First came two French maids, carrying small, purple dogs, and followed by a squad of porters, blind and invisible under innumerable bunches and bouquets of fresh flowers. Another maid followed, leading a sad-eyed orphan child of a French flavor, and close upon its heels walked the second officer pulling along three neurasthenic wolfhounds, much to their reluctance and his own.
A pause. Then the captain, Sir Howard George Witchcraft, appeared at the rail, with something that might have been a pile of gorgeous silver-fox fur standing by his side.
Rags Martin-Jones, after five years in the capitals of Europe, was returning to her native land!
Rags Martin-Jones was not a dog. She was half a girl and half a flower, and as she shook hands with Captain Sir Howard George Witchcraft she smiled as if some one had told her the newest, freshest joke in the world. All the people who had not already left the pier felt that smile trembling on the April air and turned around to see.
She came slowly down the gangway. Her hat, an expensive, inscrutable experiment, was crushed under her arm, so that her scant boy’s hair, convict’s hair, tried unsuccessfully to toss and flop a little in the harbor wind. Her face was like seven o’clock on a wedding morning save where she had slipped a preposterous monocle into an eye of clear childish blue. At every few steps her long lashes would tilt out the monocle, and she would laugh, a bored, happy laugh, and replace the supercilious spectacle in the other eye.
Tap! Her one hundred and five pounds reached the pier and it seemed to sway and bend from the shock of her beauty. A few porters fainted. A large, sentimental shark which had followed the ship across made a despairing leap to see her once more, and then dove, broken-hearted, back into the deep sea. Rags Martin-Jones had come home.
There was no member of her family there to meet her, for the simple reason that she was the only member of her family left alive. In 1913 her parents had gone down on the Titanic together rather than be separated in this world, and so the Martin-Jones fortune of seventy-five millions had been inherited by a very little girl on her tenth birthday. It was what the consumer always refers to as a “shame.”
Rags Martin-Jones (everybody had forgotten her real name long ago) was now photographed from all sides. The monocle persistently fell out, and she kept laughing and yawning and replacing it, so no very clear picture of her was taken--except by the motion-picture camera. All the photographs, however, included a flustered, handsome young man, with an almost ferocious love-light burning in his eyes, who had met her on the dock. His name was John M. Chestnut, he had already written the story of his success for the American Magazine, and he had been hopelessly in love with Rags ever since the time when she, like the tides, had come under the influence of the summer moon.
When Rags became really aware of his presence they were walking down the pier, and she looked at him blankly as though she had never seen him before in this world.
“Rags,” he began, “Rags--”
“John M. Chestnut?” she inquired, inspecting him with great interest.
“Of course!” he exclaimed angrily. “Are you trying to pretend you don’t know me? That you didn’t write me to meet you here?”
She laughed. A chauffeur appeared at her elbow, and she twisted out of her coat, revealing a dress made in great splashy checks of sea-blue and gray. She shook herself like a wet bird.
“I’ve got a lot of junk to declare,” she remarked absently.
“So have I,” said Chestnut anxiously, “and the first thing I want to declare is that I’ve loved you, Rags, every minute since you’ve been away.”
She stopped him with a groan.
“Please! There were some young Americans on the boat. The subject has become a bore.”
“My God!” cried Chestnut, “do you mean to say that you class my love with what was said to you on a boat?”
His voice had risen, and several people in the vicinity turned to hear.
“Sh!” she warned him, “I’m not giving a circus. If you want me to even see you while I’m here, you’ll have to be less violent.”
But John M. Chestnut seemed unable to control his voice.
“Do you mean to say”--it trembled to a carrying pitch--”that you’ve forgotten what you said on this very pier five years ago last Thursday?”
Half the passengers from the ship were now watching the scene on the dock, and another little eddy drifted out of the customs-house to see.
“John”--her displeasure was increasing--”if you raise your voice again I’ll arrange it so you’ll have plenty of chance to cool off. I’m going to the Ritz. Come and see me there this afternoon.”
“But, Rags!” he protested hoarsely. “Listen to me. Five years ago--”
Then the watchers on the dock were treated to a curious sight. A beautiful lady in a checkered dress of sea-blue and gray took a brisk step forward so that her hands came into contact with an excited young man by her side. The young man retreating instinctively reached back with his foot, but, finding nothing, relapsed gently off the thirty-foot dock and plopped, after a not ungraceful revolution, into the Hudson River.
A shout of alarm went up, and there was a rush to the edge just as his head appeared above water. He was swimming easily, and, perceiving this, the young lady who had apparently been the cause of the accident leaned over the pier and made a megaphone of her hands.
“I’ll be in at half past four,” she cried.
And with a cheerful wave of her hand, which the engulfed gentleman was unable to return, she adjusted her monocle, threw one haughty glance at the gathered crowd, and walked leisurely from the scene.
II
The five dogs, the three maids, and the French orphan were installed in the largest suite at the Ritz, and Rags tumbled lazily into a steaming bath, fragrant with herbs, where she dozed for the greater part of an hour. At the end of that time she received business calls from a masseuse, a manicure, and finally a Parisian hair-dresser, who restored her hair-cut to criminal’s length. When John M. Chestnut arrived at four he found half a dozen lawyers and bankers, the administrators of the Martin-Jones trust fund, waiting in the hall. They had been there since half past one, and were now in a state of considerable agitation.
After one of the maids had subjected him to a severe scrutiny, possibly to be sure that he was thoroughly dry, John was conducted immediately into the presence of m’selle. M’selle was in her bedroom reclining on the chaise-longue among two dozen silk pillows that had accompanied her from the other side. John came into the room somewhat stiffly and greeted her with a formal bow.
“You look better,” she said, raising herself from her pillows and staring at him appraisingly. “It gave you a color.”
He thanked her coldly for the compliment.
“You ought to go in every morning.” And then she added irrelevantly: “I’m going back to Paris tomorrow.”
John Chestnut gasped.
“I wrote you that I didn’t intend to stay more than a week anyhow,” she added.
“But, Rags--”
“Why should I? There isn’t an amusing man in New York.”
“But listen, Rags, won’t you give me a chance? Won’t you stay for, say, ten days and get to know me a little?”
“Know you!” Her tone implied that he was already a far too open book. “I want a man who’s capable of a gallant gesture.”
“Do you mean you want me to express myself entirely in pantomime?”
Rags uttered a disgusted sigh.
“I mean you haven’t any imagination,” she explained patiently. “No Americans have any imagination. Paris is the only large city where a civilized woman can breathe.”
“Don’t you care for me at all any more?”
“I wouldn’t have crossed the Atlantic to see you if I didn’t. But as soon as I looked over the Americans on the boat, I knew I couldn’t marry one. I’d just hate you, John, and the only fun I’d have out of it would be the fun of breaking your heart.”
She began t
o twist herself down among the cushions until she almost disappeared from view.
“I’ve lost my monocle,” she explained.
After an unsuccessful search in the silken depths she discovered the illusive glass hanging down the back of her neck.
“I’d love to be in love,” she went on, replacing the monocle in her childish eye. “Last spring in Sorrento I almost eloped with an Indian rajah, but he was half a shade too dark, and I took an intense dislike to one of his other wives.”
“Don’t talk that rubbish!” cried John, sinking his face into his hands.
“Well, I didn’t marry him,” she protested. “But in one way he had a lot to offer. He was the third richest subject of the British Empire. That’s another thing--are you rich?”
“Not as rich as you.”
“There you are. What have you to offer me?”
“Love.”
“Love!” She disappeared again among the cushions. “Listen, John. Life to me is a series of glistening bazaars with a merchant in front of each one rubbing his hands together and saying ‘Patronize this place here. Best bazaar in the world.’ So I go in with my purse full of beauty and money and youth, all prepared to buy. ‘What have you got for sale?’ I ask him, and he rubs his hands together and says: ‘Well, Mademoiselle, to-day we have some perfectly be-oo-tiful love.’ Sometimes he hasn’t even got that in stock, but he sends out for it when he finds I have so much money to spend. Oh, he always gives me love before I go--and for nothing. That’s the one revenge I have.”
John Chestnut rose despairingly to his feet and took a step toward the window.
“Don’t throw yourself out,” Rags exclaimed quickly.
“All right.” He tossed his cigarette down into Madison Avenue.
“It isn’t just you,” she said in a softer voice. “Dull and uninspired as you are, I care for you more than I can say. But life’s so endless here. Nothing ever comes off.”
“Loads of things come off,” he insisted. “Why, to-day there was an intellectual murder in Hoboken and a suicide by proxy in Maine. A bill to sterilize agnostics is before Congress--”
“I have no interest in humor,” she objected, “but I have an almost archaic predilection for romance. Why, John, last month I sat at a dinner-table while two men flipped a coin for the kingdom of Schwartzberg-Rhineminster. In Paris I knew a man named Blutchdak who really started the war, and has a new one planned for year after next.”
“Well, just for a rest you come out with me tonight,” he said doggedly.
“Where to?” demanded Rags with scorn. “Do you think I still thrill at a night-club and a bottle of sugary mousseaux? I prefer my own gaudy dreams.”
“I’ll take you to the most highly-strung place in the city.”
“What’ll happen? You’ve got to tell me what’ll happen.”
John Chestnut suddenly drew a long breath and looked cautiously around as if he were afraid of being overheard.
“Well, to tell you the truth,” he said in a low, worried tone, “if everything was known, something pretty awful would be liable to happen to me.”
She sat upright and the pillows tumbled about her like leaves.
“Do you mean to imply that there’s anything shady in your life?” she cried, with laughter in her voice. “Do you expect me to believe that? No, John, you’ll have your fun by plugging ahead on the beaten path--just plugging ahead.”
Her mouth, a small insolent rose, dropped the words on him like thorns. John took his hat and coat from the chair and picked up his cane.
“For the last time--will you come along with me to-night and see what you will see?”
“See what? See who? Is there anything in this country worth seeing?”
“Well,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, “for one thing you’ll see the Prince of Wales.”
“What?” She left the chaise-longue at a bound. “Is he back in New York?”
“He will be to-night. Would you care to see him?”
“Would I? I’ve never seen him. I’ve missed him everywhere. I’d give a year of my life to see him for an hour.” Her voice trembled with excitement.
“He’s been in Canada. He’s down here incognito for the big prize-fight this afternoon. And I happen to know where he’s going to be to-night.”
Rags gave a sharp ecstatic cry:
“Dominic! Louise! Germaine!”
The three maids came running. The room filled suddenly with vibrations of wild, startled light.
“Dominic, the car!” cried Rags in French. “St. Raphael, my gold dress and the slippers with the real gold heels. The big pearls too--all the pearls, and the egg-diamond and the stockings with the sapphire clocks. Germaine--send for a beauty-parlor on the run. My bath again--ice cold and half full of almond cream. Dominic--Tiffany’s, like lightning, before they close. Find me a brooch, a pendant, a tiara, anything--it doesn’t matter--with the arms of the house of Windsor.”
She was fumbling at the buttons of her dress--and as John turned quickly to go, it was already sliding from her shoulders.
“Orchids!” she called after him, “orchids, for the love of heaven! Four dozen, so I can choose four.”
And then maids flew here and there about the room like frightened birds. “Perfume, St. Raphael, open the perfume trunk, and my rose-colored sables, and my diamond garters, and the sweet-oil for my hands! Here, take these things! This too--and this--ouch!--and this!”
With becoming modesty John Chestnut closed the outside door. The six trustees in various postures of fatigue, of ennui, of resignation, of despair, were still cluttering up the outer hall.
“Gentlemen,” announced John Chestnut, “I fear that Miss Martin-Jones is much too weary from her trip to talk to you this afternoon.”
III
“This place, for no particular reason, is called the Hole in the Sky.”
Rags looked around her. They were on a roof-garden wide open to the April night. Overhead the true stars winked cold, and there was a lunar sliver of ice in the dark west. But where they stood it was warm as June, and the couples dining or dancing on the opaque glass floor were unconcerned with the forbidding sky.
“What makes it so warm?” she whispered as they moved toward a table.
“It’s some new invention that keeps the warm air from rising. I don’t know the principle of the thing, but I know that they can keep it open like this even in the middle of winter--”
“Where’s the Prince of Wales?” she demanded tensely.
John looked around.
“He hasn’t arrived yet. He won’t be here for about half an hour.”
She sighed profoundly.
“It’s the first time I’ve been excited in four years.”
Four years--one year less than he had loved her. He wondered if when she was sixteen, a wild lovely child, sitting up all night in restaurants with officers who were to leave for Brest next day, losing the glamour of life too soon in the old, sad, poignant days of the war, she had ever been so lovely as under these amber lights and this dark sky. From her excited eyes to her tiny slipper heels, which were striped with layers of real silver and gold, she was like one of those amazing ships that are carved complete in a bottle. She was finished with that delicacy, with that care; as though the long lifetime of some worker in fragility had been used to make her so. John Chestnut wanted to take her up in his hands, turn her this way and that, examine the tip of a slipper or the tip of an ear or squint closely at the fairy stuff from which her lashes were made.
“Who’s that?” She pointed suddenly to a handsome Latin at a table over the way.
“That’s Roderigo Minerlino, the movie and face-cream star. Perhaps he’ll dance after a while.”
Rags became suddenly aware of the sound of violins and drums, but the music seemed to come from far away, seemed to float over the crisp night and on to the floor with the added remoteness of a dream.
“The orchestra’s on another roof,” explained John. “It’s a
new idea--Look, the entertainment’s beginning.”
A negro girl, thin as a reed, emerged suddenly from a masked entrance into a circle of harsh barbaric light, startled the music to a wild minor, and commenced to sing a rhythmic, tragic song. The pipe of her body broke abruptly and she began a slow incessant step, without progress and without hope, like the failure of a savage insufficient dream. She had lost Papa Jack, she cried over and over with a hysterical monotony at once despairing and unreconciled. One by one the loud horns tried to force her from the steady beat of madness but she listened only to the mutter of the drums which were isolating her in some lost place in time, among many thousand forgotten years. After the failure of the piccolo, she made herself again into a thin brown line, wailed once with sharp and terrible intensity, then vanished into sudden darkness.
“If you lived in New York you wouldn’t need to be told who she is,” said John when the amber light flashed on. “The next fella is Sheik B. Smith, a comedian of the fatuous, garrulous sort--”
He broke off. Just as the lights went down for the second number Rags had given a long sigh, and leaned forward tensely in her chair. Her eyes were rigid like the eyes of a pointer dog, and John saw that they were fixed on a party that had come through a side entrance, and were arranging themselves around a table in the half-darkness.
The table was shielded with palms, and Rags at first made out only three dim forms. Then she distinguished a fourth who seemed to be placed well behind the other three--a pale oval of a face topped with a glimmer of dark-yellow hair.
“Hello!” ejaculated John. “There’s his majesty now.”
Her breath seemed to die murmurously in her throat. She was dimly aware that the comedian was now standing in a glow of white light on the dancing floor, that he had been talking for some moments, and that there was a constant ripple of laughter in the air. But her eyes remained motionless, enchanted. She saw one of the party bend and whisper to another, and after the low glitter of a match the bright button of a cigarette end gleamed in the background. How long it was before she moved she did not know. Then something seemed to happen to her eyes, something white, something terribly urgent, and she wrenched about sharply to find herself full in the center of a baby spot-light from above. She became aware that words were being said to her from somewhere, and that a quick trail of laughter was circling the roof, but the light blinded her, and instinctively she made a half-movement from her chair.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 190
