CHAPTER II

To a woman, the discovery that events do not work out as she had planned comes in the nature of a disappointment. To a man, the same discovery adds zest to the determination to make them do so. The man in the yellow touring car was amazed to find that Sallie actually did permit him to drive her home and no farther. He had anticipated that run round the park at least once—probably twice—possibly three times. He had even anticipated a cozy supper at which, across a table not too wide, he could drink deep of a pair of well-like blue eyes shaded with gold. But Sallie gave him her address, ten blocks from the theater, and though he urged with all the masculine dominance of which he was capable, she got out of the car in front of a brownstone house sagging as if with the weight of its own years.

The man looked up the steep steps to where a flicker of gaslight sifted on the broken mosaics of the vestibule.

“Is this where you live?” he queried, still holding the hand by which he had helped her.

Sallie nodded, adding as she tried to withdraw the hand, “Thanks ever so much.”

“Here—just a minute!” He drew her back. “You haven’t told me your name yet!”

“Zara May.”

“On-the-level name, I mean.”

“Oh”—she flashed him a smile—“that one’s good enough.”

“Peaches and cream would fit better!” came in quick response.

She jerked her hand away. “Good-night, Mr.—Mr.—”

“Patterson. Jimmie Fowler Patterson. You’ll notice I’m not so stingy as somebody else!”

She caught hold of the rusty iron railing.

He sprang into the car. “Well, I can wait! See you to-morrow, Miss Zara May.”

Two emotions played havoc with her dreams that night—exultation over the girls and fear. As through her narrow rear window she watched the patch of dull blue mellow into dull gray, she assured herself that to-morrow she would do nothing more than walk past the yellow car with a pleasant “Good-evening.”

But of course she didn’t. Not to-morrow—nor any other night that found it waiting at the stage entrance. And that became every night.

In the chorus dressing-room an aura of new interest surrounded her. That car commanded respect. Miss Mariette even restrained her inclination to persiflage until one evening some ten days later when Sallie came in after the final act and caught her hunched on the floor, back up, meowing with all her might while the alley cat reposed over one ear.

All the old wounds tore open. The blood gushed to Sallie’s head. She grabbed the hat and slapped Miss Mariette’s face, leaving the latter too startled to retaliate in kind. And when Mr. Patterson begged her as he did each evening to drive out to supper, she stepped into the car, throat too full for speech.

He gave a broad grin. “Shall we make it up the Drive and back to Montmartre?”

“I’d just rather ride if you don’t mind.”

They spun up Broadway, through Seventy-second Street and into the enveloping shadows of Riverside. The moon was up, a new crescent streaking its modest trail across the water. On the opposite shore the chain of lights was a necklace of clustering jewels laid on the plush of night.

Sallie nestled into the deep leather-cushioned seat, somewhat to the far side. A sharp wind lifted the curls from under the despised turban and sent them flying across the man’s face. He stole a moment to turn and gaze.

“You’re a winner!” he murmured.

Sallie scarcely heard him. She was lost in the intoxication of tearing motor and racing March wind. Never had she experienced anything like it. And gradually the turmoil of it soothed her own. She closed her eyes.

When they opened it was to meet a swift turn of road, the houses mounted to a higher level and before them, far into the star-eyed night, a stretch of wooded walk through which the Hudson shimmered.

“What’s this?” she asked, hand grasping his coat sleeve as if to stop the onward rush.

“Lafayette Boulevard. You’ve been up here—haven’t you?”

“Never!”

He slowed down, eyes mocking her.

“Honestly! I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Good Lord!” he whistled and stared at her.

“How long have you been in the show business?”

“About a year.”

“Well, what have you been doing all that time?”

“Working, most of it.”

“But after working hours?”

“Oh, home right after the show. I’m pretty tired then.”

He gave another low whistle, still regarding her curiously, that puzzled, half-skeptical expression creeping into his eyes.

“And Sundays?”

“I visit the girls I used to work with.”

“Where?”

“You mean where did I work?”

He nodded, still with that curious measuring of her.

“In Brooklyn—in a department store. I was at the perfumery. And one day Miss Barton, Bessie Barton—ever hear of her?”

“Rather! Peach of a voice—in ‘Kiss Me Again.’”

“Yes. She was playing over there last year and she came in to buy some French extract—it’s awfully expensive—”

“I know.”

“I waited on her. And after she’d bought a big bottle—it was eight-eighty an ounce—she asked me if I’d ever wanted to go on the stage. She said I was—” Sallie paused.

“Go on,” he put in quickly. “She said you were a beauty who didn’t belong behind a counter.”

“How did you know?” came wonderingly.

“I don’t need blinders to make me see straight,” he remarked succinctly.

She gave an embarrassed, stammering laugh. “Well—you—you’re right. That’s what she did say—and she’d have her manager give me a job if I wanted it. So I went with them—twenty-five a week. It was a lot more than I was getting at the store. And when she closed, they took me on at the Summer Garden.”

“And you still go round with the Brooklyn crowd?”

Some note in his voice put her on the defensive.

“They’re my old friends—why shouldn’t I?”

He stared at her again. “Queer!” he remarked to himself.

They dashed up a hill.

“I guess we’d better be going back,” she sighed regretfully.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like this?”

“It—it’s wonderful!” Luxuriously she nestled down, eyes half closing again.

“Then have a heart! I’ve been jitneying you from the theater for two solid weeks! Be a little sympathetic, won’t you?”

She laughed, a ringing laugh free as the March wind. “You must think I’m an awful grafter.”

“I think you’re a sweetness.”

The laugh died down. “I guess we’d better be going back.”

They swung round. “All right. But we’ll stop at Arrowhead first.”

“What’s Arrowhead?”

Once more that swift quizzical look, then his head went back with a long chuckle. “By George, you are cute!”

“What’s so funny about my asking?”

“It’s called Arrowhead Inn, sweetness—and we’re going there for supper.”

“Oh!”

“Now I guess you think you’re not hungry?”

“No—I am hungry.”

Her prompt and unexpected reply pleased him hugely.

“Right! There you are!”

They were flying up a drive, round a grass plot and under a porte-cochère. Sallie saw a house girdled with glass that glowed, warm and alluring.

She went into the hall while her host parked the car. A mirror on the wall reflected a face very different from the one she saw habitually in the jagged glass of the dressing-table or the mottled one above her washstand. Its eyes were glistening, red lips were laughing, and at one corner a dimple danced. The blood surged under the smooth skin and went singing through every vein.

To a rotund observer standing nearby, the girl in the mirror looked like a golden-haired sprite. To Sallie she looked nothing more than happy. She proceeded to powder her nose critically and straighten the alley cat on the shining curls. She was still engaged in the process when Mr. James Patterson came in and bore her off under the rotund one’s fat nose. Mr. Patterson had already achieved a proprietory air that prohibited trespassing under penalty of the law.

He refused the first table offered, selecting one close against the window with an intimate little lamp shedding its blush over the cloth. Sallie had never felt so important, not even the night of her stage debut, for then she had been conscious solely of the fact that she was dancing with no skirt on before a lot of people.

The head-waiter helped her out of the ulster. Mr. Patterson then seated himself and for the first time Sallie saw him under revealing electricity.

His hair, parted at the side and brushed straight from his forehead, gave evidence of having been in boyhood the color affectionately known as “carrots.” But frequent use of water and military brushes had charitably darkened it. Remnants of freckles lingered where no amount of hatless motoring could promote more than one coat of tan. Above them gray eyes, not so young as they might have been, searched a world with which they were well acquainted. Smiling, they were a boy’s. In repose, as old as any frequenter’s of stage doors.

Sallie’s gaze settled, not on his features but on his clothes. Patch pockets slanted across the coat. The waistcoat was high and of the same dark blue material threaded with a hairline of white. From the sleeves she thought rather too short, he shook down blue silk shirt cuffs matched by a soft collar. His blue Persian tie was held in an immaculate four-in-hand by a small pearl scarfpin. The correctness, the perfection of detail, were to Sallie positively thrilling. As he picked up the menu she noticed that his hands were wide and muscular with no shine on the nails. She was glad he wasn’t a dude.

He proceeded to order with the casual ease of one who knows the chef’s best dishes. Sallie pulled off her gloves, crossed her arms on the table, leaned forward to listen with a kind of awe. He turned back and as he did so his glance fell on her hand. It riveted there, then slowly traveled upward accompanied by the same long low whistle he had emitted as they drove uptown.

“Whew, what a stone!”

“Yes,” replied Sallie. “It used to be my mother’s.”

He stared. After which came a knowing twinkle to his eyes and a laugh, equally knowing, to his lips. He said nothing.

“Honestly it was,” Sallie protested.

His stare probed her—then came a faint flash of resentment. “I wasn’t born yesterday—not quite,” he announced.

Tears started to Sallie’s eyes. “Please—_please_ believe me!”

“Your mother owned a stone like that and you had to work in a department store?”

“It does sound funny. But it’s true! We never had any money after my father died. Nor before, either. He just saved and saved, and then when he was gone mother just spent and spent. She went crazy spending. She said he never gave us enough to eat when he was alive and she was going to make the best of it now that he was dead. So she went to the savings bank and took out every cent and had a wonderful time—for a while. Hats and dresses and movies every night. She was awfully pretty—”

“I believe it,” came vehemently.

“And she never did have a decent thing to wear while my father was living. Then one day she came home with this ring. ‘Baby,’ she said—she always called me her baby—‘there’s not much left and before it’s all gone, I want to be sure you’re fixed. If I put it in the bank I’ll take it out again, so this way we’ll always have something we can hock if we need to.’”

He chuckled. “And did you ever need to?”

“Often.”

Unwittingly, perhaps, his gaze shifted from the diamond to her dress and hat. She needed no intuition to interpret that look. Experience had taught her exactly what it meant. And where defiance had met the girls in the dressing-room, a wave of shame now swept over her.

Gazing at him in his immaculate perfection, her fingers twitched to toss the alley cat out of the window. Yet she could not apologize for it. She couldn’t explain that, being her father’s daughter, she was banking such of her earnings as could be spared against the day when the sapphire sparkle would fade from her eyes.

As the ’busboy shook out the glistening white napkin, placing it across her knees, she felt an absurd inclination to slide under the table.

Mr. Patterson’s attention, however, had turned to the silver dish of frogs’ legs submitted for approval. He regarded them critically, nodded to the waiter, and Sallie’s discomfort vanished in the thrill of a new experience, though she wished he had ordered a nice thick steak.

When they were once more gliding down the Drive he leaned over, quickly freeing one hand, and gave hers a squeeze.

“You’re an adorable infant!” he whispered. “Don’t know just what to make of you, but you’ve got me going!”

Sallie looked up a little uncertainly. “My right name’s Sallie MacMahon,” she stammered.

“I don’t care what it is,” came tenderly. “My name for you is the same as your mother’s—‘Baby!’”