"It's real country out there," Fannie Davis had said. "Buttercups and
daisies. Come on, Lila! I won't go if you won't."
This sudden demonstration of friendship was too much for Lila. She
forgot that she had no stylish dress for the occasion, or that her
mother could not very well spare her for a whole day, and she promised
to be ready at nine o'clock on the following Sunday morning.
"Fannie Davis," she explained to her mother, "has asked me to go out to
Pelham Bay Park with her Sunday. And finally I said I would. I feel
sometimes as if I'd blow up if I didn't get a breath of fresh air after
all this hot spell."
She set her pretty mouth defiantly. She expected an argument. But he
mother only shrugged her shoulders and said,
"We could make your blue dress look real nice with a few trimmings."
They discussed ways and means until long after the younger children were
in bed and asleep.
By Saturday night the dress was ready, and Lila had turned her week's
wages back into the coffers of the department store where she worked in
exchange for a pair of near-silk brown stockings and a pair of stylish
oxford ties of patent leather.
"You look like a show-girl," was Fannie's enthusiastic comment. "I
wouldn't have believed it of you. Why, Lila, you're a regular little
peach!"
Lila became crimson with joy.
They boarded the subway for Simpson Street. The atmosphere was hot and
rancid. The two girls found standing-room only. Whenever the express
curved they were thrown violently from one side of the car to the other.
A young man who stood near them made a point on these occasions of
laying a hand on Lila's waist to steady her. She didn't know whether it
was proper to be angry or grateful.
"Don't pay any attention to him," said Fannie; "he's just trying to be
fresh, and he doesn't know how."
She said it loud enough for the young man to hear. Lila was very much
frightened.
They left the subway at Simpson Street and boarded a jammed trolley-car
for Westchester. Fannie paid all the fares.
"It's my treat," she said; "I'm flush. Gee, ain't it hot! I wish we'd
brought our bathing-suits."
Much to Lila's relief the young man who had annoyed her was no longer
visible. Fannie talked all the way to Westchester in so loud a voice
that nearly everybody in the car could hear her. Lila was shocked and
awed by her friend's showiness and indifference.
From Westchester they were to walk the two hot miles to the park.
Already Lila's new shoes had blistered her feet. But she did not mention
this. It was her own fault. She had deliberately bought shoes that were
half a size too small.
In the main street of Westchester they prinked, smoothing each other's
rumpled dresses and straightening each other's peach-basket hats.
"Lila," said Fannie, "everybody's looking at you. I say you're _too_
pretty. Lucky for me I've got my young man where I want him, or else
you'd take him away from me."
"I would not!" exclaimed Lila, "and it's you they're looking at."
Fannie was delighted. "_Do_ I look nice?" she wheedled.
"You look sweet!"
As a matter of fact, Fannie looked bold and handsome. Her clothes were
too expensive for her station in life. Her mother suspected how she came
by them, but was so afraid of actually knowing that she never brought
the point to an issue; only sighed in secret and tried not to see or
understand.
Now and then motors passed through the crowds straggling to the park,
and in exchange for gratuitous insults from small boys and girls left
behind them long trails of thick dust and the choking smell of burnt
gasoline. In the sun the mercury was at one hundred and twenty degrees.
"There's a hog for you," exclaimed Fannie. She indicated a stout man in
shirt-sleeves. He had his coat over one arm, his collar and necktie
protruding from the breast pocket. His wife, a meagre woman, panted at
his side. She carried two heavy children, one of them not yet born.
Half the people carried paper parcels or little suitcases made of straw
in which were bathing-suits and sandwiches. It would be low tide, but
between floating islands of swill and sewage there would be water, salt,
wet, and cool.
"My mother," said Fannie, "doesn't like me to come to these places
alone. It's a real nice crowd uses Pelham Park, but there's always a
sprinkling of freshies."
"Is that why you invited me?" said Lila gayly. Inwardly she flattered
herself to think that she had been asked for herself alone. But Fannie's
answer had in it something of a slap in the face.
"Well," said this one, "mother forbade me to come alone. But I do want
to get better acquainted with you. Honest."
They rested for a while sitting on a stone wall in the shade of a tree.
"My mother," said Fannie grandly, "thinks everybody's rotten, including
me. My God!" she went on angrily, "do me and you work six days of the
week only to be bossed about on the seventh? I tell you I won't stand it
much longer. I'm going to cut loose. Nothing but work, work, work, and
scold, scold, scold."
"If I had all the pretty things you've got," said Lila gently, "I don't
believe I'd complain."
Fannie blushed. "It's hard work and skimping does it," she said. "Ever
think of marrying, kid?"
Lila admitted that she had.
"Got a beau?"
Lila blushed and shook her head.
"You have, too. Own up. What's he like?"
Lila continued to deny and protest. But she enjoyed being teased upon
such a subject.
"Well, if you haven't," said Fannie at last, "I have. It's a dead
secret, kid. I wouldn't tell a soul but you. He's got heaps of money,
and he's been after me--to marry him--for nearly a year."
"Do you like him?"
"I'm just crazy about him."
"Then why don't you marry him?"
"Well," Fannie temporized, "you never want to be in a rush about these
things."
Fannie sighed, and was silent. She might have married the young man in
question if she had played her cards better. And she knew it, now that
it was too late, and there could not be a new deal. He had wanted her,
even at the price of marriage. He was still fond of her. And he was very
generous with his money. She met him whenever she could. He would be
waiting for her now at the entrance to the park.
"He's got a motor-boat," she explained to Lila, "that he wants to show
me. She's a cabin launch, almost new. You won't mind?"
"Mind? Are you going out for a sail with him, and leave me?"
"Well, the truth is," said Fannie, "I've just about made up my mind to
say yes, and of course if there was a third party around he couldn't
bring the matter up, could he? We wouldn't be out long."
"Don't mind me," said Lila. Inwardly she was terribly hurt and
disappointed. "I'll just sit in the shade and wish you joy."
"I wouldn't play it so low down on you," said Fannie, "only my whole
future's mixed up in it. We'll be back in lots of time to eat."
Lila walked with them to the end of the pier at the bathing-beach. The
water was full of people and rubbish. The former seemed to be enjoying
themselves immensely and for the most part innocently, though now and
then some young girl would shriek aloud in a sort of delighted terror as
her best young man, swimming under water, tugged suddenly at her
bathing-skirt or pinched the calf of her leg.
Lila watched Fannie and her young man embark in a tiny rowboat and row
out to a clumsy cabin catboat from which the mast had been removed and
in whose cockpit a low-power, loud-popping motor had been installed. The
young man started the motor, and presently his clumsy craft was dragging
herself, like a crippled duck, down Pelham Bay toward the more open
water of Long Island Sound.
Lila felt herself abandoned. She would have gone straight home but for
the long walk to Westchester and the fact that she had no car fare. She
could have cried. The heat on the end of the dock and the glare from the
water were intolerable. She was already faint with hunger, and her shoes
pinched her so that she could hardly walk without whimpering. It seemed
to her that she had never seen so many people at once. And in all the
crowds she hadn't a single friend or acquaintance. Several men, seeing
that she was without male escort, tried to get to know her, but gave up,
discouraged by her shy, frightened face. She was pretty, yes. But a
doll. No sport in her. Such was their mental attitude.
"She might have left me the sandwiches," thought Lila. "Suppose the
motor breaks down!"
Which was just what it was going to do--'way out there in the sound. It
always did sooner or later when Fannie was on board. She seemed to have
been born with an influence for evil over men and gas-engines.
At the other side of green lawns on which were a running-track, swings,
trapezes, parallel bars, and a ball-field, were woods. The shade, from
where she was, looked black and cold. She walked slowly and timidly
toward it. She could cool herself and return in time to meet Fannie. But
she returned sooner than she had expected.
She found a smooth stone in the woods and sat down. After the sun there
was a certain coolness. She fanned herself with some leaves. They were
poison-ivy, but she did not know that. The perspiration dried on her
face. There were curious whining, humming sounds in the woods. She began
to scratch her ankles and wrists. Her ankles especially tickled and
itched to the point of anguish. She was the delightful centre of
interest to a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. She leaped to her feet and
fought them wildly with her branch of poison-ivy. Then she started to
run and almost stepped on a man who was lying face up in the underwood,
peacefully snoring. She screamed faintly and hurried on. Some of the
bolder mosquitoes followed her into the sunlight, but it was too hot
even for them, and one by one they dropped behind and returned to the
woods. The drunken man continued his comfortable sleep. The mosquitoes
did not trouble him. It is unknown why.
Lila returned to the end of the dock and saw far off a white speck that
may or may not have been the motor-boat in which Fannie had gone for a
"sail."
If there hadn't been so many people about Lila must have sat down and
cried. The warmth of affection which she had felt that morning for
Fannie had changed into hatred. Three times she returned to the end of
the dock.
All over the park were groups of people eating sandwiches and
hard-boiled eggs. They shouted and joked. Under certain circumstances,
not the least of sports is eating. Lila was so angry and hungry and
abused that she forgot her sore feet. She couldn't stay still. She must
have walked--coming and going--a good many miles in all.
At last, exhausted as she had never been even after a day at the
department store during the Christmas rush, she found a deep niche
between two rough rocks on the beach, over which the tide was now gently
rising, and sank into it. The rocks and the sand between them gave out
coolness; the sun shone on her head and shoulders, but with less than
its meridianal fury. She could look down Pelham Bay and see most of the
waters between Fort Schuyler and City Island. Boats of all sorts and
descriptions came and went. But there was no sign of that in which
Fannie had embarked.
Lila fell asleep. It became quiet in the park. The people were dragging
themselves wearily home, dishevelled, dirty, sour with sweat. The sun
went down, copper-red and sullen. The trunks of trees showed ebony black
against it, swarms of infinitesimal gnats rose from the beaches, and
made life hideous to the stragglers still in the park.
Lila was awakened by the tide wetting her feet. She rose on stiff,
aching legs. There was a kink in her back; one arm, against which she
had rested heavily, was asleep.
"Fannie," Lila thought with a kind of falling despair, "must have come
back, looked for me, given me up, and gone home."
In the midst of Pelham Bay a fire twinkled, burning low. It looked like
a camp-fire deserted and dying in the centre of a great open plain. Lila
gave it no more than a somnambulant look. It told her nothing: no story
of sudden frenzied terror, of inextinguishable, unescapable flames, of
young people in the midst of health and the vain and wicked pursuit of
happiness, half-burned to death, half-drowned. It told her no story of
guilt providentially punished, or accidentally.
She had slept through all the shouting and screaming. The boats that had
attempted rescue had withdrawn; there remained only the hull of a
converted catboat, gasoline-soaked, burnt to the water's edge, a
cinder--still smouldering.
Somewhere under the placid waters, gathering speed in the tidal
currents, slowing down and swinging in the eddies, was all that remained
of Fannie Davis, food for crabs, eels, dogfish, lobsters, and all the
thousand and one scavengers of Atlantic bays, blackened shreds of
garments still clinging to her.