“Won’t you sit down, Annabelle? Don’t you like me even a little bit?”
She rubbed her hand through his hair and down across his face. “Of course I do, you little blue-eyed ninny… But can’t you see it’s everything driving me wild, all those old cats round the hotel talk about me as if I was a scarlet woman because I occasionally smoke a cigarette in my own room… Why, in England some of the most aristocratic women smoke right in public without anybody saying ‘boo’ to them… And then I’m worried about Dad; he’s sinking too much money in realestate. I think he’s losing his mind.”
“But there’s every indication of a big boom coming down here. It’ll be another Atlantic City in time.”
“Now look here, ’fess up, how many lots have been sold this month?”
“Well, not so many… But there are some important sales pending… There’s that corporation that’s going to build the new hotel.”
“Dad’ll be lucky if he gets fifty cents out on the dollar… and he keeps telling me how rattlebrained I am. He’s a physician and not a financial wizard and he ought to realize it. It’s all right for somebody like you who has nothing to lose and a way to make in the world to be messing around in realestate… As for that fat Colonel I don’t know whether he’s a fool or a crook.”
“What kind of a doctor is your father?”
“Do you mean to say you never heard of Dr. Strang? He’s the best known nose and throat specialist in Philadelphia… Oh, it’s so cute…” She kissed him on the cheek “… and ignorant…” she kissed him again… “and pure.” “I’m not so pure,” he said quickly and looked at her hard in the eyes. Their faces began to blush looking at each other. She let her head sink slowly on his shoulder.
His heart was pounding. He was dizzy with the smell of her hair and the perfume she wore. He pulled her to her feet with his arm round her shoulders. Tottering a little, her leg against his leg, the stiffness of her corset against his ribs, her hair against his face, he pulled her through the little livingroom into the bedroom and locked the door behind them. Then he kissed her as hard as he could on the lips. She sat down on the bed and began to take off her dress, a little coolly he thought, but he’d gone too far to pull back. When she took off her corset she flung it in the corner of the room. “There,” she said. “I hate the beastly things.” She got up and walked towards him in her chemise and felt for his face in the dark. “What’s the matter, darling?” she whispered fiercely, “Are you afraid of me?”
Everything was much simpler than Johnny expected. They giggled together while they were dressing. Walking back along the beach to the Ocean House, he kept thinking: “Now she’ll have to marry me.”
In September a couple of cold northeasters right after Labor Day emptied the Ocean House and the cottages. The Colonel talked bigger about the coming boom and his advertising campaign, and drank more. Johnny took his meals with him now instead of at Mrs. Ames’ boardinghouse. The booklet was finished and approved and Johnny had made a couple of trips to Philadelphia with the text and the photographs to get estimates from printers. Running through Wilmington on the train without getting off there gave him a pleasant feeling of independence. Dr. Strang looked more and more worried and talked about protecting his investments. They had not talked of Johnny’s engagement to his daughter, but it seemed to be understood. Annabelle’s moods were unaccountable. She kept saying she was dying of boredom. She teased and nagged at Johnny continually. One night he woke suddenly to find her standing beside the bed. “Did I scare you?” she said. “I couldn’t sleep… Listen to the surf.” The wind was shrilling round the cottage and a tremendous surf roared on the beach. It was almost daylight before he could get her to get out of bed and go back to the hotel. “Let ’em see me… I don’t care,” she said. Another time when they were walking along the beach she was taken with nausea and he had to stand waiting while she was sick behind a sanddune, then he supported her, white and trembling, back to the Ocean House. He was worried and restless. On one of his trips to Philadelphia he went round to The Public Ledger to see if he could get a job as a reporter.
One Saturday afternoon he sat reading the paper in the lobby of the Ocean House. There was no one else there, most of the guests had left. The hotel would close the fifteenth. Suddenly he found himself listening to a conversation. The two bellhops had come in and were talking in low voices on the bench against the wall.
“Well, I got mahn awright this summer, damned if I didn’t, Joe.”
“I would of too if I hadn’t gotten sick.”
“Didn’t I tell you not to monkey round with that Lizzie? Man, I b’lieve every sonofabitch in town slep’ with that jane, not excludin’ niggers.”
“Say, did you… You know the blackeyed one? You said you would.”
Johnny froze. He held the paper rigid in front of him.
The bellhop gave out a low whistle. “Hotstuff,” he said. “Jeez, what these society dames gits away with’s got me beat.”
“Didye, honest?”
“Well, not exactly…’Fraid I might ketch somethin’. But that Frenchman did… Jeez, he was in her room all the time.”
“I know he was. I caught him onct.” They laughed. “They’d forgot to lock the door.”
“Was she all neked?”
“I guess she was… under her kimono… He’s cool as a cucumber and orders icewater.”
“Whah didn’t ye send up Mr. Greeley?”
“Hell, why should I? Frenchman wasn’t a bad scout. He gave me five bucks.”
“I guess she can do what she goddam pleases. Her dad about owns this dump, they tell me, him an ole Colonel Wedgewood.”
“I guess that young guy in the realestate office is gettin’ it now… looks like he’d marry her.”
“Hell, I’d marry her maself if a girl had that much kale.”
Johnny was in a cold sweat. He wanted to get out of the lobby without their seeing him. A bell rang and one of the boys ran off. He heard the other one settling himself on the bench. Maybe he was reading a magazine or something. Johnny folded up the paper quietly and walked out onto the porch. He walked down the street without seeing anything. For a while he thought he’d go down to the station and take the first train out and throw the whole business to ballyhack, but there was the booklet to get out, and there was a chance that if the boom did come he might get in on the ground floor, and this connection with money and the Strangs; opportunity knocks but once at a young man’s door. He went back to his cottage and locked himself in his bedroom. He stood a minute looking at himself in the glass of the bureau. The neatly parted light hair, the cleancut nose and chin; the image blurred. He found he was crying. He threw himself face down on the bed and sobbed.
When he went up to Philadelphia the next time to read proof on the booklet:
OCEAN CITY (Maryland)
VACATIONLAND SUPREME
He also took up a draft of the wedding invitations to be engraved:
Dr. Alonso B. Strang
announces the marriage of his daughter
Annabelle Marie
to Mr. J. Ward Moorehouse
at Saint Stephen’s Protestant Episcopal Church,
Germantown, Pennsylvania, on November fifteenth