Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The sea was deserted. From blue it had become green and from green grayish-yellow. In a short while it would turn purple and then black. But no one was at all interested. They were not down here to study nature. Instead they were studying Mrs. Harry Werner a considerable part of the time.

Mrs. Werner got up to dance with one of her friends. “I see they have a new orchestra down here this year.”

“They’ve been here ever since the holidays,” he informed her.

“I don’t think much of their playing, do you?”

Now anyone who knew anything at all about Mrs. Harry Werner would have known that to run anything down in an effort to distract her attention was the most fatal thing imaginable. Mrs. Harry Werner was stubborn and used to having her own way too much for that sort of thing to be at all successful.

“Why, I don’t see how you can say such a thing!” she exclaimed at once. “I like their playing very well.”

“Everyone’s taste is different,” murmured her partner.

“In that case you have a great deal to account for,” said she. When they sat down, she looked out at the obscured sea for a long while and her well-etched brown eyes seemed a thousand miles off. Then all at once she came to life again, borrowed a pencil from the waiter, and wrote a few words on the back of a card. This she wrapped in something crisp and yellow below the level of the table and passed it to the waiter, folding her small hand over his.

“A new leader,” she murmured into her cigarette. “How challenging!”

Presently she got up to dance once more with her friend. A tender sobbing filtered through her consciousness.

“Do you recognize that?” she said. “It’s the Meditation from Thais.” And she added with a touch of bravado: “They’re playing it for me.”

“What a heavy title,” observed her partner. “You’d think they’d call it the Deep Thinkin’ Blues or something like that.”

As they passed Jones, baton in hand, he caught their eyes.

“Thanks,” smiled Mrs. Harry Werner cordially.

“Thank you,” he answered with a slight bow.

Every afternoon Zoe Werner stopped for luncheon at the Casa Madrid. The sands of the Albuquerque Playa knew her no more. Each day she drove nine miles to and fro for the cold asparagus tips and convent-like gloom of the Madrid. Is it reasonable to suppose she knew her own mind? Leaving her car, she entered and looked about her, accustoming her eyes to the cool shadowiness that pervaded the place. The floor was of pinkish sandstone and the patio partly open to the sky. There were plants and vines and Moorish water jars. Zoe Werner sat down at a nearby table at which Jones had been seated for some time past. They shook hands above the sapphire glassware.

“Wasn’t the water chilly this morning?” she remarked casually. “Have you had your dip yet?”

“She comes here every day at this time,” a Dillingham chorus girl confided to her chum. “He’s the orchestra leader at the Albuquerque Playa.”

“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,” observed the chum philosophically.

“I wish you wouldn’t insist on this place,” Jones was saying. “It’s frightfully expensive.”

“Don’t let that trouble your little heart.”

His eyes followed a mountain of cotton batting drifting painlessly over the sky in the direction of the West Indies. She had a flair for romance. She went over his face inch by inch like a surveyor.

After a while they renewed a discussion that had been going on between them for several days in succession.

“Then you want me to believe you are married?” she smiled.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be right somehow,” she cried impatiently.

“Haven’t I a right to be married as well as the next fellow?” he said dryly.

She smiled into the corrugated blue glass. “You can’t convince me.”

“I can’t, eh?”

They laughed foolishly into each other’s faces.

“Not even if I were to tell you my wife’s right down here with me?”

Zoe Werner choked with mirth. “Absurd!” she cried. In the emotional intensity of the effort to convince her, he took one of her hands. Neither of them appeared to notice.

“She has charge of the perfumery counter at the Albuquerque.”

Her fire-red lips were ever so slightly ajar. She seemed puzzled. She drew her hand away. “I think I know who you mean. That baby-faced thing with the boy haircut.”

“She wears a ring around her throat, an alabaster ring I gave her.”

Zoe Werner made a little fist. “I’m going to ask her,” she cried rapturously.

He meanwhile was fumbling with the inside pocket of his coat and growing red in the face. She watched him with an expression that seemed to say “Yes, I know.”

“Try one of the side pockets,” she suggested, looking down shyly.

He put his hand in and felt a small envelope that had been left open.

Mrs. Harry Werner had sent down to say that she wanted to make a selection of toiletries. Sharlee was shown into her suite at ten the next day, carrying a tray loaded with flasks and vials strapped over her shoulders.

“Send her in here to me,” directed Mrs. Werner from an inner room. She was on the bed but not in it, her ankles crossed on the coverlet. She wore her hair in a Grecian knot at the back of her neck.

She looked Sharlee over. “What have you got there?” she asked indifferently.

“Coty, Caron, Bourjois—”

“I, ah, was speaking to your husband yesterday evening,” proceeded Mrs. Werner without stopping to listen.

Sharlee nodded obediently. “He leads the orchestra.”

“You both of you seem so well bred,” observed Mrs. Werner. “I can’t quite grasp the situation.”

“I came down here to be near him. Everyone has to make a living, you know.”

“Yes, we lunch together quite often,” mused Mrs. Werner dreamily.

“I know,” said Sharlee spiritedly. “Mr. Jones tells me everything.”

Mrs. Werner treated her to an indulgent smile. “Not quite everything, my dear.”

Sharlee looked at her as though a rattlesnake had just bitten her. She could hardly wait until she got away.

“Will that be all?”

“Yes, that will be all.”

That evening Gerry stood with his back to the dance floor, shaking spasmodically first one leg then the other, resting the baton against his waistcoat, leading his saxophones like whimpering panthers. And all about him danced Zoe Werner, a thing possessed, devils in her eyes, a bacchante brave with silver and with jet. They played Poor little rich girl, Poor little rich girl, Better take care. Diluted breezes came in under the scalloped awnings. This pitiful music drowned out the sound of the sea for a little while only, but the sound of the sea would last forever.

“Look, Gerry, how’s this for real dancing?” Her hair began uncoiling and then all at once tumbled headlong down her back. She gave a hilarious scream of dismay and ran out of the room.

A little while after that there was an intermission, and Sharlee met Gerry on his way out through the lobby for a breath of air.

“Gerry, I haven’t seen you all day.”

He murmured something about being called back.

“There’s loads of time,” she said. “You won’t have to play again for another half hour.”

He lit a cigarette with a trembling hand, but she could see that he wasn’t even thinking of her; he was all keyed up to the intrigue set for him, looking over her shoulder toward the elevators all the time.

“What?” he said absently.

“Gerry Jones,” she lamented in a peculiar sing-song, “you’re the talk of the season, you two. I’ve stood all I can. You’re the laughing-stock of this place—”