"But certainly," the young woman said, for she had recently returned from France. "But of course."
She lent him room on the little sofa where she sat, light and languid, and he rested none too easily beside her. He set his gaze upon her face, nor did he take it away.
"You know, this is terribly nice of you to let me do this," he said. "It"s-well, what I mean is, I was afraid maybe you wouldn"t."
"But no!" she said.
"You see," he said, "I"ve been looking at you all evening. At least, I couldn"t get my eyes off of you. Honest. First thing I saw you, I tried to get Marge to introduce me, but she"s been so busy fixing drinks and everything, I couldn"t get near her. And then I saw you come and sit here, all by yourself, and I"ve been trying to get up my nerve to come over and talk to you. I thought you might be sore or something, at least. I"d get all set to start over, and then I"d think, "Oh, she"s so sweet and pretty, she"ll just give me the b.u.m"s rush." I thought you"d be sore or something, me coming over and talking to you without an introduction, I mean."
"Oh, non," she said. "Why, I"d never dream of being sore. Abroad, you know, they say the roof is an introduction."
"Beg pardon?" he said.
"That"s what they say abroad," she said. "In Paris and places. You go to a party, and the person that"s giving the party doesn"t introduce anybody to anybody. They just take it for granted that everybody will talk to everybody else, because they take it for granted that their friends are their friends" friends. Comprenez-vous? Oh, I"m sorry. Slips. I must stop talking French. Only it"s so hard, once you get into the habit of rattling it off. I mean, see what I mean? Why, I"d forgotten all about people having to be introduced to other people at a party."
"Well, I"m certainly glad you aren"t sore," he said. "At least, it"s wonderful for me. Only maybe you"d rather be alone, here. Would you?"
"Oh, non, non, non, non, non," she said. "Goodness, no. I was just sitting here, watching everybody. I feel as if I don"t know a soul since I"ve come back. But it"s so interesting, just to sit and watch the way people behave and their clothes and everything. You feel as if you were in another world. Well, you know how you feel when you"ve come back from being abroad. Don"t you?"
"I"ve never been abroad," he said.
"Oh, my," she said. "Oh, la-la-la. Haven"t you really? Well, you must go, the very first minute you can. You"ll adore it. I can tell just by looking at you you"ll be crazy over it."
"Were you abroad long?" he said.
"I was in Paris over three weeks," she said.
"That"s one place I"d like to go," he said. "I guess that must be tops."
"Oh, don"t talk about it," she said. "It makes me so homesick I can"t see straight. Oh, Paree, Paree, ma chere Paree. I just feel as though it"s my city. Honestly, I don"t know how I"m ever going to get along away from it. I"d like to go right straight back this minute."
"Hey, don"t talk like that, will you?" he said. "We need you around here. At least, don"t go back yet a while, will you please? I"ve only just met you."
"Oh, that"s sweet of you," she said. "Goodness, so few American men know how to talk to a woman. I guess they"re all too busy, or something. Everybody seems in such a hurry-no time for anything but money, money, money. Well, c"est ca, I suppose."
"We could find time for other things," he said. "There"s a lot of fun we could have. There"s a lot of fun around New York, at least."
"This old New York!" she said. "I don"t believe I"ll ever get used to it. There"s nothing to do here. Now in Paris, it"s so picturesque and everything, you"re never blue a second. And there are all these cute little places where you can go and have a drink, when you want. Oh, it"s wonderful."
"I know any amount of cute little places where you can go and have a drink," he said. "I can take you to any one of them in ten minutes."
"It wouldn"t be like Paris," she said. "Oh, every time I think of it, I get terriblement triste. Darn it, there I go again. Will I ever remember?"
"Look," he said, "can"t I get you a drink now? Why, you haven"t been doing a thing. What would you like?"
"Oh, mon dieu, I don"t know," she said. "I"ve got so in the habit of drinking champagne that really-What have they got? What do people drink here, anyway?"
"Well, there"s Scotch and gin," he said, "and I think maybe there"s some rye out in the dining-room. At least there may be."
"How funny!" she said. "You forget about the terrible things that people drink. Well, when in Rome-Gin, I guess."
"With ginger ale?" he said.
"Quel horreur!" she said. "No, just plain, I think, just-what do you call it?-straight."
"I"ll be right back," he said, "and it"ll be too long."
He left her and quickly returned, bearing little full gla.s.ses. Carefully he presented one to her.
"Merci mille fois," she said. "Oh, darn me. Thank you, I mean."
The young man sat down again beside her. He drank, but he did not look at the gla.s.s in his hand. He looked at the young woman.
"J"ai soif," she said. "Mon dieu. I hope you don"t think I swear terribly. I"ve got so in the way of doing it, I really don"t realize what I"m saying. And in French, you know, they don"t think anything of it at all. Everybody says it. It isn"t even like swearing. Ugh. My goodness, this is strong."
"It"s all right, though," he said. "Marge has a good man."
"Marge?" she said. "A good man?"
"At least," he said, "the stuff isn"t cut."
"Stuff?" she said. "Isn"t cut?"
"She"s got a good bootlegger, at least," he said. "I wouldn"t be much surprised if he really did get it off the boat."
"Oh, please don"t talk about boats!" she said. "It makes me so homesick, I just nearly die. It makes me want to get right on a boat now."
"Ah, don"t," he said. "Give me just a little chance. Lord, when I think I nearly pa.s.sed up this party. Honestly, I wasn"t going to come at first. And then the minute I saw you, I knew I"d never been so right in my life. At least, when I saw you sitting there and that dress and everything-well, I went for a loop, that"s all."
"What, this old thing?" she said. "Why, it"s old as the hills. I got it before I went abroad. I sort of didn"t want to wear any of my French things tonight because-well, of course no one thinks anything of them over there, but I thought maybe these New York people might think they were pretty extreme. You know how Paris clothes are. They"re so Frenchy."
"Would I like to see you in them," he said. "Boy! Why, I"d-Hey, there isn"t anything in your gla.s.s. Here, let me fix that up for you. And don"t move, will you?"
Again he went and came back, and again he bore gla.s.ses filled with colorless fluid. He resumed looking at the young woman.
"Well," she said. "a votre sante. Heavens, I wish I could stop that. I mean good luck."
"I"ve got it," he said, "ever since I met you. I wish-at least I wish we could get off somewhere away from here. Marge says they"re going to roll back the rugs and dance, and everybody"ll be wanting to dance with you, and I won"t have a prayer."
"Oh, I don"t want to dance," she said. "American men dance so badly, most of them. And I don"t want to meet a lot of people, anyway. It"s awfully hard for me to talk to them. I can"t seem to understand what they"re talking about, since I"ve been back. I suppose they think their slang is funny, but I don"t see it."
"You know what we might do," he said, "if you would, at least? We might wait till they start dancing, and then just ease out. We might do the town for a while. What would you say, at least?"
"You know, that might be rather amusing," she said. "I"d really like to see some of your new little bistros-what do you call them?-oh, you know what I mean-speakeasies. I hear some of them are really quite interesting. I suppose this stuff is strong, but it doesn"t seem to do anything at all to me. It must be because I haven"t been used to anything but those wonderful French wines."
"Can I get you some more?" he said.
"Well," she said, "I might have a little. One has to do what everybody else does, don"t you?"
"Same thing?" he said. "Straight gin?"
"S"il vous plait," she said. "But yes."
"Lady," he said, "can you take it! Are we going to have an evening!"
For the third time he went and came. For the third time he watched her though he drank.
"Ce n"est pas mal," she said. "Pas du tout, at all. There"s a little place in one of the Boulevards-they"re those big avenues they have-that has a sort of cordial that tastes almost exactly like this. My, I"d like to be there now."
"Ah, no, you wouldn"t," he said. "Would you, really? You won"t after a little while, anyway. There"s a little place on Fifty-Second Street I want to take you first. Look, when they start dancing, what do you say you get your coat, or at least whatever you have, and meet me in the hall? There"s no sense saying good-night. Marge will never know. I can show you a couple of places might make you forget Paris."
"Oh, don"t say that," she said. "Please. As if I could ever forget my Paree! You just can"t know how I feel about it. Every time anybody says "Paris," I just want to cry and cry."
"You can even do that," he said, "at least as long as you do it on my shoulder. It"s waiting right here for you. What do you say we get started, baby? Mind if I call you baby? Let"s go get ourselves a couple of pretty edges. How are you coming with that gin? Finished? Atta girl. How about it we go out now and get stinking?"
"But oke!" said the young woman in green lace.
They went out.
The New Yorker, September 24, 1932.
Horsie.
When young Mrs. Gerald Cruger came home from the hospital, Miss Wilmarth came along with her and the baby. Miss Wilmarth was an admirable trained nurse, sure and calm and tireless, with a real taste for the arranging of flowers in bowls and vases. She had never known a patient to receive so many flowers, or such uncommon ones; yellow violets and strange lilies and little white orchids poised like a bevy of delicate moths along green branches. Care and thought must have been put into their selection that they, like all the other fragile and costly things she kept about her, should be so right for young Mrs. Cruger. No one who knew her could have caught up the telephone and lightly bidden the florist to deliver her one of his five-dollar a.s.sortments of tulips, stock, and daffodils. Camilla Cruger was no complement to garden blooms.
Sometimes, when she opened the shiny boxes and carefully grouped the cards, there would come a curious expression upon Miss Wilmarth"s face. Playing over shorter features, it might almost have been one of wistfulness. Upon Miss Wilmarth, it served to perfect the strange resemblance that she bore through her years; her face was truly complete with that look of friendly melancholy peculiar to the gentle horse. It was not, of course, Miss Wilmarth"s fault that she looked like a horse. Indeed, there was nowhere to attach any blame. But the resemblance remained.
She was tall, p.r.o.nounced of bone, and erect of carriage; it was somehow impossible to speculate upon her appearance undressed. Her long face was innocent, indeed ignorant, of cosmetics, and its color stayed steady. Confusion, heat, or haste caused her neck to flush crimson. Her mild hair was pinned with loops of nicked black wire into a narrow knot, practical to support her little high cap, like a charlotte russe from a bake-shop. She had big, trustworthy hands, scrubbed and dry, with nails cut short and so deeply cleaned with some small sharp instrument that the ends stood away from the spatulate finger-tips. Gerald Cruger, who nightly sat opposite her at his own dinner table, tried not to see her hands. It irritated him to be reminded by their sight that they must feel like straw matting and smell of white soap. For him, women who were not softly lovely were simply not women.
He tried, too, so far as it was possible to his beautiful manners, to keep his eyes from her face. Not that it was unpleasant-a kind face, certainly. But, as he told Camilla, once he looked he stayed fascinated, awaiting the toss and the whinny.
"I love horses, myself," he said to Camilla, who lay all white and languid on her apricot satin chaise-longue. "I"m a fool for a horse. Ah, what a n.o.ble animal, darling! All I say is, n.o.body has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don"t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?"
He did not dislike Miss Wilmarth; he only resented her. He had no bad wish in the world for her, but he waited with longing the day she would leave. She was so skilled and rhythmic in her work that she disrupted the household but little. Nevertheless, her presence was an onus. There was that thing of dining with her every evening. It was a ch.o.r.e for him, certainly, and one that did not ease with repet.i.tion, but there was no choice. Everyone had always heard of trained nurses" bristling insistence that they be not treated as servants; Miss Wilmarth could not be asked to dine with the maids. He would not have dinner out; be away from Camilla? It was too much to expect the maids to inst.i.tute a second dinner service or to carry trays, other than Camilla"s, up and down the stairs. There were only three servants and they had work enough.
"Those children," Camilla"s mother was wont to say, chuckling. "Those two kids. The independence of them! Struggling along on cheese and kisses. Why, they hardly let me pay for the trained nurse. And it was all we could do, last Christmas, to make Camilla take the Packard and the chauffeur."
So Gerald dined each night with Miss Wilmarth. The small dread of his hour with her struck suddenly at him in the afternoon. He would forget it for stretches of minutes, only to be smitten sharper as the time drew near. On his way home from his office, he found grim entertainment in rehearsing his table talk, and plotting desperate innovations to it.
Cruger"s Compulsory Conversations: Lesson I, a Dinner with a Miss Wilmarth, a Trained Nurse. Good evening, Miss Wilmarth. Well! And how were the patients all day? That"s good, that"s fine. Well! The baby gained two ounces, did she? That"s fine. Yes, that"s right, she will be before we know it. That"s right. Well! Mrs. Cruger seems to be getting stronger every day, doesn"t she? That"s good, that"s fine. That"s right, up and about before we know it. Yes, she certainly will. Well! Any visitors today? That"s good. Didn"t stay too long, did they? That"s fine. Well! No, no, no, Miss Wilmarth-you go ahead. I wasn"t going to say anything at all, really. No, really. Well! Well! I see where they found those two aviators after all. Yes, they certainly do run risks. That"s right. Yes. Well! I see where they"ve been having a regular old-fashioned blizzard out west. Yes, we certainly have had a mild winter. That"s right. Well! I see where they held up that jeweler"s shop right in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue. Yes, I certainly don"t know what we"re coming to. That"s right. Well! I see the cat. Do you see the cat? The cat is on the mat. It certainly is. Well! Pardon me, Miss Wilmarth, but must you look so much like a horse? Do you like to look like a horse, Miss Wilmarth? That"s good, Miss Wilmarth, that"s fine. You certainly do, Miss Wilmarth. That"s right. Well! Will you for G.o.d"s sake finish your oats, Miss Wilmarth, and let me get out of this?
Every evening he reached the dining-room before Miss Wilmarth and stared gloomily at silver and candle-flame until she was upon him. No sound of footfall heralded her coming, for her ample canvas oxfords were soled with rubber; there would be a protest of parquet, a trembling of ornaments, a creak, a rustle, and the authoritative smell of stiff linen; and there she would be, set for her ritual of evening cheer.
"Well, Mary," she would cry to the waitress, "you know what they say-better late than never!"
But no smile would mellow Mary"s lips, no light her eyes. Mary, in converse with the cook, habitually referred to Miss Wilmarth as "that one." She wished no truck with Miss Wilmarth or any of the others of her guild; always in and out of a person"s pantry.
Once or twice Gerald saw a strange expression upon Miss Wilmarth"s face as she witnessed the failure of her adage with the maid. He could not quite cla.s.sify it. Though he did not know, it was the look she sometimes had when she opened the shiny white boxes and lifted the exquisite, scentless blossoms that were sent to Camilla. Anyway, whatever it was, it increased her equine resemblance to such a point that he thought of proffering her an apple.
But she always had her big smile turned toward him when she sat down. Then she would look at the thick watch strapped to her wrist and give a little squeal that brought the edges of his teeth together.
"Mercy!" she would say. "My good mercy! Why, I had no more idea it was so late. Well, you mustn"t blame me, Mr. Cruger. Don"t you scold me. You"ll just have to blame that daughter of yours. She"s the one that keeps us all busy."
"She certainly is," he would say. "That"s right."
He would think, and with small pleasure, of the infant Diane, pink and undistinguished and angry, among the ruffles and choux of her ba.s.sinet. It was her doing that Camilla had stayed so long away from him in the odorous limbo of the hospital, her doing that Camilla lay all day upon her apricot satin chaise-longue. "We must take our time," the doctor said, "just ta-a-ake our ti-yem." Yes; well, that would all be because of young Diane. It was because of her, indeed, that night upon night he must face Miss Wilmarth and comb up conversation. All right, young Diane, there you are and nothing to do about it. But you"ll be an only child, young woman, that"s what you"ll be.
Always Miss Wilmarth followed her opening pleasantry about the baby with a companion piece. Gerald had come to know it so well he could have said it in duet with her.
"You wait," she would say. "Just you wait. You"re the one that"s going to be kept busy when the beaux start coming around. You"ll see. That young lady"s going to be a heart-breaker if ever I saw one."
"I guess that"s right," Gerald would say, and he would essay a small laugh and fail at it. It made him uncomfortable, somehow embarra.s.sed him to hear Miss Wilmarth banter of swains and conquest. It was unseemly, as rouge would have been unseemly on her long mouth and perfume on her flat bosom.
He would hurry her over to her own ground. "Well!" he would say. "Well! And how were the patients all day?"
But that, even with the baby"s weight and the list of the day"s visitors, seldom lasted past the soup.
"Doesn"t that woman ever go out?" he asked Camilla. "Doesn"t our Horsie ever rate a night off?"
"Where would she want to go?" Camilla said. Her low, lazy words had always the trick of seeming a little weary of their subject.
"Well," Gerald said, "she might take herself a moonlight canter around the park."
"Oh, she doubtless gets a thrill out of dining with you," Camilla said. "You"re a man, they tell me, and she can"t have seen many. Poor old horse. She"s not a bad soul."
"Yes," he said. "And what a round of pleasure it is, having dinner every night with Not a Bad Soul."
"What makes you think," Camilla said, "that I am caught up in any whirl of gaiety, lying here?"
"Oh, darling," he said. "Oh, my poor darling. I didn"t mean it, honestly I didn"t. Oh, lord, I didn"t mean it. How could I complain, after all you"ve been through, and I haven"t done a thing? Please, sweet, please. Ah, Camilla, say you know I didn"t mean it."
"After all," Camilla said, "you just have her at dinner. I have her around all day."
"Sweetheart, please," he said. "Oh, poor angel."
He dropped to his knees by the chaise-longue and crushed her limp, fragrant hand against his mouth. Then he remembered about being very, very gentle. He ran little apologetic kisses up and down her fingers and murmured of gardenias and lilies and thus exhausted his knowledge of white flowers.
Her visitors said that Camilla looked lovelier than ever, but they were mistaken. She was only as lovely as she had always been. They spoke in hushed voices of the new look in her eyes since her motherhood; but it was the same far brightness that had always lain there. They said how white she was and how lifted above other people; they forgot that she had always been pale as moonlight and had always worn a delicate disdain, as light as the lace that covered her breast. Her doctor cautioned tenderly against hurry, besought her to take recovery slowly-Camilla, who had never done anything quickly in her life. Her friends gathered, adoring, about the apricot satin chaise-longue where Camilla lay and moved her hands as if they hung heavy from her wrists; they had been wont before to gather and adore at the white satin sofa in the drawing-room where Camilla reclined, her hands like heavy lilies in a languid breeze. Every night, when Gerald crossed the threshold of her fragrant room, his heart leaped and his words caught in his throat; but those things had always befallen him at the sight of her. Motherhood had not brought perfection to Camilla"s loveliness. She had had that before.
Gerald came home early enough, each evening, to have a while with her before dinner. He made his c.o.c.ktails in her room, and watched her as she slowly drank one. Miss Wilmarth was in and out, touching flowers, patting pillows. Sometimes she brought Diane in on display, and those would be minutes of real discomfort for Gerald. He could not bear to watch her with the baby in her arms, so acute was his vicarious embarra.s.sment at her behavior. She would bring her long head down close to Diane"s tiny, stern face and toss it back again high on her rangy neck, all the while that strange words, in a strange high voice, came from her.
"Well, her wuzza booful dirl. Ess, her wuzza. Her wuzza, wuzza, wuzza. Ess, her wuzz." She would bring the baby over to him. "See, Daddy. Isn"t us a gate, bid dirl? Isn"t us booful? Say "nigh-nigh," Daddy. Us doe teepy-bye, now. Say "nigh-nigh." "