This mass spirit of hilarious joy could not fail to have a certain effect upon Robert. He had stumbled from the hotel in the grip of an awful despair. His soul was dead and he welcomed death.
Canal Street scoffed at his despair. It jeered at death. It defied the premise that life is real and life is earnest. It shouted that there is a joy in living which transcends all mortality. It screamed that only the present matters; the past is dead, and the future nonexistent.
With a great roaring rumble of thunderous applause it proclaimed that here were a mighty host who dedicated this night to mirth and pleasure.
Robert’s step quickened. His face brightened and he tentatively smiled. A girl by his side caught the smile and held it as her own. She had flashing eyes and ruby lips. Her arms were about Robert’s neck before he realized what was occurring. The ruby lips were pressed close upon his own, and the girl’s breasts sent a surge of mad pleasure through his body.
The kiss lasted longer, than any kiss Robert had experienced, and he gasped as the girl swayed away from him. Her smile was flashingly exultant.
“I choose you,” she cried gayly. “Come on.” Her hand sought his and she tried to drag him from the hurrying throng.
“I’m sorry.” Robert drew his hand away gently. His pulses tingled at the promise which was in her touch.
“Already taken?” she laughed. “You would be.” Her admiring glance followed him as he moved on toward Claiborne.
Robert was strangely moved by the brief incident. To him it took on a vast significance. He held his head erect and brushed past the laggards impatiently.
A bold gypsy lass espied him as he neared her. She planted herself in his path so he bumped into her before he saw she was there.
“Watch out!” She stepped clear of his path and rubbed her sinewy arm ruefully.
“Did I hurt you?” Robert was aghast.
“Yes, you did,” she pouted. “Kiss the hurt away.” She held her arm out to him impudently.
Robert gingerly lowered his head and brushed her arm with his lips.
Her eyes were bright as they took in his clean Strength. Her arm encircled his neck and drew his head close to her bosom.
“You’re sweet,” she whispered in his ear. “And I’m all alone to-night … of all nights.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered inanely.
“Sorry?” she mocked. “Is that the best you can offer? Anything goes to-night. And I’ve got plenty.” She winked one dark lash at him and rubbed her body against him suggestively.
“I … I … I’m sorry,” Robert muttered. He loosed himself from her and hurried down the street.
She made a little face after him. “Off after some other wench!” she exclaimed angrily. “It’s his hard luck … but, Gawd, I coulda shown that han’some son-of-a-gun a thing or two.”
Robert looked neither to the right nor left as he turned into Claiborne and hurried westward. He was feverishly impatient to reach the Brinkley home, for he.had a feeling that Barbara would be awaiting him. Mr. Brinkley would have told her of his phone call, and he envisioned her waiting for him breathlessly at the front gate.
The two encounters on the street had given him new courage. He felt savagely capable of sweeping all Babs’ protestations away. The red wine of passion coursed through his veins for the first time in his life. And it was heady stuff.
He would teach Babs passion, he thought exultantly. How exceedingly wonderful it would be to teach her gently what he had learned this night.
Claiborne was much quieter than Canal Street. There were many groups of riotous couples, and Robert was accosted by several girls who strolled singly, but he did not pause to talk with any. His soul cried out that he must hurry to Babs.
He came to the street at last, and turned up it more slowly, looking for house numbers to locate the Brinkley home. This street was deserted and quiet. So much in contrast to the hurly-burly just quitted that it seemed endless leagues removed.
He found the house at last. A two-story home set back from the street in the center of a lawn. A thick hedge, shoulder-high, surrounded the yard. A dim light gleamed in the front window as he halted on the sidewalk and considered his course.
Somehow, the house seemed cold and lifeless. It was inconceivable that its bulk sheltered the vital spirit that was Babs. Perhaps she had not yet returned. A cold chill overtook him at the thought. He studied his watch in the dim glow from a street lamp on the corner and discovered that it was eleven-thirty. He could not believe she would still be out.
Cautiously he moved up the path until he stood directly before the front door. There was no sign of life within the dimly lit parlor. Only one floor lamp was burning.
He shook his head dismally and retraced his steps to the front gate. He knew that Babs had not returned. She would have waited expectantly for him if she had returned in the interim.
What to do? He considered swiftly. He could not return to the hotel without seeing her. Until he saw her there would be no rest for him.
He decided he would wait. Certainly, he thought, she would come at any moment. Never in all her life had he known of Babs being out later than ten o’clock. He would wait.
So he waited. For two hours he waited, tortured with jealousies and anxious with fears for her safety.
He was suddenly aware of the lights of an approaching automobile. Other automobiles had approached while his heart stood still … and passed on.
This was different. Some hidden sense, warned him that this was the automobile he had long awaited. He sat near the path in the dark shadow of the hedge, his knees drawn up beneath his chin—a picture of abject misery.
He felt strangely lethargic as the car ground to a halt in front of the house. There were light voices and Barbara’s clear laugh. It was, indeed, she.
He made no move to arise. He saw that a man drove the car. And Ethel was with them. He breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving as he noted there were only the three. What a fool he had been! Of course Babs had just gone out for a ride with Ethel and her friend.
Then occurred that terrible scene which Robert was never wholly to efface from his memory. Ethel stepped from the car first and helped Barbara to alight. The driver leaped from the seat and hurried around the car to murmur indistinguishable words.
Ethel moved away and the man had his arm about Babs’ waist!
Barbara’s voice:
“I’ve always thought I’d feel terrible after doing this the first time.… I don’t.… I’m not a bit ashamed.”
The world stood still for Robert.
The stranger’s voice:
“I’m so glad … never cease calling myself a dog.…”
Barbara! Stopping at the gate not five feet from Robert. Lifting her arms to the stranger. Her voice, warm and vibrant:
“Kiss me. I want to thank you … for—everything.…”
Robert heard nothing more. A merciful blackness descended which shut out the remainder of the horrible scene.
He was not conscious that the automobile sped away. He did not hear Barbara and Ethel go up the front steps and slam the door behind them.
He did not know that he stumbled and fell as he ran from the hideous thing he had overheard.
He knew only that he must escape … and that there could be no escape from the black phantom which pursued him.
Chapter Eleven
Hattie looked up with a grim frown as Jim hesitated in the doorway.
“Oh! It’s you!” she snapped. “Where’s Robert?”
“Why he’s … he’s gone out to … to see if he,…” Jim got no further with his stumbling explanation.
“He’s slipped out to chase after that slip of a Barbara, I’ll be bound. You’d think he’d have more pride, wouldn’t you? Robert Sutler! My own cousin! His head so turned by a good-for-nothing that he forgets everything else.” Cousin Hattie assumed a martyred expression. She did it quite well. Jim marveled at the facility she showed in settling her harsh features int
o injured lines. He didn’t know how much practice she had had in this respect.
“Goes right out at this outlandish time of the night without so much as a by-your-leave to me who came with him because it was my plain duty to see that he came to no harm.”
“But it’s really not so late,” Jim protested. “It’s just eleven now. The fun’s just beginning on the streets.”
“Fun? Humph!” Cousin Hattie’s tone expressed her idea of people who started their fun at eleven o’clock in the night.
Jim started to answer, but she pressed on relentlessly:
“Little he cares about me. His head’s so turned by that flittery-gibbet girl that he doesn’t know I’m living. A lot he cares about what becomes of me. Why, I could be kidnaped or … or attacked … and he’d never turn a hair.”
“That’s … that’s not quite fair to Robert,” Jim protested, choking back a chuckle as he envisioned Cousin Hattie being kidnaped … or attacked. “I’m here,” he added helplessly. “Robert asked me to do anything I could to make up for his rushing away like this.”
“Humph.” Cousin Hattie sniffed three times and softened visibly.
“Perhaps you’d like to go out and see the sights,” Jim offered desperately. “Though I don’t suppose you’d care for that so late at night.”
“Well, now maybe it’s my duty to go and get the sights of these scandalous carryings-on.” Cousin Hattie arose with alacrity. Her nose wriggled as she simpered before the mirror.
“I must say I’ll feel perfectly safe with you to protect me,” she went on. “I suppose I should change, though goodness knows I have on my very nicest dress right now. I insisted on wearing this on the train … not wanting Robert to be ashamed of me when we met his friends here in the city. And it is a right nice dress if I do say it myself as who shouldn’t. I made it especial from a pattern in the magazine for Rose’s funeral last fall. Rose Duncan, that was. Jacob Duncan’s second wife. Poor dear. She looked so sweet lying in her casket. So sweet and peaceful. Land sakes, I told them … it’s the first peace she’s known since she married that man. A terrible rounder, he was. Sporty. Up at all hours playing billiards and all those sinful card games. For money, too, mind you.…”
“That’s terrible,” Jim said quickly as she paused for breath. “And I must say that your dress is very becoming.” He tried to keep his dismay from showing as he gazed at the heavy folds of black silk which enshrouded her gaunt frame. Long sleeves and high collar with a ruffle of black lace. A black hat with faded artificial cherries and a wide bow of clashing yellow completed the striking ensemble.
Jim thought desperately of fleeing, but he set his teeth grimly. He had promised Robert. And, after all, he would see no one he knew among the merrymakers.
Cousin Hattie patted the hat firmly atop her head, and inserted two gleaming hatpins. Jim waited grimly while she found black mittens to cover her roughened hands. She turned toward him with a severe smile. Her attitude said that she was determined to throw all sense of decorum to the winds.
“I declare, I feel skittish,” she said. “I wonder what the ladies of the Aid Society would say now?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Jim told her gravely as they passed out of her room into the corridor. “No doubt they’d all envy you tremendously.”
“I’ll never dare breathe a word of this at home,” Hattie said mournfully. “They’d never believe me if I did.”
Jim took her arm carefully and looked straight ahead as they marched through the lobby and into the throng outside. Hattie’s voice continued its ceaseless monotone, but Jim paid her no heed. The words seemed to flow about him without impinging upon his consciousness. This was a job which he had taken upon himself, and he manfully proceeded to discharge his duties as guide to Robert’s cousin.
They walked slowly toward Canal, and Hattie’s flow of personal reminiscences slowly faded away to sniffs of horror and gasps of astonishment. Her eyes jerked about madly as she sought to see everything of the fantastic spectacle. What a story she would have to tell at home!
Jim was more and more painfully conscious of curious glances following them as they made their way along the sidewalk. There were titters behind their backs, and amused side-glances as the carnivalists studied the grotesque appearance Hattie presented.
She was serenely unconscious of the stir her costume created. If she noticed that at all, it was with the satisfied belief that she was giving them an “eyeful.”
Jim plodded doggedly ahead. Dragging impatiently at Hattie when she would have stopped to stare erotically at the amorous gestures of a group of men and maids who had imbibed of something stronger than the festival spirit.
Her conversation had been reduced to a series of “ohs” and “ahs” when they were finally flung into the maelstrom of Canal. The time was nearing midnight, and the atmosphere of untrammeled carousal was replacing the lighter aspect of earlier evening.
Jim drew Hattie back to a store front where the fringe of the crowd surged past and gave them some respite from the breathless give and take encountered in moving through the surging mélange of participants.
Her eyes were glittering and she breathed heavily. Jim stole a guarded glance at Hattie’s face as they stood together, and surprised an expression of strained expectancy. It was as though, disbelieving, she sought frantically for belief. As though her mind told her this was but a mirage, while her warped soul found something splendid in the unreality of the moment. As though she realized the entire world had gone insane … and an inner consciousness welcomed and embraced the insanity.
“Oooh! Look, Buddie! See th’ lady in th’ costume! Ain’t she grand?”
Jim looked down to see a chubby lass in a sadly bedraggled fairy costume tugging at the arm of a smaller, and fatter, and dirtier edition of herself who wore what Jim supposed to be a cowboy costume. The little girl was not more than six … and she was pointing excitedly at Cousin Hattie.
Jim stole another quick glance at Hattie, and was relieved to see her thin nose was pointing in the opposite direction as she watched a couple who had cleared a space for a gyrating execution of the rhumba.
“She looks sorta like mammy,” the little boy responded sturdily.
“Oooh,” the little girl said. “But mammy wouldn’ come to Mwada Gwa an’ be costumed an’ all like her. You know she wouldn’,” she ended severely.
“Wheah’s daddy, Boots?” the little fellow asked impatiently.
“He’s comin’ fas’ as he kin. We left him when we runned back yonder. He wuz talkin’ to that lady an’ she wouldn’ lissen.”
“Oh yeh. I ’member. Th’ lady looked cross. I’m glad she didn’ talk tuh daddy. I wuz ’fraid he might pick her out fer our new mammy … an’ I didn’ like her. I like this’n better.” Buddie motioned toward Hattie, who remained unconscious of the fact that she was being discussed.
Jim listened with amusement. His mind was working at top speed as he revolved the question of what to do with Hattie. She seemed to have entirely forgotten the lateness of the hour. He shuddered as he looked forward to weary hours of following her about the streets. Half his conscious mind listened to the conversation of the children, while the other half toyed with the desperate thought of disappearing while Hattie was looking the other way.
“Shhh. She’ll hear you,” Boots warned her brother. “Daddy wouldn’ like you to say that.”
“But she is lots nicer,” Buddie insisted. “I betcha daddy’ll think so too. I betcha maybe he’ll ast her tuh be our new mammy.”
“Oooh! There comes daddy now!” Boots exclaimed. “Don’t he look funny? He’s huntin’ fer us. He looks turrible worrit.” She laughed merrily and pointed with a dirty forefinger.
Jim looked in the direction she pointed and saw a tall figure hurriedly approaching them through the throngs which buffeted and shoved him about. It was the Widower Simpson, his angular frame fantastically rigged out in an ill-fitting Gaucho costume.
A beaded vest hun
g loosely from his thin shoulders, over a flowing blouse of vivid yellow. A wide crimson sash was about his waist, and his thin shanks were encased in tight pants which clung to his flesh and made him walk stiff-legged. A wide sombrero with leather chin strap completed the costume and added a final touch of grotesquerie to his appearance.
Yet, there was something pathetic about the man which held back the laugh his fantastic garb merited. A haunting hopefulness in his eyes, a suggestion of wistful eagerness in his mien, an air of nervous expectancy which, somehow, changed one’s mirth to a choked dismay. It was evident that he was proud of his regalia, and totally unaware of the ludicrous figure he presented.
He was searching for Boots and Buddie when Jim first saw him; frowning anxiously and peering about uncertainly. He was close to them before he saw they were safe, and Jim saw him straighten and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Jim was still staring at the man, uncertain whether he should laugh or weep, when he heard Hattie’s sharp tone addressing the children:
“My goodness sake’s alive! What are your parents thinking of? You two babies out at this time of night?”
“We ain’t babies,” Boots responded sturdily. “I’m fi’-goin’-on-six, an’ Buddie’s four.”
“’Sides, daddy’s lookin’ after us,” Buddie chimed in. “He’s comin’ now. He stopped to talk to the lady not as purty as you, an’ we jes’ come on wivout him.”
“But you should have been in bed hours ago,” Hattie said hastily. But her severity relaxed and she almost hazarded a smile. “Your daddy needs a good talking to … that’s what he needs,” she ended.
It was at that moment that Jim was inspired. Ever afterward he looked back upon that instant and marveled at the strength and certainty he had shown in handling the situation. He saw the Widower Simpson gazing upon Hattie beseechingly. From the children’s conversation it had been a simple matter to gather that their father was searching for a new mother for them.
Mardi Gras Madness Page 9
