Clinton rose at once. “Why, of course.”
Easy sat back and watched the two couples move out on the floor. When the waiter came by, Easy grabbed him by the arm and said, “Hey, buddy.”
“Yes, monsieur?”
“Who is this woman, Avis Warwick?”
“You do not know her? You are her guest, are you not?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know much about her.”
The waiter leaned forward and lowered his voice. “She is the widow of Charles Warwick, who was one of the wealthiest manufacturers in the state. He was an old man when he married. When he died, he left all of his fortune to his widow. She is a very wealthy woman.”
“Well, glad to hear it. Maybe I can have some more of them snails you been bringin’ in here.”
Avis was dancing with Peter and smiling up at him, saying, “Are you proud of what you won or sorry that you didn’t win first place?”
“We were lucky,” Peter shrugged. “We shouldn’t have even finished in the first five. Their cars were built a lot better and much faster.”
“Why don’t you get a bigger, faster car?”
“It takes a lot of money, Avis.”
Avis considered him awhile, then said, “Maybe I can help.”
“Help in racing? You don’t know anything about it, do you?”
“No, but I could help with the money. I’ve got plenty of that.”
“I couldn’t take money from a woman,” Peter objected.
Avis Warwick was pleased with his reply, but she laughed. “You are a dinosaur. There are no more left like you. Come on, let’s go get something to drink. Oh, I forgot, you don’t drink. Well, let’s go get me something to drink,” she said as she hooked her arm in his and led him back to the table where Easy was enjoying another dish of snails.
The party went on for quite a while, and when they finally left, Avis packed them all into cabs that were waiting. She held on to Peter’s arm and said, “I’ll take care of this one. Good night to the rest of you.”
Jolie sat between Clinton and Easy in the cab, fuming. “Who does she think she is?”
“She thinks she’s a rich woman,” Easy said wryly and told Jolie what he had heard about her wealth from the waiter.
“Well, I don’t care if she is rich. I don’t like her.”
“Now I remember reading something about her,” Clinton said. “She’s kind of an outlaw—always getting into some kind of jam. I just didn’t remember it before.”
When they arrived at the boardinghouse, where Easy and Jolie got out, Clinton got out with them and said, “Congratulations, Easy. That’s a wonderful car you and Peter have built.”
“Couldn’t have done it without your help, Clinton,” Easy said. He looked at the two and said abruptly, “Good night,” then walked quickly into the building.
“I’ve got to get home,” Clinton said.
Jolie was still angry. “I can’t stand that woman! You can tell she’s no good!”
“How can you tell that?” asked Clinton, surprised at Jolie’s outburst.
“I’ve seen enough no-goods to know one. Haven’t you?”
“Well, I guess not really.” Clinton had not seen a great deal of the world, and now he asked uncertainly, “Will I see you again, Jolie, getting ready for the next race?”
“Yes, I expect so, Clinton. Good night.” Jolie turned and stalked into the building.
For a moment, Clinton stood there and watched, then he climbed back into the cab and gave the driver directions to his house.
Jolie went to her own room and paced angrily, clenching her fists. “That Avis woman! You can tell what she’s like. She’s after men, and she doesn’t care how she gets them. Peter’s got to be warned. Don’t guess she has to care, with her money. Surely Peter’s got better sense—” She stopped, then said, “She’s beautiful and rich.” Slowly her hand reached up and she touched the scar that traced her cheek in a long line. She grew silent then and tried to shake the thoughts out of her head.
When Clinton got out of the cab, he paid the driver and walked inside. He had barely closed the door when his father strode out of the study and came rapidly down the hall, his face cloudy. “Where have you been, Clinton?” he demanded.
Clinton considered lying for one moment, but something stirred within him. “I’ve been out with some friends.”
“Out where?”
Again Clinton tried to evade the issue, but his father pressed for an answer. “Where have you been that you’re so ashamed of it?”
“I’m not ashamed of it! I’ve been to an automobile race with the Winslows. Phil was there and his cousin Peter was in the race. I told you about them. Fine young men, both of them.”
“I told you I didn’t want you to go to those races! Besides, it’s late. They weren’t racing this time of the night.”
Now half angry, Clinton said, “We went out for supper.”
“Alone? Just you men?”
“No, Avis Warwick invited us to a fine restaurant and a young woman named Jolie Devorak went along, too. I don’t really want to talk about this now, Father.”
“We’ll talk about it all right! Don’t you have any idea who Avis Warwick is? Why, she’s nothing but a hussy! Everyone in New York knows she’s nothing but an adulterous woman! I’m ashamed of you, Clinton! And this other young woman, she’s probably no better!”
For the first time in his life, Clinton looked at his father and said with a timbre of defiance in his voice, “You don’t even know anything about her. She’s a fine young woman! There’s nothing wrong with Miss Devorak!”
“Who is she?” Oliver Lanier’s face was flushed and his eyes were squeezed together. He hated for any situation involving his family to be out of his control. He listened impatiently as Clinton tried to explain Jolie Devorak. “It sounds to me,” Oliver said, “like she’s living with those two men. I forbid you to have anything to do with them!”
“Father, I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m able to choose my own friends.”
“I don’t care how old you are! You’re still not able to make the right decisions. I’m warning you, Clinton. We’ve been through this before. I’m tired of this foolishness, and you’ll have to make your choice. Either go out and try your crazy idea of racing cars or become a useful member of the firm! You can’t do both. Now which will it be?”
For one moment Clinton came very close to saying, I’ll see whom I please when I please, but somehow the thought of being penniless frightened him, and instead he replied, “You’re not being fair, Father.”
“You’ve heard my terms. Now which will it be?”
Clinton stood there for a moment, and then a feeling of hopelessness seemed to engulf him. “All right,” he said. “I won’t see them anymore.”
“Now you’re talking like a man with sense.”
Clinton went upstairs to his bedroom feeling dejected for not having stood up to his father. He went over to his desk and slowly pulled out a sheet of paper. Sitting down, he sighed and began to write, for he did not want to face Jolie or Easy or Peter again. He simply thanked them for their company and said that he would not be seeing them again. Slipping the note into an envelope, he addressed it and put it down, then slowly began to undress. A great bitterness settled on him. He realized he had failed himself and would never again feel any pride in himself as a man apart from his father.
Two days after the race, Phil Winslow stopped by to see Peter and noticed Jolie was upset about something. While Peter was helping Easy with the Jolie Blonde, he turned to her and said, “You seem awfully quiet today. Something the matter?”
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to Phil. She waited until he had finished reading it, then said bitterly, “His father probably found out about his going to the races and then going out to dinner with us and forbade Clinton to see us anymore!”
“That’s bad. The man needs to stand up for himself.”
“I think he’s fo
rgotten how. You met Mr. Lanier. What’s he like?”
“He’s brutal—a strong man who’s used to having his own way. But I thought better of Clinton than this. After all, he’s old enough to be his own man.”
Clinton’s decision to stop seeing his friends preyed on Phil’s mind the rest of the day. When he went to the Lanier house the next day for his appointment with Cara, instead of continuing with the portrait he was doing of her, he said, “Tell me about Clinton.”
Cara, of course, had heard all about her father’s tirade and her brother’s acquiescence to his unreasonable demands. It was impossible to keep a secret in this house. She had tried to talk to Clinton, but he had been so despondent that he could do no more than say, “Father forbade it, and there’s nothing else to say.” She had stood there for a moment, then had said, “I’m sorry for your friends.”
“I’m sorry for Clinton,” Phil said, after hearing the story from Cara. “What kind of a man is your father, anyhow?”
“He’s a good man,” Cara said defensively. “You just don’t know what it’s like living—” She broke off abruptly, then said, “You just don’t understand Clinton’s position.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t understand Mary Ann either. She’s in love with a preacher who’s a good man, but she can’t have him. You want to go out and walk in the park and lead a normal life, but you can’t do it. Now Clinton wants to make friends outside of his office and try something on his own, and he can’t do it. Tell me some more about your father. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a crueler man in my whole life.”
“Don’t say that!” Cara pleaded. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she said, “Father had a very hard life. He didn’t have a penny, and you don’t understand how hard he had to work.”
“And that makes it all right for him to enslave his own children? You’ll never be a painter or anything else until you are able to stand up to him, Cara. And Clinton will never be a man, and Mary Ann will never be happy and free to marry the man she loves. All of you are living like slaves under your father’s roof.”
Cara listened and grew more miserable. Finally she whispered, “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Cara, listen to me—”
“I’m not feeling well. Please leave, Phil.”
Phil stared at her, then said, “All right, if that’s the way you feel.”
As soon as he was gone, Cara went over and fell across the bed and began weeping. She slept hardly at all that night, and the next day when Dr. McKenzie came to check on her, he was very concerned. Her father came in, and McKenzie said, “I’m thinking she’s had a setback. Too much company, I’m afraid.”
“It’s that artist fellow. He’s kept her stirred up. He’s a bad influence on the whole family. I’ll not have him in the house again!”
Oliver Lanier was as good as his word, for the next day Phil was handed a note that read, “Your attentions to my daughter are unwelcome. You have been a bad influence on her, and upon my son, and upon my family in general. From this day forward you are not welcome in my house.” It was signed, “Oliver Lanier.”
Phil took the note, tore it up, and threw it down. A cold anger washed through him, and then it passed. Instead he felt a great pity. “Those poor people,” he whispered to himself. “Work slaves in the tenements are freer than they are. God help them all!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Love Don’t Always Add Up, Jolie . . . !”
Americans looked back on the year 1907 with mingled admiration and apprehension. As always, the year had produced tragedy and turmoil, as well as triumph and victory.
The Chicago Cubs won the World Series with Tinker, Evers, and Chance in the infield, defeating the Detroit Tigers 4–0. But the big news in baseball was yet to come, for Walter Johnson, age nineteen, signed with the Washington Senators. The Big Train, as he was called, would become the greatest fast-ball pitcher ever.
Barnum and Bailey Circus, created in 1881, became the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus and toured the country triumphantly, drawing huge crowds wherever it set up its tents.
Jack London continued to dominate in literature, but the poetry of Robert Service, set in the Yukon and including his poems The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew, swept the country.
Horse-drawn vehicles in New York were giving way to motor buses and electric trolleys. American motorcar production reached forty-three thousand, and, even though automobiles were more expensive than horses, businessmen slowly began to accept the motorcar as a part of American life. The big news of 1907 was the financial disaster that struck the nation. A stock market crash rocked the country, and one man single-handedly averted the financial panic that followed. On October 23 a rush by depositors to withdraw their money from New York’s Knickerbocker Trust was stopped by financier J.P. Morgan. Morgan obtained a pledge of ten million dollars from John D. Rockefeller, and ten million from the Bank of England, which arrived in the British steamship Lancaster on her maiden voyage.
And so as January 1908 came, bringing with it cold blasts that froze the streets of New York, that city and others sighed with relief and looked forward with the optimism so inherent in the American character to a New Utopia.
The feel of snow was in the air as Peter and Avis walked down Broadway. The two of them had taken a half holiday. Avis had stopped by and practically pulled Peter away from his car, saying, “Come along. You’ve got to go shopping with me.”
Peter had protested but actually had been glad to leave the Jolie Blonde. He had closed the hood, shot a quick glance at Easy Devlin, who scowled, then grinned. “Okay, let’s make our getaway.”
“You don’t be gone all day, you hear,” Easy had called out as Peter walked away. “We still have lots of work to do on this here car if we plan to have her ready for the race coming up.”
Now as they moved along the crowded streets, Avis took a deep breath and lifted her face to the gray skies above. “I love cold weather. I hope it snows.”
“You haven’t had to ride in cold trains like I have,” Peter returned as he pulled his collar up around his neck. He brushed against her arm and thought of how close they had become in the time since they had first met. They walked together until finally she led him into A.T. Stuart’s enormous store. Stuart’s dominated the retail dry-goods trade in New York. It was the largest importer in the nation, and today all five stories were filled with people. Avis promptly led Peter through the crowds to the elevator, for a ride to the fourth-floor ladies’ wear department.
Stepping out of the elevator as soon as the operator had brought the floor level, Peter glanced around at the fashions, some of them displayed on dressmaker’s dummies. “What an amazing sight!” he exclaimed. “This is like Sunday afternoon in Peacock Alley, only more so.”
Avis laughed. “There’s something for nearly everyone here. But I like Stuart’s because they’ve got the latest fashions, not just something your mother would wear.” She stopped before a dress with a trailing skirt. “That’s a pretty fabric, but that style is on its way out. Every time I wear one, I think how absolutely stupid it is to wear a dress that drags through trash and spittle and germs from the sidewalk!” She stepped into the next display area and turned back to Peter, beckoning him over. “Now this is more what I like.”
“That?” exclaimed Peter, joining her and examining the object of her interest. “That looks like something a woman would wear in the privacy of her bedroom!”
He couldn’t help staring. The mannequin before them was modeling a sheath gown that had just arrived from Paris and was quickly becoming all the rage with style-conscious American women. As far as he could tell, this model had a skirt that was little more than a cloth tube from hips to shoe tops. “It’s got all the charm of a gun barrel, or an umbrella stand,” Peter scowled. “How does anybody ever walk in one?”
“You don’t—at least not very quickly or very far. It’s what’s called a hobble skirt,” Avis said. “I have to agr
ee that from a practical point of view, it’s a crazy idea—though maybe not more than some other styles that have come out of Paris.” Despite the evaluation, her eyes sparkled as she looked at the dress, but she gripped Peter’s arm possessively and, lowering her voice, confided, “I think it’s psychological.”
“What? A tight skirt?”
“Yes. Some man invented that,” she asserted positively. Her green eyes flashed, and she ruffled her strawberry blond hair with her free hand, saying, “Men always want to keep women tied down, or tied up in some way. So that’s why they hobble them.”
Peter laughed aloud. “My father hobbles horses out west to keep them from wandering. Maybe it’s a good idea.”
Avis gave him a direct stare. “No man will ever hobble me,” she snapped. “Come along and look at this.” She stopped before another displayed garment. “What do you think of this?”
Peter studied the blouse and finally said, “It looks like it’s been punched by one of those things that makes holes in paper. It’s got holes all in it.”
“Of course it has. It’s called a peek-a-boo.”
“And the material is so thin you can see through it. It seems to me,” Peter said, “that women are now wearing in public what they only wore inside their bedrooms at one time.”
“That’s the idea, to make you men look at us. Come on. I’m going to try on some clothes. You can sit over there.”
For the next two hours Peter sat as Avis tried on dress after dress, and he had to admit that no matter what she put on, she made it look good. Some of them were rather daring, and as he frowned, she came over and grabbed him by his hair and pulled his head back. “You’re nothing but a Puritan,” she whispered. “I need to reform you from all that.”
Finally, after she had made her selections, they left the ladies’ department burdened down with packages. “I’m glad men’s clothes don’t change,” Peter muttered. “The only change I’ve seen is that men are wearing derbys instead of high silk hats.”
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