VI.
After a restless night Dolly made her decision. She would go back to New York on the first train. The man she loved resented even her presence here and she was too proud to stay where she wasn’t wanted. It was a mistake ever to have come at all. How could she have thought that, stained and stamped as she was, she could compete with these girls who had been wrapped in cotton wool since birth? Perhaps back in the city her money would buy her friends who would grow to care for her, and some day she would forget.
Listlessly she began throwing things into her grip—they meant so little to her now—the gorgeous evening dress that had seemed like a princess’s robe a few short weeks ago was less to her than a shapeless prison gown now that the prince had failed to look her way. Her shoes—she kicked one impatiently against the wall, scraping a gash in its leather side. Then she was sorry and wept over the gash, knowing all the time that she was weeping over something else.
She couldn’t find the purse with lipstick in it. Where had she left it—and yet what did it matter now? Let it go—and youth and love too!
A knock at the door. Professor Swope, bowing and beaming, stood outside. He had a letter for her, forwarded from New York in his care. Dolly opened it—it was from the lawyers who handled her money.
Miss Dolly Carrol
Dear Madame
It is with great regret that we inform you that your uncle has met with reverses in the West and will be unable to continue your allowance. In fact we must ask you to return the sum of $982.00 advanced you last week above funds in hand.
Yours Very Respectfully,
Barly, Bacon and Barly.
The letter stunned her. She read it again and then stood with her eyes fixed on the space over the professor’s head. Her fingers drummed idly for a moment on the dresser until suddenly the keys of a typewriter seemed to materialize beneath them. She drew back frightened. Why—there would be no more gold dresses, or French shoes to kick about, or limousines, or fashionable hotels. Back to the old life in an office and an occasional trip to the theatre with the young clerk who worked next door.
Back she swung—now the gold dress was important again and the shoes—yes, and the prom and the girls who were going to dance tonight and be happy. Never again—she had had her chance and missed. The doors of the great world were closed to her.
The professor suddenly noticed that her grip was packed and that she was wearing a traveling suit.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Are you going away?”
She hesitated. Her eyes filled with tears. Must she go? Couldn’t she have just this night, this last night? At any cost to her pride she must see him again and with the lipstick make him kiss her once more. Better that way than not at all. But—even the lipstick was gone. She had nothing.
Professor Swope came into the room and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.
“What is it?” he inquired. “Can I be of any assistance?”
“I’m—I’m not going,” she faltered. “I thought I had an engagement in New York but this letter tells me I was wrong.”
By ten o’clock that night a constant stream of bright fur and satin was flowing into the gymnasium. A student took tickets at the door and beside him stood Joe Jakes to see that no one entered with a flask showing on his hip or in a state of inebriation.
One crossed the trophy room and came into the great gymnasium, gay now with bunting and streamers and flowers. The walls were lined with boxes, each designated by the name of a fraternity and used as parking places for chaperones—none of the young people came there except to borrow a pen or leave a loose buckle. Between dances they sat in the trophy room and its galleries or in autos outside or on the winding steps of an edifice called Honeymoon Tower.
Looked at from above the prom resolved itself into a central circle of closely packed stags around which hub revolved the varicolored wheel of dancers. Outside the wheel was a further ring of stags, flanked at each end by a celebrated orchestra from New York. The slow revolution of the wheel and the flashes of black darting out to dance with pink or blue or gold, kept the whole scene in constant, colorful motion.
The women’s dressing room presented a scene of equal, if less public animation. Five hundred girls pushed politely to a place in front of the long mirror, five hundred girls found some slight imperfections in the tint of a cheek or an eyebrow, five hundred girls remedied the defection with loving care.
But no girl was so particularly interested in this final moment as was Mimi Haughton. She had the lipstick and she was going to use it. Picture her in front of a mirror at one end of a long row of girls. Grace is at her side.
A glass shelf runs underneath the mirror from one end of the room to the other and this is what happens. Mimi and Grace take out their respective lipsticks, which are not unlike in size and appearance, and set them down on the glass shelf, their hands crossing as they do so. A moment later each of them, their eyes absorbed in the mirror, picks up the other’s lipstick. Grace, all unsuspecting, rubs the magic scent upon her lips—Mimi, all unsuspecting, rubs her lips with ordinary rouge.
But the tilting shelf has another trick to play. As Grace lays down the scented lipstick it falls on its fat side and begins to roll determinedly down the whole length of the shelf. A dozen girls grab at it absently, but it continues its course until brought to a stop in front of Dolly at the extreme end. She is so surprised and glad to get it back that she doesn’t inquire who has had it, but pops it into a bag that, this time, is affixed firmly to her arm.
This is destined to be the evening of Grace Jones’ life, the one that she’ll remember forever and tell about to her children and her grandchildren. For she is one of the belles of the ball. Man after man cuts in—even Cupid shows her marked attention until her round eyes almost pop out with happiness.
For Mimi it is another story. As Ben leads her out on the floor she takes his arm, leans close and looks up at him with languorous eyes. But her arm receives no answering pressure and his eyes seem unusually cold and far away, as if he had something on his mind.
They are standing near the foot of a winding staircase that rises out of a corner of the trophy room.
“Where does that go?” she asks.
“That’s called Wedding Stair,” he answers politely, but indifferently. “It leads up to Honeymoon Tower.”
“Is the view nice?” Again she tries the effect of the lipstick by leaning close to him, but he is unresponsive. She turns away to hide her disappointment and comes face to face with Dolly who has just emerged from the dressing room and overheard the conversation. Giving Dolly a glance of ill concealed malice Mimi walks with Ben into the ballroom.
Dolly hasn’t used the lipstick yet tonight. She scarcely knows why. What is the use if Ben won’t come near?
Strangely enough other boys seemed to like her just as well without it. They danced with her and she was, if anything, relieved that they no longer leaned toward her in just that eager way. But Ben didn’t come near and her heart grew numb and nothing seemed to matter at all.
She is sitting with Professor Swope in the Trophy Room between dances when her eyes are arrested by the sight of Ben lighting a cigarette and strolling moodily through the entrance to the Wedding Stair as if he were going up. The professor at the moment is asking Dolly to marry him. He tells her that at great personal sacrifice he has put her criminal past out of mind. In the middle of the unromantic declaration Dolly unceremoniously jumps to her feet and announces that she wants to go up to the tower. Professor Swope readily accedes.
The winding stair is well occupied. Near the bottom sit a couple, the girl fixing a flower into the man’s buttonhole. Around the next bend another couple are holding hands. Further up two are absorbed in an embrace, and further still a man is fitting an engagement ring on to a girl’s finger.
When the professor and Dolly have climbed this far, she stops and tells him that she doesn’t know whether she is worthy of him. She will have to ask herself. Will he wait here and let no one pass while she consults her conscience up on the tower?
He sits down and folds his hands prepared to wait. Dolly continues on up. Ben Manny is nearly at the top when he hears footsteps following him. He stops suspiciously—he wants to be alone and think. Somehow he isn’t happy that his engagement to Mimi will be announced tomorrow.
The footsteps have stopped so he goes on. Near the top he pauses again, hearing them distinctly. But again
