It was a hot August, the mornings still, the afternoons piling up sultry into thundershowers. Except when there were clients to show about the scorched sandlots and pinebarrens laid out into streets, Johnny sat in the office alone under the twoflanged electric fan. He was dressed in white flannels and a pink tennis shirt rolled up to the elbows, drafting the lyrical description of Ocean City (Maryland) that was to preface the advertising booklet that was the Colonel’s pet idea: “The lifegiving surges of the broad Atlantic beat on the crystalline beaches of Ocean City (Maryland)… the tonic breath of the pines brings relief to the asthmatic and the consumptive… nearby the sportsman’s paradise of Indian River spreads out its broad estuary teeming with…” In the afternoon the Colonel would come in sweating and wheezing and Johnny would read him what he had written and he’d say, “Bully, ma boy, bully,” and suggest that it be all done over. And Johnny would look up a new batch of words in a dogeared “Century Dictionary” and start off again.
It would have been a fine life except that he was in love. Evenings he couldn’t keep away from the Ocean House. Each time he walked up the creaking porch steps past the old ladies rocking and fanning with palmleaf fans, and went through the screen doors into the lobby he felt sure that this time he’d find Annabelle Marie alone, but each time the Frenchman was with her as smiling and cool and potbellied as ever. They both made a fuss over Johnny and petted him like a little dog or a precocious child; she taught him to dance the “Boston,” and the Frenchman, who it turned out was a duke or a baron or something, kept offering him drinks and cigars and scented cigarettes. Johnny was shocked to death when he found out that she smoked, but somehow it went with dukes and Newport and foreign travel and that sort of thing. She used some kind of musky perfume and the smell of it and the slight rankness of cigarettesmoke in her hair made him dizzy and feverish when he danced with her. Some nights he tried to tire out the Frenchman playing pool, but then she’d disappear to bed and he’d have to go off home cursing under his breath. While he undressed he could still feel a little tingle of musk in his nostrils. He was trying to make up a song:
By the moonlight sea
I pine for thee
Annabelle Marie…
Then it ’ud suddenly sound too damn silly and he’d stride up and down his little porch in his pajamas, with the mosquitoes shrilling about his head and the pound of the sea and the jeer of the dryflies and katydids in his ears, cursing being young and poor and uneducated and planning how he’d make a big enough pile to buy out every damn Frenchman; then he’d be the one she’d love and look up to and he wouldn’t care if she did have a few damn Frenchmen for mascots if she wanted them. He’d clench his fists and stride around the porch muttering, “By gum, I can do it.”
Then one evening he found Annabelle Marie alone. The Frenchman had gone on the noon train. She seemed glad to see Johnny, but there was obviously something on her mind. She had too much powder on her face and her eyes looked red; perhaps she’d been crying. It was moonlight. She put her hand on his arm, “Moorehouse, walk down the beach with me,” she said. “I hate the sight of all these old hens in rockingchairs.” On the walk that led across a scraggly lawn down to the beach they met Dr. Strang.
“What’s the matter with Rochevillaine, Annie?” he said. He was a tall man with a high forehead. His lips were compressed and he looked worried.
“He got a letter from his mother… She won’t let him.”
“He’s of age, isn’t he?”
“Dad, you don’t understand the French nobility… The family council won’t let him… They could tie up his income.”
“You’ll have enough for two… I told him that.”
“Oh, shut up about it, can’t you?…” She suddenly started to blubber like a child. She ran past Johnny and back to the hotel, leaving Johnny and Dr. Strang facing each other on the narrow boardwalk. Dr. Strang saw Johnny for the first time. “H’m… excuse us,” he said as he brushed past and walked with long strides up the walk, leaving Johnny to go down to the beach and look at the moon all by himself.
But the nights that followed Annabelle Marie did walk out along the beach with him and he began to feel that perhaps she hadn’t loved the Frenchman so much after all. They would go far beyond the straggling cottages and build a fire and sit side by side looking into the flame. Their hands sometimes brushed against each other as they walked; when she’d want to get to her feet he’d take hold of her two hands and pull her up towards him and he always planned to pull her to him and kiss her but he hadn’t the nerve. One night was very warm and she suddenly suggested they go in bathing. “But we haven’t our suits.” “Haven’t you ever been in without? It’s much better… Why, you funny boy, I can see you blushing even in the moonlight.” “Do you dare me?” “I doubledare you.”
He ran up the beach a way and pulled off his clothes and went very fast into the water. He didn’t dare look and only got a glimpse out of the corner of an eye of white legs and breasts and a wave spuming white at her feet. While he was putting his clothes on again he was wondering if he wanted to get married to a girl who’d go in swimming with a fellow all naked like that, anyway. He wondered if she’d done it with that damn Frenchman. “You were like a marble faun,” she said when he got back beside the fire where she was coiling her black hair round her head. She had hairpins in her mouth and spoke through them. “Like a very nervous marble faun… I got my hair wet.” He hadn’t intended to but he suddenly pulled her to him and kissed her. She didn’t seem at all put out but made herself little in his arms and put her face up to be kissed again. “Would you marry a feller like me without any money?” “I hadn’t thought of it, darling, but I might.”
“You’re pretty wealthy, I guess, and I haven’t a cent, and I have to send home money to my folks… but I have prospects.”
“What kind of prospects?” She pulled his face down and ruffled his hair and kissed him. “I’ll make good in this realestate game. I swear I will.” “Will it make good, poor baby?” “You’re not so much older’n me… How old are you, Annabelle?” “Well, I admit to twentyfour, but you mustn’t tell anybody, or about tonight or anything.” “Who would I be telling about it, Annabelle Marie?” Walking home, something seemed to be on her mind because she paid no attention to anything he said. She kept humming under her breath.
Another evening they were sitting on the porch of his cottage smoking cigarettes — he would occasionally smoke a cigarette now to keep her company — he asked her what it was worrying her. She put her hands on his shoulders and shook him: “Oh, Moorehouse, you’re such a fool… but I like it.” “But there must be something worrying you, Annabelle… You didn’t look worried the day we came down on the train together.” “If I told you… Gracious, I can imagine your face.” She laughed her hard gruff laugh that always made him feel uncomfortable. “Well, I wish I had the right to make you tell me… You ought to forget that damn Frenchman.” “Oh, you’re such a little innocent,” she said. Then she got up and walked up and down the porch.