He rose to pick it up. When he turned back again, he saw that she had left the couch and was standing on the threshold of the open door, a blotch of filmy, gauzy white.
She was gone before he could rush to her side. When he tried to cross the threshold, to run after her, he felt again the whirring of wings, which brought with it a sense of ineffable sweetness and peace, and which enveloped his subconscious self in a rush of blind delight.
IV
It was Captain Donaldson of his regiment who startled him out of his sleep early the next morning.
“Hurry up, old man!” he said. “The transport sails this afternoon instead of tomorrow.”
Roger Kenyon tumbled out of bed and walked over to the desk where he had dropped the rose the night before.
“What are you looking for?” asked his friend. “A cigarette? Here—have one of mine!”
“No, no. I thought I had left a rose here last night—a scarlet Gloire de Dijon rose; but—”
“Gallant adventure, eh?” laughed Donaldson. “Say, you must have been drinking! Why, this isn’t a rose—it’s a white lily!”
He picked up the stiff, sweet-scented flower.
“By the way,” asked Donaldson, facing his friend over coffee and toast and eggs, “have you heard that Danny Coolidge’s wife died last night?”
“Yes,” replied Roger Kenyon.
POKER
Jimmy was tall and strong. He looked like a paperback edition of a Twentieth-Century Magog, and at a distance he seemed to show breed from head to foot. He radiated it. Girls just out of boarding school who saw him swing down the main street of the little Northwestern town where he had been born and bred spoke of his fascinating virility.
But when he came nearer, and chiefly when he raised his olive-green velvet hat with the twisted, many-colored pugaree band, you changed your first impression. For he pompadoured his hair in the manner of the statuesque child-men in the streetcar ads, who picture the latest extravaganzas in five-ply, guaranteed-linen, long-point collars; he was suspected of using a Rachel shade of face powder; and it took him years of hardy effort to graduate from peg-tops and padded shoulders to chaste, Manhattan-cut trousers and coat.
His character was half drizzle and half sleet; his was the gift of mean and useless things charmingly done, the sort of mind which tries to fill an empty well with dew drops and to attach handles to an egg.
But he could split a pair of aces and draw to a flush, and never change a muscle.
When Jimmy arrived in Europe he was of course crude and uncooked.
Paris took him to her bosom; for she is a reasonable town, a cocotte of a town, which likes the uncooked as long as it is rich. And Paris and the Parisian’s ate the liberal remittances which Jimmy’s father sent.
So he went the rounds. The boulevards acclaimed him. The Place Pigalle knew him. The Bois respected him. And Henri’s bar honored him: for Monsieur Jean McCafferty, the imported Coney Island barkeeper, named a cocktail after him.
Then one day he discovered that Paris was not all silk-hose and alcohol. He discovered that there was a Paris which worked and made money and did remarkably well. And, at the American Consulate, he was introduced to two pushing young New Yorkers who were thinking of building there a miniature edition of famed Luna Park.
Now be it understood that Jimmy’s father was one of those Northwestern pioneers who had drifted West in the days of the prairie-schooner and who had acquired a bankroll of noble proportions by squatting on somebody else’s land, and by selling Germantown wool and printed calico and red liquor to the guileless Siwash. And so, when Jimmy heard the plans of the two young New Yorkers, the prairie-schooning, Siwash-impoverishing instinct rose screaming in his heart; he cabled to his father, and his father thought he would give the boy a chance. So he sent him a neat little sum of money, and Jimmy became the leading stockholder and managing director of the Paris Luna Park.
Now it is worth remembering that a stomach which surprises its proprietor by feeding ravenously on strong coffee, ice-cream and pies and Welsh rabbits can stand anything, even to be tossed about in a mad circle at fifty miles an hour, and to slide one-steppingly around a greased and rapidly rotating dance floor; while, on the other hand, a logical, artistic, Latin stomach which gives a happy and exclusive home to hearty Burgundy, honest beef a la mode, scintillating lemon soufflés, and sterling-minded Camembert, can never relish the sensations of a whirling super-Dervish in a tantrum.
And so the Paris Luna Park enterprise was not a success. Decidedly not.
Frequently did Jimmy Webb cable home for money, and frequently did Dad remit, until one day a crude and unfeeling message flashed from the little Northwestern town to Paris.
It was in the nature of an ultimatum. For it told Jimmy to take the next ship home. The Paris agent of the International Mercantile Steamship Line would give him through transportation straight back to his home town, and enough ready cash for tips and meals and baggage. At home a hearty job was waiting for him. If he preferred Europe he could remain there. But he would have to shift for himself; and no cables, not even the most urgent, emotional and expensive, would be answered. He should also write regularly to Mother, who was worrying.
Strange to relate, Jimmy did not worry a bit.
He counted his ready cash and made the pleasant discovery that there were still over five hundred francs remaining. So he promptly rejected his father’s unsympathetic and brutal offer, and adjourned to his chop and beer—metaphorical chop and very metaphorical beer. For the chop developed into gray-grained, unsalted molossol caviar, venison steak à la Pueckler-Muskau, and crêpes Suzette, while the beer metempsychosized into a bottle of Saint Emilion and a neat series of little glasses—some golden-yellow, some pink, and some violet. Which goes to show that Jimmy was crude and uncooked no more.
Fate had a hand in this dinner and appointed the headwaiter Deputy-Providence.
For when Laurette de Roza, nee Malloy (the one and only Laurette, whose meteoric rise from the Barbary Coast to Pantages’s Circuit, from Pantages’s to Broadway, and from Broadway to the Alhambra, the Berlin Wintergarten, and the Casino de Paris, had been the talk of half the Knickerbocker Building and all the Sunday supplements), when Laurette sauntered into the restaurant for a leisurely dinner, she found every table occupied. The diplomatic Swiss Prince who was disguised as headwaiter looked at Laurette’s tight-fitting toque, at her short-vamp pumps and supra-Paris frock; and then, looking for a likely place, his eye caught sight of Jimmy’s tweed Norfolk, his broad-ribboned shoes and his trousers innocent of suspenders. And he decided that, by secret sign of dress and square chin, the two belonged to the same lodge of race and prejudice.
So he asked Jimmy if he minded, and Jimmy said that he did not. And two seconds later Laurette sat facing Jimmy.
She looked at her vis-à-vis from underneath her slow-drooping eyelids. Perhaps she liked the appearance of her young countryman; perhaps she felt just the least little bit homesick; at all events she hurdled suavely over all the usual Anglo-Saxon preliminaries and broke the ice with a hammer of considerable weight.
“Say, Mister Man, shoot me over the sweetener, will you?”
Jimmy was startled. Jimmy was pleased. Jimmy was touched and affected. For, in the soft rolling of the R’s, in the rich diction and the bold grammar, he read the high-sign of the Pacific homeland.
He passed the sugar as bid, lit a cigarette, and inquired politely if the lady hailed from the noble State of Washington.
California rose in its mighty wrath.
“Not so’s you’d notice it. San Francisco is my middle name—and it’s good enough for me, believe me!”
Jimmy countered gracefully.
“Great little town, Miss—?”
“Laurette—Laurette de Roza,”
“Glad to meet you, Miss de Roza. My name’s Jimmy Webb. Shake!”
They shook. They shook warmly. And thus began a friendship which was destined to make history both in the French
and in the Inland Empire Capitals.
That same night he accompanied her to the Casino de Paris, and from a seat in back of the stage, nonchalantly tilted back against a pile of scenery, he watched his fair countrywoman as she fascinated the sporting males and a few sporting females of Paris with the latest wrinkles in the cracking of finger joints and the wriggling of shoulders. And there was just the least little bit of jealousy in his heart as he heard remarks of sprightly Latin appreciation floating up from the stalls and the orchestra-loges.
“Elle est charmante, la petite Américaine…oh là là, qu’elle est rigolo…mais elle est bien …”
After the first night, they would meet nearly every afternoon in one of cafés on the Champs Elysées or the Bois; and there, fortified by slushy French pastry and syrupy drinks of a passionate shade of cerise, the boy would listen to the girl’s quaint, homemade philosophy and to her uncalled for insults about the facial and bodily characteristics of the Parisian ladies.
And gradually the old Jimmy sickened and died. A new heart, a new Self grew up in the body of Jimmy Webb. And this new heart was filled to overflowing with blind, pathetic, puppyish love for the glittering little butterfly who had danced and sung her way from the Barbary Coast to the star dressing room of Continental music halls.
Of course it would have been decidedly more proper and moral if he had returned to his home town in the Inland Empire, had accepted the hearty job which awaited him there, had married the daughter of Larry Purcell as his parents wished him to, and had lived a decent and constructive life henceforth, divided between the eight-room bungalow on Cannon Hill, the golf links, and his office chair in the Old National Bank Building.
But once in a while Fate, perhaps to vary the monotony, decides to cheat muslin-frocked, pink-and-white primness; and so Jimmy loved, and gloried in his love.
And steadily his financial resources grew more anemic.
The girl noticed it. She also noticed that there was a soft, white, weak lovableness about him, that there was the making of a man beneath his pompadour and his regrettable olive-green velvet hat, and that there was the far-off chance that the leer of lust which curled and lurked in the corners of his fleshy lips might change in time to the clean smile of real love.
But she was a very practical little girl, and when Jimmy popped the eternal question shortly afterward, she laughed and replied.
“Forget it, kid. You’re flighty and I’m flighty. There ain’t no ballast to such a team—to keep ‘em steady,”
But presently the mothering instinct which is one-half of the love of woman rose in her soul, and she spoke to Jim seriously and naggingly.
“You gotta cut out that bunch of the Café Ritz. You gotta keep away from them hell-roaring bums—or it’s Good Night for you.”
Jimmy’s teeth tightened the string of the little red tobacco bag which was a priceless relic from the Pacific slope, and he remonstrated mildly.
“Say, what’s eatin’ you? That hunch is all right. And they’re all Americans. Why, last night when I lent Tommy Slater that five-spot he’d asked me for, he promised me he would—”
She interrupted savagely.
“Ah, you talk like a clam-chowder. You’re the original easy-mark. Here you are with a few measly, pockmarked kopeks in your jeans, and you let that bunch sponge on you. Why, Jim, I’m surprised at you. Any itinerant con-guy who flouts the little old flag over the Congtinong can hand you a spring onion, and you think it’s a tuberose.”
Jimmy thought for a while in his slow way. Then he grinned good-humoredly.
“Spring onion—tuberose—Gee whiz, but it fits me like a blister.”
And he lit his cigarette with an air of unconcern and looked out into the garden where the birds were nipping the tips from the peeping tulip leaves.
“This ain’t no laughing matter,” Laurette continued sternly. “I mean what I say. Why don’t you make something of yourself? Six foot two, as healthy as a baby bull that’s been vaccinated and didn’t catch—and you can’t even earn a living. All you do is to play sucker to that bunch at the Ritz. Why can’t you make good, same as your father done?”
He looked at her, and then, reading between the lines of her temperamental outburst, he walked up close to her and took both her hands in his.
“I guess you do care for me just the least little bit, honey-bugs.”
And he attempted to kiss her, but found himself rewarded by a resounding and painful left-hander.
He rubbed his cheek and grinned sheepishly.
But he knew that there was some sense in Laurette’s lecture, and so he left her and walked down the Boulevard des Italiens, head held high, arms swinging easily, determination in every feature, and jaw stuck out defiantly. Once more the Siwash-impoverishing spirit of his pioneer ancestors rose screaming in his soul; and as he strode along he was taking an inventory of his money-getting qualities.
And a retired Parisian banker, resplendent in white spats and a square-cut Assyrian beard, pointed at him and said to his plump wife:
“Regardez, Marie. There’s a typical young American for you—there’s energy for you and intelligence and determination. Ah, cherie, by the ten thousand little blue devils, but they are a great nation!”
Laurette was hurt when Jimmy did not show up for several days. She was lonely and unhappy, and she missed her afternoon walks with him in the golden Paris air when summer days cried them out to garden and wood. And every night she confided to her pillow that the boy was dearer to her than the dwellings of kings. But every morning she got a fresh hold on her common sense, and decided that it was no use to spill perfectly good milk.
Finally, one rainy Sunday afternoon, Jimmy came to her and with his first words he asked her again to marry him.
But she shook her head.
“No, no, Jimmy.” By this time he was sitting close to her, his right arm firmly encircling her waist. “I guess love is all fine and dandy. But you can’t discount it for a second-hand sandwich. It ain’t got no market value. Nobody could sell it—not even a Los Angeles real estate agent. And I do need eats and drinks and heaps and heaps of clothes; yes, and a few sparklers, too. I guess I’ll stay single and keep on tangoing for a living. Now don’t sit there and look as solemn as the last trump. You know I’m right, don’t you?”
Jimmy grinned.
“Listen here, honey. Just suppose I blow in here one of these days with a great big wad of those sympathetic yellow-backs?”
She laughed.
“Ah, tell it to the marines—to the French marines at that! You and a wad. You haven’t been hitting the coke, have you? Take my tip and return to the Old Man back in the Northwest and eat humble pie. It’s darned wholesome pie, and easy money ain’t your line. Be a good boy, go home, and I’ll stake you to your ticket.”
Jimmy answered never a word. He got up and kissed her square on the mouth, and this time she was too surprised to give him a left-hander in exchange.
Then he strode out of the room whistling “Casey Jones.”
Laurette walked over to the window and looked after him. It was still raining, and suddenly she felt very lonely; and there was sobbing in the wind, and the sound of homesickness in the sweep of the warm rain.
She dabbed at her eyes with a tiny square of lace-edged grass-linen which did duty for handkerchief, and whispered:
“Oh, Jimmy, it’s too bad your feet are so big, I’d like it swell to have you for a dancing partner—‘Mr. and Mrs. James Webb in their latest society dances’—wouldn’t it be great? But it can’t be done—not with those brogans of yours.” She looked in the mirror. “Gosh, but I’m a silly goose. Here I am crying and looking like a dying Welsh rabbit, and I gotta hurry over to the Casino de Paris and do my stunt and smile. This sure is a hard life.”
But all the sobbing sorrow of the world could not interfere with the charm and skill of her little dancing feet. The Casino de Paris was packed night after night with crowds of enthusiastic Frenchmen, and Monsieur Henri
Deschamps, the manager, after much cabling to New York, renewed her contract for another two months.
Meanwhile Jimmy called on her as before, and his first question dealt always with papa and wedding ring.
She knew that his roll must have nearly dwindled to the size of a lone, emaciated toothpick, and she offered him money, first indirectly and delicately, and then directly and indelicately. But Jimmy refused with a laugh which made her wild.
“Don’t laugh like a fool, Jim. No, no, don’t laugh—don’t even smile. That ain’t a smile. It’s a railroad track.”
Jimmy bent down and kissed her pouting mouth (it had lately become a habit with him), picked up stick and hat, and left, pleading a business engagement.
She opened the door and shouted after the disappearing figure:
“A business engagement? A business engagement? Say, Jimmy, you got cobwebs in your brilliantined belfry, haven’t you?”
But he repeated his portentous statement, and hurried downstairs two steps at a time. He swung himself aboard a westbound motorbus and was off in the direction of his business premises.
Back in the little parlor, Laurette discovered a small package which Jim had left behind. It was tied with pink satin ribbon, and Jimmy’s card was stuck in it with the penciled words “For Laurette.” She opened it eagerly, and a second later she slipped a tremendous canary diamond on her second finger.
And she said to herself wonderingly:
“Lord, whatever his business, it sure seems to pay big.”
And she was right. Jimmy was really in business for himself (very much for himself), and was making money rapidly—big, juicy money.
Now I warned the reader several pages back that, in the course of this simple narrative, straight-front, well-laundered, muslin-frocked Morality was liable to get a black eye, and that, contrary to all “uplift” magazine stories, the looseness of moral fiber which a futurist poet (probably drunk) has been heard to describe as purple with a dash of cerise, was going to march forth to victory triumphantly.
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack Page 22
