She might never stop flirting—any more than he could learn to sit still when the engines went by. But when Mary was sweet to him, and when she was at his side, he could learn to sit down again. Perhaps Mary would never outgrow that quickening of her pulses when a man paid her court. But if he were always there and always sweet to her, perhaps it would be easier for her to learn to take her seat again.
And they would both grow old together and someday Mary would be too old to flirt and he would be too old to go to fires and then—. The ambulance stopped. They were home.
DIMI AND THE DOUBLE LIFE
“Van,” asked Dimi Brown of his sister across the supper table one night, “what’s the matter with me?”
“Dimi, if you’re going to start with your tonsils again—”
“Tonsils! Your idea of the adult male is a spoiled stomach bounded on the north by tonsils and on the south by wet feet. ‘Tonsils,’ says the low creature when I would parley of matters connected with the soul!”
“Oh, Dimi,” cried Van, gazing upon him as a mother whose eldest has just betrayed the first symptoms of an inherited taste for alcohol, “you’re not going to get that way, are you?”
“What way?” he inquired, though he knew.
“Soulful!”
To look at him you would never have feared for him. There was nothing soulful about his figure, which was five feet ten of healthy manhood, a little too inclined to fill out his custom-made Oxford suit, or about his face, which, though it had never caused a single clock to stop, had not made any movie directors lose their night’s sleep either. No interesting shadows marred the clearness of his eyes, which were too blue to be gray and too gray to be blue. And nothing could have been less soulful than his English mustard colored hair brushed smoothly from his brow. Still you never could tell. Nobody would have known just to look at Mrs. Elizabeth Penny Brown that she had had a soul.
And what a soul—with a color and a classification and an essential environment. In fact, Mrs. Brown’s soul had had everything except a license number. Her body was nothing but a troublesome wrapper for her soul.
All the last years of her life were spent in a vain struggle merely to express it. It was the sort of soul that had to feed on life. So they lived in one room and alcove in the West Forties, where behind apricot-colored portieres that shut out the sun they were enabled with the help of candles to see the true light.
Mrs. Brown did without a winter coat to buy her seat at the opera. Dmitri and Vanya were fed opera instead of good red meat. In place of milk they were given tea, started in a huge tarnished old samovar. Lacking fresh air, they were completely surrounded with atmosphere. And though the bathroom was not always accessible, being the joint property of two floors, they were always free to bathe in a flow of inspired, soul twaddle, which, however, did them no real harm, because they always fell asleep on the couch before the hour or the talk became advanced enough to be pernicious.
Altogether, in some miraculous way they managed to survive it, and in all his thirty-one years Dimi had never shown any real traces of an inherited tendency toward soul. At his mother’s death he had quit art school and plunged into college, where he had shown a quite degraded interest in the development of his troublesome wrapper. Later he had sold his talents to an advertising agency, from whence he had been graduated into the advertising department of Steinberger’s Department Store, of which, after his return from the Army, he became head. True, the opera habit still clung to him, but he himself invariably lapsed into blue chords and syncopations at the piano. And though he wrote occasional magazine verse under the name of D. Brown he always called it stuff, which you never do if you have a soul. And the only art he ever practiced was in connection with the advertising policy of the house of Steinberger and occasional sketches which he did for those of Van’s customers who wanted something very—very—
Let us hope that the wrapperless shade of Elizabeth Brown never yielded to the present-day shade weakness for the dim lights of the séance parlor, where with shade omniperceptivity she must have winced under the knowledge that her Vanya, in spite of the advantages of her youth, was a mere builder of gowns in a Philistine little suburb like Locust Hills. And she wore rubber heels and tailored blouses with convertible collars. And she had shoulders of an utterly unpoetic breadth, and she strode. Her one great interest outside of her work was in her attractive, up-to-date little stucco house with the goodly attic, wherein were stored the old samovar and the cidevant apricot-colored portieres; and a large cellar containing a complete electric laundry. Probably a childhood entirely clad in undershirts that were surreptitiously and occasionally rinsed in the basin had something to do with her passion for that laundry. It was her one great love. And her one great hate was souls. So she looked relieved when her brother Dimi reassured her.
“No, I’m not getting soulful. I was only wondering why it is no women—no girls ever—Van, why doesn’t somebody fall in love with me?”
Van eyed him sharply.
“Dimi, are you in love?”
“No!”
“Then why the anxiety? Do you want some girl to send you orchids or kill herself across the doorstep—and I’d have to sweep her away and face a coroner’s inquest?”
“Honestly, Van, if you were just a little funnier you’d be a Greek tragedy.” Then he leaned toward her earnestly. “Van, you know it—I’ve never had a girl. Why is it?”
“Never had a girl! Why, there isn’t a girl in Locust Hills that wouldn’t stumble over her own shoe laces—”
Dimi sighed.
“I thought nobody but a mother would say a thing like that. Why, there isn’t a girl gives me a second thought!”
“Dimi, you’re the most popular man at the club!”
“Oh, when there’s a sister to be escorted or an awfully nice girl that’s kind to her mother to be shown round I’m more than popular, I’m unanimous! But just let a regular 1921 model appear and just let her get to the point where she knows my heart is white and my name is Brown—and presto! somebody waltzes her right off under my nose and the next glimpse I get of her is from behind the barrage of a large and solitary diamond. Every dance I go to—”
“Why don’t you learn to dance?”
“But I don’t like dancing! Even if I don’t foxtrot, couldn’t some woman use me evenings and Sundays round the house?”
“I think you’d make the most wonderful husband in the world!”
“In some ways, Van, you have a really superior mind. Now if only I could find a girl with your discernment—”
“But, Dimi, you’ve never even tried!”
“I never get a chance to. Just about the time I am girding up my loins some other fellow is opening telegrams of congratulation. There must be something lacking in me.”
“There’s nothing lacking in you. You’ve got everything from nice eyebrows to a sense of humor. And when the right girl comes along—”
“You sound like Helpful Hints to the Homely but Hopeful. How do I know the right girl hasn’t come and gone and married half a dozen other people?” Van came over to the back of his chair and laid an affectionate cheek on his head.
“You should manifest concern. When the right girl comes along you’ll know it. Meanwhile”—she dropped a light kiss on the blond smoothness of his hair—“do me a sketch for Mrs. Payson’s black velvet. Something wherein daring originality is barely subordinated to quiet elegance.” Which he did.
A week later he sold a poem to the American Lyric. He had never taken his stuff seriously enough to try it before. He was foolishly happy with that especial happiness that comes only to fathers of first-born males and men who have sold their first poem to the American Lyric. Untrodden vistas started up before him. Important chapters opened in his life. New romantic futures held out beckoning hands.
He could scarcely wait to tell Van. As he swung, or rather floated
, into their very attractive little colonial sitting room her voice attacked him from the stairs.
“Oh, Dimi, Dimi, I’ve got the most wonderful news!”
“What kind of news?” His question went out to meet her.
“Oh, Dimi!” she gasped against the collar of his coat.
He held her at arm’s length and looked at her. She was positively blushing.
“You look,” he told her, “like love’s young dream. Anybody seeing you would think you had went and did it.”
“I have—I did—” she blurted out happily. “Dimi—I’m engaged.”
“Oh!” said Dimi queerly and dropped his arms.
“Wh-why, Dimi, what’s the matter? Aren’t you glad?”
“Of—of course,” he lied. “Sit down here and tell me. It’s Tubby, of course?”
“Of course not! It’s Barry.”
“Barry? Lieutenant Barrow? I didn’t even know he was back!”
“He isn’t. He—he telegraphed.”
Dimi gave her a searching look, but there was nothing in her eyes save a queer trembly kind of radiance. “D-don’t laugh, Dimi! Look!”
From the inside of her blouse she took out her handkerchief. And from her handkerchief she took out a knot. And from the place where the knot had been she took out a diamond solitaire.
Entirely eclipsed was the American Lyric. Eglantine, the cafe-au-lait maid, announced dinner. And when she was out of earshot Van told him how Barry, unable to wait any longer, had telegraphed, a ring arriving almost at the same time as the telegram.
“But you hardly know him, Van. He was only here—”
“A week. But,” she went on defensively, “we’ve been writing ever since.”
“But a week! How can you know your own mind?”
“At twenty-nine, Dimi dear, you know your own mind if you don’t know another thing. I knew it the first time I met him. And oh, Dimi, I’m so happy! If it weren’t for you and the house here—”
“Bother me and the house! We’ll get us a housekeeper somewhere.”
“Name of Mrs. Brown?”
He shook his head and she reached for his hand across the table.
“It’ll be easier with me out of the way. It’s hard for a man to get married when he’s got an old-maid sister to look after.”
“Oh, sure!” he assented gloomily. “You broke up ten or twelve very promising little affairs. I tell you, Van”—his voice took on just a hint of petulance—“I don’t register with women. They call me up when they’re in town and can’t think of anybody else. They invite me to their parties. They even recommend me to their college chums. But they always marry somebody else.”
“But you can’t expect them to propose to you!”
“Jelly beans! I’ll do the proposing if they’ll only let me. They’re as personal with me as the printed announcement of a sale of barroom fixtures. I only remember one woman that ever looked as if she wanted me to kiss her.”
“And did you?”
“No, of course not. She was married.”
“Holy Trotzky! Perhaps if you weren’t so darn decent—”
“Huh! That’s a grand, elegant, uplifting influence you have.”
“You don’t need to be uplifted. You need to be let down. Honestly you’re too high-minded to be human—too nobell—like a dorg,” she finished scornfully. “That’s just what you are. A girl says, ‘Come here, nice Raggsie,’ and what do you do? Do you pass her by easy stages from mild interest to consuming desire? You do not! You never even heard of salesmanship. You go right over and lie down on her doorstep with fidus ad mortem written all over your collar, and—well, there hasn’t been one girl with brains enough to want you in spite of your virtues.”
Dimi sighed. “Tough, ain’t it? What would you advise, Doctor Fairfax?”
“First find the right girl. And then don’t tax your speedometer getting to her. Give her a run for her money. Slip her an occasional thrill.”
“Thrill! If bumping off the road in my jit going at fifty-five isn’t a thrill—”
“No, you underdone polliwog, that’s not a thrill—that’s an attack of heart failure. Haven’t you ever even read of thrills? Real thrills? Haven’t you ever heard of atavism? Aren’t you even acquainted with the genus cave man?”
“Cave man! Van, I’m ashamed of you!”
“Well”—defensively—“that’s what got me about Barry—he’s so masterful. And on the other hand, look at Tubby. He died of devotion all over the house and on the front porch. And it took me exactly six years to make up my mind that I couldn’t make up my mind to marry him. You’ve just got to make a girl respect you.”
“Jelly beans! I don’t want a girl to respect me—I just want her to love me.”
“But, newborn babe, you can’t love a man without respecting him!”
Dimi groaned.
“Nobody in the world could respect a man named Dimi!”
“Listen, Dimi! I’m going to tell you something, because you’d find it out later anyhow. And may it go to show you how little you know. But if you snicker it’ll be your last snick. You know Barry stands for Barrow.” Dimi nodded. “Well, the rest of his name is—is Hyacinth. But I didn’t turn him down because of it. Go ahead now and burst a blood vessel.”
But Dimi did no such thing. He did not even snicker. He listened very seriously to everything Van had to say that night and on the subsequent occasions when the talk turned on him and his failure to connect with what Eglantine called the ladies of the opposite sex. He listened, but it is certain he never took the thing really to heart—never actually considered the possibility of a personal application of the troglodytic principle until the night before Nora Barrow left for the Middle West. Nora was Barry’s sister and when Barry obtained an unexpected leave she came to New York for a week to visit an old cousin and to be near her brother. Barry and Van went to meet her at the train while Dimi stayed at home, to work on a new advertising campaign for Steinberger.
“We’ll have to start her,” he remarked apropos of the new campaign whose destiny he was tracing with a yellow lead pencil on yellow paper, “right here. We’ll call this—Nora Barrow. M’m—I’m sure we ought to figure on taking in—Kansas City. I wonder what she’ll be like, coming from the Middle West and—taking in Manhattan and the Bronx. For ten thousand we can plaster the stuff all over. If she only isn’t too fat. But you always have to figure on spending more if—she’s a blonde, Barry says. Steinberger’ll kick like blazes when he hears that—she can’t be very young—say twenty-five. Or maybe I ought to add a hundred or two to be on the safe side. He ought to realize that—school-teachers are always a little fagged and discouraged, so—you can’t expect results too soon. In about three months—she might fall for me. Barry says she’s slender—but of course we have to figure on the outlying districts. The only thing I’m worried about is—I hope she’s pretty—J. S. will begin to wail about the expense unless I can convince him that—even if she isn’t she needn’t be out of the question—if we get results—”
Finally, having given up the new campaign, which for some reason would not map itself out, he went to bed. As he was about to turn out his light he caught his reflection in the mirror.
“I’ve got to do it,” he confided to D. Brown, who seemed to find nothing extraordinary in his having decided to marry a girl he had never seen, provided, of course, she came up to specifications. “I couldn’t stand living here without Van. I’ll be good to her—and I’ll make her happy, so help me Isaac! I’m going to try out Van’s dope. No more poodle stuff for me. I promise you, D. Brown, if she’s only halfway possible I’ll make her marry me—I vow it!”
Well, if she had been only halfway possible he might have kept his vow. But she was so radiantly, so distractingly, so impossibly possible! Nora! The name was ridiculously inadequate. She should have been Thais.
She had long brown-velvet eyes that you could never get to the bottom of; utterly improbable eyes within still more improbable lashes. There was a hint of Egypt about her—in the curve of her little nose, her smooth dark hair, her small voluptuous mouth, her lithe gliding walk. Oh, but she was really beautiful! Her voice was beautiful and her hands were beautiful and her teeth. But, oh, it was her eyes that held you until you were supine as the doormat at her feet—more absolutely fidus ad mortem than the aroma of cabbage in the hallway of a boarding house. Alas, poor Dimi! Other girls there had been who charmed him, girls who interested him; even there had been girls who moved him. But never, never a girl who did to him what Nora Barrow did. Never!
And the wonderful part was, she appeared to like him too. They just seemed somehow to belong. He did not feel that feverish need for establishing himself in her eyes. He did not bring forth his books of sketches. He did not recite any of his poems—not even the one in the American Lyric. It was just as if there were going to be a time for everything later.
It was a heavenly week. Barry had refused to be dragged round to meet people. And after the first disappointment Van had admitted his wisdom. Dimi respected his grit, though wondering at his nerve. This casual wonder gave way gradually to a grudging admiration not unmixed with resentment. The way that guy got away with things!
With an inborn horror of tragedy Dimi had resolutely kept his thoughts from the fast approaching Wednesday that would take Nora back to the Middle West. In his heart he had a hunch that in some miraculous way she was to be kept from going.
But on Monday night the barometer began to drop. There was talk of trains as though going were a definite thing. And Dimi, though putting off the inevitable face-to-face tussle with the calamity, could not entirely escape the shadow of the coming event. And, to make it worse, Buck Connor and Madge Skelley dropped in. And in five minutes Buck was absolutely ignoring Madge, whom he had been rushing for a month, and was falling with a terrible thud for Nora. And Dimi, being a gentleman, had to try to keep Madge from realizing that she was being thrown. And Nora, seeing him thus occupied, turned her wonderful eyes on Buck. And oh, my friends, the world’s worst nightmares do not always happen during slumber!
The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery Page 17
