Chapter 2

( Originally Published 1915 )

SHE GOES TO A NOVEL ENTERTAINMENT; WEARING, HOWEVER, THE WRONG CLOTHES

MISS WILSON and Blink Moran sat far back in the "artists' corner" of the Parnasse tea room, at the extreme end of the low platform that enabled the patrons of the rear rows of tables to see the dancing over the heads of those seated on the floor level. He answered her questions quietly but fully enough. Indeed, familiar as the scene was to him, he seemed to take a sober sort of enjoyment in the bright gaiety of it.

The couple now dancing the Maxixe in the cleared space between the tables were Etheridge and Gay, of the Twisters troupe. A married couple by the way; though, very young. She had lost her baby, in London, only three months back. Also on the floor were Millicent, a pretty girl, of the English chorus, and the person known as "Monocle John," a pasty-faced. French youth with sleepy eyes, one of which was partially obscured by a monocle. The extraordinarily blond waiter, who met Moran's excellent French at every point with a surprising command of English, used to work at the Plaza and the Knickerbocker in New York. And the boxer smiled a little, adding—"We always do this. I talk French to him. And he won't talk anything but English to me."

"You speak French very well, don't you?" said Miss Wilson, with a slight touch of chagrin that this rough person should outmatch her in accomplishments. But he turned the little compliment aside with a simple "Oh, you pick it up."

It became gradually evident—as the clock over the entrance door struck one quarter-hour after another, as the hundreds of tables filled with guests of every imaginable nationality, as the violin and mandolin orchestras alternately played the latest dance music, dreamy and gay, as graceful tangoists gave way to the riotous "Texas Twisters" in cowboy costume and then again took the floor—that this same Mr. Moran was something of a celebrity. Every one in the corner of this great room unmistakably knew who he was. The waiters, the dancers, the members of the orchestra regarded him with respect that was not without its touch of awe. She saw two different groups of American men, at near-by tables, looking over into the corner and whispering about him.

The fact interested her because it explained his manner. Being a celebrity, he was simply acting as a celebrity is forced to act by the attitude of the world about him. It explained his reticence and his courtesy. And it was not surprising, when you stopped to think of it. She knew that the boxer is greatly respected in. Paris, that he may easily have something near a social standing. Why, Oarpentier, the heavyweight champion, was the idol of Paris, and was reported, even in the outer circles which her own life occasionally touched, to be a young man of considerable charm.

A little later Moran called her attention to these same Americans. They were all drinking highballs, and. were rapidly approaching the state in which mellow good cheer gives way to a primitive enjoyment of noise as such.

"Queer how Americans act over here," he observed, studying the two groups reflectively. "They go crazy." "Not all Americans."

"Most all. The men, I mean, when they aren't with their families. You know it isn't the French that go to pieces in Paris, anyway. It's our folks, and the English and Germans, and sometimes the South Americans. These Parisians keep their heads, and put their boys in school, and shut up their daughters where we won't see them, and then they take our money. They don't mind."

"I never thought of that," mused Miss Wilson. "It always seemed a pretty lively sort of place to me. Though I've always been too busy to look around much."

"Oh, it's lively enough. But it wouldn't be without us foreigners. Just look around once in any other French city and you'll see what I mean. An American or Canadian may be all right at home, and keep fairly straight in London, but the minute he hits Paris, everything's off. He explodes with a big bang. His mind's all prepared for it, you see. That's the way he thinks of Paris. Take those fellows over there, now. Pretty soon they'll begin yelling. Then they'll be trying to make some of these tourist ladies dance with them. And then they'll get thrown out. It happens most every day."

"I have always supposed," observed Miss Wilson, "that we are more moral than the French."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"But certainly, as a people, we behave better."

"Better—and worse," said he. "We :pull a longer face. And we're always telling ourselves how good we are and how wicked the French are. Oh, we don't hate ourselves ! Not so much. But when we blow, we blow for keeps. And Mr. Frenchman just looks at us, and wonders what's got into us, and goes on the way he was before—not so good and not so bad. I was talking about this just the other day with an English newspaper man. He says the Frenchman isn't worse than us, or better. It's only that his safety valve is set lower."

Miss Wilson chuckled softly. He was distinctly a bit of a philosopher, her prize-fighter. She would have liked to carry the conversation further, had not a sudden diversion claimed the attention of both.

A slim pretty girl, with a weakly pleasant face and extremely blonde hair made her way through the crowded tables and joined the group of "artists" in the corner. She spoke to Adele Rainey.

"The doctor was in, Adele, and he says it's colic when it rolls its eyes and smiles that funny way."

Adele looked alarmed. "Colic !" she exclaimed. "But say, Blondie, you didn't leave it alone, did you ?"

"No, two of the girls came in. He gave me a list of things to get at the drug store to fix the food with. The milk's too strong. Somebody give me some money."

"Here," said Moran, handing her a gold louis.

She took the coin, and, admonished by Adele to lose no time on her errand, went back through the crowd and out the main doorway.

Shortly after this Adele brought her dancing partner to the table.

"This is the lady that came with us, Will," she said.

Harper bowed. He was a mere youth of twenty or twenty-one with a pale, almost haggard face. He smiled a good deal, and talked eagerly, as if anxious to make a pleasant impression. Miss Wilson had observed that his fin gers were stained with nicotine, and that every moment that he was not actually out on the dancing floor he was inhaling cigarettes. She had also noted the fact that after a very few moments of his acrobatic dancing he appeared exhausted and had some difficulty in getting his breath.

"Are you interested in this side of Paris life ?" he asked, so palpably talking up to her that she had to suppress a smile.

She admitted that she was.

"Funny how you meet all sorts o' people here," he ran on. "Take our troupe, for instance. Miss Rainey's from Buffalo. I'm from Kansas City. You wouldn't expect to find a Kansas City boy working here on the boulevards—now would you !"

Suddenly his face clouded, as with the recurrence of a half-forgotten anxiety. "Say, I'm sort o' sorry you came to-day. I'm trying out a new tune for this next dance, and there's no telling how it'll go. They may not like it at all, you know. I been using Under the Car for Yours. It's a good tune. You know how it goes."

To make sure, he hummed it huskily, oblivious to the fact that the mandolins were at the moment filling the air with a quite different melody. Plainly, the simplest thing was to nod knowingly; which Miss Wilson accordingly did.

"I'm trying out Tingle, Tingle to-day. It's a good tune, you know. But you never can tell how they'll go with the crowd. I've got a trunk full of songs up-stairs, though, and I'll try 'em out till I get the right one. You come around to-morrow, and if this thing doesn't work out, I'll go back to Under Me Car for Yours. That's safe, anyway. This way, I'm afraid you won't get much idea of my dancing."

Fortunately his call came then. Miss Wilson glanced at Moran to see how he took this curiously trivial boy. But Moran evidently was taking him in the same way that he appeared to take everything else—as a matter of course. It amused her further to observe that Adele played quite as important a part in the dance as the boy's egotistical self. Indeed, Adele seemed really to become herself on the dancing floor. She was light and pleasing as a fairy. She even took on a degree of distinction.

In a short time they were back; Harper, by lighting a cigarette with great nonchalance, endeavoring to conceal the fact that for the moment he simply could not recover his breath. A moment more and he was talking again, rapidly and at random. He asked her advice regarding the wisdom of accepting a tentative offer to go to Budapest for the spring months. He confided to her that he and Adele didn't get on with Etheridge and Gay. "We're going to break up, anyway, after this engagement," he whispered, close to her ear. "Jimmy takes my steps as fast as I can invent 'em. He gets by now because he's got me to steal from—but you watch him after he's been going it alone for a month or two. He won't have a thing. Why, right now he can't even do a wing. Think of it ! Nothing but this Texas Twist step and some straight clogging. And he got the twist from me. Harry Behman—he was our manager before—he told me just last week that a man who can dance like I can oughtn't to be tied up with a fellow like Jimmy Etheridge. And Harry knows my work, you see."

At this point Adele hurried him off to change his costume.

When he returned, it was with a fresh idea. "Say," he observed, leaning an elbow on the table, "if you enjoy seeing this side of Paris life, why don't you make Blink here take you to a fight ? It's the great thing here now, you know, next to dancing. All Paris is crazy about boxing. They call it La Boxe. Funny, isn't it !"

This curious suggestion came to Miss Wilson with quite unexpected force. It was a curious suggestion—yet why not ! Ed Johnson would do it in a minute. So would Joe Hemstead himself, for that matter, if it happened to catch his interest. She bit her lip; and the gray-blue eyes lighted.

Moran was looking down at his empty teacup, moving the grounds about with his spoon. As nearly as she could make out, he was struggling with the courteous impulse to accept the situation young Harper had thrust upon him. Perhaps he didn't quite know what to make of the idea of taking a lady to a fight.

She watched him, suppressing a smile. She saw the bunches of muscle on his jaws move and set. She felt the not unmischievous desire to pin him down to it and go straight through with the little adventure, now that she had let herself go so far along the way. It would be interesting to see how he would handle the situation. Then her thoughts fluttered. She was certainly being swept along at a great rate. And it did sound rather alarming.

He raised his eyes, and met hers frankly. The Gothic eyebrow seemed grotesquely conspicuous; yet the eyes were attractively cool and steady, and the face was firm. The color arose unexpectedly in her cheeks ; and again she bit her lip.

"There's one to-night, if you'd care to see it," he said—"at Luna Park, out by the Porte Maillot."

It was her chance. Fourteen driving business years had taught her that a chance will not keep. And so, with the sudden queer sensation of one who is casting off all moorings and swinging out on a very long trail indeed, she slowly nodded.

"Why, thank you," she replied calmly. "I'd like very much to go."

"All right. It's Sam Langford and a big Englishman. The preliminaries are nearly all amateur—the army championships—not very interesting. We don't want to get there before ten o'clock. If you'll tell me where to call for you—"

Miss Wilson wrote the name of her hotel on a card, and gave it to him.

"I'll be ready for you any time after half past nine, but oh, as to clothes. The only woman I ever knew that went to a fight wore men's things. She was a newspaper girl." She hesitated, in momentary embarrassment.

He shook his head, saying merely, "That won't be necessary."

She could have asked innumerable questions—as to the exact degree of brutality she must steel herself to endure with, at least, outward composure; as to this Langford and his opponent, who they might be and where they might have come from; something more in detail regarding the proper costume—but she promptly decided to ask none of them, just to go ahead and accept whatever might come. That was her method in business; therefore why not follow it in this plunge into a new region of experience, this region which was habitually roamed over with the most casual freedom in the world by virtually every man of her acquaintance, but regarding which most of the women she knew were quite ignorant and only a little curious.

When she rose to go, it was a relief to find that he made no offer to escort her; merely bowed, and stood by his chair while she said good-by to Harper and Rainey. These young persons now felt that they had. known her well for a very long time indeed, and were properly cordial in urging her to return on the morrow.

It was with a sense of almost complete unreality that she threaded. her way among the tables, walked down the long passage to the boulevard entrance, and turned toward. the Place de l' Opera.

She walked briskly. She always walked. briskly. The afternoon was over now, and the early winter darkness had settled over the city. The broad sidewalk was thronged. The roadway was dense with moving vehicles. The shops were all lighted, and the street lamps. Newsboys and fakers shouted their wares. Everywhere, all about her, was the stir and pulse of intense life. She responded. to the stimulus of it, but still with that odd sense of unreality. It was an eight-year-old. spectacle to her;; but as a personal experience it was wholly new. She had seen it often enough; she had never before been a part of it. To-day Paris had caught her up. In a harmless but sufficiently exciting way she purposed whirling along with it, riding with the tide, for the time letting her life take its own course, just as Paris does.

No more drive for a while—only freedom ! She drew in a quick deep breath at the thought. Of course she would have to see a little more of M. Armandeville and his staff, enough to make certain that all her purchases except the three dozen stock gowns from Caillaufs and the cloaks from Henri's should really be shipped before the first, and these latter not later than March twentieth. And she must lay out May Isbell's work pretty carefully. She would have May come back to Paris instead of going through by the Mediterranean-Calais route to London, keep her about for a day or two, and then send her along. The business letters that were now in her wrist-bag she would answer this evening—before going out. There would be more enjoyment in the evening if she knew that these few nagging little matters were definitely out of her mind. It was like keeping your desk clean at the office; you slept better for it. . . . Also she must reply to her mother's letter. She would have to think out some way of explaining her sudden decision to linger abroad that would forestall any worry on her mother's part. But that should not be difficult.

She turned to the right at the Rue de la Paix, and walked through to the Rue de Rivoli, turning in at one of the big cosmopolitan hotels which border that historic avenue.

Door boys, hall boys, lift boys, bright with buttons, ushered her along. Walls of Circassian walnut and brocaded silk closed in about her. Voices—American voices—jangled at her ears from groups at tea tables. She hurried through it all to her room. She hated this hotel, that once, eight mortal years ago, had thrilled her with its magnificence. She had longed, these many years, to stop at some peaceful little French hostelry that would distinctly not be on the Rue de Rivoli. This longing recurred now, as she closed the door and wearily tossed her furs on the bed; and it brought resentments. She had to stop here because other solitary woman buyers stopped here. It was the beaten track for such as she. It explained her. It justified her. It gave her moral standing among men whose own moral sense was outrageously complex—which moral standing, duly appraised, stood to her credit at the Harman store, classified as salary account.

She ordered up a light dinner, and over it studied the letters that demanded answers. Then she set about fraraing these answers. This work accomplished, she read her mother's letter, and sat for a little time studying it. Once she sighed. Every way one might turn, it appeared, loomed an eternity of puzzling little problems, personal tangles mostly, that must be thought out faithfully, each in its phase of the moment. She wrote as follows :

"MOTHER DEAR : Yours of the eighth just here today. I wrote you a long letter night before last that answers most of your questions, I think. My advice is to go right ahead with Harry's tutor. I'll send another draft tomorrow. And really I don't want you to worry about the money. It will save Harry a year in getting his business start; and surely that's worth a slight extra investment. Now isn't it ! You don't seem able to realize, mother, that your daughter is a very successful business woman, more than thirty years old and earning a salary of eight thousand a year. And not a soul to spend it on except myself. Why, I've got more actual income-producing capital laid aside right now than poor old dad ever saw at one time in his whole life.

"As for Margie—It is hard to know what to say. But she's not such a child, though, mother. She'll be twenty this spring. Perhaps that is a little premature, as things go nowadays, but we mustn't forget for a moment that she has a good strong head. I don't like John very well myself, but what can we do ? It won't help a bit to oppose her. Her best quality, her independence, is against us there. If I were you I'd take the exactly opposite course. Give her her head. Let her have him in to meals—make him feel at home. Don't in any way give her the chance to work up a clandestine romance out of no better material than a sense of injury. The chances are either that she'll gradually get bored to death or else that the rest of us will find out what it is she sees in him.

"I keep fairly well, though very busy. Mr. Hemstead is urging me to take that vacation now that I didn't get last- summer, and I've about decided to do it. Things are going all right at the store. And May Isbell will be quite competent to represent me there for a short time. In. all the times I've been over here, I've never really seen anything but a few cities and the Rhine and the inside of a lot of sleeping cars. It certainly seems to be a chance worth taking. So I'm going to turn plain tourist for a month or so. I'll keep you informed as I go along. And don't worry."

After a moment's reflection she crossed out this last sentence. "I mustn't put the suggestion of worry into mother's mind," she thought. "That would upset her. I'll keep it natural and offhand, and not suggest or explain any more than is absolutely necessary."

"Tell Margie," thus the conclusion, "I've picked up for her a piece of the loveliest coppery green silk she ever saw. She can feel sure there won't be another frock like it in the United States—not one It will be wonderful with her hair.

"I'm so glad you've stopped coffee.

"Lots of love. More news later. HILDA."

The envelope addressed, sealed and stamped, she consulted the little traveler's clock that stood in its pigskin case by the inkwell. The hands indicated ten minutes after nine.

She got up and, with knit brows, studied the varicolored assortment of frocks and suits hanging in her wardrobe trunk, that stood open at the foot of the bed. If it was not to be men's clothes—which would be absurdly out of the question anyway—it had better be something as inconspicuous as possible. She finally selected an old suit of dark serge that she kept for stormy weather and hard traveling. On her rather small feet she drew a pair of plain walking boots with low boyish heels. She chose a plain black hat, soft with a rolling brim, that fitted down close about her head. Furs she decided against.

Over the old suit she put on a heavy gray coat of homespun, waterproofed. Then she stood before the long mirror and surveyed herself. Her hat brim threw her eyes into partial shadow, quite hiding those faintly wrinkled half moons under them. The eyes sparkled at her from the mirror, and she found herself smiling a little. "You aren't so old !" she thought. It was pleasing, too, to think that her new friend, of the rough but real accomplishments, would find her roughly but well equipped for whatever experience it might be necessary to meet. There was even some amusement in the thought of passing through the imposing lobby of the hotel in this costume.

His card came up then. As she took it from the boy and looked at it, she smiled again. It bore the name, in small black letters, "Albert Moran." Almost unconsciously she ran her thumb over the letters. Yes, they were engraved. She was still smiling as she drew on her short gray gloves and started down-stairs.

But when she confronted her escort of the evening she was caught in a confusion of spirit that, if momentary, was complete. He rose from a chair and came forward to meet her, clad in the fullest of evening dress—glistening "patent leather" shoes, perfectly creased trousers, pleated shirt of the variety known in the men's furnishing department as "semi soft," neat white tie, and thatch of hair brought into a temporary subjection by means of many brushings and some brilliantine. His long black overcoat (not the sables this evening) was shaped to the outlines of his wide shoulders, his curved back, his almost slim waist. His tall hat, held carefully in his left hand, had been blocked to an unruffled polish. His walking stick, suspended from this same left hand, was heavy and it had a curving handle tipped with silver—the sort of stick known along the boulevards as a "canne Anglaise." He wore one white glove, also on his left hand, and held the other crushed against his hat brim. The only jewelry in evidence was his watch chain with a gold sovereign suspended from it.

She saw that he was holding his bare right hand ready either to take her hand or not, according as her inclination might determine. She determined to extend hers, and did so.

Then she found her voice.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "I didn't think—I didn't know—" And her troubled eyes roved from his resplendent costume to her own dingy one. "I never dreamed. of dressing up. I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to wait while I put on something else."

"Don't bother," said he. "You do as you like in Paris. Nobody minds." He did not smile. As all during the afternoon, he was grave, respectful and distinctly unper turbed.

"Would there be time ?" she asked.

"Hardly," said he.

She compressed her lips. Then, with a determined little nod, she led the way toward the door. And as he helped her into a taxi and seated himself beside her she was wondering how she could get control of the situation. At the moment he was certainly in command. His very unselfconsciousness as he sat quietly there, his willingness to be silent and to concede the same privilege to her, perturbed her the more. For she wanted him to say something. She wanted the chance to reassert her personality. She knew that it was trivial to feel like this. She ought to rise above it. And she couldn't rise above it. So she bit her lip, sitting motionless there in the dark.

"That's what I like most about Paris," he observed, as they crossed the Place de la Concorde, with its hundreds upon hundreds of soft lights, and entered the shadowy reaches of the Champs Elysees. "Everybody does what they please. They all drink, you know. And I don't drink. They don't care. They just think that's my peculiarity and let it go at that. It's different with the Americans that turn up. They're always at you about it. They keep trying to make everybody else do everything they do themselves."

I Hilda said something, she hardly knew what. And the conversation drifted on.

Her business experience had been thorough and varied enough to teach her that personal force, the intangible quality that is known, loosely, as "personality," is found in every department of life. She had observed it in salesmen and shipping clerks, in errand girls and bankers. And she could perceive that this man with the slightly crooked nose and the curious eyelid and the remarkably steady eyes had this intangible quality in an extraordinary degree. His vocation was rough, yes. But it called for the extreme of self-control. It called for greater self-control indeed than any man of her acquaintance—excepting Joe Hemstead, perhaps—was capable of exercising. And it must of course call for consummate skill and address.

She recalled how he had looked, earlier in the day, as he walked across the mail room at the American Express, and again she thought of tigers. No loose-minded, self-indulgent man (such as you met, mostly) could conceivably look like that. And it was plain, from his gravity and his reticence, from his very silences, that this moral strength—yes, you would have to call it that—was by no means the result of laborious self-discipline; it was simply the native quality of the man.

He gave her some odd bits of information regarding the boxing world of Paris. "They use a lot of our words punch,"match,"round,"ring,' and. so on. And the verb `knockouter; to knock out."

She smiled vaguely, wondering if any one would be "knocked out" this evening; and wondering, too, how she would take it if it happened. She must not show weakness; not to this man.

They walked in through the plaster and iron gateway of the amusement park among a crowd of eager, jostling French boys. Some of these looked distinctly rough; perhaps he would yet prove to be wrong and she right in the matter of dress.

But when they entered the great structure of steel and glass, with its overhead decorations of flags and colored lights, its hundreds of rows of chairs, nearly all occupied, and its elevated square "ring" in the center with white ropes enclosing it and a bunch of blazing white lights directly above it, she was conscious, confused in some inextricable way with her immense relief at finding herself in so cleanly attractive a place. of a sinking of heart.

For there were very nearly half as many women as men among the several thousand spectators, and nearly all were in bright evening costume. Everywhere one looked there was the spectacle of bare white necks and shoulders outlined against the black evening coats of the men. The occasional vacant chairs were piled high with gay opera wraps and heaps of furs. Here and there groups of officers supplied touches of red cloth and the glint of metal.

Miss Wilson, following a girl usher down the long aisle to a seat only three rows from the ringside, felt like a gray sparrow among birds of paradise.