the cars in the afternoon an’ he gives it to me free. Sometimes I drive one of his taxies and pick up a little thataway. I get fed up doin’ that regular though.”
“That all?”
“Well, when there’s a lot of work I help him by the day—Saturdays usually—and then there’s one main source of revenue I don’t generally mention. Maybe you don’t recollect I’m about the champion crap-shooter of this town. They make me shoot from a cup now because once I get the feel of a pair of dice they just roll for me.”
Clark grinned appreciatively,
“I never could learn to set ’em so’s they’d do what I wanted. Wish you’d shoot with Nancy Lamar some day and take all her money away from her. She will roll ’em with the boys and she loses more than her daddy can afford to give her. I happen to know she sold a good ring last month to pay a debt.”
The Jelly-bean was noncommittal.
“The white house on Elm Street still belong to you?”
Jim shook his head.
“Sold. Got a pretty good price, seein’ it wasn’t in a good part of town no more. Lawyer told me to put it into Liberty bonds. But Aunt Mamie got so she didn’t have no sense, so it takes all the interest to keep her up at Great Farms Sanitarium.
“Hm.”
“I got an old uncle up-state an’ I reckin I kin go up there if ever I get sure enough pore. Nice farm, but not enough niggers around to work it. He’s asked me to come up and help him, but I don’t guess I’d take much to it. Too doggone lonesome—” He broke off suddenly. “Clark, I want to tell you I’m much obliged to you for askin’ me out, but I’d be a lot happier if you’d just stop the car right here an’ let me walk back into town.”
“Shucks!” Clark grunted. “Do you good to step out. You don’t have to dance—just get out there on the floor and shake.”
“Hold on,” exclaimed. Jim uneasily, “Don’t you go leadin’ me up to any girls and leavin’ me there so I’ll have to dance with ’em.”
Clark laughed.
“’Cause,” continued Jim desperately, “without you swear you won’t do that I’m agoin’ to get out right here an’ my good legs goin’ carry me back to Jackson street.”
They agreed after some argument that Jim, unmolested by females, was to view the spectacle from a secluded settee in the corner where Clark would join him whenever he wasn’t dancing.
So ten o’clock found the Jelly-bean with his legs crossed and his arms conservatively folded, trying to look casually at home and politely uninterested in the dancers. At heart he was torn between overwhelming self-consciousness and an intense curiosity as to all that went on around him. He saw the girls emerge one by one from the dressing-room, stretching and pluming themselves like bright birds, smiling over their powdered shoulders at the chaperones, casting a quick glance around to take in the room and, simultaneously, the room’s reaction to their entrance—and then, again like birds, alighting and nestling in the sober arms of their waiting escorts. Sally Carrol Hopper, blonde and lazy-eyed, appeared clad in her favorite pink and blinking like an awakened rose. Marjorie Haight, Marylyn Wade, Harriet Cary, all the girls he had seen loitering down Jackson Street by noon, now, curled and brilliantined and delicately tinted for the overhead lights, were miraculously strange Dresden figures of pink and blue and red and gold, fresh from the shop and not yet fully dried.
He had been there half an hour, totally uncheered by Clark’s jovial visits which were each one accompanied by a “Hello, old boy, how you making out?” and a slap at his knee. A dozen males had spoken to him or stopped for a moment beside him, but he knew that they were each one surprised at finding him there and fancied that one or two were even slightly resentful. But at half past ten his embarrassment suddenly left him and a pull of breathless interest took him completely out of himself—Nancy Lamar had come out of the dressing-room.
She was dressed in yellow organdie, a costume of a hundred cool corners, with three tiers of ruffles and a big bow in back until she shed black and yellow around her in a sort of phosphorescent lustre. The Jelly-bean’s eyes opened wide and a lump arose in his throat. For she stood beside the door until her partner hurried up. Jim recognized him as the stranger who had been with her in Joe Ewing’s car that afternoon. He saw her set her arms akimbo and say something in a low voice, and laugh. The man laughed too and Jim experienced the quick pang of a weird new kind of pain. Some ray had passed between the pair, a shaft of beauty from that sun that had warmed him a moment since. The Jelly-bean felt suddenly like a weed in a shadow.
A minute later Clark approached him, bright-eyed and glowing.
“Hi, old man” he cried with some lack of originality. “How you making out?”
Jim replied that he was making out as well as could be expected.
“You come along with me,” commanded Clark. “I’ve got something that’ll put an edge on the evening.”
Jim followed him awkwardly across the floor and up the stairs to the locker-room where Clark produced a flask of nameless yellow liquid.
“Good old corn.”
Ginger ale arrived on a tray. Such potent nectar as “good old corn” needed some disguise beyond seltzer.
“Say, boy,” exclaimed Clark breathlessly, “doesn’t Nancy Lamar look beautiful?”
Jim nodded.
“Mighty beautiful,” he agreed.
“She’s all dolled up to a fare-you-well tonight,” continued Clark. “Notice that fellow she’s with?”
“Big fella? White pants?”
“Yeah. Well, that’s Ogden Merritt from Savannah. Old man Merritt makes the Merritt safety razors. This fella’s crazy about her. Been chasing, after her all year.
“She’s a wild baby,” continued Clark, “but I like her. So does everybody. But she sure does do crazy stunts. She usually gets out alive, but she’s got scars all over her reputation from one thing or another she’s done.”
“That so?” Jim passed over his glass. “That’s good corn.”
“Not so bad. Oh, she’s a wild one. Shoot craps, say, boy! And she do like her high-balls. Promised I’d give her one later on.”
“She in love with this—Merritt?”
“Damned if I know. Seems like all the best girls around here marry fellas and go off somewhere.”
He poured himself one more drink and carefully corked the bottle.
“Listen, Jim, I got to go dance and I’d be much obliged if you just stick this corn right on your hip as long as you’re not dancing. If a man notices I’ve had a drink he’ll come up and ask me and before I know it it’s all gone and somebody else is having my good time.”
So Nancy Lamar was going to marry. This toast of a town was to become the private property of an individual in white trousers—and all because white trousers’ father had made a better razor than his neighbor. As they
