T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
June, 1939
222
minute styling, the glamor and flash of its first appeal. Were its colors “fast”? Could it stand being cleaned? Would it shrink? Again Rita tugged at his arm, coyly this time, in Rita’s favorite manner. “What’s the matter, Gordon? Still thinking about her?” Yes, he was still thinking about her— and about something else. “Do you know what time it is?” he asked, lifting his wrist watch to catch the light. “Who cares?” She was pulling him out onto the floor now; and he was followings against his will. "Unbend, Statue!” she teased. The swing band was playing "Let Yourself Go." Abruptly he stopped, angered. He wanted time to think, to solve a problem that ten minutes ago had awakened and challenged him. He wanted to get alone somewhere. Had the girl in the fortune teller’s booth recognized him? He was sure she had. Her name was repeating itself in his mind: “Fonda Amundsen. Fonda!" The little Danish girl whom he had met at Ames. Met and loved desperately. He dragged Rita back into the crowd of onlookers that fringed the dance floor. But Rita’s mind had already yielded both her soul and body to the dance. She re sented his attitude. "All right!” she exclaimed angrily. “Go back and let Madame hold your hand a while! But don't expect me to be a display- window manikin!" She pushed aside his restraining arm, found a waiting partner, and floated away in the dizzying whirl. Driftwood on a seeth ing sea. On an outgoing tide. Gordon Harrington stood, himself like a manikin in his father’s store window, his eyes on Rita until she was swallowed up in the crowd. Rita, first soprano in the choir of the Community Church, who last Sunday had sung so effectively—and affectedly— “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken”! Her lips had sung the words. Tonight, her life was saying, “Jesus, I my cross have laid aside." Did the cross of Calvary mean no more to her than an unpleasant symbol of self-de nial and suffering? Had she never yielded her will or her love to the One who there bore in His own body the sins of the world! And what, he asked himself, had the cross meant to Gordon Harrington? What did it mean to him now ? He, to whom it had once meant the symbol of eternal salvation! He who had once professed to love the Lord of Calvary more than life itself! The manikin moved; the staring eyes glowed warm with sudden resolve. Life was a conundrum, a hypocrisy. There was no pot of gold at the foot of its rainbow. Rita danced past him gracefully, caught in the embrace .of one whom Gordon knew to be a scoundrel, whom the medical pro fession of the town knew to be a moral leper. Rita waved long eyelashes at him, pressed her cheek lightly against her part ner’s shoulder and floated out to sea again. His heart pounding loudly in his ears, Gordon turned, pushed his way through the crowd, and directed his steps to Madame Nevairre’s tent. [T o be continued.]
“Nothing.” And then Rita’s sarcastic, "She was pretty, wasn’t she? Let’s go watch the dance.” Among the thousands of footsteps out side, scraping, scraping past her door, she seemed to distinguish those of Gordon Har rington and Rita Martineau, as they re ceded from her tent. In her mind’s eye she could see these two melting into the crowd, Rita’s arm linked through his possessively. Rita had a way with men, she remembered from seeing her at Ames last year—a way that drew them as nectar drew humming birds, as candles drew the moths and sphinxes of the night; drew them, singed their wings and laughed when, wounded and disillusioned, they turned away. If only she might follow Gordon and Rita, hear their words, read their thoughts, intercept their thoughts. Madame Karen had said it was possible. She claimed to be able to do it. On the table at her left, the grinning miniature human skull seemed to be laugh ing at her, mocking her. Purple incense poured from its eyeless sockets and oozed upward, mingled with the blue from Bud dha’s image, and was whirled away by the force of the air from the electric fan. If only some one would come in, any one; if only something would happen to take away the torment of her mind. If only —if only there were a sedative in life to alleviate ■the pain of unrequited lové! * ★ ★ ★ Gordon Harrington, Rita at his side, stood watching the dance. His face was serious, on his forehead a frown of dis approval, disdain. The sea of dancers m o v e d r h y t h m i c a l l y , sw aying, swirling in obedience to the spirit of the music. He hated the thing, pitied these people who unashamedly allowed them selves to take liberties with the wives and sweethearts of others, liberties which under any other circumstahce would have been frowned upon and condemned by decent society. « "Aren’t we going to dance?” Rita asked, tugging at his arm. He mumbled some kind of response. It was only after he had answered her and felt her shrink away from him that he real ized he had spoken gruffly. He had been thinking of the face of the girl he had seen standing in the entrance of the fortune teller’s booth, of the misery in her brown eyes, the long, pendant red earrings, the gypsy costume. And he was thinking of something else: He was g e t t i n g t i r e d of Rita. He looked down at her. Rita was aquiver with excitement tonight, her feet tapping time to the music. Attractive, yes. And she wore her clothes well, their color scheme in harmony with her eyes that were like June skies and her hair that was like a golden nimbus about her delicately tinted face. Her lips knew how and when to pout. Sensational. She was like some of the false claims he had had to discard from the dis play ads for his father’s store. Gross exag geration. The girl herself did not measure up. It was the quality of the goods that counted in the long run, not the up-to-the-
here, and yet it was true. Tomorrow she would be on the road—she and Joan—and the night following, she would be reading palms in another town a hundred miles away. Madame Nevairre shuddered. When, she asked herself, would the accident oc cur? How serious would it be? It was well, then, that she and Gordon had never married, for if the reading were true, he would sooner or later become a widower. A tired shiver went through her body. It was nonsense to believe things like this. Was there no way out? Once she had tried to pray for escape from her fate. But God had seemed so far ¿way, and the mock ery of petitioning what seemed an imper sonal, distant Being had chilled her into si lence. What did people mean when they talked joyously of Jesus Christ as a "per sonal Saviour”? Somewhere she had heard the words, "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life . . . ” Life! What was the rest of it—something about its being "through Jesus Christ . . . ”? She gave a tiny gesture of helplessness, arose and stood in the tent entrance, aware even as she stood there, with the crowd gaping at her as they passed, of the subtle beauty of her costume with its gypsy at mosphere, her dangling red earrings, the black and gold ribbon across her fore head, the charm of her own natural beauty even apart from her costume. Then it was that she heard his voice, the laugh that she had always loved, and al ways would. She saw him coming toward her tent, Rita at his side, her arm linked through his, both of them care free, aban doned to the pleasure of the moment, their thoughts only for each other. And then without warning, his eyes were looking straight into hers, clear gray eyes with warmth and appeal and friendliness— questioning eyes! The light in them flared up with sudden recognition, and in that moment she felt again the flaring up within herself of the fire of her love for him. She turned blindly, stumbled falteringly into the tent and sank down into the chair at her table, every nerve trembling. Outside, the bustle and roar and clatter of the Midway went on, the shuffling feet, the shouts and screams of laughter, the pounding rhythm of the merry-go-round. Static. But she had looked once again into Gordon Harrington’s eyes, heard the voice that for her would never be stilled, knew of a certainty that her love for him was still alive, knew also that it ought not to be alive. For if Gordon and Rita were to be m a r r ie d , or p e r h a p s were already married—! A break in her Life Line! Desperately she was reminded of that horrifying fact. Must that break be interpreted to mean calamity for her physical body, or some stark soul tragedy? It could mean either one, perhaps. . . . If only he had not seen her, nor recog nized her. She had read hurt disapproval in his eyes, even in that brief moment when he and she had stood once more unveiled to each other. She could hear Rita's nasal voice, drawling, complaining, “Come on, Gordon! What are you staring at? You look like a statue!” And Gordon's muttered, impatient reply,
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