She has just emerged and is trying the lipstick, curiously and eagerly, glad merely for the fact that it will make her lips red.
“I beg your pardon, here is my card. I saw your face and I couldn’t resist wanting to talk to you. They told me you were leaving today. If there’s anything I can do—”
What a kind world. What a funny little man. She smiled at him—he became confused.
“I’m all right,” she said. “Thanks.”
Why, she was beautiful he thought. To offer her charity was an insult. To think that his students had spoken trivially of such a girl.
The prom indeed—how many prom girls could look at a man with a gaze as fresh and lovely. Probably she would behave as well as anyone at a prom. What an experiment it would be to take her. That mouth—it was like a flower—why, it was worth a life time of study—of devotion.
“Professor!” Her voice brought him to himself—his lips were not two inches away from hers.
“I beg your pardon,” he faltered. Then words springing from some spontaneous source gushed from him, “Would you honor me by coming with me to the University dance next month?”
He was trembling, astonished at himself.
“Me?” Dolly laughed. Stuff of her dreams. “No thanks. But you’re very kind.” And then with a touch of suspicion, “Did you want to parade me around in my ball and chain?”
He looked so hurt that she smiled kindly and thanked him again.
“I really mean it. I—” She stepped back hurriedly—again he was swaying toward her.
“You can help me with my bag,’’ she said and turned toward the great doorway. Picking up the cardboard grip he followed her. The turnkey shook hands with Dolly—the gate swung open. In a trance she passed through, stepped into the sunshine, heard a trim deferential voice at her ear.
“Miss Dolly Carrol?”
A liveried chauffeur stood attention beside her, holding a coat of Russian sable over his arm.
“This is your car, Miss Carrol—” It was a lemon colored Rolls-Royce. Dolly looked incredulously from the car to the chauffeur.
“It’s a mistake,” she said.
“No mistake, Miss Carrol.”
Suddenly the full meaning of her uncle’s letter burst over her. “You are to be a typist no longer”—My God, it wasn’t just a prisoner’s hallucination, induced by months of loneliness and
“Your coat, Miss Carrol.”
Her arms slid into the silken sleeves. The chauffeur opened the limousine door. She took a faltering step, hesitated, but the professor’s face convinced her that it was real—he was as astonished—overwhelmed as she. Dolly got in.
From the prison emerged the group of students.
“My God,” ejaculated Cupid, “it’s that girl.” Ben nodded, cynically. “Evidently she hid the swag well.”
Dolly saw them, and her own chin went up.
“Goodbye professor,” she said graciously. “May we meet again.”
Her hand still clasped the diploma from a business school. With another haughty glance at the staring faces she folded it, tore it up and flung it to the breeze. Then she snuggled down into her sable coat.
“The Ritzmore, New York,” she said.
This is the end of the first sequence.
II.
It’s better to be poor and popular on a side street than to be rich and lonesome in a fashionable hotel. Dolly is so lonesome that she pretends not to be—behold her in the lobby trying to look as if she hopes no one will speak to her. She drives “to the Stuyvesants at Southampton” and once out of the city she climbs into the front seat, shares a lunch box with the chauffeur, and drives back to the Ritzmore. On her return from one of these expeditions she finds the lobby swarming with college boys and young girls. She asks information from a clerk. He tells her that these are the outward and visible signs of prom week.
At the sight of these girls, the flowers of many cities from coast to coast, Dolly feels a pang. The prom stands for music, lights, fashion, youth—the things that apparently she had missed forever.
“I beg your pardon.” A man brushes against her and without looking at her passes with his companion, but not too quick for her to recognize Ben Manny, the haughty handsome boy whose face hadhaunted her since she left prison. And the girl with him is none other than the newspaper clipping come to life. The Mimi Haughton who one day last fall had been “presented to society at a dinner at the Plaza.”
Another familiar face—
A stout boy standing beneath the clock and looking anxiously at his watch. She remembers that he was one of the party of students that day.
“Mr. Manny!”
A page squirms through the crowd. Ben stops him, looks at the address on the telegram and directs him to his brother, under the clock.
“Bet you Cupid’s girl can’t come,” says Ben to Mimi Haughton.
Cupid opens the telegram with forebodings.
Mother ill in Albany. Can’t come. In tears. Grace.
It is a standard joke that Cupid’s girl whoever she may be never arrives. He grinds his teeth as he realizes that he is in for some heavy kidding. He is trudging gloomily out of the lobby when he comes face to face with Dolly.
“Hello,” she says.
Pretty girl. He wonders where he has known her and then suddenly remembers. Because he is sorry for her he stands for a moment chatting. Then he realized that dressed as she was in perfect taste, she isn’t a pitiable object at all.
Down the corridor he sees Ben and Mimi and Mimi’s mother going into the tea dance. The scent of perfume and powder is heavy on the air. The melody of “Meadowlark” floats out into the lobby. If that damn girl, would only—“I beg your pardon,” he says suddenly. His face has managed to slide up to within a foot of Dolly’s.
“Look here,” he says to Dolly, “come in and have some tea.”
“Me?”
“Sure.”
“Is it all right to invite me?”
“Of course.”
He is struck by an even more radical idea. This girl is a beauty and seems to be a pretty good counterfeit of a lady. No one knows who she is—why not take her to the prom and pretend she’s the one he originally invited.
They go into the tea room and join Ben’s party. Cupid has asked Dolly her name—now he introduces her in turn to Ben, Mimi and Mimi’s mother. During the introduction a parrot on a perch overhead—one of six in the room—glares down at Dolly and cries “Who’s this? Who’s this?” in a shrill voice.
Ben looks angrily from Dolly to his brother. This is really too much—when he gets Cupid alone he’ll give him a piece of his mind.
Mrs. Haughton’s politeness toward any girls who might compete with her daughter, Mimi, is effusive but artificial. Mimi is nineteen, a pretty, sharp-featured girl with a cynical worldly line of New York chatter. She is definitely “after” Ben Manny who represents everything she desires.
Cupid shows Ben the telegram which says that his girl, Grace, can’t come. The music starts. Ben dances with Mimi, Cupid with Dolly.
On the floor the attraction of the lipstick begins to act on Cupid. Why, this girl is wonderful—only with considerable difficulty does he restrain himself from kissing her on the floor. When they sit down he begins working around to the subject of the prom. Suddenly Ben perceives with horror what Cupid has in mind. Ben has nothing against Dolly personally but it is his honest conviction that it wouldn’t do at all.
“Miss Carrol,” says Cupid, “I wonder if you would care to—”
Ben interrupts him by asking for the sugar and gives Cupid a warning glance that Cupid pretends not to see.
“Miss Carrol,” he resumes, “This week-end—”
Again Ben’s voice, cold as ice, asking for the cream. And now Dolly understands what is happening. Her eyes meet Ben’s, first hurt and then defiant, and they stare at each other so tensely that Mimi and Mrs. Haughton sense the conflict. But they don’t guess the truth—that Ben has determined that Cupid will only bring this girl to the prom over his dead body.
“I was wondering, if you had nothing to do this week-end, if you would—”
A page boy winding among the tables cuts the suspense with—
“Mr. Manny! Mr. Manny!”
Cupid is wanted on the phone. He excuses himself and goes out to a booth—it is his girl on long distance. Mother is better. She can come. If Cupid could see the childhood sweetheart to whom he is talking over the phone he would have been less jubilant. Little Grace Jones has grown—she is no longer a sylph-like child of 75 pounds, but an oversized duofold model of 190, who can hardly get into the booth. But Cupid is happily unaware of this as he returns to the table and announces that his girl is coming after all. Ben tries to hide his look of relief and Dolly hers of disappointment. Neither succeeds.
“I’m honestly sorry,” Cupid whispers, “I was just about to ask you.”
But Dolly has jumped in turn to an audacious decision.
“To the prom?” she asks in a clear guileless voice. “Oh, that’s nice of you but I couldn’t have accepted. I’m going with another man.” She gets up. “Good bye. I’ll see you all there.”
And as she turns away, her chin uptilted, the parrot overhead makes a final comment.
“Some baby! Some baby!”
Thus ends the second sequence.
III.
Every train to the University town was jammed to the doors. Five hundred girls and half as many chaperones
