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-in which Romance was the uninvited guest at Mrs. De Rham's exclusive boarding house in Old New York
SIX Wednesday Nights
by LOUISE KENNEDY MABIE
Illustrations by W. Emerton Heitland
THAT WAS the year everyone had a red waist. At Mrs. De Rham's at least two red waists came down to dinner every evening, for Mrs. Willy had a scarlet waist made of taffeta silk and Miss Wagnalls had a crimson waist made of that new material called crepe de Chine. Gillen Pierce had a red cashmere waist with great puffed sleeves lined with crinoline, and Mrs. De Rham herself was having a waist made of garnet-colored velvet.
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| Mrs. De Rham watched Mr. De Rham crave, |
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| Mr. Pell tried to shield Jan, but in spite of him the blizzard howled and tore at her. He lifted up her face and kissed her wet cheeks.
continued on page 134
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Old Mrs. Parsons was what Mr. Willy called "a grumpy old
girl." Her table was a cozy table for one but not for two. For two it had to be pulled out; for one it fitted right into its corner. When the new girl was placed at her table Mrs. Parsons glared at her continuously, and she would lean forward and look at the new girl's plate through her lorgnette. Mrs. Parsons' white hair was piled up into a pyramid with puffs on puffs, and above her black accusing eyes her black eyebrows were formidable curves of protest at whatever she saw.
"Call that a dinner?" she boomed out suddenly, with the unexpectedness of a cannon, and she pointed an accusing finger at the new girl's empty plate.
"Oh, yes, ma'am-plenty," said the girl hastily and she dropped her napkin on the floor. Her face was paler than ever when she sat neatly up again. Carefully she spread the napkin over her dark blue woolen dress.
"Boiled onions," boomed Mrs. Parsons. "Don't you like 'em?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am," said the girl. "That is-"
"Mrs. De Rham," boomed Mrs. Parsons across the room, "the boiled onions kindly once again. In their first passage about the room this new young lady was missed."
Mrs. De Rham rang a little bell sharply -ting-ting-ting! There was a scuttling in the pantry followed by reverberations in the kitchen. All the diners stopped eating to look. The boiled onions in cream sauce were brought to the new young lady. Mrs. Parsons was very rich.
"Help yourself to a double portion," ordered Mrs. Parsons with another glare at the girl, "since you were passed by before."
Dessert that night was a choice-plum pudding with a hard sauce, apple pie, or Bavarian cream. Mrs. Parsons took plum pudding. The girl took plum pudding also.
"I suppose you have a name," said Mrs. Parsons suddenly. "Out with it."
The girl dropped her spoon. "I'm Jan Curran," she said hastily.
"Jan? Jan?"
"It's really Janet."
"It had better be," said old Mrs. Parsons. "Where you from?"
"Milledgeville," said the girl. "Ohio."
"Ohio!" snorted old Mrs. Parsons. "West. Flat. Uninteresting. I wouldn't give a button for the whole state."
The girl's eyes were a warm bright brown and she had a way of looking at people steadily and intensely. She looked at old Mrs. Parsons thoughtfully and steadily now. "You are so kind," she said; then directly, without a trace of shyness, "You are the only person I have met in New York who has spoken to me at all." She folded up her napkin and stood up. She made a bow to Mrs. Parsons which conveyed interest and respect.
Mrs. Parsons looked after her as she left the room. The blue woolen dress was cut wrong. Although the girl was as thin as a rail, it made her look lumpy, and it should have been brown. Her hair was pulled back too tight. Pulling a girl's hair back like that made her nose look too big. The girl was pale and poor and cold all over. Her hands when she first sat down at table had been blue with cold. On her way out Mrs. Parsons stopped at Mrs. De Rham's table.
"Tomorrow is Wednesday," she said ominously to Mrs. De Rham. "Put that girl at some other table tomorrow night."
Mrs. De Rham uuderstood On Wednesday evenings Mrs. Parsons' nephew dined with her. . "I'm sorry I had to put her at your table at all," said Mrs. De Rham apologetically. "I've just taken her in for the six weeks of her special course in French." Mrs. De Rham was handsome and hard. When she spoke of her own good qualities she lisped. She lisped now. "I am a Brooke. My heart runth away with me."
"Where to?" said old Mrs. Parsons bluntly. "She pays, doesn't she? Is there any heat up there in that roost where you've put her?"
Mrs. De Rham flushed. The Pierces and the Willys looked at each other, and Mr. Pierce soundlessly slapped his knee.
Mrs. Parsons stumped up the stairs, and Mrs. De Rham drew in a deep breath. Everyone heard her. "Well!" said Mrs. De Rham.
To this day nobody knows whether Mrs. De Rham really forgot or not. The Willys and the Pierces discussed it back and forth for years and could never decide, but on the next night, the Wednesday night, when the new girl came down to dinner late there was no place for her in the dining room.
Mrs. Parsons was eating her bit of fish and Mrs. Parsons' nephew had a piece of celery in his hand when the girl walked over to their table and stood there. Everyone knew at once that the girl had not been told. Mrs. Parsons looked up in astonishment, and the nephew after a glance at the girl slowly rose. The girl looked all around the room hastily, and there wasn't it seat. For a horrid moment everyone thought she might be going to cry.
"Does she sit here? Have I her place?" Mrs. Parsons' nephew demanded of the room, and three people spoke together- Mrs. Parsons, Mrs. De Rham and Mr. Pierce. It was Mr. Pierce who made everything quite clear.
"You bet she sits there!" called out Mr. Pierce, with a glare at old Mrs. Parsons. "There's a lot of favoritism and knuck- ling down to money around here, and I for eno don't believe in it."
And Mrs. Pierce said faintly, "Harry!"
"Feeling runs high," said Mrs. Parsons' nephew to the girl. "You'd better sit down quickly. I'll have them bring in a chair for myself from the kitchen."
"But it's your place," said the girl.
"Sit down," said Mrs. Parsons' nephew, with a hint of exasperation. When she did not move he pushed her into his chair, and he waited there beside her until another chair was brought. Not a kitchen chair, of course. A kitchen chair, even in a crisis, had never entered Mrs. De Rham's dining room and never would. A leather chair from the hall was brought, and Mrs. Parsons' nephew sat down on it. The leather chair from the hall was high and Mrs. Parsons' nephew was tall and the result was that he towered.
The table, which was cozy for one, was crowded for two and well-nigh impossible for three.
"This is my nephew, Olin Pell," said Mrs. Parsons grumpily. "Miss Curran."
"How do you do?" said Miss Curran wretchedly.
"Not very well," said Mrs. Parsons' nephew. "Let's put the fernery on the floor, and I think if we push the candle back an inch we may find room for the bread."
"I'm intruding," said the girl. "I'm spoiling everything. Please let me go."
"No," said Mrs. Parsons' nephew definitely, looking at her judicially. "No." Her hair was the color of a copper kettle. She wore it in a coronet braid around her head. There were tears in her brown eyes which she winked away. She was wretched. When her dinner was brought she tried to eat. Old Mrs. Parsons' roast chicken was brought and she ate it. Mr. Olin Pell's fish was brought and he sent it away. All over the dining room there was silence until Mr. Willy told a new funny story which allowed the room to laugh.
At Mrs. Parsons' table no one laughed. Mrs. Parsons ate in silence. Mrs. Parsons' nephew did not eat at all. Calmly, pleasantly, he sent everything away. He seemed to be shortsighted, for when anything was brought he looked at it carefully, and then he said, "No. This seems very nice but tonight I do not care for it."
To Jan Curran Mrs. Parsons' nephew was a terrifying object. He was society; he was smart; he belonged to the four hundred. He wore what Mr. Pierce called "a dress suit." His profile was extremely good, and he let Miss Curran see plenty of it, for he seemed always to be looking the other way. But when he looked at her directly he was even more terrifying, for then he was better-looking and even more displeased, and she knew that he was about to converse.
"I suggest," he had said, "that we say something to each other at three-minute intervals-for the benefit of the room." And taking out his watch, he laid it on the table.
After three minutes he spoke again.
"You are a, stranger in New York?" "I'm taking a six-weeks' course in French.
I'm going abroad to the Sorbonne on a scholarship," she added.
"With what object?"
"Eventually I shall teach in a school at home."
"Teach what?"
"Mathematics and astronomy."
"Lord!" said Mrs. Parsons' nephew. "Digits. Squinting through telescopes. Je voudrais vous y voir."
"I don't understand conversational French," said Miss Curran. "I haven't got that far. But I know all the regular verbs such as 'aimer'-to love."
"And what to do with it?" he asked.
"I should like some bread," said old Mrs. Parsons.
Before Miss Curran ended her dinner, Mrs. Parsons' nephew left. He was going to the Booths', he said, and then "on."
"I'll be here next Wednesday to dine with you and little Miss Curran," he said to his aunt. "Invincibly."
He looked down at Miss Curran and she looked up. He was tall and blond and completely enclosed in his own rich and fashionable existence. Miss Curran despised men who led cotillions and went "on" from one place to another.
Jan Curran admired missionary doctors in China and exploring men at the North Pole and men who gave up their lives to lepers, but a young man like Mrs. Parsons' nephew, no! Poring over her French lesson, no-jamais de la vie. Getting into her flannel nightgown, no. Going to sleep with her head between two pillows against the cold, no . . .
"I'm going upstairs to see her," said Mrs. Willy the next evening, as if she might be starting on an expedition.
"What for?" asked Mr. Willy.
"I'm ashamed of myself for not speaking to her," said Mrs. Willy.
It was very cold that night. Mrs. Willy put on a white woolen knitted jacket over her red silk waist before she mounted the stairs to the top-floor room. There was a light under the door, and Mrs. Willy knocked. The girl's face smiled all over when she opened the door.
"You're Mrs. Willy," she said. "You're the pretty one. But if you come in I'm afraid you may be a little cold."
"How about you?" asked Mrs. Willy, coming in.
"I'm a country girl. I'm used to it. Isn't it a lovely room? And look. I'm cutting out a red silk waist."
"You've laid this part of the pattern- the wrong way of the goods," said Mrs. Willy. "May I help?"
On the next Wednesday night the new girl dined with the Willys, and it was an occasion. Mrs. Willy had asked her brother to dinner, and she had bought flowers for their table. The fernery was removed. Mrs. Willy's brother was a bank president, the youngest in New York City. It was a small bank, but when you speak of them, banks are banks.
Tonight, Mrs. Willy's brother, who was a bachelor, wore a frock coat, a white waistcoat, striped trousers and a carnation in his buttonhole, and he always wore eyeglasses and a dark mustache. Mrs. Willy wore her purple taffeta. Jan Curran wore her new red waist, and in it she bloomed, for it was a delightful affair of surah silk with long puffed sleeves. Nobody noticed what Mr. Willy wore.
When Mrs. Parsons came in followed by her nephew and stumped across to her table, she stopped in her tracks when she saw Jan Curran smiling and bowing and blooming there at the Willys' table. Mrs. Parsons' nephew did not notice Jan Curran at all. He stalked in and sat down with his aunt in splendor and gloom, and when old Mrs. Parsons called his attention to Miss Curran across the room it was with difficulty that he could remember Miss Curran.
"The one in purple?" he asked, looking across at the Willys' table.
"No. The one in the red waist. It's new. I think she made it for you."
Mrs. Parsons' nephew laughed out shortly and unexpectedly. "Why do you think that?" he said.
"In a place like this people think things about other people. And she likes you."
He looked at the girl again across the room and at all the festive people at the Willys' table. "Who is the unspeakable bounder behind the mustache?"
"He's a very good fellow. He's the president of a little bank. On Sundays he goes to church."
"I loathe him," said Mr. Pell. Leaning forward, he looked down carefully at the fricasseed chicken with dumpling upon his plate. "This seems to be very nice," he said to the maid, "but tonight I do not care for it."
"Tantrums again," said old Mrs. Parsons. "I wonder why you come here at all."
"Darling, to see you," said young Mr. Pell. "A dinner with you irradiates my week."
"Bosh!" said old Mrs. Parsons. "I am not so rich as you think, and any day now I may be going change my will and leave the little I have from you to the college."
"So you think I come here because of your money," he said pleasantly.
"Why else?"
"All right," he said, "I'll stay away." He stood up. He had not exchanged a bow with Miss Curran, for their eyes had never happened to meet. "I'm going to the Deschlers'," he said, "and then 'on.''' He looked at his watch, "I know you'll excuse me," he said to his aunt.
"I'll excuse you for life," said his aunt.
"I shan't be able to be here next Wednesday night," he said. "Shall we say the week after?"
"Say whenever you like," said Mrs. Parsons grumpily. "It doesn't matter in the least to me. I'm never lonely."
There was an interval in the cold, and a damp south wind brought a thaw. Everybody wore storm rubbers and felt dismal. Jan Curran was not so cold when she came down to Mrs. Parsons' table each evening for dinner, but she was paler than ever and her mouth looked pinched. Oh, yes, she was getting along well with her French. She could say a few sentences and said them. "My brother has no cigars but he has plenty of cheese." "The umbrella of my sister-in-law is large, and she has lost it at Versailles. She has no nephews but she has plenty of nieces."
"I should like plenty of nieces and to lose my large umbrella at Versailles," said old Mrs. Parsons. "I may be coming over there myself in the spring."
"That would be wonderful for me," said the girl.
"Why for you?"
"I'm afraid of the Sorbonne. I'm afraid of France. But if you were over there, too, I shouldn't be afraid. We might go about together and eat little French cakes."
"I don't eat little French cakes," said Mrs. Parsons. "When you see my nephew again, don't say anything to him about my going to France."
The girl blushed-a wave of color so deep and vital that it looked as if it must hurt. "Probably I shall never see your nephew again," she said. "This is Wednesday and he's not here."
"In Washington on business," said Mrs. Parsons, spooning up her pudding. "Black, Durstine and Long. Ever heard of them?"
"No."
"Construction. He's the brains. It seems the government wants to build a dam."
"I didn't know that he worked at all," said the girl in a low voice.
"He finds what they want to do- the answer to the problem: dam, power plant, skyscraper-then he works from the result backwards," said Mrs. Parsons with satisfaction. "At mathematics he's an artist. He can take thirty pages of figures which the staff has been boiling down for weeks, go back to his rooms and reduce them to three pages. He can simplify," said old Mrs. Parsons.
"So he has rooms," said the girl, her eyes shining with wonder. "Like in a novel."
"Well, he has to live somewhere." said Mrs. Parsons bleakly. She looked searchingly at the girl. "You're not eating your pudding," she said, "and to me you seem rather limp about your French."
"Oh, but I'm not," said the girl, Sitting upright and squaring her shoulders with determination. "It's-it's thrilling to wander through the mazes of a new language in which throughout countless ages the French people have been thinking and speaking. You realize how hometown you are; how little you know; what- what a fool you are."
"You won a scholarship, didn't you?" said old Mrs. Parsons dryly. "Don't get so excited."
The French school was up ten blocks from Mrs. De Rham's and across four, and if there was wind anywhere in the city it was there. It scurried and flopped and skited straight from the river across the City into Jan Curran's mouth. The French school was never warm, and the light through the tall bare windows facing the river was blue. Madame Benet, who taught the class in conversation, had black snapping eyes, a formidable black pompadour, and wore black silk mitts. During class she would shuffle over in her black-mitted hands a packet of white cards with names written on them.
"Mademoiselle Curran," she would say when Jan's card came up. "Converse in French this morning, if you please, of the event."
Jan Curran would stand up. "We are to have in our school an event. Two weeks from this evening---on Wednesday -we will receive a visit to us-"
"Et nos amis," prompted Madame Benet.
"-and our friends-from the famous French actor Coquelin, who will enact for us some scenes from the play by Moliere, 'Physician in Spite of Himself.'''
The class would drone on and on, and afterwards Jan Curran would tramp back to Mrs. De Rham's and study and study, for time was short and life was fleeting and there were left to her only two more weeks at Mrs. De Rham's before she must sail for France.
Jan Curran pulled down the shade of her hall-room window against the twilight and lighted the gas and looked at her hair in the mirror. Its color was right and its fineness and its length, but done up like that in a coronet braid it made her look too thoughtful. She ran downstairs and borrowed a curling iron from Mrs. Willy, and heating the iron in the gas flame beside her mirror, she curled her hair and looked searchingly at her face as she did so.
Her nose looked honest, shining away there in the middle of her face, but she decided that her mouth was childish- sort of sweet and half opened, as if it waited for something. She couldn't manage to do up her hair in any way except the coronet braid, but now across the front there was a flat curl which she liked and some loose curls over her ears.
This was a Wednesday night-her fourth at Mrs. De Rham's -and Jan Curran's hands were cold with excitement and her cheeks were burning. She put on her beloved red waist and her silver ring and her black silk skirt with the silk dust-ruffle, and after she had returned Mrs. Willy's curling iron she went down the velvet-carpeted stairs to dinner.
And she met him on the stairs. He was coming up and she was going down, so by all the laws of mathematics they had to meet.
He stopped just below her and he didn't look at her face at first, but at her hand on the stair rail. He was blocking her way, so she had to say something.
"I have only two more weeks here," she said.
He looked up at her quickly then, and in one glance he took in her curls, her steadfast eyes, her mouth. He took in all the beauty of her face and drained it. He came up a step to be closer to her, she thought. She had not known that a man's eyes could be so bright.
"Where do you come from?" he said abruptly, after a moment. "Iceland?"
"Ohio."
"Ohio," he repeated. "Long ago my family came from Ohio, and they might have done better to stay there." Their eyes were on a level, for he stood one step down. Hers looked at him without faltering. He reached out his hand and touched the sleeve of her red waist.
It was a shock to her when he touched her red waist. There must have been electric sparks in his fingers, for the shock ran through her.
"What's your first name?" he said.
"Jan."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-one."
"Are you going to have dinner with me tonight?"
"Mrs. Pierce has asked me to sit with them tonight- so as not to crowd."
"Crowd?" he said sharply. "Crowd?"
"Is that you, Olin?" called old Mrs. Parsons' voice from above and her be-puffed white coiffure appeared over the banisters. "What in the world are you stopping down there for?" she asked.
"Just a word with Miss Curran," said her nephew pleasantly. He held out his hand to Miss Curran. "Good-by," he said. Her hand went into his. Her hand was cold, and so was his around it. "My aunt says you like me," he said. "If you do, you might chuck the Pierces tonight."
"I couldn't do that," she said.
"I thought so," he. said, and dropping her hand, he continued up the staircase.
That night when Jan Curran got safely to bed she cried, for men never give you credit for not doing a thing. They think that if you want to do something badly enough you will throw everything else overboard and do it. But if you have principles you can't. So they misunderstand and withdraw, and you are left with your principles to suffer.
On his way out he had stopped and looked back at her from the doorway coolly, apparently without a particle of interest, and then he was gone, probably forever. Life was not fair.
On the fifth Wednesday night she didn't bother to curl her hair. She wore her old blue woolen dress. She hadn't put any talcum powder on her nose or bitten her lips to make them red. Old Mrs. Parsons' door stood wide open, and as she passed it Mrs. Parsons called her in. Mrs. Parsons had on her black velvet dress with the Brussels lace. There was a fire in Mrs. Parsons' grate, and there were roses in a vase on her table. And he was standing by the window looking out.
"In this driving rain my nephew insists upon taking me out to dinner," said Mrs. Parsons tartly. "He's brought a carriage. Just fasten these pearls for me, but if your fingers are cold don't touch my neck. Don't you two speak to each other?"
"Your nephew is angry with me," said Jan.
"Angry?" said Mrs. Parsons. "When he hardly knows you? What for?"
"Because I ate my dinner at the Pierces' table last Wednesday night instead of at yours. It wasn't because I wanted to," she said. "But after I had accepted I couldn't chuck the Pierces. It was an obligation."
"My nephew-Olin Pell-asked you to chuck the Pierces after you had accepted an invitation to dine with them?" said old Mrs. Parsons incredulously.
"Merely as a demonstration of power," said the girl. "There. It's fastened. Good night, Mrs. Parsons."
That night she sat all alone at Mrs. Parsons' table.
So it was all over. He hadn't turned away from the window or said a word to her. During that last week she could hardly eat and she couldn't sleep. She couldn't take any interest in her French or in her passport or the palace at Versailles or Moliere.
The French school had gone mad over Moliere, for "Physician in Spite of Himself" was the play which the great actor with the queer name-Coquelin-was to read for them. The French school cleaned its windows until they shone and decorated itself with wreaths. On Tuesday, the day before the great Wednesday night-her last-the drawing-room at the school was filled with rows of camp chairs and an improvised stage was set up with a red velvet curtain in front of it.
"I hope you are all coming tomorrow night," Jan Curran said to the Willys and the Pierces and old Mrs. Parsons. "I hope it won't storm too much." They all said that they wouldn't miss it for anything.
In the morning Mrs. Parsons stopped Jan Curran as she was going out to French school. "You've given me two tickets," she said. "Maybe you've made a mistake."
"No," said Jan Curran, and she flushed. But when the flush died away she was paler than ever. Old Mrs. Parsons thought she had never seen such a ghost of a girl. "No," said Jan Curran. "I meant you to have the two tickets-in case there was anyone you might like to invite."
"There isn't anyone," said old Mrs. Parsons.
"Well, that's all right," said Jan Curran, and she swallowed. Mrs. Parsons saw her. "Keep the ticket, anyway. I get in free."
Old Mrs. Parsons waited until Jan Curran was well out of the house, and then she went upstairs. The maid was doing up the girl's room and Mrs. Parsons sent her away, closed the window, sat down in the rocking chair and surveyed the room. After a while she got up and looked at all the things on the bureau -at the small silver mirror, the white celluloid comb, the brown wooden-backed hairbrush, blue pincushion, blue china pig with matches in its back. She opened all the bureau drawers and looked in. Everything was very neat, but there was so little of anything that Mrs. Parsons searched for more until she realized there wasn't any more.
Jan Curran's closet was out in the hall, and beside it stood a pail of water and a scrubbing brush which had been left there by the maid. Mrs. Parsons took out all the girl's clothes and looked at them, and there were so few of them that she looked in the dark closet for more, but there weren't any more.
Mrs. Parsons took down the red silk waist, and holding it in her hands she thought, and after she had thought the red silk waist slipped out of her hands and fell into the pail of water. Mrs. Parsons rescued it. She wrung it out and hung it hastily away again. On her way downstairs she gave the maid a dollar.
In the afternoon it began to snow. By night the ground was covered. They were all to go to the reception in a carriage with two seats which faced each other, and there would be some crowding. But just before dinner there came a knocking on Mrs. Parsons' door and Jan Curran burst into the room. In her hand was the red waist.
"It's wet!" cried Jan Curran. "It was hanging safely in my closet and it's wet. It's- ruined. I can't go!"
"Wet?" said Mrs. Parsons, and she took it in her hand and felt it. It was still wet. It was wrinkled. It looked as if something had happened to it. "Does the roof leak?" asked Mrs. Parsons.
"I don't know. I don't know," said the girl, and she wrung her hands together. "I was going to pack it in my satchel tonight. My life; all my hopes and plans; my red waist-"
"Sit down," said Mrs. Parsons. "Don't get so excited," she added grumpily. "Here. Drink this thimbleful of sherry, and of course you'll go. I'm glad you came straight to me. I've got a dress'll fit you. I bought it at a bargain the other day for one of my nieces. It ought to be your size-" Mrs. Parsons' voice was muffled as it came from her closet. "It's a sage-green velvet dress with a real lace collar. Where did I put that dress, anyway?"
The lights were low. There was a scent of roses in the air. All the camp chairs were filled with bare-shouldered ladies and dress-coated men. Everything was very fine. It was all like a dream in which anything may happen. Jan Curran sat next to old Mrs. Parsons and the Willys, and the Pierces were just in front.
Every now and then Jan Curran would look down at the sage-green velvet of her dress, and once she touched it, and looking up at Mrs. Parsons, smiled. Then Mrs. Parsons did a singular thing. She slipped her hand through the girl's arm, and so they sat there, arm in arm.
There was a vacant chair next to Jan Curran which worried her greatly, for at any moment it might be occupied. At any moment someone might come in and sit down in it. Jan Curran watched the door, and when anyone tall and blond and young appeared, her heart would give a great jump and stars would seem to be falling all around. But it was never the right man. It was always some stranger, and then Jan Curran would feel sick all over.
It was just when the room went dark except the lighted stage, and the red velvet curtain was pulled back and the headmistress of the French school came forward holding a bouquet and all the people began to applaud, that the chair beside Jan Curran was taken. By a man, she discerned, for even with down-cast eyes she could see his broadcloth- covered knees and his patent leather pumps and black silk ankles.
In beautiful French the headmistress was introducing to the distinguished audience a stout, pleasant-looking, gray-haired gentleman with an actor's face who bowed and bowed and bowed again, for the applause was thunderous, deafening. And then a hand cupped Jan Curran's bare elbow, and the hand was cold.
"Aren't you going to look at me?" he said.
She shook her head. She could not look. She pretended to be looking at the stage, and she leaned forward away from him in her pretense of looking but she saw nothing. It was all a blur. She thought he would take his hand away from her elbow when she leaned forward but he didn't. He leaned forward with her, and so they were as close as ever. But when she leaned back he leaned back also, and then they were closer than ever.
She was really against his shoulder, and his hand, cold no longer, still cupped her elbow. Now and then she would stir, for she felt that anything as heavenly as this must be wrong, and he would say "S-sh! Be still." So she would be still for a long time, and all over the world tides rose and fell and there were storms and wars but she didn't care.
Golden French words fell over her in a laughing, tingling stream, and although all her French had left her by now and she had no acute realization of anything except the man's hand around her elbow and his shoulder behind hers, she was carried along by the living stream. She would never forget this night, this consummation. The lights were low. There was the scent of roses in the air. On one side of her Mrs. Parsons sat, linked to her, arm in arm, and on the other side of her Mrs. Parsons' nephew sat, incredible but there, holding her close against him.
Afterwards he Shook hands with Mrs. Pierce and with Mrs. Willy and with Mr. Willy and with Mr. Pierce, and he chucked his aunt under the chin. And then, unaccountably, the Pierces and Willys and Mrs. Parsons drifted away and were lost in the crowd, and Jan Curran in her heavy old brown coat, with her high rubbers on and no hat, was standing on the doorstep beside him facing the storm. Their carriage had left.
"I'll try to get a cab," he said to her breathlessly. "Don't go away with Coquelin if he asks you to."
This was a joke. So he could joke. He could think of cabs. So it could not have gone so deep with him as it had with her, for all she could do was lean against the wall and tremble and wait. When he came back he hadn't any cab but he had an umbrella, large and black.
"Will you lose it at Versailles?" she said dreamily.
"I'm coming over in the spring," he said. "The snow's getting worse. It's a blizzard. Can you walk as far as the avenue?"
"I've walked in snow all my life," she said.
"Well, hold up your lovely face," he said.
She held up her lovely face, and he tied his white scarf around her head tight. When she still held up her lovely face he laid his cheek against it, but he laughed as he did so as if it was nothing to him.
Literally they were blown around the corner, for the wind took them off their feet. With his arm around her they sailed before it, and at first it was fun. When he put up the umbrella it blew away down the block. When they reached the avenue there were no cabs, no carriages, no people.
The snow blew up, down, crossways. It blew into their faces so that they couldn't see. It blew the scarf off her head and he pulled her to him and tied it on tightly again and held her in his arms for a moment while they breathed.
The wind owned the city that night and it was an emperor wind, not subject to law. It picked them out and whirled around and around with them in the vortex. And it was growing steadily colder. And the green velvet dress was wet to her knees.
"The dress!" she shouted to him, pointing to her dress. "This beautiful dress. It's ruined. And it's not mine."
"What's a dress?" he shouted back. "Of course it's yours."
"Of course it's not," she insisted, against the wind. "Mrs. Parsons -bought it- for one of her nieces."
"Mrs. Parsons bought it for you. Don't try to talk. This is a blizzard."
They crossed two long blocks and struggled down four. Stores lined this avenue, and everything was closed. There was no place to go in, and she was nearly tuckered out. He tried to shield her with his body but the wind reached her in spite of him.
Finally he pushed her into a doorway and stood in front of her. He took her in his arms, and she let him. He lifted up her face and kissed her eyelashes weighted with snow, her wet cheeks, her delicious half-opened childish mouth. "Darling-darling-darling," he said. "I've been crazy to bring you into this but I've been crazy since that first night."
She let him kiss her. She kissed him, too. She was terribly in love with him and so happy, but everything was a blur. She couldn't fight any more. She had gone to the limit of her strength; she had reached the peak; it was nice to Slip down on the other side . . .
"Jan, Jan!" he cried, and he shook her. He rubbed her face with snow. In his terror he slapped her lovely face. In his terror he cried out to the storm, "Help! Help!" He lifted her up in his arms and carried her. Every now and then he kissed her.
A barging hansom cabman heard him shouting, and picked them up on the next block. "Want a ride, governor? Want to take a nice little ride?"
Mrs. De Rham's exclusive boarding house was lighted from basement to top floor, although all the other houses in the neighborhood were dark. Outside Mrs. Parsons' closed door stood Mr. and Mrs. Willy and Mr. and Mrs. Pierce and Mr. and Mrs. De Rham. Miss Wagnalls would open the door every now and then and give them a bulletin.
"She's come to," announced Miss Wagllan in one triumphant whisper, "and old Mrs. Parsons is crying."
The door closed again. They all stood there.
"She's sitting up wrapped in blankets. He's sitting on her bed. He's dreadfully in love with her, and they're going to be married," announced Miss Wagnalls in another triumphant whisper.
"Aw," said Mr. Pierce in disgust, for Mr. Pierce had been greatly worried himself, "tell us something we don't know."
"All right, I will," whispered Miss Wagnalls with her eyes snapping. "Something the girl didn't even know herself. Who do you suppose gave that scholarship anonymously to that Ohio college in memory of her own dead daughter? Who do you suppose brought the girl who won it down here to Mrs. De Rham's?"
"Who?" said the Pierces and the Willys in unison.
"Mrs. Parsons," hissed Miss Wagnalls triumphantly, and she shut the door in their faces. They all stood there.
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