“I thought maybe that was it.”
Her eyes were suddenly scaringly cold black in his. He hated her at that minute, then he smiled blue-eyed and boyish. “I mean you being so nervous and everything.” He laughed and took her hand. “Well, I’m goin’ to make you an honest woman, ain’t I?” He had the drop on her now. He kissed her.
She burst out crying.
“Oh, Ward, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘ain’t.’”
“I was just teasing, dear . . . But isn’t there some way?”
“I’ve tried everything . . . Dad would know, but I don’t dare tell him. He knows I’m pretty independent . . . but . . .”
“We’ll have to stay away for a year after we’re married . . . It’s rotten for me. I was just offered a job on The Public Ledger.”
“We’ll go to Europe . . . Dad’ll fix us up for our honeymoon . . . He’s glad to get me off his hands and I’ve got money in my own right, mother’s money.”
“Maybe it’s all a mistake.”
“How can it be?”
“How long is it since you . . . noticed . . . ?”
Her eyes were suddenly black and searching in his again. They stared at each other and hated each other. “Quite long enough,” she said and pulled his ear as if he were a child, and went swishing upstairs to dress. The Colonel was tickled to death about the engagement and had invited them all to dinner to celebrate it.
The wedding came off in fine style and J. Ward Moorehouse found himself the center of all eyes in a wellfitting frock coat and a silk hat. People thought he was very handsome. His mother back in Wilmington let flatiron after flatiron cool while she pored over the account in the papers; finally she took off her spectacles and folded the papers carefully and laid them on the ironing board. She was very happy.
The young couple sailed the next day from New York on the Teutonic. The crossing was so rough that only the last two days was it possible to go out on deck. Ward was sick and was taken care of by a sympathetic cockney steward who spoke of Annabelle as the “Madam” and thought she was his mother. Annabelle was a good sailor but the baby made her feel miserable and whenever she looked at herself in her handmirror she was so haggard that she wouldn’t get out of her bunk. The stewardess suggested gin with a dash of bitters in it and it helped her over the last few days of the crossing. The night of the captain’s dinner she finally appeared in the diningroom in an evening gown of black valenciennes and everybody thought her the bestlooking woman on the boat. Ward was in a fever for fear she’d drink too much champagne as he had seen her put away four ponies of gin and bitters and a Martini cocktail while dressing. He had made friends with an elderly banker, Mr. Jarvis Oppenheimer and his wife, and he was afraid that Annabelle would seem a little fast to them. The captain’s dinner went off without a hitch, however, and Annabelle and Ward found that they made a good team. The captain, who had known Dr. Strang, came and sat with them in the smokingroom afterwards and had a glass of champagne with them and with Mr. and Mrs. Oppenheimer and they heard people asking each other who could that charming scintillating brilliant young couple be, somebody interesting surely, and when they went to bed after having seen the lighthouses in the Irish Sea, they felt that all the seasick days had been thoroughly worth while.
Annabelle didn’t like it in London where the dark streets were dismal in a continual drizzle of sleet, so they only stayed a week at the Cecil before crossing to Paris. Ward was sick again on the boat from Folkestone to Boulogne and couldn’t keep track of Annabelle whom he found in the dining saloon drinking brandy and soda with an English army officer when the boat reached the calm water between the long jetties of Boulogne harbor. It wasn’t so bad as he expected being in a country where he didn’t know the language and Annabelle spoke French very adequately and they had a firstclass compartment and a basket with a cold chicken and sandwiches in it and some sweet wine that Ward drank for the first time—when in Rome do as the Romans do—and they were quite the honeymoon couple on the train going down to Paris. They drove in a cab from the station to the Hotel Wagram, with only their handbaggage because the hotel porter took care of the rest, through streets shimmering with green gaslight on wet pavements. The horse’s hoofs rang sharp on the asphalt and the rubbertired wheels of the cab spun smoothly and the streets were crowded in spite of the fact that it was a rainy winter night and there were people sitting out at little marbletop tables round little stoves in front of cafés and there were smells in the air of coffee and wine and browning butter and baking bread. Annabelle’s eyes caught all the lights; she looked very pretty, kept nudging him to show him things and patting his thigh with one hand. Annabelle had written to the hotel, where she had stayed before with her father, and they found a white bedroom and parlor waiting for them and a roundfaced manager who was very elegant and very affable to bow them into it and a fire in the grate. They had a bottle of champagne and some paté de fois gras before going to bed and Ward felt like a king. She took off her traveling clothes and put on a negligee and he put on a smoking jacket that she had given him and that he hadn’t worn and all his bitter feelings of the last month melted away.
They sat a long time looking into the fire smoking Muratti cigarettes out of a tin box. She kept fondling his hair and rubbing her hand round his shoulders and neck. “Why aren’t you more affectionate, Ward?” she said in low gruff tones. “I’m the sort of woman likes to be carried off her feet . . . Take care . . . You may lose me . . . Over here the men know how to make love to a woman.”
“Gimme a chance, won’t you? . . . First thing I’m going to get a job with some American firm or other. I think Mr. Oppenheimer’ll help me do that. I’ll start in taking French lessons right away. This’ll be a great opportunity for me.” “You funny boy.” “You don’t think I’m going to run after you like a poodledog, do you, without making any money of my own? . . . Nosiree, bobby.” He got up and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go to bed.”
Ward went regularly to the Berlitz school for his French lessons and went round to see Notre Dame and Napoleon’s tomb and the Louvre with old Mr. Oppenheimer and his wife. Annabelle, who said that museums gave her a headache, spent her days shopping and having fittings with dressmakers. There were not many American firms in Paris so the only job Ward could get, even with the help of Mr. Oppenheimer who knew everyone, was on Gordon Bennett’s newspaper, the Paris edition of The New York Herald. The job consisted of keeping track of arriving American business men, interviewing them on the beauties of Paris and on international relations. This was his meat and enabled him to make many valuable contacts. Annabelle thought it was all too boring and refused to be told anything about it. She made him put on a dress suit every evening and take her to the opera and theatres. This he was quite willing to do as it was good for his French.
She went to a very famous specialist for women’s diseases who agreed that on no account should she have a baby at this time. An immediate operation was necessary and would be a little dangerous as the baby was so far along. She didn’t tell Ward and only sent word from the hospital when it was over. It was Christmas day. He went immediately to see her. He heard the details in chilly horror. He’d gotten used to the idea of having a baby and thought it would have a steadying effect on Annabelle. She lay looking very pale in the bed in the private sanatorium and he stood beside the bed with his fists clenched without saying anything. At length the nurse said to him that he was tiring madame and he went away. When Annabelle came back from the hospital after four or five days announcing gaily that she was fit as a fiddle and was going to the south of France, he said nothing. She got ready to go, taking it for granted that he was coming, but the day she left on the train to Nice he told her that he was going to stay on in Paris. She looked at him sharply and then said with a laugh, “You’re turning me loose, are you?” “I have my business and you have your pleasure,” he said. “All right, young man, it’s a go.” He took her to the station and put her on the train, gave the conductor five fr
ancs to take care of her and came away from the station on foot. He’d had enough of the smell of musk and perfume for a while.
Paris was better than Wilmington but Ward didn’t like it. So much leisure and the sight of so many people sitting round eating and drinking got on his nerves. He felt very homesick the day the Ocean City booklet arrived inclosed with an enthusiastic letter from Colonel Wedgewood. Things were moving at last, the Colonel said; as for himself he was putting every cent he could scrape up, beg or borrow, into options. He even suggested that Ward send him a little money to invest for him, now that he was in a position to risk a stake on the surety of a big turnover; risk wasn’t the word because the whole situation was sewed up in a bag; nothing to do but shake the tree and let the fruit fall into their mouths. Ward went down the steps from the office of Morgan Harjes where he got his mail and out onto Boulevard Haussmann. The heavy coated paper felt good to his fingers. He put the letter in his pocket and walked down the boulevard with the honk of horns and the ring of horse’s hoofs and the shuffle of steps in his ears, now and then reading a phrase. Why, it almost made him want to go back to Ocean City (Maryland) himself. A little ruddy sunlight was warming the winter gray of the streets. A smell of roasting coffee came from somewhere; Ward thought of the white crackling sunlight of windswept days at home; days that lashed you full of energy and hope; the Strenuous Life. He had a date to lunch with Mr. Oppenheimer at a very select little restaurant down in the slums somewhere called the Tour d’Argent. When he got into a red-wheeled taximeter cab it made him feel good again that the driver understood his directions. After all it was educational, made up for those years of college he had missed. He had read through the booklet for the third time when he reached the restaurant.
He got out at the restaurant and was just paying the taxi when he saw Mr. Oppenheimer and another man arriving down the quai on foot. Mr. Oppenheimer wore a gray overcoat and a gray derby of the same pearly color as his moustaches; the other man was a steelgray individual with a thin nose and chin. When he saw them Ward decided that he must be more careful about his clothes in the future.
They ate lunch for a long time and a great many courses, although the steelgray man, whose name was McGill—he was manager of one of Jones and Laughlin’s steel plants in Pittsburgh—said his stomach wouldn’t stand anything but a chop and a baked potato and drank whisky and soda instead of wine. Mr. Oppenheimer enjoyed his food enormously and kept having long consultations about it with the head waiter. “Gentlemen, you must indulge me a little . . . this for me is a debauch,” he said. “Then, not being under the watchful eye of my wife, I can take certain liberties with my digestion . . . My wife has entered the sacred precincts of a fitting at her corsetière’s and is not to be disturbed . . . You, Ward, are not old enough to realize the possibilities of food.” Ward looked embarrassed and boyish and said he was enjoying the duck very much. “Food,” went on Mr. Oppenheimer, “is the last pleasure of an old man.”
When they were sitting over Napoleon brandy in big bowlshaped glasses and cigars, Ward got up his nerve to bring out the Ocean City (Maryland) booklet that had been burning a hole in his pocket all through lunch. He laid it on the table modestly. “I thought maybe you might like to glance at it, Mr. Oppenheimer, as . . . as something a bit novel in the advertising line.” Mr. Oppenheimer took out his glasses and adjusted them on his nose, took a sip of brandy and looked through the book with a bland smile. He closed it, let a little curling blue cigarsmoke out through his nostrils and said, “Why, Ocean City must be an earthly paradise indeed . . . Don’t you lay it on . . . er . . . a bit thick?” “But you see, sir, we’ve got to make the man on the street just crazy to go there . . . There’s got to be a word to catch your eye the minute you pick it up.”
Mr. McGill, who up to that time hadn’t looked at Ward, turned a pair of hawkgray eyes on him in a hard stare. With a heavy red hand he reached for the booklet. He read it intently right through while Mr. Oppenheimer went on to talk about the bouquet of the brandy and how you should warm the glass a little in your hand and take it in tiny sips, rather inhaling it than drinking it. Suddenly Mr. McGill brought his fist down on the table and laughed a dry quick laugh that didn’t move a muscle of his face. “By gorry, that’ll get ’em, too,” he said. “I reckon it was Mark Twain said there was a sucker born every minute . . .” He turned to Ward and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t ketch your name, young feller; do you mind repeating it?” “With pleasure . . . It’s Moorehouse, J. Ward Moorehouse.” “Where do you work?” “I’m on The Paris Herald for the time being,” said Ward, blushing. “Where do you live when you’re in the States?” “My home’s in Wilmington, Delaware, but I don’t guess I’ll go back there when we go home. I’ve been offered some editorial work on The Public Ledger in Philly.” Mr. McGill took out a visiting card and wrote an address on it. “Well, if you ever think of coming to Pittsburgh, look me up.” “I’d be delighted to see you.”
“His wife,” put in Mr. Oppenheimer, “is the daughter of Dr. Strang, the Philadelphia nose and throat specialist . . . By the way, Ward, how is the dear girl? I hope Nice has cured her of her tonsilitis.” “Yes, sir,” said Ward, “she writes that she’s much better.” “She’s a lovely creature . . . charming . . .” said Mr. Oppenheimer, draining the last sip out of his brandyglass with upcast eyes.
Next day Ward got a wire from Annabelle that she was coming up to Paris. He met her at the train. She introduced a tall Frenchman with a black vandyke beard, who was helping her off with her bags when Ward came up, as “Monsieur Forelle, my traveling companion.” They didn’t get a chance to talk until they got into the cab together. The cab smelt musty as they had to keep the windows closed on account of the driving rain. “Well, my dear,” Annabelle said, “have you got over the pet you were in when I left? . . . I hope you have because I have bad news for you.” “What’s the trouble?” “Dad’s gotten himself in a mess financially . . . I knew it’d happen. He has no more idea of business than a cat . . . Well, that fine Ocean City boom of yours collapsed before it had started and Dad got scared and tried to unload his sandlots and naturally nobody’d buy them . . . Then the Improvement and Realty Company went bankrupt and that precious Colonel of yours has disappeared and Dad has got himself somehow personally liable for a lot of the concern’s debts. . . . And there you are. I wired him we were coming home as soon as we could get a sailing. I’ll have to see what I can do . . . He’s helpless as a child about business.”
“That won’t make me mad. I wouldn’t have come over here anyway if it wasn’t for you.”
“Just all selfsacrifice, aren’t you?”
“Let’s not squabble, Annabelle.”
The last days in Paris Ward began to like it. They heard La Bohème at the opera and were both very much excited about it. Afterwards they went to a café and had some cold partridge and wine and Ward told Annabelle about how he’d wanted to be a songwriter and about Marie O’Higgins and how he’d started to compose a song about her and they felt very fond of each other. He kissed her again and again in the cab going home and the elevator going up to their room seemed terribly slow.
They still had a thousand dollars on the letter of credit Dr. Strang had given them as a wedding present, so that Annabelle bought all sorts of clothes and hats and perfumes and Ward went to an English tailor near the Church of the Madeleine and had four suits made. The last day Ward bought her a brooch in the shape of a rooster, made of Limoges enamel and set with garnets, out of his salary from The Paris Herald. Eating lunch after their baggage had gone to the boat train they felt very tender about Paris and each other and the brooch. They sailed from Havre on the Touraine and had a completely calm passage, a gray glassy swell all the way, although the month was February. Ward wasn’t seasick. He walked round and round the firstclass every morning before Annabelle got up. He wore a Scotch tweed cap and a Scotch tweed overcoat to match, with a pair of fieldglasses slung over his shoulder, and tried to puzzle out some plan for the f
uture. Wilmington anyway was far behind like a ship hull down on the horizon.
The steamer with tugboats chugging at its sides nosed its way through the barges and tugs and carferries and red whistling ferryboats of New York harbor against a howling icybright northwest wind.
Annabelle was grouchy and said it looked horrid, but Ward felt himself full of enthusiasm when a Jewish gentleman in a checked cap pointed out the Battery, the Custom House, the Aquarium and Trinity Church.
They drove right from the dock to the ferry and ate in the red-carpeted diningroom at the Pennsylvania Station in Jersey City. Ward had fried oysters. The friendly darkey waiter in a white coat was like home. “Home to God’s country,” Ward said, and decided he’d have to go down to Wilmington and say hello to the folks. Annabelle laughed at him and they sat stiffly in the parlorcar of the Philadelphia train without speaking.
Dr. Strang’s affairs were in very bad shape and, as he was busy all day with his practice, Annabelle took them over completely. Her skill in handling finance surprised both Ward and her father. They lived in Dr. Strang’s big old house on Spruce Street. Ward, through a friend of Dr. Strang’s, got a job on The Public Ledger and was rarely home. When he had any spare time he listened to lectures on economics and business at the Drexel Institute. Evenings Annabelle took to going out with a young architect named Joachim Beale who was very rich and owned an automobile. Beale was a thin young man with a taste for majolica and Bourbon whisky and he called Annabelle “my Cleopatra.”
Ward come in one night and found them both drunk sitting with very few clothes on in Annabelle’s den in the top of the house. Dr. Strang had gone to a medical conference in Kansas City. Ward stood in the doorway with his arms folded and announced that he was through and would sue for divorce and left the house slamming the door behind him and went to the Y.M.C.A. for the night. Next afternoon when he got to the office he found a special delivery letter from Annabelle begging him to be careful what he did as any publicity would be disastrous to her father’s practice, and offering to do anything he suggested. He immediately answered it: