When Washington Was In Vogue

by Edward Christopher Williams

  “Nor I,” I answered. “It’s a lot more fun hitting the other fellow when he is looking you in the eye.” At this juncture our tête-à-tête was interrupted by Will Hale, who, as if to show his intent to make a third, brought over a chair and sat down by us. It was apparent that he had been drinking, though he was not the least bit defensive, but only somewhat too animated.

  “What have you two been talking about all evening?” he queried, good-naturedly enough, but as if he really expected an answer. I recalled what I had heard and seen of Hale’s interest in Billie.

  “Men, and women, and things in general,” I responded, without hesitation. Then I looked quickly at Billie, but her expression was one of the greatest serenity.

  “We have been discussing the question of fairness in fighting. Do you believe one is ever justified in fighting unfairly?” I added.

  Hale laughed noisily, as is his way when he has had a drop too much.

  “You know the old saw about ‘love and war,’ don’t you? The recent European unpleasantness is a precedent surely for the latter, and, as for the former, well—did you ever see women fight fairly when they fight at all?”

  “How about ladies?” asked Miss Billie tartly.

  “Ladies?” Hale laughed still louder. “It takes ‘ladies’ to give the crowning touch. Nowadays they use a hypodermic when you are not looking, instead of a dagger, as in the Middle Ages. You never know you are hurt until you drop. Oh, yes, for nice, fair, clean fighting, give me ‘ladies’ by all means!”

  “You’re a most objectionable person, Will Hale!” exclaimed Billie.

  Hale laughed again.

  “To change the subject somewhat, I came over to tell you that you are looking stunning tonight. That’s the prettiest gown I’ve seen in many a moon. Don’t you think so, Carr?”

  “Miss Riddick,” said I, “has already heard my views on her appearance in general, and her gown in particular. I quite agree with you.”

  Hale’s methods being a trifle too direct for my taste, I was glad when the orchestra struck up once more.

  The rest of the evening was very enjoyable. For sheer grace, feathery lightness, and “spirit of the dance,” few women in any crowd could equal Tommie and Miss Riddick, and two or three of the dances I had with them were inexpressibly delightful. On one occasion Billie and I stopped just in a crowd of my own particular friends. Said Mrs. Morrow with a rather mischievous smile:

  “There is one person in this room who is having the time of his life, and that is—Mr. Davy Carr. How is it, my friend?”

  “Right you are,” I responded with enthusiasm. “How could I help it?”

  As I turned, almost involuntarily it seemed, toward Caroline, she turned her head away, and thrusting her arm quickly through Don Verney’s, she said, with a laugh:

  “Come on, Don, old dear, let’s take a stroll!”

  When I had taken Billie home, I dismissed the taxi, for I wanted the few blocks’ walk in the frosty air, and I wanted to smoke. It was nearly two when I got in, and I was surprised to find Caroline standing in front of the grate fire which is always burning in the back parlor. Something told me to go right up to my room without seeing her, but a strange spirit of perversity seemed to take hold of me. So, instead of going up promptly, I strolled, with a carelessness which I now realized was feigned, into the parlor, with overcoat open and hat in hand.

  Caroline glanced at me for a second, and then her gaze returned again to the dying fire, while she tapped idly with the toe of her little gold slipper on the fender, and held with either hand the folds of the coat which hung loosely from her shoulders. Once again—as before in the past few days—her beauty seemed to strike me full in the face, as it were, and I felt a curious mixture of embarrassment and irritation. Since something had to be said, I opened the conversation.

  “Did you have a good time tonight?” Thus conventionally I began.

  She looked up at me quickly, and I should almost say saucily—impudently. Then her eyes again sought the fire.

  “Yes, I had a very good time, but no thanks to you, Mr. Carr.”

  It is impossible for me to convey to you in written words any adequate idea of the coldness and the cutting sarcasm of her tone. For a moment I hesitated, then I answered very calmly, so it seemed to me then.

  “If you refer to my failure to get a dance with you, I think your remark is most unjust, and its tone quite uncalled for.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?” was the very crisp rejoinder from the otherwise motionless figure in front of the grate.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  A long silence—interminably long, so it appeared to me as I stood there beside her. Finally—

  “Others—and some who are not quite nonentities—asked me more than once, and more than twice. Don Verney asked me three or four times before he got a dance.”

  “That was his privilege of course,” I answered, coolly enough, though something within me warned me to say good night and take my leave before a possible explosion. But the imp of perversity which was hovering about urged me to stay, and I did.

  “Neither time that I asked you did you give me the slightest encouragement to ask again. So uninterested were you that I hesitated even to ask you the second time.”

  “Indeed! I suppose you consider it kind in you to put it that way—to let me down easy, as it were. To give your due, I should expect you to do that, Mr. Carr, and I assure you I appreciate it. It’s really much nicer than saying or intimating one is too busy with new friends to bother with the old. Don’t you think so, Mr. Carr?”

  Her tone was irritating, almost maddening. I had an almost irresistible desire to shake her until her teeth rattled. How is it that a woman can persist in reiterating what she does not believe, and could not believe, as if it were the chief article of her creed? I had heard it done before, many times, but that makes it no easier to endure in this case. Suddenly I seemed to lose myself, provoked beyond control by her cool, sarcastic manner. While I am not quite certain what happened, I shall put it down as I recall it now, to the very best of my ability. It does not sound quite rational, but, alas, I fear it is true.

  I seized Caroline by both arms and shook her.

  “Why do you persist in saying that?” I said.“You know it is not true.”

  “Let me go, Davy Carr, you hurt me!” She tried to free herself, but the heavy cloak impeded her.

  Then some blind impulse seemed to seize me with violence and rushed me headlong to my own destruction. I let go her wrists, which I had grasped in the folds of the cloak, and holding her in a close embrace, I kissed her again and again. For one brief second in my delirium, it seemed that she yielded to my embrace, but suddenly every muscle seemed to stiffen and she became rigid in my arms.

  “Let me go, Davy Carr, let me go!” she panted. “How dare you! How dare you! Oh, I hate you! I hate you!”

  Brought to my senses, my arms relaxed their hold, and she wrenched herself free. Her face was ablaze. Without warning, she struck me with all her might with her left hand. The blow, centering its force in my right eye, blinded me completely, and then she struck me again, this time with her right hand, the set from her ring making a long, deep scratch on my left cheek running from my eye to mouth. When I was able to see again, I was alone in the room, and Caroline’s fur coat lay in a heap on the floor just where it had fallen from her shoulders, and a few feet off her handbag and a handkerchief, signs of a hasty, headlong flight. My first impulse was, of course, to follow her, but a second’s reflection showed me the futility of that, and then, suddenly, I felt almost ill. The scratch on my face burned fiercely, my eye pained me not a little. I slumped rather limply on the davenport, and my incurable propensity to make a jest, even at my own expense, asserted itself almost automatically, as it were.

  “The little vixen—a regular fierce little two-fisted fighter!” I tried to smile.

  Then I put my hand to my eye, and winced, and touched my handkerchief to the long, sti
nging scratch, and brought it away with streaks of red upon it. I piled up the beautiful coat, and held it at first idly, between my hands. The delicate fragrance of Fleurs d’Amour enveloped me until it seemed that I held Caroline herself in my arms. And then it struck me all in a heap what has been the matter with me all these days and weeks. What a purblind fool I have been, groping about with my eyes shut, when all I had to do was to open them and then look. But, true as I live and as I write these words, I never realized until that minute, sitting there before the dying fire in that still room, nursing my hurts, that I have been wildly in love with Caroline all this time. In trying to think it over calmly, and discover just when this distemper seized me, I find it difficult to disentangle things. But my present state is perfectly clear, and I see, too, that others have known it for some time—Don, for example, and you. Why did you not say something about it? Or did you think I knew, but was trying to keep it from you?

  But what a mess my dullness has gotten me into! If I had realized before what was ailing me, I could have acted differently. But after my brutality of last night, I don’t know how I am ever going to straighten things out. I really don’t. If ever a woman was offended, Caroline is that woman. And God knows, I can’t blame her. Even supposing she could forgive my brutality, could she care for me as I care for her? I wonder. Does she love Dr. King? Poor Billie Riddick—ah, that brings another pang! When I recall how I have been carrying on with her, it makes me sick! If Caroline ever cared for me, would not that have killed off any budding affection? Billie insists that Caroline does not love the doctor, but could not give satisfactory reasons for her faith. Tommie preserves a very discreet and noncommittal silence when approached on the subject. A shrug of her pretty brown shoulders is the most I have been able to get from her. So there you are!

  I have been going over my diary since the painful event of last night, and I find that Caroline, when she seemed to like me most, treated me more like a brother than a possible lover. She has always thought me a slow coach, safe company, a personable escort, and all that, but not much fun. Since Thanksgiving she has changed. She has come to my room only on definite, and brief, errands, and she has seemed to take no more pleasure in the teasing pranks which used to delight her so much. As I look over the record, this change of attitude is almost exactly coincident with the return of Dr. King. The prospect is not a cheerful one. I have always prided myself on being a game loser, as you know, but this is different somehow. And then to end in such a disgusting mess. I wish I had gone to Columbia last week, as I originally planned to do. I see now why I stayed on, though up to last night I was not aware of my own motive for the delay.

  What I am going to do, exactly, I don’t quite know. I have been in the house all day, having ’phoned to the restaurant to send me in my lunch. My eye does not trouble me, for plenty of hot water and a nice witch hazel bandage fixed it all right. The scratch is not so easily camouflaged. I have kept it touched up all day, and it is fast losing its conspicuousness. But I should confess to you what I would not want to confess to anyone else, that I would rather face a nest of German machine guns than meet Mrs. Rhodes or Genevieve. Not that I think Caroline would say anything to them, but I should just feel horribly self-conscious, especially with this shrieking scratch down my cheek.

  But I must see Caroline alone, if possible. She seems not to have been home all day, for I have not seen her or heard her since early morning. At about noon, when Mrs. Rhodes came up on some errand in the front room, she knocked at my closed door, and asked if I were ill. When I responded as cheerfully as I could that I was quite well, she went away satisfied.

  I shall have to go out this evening, for I have an engagement to play cards at Lillian Barton’s. As there are to be just eight of us, I dare not send regrets at this late hour without the very best of excuses. So it is up to me to make the best of it. Nothing by any chance escapes the sharp eyes of Lillian Barton, Don Verney, nor Mary Hale, for that matter. So I expect to be an object of interest this evening. What can be deduced by keen observation will be elicited by that crowd, you may be sure. Whether I am a match for them all, or not, time will tell.

  In one way I am glad to have to go, for I think I should explode if I were shut up here all evening. I am sure I should.

  7:30 P.M.

  As this letter is so long already I think I shall mail it as I go out. If anything of supreme and vital concern occurs in the next few hours, I shall write you tomorrow. Who can tell what may happen? The air is electric! Up to this moment as I write, there has been neither sight nor sound denoting Caroline’s presence in the house, nor have I seen or heard Tommie all day. That reminds me to warn you not to breathe one word of what I have told you to Tommie, at any rate hot until I give you explicit permission. Things are bad enough as they are, and I cannot afford to risk complications.

  Your disfigured but still smiling friend,

  Davy

  THIRTEEN

  Love troubles. “Madame X” once more. What Billie Riddick thinks of the flappers. Don and his Mary.

  Sunday, February 4

  Dear Bob:

  As I pen these lines I am still on Uneasy Street—to quote the slangy Miss Riddick. Several things have happened since I mailed you my last letter a week ago yesterday on my way to Lillian Barton’s, but they are not such things as serve to make life more endurable. In a hackneyed phrase, “The plot thickens!”

  To be sure I omit nothing, perhaps I might better begin at the beginning, and take things in order. My story starts, then, just after I had dropped your letter in the mailbox at the corner, and set out for Lillian’s. As you may recall, Dr. King’s office is two doors down from that very corner, and his car was standing at the curb as I passed, a sign that he was keeping his office hours. I was looking idly at the car when I almost collided with two people who were coming from the opposite direction, and who should it be but Caroline and Tommie.

  Tommie stopped, of course, and greeted me warmly, but Caroline, with a look in my direction, walked over to the doctor’s car and opened the door. Tommie explained that they were going out with Dr. King, and had decided, to save time, to sit in the car until his office hours were over, which would be in a few minutes. As she talked, she looked inquiringly at Caroline, and I gathered from her perplexity that the latter had said nothing to her about our little disagreement.

  “Come and keep us company until Dr. King comes out,” she added, “if you have nothing better to do.”

  But somehow I did not want to force myself on Caroline, and when I did see her, I wanted the interview to be without witnesses. Until I could see her alone, I preferred to see her not at all. So I thanked Tommie for her invitation, pleaded an engagement, and with my best bow took my leave, quite aware that the look of perplexity on Tommie’s face had deepened, as Caroline showed, neither by word or sign, that she noticed me.

  I did a lot of thinking as I moved on up the street, but it was motion in a circle and got me nowhere at all. I had planned to stop at Don’s, and pick him up, but changed my mind and went instead straight to Lillian’s, and so I arrived a little early. As during my walk I had been so deep in my reflection that I had forgotten to button my topcoat, the chill of the night had begun to strike in, so I enjoyed to the full the grateful warmth of the blazing wood fire in the big parlor, where the alternating light and shade played hide-and-seek in the dark corners. My hostess looked particularly handsome in the yellow light, her welcome was unusually cordial, and I began to be glad that I had come.

  “Shall I snap on a light, or will the firelight suffice?” she asked as we came in from the hallway.

  “I like nothing better than this,” I answered. “It suits my mood perfectly.”

  “Oh, do you men admit moods? I thought that they were reserved exclusively for the weaker sex.”

  “Sometimes I wonder just which is the weaker sex,” I responded. Then, after a pause, I continued, “I was afraid I might be too early, but I took the chance, hoping that I mig
ht not be too troublesome.”

  “You are never too early, my friend,” said Miss Barton, with every appearance of sincerity. “It is nice to think you wanted to be early.”

  “But you may be busy with something or other. If you are, don’t let me keep you. I can enjoy the firelight and—my own musings,” I smiled.

  “The ‘something or other’ can wait. But what have you on your mind?” She looked at me keenly.

  I think I have discussed with you Miss Barton’s perfectly uncanny faculty of “sensing” things. Now and then it is somewhat disconcerting, but on this occasion I was expecting a manifestation of it, and so was prepared.

  “Cannot the power of perception, which tells you there is something on my mind, also tell you what it is?” I parried, smiling serenely.

  “No, it does not carry that far,” she said. “But I knew the moment I saw you in the hall that something was worrying you.”

  “You have sharp eyes,” I said.

  “Where my friends are concerned—yes. In your case it is easy to see that you have been puzzling over something for quite a while.”

  “Indeed! That is interesting.”

  “Yes, it is interesting.” Miss Barton’s brown eyes looked at me keenly, as she held the match for my cigarette, and then lighted one for herself. “And a great many people are interested,” she added, as she tossed the match into the fireplace and idly watched it burn.

  I took advantage of her momentarily averted gaze to look at her. She is surely a beautiful woman, with her soft brown hair, her lovely color, and the graceful poise of her handsome head on the snowy shoulders. The hand, too, which held the cigarette, and the rounded arm, which gracefully flicked the ash toward the hearth, would not be far from the top in any beauty contest. But, for all that, I like Caroline’s type of beauty best. And, as I sat there, I reconstructed her in my mind’s eye, with her satiny brown skin, her raven hair, sloe-black eyes, and the dainty but substantial prettiness of her, from the slim fingertips to the “petits pieds si adorés.” Lillian has a sparkle like champagne, but Caroline radiates a sweet, warm vitality which intoxicates no less than champagne. I had lost myself entirely in my dream, and must have been looking through or beyond my hostess when she brought me out of my trance in a jiffy.