When, after a long and tedious voyage over a sea as flat as a plate and
unflawed by a single cooling drift of air, the steamboat was made fast
to the end of that long iron pier which juts out from the flat, low
coast of Coney Island, its passengers rose en masse and crowded toward
the gangways. Joan and Fowey, attempting to hang back until the crowd
had thinned out sufficiently to enable them to go ashore in comfort,
were caught in the swirl of it and swept along willy-nilly.
Once on the pier-head the multitude had more elbow room and spread out,
the main body streaming headlong shorewards, keen-set for the delights
promised by the two great amusement parks which had grown up in the
heart of that frontier settlement of gin-mills, dance-halls, side-shows,
eating-houses, and dives unspeakable.
Joan and Fowey followed more at their leisure, constraint and silence
between them like a wall. The girl was deeply disappointed with the
expedition, as far as it had gone, doubting whether anything better
would follow, and still labouring under that unaccountable depression
which had settled down upon her spirits at sight of Quard on the New
Bedford boat. Fowey, no less disgusted, was puzzled by his companion's
attitude, at once tolerant and aloof, keenly watchful for an opening
through which to pursue his conquest, and wondering how it would end. If
she were simply bent on tantalizing him again, for her own amusement....
He swore angrily but inaudibly.
Near the shore end of the pier they delayed to watch the antics of the
hundreds of bathers churning the shallows in front of huge and hideous
bathing establishments. In countless numbers, they dotted the sea like
flies and darkened the sun-baked, unclean sands, into which their feet
had trodden the wreckage of ten thousand lunches.
Fowey said something inexpressively cynical about the resemblance of the
scene below to a congregation of bacilli crawling upon a slide beneath a
microscope.
Joan heard without response, either vocal or mental. She resented
bitterly the superior attitude adopted by her companion. For her part,
she would have asked nothing better than to mingle with the throng and
taste those crude pleasures so dear to its simple heart and, had she but
dared admit it, to her own. But she had Fowey to live up to.
Very heartily she regretted the impulse which had dictated her
invitation. She had been far happier alone--though it would have been
strange had she been suffered to remain long alone.
By the time they left the pier, the evening was so far advanced that the
myriad lights of the tawdry town were flashing into being. They
debouched into a roaring mob which filled the wide avenue from curb to
curb, packed so densely, though in constant motion, that trolley cars
and automobiles forced a way through it only at a snail's pace and with
great difficulty. Encouraged by the excessive heat which rendered Town
intolerable to all who had the means to escape it, the week-end swarming
had begun in all sincerity. In spite of the terrific congestion which
already obtained in all the streets and avenues and beaches, piers,
amusement parks, catch-penny shows, saloons, and restaurants, scarcely a
minute passed without the arrival at some one of the trolley terminals
of a car packed to the guards with more visitors.
A good-natured if rowdy mob, for the most part, with only a minimum
element of the downright vicious in its composition, it was none the
less bent on amusement in its cheapest form, that is to say, at somebody
else's expense. It gathered thickest round the places of free
entertainment, where acrobats performed on open-air stages or crawled
upon high, invisible wires, or where slides were supplied gratis for
public diversion: grinning always, but howling with delight when treated
to real misadventure, as when some girl, negotiating a bamboo slide upon
a grass mat, her skirts wrapped tight about her, would lose balance and
shoot headlong, sprawling, to the level; the greater the exposure, the
greater the diversion....
Nor was Fowey permitted to escape unteased: his conspicuous clothing,
and the broad black ribbons dangling from his horn-rimmed glasses were
too tempting to be resisted. Once his Panama was smashed down over his
eyes; and his glasses were so frequently jerked by their moorings from
his nose that he was fain at length to pocket them and poke owlishly
along at Joan's guidance.
Dazzled to blindness by those ten million glaring bulbs which lifted up
tier upon tier against the blank purple skies; deafened by an
indescribable cacophony of bands, organs, bells, horns, human tongues
incessantly clattering; suffering acutely from the collective heat of
the multitude added to that of the still and muggy night; buffeted and
borne hither and yon at the will of the mass: they contrived in the end
to engage an open, horse-drawn vehicle, of the type colloquially known
in those days as "low-neck hack," and ordered themselves driven to the
Manhattan Beach Hotel.
When presently they had gained the darkling peace of a long road between
marsh-lands, Fowey resumed with his glasses his hateful cynicism.
"That was considerable treat, all right," he said pensively.
"Glad you liked it," Joan replied with the curtness of chagrin.
"We'll go back and have some more after dinner," he suggested.
"Thanks--I've had plenty."
"No, but really!" he insisted. "We haven't seen half of it--"
"Oh, shut up!"
Her anger was real; and when he would have mollified the girl with soft
words and an arm that sought to steal round her waist, she repeated her
injunction with added coarseness and struck his hand away with a force
that he felt.
In spite of this, he schooled himself to patience.
Dinner, served perfunctorily by a weary waiter and consumed upon the
verandah of the hotel at a table, the best they could command, far
removed from the comparative coolness and ease of those beside the
railing, did little if anything to modify Joan's temper.
She, who had set out, believing herself the happiest of mortals, to
spend an evening of real enjoyment, felt utterly wretched and forlorn.
Moment by moment her distaste for Fowey was gaining strength. She was
put to it to listen to his bragging and to make response civilly. She
did not relish her food, her company, or her surroundings; and in utter
ennui tried to stimulate herself with her favourite brand of sweet
champagne, insisting on another bottle when they had emptied one between
them. It served only to stimulate a fictitious gaiety in her, one swift
to wane.
For all this, she was reluctant to contemplate going home. Anything were
preferable to that--at least until she could feel reasonably sure of
finding Hattie abed and asleep.
They finished their meal at an hour too late to make it worth while to
patronize one of the open-air entertainments with which she had promised
herself diversion; and since she would neither go home nor, at Fowey's
mischievous suggestion, return to Coney Island, they moved to another
table, nearer the railing, and whiled away one more hour listening to
the band music over their cigarettes and liqueurs.
Toward eleven o'clock, Joan suddenly announced that she was sick of it
all and ready to go. Fowey revived his preference for a motor-car, and
got his way against scanty opposition. In a saner humour, Joan would
have stuck to her original plan. As it was, she accepted the motor ride
with neither gratitude nor graciousness.
Curiously enough, once established in the car, her hat off, the swift
rush of night air cooling her moist brows, her head resting back against
the cushions, she permitted Fowey to repeat his ardent love-making which
had made their previous ride together memorable. Her dislike of him was
no less thorough-paced, but had passed from an active to a passive
stage; she was at once too indifferent to resist him and so bored that
she welcomed anything that promised excitement. She suffered his kisses,
confident in her power to control him, and drew a certain satisfaction
from reminding him, now and again forcibly, that there were limits to
her toleration. But for the most part she lay in his arms in passive
languor, her eyes half closed, and tried to forget him, or rather to
believe him someone else, one whose embraces she could have welcomed....
When they came to lighted streets, she bade Fowey "behave," and would
not permit him even so slight a lapse from decorum as that of "holding
hands."
She sat up, rearranging the disorder of her hair, adjusted her hat,
surreptitiously restored the brilliance of her lips with a stick of
rouge.
The man drew back sullenly into his corner, fuming....
At her door, dismissing the car, he followed her up to the stoop.
"Joan--" he began angrily.
She turned back from using her latch-key, with a wondering, child-like
stare.
"Yes, Hubert?" she enquired with hidden malice.
"You're not--you're not going to send me off like this?"
"Why not?" she demanded with fine assumption of simplicity. "It's awful'
late."
Fowey seized her wrist.
"Now, listen to me!"
Joan broke his grasp with little or no effort.
"Silly boy!" she said. "Do you really want to come in and visit a while
before you say good night?"
Her look was false with a winning softness. Fowey stammered.
"You--you know--"
"Then come along!" she said, with a laugh; and turning fled lightly
before him up the darkened stairway.
She had opened the door to the tiny private hallway of the flat when he
overtook her, panting. She paused, with a warning finger to her lips.
"S-sh!" she warned. "Don't wake Hattie!"
He swore viciously, discountenanced; and she laughed and, leaving the
door wide, went on into the small sitting-dining-room, meanly exulting
in the discomfiture she had planned, knowing quite well that he had
either forgotten Hattie or believed her to be spending this week-end out
of Town, as before.
In the act of lighting the gas, she heard the door close and saw Fowey
come, white and shaken, into the room.
"Hush!" she said gaily. "I'll make sure she isn't awake--"
Removing her hat, she passed on into the adjoining bedroom, and stopped
short with a sensation of sinking dismay. The room was empty, the bed
she shared with Hattie untouched. So much was visible in the faint light
entering through windows that opened on a well.
Wondering, Joan struck a light. Its first glimmer revealed to her the
fact that Hattie's trunk was gone. The flare of the gas-jet disclosed
greater changes in the aspect of the room, due to the disappearance of
Hattie's toilet articles and knick-knacks.
Hattie had left, bag and baggage--had gone for good!
But why?
Had she discovered Joan's treachery? Or what had happened?
And in her surprise and perplexity, the girl was conscious anew of that
sense of loneliness. She had been afraid to return to the one whom she
had betrayed so lightly; but now she was afraid to be without her.
Going back to the adjoining room, she found Fowey standing beside the
table and with a slight smile examining a sheet of paper.
"I found this lying here," he announced, handing it over--"didn't
realize it was anything until I'd read half of it."
His smile was again confident, bright with premature pride of conquest.
But Joan didn't heed it. She was reading rapidly what had been written,
swiftly and in a sprawling hand, upon the half sheet of note-paper.
"By rights I ought to stay until you come back, whenever you
have the cheek to, and tell you what I think of you--I saw B.
E. this evening and he told me all about it--but I want never
to see you again--the rent's paid up till next Wednesday--then
you can stick or get out--I don't care which--and I wish you
joy of your bargain!--H. M."
"You've been scrapping with Hattie, eh?" Joan heard Fowey say in an
amused voice.
Without answering, she let the sheet of paper fall to the table, and
stood with head bowed in thought, suffering acutely the humiliation
inspired by Hattie's contemptuous dismissal.
"What was the trouble?" Fowey pursued. "Not that I'm sorry--"
"Oh, nothing much," Joan interrupted. "We just had a difference of
opinion, and she had to fly off the handle like this. It doesn't
matter."
"It matters to me," Fowey announced significantly.
Now Joan looked up, for the first time appreciating her position.
"Oh ..." she said blankly.
Fowey was advancing, with extended arms. She raised a hand to fend him
off.
"Don't!" she begged. "Please don't. I can't.... You must go, now--of
course. I'm sorry. Good night."
He paused, and she saw his face pale and working with passion; his small
eyes blazing behind their thick lenses; his hands clenched by his sides,
but not tightly, the fingers twitching nervously; his whole body
trembling and shaken beyond control.
She was conscious of an incongruous, unnatural, inexplicable feeling of
pity for him.
"Please be a good boy," she pleaded, "and go away."
"No, I'm damned if I do. You asked me up here--I know now--just to tease
me. But that's no good. I won't go!" He advanced another pace, his tone
and manner changing. "O Joan, Joan!" he begged--"don't treat me so
cruelly! You know I'm mad about you. Doesn't that mean anything to you,
more than a chance to torment me? My God! what kind of a woman are you?
I can't stand this. Flesh and blood couldn't. I'm only human. All this
week I've kept away from you simply because I realized what you were--"
"What am I?" Joan cut in quickly.
Fowey choked again, with a gesture of impotent exasperation.
"You," he almost shouted--"you're the woman I love and who's driving me
mad--mad I tell you!"
"Hubert! You mean that? You really love me?"
"You know I do. You know I'm crazy about you. Haven't you seen it from
the first?"
Hesitating, Joan experienced a sense of one in deep waters. There was a
sound as that of distant surf in her ears. All through her body pulses
were throbbing madly.
She struggled still a little, instinctively; but Fowey advantaged
himself of that instant of indecision. He held her in his arms, now; her
face was stinging beneath his kisses.
Almost unconsciously, she lifted her arms and clasped them round his
neck, drawing his face to hers.
"You poor kid!" she murmured fondly, her eyes closed.... "You poor
kid...."