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

I can no longer recall too many of the particulars of the party, at this distance, just its overall generalities. It was about average for its time and for its age group, I guess: like any other party then, and probably still pretty much like any such party now, given a few insignificant variations in tricks of dress and turns of dance and turns of speech. The basic factor remains the same: the initial skirmishing of very young men and girls in preparation for the pairing off of later life. Learning the rules for later on. The not-quite-fully mature, trying to act the part of grown-ups. No, that’s not wholly accurate, either. For we were enclosed in our own world, and therefore we were what we seemed to ourselves to be, in every sense of the word. We reacted to one another on that plane, and that made it a fact. Those outside that world were not the real grown-ups, they were simply aliens, and their viewpoint had no validity among us. The wall of the generations.

She had a fleeting moment or two of uncertainty, of faltering self-confidence, as we stood facing the door, waiting for it to be opened. I could tell it by the whiteness of her face, by the strained fixity of her eyes. Then as the room spread itself out before us like a slowly opening, luminous, yellow and ivory fan, alive with moving figures and flecks of disparate color — the party — her lack of assurance passed and she swept forward buoyantly, almost with a lilt to her step, not more than two or three fingers lightly touching the turn of my arm in token indication that I was her escort. And from then on, all the rest of the evening, that was the word to describe her: buoyant. Whether she was standing or sitting still, dancing or just moving about without music; whatever she was doing. She seemed to skim over the floor instead of being held to it like the rest of us.

She was well liked at once, it was easy to see that. All the very first words that followed my pronunciation of her name each time were warm and friendly and interested and showed a real eagerness on the speaker’s part to become better acquainted with her, over and above the formal politeness that the occasion indicated. We weren’t much on formal politeness anyway, at our ages.

I had expected the boys to like her, but the girls very patently did too. For a boy will like almost any girl except the most objectionable, that’s part of his make-up, but to be liked by her own kind is the real test of popularity for a girl. Within an hour or two of the start of the affair, Vera was a beckoned-to and sought-after and arms-about-waists member of each successive little group and coterie that went inside to the bedroom to giggle and chatter and powder its collective noses away from the boys for a few moments’ respite. She was as incandescent as a lighted lamp swinging from the ceiling of an old-fashioned ship’s cabin and darting its rays into the farthest corners.

But Janet was the big surprise of it all. I had fully expected her to be her usual prickly self, and though for my own part this wouldn’t have fazed me in the least (I even welcomed it, for it put us on a more even footing of mutual ill will, of verbal give-and-take with no holds barred), I had intended to do all I could to protect Vera from her quills. But it turned out not to be necessary at all. Janet seemed to take to her from the moment that she first stepped forward to welcome her, sizing her up in one quick, comprehensive, head-to-foot look, the kind even very young girls her age are fully capable of giving. She obviously liked her, whatever her reasons. From then on, she made her the exception to the entire group. She was quite simple, natural, unaffected, cordial, and hospitable toward her, with just a touch of self-effacement. Her smiles were elfin, but at least they were real smiles. Her remarks had no rusty razor blades embedded in them. A new Janet I had never seen before began to peer shyly forth.

I caught myself thinking as I watched her: Well, I’ll be darned. Sometimes you know people for years, and then suddenly you find out you don’t really know them at all. Somebody new comes along who brings out another side to them that you didn’t even suspect was there, simply because it never had been shown to you before. This is how she would be if she had really liked anyone before. She feels about all of us exactly as I feel about her; she’s known us all too long and well, and she sees only our unappealing qualities by now.

We had dinner first, and then afterward we danced. We played records on the phonograph and danced to them: “Kalua,” which was just going out, and “April Showers,” which was just coming in, and others which were in-between. The phonographs of the day were upright consoles, generically called victrolas, although other manufacturers in addition to the Victor Company marketed them. The average one still had to be cranked by hand, although a few of the costlier ones could now be operated on electrical current, but that was as far as mechanization had gone. They stopped after just one record each time, and a new one had to be put on by hand. We were uncomplaining, though. Our older brothers and sisters, or at least the younger ones among our parents, had had to rely for the most part on player pianos and hand-played pianos, and squeaky, open-topped little turntables with tremendous tulip-horn amplifiers, when they wanted to dance in their homes.

We had dinner and we danced, and that’s all there really was to the party.

We were the last ones to leave, Vera and I. I think we would have stayed on even longer if it weren’t for the fact that we were now reduced (from my point of view, at least) to being alone with the unpleasing Janet. Vera seemed not to mind how long we stayed. She was so keyed up and animated from the hours-long peak of stimulation whipped up by the party (just like an actress is after an opening night, I suppose) that she kept talking away without a let-up, as if there were still dozens of people there and not just three of us.

Janet, whom I had frequently known to be quite ungracious and even blunt in her dismissals (she had once said to a whole group of us, holding the door back at full width, “All right, everybody out; go home now”), seemed to enjoy having her stay. She sat beside Vera, an arm about her shoulder, nibbling at something from the refreshment table, drinking in everything she said with little nods and grins of accord. But it was close to one o’clock, which was still a fairly raffish hour for us at that stage of our lives, and I finally suggested to Vera she’d better let me take her home.

“Oh, what a lovely party that was!” she burst out as we emerged from the glowingly warm building into the cold, bracing night air, which immediately formed little wisps of steamy breath in front of our faces. “I never dreamed I’d have such a good time. My head’s still swimming from it.” And while I was busy scanning the street for a cab, she spread her coat and dress out wide between her outstretched hands and executed a succession of little whirling dance steps, waltz-turns, there on the sidewalk, turning, reversing, then turning back again.

Back at her house, we hustled all the way up those six flights of stairs, and then stopped suddenly almost at the top, and threw our arms around each other, as much in high spirits as in love. We stood there, and we kissed, and we whispered so low that no one standing right beside us could have heard, even if there had been someone standing right beside us.

Something more could have happened; she would not have opposed it. She was stirred by the party, intoxicated by her success at it, and this would have been part of that, and that would have been part of this. There is an unspoken understanding, a wordless language, at certain times, and even a youngster such as I was then, can sense and translate it. The half-turn her head made against my shoulder, lying inert, passive, submissive, the way her hand dropped off my arm and hung down loose, the play of her breath as soft as the ebb and flow of breath-mist on a mirror, against my face, were words enough, no real ones were needed. This is part of the race’s instinct.