A Dance of Folly and Pleasure: Stories Page 5

  Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the blonde type known as ‘medium’, and her measurements even went the required 38–25–42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum’s two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that fabulous monster’s gaze would have wavered and softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers.

  ‘Now, Mr Platt,’ said Zizzbaum, ‘I want you to see these princesse gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. This first, if you please, Miss Asher.’

  Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated oilily of the styles. On the model’s face was her faint, impersonal professional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or contempt.

  When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to build a house for his wife-to-be – who was just then in the dressing-room taking off an evening gown of lavender and tulle.

  ‘Take your time, Mr Platt,’ said Zizzbaum. ‘Think it over tonight. You won’t find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these. I’m afraid you’re having a dull time in New York, Mr Platt. A young man like you – of course, you miss the society of the ladies. Wouldn’t you like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this evening? Miss Asher, now, is a very nice young lady; she will make it agreeable for you.’

  ‘Why, she doesn’t know me,’ said Platt wonderingly. ‘She doesn’t know anything about me. Would she go? I’m not acquainted with her.’

  ‘Would she go?’ repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. ‘Sure, she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go.’

  He called Miss Asher loudly.

  She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirtwaist and plain black shirt.

  ‘Mr Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this evening,’ said Zizzbaum, walking away.

  ‘Sure,’ said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. ‘I’d be much pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth Street. What time?’

  ‘Say seven o’clock.’

  ‘All right, but please don’t come ahead of time. I room with a schoolteacher, and she doesn’t allow any gentlemen to call in the room. There isn’t any parlour, so you’ll have to wait in the hall. I’ll be ready.’

  At half-past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway restaurant. She was dressed in a plain filmy black. Platt didn’t know that it was all a part of her day’s work.

  With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a respectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries.

  Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile.

  ‘Mayn’t I have something to drink?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, certainly,’ said Platt. ‘Anything you want.’

  ‘A dry Martini,’ she said to the waiter.

  When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took it away. ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘A cocktail, of course.’

  ‘I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You can’t drink this. What is your first name?’

  ‘To my intimate friends,’ said Miss Asher freezingly, ‘it is “Helen”.’

  ‘Listen, Helen,’ said Platt, leaning over the table. ‘For many years every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to thinking of somebody that I’d never seen or heard of. I knew it was you the minute I saw you yesterday. I’m going back home tomorrow and you’re going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when you first looked at me. You needn’t kick, for you’ve got to fall into line. Here’s a little trick I picked out for you on my way over.’

  He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss Asher flipped it back to him with her fork.

  ‘Don’t get fresh,’ she said severely.

  ‘I’m worth a hundred thousand dollars,’ said Platt. ‘I’ll build you the finest house in West Texas.’

  ‘You can’t buy me, Mr Buyer,’ said Miss Asher, ‘if you had a hundred million. I didn’t think I’d have to call you down. You didn’t look like the others to me at first, but I see you’re all alike.’

  ‘All who?’ asked Platt.

  ‘All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner with you or lose our jobs that you’re privileged to say what you please. Well, forget it. I thought you were different from the others, but I see I was mistaken.’

  Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, illuminating satisfaction.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ he exclaimed, almost hilariously – ‘the Nicholson place, over on the north side. There’s a big grove of live oaks and a natural lake. The old house can be pulled down and the new one set farther back.’

  ‘Put out your pipe,’ said Miss Asher. ‘I’m sorry to wake you up, but you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you stand. I’m supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you along so you’ll trade with old Zizzy, but don’t expect to find me in any of the suits you buy.’

  ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ said Platt, ‘that you go out this way with customers, and they all – they all talk to you like I have?’

  ‘They all make plays,’ said Miss Asher. ‘But I must say that you’ve got ’em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds while you’ve actually dug one up.’

  ‘How long have you been working, Helen?’

  ‘Got my name pat, haven’t you? I’ve been supporting myself for eight years. I was a cash girl, and a wrapper, and then a shop-girl until I was grown, and then I got to be a suit model. Mr Texas Man, don’t you think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?’

  ‘You’re not going to drink wine any more, dear. It’s awful to think how – I’ll come to the store tomorrow and get you. I want you to pick out an automobile before we leave. That’s all we need to buy here.’

  ‘Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk.’

  After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana’s little wooded park. The trees caught Platt’s eye at once, and he must turn along under the winding walk beneath them. The lights shone upon two bright tears in the model’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t like that,’ said Platt. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Don’t you mind,’ said Miss Asher. ‘Well, it’s because – well, I didn’t think you were that kind when I first saw you. But you are all alike. And now will you take me home, or will I have to call a cop?’

  Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a minute in the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her eyes that even his heart of oak began to waver. His arm was halfway around her waist, when she struck him a stinging blow on the face with her open hand.

  As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the tiled floor. Platt groped for it and found it.

  ‘Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr Buyer,’ she said.

  ‘This was the other one – the wedding ring,’ said the Texan, holding the smooth, gold band on the palm of his hand.

  Miss Asher’s eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness.

  ‘Was that what you meant? – did you—’

  Somebody opened the door from inside the house.

  ‘Good night,’ said Platt. ‘I’ll see you at the store tomorrow.’

  Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the schoolteacher until she sat up in bed ready to scream ‘Fire!’

  ‘Where is it?’ she cried.

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ said the model. ‘You’ve studied geography, Emma,
and you ought to know. Where is a town called Cac – Cac – Carac – Caracas City, I think they called it?’

  ‘How dare you wake me up for that?’ said the schoolteacher. ‘Caracas is in Venezuela, of course.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Why, it’s principally earthquakes and negroes and monkeys and malarial fever and volcanoes.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Miss Asher blithely; ‘I’m going there tomorrow.’

  Springtime à la Carte

  It was a day in March.

  Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation.

  Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.

  Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!

  To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinée. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed.

  The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice anyone try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way?

  Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a freelance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying.

  The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah’s battle with the world was the deal she made with Schulenberg’s Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-roomed. One evening after dining at Schulenberg’s forty-cent five-course table d’hôte (served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman’s head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week.

  The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from ‘hors d’oeuvre’ to ‘not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas.’

  Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant – a new bill for each day’s dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required.

  In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah’s hall-room by a waiter – an obsequious one if possible – and furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schulenberg’s customers on the morrow.

  Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg’s patrons now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was the main thing with her.

  And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant in the cross-town streets. The hand-organs still played ‘In The Good Old Summertime’, with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam. And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the clutches of winter.

  One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall-bedroom; ‘house heated; scrupulously clean; conveniences; seen to be appreciated.’ She had no work to do except Schulenberg’s menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the window. The calendar on the wall kept crying to her: ‘Springtime is here, Sarah – springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You’ve got a neat figure yourself, Sarah – a nice, springtime figure – why do you look out the window so sadly?’

  Sarah’s room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal; and Sarah was looking down a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses.

  Spring’s real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must have the flowering crocus, the wood-starring dogwood, the voice of bluebird – even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in Green to their dull bosoms. But to old earth’s choicest kin there come straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no stepchildren unless they choose to be.

  On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a farmer.

  (In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and cripples interest. Let it march, march.)

  Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old Farmer Franklin’s son, Walter. Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cowhouse, and he could figure up exactly what effect next year’s Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon.

  It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands.

  They were to marry in the spring – at the very first signs of spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter.

  A knock at the door dispelled Sarah’s visions of that happy day. A waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant’s next day fare in old Schulenberg’s angular hand.

  Sarah sat down at her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally in an hour and a half the twenty-one menu cards were written and ready.

  Today there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups were lighter; pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was diminuendo con amore. The frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled; the richer puddings had vanished; the sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant thanatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet but doomed maple.

  Sarah’s fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream. Down through the courses she worked, giving each item its position according to its length with an accurate eye.

  Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables. Carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima beans, cabbage – and then –

  Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry accompaniment to her moist sobs.

  For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was dandelions – dandelions with some kind of egg – but bother the egg!
– dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bride – dandelions, the harbingers of spring, her sorrow’s crown of sorrow – reminder of her happiest days.

  Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test: let the Marèchal Niel roses that Percy brought you on the night you gave him your heart be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a Schulenberg table d’hôte. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens dishonoured the sooner would she have sought the lethean herbs of the good apothecary.

  But what a witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it but the little hardy courier of the fields with his rough, green coat and modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this dent-de-lion – this lion’s tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he will assist at love-making, wreathed in my lady’s nut-brown hair; young and callow and unblossomed, he goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress.

  By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strike-breaker’s motor car.

  At six o’clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-endorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart’s true affection.

  At 7.30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel; the man in the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload – the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out The Cloister and the Hearth, the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard.