It was one night in middle October when Billy and Caroline met by accident on Thirty-fourth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Caroline stood looking into a drug-store window where an automatic mannikin was shaving himself with a patent safety razor.
“There’s a wax feller going to bed in an automatic folding settee, a little farther down the street,” Billy offered gravely at her elbow; “and on Forty-second Street there is a real live duck pond advertising the advantages of electric heaters in the home.”
“H’lo,” said Caroline, who was colloquial only in moments of real pleasure or excitement. “I’ve just written to you. I asked you to come and see me to-morrow evening,” she added more seriously, “to talk about something that’s weighing on my mind.”
“I’m going out with a blonde to-morrow, night,” Billy said speciously, “but what’s the matter with to-night? I’m free until six-fifty
“I can’t to-night,” Caroline said, “I promised Nancy to dine at the Inn.”
“That wasn’t your line at all,” Billy groaned. “Who’s the blonde?—that was your cue. If it’s only Nancy you’re dining with—that can be fixed.”
“I regard an engagement with Nancy as just as sacred as—”
“So do I,” Billy cut in. “She is the blonde. Well, let to-morrow night be as it may; let’s you and I call up the Nancy girl now and tell her that we’re going batting together; she won’t care.”
“I don’t like doing that,” Caroline said; “it’s a nice night for a bat, though.”
“I walked down Murray Hill and saw the sun set in a nice pinky gold setting,” Billy said artfully. Caroline liked to have him get an artistic perspective on New York. “Let’s walk down the avenue to the CafÉ des Artistes and have EmincÉ Bernard, and a long wide high, tall drink of—ginger ale,” he finished lamely.
“We’d have to telephone Nancy,” Caroline hesitated.
Billy took her by the arm and guided her into the interior of the drug-store to the side aisle where the telephones were, and stepped into the first empty booth that offered. Caroline stopped him firmly as he was about to shut himself inside.
“I’d rather hear what you say,” she said.
Billy slipped his nickel in the slot and took up the receiver.
“Madison Square 3403 doesn’t answer,” Central informed him crisply after an interval.
“Oh! Nancy, dear,” Billy replied softly into her astonished ear. “Caroline and I are going off by ourselves to-night, you don’t care, do you?”
“Ringing thr-r-ree-four-o-thr-r-ee, Madison Square.”
“That’s nice of you,” Billy responded heartily. “I thought you’d say that.”
“Madison Square thr-r-ree-four-o-t-h-r-r-ree doesn’t answer. Hang up your receiver and I’ll call you if I get the party.”
“Of course I will. You’re always so tactful in the way you put things, always so generous and kind and thoughtful. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“What did Nancy say?” Caroline asked, as they turned away from the booth.
“You heard my end of the conversation,” Billy said blandly. “You can deduce hers from it.”
“There was something about your end of the conversation that sounded queer to me somehow. It was odd that Central should have returned your nickel to you after you had talked so long.”
“Yes, wasn’t it?” Billy asked innocently. “Well, I suppose mistakes will happen in the best regulated telephone companies.”
“I like you,” Billy said contentedly, as the lights of the avenue strung themselves out before them. “I like walking down this royal thoroughfare with you. You’re a kind of a neutral girl, but I like you.”
“You’re a kind of ridiculous boy.”
“Don’t you like me a little bit?”
“Yes, a little.”
“What did you get engaged to me for if you only like me a little?”
“Ought not to be engaged to you. That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about.”
“Well, you are engaged to me, and that’s one
“Oh! Billy,” Caroline sighed, “why can’t we be just good friends and see a good deal of each other without this perpetual argument about getting married?”
“I don’t know why we can’t, but we can’t,” Billy said firmly. “What was the other thing you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Nancy’s affairs. The reckless—the criminal way she is running that restaurant, and the unthinkable expenditure of money involved. I can’t sleep at night thinking of it.”
“And I thought this was going to be a pleasant evening,” Billy cried to the stars.
“I wish you’d be serious about this,” Caroline said. “Nancy’s the best friend I have in the world, and she doesn’t seem to be quite right in her mind, Billy. Of course, I approve of a good part of her scheme. I believe that she can be of incalculable value as a pioneer in an enterprise of this sort. Her restaurant is based on a strictly scientific theory, and every person who patronizes it gets a balanced ration, if he has the good sense to eat it as it’s served.”
“And not leave any protein on his plate,” Billy murmured.
“I don’t even mind the slight extra expenditure and the deficit that is bound to follow her theory of stuffing all her subnormal patrons with additional nourishment. That is charity. I believe in devoting a certain amount of one’s income to charity, but what I mind about the whole proceeding is the crazy way that Nancy is running it. She’s not even trying to break even. She orders all the delicacies of the season—no matter what they are. She’s paid an incredible amount for the new set of carved chairs she has bought for up-stairs. You’d think she had an unlimited fortune behind her, instead of being in a position where the sheriff may walk in upon her any day.”
“Handy men to have around the house,—sheriffs. I knew a deputy sheriff once that helped the lady of the house do a baby wash while he was standing around in charge of the place. All the servants had deserted, and—”
“You pretend to be Nancy’s friend, and you’re the only thing remotely approaching a lawyer that she has, and yet you can shake with
“That isn’t what I’m shaking with joy about.”
“Nancy must have spent at least twice the amount of her original investment.”
“Just about,” Billy agreed cheerfully.
Caroline turned large reproachful eyes on him.
“Billy, how can you?”
“Listen to me, Caroline, honey love, it will be all right. Nancy isn’t so crazy as she seems. She is running wild a little, I admit, but there’s no danger of the sheriff or any other disaster. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s playing safe, though I admit it’s an extraordinary game.”
“She’s unhappy,” Caroline said. “You don’t suppose she’s going to marry Dick to get out of the scrape, and that she’s suffering because she’s had to make that compromise.”
“No, I don’t,” said Billy.
“I can’t imagine anything more dreadful than to give up your career—your independence because you were beaten before you could demonstrate it.”
“Let’s go right in here,” Billy said, guiding her by the arm through the door of the grill of the CafÉ des Artistes which she was ignoring in her absorption.
It was early but the place was already crowded with the assortment of upper cut Bohemians, Frenchmen, and other discriminating diners to whom the cafÉ owed its vogue. Billy and Caroline found a snowy table by the window, a table so small that it scarcely seemed to separate them.
“If it’s Dick that Nancy’s depending on,” Caroline shook out her mammoth napkin vigorously, “then I think the whole situation is dreadful.”
“I don’t see why,” Billy argued; “have him to fall back on—that’s what men are for.”
“Your opinion of women, Billy Boynton, just about tallies with the most conservative estimate of the Middle Ages.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” he grinned, then his evil genius prompting, he continued. “Isn’t that just about what you have me for—to fall back on? You’re fond of me. You know I’ll be there if the bottom drops out. You’re sure of me, and you’re holding me in reserve against
“Is that what you think?”
“Sure, it’s the way it is. If I haven’t got any kick coming I don’t see why you should have any. You’re worth it to me. That’s the point.”
Caroline opened her lips to speak, and then thought better of it. The dangerous glint in her pellucid hazel eyes was lost on Billy. He was watching the clear cool curve of her cheek, the smooth brown hair brushed up from the temple, and tucked away under the smart folds of a premature velvet turban.
“I like those mouse-colored clothes of yours,” he said contentedly.
“I think the only reason a woman should marry a man is that she—she—”
“Likes him?” Billy suggested.
“No, that she can be of more use in the world married than single. She can’t be that unless she’s going to marry a man who is entirely in sympathy with her point of view.”
“That I know to be unsound,” Billy said. “Caroline, my love, this is a bat. Can’t we let these matters of the mind rest for a little? See, I’ve ordered Petite Marmite, and afterward an
“I wish you’d tell me about Nancy,” Caroline said. “It makes a lot of difference. You haven’t any idea how much difference it makes.”
“See the nice little brown pots with the soup in them,” Billy implored her. “Cheese, too, all grated up so fine and white. Sprinkle it in like little snow-flakes.”
But in spite of all Billy’s efforts the evening went wrong after that. Caroline was wrapped in a mantle of sorrowful meditation the opacity of which she was not willing to let Billy penetrate for a moment. After they had dined they took a taxi-cab up-town and danced for an hour on the smooth floor of one of the quieter hotels. Billy’s dancing being of that light, sure, rhythmic quality that should have installed him irrevocably in the regard of any girl who had ever danced with a man who performed less admirably. Caroline liked to dance and fell in step with an unexpected docility, but even in his arms, dipping, pivoting, swaying to the curious syncopation of modern dance time, she was as remote and cool as a snow maiden.
At the table on the edge of the dancing platform where they sat between dances, Billy pledged her in nineteen-four Chablis Mouton.
“This is what you look like,” he said, holding up his glass to the light, “or perhaps I ought to say what you act like,—clear, cold stuff,—lovely, but not very sweet.”
“If it’s Dick,”—Caroline refused to be diverted—“Nancy is merely taking the easiest way out. Just getting married because she hasn’t the courage to go through any other way. She and Dick have hardly a taste in common—they don’t even read the same books.”
“What difference does that make?”
“If you don’t know I can’t tell you. When you see somebody else in danger of following the same course of action that you, yourself, are pursuing,” she added cryptically, “it puts a new face on your own affairs.”
“Oh! let’s get out of here,” Billy said, signaling for his check.
Caroline lived, for the summer while her family were away, in an elaborate Madison Avenue boarding-house. The one big room into which the entrance gave, dim and palatial in effect—at least in the light of the single gas-jet
“Cave-man stuff—that’s the answer to you and Caroline.... This watchful waiting’s entirely the wrong idea....”
Billy made a great lunge toward the figure of his fiancÉe, and caught her in his arms.
“I’ve never really kissed you before,” he cried, “now I shan’t let you go.”
She struggled in his arms, but he mastered her. He covered her cool brow with kisses, her hands, the lovely curve of her neck where the smooth hair turned upward, and at last—her lips.
“You’re mine, my girl,” he exulted, “and nothing, nothing, nothing shall ever take you away from me now.”
There was a click in the latch of the door through which they had just entered. Another belated boarder was making his way into the domicile which he had chosen as a substitute for the sacred privacy of home. Caroline tore herself out of Billy’s arms just in time to exchange greetings with the incoming guest with some pretense of composure. He was a fat man with an umbrella which clattered against the balusters as he ascended the carved staircase.
“Caught with the goods,” Billy tried to say through lips stiffened in an effort at control.
Caroline turned on him, her face blazing with anger, the transfiguring white rage of the woman whose spiritual fastnesses have been invaded through the approach of the flesh.
“There is no way of my ever forgiving you,” she said. “No way of my ever tolerating you, or anything you stand for again. You are utterly—utterly—utterly detestable in my eyes.”
“Is—is that so?” Billy stammered, dizzied by the suddenness of the onslaught.
“I—I’ve got some decent hold on my pride and self-respect—even if Nancy hasn’t, and I’m not going to be subjugated like a cave woman by mere brute force either.”
“Aren’t you?” said Billy weakly, his mind in a whirl still from the lightning-like overthrow of all his theories of action.
“I’m not going to do what Nancy is going to do, just out of sheer temperamental weakness, and—and tendency to follow the line of least resistance.”
Billy had no idea of the significance of her last phrase, and let it go unheeded. Caroline turned and walked away from him, her head high.
“But, good lord, Nancy isn’t going to do it,” he called after her retreating figure, but all the answer he got was the silken swish of her petticoat as she took the stairs.
