Evening Star Newspaper, August 1, 1937, Page 79

Avgust 1, 1937 The prettiest girl in town! It was funny the way he had said it. Not like a compliment but like a statement about the sun always rising in the east or something. Like it was just a fact and he knew it as well as anybody. “Well, if you saw me,” she said, “why didn’t you ever speak to me?”’ He laughed without bitterness. “You wouldn’t want to be bothered speaking to me."” “Bothered?’”’ She thought this a neat and gentle rebuke, but he was not impressed. “Yeah, bothered. You out on a date with a guy in a swell car, having to wave to a guy driving a truck.” She stood up and tried to wither him with a glance. “I am not,” she said, ‘‘a mere creature of snobbery. And I'll have you know you can’t insult me this way.” “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said in- dulgently. ““I only said something that’s true; just because it’s the way things are.” Her heart was beating fast with an inexpli- cable anger and embarrassment. He had no right to act so calm and lordly; he had no right to talk to her like this. She’d show him! “What are you doing tonight?” she asked disagreeably. “‘Going home to the ‘Y’ and read a book.” “Well!” She was growing quite sarcastic now. “If you could postpone the book, you might take me to the movies.” There was silence. He stared at her, his expression making her feel suddenly ashamed, though she didn’t know why. Then he said: “] haven't got a car.” “I believe the street cars are still running,” she plunged on in her high and mighty man- ner. “And I haven’t been informed if the neighborhood movie five blocks from here has burned down. You logk strong enough to walk that staggering distance.” THIS “Okay.” His voice was toneless. “I'll be here at eight.” He looked down at the ground, his mouth set and stern. There was something about his mouth that made her uncomfortable. She shifted her gaze lower. The leaves flicked shadows on his white apron and color flooded in her cheeks, because she could not quell the wish that he might be allowed to deliver Bailey’s groceries without the apron. *“All right,” she said to him. “I'll be ready at eight, and we’ll walk down to the movie.” She wanted him to spend as little money as possible. He must be very poor. He nodded and turned away toward the gate. He wouldn’t look at her. “Goodby!”” she said to his back. She hadn’t been mad like this in heavens knew how long. She’d really never been mad in exactly this way in her whole life. That night at the dinner table, she realized she would have to tell her mother and father about going out with Jim Rainey. It was better to tell them than to have them find out for themselves. And if they dared smile or even get a funny look on their faces — “I’'m going to the movies with Jim Rainey,”’ she announced in a defiant rush of words. “Darling, how nice!”” Rosalie Cummings said. “You know Jim Rainey?”’ Isabelle asked cautiously. “Of course we know Jim,” her mother began and her father broke in: “A fine boy. Taken care of himself ever since his aunt died when he was little more than a kid. She was all the family he had — a nice woman; clerked in Berger’s store.”’ *Oh.” Isabelle’s tone was flat. She hadn’t expected this. And why were they both look- ing at her as if they didn’t understand her, and still as if they were awfully pleased with her? Isabelle was ready when Jim arrived promptly at eight. She could not greet him with the regal manner she had practiced all afternoon, for her parents were on hand to greet him too. Isabelle made herself incon- spicuous and watched while WEEK he talked with them. She did not listen, con- cerned as she was with his appearance and her vehement denial that it mattered to her at all. She was merely curious to see how he looked without — well, how he looked in other clothes than the ones he worked in. He didn’t look yokel, she saw, but he certainly wasn’t a fashion plate. He looked Main Street, at least from the neck down. His clothes were sort of pinched and dreary — except for his tie. It was horribly bright. Embarrassment and an emotion she did not recognize as pity, made her acutely uncomfortable. She imag- ined him putting on the tie and thinking he was getting dressed up for a festive evening. The evening proved anything but gay. Isabelle assumed her regal manner the mo- ment they left the house, and he retreated to a remote and indulgent amusement which she considered revoltingly insulting. After the motion picture was over, he asked: “Would you like to go somewhere and get a soda or something?”’ “No, thank you.” She could save him spending that much money, anyway. When they reached her house, he stopped at the steps. . “Won't you come in?”’ she asked, discard- ing her regal manner. ‘“We can hunt the ice box for something to eat.” “No, thank you. I'd better be going on.” She wondered why his mouth was suddenly just a tight line across his face, like he was mad or hurt or something. Heavens, she’'d only been trying to be hospitable. “Well, thank you for a lovely evening,” she said. “Thank you.” She didn’t like the way he’d said that. It implied everything he had done to insult her in the first place. And that he could not get away with. He was going to have another date with her. And this time he was going to ask for it. They stood looking vaguely past each other. At last his gaze came to her and found her eyes, enormous and shyly pleading. “What about day after tomorrow night, at eight?” he said. She could tell from the way he looked that he hadn’t meant to ask her. He looked sur- prised and sort of trapped, yet he looked sort of happy. ; “I'd love it,” she said, and ran away from him up the steps. For his date, he took her downtown to the Ritz-Imperial Theater; and Isabelle suffered. Of course, she wanted to go, but there’d be so many explanations if she met any of the girls — introductions and explanations and all. Besides, it was terrible for him to spend forty cents apiece for tickets and twenty cents for street-car fare, when they could’ve gone to the neighborhood movie just as well. After- wards they went to the Tanglewood Grill for a sandwich. She couldn’t eat but half of hers for thinking how terrible it was for him to throw his money away, and for looking around to see if anyone she knew came into the grill. After that evening, there was no longer anything withheld or remote in his manner. Every morning he would find her curled up in one of the chairs under the big tree. When he had to move on with his truck, she could AND NOW HERE SHE WAS, WITH THE GIRLS AND THE BOYS LOOK- ING AT HER LIKE A HERD OF SOMETHING WITH MOUTHS VERY WIDE OPEN Magazine Section 5 see that he was very sorry he could not linger. The back yard had now become a garden to Isabelle. She brought out cretonne cushions for the chairs, and noted each new zinnia that blossomed at the edge of the walk to the kitchen. Mamie, banging pots and pans in- side, rather destroyed the effect. But, Isabelle reflected, except for Mamie and the garage — and, thank heavens, it had a vine growing on it — the yard was sort of Englishy and sweet with the grass and the tree, the zinnias and the shrubs growing against the house. She began to long vaguely for frocks of dotted muslin, wide straw hats, and a tea table. Jim Rainey’s apron and his old shirt were not as real to her now as the tweeds in which her imagination clothed him, the tweeds and heavy brogues of a country gentleman. Bailey’s truck, rattling off down the alley, was a foreign roadster purring along a country lane, carrying Jim (whose name was Jeremy, or maybe Michael) away from a clandestine meeting with a girl (whose name was Jennifer) in a walled and secret garden. Well, maybe the garden wasn’t secret exactly. Mamie could look out from the kitchen; but the hedge was thick enough to shut out neighbors almost as well as a wall. Then the gentle excitement of this remem- bered fragment from an English novel was shattered. Isabelle had asked Jim to ‘‘drop around”” later — it was his afternoon off — and he had just clamored happily away in the truck when it happened. Kay Oliver’s voice called from the kitchen: * Jeepers creepers! What goes on here?”’ Isabelle jumped and pretended she hadn’t, and stopped looking misty-eyed. Kay, with Susie Clayton at her heels, came out of the kitchen, the screen door banging behind them. ; “For gosh’ sake!” Kay said. “Mamie tells me this goes on day in and day out.” Isabelle regarded Susie and Kay with a conspicuous lack of interest. They were simply too disgusting. And oh, heavens, what was she going to say to them? Susie Clayton asked sweetly: * ‘Any port in time of storm,’ darling? Or do you prefer: ‘Half a loaf is better than none’? ” “I prefer,” Isabelle stated languidly, ‘“‘not to be talked to inf riddles.” “He’s handsome, all right,” Kay said. ‘“There’s no riddle about that.” “Or his apron,” Susie said. She smiled at Isabelle. “Does he wear it all the time?”’ ““How much longer is this side-splitting wit going to continue?”’ Boredom in every line of her face, Isabelle looked from Kay to Susie. “But, darling,” they shrieked in unison, ‘‘Bailey’s delivery boy!” ““You are the most un-American two people I have ever known — snobs of the first water,”’ she said; and added with the sudden anger of a rabbit at bay: ‘‘Besides, just what affair is it of yours who I know?”’ “It’s certainly your affair, my sweet,” Susie said; and Kay swallowed down her laughter. “‘But we hope it won’t keep you away from the club tomorrow night.” “Why should it?”’ Kay said to Isabelle. “Bring him along. The boys would just love to see him, I bet.” “The boys?”’ Isabelle’s voice was faint. “Wally, Cliff and Ken and the rest of the gang,” Kay explained, as if Isabelle were no longer the ideal of each of the gentlemen named. ‘“My mother met Wally’s mother at market this morning, and she said Wally had telegraphed they were coming home because the fishing is bad, they're all sick of their own cooking, and the insects are eating them alive when they aren’t eating the insects.” ‘““We thought,” Susie said, “it would be rather nice if we girls got together and put on a casual little brawl at the country club for them.” . “How amusing,” Isabelle murmured. “I'd love to be there.” Her look dared them to suggest again Jim Rainey’s being there with her. Everything was a blurred panic to her now. How had she ever gotten herself into this, this — why, this was verging on disaster! Kay and Susie would certainly lose no time in spreading their vile version of things to every girl in town, and it would be the first thing they’d tell the boys, even before they said, “Hello, did you have a good time?”” Well, Isabelle would be the first to get to the club tomorrow night and she’d spike that one gun by telling her own version first. She’d have one worked out by then. As for her date with Jim Rainey, she’d have to break it. (Continved on page 13)