The experience depressed her more than she could account for. This was only her second prom, but neither before nor after did she ever enjoy one so little. She had never been more enthusiastically rushed, but through it all she seemed to float in a detached dream. The men were not individuals tonight, but dummies; men from Princeton, men from New Haven, new men, old beaus—were all as unreal as sticks. She wondered if her face wore that bovine expression she had often noted on the faces of stupid and apathetic girls.
“It’s a mood,” she told herself. “I’m just tired.”
But next day, at a bright and active luncheon, she seemed to herself to have less vivacity than the dozen girls who boasted wanly that they hadn’t gone to bed at all. After the football game she walked with Paul Dempster to the station, trying contritely to give him the last end of the week-end, as she had given him the beginning.
“Then why won’t you go to the theater with us tonight?” he was pleading. “That was the understanding in my letter. We were to come to New York with you and all go to the theater.”
“Because,” she explained patiently, “Lillian and I have to be back to school by eight. That’s the only condition on which we were allowed to come.”
“Oh, hell,” he said. “I’ll bet you’re doing something tonight with that Randall.”
She denied this scornfully, but Paul was suddenly realizing that Randall had dined with them, Randall had slept upon his couch, and Randall, though at the game he had sat on the Yale side of the field, was somehow with them now.
His was the last face that Paul saw as the train pulled out for the Junction.
He had thanked Paul very graciously and asked him to stay with him if he was ever in New Haven.
Nevertheless, if the miserable Princetonian had witnessed a scene in the Pennsylvania Station an hour later, his pain would have been moderated, for now Louie Randall was arguing bitterly:
“But why not take a chance? The chaperon doesn’t know what time you have to be in.”
“We do.”
When finally he had accepted the inevitable and departed, Josephine sighed and turned to Lillian.
“Where are we going to meet Wallie and Joe? At the Ritz?”
“Yes, and we’d better hurry,” said Lillian. “The Follies begin at nine.”
II
It had been like that for almost a year—a game played with technical mastery, but with the fire and enthusiasm gone—and Josephine was still a month short of eighteen. One evening during Thanksgiving vacation, as they waited for dinner in the library of Christine Dicer’s house on Gramercy Park, Josephine said to Lillian:
“I keep thinking how excited I’d have been a year ago. A new place, a new dress, meeting new men.”
“You’ve been around too much, dearie; you’re blase.”
Josephine bridled impatiently: “I hate that word, and it’s not true. I don’t care about anything in the world except men, and you know it. But they’re not like they used to be… What are you laughing at?”
“When you were six years old they were different?”
“They were. They used to have more spirit when we played drop-the-handkerchief—even the little Ikeys that used to come in the back gate. The boys at dancing school were so exciting; they were all so sweet. I used to wonder what it would be like to kiss every one of them, and sometimes it was wonderful. And then came Travis and Tony Harker and Ridge Saunders and Ralph and John Bailey, and finally I began to realize that I was doing it all. They were nothing, most of them—not heroes or men of the world or anything I thought. They were just easy. That sounds conceited, but it’s true.”
She paused for a moment.
“Last night in bed I was thinking of the sort of man I really could love, but he’d be different from anybody I’ve ever met. He’d have to have certain things. He wouldn’t necessarily be very handsome, but pleasant looking; and with a good figure, and strong. Then he’d have to have some kind of position in the world, or else not care whether he had one or not; if you see what I mean. He’d have to be a leader, not just like everybody else. And dignified, but very pash, and with lots of experience, so I’d believe everything he said or thought was right. And every time I looked at him I’d have to get that thrill I sometimes get out of a new man; only with him I’d have to get it over and over every time I looked at him, all my life.”
“And you’d want him to be very much in love with you. That’s what I’d want first of all.”
“Of course,” said Josephine abstractedly, “but principally I’d want to be always sure of loving him. It’s much more fun to love someone than to be loved by someone.”
There were footsteps in the hall outside and a man walked into the room. He was an officer in the uniform of the French aviation—a glove-fitting tunic of horizon blue, and boots and belt that shone like mirrors in the lamplight. He was young, with gray eyes that seemed to be looking off into the distance, and a red-brown military mustache. Across his left breast was a line of colored ribbons, and there were gold-embroidered stripes on his arms and wings on his collar.
“Good evening,” he said courteously. “I was directed in here. I hope I’m not breaking into something.”
Josephine did not move; from head to foot she saw him, and as she watched he seemed to come nearer, filling her whole vision. She heard Lillian’s voice, and then the officer’s voice, saying:
“My name’s Dicer; I’m Christine’s cousin. Do you mind if I smoke a cigarette?”
He didn’t sit down. He moved about the room and turned over a magazine, not oblivious to their presence, but as if respecting their conversation. But when he saw that silence had fallen, he sat against a table near them with his arms folded and smiled at them.
“You’re in the French army,” Lillian ventured.
“Yes, I’ve just got back, and very glad to be here.”
He didn’t look glad, Josephine noticed. He looked as if he wanted to get out now, but had no place to go to.
For the first time in her life she felt no confidence. She had absolutely nothing to say. She hoped the emptiness that she had felt ever since her soul poured suddenly out toward his beautiful image didn’t show in her face. She made her lips into a smile, and kept thinking how once, long ago, Travis de Coppet had worn his uncle’s opera cloak to dancing school and suddenly seemed like a man out of the great world. So, now, the war overseas had gone on so long, touched us so little, save for confining us to our own shores, that it had a legendary quality about it, and the figure before her seemed to have stepped out of a gigantic red fairy tale.
She was glad when the other dinner guests came and the room filled with people, strangers she could talk to or laugh with or yawn at, according to their deserts. She despised the girls fluttering around Captain Dicer, but she admired him for not showing by a flicker of his eye that he either enjoyed it or hated it. Especially she disliked a tall, possessive blonde who once passed, her hand on his arm; he should have flicked away with a handkerchief the contamination of his immaculateness.
They went in to dinner; he was far away from her, and she was glad. All she could see of him was his blue cuff farther up the table when he reached for a glass, but she felt that they were alone together, none the less because he did not know.
The man next to her gave her the superfluous information that he was a hero:
“He’s Christine’s cousin, brought up in France, and joined at the beginning of the war. He was shot down behind the German lines and escaped by jumping off a train. There was a lot about it in the papers. I think he’s over here on some kind of propaganda work… Great horseman too. Everybody likes him.”
After dinner she sat quietly while two men talked over her, sat persistently willing him to come to her. Ah, but she would be so nice, avoiding any curiosity or sentimentality about his experiences, avoiding any of the things that must have bored and embarrassed him since he had been home. She heard the voices around him:
“Captain Dicer… Germans crucify all the Canadian soldiers they capture… How much longer do you think the war… to be behind the enemy lines… Were you frightened?” And then a heavy, male voice telling him about it, between puffs of a cigar: “The way I see it, Captain Dicer, neither side is getting anywhere. It strikes me they’re afraid of each other.”
It seemed a long time later that he came over to her, but at just the right moment, when there was a vacant seat beside her and he could slip into it.
“I wanted to talk to the prettiest girl for a while. I’ve wanted to all evening; it’s been pretty heavy going.”
Josephine wanted to lean against the shining leather of his belt, and more, she wanted to take his head in her lap. All her life had pointed toward this moment. She knew what he wanted, and gave it to him; not words, but a smile of
