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.”