“Isn’t he a darling?” she said when Ollie turned away. “We used to be great sweethearts when I was about six and he was a collegeboy.” When they were all ready to go into dinner Ollie, who’d had a couple more cocktails, spread out his arms and made a speech. “Look at them, lovely, intelligent, lively American women… There was nothing like that on the other side, was there, Charley? Three things you can’t get anywhere else in the world, a good cocktail, a decent breakfast, and an American girl, God bless ’em.” “Oh, he’s such a darling,” whispered Miss Humphries in Charley’s ear.
There was silverware in rows and rows on the table and a Chinese bowl with roses in the middle of it, and a group of giltstemmed wineglasses at each place. Charley was relieved when he found he was sitting next to Miss Humphries. She was smiling up at him. “Gosh,” he said, grinning into her face, “I hardly know how to act.” “It must be a change… from over there. But just act natural. That’s what I do.”
“Oh, no, a feller always gets into trouble when he acts natural.”
She laughed. “Maybe you’re right… Oh, do tell me what it was really like over there… Nobody’ll ever tell me everything.” She pointed to the palms on his Croix de Guerre. “Oh, Lieutenant Anderson, you must tell me about those.”
They had white wine with the fish and red wine with the roastbeef and a dessert all full of whippedcream. Charley kept telling himself he mustn’t drink too much so that he’d be sure to behave right.
Miss Humphries’ first name was Doris. Mrs. Benton called her that. She’d spent a year in a convent in Paris before the war and asked him about places she’d known, the church of the Madeleine and Rumpelmayers and the pastryshop opposite the Comédie Française. After dinner she and Charley took their coffeecups into a windowbay behind a big pink begonia in a brass pot and she asked him if he didn’t think New York was awful. She sat on the windowseat and he stood over her looking past her white shoulder through the window down at the traffic in the street below. It had come on to rain and the lights of the cars made long rippling streaks on the black pavement of Park Avenue. He said something about how he thought home would look pretty good to him all the same. He was wondering if it would be all right if he told her she had beautiful shoulders. He’d just about gotten around to it when he heard Ollie Taylor getting everybody together to go out to a cabaret. “I know it’s a chore,” Ollie was saying, “but you children must remember it’s my first night in New York and humor my weakness.”
They stood in a group under the marquee while the doorman called taxicabs. Doris Humphries in her long eveningwrap with fur at the bottom of it stood so close to Charley her shoulder touched his arm. In the lashing rainy wind off the street he could smell the warm perfume she wore and her furs and her hair. They stood back while the older people got into the cabs. For a second her hand was in his, very little and cool as he helped her into the cab. He handed out a half a dollar to the doorman who had whispered “Shanley’s” to the taxidriver in a serious careful flunkey’s voice.
The taxi was purring smoothly downtown between the tall square buildings. Charley was a little dizzy. He didn’t dare look at her for a moment but looked out at faces, cars, trafficcops, people in raincoats and umbrellas passing against drugstore windows.
“Now tell me how you got the palms.”
“Oh, the frogs just threw those in now and then to keep the boys cheerful.”
“How many Huns did you bring down?”
“Why bring that up?”
She stamped her foot on the floor of the taxi. “Oh, nobody’ll ever tell me anything… I don’t believe you were ever at the front, any of you.” Charley laughed. His throat was a little dry. “Well, I was over it a couple of times.”
Suddenly she turned to him. There were flecks of light in her eyes in the dark of the cab. “Oh, I understand… Lieutenant Anderson, I think you flyers are the finest people there are.” “Miss Humphries, I think you’re a… humdinger… I hope this taxi never gets to this dump… wherever it is we’re goin’.” She leaned her shoulder against his for a second. He found he was holding her hand. “After all, my name is Doris,” she said in a tiny babytalk voice.
“Doris,” he said. “Mine’s Charley.”
“Charley, do you like to dance?” she asked in the same tiny voice. “Sure,” Charley said, giving her hand a quick squeeze. Her voice melted like a little tiny piece of candy. “Me too… Oh, so much.”
When they went in the orchestra was playing Dardanella. Charley left his trenchcoat and his hat in the checkroom. The headwaiter’s heavy grizzled eyebrows bowed over a white shirtfront. Charley was following Doris’s slender back, the hollow between the shoulderblades where his hand would like to be, across the red carpet, between the white tables, the men’s starched shirts, the women’s shoulders, through the sizzly smell of champagne and welshrabbit and hot chafing-dishes, across a corner of the dancefloor among the swaying couples to the round white table where the rest of them were already settled. The knives and forks shone among the stiff creases of the fresh tablecloth.
Mrs. Benton was pulling off her white kid gloves looking at Ollie Taylor’s purple face as he told a funny story. “Let’s dance,” Charley whispered to Doris. “Let’s dance all the time.”
Charley was scared of dancing too tough so he held her a little away from him. She had a way of dancing with her eyes closed. “Gee, Doris, you are a wonderful dancer.” When the music stopped the tables and the cigarsmoke and the people went on reeling a little round their heads. Doris was looking up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “I bet you miss the French girls, Charley. How did you like the way the French girls danced, Charley?”
“Terrible.”
At the table they were drinking champagne out of breakfast coffee-cups. Ollie had had two bottles sent up from the club by a messenger. When the music started again Charley had to dance with Mrs. Benton, and then with the other lady, the one with the diamonds and the spare tire round her waist. He and Doris only had two more dances together. Charley could see the others wanted to go home because Ollie was getting too tight. He had a flask of rye on his hip and a couple of times had beckoned Charley out to have a swig in the cloakroom with him. Charley tongued the bottle each time because he was hoping he’d get a chance to take Doris home.
When they got outside it turned out she lived in the same block as the Bentons did; Charley cruised around on the outside of the group while the ladies were getting their wraps on before going out to the taxicab, but he couldn’t get a look from her. It was just, “Goodnight, Ollie dear, goodnight, Lieutenant Anderson,” and the doorman slamming the taxi door. He hardly knew which of the hands he had shaken had been hers.
Newsreel XLV
’Twarn’t for powder and for storebought hair
De man I love would not gone nowhere
if one should seek a simple explanation of his career it would doubtless be found in that extraordinary decision to forsake the ease of a clerkship for the wearying labor of a section hand. The youth who so early in life had so much of judgment and willpower could not fail to rise above the general run of men. He became the intimate of bankers
St. Louis woman wid her diamon’ rings
Pulls dat man aroun’ by her apron strings