1
when they took the train to town on monday morning, the question of where they were to live was still undecided. rose-ann had put the matter unreservedly in felix’s hands; she had told him in detail and without prejudice the merits and demerits of the various apartments she had seen. but he felt incompetent to arrive at a decision in such a matter; and after all, he did not want to do anything which would not have rose-ann’s real approval. he distrusted this mood of utter surrender to his will, and he sought to make her reassume the burden of judgment.
he suggested again the possibility of having a house in the country; and she discussed that possibility in a practical spirit. they could rent some small house in woods point for the summer; it would cost only a hundred dollars or so for the season—or they might find something they liked that was for sale.
it was easier to buy a house, it appeared, than felix had thought; there was usually a mortgage to be taken over, and one needed only keep up the interest on that; the actual cash need be only a little, five hundred dollars, or at most a thousand. to felix this seemed a great deal, but rose-ann explained casually that she could borrow it from her brothers in springfield, and if need be give a second mortgage; so that only the interest would have to be paid for the time being. and the interest on both debts would be less than the rent they would pay in town.
felix had never understood these things very well, and buying a house seemed amazingly simple—one need not work and save for years, one bought the house first, even 156though one had no money! of course, there were the mortgages, of which felix retained a somewhat sinister notion from his childhood fiction-reading; but rose-ann seemed to regard them as a commonplace....
if he only knew what she really wanted!
it ended by his suggesting, half-jestingly, that they go and live in a hotel until they could decide what to do; and she agreed, saying that she knew of a good family hotel, in hyde park, not expensive—the st. dunstan. so it was at the st. dunstan that they engaged, by telephone from woods point, a room for the following week. during that week rose-ann could settle up her affairs at community house, felix could get reacquainted with his job, and they could decide on a place to live.
2
they parted at the station, and felix went to the office. it was strange to take his place at his desk again. it seemed as though he had been away a thousand years; he had the feeling of a truant who has returned to school and wonders if he will ever catch up with his lessons.... mr. devoe had said to come in and see him when he got back. but harris sent him out on an interview the first thing, and when he had finished writing it, mr. devoe was out in the composing room overseeing some change in the editorial page. felix did not like to bother him. doubtless he had spoken lightly, and had already forgotten what he had said to felix.
as felix sat idly before his typewriter, hawkins came up. “glad to see you back,” he said, and shook hands. and then: “come in my office, will you?”
one of the last things felix had done before falling ill was to “do” a play for hawkins, on a night when there were two openings. his way of doing plays was so unlike hawkins’s serious method of assigning praise and blame that he had been afraid hawkins would never ask him to do another; but he had been encouraged by willie’s laughter at his piece of foolery, and clive’s only half-ironical 157remark: “when willie smith enjoys a piece of writing, you can figure on ten thousand other people liking it, too!” the idea of those ten thousand other people liking his whimsical criticism had offset the supposedly unfavorable judgment of the serious hawkins.
“sit down,” said hawkins. “i suppose”—with an embarrassed air—“you’ve heard i’m writing a play.” then, more cheerfully, “well, i want to get as much time away from the office as possible, so i’ve persuaded devoe to let me have an assistant. would you like the job?”
felix flushed with incredulous pleasure. “all right,” hawkins went on. “there’s a certain amount of detail to be attended to—making up the saturday dramatic page, selecting the pictures and arranging the layout, seeing publicity people or letting them see you, once a week—that sort of thing. you can take all that off my hands, besides doing some of the shows for me. there’s two opening tonight, and i’d like to have you do one of them.” he felt in his pocket, and took out two envelopes. a little apologetically, he said, “i’m sending you to the one i don’t want to do myself—but you’ll get a chance at the real shows a little later. all right?”
“i’m—everlastingly grateful to you,” said felix. “is this all settled with—with mr. devoe?”
“oh, yes. you made quite a hit with the old man, you know—something you wrote in that thing you did for me—something about the fatted laugh and the prodigal joke—i forget, but he went around the shop all morning that day repeating it to everybody. yes, the old man thinks you’re all right. you’d better go in and see him; not now—i want to tell you some more about this job. have a cigarette?”
it appeared that felix was to commence his duties at once, taking a desk in hawkins’ office and the title of assistant dramatic editor. he would be relieved of his regular work as a reporter, but he would be expected to help along a little with the editorial page, especially in the summer, when there would be hardly any theatrical stuff to take care of. and 158there was to be a small raise in salary; he would get thirty dollars a week—to begin with, as hawkins put it.
these happy prospects were confirmed by a brief interview with mr. devoe, who seemed to beam on felix with paternal benevolence. “i think we’ve found the right place for you,” he said. and then his eyes narrowed and his lips straightened. “you can prove whether we are right or not,” he said sternly, and held out his hand in a formal gesture.
“yes, sir—thank you!” said felix, a little frightened, and went out.
3
felix went to canal street that afternoon to remove his things and give up the room. he told the news of his marriage and advancement to roger and don with something of the feeling of revisiting the scenes of childhood and finding one’s old friends still playing at marbles, astonishingly not grown up. but roger and don did not sense his secret scorn; at least they maintained their customary imperturbable air.
“rose-ann prentiss? who is she? what does she do?” they asked, and when they learned that she was not an artist, not a writer, not even an interior decorator, they raised their eyebrows and went back to their flaubert.
rose-ann herself, that night, took his news calmly enough. it seemed that there was no surprising her with any such good fortune; it was as if she had expected it all along!
she dressed with particular care for dinner and the theatre that evening, considering and rejecting half a dozen frocks before she decided upon a quite simple tight-bodiced black velvet thing that made her seem very pale and her hair a flaming red. this was the first time that felix had seen her wardrobe, and he was much impressed. “i’ve never seen you in anything but your working clothes, have i!” he laughed. “i like you, dressed up!”
“oh, these are all old things,” she said; and felix wondered why women always said that, when one praised anything they wore. “but,” she said, “i do look rather nice in this 159evening dress,” and she held up a shimmering fluid thing of blue and silver that did not seem to felix like a dress at all, but like a moonlit fountain dripping silver spray. “i’d wear this if you’d get some evening clothes yourself.”
“what do i want of evening clothes?” he protested, his pleasure in the sight of that lovely garment gone with the threatening onset of sartorial obligations of his own.
“i should think a dramatic critic might very well have evening clothes,” said rose-ann mildly.
“i’m only half a dramatic critic,” objected felix.
“well,” said rose-ann, “that being the case, i wouldn’t insist on full-dress. i’ll be content if you come half way. i mean, dinner clothes. it’s the silly long-tailed coat that you object to, isn’t it? i don’t like it myself. dinner clothes would be very becoming to you, though.”
“but i haven’t any money—” he began.
“felix,” she said, “how many times must we argue that out? if you haven’t any money, i have—not much, but enough to get ourselves started on. and do you want me to let it lie in the bank at springfield while we do without things we need? you want me to look nice, don’t you? and if i didn’t have a decent dress to go to the theatre with you in, and you could help me get one, you’d want to, wouldn’t you?”
“do i look so bad as all that?” he asked, looking down at his rather worn blue serge suit.
“you look very nice, felix,” she said, coming over and kissing him. “but you do need some new clothes, that’s a fact. and really, if you’re going to be a dramatic critic—. as long as we bought our own seats, in the balcony, it was all right to go in our ‘working clothes.’ but i think—”
“oh, all right!” he said gloomily.
4
nevertheless, the prospect of evening clothes did not spoil his enjoyment of the play and rose-ann. it was a rather silly play, and they bubbled over with amused comments upon it on their way back to the st. dunstan. 160“i must remember all these things, and put them into my criticism,” he remarked.
“why don’t you write it tonight,” she said.
“at the hotel? i haven’t a typewriter, for one thing.”
“but i have mine. why don’t you say it off to me, and i’ll take it down. then you’ll have it over with, and we can mail it tonight, and then we can talk as late as we want to, without having to think of getting-up-time in the morning. now that you’re a dramatic critic, you don’t have to keep such regular working hours.”
really, it seemed an admirable plan. “but won’t the other people in the hotel object to a typewriter being pounded at this hour of the night?”
“let them! if they complain, we’ll say we’re sorry, and promise not to do it again! and by the next time, we’ll be in some place of our own where we can pound a typewriter all night if we want to—i hope!”
felix stored that away in his memory as one of rose-ann’s specifications for a place to live—a place where one could run a typewriter all night.... it was going to be hard to find such a place!
rose-ann exchanged her black velvet frock for a flame-coloured kimono—which, as he noted, matched her hair when the light shone through its stray curls—and sat down at the typewriter.
“ready!”
felix dictated for half an hour, only occasionally thinking of their neighbours on the other side of these thin hotel partitions. still, it was not yet midnight. “i guess that’s enough,” he said at last.
“a good line to end on,” she agreed, finishing the sentence and typing his name underneath. “there are stamps in my pocketbook, felix—and here’s your envelope, all addressed. it will make the one o’clock collection, and we can breakfast at leisure.”
“but,” he said, pausing at the door, “suppose it got lost in the mails or something!”
“i made a carbon,” said rose-ann, “and you can take that 161with you when you go to the office, in case of emergencies.”
“you are an efficient little manageress!” he said.
5
obediently the next day he went to a tailor—recommended by clive, who seemed heartily to approve of this particular surrender to convention—and was measured for a dinner coat, and a new loose-fitting suit of brown homespun selected by rose-ann.
he found he did not mind the idea of wearing evening clothes after all. he only wished that—well, that he was going to pay for them himself!
