They had little money but Mrs. Speers was so sure of Rosemary’s beauty and had implanted in her so much ambition, that she was willing to gamble the money on “advantages”; Rosemary in turn was to repay her mother when she got her start. . . .
Since reaching Paris Abe North had had a thin vinous fur over him; his eyes were bloodshot from sun and wine.
Rosemary realized for the first time that he was always stopping in places to get a drink, and she wondered how Mary North liked it.
Mary was quiet, so quiet save for her frequent laughter that Rosemary had learned little about her.
She liked the straight dark hair brushed back until it met some sort of natural cascade that took care of it— from time to time it eased with a jaunty slant over the corner of her temple, until it was almost in her eye when she tossed her head and caused it to fall sleek into place once more.
“We’ll turn in early to-night, Abe, after this drink.”
Mary’s voice was light but it held a little flicker of anxiety.
“You don’t want to be poured on the boat.”
“It’s pretty late now,” Dick said.
“We’d all better go.”
The noble dignity of Abe’s face took on a certain stubbornness, and he remarked with determination:
“Oh, no.”
He paused gravely.
“Oh, no, not yet.
We’ll have another bottle of champagne.”
“No more for me,” said Dick.
“It’s Rosemary I’m thinking of.
She’s a natural alcoholic—keeps a bottle of gin in the bathroom and all that—her mother told me.”
He emptied what was left of the first bottle into Rosemary’s glass.
She had made herself quite sick the first day in Paris with quarts of lemonade; after that she had taken nothing with them but now she raised the champagne and drank at it.
“But what’s this?” exclaimed Dick.
“You told me you didn’t drink.”
“I didn’t say I was never going to.”
“What about your mother?”
“I’m just going to drink this one glass.”
She felt some necessity for it.
Dick drank, not too much, but he drank, and perhaps it would bring her closer to him, be a part of the equipment for what she had to do.
She drank it quickly, choked and then said,
“Besides, yesterday was my birthday—I was eighteen.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” they said indignantly.
“I knew you’d make a fuss over it and go to a lot of trouble.” She finished the champagne.
“So this is the celebration.”
“It most certainly is not,” Dick assured her.
“The dinner tomorrow night is your birthday party and don’t forget it.
Eighteen—why that’s a terribly important age.”
“I used to think until you’re eighteen nothing matters,” said Mary.
“That’s right,” Abe agreed.
“And afterward it’s the same way.”
“Abe feels that nothing matters till he gets on the boat,” said Mary.
“This time he really has got everything planned out when he gets to New York.”
She spoke as though she were tired of saying things that no longer had a meaning for her, as if in reality the course that she and her husband followed, or failed to follow, had become merely an intention.
“He’ll be writing music in America and I’ll be working at singing in Munich, so when we get together again there’ll be nothing we can’t do.”
“That’s wonderful,” agreed Rosemary, feeling the champagne.
“Meanwhile, another touch of champagne for Rosemary.
Then she’ll be more able to rationalize the acts of her lymphatic glands.
They only begin to function at eighteen.”
Dick laughed indulgently at Abe, whom he loved, and in whom he had long lost hope:
“That’s medically incorrect and we’re going.”
Catching the faint patronage Abe said lightly:
“Something tells me I’ll have a new score on Broadway long before you’ve finished your scientific treatise.”