ALL ELSE IS HERESY
There are certain people, good people to whom orthodox precepts and
preachments are more than the constant evidence of their own eyes, who
will find displeasure in this story. For they are accustomed to a
formula in all such tales and are not likely to abide a departure from
it.
By it they have come to know immediately, whenever a woman with
instincts of doubtful propriety is introduced early in the action, just
what to expect. Her doom has struck. The frightful end which will be
hers is only a deferred matter still in the hands of her historian: The
dark river, a rushing car over an embankment to swift oblivion, a
living agony of remorse,--the rewards it will be noted bear a distinct
resemblance each to the other. For the wages of sin have long been
classified, tabulated and fixed, a minimum of mercy, a maximum of
disaster. All else is heresy.
They have been told this so many times that they not only believe it,
just as Cecille Manners once believed, utterly, fervidly, but they
derive therefrom an ardent satisfaction. This might seem strange, but
it is stranger far that they never look about them, just for a moment,
at life itself--just for a moment, just long enough to wonder. But
they do not. They believe in and expect the worst, demand it indeed.
And so this story will not please them--no. Not at all in so far as it
chronicles the life of Felicity Brown.
But the other half, the half which has been wondering for quite a
while, just as Cecille came to wonder, may read it and approve.
[Illustration: He tore at them, mad with rage.]
Once it was considered adequate to combat wickedness with fear, but
methods change. It has come to seem wiser, if less orthodox, to urge
that heaven is fair instead of insisting first that hell is so foul.
And so perhaps it would be well for a change to bear less heavily upon
the wages of sin, and extol, just a little, the wages of virture. For
too constant insistence upon an evil thing is sure to breed doubt in
the mind of one who is in the habit of thinking at all. It did in
Cecille's. If it be so true, so inevitable, so frightful, surely it
should be self-evident now and then, instead of a mere matter of
report. And beautiful generalization, never anything but vague,
becomes noticeable after a time, questionable. The things of glory in
this world are not so tediously many that they will not bear once or
twice the telling. Why not refuse, for once, to blink the facts, even
though they may not be suitably sordid? Why not go into detail, once
in a while, if the prospect is as fair as they would have one fancy?
This story does, I hope. It would be honester that way.
* * * * * *
It is not easy to account for the intimacy which existed between those
two girls. It is doubtful if either of them could have done much to
account for it. Pressed for an explanation, Felicity Brown, it is
true, might have essayed an answer of sorts. "Oh, Cele's kind of a
nut," she might have declared, "but she's a good scout," or something
equally unsatisfactory. But Cecille, unless urged, quite likely
wouldn't have made any answer at all. Then, "I don't know," she would
have murmured. And in the face of such gravity her inquisitor must
surely have sought a different topic.
Yet the intimacy was a fact,--one of those odd facts which life
persists in producing. They had shared an apartment (that is a nice
compliment, that phrase, applied to their sitting-room, bedroom and
bath) for almost a year, continuing in a state of amiability possible
only between two people so widely separated in ideals and hopes that
there could never be a clash. There had never been much companionship,
however. Now and then they ate one meal together, an early dinner for
Cecille and a late breakfast for Felicity, at six o'clock in the
evening. For Cecille's working day was over before Felicity's began.
But there had been no intimacy of the spirit. And yet each knew the
soul of the other as well as though it had been a meal sack which could
be turned inside out, exposing every seam to scrutiny.
Felicity Brown belonged to the Midnight Roof Club's famous Aero Octet.
That is, of course, a needless bit of information, presumptuous even to
the initiate, for everybody knows her, almost everybody. She was the
third from the left, the one in new-grass green, with balloons pendant
from the scalloped corners of her short, stiff-wired skirt--black
balloons like huge dull pearls. The one with the smile. Yes, I know
that the others smiled, too, constantly, provocatively; but sometimes
the set of their lips was likely to seem anything but the curl of
mirth. But not Felicity's.
It never lost its challenge. And her dancing was like that, tireless,
serenely abandoned, the essence of knowing grace. Half-pagan,
half-divine, Denby, the young cover artist, badly smitten, once put it
with striking unoriginality. And with exceeding inaccuracy, too. For
there are all too many who will insist that the pagan portion rather
over-balanced the rest. But her sheer vitality was amazing.
An unobserving person, still seeking the key to their intimacy, could
easily blunder upon the old bromide and repeat that a pretty woman
invariably prefers a plain one for a foil. But he would have to be a
very blind fool indeed. For Felicity Brown's beauty, perfect enough
under the spot of the Midnight Club's miniature stage, became a less
flawless thing in contrast with Cecille. Perhaps that sounds
far-fetched. Perhaps, having seen Felicity for yourself, you are
inclined to smile and shrug. Nevertheless it is so.
Not one of a million Denbys would ever have called Cecille half-pagan
or divine in any degree. He wouldn't have noticed her, even, unless
his attention had been pointedly called that way. And if another,
contemplating her with an eye not greedy of the flesh alone, had
finally hit upon the word poignant to describe the hungry youth of her,
the odd little tilt of her head, the soft and eager promise in swelling
line of hip and breast, Denby himself most certainly would have
murmured absently:
"Poignant. Yes--yes, poignant. Quite so--quite so!"
And yawned.
For she did not challenge instantly, as did Felicity. A man might look
at her a long time before her perfection smote him. It usually
happened that way; it happened exactly like that to Perry Blair. He
looked at her many, many times before he saw with seeing eyes and
realized how shyly precious and flagrantly bold girlhood like hers
could be.
Her smile was not as ready as that of the girl who danced. And it had
become a little strained, a little edged, before the end. But it never
lost its freshness. It was always as shining as fine rain at dawn.
And the inquiry in her eyes was not part calculation. They were more
wistful, less expectant maybe. But they were steady. And gray as a
November sea.
Once, remarking the incongruity of their names, Cecille repeated her
own with a shade of scorn and provoked from her companion one of the
few personalities in which she ever indulged.
"Cecille Manners!" she drawled. "Cecille Manners--gown-fitter's
assistant! With a name like that I should be in a Broadway chorus."
It happened late one evening. Cecille was half undressed for bed. And
Felicity, busy at the mirror, turned an instant to follow with a
dispassionate eye the slight, knickered figure crossing the room.
"With a figure like that, you mean," she amended. "It's plain stingy
to keep it under cover. Think of the thousands who are panting to pass
over three-fifty per, just to sit out front and give it the up and
down!"
Nor did the girl at the mirror see the raw flush which her cool comment
brought to Cecille's face, nor would she have understood it had she
seen. That one's privacy, one's physical fastidiousness, could be
affronted by mere words, would have astounded her. Fastidiousness
carried that far--fastidiousness of any sort--was incomprehensible to
Felicity. But she found the topic momentarily of interest.
"It is kind of stagy," she pursued it. "Your own?"
"Naturally."
Cecille's crispness was lost upon her. They could never have
quarreled. And Cecille had found a dressing-gown and hugged it tight
around her knees.
"Oh, not necessarily," Felicity said, abstractedly judicious. "Take me
for instance. I tried out four or five before I was inspired with the
one I'm wearing now. And a couple of them woulda knocked you dead,
take it from me. But the Vere de Vere stuff is bla now. Too phony.
There's no class to that kind of a monicker any more. And, believe me,
you can't afford to overlook any bets, nowadays; you got to have class
in everything. Something simple--something demure, that's what they
want. You got to be a lady."
And perhaps that is the best explanation, after all, of Felicity's
cultivation of the other girl. One cannot of oneself acquire breeding,
but it is possible to study technique. And I think Cecille's reason
for sticking to Felicity to the very end is clear too. Once, before
things happened, she was one of those people who believed in the
inevitable dark river, or swift oblivion, or an agony of remorse.
Believed pathetically.
I think Felicity Brown served her as a fearsome revelation of life
stripped to its rawest essentials,--a demonstration of shattering
truths which she would never have believed had she not stood by,
looking on. It held her as a snake's eye holds a bird, fascinated, in
deadly peril.
But they got on together. And as an economic arrangement it left
nothing to be desired. Cecille sewed well and was paid twenty-two
fifty a week. For her appearance in the Aero Octet Felicity received,
at the beginning, forty-five. This may astonish some. It shouldn't.
"I don't pay my girls much." So Fiegenspann, the proprietor of the
Roof Club, bluntly advised her, after she had passed his scrutiny and
been pronounced unusual enough even for the Aero Octet. "I don't have
to. Because the opporchoonities here are big--very big. And I like my
girls to be sociable. It makes business."
Felicity knew then that she had finally found the right man--the right
market. She appreciated his frankness and reciprocated.
"I get you," she said, "and forty-five it is. And I'm sociable, or I
can be, if sufficiently persuaded. Only let's be clear about that
point right now, at the start. You can send Opporchoonity's card in
whenever he calls and I'll be pleased to meet him. But he mustn't
crawl up to the curb in any Decrepid Four--understand? He's got to be
hitting on twelve."
Fiegenspann understood. He nodded his heavy head. He began to see,
then and there, that Felicity Brown was going to add another page to
the Roof Club's history. He even essayed a compliment.
"My clientele is of all the world," he said. "And you--you look
expensif."
"I am," said Felicity. "No pikers need apply."
And with that business conference between Felicity and Fiegenspann
began the revelation which during the months that followed Cecille
watched in a kind of stricken suspense that must, it seems, have been
childish anticipation in the beginning of the pitiless blast which
would complete the other's sure destruction.
Since the day when freakish chance had thrown them together she had had
no illusions concerning Felicity's ultimate destiny. It had surprised
her not that Felicity was traveling the road, but that she had not long
since arrived. She had not learned then how coolly Felicity herself
had selected that destiny and taken it in hand. She had not surmised
with what dispassionate judgment she had husbanded her resources, once
the route was chosen.
And she wouldn't believe the evidence of her own eyes and ears, at
first. It never happened this way--it couldn't! Such things were the
black fruit of one reckless moment; of nameless impulses; of bitter
betrayal. Someone had written something like that. One more
unfortunate, rashly importunate--that was it. She couldn't remember
the rest. And then her suspense, which was half fearsome expectancy,
was overwhelmed by a thought which really frightened her.
If all that they had taught her wasn't so; if all that she had accepted
so blindly wasn't the literal truth, inexorable for every individual
(life was a too bitterly personal thing for her to concern herself with
a doctrine which, accurate in the main, could be shrugged aside when it
failed in isolated cases) then all the rest, all that she had clung to
just as blindly, could be a lie. And if it was--if it was--
The thought struck at all she knew, all she had, her creed and code and
hope of to-morrow.
Felicity when she burst in with the news that she had landed
Fiegenspann did a wild can-can up and down the room. She danced as no
one else ever saw her dance, in a surrender to exultation that was
wanton savagery. But her mood passed quickly. The next moment, like
an implacable campaigner, she was summing up the excellences of her
latest step.
"Now you watch me!" she said. "Now you watch my dust!"
It was cold-blooded; it was as passionless as chess. And it was about
then that Cecille began to draw nearer and nearer in spirit, like a
bird hypnotized by a snake. The simile is hectic, I know. But it was
like that.
She tried to hold aloof. She used to wonder why she had not packed her
bag that night and got out. She used to shiver when she remembered
Felicity's dance. One couldn't touch pitch and not be denied. There
were, it seemed, an overwhelming number of such proverbs, and most of
them forbidding.
But she stayed on. More than that, she found herself after a time
stammering a question concerning each new cavalier as he appeared. And
each time Felicity's answer was unbelievably unconcerned and laconic.
"Nothing doing," she'd say. "He's hard boiled."
Familiarity breeds complacency oftener than contempt. But it was
neither the one nor the other which forced Cecille to ask, over and
over again. Once Felicity surprised in her eyes the light that
invariably accompanied the question.
"You're a queer kid," she added that time, after the usual answer. "I
sure don't get you."
Later she thought she had solved it.
"Don't you worry, Cele," she reassured her. "When the fall comes
you'll hear the crash. I'll slip you the returns a little ahead of
time so that you can get out from under."
"It--it wasn't that," protested Cecille quickly.
She wondered why she didn't pack up and get out.
But she was still there another night when Felicity finally came home
again with every lithe line of her body pulsing triumph. She was even
sitting up, which was unusual. An unusual occurrence accounted for it.
In the beginning Felicity had tried to share with the other girl those
prospects who, for one reason or another, were of no importance.
"Come on along," she often urged. "These guys mean nothing in my young
life except a dinner. And you needn't worry. Believe me, you'll be
shown the same respect as if you were out with your maiden aunt. They
know I'm refined and won't stand for anything else. And it'll do you
good."
Cecille did go, once. So far as her escort was concerned she found
that Felicity had spoken the truth. He was innocuous. He was, indeed,
quite entirely unaware of her presence most of the evening. That did
not displease her. She found him little stupider than a swain of the
same age might have been in her own home town, even though his name did
appear in heavy block type in the Social Register. But she went only
once. She made a mistake. She had that day helped to costume a sister
of one of the men. She happened now to mention that sister's
prettiness.
The man looked her in the eye, coldly, for a prolonged moment.
"Let's leave my sister out of it," he said at length deliberately.
And Cecille's cheeks were still pale from his tone when they arrived
back at the apartment.
"That was a bad crack you made," Felicity told her then.
"I--I didn't know."
"They don't like to discuss their own womenfolks with girls like us."
"Oh!"
The exclamation was little more than a whisper.
"But no harm done," airily. "He has to depend on the old man for his
bank-roll. I just thought I'd tip you off."
She didn't go again. She stopped wanting to go anywhere, even to the
movies, for quite a while. And then, just at eleven one night, while
Felicity was before the mirror preparing to go to work and wondering
where Cecille could be, the latter came quietly in. Felicity hardly
marked her entrance until she dropped suddenly into a chair and began
to laugh. It was the laugh which made Felicity turn so sharply. She
had had experience with that shrill note in women's voices and knew
what it could mean. Such breakdowns were ugly to handle.
She flung sharply round.
"What's tickling you?" she barked harshly. "Shoot! Let's have it.
Cut that, now!"
It stayed the slighter girl's hysteria.
"I've been--I've been to a dance," she gurgled.
Felicity gave her no foolish respite.
"Well, I don't get it," she rapped on. "Maybe I'm English. Where's
the joke?"
"A--a dance over at the Central Palace, given for Worthy Working
Girls--"
"That's funnier! But go ahead. Snap into it! Don't let it
drag--don't let it drag--"
It seemed a potent cure.
"I went because I saw in the paper that Mrs. Schuyler Driggs was going
to be among the patronesses to receive."
The hysterical giggle was gone from Cecille's voice. She shut tight
her teeth and raised her chin. Felicity felt that it was safe now to
remain silent. And she was right, partly right. She only failed to
realize that Cecille was all too calm.
"I'm sorry, Felicity," the latter apologized meekly. "But I couldn't
help it. I thought I'd laugh and cry and scream, right on the street,
before I could get here. But I held on. Shall I finish?"
"Mrs. Schuyler Driggs has just made her entrance--"
"Yes. She was in the shop this morning." The recital seemed simple
and orderly now. "I helped to fit her. I usually do. She's never
very cordial, but this morning she was--oh, she was a beast! She
nagged and nagged and nagged, until I got nervous. I couldn't help it.
I got worse and worse, until I stuck a pin into her. Not just a
scratch." The gurgle threatened. "But deep--deep!"
"If you go off again," promised Felicity, "I'll dump that pitcher of
water over you."
"I won't. I stuck the pin into her, and she--she grunted. And then--I
never saw anyone grow so furious. She turned purple. I'm not sure
that she didn't strike at me.
"'You did that on purpose,' she grated at me. Grated, that's the only
word that describes it. 'You fool! You damned clumsy little fool!'"
Felicity waited until it was evident that she would have to speak.
"Well?" she asked then in a voice grown hard. "What did _you_ say?
What was the snappy come-back?"
"I couldn't think of anything to say, not just then--"
"Folks like you usually can't," said Felicity drily. "They think of a
knock-out a half an hour too late. But not me. Language comes easy to
me in a spot like that, language that I can't use regular without
getting pinched, and I'm generous with it."
"I was a little more than a half hour late in having my say," Cecille
admitted. "But I had it. I saw the announcement of the dance in the
afternoon paper and her name, and I decided to go. I don't know why;
that is, I didn't--not until she recognized me. Then I knew! She was
shaking hands with me and telling me to have a good time. She was just
passing me on to the next in line, when she blinked at me, like
that--she's fat--and stopped me.
"'Haven't I seen you somewhere before, my dear?' she asked. 'You seem
somehow very familiar.'
"Then I knew why I'd come. And I let her have it!
"'You have,' I was just as throaty as she was. 'And I should
be,'--meaning familiar. 'At ten-thirty o'clock this morning when I
stuck a pin into you, fitting that gown you have on, you cursed me. If
I remember accurately you called me a damned clumsy little fool.'"
"--seven--eight--nine--ten!" chanted Felicity joyously. "And _out_!
What did she do?"
And then, quite without any warning at all, came the break. It was
like the shattering of brittle glass.
Cecille rocked to crazy mirth.
"She had them put me out!" she shouted. "She called the matron and had
her put me out! She said the language I'd used before her was
positively vicious. She said I'd--contaminate--those--worthy--working
girls!"
And it took Felicity almost three-quarters of an hour to bring her
round. In one brief interval of calm she managed to slip to the
telephone and call a taxi. The rest of the time she spent on her knees
beside the girl in the chair crooning softly. And she never knew that
most of the words she set to her soothing, extemporaneous tune would
have contaminated anybody, most of all Mrs. Schuyler Driggs herself.
At eleven-thirty, when Cecille was crying comfortably, she rose. And
seeing that her work was well done, she became brisk.
"I'll get a bawling out from Fiegenspann," she said, and ran to a
window. "Thank God, that taxi's here. And now you'd better get to
bed. Maybe hereafter you'll know better than to mix it with somebody
outa your class. You oughta known in the first place that perfect
ladies have got it all over girls like us, before we start. They've
got everything fixed, the judges and the referee, before you step into
the ring."
She ran out--and flashed back.
"Don't get me wrong, Cele." For one reason or another she hurried it.
"I ain't got time to explain just what I meant to say, but there's one
thing I didn't mean. Don't get me wrong. If you ain't a lady, then
I'm the Prince of Wales."
That was the second time Cecille heard it.
"A girl like us."
After a time her sobs subsided until they were no more than long,
unsteady breaths. But she stayed at the window, staring down into the
street. Once she dug the knuckles of one fist into her eyes and
wistfully shook her head.
"I wonder," she whispered. "I wonder."