VI
Master of all the sky, the sun fell warmly on the city, making delicious shadows, gliding giant buildings, streaming across the park, chasing the endless traffic along the Avenue, and catching at points of color. It was one of those splendid mornings of full-blown Tune, when even New York,—that paradox of cities,—had beauty. It was too early in the year for the trees to have grown blowsy and the grass worn and burnt. The humidity of midsummer was held back by the energy of a merry breeze which teased the flags and sent them spinning against the oriental blue of the spotless sky.
Martin walked to West Forty-sixth Street. There was an air of half-time about the Avenue. The ever-increasingly pompous and elaborate shops, whose window contents never seem to vary, wore a listless, uninterested expression like that of a bookmaker during the luncheon hour at the races. Their glittering smile, their enticement and solicitation, their tempting eye-play were relaxed. The cocottes of Monte Carlo at the end of the season could not have assumed a greater indifference. But there were the same old diamonds and pearls, the same old canvases, the same old photographs, the same old antiques, the same old frocks and shoes and men’s shirtings, the same old Persian rugs and Japanese ware, the same cold, hard plates and china, the very same old hats and dinks and dressing-gowns and cut flowers and clubs, and all the same doormen in the uniforms that are a cross between those of admirals and generals, the men whose only exercise during the whole of the year is obtained by cutting ice and sweeping snow from just their particular patch of pavement. In all the twists and changes, revolutions and cross currents, upheavals and in-fallings that affect this world, there is one great street which, except for a new building here and there, resolutely maintains its persistent sameness. Its face is like that of a large, heavily made-up and not unbeautiful woman, veil-less and with some dignity but only two expressions, enticement and indifference. A man may be lost at the North Pole, left to die on the west coast of Africa, married in London, or forcibly detained in Siberia, but, let him return to life and New York, and he will find that whatever elsewhere Anno Domini may have defaced and civilization made different, next to nothing has happened to Fifth Avenue.
Martin had told Howard of the way he had found Joan on the hill, how she had climbed out of window that night and come to him to be rescued and how he had brought her to town to find Alice Palgrave away and married her. All that, but not one word of his having been shown the door on the night of the wedding, of her preference for Palgrave, her plunge into night life, or his own odd hut human adventure with Susie Capper as a result of the accident. But for the fact that it wasn’t his way to speak about his wife whatever she did or left undone, Martin would have been thankful to have made a clean breast of everything. Confession is good for the soul, and Martin’s young soul needed to be relieved of many bewilderments and pains and questionings. He wished that he could have continued the story to Howard of the kid’s way Joan had treated him,—a way which had left him stultified,—of how, touched by the tragedy that had reduced the poor little waif of the chorus to utter grief and despair, he had taken her out to the country to get healing in God’s roofless cathedral, and of how, treating her, because of his love and admiration of Joan, with all the respect and tenderness that he would have shown a sister, it had given him the keenest pleasure and delight to help her back to optimism and sanity. He would like to have told Howard all the simple and charming details of that good week, giving him a sympathetic picture of the elfish Tootles enjoying her brief holiday out in the open, and of her recovery under the inspiration of trees and flowers and brotherliness, to all of which she was so pathetically unaccustomed. He wouldn’t have told of the many efforts made by Tootles to pay him back in the only way that seemed to her to be possible, even if he had known of them,—he had not been on the lookout for anything of that sort. Nor would he, of course, have gone into the fact that Tootles loved him quite as much as he loved Joan,—he knew nothing of that. But he would have said much of the joy that turned cold at the sight of Joan’s face when she saw Tootles lying on the sofa in his den, of her rush to get away, of the short, sharp scene which followed her unexpected visit, and of his having driven Tootles back to town the following morning at her urgent request,—a curious, quiet Tootles with the marks of a sleepless night on her face. Also he would have said something of his wild despair at having been just ten minutes too late to find Joan at the house in East Sixty-fifth Street, of his futile attempts to discover where she had gone, and of the ghastly, mystifying days back in the country, waiting and wondering and writing letters that he never posted,—utterly unaware of the emotion which had prompted Joan to walk into his den that night, but quite certain of the impression that she had taken away with her.
It was with a sense of extraordinary isolation that Martin walked down Fifth Avenue. Two good things had, however, come out of his talk with Howard Oldershaw. One was the certainty of this man’s friendship. The other the knowledge of the place at which Joan was staying. This last fact made him all the more anxious to get down to the cottage. Devon was only a short drive from Easthampton, and that meant the possibility of seeing and speaking to Joan. Good God, if only she could understand a little of what she meant to him, and how he craved and pined for her.
The dressmaker on the street floor of the rabbit warren had gone out of business. Failed probably, poor thing. Tootles had once said that the only people she ever saw in the shop were pressing creditors. A colored woman of bulbous proportions and stertorous breathing was giving a catlick to the dirty stairway. A smell of garlic and onions met Martin on his way to the rooms of Tootles’ friend, and on the first landing he drew back to let two men pass down who looked like movie actors. They wore violet ties and tight-fitting jackets with trench belts and short trousers that should have been worn by their younger brothers. The actor on the next floor, unshaven and obviously just out of bed, was cooking breakfast in his cubby-hole. He wore the upper part of his pajamas and a pair of incredibly dirty flannel trousers. The marks of last night’s grease paint were on his temples and eyebrows. He hummed a little song to the accompaniment of sizzling bacon.
When Martin knocked on the door of the apartment of the girl to whom he had never spoken except over the telephone and whose name he remembered to be Irene Stanton, a high-pitched, nasal voice cried out.
“Come right in.” He went right in and was charged at by a half-bred Chow whose bark was like a gunman’s laugh, and a tiny pink beast which worked itself into a state of hysterical rage. But when a high-heeled shoe was flung at them from the bedroom, followed by a volley of fruit-carrier words of the latest brand, they retired, awed and horror-stricken, to cover.
Martin found himself in a small, square living room with two windows looking over the intimate backs of other similar houses. Under the best of conditions it was not a room of very comfortable possibilities. In the hands of its present occupant, it was, to Martin’s eyes, the most depressing and chaotic place he had ever seen. The cheap furniture and the cheaper wall paper went well with a long-unwhite-washed ceiling and smudged white paint. A line of empty beer bottles which stood on a mantelpiece littered with unframed photographs and dog-eared Christmas cards struck a note so blase that it might almost have been committed for a reason. On the square mission table in the center there was a lamp with a belaced pink shade at a cock-eyed angle which resembled the bonnet of a streetwalker in the early hours of the morning. An electric iron stood coldly beneath it with its wire attached to a fixture in the wall. Various garments littered the chairs and sofa, and jagged pieces of newspaper which had been worried by the dogs covered the floor.
But the young woman who shortly made her appearance was very different from the room. Her frock was neat and clean, her face most carefully made up, her shoes smart. She had a wide and winning grin, teeth that should have advertised a toothpaste, and a pair of dimples which ought to have been a valuable asset to any chorus. “Why, but you HAVE done a hustle,” she said. “I haven’t even had time to tidy up a bit.” She cleared a chair and shook a finger at the dogs, who, sneaking out from under the sofa, were eyeing her with apprehensive affection. The Chow’s mother had evidently lost her heart to a bulldog. “Excuse the look of this back attic,” she added. “I’ve got to move, and I’m in the middle of packing.”
“Of course,” said Martin, eager to know why he had been sent for. “It’s about Tootles, you said.”
“Very much so.” She sat on the edge of the table, crossed her arms, and deliberately looked Martin over with expert eyes. Knowing as much about men as a mechanic of a main-road motor-repairing shop knows about engines, her examination was acute and thorough.
Martin waited quietly, amused at her coolness, but impatient to come to cues. She was a good sort, he knew. Tootles had told him so, and he was certain that she had asked to see him out of friendship for the girl upstairs.
Her first question was almost as disconcerting and abrupt as a Zeppelin bomb. “What did you do to Tootles?”
Martin held her examining gaze. “Nothing, except give her a bit of a holiday,” he said.
“I saw you go off with her that morning.” She smiled and her eyes became a little more friendly. “She wrote me a letter from your place and said she’d found out what song writers meant by the word heaven.”
“Did she?” said Martin. “I’m glad.”
It came to her in a flash that her little pal had fallen in love with this boy and instantly she understood the mystery of Tootles’ change of method and point of view—her moping, her relaxed grip on life. She meant almost nothing to the boy and knew it.
“But don’t you think you might have been to see her since you brought her back?” she asked.
“I’ve been very worried,” said Martin simply.
“Is that so?” and then, after another pause, this girl said a second astonishing thing. “I wish I didn’t see in you a man who tells the truth. I wish you were just one of the ordinary sort that comes our way. I should know how to deal with you better.”
“Tell me what you mean,” said Martin.
“Shall I? All right, I will.” She stood up with her hands on her hips. “If you’d played the usual game with little Tootles and dropped her cold, I wouldn’t let you get out of this room without coming up to scratch. I’d make you cough up a good-sized check. There’s such a thing as playing the game even by us strap-hangers, you know. As it is, I can see that you were on the square, that you’re a bit of a poet or something and did Tootles a good turn for nothing, and honestly, I don’t know the next move. You don’t owe her anything, you see.”
“Is money the trouble?” asked Martin.
Irene Stanton shot out an odd, short laugh. “Let me tell you something,” she said. “You know what happened at the dress rehearsal of ‘The Ukelele Girl’? Well, the word’s gone around about her chucking the show at the last minute, and it’s thumbs down for Tootles. She hadn’t a nickel when she came back from your place, and since then she’s pawned herself right down to the bone to pay her rent and get a few eats. She wouldn’t take nothing from me because I’m out too, and this is a bad time to get into anything new. Only two things can stop her from being put out at the end of the week. One’s going across the passage to the drunken fellow that writes music, and the other’s telling the tale to you. She won’t do either. I’ve never seen her the way she is now. She sits around, staring at the wall, and when I try to put some of her usual pep into her she won’t listen. She’s all changed since that taste of the country, and I figure she won’t get on her feet again without a big yank up. She keeps on saying to herself, like a sort of song, ‘Oh, Gawd, for a sight of the trees,’ and I’ve known girls end it quick when they get that way.”
Martin got up. “Where do you keep your pen and ink?” he asked. Poor old Tootles. There certainly was something to do.
Irene bent forward eagerly. “Are you going to see her through this snag?”
“Of course I am.”
“Ah, that’s the talk. But wait a second. We got to be tricky about this.” She was excited and tremendously in earnest. “If she gets to know I’ve been holding out the hat to you, we’re wasting time. Give me the money, see? I’ll make up a peach of a story about how it came to me,—the will of a rich uncle in Wisconsin or something, you know,—and ask her to come and help me blow it in somewhere on the coast, see? She gave me three weeks’ holiday once. It’s my turn now, me being in luck.... But perhaps you don’t trust me?”
“You trust me,” said Martin, and gave her one of his honest smiles.
He caught sight of a bottle of ink on the window sill. There was a pen of sorts there also. He brought them to the table and made out a check in the name of his fellow conspirator. He was just as anxious as she was to put “a bit of pep” into the little waif who had sat beneath the portrait of his father. There was no blotting paper, so he waved it in the air before handing it over.
A rush of tears came to Irene’s eyes when she saw what he had written. She held out her hand, utterly giving up an attempt to find words.
“Thank you for calling up,” said Martin, doing his best to be perfectly natural and ordinary. “I wish you’d done so sooner. Poor old Tootles. Write to the Devon Yacht Club, Long Island, and let me know how you get on. We’ve all three been up against some rotten bad luck, haven’t we? Good-by, then. I’ll go up to Tootles now.”
“No, no,” she said, “don’t. That’d bring my old uncle to life right away. She’d guess you was in on this, all right. Slip off and let me have a chance with my movie stuff.” With a mixture of emotion and hilarity she suddenly waved the check above her head. “Can you imagine the fit the receiving teller at my little old bank’ll throw when I slip this across as if it meant nothing to me?”
And then she caught up one of Martin’s hands and did the most disconcerting thing of all. She pressed it to her lips and kissed it.
Martin got as red as a beet. “Well, then, good-by,” he said, making for the door. “Good luck.”
“Good-by and good luck to you. My word, but you’ve made optimism sprout all over my garden, and I thought the very roots of it were dead.”
For a few minutes after Martin was gone, she danced about her appalling room, and laughed and cried and said the most extraordinary things to her dogs. The little pink beast became hysterical again, and the Chow leaped into a bundle of under-clothing and worried the life out of it. Finally, having hidden the check in a safe place, the girl ran upstairs to break the good news of her uncle’s death to Tootles. Why, they could do the thing like ladies, the pair of them. It was immense, marvellous, almost beyond belief! That old man of Wisconsin deserved a place in Heaven.... Heaven—Devon.
It was an inspiration. “Gee, but that’s the idea!” she said to herself. “Devon—and the sight of that boy. That’ll put the pep back, unless I’m the original nut. And if he doesn’t care about her now, he may presently. Others have.”
And when she went in, there was Tootles staring at the wall, and through it and away beyond at the place Martin had called the Cathedral, and at Martin, with his face dead-white because Joan had turned and gone.