XI

Jean meant to probe the mystery at the first possible moment, but her

resolve weakened in Amy's presence. If the girl's light-heartedness

did not of itself quiet suspicion, it at least disarmed it, while

her unselfish joy at Jean's release from the thraldom of Meyer &

Schwarzschild alone made the questions Jean had thought to put seem

churlish and ungrateful. Moreover, Amy was full of a plan for the

evening.

"I knew it was coming," she exulted. "Anybody with a pair of eyes could

see by the way he's picked you out to talk to every night that you've

got him going. He came to me first to ask if I thought you'd come, and

when I accepted for both, he hustled right out to get the tickets."

"What tickets?" She did not ask who was the purchaser; she, too, had

eyes.

"Tickets for the theatre--a vaudeville show."

Jean's face lit.

"Vaudeville! I've often wondered what it was like."

"You're not telling me you've never seen a vaudeville show?"

"Never. Nothing worth seeing ever came to Shawnee Springs. Ought we to

go?"

"Do you mean, is it respectable? Sure! One of the best in the city."

"I don't mean that. Ought we to go in this way? I don't know him."

"Well, I do," rejoined Amy, decisively; "and if there's a nicer fellow

between High Bridge and the Battery, I'll miss my guess. Of course,

if you want to scare up a headache and back out, why, you can. I'm

going, anyway, and I reckon the extra ticket won't go a-begging. The

stenographer or the manicure would jump at the chance."

"Would he be offended?"

"Awfully. Why, he only asked me because he wanted you! Next time it

will be you alone."

Jean needed little coaxing. She wanted exceedingly to see a New

York theater, and she really liked the breezy young dentist. It had

surprised her in their evening talks to find how much they had in

common. He, too, had spent his youth in a country town, and, though

he had migrated first to a smaller city to study for his profession,

his early impressions of New York coincided very closely with her own.

She later discovered the same community of interest with nearly every

one so reared, but it now chanced that none other of Mrs. St. Aubyn's

boarders--or, as she preferred to call them, guests--were country-bred,

and Paul Bartlett got the credit of a readier sympathy accordingly.

Thus, to-night, he did not share Amy's rather too frequently expressed

wonder that Jean had never witnessed a vaudeville performance.

"Never saw anything nearer to it than a minstrel show myself, up to the

time I went away to dental college," he confessed frankly, as they set

out. "We only got 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and 'East Lynne' troupes in our

burg. Say, but they were a rocky aggregation! I could see that even

then."

This also struck Jean as a notable coincidence.

"It seems as if you were describing the Springs," she said. "But we did

get a circus or two."

"Then your town beat mine," Paul laughed. "We had to jog over to the

county seat for Barnum's. Otherwise they seem to have been cut off the

same piece of homespun. I'll bet you even had box socials?"

Jean's face suddenly lost its animation.

"Yes," she answered.

"Just about the limit, weren't they? I wonder Newport doesn't take 'em

up. They're foolish enough. Yet I thought they were great sport once.

I used to try to change the boxes when I suspected that some love-sick

pair were scheming to beat the game. Maybe you've done that, too?"

"Yes," Jean assented again unsteadily.

She was infuriated with herself for her involuntary change of manner

and burning face, neither of which, she feared, had escaped his quick

eye. It galled her thoroughgoing honesty to be forever on her guard

against disclosing her refuge history, yet there seemed no help for

it. Unjust though it was, the stigma was as actual for her as for the

guiltiest, and cloak it she must.

If the dentist noticed anything amiss, he was tactful and launched into

an exchange of nonsense with Amy which lasted quite to the theater's

garish door. Once within, Jean forgot that she had a past which might

not be fearlessly bared for any eye. Amy squeezed her arm happily as

they passed directly into the body of the house instead of mounting

the stairs familiar to her feet when she paid her own way; and to the

squeeze she added a look of transport and awe when, following the

usher, they skirted the orchestra and entered a narrow passage near the

stage.

"We've got _box_ seats!" she whispered huskily. "They couldn't have

cost him less than a dollar apiece!"

Jean had a moment of timidity begotten of a vivid recollection of

two cramped pigeon-roosts, always untenanted, which flanked the

advertisement-littered drop-curtain of the Shawnee Springs Grand Opera

House, but was speedily reassured to find that she need endure no such

lonely distinction here. These boxes were many, and they held many,

their own being shared by half a dozen persons besides themselves,

while the hangings were so disposed that she could be as secluded as

she pleased, yet miss nothing of the play.

The play! It was a series of plays, with endless other wonderful

things, too. Nothing that she had conceived resembled this

ever-shifting spectacle of laughter and tears. For there were

tears--real ones! Jean had often jeered at girls who cried over

novels, while those whom a play, or at least the Shawnee Springs brand

of drama, could move to tears, were even less comprehensible; yet

to-night, when a simple little piece dealing merely with an unhappy man

and wife who, resolved to go their separate ways, callously divided

their poor belongings until they reached a dead baby's shoes, ran its

course, she found her breath short and her cheeks wet. She was at

first rather ashamed of this weakness, attributing it to her refuge

nerves, but she presently heard Amy sob, and, looking round, perceived

handkerchiefs fluttering throughout the darkened house. Paul, on her

other side, hemmed once or twice, and she supposed him disgusted with

all this ado over a baby who never existed, but when the lights went up

suddenly she discovered that his eyes were moist, too.

She liked this trait in Paul. She was glad, furthermore, that he

did not scoff afterward, as did some men whom the acting had moved.

It seemed to her a wholesome sign that he had the courage of his

sympathies; one could probably rely upon that type of man. His mental

alertness also impressed her anew. For him none of the quips of the

Irish or German comedians were recondite, and he could explain in a

nutshell the most bewildering feats of the Japanese adepts at sleight

of hand. She wondered not a little at this special knowledge, and when

they left the theatre he told her that it had been his chief boyish

ambition to become a magician.

"I drummed up subscriptions, collected bones, old iron, and rubber

for the tinman, peddled anything under the canopy that folks would

buy, all for the sake of a little cash to get books and apparatus," he

confessed. "Once, when I was about smart sixteen, I gave an exhibition,

part magic lantern, part magic tommyrot. I hired the village hall, mind

you. What cheek I had those days!"

Jean was keenly interested. This, too, reminded her of the Springs and

her own irrevocable playtime.

"Did people turn out?" she asked.

"Did they! I cleared twelve dollars."

"My!" jeered Amy. "I suppose you bought an automobile?"

"No; they hadn't been invented yet." He turned again to Jean. "Guess

what I did buy!"

"More apparatus."

"Just as quick as I could get a money-order," he laughed. "You're

something of a wizard yourself. You must have been a boy once upon a

time."

"Yes," said Jean; "I was."

When they reached the street Paul suggested oysters, and after a faint

demurrer from Jean, which a secret pinch from Amy abruptly quenched, he

led the way to a restaurant. The establishment he chose had a German

name, and was fitted up in a manner which Jean took to be German also.

The chairs and tables were of a heavy medieval design, and matched

the high paneling which surrounded the room and terminated in a shelf

bearing a curious array of mugs and flagons. From a small dais in one

corner an orchestra, made up of a zither, two mandolins, and a guitar,

discoursed a wiry yet not unpleasant music which seemed, on the whole,

less Teuton than American, of a most unclassical bounce and joyousness.

Paul apologized for this flaw in an otherwise harmonious scheme,

explaining that the American patrons outnumbered the German, but Amy

patriotically declared that ragtime was better than foreign music any

day, and pronounced the entire place as cute as it could be, which

really left nothing else to be said.

Everybody was drinking beer with his food, or, speaking more

accurately, eating a little food with his beer, and Paul ordered two or

three bottles of the exceedingly dark variety most in vogue, which he

and Amy consumed. Amy rallied Jean upon her abstinence, and asked if

she had signed the pledge; but Paul seemed to respect her scruples.

"Felt the same way myself once," he said. "Whenever the good old

scandal specialists up our way saw a fellow slide into the hotel on a

hot day for a glass of lager, they thought he was piking straight for

the eternal bonfire. Naturally the boys punished a lot of stuff they

didn't want, just to live up to their reputations. It's some different

down here."

"I should say so," agreed Amy, boisterously. "Why, my stepfather began

to send me out for beer almost as soon as I could walk. The idea of its

hurting anybody! I don't believe I'd feel it if I drank a keg."

Paul did not seem as impressed by this statement as were an

after-theater party at an adjoining table, and embraced a quiet

opportunity to move an unfinished bottle out of her enthusiastic

reach. Jean glowed under the scrutiny of the supper-party opposite,

and, exchanging a look with Paul, rose presently to go. Amy objected

eloquently, pointing out that it still wanted half an hour of midnight

and that department stores did no business Sundays, together with

sundry arguments as trenchant, which plainly carried weight with the

attentive tables roundabout, but failed to convince her companions.

Near the door she fell in with an unexpected ally in the person of Mr.

Rose, who listened to her protests quite as sympathetically as if they

had not already reached him across the room, and promptly invited them

all to what he termed a nightcap with himself. Jean declined civilly,

and Amy, though sore tempted, followed her example. Once outside,

however, she asserted her perfect independence by walking off with Mr.

Rose on his remarking easily that he would stroll their way.

"Aching incisors!" ejaculated the dentist, grimly watching them forge

ahead. "Where did I get the foolish idea that I was her escort? Who is

that flower, anyhow?"

"An employee in our store."

"Oh!" said Paul. "Clerk?"

"No; a floor-walker."

"Oh!" he said again, with a change of intonation which Jean detected.

"In her department?"

"No; in mine."

"Oh!"

Amy's laugh came back shrilly through the now sparsely frequented

street.

"I shouldn't have ordered so much beer," admitted the man. "It was too

heavy for her, even if her stepfather--but let's cut that out!"

Jean herself thought that this passage from the Jeffries family history

might better be left undiscussed. She quickened their pace till they

were close upon Amy's too buoyant heels, and so continued to their door.

Amy was full of regrets that she could not at this hour with propriety

ask Mr. Rose into Mrs. St. Aubyn's drawing-room, and as Paul

inhospitably neglected to offer his quarters, the floor-walker, with

unflagging cordiality and self-possession, took himself off.

"I don't cotton to Mr. Rose," said the dentist, in a voice too low for

Amy, who was already mounting the stairs. "I hope you don't."

"I don't know him."

"You don't want to know him, take my word for it. This isn't sour

grapes because he butted in, mind you. If you knew the city, I wouldn't

say a word."

Jean bent a frank gaze upon him under the dim hall light. Paul met it

to her satisfaction.

"Thank you for to-night," she said, giving him her hand. "Thank you for

all of it; for the theater and the supper and for--this."

Explanations with Amy were impossible now, but the following morning,

which the girls spent luxuriously in bed, proved auspicious. Amy's

waking mood was contrite. She owned of her own engaging accord that

she had made a goose of herself in the restaurant, suggesting by way

of defence that her stepfather must have favored quite another kind of

beer. She as frankly conceded that the Rose episode was indefensible,

and promised ample apologies to the dentist.

"He'll understand how it was," she said. "Paul's not a Jake Meyer."

"Will Mr. Rose understand?" asked Jean, pointedly.

Amy shot her a sidelong glance.

"Why not?"

"He's not--well, a Paul Bartlett."

"He isn't a Jake Meyer, either, if that's what you mean," retorted Amy,

rising on her elbow. "I like Rosey and make no bones of telling you.

What have you got at the back of your big brown eyes there? Somebody

has been stuffing you, I guess. Was it some kind friend at Meyer &

Schwarzschild's? What did they say about Rosey and me?"

"Nothing," answered Jean, suspicious of her warmth; but now told her

plainly whom and what they had mentioned.

Amy listened without surprise.

"There was bound to be some gossip," she commented, at length. "I

counted on it."

"You counted on it!"

"Certainly. Jake knew the buyer's record from A to Z, and there were

others."

Jean had a moment's giddiness, and shrank from her explorations.

"Did you?" she faltered.

"Of course. Do you suppose I couldn't read him like a book after all

I've been through?"

"Yet you went just the same! You--"

"I trusted to luck, and for once luck was with me. He had a big offer

from a Chicago firm, and left town the very day I went into the cloak

department. Oh, you needn't stare," she added, with a touch of passion.

"The world hasn't been any too kind to me, and I'm learning to beat it

at its own selfish game. Don't let it worry you."

"I can't help it."

"Then you're silly. I'm not as soft as I look. Besides, you'll find

yourself pretty busy paddling your own canoe."

Jean fell into a brooding silence. The new life was incredibly complex.

It held possibilities before which imagination flinched. A picture,

recalled again and again with extraordinary vividness, flashed once

more before her. She saw a camp among birches bordering a pellucid

lake; a boyish, pacing figure; a straightforward, troubled face

confronting her own. She evoked a voice, "To be a stranger in New

York, homeless, friendless, without work, the shadow of that place

over there dogging your steps...." Every syllable, every intonation,

was ineffaceable. Where was he now, that flawless young knight of the

enchanted forest, who had stayed her folly and changed the current of

her life? He had promised to befriend her when, against his counsel,

she had thought to dare this unknown world. Would he still have faith,

should they meet?

Amy's laugh caught her back to the room of three dormers.

"You looked a million miles away," she said. "If you were another sort

of girl, I'd say you were dreaming of your best fellow. What! Blushes!

Then you were? Was it Paul?"

"Paul!" Jean repelled the suggestion with a pillow. "Take that!"

They said no more of the buyer--he was luckily out of the reckoning;

and although Jean deemed the dentist a wiser judge of men in general,

and of floor-walkers in particular, than Amy, she decided for the

present to side with neither, but try to weigh Mr. Rose for herself. If

Amy was skimming thin ice, she was at least a practiced skater, with

the chastening memory of a serious splash. Moreover, to recur to Amy's

metaphor, she had a canoe of her own to paddle, as she was roughly

reminded that same afternoon.