IX

Of course, he now fell back on his own unfailing gospel.

“See?” said he to the cockeyed world, “that jes’ goes to show y’, see? One mo’ sheba, that’s all. Mo’ different they look, less different they are. Bet he offered her a stick o’ candy or sump’m.⁠ ⁠… And here I come near gettin’ excited jes’ lookin’ at her. Can y’ beat it?”

But though this might be only one more instance of a far-reaching general truth, somehow the cynic did not dismiss it with customary casualness. As the evening progressed, he admitted this to himself, indeed could not deny it. For even after he had danced through “Do it, Daddy,” with Babe Merrimac, who vamped him desperately without avail, and through a slow and easy, somewhat disturbing “Shake That Thing” with the voluptuous Lottie Buttsby, the earlier incident still stuck fast in his mind. Babe and Lottie both complained of finding him even less enthusiastic than usual; he was, they avowed, downright leaden, and Lottie specified precisely where anyone interested could find the lead. But neither succeeded in bantering him into promising to see her safely home after the shout.

He caught sight of Linda occasionally, dancing with boys, nice, Sunday-Schoolish boys he did not know, and he blamed these occasional views of her for the persistence in his mind of what he had seen. He began to resent that persistence:

“What the hell I keep thinkin’ ’bout that for?”

Then, by way of excuse, “Well she sho’ is good to look at. Ain’ no sense in a woman bein’ that good-lookin’. Ain’ no excuse for it. Dangerous, what I mean. Ought to be locked up somewheres where she couldn’ do so much harm.”

He encountered Jinx and Bubber and they did nothing to help him forget.

“Boy!” exclaimed Bubber, “ ’member that sheba we seen that mornin’ on Court Avenue?”

Shine grunted assent.

“She’s right hyeh at d’belly-rub tonight, big boy. Sharp out this world. We jes’ seen ’uh⁠—right over yonder. Great Gordon Gin⁠—talk about one red hot mamma! Dressed like a fortune-teller⁠—wish she’d tell mine. Anything she say ’d be awright with me. Tell me I go’n’ die tomorrer, I’d go right on and die happy.”

“I mean,” Jinx agreed. “And when I was dead and buried, all she’d have to do ’d be walk over my grave, see?⁠—and damn if I wouldn’t git up and follow ’uh. Boy, she’s got what it takes, and papa don’ mean maybe!”

“She’s the owl’s bow’ls,” Bubber epitomized.

Shine looked at them scornfully. “You guys,” he observed, “mus’ both have glass eyes.”

When he had glumly departed, they looked at each other a long time solemnly; then they grinned and finally laughed aloud.

“What’s a matter with my boy?” Jinx wanted to know.

“Nothin’. She jes’ done put d’ locks on ’im, thass all.”

“Nothin’ different. And then up and give him lots o’ air.”

“Seems lak,” Bubber grew serious, “our boy has been smote sho’ ’nuff, though, don’ it?”

“Smit,” corrected Jinx.

“Smote.”

“Smit.”

“What you know ’bout language?”

“Mo’ ’n you. Don’ nobody talk language down yo’ home in South Ca’lina.”

“What they talk, then?”

“Don’ talk ’tall. Jes’ grunt.”

“Yea⁠—and so did that man grunt what run you out o’ Virginia, too.”

“Thass aw right ’bout that. Fact is, ev’y time you forgit you up nawth, you start gruntin’ in yo’ native language.”

“Maybe. But what I mean, you don’ never forgit you up nawth⁠—and ain’ nobody never heard you sing that song ’bout ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’ neither.”

“D’ word is smit.”

“Smote.”

“Smit, I say.”

“Listen, squirrel-fodder. When you git a letter in yo’ mail what somebody write y’, it’s wrote, ain’t it?”

“You listen, Oscar. When you git a hole in yo’ hiney where some dog bite y’, you bit, ain’t y’?”

The debate between these two was no more undecided than another, conducted within the mind of Joshua Jones. The question at issue was this: If Henry Patmore had so easily picked up the girl, why should not he pick her up also? Or⁠—why should he?

On the one side were all the customary objections of his avowed attitude toward women. On the other were a number of obscure things, imponderable as vapor, but just as present and annoying: an impulse to win her favor just to have the pleasure of discarding it, compensating somewhat thus for his own recent disillusion; a plaguing curiosity to observe the girl at close range and satisfy the suspicion that she couldn’t be all that she seemed to be at a distance; a thought of riling Patmore by outdoing him at his own game and robbing him of this, his latest triumph; these but the half-conscious excuses, really, for a far simpler, unadmitted urge: the unquestionably compelling attractiveness of the girl herself.

This debate terminated suddenly and decisively. Linda finished a dance with one of the Sunday-School boys, and now, completely bored, shooed him off into the crowd, insisting that otherwise the following dance would begin before he could find his next partner. She came now unaccompanied toward the low terrace, reaching it just as the orchestra struck up a new number. Here she and Shine met face to face and the argument was settled; she was alone, she was at hand, and a new dance was beginning.

Their eyes met and he grinned and said:

“Didn’ you promise me this one?”

It was a good grin, wide, honest-looking, a trifle amused, a trifle audacious. His chin assumed more than its usual challenge, and the flash of his teeth set up twinkling echoes in his eyes. It was a perfectly spontaneous, disarming grin and it ought to have turned the trick. But it failed.

The girl looked at him a moment at first surprised, then puzzled; then with a little smile of comprehension and disdain, brushed past him without a word.

The superiority of that smile was far and away more telling and convincing than any scornful toss of the head or sneer or gesture of anger could have been. It placed the notion of dancing with him beyond anger, resentment, or contempt. It stamped such a possibility as too absurd to be aught but a trifle amusing. And it raised Shine’s temperature.

On the impulse of his anger he turned and followed her the short distance to her table, and when she sat down and looked up, there he was. She was mildly astonished.

“Wrong number,” she said briefly and smiled that smile again.

He sat down and put his arms on the table and leaned forward as she drew back in surprise. He spoke very gravely, and his voice, though low, suffered no loss of clarity by reason of the bedlam ’round about; indeed the merry confusion seemed to lend them a certain seclusion.

“Listen, Long Distance⁠—who you kiddin’?”

“Wrong number, I said,” the girl repeated less generously and pushed back her chair to rise.

“One moment please, operator,” returned Shine. “What number’d you think I was callin’?”

“The number on that policeman’s badge,” she said, although “that policeman” was nowhere in sight.

“Where?” He looked about unconcernedly.

“Or⁠—one of the officials.”

“Officials?”

“Yes officials!”

“Oh. They all friends o’ mine.”

“Mr. Henry Patmore, I suppose?”

“Who?”

“Henry Patmore.” She knew that would settle him.

“Pat?⁠ ⁠… Well I take it back. I know him well but he ain’t no friend o’ mine.”

There was but one way to keep him from imperturbably trailing her the rest of the evening; she had recourse to insult:

“No⁠—he wouldn’t be.”

That went wide. “What official is he⁠—official bootlegger?”

“He’s a judge⁠—and a gentleman.”

“Judge? Judge of what?”

“Of costumes⁠—and of people that try to be sheiks.”

He looked at her as she sat on the edge of the chair, a bird poised, postponing flight only for one last jab at the snake; and instead of laughing aloud at what she had said about Patmore, he scowled and muttered, “Judge. Humph. So that was his jive. Huh. Judge.”

This piqued her curiosity and further delayed her departure. “Yes, judge.”

“What else did he tell y’?”

“Nothing else about himself⁠—but a whole lot about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes you.”

“Me? How he come to⁠—?”

“I saw you looking and asked him.” She rose at last. “I promised him this dance, if?”⁠—no missing the sarcasm this time⁠—“if you will excuse me.”

“No⁠—wait a minute⁠—listen.” He too was standing now, towering over her, leaning a trifle toward her, and perhaps less composed than he’d ever been in his life in the company of a girl. If she had been interested enough to ask Pat about him, there was no sense in releasing her now so easily, just because she was playing tight. Or maybe she wasn’t playing. Maybe she was scared. “Listen⁠—I admit I got you all wrong. But it looked⁠—Listen. I’m standin’ over there, see? And Pat comes up and puts on his jive⁠—anybody can see you don’ know ’im. But you lap it up. You swallow it whole. I mean that’s the way it looked. Naturally I figger I can get away too, see? Y’ can’t kill me f’ that, can y’?”

From Shine this was abject apology. Babe would have taken it so, or Lottie, and been delighted and amazed. But Linda, to whom his implication was insult, stiffened as if something unclean had touched her, while her eyes dilated with anger and resentment. Then her body relaxed into an attitude of casual contempt and her look became tranquil scorn. She said quietly, as if verifying a memory:

“Mr. Patmore said you were just a dirty rat.”

At first the words merely stuck in his ears unrealized and meaningless, like the monotonous pulse of the orchestra’s bass drum. Then suddenly, as if their beating had finally broken through a wall, they burst full into consciousness and throbbed in his head like pain.

He stood quite still, experiencing new and terrible feelings. Rat. Well enough from an equal⁠—but from this girl⁠—Rat. Dirty rat. Patmore said you were just a dirty rat.

Linda saw the change come over his face; saw the brows contract, the eyes gleam, the jaws tighten, the lips set; saw his body go taut like a rope under tension and the bronze skin lose its life and turn dirty copper. Linda had not the sophistication nor the cultivated self-protective cruelty of most beautiful women. She did not see that she had achieved her purpose, had effected a serious wound, and could now perhaps go on her way unafraid. She saw only that her thrust had gone too deep and said impulsively:

“Oh, I’m sorry⁠—I didn’t really mean that⁠—”

Then in a flutter of contrition and fright she whirled about and fled.

For yet a while longer he did not move. Music, dancing, laughter⁠—tumultuous silence, uproarious, crowded solitude. Presently he was aware of a voice periodically snarling “R‑r‑rat!” and after a while realized that the trap-drummer was executing a series of rolls each swelling to a terminal snap like the epithet. “R‑r‑rat!”

That woke him. The stupor had been the recession of a wave, withdrawing only to gather new impetus. Now again it rushed over him, hot and impelling. He looked about a little madly and very grimly, and he said aloud:

“Judge. Hmph. Show me that judge. I’m go’n’ give ’im sump’m to judge.”