Ever After (25 page)

Johnny nodded. Fitz nodded too.

“Now I see everything,” he said.

“My Aunt Irma always used to say—” Johnny began
expansively
while Gwen sat before her untasted food, waiting patiently for them to begin.

She was a little uncertain whether she had fallen into the company of high-class wits or just plain downright clowns. Humour was one of the many things which her brother Don had lacked, and laughter was to Gwen a serious business because she was unfamiliar with it. Sheer idiocy for its own sake was something she had never
encountered
either, and the solemn foolery which passed for conversation between her two knights errant was outside her experience. She trusted them, for she had taught herself long since to judge men by their eyes and the shape of their mouth and hands, rather than by the things they said, but she did not understand these two, not yet. She was hungry, desperately so, and the smell of the coffee curled tantalizingly around her nostrils while she waited.

“Did your Aunt Irma ever tell you to shut up and start eatin’?” Fitz asked pointedly of their host, and at last her teeth met
gratefully
on the pink ham, which was the kind that melts in your mouth.

She tried not to wolf it, but they were talking and she was not, and her sandwich was gone completely before they had well begun. Fitz laid the untouched half of his on her plate. Without pausing in the flow of his colourful reminiscences of life with Aunt Irma, Johnny did the same. Gwen looked from one to the other of them piteously. It was a little thing, but just that much too much. Tears welled up, spilled over.

“Ah, now, don’t do that, honey, that ham is salt enough already—”

But Gwen put her head down on her arm on the corner of the table and cried. And cried. And cried.

Neither of them had ever heard anybody cry like that before—great racking sobs that came up by the roots, long aching pauses while she fought for breath. Neither of them tried to stop her, though. Nobody patted her on the back and talked optimistic nonsense, nobody even gave her a handkerchief. They simply let her howl. When it was over, Johnny was gazing thoughtfully into his beer, and Fitz stood at the dark window, his back to the room.

Gwen rose, moving feebly and with caution, as though she had had a long illness, and went to the bureau and got her handkerchief out of her bag and blew her nose. Still nobody said anything. Johnny roused himself, opened the top drawer, and gave her a clean handkerchief of his own, big enough to do some good. He returned at once to his chair and his beer and they waited tactfully while she got herself together again.

“I never did that before,” she said. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

“I guess it was time you did it, then,” said Johnny. “Maybe you’d like us to go now, so you can get some rest. You can find
everything
here you need, except a toothbrush. I’ll buy you one of those tomorrow.” And he began to collect his own toothbrush and shaving things, dropping them into his coat pockets.

“It’s awfully kind of you,” Gwen said, with a helpless,
inarticulate
gesture. “I’m making a lot of trouble, I—I’d be willing to try to repay you—”

“You’re going to be a mother to us, aren’t you?” said Johnny. “Here’s Dixie, dying of homesickness for Williamsburg, Virginia, and I’ve been an orphan all my life–what more do you want? I don’t know how we’ve got along all this time without you.”

She looked at them doubtfully, still at sea except that she knew she liked them and felt safe with them. But why? What was there in it for them? What did they expect of her in return?

For Gwen, life had a terrible simplicity. A man did you a favour. He expected something back. Sooner or later you had to pay up. There had been nothing in her experience so far to indicate any exceptions to this rule. She could only regard all this talk of mothers and orphans as some kind of elaborate blind, or a new kind of fancy approach she wasn’t wise to. Which one of them would it be, then? The one whose room they were in was ready to leave. Her eyes went to the other one. He had picked up his hat. Were they being considerate, tonight, because her brother was dead? Fagan hadn’t shown any such delicacy, though the woman from the contortionist act had seemed to expect him to.

What was their game? How did it end? Was it her move? Perhaps they were leaving it to her, in some subtle fashion, to choose. Nothing they said or did made any more sense than that. Was she supposed to say, some time, All right, I’ll take that one—? The room rocked under her feet, and she put up a hand before her face. Either one. Any time. She was too tired to care. And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, so long as it wasn’t Fagan—so long as she could stay here in this comfortable room, in the midst of this strange, carefree society—so long as she needn’t ever go back again….

“I don’t know what you boys want from me for this,” she said drearily behind her hand. “I don’t understand half you say. Please don’t make fun of me any more, just tell me what it is and I’ll do it.” She took her hand away and looked at them straightly, braced against the bureau, with her small, one-sided smile. “You don’t have to be polite with me. I like to know where I am, that’s all.”

For the first time, she saw embarrassment on their faces. Johnny recovered first.

“Ah, now, Gwen, for the love of God, did you think there were
strings to it? The place is yours, girl, such as it is. Neither of us goes with it, now or later, if that’s what’s biting you. You’ve had too much Fagan, I can see that, but my name is Malone, didn’t I tell you?”

“You mean you’re just—
giving
me this room—?”

Johnny and Fitz exchanged glances. Fitz was still speechless. Johnny tried again.

“Look, now, Gwen–the rent here is paid till next Saturday. Friday night it will be paid again for another week. And so on. The milk comes every morning, right on the doorstep. And two morning papers, compliments of the management. There’s food of one kind and another—enough to keep you. But you have to promise us one thing.” His slow, impressive forefinger rose. “Never show your little nose outside this door till we give you the word. We’ll be back and take you to dinner about seven o’clock. G’night.” He offered a large, open hand and she put hers in it.

“’Night, honey,” said Fitz, and touched her shoulder lightly as he passed.

The door closed behind them, and opened again to admit Johnny’s head.

“There’s the key,” he said, pointing to the inside keyhole. “Lemme hear you turn it.”

They stood outside the closed door, listening. The lock clicked. As they reached the street—

“You come along home with me,” said Fitz. “Lots of room. We can say you have lent your place to a friend who is temporarily down on his luck.”

“Will the Boss stand for it, do you think?”

“Who’re we workin’ for? Fagan?”

T
HE
following day happened to be a slack one at the Shop. Fitz’s thoughts reverted more than once to the girl they had so
precipitately taken under their wing. He percieved that it was not going to be easy to conceal for an indefinite period of time a person who made her living by singing and dancing on the stage. To spirit her away from the music hall on West Thirty-fourth Street and lodge her secretly, and then pitch her into the bill at Tony Pastor’s or Koster and Bial’s, even if he and Johnny had the influence to do so, would not solve anything. Fagan or his henchmen would spot her in no time and that was bound to mean unpleasantness all round.

He began to wonder what else Gwen could do besides sing and dance. If only she were a boy it would be so simple. Then you could lug her along to Cabot and ask him to give her a job. If she had been a boy she could have learned typewriting and been somebody’s secretary. Nobody wanted a girl for a secretary, though–girls hadn’t the right kind of brains. Besides, she was too pretty. In fact, she was too pretty to do much of anything but sing and dance.

The idea of consulting Eden about Gwen did not appeal to him. If Gwen had been the sort of girl to take a job as housemaid it would have been different, or if she had been ill he would not have hesitated to call on Eden for help. But things weren’t as bad as that. And he felt a singular delicacy about revealing to anybody for whom life had cut as near the bone as it had for Gwen that he was the nephew of Cabot Murray, who owned the
Star,
and lived with him in a Madison Avenue mansion instead of getting along on his reporter’s salary the way Johnny had to. Johnny didn’t mind the relationship, being used to it, but Gwen might think he was just slumming. Perhaps it would be better if he took a cheap room somewhere, like Johnny. But at this point in Fitz’s meandering thoughts the practical side of the matter cropped up. Gwen might cost them money, if she couldn’t work, and Johnny needed all he had each week. Fitz decided to let Cabot feed and house him a little longer. Cabot could afford it. He had just turned over his Trenton steel interests to the new United States Steel Company for a hunk of preferred stock which hoisted his personal fortune into the six cypher class.

She had not answered his question about parents, he realized, nor had she entered into the discussion of Johnny’s orphanship with any revelations of her own. There was apparently no one to whom the news of Don’s death must be broken, and no one to worry if she spent the night away from her usual lodging. That was tough. He wondered how old she was. Less than twenty, he felt certain. She ought to have somebody to look after her. The best thing would be for her to marry somebody who was capable of protecting her. Johnny, for instance. Fitz contemplated the idea in the light of inspiration. It would be just the thing, if Johnny gave up his hopeless passion for Virginia and fell in love with Gwen, and married her. That would settle Fagan and his gang.

Johnny stopped beside his desk as quitting time drew near.

“You’ll have to take Gwen to dinner.” he said. “I’m going to Brooklyn for a story. Is it all right if I sleep at your place again tonight? I may be late.”

“Sure. Can’t you join us somewhere? We could go to Martin’s and sit around till you come.”

“Oh, no! You’ll go to Frieda’s downstairs, and sit ’way at the
back. And then you’ll go straight back to my room and stay there till I come. You’re trying to hide this girl, Dixie, not advertise her.”

“Just as you say,” Fitz agreed meekly.

“And be sure to buy her a toothbrush,” Johnny said as he departed.

Frieda’s was a little eating-place next door to the house where Johnny lived. The German food was plentiful, savoury, and cheap. Fitz and Gwen sat at a small corner table in the rear, and gradually he charmed out of her some personal history.

She was worrying about a job already, and Fitz said they had enough for three until things blew over. Reluctantly then she admitted that it wasn’t just herself. There was always Pa to think of.

“Pa is in a home,” she said, avoiding his sympathetic eyes. “A mental home. We—I have to send money every week for his keep. I have to send it tomorrow.”

“How much?”

“We’ve got a little behind. We were out of work a while and—we owe them nineteen dollars.”

“Well, I guess Johnny and I can manage to carry that.”

“I’ve got seven, and Don had some, but we can’t get that now, I suppose. The point is, I have to keep working and not let the
payments
pile up.”

“Would they put him out?”

“They never have yet, but once you get behind on a thing like that you never catch up again. Don and I had to do all sorts of things towards the end of the week when we didn’t have enough.” Her eyes were shadowed with the things they had done, and Fitz saw for the first time how shabby and cheap her street clothes were. You didn’t really notice how badly Gwen was dressed at first because her hair shone with brushing and the lace at her throat was clean and she carried herself as though she wore sables.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked.

“Since I was a kid. I don’t want you to think we’ve got real insanity in our family, it isn’t that. Pa had a fall—from the trapeze. We used to be with an aerial act when Don and I were children.”

“I see,” said Fitz, trying to.

“He struck his head when he fell. We thought he was dead, but when he came to in the hospital he’d—well, forgotten everything. And ever since then he’s been kind of simple.”

“I see.”

“Mom left the act, they didn’t want us without him. We went on the kerosene circuit with
The
Black
Crook
, but that didn’t last. Then Don and I played dime museums and county fairs for a while. We had a paper-tearing act, and sang and danced at the same time.
It was cute while we were small, but it ran out when we stopped being children. Don was a born dancer, and we worked out a new grown-up routine while Mom scrubbed floors and cleaned up in a place down on the Bowery to get the money for Pa. Mom stayed
respectable
—I think.” She sat for a moment, looking back. “Mom was a real lady. She always made us speak right and taught us manners. I think Mom could have been another Lillian Russell if she’d had the chance, and she always thought I could be. It broke her heart I couldn’t have regular singing lessons and learn good music, but we never could afford it. It seems as though as long as I can
remember
, we always had to get that money by Saturday night for Pa. There’s only me to do it now. But tomorrow is Saturday, the same as always.”

“Well, now, wait a minute, I live with my uncle, remember, and don’t have to pay rent, so I never need all my salary. You just leave your Pa to me for a while. I’ve got the nineteen dollars right on me tonight, as it happens. We’ll pay it off and start even for next Saturday.”

“I only need twelve, I’ve got—”

“I know, you’ve got seven, but you keep that, you’ll want it.”

“You’re very kind, but I really couldn’t—”

“Now, Gwen, listen,” Fitz said firmly. “Johnny and I hauled you out of that dump last night and we’re going to see you through, but you’ve got to do as we say. If you’re going to dodge Fagan you can’t go round the halls looking for a job right away. Anyway, your act is gone. Have you thought what you could do alone?”