restrained myself from butting in on the progress of the new friendship that was developing on my right, except for occasional grunts to show that I wasn’t sulking. By the time my glass was half empty Mr. Barry Tolman was saying:
“I heard you-forgive me, but I couldn’t help hearing-I heard you mention San Remo. I’ve never been there. I was at Nice and Monte Carlo back in 1931, and someone, I forget who, told me I should see San Remo because it was more beautiful than any other place on the Riviera, but I didn’t go. Now I… well… I can well believe it.”
“Oh, you should have gone!” There was throat in her voice again, and it made me happy to hear it. “The hills and the vineyards and the sea!”
“Yes, of course. I’m very fond of scenery. Aren’t you, Mr. Goodwin? Fond of-” There was a concussion of the air and a sudden obliterating roar as we thundered past a train on the adjoining track. It ended. “Fond of scenery?”
“You bet.” I nodded, and sipped.
Constanza said, “I’m so sorry it’s night. I could be looking out and seeing America. Is it rocky-I mean, is it the Rocky Mountains?”
Tolman didn’t laugh. I didn’t bother to glance to see if he was looking at the purple eyes; I knew that must be it. He told her no, the Rocky Mountains were 1500 miles away, but that it was nice country we were going through. He said he had been in Europe three times, but that on the whole there was nothing there, except of course the historical things, that could compare with the United States. Right where he lived, in West Virginia, there were mountains that he would be willing to put alongside Switzerland and let anyone take their pick. He had never seen anything anywhere as beautiful as is native valley, especially the spot in it where they had built Kanawha Spa, the famous resort. That was in his county.
Constanza exclaimed, “But that’s where I’m going! Of course it is! Kanawha Spa!”
“I… I hope so.” His cheek showed red. “I mean, three of these pullmans are Kanawha Spa cars, and I thought it likely… I thought it possible I might have a chance of meeting you, though of course I’m not in the social life there…”
“And then we met on the train. Of course, I won’t be there very long. But since you think it’s nicer than Europe, I can hardly wait to see it, but I warn you I love San Remo and the sea. I suppose on your trips to Europe you take your wife and children along?”
“Oh, now!” He was groggy. “Now, really! Do I look old enough to have a wife and children?”
I thought, you darned nut, cover up that chin! My milk was finished. I stood up.
“If you folks will excuse me, I’ll go and make sure my boss hasn’t fallen off the train. I’ll come back soon, Miss Berin, and take you to your father. You can’t be expected to learn the knack of acting like the American girls the first day out.”
Neither of them broke into tears to see me go.
In the first car ahead I met Jerome Berin striding down the passage. He stopped and of course I had to.
He roared, “My daughter? Vukcic left her!”
“She’s perfectly all right.” I thumbed to the rear. “She’s back in the club car talking with a friend of mine I introduced to her. Is Mr. Wolfe okay?”
“Okay? I don’t know. I just left him.”
He brushed past me and I went on.
Wolfe was alone in the room, still on the seat, the picture of despair, gripping with his hands, his eyes wide open. I stood and surveyed him.
I said, “See America first. Come and play with us in vacationland! Not a draft on the train and sailing like a gull!”
He said, “Shut up!”
He couldn’t sit there all night. The time had come when it must be done. I rang the bell for the porter to do the bed. Then I went up to him-but no. I remember in an old novel I picked up somewhere it described a lovely young maiden going into her bedroom at night and putting her lovely fingers on the top button of her dress and then it said, “But now we must leave her. There are some intimacies which you and I, dear reader, must not venture to violate; some girlish secrets which we must not betray to the vulgar gaze. Night has drawn its protecting veil; let us draw ours!”
Okay by me.
2
I SAID, “I wouldn’t have thought this was a job for a house dick, watching for a kid to throw stones. Especially a ritzy house dick like you.”
Gershom Odell spit through his teeth at a big fern ten feet away from where we sat on a patch of grass. “It isn’t. But I told you. These birds pay from fifteen to fifty bucks a day to stay at this caravansary and to write letters on Kanawha Spa stationery, and they don’t like to have niggers throwing stones at them when they go horseback riding. I didn’t say a kid, I said a nigger. They suspect it was one that got fired from the garage about a month ago.”
The warm sun was on me through a hole in the trees, and I yawned. I asked, to show I wasn’t
