Decatur rolled over the table. Nancy was flushed and half-hysterical, but her luck was holding.
She drove the pot up and up, refusing to drag. Taylor was drumming with his fingers on the table but he was in to stay.
Then Nancy tried for a ten and lost the dice. Taylor seized them avidly. He shot in silence, and in the hush of excitement the clatter of one pass after another on the table was the only sound.
Now Nancy had the dice again, but her luck had broken. An hour passed. Back and forth it went. Taylor had been at it again — and again and again. They were even at last — Nancy lost her ultimate five dollars.
“Will you take my check,” she said quickly, “for fifty, and we’ll shoot it all?” Her voice was a little unsteady and her hand shook as she reached to the money.
Clark exchanged an uncertain but alarmed glance with Joe Ewing. Taylor shot again. He had Nancy’s check.
“How ‘bout another?” she said wildly. “Jes’ any bank’ll do — money everywhere as a matter of fact.”
Jim understood — the “good old corn” he had given her — the “good old corn” she had taken since. He wished he dared interfere — a girl of that age and position would hardly have two bank accounts. When the clock struck two he contained himself no longer.
“May I — can’t you let me roll ’em for you?” he suggested, his low, lazy voice a little strained.
Suddenly sleepy and listless, Nancy flung the dice down before him.
“All right — old boy! As Lady Diana Manners says, ‘Shoot ‘em,. Jelly-bean’ — My luck’s gone.”
“Mr. Taylor,” said Jim, carelessly, “we’ll shoot for one of those there checks against the cash.”
Half an hour later Nancy swayed forward and clapped him on the back.
“Stole my luck, you did.” She was nodding her head sagely.
Jim swept up the last check and putting it with the others tore them into confetti and scattered them on the floor. Someone started singing and Nancy kicking her chair backward rose to her feet.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, “Ladies — that’s you Marylyn. I want to tell the world that Mr. Jim Powell, who is a well-known Jelly-bean of this city, is an exception to the great rule— ‘lucky in dice — unlucky in love.’ He’s lucky in dice, and as matter of fact I — I love him. Ladies and gentlemen, Nancy Lamar, famous dark-haired beauty often featured in the Herald as one the most popular members of younger set as other girls are often featured in this particular case; Wish to announce — wish to announce, anyway, Gentlemen—” She tipped suddenly. Clark caught her and restored her balance.
“My error,” she laughed, “she — stoops to — stoops to — anyways — We’ll drink to Jelly-bean … Mr. Jim Powell, King of the Jelly-beans.”
And a few minutes later as Jim waited hat in hand for Clark in the darkness of that same corner of the porch where she had come searching for gasolene, she appeared suddenly beside him.
“Jelly-bean,” she said, “are you here, Jelly-bean? I think—” and her slight unsteadiness seemed part of an enchanted dream— “I think you deserve one of my sweetest kisses for that, Jelly-bean.”
For an instant her arms were around his neck — her lips were pressed to his.
“I’m a wild part of the world, Jelly-bean, but you did me a good turn.”
Then she was gone, down the porch, over the cricket-loud lawn. Jim saw.
Merritt come out the front door and say something to her angrily — saw
her laugh and, turning away, walk with averted eyes to his car.
Marylyn and Joe followed, singing a drowsy song about a Jazz baby.
Clark came out and joined Jim on the steps. “All pretty lit, I guess,” he yawned. “Merritt’s in a mean mood. He’s certainly off Nancy.”
Over east along the golf course a faint rug of gray spread itself across the feet of the night. The party in the car began to chant a chorus as the engine warmed up.
“Goodnight everybody,” called Clark.
“Goodnight, Clark.”
“Goodnight.”
There was a pause, and then a soft, happy voice added,
“Goodnight, Jelly-bean.”
The car drove off to a burst of singing. A rooster on a farm across the way took up a solitary mournful crow, and behind them, a last negro waiter turned out the porch light, Jim and Clark strolled over toward the Ford, their shoes crunching raucously on the gravel drive.
“Oh boy!” sighed Clark softly, “how you can set those dice!”
It was still too dark for him to see the flush on Jim’s thin cheeks — or to know that it was a flush of unfamiliar shame.
IV
Over Tilly’s garage a bleak room echoed all day to the rumble and snorting downstairs and the singing of the negro washers as they turned the hose on the cars outside. It was a cheerless square of a room, punctuated with a bed and a battered table on which lay half a dozen books — Joe Miller’s “Slow Train thru Arkansas,” “Lucille,” in an old edition very much annotated in an old-fashioned hand; “The Eyes of the World,” by Harold Bell Wright, and an ancient prayer-book of the Church of England with the name Alice Powell and the date 1831 written on the fly-leaf.
The East, gray when Jelly-bean entered the garage, became a rich and vivid blue as he turned on his solitary electric light. He snapped it out again, and going to the window rested his elbows on the sill and stared into the deepening morning. With the awakening of his emotions, his first perception was a sense of futility, a dull ache at the utter grayness of his life. A wall had sprung up suddenly around him hedging him in, a wall as definite and tangible as the white wall of his bare room. And with his perception of this wall all that had been the romance of his existence, the casualness, the lighthearted improvidence, the miraculous open-handedness of life faded out. The Jelly-bean strolling up Jackson Street humming a lazy song, known at every shop and street stand, cropful of easy greeting and local wit, sad sometimes for only the sake of sadness and the flight of time — that Jelly-bean was suddenly vanished. The very name was a reproach, a triviality. With a flood of insight he knew that Merritt must despise him, that even Nancy’s kiss in the dawn would have awakened not jealousy but only a contempt for Nancy’s so lowering herself. And on his part the Jelly-bean had used for her a dingy subterfuge learned from the garage. He had been her moral laundry; the stains were his.
As the gray became blue, brightened and filled the room, he crossed to his bed and threw himself down on it, gripping the edges fiercely.
“I love her,” he cried aloud, “God!”
As he said this something gave way within him like a lump melting in his throat. The air cleared and became radiant with dawn, and turning over on his face he began to sob dully into the pillow.
