1
WHEN they took the train to town on Monday morning, the question of
where they were to live was still undecided. Rose-Ann had put the matter
unreservedly in Felix’s hands; she had told him in detail and without
prejudice the merits and demerits of the various apartments she had
seen. But he felt incompetent to arrive at a decision in such a matter;
and after all, he did not want to do anything which would not have
Rose-Ann’s real approval. He distrusted this mood of utter surrender to
his will, and he sought to make her reassume the burden of judgment.
He suggested again the possibility of having a house in the country; and
she discussed that possibility in a practical spirit. They could rent
some small house in Woods Point for the summer; it would cost only a
hundred dollars or so for the season—or they might find something they
liked that was for sale.
It was easier to buy a house, it appeared, than Felix had thought; there
was usually a mortgage to be taken over, and one needed only keep up the
interest on that; the actual cash need be only a little, five hundred
dollars, or at most a thousand. To Felix this seemed a great deal, but
Rose-Ann explained casually that she could borrow it from her brothers
in Springfield, and if need be give a second mortgage; so that only the
interest would have to be paid for the time being. And the interest on
both debts would be less than the rent they would pay in town.
Felix had never understood these things very well, and buying a house
seemed amazingly simple—one need not work and save for years, one bought
the house first, even though one had no money! Of course, there were the
mortgages, of which Felix retained a somewhat sinister notion from his
childhood fiction-reading; but Rose-Ann seemed to regard them as a
commonplace....
If he only knew what she really wanted!
It ended by his suggesting, half-jestingly, that they go and live in a
hotel until they could decide what to do; and she agreed, saying that
she knew of a good family hotel, in Hyde Park, not expensive—the St.
Dunstan. So it was at the St. Dunstan that they engaged, by telephone
from Woods Point, a room for the following week. During that week
Rose-Ann could settle up her affairs at Community House, Felix could get
reacquainted with his job, and they could decide on a place to live.
2
They parted at the station, and Felix went to the office. It was strange
to take his place at his desk again. It seemed as though he had been
away a thousand years; he had the feeling of a truant who has returned
to school and wonders if he will ever catch up with his lessons.... Mr.
Devoe had said to come in and see him when he got back. But Harris sent
him out on an interview the first thing, and when he had finished
writing it, Mr. Devoe was out in the composing room overseeing some
change in the editorial page. Felix did not like to bother him.
Doubtless he had spoken lightly, and had already forgotten what he had
said to Felix.
As Felix sat idly before his typewriter, Hawkins came up. “Glad to see
you back,” he said, and shook hands. And then: “Come in my office, will
you?”
One of the last things Felix had done before falling ill was to “do” a
play for Hawkins, on a night when there were two openings. His way of
doing plays was so unlike Hawkins’s serious method of assigning praise
and blame that he had been afraid Hawkins would never ask him to do
another; but he had been encouraged by Willie’s laughter at his piece of
foolery, and Clive’s only half-ironical remark: “When Willie Smith
enjoys a piece of writing, you can figure on ten thousand other people
liking it, too!” The idea of those ten thousand other people liking his
whimsical criticism had offset the supposedly unfavorable judgment of
the serious Hawkins.
“Sit down,” Said Hawkins. “I suppose”—with an embarrassed air—“you’ve
heard I’m writing a play.” Then, more cheerfully, “Well, I want to get
as much time away from the office as possible, so I’ve persuaded Devoe
to let me have an assistant. Would you like the job?”
Felix flushed with incredulous pleasure. “All right,” Hawkins went on.
“There’s a certain amount of detail to be attended to—making up the
Saturday dramatic page, selecting the pictures and arranging the layout,
seeing publicity people or letting them see you, once a week—that sort
of thing. You can take all that off my hands, besides doing some of the
shows for me. There’s two opening tonight, and I’d like to have you do
one of them.” He felt in his pocket, and took out two envelopes. A
little apologetically, he said, “I’m sending you to the one I don’t want
to do myself—but you’ll get a chance at the real shows a little later.
All right?”
“I’m—everlastingly grateful to you,” said Felix. “Is this all settled
with—with Mr. Devoe?”
“Oh, yes. You made quite a hit with the Old Man, you know—something you
wrote in that thing you did for me—something about the fatted laugh and
the prodigal joke—I forget, but he went around the shop all morning that
day repeating it to everybody. Yes, the Old Man thinks you’re all right.
You’d better go in and see him; not now—I want to tell you some more
about this job. Have a cigarette?”
It appeared that Felix was to commence his duties at once, taking a desk
in Hawkins’ office and the title of assistant dramatic editor. He would
be relieved of his regular work as a reporter, but he would be expected
to help along a little with the editorial page, especially in the
summer, when there would be hardly any theatrical stuff to take care of.
And there was to be a small raise in salary; he would get thirty dollars
a week—to begin with, as Hawkins put it.
These happy prospects were confirmed by a brief interview with Mr.
Devoe, who seemed to beam on Felix with paternal benevolence. “I think
we’ve found the right place for you,” he said. And then his eyes
narrowed and his lips straightened. “You can prove whether we are right
or not,” he said sternly, and held out his hand in a formal gesture.
“Yes, sir—thank you!” said Felix, a little frightened, and went out.
3
Felix went to Canal street that afternoon to remove his things and give
up the room. He told the news of his marriage and advancement to Roger
and Don with something of the feeling of revisiting the scenes of
childhood and finding one’s old friends still playing at marbles,
astonishingly not grown up. But Roger and Don did not sense his secret
scorn; at least they maintained their customary imperturbable air.
“Rose-Ann Prentiss? Who is she? What does she do?” they asked, and when
they learned that she was not an artist, not a writer, not even an
interior decorator, they raised their eyebrows and went back to their
Flaubert.
Rose-Ann herself, that night, took his news calmly enough. It seemed
that there was no surprising her with any such good fortune; it was as
if she had expected it all along!
She dressed with particular care for dinner and the theatre that
evening, considering and rejecting half a dozen frocks before she
decided upon a quite simple tight-bodiced black velvet thing that made
her seem very pale and her hair a flaming red. This was the first time
that Felix had seen her wardrobe, and he was much impressed. “I’ve never
seen you in anything but your working clothes, have I!” he laughed. “I
like you, dressed up!”
“Oh, these are all old things,” she said; and Felix wondered why women
always said that, when one praised anything they wore. “But,” she said,
“I do look rather nice in this evening dress,” and she held up a
shimmering fluid thing of blue and silver that did not seem to Felix
like a dress at all, but like a moonlit fountain dripping silver spray.
“I’d wear this if you’d get some evening clothes yourself.”
“What do I want of evening clothes?” he protested, his pleasure in the
sight of that lovely garment gone with the threatening onset of
sartorial obligations of his own.
“I should think a dramatic critic might very well have evening clothes,”
said Rose-Ann mildly.
“I’m only half a dramatic critic,” objected Felix.
“Well,” said Rose-Ann, “that being the case, I wouldn’t insist on
full-dress. I’ll be content if you come half way. I mean, dinner
clothes. It’s the silly long-tailed coat that you object to, isn’t it? I
don’t like it myself. Dinner clothes would be very becoming to you,
though.”
“But I haven’t any money—” he began.
“Felix,” she said, “how many times must we argue that out? If you
haven’t any money, I have—not much, but enough to get ourselves started
on. And do you want me to let it lie in the bank at Springfield while we
do without things we need? You want me to look nice, don’t you? And if I
didn’t have a decent dress to go to the theatre with you in, and you
could help me get one, you’d want to, wouldn’t you?”
“Do I look so bad as all that?” he asked, looking down at his rather
worn blue serge suit.
“You look very nice, Felix,” she said, coming over and kissing him. “But
you do need some new clothes, that’s a fact. And really, if you’re going
to be a dramatic critic—. As long as we bought our own seats, in the
balcony, it was all right to go in our ‘working clothes.’ But I think—”
“Oh, all right!” he said gloomily.
4
Nevertheless, the prospect of evening clothes did not spoil his
enjoyment of the play and Rose-Ann. It was a rather silly play, and they
bubbled over with amused comments upon it on their way back to the St.
Dunstan. “I must remember all these things, and put them into my
criticism,” he remarked.
“Why don’t you write it tonight,” she said.
“At the hotel? I haven’t a typewriter, for one thing.”
“But I have mine. Why don’t you say it off to me, and I’ll take it down.
Then you’ll have it over with, and we can mail it tonight, and then we
can talk as late as we want to, without having to think of
getting-up-time in the morning. Now that you’re a dramatic critic, you
don’t have to keep such regular working hours.”
Really, it seemed an admirable plan. “But won’t the other people in the
hotel object to a typewriter being pounded at this hour of the night?”
“Let them! If they complain, we’ll say we’re sorry, and promise not to
do it again! And by the next time, we’ll be in some place of our own
where we can pound a typewriter all night if we want to—I hope!”
Felix stored that away in his memory as one of Rose-Ann’s specifications
for a place to live—a place where one could run a typewriter all
night.... It was going to be hard to find such a place!
Rose-Ann exchanged her black velvet frock for a flame-coloured
kimono—which, as he noted, matched her hair when the light shone through
its stray curls—and sat down at the typewriter.
“Ready!”
Felix dictated for half an hour, only occasionally thinking of their
neighbours on the other side of these thin hotel partitions. Still, it
was not yet midnight. “I guess that’s enough,” he said at last.
“A good line to end on,” she agreed, finishing the sentence and typing
his name underneath. “There are stamps in my pocketbook, Felix—and
here’s your envelope, all addressed. It will make the one o’clock
collection, and we can breakfast at leisure.”
“But,” he said, pausing at the door, “suppose it got lost in the mails
or something!”
“I made a carbon,” said Rose-Ann, “and you can take that with you when
you go to the office, in case of emergencies.”
“You _are_ an efficient little manageress!” he said.
5
Obediently the next day he went to a tailor—recommended by Clive, who
seemed heartily to approve of this particular surrender to
convention—and was measured for a dinner coat, and a new loose-fitting
suit of brown homespun selected by Rose-Ann.
He found he did not mind the idea of wearing evening clothes after all.
He only wished that—well, that he was going to pay for them himself!
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