"You see," she continued, again breathless after a draught. "People over there have style, Nobody has style here. I mean the boys here aren't really worth dressing up for or doing sensational things for. Don't you know?"
"I suppose soI mean I suppose not," murmured Jim.
"And I'd like to do 'em an' all. I'm really the only girl in town that has style."
She stretched, out her arms and yawned pleasantly.
"Pretty evening."
"Sure is," agreed Jim.
"Like to have boat" she suggested dreamily. "Like to sail out on a silver lake, say the Thames, for instance. Have champagne and caviare sandwiches along. Have about eight people. And one of the men would jump overboard to amuse the party, and get drowned like a man did with Lady Diana Manners once."
"Did he do it to please her?"
"Didn't mean drown himself to please her. He just meant to jump overboard and make everybody laugh."
"I reckin they just died laughin' when he drowned."
"Oh, I suppose they laughed a little," she admitted. "I imagine she did, anyway. She's pretty hard, I guesslike I am."
"Oh, I suppose they laughed a little," she admitted. "I imagine she did, anyway. She's pretty hard, I guesslike I am."
"You hard?"
"Like nails." She yawned again and added, "Give me a little more from that bottle."
Jim hesitated but she held out her hand defiantly, "Don't treat me like a girl;" she warned him. "I'm not like any girl you ever saw," She considered. "Still, perhaps you're right. You gotyou got old head on young shoulders."
She jumped to her feet and moved toward the door. The Jellybean rose also.
"Goodbye," she said politely, "goodbye. Thanks, Jellybean."
Then she stepped inside and left him wideeyed upon the porch.
III
At twelve o'clock a procession of cloaks issued single file from the women's dressingroom and, each one pairing with a coated beau like dancers meeting in a cotillion figure, drifted through the door with sleepy happy laughterthrough the door into the dark where autos backed and snorted and parties called to one another and gathered around the watercooler.
Jim, sitting in his corner, rose to look for Clark. They had met at eleven; then Clark had gone in to dance. So, seeking him, Jim wandered into the softdrink stand that had once been a bar. The room was deserted except for a sleepy negro dozing behind the counter and two boys lazily fingering a pair of dice at one of the tables. Jim was about to leave when he saw Clark coming in. At the same moment Clark looked up.
"Hi, Jim" he commanded. "C'mon over and help us with this bottle. I guess there's not much left, but there's one all around."
Nancy, the man from Savannah, Marylyn Wade, and Joe Ewing were lolling and laughing in the doorway. Nancy caught Jim's eye and winked at him humorously.
They drifted over to a table and arranging themselves around it waited for the waiter to bring ginger ale. Jim, faintly ill at ease, turned his eyes on Nancy, who had drifted into a nickel crap game with the two boys at the next table.
"Bring them over here," suggested Clark.
Joe looked around.
"We don't want to draw a crowd. It's against club rules.
"Nobody's around," insisted Clark, "except Mr. Taylor. He's walking up and down, like a wildman trying find out who let all the gasolene out of his car."
There was a general laugh.
"I bet a million Nancy got something on her shoe again. You can't park when she's around."
"O Nancy, Mr. Taylor's looking for you!"
Nancy's cheeks were glowing with excitement over the game. "I haven't seen his silly little flivver in two weeks."
Jim felt a sudden silence. He turned and saw an individual of uncertain age standing in the doorway.
Clark's voice punctuated the embarrassment.
"Won't you join us Mr. Taylor?"
"Thanks."
Mr. Taylor spread his unwelcome presence over a chair. "Have to, I guess. I'm waiting till they dig me up some gasolene. Somebody got funny with my car."
His eyes narrowed and he looked quickly from one to the other. Jim wondered what he had heard from the doorwaytried to remember what had been said.
"I'm right tonight," Nancy sang out, "and my four bits is in the ring."
"Faded!" snapped Taylor suddenly.
"Why, Mr. Taylor, I didn't know you shot craps!" Nancy was overjoyed to find that he had seated himself and instantly covered her bet. They had openly disliked each other since the night she had definitely discouraged a series of rather pointed advances.
"All right, babies, do it for your mamma. Just one little seven." Nancy was cooing to the dice. She rattled them with a brave underhand flourish, and rolled them out on the table.
"Ahh! I suspected it. And now again with the dollar up."
Five passes to her credit found Taylor a bad loser. She was making it personal, and after each success Jim watched triumph flutter across her face. She was doubling with each throwsuch luck could scarcely last. "Better go easy," he cautioned her timidly.
"Ah, but watch this one," she whispered. It was eight on the dice and she called her number.
"Little Ada, this time we're going South."
Ada from Decatur rolled over the table. Nancy was flushed and halfhysterical, but her luck was holding.
She drove the pot up and up, refusing to drag. Taylor was drumming with his fingers on the table but he was in to stay.
Then Nancy tried for a ten and lost the dice. Taylor seized them avidly. He shot in silence, and in the hush of excitement the clatter of one pass after another on the table was the only sound.
Now Nancy had the dice again, but her luck had broken. An hour passed. Back and forth it went. Taylor had been at it againand again and again. They were even at lastNancy lost her ultimate five dollars.
"Will you take my check," she said quickly, "for fifty, and we'll shoot it all?" Her voice was a little unsteady and her hand shook as she reached to the money.
Clark exchanged an uncertain but alarmed glance with Joe Ewing. Taylor shot again. He had Nancy's check.
"How 'bout another?" she said wildly. "Jes' any bank'll domoney everywhere as a matter of fact."
Jim understoodthe "good old corn" he had given herthe "good old corn" she had taken since. He wished he dared interferea girl of that age and position would hardly have two bank accounts. When the clock struck two he contained himself no longer.
"May Ican't you let me roll 'em for you?" he suggested, his low, lazy voice a little strained.
Suddenly sleepy and listless, Nancy flung the dice down before him.
"All rightold boy! As Lady Diana Manners says, 'Shoot 'em, Jellybean'My luck's gone."
"Mr. Taylor," said Jim, carelessly, "we'll shoot for one of those there checks against the cash."
Half an hour later Nancy swayed forward and clapped him on the back.
"Stole my luck, you did." She was nodding her head sagely.
Jim swept up the last check and putting it with the others tore them into confetti and scattered them on the floor. Someone started singing and Nancy kicking her chair backward rose to her feet.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she announced, "Ladiesthat's you Marylyn. I want to tell the world that Mr. Jim Powell, who is a wellknown Jellybean of this city, is an exception to the great rule'lucky in diceunlucky in love.' He's lucky in dice, and as matter of fact II love him. Ladies and gentlemen, Nancy Lamar, famous darkhaired beauty often featured in the Herald as one the most popular members of younger set as other girls are often featured in this particular case; Wish to announcewish to announce, anyway, Gentlemen" She tipped suddenly. Clark caught her and restored her balance.
"My error," she laughed, "shestoops tostoops toanywaysWe'll drink to Jellybean Mr. Jim Powell, King of the Jellybeans."
And a few minutes later as Jim waited hat in hand for Clark in the darkness of that same corner of the porch where she had come searching for gasolene, she appeared suddenly beside him.
"Jellybean," she said, "are you here, Jellybean? I think" and her slight unsteadiness seemed part of an enchanted dream"I think you deserve one of my sweetest kisses for that, Jellybean."
For an instant her arms were around his neckher lips were pressed to his.
"I'm a wild part of the world, Jellybean, but you did me a good turn."
Then she was gone, down the porch, over the cricketloud lawn. Jim saw Merritt come out the front door and say something to her angrilysaw her laugh and, turning away, walk with averted eyes to his car. Marylyn and Joe followed, singing a drowsy song about a Jazz baby.
Clark came out and joined Jim on the steps. "All pretty lit, I guess," he yawned. "Merritt's in a mean mood. He's certainly off Nancy."
Over east along the golf course a faint rug of gray spread itself across the feet of the night. The party in the car began to chant a chorus as the engine warmed up.
"Goodnight everybody," called Clark.
"Goodnight, Clark."
"Goodnight."
There was a pause, and then a soft, happy voice added,
"Goodnight, Jellybean."
The car drove off to a burst of singing. A rooster on a farm across the way took up a solitary mournful crow, and behind them, a last negro waiter turned out the porch light, Jim and Clark strolled over toward the Ford, their shoes crunching raucously on the gravel drive.
"Oh boy!" sighed Clark softly, "how you can set those dice!"
It was still too dark for him to see the flush on Jim's thin cheeksor to know that it was a flush of unfamiliar shame.
IV
Over Tilly's garage a bleak room echoed all day to the rumble and snorting downstairs and the singing of the negro washers as they turned the hose on the cars outside. It was a cheerless square of a room, punctuated with a bed and a battered table on which lay half a dozen booksJoe Miller's "Slow Train thru Arkansas," "Lucille," in an old edition very much annotated in an oldfashioned hand; "The Eyes of the World," by Harold Bell Wright, and an ancient prayerbook of the Church of England with the name Alice Powell and the date 1831 written on the flyleaf.
The East, gray when Jellybean entered the garage, became a rich and vivid blue as he turned on his solitary electric light. He snapped it out again, and going to the window rested his elbows on the sill and stared into the deepening morning. With the awakening of his emotions, his first perception was a sense of futility, a dull ache at the utter grayness of his life. A wall had sprung up suddenly around him hedging him in, a wall as definite and tangible as the white wall of his bare room. And with his perception of this wall all that had been the romance of his existence, the casualness, the lighthearted improvidence, the miraculous openhandedness of life faded out. The Jellybean strolling up Jackson Street humming a lazy song, known at every shop and street stand, cropful of easy greeting and local wit, sad sometimes for only the sake of sadness and the flight of timethat Jellybean was suddenly vanished. The very name was a reproach, a triviality. With a flood of insight he knew that Merritt must despise him, that even Nancy's kiss in the dawn would have awakened not jealousy but only a contempt for Nancy's so lowering herself. And on his part the Jellybean had used for her a dingy subterfuge learned from the garage. He had been her moral laundry; the stains were his.