Katharine Brush

“ You're a poseur. You devote all your ingenuity to making everybody think you're different from what you are. Life's a masquerade to you, and you go wearing a—a clown suit."
"Say!" cried Jock, surprised and alarmed. "Say, why, you're uncanny! How did you guess that? Hardly anyone ever does, unless I tell them."
"I don't know how I guessed it," Peg said. "Call it feminine insight, or whatever you like. Anyway, I knew it as soon as I'd talked to you five minutes. I think I even got wind of it before I ever met you, from things Bones said." ”

“ They smiled at one another, Molly meaningly and personally, Jock in a casual sort of way. "She's all right for a prom," he told himself. "Clothes, and looks, and an awfully good dancer. If only she doesn't start talking like an idiot—Oh Lord, she's going to!" he finished. He knew that preliminary flicker of the lashes.
"Jock," said Molly softly, "there were a million girls on that train, and I felt so superior to all of them, you can't imagine, because they were coming to the prom with just any old boy and I was coming with you. ”

“ Two o'clock found Jock arraying himself listlessly—a definite contrast to the manner in which he would have arrayed himself had it been Yvonne's train. Dressing to meet Yvonne was an elaborate process, one requiring much thought, much painstaking selection, and ruthless raids upon the wardrobes of his friends. He always set forth for a call on her sartorially representing the fraternity at large . . . in Pink's new suit, Bill's hat, Ken Kennedy's muffler. Somehow one's own clothes, however good, are never quite good enough for the eyes of a girl like Yvonne.
But they do very well for a Molly. ”

“ Jock got to his feet. "You—shut—up!" he commanded. Then, as Eunice turned to him, stunned, he said more calmly, "I beg your pardon. It's none of my affair, of course, but I couldn't sit here and hear you ride Brad like that. Don't you see he's ill, Eunice? He's not himself."
"I'm just tired," Brad repeated. "It's all right, Jock. Eunice doesn't mean anything."
Then Jock felt foolish, He saw himself as a third party who had butted unasked into a domestic argument. Absurd, to take up cudgels for a man against his wife! After all, Brad understood Eunice. ”

“ The junior promenade was in full cry when finally they reached the gymnasium, A typical college prom it was. Typical setting of fir boughs and potted palms, of banners and bunting, of Japanese lanterns and shifting searchlights, of polished floor with an orchestra on a raised dais at each end, of booths marked with the letters of twenty fraternities where chaperones sat yawning behind their feather fans. And a typical scene. Gowns of scarlet and green and orange and turquoise and cloth-of-gold, sophisticated gowns, blasé gowns, wise, knowing, faintly wicked gowns. ”

“ They stand in groups, talking, or sit on baggage-trucks and swing their red-shod feet, or lean against posts and stare raptly into space, or rush about with such busy haste that their unbuttoned coats curve out on the air behind them like raccoon wigwams. They laugh, and whistle, and bawl forth jibes and aphorisms. The only thing they do not do is the thing they unanimously want to do—walk out on the tracks and peer for the train. They do not do this because they deem it "kid stuff," the natural trick of a youngster about to be taken on the choo-choo to see Grandma. ”

“ Jock said simply. As he said it he thought, "There! There's the whole trouble with me where women are concerned, in four words—'I liked her once!' Every darn time it evolves into that. I must be fickle as hell." Then came another idea. "Wonder if I'll ever say about Yvonne, 'I liked her once'?" This seemed to him impossibly absurd, and he grinned into the mirror. "Never," he assured himself. "I'll always love Yvonne. She's the one I've been looking for all my life."
Bones was talking on. "You and Dopey Lane ought to get together. ”

“ Bones Allen moaned in his sleep, and Jock almost leaped at the sound. That noise! Noise that a man might make if he were hurt, wounded . . . or if he were pinned under an automobile somewhere on a deserted road, locked into a coupé like an animal in a cage. . . . Brad. . . .
"Here!" he told himself sharply. "I've got to cut this out, or I'll only upset Eunice more. Brad's all right. Sure he's all right. He probably got drunk or something, and forgot to come home." But this failed to convince him; Brad had never, to his knowledge, had a drink in his life. ”

“ Sitting alone at a table in a distant corner. Steady old Brad, who never drank, who never dissipated, alone in this dive! . . .
Jock leaned back in his chair, feeling suddenly shaken and tired and a little old. Brad. Alone. When you came to a Black-and-Tan with a crowd, that was one thing. You were sight-seeing, then; being devilish in a different way. You meant no evil. But when you came alone, a sneak in the night, that was something else again. . . . Brad. Of all people.
The others were watching a woman dance, a fat black woman in brief striped satin knickers and red stockings. ”

“ So many girls drunk! Revolting, unlovely. Girls were put on earth for men to worship, and look up to, and adore. And you couldn't, in this generation. Idols with clay feet. Even when you shut your eyes you could still see them, moving unsteadily, mouthing the phrases of bar room loafers . . . "Set 'em up!" . . . "Awful thirst tonight" . . . "Wet my whistle." You could fancy them being hideously sick, later.
Jock shook himself. ”

“ Faces close together. Slim girl-bodies swaying backward from the hips. Stag-line in the middle of the hall, a thick wall opening to receive, to give back, elbowing itself, craning its neck, squirming, never still. Whisper of a thousand pairs of shoes along the floor. Croon of jazz. Blended odor of flowers and whiskey and perfume and soap and cigarettes and damp powder and brilliantine—the typical odor, the twentieth century odor.
Someone cut in on Molly before she and Jock had danced half the length of the gym, and Jock, thus freed, joined the stag-line. ”

“ She lit a cigarette and added judicially, "Of course Bones doesn't realize it himself, except subconsciously. Bones never realizes anything unless you explain it to him with great care and draw a few little diagrams. He's a dumbbell."
"He's a great guy, though," said Jock.
"One of the greatest," Peg agreed. "I worship him. But he's a dumbbell none the less. I'm a dumbbell too, but not quite such a hopeless one as Bones. I never read, and seldom think, but I've got imagination, which he most decidedly hasn't. And I flatter myself I know a lot about people—boys especially. ”

“ By the dark blue taffeta gown that bunched in the wrong places they knew it. By the heavy black stockings in a year of sheer flesh-colored ones, and by the hair that wasn't shingled, and by the face that wasn't rouged, and by the lack of self-confidence they knew it. But being ultra-modern boys and girls, unto whom "Everyone for himself" was the law, they did not care. ”

“ XI Prom broke up the next morning.
Molly went home still violently enraged at Jock, and rather proud of herself for being enraged. She would even boast about it a little to her friends. "Believe me, I told him where to get off!" And in years to come she would list him among the suitors who had battered the door of her heart in vain. Women delude themselves so, for their greater conceit and peace of mind.
Cecily went home full of a strong resolve, and happy because Jock had sought her out to say good-bye at the station. ”

“ V The girls who attend college proms are tabulated neatly within an hour of their arrival. In undergraduate language, they are either knockouts, or else they're dull thuds. There is no middle class, The knockouts enjoy two days of exhilarating popularity and unalloyed bliss. The dull thuds look on and wonder miserably why they had been so awfully excited about coming . . .
Everybody in the Zeta Kappa house—members of the fraternity, visiting young ladies, everybody—knew that Dopey Lane's prom-girl was a dull thud. ”

“ I'm such a hell of a dancer myself, I always think I'm responsible and take the blame as a matter of course."
They danced on, and on, and on. No one cut in. No one even seemed to so much as look in their direction. Jock became alarmed. Good Lord, was he going to have to dance with her all evening? She was a nice little thing and he was sorry for her, sorry as the devil, but even charity should have an end somewhere. He strove to locate Dopey and finally spied him, suspiciously red of face, whirling about with Gloria Martin in his arms. ”

“ The railroad station houses a gathering strictly stag. The platform groans with the tramp and stamp of young masculine impatience, and is animate with trouser-legs as wide as bolster-cases. Hundreds of boys are there, collegians, recognizable anywhere by their clothes, and the tilt of their hats, and their justtubbed look, and their air of insouciance and irresponsibility and "what-the-hell-do-we-care-now." One senses light hearts and heavy hip pockets. ”

“ Jock pulled a chair up to face hers and seated himself so close that their knees touched. He cleared his throat in a business-like manner. "Well, to begin with," he said, "there're your clothes, Cecily. A woman could tell you just what's wrong with them, but I can't—I only know something is. You'll have to find out for yourself just what. They're not like the other girls' clothes—you can see that, can't you?" ”

“ Not finding it, she relapsed again on to the pillows. "You're just a natural damn fool," she finished.
Jock roared. "Good Lord, Peg, but I don't amount to anything! You're——"
"And he won't even admit it to me!" sighed Peg. She sat up again, wagging a denunciatory finger. "Last night at dinner mother said, 'We have tickets for the Symphony, don't you three want to go?' I peeked over at you, and your face was all lit up like a new saloon. And then Bones said, 'Hell, no, we're going with a bunch out to Canter Inn.' Business of glim-dousing, and Mr. Hamill's countenance returns to normalcy. ”

“ Miss Norma Knight, Jock. You know—the one I talk in my sleep about——"
Jock completed the mutual introductions, and observed that the two girls met with an instant hostility, only thinly veiled. "All prom-girls hate all other prom-girls," he made a mental note.
The ride up the hill to the fraternity house was accomplished in short order, and the girls escorted inside. There was a momentary pause in the lower hall while they squealed admiringly, in chorus, "Oh, isn't this darling!"—as was expected of them. Then Jock and Bones showed the way upstairs and to their room. ”

“ Freshmen drifted about the campus, trying hard to look as though they didn't know anything unusual was happening and fervently desiring the coming of the day when they should be sophomores and free to participate. The woman-hating element, clad defiantly in their oldest and worst, circulated in groups, jeering at immaculate contemporaries. ”

“ Go back and tell him what an awful weekend you've had at this prom, and why. Tell him what you've told me, and what I'm going to tell you. He'll help you out, I'll bet. Older men understand things like that better than older women do, somehow. Anyway—find yourself a good shop—I'll get the name of a good one in New York for you if you want me to—and put yourself in the hands of some saleswoman that knows her business, and let her rebuild you. ”

“ There is a crackling electric tension in the air—then acheer, and a general surge toward the platform's edge. The locomotive blows its warm quick breath against their faces, crashes past, stops. Strings of girls begin to spill from every coach. ”

“ A few minutes later Jock watched the coupé wheel away from the curb and down the street. "I'll call her up, yah, the hell I will!" he told himself. And added, "I suppose the next I know they'll be saying I bought her that coupé, too."
He walked on, sober and puzzled. . . .
XIII On Saturday he cut two classes to catch an early New York train, and spent the hiatus between his arrival and the hour when Yvonne expected him in buying things for her. Assorted small things, chosen because they reminded him of her, or seemed suitable to her, or merely because they chanced to catch his fancy. ”

“ They summed her up, "No looks, no style, no pep." Then they forgot her utterly, the girls because they were not afraid of her, the boys because they were not interested.
Pep! Fuel for the speed of the generation! Sine- qua non of the ultra-moderns! The Zeta Kappa living room whizzed with it. The atmosphere was hectic with it. Every damsel strove to prove at once, then and there, that she had it—that she had more of it than any other damsel. You should have seen Norma Knight gulping straight Scotch from a bottle. ”

“ Do you see the difference?"
"I think so," said Cecily.
"You ought to wear those light whatchacallem stockings," Jock continued, warming to his subject increasingly. "The kind that make people wonder whether you have any on at all. They seem to be the thing this season and you've got good-looking legs—you could get away with them. And do you know one of the first things they teach a chorus-girl? To keep the seams of her stockings straight up the back. That goes for the laity as well. And don't wear low-heeled shoes, will you? I know a lot of girls do—fashionable girls, too—but they're ugly. ”