“That’s what I think, certainly,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
But she did not. She did not know what she thought about such things lately. She had been back from her last visit to Nevada for a long while during which she had done nothing startling to keep herself vivid before her friends—God, how people do get used to you! On her previous returns from her quests for freedom, invitations had whirled about her like blown snow; now they trickled in, slow and thin. Oh, of course there were various bids for her presence, but there was no excitement to them. And actually, once or twice, the plea that she come to dine had concluded with those words that are like the thud of clods on a coffin-lid: “Just us, you know—you don’t mind if we don’t get a man for you, do you, darling?” Lord in Heaven, was she, Alicia Hazelton, becoming an extra woman?
“You’ll never have to worry about being alone,” Miss Nicholl said. “You—with the whole town clamoring after you.”
“Oh—that,” Mrs. Hazelton said. Suddenly she looked closely at Miss Nicholl. “Mary,” she said, “tell me. What do you do evenings?”
“Why, I don’t know,” Miss Nicholl said. “Different things—” She broke off in a high, wild cry; Mrs. Hazelton’s daughter had come into the room. “There she is!” shrieked Miss Nicholl. “There her was! There’s her mother’s ewe lamb!”
Ewie was a pretty thing, tall and slender, with skin white as cherry bloom, waving red-gold hair cut close to her fine head, and long, straight red-gold eyelashes.
“You remember Miss Nicholl, Ewie,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Go say how-do-you-do to her.”
Ewie went to Miss Nicholl, let her hand touch Miss Nicholl’s hand, and kicked a little curtsy, the very awkwardness of which would have been irresistible in a smaller child.
“She’s simply beautiful—the picture of her mother!” Miss Nicholl said. “Well, aren’t I going to get a kiss, Ewie? Just for old times’ sake?”
“I’ve got a head cold,” Ewie said. She left Miss Nicholl and rushed to the dog. She picked her up and pressed kisses on her infinitesimal nose.
“Ah, de Bouchie-wouchie,” she said. “Ah, de baby angel.”
“Ewie!” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Stop kissing the dog. With your cold.”
Ewie replaced Bonne Bouche, who immediately returned to slumber. Then she sat down on a sofa and began humming a private, tuneless selection.
“Don’t slump like that,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Look at Miss Nicholl. See how nice and straight she sits.”
Ewie looked at Miss Nicholl and looked away again.
“I’m so sorry you have a cold,” Miss Nicholl said. “It’s a shame.”
“Oh, it’s much better,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“It’ll be worse tonight,” Ewie said. “Dellie says that’s the dangerous thing about head colds, they always get worse at night. They go up into your sinuses or something. She says sometimes they get so bad you have to have a terrible operation.”
“Well, you won’t have to have anything like that,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“I might,” Ewie said. She hummed again.
“Oh, this beautiful room!” Miss Nicholl said. “Those flowers! You always have white flowers, don’t you, lady fair?”
“Yes, always,” Mrs. Hazelton said. She always did, ever since she had read of a leader of society who permitted none but white blossoms in her home.
“They’re just like you,” Miss Nicholl said. She looked at an array of stock like a great white fountain, started to count the sprays, felt vertigo coming on, and gave it up.
“These are on their last legs,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “The florist will be here tomorrow. He changes them every three days.”
“Three days, you extravagant pussy-cat!” Miss Nicholl cried. “Oh, why can’t I take care of your flowers? I’ve got a green thumb.”
Ewie’s eyelashes sprang apart. She looked eagerly at Miss Nicholl.
“You have?” she breathed. “Is it on the hand you shook hands with me with? Ah, I didn’t see it. Show it to me.”
“Oh, no, dear,” Miss Nicholl said. “It isn’t a real one. It’s just a way of saying that flowers will do anything for you.”
“Oh, shoot!” Ewie said. She went back to her musical abstraction.
“Ewe lamb, if you could manage to stop that singing, somehow,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Pour some fresh in Miss Nicholl’s glass.”
Ewie rose, gave Miss Nicholl a drink (“Why, thank you, you sweet thing!”), and watched her sip.
“Do you like that stuff?” she said. “I think it tastes like medicine.”
“Well, it is a kind of medicine, you know,” Miss Nicholl said. “A lovely kind. It does so much good for poor sick people.”
Ewie drew closer. “Are you sick?” she asked. “What’ve you got the matter with you?”
“I’m not sick, precious,” Miss Nicholl said. “I only said that. It was just a sort of figure of speech. Have you had figures of speech in school?”
“That’s next year,” Ewie said. “With Miss Fosdeck; I hate her. What kind of sick people is it good for?”
“Oh, Ewie, for heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“I didn’t mean really sick,” Miss Nicholl said. “I meant people who are, well—people who are blue.”
“You know what?” Ewie said. “Dellie knew this baby and it got born too soon, and it was blue. Dark blue. All over.”
“But I’m sure Dellie said it’s all right now, didn’t she?” Miss Nicholl said.
“It died,” Ewie said. “Dellie says all those cases are doomed. Doomed from the womb.” The remembered phrase caught her fancy, and she chuckled.
“Oh, Dellie says, Dellie says!” Mrs. Hazelton said. “You’ll turn into a Dellie-says one of these fine days if you don’t watch out. Why don’t you go and sit down and be sweet?”
Ewie went and sat down and was sweet, save that she resumed her song, this time adding as a lyric “doomed from the womb, oh-h, doomed from the womb,” until her mother’s voice drowned her out.
“Ewie, stop that!” Mrs. Hazelton screamed.
“You still haven’t told me what you’ve been doing,” Miss Nicholl said quickly to Mrs. Hazelton. “But I can guess—I know you, lady fair. Nothing but parties, parties, parties, every day and every night. Aren’t I right?”
“No, my dear,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I’ve taken a vow to let up. Daytime things, lunch and fashion openings and cocktails and all that, yes, but oh, those late nights, every blessed night!”
“Oh, you haven’t been out at night for ages,” Ewie said.
“Naturally,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “When my only child is sick, I’m not going to leave her here alone.”
“Dellie was here,” Ewie said. “Anyway, you haven’t gone out at night since before I got my head cold.”
“If I choose to stay at home for an evening of quiet now and then, I can do it without any comment from you,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
Ewie took up her aria again, but with no words. She also occupied herself with forming tiny pleats in the skirt of her frock, pressing them sharp with a thumbnail.
“I bet you’ve been doing a lot of entertaining, yourself,” Miss Nicholl said.
“Oh, it’s so hard to get up the energy,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “And this season’s crop of extra men! They’re about the right age for Ewie. They make me feel a hundred years old.”
“You! Old!” Miss Nicholl said.
“I can’t stand them hanging around the house, messing on my carpets,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I know lots of women invite them, but—well, let them. It’s their funeral.”
Ewie ceased her activities. “You know what?” she said. “I was in a funeral once.”
“You were no such thing!” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Oh, I was so, too!” Ewie said. “There was this big long funeral going down Fifth Avenue, and it was so long some of the last cars had to wait for a light, and so, why, I started to walk across to go to the park, and so there I was, right in the midd
le of it. Only Dellie yelled and yanked me back. She says it’s terrible luck to go through a funeral. Once she had a cousin that did, and in two weeks, right smack to the day, her cousin died.”
“I’m not sure that I like all this about Dellie yelling and yanking on Fifth Avenue,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “That’s the way they get when they’ve been with you so long—think they can do anything. Still, I can’t imagine how I’d have ever got along without her. She practically brought Ewie up, you know.”
“Yes, I can see the marks,” Miss Nicholl said. “Oh, only fooling, lady fair, just my little joke. I’ve always said Dellie’s a real treasure. Well, you always have perfect servants.”
“There I was, bang in the middle of a funeral,” Ewie said.
“I don’t know what makes Ewie this way,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Oh, all children are like that,” Miss Nicholl said.
“I never was,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Come to think of it, I don’t believe I was either,” Miss Nicholl said. “And you couldn’t have been anything but perfect. Ever.”
They considered Ewie, now both pleating and humming.
“So active,” Miss Nicholl said. “Always busy.”
“She never got that from her father,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “That or anything else.”
Ewie hummed higher.
“Ewe lamb, you don’t think you’ve got any fever, do you?” Mrs. Hazelton said.
Ewie felt the back of her neck. “Not yet,” she said.
“You’re just about all well,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “If it’s a decent day tomorrow, you and Dellie can go to the park.”
“Oh, what fun!” Miss Nicholl cried.
“It’s Dellie’s day off tomorrow,” Ewie said. “She’s going over to see her sister. Her sister’s husband’s terribly sick.”
“Hasn’t Dellie got any healthy friends, honey-bunny?” Miss Nicholl said.
“Oh, she’s got zillions of them,” Ewie said. “There was seventeen, right in her family, only twelve of them died. Some of them were born dead, and the others had a liver condition. Dellie said it was nothing but bile, bile, bile—”
“Ewie, please,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “No details, if you don’t mind.”
“Dellie says all the alive ones feel fine,” Ewie said. “It’s just this husband of her sister’s. He can’t work or anything, but Dellie says you wouldn’t want to meet a lovelier man. He’s good and sick. Dellie says her sister says she wouldn’t be surprised if he started spitting blood, any day.”
“Kindly stop that disgusting talk,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “While we’re trying to drink our cocktails.”
“Well, I was only answering her,” Ewie said, jerking her head in the direction of Miss Nicholl. “She asked me if Dellie had any healthy friends, and I told her all except that husband of her sister’s and he—”
“That will do,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Now why don’t you run along and ask Dellie to take your temperature? And then you can stay in the kitchen and talk to her and Ernestine.”
“Can I take Bonne Bouche with me?” Ewie asked.
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Hazelton said. She picked up the little dog. “But don’t let Ernestine give her anything to eat besides her supper. She’s beginning to lose her figure.” She kissed Bonne Bouche on her hair ribbon. “Aren’t you, darling?”
Ewie joyously received the dog into her arms. “Can we stay in the kitchen to have our supper?” she asked.
“Oh, all right, all right!” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Oo brother!” Ewie said. She started for the door.
“Ewie, what’s the matter with you, anyway?” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I tell you, I’m thinking seriously of changing that school of yours, next year. You have no more manners than a moose. Say good-by to Miss Nicholl, for heaven’s sake.”
Ewie turned toward Miss Nicholl and smiled at her—her smile, that had the rarity of all truly precious things. “Good-by, Miss Nicker,” she said. “Please do come again very soon, won’t you?”
“Oh, I will, you angel-pie,” Miss Nicholl said.
Ewie, cooing to Bonne Bouche, left them.
“She’s simply adorable!” Miss Nicholl said. “Oh, lady fair, why do you have to have everything in the world? Well, you deserve it, that’s all I can say. That’s what keeps me from murdering you, right this minute.”
“Oh, you mustn’t do that,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“If I could only have a sweet, happy little girl like Ewie, that’s all I would ask,” Miss Nicholl said. “You don’t know how I’ve always wanted to have a child all my own. Without having any old man mixed up in it.”
“I’m afraid that would be rather hard to accomplish,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I guess you’d just have to take the bitter along with the sweet, like the rest of us. Well. What were we talking about before Ewie barged in? Oh, yes—what do you do in the evenings?”
“Why, after I’m through work,” Miss Nicholl said, “I really feel I’ve earned a little enjoyment. So when I get home, after I’ve cleaned up, Idabel and I—”
“Who?” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Idabel Christie,” Miss Nicholl said. “That has the room across the hall from me. You know—I’ve told you about her.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “I forgot for a moment her name was Idabel. I don’t know how I came to.”
“It’s an odd name,” Miss Nicholl said. “But I think it’s rather sweet, don’t you?”
“Yes, charming,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Anyway, we do all sorts of things,” Miss Nicholl said. “When we’re feeling rich, we go to dinner at the Candlewick Tea Room—terribly nice, and just around the corner from us. It’s so pretty—candles, and yellow tablecloths and a little bunch of different-colored immortelles, dyed I guess they are, on every table. It’s those little touches that make the place. And the food! Idabel and I always say to each other when we go in, ‘All diet abandon, ye who enter here.’ ”
“You don’t have to diet,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “You’re one of those fortunate people.”
“Me fortunate! Well, that’s a new picture of yours truly,” Miss Nicholl said. “One thing, though, I don’t want to flesh up, if I can help it. But oh, those yummy sticky rolls, served in little baskets, and that prune spin with maraschino cherries in it! Idabel Christie likes the fudge cup-custard, but I can’t resist the prune spin.”
Only a tiny ripple along her chiffons told that Mrs. Hazelton shuddered.
“Well, of course the Candlewick couldn’t be farther away from this,” Miss Nicholl said. “You’d probably laugh at it.”
“Why, I wouldn’t at all,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Yes, you would,” Miss Nicholl said. “You don’t know about how, when you can have so few things, you have to like the thing you can have. We can’t go to the Candlewick very often. It’s not at all cheap, I mean for us. You can hardly get out of there much under two dollars apiece with the tip. Listen to me! I bet you never heard of as little as two dollars.”
“Now stop it,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“There’s another thing about the Candie—we call it the Candie to ourselves,” Miss Nicholl said. “You have to get there pretty fairly early. It’s so small and it’s grown so popular you haven’t a chance of a table after six o’clock.”
“But when you’re through dinner doesn’t that make an awfully long evening for you?” Mrs. Hazelton asked.
“That’s what we like,” Miss Nicholl said. “We have to get up in the morning—we’re woiking goils, you know. Usually, when we go to the Candie, we make a real binge of it and go to a movie afterward. And sometimes, when we feel just wild, we go to the theater. But that’s pretty seldom. The price of tickets, these days!”
“You do?” Mrs. Hazelton asked. “You go to the theater alone together? Oh, I wouldn’t dare do that!”
“I don’t think anybody would try to hold us up,” Miss Nicholl said. “And if they did, there’s two
of us.”
“I didn’t mean holdups,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “It’s only I’ve always been told nothing ages a woman so much as being seen at the theater in the evening with just another woman.”
“Oh, really?” Miss Nicholl said.
“Oh, it certainly doesn’t work with you,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “Prob ably some silly old wives’ tale, anyway. Well, but look. Suppose you don’t go to the movies or the theater. Then what do you do?”
“We just stay home and do our nails and put up our hair and talk,” Miss Nicholl said.
“That must be a comfort,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “To have somebody to talk to whenever you feel like it right there in the house. A great comfort.”
“Well, yes, it is, you know,” Miss Nicholl cried.
“It’s the only thing that could possibly make me give a thought to having another husband,” Mrs. Hazelton said, slowly. “Somebody here, somebody to talk to you.”
“Why, you’ve got Ewie!” Miss Nicholl cried.
“You’ve heard Ewie,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“Then some evenings,” Miss Nicholl said, “when we don’t feel like going out or talking or anything, we just go to our own rooms and read. Idabel Christie, oh, she’s a wicked one! She works in a library, the way I’ve told you, and when she sees a book she knows I’d like, she hides it away for me, even if there’s a long waiting list. I suppose I’m as bad as she is, for taking it.”
“I simply must order some books,” Mrs. Hazelton said. “There’s not a new book in this house.”
“Think of buying books, instead of borrowing them from a library!” Miss Nicholl said. “Think of being the first one to read them! Think of never having to touch another plastic jacket! Well, there’s not much use dreaming about buying books, when you haven’t got a decent rag to your back, is there? Oh, what a curse it is to be poor!”
“Mary Nicholl, no one would ever think about your being poor if you didn’t talk about it so much,” Mrs. Hazelton said.
“I don’t care if they know,” Miss Nicholl said. “I never heard that poverty was any disgrace. I’m not ashamed of it. However little money I may have, I earn every cent of it. There are some people who can’t say that much for themselves.”
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