IV
After a few minutes, when John Bailey’s trouble had died away in the distance, they all stopped being stunned and behaved like people again. Mr. and Mrs. Perry were panicky as to how far Josephine was involved; then they became angry at John Bailey for coming there with disaster hanging over him.
Mr. Perry demanded: “Did you know he was married?”
Josephine was crying; her mouth was drawn; he looked away from her.
“They lived separately,” she whispered.
“She seemed to know he was out here.”
“Of course he’s a newspaperman,” said her mother, “so he can probably keep it out of the papers. Or do you think you ought to do something, Herbert?”
“I was just wondering.”
Howard Page got up awkwardly, not wanting to say he was now going to the tennis finals. Mr. Perry went to the door and talked earnestly for a few minutes, and Howard nodded.
Half an hour passed. Several callers drifted by in cars, but received word that no one was at home. Josephine felt something throbbing on the heat of the summer afternoon; and at first she thought it was pity and then remorse, but finally she knew what the throbbing was. “I must push this thing away from me,” it said; “this thing must not touch me. I hardly met his wife. He told me——”
And now John Bailey began slipping away. Who was he but a chance encounter, someone who had spoken to her a week before about a play he had written? He had nothing to do with her.
At four o’clock Mr. Perry went to the phone and called St. Anthony’s Hospital; only when he asked for an official whom he knew did he get the information: In the actual face of death, Mrs. Bailey had phoned for the police, and it now seemed that they had reached her in time. She had lost blood, but barring complications——
Now, in the relief, the parents grew angry with Josephine as with a child who has toddled under galloping horses.
“What I can’t understand is why you should have to know people like that. Is it necessary to go into the back streets of Chicago?”
“That young man had no business here,” her father thundered grimly, “and he knew it.”
“But who was he?” wailed Mrs. Perry.
“He told me he was a descendant of Charlemagne,” said Josephine.
Mr. Perry grunted. “Well, we want no more of Charlemagne’s descendants here. Young people had better stay with their own kind until they can distinguish one from another. You let married men alone.”
But now Josephine was herself again. She stood up, her eyes hardening.
“Oh, you make me sick,” she cried—“a married man! As if there weren’t a lot of married men who met other women besides their wives.”
Unable to bear another scene, Mrs. Perry withdrew. Once she was out of hearing, Josephine came out into the open at last: “You’re a fine one to talk to me.”
“Now look here; you said that the other night, and I don’t like it now any better than I did then. What do you mean?”
“I suppose you’ve never been to lunch with anybody at the La Grange Hotel.”
“The La Grange——” The truth broke over him slowly. “Why—” He began laughing. Then he swore suddenly, and going quickly to the foot of the stairs, called his wife.
“You sit down,” he said to Josephine. “I’m going to tell you a story.”
Half an hour later Miss Josephine Perry left her house and set off for the tennis tournament. She wore one of the new autumn gowns with the straight line, but having a looped effect at the sides of the skirt, and fluffy white cuffs. Some people she met just outside the stands told her that Mrs. McRae’s nephew was weakening to the veteran, and this started her thinking of Mrs. McRae and of her decision about the vaudeville with a certain regret. People would think it odd if she wasn’t in it.
There was a sudden burst of wild clapping as she went in; the tournament was over. The crowd was swarming around victor and vanquished in the central court, and gravitating with it, she was swept by an eddy to the very front of it, until she was face to face with Mrs. McRae’s nephew himself. But she was equal to the occasion. With her most sad and melting smile, as if she had hoped for him from day to day, she held out her hand and spoke to him in her clear, vibrant voice:
“We are all awfully sorry.”
For a moment, even in the midst of the excited crowd, a hushed silence fell. Modestly, conscious of her personality, Josephine backed away, aware that he was staring after her, his mouth stupidly open, aware of a burst of laughter around her. Travis de Coppet appeared beside her.
“Well, of all the nuts!” he cried.
“What’s the matter? What——”
“Sorry! Why, he won! It was the greatest come-back I ever saw.”
So, at the vaudeville, Josephine sat with her family after all. Looking around during the show, she saw John Bailey standing in the rear. He looked very sad, and she felt very sorry, realizing that he had come in hopes of a glimpse of her. He would see, at least, that she was not up there on the stage debasing herself with such inanities.
Then she caught her breath as the lights changed, the music quickened and at the head of the steps, Travis de Coppet in white-satin football suit swung into the spotlight a shimmering blonde in a dress of autumn leaves. It was Madelaine Danby, and it was the role Josephine would have played. With the warm rain of intimate applause, Josephine decided something: That any value she might have was in the immediate, shimmering present—and thus thinking, she threw in her lot with the rich and powerful of this world forever.
