and sat at ease with his feet spread in front of him. When he caught Grace's eye ne winked and made violent, jovial signals.
Annabella appeared in a white, downy dress, with her partner, sliding like a large swan through the motions of a formal waltz. This was a tribute to Gene Arden, who had been a ballroom dancer. A few people pattered their hands. The next number belonged to Annabella alone; then she met her partner and the two performed some pretty, jigging steps. Alone again, she was better but not very exciting. There was light applause—and intermission.
Al rushed over.
"This is just the beginning. Wait, you ain't seen nothin' yet."
Grace glanced toward Harry Strauss's table and felt depressed. Mr. Strauss was looking down his long nose, tapping a glass with his fingernail.
"He doesn't seem pleased," she said. "If she's no better than this——"
"Say, don't you worry!" cried Al. "That kid has the stuff. This is just a starter. She's a little scared, see? But she's got something up her sleeve you don't know nothin' about." The music began. "Watch this now. You'll see." He scurried away.
"He always knows so much," she murmured to Blake.
"Mmm. That's the Broadway act," said Blake.
Suddenly the circle of dance floor was flooded with a light that made it waver in long lines as if it were not wood but water. Annabella entered. Was it Annabella? Everyone sat up. The baby face was gone. This woman had no face—her face couldn't be noticed or recollected. She wore a short skirt of green grass apparently, and a band of grass lightly confined her breasts. The middle of her torso was bare, gracious, wide, and white. It was flat but not thin; the softness of the flesh was evident. She took a few steps directly within the light. She turned and sang, kicked out, danced. All at once she stood still. Her hips swayed. The audience breathed heavily. She was no longer Annabella Arden or anybody. She had completely, unconsciously visualized herself into a symbol. She was a woman—the woman. Holding herself still, the woman moved her body from the hips. The woman's white flesh rippled as a ray of white light ripples on a clear stream, and she threw up one white arm like a call. As she pranced, she sang, and it was as if she whinnied. "Well," cried Al, hollering above the thud of feet and hands, the applause, the calls, and mopping his brow. "Wha'd I tell you? Look at Harry now."
Harry Strauss was clapping and nodding his head slowly and definitely. Variations of the shimmy were still novel that year.
"She's a knockout! I bet Harry's glad now he tied her up."
"Do you mean to say Mr. Strauss didn't know about—this?"
"Oh, he knew. But he didn't know how this belly-dancing, what-you-call-it, would go in a ritzy club like the Miraflore. Larchmont didn't want to try it."
"It would go anywhere, from a honky-tonk up," said Blake. He had to raise his voice. There was still applause.
"You in show business?" cried Al.
Blake rose and spoke to Grace. "I'd better run along now before the encore."
"Don't—mind about me. I'm staying with Let to-night anyhow."
It hadn't occurred to Blake to mind about her, she saw. Once this would have hurt her, now she was resigned. That was just Blake's way. He was sorry and took her hand gently, in front of Al, to make up for his remissness.
"Hey, ain't he taking you home?" cried Al. "Say, there's a chance for me now!"
Blake went at once.
After the encore Grace dragged Letty off the dance floor to go home. Miss Vestry was just leaving, too. Letty said to her with enthusiasm, "Come and see us sometime, call me up, won't you?"
Harold yawned widely in the taxi and Letty, animated as ever, gave him a push and a kiss. "The tired old business man. Well, your evening wasn't lost, was it? Just think of all the great big potteries you discussed with Miss—Miss—what was that girl's name?"
"Vestry. She seems to be all right. Blake liked her," said Grace.
"And so do I," declared Letty. "I asked her to call me up. Why don't you bring her along, Gracie, some Sunday maybe? I mean it. That's a nice girl, intelligent."
"Sunday? Oh. That—reminds me. What are—your plans—Sunday after next? I—was going to borrow your apartment."
"Uh-huh." By a direct look Letty signified that they had best discuss this when they were alone. Harold had turned away his face, twisted with irritation and embarrassment.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On the Sunday which Grace had reserved, the Moseses came home in ill humor from a vaudeville show and a walk. It was a cold November afternoon, blanketed in the lethargy of the day of rest, with a wind which swept along the closed shop windows on Fifth Avenue and between the people on Broadway and left both streets naked—naked and dull. Harold wished to return home as quickly as possible, but Letty said the walk would do them good. He suspected that she had promised not to come back before a certain hour.
Nor did their house seem much more cheerful to him than the street. It consisted of a tiny entrance, one square room, and behind that a doorless alcove through whose looped, glossy curtains twin beds could be seen. There was also a bit of tiled kitchenette near the entrance. Everything was in order. Everything shone with the chill, dustless luster of the apartment house itself, its mirrored elevator and its hall boys. And over everything lay a special Sunday atmosphere, like a heavy gray enamel.
Blake and Grace were sitting on the couch, rolling private jokes between them. They were happy enough. To Harold their good cheer was the final straw. One couldn't even be alone in one's own house with one's own troubles without the mood of those two interfering. He went into the bathroom, the only unoccupied room in the house, and banged the door.
Grace lifted her brows in sincere surprise. "What is it now?"
"Oh-h," said Letty with a long, a gusty sigh, "don't ask me! It started with his insurance and then went on and on and on."
She threw off her coat and sat down beside Blake. He put an arm around her and they kissed each other while Grace regarded them with an encouraging, a mock-coy amusement. She often spoke of the attachment between Blake and Letty. She even urged them to flirt a bit, serving up Letty's kisses as an extra fillip to Blake and feeling secure with the knowledge that these were passed out always through a window in the solid barrier of Letty's loyalty to her, a window which had been opened by her permission and would be sealed at her behest. It was not so much that she trusted Letty—only Letty was that kind of a girl; her friends' preserves were so enclosed in her mind that they were practically invisible. Of course, if their friendship no longer existed—"If I should die for instance," Grace often said meditatively, "you two might—start something."
Harold understood the situation, too, but this did not mean that he enjoyed it. He went to the armchair by the window. Grace and Blake were now rolling their special jokes on to Letty, but Harold was left to smile out in the cold; not intentionally, more as if the circle of three had too close a harmony to need or permit of additions. From experience, he knew that it would not be possible for him to start a new conversation. If he tried, if even Letty tried, Blake's voice, which was a little hoarse, as if with weariness, and Grace's contralto and Grace's characteristic laugh would separate the words, brush them aside, distract the attention. Neither Harold nor Letty could attach as much importance to what each said as Blake and Grace apparently could to what they said. Grace made of each laugh a particular tribute to Blake as king, to herself as queen. It was too deep and too prolonged for a snigger, but she laughed, drawing the laughter inside of herself, arching her shoulders, curling her lips, lifting her head, making a distinct point of each gesture, as if her amusement had a distinct significance, an appreciation peculiar to herself and necessarily transcending all other appreciation.
"Tell us about Harry Strauss and his nickel," said Blake to her.
"Oh, yes. The other day I was telephoning and Harry, as usual, was listening. Before I got through he called, 'Don't hang up; I want to talk to him.' Well, you know how it is when you're—busy and you're telephoning. When I was through I—instinctively hung up, just as Harry made a move to grab the phone. He shook his head, went 'Teh. Teh,' and I said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I'll get him right back,' and I started to—call the number again. And Harry said, shaking his finger at me, 'Listen, my dear, you ought to be more careful. Every time you do that it costs a nickel!'"
Letty trilled laughter. "Oh, my Gosh! Why'n't you tell him you'd give him the nickel?"
"Oh, I couldn't do that, Letty," said Grace reprovingly. "But Blake and I—" she began to curl her lips and arch her shoulders, looking from person to person—"Blake and I—have decided to call him It-costs-a-nickel-Harry!" And she began her deep, prolonged, continuous snigger.
Then Blake told them about another publicity man who had the habit of adding, at the top of each news note, an impassioned plea for its publication, concluding with the bribe of eternal gratitude from him and his employer. His first name was Mike, so, as he and the employer were both notorious for their piety, some of the dramatic editors had nicknamed him For-Christ's-sake-print-this-Mike.
When he was done he looked solely at Grace and she rewarded him. They were, or considered themselves to be, too unsentimental to use endearments in front of other people, but they began a sort of wrestling match which was a form of endearment. It was a sophisticated wrestling match; merely a pulling and bending of arms with a vast deal of deliberate mirth on Grace's part. There was none of the apparent indelicacy of a pair cooing before others, yet they were so self-sufficient, they erased everyone else so completely, that even Letty sought to detach their interest from each other. As for Harold, he looked out of the window and smoked, first cigarettes, then a pipe. Harold would have liked Blake by himself; with Grace he frequently found him insufferable.
Finally Letty attracted Blake's attention by some question about what he would like to eat.
He paused in the wrestling match and said with complete naturalness, "I can't stay."
"You can't stay to-night?" cried Letty. "But——"
Grace was slowly disengaging herself. It was understood that Blake had to filch these Sunday afternoons from his wife; he was always supposed to be working on his play at a friend's house and he usually had to be back for supper. But—the same thought was in the minds of both girls—this was the first Sunday of his wife's absence, the first day in months which he and Grace had had absolutely to themselves.
She said, "Don't you want any supper?" It was a carefully surprised question, not a demand.
"Bill asked me over there for supper."
Something of Grace's rigidity penetrated even to him.
He glanced at her and muttered, as if against his will, "We were going to work to-night anyway."
For a second she could not answer. She had planned this Sunday to be so perfect, unmarred by that shade of prior claim, unjarred by the necessity for departure at a set hour. Sudden sensations of revolt swarmed within her like a disturbed hornet's nest. She felt her voice freezing with the effort to keep it tearless and unexacting.
Presently, she said, "Oh. I wish—you'd tell me those things in time—so I could—make—my own plans."
"Well, you can stay here now, can't you?" said Blake through tighter lips.
"So I can—now," she said quietly, "but I might have made—other arrangements."
She did not mean to let Blake depart in sullenness, however. It was one of her axioms never to permit even the slightest breach to remain unadjusted overnight, "never to sleep on a quarrel." No telling what depths it might borrow from the thoughtful spaciousness of the night! She followed him to the entrance, from which could be heard her special laughter accompanying their lingering embrace.
Then Grace, Harold, and Letty were left alone.
"You might go down and get something to eat," suggested Letty, speaking to Harold for the first time. "Everything's a lot cheaper at that little delicatessen on Broadway and they won't deliver. I've argued and argued with them and they won't."
"Of course they won't," grumbled Harold. "That's how they can afford to sell cheaper. Can't you get it through your head that when production costs are higher, prices must rise? You're like all consumers——"
"Oh, you and your old production costs!" cried Letty. "Very well. I'm a consumer and I don't care who knows it! I don't give a rap about producers. I'm a consumer. I consume." She flounced over to the telephone in the alcove.
Grace began to talk amicably to Harold, trying to "smooth him over."
"Speaking of production costs," she said, "do you know—you have an admirer? Remember that Miss Vestry who held forth on potteries? She was all het up—when I told her you were a manager in an underwear factory. Said she'd like to know one person in New York who didn't have some job connected with words."
"That's a funny idea," said Harold unwillingly.
And, "What was that?" demanded Letty as she flung herself back on the couch. "Have you been seeing her?"
"Yes. I had dinner with her last week. She's a funny girl but—sort of interesting. She's all alone here, lives in a weird rooming house. I asked her why she didn't try for a job in the Fashion Department and she said she hated the Dress Daily and hated all the jobs that had sprung up around words. She said when Mr. Milford started to dictate she felt like—a fly caught in a spider's web! She told me she wished she could find something to do in a place where they made—things. No wonder she knew so much about potteries. It seems her father is a potter or something like that."
"I always hated stenography, too," declared Letty. "All that stew and fuss to write a lot of bunk!"
"You wouldn't know anything about it," put in Harold. "You were a bum stenog."
"That's right. Take it out on me!"
The food, when it finally arrived, also had a veneer, the enameled sheen of the delicatessen. They served themselves dabs of many things, one plate to a person, put the plates on paper napkins in their laps, and ate, mostly in silence till Harold remarked that, considering the young fortune Letty spent on food, it was remarkable how rotten this supper could taste.
"Yes," said Letty bitterly, "and you heard what I got, Grace, when I tried to save some money. And I was bawled out for extravagance all through a vaudeville show just because I asked him to raise my clothes allowance!"
Harold gave Letty a look which said, "How dare you bring that girl into our affairs?" All the same, he could not help defending himself. "I told you why I couldn't raise your clothes allowance. I'm taking out more insurance. Letty doesn't understand that that's more for her benefit than extra clothes."
"I'd rather have the clothes," said Letty. "You're always worrying about what would become of me if anything happened to you. I never worry. It's not as if we had a family. I could go back to work."
"Mm. What would you do? You were just saying how you hated stenography."
Letty tossed her head. "Oh, well, I wouldn't work forever. It sounds vain—but I know I could always marry somebody or get kept or something." She shrugged.
Grace began the preliminary motions to her deep snigger.
"I dare say—Paul—would be glad to step into Harold's shoes," she suggested, emphasizing the joke with a coy lift of her brows.
Harold went over to the phonograph and put on a record, and Letty behind his back made a warning "oh" of her mouth. She started to pile the dishes and carry them into the kitchenette, calling to Harold for assistance, but on her return trip she stopped by Grace and said something to her and giggled. Grace whispered, "You did see him?" Then she put her hand hastily over her mouth. Harold had also stepped out of the kitchenette. She didn't believe he had heard, but the expression of his face was so enraged that she grew pale for a moment and thought that really Letty tantalized him too much.
Neither Harold nor Letty spoke for some time. Although Grace realized that the former was angry and the latter uneasy, it would not occur to her that she could be involved. After an evening visit to Letty she nearly always stayed the night, so, with the assurance of precedent, she got up, said she was sleepy, and went into the alcove.
Even more than the clandestine use to which she put the apartment, this habit of hers irritated Harold. He had had many a quarrel with Letty over the requisitioning of their place Sunday afternoons and only an idea of the futility of the procedure restrained him from forbidding it. Letty was quite capable of lending the key anyhow and Grace of arranging matters so that he need never know. Whenever Grace made ready to spend the night, the same fear of what Letty would do, plus a sense of middle-class manners, never let him go beyond the muttered comment: "Hasn't she got a home?" But to-night was different. To-night he was incensed beyond fear and beyond courtesy. Not only could he and Letty never seem to be mentally alone in their house; but often they couldn't even be physically alone! He said to Letty, "Go in there and tell her to go home."
"I will not," replied Letty at once.
"If you won't, I will. I expect to have my home to myself once in a while."
Unconsciously, Letty raised her voice. "As far as I'm concerned, you can have your old home to yourself—all to yourself—for ever and ever."
Grace now appeared between the curtains of the alcove. She had put on Letty's dressing gown and looked from one to the other, pale, with large, disturbed eyes. She had caught Letty's last words; still she never thought that the quarrel could include her. Only, she was sorry for both of them.
"We think you'd better go home to-night," said Harold.
She was so taken aback that her cheeks grew quite white and haggard, her eyes turned toward him with a dark, welling pathos. Harold moved his own eyes quickly.
"Don't mind a thing he says," cried Letty. "Don't go home. I want you to stay."
"No. I'd better go."
She walked, white-faced, into the alcove, followed by Letty. Her shadow had been pulled up short and she was, for the moment, stunned by the comprehension of what this might mean to her.
CHAPTER NINE
When Grace had not seen Letty for a fortnight, her mind began to weave in and about various stratagems. She knew she would make her way back to their house—she had to—but her life, especially of late, had been so based on substrata of manipulation that it never occurred to her to do this directly. At last she hit on a plan which included Anita Vestry. The latter was not so much associated with her as to draw Harold's instant suspicion; besides, Letty, in Harold's hearing, had asked the girl to come and see her.
One noon she made a special trip downtown to have lunch with Anita, to confide in her and to broach to her the idea of calling up Letty and inviting her to the theater. Grace would get them free tickets and would meet them.
"I really want to see her ever so much," Grace pleaded. "Of course, I call her up, but it's not the same. Harold plays bridge to-morrow so, if he knows she's going with you, it'll be all right."
Anita couldn't understand. "Why don't you just call her up and meet her downtown yourself?"
"No," said Grace, "I want her to have a perfect alibi. If you call up at dinner time Harold will answer the phone and he'll know you are making the arrangements, and he'll be satisfied. They fight so much about everything, I don't want them to fight over me. Besides, I'd like to have you along."
This was not an afterthought. There was an uncommon stability, a fresh sturdiness about Anita, which was new to Grace and which attracted her. All her other relations—at home, with Blake, at the office; even, now, with Letty—seemed so precarious that she was nearly always in a state of inner fear—an apprehensive shivering of her very soul. She longed for solid, utterly smooth ground, and Anita gave promise of this.
By some maneuver Grace had managed to get two pairs of seats, so Letty and Grace sat together, and Anita sat behind them by herself. She enjoyed it that way. She luxuriated in the vacant seat.
"If I am ever rich," she thought, "I will always buy three seats to the theater; one for me and a vacant one on either side."
A fig for talk of selfishness when, for the price of selfishness, one could buy some freedom from too enveloping human contacts! But probably she would never be rich. The play was poor, even Anita, who merely liked to watch the lights and the faces, was forced to recognize. But the featured actress had a voice. What a voice! It made the cheapest commonplaces sound like mottoes on glorious tombs. The audience was aquiver with her voice.
During the first intermission Anita remarked on it to Grace.
"Yes," said Grace with a grave note of opinion, "I think so, too. I think they're—silly not to star her."
"Imagine her as Juliet!" suggested Letty.
"N-no. She's not helpless enough. I don't feel that a Juliet—would have so much poise. But Candida! Blake and I are mad about Shaw and we decided that she'd make the perfect Candida. I told Dexter I wanted to meet her, and if he can arrange it I'd like to tell her that."
Somehow, Anita had never realized that actresses could be met. The idea struck her very suddenly and she looked at Grace, in spite of herself, with wonder that had a tinge of awe in it. Anita would not quite have dared to cry as Letty did, "Oh, will you take me along, Grace?"
"If it's—possible," said Grace with dignity.
During the second intermission Grace and Letty held a long, vigorous consultation on clothes. Anita, listening, could not understand why they had troubled to trick and to arrange this evening for such talk. She could not feel the warm alliance between them from which each drew comfort and composure, no matter what they said. From each other they got that sense of the burden of troubles, emotions, and thoughts being eased, shared; of some other helping to live their lives which men may hope to freely get from women, but which wise women never even attempt to expect from men. To be sure, men can have their easy, unexacting, open friendships, and laugh at the intricate intimacies between women, for it is upon the shoulders of women that they unload the subtler moods and cares. But this lack in their lives women must look to other women to fill, unless they can bear to be, too often, entirely alone.
After the theater the three girls walked up Broadway, past the first rush and chatter of the crowds, the first battle of lights and electric signs, past the kitten made of light naïvely chasing a spool made of light, to a slightly quieter section before another turn of that twisting, glinting street, opening and shutting accordion-like. They went into Bouton's and sat down at a blackly shining, glassy table.
"Three frŏsted chŏcolates," ordered Grace.
"Three frawsted chawc'lets?" inquired the waiter politely.
They began to giggle behind his back.
"It's always that way," said Grace. "I've tried every combination but I never hit on the right one. If I say 'frawsted chŏcolate,' the waiter rebukes me with 'frŏsted chawc'let.' And if I reverse the pronunciation, he reverses it, too, so we never meet."
They were merry, but both Grace and Letty glanced at the clock from time to time. Letty said in a low aside under cover of the general hubbub, "Are you going up with me?"
"No, to Brooklyn," murmured Grace. She gave the faintest nod in Anita's direction. Anita was not meant to catch the nod.
Grace looked up at her swiftly across the table.
"How is your job going now?" asked Anita.
"Oh, so-so. Al has a movie. I've been working all day with a vaudeville act. Midgets. I had an awfully bright idea—if I say so myself. Eight of them—piled into a cab and then refused to pay extra fare, claiming they were so small that eight of them made only four legal persons. So the driver—haled them to court. He was marvelous—we had to let him in on it, of course—fell right into the spirit of the thing and was very—indignant, and postured and declaimed like anything. I love taxi drivers. They always catch the spirit of things. But we had to let the judge in, too, so he would dismiss the case before the afternoon show and that—was difficult. Harry fixed that up. We've got a tremendous spread in the Evening World to-night—it's just their meat—and stuff in all the other papers. Very funny.
"But none of it's—easy," she explained with more emphatic pauses and doubly serious eyes. "It's not like doing publicity for an established theatrical firm. They're—entitled to a certain amount of space in the dramatic columns. They have standing and they advertise. Harry Strauss places advertising for his clients, too, but not everywhere and not enough and not—consistently. Besides, the papers are wary of him into the bargain. So it's a process of grab as grab can. And he certainly expects you to grab. He wants all the news space and all the front pages!"
"I have a singer, too," she added with a snigger. "Baritone. I think I've—acquired him, Letty. Two lunches and one dinner so far, and he wants to teach me how to speak Italian and eat spaghetti. Pretty good—what? We're also going to have a show soon—called Mamie—and I think perhaps Mr. Strauss'll let me handle it alone. If I do well perhaps I'll even get—a raise. Do you know, Annabella told me she paid Strauss $200 a week, and I don't know what the night club paid him. It's unbelievable, isn't it? He gets the highest prices in the business."
"I'll bet Blake minds the baritone," put in Letty.
"Minds? I guess he doesn't," said Grace firmly. She seemed altogether less flexible than Anita had ever seen her. Her eyes were merely large eyes, very calm. "I guess—he has no right to mind. I must find some way to spend my evenings."
There was one thing more that Letty wished to know, and as they were leaving, single file, she murmured to Grace, "Then when is she coming back?"
"Not till December," said Grace, low. "She changed her mind and wanted to come home for Thanksgiving but—she was told to stay. If Ma should call..."
"I know. Don't worry."
Some time later, when Anita was preparing for bed, the two asides, the conversation she had overheard at the night club, the slight warning nod began to arrange themselves idly in her mind. And, not of her volition, but like the final link of a puzzle slipping into place without effort when all the other parts have been set in order, there came back to her a remark Grace had made at their one dinner together. Blake lived in Brooklyn.
With a certain gallantry, she at once shook off this unexpected meaning, a meaning that seemed too discordant in the atmosphere of the tragic which she had sensed about Grace; a meaning which left a wryness in her mouth and opened before her mind a shocking vista of sad, small, endless, and tasteless adaptations ever at their task of leveling and making endurable. After all, what did she know of tragedy? It suddenly struck her that perhaps the very souls in hell found obscure dingy ways of habituating themselves to hell fire and thereafter survived in the midst of it with an unseemly equanimity.
CHAPTER TEN
During the last two years of school Grace had taken her classes at the Washington Square College. Between classes, which came in the late afternoon and evening, she would cross Washington Square Park and explore the raggedy-taggedy streets of the Italian and artistic colonies. Sometimes she went to the tea-room cafés that brought together art and tourists. When she met Blake Andrews in one of these (very formally, they were introduced) she met an even-featured young man with sandy hair, a solid chin, and thin cheeks. He slouched with determination, did not trouble to be polite, and did not trouble to be neat. The acidity of failure she mistook and he mistook for the irony of sophistication. He talked about books, plays, and the stage. So did she. He was married, which was too bad, but not definitely against him in our times, and his wife remained in St. Louis, which was better. He led a curious life.
This life seemed strange even to Blake, though he acted as if he had been born to it. His people were decent, semi-substantial folks in St. Louis. He had married, as Grace said, the "little girl next door," a pretty girl, whose porch and lawn adjoined, who had gone to the same college, who was gentle and dutiful and knew how to cook. No one had forced him to marry her. No one had forced him to enter a relative's bank. There he had done his work equably and capably and was in line for a vice-presidency, at least. He and Edith, his wife, had an apartment, not a house like their parents', with all sorts of novel appliances. They were a modern young couple. When the war began Blake enlisted at once, and after his discharge he stayed in New York. He said that he wished to write plays.
Blake came not too unnaturally by an interest in the theater. An uncle was on the stage—on the road, rather, but with headquarters in New York; the aunt, too, was of the profession. They lived in a two-room apartment over a restaurant on West Forty-seventh Street. There Blake took up his abode. At one end of the street burlesque chorus girls with fat legs stood about the stage door of the Columbia; opposite, agents and vaudeville actors greeted each other warmly around the Palace. In the center of the block Spaniards leaned against the portals of the Hotel America, contemplating with dumb, warm eyes and chewing toothpicks. The porter constantly moved trunks with vivid placards. Actors and fight managers were shaved by the window of the Hotel Somerset. Highly painted, ardently respectable women, with wedding rings, divorces, fur coats, and diamonds of various grades, walked in and out of the delicatessen shops, lingerie shops, restaurants, lobbies, and the few remaining brownstone houses. Lap dogs were aired before shabby apartment hotels and trucks of scenery unloaded before the climbing iron staircase back of the Palace.
At first Blake hunted for work. As he disliked the only sort of work he knew and was not familiar with any other, he found no work. He looked up various people from St. Louis, made acquaintance with Broadway, and for a time he drifted toward the Village. His struggles had served no purpose, so he made up his mind with a vigor none the less effective for being inert, to struggle no more. He would not go home. He did no work. He even stopped shaving and paid no further attention to his clothes. His parents sent him a little money and not too many remonstrances; he was their only child and they swore by him—perhaps they remembered his firm chin and unwavering gait. His wife stayed with her people and wrote him bewildered, pleading letters. His uncle provided food and shelter. Blake went about, unshaven, thin-cheeked, morose, not confiding in anyone.
He was, as one Village girl defined it, in the "sitting business." Whenever she entered a Village café and saw him there, sitting sourly in a corner, she called, "Ah, there! Still in the sitting business, what?" Blake was outsitting his parents, his job, his duty, his class, and St. Louis, Missouri. He even had a faint hope that he might outsit his wife, a faint hope since Blake came of a social stratum in which it is one of the virtues of wives to stick like a wet hair to the hand. To prove, however, that he had at least outsat this virtue in himself, he made some careless love to girls who painted or wrote and thereby, necessarily to Blake, flaunted their lack of cohesion. For several months he and Grace met thus, very casually, enjoying the novelty of each other's "lines."
One day they were walking up Sixth Avenue when a shabby man approached Blake and asked him for money to buy a meal. Blake had a quarter in his pocket. The sight of pain, trouble of any sort, was hateful to him, for, affected by it though he was, he found himself averse with every fiber of his lethargic, self-contained nature to any effort at alleviation. He thought he had decided that such effort was futile. He could not help other people's troubles; therefore he wished to be unconscious of them. They made him feel too powerless. He put his hand into his pocket, because of Grace, and at once thought better of it. He didn't mean to be confused by gallantry. The man added, "I been in vaudeville for years, mister, and now I can't get work." Blake walked by with an awkward laugh. "Oh, in vaudeville?" he said. "Then you're not worth even a quarter. Apply to the N.V.A." He flushed, as he said this, at his own brutality.
Grace hurried past him, caught up with the man, and searched for some change. She was white-lipped and had difficulty to keep back the tears. She did not think she could even bear Blake by her side.
Blake had a stroke of luck that year. He wrote a playlet with another man who knew an agent who sold it as a vaudeville act. Toward the end of the year Edith managed to get the money to come to New York, their furniture was brought from St. Louis, and Blake found himself in the midst of his lares and penates in Brooklyn, with a vague income, a tender if puzzled wife, and a love affair accelerated by its own speed, going now of its own volition.
At last neither Grace nor Blake could make any further attempts to fly before the fire with which they had been playing. They merely sought, with a muddled stubbornness on Blake's part, to keep the flames away from that parched island where Edith dwelt, bewildered, but not even imagining, utterly unknowing. Their hope, at least Blake's hope, was that some day the island would grow too parched for human endurance and Edith would cease to forgive and to submit and by herself, of her own free will, try to escape. To cast her out from even this poor refuge to which she clung so intently seemed impossible to Blake. He could not be so cruel to her. And Grace, resenting this division between his love and his kindness, this division which was so nicely defined for her, which Blake could not, would not, realize, saw no way but to yield. She wished for both the love and the kindness; she would not rest and could not feel serene till she had both. But for the present, for the sake of peace, she had made her choice. There was a rough justice in it, a painful justice. She would have the love and Edith might, undisturbed for the present, have the kindness.