After a few minutes she was startled to hear Dizzy’s voice over the wire.
“Why aren’t you at the play?” Gwen demanded.
“I was late—Mrs. Tulliver left two seats and a note for us and I was just going over.”
“Well, tell her I’m all right.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on a boat going to the West Indies,” said Gwen ambiguously.
“What?” Dizzy exclaimed. “Did you find a real pearl?”
“I mean the boat’s going, but I’m not. I wish it would start and I’d get left aboard by accident. Why were you late?”
“I got locked up in the bird house.”
“The what?”
“I went to the zoo and the keeper went out to lunch. Oh, it was the dumbest thing—I never want to see a bird again.”
When Gwen went back to Mrs. TenBroek’s suite, that lady was full of an idea.
“It’s hard to offer a reward to someone like you,” she said, “But I’ve thought of something. I’m just making this trip to pick up an old aunt of mine and bring her back to New York and I wonder if you’d like to go along and keep me company—I’m sure I could arrange it with your family by long distance.”
The magnificent prospect rushed over Gwen like a champagne cocktail, but after a minute’s reflection she shook her head.
“I don’t think you could,” she said. Adding frankly, “Daddy would know your name, of course, but he doesn’t really know anything about you.”
“I know quite a few people down there who might be willing to recommend me,” said Mrs. TenBroek.
“I’m so much obliged, but I don’t think I’d better.”
“Very well, then.” She had taken a fancy to Gwen and she was disappointed. “In any case I’m going to insist that you take two hundred dollars and buy yourself a nice evening dress, or whatever you want.”
“Two hundred dollars,” Gwen exclaimed, “That’s ten evening dresses!”
“Is it? Well, use it as you like. Are you quite sure you’d rather have the money than the trip?”
Tight-lipped, Gwen said:
“Yes, I would, Mrs. TenBroek.”
—It was too bad the child was mercenary. Mrs. TenBroek had felt that behind those bright blue eyes lay the sort of romance that had haunted her own youth—she was sure she would have chosen the West Indies.
She counted out four new fifty dollar bills.
On the decks the cymbals were crashed and voices were calling “All ashore that’s going ashore.” When the Dacia had slid out into the harbour to the flutter of handkerchiefs the five young people left the pier. In the street Peddlar TenBroek said:
“We thought maybe you could have dinner with us this evening. You said there were four of you, and there’s four of us and we haven’t a thing to do. We could have dinner and dance up in the Rainbow Room.”
“That’s be wonderful,” said Gwen, “But I don’t know whether our chaperone, Mrs. Tulliver—”
“I’ll talk to her myself,” he said confidently.
“All right,” she hesitated, “But would you take me somewhere else first? Or rather two places—I’ve got to go to the first place to see where the second place is.”
“Just tell the chauffeur where you want to go.”
Half an hour later Gwen knocked softly at a thin door and at a listless response, went in.
It was a barren room furnished only with table, chair, and iron bed. In the corner was a cardboard suitcase with books piled beside it; a street suit and a hat hung from a hook on the wall. Ethan Kennicott, the side of his face blue and swollen, sat at the table, staring straight ahead of him, through half closed eyes. When he saw her his head jerked up, and with a tense movement he got to his feet.
“What do you want?” he asked harshly.
“I just came for a minute. My father says nobody ever ought to go to bed angry no matter what’s happened.”
“Tell that to one of those smoothies,” he said bitterly. “They can spend all their lives being polite. But it just happens that I lost my job.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“What did you expect? Sure, I suppose I deserved it too.”
“I sort of think it’s my fault.”
He shook his head defiantly.
“It’s my fault—and I don’t care any more. I don’t care if I get an education—I don’t care about anything.”
“You oughtn’t to feel that way,” she said, shocked. “You’ve got to get an education.”
“Big chance.” He gave an unsuccessful little laugh. “I tell you I don’t want one. I’m not fit for one, but when you’ve been half starved for three months—and too proud to take relief and then you see a chance like that. You think I’m a thief, don’t you—well, let me tell you I never did a thing like that before in my life. I never even thought a thing like that, any more than you did.”
“I thought it,” she lied.
“Yes, you did.”
“Yes, I did—my family hasn’t got much money and more and I thought if we sold the fur I could go on a trip or something.”
He looked at her incredulous.
“You did?”
“I didn’t think it long,” she said hastily. “But I did think it.” A memory of the pearl that wasn’t a pearl rose in her mind to help her out, “I thought finders keepers losers weepers too.”
“But you didn’t think like that very long.”
“Neither did you.”
As she gave him back his self respect moment by moment, his whole posture changed.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have,” he said meditatively, but with recurrent bitterness he shrugged his shoulders, “It’s too late now though—the job’s gone. And I don’t know when I’ll ever get another.”
She had come up close to the table, her hand clasped tight around the four fifty dollar bills so that they had become a compact little lump.
“This ought to help,” she said and tossed the wad quickly onto the table.
Then before he could move or say a word she ran childishly from the room, slammed the door and hurried downstairs to the waiting car.
It was very wonderful in the Rainbow Room. The floor floated in the sky while two orchestras tore the spectrum into many colors for Gwen’s avid eyes. The archaic quality of the English youths’ dancing was being dissipated under expert tutelage, and if the girls had felt that their trip had been wanting up to now, this evening atoned for everything. It was fun crying “Poop-poop!” at Dizzy and pretending to order birdseed for her; and it was fun for Gwen to know that Peddlar TenBroek was completely at her service and that she’d get letters from England all the rest of the spring. It was all fun—
“What are you thinking of?” Peddlar asked her.
“Thinking of?” she came back to reality. “Well, if you have to know, I was thinking about that young taxi driver. He really did want to go to Williams College. And now he has no job and I was just thinking he was probably sitting in his room feeling so blue.”
“Let’s call him up,” said Peddlar promptly, “We’ll tell him to come and join us. You say he’s a good fellow.”
Gwen considered.
“No, it wouldn’t be best,” she decided with a touch of wisdom beyond her years, “He’s sure to have a hard time and this wouldn’t help him. Let’s skip it.”
She was happy, and a little bit older. Like all the children growing up in her generation she accepted life as a sort of accident, a grab bag where you took what you could get and nothing was very certain. The pearl her father had found hadn’t been a pearl but this night’s pleasure came from the fact that she had stumbled upon the skins of two-score South American rodents.
Months later when Gwen could not have told what tunes the orchestra played, she would still remember the other pearl, the one she had strung upon her personal rosary—though of course she didn’t think of it like that, but rather felt a sense of guilty triumph that she had put something over on life. She didn’t tell Dizzy about that. She never told anyone at all. Girls never started anything, didn’t they? The pearl and the fur they were accidents—but it was no accident when she gave him her voyage to the blessed isles, gave to him out of a pity that was so deep in her that she could never even tell Dizzy about it—never told anyone at all.
