where no one is standing.”
Drewena saw the painful expression on her face and nodded agreement,
sitting down with her for a moment.
“Is Martin coming to-night?” asked Roberta nervously.
“Why, yes,” said Drewena. “That is, I think so. I sent him a note, urging
him to be here. I have such a pretty name for him.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” answered Roberta, a little absently, tapping her
silver slipper against the side of her chair. “Is Rio coming?”
“Indeed not,” said Drewena, amazed at the question. “Ask that man up?—I
should say not!”
“‘Man’—my petticoat!” observed Roberta. “What’s the matter with you,
Drewena? _That_ one is dashed for fair! Her hard-boiled act doesn’t fool
me a bit. She’s a damned _poseur_ and as full of bitchery as——”
“Stop shaking,” broke in Drewena. “For heaven’s sake! All the cats are
beginning to gossip about the way you’re acting. See old Docky talking
with her hand over her mouth? She knows perfectly well that I can read
lips. If she hadn’t been a splendid surgeon in her day and attended my
father years ago, I should never have invited her.”
And Docky was saying to the more elderly group clustered around her at
this moment, “It’s shameful the way Roberta monopolizes Drewena’s time.
In a way though, one can’t blame her. For dearies, Roberta hasn’t long
to be a queen at the rate _she’s_ going!” Docky pulled her shawl more
tightly about her neck.
“What _is_ wrong with her, Docky?” asked one rather vapid, sweet-faced
auntie. “Is she sick?”
At this, Docky raised her lorgnette and looked at the speaker, a quiver
of amusement lacing her cheeks back and forth until it seemed they would
have met if her nose hadn’t kept them apart.
“Precious!” She lifted her hand. Enormous jewels sparkled and flickered
on every finger. “_I_ wouldn’t know. I haven’t been out with her since
she was a child—ah!” Docky breathed. “Those halcyon days!”
Back in the corner Drewena sighed.
“If you won’t, you won’t, Roberta; but it looks like intrigue, and I hate
intrigue. You’re positive you won’t give even a short number? I wish
you’d read one of your own lovely poems. You did, last year, and they’ll
expect it. Of course, if you won’t, I’ll send Carrie over to keep you
company during the program.”
“Not unless you want a murder at your drag,” said Roberta in such a
menacing voice that Drewena started, then watched her guest for a
moment until the fire was out of Roberta’s eyes, and some of the hatred
expressed on her face had dissipated.
“Roberta,” she said at last, “if you are ill, you should go home. It
would be doing both of us a kindness.”
“I’m not sick,” said Roberta evenly.
“Why do you hate Carrie so much?” persisted Drewena.
“Don’t talk like that,” said Roberta, in despair. “It’s just that she
_thinks_ of Martin. She thinks of him in a terrible way. Please don’t
question me further.” Roberta opened her compact, studied herself in the
tiny mirror and powdered her face lightly, smoothing away the lines from
her forehead and looking with detachment at the shadows under her eyes.
Drewena took her hand for an instant and held it tightly before she left.
But as she walked toward the punchbowl with its merry company, there was
an intimate, definite foreboding and a striking glance of prescience from
her heavy-lidded eyes. Her appearance was so exotic, so provocative, that
when Kate offered her a drink, she wanted to offer her a kiss as well.
The widows around Docky, however, were still discussing Roberta.
“Look at her,” said Daisy, the pretty one. “Holding her jaws down at the
side in that manner. If I were half so pretty as she, I wouldn’t hide in
the corner like that.”
“I’ll _bet_ you wouldn’t,” yawned Docky, grasping her upper plate, as she
had a horror of swallowing it.
Again Patsy’s high voice rang out, this time against the music of the
orchestra.
“Miss Devaud,” she bawled.
Drewena’s face grew whiter as she went gracefully but swiftly to the
arch-like entrance to greet the new arrival, whose perfect casting—the
unusual make-up against the wheat-colored hair, against the long, pale
yellow dress, against the turquoise of her eyes, and the strong, uneven
modeling of her features brought the hostess to a stop before she reached
her guest.
“Beautiful Miriam,” she whispered.
Miriam contemplated Drewena without expression, though enjoying her
beauty far more than she liked to admit. While Drewena was thinking in
confusion how and where to get her friend alone—away from the others who
would spoil her with their eyes—yes, with their thoughts, as Roberta had
said. If she, Drewena, could only touch her once—could only hold her....
So taking her guest by the hand, she quickly pulled her back into the
hall.
“Come upstairs for a moment, Miriam,” she whispered hoarsely. “You must
have earrings to make you perfect. I have some of jet that will make you
lovelier than ever!” They ascended the wide spiral staircase.
Carrie ran after them. On the bottom step she paused. As they disappeared
around a bend in the stairs, Carrie clung tightly to the newel post.
Then turning, her eyes wide, she stepped down and hurried to Beulah.
Roberta, sitting in her corner, saw all this, and the rapidity with
which she changed coloring caused old Docky to chuckle something about
adrenalin. But Roberta was really acting strangely. She seemed ready
to leave her chair, then at intervals would pull something halfway out
of her muff. Docky could not quite see, for Roberta covered the object
cleverly. Each movement, however, was hesitant, until finally, with a
certain air of fatalism, Roberta settled down in a rigid posture which
she maintained for some time.
Upstairs, Drewena opened a door beyond the staircase, and led Miriam
out on the terrace. Saturn was in conjunction with the frozen moon.
Midway between the zenith and the horizon, the moon, as if by some
prearrangement lightened Drewena’s white face until her beauty would have
been nebulous had she not been pressed so closely to her friend. Miriam’s
face, however, had caught the amber tone of the planet, and her cheeks
seemed flushed as though by moonburn. Drewena pulled her inside again and
sat beside her on the bed. She turned out the indirect lights and lay
down, her head on Miriam’s lap. The moon shone upon them brightly.
“Miriam,” she said, “is that a halo around your head, dearest?”
“It’s the moon in the fuzz of my wig,” answered Miriam seriously.
Drewena sighed. “How I wish,” she said, “that we could have stayed out on
the terrace!—Perhaps we can come up here after the guests have gone....
This bed is so deep and wide, we’ll cool off quickly.... And to-morrow
we can go to a little cottage I have up on the coast near Cape Cod....
We’ll listen to the wind—and there’ll be snow, and the surf breaking
on the rocks under our doorstep.... You’ll carry a lamp to help me to
my bed. I want to be dependent on you—oh! you understand!” Drewena put
her gentle hands on Miriam’s cheeks. “They’re hot, Miriam. Perhaps you
are excited, too—perhaps I won’t have to go away as I told Tai! He’s my
little protegé! I’ll send him to France with his tutor.... My dearest,
tell me that I needn’t go!”
Miriam petted her gently and explained quite simply that of course
she didn’t have to leave; but when that was said, she kept repeating,
“Go!—go!—go!—” continuing to blend the words until they became
untranslatable.
Drewena looked at her in astonishment.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Those words—they have a cadence that
makes me feel insane—Please don’t talk like that!... Dear God!—All I ask
is that you bear with me. I’d never cheat Deane. It’s on a different
plane. Quite different. Kiss my lips, Miriam—I’m tired—so tired.”
“Aye,” said Miriam gently, “that I _can_ do! For you’re as sweet a little
maiden as I’ve ever seen, lying so in the moonlight.” And bending over,
she pressed her lips upon Drewena’s. The white-tinted hair fell over
her shoulders and Drewena shuddered as Deane had shuddered. There was no
distaste, for Drewena lay quietly now in Miriam’s arms, only a slight,
convulsive movement betraying her passion. Then Miriam sat up and leaned
away as though into the moon; for a feeling had come over her during that
kiss that she could not interpret. It was a half sick, half desirous mood
of great intensity. And so, unaccustomed to tempering her emotions, she
threw Drewena back upon the bed and held her tightly, her mouth pressing
on her throat. Drewena did not resist until the desire had grown and
Miriam groped blindly. Then quickly Drewena struggled away and as quickly
turned on the lamps.
“Not now,” she laughed, a splendid light in her eyes. “Later—after the
party. Oh,” she exclaimed, bending toward her friend, “it’s the heaven
I thought I’d never find—the soul, the mind, the body.... But now, we
must hurry and touch ourselves up.” And she hung the long, jet pendants
from Miriam’s ears. So the gowns were smoothed out, the hair recombed and
pinned, the make-up applied anew.
When at last they entered the drawing room there was only the faintest
buzzing of interest among the more intrepid of the gossipers. Even this
ceased as Drewena, her arm linked closely in Miriam’s, stopped at various
groups to introduce her friend. Docky stopped chattering just long enough
to size up Miriam’s figure.
“Miriam, my dear,” she said at once, “if I’d known _you_ were coming,
I’d have worn my new gown of cardinal red. To think!—you see me in
the faded splendor of this musty blue! You must come and chat with us
this evening.” She looked at Miriam intently and pulled her shawl even
tighter. Then she smiled, a good deal of understanding and more than
that, compassion, expressed in her face. When Drewena took Miriam with
her to the punchbowl, Beulah turned on Docky in a fury.
“Only past sixty, and you’re back to childhood! I could scratch your eyes
out! Miriam is simply lovely, and now you’ve driven her away!”
“There, there,” Docky said, in her best professional tone. “It’s just as
well—Drewena loves him.”
“‘Him’?” screeched Daisy, fascinated.
“Don’t get so excited, Daisy. Remember your blood pressure,” said Docky
calmly. “Of course, ‘him’! The boy’s as jam as the preserves you used to
steal off your mother’s shelf!”
“Absurd!” said Beulah. “She has a _grand_ dash!”
“On the edge, dearie, but he’s never fallen off, and I doubt if he ever
will. The habit pattern has unfortunately fixated him for women. Ah!—if I
could have had him to mold some years ago!”
“_‘Jam’!_” cried Daisy once more, her hands to her ears.
Docky pushed back the wisps of gray hair from her forehead and took out
her left eye, wiping it carefully.
“Mercy!” said Beulah. “_Must_ you do that in company?” She tossed her
head angrily. “And don’t tell us how you lost your real one at Ypres!
There!” She pointed swiftly toward the punchbowl. “I _knew_ it! Kate is
trying to snitch Miriam from Drewena!”
“Common!” said the same sepulchral voice that had uttered this word
before.
Everyone turned around to see who had repeated it, but there was no one
in sight. Docky chuckled.
Kate was speaking vivaciously to Miriam until she caught Drewena’s eye,
whereupon she merely shrugged her strong bare shoulders and turned
petulantly away. The moment of ensuing silence was broken by Patsy’s
high-pitched tremulo, which seemed to be growing weaker.
“Miss Murphy!” she shouted feebly.
Miss Murphy did not wait for Drewena’s welcome. She flew into the room
in a state of deshabille, her black lace dress torn slightly on the
shoulder, her corsage of gardenias darkening around the edges as though
they had been crushed in a heavy fist.
“Oh, my God!” she said, breathing heavily as Drewena comforted her.
Kate stole a glance at Miriam and whispered, “Doing the taxis again!”
Then she took a glass to the newcomer.
“Drink this, Sophie,” she began, when the other turned on her, stamping
her foot and pulling the torn lace back over her shoulder.
“Don’t you _dare_ offer me any of that sickening, frothy slop!” she
cried. “I want a straight one, or I’ll just _die_!”
Kate lifted the glass and drained it.
“‘It was good enough for mother, and it’s good enough for me,’” she
quoted sweetly. But Drewena called for a glassful of whisky and handed it
to Sophie who began to drink it greedily.
Docky had her hand over her mouth again and was leaning toward Beulah.
“Don’t look now,” she said. “Sophie’s watching us like _mad_. I’ll bet
she thinks we’re dishing her.”
“Well, dearie,” said Beulah, her hand covering her lips also, “she’s
right. But I won’t smile, and don’t you _dare_ look now.”
But Docky went on, the rest of the group straining toward her, for no one
could dish like Docky.
“My God, Beulah,” she said, “they speak of _courage_ in history. But she
has a _nerve_ to come here in _that_ lace!”
“‘Lace’!” Beulah appeared shocked. “She bought that netting at the ten
cent store to cover her trade with, when she gets that Cleopatrine
feeling! No _wonder_ all the cab drivers around Pennsylvania Station are
looking tired these days!”
“Shish!” said Docky. “Look now, dearie. She’s terrible from the front. Do
you notice her fallen chest?... And what do you think of the back? And
oh!—what ugly hands! I’m sure those hands have snitched many pieces of
silver in _her_ time!”
“I don’t care how much silver she has snitched,” said Beulah, “but I _do_
hope she’ll keep her dirty mitts off Miriam. Really, Docky, you don’t
honestly believe that Miriam might be jam, now do you?”
Docky leaned over and spoke into Beulah’s ear.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I’m really sure. I really shouldn’t have told
you, but since you have thrown so much my way in the past——”
“Christ!” said Daisy, fidgeting with her lavaliere. “Sophie really makes
me ill. She always looks as though she’s straight from the washtub.”
“True,” said Docky, “from the shanty on the other side of the tracks.
It’s a shame for her to have money, with me dodging creditors like _mad_!
Look at her trying to be elegant, wiping her nose with her soft, raggy
wrist—and dearie, her nose isn’t running from a cold. _That_ one’s been
broken down for years and years. Old saddley ass! She looks as though she
had three pillows in her rear!”
“It _is_ indecent,” agreed Beulah. “And she doesn’t have fallen arches
for nothing. She’s been cruising _most_ of her life.”
“That she has!” said Docky. “My God!” Docky leaned forward excitedly.
“She’s picking up her skirts! Do you see those varicose veins on her leg?
They stand out like the knots on a pinetree!”
Drewena was now urging Sophie to give the first “number” of the evening.
But Sophie, partly drunk from her brief, but thrilling escapade with the
cab driver, kept showing a bruise on her shoulder.
“It hit me! The person really hit me! It was all over that cage I brought
for my number. Will you have Patsy bring me the cage I left with her?
I’ll be in the powder room.”
When she had gone, Drewena explained to Miriam that each guest always
gave a little act.
Miriam was thunderstruck.
“I don’t know anything to do. It’s impossible for me.”
“Just anything,” said Drewena, with composure. “It doesn’t have to be
much.”
Miriam thought a moment, observing the heavy beam above her, the high
ceiling and the shadows.
“Was that Tai whom I saw peeping out into the hall a moment ago? The
child looked Indo-Chinese. If you’d lend him to me....”
“I can’t risk the child,” said Drewena slowly. “His father nursed me. And
next to you, Miriam, I love him better than anyone but Deane.” Drewena
gave a queer smile. “_She_ has a portion of the roundtable of my mind
that no one, not even you, my dearest, can fathom.”
“I won’t hurt the child,” said Miriam earnestly. “He’ll think it’s a lot
of fun. You can see what I’ll do!”
“It isn’t that,” said Drewena, flushing. Then, “All right. Tai is yours
for the trick. What else do you need?”
“A man with powerful shoulders, and a rope,” said Miriam. “And have the
orchestra play loudly while I work.”
Suddenly Drewena laughed.
“Oh, you are really good!—I see it now. You’ve always just pretended to
be an impossible person. I believe you’d cry easily.”
“Yes, I cry very easily,” Miriam agreed.
“Have you seen Roberta?” asked Drewena suddenly. “She was asking about
you.”
“You mean Roberts? No, I haven’t.”
“Well, she’s in a corner, pouting about something. It’s either you, or
Carrie—perhaps even myself. She is in a terrible mood to-night. Please
don’t have a scene with her. And please, Miriam, remember, this _is_ a
drag. I don’t care how masculine they may seem to you,—call them by their
feminine names, or address them impersonally as ‘she.’ Do you see Beulah
over there in her lavender gown?... He was thirty-nine and three times
married before he recognized himself for what he was. Being a flexible
character, he slipped quite naturally into his present rôle—that of a
tight-fisted, gossipy old dowager, but behind the intermittent lechery
of his old and experienced eyes he is a strong man and a gentleman. No
one in the everyday world even suspects. They’ve marked him down, in
fact, as a devil with the ladies. Kate is a harsher type. He married
one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She bore him a lovely
boy. Then one day, Kate became irritated over a trifle and threw his
wife across the room. Fortunately, she was not injured; but he went into
a ‘break’ or nervous explosion. From that, into a depressive state and
out of it in a wild hysteria. Then came his first love—his consulting
psychiatrist.... The pattern was woven swiftly enough—and Kate, too,
slipped into her niche, not so pleasant a one as Beulah’s, who takes them
as she finds them. Kate is now searching desperately. You will not?—”
Drewena hesitated. “Forgive me, Miriam. And now, let us visit Roberta.
Please give her a smile and I know she will feel better. We must hurry.
Sophie will soon be ready for her act, and you must prepare your magic.”
They walked across the floor, both sated—one by boredom, the other by
necessity. When they approached Roberta, she stood up, one hand touching
the pearls at her throat, the other holding her muff.
“Drewena,” she said quietly, with slow sarcasm, “it would be a pleasure
to meet your friend. She is very pretty in yellow. Did Carrie make the
dress?” Roberta’s lip curled. Once more her hand moved convulsively in
her muff.
Without a word Miriam stepped up close and running her fingers down
Roberta’s arm, slipped her own hand well inside the tiny fur. Roberta
shook her off; but Miriam, now looking at her friend as though intrigued,
said slowly, “Perhaps you’d like another cocktail, Roberta. It will warm
you. Your hands are like ice.”
Drewena looked on, but finding the scene too difficult to interpret,
shook her head sadly, murmured something about the program and led Miriam
away.
Roberta, still brooding, was left alone in her corner.
Standing by the piano, Drewena clapped her hands and the crowd grew quiet.
“First,” she said, “since Sophie is not ready, I’ll ask Daisy, who has
come in her perennial form of the ‘Prairie Flower’ to sing for us.”
Docky sniffed and whispered to Beulah, “Look at her! She doesn’t even
have to make up for the part! My dear, do I _have_ to listen to that
miserable dentist do her wild flower act again? It’s just been repeated
and repeated till I could simply scream! Imagine, trying to carry on at
_her_ age when we _all_ know she’s well into the menopause!”
Daisy, however, tripped across the floor, her black taffeta dress
flouncing around her wide hips. After bowing to the somewhat bored and
suffering crowd, she put her hands to her shoulders and bent her knees.
In a stringy voice she sang—
“I’m a little Prairie Flower
Growing wilder every hour!
No one here to care about me—
I’m as wild as wild can be!”
Then she put one hand on the top of her head, and the other on her hip.
Jigging up and down to the music of the piano, she began to rotate on
her toes. The frayed voice continued—
“I’m a little patchwork quilt
All my edges trimmed in gilt!
No one here to cuddle with me—
I’m as cuddly as can be!”
There was loud, determined clapping, and Daisy ran off the floor, her
face suffused with blushes.
“Perfectly grand, dear,” said one of the guests. “So much sweeter than
the _first_ time you gave it.”
“_That_ won’t last,” said Beulah, looking at Daisy who had returned to
the room and was holding someone’s hand, obviously searching the face of
her friend for signs of approval. “It won’t last—I’ve been all through
it.”
In the alcove, six musicians wearing short red skirts, white blouses,
white silk stockings and red sandals, were holding their instruments in
readiness. They were camping among themselves, though the one with the
clarinet looked just a trifle uncomfortable. Drewena asked them to play
a slow drag and they began “Mood Indigo,” the harpsichordist tapping
her red sandal on the side of her chair, each musician looking oddly
like his instrument. Drewena favored a tempered arrangement of popular
music in the modern idiom. For a simplified expression of this type of
instrumentation she had chosen the curious grouping of harpsichord,
vibraphone, harp, bassoon, clarinet and drums. She felt that any brass,
even muted, would destroy the exotic, passionate tenor of the music
achieved by the combination of strings and reeds (the drums having been
modulated by casings) and affected also by the arranger, who had found
the predominant oriental theme from listening to Drewena herself at the
piano.
Some of the dancers walked idly, in as slow a tempo as possible. Others,
however, flew around the floor in a febrile reaction to the sometimes
sweet, sometimes wild expression of the orchestra. Carrie’s popularity
was noticeable. She flew from partner to partner. But her dancing was a
little heavy, and her large, moist eyes followed Miriam.
Drewena held on to Miriam tightly, preferring to be led.
“Your arm is like a rock, Miriam,” she whispered.
This winter idyll was drenched in an arbor of delicate flowers that
grew from the basketball scents of the dancers. A cloth seemed to cover
Miriam’s eyes; but as she opened them, it was Drewena’s white-tinted
hair that confused her. The soft waves and ringlets covered Miriam’s
arm and the paths that had intrigued her so long were now undivided.
Nevertheless, as she breathed of Drewena’s cheek, that which had been
unrevealed before came swiftly in an explicable panic. She stopped in the
middle of the floor. Her mouth was dry.
“I’d better prepare for my act,” she said quite suddenly.
Without a word Drewena broke from her, and Miriam followed her quick
steps through the archway.
“How irresponsible you are to-night, my Miriam,” she breathed, a grave
smile darkening her eyes. Then she called Tai.
The child ran into the powder room and bowed reverently before her.
“You will obey my friend for a trick,” she said. “It will not take long.”
She placed her hand for a second on his shoulder before she left.
“It will be fun, Tai,” said Miriam, noting the child’s frightened look.
Tai bowed again.
“I shall do as you bid, mistress,” he whispered, his piquant face quite
solemn.
Just then a footman entered with a good hemp rope. Miriam rapidly
explained the routine of the act, asked the man if his shoulders were
strong, gave a simple instruction to Tai, finishing just as the orchestra
ceased. The second number was being announced as she returned to the
drawing room.
Someone screamed very faintly and Docky looked at Beulah; for, radiant
with smiles and dressed in long white tights, Sophie posed in the
doorway, a wild-looking pigeon in her hand. She began to pivot slowly.
Docky raised her scented handkerchief to her nose.
“_Pee-yoo!_” she said softly. “Here comes the pigeon-woman! She’s gone
pervert on us!”
“Yes,” agreed Beulah, and began to hum. “‘_We’re camping to-night on the
old campground._’”
A person near them who was dressed in a hoopskirt made in the shape of
a bell, stood up, the bell chiming once, twice, before she adjusted her
bodice.
“Your clapper rings indiscriminately,” said Beulah, in a mild tone.
“It is rusty from lack of use, my sweet,” replied Angela, who was an
undertaker.
“It is atrophied,” said Docky. “But let’s watch the dance.”