Winner Take All Part 16

More than once she had dreaded that it would find her cheaply dramatic; that nervous sentiment would surprise her and break her down. Now she met it, unconcerned, without the slightest sense of shock. She had never doubted that Felicity would be anything but matter-of-fact and jaunty, right up to the end. Now it was the other girl who displayed unexpected feeling.

For Cecille had learned that morning that Perry was leaving at midnight for the South. With Felicity gone she realized how little chance there was of his ever returning again to frequent the apartment. And nothing else in the world much mattered. She was too deep sunk in misery even to try to dissemble her apathy. But Felicity had not forgotten a single night when she had waked to hear the other girl crying; she missed nothing of her present dejection.

"Well, I'm off!" This without even turning from the mirror.

Cecille failed to answer. She crossed the room and dropped heavily into a chair.

"We're catching the three-thirty this afternoon for the West."

Again silence for a while, and then a dry, strained question.

"Aren't you afraid?"

She'd made up her mind to ask at least that question. She had admitted to herself that she had to ask it. And her tone made Felicity wheel.

"Of what?" Felicity demanded, a little blank.

Cecille laughed. It was a woeful, croaking attempt at flippancy.

"Oh, the old line of stuff!" She had never before employed Felicity's brand of slang. It came unpleasantly from her tongue. "The wages of sin and all that sort of thing."

That brought Felicity across the room until she stood, hands bracketed on hips, above her.

"Don't you worry about me, Cele," she said slowly. "Don't you nor any one else spend any pennies buying extras, expecting to strike news of my violent and untimely end. Safety First; that's my maiden name. I let Dunham drive thirty-five when he's sober. When he isn't, I walk. And I'm going to be that careful about deep water that I'll bathe always under a shower. Don't you worry about me." She paused soberly.

"It's you," she stated, "I'm worried about."

It was Felicity who displayed feeling at the end.

She stood quite a while staring down at the other girl's bright hair.

Then with an air of definite purpose she drew up a chair for herself.

"I don't get you," she mused. "You're a queer kid.

". . . From the country?"

"I suppose so," Cecille admitted. "I didn't use to think so. I used to think we were quite--"

"That'll do," cut in Felicity. "I get it from that much description.

". . . Raised strict?"

"I guess so--pretty strict."

"Rigid church people?"

"Yes."

A little time of silence.

"Gee, that's tough!"

And Felicity's gravity at last had caught at the other girl's attention.

Slowly she looked up.

"Why?" she asked dully.

Felicity sat and studied her--pondered her. Felicity's face was harder than Cecille had ever seen it before, and infinitely more tender.

"I hate to leave you," she said. "I wouldn't mind so much if I could _get_ you. If I could once get it through my nut what you're waiting for--what you expect there's going to be in it for you--it wouldn't be so hard. But I can't."

"I don't know what you mean." She had caught Cecille's interest now.

"Neither do I," she admitted. "Not exactly. That's why I'm talking.

That's what I'm trying to get at." Her voice became half-absent-minded, ruminative, as though she were thinking aloud.

"They caught me young, too," she murmured. "Oh, that was a long time ago. Not measured in years, measured in time. There's a difference.

"A mission-school got hold of me. Good women, not brainless velvet pets from the younger set, looking for a new sensation. Good women, sincere women that wanted to help. Well, I was sincere, too. I wanted to be helped. I told 'em so; but I also told 'em I doubted if they could do much.

"I'd begun to get wise to one thing that early. I was seventeen, but I'd begun to see that all you got in this world was what you helped yourself to. But I was willing to try; I'd try anything once. If learning things out of a book would do it; if studying how to shoot the right language in the right spot and how to live sweet and pretty, inside and out, was going to get me what I wanted, well and good. Also, soft! There couldn't be any easier way, several well-known draymas to the contrary.

So I gave 'em a chance.

"'Show me,' I said. And I stuck it out two years."

She stared at the ceiling, her eyes sardonic with reminiscence.

"Two years. Get that. Not two days, nor two weeks, nor two months. Two _years_. And did I see myself at the end of that time any nearer what I was after? I hadn't slacked, mind you. I'd worked! Everything they'd ever spilled I'd sopped up like a sponge. And did it finally bring me a chance? Sure it did, believe you me. A whiskey drummer with false teeth!"

Here she laughed, a slurring note or two.

"That cured me, I guess. I did stay a little longer, but I knew! I knew I was through. I stayed another week, and then I went to the mat.

"'Show me,' I said again. That was what I wanted, a show-down. And did they? Could they? Bah! They talked! They told me I was making wonderful progress.

"'Sure,' I admitted. 'I'm on my way. I see that.' But what I wanted 'em to slip me was a little info as to where was I going.

"Well, they talked. What did I hope for? What did I want? What did I expect to get out of it? And I told 'em. Well, that was a pretty large order for a girl of my station. My station didn't figure, I told 'em; we'd leave that out of it. And I told 'em so plainly that they neglected to refer to that any more.

"But they took another tack instead. The things that I'd mentioned were mere material things! Like that--scornful--as if they weren't worth mentioning at all. 'Merely material!' And there was a better world to live in--oh, my, yes--the world of the spirit.

"'Do you live in it?' I asked. 'Do you?' They wore sealskin coats, when it wasn't mink or chinchilla. They were driving downtown every day in their own closed cars to urge me to be content with the things of the spirit. And when I realized that--No, I wasn't sore. I was just hep, that's all.

"'I'll try Broadway,' I said then. 'If there's nothing, after all, in this climb-though-the-rocks-be-rugged stuff, no great harm done. I'm still young. But why waste more valuable time? I'll try Broadway,' I said. 'I'll have a whirl at the primrose path.'

"They didn't believe me at first. They thought I was just bluffing, just talking because I was discouraged. So they talked themselves some more--a whole lot more. Beautiful words--but they didn't mean anything.

Not to me.

"Did any of 'em say: 'Sure, I understand. You're young and pretty, and it's natural you should crave such things. Here's my last year's coat and a perfectly miserable old last year's model car'? Did they? Don't make me laugh! Not that they woulda missed them. Nothing like that!