"Nicky Overton's only nineteen, thank goodness." Their car was caught in
the jam. When they moved at all it was by inches. When at last they
reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he
had not yet come in. So they waited.
No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the
relieved houseman.
Jo's home has already been described to you. Stell and Eva, sunk in
rose-colored cushions, viewed it with disgust, and some mirth. They
rather avoided each other's eyes.
"Carrie ought to be here," Eva said. They both smiled at the thought of
the austere Carrie in the midst of those rosy cushions, and hangings,
and lamps. Stell rose and began to walk about, restlessly. She picked up
a vase and laid it down; straightened a picture. Eva got up, too, and
wandered into the hall. She stood there a moment, listening. Then she
turned and passed into Jo's bedroom. And there you knew Jo for what he
was.
This room was as bare as the other had been ornate. It was Jo, the
clean-minded and simple-hearted, in revolt against the cloying luxury
with which he had surrounded himself. The bedroom, of all rooms in any
house, reflects the personality of its occupant. True, the actual
furniture was paneled, cupid-surmounted, and ridiculous. It had been the
fruit of Jo's first orgy of the senses. But now it stood out in that
stark little room with an air as incongruous and ashamed as that of a
pink tarleton _danseuse_ who finds herself in a monk's cell. None of
those wall-pictures with which bachelor bedrooms are reputed to be hung.
No satin slippers. No scented notes. Two plain-backed military brushes
on the chiffonier (and he so nearly hairless!). A little orderly stack
of books on the table near the bed. Eva fingered their titles and gave a
little gasp. One of them was on gardening.
"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Stell. A book on the War, by an
Englishman. A detective story of the lurid type that lulls us to sleep.
His shoes ranged in a careful row in the closet, with a shoe-tree in
every one of them. There was something speaking about them. They looked
so human. Eva shut the door on them, quickly. Some bottles on the
dresser. A jar of pomade. An ointment such as a man uses who is growing
bald and is panic-stricken too late. An insurance calendar on the wall.
Some rhubarb-and-soda mixture on the shelf in the bathroom, and a little
box of pepsin tablets.
"Eats all kinds of things at all hours of the night," Eva said, and
wandered out into the rose-colored front room again with the air of one
who is chagrined at her failure to find what she has sought. Stell
followed her furtively.
"Where do you suppose he can be?" she demanded. "It's"--she glanced at
her wrist--"why, it's after six!"
And then there was a little dick. The two women sat up, tense. The door
opened. Jo came in. He blinked a little. The two women in the rosy room
stood up.
"Why--Eve! Why, Babe! Well! Why didn't you let me know?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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