“I know what you’re up to and I know you’re doing it to be kind. But life doesn’t start all over again when a man talks to an old love on a spring night.”
“I’m not doing it to be kind.”
He looked at her closely.
“You lie, Diamond Dick. But—even if you loved me now it wouldn’t matter. I’m not like I was five years ago—I’m a different person, can’t you see? I’d rather have a drink this minute than all the moonlight in the world. I don’t even think I could love a girl like you anymore.”
She nodded.
“I see.”
“Why wouldn’t you marry me five years ago, Diamond Dick?”
“I don’t know,” she said after a minute’s hesitation. “I was wrong.”
“Wrong!” he exclaimed bitterly. “You talk as if it had been guesswork, like betting on white or red.”
“No, it wasn’t guesswork.”
There was a silence for a minute—then she turned to him with shining eyes.
“Won’t you kiss me, Charley?” she asked simply.
He started.
“Would it be so hard to do?” she went on. “I’ve never asked a man to kiss me before.”
With an exclamation he jumped off the wall.
“I’m going to the city,” he said.
“Am I—such bad company as all that?”
“Diana.” He came close to her and put his arms around her knees and looked into her eyes. “You know that if I kiss you I’ll have to stay. I’m afraid of you—afraid of your kindness, afraid to remember anything about you at all. And I couldn’t go from a kiss of yours to—another girl.”
“Good-bye,” she said suddenly.
He hesitated for a moment; then he protested helplessly.
“You put me in a terrible position.”
“Good-bye.”
“Listen Diana——”
“Please go away.”
He turned and walked quickly toward the house.
Diana sat without moving while the night breeze made cool puffs and ruffles on her chiffon dress. The moon had risen higher now, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjos on the lawn.
Alone at last—she was alone at last. There was not even a ghost left now to drift with through the years. She might stretch out her arms as far as they could reach into the night without fear that they would brush friendly cloth. The thin silver had worn off from all the stars.
She sat there for almost an hour, her eyes fixed upon the points of light on the other shore. Then the wind ran cold fingers along her silk stockings so she jumped off the wall, landing softly among the bright pebbles of the sand.
“Diana!”
Breck was coming toward her, flushed with the excitement of his party.
“Diana! I want you to meet a man in my class at New Haven. His brother took you to a prom three years ago.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve got a headache; I’m going upstairs.”
Coming closer Breck saw that her eyes were glittering with tears.
“Diana, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Something’s the matter.”
“Nothing, Breck. But oh, take care, take care! Be careful who you love.”
“Are you in love with—Charley Abbot?”
She gave a strange, hard little laugh.
“Me? Oh, God, no, Breck! I don’t love anybody. I wasn’t made for anything like love. I don’t even love myself anymore. It was you I was talking about. That was advice, don’t you understand?”
She ran suddenly toward the house, holding her skirts high out of the dew. Reaching her own room she kicked off her slippers and threw herself on the bed in the darkness.
“I should have been careful,” she whispered to herself. “All my life I’ll be punished for not being more careful. I wrapped all my love up like a box of candy and gave it away.”
Her window was open and outside on the lawn the sad, dissonant horns were telling a melancholy story. A blackamoor was two-timing the lady to whom he had pledged faith. The lady warned him, in so many words, to stop fooling ’round Sweet Jelly-Roll, even though Sweet Jelly-Roll was the color of pale cinnamon——
The phone on the table by her bed rang imperatively. Diana took up the receiver.
“Yes.”
“One minute please, New York calling.”
It flashed through Diana’s head that it was Charley—but that was impossible. He must be still on the train.
“Hello.” A woman was speaking. “Is this the Dickey residence?”
“Yes.”
“Well, is Mr. Charles Abbot there?”
Diana’s heart seemed to stop beating as she recognized the voice—it was the blonde girl of the café.
“What?” she asked dazedly.
“I would like to speak to Mr. Abbot at once please.”
“You—you can’t speak to him. He’s gone.”
There was a pause. Then the girl’s voice, suspiciously:
“He isn’t gone.”
Diana’s hands tightened on the telephone.
“I know who’s talking,” went on the voice, rising to a hysterical note, “and I want to speak to Mr. Abbot. If you’re not telling the truth, and he finds out, there’ll be trouble.”
“Be quiet!”
“If he’s gone, where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he isn’t at my apartment in half an hour I’ll know you’re lying and I’ll——”
Diana hung up the receiver and tumbled back on the bed—too weary of life to think or care. Out on the lawn the orchestra was singing and the words drifted in her window on the breeze.
“Lis-sen while I—get you tole:
Stop foolin’ ’roun’ sweet—Jelly-Roll——”
She listened. The negro voices were wild and loud—life was in that key, so harsh a key. How abominably helpless she was! Her appeal was ghostly, impotent, absurd, before the barbaric urgency of this other girl’s desire.
“Just treat me pretty, just treat me sweet
Cause I possess a fo’ty-fo’ that don’t repeat.”
The music sank to a weird, threatening minor. It reminded her of something—some mood in her own childhood—and a new atmosphere seemed to open up around her. It was not so much a definite memory as it was a current, a tide setting through her whole body.
Diana jumped suddenly to her feet and groped for her slippers in the darkness. The song was beating in her head and her little teeth set together in a click.