The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Girl in the Mirror, by Elizabeth Garver Jordan, Illustrated by Paul Meylan This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Girl in the Mirror Author: Elizabeth Garver Jordan Release Date: March 2, 2010 [eBook #31471] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR*** E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.fadedpage.com) "Well, Princess," he said at last, still trying to speak lightly "Well, Princess," he said at last, still trying to speak lightly THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR BY ELIZABETH JORDAN Author of "The Wings of Youth," "May Iverson—Her Book," "Lovers' Knots," etc. ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL MEYLAN NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919 Copyright, 1919, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1919, by Today's Housewife Published, October, 1919 TO MRS. HENRY FERRE CUTLER WITH HAPPY MEMORIES OF FLORENCE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I Barbara's Wedding 3 II Rodney Loses a Battle 26 III Laurie Meets Miss Mayo 47 IV A Pair of Gray Eyes 66 V Mr. Herbert Ransome Shaw 90 VI Laurie Solves a Problem 99 VII Griggs Gets an Order 112 VIII Samuel Plays a New Game 124 IX An Invitation 138 X The Lair of Shaw 151 XI A Bit of Bright Ribbon 162 XII Doris Takes a Journey 180 XIII The House in the Cedars 196 XIV Laurie Checks a Revelation 216 XV Mr. Shaw Decides to Talk 240 XVI Burke Makes a Promise 258 XVII Laurie Makes a Confession 270 XVIII A Little Look Forward 285 XIX"What About Laurie?" 296 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "Well, Princess," he said at last, still trying to speak lightly Frontispiece "You see, what we were going to do isn't done much nowadays" 64 "There is someone outside that door!" she whispered 116 "What you been doin' to yerself?" he gasped 264 THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR CHAPTER I BARBARA'S WEDDING The little city of Devondale, Ohio, had shaken off for one night at least the air of aristocratic calm that normally distinguished it from the busy mill towns on its right and left. Elm Avenue, its leading residence street, usually presented at this hour only an effect of watchful trees, dark shrubbery, shaded lamps, and remote domestic peace. Now, however, it had blossomed into a brilliant thoroughfare, full of light, color, and movement, on all of which the December stars winked down as if in intimate understanding. Automobiles poured through the wide gates of its various homes and joined a ceaseless procession of vehicles. Pedestrians, representing every class of the city's social life, jostled one another on the sidewalks as they hurried onward, following this vanguard. Overwrought policemen barked instructions at chauffeurs and sternly reprimanded daring souls who attempted to move in a direction opposite to that the crowd was following. For the time, indeed, there seemed to be but one destination which a self-respecting citizen of Devondale might properly have in mind; and already many of the elect had reached this objective and had comfortably passed through its wide doors, down its aisles, and into its cushioned pews. The Episcopal church of St. Giles was the largest as well as the most fashionable of Devondale's houses of God, but it had its limitations. It could not hold the entire population of the town and surrounding counties. The chosen minority, having presented cards of admission at the entrance, accepted with sedate satisfaction the comfortable seats assigned to it. The uninvited but cheerful majority lingered out in the frosty street, forming a crowd that increasingly blocked the avenue and the church entrance, besides wrecking the nervous systems of traffic men. It was an interested, good-humored, and highly observant crowd, pressing forward as each automobile approached, to watch with unashamed curiosity the guests who alighted and made their way along the strip of carpet stretching from curbstone to church. Devondale's leading citizens were here, and the spectators knew them all, from those high personages who were presidents of local banks down to little Jimmy Harrigan, who was Barbara Devon's favorite caddie at the Country Club. Unlike most of his fellow guests, Jimmy arrived on foot; but the crowd saw his unostentatious advent and greeted him with envious badinage. "Hi, dere, Chimmie, where's yer evenin' soot?" one acquaintance desired to know. And a second remarked solicitously, [Pg 1] [Pg 3] [Pg 2] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] "De c'rect ting, Chimmie, is t' hold yer hat to yer heart as y' goes in!" Jimmy made no reply to these pleasantries. The occasion was too big and too novel for that. He merely grinned, presented his card of admission in a paw washed clean only in spots, and accepted with equal equanimity the piercing gaze of the usher and the rear seat to which that outraged youth austerely conducted him. There, round-eyed, Jimmy stared about him. He had never been inside of St. Giles's before. It was quite possible that he would never find himself inside of it again. He took in the beauty of the great church; its blaze of lights; its masses of flowers; its whispering, waiting throng; the broad white ribbon that set apart certain front pews for the bride's special friends, including a party from New York. Jimmy knew all about those friends and all about this wedding. His grimy little ears were ceaselessly open to the talk of the town, and for weeks past the town had talked of nothing but the Devons and Barbara Devon's approaching wedding. Even now the townspeople were still talking of the Devons, during the brief interval before the bridal party appeared. In the pew just in front of Jimmy, Mrs. Arthur Lytton, a lady he recognized as a ubiquitous member of the Country Club, was giving a few intimate details of Miss Devon's life to her companion, who evidently was a new-comer to the city. "You see," Mrs. Lytton was murmuring, "this is really the most important wedding we've ever had here. Barbara Devon owns most of Devondale, and her home, Devon House, is one of the show places of the state. She hasn't a living relative except her brother Laurie, and I fancy she has been lonely, notwithstanding her hosts of friends. We all love her, so we're glad to know she has found the right man to marry, especially as we are not to lose her ourselves. She intends to live in Devon House every summer." The new-comer—a Mrs. Renway who had social aspirations—was politely attentive. "I met Laurence Devon at the Country Club yesterday," she said. "He's the handsomest creature I've ever seen, I think. He's really too good-looking; and they say there's some romantic story about him. Do you know what it is?" Her friend nodded. "Mercy, yes! Every one does." Observing the other's growing attention, she went on expansively: "You see, Laurie was the black sheep of the family; so the Devons left all their great fortune to Barbara and put Laurie in her care. That infuriated him, of course, for he is a high-spirited youngster. He promptly took on an extra shade of blackness. He was expelled from college, and sowed whole crops of wild oats. He gambled, was always in debt, and Barbara had to pay. For a long time she wasn't able to handle the situation. They're both young, you know. She's about twenty-four, and Laurie is a year younger. But last year she suddenly put her mind on it and pulled him up in a rather spectacular way." Mrs. Renway's eyes glittered with interest. "Tell me how!" she begged. The raconteur settled back into her pew, with the complacent expression of one who is sure of her hearer's complete absorption in her words. "Why," she said, "she made Laurie a sporting-proposition, and he accepted it. He and she were to go to New York and earn their living for one year, under assumed names and without revealing their identity to anybody. They were to start with fifty dollars each, and to be wholly dependent upon themselves after that was gone. Laurie was to give up all his bad habits and buckle down to the job of self-support. For every dollar he earned more than Barbara earned, she promised him five dollars at the end of the year. And if he kept his pledges he was to have ten thousand dollars when the experiment was over, whether he succeeded or failed. He and Barbara were to live in different parts of the city, to be ignorant of each other's addresses, and to see each other only twice." She stopped for breath. Her friend drove an urgent elbow into her side. "Go on!" she pleaded. "What happened?" "Something very unexpected," chuckled Mrs. Lytton. (For some reason, Barbara's friends always chuckled at this point in the story.) "Barbara, who is so clever," she went on, "almost starved to death. And Laurie, the black sheep, after various struggles and failures fell in with some theatrical people and finally collaborated with a successful playwright in writing a play. Perhaps it was partly luck. But the play made a tremendous hit, Laurie kept his pledges, and Barbara has had to pay him a small fortune to meet her bargain!" The hearer smiled sympathetically. "That's splendid," she said, "for Laurie! But is the cure permanent, do you think? The boy's so young, and so awfully good-looking—" "I know," Mrs. Lytton looked ominous. "He is straight as a string so far, and absorbed in his new work. But of course [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] his future is on the knees of the gods, for Barbara is going to Japan on her honeymoon, and Laurie will be alone in New York the rest of the winter. Barbara found her husband in New York," she added. "He's a broker there, Robert Warren. That's what she got out of the experiment! She met him while she was working in the mailing-department of some business house, for seven dollars a week—" Mrs. Lytton stopped speaking and craned her head backward. "They're coming!" she whispered excitedly. "Oh, dear, I hope I sha'n't cry! I always do cry at weddings, and I never know why." From the crowd outside there rose a cheer, evidently at the bride's appearance. The echoes of it accompanied her progress into the church. "The mill people adore Barbara," whispered Mrs. Lytton. "She built a big club-house for them two years ago, and she's the president of most of their clubs." In his seat behind her, Jimmy Harrigan, who had given his attention to the conversation, sniffed contemptuously. If the dame in front was goin' to talk about Miss Devon, why didn't she tell somethin' worth while? Why didn't she tell, fer ins'ance, that Miss Devon played the best golf of any woman in the club, and had beaten Mrs. Lytton to a frazzle in a match last month? An' why didn't she say somethin' about how generous Miss Devon was to caddies in the matter of skates and boxing-gloves and clothes? And why didn't she say what a prince Laurie Devon was, instead of all dat stale stuff what everybody knew? But now Mrs. Lytton was exclaiming over the beauty of the bride, and here Jimmy whole-heartedly agreed with her. "How lovely she looks!" she breathed. "She's like Laurie, so stunning she rather takes one's breath away! Oh, dear, I'm going to cry, I know I am! And crying makes my nose actually purple!" The excitement in the street had communicated itself to the dignified assemblage in the church. The occupants of the pews were turning in their seats. The first notes of the great pipe-organ rolled forth. Friends who had known and loved Barbara Devon since she was a little girl, and many who had known her father and mother before her, looked now at the radiant figure she presented as she walked slowly up the aisle on her brother's arm, and saw that figure through an unexpected mist. "What a pair!" whispered Mrs. Renway, who had a pagan love of beauty. "They ought to be put in one of their own parks and kept there as a permanent exhibit for the delight of the public. It's almost criminal negligence to leave that young man at large," she darkly predicted. "Something will happen if they do!" Mrs. Lytton absently agreed. "The bridegroom is very handsome, too," she murmured. "That stunning, insolent creature who is acting as matron of honor, and looking bored to death by it, is his sister, Mrs. Ordway, of New York. The first bridesmaid is another New York friend, a Russian girl named Sonya Orleneff, that Barbara met in some lodging-house. And will you look at the Infant Samuel!" An expression of acute strain settled over the features of Mrs. Renway. She hurriedly adjusted her eye-glasses. "The what?" she whispered, excitedly. "Where? I don't see any infant!" Mrs. Lytton laughed. "Of course you don't! It's too small and too near the floor. It's a thirty-months-old youngster Barbara picked up in a New York tenement. She calls him the Infant Samuel, and she has brought him here with his mother, to live on her estate. They say she intends to educate him. He's carrying her train and he's dressed as a page, in tiny white satin breeches and lace ruffles. Oh, don't miss him!" A little ripple stirred the assemblage. Three figures in the long advancing line of the bridal party held the attention of observers. Two were the bride and her brother. The third, stalking behind her, with her train grasped in his tiny fists, his round brown eyes staring straight ahead, and his fluffy brown hair flying out as if swept backward by an eternal breeze, was obviously the Infant Samuel Mrs. Lytton had mentioned. From a rear pew the Infant's mother watched her offspring with pride and shuddering apprehension. It was quite on the cards that he might suddenly decide to leave the procession and undertake a brief side excursion into the pews. But Samuel had been assured that he was "taking a walk," and as taking a walk happened to be his favorite pastime he kept manfully to this new form of diversion, even though it had features that did not strongly appeal to him. His short legs wabbled, and his tiny arms ached under the light weight of the bridal train, but Something would happen if he let that train drop. He did not know quite what this Something would be, but he abysmally inferred that it would be extremely unpleasant. He held grimly to his burden. Suddenly he forgot it. The air was full of wonderful sounds such as he had never heard before. His eyes grew larger. His mouth formed the "O" that expressed his deepest wonder. He longed to stop and find out where the sounds came from, but the train drew him on and on. With an unconscious sigh he accompanied the train; bad as things were, they might have been worse, for he knew that somewhere in advance of him, lost in a mass of white stuff, was the "Babs" he adored. [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] When the train stopped, he stopped. In response to an urgent suggestion from some one behind him, he dropped it. In obedience to an equally urgent inner prompting, he sat down on it and gazed around. The walk had been rather a long one. Now the big house he was in was very still, save for one voice, saying something to Babs. It was all strange and unfamiliar, and Babs seemed far away. Nothing and nobody looked natural. Samuel became increasingly doubtful about the pleasure of this walk. The corners of his mouth went down. A flower fell into his lap, and looking up he saw Sonya Orleneff smiling at him. Even Sonya was a new Sonya, emerging from what Samuel dimly felt to be pink clouds. But the eyes were hers, and the smile was hers, and it was plain that she expected him to play with the pink flower. He pulled it to pieces, slowly and absorbedly. The task took some time. From it he passed to a close contemplation of a pink slippered foot which also proved to be Sonya's, and then to a careful study of a black pump and black silk sock that proved to be Lawwie's. Lawwie was smiling down at Samuel, too, and Wobert was standing beside Babs, saying something in a voice that wabbled. Samuel sighed again. Perhaps by and by Lawwie would take him out for a real walk in the snow. All this pink-and- white display around him might be pretty, but there was nothing in it for a small boy. He gazed appealingly at Sonya, who promptly hoisted him to his fat legs. The man at the railing had stopped talking to Babs and the walk was resumed, this time toward the door. Again that especially precious part of the white stuff was in Samuel's keeping. The sounds that now filled the air were more wonderful than ever. They excited Samuel. His fat arms waved, and the light train waved with them. A compelling hand, Sonya's, quieted them and it. There was absolutely nothing a little boy could do in this queer walk. Gloomily but sedately the Infant Samuel continued his promenade. "Here he is," murmured Mrs. Lytton to her friend. "You can see him now, can't you?" Mrs. Renway gurgled happily. She could. "Rodney Bangs, the playwright who collaborated with Laurie, is sitting in the front pew," continued her informant, "and the fat little bald man next to him is Jacob Epstein, the New York manager who put on their play." At the same moment Epstein was whispering to his companion, as the two watched Barbara and her husband start down the aisle in the first little journey of their married life. "Say, Bangs, if ve could put this vedding into a play, just like they done it here, ve could vake up Broadvay a little—ain't it?" Bangs nodded, vaguely. His brown eyes were alternately on the bride and on his chum and partner, her brother. He was conscious of an odd depression, of an emotion, new and poignant, that made him understand the tears of Barbara's women friends. Under the influence of this, he spoke oracularly: "Weddings are beastly depressing things. What the public wants to see is something cheerful!" Epstein nodded in his turn. His thoughts, too, were busy. Like many of those around him, he was mentally reducing the spectacle he was watching to terms that he could understand. A wedding conducted on this scale, he estimated, probably represented a total cost of about ten thousand dollars. But what was that to a bride with thirty or forty millions? It was strange her family had left them all to her and none to the boy, even if the boy had been a little wild. But the boy was all right now. He'd make his own fortune if life and women and the devil would let him alone. He had made a good start already. A few more successes like "The Man Above" would make Epstein forget several failures he had already and unwisely produced this season. If he could get Bangs and Devon to start work at once, on another good play— Epstein closed his eyes, lent his Jewish soul to the spell of the music, and dreamed on, of Art and Dollars, of Dollars and Art. A little later, in the automobile that whirled him and Epstein out to the wedding-reception at Devon House, Rodney Bangs briefly developed the wedding theme. "I suppose the reason why women cry at weddings and men feel glum is that they know what the bride's in for," he remarked, gloomily. Epstein grunted. "You an' me is bachelors," he reminded the momentarily cynical youth. "Ve should vorry!" "What I'm worrying about is Laurie," Bangs admitted. Epstein turned to him with awakened interest. "Vell," he demanded, "what about Laurie? He's all right, ain't he?" "His sister has always kept a collar and leash on Laurie," Bangs reminded him, "and Laurie has needed them both. Now she's off for Japan on a four-months' honeymoon. The leash and collar are off, too. It's going to be mighty interesting and rather anxious business for us to see what a chap like Laurie does with his new freedom. His nature hasn't changed in a year, you see, though his circumstances have," he added, slowly. "And all his promises to Barbara are off. His year of probation is over." [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] Epstein grunted again. He was fond of saying that he loved Bangs and Laurie as if they were the sons he had never had; but he was not given to analysis of himself or others, and he had little patience with it. His reply showed a tolerance unusual in him. "Vell, ve keep an eye on him, don't ve?" he predicted. Bangs frowned. "We'll have to do it mighty carefully," he muttered. "If Devon catches us at it, he won't leave us an eye to keep on anything!" Epstein grunted again. "Ve keep him busy," he suggested, eagerly. "Start him right avay on another play. Eh? That's the idea!" Bangs shook his head. "That's it," he conceded. "But Laurie has decided that he won't work again, just yet. He says he's tired and wants a few months' rest. Besides, he thinks America will declare war before the winter's over. He's going to volunteer as soon as it does, and he doesn't want any loose ends dragging here, any half-finished plays, for example." Epstein looked worried. This was serious news. Without allowing him time to recover from it, Bangs administered a second jolt. "And of course, in that case," he added simply, "I'd volunteer, too." Under the double blow Epstein's head and shoulders went down. He knew in that moment what even he himself had sometimes doubted, that his boasted love for the boys was deep and sincere. Few fathers could have experienced a more poignant combination of pride and pain than that which shook him now. But he remained, as always, inarticulate. "Oh, vell," he said vaguely, "I guess ve meet all that if it comes, eh? Ve needn't go to it to-day." At Devon House they found the congestion characteristic of wedding-receptions. A certain line had been drawn at the church. Seemingly no line at all had been drawn in the matter of guests at the reception. All Barbara Devon's protégés were there, and they were many; all the young folks in her clubs; all the old and new friends of her crowded life. Each of the great and beautiful rooms on the main floor of Devon House held a human frieze as a background for the throng of new-comers that grew rather than lessened as the hours passed. As Bangs and Epstein entered the main hall Laurie Devon saw them over the heads of the crowd and hurried to meet them, throwing an arm across the shoulder of each. He was in a mood both men loved and feared, a mood of high and reckless exhilaration. He liked and approved of his new brother-in-law. The memory of his own New York triumph was still fresh enough to give him a thrill. He was devoted to his partners, and proud of his association with them and their work. But most of all, and this he himself would loyally have denied, deep in his heart he was exulting fiercely over his coming freedom. Laurie loved his sister, but he was weary of leading-strings. Henceforth he could live his own life. It should be a life worth while, on that he had decided, and it should continue free from the vices of gambling and drinking, of which he was sure he had cured himself in the past year. He had come into a full realization of the folly of these and of the glory of the work one loves. He hadn't the least notion what he was going to do with his independence, but a boundless delight filled him in the prospect of it. Whatever life held he was convinced would be good. Looking down from his slender height on the plump Epstein and the stocky Bangs, he smiled into the sober face of each, and under the influence of that smile their momentary solemnity fell from them like dropped veils. "Come and see Barbara," Laurie buoyantly suggested. "She wants to say good-by to you, and to tell you how to tuck me into my crib every night. She's going to slip away pretty soon, you know. Bob and I have got her off in an alcove to get a few minutes' rest." He led them to this haven, of which only fifty or sixty other guests seemed aware, for the room was but comfortably filled. They found Barbara sitting in a high-backed Spanish chair, against which, in her bridal array and her extraordinary beauty, she made a picture that unaccountably deepened the new depression in Rodney's soul. On her train by the side of the chair, the Infant Samuel slumbered in peace, like an exhausted puppy. Warren, hovering near his wife, shook hands with the new-comers and responded to their congratulations. Then, slipping his arm through Laurie's, he drew him across the room to where his sister, Mrs. Ordway, was languidly talking to several of the bride's old friends. He knew that Barbara wanted a final and serious word with her brother's partners. Laurie knew it, too, and winked at the pair like an impish child as he permitted himself to be led away. Young Mrs. Warren, whose title was still so new that she looked startled when they addressed her by it, greeted them warmly and indicated the sleeping Samuel with an apologetic smile. "His mother is lost somewhere in the crowd," she explained. "He has had two glasses of milk, four fat cakes, and three plates of ice-cream; and he's either asleep or unconscious, I'm not sure which." Her manner sobered. "I'm so glad to have a moment with you two," she said gently. "You know what I want to talk about." [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] [Pg 21] "We can guess it." Bangs smiled at her with the odd wistfulness his smile always took on when he spoke to Barbara. To Bangs, Barbara had become a temple at whose portal he removed his earth-stained shoes. "You want us to look after Laurie," he added, quietly. "Well, you bet we're going to do it." She smiled again, this time the rare smile that warmed her face like a light from within. "Then I shall go away happy," she told them. "And there's nothing more to be said; for of course you both understand that I don't distrust Laurie. How could I, after he has been so wonderful all this year? It's only—" she hesitated—"I suppose it's life I'm afraid of," she confessed. "I never used to be. But—well, I learned in New York how helpless we are, sometimes." Rodney's nod was understanding. "I know," he robustly agreed. "But it's going to be absolutely all right. Be sure of that." Epstein added his well-meaning but none too happily chosen bit. "Laurie can't get into no scrape ve can't get him out of," he earnestly assured Laurie's sister. Barbara laughed. A circle of new-comers was forming around them. "We'll let it go at that," she said, and extended a hand to each man. "Good-by. I won't try to thank you. But—God bless you both!" Under the influence of this final benediction, Epstein waddled over to the corner where Warren, very pale, and Louise Ordway, very much bored, stood surrounded by a group that included Sonya Orleneff. Firmly detaching the bridegroom from this congenial assemblage, Epstein led him to one side. "Varren," he said solemnly, "I got to congratulate you all over again. You got von voman in a million—No, you got von voman in eighty million!" Warren laughed, rather shakily. Over the heads of the crowd his eyes caught his wife's and held them for an instant. "Make it a million million," he suggested joyously, and led Epstein to the supper room. Laurie was there with Bangs and a group of friends, who, having patronized young Devon a year ago, were endeavoring to wipe out the memory of this indiscretion by an excess of friendly attention. Laurie's brilliant eyes, filled with the excited glitter they had taken on to-night, saw through the attempt and the situation. Both amused him. In his clubs, or anywhere but here, he might have indulged himself to the extent of having a little fun with these people. But not in his own home, while he was acting as host at his sister's wedding. Here his manner was perfect, though colored by the exhilaration of his mood. "No," Warren and Epstein heard him say to Mrs. Lytton and Mrs. Renway, "there's nothing I'd like better than to come, thank you. But I'm going back to New York to-morrow. You see," he added, "this business of marrying off a sister, and attending to all the details and seeing that she conducts herself properly as long as she's in my care, is a bit of a strain. I've got to get back to town and recuperate." "I suppose you will rest your mind by writing another play?" gushed Mrs. Renway. Laurie shook his black head. "Not a bit of it!" he asserted. "Don't even suggest such a thing before Epstein, there. It sounds abhorrently like work." Mrs. Renway's curiosity had a brief and losing struggle with her good breeding. "Then what are you going to do?" she demanded coquettishly. The young man pondered, as if considering the question for the first time. "Well," he said at last, "between you and me, I'm going in for adventure. I intend to devote the next four months to discovering how much excitement a worthy youth can crowd into his life if he makes a business of going after the gay bird of adventure, and finding it, and putting salt on its tail!" The puzzled countenance of Mrs. Renway cleared. "Oh, I see," she said brightly, "you're joking." Laurie smiled and turned to greet a late guest who had come up behind him. In the little group that had overheard him, three pairs of eyes met in startled glances. "Humph!" said Warren. "Hear that?" "Nice prospect for us!" muttered Rodney Bangs. Jacob Epstein looked harassed. A little later he joined the throng in the main hall, and watched the showers of rice fall harmlessly from the polished sides of Barbara's limousine as the bride and groom were whirled away from the brilliant [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] entrance of Devon House. "She's gone," he said to Bangs as the two men turned and reëntered the still crowded yet suddenly empty house. And he added solemnly, "Believe me, Bangs, on that job she left us you an' me 've got our hands full!" CHAPTER II RODNEY LOSES A BATTLE Rodney Bangs, author of "The Black Pearl" and co-author of "The Man Above," was annoyed. When Mr. Bangs was annoyed he usually betrayed the fact, for his was an open nature. He was betraying it now. His clear, red-brown eyes were clouded. The healthy pink of his youthful cheeks had deepened to an unbecoming flush. His wide, engaging grin, the grin of a friendly bulldog, was lacking, and his lips were set tight. Even his burnished red pomadour added to the general pugnaciousness of his appearance. Standing up at its most aggressive angle, it seemed to challenge the world. Sitting on a low chair in the dressing-room of the bachelor apartment he and Laurence Devon occupied together, Rodney drew on a shoe and stamped his foot down into it with an emphasis that shook the floor. Devon, fastening his tie before the full-length mirror set in the door leading to their common bath-room, started at the sound, like a high- strung prima donna. This was one of Laurie's temperamental mornings. "What the devil's the matter with you, Bangs?" he demanded, but without ill humor. "Can't you get on a shoe without imitating the recoil of a seventy-five centimeter gun?" Bangs grunted, drew on the other shoe, and drove his foot into it with increased energy. Laurie looked at him, and this time there was a spark in his black eyes. Very quietly he turned, crossed the small room, and, planting himself in front of his chum, resentfully stared down at the dynamic youth. "What's the idea?" he demanded. "Are you deliberately trying to be annoying?" Rodney did not raise his head. His fingers were busy with a complicated knot. "Oh, shut up!" he muttered. Laurie, his hands in his pockets, remained where he was. Under his continued inspection, the fingers of Bangs grew clumsy. He fumbled with the knot, and, having unfastened it, prolonged to the utmost the process of lacing his shoes. He knew what must come as soon as he settled back in his chair. It had been coming for days. He was in for an unpleasant ten minutes. But the situation was one he had deliberately created as the only possible way of bringing about a serious talk with his friend. Now that it was here, he was anxious to make the most of it. With head bent and thoughts busy he played for time. At last, the shoes laced and his campaign mapped out, he sat up and met Laurie's eyes. Their expression of antagonism, temporary though he knew it to be, hurt him. Devon, when he had his own way, and he usually had it, was a singularly sweet-tempered chap. Never before, throughout their year of close association, had he looked at Bangs like that. Rodney knew that he deserved the look. For days past he had deliberately subjected his companion to a series of annoyances, small but intensely irritating. "Well?" demanded Laurie. "What's the answer?" "What answer?" Rodney was in the position of a small boy challenged to combat in cold blood. He was experiencing some difficulty in working himself up to the necessary heat for an engagement. But Laurie's next words helped him out. "You've been making a damned nuisance of yourself for the last week," he said deliberately. "I want to know why." Bangs squared his stocky shoulders and rose to his feet. His brown eyes were below the level of his chum's black ones, but the two glances met sharply and a flash passed between them. Under the force of his rising excitement the voice of Rodney shook. "The reason I've been a damned nuisance," he said curtly, "is because you've been acting like an infernal fool, and I'm sick of it." Laurie's lips tightened, but the other rushed on without giving him a chance to reply. The moment was his. He must crowd into it all he had not dared to say before and might not be given a chance to say again. "Oh, I know what you'll say!" he cried. "It's none of my business, and you're your own master, and all that sort of rot. And I know you're not drinking, and God knows I'm not ass enough to take on any high moral tone and try to preach to you, whatever you do. What gets my goat, Devon, and the only thing I'm worrying about, is this damnable waste of your time and mine." [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] Laurie grinned, and the grin infuriated Bangs. He whirled away from it. A footstool impeded his progress, and he kicked it out of his way with large abandon. It was his habit to rush about a room when he was talking excitedly. He rushed about now; and Laurie lit a cigarette and watched him, at first angrily, then with a growing tolerance born of memories of scenes in their plays which Bangs had threshed out in much this same manner. The world could never be wholly uninteresting while Rodney pranced about in it, cutting the air with gestures like that. "Here I am," snapped Rodney, "ready with my play, the best plot I've had yet. You won't let me even mention it to you. Here's the new season. Here's Epstein, sitting on our door-mat with a check-book in each hand, waiting to put on anything we give him. You know he's lost a small fortune this fall. You know it's up to us to give him a play that will pull him out of the hole he's in. Here's Haxon, the best director in town, marking time and holding off other managers in the hope that you and I will get down to business. And here you are, the fellow we're all counting on—" He stopped for breath and adjectives. "Yes," Laurie politely prompted him. "Here I am. What about it? What am I doing?" "You know damned well what you're doing. You're loafing!" Bangs fired the word at him as if it were a shell from a Big Bertha. "You're loafing till it makes us all sick to look at you. We thought a week or two of it would be enough, when you realized the conditions; but it's gone on for a month; and, instead of getting tired, you're getting more and more into the loafing habit. You abuse time till it shrieks in agony." "Good sentence," applauded Laurie. "But don't waste it on me. Put it into a play." Bangs seemed not to hear him. He was standing by the room's one window, now, staring unseeingly out of it, his hands deep in his pockets, taking in the knowledge of the failure of his appeal. Under the realization of this he tossed a final taunt at his partner over his shoulder. "I can forgive the big blunders a man makes in his life," he muttered; "but, by God, I haven't much patience with a chap that lies around and shirks at a time like this!" Laurie removed the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth, and not finding an ash tray within reach, carefully crushed out its burning end against the polished top of the dressing-case. He had grown rather pale. "That will be about all, Bangs," he said quietly. "What you and Epstein and Haxon don't seem to remember is just one thing. If you don't like matters as they are, it's mighty easy to change them. It doesn't take half a minute to agree to dissolve a partnership." "I know." Bangs returned to his chair, and, dropping limply into it, his hands still in his pockets, stared despondently at his outstretched legs. "That's all it means to you," he went on, morosely. "Our partnership is one in a thousand. It's based on friendship as well as on financial interest. If I do say it, it represents a combination of brains, ability, backing, and prospects that comes only once in a lifetime, if it comes at all. Yet in one year you're sick of it, and tired of work. You're ready to throw it all over, and to throw over at the same time the men whose interests are bound up with yours. You're dawdling in cabarets and roadhouses and restaurants, when you might be doing Work—" Bangs's voice capitalized the word—"real work," he added fiercely, "work other fellows would give their souls to be able to do." He ended on a flat note, oddly unlike his usual buoyant tones, and sat still as if everything had been said. Laurie lit a fresh cigarette, drew in a mouthful of smoke, and exhaled it in a series of pretty rings. In his brief college experience he had devoted some time to acquiring this art. Admiringly watching the little rings pass through the big rings, he spoke with studied carelessness. "It was a pretty good scene, Bangs," he said, "and it showed careful rehearsing. But it would be a lot more effective if you had a real situation to base it on. As it is, you're making a devil of a row about nothing. I worked like a horse all last year, and you know it. Now I'm resting, or loafing, if you prefer to call it that, and"—he bit off the words and fairly threw them at his friend—"it will save you and Epstein and Haxon a lot of mental wear and tear if you will mind your own business and let me alone." Bangs raised his eyes and dropped them again. "You are our business," he somberly reminded his partner. "I've got so I can't work without you," he added, with a humility new to him. "You know that. And you know I've got the plot. It's ready—great Scott, it's boiling in me! I'm crazy to get it out. And here I've got to sit around watching you kill time, while you know and I know that you'd be a damn sight happier if you were on the job. Good Lord, Laurie, work's the biggest thing there is in life! Doesn't it mean anything at all to you?" "Not just now." Laurie spoke with maddening nonchalance. "Then there's something rotten in you." Laurie winced, but made no answer. He hoped Bangs would go on talking and thus destroy the echo of his last words, with which the silent room seemed filled. But nothing came. Rodney's opportunity had passed, and he was lost in depressed realization of its failure. Laurie strolled back to the mirror, his forgotten tie dangling in his hand. [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] "We'll let it go at that," he said then. "Think things over, and make up your mind what you want to do about the contract." "All right." Bangs replied in the same flat notes he had used a moment before, and without changing his position; but the two words gave Laurie a shock. He did not believe that either Rodney or Epstein would contemplate a dissolution of their existing partnership; but an hour ago he would not have believed that Rodney Bangs could say to him the things he had said just now. He was beginning to realize that he had tried his partners sorely in the month that had passed since his return to town; and all for what? He himself had brought out of the foolish experience nothing save a tired nervous system, a sense of boredom such as he had not known for a year, and, especially when he looked at Bangs, an acute mental discomfort which introspective persons would probably have diagnosed as the pangs of conscience. Laurie did not take the trouble to diagnose it. He merely resented it as a grievance added to the supreme grievance based on the fact that he had not yet even started on the high adventure he had promised himself. He was gloomily considering both grievances, and tying his tie with his usual care, when something in the mirror caught and held his attention. He looked at it, at first casually, then with growing interest. In the glass, directly facing him, was a wide studio window. It was open, notwithstanding the cold January weather, and a comfortable, middle-aged, plump woman, evidently a superior type of caretaker, was sitting on the sill, polishing an inner pane. The scene was as vivid as a mirage, and it was like the mirage in that it was projected from some point which itself remained unseen. Laurie turned to the one window the dressing-room afforded—a double French window, at his right, but a little behind him, and reaching to the floor. Through this he could see across a court the opposite side of his own building, but no such window or commonplace vision as had just come to him. In his absorption in the phenomenon he called to Bangs, who rose slowly, and, coming to his side, regarded the scene without much interest. "It's a cross projection from a house diagonally opposite us," he said, after studying the picture a moment. "It must be that old red studio building on the southwest corner of the square. If we had a room back of this and looking toward the west, we could see the real window." "As it is," said Laurie, "we've got a reserved seat for an intimate study of any one who lives there. I wonder who has that studio?" Bangs had no idea. He was grateful to the little episode, however, for spreading over the yielding ground beneath his feet the solid strip on which he had crossed back to his chum. He threw an arm across Laurie's shoulders and looked into his face, with something in his expression that reminded young Devon of a favorite collie he had loved and lost in boyhood. "All right now?" the look asked, just as the dog's look had asked it of the little chap of ten, when something had gone wrong. Rodney's creed of life was held together by a few primitive laws, the first of which was loyalty. Already he was reproaching himself for what he had said and done. Laurie carefully completed the tying of his tie, and turned to him with his gayest smile. "Hurry up and finish dressing," he cheerfully suggested, "and we'll go out to breakfast. Since you insist on waiting 'round for me like Mary's little lamb, I suppose I've got to feed you." Rodney's wide grin responded, for the first time in many days. He bustled about, completing his toilet, and ten minutes later the two young men started out together with a lightness of spirit which each enjoyed and neither wholly understood. Both had a healthy horror of "sentimental stuff" and a gay, normal disregard of each other's feelings in ordinary intercourse. But in the past half-hour, for the first time in their association, they had come close to a serious break, and the soul of each had been chilled by a premonitory loneliness as definite as the touch of an icy finger. In the quick reaction they experienced now their spirits soared exultantly. They breakfasted in a fellowship such as they had not known since Barbara's marriage, the month before. If Bangs had indulged in any dream of a change of life in Laurie, however, following this reconciliation, the next few days destroyed the tender shoots of that hope. Laurie's manner retained its pleasant camaraderie, but work and he met as strangers and passed each other by. The routine of his days remained what they had been during the past five weeks. He gadded about, apparently harmlessly, came home at shocking hours, and spent most of the bracing January days wrapped in a healthful slumber that infuriated Bangs, who wandered in and out of their apartment like an unhappy ghost. On the rare occasions when he and Rodney lunched or dined together, Laurie was entirely good-humored and when Epstein was with them seemed wholly impervious to any hints thrown out, none too subtly, by his producing partner. "Listen, Laurie," said that disgusted individual, almost a month after the new year had been ushered in, "the new year's here. That's a good time for a young fella to get busy again on somethin' vorth while. Ain't I right?" Laurie suppressed a yawn and carefully struck off with his little finger the firm ash of an excellent cigarette. He was consuming thirty or forty cigarettes a day, and his nerves were beginning to show the effect of this indulgence. "I believe it is," he courteously agreed. "It has been earnestly recommended to the young as a good time to start [Pg 34] [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37] [Pg 38] something." "Vell," Epstein's voice took on the guttural notes of his temperamental moments, "don't that mean nothin' to you?" Laurie grinned. He had caught the quick look of warning Bangs shot at the producer and it amused him. "Not yet," he said. "Not till I've had my adventure." Epstein sniffed. "The greatest adventure in life," he stated dogmatically, "is to make a lot of money. I tell you vy. Because then you got all the other adventures you can handle, trying to hold on to it!" Bangs, who was developing a new and hitherto unsuspected vein of tact, encouraged Epstein to enlarge on this congenial theme. He now fully realized that Devon would go his own gait until he wearied of it, and that no argument or persuasion could enter his armor-clad mind. The position of Bangs was a difficult one, for while he was accepting and assimilating this unpleasant fact, Epstein and Haxon—impatient men by temperament and without much training in self- control—were getting wholly out of patience and therefore out of hand. Haxon, indeed, was for the time entirely out of hand, for he had finally started the rehearsals of a new play which, he grimly informed Bangs, would make "The Man Above" look like a canceled postage-stamp. Bangs repeated the comment to his chum the next morning, during the late dressing-hour which now gave them almost their only opportunity for a few words together. He had hoped it would make an impression, and he listened with pleasure to a sharp exclamation from Laurie, who chanced to be standing before the door mirror in the dressing-room, brushing his hair. The next instant Bangs realized that it was not his news which had evoked the tribute of that exclamation. "Come here!" called Laurie, urgently. "Here's something new; and, by Jove, isn't she a beauty!" Bangs interrupted his toilet to lounge across the room. Looking over Laurie's shoulder, his eyes found the cynosure that held the gaze of his friend. The wide-open studio window was again reflected in the mirror, but with another occupant. This was a girl, young and lovely. She appeared in the window like a half-length photograph in a frame. Her body showed only from above the waist. Her elbows were on the sill. Her chin rested in the hollows of her cupped hands. Her wavy hair, parted on one side and drawn softly over the ears in the fashion of the season, was reddish-gold. Her eyes were brown, and very thoughtful. Down-dropped, they seemed to stare at something on the street below, but the girl's expression was not that of one who was looking at an object with interest. Instead, she seemed lost in a deep and melancholy abstraction. Laurie, a hair-brush in each hand, stared hard at the picture. "Isn't she charming!" he cried again. Bangs's reply revealed a severely practical side of his nature. "She'll have a beastly cold in the head if she doesn't shut that window," he grumpily suggested. But his interest, too, was aroused. He stared at the girl in the mirror with an attention almost equal to Laurie's. As they looked, she suddenly stirred and moved backward, as if occultly warned of their survey. They saw her close the window, and, drawing a chair close to it, sit down and stare out through the pane, still with that intent, impersonal expression. Bangs strolled back to the dressing-case and resumed his interrupted toilet. Laurie, fumbling vaguely with his brushes, kept his eyes on the girl in the mirror. "Do you suppose we could see her if we went out on the street?" he asked, suddenly. "Her? Oh, you mean that girl?" With difficulty Bangs recalled his thoughts from Haxon's new play. "No, I don't think so," he decided. "You see, we're up on the tenth floor, so she must be fairly high up, too." "She's a wonder." Laurie was still gazing into the mirror. "Prettiest girl I've ever seen, I think," he reflected aloud. Bangs snorted. "She's probably a peroxide," he said. "Even if she isn't, she can't hold a candle to your sister." "Oh, Barbara—" Laurie considered the question of Barbara's beauty as if it were new to him. "Babs is good-looking," he handsomely conceded. "But there's something about this girl that's unusual. Perhaps it's her expression. She doesn't look happy." Bangs sighed with ostentation. "If you want to study some one that isn't happy, look at me," he invited warmly. "If that play of mine isn't out of me pretty soon, I'll have to have an operation!" Laurie made no reply to this pathetic prediction, and Bangs sadly shook his head and concluded his toilet, meditating gloomily the while on the unpleasant idiosyncrasies of every one he knew. To see Devon turn suddenly into a loafer [Pg 39] [Pg 40] [Pg 41] [Pg 42] upset all his theories as well as all his plans. Laurie, for some reason, dawdled more than usual that morning. It...