Bad Girl (Delmar)/Chapter 1
Many a stormy wind shall blow
Ere Jack comes home again."
Some one had brought a ukulele. Some one who hit the strings with a gay discordancy, a gleeful insolence that seemed to say, "Sure, it's out of tune. Who cares?"
The last agonizing chord rode out on the Hudson, and a voice falsely keyed and tuneless followed with a startlingly lengthy "agai-ain." A burst of high feminine laughter completed the grotesque performance.
The famous and beloved excursion steamer Burma glided on through the shining night. One fancied that she tossed her head disdainfully at the private boats that fluttered by like small, graceful birds. They were snobs who offered the silver river and the gleaming sweet-smelling night to a small, select company. The Burma was the real aristocrat of the Hudson. Her gentility was not so easily blasted that she feared the touch of the rabble. She could afford to open her doors to the sweltering hordes and give them music, dancing, refreshments as the advertisements reported. She gave them the magic of a river moon and romance, too, and all for a dollar twenty-five.
The passengers of the Burma danced and sang snatches of current songs that were born to live for one rollicking hour like the vows that were whispered in darkened recesses of the boat. Sizzling sodas, red and gold, leaped up through yellow straws to the moist and smiling lips of bobbed-haired damsels. Cigarettes gleamed in the darkness, and here and there an adventurous maiden bared white knees to the cool air. The flat-dwellers of New York were forgetting factory and office in the tolerant laws of the gold and white Burma.
Eddie Collins stood at the rail of the boat with his back to the water. Both hands were in his pockets, and across one arm a woman's cape, a frail black wisp of silk, trailed dejectedly.
He scanned the faces of the laughing couples who drifted past him, and on his own face was a confession of anger that simmered darkly within him.
"Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main"—the unmusical voice had resumed its chant, and Collins turned toward the rail and looked down into the glimmering river. He was very young. His hair was a sandy, disorderly crown, for he scoffed at the pomades that brought hard and shiny tidiness to the hair of the other youths. Collins' eyes were blue. They were sharply questioning eyes that proclaimed a keen intelligence that still groped blackly and unsatisfied within itself. The line of his chin was strong and firm. It was a chin that had taken blows and had proudly thrust itself upward at knowing the man who could give them. His mouth was large. There was a suggestion of obstinacy in his lips.
Somewhere a girl screamed with laughter. Eddie Collins clenched his jaws, and his eyes became hard blue chinks. The laughing girl's voice was raised now in mocking supplication. "Oh, Billy, ple-ease. I just combed my hair."
More laughter. Other voices mingled with the girl's. Eddie Collins spat contemptuously. "God-damn fools," he said.
An adventurous breeze sprang up from the river and in passing touched lightly the black wisp that lay on Eddie's arm. The wrap stirred languidly, a trifle impatiently, and slipped from Eddie's disinterested hold. It lay on the deck of the Burma, an aromatic heap of silk. A wrap with a Lanvin green lining that was splotchy and torn but still defiantly Lanvin green.
He left it there for a moment; then, regretting the childishness of the deed, flung it carelessly over his arm again.
"Many a stormy wind shall blow . . ."
And now the player of the untuned ukulele was drawing nearer, and Eddie listened to her song with a lazy interest.
"Ere Jack comes home again."
She rounded the corner of the boat and stood not three feet from Eddie Collins. Her voice was young and husky, her mouth wide and red.
"Sailing, sailing—"
The ukulele dropped to her side. She reached into the pocket of her flame-colored sweater and brought forth a chocolate almond.
An older girl, tall, thin, indifferently blonde, with her hair decorously imprisoned beneath a net, came from around the corner as though she had been following gay, fleet steps at a distance and had just caught up.
The two stood together wagering on the endurance of a candy-box cover that leaped the waves happily unconscious of the fate that would soon overtake it. Then the girl with the ukulele saw Eddie, and her breeziness suffered a momentary squelching under his sullen scrutiny. She was resentful of that moment, and her eyes beneath piquantly narrowed brows questioned his right to quench her buoyancy. Then she smiled. At herself, perhaps, for the moment she had stood with her laughter paralyzed on her lips and the angry gaze of the sandy-haired boy upon her.
The green of the cape lining caught her attention, and with a gleeful impudence she struck a chord on her ukulele and sang:
She didn't say why, oh, I hope that I die!"
Eddie concentrated his whole attention on a cigarette. He would be damned if she'd drive him away.
Far down the deck a voice suggestive of soiled Lanvin green was once more begging "Bill-ly" not to muss her hair, and the ukulele continued: "Sweetie went away."
Eddie's cigarette described a fiery are on its way to the river. He lit another, and the girl made a funny little clicking noise with her tongue and told her companion in disconcertingly loud tones that she just loved nervous men. The older girl was still watching the river. She was completely unaware of Eddie's existence, and therefore the remark seemed pointless. She did not answer, and apropos of her friend's silence the incorrigible ukulele player turned to Eddie and sang:
You're lonesome, too."
Eddie shrugged his shoulders noticeably and took a step toward the girl. There was a fatalistic acceptance of her advances in his mien. She wanted to know him, and, after all, the atmosphere discouraged solitude.
"What makes you think I'm lonesome?" he asked. His question was not put in a softly inquiring manner, but truculently, after the manner of Harlem swains.
She was practiced. Her determination to establish social relations did not shrivel at his tone. She laughed at him. Her wide red mouth and the eyes that were dark and glowing gave themselves up to a great hearty laugh at Eddie Collins.
"I knew I'd get you to talk to me," she said.
"Oh, that was it?"
"Sure. You didn't think I wanted the pleasure of your company, did you?"
"Gee, you're fresh, aren't you?"
"Just fresh enough," she responded.
Her teeth flashed whitely behind the generously proportioned scarlet lips. Her eyes frankly revealed the idea that lay so close to them. She wanted to be kissed. Not at that moment, of course, but Eddie knew the routine. At first they would toss mildly insulting wisecracks back and forth; then gradually the artless phrasing of their speeches would take on a slightly yellowish tinge. Significant smiles and glances would accompany the degeneration of their chatter. It would become quite the thing to place smutty interpretations on every word passed between them. Then she would move with him into a darkened corner and permit him to kiss her, to paw her unrestrainedly. The limit? No, she would not go the limit. She would lie against his shoulder, moist-lipped, panting, but ever alert lest the purely physical barrier that guaranteed her self-respect be taken from her.
Oh, yes, Eddie knew, but he was not conscious of having so gloomily detailed how far one could presume on the somewhat vulgar virginity of the lower middle-class girl.
"Who's with you?" he asked.
She motioned carelessly toward her companion. "Edna, my brother's lady friend," she replied.
The older girl, hearing her name, turned curious eyes upon the two. Flushed with self-consciousness at the importance of her social obligation, the girl with the ukulele made the one-sided introduction. "This is Mrs. Edna Driggs."
Eddie touched his hat and said, "I'm pleased to meet you."
Edna did not move from her position at the rail. She smiled at Eddie, exhibiting teeth that had gone to the dentist too late. The mutual friend suffered great embarrassment at Edna's silence but overcame it by assuring herself that she had done the proper thing. So reasoning, she turned her back on Mrs. Edna Driggs and said to Eddie, "Who's with you?"
She was looking at the cape, and Eddie frowned. "A bimbo," he told her. "Picked her up on Seventh Avenue. She wanted to go for a sail so I took her. She met somebody she knew on the boat and canned me." He smiled ruefully. "Didn't even know her name," he added. "What's yours?"
"Dot."
"That's not a name," he said. "That's punctuation."
She laughed and gave him a playful little push suggestive of long familiarity. He didn't mind. The hard blue chinks had widened into palely pleasant eyes. On a Sunday excursion one slim round-breasted girl is as desirable as another slim round-breasted girl, for they are all misers.
"Of course, my name's Dorothy. Dorothy Haley. What's yours?"
"Joe," he replied. Mysterious and unexplainable is the urge in extremely young men to conceal their real identities. He was not thinking that he had lied, so mechanically and absently had the name leaped to his lips.
"Joe," she repeated. She was standing close to him now, and her eyes, dark and thoughtful, were considering the glittering river. "Aren't you going to tell me your last name?"
"Sure. It's Williams."
"Joe Williams. I use to know another guy named Joe. He had a dandy job at the Chevrolet service station."
Without reasonable excuse or preamble, Eddie suddenly pulled her close to him and kissed her. She was not surprised or angry, and he had known that she would not be. He liked her. The routine leading up to the kiss had been different with her. She had not insisted on a conversation replete with double entendres. It was not delicacy in Eddie that made him welcome the change, just that he was tired of the other.
There was no embarrassment between them now. Nothing in their words, facial expressions, or actions suggested that they had kissed.
Edna, the lady friend of Dorothy's brother, left off staring at the river and shifted her gaze to them. It was frankly inquisitive, but not unkind.
"Think she saw us?" Eddie whispered.
"Don't care if she did," Dot responded blithely. "She won't tell my brother. She says you can't watch a girl hard enough to keep her good, if she don't want to be."
Eddie nodded gravely. That sounded like brilliant summing up of a situation to him. He surveyed Edna interestedly. "She looks kind of young," he decided at last.
"Oh, no," Dot said, smiling faintly at the blindness of man. "Edna's twenty-eight. She's got a kid four years old. His name's Floyd. Her husband was killed on the railroad two months before the kid was born. She got ten thousand dollars for his death."
"That's fine for your brother," Eddie remarked.
Dot laughed shortly to show her appreciation of his sally and hurried on. "Oh, my brother isn't after her money. He gets seventy-five dollars a week himself. He won't let me put a penny in the house. Some brother I got."
"I'll say," Eddie agreed. "Where do you work?"
"On Twenty-third Street."
"Stenographer?"
"No, just a typist." Her lashes, soft and silky, fluttered as she raised an anxious gaze to his face. Her eyes were pleading, her tone apologetic, as she said, "I could 'a' learned shorthand. My brother wanted to send me to school, but I was crazy. You know how it is, I wanted to get to work."
He nodded understandingly.
"What do you do?" she asked him.
"Radio," he replied laconically.
"Gee," she said. There was admiration and awe mingled in her exclamation. "Hard work, ain't it?"
"Naw," swiftly and emphatically.
"We got a set. My brother built it."
"Everybody's got a set," Eddie said crushingly.
"Yeh, I guess that's so."
Conversation languished, and they stood looking at each other. After a moment Eddie asked, "Say," pointing to the ukulele, "do you really play that thing?"
"Sure. I play it swell sometimes."
"What do you mean, sometimes?"
"Well, it's according to what I'm playing."
"What can you play good?"
"Do you know 'It Ain't Gonna Rain No More'?"
Eddie nodded. Who in the year of our Lord 1923 didn't know "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More"? "Go ahead, play it," he ordered.
Dot sat down on a camp stool and began:
It ain't gonna rain no more.
How in the world can the old folks tell
That it ain't gonna rain no more?"
There was something pathetically sweet about her. She was so eager to please. So anxious to be obliging. Even the untrained ear of Eddie Collins cringed at the horrible chords that came forth so brazenly from the ukulele. She was like a good child dancing for company. No ability, but plenty of willingness. Her brows were knit with earnestness. Her eyes never left the fingers which she placed with such painful accuracy in the wrong places. Eddie smiled.
"It ain't gonna rain no more, no more. . . ."
And she was darn pretty, too. Gee, what soft-looking skin.
"That it ain't gonna rain no more." . . .
The ukulele was quiet. The earnest eyes looked up at Eddie from their task.
"Yeh," he said by way of approbation. "Let's talk."
A thin-faced, sleek-haired youth wearing white trousers came suddenly from around the corner of the boat.
"Miss Higgins wants her cape," he said to Eddie.
Eddie's hands dug deeper into his pockets. His shoulders became a shade more rounded. He said, "Tell Miss Higgins to come for it herself."
The thin-faced youth smiled. "One doesn't say those things to a lady," he told Eddie, loftily.
"No? Well, you tell what's-her-name to come get this coat herself."
"Perhaps she doesn't care to speak to you," suggested the other.
"She didn't mind early this evening," said Eddie. His eyes narrowed again. His mouth was a crooked line when he spoke.
"Just what do you mean?" The boy with the sleek hair was quick to leap at Eddie's insinuation.
Dot's teeth tore nervously at her nails. She had once seen a pale-faced fellow with greased hair reduce an automobile mechanic to a meek and bloody pulp.
"Look here, Buddie," Eddie's tone was not unpleasant now, but his eyes still squinted, and his lips were thin and jagged. "I have no pick with you."
"But I have with you," replied the other.
Eddie's hands flew out of his pockets, and Dot uttered a tiny cry as the pale-faced youth came toward them.
The woman, Edna, left her place at the rail. She did not appear to hurry, but suddenly she was between Eddie and the other youth.
"One moment," she said.
Eddie glared at her. His eyes were hot and red with fury. In that mad, whirling eternity just before the first blow is struck, every man is wildly, gloriously primitive. In the blackness of club and nail, of tooth and claw, woman's business was to stand aside till the cry of the victor split the silence. Woman and foe never appeared simultaneously upon the horizon of the primitive warrior, and so, harking back to the Stone Age, the brain of the fighting man is unprepared for the active presence of a woman on the battle-ground.
Edna, tall and smiling, stood between the two young men. The black silk cape lay over her arm now. It had fallen to the deck with Eddie's first decisive movement.
"You get the hell out of this." Eddie spoke quietly between his teeth.
The woman laughed and flung the cape across the arm of the sleek-haired boy. "Here's Miss Higgins' cape," she said. "Tell her that Carbona is great stuff."
She laughed again, and forcing her arm through his, walked him back toward his crowd. He was an easier subject than Eddie would have been. The youth had not really wanted to fight. His fear of Eddie's contempt had made him aggressive. He welcomed the peace-making efforts of Edna Driggs.
Eddie Collins didn't. "Your friend is pretty God-damn interfering," he said to Dot.
"Don't be sore," she begged. "I'm glad he didn't hit you."
"What! That little monkey-faced fool?"
"Oh, I know you could have licked him, but I'm glad you didn't fight."
A couple passed them, carrying cigarettes that glowed brightly in the night. Beneath was the lustrous, splashing river, and above, a tranquil ceiling of stars.
"Funny," Dot said, and her voice was low. "We see each other here tonight and then never again." She waved toward the place where Edna had disappeared with the sleek-haired boy. "Why did you meet that Higgins girl, I wonder? It wasn't for anything. You just meet and talk and fight and forget. I wonder why."
"Say, what are you talking about?"
She smiled a little, and her eyes were wide and childish in the moonlight. "I feel mopey now," she said. "It's 'cause they're playing sad music, I guess."
She leaned against the rail and listened. Some one who could coax forth all the native pathos and grief there is in the melody was playing "Aloha Oe" on a steel guitar.
"Ain't that sad?" Dot asked. "Gee, it makes me feel so soft." She reached for his hand, and these two children stood together, silent and solemn, on the deck of the noisy Burma. "Gee, I could cry," she said. "Honest to God, Joe, I could cry."
Her dark, full lips quivered, and his grasp on her thin, nail-bitten fingers tightened ever so slightly.
"My name's not Joe. It's Eddie. Eddie Collins," he said, and his tone was harsh and angry.