"You're an angel," she said. "I wish there were more like you. But I
guess they've lost the pattern. Well, I'll go back and tell Fillmore
that. It'll relieve him."
The door closed, and Sally sat down with her chin in her hands to think.
3
Mr. Isadore Abrahams, the founder and proprietor of that deservedly
popular dancing resort poetically named "The Flower Garden," leaned back
in his chair with a contented sigh and laid down the knife and fork with
which he had been assailing a plateful of succulent goulash. He was
dining, as was his admirable custom, in the bosom of his family at his
residence at Far Rockaway. Across the table, his wife, Rebecca, beamed
at him over her comfortable plinth of chins, and round the table his
children, David, Jacob, Morris and Saide, would have beamed at him if
they had not been too busy at the moment ingurgitating goulash. A
genial, honest, domestic man was Mr. Abrahams, a credit to the
community.
"Mother," he said.
"Pa?" said Mrs. Abrahams.
"Knew there was something I'd meant to tell you," said Mr. Abrahams,
absently chasing a piece of bread round his plate with a stout finger.
"You remember that girl I told you about some time back - girl working at
the Garden - girl called Nicholas, who came into a bit of money and
threw up her job..."
"I remember. You liked her. Jakie, dear, don't gobble."
"Ain't gobbling," said Master Abrahams.
"Everybody liked her," said Mr. Abrahams. "The nicest girl I ever
hired, and I don't hire none but nice girls, because the Garden's a nice
place, and I like to run it nice. I wouldn't give you a nickel for any
of your tough joints where you get nothing but low-lifes and scare away
all the real folks. Everybody liked Sally Nicholas. Always pleasant and
always smiling, and never anything but the lady. It was a treat to have
her around. Well, what do you think?"
"Dead?" inquired Mrs. Abrahams, apprehensively. The story had sounded
to her as though it were heading that way. "Wipe your mouth, Jakie
dear."
"No, not dead," said Mr. Abrahams, conscious for the first time that the
remainder of his narrative might be considered by a critic something of
an anti-climax and lacking in drama. "But she was in to see me this
afternoon and wants her job back."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Abrahams, rather tonelessly. An ardent supporter of the
local motion-picture palace, she had hoped for a slightly more gingery
denouement, something with a bit more punch.
"Yes, but don't it show you?" continued Mr. Abrahams, gallantly trying
to work up the interest. "There's this girl, goes out of my place not
more'n a year ago, with a good bank-roll in her pocket, and here she is,
back again, all of it spent. Don't it show you what a tragedy life is,
if you see what I mean, and how careful one ought to be about money?
It's what I call a human document. Goodness knows how she's been and
gone and spent it all. I'd never have thought she was the sort of girl
to go gadding around. Always seemed to me to be kind of sensible."
"What's gadding, Pop?" asked Master Jakie, the goulash having ceased to
chain his interest.
"Well, she wanted her job back and I gave it to her, and glad to get her
back again. There's class to that girl. She's the sort of girl I want in
the place. Don't seem quite to have so much get-up in her as she used
to... seems kind of quieted down... but she's got class, and I'm glad
she's back. I hope she'll stay. But don't it show you?"
"Ah!" said Mrs. Abrahams, with more enthusiasm than before. It had not
worked out such a bad story after all. In its essentials it was not
unlike the film she had seen the previous evening - Gloria Gooch in "A
Girl against the World."
"Pop!" said Master Abrahams.
"Yes, Jakie?"
"When I'm grown up, I won't never lose no money. I'll put it in the
bank and save it."
The slight depression caused by the contemplation of Sally's troubles
left Mr. Abrahams as mist melts beneath a sunbeam.
"That's a good boy, Jakie," he said.
He felt in his waistcoat pocket, found a dime, put it back again, and
bent forward and patted Master Abrahams on the head.
CHAPTER XV
UNCLE DONALD SPEAKS HIS MIND
There is in certain men - and Bruce Carmyle was one of them - a quality of
resilience, a sturdy refusal to acknowledge defeat, which aids them as
effectively in affairs of the heart as in encounters of a sterner and
more practical kind. As a wooer, Bruce Carmyle resembled that durable
type of pugilist who can only give of his best after he has received at
least one substantial wallop on some tender spot. Although Sally had
refused his offer of marriage quite definitely at Monk's Crofton, it
had never occurred to him to consider the episode closed. All his life
he had been accustomed to getting what he wanted, and he meant to get
it now.
He was quite sure that he wanted Sally. There had been moments when he
had been conscious of certain doubts, but in the smart of temporary
defeat these had vanished. That streak of Bohemianism in her which from
time to time since their first meeting had jarred upon his orderly mind
was forgotten; and all that Mr. Carmyle could remember was the
brightness of her eyes, the jaunty lift of her chin, and the gallant
trimness of her. Her gay prettiness seemed to flick at him like a whip
in the darkness of wakeful nights, lashing him to pursuit. And quietly
and methodically, like a respectable wolf settling on the trail of a
Red Riding Hood, he prepared to pursue. Delicacy and imagination might
have kept him back, but in these qualities he had never been strong. One
cannot have everything.
His preparations for departure, though he did his best to make them
swiftly and secretly, did not escape the notice of the Family. In many
English families there seems to exist a system of inter-communication
and news-distribution like that of those savage tribes in Africa who
pass the latest item of news and interest from point to point over miles
of intervening jungle by some telepathic method never properly
explained. On his last night in London, there entered to Bruce Carmyle
at his apartment in South Audley Street, the Family's chosen
representative, the man to whom the Family pointed with pride - Uncle
Donald, in the flesh.
There were two hundred and forty pounds of the flesh Uncle Donald was
in, and the chair in which he deposited it creaked beneath its burden.
Once, at Monk's Crofton, Sally had spoiled a whole morning for her
brother Fillmore, by indicating Uncle Donald as the exact image of what
he would be when he grew up. A superstition, cherished from early
schooldays, that he had a weak heart had caused the Family's managing
director to abstain from every form of exercise for nearly fifty years;
and, as he combined with a distaste for exercise one of the three
heartiest appetites in the south-western postal division of London,
Uncle Donald, at sixty-two, was not a man one would willingly have
lounging in one's armchairs. Bruce Carmyle's customary respectfulness
was tinged with something approaching dislike as he looked at him.
Uncle Donald's walrus moustache heaved gently upon his laboured breath,
like seaweed on a ground-swell. There had been stairs to climb.
"What's this? What's this?" he contrived to ejaculate at last. "You
packing?"
"Yes," said Mr. Carmyle, shortly. For the first time in his life he was
conscious of that sensation of furtive guilt which was habitual with his
cousin Ginger when in the presence of this large, mackerel-eyed man.
"You going away?"
"Yes."
"Where you going?"
"America."
"When you going?"
"To-morrow morning."
"Why you going?"
This dialogue has been set down as though it had been as brisk and
snappy as any cross-talk between vaudeville comedians, but in reality
Uncle Donald's peculiar methods of conversation had stretched it over a
period of nearly three minutes: for after each reply and before each
question he had puffed and sighed and inhaled his moustache with such
painful deliberation that his companion's nerves were finding it
difficult to bear up under the strain.
"You're going after that girl," said Uncle Donald, accusingly.
Bruce Carmyle flushed darkly. And it is interesting to record that at
this moment there flitted through his mind the thought that Ginger's
behaviour at Bleke's Coffee House, on a certain notable occasion, had
not been so utterly inexcusable as he had supposed. There was no doubt
that the Family's Chosen One could be trying.
"Will you have a whisky and soda, Uncle Donald?" he said, by way of
changing the conversation.
"Yes," said his relative, in pursuance of a vow he had made in the early
eighties never to refuse an offer of this kind. "Gimme!"
You would have thought that that would have put matters on a pleasanter
footing. But no. Having lapped up the restorative, Uncle Donald returned
to the attack quite un-softened.
"Never thought you were a fool before," he said severely.
Bruce Carmyle's proud spirit chafed. This sort of interview, which had
become a commonplace with his cousin Ginger, was new to him. Hitherto,
his actions had received neither criticism nor been subjected to it.
"I'm not a fool."
"You are a fool. A damn fool," continued Uncle Donald, specifying more
exactly. "Don't like the girl. Never did. Not a nice girl. Didn't like
her. Right from the first."
"Need we discuss this?" said Bruce Carmyle, dropping, as he was apt to
do, into the grand manner.
The Head of the Family drank in a layer of moustache and blew it out
again.
"Need we discuss it?" he said with asperity. "We're going to discuss
it! Whatch think I climbed all these blasted stairs for with my weak
heart? Gimme another!"
Mr. Carmyle gave him another.
"'S a bad business," moaned Uncle Donald, having gone through the
movements once more. "Shocking bad business. If your poor father were
alive, whatch think he'd say to your tearing across the world after this
girl? I'll tell you what he'd say. He'd say... What kind of whisky's
this?"
"O'Rafferty Special."
"New to me. Not bad. Quite good. Sound. Mellow. Wherej get it?"
"Bilby's in Oxford Street."
"Must order some. Mellow. He'd say... well, God knows what he'd say.
Whatch doing it for? Whatch doing it for? That's what I can't see. None
of us can see. Puzzles your uncle George. Baffles your aunt Geraldine.
Nobody can understand it. Girl's simply after your money. Anyone can see
that."
"Pardon me, Uncle Donald," said Mr. Carmyle, stiffly, "but that is
surely rather absurd. If that were the case, why should she have refused
me at Monk's Crofton?"
"Drawing you on," said Uncle Donald, promptly. "Luring you on.
Well-known trick. Girl in 1881, when I was at Oxford, tried to lure me
on. If I hadn't had some sense and a weak heart... Whatch know of this
girl? Whatch know of her? That's the point. Who is she? Wherej meet
her?"
"I met her at Roville, in France."
"Travelling with her family?"
"Travelling alone," said Bruce Carmyle, reluctantly.
"Not even with that brother of hers? Bad!" said Uncle Donald. "Bad,
bad!"
"American girls are accustomed to more independence than English girls."
"That young man," said Uncle Donald, pursuing a train of thought, "is
going to be fat one of these days, if he doesn't look out. Travelling
alone, was she? What did you do? Catch her eye on the pier?"
"Really, Uncle Donald!"
"Well, must have got to know her somehow."
"I was introduced to her by Lancelot. She was a friend of his."
"Lancelot!" exploded Uncle Donald, quivering all over like a smitten
jelly at the loathed name. "Well, that shows you what sort of a girl she
is. Any girl that would be a friend of... Unpack!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Unpack! Mustn't go on with this foolery. Out of the question. Find
some girl make you a good wife. Your aunt Mary's been meeting some
people name of Bassington-Bassington, related Kent
Bassington-Bassingtons... eldest daughter charming girl, just do for
you."
Outside the pages of the more old-fashioned type of fiction nobody ever
really ground his teeth, but Bruce Carmyle came nearer to it at that
moment than anyone had ever come before. He scowled blackly, and the
last trace of suavity left him.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," he said briefly. "I sail to-morrow."
Uncle Donald had had a previous experience of being defied by a nephew,
but it had not accustomed him to the sensation. He was aware of an
unpleasant feeling of impotence. Nothing is harder than to know what to
do next when defied.
"Eh?" he said.
Mr. Carmyle having started to defy, evidently decided to make a good job
of it.
"I am over twenty-one," said he. "I am financially independent. I
shall do as I please."
"But, consider!" pleaded Uncle Donald, painfully conscious of the
weakness of his words. "Reflect!"
"I have reflected."
"Your position in the county..."
"I've thought of that."
"You could marry anyone you pleased."
"I'm going to."
"You are determined to go running off to God-knows-where after this Miss
I-can't-even-remember-her-dam-name?"
"Yes."
"Have you considered," said Uncle Donald, portentously, "that you owe a
duty to the Family."
Bruce Carmyle's patience snapped and he sank like a stone to absolutely
Gingerian depths of plain-spokenness.
"Oh, damn the Family!" he cried.
There was a painful silence, broken only by the relieved sigh of the
armchair as Uncle Donald heaved himself out of it.
"After that," said Uncle Donald, "I have nothing more to say."
"Good!" said Mr. Carmyle rudely, lost to all shame.
"'Cept this. If you come back married to that girl, I'll cut you in
Piccadilly. By George, I will!"
He moved to the door. Bruce Carmyle looked down his nose without
speaking. A tense moment.
"What," asked Uncle Donald, his fingers on the handle, "did you say it
was called?"
"What was what called?"
"That whisky."
"O'Rafferty Special."
"And wherj get it?"
"Bilby's, in Oxford Street."
"I'll make a note of it," said Uncle Donald.
CHAPTER XVI
AT THE FLOWER GARDEN
1
"And after all I've done for her," said Mr. Reginald Cracknell, his
voice tremulous with self-pity and his eyes moist with the combined
effects of anguish and over-indulgence in his celebrated private stock,
"after all I've done for her she throws me down."
Sally did not reply. The orchestra of the Flower Garden was of a
calibre that discouraged vocal competition; and she was having,
moreover, too much difficulty in adjusting her feet to Mr. Cracknell's
erratic dance-steps to employ her attention elsewhere. They manoeuvred
jerkily past the table where Miss Mabel Hobson, the Flower Garden's
newest "hostess," sat watching the revels with a distant hauteur. Miss
Hobson was looking her most regal in old gold and black, and a sorrowful
gulp escaped the stricken Mr. Cracknell as he shambled beneath her eye.
"If I told you," he moaned in Sally's ear, "what... was that your ankle?
Sorry! Don't know what I'm doing to-night... If I told you what I had
spent on that woman, you wouldn't believe it. And then she throws me
down. And all because I said I didn't like her in that hat. She hasn't
spoken to me for a week, and won't answer when I call up on the 'phone.
And I was right, too. It was a rotten hat. Didn't suit her a bit. But
that," said Mr. Cracknell, morosely, "is a woman all over!"
Sally uttered a stifled exclamation as his wandering foot descended on
hers before she could get it out of the way. Mr. Cracknell interpreted
the ejaculation as a protest against the sweeping harshness of his last
remark, and gallantly tried to make amends.
"I don't mean you're like that," he said. "You're different. I could
see that directly I saw you. You have a sympathetic nature. That's why
I'm telling you all this. You're a sensible and broad-minded girl and
can understand. I've done everything for that woman. I got her this job
as hostess here - you wouldn't believe what they pay her. I starred her
in a show once. Did you see those pearls she was wearing? I gave her
those. And she won't speak to me. Just because I didn't like her hat. I
wish you could have seen that hat. You would agree with me, I know,
because you're a sensible, broad-minded girl and understand hats. I
don't know what to do. I come here every night." Sally was aware of
this. She had seen him often, but this was the first time that Lee
Schoenstein, the gentlemanly master of ceremonies, had inflicted him on
her. "I come here every night and dance past her table, but she won't
look at me. What," asked Mr. Cracknell, tears welling in his pale eyes,
"would you do about it?"
"I don't know," said Sally, frankly.
"Nor do I. I thought you wouldn't, because you're a sensible,
broad-minded... I mean, nor do I. I'm having one last try to-night, if
you can keep a secret. You won't tell anyone, will you?" pleaded Mr.
Cracknell, urgently. "But I know you won't because you're a sensible...
I'm giving her a little present. Having it brought here to-night. Little
present. That ought to soften her, don't you think?"
"A big one would do it better."
Mr. Cracknell kicked her on the shin in a dismayed sort of way.
"I never thought of that. Perhaps you're right. But it's too late now.
Still, it might. Or wouldn't it? Which do you think?"
"Yes," said Sally.
"I thought as much," said Mr. Cracknell.
The orchestra stopped with a thump and a bang, leaving Mr. Cracknell
clapping feebly in the middle of the floor. Sally slipped back to her
table. Her late partner, after an uncertain glance about him, as if he
had mislaid something but could not remember what, zigzagged off in
search of his own seat. The noise of many conversations, drowned by the
music, broke out with renewed vigour. The hot, close air was full of
voices; and Sally, pressing her hands on her closed eyes, was reminded
once more that she had a headache.
Nearly a month had passed since her return to Mr. Abrahams' employment.
It had been a dull, leaden month, a monotonous succession of lifeless
days during which life had become a bad dream. In some strange nightmare
fashion, she seemed nowadays to be cut off from her kind. It was weeks
since she had seen a familiar face. None of the companions of her old
boarding-house days had crossed her path. Fillmore, no doubt from
uneasiness of conscience, had not sought her out, and Ginger was working
out his destiny on the south shore of Long Island.
She lowered her hands and opened her eyes and looked at the room. It
was crowded, as always. The Flower Garden was one of the many
establishments of the same kind which had swum to popularity on the
rising flood of New York's dancing craze; and doubtless because, as its
proprietor had claimed, it was a nice place and run nice, it had
continued, unlike many of its rivals, to enjoy unvarying prosperity. In
its advertisement, it described itself as "a supper-club for
after-theatre dining and dancing," adding that "large and spacious, and
sumptuously appointed," it was "one of the town's wonder-places, with
its incomparable dance-floor, enchanting music, cuisine, and service de
luxe." From which it may be gathered, even without his personal
statements to that effect, that Isadore Abrahams thought well of the
place.
There had been a time when Sally had liked it, too. In her first period
of employment there she had found it diverting, stimulating and full of
entertainment. But in those days she had never had headaches or, what
was worse, this dreadful listless depression which weighed her down and
made her nightly work a burden.
"Miss Nicholas."
The orchestra, never silent for long at the Flower Garden, had started
again, and Lee Schoenstein, the master of ceremonies, was presenting a
new partner. She got up mechanically.
"This is the first time I have been in this place," said the man, as
they bumped over the crowded floor. He was big and clumsy, of course.
To-night it seemed to Sally that the whole world was big and clumsy.
"It's a swell place. I come from up-state myself. We got nothing like
this where I come from." He cleared a space before him, using Sally as a
battering-ram, and Sally, though she had not enjoyed her recent
excursion with Mr. Cracknell, now began to look back to it almost with
wistfulness. This man was undoubtedly the worst dancer in America.
"Give me li'l old New York," said the man from up-state,
unpatriotically. "It's good enough for me. I been to some swell shows
since I got to town. You seen this year's 'Follies'?"
"No."
"You go," said the man earnestly. "You go! Take it from me, it's a
swell show. You seen 'Myrtle takes a Turkish Bath'?"
"I don't go to many theatres."
"You go! It's a scream. I been to a show every night since I got here.
Every night regular. Swell shows all of 'em, except this last one. I
cert'nly picked a lemon to-night all right. I was taking a chance,
y'see, because it was an opening. Thought it would be something to say,
when I got home, that I'd been to a New York opening. Set me back
two-seventy-five, including tax, and I wish I'd got it in my kick right
now. 'The Wild Rose,' they called it," he said satirically, as if
exposing a low subterfuge on the part of the management. "'The Wild
Rose!' It sure made me wild all right. Two dollars seventy-five tossed
away, just like that."
Something stirred in Sally's memory. Why did that title seem so
familiar? Then, with a shock, she remembered. It was Gerald's new play.
For some time after her return to New York, she had been haunted by the
fear lest, coming out other apartment, she might meet him coming out of
his; and then she had seen a paragraph in her morning paper which had
relieved her of this apprehension. Gerald was out on the road with a new
play, and "The Wild Rose," she was almost sure, was the name of it.
"Is that Gerald Foster's play?" she asked quickly.
"I don't know who wrote it," said her partner, "but let me tell you he's
one lucky guy to get away alive. There's fellows breaking stones on the
Ossining Road that's done a lot less to deserve a sentence. Wild Rose!
I'll tell the world it made me go good and wild," said the man from
up-state, an economical soul who disliked waste and was accustomed to
spread out his humorous efforts so as to give them every chance. "Why,
before the second act was over, the people were beating it for the
exits, and if it hadn't been for someone shouting 'Women and children
first' there'd have been a panic."
Sally found herself back at her table without knowing clearly how she
had got there.
"Miss Nicholas."
She started to rise, and was aware suddenly that this was not the voice
of duty calling her once more through the gold teeth of Mr. Schoenstein.
The man who had spoken her name had seated himself beside her, and was
talking in precise, clipped accents, oddly familiar. The mist cleared
from her eyes and she recognized Bruce Carmyle.
2
"I called at your place," Mr. Carmyle was saying, "and the hall porter
told me that you were here, so I ventured to follow you. I hope you do
not mind? May I smoke?"
He lit a cigarette with something of an air. His fingers trembled as he
raised the match, but he flattered himself that there was nothing else
in his demeanour to indicate that he was violently excited. Bruce
Carmyle's ideal was the strong man who can rise superior to his
emotions. He was alive to the fact that this was an embarrassing moment,
but he was determined not to show that he appreciated it. He cast a
sideways glance at Sally, and thought that never, not even in the garden
at Monk's Crofton on a certain momentous occasion, had he seen her
looking prettier. Her face was flushed and her eyes aflame. The stout
wraith of Uncle Donald, which had accompanied Mr. Carmyle on this
expedition of his, faded into nothingness as he gazed.
There was a pause. Mr. Carmyle, having lighted his cigarette, puffed
vigorously.
"When did you land?" asked Sally, feeling the need of saying something.
Her mind was confused. She could not have said whether she was glad or
sorry that he was there. Glad, she thought, on the whole. There was
something in his dark, cool, stiff English aspect that gave her a
curious feeling of relief. He was so unlike Mr. Cracknell and the man
from up-state and so calmly remote from the feverish atmosphere in
which she lived her nights that it was restful to look at him.
"I landed to-night," said Bruce Carmyle, turning and faced her squarely.
"To-night!"
"We docked at ten."
He turned away again. He had made his effect, and was content to leave
her to think it over.
Sally was silent. The significance of his words had not escaped her.
She realized that his presence there was a challenge which she must
answer. And yet it hardly stirred her. She had been fighting so long,
and she felt utterly inert. She was like a swimmer who can battle no
longer and prepares to yield to the numbness of exhaustion. The heat of
the room pressed down on her like a smothering blanket. Her tired nerves
cried out under the blare of music and the clatter of voices.
"Shall we dance this?" he asked.
The orchestra had started to play again, a sensuous, creamy melody which
was making the most of its brief reign as Broadway's leading song-hit,
overfamiliar to her from a hundred repetitions.
"If you like."
Efficiency was Bruce Carmyle's gospel. He was one of these men who do
not attempt anything which they cannot accomplish to perfection.
Dancing, he had decided early in his life, was a part of a gentleman's
education, and he had seen to it that he was educated thoroughly. Sally,
who, as they swept out on to the floor, had braced herself automatically
for a repetition of the usual bumping struggle which dancing at the
Flower Garden had come to mean for her, found herself in the arms of a
masterful expert, a man who danced better than she did, and suddenly
there came to her a feeling that was almost gratitude, a miraculous
slackening of her taut nerves, a delicious peace. Soothed and
contented, she yielded herself with eyes half closed to the rhythm of
the melody, finding it now robbed in some mysterious manner of all its
stale cheapness, and in that moment her-whole attitude towards Bruce
Carmyle underwent a complete change.
She had never troubled to examine with any minuteness her feelings
towards him: but one thing she had known clearly since their first
meeting - that he was physically distasteful to her. For all his good
looks, and in his rather sinister way he was a handsome man, she had
shrunk from him. Now, spirited away by the magic of the dance, that
repugnance had left her. It was as if some barrier had been broken down
between them.
"Sally!"
She felt his arm tighten about her, the muscles quivering. She caught
sight of his face. His dark eyes suddenly blazed into hers and she
stumbled with an odd feeling of helplessness; realizing with a shock
that brought her with a jerk out of the half-dream into which she had
been lulled that this dance had not postponed the moment of decision, as
she had looked to it to do. In a hot whisper, the words swept away on
the flood of the music which had suddenly become raucous and blaring
once more, he was repeating what he had said under the trees at Monk's
Crofton on that far-off morning in the English springtime. Dizzily she
knew that she was resenting the unfairness of the attack at such a
moment, but her mind seemed numbed.
The music stopped abruptly. Insistent clapping started it again, but
Sally moved away to her table, and he followed her like a shadow.
Neither spoke. Bruce Carmyle had said his say, and Sally was sitting
staring before her, trying to think. She was tired, tired. Her eyes were
burning. She tried to force herself to face the situation squarely. Was
it worth struggling? Was anything in the world worth a struggle? She
only knew that she was tired, desperately tired, tired to the very
depths of her soul.
The music stopped. There was more clapping, but this time the orchestra
did not respond. Gradually the floor emptied. The shuffling of feet
ceased. The Flower Garden was as quiet as it was ever able to be. Even
the voices of the babblers seemed strangely hushed. Sally closed her
eyes, and as she did so from somewhere up near the roof there came the
song of a bird.
Isadore Abrahams was a man of his word. He advertised a Flower Garden,
and he had tried to give the public something as closely resembling a
flower-garden as it was possible for an overcrowded, overheated,
overnoisy Broadway dancing-resort to achieve. Paper roses festooned the
walls; genuine tulips bloomed in tubs by every pillar; and from the roof
hung cages with birds in them. One of these, stirred by the sudden
cessation of the tumult below, had began to sing.
Sally had often pitied these birds, and more than once had pleaded in
vain with Abrahams for a remission of their sentence, but somehow at
this moment it did not occur to her that this one was merely praying in
its own language, as she often had prayed in her thoughts, to be taken
out of this place. To her, sitting there wrestling with Fate, the song
seemed cheerful. It soothed her. It healed her to listen to it. And
suddenly before her eyes there rose a vision of Monk's Crofton, cool,
green, and peaceful under the mild English sun, luring her as an oasis
seen in the distance lures the desert traveller ...
She became aware that the master of Monk's Crofton had placed his hand
on hers and was holding it in a tightening grip. She looked down and
gave a little shiver. She had always disliked Bruce Carmyle's hands.
They were strong and bony and black hair grew on the back of them. One
of the earliest feelings regarding him had been that she would hate to
have those hands touching her. But she did not move. Again that vision
of the old garden had flickered across her mind... a haven where she
could rest...
He was leaning towards her, whispering in her ear. The room was hotter
than it had ever been, noisier than it had ever been, fuller than it had
ever been. The bird on the roof was singing again and now she understood
what it said. "Take me out of this!" Did anything matter except that?
What did it matter how one was taken, or where, or by whom, so that one
was taken.
Monk's Crofton was looking cool and green and peaceful...
"Very well," said Sally.
3
Bruce Carmyle, in the capacity of accepted suitor, found himself at
something of a loss. He had a dissatisfied feeling. It was not the
manner of Sally's acceptance that caused this. It would, of course, have
pleased him better if she had shown more warmth, but he was prepared to
wait for warmth. What did trouble him was the fact that his correct mind
perceived now for the first time that he had chosen an unsuitable
moment and place for his outburst of emotion. He belonged to the
orthodox school of thought which looks on moonlight and solitude as the
proper setting for a proposal of marriage; and the surroundings of the
Flower Garden, for all its nice-ness and the nice manner in which it was
conducted, jarred upon him profoundly.
Music had begun again, but it was not the soft music such as a lover
demands if he is to give of his best. It was a brassy, clashy rendering
of a ribald one-step, enough to choke the eloquence of the most ardent.
Couples were dipping and swaying and bumping into one another as far as
the eye could reach; while just behind him two waiters had halted in
order to thrash out one of those voluble arguments in which waiters love
to indulge. To continue the scene at the proper emotional level was
impossible, and Bruce Carmyle began his career as an engaged man by
dropping into Smalltalk.
"Deuce of a lot of noise," he said querulously.
"Yes," agreed Sally.
"Is it always like this?"
"Oh, yes."
"Infernal racket!"
"Yes."
The romantic side of Mr. Carmyle's nature could have cried aloud at the
hideous unworthiness of these banalities. In the visions which he had
had of himself as a successful wooer, it had always been in the moments
immediately succeeding the all-important question and its whispered
reply that he had come out particularly strong. He had been accustomed
to picture himself bending with a proud tenderness over his partner in
the scene and murmuring some notably good things to her bowed head. How
could any man murmur in a pandemonium like this. From tenderness Bruce
Carmyle descended with a sharp swoop to irritability.
"Do you often come here?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"To dance."
Mr. Carmyle chafed helplessly. The scene, which should be so romantic,
had suddenly reminded him of the occasion when, at the age of twenty, he
had attended his first ball and had sat in a corner behind a potted palm
perspiring shyly and endeavouring to make conversation to a formidable
nymph in pink. It was one of the few occasions in his life at which he
had ever been at a complete disadvantage. He could still remember the
clammy discomfort of his too high collar as it melted on him. Most
certainly it was not a scene which he enjoyed recalling; and that he
should be forced to recall it now, at what ought to have been the
supreme moment of his life, annoyed him intensely. Almost angrily he
endeavoured to jerk the conversation to a higher level.
"Darling," he murmured, for by moving his chair two feet to the right
and bending sideways he found that he was in a position to murmur, "you
have made me so..."
"Batti, batti! I presto ravioli hollandaise," cried one of the disputing
waiters at his back - or to Bruce Carmyle's prejudiced hearing it
sounded like that.
"La Donna e mobile spaghetti napoli Tettrazina," rejoined the second
waiter with spirit.
"... you have made me so..."
"Infanta Isabella lope de Vegas mulligatawny Toronto," said the first
waiter, weak but coming back pluckily.
"... so happy..."
"Funiculi funicula Vincente y Blasco Ibanez vermicelli sul campo della
gloria risotto!" said the second waiter clinchingly, and scored a
technical knockout.
Bruce Carmyle gave it up, and lit a moody cigarette. He was oppressed
by that feeling which so many of us have felt in our time, that it was
all wrong.
The music stopped. The two leading citizens of Little Italy vanished
and went their way, probably to start a vendetta. There followed
comparative calm. But Bruce Carmyle's emotions, like sweet bells
jangled, were out of tune, and he could not recapture the first fine
careless rapture. He found nothing within him but small-talk.
"What has become of your party?" he asked.
"My party?"
"The people you are with," said Mr. Carmyle. Even in the stress of his
emotion this problem had been exercising him. In his correctly ordered
world girls did not go to restaurants alone.
"I'm not with anybody."
"You came here by yourself?" exclaimed Bruce Carmyle, frankly aghast.
And, as he spoke, the wraith of Uncle Donald, banished till now,
returned as large as ever, puffing disapproval through a walrus
moustache.
"I am employed here," said Sally.
Mr. Carmyle started violently.
"Employed here?"
"As a dancer, you know. I..."
Sally broke off, her attention abruptly diverted to something which had
just caught her eye at a table on the other side of the room. That
something was a red-headed young man of sturdy build who had just
appeared beside the chair in which Mr. Reginald Cracknell was sitting in
huddled gloom. In one hand he carried a basket, and from this basket,
rising above the din of conversation, there came a sudden sharp yapping.
Mr. Cracknell roused himself from his stupor, took the basket, raised
the lid. The yapping increased in volume.
Mr. Cracknell rose, the basket in his arms. With uncertain steps and a
look on his face like that of those who lead forlorn hopes he crossed
the floor to where Miss Mabel Hobson sat, proud and aloof. The next
moment that haughty lady, the centre of an admiring and curious crowd,
was hugging to her bosom a protesting Pekingese puppy, and Mr.
Cracknell, seizing his opportunity like a good general, had deposited
himself in a chair at her side. The course of true love was running
smooth again.
The red-headed young man was gazing fixedly at Sally.
"As a dancer!" ejaculated Mr. Carmyle. Of all those within sight of the
moving drama which had just taken place, he alone had paid no attention
to it. Replete as it was with human interest, sex-appeal, the punch, and
all the other qualities which a drama should possess, it had failed to
grip him. His thoughts had been elsewhere. The accusing figure of Uncle
Donald refused to vanish from his mental eye. The stern voice of Uncle
Donald seemed still to ring in his ear.
A dancer! A professional dancer at a Broadway restaurant! Hideous doubts
began to creep like snakes into Bruce Carmyle's mind. What, he asked
himself, did he really know of this girl on whom he had bestowed the
priceless boon of his society for life? How did he know what she was - he
could not find the exact adjective to express his meaning, but he knew
what he meant. Was she worthy of the boon? That was what it amounted to.
All his life he had had a prim shrinking from the section of the
feminine world which is connected with the light-life of large cities.
Club acquaintances of his in London had from time to time married into
the Gaiety Chorus, and Mr. Carmyle, though he had no objection to the
Gaiety Chorus in its proper place - on the other side of the
footlights - had always looked on these young men after as social
outcasts. The fine dashing frenzy which had brought him all the way from
South Audley Street to win Sally was ebbing fast.
Sally, hearing him speak, had turned. And there was a candid honesty in
her gaze which for a moment sent all those creeping doubts scuttling
away into the darkness whence they had come. He had not made a fool of
himself, he protested to the lowering phantom of Uncle Donald. Who, he
demanded, could look at Sally and think for an instant that she was not
all that was perfect and lovable? A warm revulsion of feeling swept over
Bruce Carmyle like a returning tide.
"You see, I lost my money and had to do something," said Sally.
"I see, I see," murmured Mr. Carmyle; and if only Fate had left him
alone who knows to what heights of tenderness he might not have soared?
But at this moment Fate, being no respecter of persons, sent into his
life the disturbing personality of George Washington Williams.
George Washington Williams was the talented coloured gentleman who had
been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a
nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a
trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few
minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of
the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, whimsically pretending to
clip the locks of the male patrons with a pair of drumsticks held
scissor-wise. And so it came about that, just as Mr. Carmyle was bending
towards Sally in an access of manly sentiment, and was on the very verge
of pouring out his soul in a series of well-phrased remarks, he was
surprised and annoyed to find an Ethiopian to whom he had never been