“Well — I may see you in church tomorrow,” said the major. “What church do you go to, by the way?”
Dolly told him.
Once the door had closed, her uncle’s household was far behind her. Did she dare ask Mrs. Appleton, she wondered, to invite Clarke to luncheon? Could a guest ask such a favor? If not, she would probably never see Clarke again, and at that dismal thought a wave of revolt swept over her. After all, Mrs. Appleton had been her mother’s best friend. With her lips moving in rehearsal, she went slowly upstairs toward Mrs. Appleton’s room.
Then, just outside the closed door, she stopped — her name had suddenly twisted through the keyhole.
“Dolly is here because she had no other place to go.”
“But I don’t see why we have to be the ones, mother. Does her father expect her to visit all the rest of her life?”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Lila.”
“Well, I can’t help it. I’d countedon having these girls for a visit,and now Dolly’s got the guest room.Don’t tell me that charity begins at home!”
Dolly tiptoed to her room, packed her suitcase hurriedly, dashed off a note to Mrs. Appleton explaining that her Uncle Charlie wanted her to visit there for a week, and crept unobserved from the house.
*****
In the morning she walked to church with Major Redfern. She had passed a curious evening, with the major beating years of dust out of a bed and Miss Willie flitting about, not at all like the trained nurse who had taken care of her father last spring.
“Dashed unlucky about those letters of introduction,” said the major as they walked along. “Of course I came down to look after your Uncle Charlie, but I planned to have a bit of amusement, too. And now I can’t find the things. I say, be a good fellow and introduce me to the thingumbob girl if we run into her.”
Dolly was glad to be of service. As the crowd rolled into church she spotted Angela in the vestibule and introduced major. Angela, good-natured and full of her current importance, was more than charmed.
“How long will you be here, Major Redfern?”
“Couldn’t say. Been taking care of Dolly’s uncle and haven’t had a chance to see the city. Seems a bit dead to an outsider, you know.”
“You mustn’t be an outsider. We take a certain pride in our hospitality.”
During the service DolIy divided the congregation into quadrants and scanned each sector for the sight of a tall young form, but to no avail, so with regret she followed the major and Angela down the aisle.
“Of course you must come,” the young lady was saying. “There’s no time to send you a formal invitation, but I’ll just write ‘Monday evening’ on my calling card and give it to you right now.”
As they emerged into the sunshine it occurred to Dolly that in spite of being handsome the major had a sort of trigger face; if the nose pressed down only a little more it might touch his mouth and precipitate an explosion. He’s a fast worker, she thought. Like Clarke: Clarke was a fast worker, too. But where was he? Back at school? She must know — right off.
Her impatience must have been apparent, for as they walked away the major said, “Not polite to leave any one so quickly. Really ought to consider manners, what?”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s America,” said the major tolerantly. “This little Duckney — she’s the type, now. Not a brain in her head. Just an easy clink, that’s all.”
“What’s a clink?” inquired Dolly.
“Eh?” He looked at her sharply. “Oh, that’s just an expression.”
Now they were approaching Miss Terhune’s house… But what was that upon the door — that rectangle of pink? She came close enough to read the one word: Measles.
The major must have seen the dismay in her face.” What’s trouble?”
“I just forgot — I got to get something at the drugstore.”
“Well, cheerio. By the way, I wouldn’t mention your Uncle Charlie there. He doesn’t want it known that he’s ill.”
*****
In the drugstore she telephoned Miss Terhune’s house and asked for Clarke Gresswell.
“I saw that sign on your house — “
“I hoped nobody would.”
“I’m staying with my uncle in the same row as you,” she ran on hurriedly. “So I just called up.”
“I’m not in bed; I loaf around and play the radio. Say, listen: have you got a funny skylight — like a box, sort of — on top of your house?”
“Have we? It’s right in the ceiling outside my door.”
“Well, after dinner, you come on out of your skylight and you’ll see me in mine. You won’t catch any measles.”
“My uncle wouldn’t like it,” she said perversely. “And anyhow I’ve got to make a Halloween costume. Good-by.”
Dolly walked home thoughtfully. As the door closed her into the gloomy front hall, the feeling of desertion came back. Meeting Miss Willie on her way upstairs, she said, “Is my uncle better? Couldn’t I see him today?”
“Not today. He’s not well enough.”
“He knows I’m here?”
“Yes; he wants you to make yourself at home.”
After dinner she set to work on her costume while the major smoked and Miss Willie looked on.
“Where’s your party going to be?” she asked Dolly.
“Just around the corner.”
“Some friends?”
“Of course,” said Dolly. “A girl I’ve known all my life.”
“Isn’t that jolly!” said the major, turning to Miss Willie. “Dolly and I will both be stepping out tomorrow night. Beastly shame you have to stay home with Uncle Charlie.”
Miss Willie didn’t answer.
“What’s the costume?”
“Sort of black thing with a mask, like a witch. We’re going all around the neighborhood and howl — that sort of thing.”
“Are these rich people?” asked Miss Willie.
“Stow it,” the major said abruptly.
Looking up at him, Dolly decided that she didn’t like him, after all. She didn’t like him any better than she did Miss Willie. Why did Uncle Charlie keep such people around?
“Do you like your school?” asked Miss Willie quickly.
“Very much. And I’ve got oodles of English history to study.”
Gathering her sawing, she went upstairs. As she passed Uncle Charlie’s room she hesitated for a moment, tempted to open the door quietly and at least look in upon the sick man. She was convinced that he was being neglected, for Miss Willie seemed a poor sort of nurse.
But she passed on up to her third-floor room. There was the pillbox skylight, reached by a cute little ladder, and she wondered if Clarke were really waiting for her two roofs away.
*****
On impulse, she brushed her hair before the mirror, climbed the ladder, pushed open a slanting strip of glass, and scrambled to the roof. In the clear autumn air her sense of oppression lifted. She shivered, not from cold, but as if shaking from her what she left below.
On her right was a fire escape leading to an alley, and northward were four old-fashioned skylights projecting from the flat continuous roof. The second would be Miss Terhune’s. Dolly’s shoes sounded flat on the cemented pebbles as she walked toward it. Framed vividly by the intersecting planes of the parallelepiped, a face stared out at her and shouted, “Can you hear me?”
“Heavens, yes!” She stopped with her back against a chimney.
“I wondered if you could,” Clarke said. “I’ve been yelling ever since I caught sight of you. And I’ve been sitting on this ladder for almost an hour. Where’ve you been?”
“I told you I wasn’t coming.”
“Oh, but that’s just like a girl. Honest, though, I did think you weren’t coming. I thought I’d come over and give you measles in revenge, and then we’d be quarantined together.”
“You look quite dumb in there,” Dolly said. “I don’t want to be quarantined with you, the way
you look.”
“You look dumb out there. Which is funniest — you that can’t come in, or me that can’t come out?”
“The whole roof is kind of dumb, isn’t it?”
“Well, why do you live in such a funny old town?”
She was about to say “I don’t know” when the fact swept over her that she didn’t know. Standing here beside a chimney on a prairie of roofs seemed as logical a location as any she had been in for months.
What Clarke said next was as good as though he had guessed her thoughts: “I was looking at a cloud, and then you stepped out of it.”
It was almost too much. And Dolly couldn’t say, “Open the skylight and let me come down and have your measles with you.” All she could say was, “Good-by. Glad you’re looking so well.”
“Are you going?”
“I’ve got to get back.”
“Oh, bunk! Your uncle won’t mind. My aunt says she used to know him.”
For an instant Dolly felt the urge to tell Clarke everything. But he was so beautiful there in his glass prison. She would not let her troubles come even that near to touching him, if she could help it.
*****
Dolly worked late at lessons, and was rather upset, deep in the evening, when Miss Willie flew up with some drugstore sandwiches and the information that her Uncle Charlie sent his love.
“Has he had the doctor?”
“Of course.”
But somehow Dolly was far from reassured.
Next afternoon, after leaving her friends at school with staccato assurances that they would meet at the party, she pondered the advisability of wiring her father. On her way upstairs she heard Miss Willie’s voice in the major’s room:
“You had studs when we left.”
“I have studs now, if I can find them. Cheer up! I can always borrow Uncle Charlie’s.”
Miss Willie laughed. It was an unpleasant laugh, both shrill and shrunken, like a bird so used to being scared that she never knew whether to start a song or not. Dolly, heartened by her familiar day at school, was once again tempted to try Uncle Charlie’s door; but a sudden scuffle in the major’s room sent her flying upstairs in a panic.
“What must I do?” she asked herself. “I can’t tell anybody, because it’s my uncle’s house.”
On her way downstairs some time later, she heard the major and Miss Willie bickering in the lower hall, and drew back in the shadows. But from the sudden fading of their voices she knew that they had heard her footsteps, so she continued on down.
The major wore a full-dress suit. His stick like a slung gun, the white gleam of his gloves, the thin string of his monocle — all these made Dolly sure he would be a success at Angela Duckney’s that evening. And she resented it. She was sorry now that she had ever introduced him to the older girl.
“Ah, the future debutante,” remarked the major gallantly. “May I drop you anywhere?”
“Oh, no. I’m just going around the comer.”
*****
Throughout the supper and the finding of old friends under black satin dominoes, Dolly was haunted by the image of the Englishman. She had never before known what it was to hate, for her father had thrown a protective screen about the motherless girl.
The Halloweeners, about to start outdoors for the real fun of the evening, stood in a group of two dozen, black-masked, clown-white with flour. Suddenly Dolly wiped the flour from her hand on a bare spot under John Hamilton’s ear.
“Hey, quit!” he protested.” Or, if you must act your age, try it on the boyfriend.”
“What boy friend?” she asked John.
“Oh, you don’t know? Well, everybody else in your school seems to know his name. Clarke Somebody.”
“Clarke Cresswell? Why, how — Where is he?”
“Over there, lapping up ice cream.”
A tough voice broke out suddenly over the soft young raillery: “All out, now — one by one. Just a formality, boys and girls.”
“I think that man’s a detective!” John whispered into Dolly’s ear. “Something’s been stolen, I bet.”
She scarcely heard him. As they trooped toward the door she kept looking about for Clarke, hoping to spot him before the mask dropped over her face and obscured her vision. The edge of the mask was tipped at the door and the rough voice said, “O.K., little lady.”
*****
She was next to the last one out; the last was a girl clown-white with flour. On the front steps the host stood and whispered something to three men who kept their hands in their pockets. The party hesitated on the sidewalk.
“Go on, go on, children,” directed the host suddenly. “What’s happened doesn’t concern you.”
It was just at that moment that, from some person indistinguishable in the darkness, Dolly heard a trill of high birdish laughter.
Miss Willie! Which one of the masked faces was hers — and where, oh, where was Clarke? There! That tall one. She darted toward him and lifted her mask.
“Well!” he exclaimed. “Well, where were you when the crown jewels disappeared? I thought sure you had them.”
“I thought sure you had the measles.”
“So did the doctor; but that was his mistake. He just thought if everybody in my school had measles I must have them too.” In the light of a street lamp he bent to look at her. “You’re shaking! What’s the matter?”
A sob broke from Dolly. “I’m worried about Uncle Charlie. They won’t let me see him.”
“Who won’t?”
“The friends that are staying with him.” Even in her anxiety she forced herself to be no more specific.
“Anything I can do?”
They were tagging a little behind the others. Suddenly she said, “I think he’s alone now. I want to see him. Will you duck the crowd and go with me?”
Uncle Charlie’s front door was locked and Dolly had no key.
“I’ve got to see my uncle,” she said. “Can’t we climb up that fire escape in the alley? It goes right by his room.”
Clarke inspected, then reported back: “It’s ten feet off the ground. But we can go through my aunt’s house and over the roof.”
Miss Terhune’s. house was inky black, but when they came out on the roof cold autumn stars were showing.
“Now tell me what it’s all about,” Clarke demanded.
It was about her pride, but she could never tell him that. “Aren’t the stars nice?” she said. “China eyes.”
“Honestly, you’re the funniest girl I ever knew! Once I thought you and I had a lot in common, but — “
“How’ll we get down to Uncle Charlie’s room?” Dolly interrupted.
“The fire escape, of course. We can get down, even if we can’t get up.”
The night was chilly, but Dolly felt warm. They backed down the iron skeleton, Clarke ahead so that if she slipped she would fall into his arms. On the second landing they faced a dark window.
“It’s stuck,” whispered Clarke. “I’ll try from the top.”
That worked, and she scrambled in.
“Can I come in?” Clarke whispered from the fire escape.
“Yes — and turn on the lights!”
The bed sprang into life. It was a great dust-covered heap of blankets and pillows piled a yard high.
There wasn’t any Uncle Charlie, then, and never had been. Dolly knew it, plain as plain. “May I come back to your house?” she asked. “And stay all night at Miss Terhune’s?”
“You know you can.”
“Let’s go,” she said. “Now!”
“But what about your uncle?”
“I never want to hear of him again. And I don’t want you to tell Miss Terhune anything!”
“All right, if you don’t want me to. We’ll just tell her you got locked out.”
“Come on! Hurry!” Dolly had heard the sound of voices and footsteps in the lower hall.
*****
Major Redfern usually tipped the taxi driver, but tonight he only had a bru
sque “Thanks very much” and a stray thought as to whether the driver would be liable to remember where he had picked up his fare.
For the major had seen a ghost at the exact moment when he had presented Angela Duckney’s card at her ball. Even though seen obliquely and halfway across the room, the major had identified it immediately as that of one Hep J. Morrison, who was built on somewhat the same ruthless dimensions as himself. There was no room there for both of them, so the major withdrew precipitately, even neglecting to go down the receiving line.
But he felt sure, as he stood in front of the checkroom, that his business rival had not seen him.
“Yes, my hat. And a cape and a stick,” he agreed mildly.
Let there be no ambiguity at this point. The major was a bad man with high hopes, and the Baltimore venture had been among his hopes. But with Hep J. Morrison working the same town there were no more hopes.
Except, of course, the little girl! He considered the possibilities all the way home. Then, turning from the taxicab, he saw a small form on the stoop, shivering in a black domino and with a face so caked with flour that he hardly recognized it.
He opened the door, almost throwing Miss Willie inside. “Now what is it? Where’ve you been?”
“Look!” Out of her pocket she drew an emerald bracelet. Then from the top of her stocking she produced a platinum-and-diamond wrist watch. “Look at that!” she sang proudly.
“Where did you get this stuff?”
“At the party around the corner. I didn’t touch anything else — honest! There wasn’t another thing worth taking.”
“Once a klep, always a klep,” he said. “Look here. We’re leaving right away. Hep Morrison was at the ball, so we’ll have to try Atlanta. Where’s Dolly?”
“She’s still with the party. They have no idea who snitched the stuff.”
He unwound his white scarf, folded it, and put it in his side pocket. “Soon as we’re packed we’ll go find that kid and then clear out. Is there anything to drink?”
“There’s some gin up in ‘Uncle Charlie’s room.’”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 338