Chapter II

“You will be entertained,” the announcer at station WXL was saying, “by the justly popular male quartet, the Orpheus Gleemen, singing exclusively for station WXL and affiliated stations. As their first number on this evening’s program, our distinguished vocalists will render their own arrangement of the ever-popular ballad ‘Mandalay,’ Miss Dora Perkins at the piano.”

“Listen to the dear boys!” growled Ralph Atwood. “You know how it runs—‘Where there ain’t no ten commandments and a man can raise a thirst.’ And they’re all front-row Christian Endeavorers and white-ribboners. They think ginger ale is a low-down wicked stuff, ’cause bad men mix highballs with it.”

“Charming!” observed Miss Stark, at the end of the quartet’s first number.

“Not bad—not at all bad,” agreed Dr. Hillary.

The announcer said that Mr. Douglas Raymond would sing a group of songs, and the hostess clapped her hands softly.

Strong, resonant tones poured from the loud-speaker:

“From the desert I come to thee,
On my Arab shod with fire—”

“Now just imagine Doug Raymond hitting it in high across the desert on _anything_ shod with fire!” jeered Ralph. “Why, he’d beat the Prince o’ Wales to a flop if he tried to ride a sawhorse. These big romantic yells always give me a pain.”

“Sh—please, Mr. Atwood,” implored the hostess.

Douglas Raymond sang his second song, “It was a Lover and his Lass.”

“There!” declared Ralph, after keeping quiet through two verses, “I’ll say that the boy’s hit his stride; that’s about the kind of stuff for him—Philadelphia cream cheese, with strawberry jam on the side. And did you hear little Dora stub her toe on the piano? She can’t keep her eyes on the music or the keyboard when Doug is singing love songs.”

“Lucky they got chaperones an’ things in the studio!” chuckled Felix McMasters, grinning at Kitty Granby.

“These frightful teases are trying to bother you, Kitty,” said Miss Bascom. “Don’t you mind them at all, dear.”

“I didn’t hear what they said,” lied Kitty bravely.

“Two charming songs, charmingly rendered!” declared Mrs. Tredmore, giving the light-minded youths a glance of lofty disdain.

“Oh, quite!” agreed the new boarder effusively. “You may tell your friend Mr. Raymond, dear Miss Granby, that I got a definite—er—a really authentic spiritual message from his work. Lovely voice!—and real feeling. He has temperament. He should go far. You needn’t hesitate to tell him so, Miss Granby.”

“Oh, thank you, Miss Stark,” said Kitty, blushing vividly, “but Mr. Raymond is—er—why, just a—just one of my friends—here in the boarding house; that’s all.”

“Dear child!” purred Miss Stark, who obviously had reached thirty, “you are so sweetly naïve! I hope you and this agreeable young man with the splendid voice may always remain—oh, very good friends!—and that you may both attain your hearts’ desires. There! You see, I’m in quite a romantic mood as a result of all this perfectly inspiring music. Oh, the radio is priceless! How did we ever live without it!”

“Hope you got all that, Ottilie,” mumbled Ralph to Miss Eldom. “Did you get an _aw-thentic_ click out of Doug’s howls? Me—I’m all lit up on the romantic stuff. Let’s go out on the porch and hold hands. And to think Doug Raymond gets real money for that stuff!”

“Too bad _you_ can’t get real money for making a fool of yourself, Ralph,” said Ottilie. “You’d have more cash than Henry Ford!”

“Click!” gasped Ralph, slapping his jaw. “That registered all right! And to think I offered to kiss you once, out in the wistaria arbor.”

“Don’t mention it; I’ve been trying to forget and forgive. I was disillusioned in love years ago, when you were in kindergarten, young man; and I’m no cradle snatcher.”

“Reckon I’ll say good night, Miss Bascom,” murmured Henry Caddock. “Got some writing to do upstairs, and I’ve got about all the romance I can stand for one evening, I guess.”

Horace Sheldon, next in line of seniority, yawned and decided to stroll down town and supervise the closing of his cigar store for the night.

Lively dance music followed the Orpheus Gleemen’s hour, and the younger boarders rolled up the rugs and spent a half hour in scraping floor wax from the polished boards while Miss Bascom presided and tried to look pleasant and unconcerned.

Kitty Granby refused to dance. She occupied a little warm and stuffy room, top floor rear, and hesitated to go there at once, but she retired moodily to a corner with a magazine and ignored the others.

She was tired, and her nerves were tired. Just as she was thinking that sleep might not come readily to her that night, she nodded over the magazine, and when she sat up with a start, wide awake again, Douglas Raymond was standing in the doorway of the parlor, and the voice of Dora Perkins sounded from the stairs. All the other boarders had gone, and she regretted bitterly that the solitude of the parlor made retreat more difficult.

“Going to the studio in the morning, Mr. Raymond?” Dora was inquiring.

“No, I don’t have to go at all tomorrow,” said Douglas.

“I do. I have to go and rehearse some accompaniments with that fiddler. About ten o’clock. You wouldn’t be walking out that way, I suppose?”

The young man glanced at the shrinking Kitty at the end of the now dimly lighted parlor, and Kitty perceived that his color deepened.

“I—I’d like to—mighty well, Miss Perkins,” he said, “but—I have to—”

“Oh, you don’t have to make excuses!” said Dora quickly with a dry little laugh. “Of course, if you weren’t going anyway! It does seem like an awful walk when you’re alone, though. And you’re such good company, Mr. Raymond. I never gave a thought to the walk either way tonight. Shows what congenial companionship will do for any one.”

“Mighty glad to have had your company, Miss Perkins,” said Douglas in a rather husky voice. “Well—good night, Miss Perkins.”

“Good night, Mr. Raymond. If you just happened to change your mind in the morning, I’ll be leaving about quarter to ten, I guess. Good night.”

“Aren’t you sitting up pretty late, Kitty?” the young man asked, walking slowly the length of the parlor.

“Not so very. I’m going up now, though.”

“That so? I was hoping you might want to sit awhile. Did you hear the program?”

“Yes, we heard it, of course. It was very good.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m pretty tired now, Doug. I guess I’ll say good night.”

“What’s the matter, Kitty?”

“Matter? Nothing the matter with me, I’m sure.”

“Maybe there is with me, then?”

“Oh, don’t be foolish, Doug! I’m terribly tired. Please don’t keep me here talking—about nothing. I’m tired—I’m just good and sick and tired of everything—of this darned old boarding house and this darned old town, and all the horrid, miserable, low-down, good-for-nothing cake-eaters and lounge-lizards round here, and the radio and the movies and the bank—and—and everything that I have to see and hear every gol-darn day of my life.

“There, now I’ve said it—and I’m not saying anything about you—and I don’t care anything about you, and I never did, and never wanted to, and I wouldn’t cry if I never saw your face again. _Good_ night!”

She darted toward the door like an agile kitten, but the dumfounded Douglas literally blundered into her way, checking her flight. He reached out clumsily to take her hand, but she raised the hand and smartly slapped his face.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried furiously. “And you get out of my way and let me go. I don’t find you such _good company_, Mr. Raymond; I haven’t noticed so much _congenial companionship_ between us!”

“Aw, gee!” muttered Douglas, staring blankly. “Say!—oh, gosh! I don’t know what’s the matter, Kitty, unless—gosh!”

In utter bewilderment he began vaguely to fear the outcome of the sudden tempest, to wonder what was to follow it. After the extraordinary, ungovernable fury, tears and hysterics seemed logical enough, and he dreaded that development no less than any other that he could conjure up in his disordered mind.

There was still a surprise in store for him, however. The tempest cleared, like summer wind and lightning, and was followed by a dead calm—without sunshine.

Kitty sat down abruptly on the nearest chair and stared at him, dry-eyed, with a certain disturbing apathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “I’m terribly sorry I made such a fool of myself, and such a scene. I suppose some of them upstairs heard it. I suppose _she_ heard it.”

“But can’t you tell me, Kitty?” he implored miserably. “Gosh!”

“Nothing to tell, Douglas. It’s my nerves, I suppose. I guess I ought to get away from here—everything is so hateful to me.”

“I didn’t know that—er—that I was.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it’s your fault,” she sighed. “But we—we could never get along, Douglas. I’ve been thinking things over a good deal. I thought I liked you pretty well; you know that, of course; but I’m afraid it was just because you’re such a good-natured, kind sort of a boy. There surely isn’t anything bad about you, but—”

“You’d better go right on,” he said grimly. “I might as well know everything right now.”

“We ought not to let things go any further, Douglas, because we might regret it all our lives. I’m a little bit afraid you’ve never grown up, and that you never will grow up. Seems to me you’re satisfied just to sing a song and have people say that it was fine. I’m terribly afraid you haven’t any ambition, Douglas.”

“Haven’t any ambition?” he gasped. “Ambition! No ambition? Why, Kitty Granby, now I know well enough you’re out o’ your head. There’s not any feller round here with more ambition than I’ve got.”

“That’s saying a whole lot, isn’t it?” she observed with crushing irony. “I’m glad you find yourself superior in some way to Ralph Atwood, and that conceited Hubert Quirk, and that idiotic McMasters boy.

“But you don’t begin to understand, Douglas. You think the little bits of unimportant things are great big things. You’re terribly pleased because you can sing for the radio three times a week and in the church exercises Sundays; you think it’s a great honor and a big success, and you’re willing to stop right there.”

“But, Kitty, the manager out at the electric plant says we surely have made a hit. He told me himself that we’d be getting offers from the big vaudeville people, and—and only tonight, he said he dropped into the studio to hear me sing, ’cause he’d got the idea that I had just the kind of a voice for radio speaking and announcing. He said there might be a chance for me to be a regular announcer. That’s the truth!”

“Not really!” she sighed, crushing him again. “I suppose you think you’d be written up in the magazines. Young man started with nothing but a baritone voice, and got to be a real radio announcer, all on his merits without any pull or influence or anything.

“You’d get almost enough money as a radio announcer to support a wife—the way you’ve hoped to do—but, of course, the wife would have to work, too, to keep up household expenses.”

“Huh! That’s it! You’d better go ’n’ marry a millionaire right off. I didn’t know.”

“And you don’t know now—not anything, Douglas Raymond! I’m not a mercenary girl, but if I ever get married I’ll choose a man who has some pride and some reasonable ideas. You speak of being a radio announcer as you’d speak of being president of a railroad or something.”

“You needn’t think it’s such a bum job! Some of ’em get mighty big pay, and they’re famous, and sign contracts like movie stars.”

“How many? Some baseball players get mighty big pay and sign big contracts, but how many? Why don’t you start in being a Babe Ruth, seeing you know as much about baseball as you do the radio business?

“Oh, Douglas, I’m afraid you haven’t got what people call a sense of values. You don’t see things as other men do. If you were a bell hop over at the hotel, your ambition would be to get to be the captain of the bell hops—never the manager or owner of the hotel.”

“Well,” he said sullenly, “I can’t start right in being an Edison or a Marconi, can I?”

“No, you’re not the type to do anything like that,” she said witheringly. “You do start things, but never finish them; you’re too easily led off the track by all the things you see around you.

“You started as a pretty fair singer, and if you really wanted to do that sort of thing you ought to have worked with all your might to be a Caruso or a Chaliapin; but here you sit down in Port Cardinal—twenty-three years old—and are tickled to death to sing every other night for the radio—a lot of silly songs, and you have no further plans, _Mister_ Raymond—except to be a radio announcer!”

“Gee! I never heard you carry on like this before!” he groaned. “How do you know what’s going on inside my head, Kitty? You must admit I never go around boasting of what I can do. But I’ve got some mighty big ideas in my old bean.

“This radio stuff is all new to me, but I’m keen about it. No reason why a man shouldn’t dig right in, if he likes it, and get to be the head of a big corporation or something.”

“I know!” she said skeptically. “But your keen enthusiasm won’t last long, Doug. Next time you get to talking of your plans, you’ll want to manage the biggest jazz band in America, or be the biggest chicken farmer in the country, or learn to fly and go out after Lindy’s record. Oh, it makes me sick to say these things to you, but I’m not the only one that can see it.”

“Is that so? Been talking me over at the breakfast table with the wise one, eh?”

“That’s like me, isn’t it?” she demanded sharply. “I didn’t have to talk with any one. I’ve been tortured by this whole miserable lot of frumps and jackasses, the whole evening. The old women and the old maids think you’re all right, but the others never speak of you with respect, Doug. They’re either patronizing or insulting.

“Making fun of your singing—casting slurs on you from all directions—talking about you as they wouldn’t dare talk about the average young man; they don’t seem to have any fear that you’ll resent it, or do what most men would do if they were insulted.”

“Is that so!” growled Douglas, bristling. “Well, I might surprise you and the rest of ’em. I’ll walk upstairs right now and give Mr. Ralph Atwood a sock in the eye that’ll shake ’im loose from his dollar-an’-a-half necktie. By—golly!”

“Oh, why don’t you swear, if you feel like it? You might let out one good honest _damn_ at least, and I’d have more respect for you, Doug Raymond!”

“Why, Kitty Granby!” he gasped. “My good grief! You do just about hate me, don’t you? Say, is that the way folks feel about me? Do they think I’m just a poor piece o’ cheese, just because I sing for a living and don’t act like a hard-boiled pug around the house? I’ve tried to be decent to people, but I guess it don’t pay, at that! Hell!”

“That’s pretty good,” she remarked with a bored smile, “but it was rather forced. Don’t swear on my account. And I don’t think Miss Perkins would like it, either. She thinks very well of you, I’m sure, just as you are. When two persons meet who are thoroughly congenial, they should cultivate each other’s society.”

“Hah! So, Kitty Granby! It _is_ because you—it’s just because I—because Miss Perkins said—well, about walking—and on account o’ my being polite to—Miss Perkins only meant to say that—”

“What,” she demanded acidly, “are you trying to say?”

“You’re jealous!” he announced heavily.

“You lie!” she flared back at him, and a sob choked her. “I couldn’t be—jealous of anything I despised, could I? You and Miss Perkins are made for each other! She’s a brainless baby doll. She’s a thousand times prettier than I am—thank God!

“I wouldn’t be seen out with her big black googly eyes, and her vanishing-cream complexion and cherry lips. I’m glad I’ve got little eyes and a big mouth, and a pug nose, and mouse-colored hair. And I’m glad I can’t play the piano or sing. Maybe I’ve got brains, though, if I haven’t anything else.”

“Oh, Kitty, please calm down and let’s talk this thing over,” he said despairingly.

“I don’t care to talk anything over with a man that’s conceited enough to think I’m jealous of an overgrown schoolboy like him, and a brainless china doll that opens and shuts its eyes. There!

“I don’t intend to run away from this house just because you’re here, Mr. Raymond, but I’ll thank you not to speak to me again. We are not on speaking terms hereafter, and I’d like you to understand that perfectly.”

“All right! Good night, Miss Granby! If you’re that kind of a—a woman, it’s a good thing I found it out in time. That’s all I got to say!”