Comedy_American Style

  “Maybe it will,” he acquiesced dryly. “I hope I live to see it. . . . No, Phebe, you live among us, you call yourself one of us, though I think you’re foolish to do it. . . . But it’s impossible for a girl of your appearance even to guess at the extra complications of living which come to vex and torment a man like me. You can only learn of them by hearsay and even then you can’t judge of the agony of spirit involved. Agony, vexation, torment, all based on an idea, a feeling. And yet causing at times the most extraordinary reactions. . . .”

  “I do know about that,” she interrupted eagerly. “I remember when I was a little girl in school I told a teacher I was colored. . . . I’ll never forget the expression on her face when she found I wasn’t joking. At first she was terribly sorry; then angry . . . at the thought. I suppose, that I might by my appearance obtain something that no colored person was supposed to have.

  “One night, not so long ago, in the Fifteenth Street car I came across her and her girl-friend, I suppose. I was opposite them. I saw Miss Packer whisper something to the other girl. Then they both glared at me and the friend curled her lip. I’ve often thought about that. Do you suppose she meant that I had no business living, that I should have worn a label?

  “It happened that we were all going to the same place on Market Street, to a movie. You know how nasty those theaters are down there? They watched me like hawks to find out where I was going to sit. I had been meaning to sit in the balcony, for I didn’t have much money that day, but just to spite them I bought a seat in the orchestra. . . . It’s a good thing there isn’t anything in the idea of the Evil Eye. . . . If looks could kill, your girl-friend wouldn’t be here today.”

  “Don’t I know it? That’s one angle of it. But there are aspects, too, of which you don’t dream. . . .” He checked himself. “What do you say to our going up into the Park and finding a nice cosy bench?”

  In silence she walked beside him through the night shades; the radiance of an occasional arc-light threw weird shadows across their path, played hide-and-seek in the massed trees and greenness. . . . Back from the road they sat where some brittle leaves had drifted near the convenient bench. . . .

  In a moment, his arm was about her, his kisses on her face and lips. Her own arms clung about his hard, broad shoulders. With all her slender strength she held him to her. . . . If he would only speak, she thought. Yet she loved him, too, for not speaking before he had finished his training; she supposed it really would be much better to wait until he had obtained a footing in his difficult field.

  For herself she would have been willing to live, half-clothed, half-fed . . . but with love . . . in the proverbial garret. But Nicholas, she had found out, was unalterably opposed to ideas of this sort. Whenever she spoke, as at one time she did frequently, of couples, young friends of hers who had entered into a marriage in which the wife was contributing the fruits of her services outside the ménage Nicholas would shake his head.

  “I don’t want my wife to do that.”

  “But, Nick,” she would argue, “that’s the only reactionary thing I’ve ever found about you. Suppose your wife has a definite interest of her own, an art, a calling, a profession. . . . You wouldn’t want her to sit home with her hands folded, would you?”

  “Of course not! Don’t be silly. I’d hate a woman who had no interests outside of darning my stockings. I think it would be swell for her to have a career. . . . But I don’t want her to support me.”

  During the long car-ride she told him about Llewellyn Nash. “He’s so amusing . . . and insincere. It’s quite patent that he’s amusing himself with the poor working-girl. . . . What he doesn’t know is that I’m amusing myself with the grand white folks. Of course, if he were the least bit serious I’d be feeling very badly.”

  Nicholas, sitting very upright, his arms folded across his chest, listened intently, unsmiling.

  “He sounds like an awfully decent fellow and I’m not so sure that he’s not serious. Better be careful, Phebe. He may prove too much for you.”

  “No,” she said, blushing a little, “he won’t. He’s already been warned. I told him that I liked somebody else.” She turned her lovely smiling gaze upon him and he had to smile back in spite of himself.

  In the hall he bent and kissed her good-night. “You’re so sweet, Phebe . . . so good, so true. You ought to have someone perfectly grand to take care of you, protect you, shelter you from yourself.”

  “You’re pretty grand yourself, Nicky . . .” she paused, her heart beating thick and fast. “And I think I have found someone able to take care of me. . . .”

  If he recognized the opening he didn’t take it. “Goodnight, Phebe.”

  “Good-night, Nicholas. . . . When shall I look for you? Tomorrow?”

  “Hardly tomorrow. I’ll telephone you. . . .” The look of disappointment on her face moved him to say hastily, “perhaps I can manage tomorrow. Pretty late though. Probably after ten.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Nick. You know I won’t mind. Nor Mother either. I really believe she looks on you as a son.”

  Out of his dark, impassive face, his eyes rested on hers, with tenderness but without self-betrayal.

  CHAPTER III

  UP IN her own room, she walked, as a girl does, automatically to her mirror, glanced unseeingly at her shining hair; at her face, which was shining too. . . . But as she sat down and composed herself to think the radiance faded.

  What was the matter with Nick? Not only today, but for many days past? She must think carefully about this matter . . . without sparing herself, without the soft illusion of her own desires. . . . Had he ever been truly ardent? Had she not rather read ardor, passion, fire into his face and bearing because he had been endowed, through no wish of his own, with all the trappings with which one associates romance?

  The set of his splendid head on its proud neck, his tall, hard, thin figure, his flat shoulders, the glance of his eye; she envisaged his thickly waving black hair, so closely set, so almost compact that it bore about it the sculptured look of a Greek head. All these attributes called for fire, romance, the bestowal of love. She remembered—indeed, she had never forgotten—his first kiss, so spontaneous, so tender, so reverent, and yet so intense . . . certainly he had loved her then. Or thought he had.

  She had always admired him . . . ever since that day when their mothers had bought Delaware porgies in the alley. But it was on that kiss that she had built up her assurance of his love; that she had dared to let her own love assume increasingly greater proportions, until now it was the greatest thing in her world . . . more than that, it was a raging fire which had bidden fair to consume her . . . which she hoped one day would consume her with Nicholas.

  But of late she had not been so sure. Nicky had come to see her with the accustomed habitude of the years; they had gone to parties together. Girls had said: “I suppose you want me to ask Nicky for you.”

  They belonged to a fortnightly dancing-class which met with the most commendable regularity; occasionally they attended St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church on Twelfth Street. But best of all there were these lovely afternoons; these precious evenings in the Park, at George’s Hill; the late, still hours in the boat on the Wissahickon; the visits without formality or stiffness in her house on Haverford Avenue. . . .

  True, there were days when she did not see him at all; there were enterprises of whose undertaking she had been unaware, until he had acquainted her of them later. There was the time he had taken Pete Holland’s cousin to the Alphas’ dance and accompanied the Talliver girl to the Penn Relays. And she had not dreamed of his going to see Marise and her new show in New York until he had gone and returned.

  The very fact that he had always told her of these doings had given her a sense of security. As a matter of course, she thought rapturously, he must give her an account of his doings. . . . Now suddenly the awful thought penetrated: Did he tell her about his extra-adventures because he knew it was not imperative; casually, as one tells a
mere acquaintance, as she herself had told Johnny Albans the other night of her last trip to Atlantic City?

  Certainly there was something behind this constant attitude of repression, this wariness, this persistent self-control which seemed to lurk, when they were together, behind his every act. She remembered the night at Anna Lucas’s . . . someone had proposed a kissing game . . . Post-office. It had fallen to Nicholas’ lot to kiss Helen Taylor. She could see yet the unguarded eagerness of that kiss . . . the same expression had appeared on the countenance of John Albans when he in turn had kissed Phebe. . . .

  But that same night in the dimly lit hall, as they were standing all alone, as she had raised her trusting face to his to say good-night, he had just brushed her lips with his own. . . . She had been conscious of a vague disappointment which had been gradually dissipated as she came to realize that he had not released her hand. He must have stood there for fully five minutes holding her soft, slim hand in his clasp so hard and warm and strong.

  He was not, she was sure, in love with anyone else; certainly he was not at all perturbed by that old story of her ill-starred mother and her faithless father. . . . For one of the few times in her life she wondered about that errant distant white man whose blood drifted so carelessly in her veins. . . .

  Then with a little sigh of relief she remembered Nick’s pride, his unwillingness to receive any aid at the hands of his wife. Why, of course that was it!

  In her trailing blue robe she wandered about the room admonishing herself. “How often do I have to remind you of that, Silly?” There was Nicky, with a father and a mother in comfortable, more than comfortable, circumstances, it was true. But a man of his type could not take any but the barest aid from his parents. He lived home; he ate their food. But beyond that he was self-supporting. In his own eyes he was practically penniless. And here on the other hand was Phebe; her dress-shop going at a great rate, her house almost paid for, her mother rendered independent. In his own eyes what had he, Nicholas Campbell, to offer a girl like that?

  Everything, her heart cried out to her. All the things that make life worth while. But she respected him, even while his heroics made her impatient. Snapping off the light she crawled happily into bed. “And I must not forget this any more,” she murmured. “I’m always worrying myself to death about this and not remembering the real reason until I am almost half-crazy.”

  In the morning she received a surprise. Nicholas, who practically never telephoned her at the store, called to tell her that he could not come to see her that evening. Something to do with an examination in Anatomy she gathered. “But the next time I come,” said the thrilling voice, “I’ll pay myself back by staying a long time. Now listen, Phebe, be very good.”

  Disappointed, but smiling, she promised she would. It took all the taste out of the lovely day. It brought to Llewellyn Nash the incomparable pleasure of escorting her that night to a concert.

  Young Campbell had had his own bad night. When he had left Phebe he thought for a moment of wandering about a bit; perhaps he might stumble across one of the Talliver boys, shoot a few rounds of pool. . . . But with no conscious volition his mind decided against this . . . there were for him certain confusing thoughts over which he must ponder; there were two or three worries which he must face and if possible, dispel. . . . Presently he let himself into his house on Girard Avenue, and mounted immediately to his room on the third floor. In a deep study and yet with his mind on no particular thing he got into pajamas and slippers, threw himself across the bed.

  He was worried about his school-work. He was worried about Phebe. For a brief instant he thought rather seriously of tossing up a coin to see which worry he should consider first, but instinctively his thoughts moved to, fastened on the girl.

  Campbell was without false modesty. He knew his points, knew that he was young, handsome and in his world—which was the only one he cared about—attractive. He knew that he could “have a way with women.” When he was a young boy he rather looked forward to the coming of his majority. He would, of course, marry eventually, eventually “settle down.” But he thought it might be fun to sow a few wild oats, reap even a few tares.

  However, an experience, while he was still too young, half-thrust on him, half-invited, one summer while he was working at a hotel permeated him with an ineluctable disgust. From that season on, he was never able to indulge too freely in his petits amours. Cheap women and their proffered pleasures nauseated him. He was unable to consider a nice girl too lightly. As a result, without being a prig, he had conducted himself with a rectitude almost beyond belief. He simply would not create a hope in a girl’s heart which he had no intention of fulfilling.

  Smoking furiously, he reviewed all this; his early, ignorant impulses, his one repellent experience; his consequent decency and wariness of conduct. And yet in spite of all this, he thought to himself groaning, he was about to wound the one woman in the world whom he would have most preferred to heal. . . . If only he had had about him, had practiced some of the ruthlessness manifested by the young fellows in his crowd . . . how easy it might have been then. How much he might have escaped, how completely Phebe might have foregone her cruel disappointment. For if he had ever slighted her, even only a little, she would have foresworn him . . . completely; her gentle demeanor, her softness deceived him not a jot.

  But like a fool he had let her love him; he had even made, for years now, a semblance of accepting that love. And he had known—was there any time when he had been unaware?—that he could never seriously return it. How had he blundered into such a state? He had been neither vicious, nor careless.

  It was simply that the girl had brought him so simply, so completely, such a wealth of love that it was almost impossible to refuse it all—entirely. Though this, he knew now too late, was what he should have done. But at first she had seemed so little, so lonely; she was so different. And there were the stories which even when they were children circulated so cruelly about herself and her distraught mother.

  Phebe had always been so brave, so unconcealing, so philosophical about the sordidness from which she had sprung . . . he could not, he simply could not, leave her to slighting words and innuendoes; the sneers of certain girls, assured daughters of “old Philadelphians”; he would have been even a worse cad than he now found himself to leave her to the machinations of the brothers of those same girls. They would have considered her fair game.

  He was still in his teens when he recognized just how much protection his constant attendance on Phebe lent her. Wrapped in the dignity of his own preference and his mother’s undoubted liking she had been able to move with assurance and self-forgetfulness across the arena of their little concourse.

  Sometimes even then when he was still too young to understand the later complications and expectations for which he was letting himself in, he used to know a faint warning which urged him to step out of this situation. And then immediately his mind, always so rational, so understanding, made him see the results. What would their little world think if, now, any coolness rose between them? That perhaps his mother had disapproved, that the Campbells had found the fact of Phebe’s illegitimacy too hard to bear; that the girl had inherited her mother’s wild blood and young Campbell had virtuously withdrawn? . . .

  It disgusted him to think on these things; it made him appear so vainglorious, so conceited. And yet these were the facts and these the complications which they had made.

  Now he saw that if at any time he had broken away the results simply must have been happier. . . . Phebe would have recovered long since; she would never have allowed herself to remain prostrate from the shock of it. Inevitably she would have regained her footing, have made new friends. What a conceited ass he’d been to think that he and he only could have raised her to, maintained her in, her present estate. . . . Or she might have gone off forever into that white world into whose portals she had so easily stepped.

  But now her feelings were involved. “It’s all very well to d
issemble your love,” she might have misquoted, “but why encourage mine to bloom and blossom when you know you never meant to gather it?”

  For how could he tell her that during all these days and months and years that he had spent with her, laughing, dancing, swimming, yes, and kissing too, though God knew that wasn’t his fault . . . he had been in love always, only, passionately, determinedly . . . with Marise?

  Yet what else could he tell her, since anything else but the truth must cause that old serpent of humiliation and anguish about her mother raise within her its ugly head? At this point, as always, the baffling situation overcame him. . . . One thing was certain, he must break away. Why, tonight the situation had been almost impossible . . . what was it she had said to this young Nash? With such innocence she had told him and yet with such obvious intention! . . . “I warned him,” she said, “that I already liked someone else.” And again: “I think I’ve already found someone to take care of me.”

  Well, he would get out of it. It meant rejecting a very great, a very perfect love. It meant, too, that he might have to carry locked in his heart for years, the responsibility for a great sorrow, perhaps a great tragedy. . . . But the ruthlessness which Teresa so uncannily had recognized, arose within him. He might ruin Phebe’s life; he might unwittingly be ruining his own. . . . But he wanted Marise.

  Through the open windows he looked out from his darkened room upon the deeper darkness of the autumn night. . . . A tree which he loved so, rustled its leaves mysteriously, communed a brief space with his turbulent spirit. He was very weary . . . these seances always left him spent. . . .

  He had meant to think of some way out of the difficulties which were so surrounding his classes in Anatomy. . . . Professor Reading and his obvious dislike . . . the man’s attitude of late was beginning to assume proportions of some moment. If he failed, and Reading had made it pretty plain that he would fail him . . . it meant another term . . . perhaps another school since it would be folly to work again under a man who so clearly and unfairly meant to thwart him. . . .