The Girl with the Frightened Eyes

by Lawrence Lariar

  I saw Kip last on the night a machine-gun bullet smashed my arm. I lay on the ground and he kneeled beside me and his face was bearded and strange to me. He was a different Kip now, suddenly older and steadier.

  He held my good hand. “You’ll be going home soon, Jeff. I want you to do me a favor.”

  I knew what was on his mind. “Paula?”

  He nodded. “I kind of thought you’d figure it the way I did. Something back there has gone wrong for her. That last letter frightened me. I want you to find her after they let you out and see that she’s okay. You can do it. You and she will speak the same language—the same screwball double-talk.”

  I said, “I can try.”

  “It won’t be tough. You and Paula should get along well together. You’re a cinch.” He gave me a broad grin and a slow wink. “And, besides, I always wanted a cartoonist in the family.”

  A dull whistle blew in the night and Kip stood over me, fumbling for a good-bye.

  I said, “Forget about Paula. I’ll write you as soon as I can get to her. It’s probably nothing at all, so don’t go batting your dome around—you’ll need all the few brains in that head of yours once you guys get started rolling toward Paris. When you get there drink a Pernod and think of me.”

  He shook my good hand and said good-bye to me with his eyes and then he walked away in the rain.

  That was the last time I saw Kip Smith. He was killed in action the day before our boys jerked the Jerries out of Cherbourg.

  CHAPTER 2

  Quaker Lane was in Greenwich Village.

  It was a typical village street, lined with typical village houses sitting close to the narrow curbing, thin and old and fading in the gloom. A regiment of ashcans decorated the sidewalks. There were a few stores at the far end of Quaker Lane, now lit for the last few moments of business. No traffic passed through the street but the drone of city movement sang around it.

  Mrs. Preston’s place was a three story brownstone. It was a very old house, asleep and dreaming of its past. The brownstone was dirty with age. A narrow porch faced the street. An incongruous yellow mail box hung on the front door. A white glass sign in a window said:

  MRS. K PRESTON

  ROOMS FOR RENT

  A pretty girl answered the bell. She looked at me with her small mouth open and fiddled with the thin black bow on her ample bosom. She wiped her hands on her apron, slowly.

  I said, “Paula Smith—is she home?”

  “She don’t live here anymore.”

  “When did she move away?”

  “I don’t know, really. Maybe you’d better see Mrs. Preston.”

  She showed me into the living room. It was late Nineteenth Century Brownstone, typical of all such living rooms of that period. It was a long layout, narrow and dark and claustrophobic. On the street side a bay window allowed the gray city light to filter into a small section of the room beyond the heavy green drapes and the tiny oval table. The walls were papered in brown and gray, a crawling vine design that squirmed in several directions at the same time. An old chandelier, heavy with poorly wrought glass ornaments, hung from the dirty ceiling. The furniture was overstuffed and there was a preponderance of dull purple and green in the motif, enough to make an interior decorator die by his own hand. The rug was dark and red and figured with confusion born in the brain of some oriental craftsman east of the Mississippi. There was a small lamp lit at the far end of the room, near the dining room.

  Only the pictures on the walls surprised me. Mrs. Preston was evidently a woman of discernment. Her taste in art was good and leaned toward the standard and accepted masters of the modern schools. The pictures were well framed and skillfully hung against the horrible wallpaper background. They were freaks in that room. They gave the place an air of incongruity and impermanence. They were hors d’oeuvres in a cafeteria.

  There was a Rivera original—a lithograph, hung neatly over the small marble mantel and on the long wall a line of water colors, framed in wide mats and in light woods. A giant oil decorated the square wall on the dining room side. This was a landscape resembling Utrillo in technique, but too well hidden in the gloom for me to see the signature. On the small occasional tables sat many plaster copies of authentic African sculpture.

  My observations were cut short by a polite cough from the girl who stood watching me from the hallway door.

  I said, “Is Mrs. Preston an artist?”

  She tittered a bit. “An artist? I don’t think so.”

  She blushed slightly and I walked over to her. “She’s got a fine collection of stuff in the room, that’s why I asked. Is there much more of it around?”

  “The place is full of it, I guess. I’m used to it so I never really look at it.”

  I said, “Is this a boarding house?”

  The girl nodded. “You might call it that. But Mrs. Preston won’t take everybody in. She likes arty-people, you know—painters and musicians and people like that. We’ve got all artists in here now, but last year there were a couple of musicians, too—and a sculptor.”

  I looked down the hallway toward the dining room. The table was set for dinner. Highlights glistened on a large lazy Suzan.

  “It’s certainly a homey place,” I said. “Might be tempted to move in here myself. How many boarders has Mrs. Preston got now?”

  “Just five. Four of them are men. The only lady is Mrs. Crandall—an old lady artist who’s been here a long time. She’s upstairs sick now. I have to take her meals in bed sometimes. Always getting sick.” She was twisting her apron nervously.

  I took out my cigarettes and offered her one. She smiled and waved it away politely.

  I said, “How long did Paula Smith live here?”

  “I’d say over two years. She lived here when I came to work for Mrs. Preston, over two years ago.”

  “And you can’t remember when she moved out?”

  “Not exactly. What happened was I had to leave here to see my mother back in Pennsylvania, because she was sick. Then, when I came back, Paula was gone. I was away from here maybe two months, you see.”

  She was trying to help me. She had a simple face, too naïve for well-constructed lying.

  I said, “When was it you went away to see your mother?”

  “Sometime in June. I came back in August. So I guess Paula left sometime in between.”

  I took out Paula’s letters and found the last one sent to Kip. It seemed to fit into the pattern. It was dated May 16th. Kip had received it in London, just before we crossed the Channel together. Evidently Paula had moved out of Mrs. Preston’s house a while after mailing that letter.

  I said, “How well did you know Paula?”

  “Paula was a swell girl,” she said. “She was always nice to me, and she didn’t treat me like a servant the way some of the other crazy artists in this place seem to. I was sorry she went away because she was a real friend to me.”

  I said, “How did she act around the time you left for Pennsylvania?”

  “How did she act?”

  I explained that I was a friend of Paula’s and the last letter she had written to me seemed full of worry.

  “I didn’t notice it,” the girl said. “Paula isn’t the kind of girl that shows when she’s upset. The last time I remember seeing her she was acting just the way she always acted.”

  A thin, high voice from somewhere upstairs chirped, “Lucy! Lucy! Where’s my dinner?”

  Lucy rubbed her hands on her apron. “That’s Mrs. Crandall, the old lady artist I was telling you about. I’ll have to go inside and bring her some dinner. Why don’t you just sit down and wait—Mrs. Preston will get in any minute now. She’ll be able to tell you a lot more about Paula Smith than I can.”

  I watched Lucy disappear into the kitchen at the far end of the dining room. I walked into the dining room and strolled around the big
oak table. I wanted to see more of Mrs. Preston’s art collection. I wasn’t disappointed.

  The dining room was square and dark although the wallpaper had changed from crawling vines to huge blocks of filigreed floral designs, calculated to add dignity to an eating room back in 1887. The walls were well filled with art of all kinds and all sizes. There was a collection of small abstractions, quickly done, and probably the preliminary sketches for a larger picture. A group of eight etchings decorated the far wall. A well framed reproduction of Burchfield’s “Ice Glare” hung over a small buffet.

  I was walking up that icy street with Burchfield when Mrs. Preston entered the living room.

  I heard the front door slam and when I turned she was standing at the far end of the red rug, half silhouetted against the bay window. She stood there slowly pulling off her gloves, a well-built woman, not tall, not short, and well molded.

  I walked to meet her and saw that her hair was black and her face angular and not unpleasant in the features. She had a fine head for caricaturing. Her eyes were two shades blacker than her hair. Her skin had a fresh quality that was almost overdone in the make-up department. Her face shone because of her eyes and because of them she appeared sharp and keen and almost theatrical. She had a good figure, high in the bust and wide in the hips. Her simple suit was cut to reveal these features.

  She gave me the full strength of her smile. She said, “Were you looking for a room, soldier?”

  I returned the smile. “I could use one. But I’m not quite ready to settle down yet. I have to locate Paula Smith first.”

  She stopped pulling at her gloves and stared at me. “Do you? That’s very odd—because I’m looking for Paula myself.”

  I said, “I don’t understand. Didn’t she leave a forwarding address?”

  Mrs. Preston sat down with a long sigh. “She left absolutely nothing. Paula woke up one day and evidently decided to go somewhere where nobody could find her, because she left without a word to anybody.”

  “She owed you rent?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Preston. “She always paid her rent regularly. She left here a few weeks before her room rent was due…very sudden and very mysterious.”

  I said, “That doesn’t sound like Paula.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She was studying my face curiously and suddenly her eyebrows went up. “But of course—you must be Paula’s brother Kip. She’s told us all about you.”

  “No, I’m not Kip. Kip Smith died some time ago in Normandy. That’s one of the reasons why I must locate Paula.”

  She said, “I’m sorry. Paula will be heartbroken.” She got up and crossed the room to stand at the window. “She was a queer girl in many ways, but I suppose you knew her well?”

  I said, “I’ve never met her, but I feel that I know her personally after living with Kip for over two years. In what way was she a queer girl?”

  Mrs. Preston shrugged daintily. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, really. What I meant was the fact that she thought so much of her work. I’ve never met a girl who worked harder to become an artist than Paula Smith. She would stay in her room for days at a time working away at certain problems in color. It struck me as rather queer that a pretty girl like Paula should go at it so seriously. You’ll admit that pretty girls are more often busy with men?”

  I said, “That doesn’t always hold, or they wouldn’t accept beautiful women in our art schools. She went to an art school, didn’t she?”

  “Not while she lived here. She mentioned having gone to The New York School of Art some time ago.”

  “How can you be sure that she wasn’t still going up there?”

  Mrs. Preston shrugged. “She just wasn’t going anywhere—regularly. She did most of her painting in her room, I guess. We rarely ever saw her go out, you know—I just didn’t happen to be around when that happened. This is a boarding house and there are things that keep me busy all day long. But I saw her once or twice with a portable kit for painting outdoors.”

  The question and answer game wasn’t getting anywhere and I sensed resentment in Mrs. Preston’s manner. I decided to appeal to her feminine impulses.

  I said, “Then Paula never got the telegram?”

  “What telegram?”

  “The army must have sent the usual death notice.”

  “You’ll have to ask Lucy that question,” she said. “I’m sure I never got a telegram for Paula.”

  I made a mental note to check this item with Lucy. I said, “The business of her art instruction mystifies me. Paula seemed the sort of girl who would want somebody to look at her work occasionally. Didn’t she ever mention a teacher?”

  “If she talked art, it was only art, not teachers. Paula scorned all formal instruction because she believed that artists shouldn’t imitate. It was her contention that all students sooner or later begin to draw like their masters.”

  “She’s not far wrong about that. But how did she go about learning to paint?”

  Mrs. Preston settled back in her chair. “She seemed to be trying out all art from the French Impressionists right up to the present schools and styles. She claimed that the only way to understand these schools was to experience them.”

  “You mean that she painted in each style, one at a time?”

  “That’s it, exactly.”

  I looked around the room and wondered how good a judge of Paula’s art Mrs. Preston would be. “What was she doing just before she left here?”

  “Paula never really let me see her work, but I did manage to look at it occasionally when Lucy was off and I had to straighten some of the rooms. The last time this happened was back in April sometime. I saw a few canvases in her room and they seemed to be wildly modern things—so modern that I’d hesitate to label them anything.”

  “Was the work good?”

  She squirmed a little. “I’m not much of an art critic, of course, but I like to think I know a little about it and I’d say that Paula’s work was—well, it was just fair.”

  We were getting nowhere. “How about her friends? A girl as pretty as you say she is must have had at least one boyfriend.”

  Mrs. Preston hesitated. “If she did, I never met him.”

  “And no women friends?”

  “She had visitors, occasionally. I seem to remember a girl of Paula’s age coming here every once in a while.”

  “But you never met her? Isn’t that rather odd?”

  “I said she was queer, didn’t I? I sensed Paula’s aloofness and never tried to pry into her affairs, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t friendly.”

  The smell of roasting meat floated in through the dining room door. It was the dinner hour. I stood up and toyed with my cap, hoping that Mrs. Preston would invite me to dinner. I would have enjoyed meeting the other roomers, asking questions. But the invitation never came. I walked into the hall and Mrs. Preston followed me to the door.

  I said, “All this can’t be very serious, I’m sure. Paula has probably gone out of town to paint some landscapes and I’ll be able to locate her through someone in the art world.”

  “You know the art groups?”

  “I used to know my way around town among the painters and sculptors before the war. It should be fairly easy to get some information soon because artists are a pretty clannish gang.”

  “They most certainly are,” she said, warming a little. “Do you know, I’ve had them in my house for years—only artists.” She paused, smiling. “Artists are the nicest people in the world, don’t you think?”

  “Some of my best friends are artists,” I said.

  “Are you?”

  “Not quite. I’m a member of the vermin fringe in the art world, Mrs. Preston. I’m a cartoonist, or maybe a caricaturist, depending upon my audience.”

  “How interesting,” she said and clasped her hands before her. “I
’ve known many cartoonists, too. George Wolfe used to live in this very house years ago when he was just getting started in the cartoon world. I’d love to see your work sometime. You work for the newspapers?”

  “I did. Maybe I will again.” I stood on the porch and looked past her into the hall. There were two men walking toward the dining room and I kept talking fast about my activities in the cartooning business, hoping that Mrs. Preston would still find it in her heart to invite me inside for dinner.

  But somebody shouted to her and she edged back to the door and ended the conversation abruptly. “Let me know where Paula is as soon as you find out,” she said. “I liked her a lot and hope that everything is all right with her.”

  Before she could close the door I asked, “That girl, Mrs. Preston—the one you mentioned a while ago as Paula’s friend. Do you remember her name?”

  She shook her head firmly. “I don’t remember.”

  I crossed the street, disappointed. It seemed impossible for a pretty girl to live for so long in one place and yet keep most of her life hidden from her landlady—especially a landlady like Mrs. Preston. Her dialogue was geared for ferreting information. It occurred to me, suddenly, that maybe Mrs. Preston was not telling me the truth. Perhaps Paula had given her a secret and Mrs. Preston was being faithful to her trust.

  I paused on the corner, meditating my next move. Searching for a Smith in the city of New York would not be an easy job. The phone book would be chock full of Smiths.

  In the small stationery store opposite Mrs. Preston’s boarding house I began my search. There was no Paula Smith listed in the phone book. I called information and asked for a Paula Smith. The closest to Paula Smith was a certain Pamela Smith.

  I bought some cigarettes and lit the first one outside under the ragged awning. It was quite dark now and a light shone through the big bay in 17 Quaker Lane. I took a deep drag and stared across at the curtained window.

  Somebody was silhouetted in the window, looking out at me. It was Lucy.

  The front door opened and she ran across the street holding her peasant skirt to prevent it from billowing in the wind. She faced me breathlessly. “I just had to run after you, Mr.—”