Just Around the Corner. Fannie Hurst
in darker red panted and chugged at the Broadway curb. Mr. Barker helped her into the front seat, swung himself behind the steering-wheel, covered them over with a striped rug, and turned his shining monster into the flux of Broadway.
Miss Gertrude leaned her head back against the upholstery and breathed a deep-seated, satisfied sigh.
"This," she said, "is what I call living."
Mr. Barker grinned and let out five miles more to the hour.
"I guess this ain't got the Sixth Avenue 'L' skinned a mile!"
"Two miles," she said.
"Honest, sis, I could be arrested for what I think of the 'L.'"
"I know the furnishing of every third-floor front on the line," she replied, with a dreary attempt at jocoseness.
"Never mind, kiddo, I've got my eye on you," he sang, quoting from a street song of the hour.
They sped on silently, the wind singing in their ears.
"Want the shield up?"
"The what?"
"The glass front."
"No, thank you, Mr. Barker; this air is good."
"This old wagon can eat up the miles, all right, eh? She toured Egypt fer two months and never turned an ankle."
"To think of having traveled as you have."
"Me, I'm the best little traveler you ever seen. More than once I drove this car up a mountainside. Hold your hat—here goes, kiddo."
"I guess you'll think I'm slow, but this is the first time I've been in an automobile, except once when I was sent for in a taxi-cab for a private manicure."
"You think you could get used to mine, kiddo?" He nudged her elbow with his free arm; she drew herself back against the cushions.
"The way I feel now," she said, closing her eyes, "I could ride this way until the crack of doom."
They drew up before a flaring, electric-lighted café with an awning extending from the entrance out to the curb. A footman swung open the door, a doorman relieved Mr. Barker of his hat and light overcoat, a head waiter steered them through an Arcadia of palms, flower-banked tables, and small fountains to a mirrored corner, a lackey drew out their chairs, a pantry boy placed crisp rolls and small pats of sweet butter beside their plates and filled their tumblers with water from a crystal bottle, a waiter bent almost double wrote their order on a silver-mounted pad, and music faint as the symphony of the spheres came to them from a small gold balcony.
Miss Gertrude removed her gloves thoughtfully.
"That is what I call living," she repeated. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, and the little bunch of violets at her belt worked out and fell to the floor. An attendant sprang to recover them.
"Let 'em go," said Barker. He drew a heavy-headed rose from the embankment between them and wiped its wet stem. "Here's a posy that's got them beat right."
She took it and pinned it at her throat. "Thanks," she said, glancing about her with glowing, interested eyes.
"This place makes Runey's lunch-room look like a two-weeks-old manicure."
"I told you I was goin' to show you the time of your life, didn't I? Any goil that goes out with me ain't with a piker."
"Gee!" said Gertrude; "if Ethyl could only see me now!"
She sipped her water, and the ice tinkled against the frail sides of the tumbler. A waiter swung a silver dome off a platter and served them a steaming and unpronounceable delicacy; a woman sang from the small gold balcony—life, wine, and jewels sparkled alike.
A page with converging lines of gilt balls down the front of his uniform passed picture post-cards, showing the café, from table to table. Gertrude asked for a lead-pencil and wrote one to a cousin in Montana, and Mr. Barker signed his name beneath hers.
They dallied with pink ices and French pastries, and he loudly requested the best cigar in the place.
"It's all in knowin' how to live," he explained. "I've been all over the woild, and there ain't much I don't know or ain't seen; but you gotta know the right way to go about things."
"Anybody could tell by looking at you that you are a man of the world," said Miss Gertrude.
It was eleven o'clock when they entered the car for the homeward spin. The cool air blew color and verve into her face; and her hair, responding to the night damp, curled in little grape-vine tendrils round her face.
"You're some swell little goil," remarked Mr. Barker, a cigar hung idle from one corner of his mouth.
"And you are some driver!" she retorted. "You run a car like a real chauffeur."
"I wouldn't own a car if I couldn't run it myself," he said. "I ran this car all through France last fall. There ain't no fun bein' steered like a mollycoddle."
"No one could ever accuse you of being a mollycoddle, Mr. Barker."
He turned and loosened the back of her seat until it reclined like a Morris chair. "My own invention," he said; "to lie back and watch the stars on a clear night sort of—of gives you a hunch what's goin' on up there."
She looked at him in some surprise. "You're clever, all right," she said, rather seriously.
"Wait till you know me better, kiddo. I'll learn you a whole lot about me that'll surprise you."
His hand groped for hers; she drew it away gently, but her voice was also gentle:
"Here we are home, Mr. Barker."
In front of her lower West Side rooming-house he helped her carefully to alight, regarding her sententiously in the flare of the street lamp.
"You're my style, all right, kiddo. My speedometer registers you pretty high."
She giggled.
"I'm here to tell you that you look good to me, and—and—I—anything on fer to-morrow night?"
"No," she said, softly.
"Are you on?"
She nodded.
"I'll drop in and see you to-morrow," he said.
"Good," she replied.
"If nothin' unexpected comes up to-morrow night we'll take one swell spin out along the Hudson Drive and have dinner at the Vista. There's some swell scenery out along the Palisade drive when the moon comes up and shines over the water."
"Oh, Mr. Barker, that will be heavenly!"
"I'm some on the soft-soap stuff myself," he said.
"You're full of surprises," she agreed.
"I'll drop in and see you to-morrow, kiddo."
"Good night," she whispered.
"Good night, little sis," he replied.
They parted with a final hand-shake; as she climbed up to her room she heard the machine chug away.
The perfume of her rose floated about her like a delicate mist. She undressed and went to bed into a dream-world of shimmering women and hidden music, a world chiefly peopled by deferential waiters and scraping lackeys. All the night through she sped in a silent mahogany-colored touring-car, with the wind singing in her ears and lights flashing past like meteors.
When Miss Gertrude arrived at the Knockerbeck parlors next morning a little violet offering wrapped in white tissue-paper lay on her desk. They were fresh wood violets, cool and damp with dew. She flushed and placed them in a small glass vase behind the cold-cream case.
Her eyes were blue like the sky when you look straight up, and a smile trembled on her lips. Ten minutes later Mr. Barker, dust-begrimed and enveloped in a long linen duster,