 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
II
At nine-thirty Jim and Clark met in front of Soda
Sam's and started for the Country Club in Clark's
Ford.
"Jim," asked Clark casually, as they rattled through
the jasmine-scented night, "how do you keep alive?"
The Jelly-bean paused, considered.
"Well," he said finally, "I got a room over Tilly's
garage. I help him some with the cars in the afternoon
an' he gives it to me free. Sometimes I drive one of
his taxies and pick up a little thataway. I get fed up
doin' that regular though."
"That all?"
"Well, when there's a lot of work I help him by the
day—Saturdays usually—and then there's one main
source of revenue I don't generally mention. Maybe
you don't recollect I'm about the champion crap-shooter
of this town. They make me shoot from a cup now
because once I get the feel of a pair of dice they just roll
for me."
Clark grinned appreciatively.
"I never could learn to set 'em so's they'd do what I
wanted. Wish you'd shoot with Nancy Lamar some
day and take all her money away from her. She will roll
'em with the boys and she loses more than her daddy can
afford to give her. I happen to know she sold a good
ring last month to pay a debt."
The Jelly-bean was non-committal.
"The white house on Elm Street still belong to you?"
Jim shook his head.
"Sold. Got a pretty good price, seein' it wasn't
in a good part of town no more. Lawyer told me to
put it into Liberty bonds. But Aunt Mamie got so she
didn't have no sense, so it takes all the interest to keep
her up at Great Farms Sanitarium.
"Hm."
"I got an old uncle up-state an' I reckin I kin go up
there if ever I get sure enough pore. Nice farm, but
not enough niggers around to work it. He's asked me
much to it. Too doggone lonesome—" He broke off
suddenly. "Clark, I want to tell you I'm much obliged
to you for askin' me out, but I'd be a lot happier if you'd
just stop the car right here an' let me walk back into
town."
"Shucks!" Clark grunted. "Do you good to step
out. You don't have to dance—just get out there on
the floor and shake."
"Hold on," exclaimed Jim uneasily, "Don't you go
leadin' me up to any girls and leavin' me there so I'll
have to dance with 'em."
Clark laughed.
"'Cause," continued Jim desperately, "without you
swear you won't do that I'm agoin' to get out right
here an' my good legs goin' carry me back to Jackson
Street."
They agreed after some argument that Jim, unmolested
by females, was to view the spectacle from a
secluded settee in the corner where Clark would join
him whenever he wasn't dancing.
So ten o'clock found the Jelly-bean with his legs
crossed and his arms conservatively folded, trying to
look casually at home and politely uninterested in the
dancers. At heart he was torn between overwhelming
self-consciousness and an intense curiosity as to all
that went on around him. He saw the girls emerge
one by one from the dressing-room, stretching and pluming
themselves like bright birds, smiling over their
powdered shoulders at the chaperones, casting a quick
glance around to take in the room and, simultaneously,
the room's reaction to their entrance—and then, again
like birds, alighting and nestling in the sober arms of
their waiting escorts. Sally Carrol Hopper, blonde and
lazy-eyed, appeared clad in her favorite pink and blinking
Wade, Harriet Cary, all the girls he had seen loitering
down Jackson Street by noon, now, curled and brilliantined
and delicately tinted for the overhead lights,
were miraculously strange Dresden figures of pink and
blue and red and gold, fresh from the shop and not yet
fully dried.
He had been there half an hour, totally uncheered
by Clark's jovial visits which were each one accompanied
by a "Hello, old boy, how you making out?"
and a slap at his knee. A dozen males had spoken to
him or stopped for a moment beside him, but he knew
that they were each one surprised at finding him there
and fancied that one or two were even slightly resentful.
But at half past ten his embarrassment suddenly
left him and a pull of breathless interest took him completely
out of himself—Nancy Lamar had come out of
the dressing-room.
She was dressed in yellow organdie, a costume of a
hundred cool corners, with three tiers of ruffles and a
big bow in back until she shed black and yellow around
her in a sort of phosphorescent lustre. The Jelly-bean's
eyes opened wide and a lump arose in his throat. For
a minute she stood beside the door until her partner
hurried up. Jim recognized him as the stranger who
had been with her in Joe Ewing's car that afternoon.
He saw her set her arms akimbo and say something in
a low voice, and laugh. The man laughed too and Jim
experienced the quick pang of a weird new kind of pain.
Some ray had passed between the pair, a shaft of
beauty from that sun that had warmed him a moment
since. The Jelly-bean felt suddenly like a weed in a
shadow.
A minute later Clark approached him, bright-eyed
and glowing.
"Hi, old man," he cried with some lack of originality.
"How you making out?"
Jim replied that he was making out as well as could
be expected.
"You come along with me," commanded Clark.
"I've got something that'll put an edge on the evening."
Jim followed him awkwardly across the floor and up
the stairs to the locker-room where Clark produced a
flask of nameless yellow liquid.
"Good old corn."
Ginger ale arrived on a tray. Such potent nectar
as "good old corn" needed some disguise beyond seltzer.
"Say, boy," exclaimed Clark breathlessly, "doesn't
Nancy Lamar look beautiful?"
Jim nodded.
"Mighty beautiful," he agreed.
"She's all dolled up to a fare-you-well to-night,"
continued Clark. "Notice that fellow she's with?"
"Big fella? White pants?"
"Yeah. Well, that's Ogden Merritt from Savannah.
Old man Merritt makes the Merritt safety razors.
This fella's crazy about her. Been chasing after her
all year.
"She's a wild baby," continued Clark, "but I like
her. So does everybody. But she sure does do crazy
stunts. She usually gets out alive, but she's got scars
all over her reputation from one thing or another she's
done."
"That so?" Jim passed over his glass. "That's
good corn."
"Not so bad. Oh, she's a wild one. Shoots craps,
say, boy! And she do like her high-balls. Promised
I'd give her one later on."
"She in love with this—Merritt?"
"Damned if I know. Seems like all the best girls
around here marry fellas and go off somewhere."
He poured himself one more drink and carefully
corked the bottle.
"Listen, Jim, I got to go dance and I'd be much
obliged if you just stick this corn right on your hip as
long as you're not dancing. If a man notices I've had
a drink he'll come up and ask me and before I know it
it's all gone and somebody else is having my good time."
So Nancy Lamar was going to marry. This toast of
a town was to become the private property of an individual
in white trousers—and all because white trousers'
father had made a better razor than his neighbor. As
they descended the stairs Jim found the idea inexplicably
depressing. For the first time in his life
he felt a vague and romantic yearning. A picture of
her began to form in his imagination—Nancy walking
boylike and debonnaire along the street, taking an
orange as tithe from a worshipful fruit-dealer, charging
a dope on a mythical account at Soda Sam's, assembling
a convoy of beaux and then driving off in triumphal
state for an afternoon of splashing and singing.
The Jelly-bean walked out on the porch to a deserted
corner, dark between the moon on the lawn and the
single lighted door of the ballroom. There he found a
chair and, lighting a cigarette, drifted into the thoughtless
reverie that was his usual mood. Yet now it was a
reverie made sensuous by the night and by the hot smell
of damp powder puffs, tucked in the fronts of low dresses
and distilling a thousand rich scents to float out through
the open door. The music itself, blurred by a loud
trombone, became hot and shadowy, a languorous overtone
to the scraping of many shoes and slippers.
Suddenly the square of yellow light that fell through
the door was obscured by a dark figure. A girl had
porch not more than ten feet away. Jim heard a low-breathed
"doggone" and then she turned and saw him.
It was Nancy Lamar.
Jim rose to his feet.
"Howdy?"
"Hello—" she paused, hesitated and then approached.
"Oh, it's—Jim Powell."
He bowed slightly, tried to think of a casual remark.
"Do you suppose," she began quickly, "I mean—do
you know anything about gum?"
"What?"
"I've got gum on my shoe. Some utter ass left his
or her gum on the floor and of course I stepped in it."
Jim blushed, inappropriately.
"Do you know how to get it off?" she demanded
petulantly. "I've tried a knife. I've tried every damn
thing in the dressing-room. I've tried soap and water—
and even perfume and I've ruined my powder-puff trying
to make it stick to that."
Jim considered the question in some agitation.
"Why—I think maybe gasolene—"
The words had scarcely left his lips when she grasped
his hand and pulled him at a run off the low veranda,
over a flower bed and at a gallop toward a group of
cars parked in the moonlight by the first hole of the
golf course.
"Turn on the gasolene," she commanded breathlessly.
"What?"
"For the gum of course. I've got to get it off. I
can't dance with gum on."
Obediently Jim turned to the cars and began inspecting
them with a view to obtaining the desired solvent.
Had she demanded a cylinder he would have done his
best to wrench one out.
"Here," he said after a moment's search. "Here's
one that's easy. Got a handkerchief?"
"It's up-stairs wet. I used it for the soap and water."
Jim laboriously explored his pockets.
"Don't believe I got one either."
"Doggone it! Well, we can turn it on and let it
run on the ground."
He turned the spout; a dripping began.
"More!"
He turned it on fuller. The dripping became a flow
and formed an oily pool that glistened brightly, reflecting
a dozen tremulous moons on its quivering bosom.
"Ah," she sighed contentedly, "let it all out. The
only thing to do is to wade in it."
In desperation he turned on the tap full and the pool
suddenly widened sending tiny rivers and trickles in
all directions.
"That's fine. That's something like."
Raising her skirts she stepped gracefully in.
"I know this'll take it off," she murmured.
Jim smiled.
"There's lots more cars."
She stepped daintily out of the gasolene and began
scraping her slippers, side and bottom, on the running-board
of the automobile. The Jelly-bean contained himself
no longer. He bent double with explosive laughter
and after a second she joined in.
"You're here with Clark Darrow, aren't you?" she
asked as they walked back toward the veranda.
"Yes."
"You know where he is now?"
"Out dancin', I reckin."
"The deuce. He promised me a highball."
"Well," said Jim, "I guess that'll be all right. I got
his bottle right here in my pocket."
She smiled at him radiantly.
"I guess maybe you'll need ginger ale though,"
he added.
"Not me. Just the bottle."
"Sure enough?"
She laughed scornfully.
"Try me. I can drink anything any man can. Let's
sit down."
She perched herself on the side of a table and he
dropped into one of the wicker chairs beside her.
Taking out the cork she held the flask to her lips and
took a long drink. He watched her fascinated.
"Like it?"
She shook her head breathlessly.
"No, but I like the way it makes me feel. I think
most people are that way."
Jim agreed.
"My daddy liked it too well. It got him."
"American men," said Nancy gravely, "don't know
how to drink."
"What?" Jim was startled.
"In fact," she went on carelessly, "they don't know
how to do anything very well. The one thing I regret
in my life is that I wasn't born in England."
"In England?"
"Yes. It's the one regret of my life that I wasn't."
"Do you like it over there."
"Yes. Immensely. I've never been there in person,
but I've met a lot of Englishmen who were over here in
the army, Oxford and Cambridge men—you know,
that's like Sewanee and University of Georgia are here
—and of course I've read a lot of English novels."
Jim was interested, amazed.
"D' you ever hear of Lady Diana Manners?" she
asked earnestly.
No, Jim had not.
"Well, she's what I'd like to be. Dark, you know,
like me, and wild as sin. She's the girl who rode her
horse up the steps of some cathedral or church or something
and all the novelists made their heroines do it
afterwards."
Jim nodded politely. He was out of his depths.
"Pass the bottle," suggested Nancy. "I'm going to
take another little one. A little drink wouldn't hurt a
baby.
"You see," she continued, again breathless after a
draught. "People over there have style. Nobody has
style here. I mean the boys here aren't really worth
dressing up for or doing sensational things for. Don't
you know?"
"I suppose so—I mean I suppose not," murmured
Jim.
"And I'd like to do 'em an' all. I'm really the only
girl in town that has style."
She stretched out her arms and yawned pleasantly.
"Pretty evening."
"Sure is," agreed Jim.
"Like to have boat," she suggested dreamily. "Like
to sail out on a silver lake, say the Thames, for instance.
Have champagne and caviare sandwiches along. Have
about eight people. And one of the men would jump
overboard to amuse the party and get drowned like a
man did with Lady Diana Manners once."
"Did he do it to please her?"
"Didn't mean drown himself to please her. He just
meant to jump overboard and make everybody laugh."
"I reckin they just died laughin' when he drowned."
"Oh, I suppose they laughed a little," she admitted. "I imagine she did, anyway. She's pretty hard, I
guess—like I am."
"You hard?"
"Like nails." She yawned again and added, "Give
me a little more from that bottle."
Jim hesitated but she held out her hand defiantly.
"Don't treat me like a girl," she warned him. "I'm
not like any girl you ever saw." She considered. "Still,
perhaps you're right. You got—you got old head on
young shoulders."
She jumped to her feet and moved toward the door.
The Jelly-bean rose also.
"Good-bye," she said politely, "good-bye. Thanks,
Jelly-bean."
Then she stepped inside and left him wide-eyed upon
the porch.
| Tales of the jazz age | |