Who Cares [98]
afternoon?"
"Yes." (Fight? Tooth and nail.) "Except for the flies. . . . Why, boy?"
"Oh, nothing. I thought--I mean, I wondered--but it doesn't matter. By gum, you have made the room look smart, haven't you? Good old Tootles. Even a man's room can be made to look like something when a girl takes an interest in it."
If she had been a dog she would have wagged her tail and crinkled up her nose and jumped up to put her nozzle against his hand. As it was she flushed with pleasure and gave a little laugh. She was a thousandfold repaid for all her pains. But, during the first half of a meal made riotous by the invincible Howard and the animated Irene, Tootles sat very quiet and thoughtful and even a little awed. How could Martin have sensed the fact that she had been there? . . . Could she,--could she possibly, even with the ever-ready help of nature,--hope to win against such a handicap? She would see. She would see. It was her last card. But during all the rest of the meal she saw the picture of a muscular sun-tanned youth carrying that pretty unconscious thing down the incline to a car, and, all against her will, she was sorry. That girl, pampered as she was, outside the big ring of hard daily effort and sordid struggle as she always had had the luck to be, loved, too. Gee, it was a queer world.
The stoop called them when they left the boxlike dining room. It was still hot and airless. But the mosquitoes were out with voracious appetite and discretion held them to the living room.
Irene flung herself on the bumpy sofa with a cigarette between her lips and a box near to her elbow. "This's the life," she said. "I shall never be able to go back to lil' old Broadway and grease paint and a dog kennel in Chorusland."
"Sufficient for the day," said Howard, loosening his belt. "If a miracle man blew in here right now with a million dollars in each hand and said: 'Howard Guthrie Oldershaw,'--he'd be sure to know about the Guthrie,--'this is all yours if you'll come to the city,' I'd . . ."
Irene leaned forward with her mouth open and her round eyes as big as headlights. "Well?"
"Take it and come right back."
"You disappoint me, Funny-face. Go to the piano and hit the notes. That's all you're fit for."
t was a baby grand, much out of tune, but Howard, bulging over the stool, made it sound like an orchestra,--a cabaret orchestra, and ran from Grieg to Jerome Kern and back to Gounod, syncopating everything with the gusto and the sense of time that is almost peculiar to a colored professional. Then he suddenly burst into song and sang about a baby in the soft round high baritone of all men who run to fat and with the same quite charming sympathy. A useful, excellent fellow, amazingly unself-conscious and gifted.
Martin was infinitely content to listen and lie back in a deep straw chair with a pipe between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, if--if her plan went through--
Howard lit another cigarette at the end of the song, but before he could get his hands on the notes again Irene bounded to her feet and went over to the piano. "Say, can you play 'Love's Epitome'?" she pronounced it "Eppy-tomy."
"Can a duck swim?" asked Howard, resisting a temptation to emit a howl of mirth. She was too good a sort to chaff about her frequent maltreatment of the language.
"Go ahead, then, and I'll give you all a treat." He played the sentimental prelude of this characteristic product of the vaudeville stage, every note of which was plagiarized from a thousand plagiarisms and which imagined that eternity rhymed with serenity and mother with weather. With gestures that could belong to no other school than that of the twice-dailies and the shrill nasal voice that inevitably goes with them, Irene, with the utmost solemnity, went solidly through the whole appalling
"Yes." (Fight? Tooth and nail.) "Except for the flies. . . . Why, boy?"
"Oh, nothing. I thought--I mean, I wondered--but it doesn't matter. By gum, you have made the room look smart, haven't you? Good old Tootles. Even a man's room can be made to look like something when a girl takes an interest in it."
If she had been a dog she would have wagged her tail and crinkled up her nose and jumped up to put her nozzle against his hand. As it was she flushed with pleasure and gave a little laugh. She was a thousandfold repaid for all her pains. But, during the first half of a meal made riotous by the invincible Howard and the animated Irene, Tootles sat very quiet and thoughtful and even a little awed. How could Martin have sensed the fact that she had been there? . . . Could she,--could she possibly, even with the ever-ready help of nature,--hope to win against such a handicap? She would see. She would see. It was her last card. But during all the rest of the meal she saw the picture of a muscular sun-tanned youth carrying that pretty unconscious thing down the incline to a car, and, all against her will, she was sorry. That girl, pampered as she was, outside the big ring of hard daily effort and sordid struggle as she always had had the luck to be, loved, too. Gee, it was a queer world.
The stoop called them when they left the boxlike dining room. It was still hot and airless. But the mosquitoes were out with voracious appetite and discretion held them to the living room.
Irene flung herself on the bumpy sofa with a cigarette between her lips and a box near to her elbow. "This's the life," she said. "I shall never be able to go back to lil' old Broadway and grease paint and a dog kennel in Chorusland."
"Sufficient for the day," said Howard, loosening his belt. "If a miracle man blew in here right now with a million dollars in each hand and said: 'Howard Guthrie Oldershaw,'--he'd be sure to know about the Guthrie,--'this is all yours if you'll come to the city,' I'd . . ."
Irene leaned forward with her mouth open and her round eyes as big as headlights. "Well?"
"Take it and come right back."
"You disappoint me, Funny-face. Go to the piano and hit the notes. That's all you're fit for."
t was a baby grand, much out of tune, but Howard, bulging over the stool, made it sound like an orchestra,--a cabaret orchestra, and ran from Grieg to Jerome Kern and back to Gounod, syncopating everything with the gusto and the sense of time that is almost peculiar to a colored professional. Then he suddenly burst into song and sang about a baby in the soft round high baritone of all men who run to fat and with the same quite charming sympathy. A useful, excellent fellow, amazingly unself-conscious and gifted.
Martin was infinitely content to listen and lie back in a deep straw chair with a pipe between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, if--if her plan went through--
Howard lit another cigarette at the end of the song, but before he could get his hands on the notes again Irene bounded to her feet and went over to the piano. "Say, can you play 'Love's Epitome'?" she pronounced it "Eppy-tomy."
"Can a duck swim?" asked Howard, resisting a temptation to emit a howl of mirth. She was too good a sort to chaff about her frequent maltreatment of the language.
"Go ahead, then, and I'll give you all a treat." He played the sentimental prelude of this characteristic product of the vaudeville stage, every note of which was plagiarized from a thousand plagiarisms and which imagined that eternity rhymed with serenity and mother with weather. With gestures that could belong to no other school than that of the twice-dailies and the shrill nasal voice that inevitably goes with them, Irene, with the utmost solemnity, went solidly through the whole appalling