Helen—Then, John, here’s the worst of it. There’s a point where everything changes.
John—(Mournfully interested) What do you mean?
Helen—Well, sometimes it’s a kiss and sometimes it’s long before anything like that. Now if it’s a kiss, it can do one of three things.
John—Three! It’s done a thousand to me.
Helen—It can make him get tired of you, but a clever girl can avoid this. It’s only the young ones and the heroines of magazine epigrams that are kissed and deserted. Then there’s the second possibility. It can make you tired of him. This is usual. He immediately thinks of nothing but being alone with the girl, and she, rather touchy about the whole thing, gets snappy, and he’s first lovesick, then discouraged, and finally lost.
John—(More grimly) Go on.
Helen—Then the third state is where the kiss really means something, where the girl lets go of herself and the man is in deadly earnest.
John—Then they’re engaged?
Helen—Exactly.
John—Weren’t we?
Helen—(Emphatically) No, we distinctly were not. I knew what I was doing every blessed second, John Cannel.
John—Very well, don’t be angry. I feel mean enough already.
Helen—(Coldly) Do you?
John—Where do I come in? This is all a very clever system of yours, and you’ve played through it. You go along your way looking for another movie hero with black hair, or light hair, or red hair, and I am left with the same pair of eyes looking at me, the same lips moving in the same words to another poor fool, the next—
Helen—For Heaven sakes don’t cry!
John—Oh, I don’t give a damn what I do!
Helen—(Her eyes cast down to where her toe traces a pattern on the carpet) You are very young. You would think from the way you talk that it was my fault, that I tried not to like you.
John—Young! Oh, I’m in the discard, I know.
Helen—Oh, you’ll find someone else.
John—I don’t want anyone else.
Helen—(Scornfully) You’re making a perfect fool of yourself.
There is a silence. She idly kicks the heel of her slipper against the rung of the chair.
John—(Slowly) It’s this damn Charlie Wordsworth.
Helen—(Raising her eyes quickly) If you want to talk like that you’d better go. Please go now.
She rises. John watches her a moment and then admits his defeat.
John—Helen, don’t let’s do like this. Let’s be friends. Good God, I never thought I would have to ask you for just that.
She runs over and takes his hand, affecting a hopeful cheerfulness which immediately revolts him. He drops her hand and disappears from the window. She leans out and watches him.
Helen—Watch for that spike. Oh, John, I warned you. You’ve torn your clothes.
John—(Drearily from below) Yes, I’ve torn my clothes. I certainly play in wonderful luck. Such an effective exit.
Helen—Are you coming to the dance?
John—No, of course I am not. Do you think I’d come just to see you and Charlie—
Helen—(Gently) Good-night, John.
She closes the window. Outside a clock strikes nine. The clatter of a few people on the stairway comes muffled through the door. She turns on the lights and, going up to the glass, looks long and with an intense interest at herself. A powder puff comes into use for an instant. An errant wisp of hair is tucked into position, and a necklace from somewhere slides into place.
Mrs. Halycon—(Outside) Oh, Helen!
Helen—Coming, Mother.
She opens the top bureau drawer, takes out a silver cigarette case, and a miniature silver flask, and places them in a side drawer of the writing desk. Then she turns out all the lights and opens the door. The tuning of violins comes in nervous twangs and discord up the stairs. She turns once more and stands by the window. From below, there is a sudden burst of sound, as the orchestra swings into “Poor Butterfly.” The violins and faint drums and a confused chord from a piano, the rich odor of powder and new silk, a blend of laughters all surge together into the room. She dances toward the mirror, kisses the vague reflection of her face, and runs out the door.
Silence for a moment. Bundled figures pass along the hall, silhouetted against the lighted door. The laughter heard from below becomes doubled and multiplied. Suddenly a moving blur takes shape behind the bureau. It resolves itself into a human figure, which arises, tip-toes over and shuts the door. It crosses the room, and the lights go on again. Cecilia looks about her and, with the light of definite purpose in her rich green eyes, goes to the desk drawer, takes out the minature flask and the cigarette case. She lights a cigarette and, puffing and coughing, walks to the pier-glass.
Cecilia—(Addressing her future self) Oh, yes! Really, coming out is such a farce nowadays, y’know. We really play around so much before we are seventeen, that it’s positive anticlimax. (Shaking hands with a visionary middle-aged man of the world) Yes, I b’lieve I’ve heard m’ sister speak of you. Have a puff. They’re very good. They’re Coronas. You don’t smoke? What a pity.
She crosses to the desk and picks up the flask. From downstairs the rain of clapping between encores rises. She raises the flask, uncorks it, smells it, tastes a little, and then drinks about the equivalent of two cocktails. She replaces the flask, makes a wry face and, as the music starts again, fox-trots slowly around the room, waving the cigarette with intense seriousness, and watching herself in the long mirror.
Curtain
— ◆ —
The Spire and the Gargoyle.
Nassau Literary Magazine (February 1917)
I.
The night mist fell. From beyond the moon it rolled, clustered about the spires and towers, and then settled below them so that the dreaming peaks seemed still in lofty aspiration toward the stars. Figures that dotted the daytime like ants now brushed along as ghosts in and out of the night. Even the buildings seemed infinitely more mysterious as they loomed suddenly out of the darkness, outlined each by a hundred faint squares of yellow light. Indefinitely from somewhere a bell boomed the quarter hour
