III
The Majestic was a vaudeville house, presenting its seven acts weekly for the delectation of its patrons, servant girls, business men, impecunious boys in the gallery, suburbanites, shop girls with their young men, traveling men, idle people, parties of young people like the Brownley girls, one of those heterogeneous crowds that a dollar and a half price for a best seat can bring in America. When the young Brownleys arrived, the acrobatic act which led the bill was over and the two poorest comedians, put on near the beginning of the bill before the audience grew too wearily critical, were doing a buck and wing dance to the accompaniment of some quite ununderstandable words.
With a great deal of noise and mysterious laughter the late arrivals became seated finally, taking their places with the lack of consideration for the people behind them which was characteristic of their arrogance, making audible and derogatory comments about the act on the stage and curiously enough not seeming to anger any one. The girls with their fur coats, hatless, well dressed hair, the sleek dinner coated young men interested the people around them far more than they bothered them by their noisiness.
They left during the last act and before the moving picture of “Current Events,” all six of them getting into the Bates’ sedan and speeding at forty miles an hour out to the Roadside Inn which was kept open only until midnight.
The Roadside Inn was a brown mockery of Elizabethan architecture, about thirty miles out of the city on a good road. The door opened invitingly on a long low room full of chintz-covered chairs and wicker tables and at this time of year there was always a good open fire to welcome any comers. Back of that a dining room and, parallel with the two, a long dance room, where three enforcedly gay negroes pounded out melodies in jungle time hour after hour every evening. Upstairs there were half a dozen small bed rooms for transient automobilists who wanted to stay in the country for some reason or other or whose cars had broken down.
The place was on the fence between decency and shadowy repute. It was frequented by people of all kinds, people who were respectable and people suspected of not being so. The landlady ignored any distinctions. She had made the place into a well-paying institution, had put its decoration into the hands of a good architect with whom she always quarreled about his charges and she asked no questions if her customers paid their bills. Probably she saw no difference between those of her guests who were of one kind and those of another. They all danced in much the same manner, were equally noisy, equally critical of the extremely good food and that was as far as her contact or comment went. If the food had not been so good, the place would have suffered in patronage, but that was unfailing. The cook was ready now at five minutes’ notice to concoct chicken a la king and make coffee for the Brownley party and as they came back from the dance room after having tried out the floor and the music, their supper was ready.
Freda had not acquitted herself badly there either. Without having all the tricks of the Brownleys, she had a grace and sense of rhythm which helped her to adapt herself. Besides she had the first dance with Ted. He held her close, hardly looking at her. That was his way in dancing.
“You must be very gay in Mohawk,” said Barbara when they were all at the table in the dining room again.
The edge of her malice was lost on Freda.
“No—not at all. Why?”
“You seem very experienced.”
A little glimmer of amusement came into Freda’s eyes.
“Well—not first hand experience. We read—we go to moving pictures.”
“I suppose lots of people are picking up ideas from the moving pictures,” Barbara commented carelessly.
One of the Bates boys was drawing something from his pocket. Barbara looked at it indifferently, Allie with a frown of annoyance.
“Didn’t I tell you, Tony, to cut that stuff out?”
“We’ll all be cutting it out soon enough,” said Tony. “Won’t be any. This is all right. Tapped father’s supply. A taste for every one and a swallow for me.”
He was a sallow thin young person whom the sight of his own flask seemed to have waked into sudden joviality.
“I don’t want any,” said Allie. “Don’t waste it.”
Then as Tony Bates ignored her protest, she drained her glass accustomedly.
Barbara took her highball without a change of expression or color. Freda tried to refuse but they laughed at her.
“Come. You came to the city to have a good time.”
She felt that she couldn’t refuse without seeming prudish. She has a fear of what the liquor might do to her, a desire to do what the rest did.
Her head felt a little light, but that was all, and that only for a moment. It wasn’t unpleasant.
They all finished the flask. They danced again, Freda with Tony Bates, Barbara with Ted. Then Ted sought Freda again. He danced as he had the first time but he held her even closer, more firmly, making his position into an embrace, and yet dancing perfectly. From over one of the young men’s shoulders, Barbara saw it. Her face did not show any feeling.
On the way home the embracing was a little promiscuous. Allie, dull from the liquor, lay sprawling against Tony’s rather indifferent shoulder. Bob let the other Bates boy paw her lazily and Freda found herself rather absorbed in keeping Ted from going to lengths which she felt were hardly justified even by three or four highballs.
It was when they were home again after the young men had left that Freda felt the dislike of the other girl. It was as if Barbara had been waiting for the young men to go to make Freda uncomfortable.
“I hope Ted didn’t embarrass you, Miss Thorstad?’
“Embarrass me?”
“Ted is such a scandalous flirt that he is apt, I think, to embarrass people who aren’t used to him. I always keep him at a distance because he talks about girls most awfully.”
“Oh, does he?”
“I’m glad he didn’t bother you. Don’t let him think you like him. He makes the most terrific game of people who let themselves in for it.”
“Lots of people do let themselves in for it too,” said Allie with meaning.
Barbara steered away from the dangers of that subject.
“I hope you’re going to enjoy yourself, Miss Thorstad. There are no end of things going on.”
“You mustn’t bother about me,” said Freda, “I’m afraid that I am going to be a burden.”
Barbara let a minute pass, a minute of insult.
“No—not at all.”
“Nonsense,” said Allie, “everybody’ll be crazy about you. You dance stunningly and the Bateses and Ted were nutty about you. You don’t have to worry.”
Freda said good night and left them. She went slowly up the staircase, thinking what fun it would be to climb that staircase every night, to go down it by natural right, to belong to it.
The sense of Barbara’s dislike pervaded everything else. She felt that she must have made a fool of herself with that young fellow. He must have thought her a dreadful idiot. Ah, well, the first evening was over and she’d had some experience. She had been at a dinner where there was an entrée, she had used a fish fork, she had danced at a roadhouse. She laughed at herself a little.
“I’ve been draining the fleshpots of Egypt,” she said, sitting on the bottom of her mother’s bed. Her mother’s prim little braids of hair against the pillow were silhouetted in the moonlight.
“You were very nice to-night,” said her mother practically. “Mrs. Flandon wants us both to go there for dinner Thursday night.”
“I like Mr. Flandon a lot.”
“Very little idealism,” commented Mrs. Thorstad, wisely.