A Maid and a Million Men
The Candid Confessions of Leona
Canwick + Censored Indiscreetly by
JAMES G. DUNTON
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers New York
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A MAID AND A MILLION MEN
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY
J. H. SEARS & CO., INCORPORATED
Second Printing, November, 1928
Third Printing, December, 1928
Fourth Printing, February, 1929
Fifth Printing, June, 1929
Sixth Printing, September, 1929
United States of America
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To
THE BULL OF THE BOULEVARDS
Because
“There weren’t enough medals to go ’round!”
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CONTENTS
1 THE MAIDEN’S PRAYER
2 CORRESPONDENCE FROM HEAVEN
3 APPLE-SAUCE FOR THE GANDER
4 A MASK OF KHAKI
5 A MAIDEN SLEEPS WITH AN ARMY
6 A JOY HOLE
7 A DOG’S LIFE
8 NO PLACE FOR A LADY
9 A LOUSY LADY
10 THE BATTLE OF LE CHIEN ROUGE
11 FAIR ENOUGH IN LOVE AND WAR
12 MADEMOISELLE FROM GAY PAREE
13 BELOW THE BELT
14 IT TAKES A WOMAN TO CATCH A WOMAN
15 THE TWAIN MEET
16 BEAUCOUP ZIGZAG
17 THE DEATH SHIPS
18 THE BEST MAN WINS
19 THE COST OF CURIOSITY
20 THE TAIL OF THE TALE
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A MAID AND A MILLION MEN
CHAPTER 1
THE MAIDEN’S PRAYER
There was a party up in Heaven the night that I was born and my mother’s
Guardian Angel was playing one of those now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don’t
shell games with the Court Jester while the Head-Man so far forgot
himself, under the influence of the chorus of angelic yessers, as to do
sleight-of-hand tricks with the Vital Statistics and the Orders of the
Day. The whole court laughed to see such sport and even my mother’s
Guardian Angel must have thought it was a good joke on my father.
I heard the angels laughing as I came into the world and I cried out, as
soon as I could, that it certainly didn’t take much to entertain some
people. Angels have no sense of humor, anyway; I’ve since discovered
that you have to go in the other direction if you want to appreciate
good jokes. Why, up there in Heaven, the whole court thought this was a
wow, judging by the celestial thunder-peals of glee which accompanied
the parlor tricks, but if you can see anything funny in playing a trick
like that on an unsuspecting couple of innocent young lovers who thought
Birth Control was a pullman porter, then I hope you go to hell where
red-hot jokes are the devil’s own sport!
Furthermore, the joke was not only on my parents, but also on us—for,
you see, it happened that not only was I twins but also the other half
of the consignment was a boy who should have been a girl while I was a
girl who should have been a boy. The Head-Man certainly proved himself a
magician; he scrambled our souls and temperaments and everything else so
thoroughly that it would have required a better man than the Court
Physician to put us together again as the Creator intended us to be,
before that weak moment of kittenishness.
Even so, you’d think the Shipping Clerk would have hesitated at sending
out a boy in a girl’s body and vice versa. Of course, the two bodies did
look very much alike, but we were unashamedly naked at the time and
you’d think that even a government clerk would notice something funny in
such a parcel. Perhaps my Guardian Angel matched pennies or shot craps
with the Clerk, and the latter may have rolled a natural for my brother
and an even number for me. After seeing some of the other shipments that
went out on my birthday, I’ll believe anything’s possible. I recently
met a man, born on that same day, who sniffs like a rabbit, eats like a
pig, walks like a woman and brays like an ass; and I know a woman who
would be a cat if she had a tail. The Clerk must have been on the party,
too, and maybe had a little too much nectar besides. Anyway, the
Head-Man scrambled everything from frogs to elephants and nobody else
unscrambled them, so if your birthday was mine you probably decided long
ago that Heaven isn’t the most efficiently operated production plant
that can be imagined. Even on good days, the service is rotten: nine
times out of ten when you place an order for a boy you get a girl or
vice versa—no wonder a lot of the circus freaks were born on my
birthday!
My brother and I looked exactly alike. Indeed we were quite a biological
achievement, because we even had identical moles in identical positions
on our left cheeks. Father was actually quite proud of us and I think
the burden of having twins was really responsible for his economic
success, for he proceeded to accumulate more than enough money after we
made our début in 1899. In fact, he became so successful that he never
stayed long enough in any one city for us to become conspicuously
familiar to even our nearest neighbors. He was always on the move,
organizing new projects, developing new enterprises, rescuing his own
and others’ investments and turning everything to profit. He was a
hard-working man and he loved to keep busy, but I think that all that
hustling around year after year had a lot to do with mother’s untimely
death when we were only ten years old. She succumbed to typhoid fever,
but that was only the last straw, for she had never really had a chance
to get strong and healthy after we appeared on the scene.
After her death, the head of the house didn’t know what to do with us,
it being obvious that he could not give us any care or attention and
still keep up his program of industry; but he finally settled the
problem by arranging a plan with our Aunt Elinor Canwick, his spinster
sister, under the terms of which he provided liberally for us and for
her on condition that she take charge of us and supervise our education.
He gave Aunt Elinor carte blanche in all matters except one: he
stipulated that we must receive, aside from whatever cultural finish she
might provide, a thorough training in some practical occupation, in
order that we might be able to earn a respectable living should our
going to work become necessary through unfortunate circumstances. More
specifically, he strongly advised that “they be trained in secretarial
work, because such work will give them the best opportunities for
improving their positions and for keeping in touch with the better class
of people.”
So we went to live in Wakeham with Aunt Elinor and I had even less
chance to be as boyish as I felt because our dear Aunt had certain
rather definite ideas about the limits of a young lady’s sphere of
activity. Also she was a confirmed art enthusiast and just as soon as
she saw any signs of talent in either of us, she promptly did everything
in her power to encourage us in the direction of artistic careers. We
went to the best schools and had the best tutors obtainable; we traveled
abroad and absorbed culture in many lands; we developed a certain amount
of artistic creativeness and appreciativeness. And yet Aunt Elinor did
not neglect the kind of training which Dad advised: indeed, I think he
was rather proud of us, for we really did become quite proficient after
studying stenography, typewriting, business English, commercial law,
filing, and lots of other purely commercial subjects and had made them
still more valuable by having mastered three foreign languages; so that
at the age when most American boys and girls are completing high school
with a smattering knowledge of half a hundred subjects, we were both
capable of speaking and writing French, Italian or German, and taking
dictation in any of them or in English. Aunt Elinor was proud of us,
too. The last time I saw our father, before his accidental death in
1916, he and Aunt Elinor were indulging in mutual admiration exercises,
congratulating each other on the results obtained. And we twins were the
nicest, meekest, most harmless and un-regular kids that ever existed—at
least, so we must have seemed.
But from the day of Dad’s funeral, Aunt Elinor made a radical about-face
and bent all her energies toward cultivating our artistic talents. No
more commercial stuff now. She thought that Leon had distinctive poetic
ability, so she saw to it that he became acquainted with all the
literature and literary people that could possibly help him develop,
while Leona, the big “I,” being somewhat of a dancer and having been
remarked upon by some really competent theatrical people, was promptly
given over to the best dancing master available, after which my life was
just one pirouette and kick after another—which really wasn’t so bad
because it was physical work and that was what I needed to keep me
happy. We lived in Wakeham, one of the Big City’s most fashionable
suburbs, and moved in a very exclusive, art-loving and -fostering
circle.
Life rolled away in its customary monotony and gradually the curtains of
our horizon were drawn back to reveal new interests and new hopes. Leon
and I seemed to grow more similar in appearance and more dissimilar in
nature as we grew up. Aunt Elinor used to say that our sexes were all
mixed up, that our natures were diametrically opposite to our respective
physiques, and for once she was really near the truth, since I was very
much of a tomboy while Leon was an ethereal-spirited, effeminate, poetic
soul who cringed from all physical matters and even resented having to
be near my dog Esky, who worshiped the very ground I walked on and
evinced not uncertainly his suspicions of people who were too nasty nice
to play with a pup now and then. Leon wasted no love on Esky and once
declared that the pup’s mother must have been promiscuous. Well, Esky
was nothing but a mongrel, to be sure, although Aunt Elinor said his
mother was a thoroughbred Eskimo dog, but even thoroughbreds have been
known to have cuckold husbands; mongrel or not, a dog instinctively
attaches himself to the man of the house—but not so with Esky. He
hadn’t any use for Leon at all, probably because Leon high-hatted him,
whereas I liked nothing better than a chance to romp and wrestle with
him.
You can readily understand how I looked upon my sweet brother. He did
none of the things that regular boys do. Sports and games and any kind
of exercise that was the least bit rough did not appeal to him at all. I
even suspected that he was too damned nice to be interested in
girls—but on this point I was mistaken, for I discovered that Vyvy
Martin, one of Wakeham’s deep-eyed débutante beauties, was more or less
Leon’s soul mate. One was about as dizzy as the other, so they made a
perfect couple, entirely sufficient unto themselves—a condition which
must, I suppose, be called Love. But you can imagine how I looked upon
Leon when every impulse in me was toward the very kind of living which
he shunned. It seemed that not a day went by without my wishing I were
in his shoes so that I could chase off and enjoy myself as he should
enjoy himself. Truly in mental and emotional equipment, we were as
dissimilar as Tom Thumb and the Fat Lady.
The more fed up I became with our “cultured” friends and interests, the
more Leon became absorbed in them. He was a thorough-going æsthete and
the more æsthetic he grew, the more discontented I became, until it
seemed that life held absolutely nothing of interest for me. For days
and weeks at a time I carried a grouch and consoled myself by making the
aforementioned complaints to the Creator. Every time Aunt Elinor
entertained, I had to perform for the benefit of the guests, and
afterwards everyone would feed her a lot of slush about my “remarkable
talent for the dance.” You might have thought I was some kind of
thoroughbred dog, the way they studied me and passed comments on my body
and brains. My Aunt should have known long before that time that her
niece had a beautiful body and enough brains to know how to use it, but
she continued to gather in the same old line of flattery and flowery
compliments until you’d have thought it was her own body people were
talking about.
Of course, not all of her parties were utter bores. Now and then a few
genuine people appeared on the scene and once in a while someone
actually interesting would be present. It was at one of her soirées that
I met Jay-Jay Marfield, the rather attractively ebullient son of one of
Broadway’s most successful producers. Jay-Jay (from his initials, J. J.)
was about twenty-six when I first met him and rather handsome in a sort
of romantic fashion. My Aunt fell in love with him at first
sight—principally because she thought that if I cultivated his
friendship he could help me along in my career. My Aunt was not exactly
a hand-shaker; she just had rather continental ideas about matrimony:
marriage was a material affair to her. She would have been in ecstasies
if I had married Jay-Jay and she used to tell him the most awful lies
about my habits and disposition, et cetera. She tried all the
traditional tricks of the match-maker, but I had my doubts about
Jay-Jay’s falling for her ensnaring line. As for me, I was willing
enough to let him show me a good time—the which he certainly tried to
do, with everything from the Russian Ballet to opium dens thrown in. He
knew all the celebrities of the stage and was always on the verge of
introducing me to So-and-So sometime—while in the meantime he
introduced me to a crowd of artistic flat tires who indulged in attic
art and garret orgies which were more asinine than sinful.
Jay-Jay and I got along famously, but from the start of our friendship I
felt that I would never want to trust him very far. Perhaps I am
naturally suspicious, but this Jay-Jay was one of the kind that you
immediately suspect. Free and easy about everything, always immaculate,
always flush and always conniving something that was neither good for
himself nor good for me, he made me feel that I had always to be on
guard or he would promptly connive against me.
Yet I enjoyed myself in his company—as who wouldn’t if her only friends
were so sappy they could be guilty of thinking a cockade was a kind of
chicken broth! There are only two kinds of aristocratic boys: the
devil-may-care variety like Jay-Jay and the sweet God-fearing innocents
who make worms look like express trains. When the son sinks in the best
of regulated families, he’s usually reverting to the type of his pioneer
ancestors who had to take both life and love in their two fists. Most
blue blood was originally red of flaming hue, and when families begin to
forget that fact, you can lay odds that the deep old roots of the family
maple aren’t sending sap enough up to supply the high and mighty
branches of to-day. When family trees get too high they wither at the
top, and such dry sticks are only useful as fertilizer for younger
trees. That’s why the worst high-hats are invariably worn by people who
are really low-brow.
Naturally, I enjoyed Jay-Jay’s company at that time and not the least of
the reasons for this lay in the fact that he kept me on edge and on the
defensive most of the time. When a girl suspects that a man is about to
assault her on the least provocation, she naturally gets a thrill out of
the dare, and I was normal in that respect even though all the rigmarole
of infatuation and love were utterly foreign to my nature. Jay-Jay knew
I was a tomboy at heart and he played his cards accordingly. I fell
headlong into the trap by responding to his dare.
Please don’t imagine for a moment that anything melodramatic happened so
soon as this. Jay-Jay was a perfectly nice young man—for quite a while.
He could usually be depended upon to get intoxicated and he always took
advantage of every opportunity for making love to me, but all this was
direct and above the board—like romantic gestures, as it were. He
didn’t resort to underhand violence until quite some time later in our
affair.
A few incidents that I recall off-hand will serve to indicate how we
behaved ourselves during this more or less casual, but always
threatening, romance. On one occasion he took us—Leon, Vyvy and me—to
a masquerade in the Big Town, a huge affair that was given annually for
the benefit of indigent members of the theatrical profession. It was
Aunt Elinor’s suggestion that Leon and I dress in identical costumes,
therefore it was really her fault that Jay-Jay and Vyvy had a difficult
time distinguishing us from each other, because my hair was tucked up
and completely concealed under a grotesque hat so that Leon and I looked
exactly alike. When Aunt Elinor inspected us before we set off, she
exclaimed prophetically, “You’ll catch your escort courting your
brother!” And her laughter at this thought is sufficient evidence of her
atrocious sense of humor.
The party proved to be a riotous success from my point of view, in spite
of a few embarrassing moments, as when Vyvy saw Jay-Jay take possession
of one of us and immediately assumed that the one he chose was I. She
promptly pounced upon the other—and it really was I. Before I could
quite recover from the shock, she had swirled me into the crowd of
dancers and I decided I might as well play up to my rôle. It was really
funny, so funny that I dared not trust my voice. Anyway, she did enough
talking for the two of us.
And what things she said! It was a revelation to me—a revelation, I
mean, of my sweet and innocent brother’s poetic nature. She just poured
sweet nothings into my ear and clung to me as if she were hanging from
the gates of paradise and feared to let go for even a second. It was “O
Leon, love!” or “O Leon, darling!” or “You exquisite thing!” or
something equally romantic and foolishly sentimental, every step we
took. I was congenially amused at first, particularly because my mind
kept wandering to Jay-Jay and wondering how he, in his
semi-intoxication, was managing my dear twin.
Before the dance was half done, I began to feel acutely uncomfortable. I
began to realize that it’s one thing to have a man whispering sweet
nothings in your ear, but quite another to have another girl do the
whispering even though she doesn’t know you are a girl, too. However, I
fought a good fight and was carrying on like a good trooper when
suddenly the strain was broken by Jay-Jay pouncing unceremoniously upon
us, with Leon trailing in the rear. Both were rather fussed up over the
incident, although Leon appeared to feel that the joke was really on
Jay-Jay. We all laughed over it, but Jay-Jay didn’t think it was so
funny. At first he claimed that he knew it was Leon from the start, but
I could tell from the look on my brother’s face that this was not so—or
rather, that Jay-Jay hadn’t acted as if he knew his dancing partner was
a boy. And incidentally I never did learn just exactly how Jay-Jay
happened to discover his mistake; knowing that he was capable of doing
almost anything when half set, I neglected to ask for specific details
even from my twin brother.
Throughout the remainder of the evening, Jay-Jay took no chances of
being fooled again and even on the way home when there was nothing much
to do but be friendly, he continued to be safely cool and distant—which
suited me well enough, but didn’t have the same effect upon Vyvy and
Leon. I thought the two love birds had had a tiff about something, they
were so chilly, but I soon discovered that Vyvy wasn’t any more certain
than Jay-Jay as to which of us was which. The discovery came when
Jay-Jay suddenly declared, “If I pull off your hat and you’ve got short
hair, you’re not the one I think you are,” and he promptly jerked Leon’s
hat from his head.... That settled that. He turned to me and I couldn’t
very well object to his attentions, as long as they remained mild,
particularly since Leon and Vyvy immediately fell into a clinch that
must have made their hearts beat as one for a couple of seconds at
least.
By the time we reached Wakeham, Jay-Jay’s accumulation of liquor was
getting the better of his head and he ceased to remain mild in his
love-making. I remember distinctly that the change was a terrible shock
to me at the time and resulted in a wrestling match which assumed such
proportions that the chauffeur so far forgot himself as to imitate Lot’s
wife. We weren’t on speaking terms when we reached our house, and I
didn’t hear his apologies (nor any word from him at all) for a fortnight
or more. I was momentarily furious—I couldn’t imagine what the man
expected of a girl like me.
Parties of this sort were a regular feature of the program for a year or
more, but there were other features, also. We attended Bohemian studio
parties which were more usually than not complete washouts from my point
of view and led me to ask Jay-Jay why, with so many well-known and
interesting people on his list of acquaintances, he persisted in messing
himself up by associating with this deluded drivel of humanity. He just
laughed and replied that “variety is still the spice of life—there’s a
time and place for everything, including dizzy artists.”
After one of these garret endurance contests, I told him that he should
have brought Leon instead of me, “because Leon would have reveled in
this stuff.” I had heard so much utter blah about “expressing one’s
soul” that I contemplated resolving never to dance again except on a
ballroom floor. All this divine artistry stuff always has given me
anatomical discomfort and there never was anyone interesting in those
crowds of hairy-jawed winebibbers. They all talked and acted as if they
knew better but preferred to be asinine, and to increase my disgust
Jay-Jay invariably went to such places when he was in a drinking mood,
which meant that I was in for a scrap before we got home.
If there’s one thing I couldn’t relish it was a man forever putting on a
whisky flush, but I refrained from objecting too strenuously, because,
after all, I was only seventeen and I had an idea that perhaps that was
the way you were supposed to act when you’re twenty-seven. I know that I
frequently consoled myself with the thought that if I were a man, just
for a night, I’d go out and deliberately drink Jay-Jay under the table,
or even a chair. I used to imagine how enjoyable such a feat would be,
and also how much good it might have done my gay courtier. I knew it
would do my heart immense good.
You can see that there were at least nine out of ten traits of Jay-Jay’s
character of which I disapproved. He was everything that I didn’t desire
in a man. He was terribly vain. He acted as if, just because his father
was prominent in the show business, he himself was something very
special and deserved respect from everyone. He was neither brilliant nor
exceptional in any way and I doubt if he had ever done a single thing
worth mentioning, except play around with a telephone directory full of
girls. Still he thought the world was his private oyster and that every
girl was receptive.
Of course, you can easily see how he got that way. He was used to having
girls make a lot of him because they thought he could and would help
them to a stage career. However, that phase of the matter meant
absolutely nothing to me. I refused to make a hand-shaker of myself,
even for Art’s sake—which refusal prompted Aunt Elinor to observe, “I
sometimes wonder whether you and Art are really suited, Leona.” And I
replied that the wondering was mutual.
But in spite of all his faults and his damnable self-assurance in regard
to my capitulation (“eventually, why not now”) I continued to play
around with Jay-Jay. With all his shortcomings, he continued to be
ardent and attentive—and a virtue like that naturally takes precedence
in the mind of any girl in my position. As long as he wanted to keep up
the chase, I was willing to be chased. There was a very clear
distinction, according to my precocious maidenly philosophy, between
girls who let themselves be pursued and those who allowed themselves to
be apprehended: the same distinction, I have since learned, exists in
every young girl’s head, with certain slight concessions to individual
circumstances. I was at that age: the age when you think you have living
and loving figured out on a blue print.
My education went forward by leaps and bounds under the guidance of
Jay-Jay and his friends and I must have changed considerably in a very
short time, because Aunt Elinor soon got into the habit of remarking
upon the fact that my language wasn’t all that it should be and that I
used it to express ideas which I certainly never thought up under her
roof. I must admit that Jay-Jay had a broadening influence upon me: he
introduced me to risqué anecdotes and bedroom ballads; I heard all the
conventional off-color jokes that are in existence and a few that were
quite unconventionally original; I became sophisticated in a certain
way, after discovering that when some man tried to tell you that “every
bowlegged girl is pleasure bent” or some other such bit of drivel, he
was not necessarily insulting you by the very act of telling you such
things; I became so wise that I could listen unblushingly to even such a
story as the one about the good wife who assaulted the minister for
saying, “There is no balm in Gilead” and explained her resentment by
declaring, “’Tain’t Gil’s fault nohow. Nuther of us wants brats to
bother with!”
I was still a tomboy at heart but my outlook had changed considerably;
or rather, I had begun to be resigned to the fate of being a girl. I had
the feeling most of the time that I might as well make the best of
it—and Jay-Jay happened to be the best at the moment.
But to show what influence will do to a person: I even harbored hopes of
taking Aunt Elinor on one of our parties for the sole purpose of getting
her plastered—just for something to do that would be different. The
only thing that kept me from doing it was the certainty that if she ever
saw how disgustingly unsteady her “choice” could be, that would be the
end of my affair with Jay-Jay, because her Puritan prudishness would
override any momentary ambitions as a matchmaker.
So I contented myself by getting Jay-Jay to take Leon with us to one of
his studio jamborees. I hoped the twin would drink more than he could
handle. I wanted to see him completely piffed—I figured that if he once
got utterly pickled it might cure him of being so obnoxiously poetic. Of
the two—being pickled or being poetic—I much preferred the briny
state.
But the attic party was a fizzle for me. I didn’t have the pleasure of
seeing Leon take even one too many. Furthermore my disappointment was
increased by the fact that all those imitation artists actually went
wild over Leon’s poetry and the more they praised him the more he read
to them. He didn’t have time to take a drink. It was a terrible evening
for me. I wouldn’t have minded being proud of him, if the facts
warranted it; but how anyone could feel other than ashamed of a brother
who would read the stuff he read—and then boasted of writing—was
beyond me. The only good thing he read to them they immediately
squelched because they said it sounded too conventional, too formalized.
Just because it made sense and was almost rhythmic!... I think my
complete loss of hopes for my dear brother dated from that evening with
those asses of the arts.
Furthermore I was beginning to be depressed again, because Jay-Jay was
not the sort of fellow one could put up with forever. I mean, he was the
kind you either had to submit to or fight with; there could be no happy
medium of friendship for very long. I remember that we went to a
Christmas blow-out in town and the entire party was well ossified, so
naturally Jay-Jay was in his element, the more so because all the people
were of the theater and knew him as his father’s son. That one evening
convinced me that show people are worse handshakers than politicians and
my escort gave me acute shooting pains with his self-satisfied manner.
He simply exuded manly confidence. He looked and acted as if he could
take any girl he wanted, and then on the way home he was deeply grieved
and insulted, not to say dumfounded, because I wouldn’t let him
manhandle me. Said I, “It would take a better man than you, I’m sure.”
To which the simple fool merely said, “Keep on hoping, honey; I’m
improving all the time!”
A week later, at a New Year’s affair, he changed his tactics completely
and made really decent and ardent love to me, just like a movie hero. He
did everything except ask me to marry him. I was so surprised at his
change of attack that I almost forgot myself. But then I remembered that
you have to fight for anything you want to keep and it also occurred to
me to wonder why he never had asked me to marry him.... Thinking it over
afterwards, I concluded that it was his idea that one marries only as a
last resort, after all other attempts have failed.... And I concluded
also that the chief reason he was so eager in pursuit of me lay in the
fact that he was beginning to doubt that he would ever have me. You’d
have thought, with all the women in New York available for him, that he
wouldn’t have bothered with me. But I suspected then, and have since
confirmed my suspicions, that the old wheeze about denial engendering
desire may be a chestnut but at least its kernel is good....
As I said before, my education was going forward in spasms. Not long
after that New Year’s party, he threw caution to the winds, forgot his
new plan of attack and resorted to the well-known cave-man methods. It
was a veritable trial by combat. I wasn’t mad—I just simply knew that I
couldn’t possibly give up anything to him. I wanted to be chased, but
I’d be damned before I’d be caught. When I got home I looked as if I had
been through a wringer, and that devil actually laughed at me and had
the nerve to observe, “Now, I know you’re the real thing, Leona!”... I
stayed awake all night trying to figure out what he meant and I must
admit that it was a year or so before I realized the exact meaning.
However, I was disgusted with him and didn’t care if I never saw him
again. At least I felt that way for several days. Then when I happened
to overhear Leon and Vyvy discussing their future love nest, with Leon
saying that his idea of heaven would be to work hard all day thinking up
beautiful verses to read to a pajamaed Vyvy in bed at night, the whole
business of love and love-making struck me so funny that I could laugh
at my own little difficulties and regain some of my customary
indifference. A few days later when Jay-Jay called again, I let him
apologize—even let him get away with exclaiming, “My God, Leona, you
can’t expect a man to love you forever without any encouragement! Your
devilish coolness is exasperating!”... Well, little children love to
play with fire and no girl ever expects to burn her fingers. I agreed to
go with him once more, if he promised to behave himself.
This party turned out to be more or less interesting, although Jay-Jay
didn’t keep his promise and most of the crowd were washouts. But there
was a Canadian war veteran there who had just returned from France where
he served with an aviation unit. It was thrilling to listen to his
descriptions of the War. He couldn’t dance because of a game leg, so I
gladly did my bit by sitting out with him and letting him talk. He
positively stirred me all up inside and I think that if we had been
alone somewhere, I would have fallen into his arms. That’s how he
affected me—which was mighty strange, considering how I felt toward
other men. This chap seemed different somehow—like a real he-man in
comparison with such papier-mâché imitations as Jay-Jay and Leon and
others of my acquaintance. However, the impulse was but momentary and my
heart only pounded for a few minutes; during which I felt more panicky
than thrilled.
That man left an indelible impression on my mind. I went home that night
disgusted with Jay-Jay and disgusted with Leon. Jay-Jay said that if the
United States went into the War, he’d be glad he could help his father
run the show business (in which case there would have been a deluge of
rotten shows on Broadway) and Leon suffered the tortures of hell every
time the World War was mentioned. They both seemed like worms to me. I
couldn’t understand their attitude at all. And I once more cried out
against the fate which had made me a girl instead of a boy. I sent up
prayer after prayer and called on the Lord to do something about it all.
It seemed to me that if Leon were more of a man I would automatically
become more of a girl and I told the Lord as much, but I also suggested
that if he couldn’t do anything about Leon he could at least make
something happen that would give me a chance to break out and get a
little of the adventurous poison out of my system.
Well, all of a sudden it appeared that a couple of Yankees had finally
got into Heaven: my prayers were answered!