POLLY PENDLETON
“WELL, Marcia, here we are,” said James Haddon, as at last their long
railway journey drew to its close in the swift sweep of the train up
the gates of the great city by the sea. “Better begin to round up your
wild man—I saw him standing in the vestibule looking out of the window
as though he was in a trance. What are we going to do with him, now
we’ve got him?”
“We’ll take him with us to our home, of course, Jim. He’d be lost
anywhere else. He knows no more than a child.”
“Pretty husky child, some ways,” said Haddon. “Well, all right, all
right! I suppose you’re glad he’s different from me. You don’t seem to
have a lot of use for me any more, some way—you’ve been like a clam
ever since we left New York, and you’re more like a clam now that we’re
getting back. There’s worse fellows in the world than Jimmy Haddon,
and maybe you’ll live to see it yet. I’ll show you, if this deal goes
through—and it will if your wild friend makes good.
“But now here we are getting into the tube—I’d better catch the wild
man, or he may get scared and jump off the train. All right—we’ll take
him up home.”
The rushing whirl of the city received them—the city, a place
occupied, so it seemed to this stranger, with sad-faced madmen hurrying
here and yon without purpose. Mad—mad—hopelessly mad—so it all
seemed to David Joslin as, himself frightened with the noise, the
clamorings, the uncertainty of it all, he finally emerged from the
gates of the railway station and stood close to the side of the woman
who now made his main reliance in this new world of the great Outside.
A deferential man in livery came toward them and led them to a long,
shining limousine car which stood at the curb. A moment later they
were whirling away through the crowded streets, escaping death every
instant, so it seemed to the newcomer, by the miracle of a second’s
fraction. He held his peace, as he had now for five days in a new,
mad world of which he had not dreamed. They passed on out through the
crowded traffic street until they reached paved ways leading to the
north, and so, after a long and steady flight of the car, drew up at
the entrance of a great apartment building on the river drive.
Joslin followed in. He never in his life before had been in a passenger
elevator. He felt a strange sinking at the pit of his stomach, and
caught instinctively at the bars of the gate. He was still less at ease
when they led him into the silent and dim apartments where Haddon and
his wife lived, as luxurious as any of the Riverside, the rent of which
each month was more than any farm in all the Cumberlands would bring in
a year.
But Joslin was now in the home of a gentlewoman. Quietly she took him
in hand, relieving his embarrassment, setting him at his ease, showing
him where he might live, and telling him kindly what might be expected
of him. He looked about him at his own room with awe. These furnishings
to him were so unbelievably luxurious that he dared not sit down upon
a chair. He gazed upon the bed, with its yellow coverlet of silk, with
but one resolve—he would sleep upon the floor, but never venture
further—nor did he. And when presently they called him to table he
felt his heart sink yet further in these strange surroundings, so that
he could not eat. He had accosted as “Mister” the servant who went to
his room with him—he saw the same man now, and wondered that he stood,
and did not eat with the others—wondered that no one noticed him nor
the white-capped maid who passed. Surely it was all a strange, mad
world.
“Well,” said Haddon, after his hurried finishing of his own meal, “I’ve
got to get down to the little old shop right away, Marcia. They’ll not
be expecting me, of course, but it’s a good piece of business that I’m
back when I am, and just the way I am.”
“I presume you’ll have plenty to do,” commented his wife.
“Listen! I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to get together all the
directors of the Company, and we’ll pull off a little dinner at the
Williston—in the Gold Room. How’ll that do, my Christian friend?” said
he, grinning at Joslin as he stepped to the hall table and picked up
his own hat and gloves.
“Of course, I can’t do that right away,” he continued, turning back,
his stick over his arm, his well-brushed hat now on his head. “Maybe a
couple of days. I’ll be busy. Maybe I’ll have to stay down at the club
to-night, Marcia. I’ll check up about dinner time.”
He did not call up at about dinner time, nor at all until past noon the
next day, when he explained that he had been crowded at the office and
unable to get his own apartments by phone—explanations with which his
wife was fairly familiar.
As for Joslin, he passed the two days in what seemed to him a
continual kaleidoscope of madhouse change. Now in charge of one of the
chauffeurs, sometimes in the more gracious company of his hostess, he
spun up and down the streets of the great city, looking at the untold
thousands of its inhabitants, wondering at its stately buildings,
wondering at the beauty of its parks, so like and yet so unlike the
woods he had always known. In the evening, in his own room, he read
steadily, as best he might, spelling out the complex, stern theology
of old John Calvin. Now and again he raised his eyes and wondered what
Calvin would have done had he been here.
They brought to him now certain other clothing of Jimmy Haddon’s,
a trifle short, a trifle large, but serving better than anything
he yet had had. He was not happy in all this—no man ever was more
unhappy in all his life than David Joslin now. Moreover, there came
to his heart, every moment of the day and night, the most exquisite
of pain—nostalgia—the actual illness of homesickness. He longed
unspeakably for the sight of the mountains, for the smell of the
wood-smoke of the fires, the look of the stars at night, the pink of
the dawn when morning came. Life here was a fearsome thing, and long
and hard seemed the unknown road that lay before him.
Haddon came home after his second night away and announced that all was
in readiness for the great banquet of the men whom he represented in
his business affiliations.
“I’m going to give you your first chance in public speaking now,
Joslin,” said he. “Believe me, you’ll have an attentive audience for
once, if you never do again—weren’t you talking of being a preacher,
or something? Talk business, son, straight business—that’s all we want
to hear. If you make good, you’ll have the time of your life. Help us,
and we’ll help you—see?”
“How about clothes?” He turned questioningly to his wife, who was in
the room at the time. “Of course it’s evening dress—is there a spare
suit of mine around anywhere?”
Marcia Haddon looked at the two for a moment “Perhaps Mr. Joslin would
not prefer it,” said she.
Joslin shook his head. “No,” said he. “I hain’t a-goin’ to change from
these clothes I’ve got on now. I’m used to ‘em a little.”
Haddon’s companion, therefore—and Haddon rather prided himself on his
invariably well-groomed appearance—presented something of a noticeable
turn-out when they entered the lobby of the great hotel where the
banquet was to be, but he did not notice the apologetic grimaces Haddon
gave in response to certain lifted eyebrows of his friends whom he met
here and there.
“Well, come along, old man,” said he to his guest, at length. “We’ll
leave our coats and hats here, and go and see if we can find some more
of the fellows.”
He was not at a loss as to the place of search. The long glazed
and marbled bar of the Williston at that time was thronged with
hundreds, much athirst. Behind the vast reaches of mahogany stood
many bartenders, all busy. Men in evening dress, with top hats and
beautifully fitting evening wear, men impeccable in gloves and
glasses and fit for presentation in any city of the world—stood here,
laughing, talking, jesting, drinking. One after another all these now
accosted Haddon, some with a sly word, a glance, a hint, a jest—things
which he hushed down as soon as might be, for he knew the keen
suspicion of the mountaineer.
“Well, what are you going to have to drink?” said he to Joslin at
length, edging his own way up to the bar. “We’ve got to lay some sort
of a foundation for the dinner, you know. What kind of cocktail do you
want—Martini?”
“I never did drink nothin’ but plain corn liquor,” said Joslin. “If I
could have jest a leetle of that now, maybe——”
“Nonsense! Have a cocktail. It’s too early for hard liquor yet. Make
him another, John,” and he nodded to the bartender.
Joslin raised the little glass, whose contents seemed, in color at
least, not unfamiliar to him as a mountain man, but he drank no more
than half of the contents, and then set down the glass. It was his
first and only cocktail. He made no comment as his host urged him,
but moved away from the bar. Haddon himself remained to finish two or
three more of the insidious potions before he himself turned and with
the others began to move toward the quarters set apart for the banquet
party.
By this time the crowd was much like the usual male banquet crowd—a
trifle flushed of face, a trifle garrulous of tongue, each in his own
heart happy, and each in his own belief quite witty and very much
aplomb. They were seated in due course at the long tables arranged
after the fashion of a Maltese cross. Haddon, it seemed, was to
preside. He placed his guest at his own right, in the place of honor.
“Trust little old Jimmy to pull a thing off,” said one merchant to
another. “He never went down to that country for nothing. He’s got
the goods with him, and you can gamble on that. He told me himself
how he caught this wild mountain man and brought him on to talk to us
to-night. He knows every foot of the land in there, and he can tell us
the whole works. Coal—gas—oil—those lands of ours are full of it!
Looks like we were going to make a killing. Trust Jimmy. He’s one grand
little live wire, if we’ve got one in our village.”
The dinner wore on, much as these things usually run—the original
stage of hilarity somewhat modified under the sobering influence of
food. It was all strange to Joslin, who, so it seemed to him, scarcely
had one plate set before him before it was taken away and replaced by
yet another. Few noticed what he did.
Presently, when all were well forward with coffee and cigars, Haddon
rapped loudly on the table as he rose. A change came over the entire
personnel of the assemblage. Here but now had been a riotous meeting
of full-blooded men, young men, middle-aged men, gray-haired men,
bent on nothing better than drinking and eating. But now anyone who
glanced down these tables would have seen a steady keenness, a fixity
of purpose, on the face of practically every man present. They were
hard-headed American business men on the instant now, each man ready
for the purpose which really had brought him here. Money—the pursuit
of money—the keen zest of the game of business—that was the real
intoxication of these men, and not that of alcohol. They listened now
in perfect silence to what their representative might have to say.
Haddon told them briefly something of his late trip into the
Cumberlands, told why it had been ended so abruptly for a second
time, admitted that he had never been over much of the Company’s land
holdings, in the mountains, and explained the reasons why that was a
difficult thing. He showed that it was necessary to have a guide to
make a successful exploration of the properties in that country, and
adverted to the benefits of direct testimony rather than hearsay,
explaining how he had brought this mountaineer, who had spent all his
life in the middle of the Company’s properties, to the city with him to
tell them his own first-hand story of the land.
A large map hung on the wall, and to this he adverted from time to
time. Joslin’s eyes followed him. Yes, he knew these streams—he could
locate this or that territory familiar to himself, here on the map. He
knew on the ground what Haddon pointed out upon the map. So presently,
when they called upon him to speak, he rose with no great diffidence on
his own part.
They greeted him with a generous round of applause, which startled him,
for he had never heard anything of the sort. But after all David Joslin
was a man of great dignity and self-respect, with great powers of mind
as well as of body. And there lurked somewhere within him, as in so
many of these strong characters of the hills, natural instincts of the
orator.
He spoke strongly, simply, powerfully, with no attempt at
embellishment, but in such terms as left no doubt whatsoever as to
his meaning. After a time he stepped to the map, and, pointing out
here and there, explained as nearly as he himself knew the nature
of the Company’s holdings. He told them where the coal cropped out
at the headwaters of this or that creek, told them that on some of
the mountain sides three veins of coal had been known ever since he
could remember, the middle vein over eight feet thick, the lower four
feet thick, and that nearest to the mountain top almost as deep. He
explained to them that there was coal over more than a hundred miles of
that country, as he knew, and told them how nearly everyone mined his
own coal on his own land, and did not trouble to cut wood for much of
the year.
As for the new strikes of oil, Joslin could put his finger upon the map
where every one of these discoveries had been made. He said that his
own people cared little for that, for they had long grown to believe
there was no way for them to get out into the world. He explained to
them that there were no roads in that country, that logs were dragged
down the mountain side by cattle, rolled into the shallow streams by
hand labor, and left to the chance of the infrequent “tides.” He told
them that in many of those streams there were logs enough to touch end
to end from one end of the creek to the other—logs enough bedded in
the sand to floor the creek entirely for half its length—black walnut
logs two and a half feet through—white oak logs three and a half feet
in diameter—and poplar four and a half feet. Their eyes glistened as
he went on telling all these things naturally, simply, naively, as one
fully acquainted with them. He explained to them the ways of all these
methods of logging, how no one could run a saw mill in that region with
profit, how no raftsman ever made more than a living at his work, hard
as it was. Then he told them how he himself had seen the stakes of the
new railroad line coming across the head of Hell-fer-Sartin and making
for the upper waters of Big Creek, and passing thence on to the older
railway lines.
“When the railroad comes, gentle-_men_,” said he, “things has got to
change in thar. We’ve been alone—no one knows much about our lands. Ye
come in thar twenty years ago, when no one cared for nothin’. Ye bought
yore land fer skercely a dollar a acre, most of it, an’ thar’s trees on
it thar that’s wuth ten an’ twenty dollars fer every log in ‘em, onct
ye git ‘em out, an’ two, three, four logs to the tree. The railroad
will let the world in, an’ it’ll let us out. I reckon the time has come
fer that. All I ask ye in turn fer what I’m a-tellin’ ye, is to treat
my people fair. Give them a fair value fer what they’ve got. They’re
pore, they’re ignerint, they’re blind. I’m as ignerint as the wust of
‘em. But we’re squar’ with ye. We want ye to be squar’ with us.”
A blank silence greeted this last remark. Men looked from one to the
other. Once in a while there might have been a cynical smile or sneer
that passed. After he had spoken for an hour, perhaps more than an
hour, and had answered all such questions as they asked him, David
Joslin sat down. A voice in the back part of the room arose.
“What’s the matter with Jimmy Haddon?”
A vociferous chorus answered. Joslin did not understand the methods of
these men, but vaguely he gathered that what he had said had been well
received.
On the whole he felt content. Now, he said to himself, on the very next
day he would go about his own business. He would leave this place,
which confused him so much. He was done with the city now. He had done
his duty.
But this did not by any means close the entertainment of the evening as
these men conceived it. As they had been revelers and again business
men, so now once more they laid aside the habit of affairs and turned
again to the business of banqueting. Waiters came quickly and filled
up glasses, large glasses, with bubbling wine. Again mingling voices
arose, laughter, jests. The glasses were filled again, and yet again.
The business of the day was over. Joy was to be more unconfined.
Men drew back curtains at the head of the hall, revealing a little
platform where stood a piano, which was wheeled into place. At a
signal from Haddon there entered an orchestra of foreign sort, and
they mingled music and jangling discord of the usual kind, perhaps
among other things a melody or so of the hour; for voices arose, and
sounds of hands and feet keeping time. A basso, very knock-kneed and
small of chin, appeared from some unknown region, sang a solo, bowed
and disappeared. A quartet of negro singers furnished rather better
entertainment, so it seemed. And then men began to push back their
chairs, so that they might easily see the entrance of the room.
All at once a round of general and vociferous applause arose. Jimmy
Haddon arose and hastened to greet the latest comers.
There stood in the doorway two young women, dressed with a certain
similarity, their long cloaks held together by clasps, their arms
in long white gloves. There were two, but there might as well have
been but one, for the older of the concert team of Pendleton and
Stanton—Pollie Pendleton and Nina Stanton, known in every theater of
the land that year—lacked so much of the charm of her companion that
she quite resigned herself to the amiable role of foil.
They were young women of that sort known in Babylon and Boston. Whence
they come, who shall say? Whither they go, who knows—the young women
of the world, the beloved and the forgotten. The world has always had
them, and perhaps will always have them—young, splendidly beautiful,
splendidly alluring—who come from none knows whence, and who go no one
knows whither.
The assembled males applauded when they saw these two young women
standing there—short of skirt, low of slipper, low of gown. All but
one rose gaily to welcome them. One man sat transfixed.
There was revealed to David Joslin, in the person of Polly Pendleton,
such a vision as never had he known in all his life, a dream which he
not yet had dreamed, nor could have dreamed, so wholly outside of all
his possible experience must it have been called. He never before had
seen woman at her frank best in sheer riot of the beauty of her sex. It
awed him.
She was a woman, but scarce seemed that to him. To his eyes she was not
woman, but some supernal thing, a Presence, a Being. And in the sheer
fact that she was of his genus, of his species, that she was woman and
he was man, he sat suddenly exalted, glorified himself, superman—for
now at last his eyes had seen!
She smiled at them all in her swift and comradely fashion, and stepped
promptly toward the little platform. Not a man there who did not know
Polly Pendleton of the Follies, the best-liked girl on the stage that
year. Singer, violinist, dancer—she had made her way up by one or
the other of her arts or all of them, until now she might use all or
either, as she liked.
A woman of about middle stature was Polly Pendleton, of covetably
slender and firm-set figure. Her eyes were large and dark, with long
lashes, her face a strong, clean oval, her skin clear, her teeth
brilliant, her head a mass of short, dark curls. So much might be said
of many women, perhaps, but Polly Pendleton had some strange plus charm
of her own, that charm for which managers pay any price. She seemed
the very spirit, the very embodiment of life, youth, eagerness—of
vital joy itself. The thought of evil could not touch her, so sweet and
clean she seemed, in every fiber of her being there was such life and
such joy in living. Her gestures were those of the young animal, of the
bird, careless, unstudied. She had no art, but succeeded through her
lack of art and through her own zest, her sheer vitality.
When Polly Pendleton stood waiting for something, interested in
anything, keyed up, not even her feet could rest upon the floor. She
had a strange way sometimes, even when talking to one, of dancing up
and down on her toes, light as a feather, her young limbs seeming not
to feel the weight of her body. There seemed an ethereal air about her,
as though she needed not to walk, needed not to stand, unless she liked.
She stood now before them, having drawn from beneath her coat her
cherished violin, whose music had pleased so many thousands. Obviously
she intended first to play. She laid aside her cloak and stood, eager,
interested, slightly leaning forward, anxious, dancing up and down
upon her little feet. Youth, life, joy, vitality, freedom from care,
absolute ignorance and disregard of toil or trouble or anxiety—there
stood Polly Pendleton.
She laid the violin to her cheek and, her eyes now aside and high, drew
a strong, firm bow across the strings. When she did this she drew out
the heart and soul from the body of David Joslin.
But David Joslin never really had heard the violin before. Of actual
music he knew nothing. He had never heard a master of any instrument in
all his life. But the sound of the violin itself, last keen climax in
this atmosphere of exhilaration, where now the young spirit of this one
fragile girl commanded the strong masculine spirit of all these massed
men—for David Joslin constituted an overwhelming experience.
She finished her number, and when the roar of applause had ceased
turned to her associate, who seated herself at the piano. They both
sang—one of their duets; and as part of this Polly Pendleton herself
danced—whirling about in pirouettes where her toes seemed scarce to
find a footing, her round, strong limbs insouciantly exposed. She was
but the spirit of youth, of life, of joy.
Now certain of the critical began to demand something known earlier as
especially delectable.
“Sing us the real one, Polly!” they cried. “Sing us ‘The Only Man,’ why
don’t you?”
“Yes; that’s it—that’s it—give us ‘The Only Man,’ Polly;” and
vigorous handclapping ensued.
She stood facing them again at the little raised dais, her lips parted,
her white teeth visible under her short, smiling upper lip. She was
always eager to please, counting not the cost of herself—a rich and
generous soul indeed was hers. Not so much her fault as ours was it
that she was here, one of the sacrifices, the perishing imperishables
of the world.
But Polly began to sing. The words matter little. It was the chorus
which had brought her fame. She left the dais now, and advanced down
the long table, her whole face a-laugh. Her eyes were fixed on a
certain large, red-faced and very bald gentleman who sat halfway down
the table at the left. Him she approached, singing as she came. She
bent above him, put an arm about his face, a hand under his chin, and
drew his head back as she bent above and sang to him.
“For you are my Baby!” sang Polly Pendleton. “You are my Baby! You’re
the only, only, _only_ man for me.”
Roars of laughter greeted this. They sang in chorus with her: “You’re
the only, only, only man for me!”
“Come here, Polly,” called this man and that. “This way! You certainly
are the only girl for me.”
But Polly Pendleton was back at the head of the table once more, still
singing, still light of foot, still gay of song. She stood and faced
them just for a moment. Something she saw which seemed to arrest her
own attention—a grave, unsmiling face, with eyes like coals, a white
face which looked straight at hers....
It was no more than a pace or two for Polly to reach the head of the
table, to push a hand out against the raised one of Jimmy Haddon as he
sat there flushed and laughing. The next instant she had stopped, and
with the audacity of her very nature, so used to being allowed its own
freakish will, she passed an arm about the head of David Joslin, a hand
beneath his chin. She drew his white face back, looked down into his
eyes, and sang—for a little while at least—“_You’re the only, only,
only man for me!_”
Something in the tense tableau they saw—some note, undefinable,
caused every man of that virile assemblage to cease his laughter and
applause. They stared. They saw the great hands of the man close tight
about the white wrists of Polly Pendleton. She ceased to stroke the
strong hair of David Joslin, and stood back, finishing her song out of
touch and out of tune. Some thought her voice quavered just a little.
But she sprang back tiptoe again upon the little dais, and finished
boldly—yes, and added thereto the notes of her violin. None the less,
there had been a scene. Someone had not played the game. And they must
take care of Polly.
They broke into applause. Someone started to pass a plate down the
table. It was heaped up with money, in great part yellow in color.
Coins fell on the floor—but there were no small silver ones. Some near
by flung money in the general direction of the little platform where
the two young women stood, smiling and bowing deeply—smiling at what
they knew to be the success of their little offerings that evening.
“Here you go, Polly!” as one man after another cast toward her
something folded. And Polly, grave and a trifle white now, leaving her
associate bowing on the stage, passed down the aisle, met the heaped
plate on its way, stopped here and stopped there, laughing and talking,
chattering like some innocent child, picking up money—money—more
money than David Joslin had thought there was in all the world. He
alone gave nothing, for he had naught to give—only the happiness and
peace of a human soul.
There was so much tribute that Polly made great show of thrusting part
of it beneath her garter, till she could hold no more in that fashion.
Some she thrust into her bosom, and then, turning, carried the rest of
it to her partner, who happily was provided with a reticule.
Everybody laughed—everybody was pleased. It had cost them very
little—perhaps a few hundred dollars—to make these two girls feel
that they had made a hit. The wine was excellent. Everything had been
splendid in every way. The cost? Why, what Jimmy Haddon had done for
them in bringing this geezer here to tell them about their property
would bring them more than ten thousand times the cost of the banquet,
or the cost of the whole investment.
And so, after a time, the banquet ended, very late—ended, indeed,
when Polly Pendleton and her friend, laughing and kissing their
hands—Polly with her violin tucked under her arm and her cloak over
all—turned once more to the door of the crystal and gold room of the
Williston banquet suite. Men rose and waved serviettes at them, shouted
good-by, asked them to come again. Haddon himself walked with Polly
Pendleton to the door, kissed her hand, bowed goodnight.
As he turned back he saw standing, staring at him fixedly, the tall,
white-faced figure of the mountaineer, whom he had utterly forgotten.
The eyes of David Joslin were like coals.
“Some girl, eh—what?” said Haddon admiringly to his uncouth friend.
But Joslin made him no reply. What he had seen, what he had felt that
night, was epochal, abysmal for him. He had looked into her eyes.
He had seen her face framed in her dark hair—had caught the very
fragrance of her hair itself. He was mad.
A motor car stood below, waiting for the popular team of Pendleton and
Stanton. It whirled them now far uptown, to the little buffet flat
which made their home. Nina, matter-of-fact as usual, busied herself
about her preparations for the close of the day’s work. But, singularly
enough, Polly, usually riante and active to the very last moment of the
day, sat, cigarette in hand, silent, somewhat triste.
“What’s the matter, Polly?—Why don’t you get ready?—I’m sleepy as an
owl. What are you wolfing about?”
“What makes you ask that, Nina?”
“Well, it’s something.”
Silence for a time, and then Polly spoke. “How do you think it went
to-night, Nina?”
“Well, all I’ve got to say,” replied that worthy young woman, “if it
went this well about one or two more nights a week or a month, we could
retire and live along the Sound like ladies the rest of our lives.”
“I wish it was all back,” said Polly Pendleton, somberly.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, the money.”
“Well, of all _things_!” exclaimed Nina Stanton, staring at her
partner. “What’s the matter with you, Polly? Have you gone crazy?
What’s set _you_ thinking this way? Of all _things_!”
“Well, it was that man, maybe. He mighty near queered me. It’s always a
man, you know—a girl can’t get away from that.”
Nina still looked at her in wonderment. “You’re out of your head, kid,”
said she. “If anyone in little old New York ought to be happy to-night,
it’s you, sitting right there grouching like you are. They didn’t see
me—I wasn’t there at all. You were the whole works. I hate to take the
money from you—and I wouldn’t if I didn’t know you’d only spend it. I
have to watch you like a mother, kid.”
But Polly sat, shaking her head in somber discontent, the little blue
rings of her cigarette rising undisturbed before her.
“Who was he, Nina?” she asked after a time.
“Who was who? The big bald-face guy down the table?—that was Rankin of
Rankin and Swan. He acted like a good sport. As for Jimmy Haddon, he
must have chipped in fifty, anyways.”
But Polly was shaking her head from side to side.
“Oh, of course, you mean the reuben at the head of the table you were
joshing. It was the hit of the evening.”
“Was it, though?” said Polly vaguely.
“The hit of the evening, kid. That’s what brought them across.”
“Well,” said Polly, “it was a raw deal for him, I suppose. Look here.”
She held up her wrist. It showed a blue line about it. “I never felt
a man’s hand like that in all my life. He could have broken my arm if
he’d wanted to.” She pushed a bracelet reflectively up and down across
the bruised ring which the clutch of Joslin’s fingers had left upon her
white skin.
“Oh, I guess he liked it all right,” commented Nina casually. “They
mostly do.”
“That’s the trouble,” rejoined Polly sagely. “I can’t tell how it was,
but somehow that man made me feel _ashamed_! There was something in his
face—I can’t tell you what. Ever since, I’ve been feeling as if this
money didn’t belong to us. I’ve a notion to give you my share, Nina.”
“You can’t, kid. I’ve always been on the level with you. I’ll take you
over my knee and give you a spanking now if you don’t shut up. You talk
silly. An ordinary hayseed from the hills—you better be thinking of
Rankin with his private yachts, or little old Jimmy, your solid. You
can’t complain. You’d better be content with what you got.”
“What do you mean, Nina? I only say I feel sort of ashamed. I never
felt my skirts were short before in all my life. I did then.”
Nina only turned with a short laugh as she stooped to unfasten her own
shoes in her progress towards her night toilet. Polly arose and went
to the panel where protruded the handle of the wall bed which these
two loyal and thrifty partners occupied in common. She pulled down the
bed, went to the little wardrobe for her own night robe, and, moodily
silent, prepared herself for sleep. At last she paused.
“Nina,” she said again, with a certain imperative quality in her tone.
“What is it, kid?” demanded her good-humored friend.
“You know what I think?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t think you think at all.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Sometimes I think I’ve had about enough of this
sort of thing. I’m sore on it. It makes me sick. All those men——”
“But if it was the ‘only, only, _only_ man’?” grinned Nina.
“I wonder,” began Polly to herself—“I wonder now——”
But what she wondered she did not vouchsafe. It was some time later, in
the darkness of the night, that Nina felt a hand upon her arm, shaking
her.
“What’s the idea, kid?” she said sleepily. “Can’t you let a fellow
sleep? I’m almost dead.”
“Nina, tell me!” demanded Polly, a strange earnestness in her voice.
“Am I bad? Nina—tell me—am I as bad as that?”
“Oh, shut up, kid,” said Nina, bored. “Go on to sleep. There’s bats in
your garret to-night, sure thing.”