” To begin at the pop of the pistol—I was born in New York—over on the East Side, where people live like flies. You’ve never been there, have you?” Joy shook her head. “Then you probably won’t believe some of the things I’m going to tell you. I was one of ten—and we all lived in two rooms.” Jerry’s voice seemed to have grown dull, and she stared away from Joy as she talked. “When you toss it over in your mind—it’s pretty brutalizing, living that way—it tends to turn humans into worse than animals—for humans can make themselves as much lower than animals as they can higher—that’s one of the things I’ve learned so far in life.” “You don’t mean ten people—in two rooms?” Joy gasped.
Jerry shrugged her shoulders. “That’s exactly what I do mean. Not only that, but we took two boarders in our rooms because my father was always out of work.”
Joy’s eyes were huge disks of horror; already she had shrunk into her chair looking at Jerry as if she had suddenly dropped in from Mars. Jerry was continuing rapidly:
“I sold newspapers as soon as I was able to take in the pennies. I wore a grey sweater and a pair of bloomers, and talked to everybody who bought a paper of me, whether they slung a line back or not.” She gave a long, quivering sigh. “I don’t intend to go into details about my life from the ground floor up——But get this clear, Joy: I never knew what it was to be innocent, not since I can remember. And I’m not throwing out any cross lines when I say that it wasn’t my fault or my own choosing. I—never had any other slant on it offered to me. My life, as I have said, was like that of an alley cat, and it couldn’t be translated to you any other way.”
“I don’t understand,” said Joy faintly.
“You wouldn’t. You were having milk fed to you when I was picking up beer-leavings. That’s the best way I can put it to you.”
There was a pause while Jerry studied her pink mules and searched for words in which to clothe what she wanted to say. Finally, with a swift frown, she plunged into narrative again, obviously leaving a hiatus.
“When I was thirteen, I got a job as messenger girl for Charlette et Cie. Happened to have drifted up the Avenue to see if I could get some man to buy my whole load of papers—saw the sign, Girl Wanted, and tacked inside. There were a bunch of others waiting that dressed the part a little better—I had on the grey sweater and bloomers—but I told the dame that was doing the interviewing that I’d carry their old bundles for less than any other applicant. This underbidding tickled the old girl somehow, and before I knew it, I was one of Charlette’s regular messenger-girls at five dollars per.
“My getting rich quick was the cause of a split between me and the family. I shut my mitt on my income—and the result was the throwing of a few flat-irons and other little parties, which ended in the fact that one night I didn’t come back and I’ve never been back since. I hadn’t ever bet much on the family—and there was a new boarder I didn’t like.”
“What do you mean, Jerry,” Joy interposed; “you couldn’t live—not live on five dollars a week?”
“I could and did. I took a room at a dollar a week. It was a hall bedroom, the kind you don’t even read about. No light, and squirming all over. I used to——Never mind—I got along all right—and the family never came after me; I guess one more or less didn’t make such a hell of a difference.
“Excuse me, Joy! You look paralyzed or something. I was inhaling the dollar-a-week air again——Cheer up—I’m whirling off the slum stuff as swift as it can go—but you’ve really got to hear some of this, so you can understand every little thing.”
“Go—on,” Joy articulated with difficulty.
“My next two years I spent carrying bundles for Charlette’s and incidentally hanging around the place before and after hours, talking to the models every chance I could get, absorbing the main truths about what clothes can do to you and what you can do to clothes. My errands took me into the workrooms and fitting-rooms, and I began to make my own clothes and what I admitted was improving on Charlette designs in doing so. Watching the models and hearing them talk had given me an idea of what colour and line could do.
“I think I was at my worst at fifteen. I tossed a mean make-up and looked probably older than I do now. I had no morals and a bunch of bad ideas. Some of the models were all right, but those weren’t the ones who shot their mouths off. About the only rule I went by was to look out for myself.
“Along about then, I struck for recognition—I was working twelve hours a day and only pulling down seven a week—and they graduated me into the work-rooms.
“That’s the way my rise in the world began—that and changing to a sub-let room in an apartment uptown. I was five years more at Charlette’s; and at the end of that time I was one of their designers—what I had been working for, all that time.” She closed her eyes as if they hurt. “I’d been working on the same old twelve-hour average, but it was a change and higher pay, and I lapped up the work, I was so crazy about it. There seemed a sort of poetry to it—even when I started as a cutter, baster, fitter and spent days over the sewing machine—a poetry that grew as I pushed myself into the designing end and put the right thing on the right person.”
“Like Mrs. Messy,” Joy said, with a little hysterical giggle. She had lost her look of breathless horror, and was listening with minute interest.
“Well—there were a lot of people like her around, of course—there always are, in a big designing shop—and I learned how to put things on them, too—as you’ve seen.” The two girls smiled at each other. The air had become less tense. It was almost in relief that Jerry continued:
“I always worked overtime, at first because I knew that was the way to get ahead, then later from habit as well as my burning to get to the top. I saved my money, too, and was the original glued-to-a-nickel fiend. Men dropped out of my life pretty much in those five years. I was too busy getting ahead.
“Before I go on and get to the heart-throb—I’ll give you a general snapshot of me at the age of twenty. I made myself up every A.M. as peppily as if I were going to tread the boards. I wore my hair in the last gasp from Paris. I cut my clothes as snappy as I could get away with, which was some, you can gather. And I looked like a misprint. As for the rest—I was hard as a city pavement, tough as gum, and looked on men as a necessary evil.”
“That wasn’t your fault!” Joy interpolated swiftly. Jerry shrugged her shoulders by way of answer, but gave a faint nod, before going on.
“Then one day a man walked into Charlette’s who—I’ve never lined this out to a soul, Joy; but I’ll try to hold my words in when I talk about him. You know, or of course you don’t, the type of man likely to float around Charlette’s. Husbands, or sapheads. Mostly both. But this day—a man came in with his sister, who was having us do her wedding dress.
“She was Mabel Lancaster. Of course you know who she is.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Joy admitted. “The name sounds vaguely familiar, but most nice names sound that way to me——”
“Well, New Yorkers would know; it’s an old family, not much ready cash; and she tied up to Eustace Drew, also old family, and a lot of ready cash. The papers were full of blurbs about it at the time. I had thrown a lot of thought over her dress, and it was good, by the way—but Fanchon spread a noise about having done it herself. Fanchon was the old girl who had first interviewed me when I came in for messenger girl. Her real name was Mrs. O’Brien, but never mind.
“I was out front shadowing Fanchon O’Brien with a telephone message when he came, not trailing after his sister with a dragged-in-look or tripping along with all the zest in the world—just the in-between effect that I had often remarked no man ever got in Charlette’s Louis Somebody salon. Joy, he—well, he’s tall, and big, and he’s got brown hair, sort of choppy, with a pinch of red in it. And his eyes are blue as yours, only they’re breezy and full of zip—and then they can look at you with a little half-smile——”
She caught herself up. “Tell me when, I blow, Joy! I knew I would.”
Joy laughed. “I love it when you ‘blow,’ Jerry! I’ve often wondered if you ever—could! Go on—quick!”
“Well—he didn’t look at me at all. Fanchon took them into the theatre salon, and I sneaked after them, pretending I was busy at something or other. Mabel Lancaster was saying that she wanted to look at some evening gowns for her trousseau, and Fanchon nailed me to rustle the dear models along. I did so, and then stood at the end of the salon and kept my eyes pasted on the back of his head. I was hard in love with him then—with the back of his head and the way he turned and smiled and said things to his sister. The back of a man’s head is an awful test—it can register, or not register, so many things. Try it and see some time!
“Finally I came down the theatre to a seat almost behind them. Fanchon had gone back in the workroom to see about the wedding dress, and thanks to Charlette having the theatre salon in semitones, they didn’t notice me, although they never wasted an eye on surrounding human scenery anyhow.
“‘Those models fascinate me, Phil,’ she was saying. ‘What an empty show their life must be! Or is it? What do you think?’ ‘I’ve known some of their kind,’ he answered, ‘and I can assure you that their chief concern is what they put on or leave off their backs. Poor little rats! Not much “honour and truth and a sure intent” among them!’
She laughed. ‘You’re always talking about “honour and truth and a sure intent,”’ she said. ‘You’re so romantic, Phil—anyone would think you were getting married instead of me!’
“Then he wasn’t married! That was my first thought, as I faded away back to Fanchon. But later on, the things he said began to sink in. ‘Poor little rats!’ He had said that in the same tone that he had looked through me. Every time I thought of it I wanted to go and burn myself up and then crawl out and fly away a new bird, like a Pegasus or a Ph?nix, or whatever the old thing is. I knew I was a poor little rat—that he’d call me the same thing if he ever had a good look at me. And the worst thing was that I didn’t have a clue on how not to be a poor little rat—not a clue, except for those three things he had named—‘honour and truth and a sure intent.’ The first two and me weren’t speaking. That last—well, I thought I did have a sure intent. To get to the top on designing for Charlette—to get so that I would be the acknowledged head, second only to the old girl Charlette herself, who spent most of her time hanging in on the Paris exhibits—that was my aim; and then I was going to spread and have a good time. Not a bad aim, as aims go. The trouble with everyone nowadays is, everyone wants to get to the top and have a good time every step of the way too.”
She paused to take breath.
“Do you mean,” said Joy, “that you—you really fell in love with him—then?”
“Yes.”
They were silent for a moment, and then Joy whispered an old, old question—and one that of late had been pricking her with uncertainty.
“Jerry—how did you—know? How could you be so—sure?”
“How does one know?” Jerry repeated. “That’s something that crashes in to different make-ups in different ways, Joy. With me—it came like a pistol shot. Just as sudden, and as unwelcome.
“I thought about him on an average of every day, after that. You see, no one had ever spilled it to me before that there might be something lacking in my get-up. I always believed that you can get to anything you want if you want it hard enough to work for nothing but that. Look where I had landed by tearing my eyes out with work while other girls watched the clock and beat it early for movie dates—from the East Side newsie in grey sweater and bloomers to a Fifth Avenue designer in a Charlette model—at twenty. And so I began to believe that if I wanted Phil Lancaster hard enough, I could get him. There was this hitch to it, though; I knew how to work for what I wanted, before. Now I was in the dark. The only right thing I knew was that I was wrong—and that I didn’t want to see him again until I was right.
“Then the war came along. When I read his name in the Plattsburg lists, I decided that I’d better go over to France and see what I could do about it, too. I had a stock-taking of myself, and decided—Y. M. C. A. entertainment was my line. When I was a newsie, I used to sing in the bars for a nickel, and I was always quick at catching on to popular songs. I got one of the fitters at Charlette’s who could rustle the ebonies, and we went over a bunch of stuff. My voice was big and I had pep—but they told me I had no training—no repertoire—that I’d better study singing, and also get some practical professional experience.
“That’s how I connected up with Pa Graham. One of the designers had a friend who sang at Rector’s, and was studying for musical comedy. Singing teachers are the worst lottery there is, but the alley cat fell on her feet again. That girl took me to Pa—she was the only musical-comedy special he had. He didn’t have much time, but when I told him I wanted to get to France, and sang for him, he fixed it.”
“Wait a minute,” said Joy. “Where did you practice, and when? Just tell me that.”
“Oh, about that time I changed my living quarters to a two-room-and-bath arrangement up on West 111th. They were furnished, and a bum piano thrown in. I didn’t care how bum it was, as it took all I could do to pick out notes with one finger. This was a blurb or so more than I’d been paying, which with my lessons meant that I was putting by a half of one percent, of my regular speed, even with a raise I got along in there.
“Then Fanchon came to me confidentially one day and offered to sell some of her stock in the firm—war times were getting stiff. I can tell you I stood still and shivered in my silk socks. Charlette’s stock was closed-corporation stuff and it had been one of my largest ideas to get some of it salted down. Only the old guard had their mitts on it, and I didn’t know when I was going to be trusted with a block. I made her out a cheque in quick order. A stockholder! They couldn’t kick me out now, I doped it.”
She was silent for a moment of reflection, seeming to choose between the thoughts that were crowding about her, while Joy held her breath in hope that she would plunge ahead without choosing.
“I wanted to get some percentage on my lessons, and some of the professional experience they talked about, so pretty soon I looked around for a cabaret job and got one—through the girl at Rector’s, who knew the manager at Hanley’s. It wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t have done anything else with my evenings but sleep—and six hours’ sleep always did me, from habit I guess. I came on at seven-thirty and eleven-five, two songs each time.
“That was some life—practice early in the A.M., get to Charlette’s at nine, work all day, Hanley’s in the evening, Pa Graham Sundays. That man has got a soul in him for every art in music, and he showed me how to succeed in my line while he was trying to make me into a diseuse. He made me go and hear Yvette Guilbert, and told me that’s what I should aim for—to be the American Yvette. But I had my own little idea of what I wanted to do, and to try diseusing in war times wasn’t it.
“And all this time I steered clear of men. It wasn’t so easy now that I was at Hanley’s, but being at work most of the time helped me, that and the thought of Phil Lancaster—it was funny the way he and the things he said stuck in my mind. ‘Honour and truth and a sure intent’—I had all of that now, the way I looked at it. You remember war times, Joy—everybody wanting to do something for somebody—air just reeking with idealism—all I wanted was to get over there and be some good. And after the war, Phil Lancaster, if he was still alive. Things would be different after the war, I thought. And I figured it that the experience of being over there would purify me as you read of its purifying people’s souls. For by that time I saw what the first years of my life had done to me. I don’t blame myself yet for being born an alley cat and living with and in scum for the first fifteen years of my life. I wasn’t taught any differently, and in spite of everything I taught myself and pulled myself out of the scum. No, I didn’t blame myself—I only wanted to better myself—and I thought that this Y stuff, overseas, would do a lot towards wiping away the scum that seeps in under the skin, when you’re buried in it, and sticks afterwards when you wash off the outside part.
“It was in October of 1917 that the top of everything was knocked off for me. I was at Hanley’s singing some fool song about ‘My Little Service Flag Having Seven Stars,’ and it was about eleven-fifteen—when suddenly I saw him—Phil Lancaster. Sitting alone at a table by the wall. He was looking at me, he was looking at me! He was in the uniform of a Captain of Infantry, and if I hadn’t been remembering him every day ever since he had come into Charlette’s, I wouldn’t have known him, he was so changed and tired. But he was looking at me! I faded up and closed out—all my wind gone. Shut down on encores. Couldn’t pipe another note. He had looked at me—well, as if he was noticing me hot.
“While I was still standing in the reception hallway, one of the waiters blew in with a note for me. I never saved it—just like me to lose it—but he asked if I couldn’t come out and have something to eat with him, describing his location. Now, we’re not allowed to go out and sit at the tables at Hanley’s. People could come back in the reception hall, and talk to us there, but that was all. My first idea was to reel a note back to him telling him that, and trust he would take the hint. But no! I didn’t dare let that go. Supposing he didn’t come across—after all those months—no, I couldn’t trust to it that he would tumble, or even want to. I gave the waiter a note saying I would join him presently, and scrubbed off most of my make-up, just leaving what I thought was a good veneer for close-range work. I had worn a big hat that flopped all around my face, and with my coat on and the lid flopping and the make-up toned down, I didn’t look much like myself. I took a sneak out the side and then breezed in front, told a waiter who didn’t know me I was joining a friend, and fox-trotted up to his table with all the starch in the world.
“And all the way I had been saying to myself: Jerry, you’ve had to fight for everything you’ve got so far—and you’ve got to fight for this, but you’ve been given the chance to fight!
“I sat down opposite him and grinned. He came out of a trance and looked at me. ‘Oh, hello!’ he said. ‘Are you sure you’re the same one who has seven stars on her service flag?’ ‘Seven is my limit,’ I said. ‘Is that a fixed resolve? Because I was seriously considering asking you if you would break over and add an eighth.’
“I took a minute off to look at him. Yes, he had the appearance of having downed a few drinks. There was a lot more, too—he certainly had been riding the sad sea waves! ‘Where do you get it, you officer guys?’ I asked him. He didn’t answer—he was lamping me. ‘On the stage up there, you seemed quite wicked. Now, you are a disappointment. I can never be taken up for conduct unbecoming an officer, with you at my table.’
“I opened my mouth and nearly fell in it. Then I managed to get out that I’d better leave, so he could try someone else. He said ‘No—I want you. You look as though you had enough joy of living to cheer up even a dead one—and that’s what I am, or the next thing to it.’
“I suggested that if he wanted me to trot out any joy of living stuff, we had better leave that place and come on up to my apartment. I had some there—a small but good assortment. I had outgrown my taste for beer, but still wolfed down the Demon Rum—and I couldn’t sit in Hanley’s much longer without being recognized. He paid the check and we were off without even waiting for the change. Now I knew he’d been drinking. It’s a long way from Hanley’s to West 111th, in case you don’t know—in a taxi—although only about twenty minutes in the Subway. We got in a meter-wagon and started off through the white lights. My heart was travelling quicker than the meter.
“‘It’s sort of unusual for an officer to be alone in New York, isn’t it?’ I said, and he pulled a laugh that would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pitiful. ‘Alone? I’m the loneliest man in New York.’ Then he set himself off and told me what was rotting in the State of Denmark. His girl had knocked him one by quietly side-stepping around the corner and getting sewed up to a French artillery officer. This had just burst in upon him when he had heaved in from Upton that P.M.—after leaving her last week with all the encouragement in the world. It had made him simply silly—he’d been sampling everything he could get hold of, and was quite poppo by now, as I could see.
“That girl was probably a good girl, but she hadn’t played fair, to do a thing like that. And when you don’t play fair, you let yourself in for a lot of responsibility. Here was her responsibility—shifted to me—and I was her opposite. I hadn’t been good, according to her standards, but I had always played fair.
“I gathered, as we bumped along through Columbus Circle, that she had been about the only thing that had been keeping him treading water, just now. He’d been made a Captain at Plattsburg, and he hadn’t felt he was up to such a position; and at Upton he was feeling it more and more. He told me about two young officers who’d shot themselves because they were going crazy with their cares and responsibilities. It was a tough thing for some of those young kids, to feel that they had whole companies of men under them to answer for, when up to now they had never answered for anything but the dog. He said if he hadn’t been older than those kids he now would be tempted to do the same thing; that he never felt nearer to it.
“It all seemed like a dream, Joy—bumping along in a taxi beside the man I’d been in love with for so long—and he spreading his tale of woe. It couldn’t have happened any other time but war times. If he thought about telling me this stuff at all, he thought I was the grade of intelligence that would peacefully let it slide by. I got that fact, and began to think in quick flashes. Ever since I had watched the back of his head, back in Charlette’s, I had fixed it in my mind so that he could have walked over me in golf shoes and I would have sat up and begged for more. I wanted to get hold of that girl and feel my fingernails meet in her throat. As for Phil—the more he talked about it, the gloomier an atmosphere he cast.
“We got to my apartment and as I opened up some joy getter, he passed the remark that I did myself pretty well for a cabaret singer. Then he slumped right down again, and got so low he couldn’t even drink. ‘It’s no use,’ he said; ‘in my frame of mind, Uncle Sam’s army is better off without me, and God knows there’s no one else in this universe who would care!’ When men say that, you always know they mean a girl. They never seem to think of their families in that connection.
“I went over to where he was looking at my wine, and said: ‘You’re drunk. To snuff yourself out would brand you a coward in the eyes of the world and God, too. Besides which, I won’t let you.’ He ripped off a nasty laugh at that. ‘This is really almost amusing—to be sitting listening to a cabaret girl tell me she won’t let me “snuff myself out!”’ He took my hand, and hung onto it. ‘Then you do want me for the eighth star!’ A man never plain holds your hand, it seems—it’s just a starter. ‘Listen here,’ I said. ‘I may be a cabaret girl, but I’m not several other little things you seem to think I am. I’ve got “honour and truth and a sure intent,” which is more than you’ll have if you follow up your intent with me!’
“He dropped my hand like a hot potato and squared off to take a look at me. ‘Did you say honour and truth and——?’ ‘I did,’ said I. ‘So come to and stay there.’ ‘I never made a mistake like this before,’ he said. ‘I think I had better go.’
“I can tell you it made me feel pretty sick. If I could have stopped caring for him the way I’d started—but I couldn’t—I’d sort of fixed everything on him and there it hung. And here he was going to the sausages, and wanted me to help him fry himself. I was knocked cold. I hadn’t really got what he had doped me out to be—until he said he’d better go.
“I lost my head then. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Sit down and let me tell you something. You’ve never seen me before. Well, I have you—in at Charlette’s last February—I heard you talking to your sister about “honour and truth and a sure intent.” That was the first look-in I’d ever had on the subject. You were the first real man that I had ever come within shouting distance of, who sprung such stuff, and those words sunk in till they got sewed in me. All the more so because I was—and am—in love with a man who’d never look straight at me till I made myself over, and I figured it that somehow those words might be the combination that would fix me up for him. I always remembered you and what you said, and I’ve been trying to get all those three things. And then when you turned up to-night I was as happy as a fool, thinking I’d be with a real man and he’d give some more dope on how to be a real girl—then you talk about ending it all, like any thirty-center up against a dark pocket, and take me for Mazie-off-the-streets thrown in!’
“He didn’t say anything for a few minutes—turned away from me and did a walk over to the piano. There was a bunch of French stuff on it that Pa was trying to get soaked into me, and a book of Yvette Guilbert’s. Then he turned around and I saw he’d lost most of his edge. ‘I want to beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been so ashamed of myself in all my life. But I shan’t curse myself for writing that note to you—no matter what prompted me to do so. Of all girls in New York—to stumble on one who remembered something I said—something that she thought was doing her good!
“I saw he’d gone sober, and I put away the cup that cheers too loud. He came up to me and looked me over—not hot this time, but impersonal. ‘So you’re in love with someone—who—won’t look straight at you?’ He squinted his eyes up and took in the general effect, the way I do when I stand off and look at a model draped in a half-built creation. ‘War times are not so busy but what I’d like to play Pygmalion for you.’ ‘What kind of a game is that?’ I said.
“He laughed, and gave me a close-up of the Pygmalion-Galatea affair. I didn’t mind if I had pulled a bone—there he was, as keen and peepy as if he hadn’t been talking about putting a bullet through his brains a while ago and glimming me as cool and impersonal as if he hadn’t hauled my hand around a minute back. The main thing was that I’d given him a jolt—and he’d lost his edge.
“When he left that night, he’d given me a list of books to wade through. The newspapers had always been my literature—them, and people. But he told me it would Galatea me some to follow the books for awhile. And he also said he’d come up to the apartment again in two weeks—he only got every other week-end off, usually—and see how I was working it.
“After he went maybe I didn’t turn cart-wheels around the apartment till the people underneath rapped on their ceiling with a broomstick, as they had nothing to do around that time but sleep, and when people get that way their mind runs on one track and you have to humour ’em. So I turned in and thought till it was time to get up. You can always tell when it’s time to get up—you’re just ready for a real sleep by then. I felt I had done a good night’s work. By a trick shake of the dice he had landed with me—and getting interested in my ‘case,’ as I had reeled it off to him, had pulled him out of a pocket.
“I quit Hanley’s after that. I needed the evenings for getting those books down. No matter what way I figured, there wasn’t any other time to do it. He hadn’t supposed I did anything but sing, in which case I would have had lots of time for his books. Every day of that two weeks was just another day until he should come again, and when he did——He looked so much better already that you couldn’t believe it was the same man. First thing he did was to apologize again for the way he’d been the other night. Said he’d never been so limp before and never would be again, thanks to me. Then we slung a line of chatter about the books I had surrounded, and he asked me was I getting along any better with that man. I said no, I didn’t see much progress—which was the truth. He said, well, he’d give me some Mid-Victorian stuff to dive into for next time, and one book would do me. It was Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’—and believe me, Joy, it let in a whole new flood of light. I’d never heard anything like it. When I got to the end of Guinevere I was sobbing as I hadn’t since I was a kid and had had my bunch of papers pinched from me. Joy, that book simply burst on me like dynamite. I’d never heard of ideas like those before. If you read that when you’re in love, it’ll either make you fall out with a thump or fall in harder than ever. I fell in harder than ever. Could I wait until he came again? To talk over the ‘Idylls of the King’ with him?”
Jerry spread out her hands, then looked at them and laughed suddenly. “The action sags from now on, Joy. Because he never turned up again.”
“What?” cried Joy.
“He never showed up. I never have seen him since. I waited that evening—God, Joy, I hope you don’t know what it is to wait like that for a man who doesn’t come—when you’ve been waiting for days for that evening—and then he doesn’t come—even when it gets too late, hoping——And then the waiting afterwards—to hear some explanation—some reason—watching the mail, jumping at the phone—oh, I can’t go over it all again!”
“Perhaps he sailed for France,” Joy said.
“I thought of that, of course. But he had told me that another thing that made him so sick was being stuck permanently on this side as far as he could see. I thought too, he might have been transferred to another camp. But whatever happened, to go off without a word—without a word, for two years——When I thought it over long enough, though, I understood. I was nothing but an incident in his life—and with soldiers in war times, incidents flared up and then passed off in double quick order. Something had happened so that it wasn’t convenient for him to come around any more—probably he got a new interest—and why should he bother to let me know? First place, there probably wasn’t any excuse—just a bare statement of fact——Second place, I was nothing but a cabaret singer—why should he go out of his way to observe any of the fine hairs of convention for me? And so on!” Jerry’s teeth clicked.
“Oh, Jerry, I know there’s something more to this. I know there must be some awfully good excuse.”
Jerry shrugged her shoulders almost out of the purple kimono. “I thought so at first. It took me quite a while to see that after all, it was a pretty simple case. When I finally came to my senses, the first thing I did was to knock the ‘Idylls of the King’ about the room a bit. Then the very next day in at Charlette’s I keeled over while shooting my mouth off at a cutter, and though I didn’t actually go out, a lot of little black specks swam around and everything looked worse than it might have if I’d fainted in a clean break. I didn’t need any pill-fiend to tell me it was overwork—the effect of years—I knew it myself, had known it for aforesaid years. I had to quit Charlette’s, but I kept the stock. The dividends from that make my only steady income, now, and as you’ve noticed, I can’t keep to it.
“Somehow, that day when I came to and kicked the ‘Idylls of the King’ about, something had snapped. I guess you can call it my sure intent. I didn’t want to go on at Charlette’s. I didn’t want to work anywhere. I’d worked all my life, I’d never had a speaking acquaintance with much of anything but work and filth, and I felt it was time to give a farewell bow to each. My sure intent beat it then and there—and the only thing it left me was just as sure an intent to get as good a time as possible out of the rest of my life before I got so old that I’d have to put the snaffle on everything.
“Still, it was war times, and if you can go back into the Dark Ages of a year ago, you can remember everybody wanted to do something for somebody else then. I signed up with the Y—but not to go across. My physical examination wouldn’t admit of that; so I signed up for duty over here.
‘I went and said good-bye to Pa, and he gave me a few tips I didn’t need about not singing DeBussy to the doughboys. Then I went on my little See-America-First expedition. It was more fun than I’d ever had, and the Y people I was thrown with taught me a lot. Some of them were wonders, others were such frosts that you wondered how even the hall could stand it, let alone the audience in the hall. I put it over, as my songs were snappy and my work had cabaret pep; by the same token I let myself in for a lot of criticism, but since the criticism never came from the soldiers, I didn’t care and I wouldn’t change my methods.
“You’ve probably heard me cartooned as an international character; anyway, that’s what I’m called. This touring of the camps was what started me. I had more freedom with the men than I would have if I’d been in France, and the college-boy type was what looked good to me. The reason I liked them both then and now—it’s truer now than it ever was—is that they had just as sure an intent as I for having as good a time as possible while they lasted, and I liked their ways of going about it. They liked me, too, because I was easy to be with and they could feel just as free as if they were among themselves.
“I suppose that’s the keynote of my relations with men; they can act just as if they were among themselves. I smoke with them, drink more than they do and hold it better; I tell ’em stories and sing ’em songs; they can be as free as possible, and yet with the added pep in the thought that after all, I am a girl.
“At the end of the summer of 1918, I broke into pieces for a fact, and the Y put me out for a rest. I think they breathed easier when I was out, anyway. Before I was in trim again, the armistice was signed. I was some relieved. As I saw it, the decks were cleared for me. I’d done more work up to twenty than some people do in a lifetime; for a year I’d worked for my country; and now I was going to have an everlasting good time while my pep held out.
“What was the use of any other sure intent? I knew I could never care again for anybody. I hadn’t seen him or heard of him. So what was the use of anything—except having a good time? Sometimes I’ve wondered if he could see me—now—would he like me any better—even if I am polished off some from the cabaret singer he knew. But what was the use of taking the ‘Idylls of the King’ to heart, when he wasn’t there to see me? If he’d left me any other way——Men are like that; they break away clean; girls make a jagged break, or leak away. He’d gone; and when you stop to think of it, he was about the only nail I had to hold me down. So what was the use? And away I popped.
“When the colleges started their parties again, I made my début into society. I stood it all right, too. The way girls who had been brought up in front families acted, made it possible for me to get away with my varnished-over East-Side-plus Charlette style. I was only a little more so than they were, and that little more so made me a little more popular than they were.
“I decided to slip my things over to Boston and settle there. You can’t blaze around at all hours the way you can in New York, but I can always think of things to do no matter what the material is, and I was sick of New York. It had got me once and I was afraid it would again. And every time I went by Charlette’s I felt a pull—but I swore I wouldn’t go back there. Boston was the nearest all colleges except Yale and Princeton, and the numbers of little comrades I had in the other colleges, and Harvard and Tech being right there, cinched the matter. I get to Yale and Princeton when I want to just the same, and go over to New York when I feel like it, which isn’t often.
“I met Sal at a Cornell house party, and afterwards ran into her around a good deal. When I moved to Boston we agreed to hit it off in this apartment. She comes from a little New Hampshire town, was the village belle, wore spit curls, rhinestone combs and all that sort of thing till some underdone Dartmouth freshman took her to Winter Carnival and she saw she’d found her lifework. She contributed the black walnut pieces that stick out in this room in spite of my black-and-white efforts. I wanted to start right, so I got everything we needed. Some of the things were donated, but even so, what we bought took all my capital except my stocks, besides whatever few little onions she slipped into count. Perhaps you’ve gathered there’s not too much love oozing between me and Sal. I wanted someone to live with; you can see most girls wouldn’t do; Sal’s the answer. As for the rest about Sal—she can tell you if she wants to; I’ve told you just as much as touches me and makes it my business.”
Jerry stopped and drew a long breath, much as she had earlier in the story. “And so you’ve got my life history salted down, Joy. It’s not as black as the ebonies nor as white as the ivories; I should say the composite picture would be a nice medium grey, like the sweater I used to sport.”
Joy had scarcely seemed to be listening for some time now. “But, Jerry—you don’t still care for that man?”
Jerry’s mouth grew pale. “I do. I could never care for anyone else.”
“But how can you, when he has gone off and left you?”
“Grant has gone off and left you. Do you still care for him?”
Joy considered, and into her cheeks crept a startled flush. “Why—why—I don’t think I know.”
“Well, then you never felt the way I do. When you’ve lived with a thing like that for years—oh, it’s so blame all wrong! If I had been a man I could have gone out and hunted for the person I cared for—made her give me at least a chance! But what can a girl do but wait and hope and wonder—and wait!” She caught herself up. “H’m—almost turned on the faucet then, all right. Well, Joy, I’ve spread the story for you. The present status Sal and I hold is shifty to locate—but we notice we never meet any fond relatives of our little friends. And so I see now that it was a raw deal on you in a way, coming to live with us. It puts you in our light. We’re not ashamed of it, for that’s the way we’re going to live while we last—but this morning I’ve been thinking things over, and for the first time I’ve got your side of the matter and so I think it’s the best thing, for you to go.”
“I was at Pa’s this morning——” Joy began.
“There, he’s one can tell you I’m not much good. I went to him to get back into shape after my work in the Y, and when I had been there only a couple of times he told me it wasn’t worth it for me to go on. He said I drank much too much, and smoked more than that, and he’d been watching me long enough to see I’d never shake off either. So that ended.”
“I was at Pa’s this morning,” Joy continued as if there had been no interruption, “and what he said made me decide to stay here—that is, if you still want me.”
There was a little, breathing pause. Then Jerry spoke in a detached tone. “Nothing I’ve said has made you change your mind?”
“Why, Jerry—what you’ve told—has made everything right! Oh, I was horrified at first—it all seemed so awful—but to have come out of it all as you did! Jerry—you’re—you’re valiant. I’ve always thought of that word in connection with you—valiant.” Joy’s voice was clothed in radiant relief. She looked at Jerry with a tenderness she dared not express—one could not imagine being tender to Jerry.
“I’m not valiant.” Jerry rose, and the pink mules sounded their way to the door. She stood with one finger on the knob, and with her hair roughed up about her face, her kimono sliding from the slim angles of her shoulders, she looked like a great butterfly, undecided whether to hover or dart away. “I tell you, Joy, I’m not good for you; I can see that now. I’m not fourteen-karat bad—but I’m an Excitement-Eater. That’s a new style girl, and the style is getting popular. I live on excitement—I feed on it. I can’t live without it. I scatter it around me—all Excitement-Eaters do. And for you, a little goes a long way—it’s taken me longer than it should have to discover that. I’m not good for you. And that’s that.”
“Pa decided me this morning,” Joy repeated; “and that’s that. You can eat your old excitement all you want—I’m going to eat music—and languages—and music——Your story just clinches my resolve to stay. Oh, Jerry, you are valiant. I can see you standing up there with your chin out telling that man you weren’t Mazie-off-the-street——”
“Valiant! Knock off that word, will you? It gives me the willies. Valiant! When there’ve been times I’ve wished I had been Mazie—then I’d have had something—and might have kept him a little longer!”
“You’re only talking now!” cried Joy; but the door was swinging, and a vanishing flutter of purple silk was her only response.