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Page 91
They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven,
having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of
express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan
watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanishing lights,
smiled with the shining wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not
eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat.
By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third
Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted
dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined
to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far
away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in
his ears--and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for
his gladness. Joan was beside him.
The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of
lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in
Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that
Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the
unromantic basement doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand.
"It's quite all right, mavourneen," he assured her mischievously.
"Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And
my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a
mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to
Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the
castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide,
old-fashioned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement--just like this with
fifty dirty people in it--but Ann with her magic wand has changed it
all."
The basement door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot
and dash announcement of identity clicked back and revealed a dimly
lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard.
Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New
York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the
quiet.
As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows,
trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead.
A girl stood waiting in the doorway.
"Hello, Ann!" called Kenny joyously. "Is it you?"
"Hello, Kenny!" cried a pleasant contralto voice. "Hurry up. It's
snowing like fury."
Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the
steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing
by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color
and soft light.
A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was
smiling at them both.
"Kenny," exclaimed Ann Marvin, "you Irish will-of-the-wisp! Where have
you been? Everybody's talking about you. Joan, dear, shake the snow
off your coat. You're beginning to melt."
Joan's eyes opened wide at the sound of her name. Ann laughed and
pinched her flushed cheek.
"My dear," she said drolly, "I know more than your name. Kenny sent me
a letter of measures, spiritual, mental and physical that would turn
Bertillon green with envy. If ever you default with all the foolish
hearts in New York I'll turn you over to the police. And you'll never
escape."
Joan clung to her with a smile and a sigh of relief that made them both
laugh.
"Ann," said Kenny in heartfelt gratitude, "you're a brick. I don't
wonder Frank Barrington's head over heels in love with you. You'll not
be mindin', Ann, dear, if I use your telephone?"
"Sure, no!" mimicked Ann broadly. "It's yonder in the den."
Kenny at the telephone called the Players' Club and with his lips set
for battle, asked for John Whitaker, whose methodical habits of
diversion for once in his life he blessed. When Whitaker's voice came,
brief and somewhat bored, he forgot to say: "Hello."
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