"But I can't," Joan protested. "I'm sorry--I'd love to--but I've got
nothing fit to wear."
"You look pretty good to me as you stand," returned Quard. "Forget it,
kid, and kick in."
"That's right," Maizie insisted. "Besides, I'll lend you a hat and a
fresh fichu; you don't need any coat tonight, it's too rotten warm."
"Anyway," Quard said over his shoulder as he left the room, "we ain't
booked for Sherry's."
In witness whereof, he introduced the girls to an obscure Italian
boarding-house in Twenty-seventh Street, the proprietress of which
admitted them only after examination through a grille in the front door.
Quard explained to Joan that this precaution was necessary because the
house served "red ink" with the meals and without benefit of a liquor
license; hence, only friends could be admitted.
They dined by gas-light in the back-yard, under an awning which served
the double purpose of excluding observation from the neighbouring
dwellings and compressing the heated air. Perhaps two dozen tables
crowded the enclosure. The male guests by common consent removed their
coats and hung them on nails in the fence. The ladies emulated by
discarding hats and all conventionalities of a nature to impede free
expression of their temperaments. Maizie Dean even did without her
English accent.
The meal was of a sort only to be consumed with impunity by optimists
and Italians: a heavy soup, and all one could eat of it, spaghetti
without end, a minute section of lukewarm blotting paper with a remote
flavour of chicken, a salad, cheese and coffee, a half-bottle of
atrocious red wine. Joan enjoyed it immensely; it has been said that her
powers of digestion were exceptional.
Everybody seemed to know everybody else. Conversation was free between
tables. Personalities were bandied back and forth amid intense glee.
Quard, consuming enormous quantities of wine, proved himself a general
favourite, a leading spirit. After dinner he called for a virulent green
cordial (which Joan tasted but could not drink) and later returned to
the wine. Before the end of the evening he became semi-maudlin, and on
leaving exploited a highly humorous inability to walk a straight line.
On the corner of Broadway he halted suddenly, bade the three women a
slurred good night, and without other ceremony swung himself aboard a
Broadway car.
His rudeness excited no comment from the Dancing Deans. They walked all
the way home with Joan, unescorted. Joan was surprised to see by the
clock in the _Herald_ building that it was almost eleven. She thought
she had never known an evening to pass so quickly and so pleasantly.
What little wine she had consumed seemed to have affected her not at
all, beyond rendering her keenly appreciative of this novel experience.
But she suffered the next morning from a slight and, to her,
inexplicable headache.
It was four or five days later before she saw Quard again. He called
early in the evening--but after dinner--and sat chatting amiably with
the women for upwards of an hour before the real purpose of his visit
transpired.
"I was talking to Reinhardt about an idea I got for a sketch, day before
yesterday," he announced suddenly. "But he wanted fifty cash before he'd
touch it, and seeing as it was him slipped me that other lemon, I told
him merrily where he could go and went home and wrote it myself."
"You didn't!" Maizie exclaimed admiringly.
"You bet your life I did," the actor asseverated with conscious modesty.
"Why not? It's no great stunt, writing; and besides it's all old junk
I've done before, only hashed up a new way. All I had to do was to cop
lines out of shows I've played in--sure-fire stuff, yunno--and write in
names of characters. That's nothing."
"Oh, no, nothin' at all!" commented May Dean from her perch on the
window-sill. "What's an author, anyway? Eight to five, girls, he's got
the 'script on him. Get ready to duck."
"Wel-l!" Quard laughed--"you beat me to it, all right." He produced a
sheaf of folded papers, smoothing them out upon his knee. "I just
thought I'd see what you thought of it. If it's any good I'm going to
read it to Schneider tomorrow and see what he'll offer me."
"Who's Schneider?" Maizie asked blankly.
"Agent for the film circuits," Quard replied.
"You don't mean you're thinkin' of fallin' for the four-a-day!"
"I'll try anything once; I'm not too proud to earn my bed and board in
the dull season, anyhow. Besides, this thing would break into the
Orpheum Circuit only over the dead body of Martin Beck. I'm no Georgie
Cohan. But it oughta sandwich in between the pictures without anybody
asking his ten cents back."
"You've got your nerve with you," Maizie commented darkly.
"Let him rave," May advised, exhaling cigarette smoke voluminously.
"Shoot!"
Taking this for consent, Quard rattled the sheets of paper, tilted back
his chair, and began to read.
His voice was flexible and sonorous; instinctively he declaimed the
lines, extracting from each its full value. Now and again he lent
emphasis to a phrase with an eloquent hand. But to Joan the composition
was quite incoherent. She attended with wonder and a feeling of
impatience because of her inability to understand what Quard seemed to
relish with so much enthusiasm. It was, in fact, a worthless farrago of
nonsense. None the less the two dancers laughed at encouraging
intervals.
Flattered, Quard rose, removed his coat and began to act the lines,
striding up and down the narrow space between the foot of the double-bed
and the marble mantelpiece. The night was hot; a single gas-jet
illumined the centre of the room; Quard perspired freely. For all that,
his stenographic acting gave the thing some slight accent of humanity.
It became a trifle, a mere trifle, more intelligible.
Seated on the window-sill, _en profile_ to the room, her slight, wiry
body attired sketchily in a kimono and short skirt, May Dean swung her
legs and stared out into the darkness, an ironic smile hovering round
her thin lips. Maizie lounged on the bed, tracing a meaningless pattern
on the counterpane with a thin and rouge-stained forefinger. Joan
occupied the only chair other than that at the disposal of the actor.
She was very tired, and her attention wandered, even though Quard
managed to draw it back now and then by some vivid trick of elocution or
gesture. Vaguely sensitive to the magnetism of the man, her thoughts
were occupied more with indefinite speculations about his personality
than with the semi-plagiaristic and wholly commonplace concoction of
cheap sentiment and tried-and-true "gags" which he professed to have
written.
Physically he attracted her. Divested of his coat, his chest swelled
impressively beneath a pink-striped silk shirt. When he lifted an arm,
the clinging sleeve moulded itself to an admirable biceps. As he strode
to and fro the stuff of his thin summer trousers shaped itself to legs
that might have proved enviable to Sir Willoughby Patterne himself. His
wide-lipped mouth disclosed an excellent outfit of large, white, strong
teeth. His jet-black hair curled engagingly at his temples and over his
generous pink ears. She liked his big, muscular, mobile hands....
She started suddenly, to discover that he had concluded and was facing
her with an expectant expression, and sat up and smiled faintly, with
embarrassment, trying to remember what it had all been about.