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THE FLIRT

BY
BOOTH TARKINGTON



To
SUSANAH


THE FLIRT

CHAPTER ONE

Valentine Corliss walked up Corliss Street the hottest afternoon
of that hot August, a year ago, wearing a suit of white serge
which attracted a little attention from those observers who were
able to observe anything except the heat. The coat was shaped
delicately; it outlined the wearer, and, fitting him as women's
clothes fit women, suggested an effeminacy not an attribute of the
tall Corliss. The effeminacy belonged all to the tailor, an artist
plying far from Corliss Street, for the coat would have
encountered a hundred of its fellows at Trouville or Ostende this
very day. Corliss Street is the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the
Park Lane, the Fifth Avenue, of Capitol City, that smoky
illuminant of our great central levels, but although it esteems
itself an established cosmopolitan thoroughfare, it is still
provincial enough to be watchful; and even in its torrid languor
took some note of the alien garment.

Mr. Corliss, treading for the first time in seventeen years the
pavements of this namesake of his grandfather, mildly repaid its
interest in himself. The street, once the most peaceful in the
world, he thought, had changed. It was still long and straight,
still shaded by trees so noble that they were betrothed, here and
there, high over the wide white roadway, the shimmering tunnels
thus contrived shot with gold and blue; but its pristine complete
restfulness was departed: gasoline had arrived, and a pedestrian,
even this August day of heat, must glance two ways before
crossing.

Architectural transformations, as vital, staggered the returned
native. In his boyhood that posthumously libelled sovereign lady,
Anne, had terribly prevailed among the dwellings on this highway;
now, however, there was little left of the jig-saw's hare-brained
ministrations; but the growing pains of the adolescent city had
wrought some madness here. There had been a revolution which was a
riot; and, plainly incited by a new outbreak of the colonies, the
Goth, the Tudor, and the Tuscan had harried the upper reaches to a
turmoil attaining its climax in a howl or two from the Spanish
Moor.

Yet it was a pleasant street in spite of its improvements; in
spite, too, of a long, gray smoke-plume crossing the summer sky
and dropping an occasional atomy of coal upon Mr. Corliss's white
coat. The green continuous masses of tree-foliage, lawn, and
shrubbery were splendidly asserted; there was a faint wholesome
odour from the fine block pavement of the roadway, white, save
where the snailish water-wagon laid its long strips of steaming
brown. Locusts, serenaders of the heat, invisible among the
branches, rasped their interminable cadences, competing bitterly
with the monotonous chattering of lawn-mowers propelled by
glistening black men over the level swards beneath. And though
porch and terrace were left to vacant wicker chairs and
swinging-seats, and to flowers and plants in jars and green boxes,
and the people sat unseen--and, it might be guessed, unclad for
exhibition, in the dimmer recesses of their houses--nevertheless,
a summery girl under an alluring parasol now and then prettily
trod the sidewalks, and did not altogether suppress an ample
consciousness of the white pedestrian's stalwart grace; nor was
his quick glance too distressingly modest to be aware of these
faint but attractive perturbations.

A few of the oldest houses remained as he remembered them, and
there were two or three relics of mansard and cupola days; but the
herd of cast-iron deer that once guarded these lawns, standing
sentinel to all true gentry: Whither were they fled? In his
boyhood, one specimen betokened a family of position and
affluence; two, one on each side of the front walk, spoke of a
noble opulence; two and a fountain were overwhelming. He wondered
in what obscure thickets that once proud herd now grazed; and then
he smiled, as through a leafy opening of shrubbery he caught a
glimpse of a last survivor, still loyally alert, the haughty head
thrown back in everlasting challenge and one foreleg lifted,
standing in a vast and shadowy backyard with a clothesline
fastened to its antlers.

Mr. Corliss remembered that backyard very well: it was an old
battlefield whereon he had conquered; and he wondered