Katharine Brush

“ In the deep well of it, lounging recumbent behind the massive steering wheel—Yvonne. Yvonne in a gray gown and a tight gray turban with long uncurled feathers that sprayed down on one shoulder. Yvonne, with hair that was a loop of flame on her cheek, with diamonds that glittered in the sunlight on her hands, with a Russian wolfhound in a jeweled collar sitting stiffly on his haunches beside her.
A picture almost indelicately sensational. Beauty on parade, demanding every eye. ”

“ She flicked the ashes from her cigarette, laid her head against the back of the divan, and put the holder between her lips again. The whole gesture was indolent; and her little smile gave no sign that behind it her teeth gripped vise-like on the bit of jade.
"In this newspaper job," she continued, "you'll probably begin on a salary of thirty or forty dollars a week—if you're lucky. I had an allowance of seven hundred a week when I lived with Demorest. Make your own deductions. I've made mine. I can't stand poverty, Jock Hamill. ”

“ Women? Treacherous. Love? A story-book fallacy. Ideals? As sand huts on a tidal beach, built for destruction.
But there was work. ("Thank God!" said Jock somewhat melodramatically, as young men in like plight have said since time immemorial.) Congenial work. Absorbing work. In a great dirty room full of shirt-sleeved figures, prodigious tables row on row, smooth sheets of copy paper, crumpled wads of copy paper, typewriters that chattered like a million teeth in a chill, air that was dead with smoke and must and dust and printers' ink, and alive—frantic—with breathlessness. ”

“ Little devil won't say yes or no."
"I don't think she is," opined Yvonne. "And even if she should be, it probably won't pan out. About one girl in a hundred ever marries her first fiancé."
"She could do a lot worse, though," Jock said generously. "Bill's a good boy. I like him better every time I see him. Well, anyway, as I was saying: Cecily's comments on those books—I wish you could have heard 'em, Yvonne! Clever as they could be. If it had been any one else I'd have thought she was plagiarizing from some big critic's book reviews, but not Cecily. ”

“ She wore a brocaded evening cloak with a vast fur collar, and above it her eyes shone and her sweet full lips smiled a smile that said, "Come on! Life's fun! Come and play with me!"
A young man walked just behind her, and as soon as he beheld this young man Jock thought, "She'll marry him. Any girl would." . . . There was a beauty-parlor look about Bill Burnholme. ”

“ Peg amused him always, Johnny he was enormously fond of, and their host of friends he found exactly to his taste. There was a special brand of informality about the Havens's parties. Everyone was expected to do just what he pleased in that apartment, and did so. People came if, and when, they wanted to, entertained themselves according to the dictates of their fancies, and departed at such time as they saw fit. ”

“ Havens, a sort of Johnny-grown-old with a beard and a belly, pounding his fist on a pile of newspapers and roaring, "Why should I waste my time?"
Why, indeed? Jock could think of no good reason, and it began to seem to him that his mere presence here in expectation of the Great was most presumptuous.
But Mr. Havens came, and was not ostentatiously Great at all, but quite human. You felt at once that he enjoyed cards and horse races, that he commanded a supply of excellent stories, and that he had a cellar full of bottles with cobwebs upon them. That type of man. ”

“ Hamill piously. "We only decided what we'd like it to be. Having no influence in heaven, and none whatever over you, we suspect that in all probability it will be something quite different. Do sit down, darling, you make me nervous. A grin at that height is too remindful of a gargoyle on a roof."
Jock and Saunders Lincoln laughed together, and Jock bent to move the little slippered feet to the side of the footstool, seating himself by them. "Well, I," he declared, "have spent this New Year's day elaborately and painstakingly mapping out the future of a beautiful young lady!" ”

“ Cecily presented him, and sank into her chair with a sigh, declaring that "introductions always befuddle me." Bill and Jock, from opposite sides, assisted her to shed her wrap, thereby revealing a tight little gown of coral velvet with a spatter of glistening beads across the bodice. "Don't tell me we're late," she implored. "What I mean is, not too late—you haven't done your act yet, have you?"
"No," said Yvonne, "not until eight."
"We had a flat tire," Cecily explained, "—of course. Bill is one of those people who always get flat tires. ”

“ The beautiful young lady was not Yvonne."
Mrs. Hamill's eyes widened, and Lincoln said, "Why, I'd been led to believe that Yvonne was the only really beautiful young lady now extant!"
"She is," Jock assured them, sobering. "This one's just an infant. Cecily Graves, from East Orange. I met her once at college, and last night she showed up at the Tavern, and—well, there's quite a yarn. Want to listen?"
"Yes," cried Mrs. Hamill with enthusiasm.
Leaning forward, his arms on his knees and a forgotten cigarette consuming itself in his fingers, Jock outlined the history of Cecily as he knew it. ”

“ Yvonne sank to her knees and huddled there on the carpet, a little shuddering heap of silk and feathers.
VIII For months he honestly believed that he would never be happy again.
So perverse is human nature that when something we have long possessed is taken from us, we do not try to determine whether or not, in our hearts, we still valued it. Theft is theft, even though it removes the thing with which we would have parted voluntarily in a little while. Jock regarded himself as a man who had suffered irredeemable loss ”

“ Nutriment to some women's vanity is requisite, you know. Especially at thirty-two. They'll go to any lengths to attain it. They'll even give up luxury, for a while, the way I have. But of course that can't last. The time comes when apartments on Park Avenue and motor cars and pearls look pretty good again, and collegiate devotion grows stale——"
"In other words, Jock Hamill," she concluded, glancing toward him for the first time, "the game has ceased to be worth the candle." ”

“ Don't think the old man doesn't know it, either. He'll see that you get a week off at least, any time you want it."
"I'm in no hurry," said Jock.
Johnny regarded him solemnly over the rim of his mug (supplied by the management to heighten the illusion) . "Listen to me, boy," he ordered, setting the mug down with a thump. "My well-earned rest starts a week from Saturday. Peg and I are going to spend it down near New London, where dad has a summer place which he's agreed to turn over to us, and we're going to take a bunch along for a houseparty. And you're coming too, d'you hear?" ”

“ Guess I've got you to thank for that, Johnny."
"Like crazy you have! You've got nobody to thank but yourself——"
Peg planted a firm palm on her husband's chest and pushed him back into place. "Subside," she commanded sweetly. 'Devote yourself to Lulu. I have certain somethings to whisper in this gent's ear before we get home." She turned to Jock. "What made you think Bill Burnholme would be here? Of course I know. You thought, being Cecily's fiancé, we'd naturally ask him." ”

“ Jock shook his head. "She didn't see me. She was in a machine" . . .
Mrs. Hamill, from the sentences that followed, got this picture:
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street at high noon. A procession of motor-cars, and, on the corner, a damp impatient host of people, waiting for them to slide by.
". . . And a fellow standing next to me said to his girl, 'There's the new Demorest Straight Eight.' Demorest is the one, you know. I looked" . . .
A magnificent two-passenger racing car, low slung, painted gray, without a top. ”

“ Jock, his face radiant and his heart doing strange alarming things within him, wrung her hand wordlessly, in token that it was not.
"Axiom One for Young Men," chanted Peg, "established by Jock Hamill of New York City, after intensive personal research work: 'The way to find your ideal girl is, bring her up yourself!'" ”

“ They parted soon after; the Havens, père et fils, to return whence they had come; Jock to rush into the nearest telephone booth, demand his mother's number, and say in a voice which he vainly strove to control, "Hello! Mrs. Madelaine Hamill? A reporter from the Log speaking" . . .
V There was assembled in the Washington Square apartment on the following afternoon a representative group of kindred spirits, to the number of twelve. Of these twelve, six were shooting dice in a circle on the floor. ”

“ Johnny muttered.
His father ignored this. "When can you start?" he shot at Jock.
"Monday, sir."
Mr. Havens jerked his head in manifestation of approval. "Come 'round. Ten a. m. My office. What do you want, anyway? Business end? News end? What?"
"News," said Jock with emphasis.
"Ever done any writing?"
"Just at college. Of course that doesn't mean anything. But I think I can, Mr. Havens."
"Damn right he can!" put in Johnny. "I've read some of his stuff my brother-in-law sent Peg in the olden days. He's got more literary ability than any staff man ever needed. ”

“ Peg announced. "Or at least, they were when we left, and I imagine they still will be. That's all we do. Swim, and dance, and swim, and eat, and swim. We practically live in our bathing suits."
"Who's on the party?" Jock wanted to know. "How many? Just the regular bunch?"
"Ten," said Peg, and listed them.
"Bill Burnholme not among those present?"
Peg looked blank. "Of course not. Why should he be? I've never even met the man—though of course I know all about him."
At this point Johnny shouted to Jock across Peg's lap, "Talk to Dad?" ”

“ This proves I had God on my side. And in the second place, she's always prided herself on being the only up-to-date woman in captivity who never got lit. She——" He broke off, and laughed into Cecily's eyes so intimately that Jock had a queer and cold sensation of not being present at all. "Remember the day I met you?" he asked her.
Cecily dimpled—whether in sentimental or merely humorous recollection it was impossible to determine. "Certainly do."
"It was at a picnic," Bill informed Jock and Yvonne, "and she sat there holding two paper drinking cups—gin in one, water in the other. ”

“ He believed he had never played worse, but in reality he played quite as usual, his fingers instinctive on the strings. Yvonne, beside him, sang a little wicked song. What Makes 'Em Dog Me Aroun'? . . . He was conscious of the motions of her hands, of the sway of her gold-sheathed body. Suggestive. Faintly indecent. Adapted to the tenor of her audience. "And I let her!" he thought, in a frenzy of self-condemnation. A man who let the girl he was going to marry stand in a public place and croon innuendos for the delight of the dissolute—what must right-minded people think of that? ”

“ The crap game gave way in time to informal dancing. Rugs were rolled up, chairs sent spinning into corners, Amy Hazelton instructed to play "That thing that goes 'ta-ta-tum-te-ta,' you know, and not too fast!" Cecily, flushed and merry, her hands full of crumpled one-dollar bills, was pulled to her feet by Larry and another youth and literally fought over. Finally Dinny Purviance settled the question by carrying her off himself.
Jock danced with Peg. She had pulled her apron around so that it hung from her shoulders down her back like a court train ”

“ But to counteract the effect of these too-faultless attributes, he had a great sinewy body, blunt hands with callouses below the fingers, and a careless, collegiate, thoroughly masculine manner. So men forgave him the beauty of his face, and women adored it the more. ”

“ She'd drink the water and touch the gin to her lips, pretending it was the chaser, and then dump the rest of it on the ground. She did that all afternoon, and I, guileless and honest, trying to keep pace with her, lapped up approximately three quarters of a quart of gin alone and single-handed and presently passed right out of the picture. ”

“ I began thinking the situation over, and that bid of Johnny's to the houseparty he and Peg are throwing right now down near New London began to sound very cagey. Everybody's down there, you know. Johnny and Peg, of course, and Larry, and Joe and his wife, and Dinny Purviance—" He fairly rushed over the next words "—'n'Cec'ly and the whole crowd. ”