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

Wally was hopping around like some funny little three-legged animal. He went down gradually like a corkscrew going into the neck of a bottle. Then he straightened up and the music stopped sharply.

Connie was waiting right beside him. She threw both her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Bless your little soul!” she cried ecstatically.

“Bless both my little soles,” he panted.

Mimi Travers was talking very animatedly to the orchestra leader. Everyone was watching her curiously. “Hurry up, make up your mind,” growled Connie under her breath.

Finally Mimi stood up and took the leader by the arm as though they were going to head a cotillion together. “Miss Travers wishes me to announce,” intoned that individual, “that the prize goes to Mr. Wallace Walters as winner of this contest. Will Mr. Walters kindly step this way?”

“Boy, oh bay-bee!” hissed Connie, and she pinched him on the arm. “Do you get that?”

There was an explosion of handclapping. Wally made his way across the floor from group to group, showered with complimentary remarks. Rose and Myrtle and Lily came over to congratulate him — not that they were any the less envious.

“I liked it!” said Rose.

It was a cake eater’s triumph. But Wally, who had had many such moments in the course of his career, was thinking of Mimi and her castle of dreams. They were standing face to face now. He could see a golden flame quivering in the depths of her heliotrope eyes. She handed him the ice-cold silver cup and for a moment their warm fingertips touched over its frosty surface.

“Good luck,” she said. “You did beautifully.”

“Thank you,” he answered. “Glad you liked it.” He bowed from the hips.

“Hold it up so everyone can see it,” she said, taking in the entire assemblage at a glance.

When it was all over, he found himself seated with Mimi at one of the little tables, somehow. And on the table there was an empty glass with two broken straws in it, and someone’s rhinestone purse, and a string of blue tickets. Mimi extracted a perfumed cigaret from a small tortoise-shell case and moistened it with her lips. Now almost anyone at all could have told Mimi that smoking was against the rule, but it so happened that the unpleasant task fell upon Wally.

“I don’t think they let you do that here,” he mentioned as casually as he was able.

Mimi didn’t like being told what not to do. “Let you do what — smoke?” she demanded coldly.

He nodded dolefully and made an unpleasant face.

“Oh, yes they do!” she assured him. “They do me at any rate.”

He looked rather doubtful and shrugged his shoulders, having had more than one fair companion separated from her nicotine just when she was beginning to enjoy it. “Well,” he said, “if you think so, go ahead—”

“I don’t think so. I know so,” remarked the fiery Mimi. “I’ll tell you what; call the proprietor and we’ll see.”

He tried to grin his way out of it but this time Mimi was out for blood — that and publicity. “Very well,” she said, “then I will!” She stood up and beckoned. “Call Mr. Nathan,” she told one of the hostesses.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Nathan a moment later. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Yes,” said Mimi in a clear voice. “I’d like to smoke this cigaret. Have you a light by any chance?” She stared at him defiantly.

Mr. Nathan saw a neat little sign tacked against a post. It read “Absolutely No Smoking.” But “Certainly, certainly,” said Mr. Nathan, and dug a little gold lighter out of his pocket. When he tried to light it, though, it shed sparks all over the place.

“Be careful of my dress,” cautioned Mimi sharply. Wally, sensing his opportunity, whipped out an everyday case of matches and accomplished the thing in no time at all.

“Thanks,” she said, with a sullen look at the proprietor.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with it,” he apologized. “It never stalled like this before.”

“No,” she agreed cynically, “never.”

“Something must be wrong with the tinder,” he mumbled to himself as he moved off with his neck bent over it. Wally and Mimi looked at one another and smiled pityingly.

“Isn’t he the wet one!” said Wally. “He’s dripping,” she agreed.

At this juncture Connie appeared before them with a decided pout on her face.

“I’m ready to go now, cake,” she announced, pulling the rhinestone bag from underneath Mimi’s nose.

“Well,” he said ungraciously, “and what am I supposed to do — break out in a rash?” And Mimi, guessing that the dance tickets were also Connie’s property, pushed them angrily off the table with her elbow. They fell to the floor.

“Say, look out what you’re doing,” snapped Connie, bending over to pick them up.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mimi haughtily.

“You certainly should,” Connie told her. She turned to Wally. “Well, make up your mind,” she advised him.

“What’s all the rush about?” he remarked. “What do you think you are, my time-table? Wise up to yourself.”

“All right, cake,” she said easily, almost tenderly. “You’ll get over it in time.”

She turned her back on the two of them. At the door Mimi saw her crumple the tickets in her fist and throw them away from her. But Wally only had eyes for his Mimi. She was the same and yet she was not the same. The clown make-up was gone. She was neat and restful to the eyes. She had lavender silk stockings; she had a gold ring around her ankle; she had a bang slicked down to the bridge of her nose. But he couldn’t forget how she had looked with the little terrier clasped in her arms. He couldn’t forget that she had stood there on the stage and everyone had laughed at her while her heart was slowly breaking. He kept telling himself that her castle of dreams had come tumbling down just as his had, over and over again. Therefore they were brother and sister under the skin.

“Don’t take it so hard,” laughed Mimi, thinking he was worried about Connie. “She’ll come back; they all do.” She stood up, and she was very tall and slim. “Afraid I’ll have to go now.”

“Can I see you to the door?” he asked.

“Only to the door?” she said, and her eyelashes swept him good-naturedly up and down.

“I meant to your door.”

And as they went out, he could hear the band playing softly and sweetly:

The following evening the fun-loving Mimi Travers, of New York and Philly but still not of points west, was the center of interest of a very lively group of friends who had gathered in her dressing room before the beginning of the show.

“He thinks,” she was telling them, “I’m really the way I’m supposed to be when I sing that song. Sort of dumb and weepy, know what I mean?”

“He must be goofy,” they chorused. “What a sap. What a bone.”

“He is,” Mimi assured them. “Probably he likes them that way. So when I found that out, I started right in to emote. Last night when we were coming out of the dance hall a stray cat came along and began rubbing itself against me so I broke down and cried for his benefit—”

Screams of laughter drowned her voice. The idea of Mimi crying about anything seemed to strike them as being extremely funny.

“You should have heard me,” she protested. “All I kept repeating was ‘What’s the use, what’s the use, ’s a cruel world,’ and he dried my eyes and called me his Cinderella. How’s that for a riot?”

“Horses!” they gasped hysterically, burying their faces on one another’s shoulders. “Oh, you Red Riding Hood! Little Eva!”