Sam looked up. She was so much like the edifying portrait of “Miss Innocence” on the calendar which the grocer sends you at New Year’s that he was not irritated even by this most ancient of strategies. “No, but I wish I were. I am from Chicago, but my name is Pearson, Thomas J. Pearson. Loans and banking. Won’t you sit down? I’m kind of lonely in Paris.”
Elsa did not seat herself precipitately. It was impossible to say just when it was that she did sit down, so modestly did she slip into a chair, looking as though she had never had so unmaidenly an encounter, as though momently she would take fright and wing away. She murmured, “That was too silly of me! You must have thought I was a terribly bold little creature to speak to you, but you did look so much like Mr.—Mr. Jackson, who is a gentleman that I met once at my aunt’s house in New Rochelle—my father is the Baptist minister there—and I guess I felt lonely, too, a wee bit—I don’t know many people in Paris myself, though I’ve been here three months. I’m studying novel-writing here. But it was awfully kind of you not to mind.”
“Mind? It was a privilege,” Sam said gallantly … and within himself he was resolving, “Yes, you cute little bitch-kitty, you lovely little gold-digger, I’m going to let you work me as much as you want to, and I’m going to spend the night with you!”
And he was triumphant, after so much difficulty, at having been at last able to take the first step toward sin.
“And now, young lady, I hope you’re going to let me buy you a little drink or something, just to show you think I’m as nice and respectable as if you’d met me in your aunt’s house, too. What would you like?”
“Oh, I—I—I’ve scarcely ever tasted alcohol.” Sam had seen her flip off two brandies at the other table. “What does one drink? What would be safe for a young girl?”
“Well—Of course you wouldn’t touch brandy?”
“Oh no!”
“No, of course not. Well, what would you most like?”
“Well—Oh, you won’t think it’s awfully silly of me, Mr. Uh—”
“Mr. Thomas—Pearson J. Thomas.”
“Of course—how silly of me! You wouldn’t think it was awfully silly of me, Mr. Thomas, if I said I’ve often heard people speaking about champagne, and always wanted to taste some?”
“No, I wouldn’t think that was a bit silly. I’m told it’s a very nice innocent drink for young girls.” (“I will! And tonight! She picked on me first!”) “Is there any particular brand of champagne you’d like to try?”
She looked at him suspiciously, but she was reassured by his large and unfanciful face, and she prattled more artlessly than ever:
“Oh, you must think I’m a terrible little silly—just a regular little greenhorn—but I don’t know the name of one single brand of any kind of wine! But I did hear a boy that I know here—he’s such a hardworking boy, a student—but he told me that Pol Roger, Quinze, I mean 1915, was one of the nicest vintages.”
“Yes, I’m told it’s quite a nice little wine,” said Sam, and as he ordered it, his seemingly unobservant glance noted that one of Elsa’s young men shrugged in admiration of something and handed another of the three a five-franc note, as though he were paying a bet.
“Am I going to have collaboration in my first seduction?” he wondered. “I may need it! I’ll never go through with it! I’d like to kiss this little imp half to death but—Oh, God, I can’t pick on a kid younger than my daughter!”
While he talked ardently to Elsa for the next half hour—about Berlin and Naples, about Charles Lindbergh, who had just this week flown from New York to Paris, and, inevitably, about Prohibition and the novels that she hadn’t yet quite started to write—his whole effort was to get rid of scruples, to regain his first flaunting resolve to forget the respectable Samuel Dodsworth and be a bandit.
He was helped by jealousy and champagne.
After half an hour, Elsa started, ever so prettily, and cried, “Why! There’s some boys I know at the second table over. As you are alone in Paris—Perhaps they might be willing to take you around a little, and I’m sure they’d be delighted to meet you. They’re such nice boys, and so talented! Do you mind if I call them over?”
“B’ d’lighted—”
She summoned the three young men with whom she had been sitting and introduced them as Mr. Clinton Gillespie, late of Bangor, miniaturist, Mr. Charley Short, of South Bend, now in the advertising business but expecting shortly to start a radical weekly, and Mr. Jack Keipp, the illustrator—just what Mr. Keipp illustrated was forever vague. Unlike Elsa, they did not need to be coaxed to sit down. They sat quickly and tight, and looked thirsty, and exchanged droll sophisticated glances as Sam meekly ordered two more bottles of Pol Roger.
While taking his champagne, they took the conversation away from him. They discussed the most artistic of topics—the hatefulness of all other artists; and now and then condescendingly threw to that Philistine, Mr. Pearson J. Thomas, a bone of explanation about the people of whom they gossiped. After half a bottle each, they forgot that they thought of Elsa only as nice young men should think of a Baptist minister’s daughter. They mauled her. They contradicted her. One of them—the sharp-nosed little man, Mr. Keipp—held her hand. And after an entire bottle, Elsa herself rather forgot. She laughed too loudly at a reference to a story which no Christmas-card cherub would ever have heard.
So jealousy and a very earnest dislike of these supercilious young men came to help kill Sam’s reluctance.
“Hang it,” he informed himself, “you can’t tell me she hasn’t been a little more than intimate with this Keipp rat! In any
