did. What of it? I didn’t mean anything by it. Gee, criminy,
can’t a person look in anybody’s eyes if they want to?”
“In the way you looked in his? Not if you claim to like
anybody else, I say.” And the skin of Clyde’s forehead lifted
and sank, and his eyelids narrowed. Hortense merely
clicked impatiently and indignantly with her tongue.
“Tst! Tst! Tst! If you ain’t the limit!”
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“And a while ago back there on the ice,” went on Clyde
determinedly and yet pathetically. “When you came back
from up there, instead of coming up to where I was you
went to the foot of the line with him. I saw you. And you
held his hand, too, all the way back. And then when you fell
down, you had to sit there with him holding your hand. I’d
like to know what you call that if it ain’t flirting. What else is
it? I’ll bet he thinks it is, all right.”
“Well, I wasn’t flirting with him just the same and I don’t
care what you say. But if you want to have it that way, have
it that way. I can’t stop you. You’re so darn jealous you
don’t want to let anybody else do anything, that’s all the
matter with you. How else can you play on the ice if you
don’t hold hands, I’d like to know? Gee, criminy! What
about you and that Lucille Nickolas? I saw her laying across
your lap and you laughing. And I didn’t think anything of
that. What do you want me to do—come out here and sit
around like a bump on a log?—follow you around like a tail?
Or you follow me? What-a-yuh think I am anyhow? A nut?”
She was being ragged by Clyde, as she thought, and she
didn’t like it. She was thinking of Sparser who was really
more appealing to her at the time than Clyde. He was more
materialistic, less romantic, more direct.
He turned and, taking off his cap, rubbed his head gloomily
while Hortense, looking at him, thought first of him and then
of Sparser. Sparser was more manly, not so much of a
crybaby. He wouldn’t stand around and complain this way,
you bet. He’d probably leave her for good, have nothing
more to do with her. Yet Clyde, after his fashion, was
interesting and useful. Who else would do for her what he
had? And at any rate, he was not trying to force her to go
off with him now as these others had gone and as she had
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feared he might try to do—ahead of her plan and wish. This
quarrel was obviating that.
“Now, see here,” she said after a time, having decided that
it was best to assuage him and that it was not so hard to
manage him after all. “Are we goin’ t’fight all the time,
Clyde? What’s the use, anyhow? Whatja want me to come
out here for if you just want to fight with me all the time? I
wouldn’t have come if I’d ‘a’ thought you were going to do
that all day.”
She turned and kicked at the ice with the minute toe of her
shoes, and Clyde, always taken by her charm again, put his
arms about her, and crushed her to him, at the same time
fumbling at her breasts and putting his lips to hers and
endeavoring to hold and fondle her. But now, because of
her suddenly developed liking for Sparser, and partially
because of her present mood towards Clyde, she broke
away, a dissatisfaction with herself and him troubling her.
Why should she let him force her to do anything she did not
feel like doing, just now, anyhow, she now asked herself.
She hadn’t agreed to be as nice to him to-day as he might
wish. Not yet. At any rate just now she did not want to be
handled in this way by him, and she would not, regardless
of what he might do. And Clyde, sensing by now what the
true state of her mind in regard to him must be, stepped
back and yet continued to gaze gloomily and hungrily at
her. And she in turn merely stared at him.
“I thought you said you liked me,” he demanded almost
savagely now, realizing that his dreams of a happy outing
this day were fading into nothing.
“Well, I do when you’re nice,” she replied, slyly and
evasively, seeking some way to avoid complications in
connection with her original promises to him.
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200
“Yes, you do,” he grumbled. “I see how you do. Why, here
we are out here now and you won’t even let me touch you.
I’d like to know what you meant by all that you said,
anyhow.”
“Well, what did I say?” she countered, merely to gain time.
“As though you didn’t know.”
“Oh, well. But that wasn’t to be right away, either, was it? I
thought we said”—she paused dubiously.
“I know what you said,” he went on. “But I notice now that
you don’t like me an’ that’s all there is to it. What difference
would it make if you really cared for me whether you were
nice to me now or next week or the week after? Gee whiz,
you’d think it was something that depended on what I did
for you, not whether you cared for me.” In his pain he was
quite intense and courageous.
“That’s not so!” she snapped, angrily and bitterly, irritated by
the truth of what he said. “And I wish you wouldn’t say that
to me, either. I don’t care anything about the old coat now,
if you want to know it. And you can just have your old
money back, too, I don’t want it. And you can just let me
alone from now on, too,” she added. “I’ll get all the coats I
want without any help from you.” At this, she turned and
walked away.
But Clyde, now anxious to mollify her as usual, ran after
her. “Don’t go, Hortense,” he pleaded. “Wait a minute. I
didn’t mean that either, honest I didn’t. I’m crazy about you.
Honest I am. Can’t you see that? Oh, gee, don’t go now.
I’m not giving you the money to get something for it. You
can have it for nothing if you want it that way. There ain’t
anybody else in the world like you to me, and there never
has been. You can have the money for all I care, all of it. I
don’t want it back. But, gee, I did think you liked me a little.
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201
Don’t you care for me at all, Hortense?” He looked cowed
and frightened, and she, sensing her mastery over him,
relented a little.
“Of course I do,” she announced. “But just the same, that
don’t mean that you can treat me any old way, either. You
don’t seem to understand that a girl can’t do everything you
want her to do just when you want her to do it.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” asked Clyde, not quite
sensing just what she did mean. “I don’t get you.”
“Oh, yes, you do, too.” She could not believe that he did not
know.
“Oh, I guess I know what you’re talkin’ about. I know what
you’re going to say now,” he went on disappointedly.
“That’s that old stuff they all pull. I know.”
He was reciting almost verbatim the words and intonations
even of the other boys at the hotel—Higby, Ratterer, Eddie
Doyle—who, having narrated the nature of such situations
to him, and how girls occasionally lied out of pressing
dilemmas in this way, had made perfectly clear to him what
was meant. And Hortense knew now that he did know.
“Gee, but you’re mean,” she said in an assumed hurt way.
“A person can never tell you anything or expect you to
believe it. Just the same, it’s true, whether you believe it or
not.”
“Oh, I know how you are,” he replied, sadly yet a little loftily,
as though this were an old situation to him. “You don’t like
me, that’s all. I see that now, all right.”
“Gee, but you’re mean,” she persisted, affecting an injured
air. “It’s the God’s truth. Believe me or not, I swear it.
Honest it is.”
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Clyde stood there. In the face of this small trick there was
really nothing much to say as he saw it. He could not force
her to do anything. If she wanted to lie and pretend, he
would have to pretend to believe her. And yet a great
sadness settled down upon him. He was not to win her after
all—that was plain. He turned, and she, being convinced
that he felt that she-was lying now, felt it incumbent upon
herself to do something about it—to win him around to her