# Carmella Commands/Chapter 7

armella ran down the short path, and Dixon opened the rear door of the sedan. Except that he did not step out of the car and salute, he did exactly as he would have done for Mrs. Barrington, and in downtown traﬀic congestion, when she was shopping, she herself did not call for these ﬂourishes.
But Carmella ignored the open door, ran around to the other side of the machine and jumped into the front seat beside Dixon.
“You wish to ride in front?” asked the latter.
“You bet I do,” said the girl happily. “I ain’t your boss, you know. I want to talk when I ride. The way we would if you took me out for a buggy ride. Don’t you, Dixon?”
Dixon chuckled at the informal camaraderie coupled with the formality of his last name.
“All right, kid,” he said. “Whatever suits you suits me. You’re Mrs. Barrington’s guest, you know.”
“Sure I am! Don’t I know it? Can’t her guests ride in the front seat if they want to?”
“They have,” said Dixon, chuckling again.
​As they drove down Doty Street, Carmella pointed casually to the house of Mike Laudini.
“Know who lives there?” she asked.
“Not a hint,” answered Dixon.
“Mike Laudini, your boss’s bootlegger.”
Dixon almost drove the machine into the curbing as he turned to look.
“How do you know he is?”
“How do I know? He told me himself,” said Carmella, lying cheerfully. “And I’ll let you know that your boss is a ve-ery particular customer. Didn’t you ever drive there, nights?”
“Mike delivers,” said Dixon.
“Sure he delivers. And sometimes slips you a pint of drug-store stuﬀ, I’ll bet.”
“Say, kid!” exclaimed Dixon, “where’d you learn all this society gossip?”
Carmella laughed joyously.
“Just because you live over on the boulevard don’t think we ain’t wise to you. Get me?”
“I reckon I get you all right,” said Dixon, stepping on the accelerator.
He intended to drive the rest of the way in silence. But Carmella’s plan was otherwise.
“Don’t you adore to drive?” she asked presently.
“Just the same way you adore to go to school, I reckon,” he said. “It’s my job, that’s all.”
“Gee!” said Carmella. “That’s funny. I’d love it.”
“They tell me before traﬀic got the way it is there ​was some fun in being a chauﬀeur,” admitted Dixon. “But ever since I’ve been at it, it’s nothing but dodge bumpers and crossing crashes.”
“Then why do you do it?” Carmella was insistent.
“Got to do something for a start, haven’t I? I’ve only been chauﬀing a couple of years. This is my ﬁrst job, outside of carrying papers. But I didn’t want to be a newsboy all my life, any more than I want to do this forever.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Carmella. One of her cherished ideals was busily deﬂating. She knew several chauﬀeurs, and they were mostly pleasant young men who often took their sweethearts out to ride in the evening in their employers’ cars. Her chief objection to Nicolo Pieri was that he was not yet old enough to be a chauﬀeur.
She had already highly resolved that her ﬁrst beau should be a professional driver. And if he did a little bootlegging on the side he would have even more money with which to lavish gifts on her. This Dixon person was a new kind of chauﬀeur to her. She turned to him, saying:
“You been driving only two years? Gee, you’re good at it! How old are you, anyway?”
“I had my twentieth birthday last week,” he answered.
“Gee!”
“What’s the matter with twenty?” he asked.
​“I thought you were most as old as dad,” said Carmella.
Dixon laughed aloud.
“And how old’s your dad?” he asked.
“Thirty-ﬁve, I think. He’s a war veteran. Are you?”
“No!” said Dixon, glumly.
“Why not?”
“They held the war too early. I wasn’t old enough in nineteen-eighteen.”
“Oh!” There was a note of sympathy in Carmella’s voice.
They drove on in silence, until the machine was turning from the boulevard into Laurel Avenue, on which the Barrington home faced. Then Carmella asked:
“How do these Barrington people dress for lunch, Mr. Dixon?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, do they dress up, like they do for evening dinner? I read in the paper that their kind of people have dinner at night. How about lunch. Do they dress up?”
“Not so you’d notice it. They don’t dress up any more than nothing at all. Whatever they happen to be wearing. I’ve even seen Mrs. B. eating lunch in her riding togs. You’re dressed all right, kid, if that’s what’s worrying you. You look like a four-hundred, if you want to know.”
​“Thank you, Mr. Dixon,” said Carmella.
The Barrington butler admitted her to the house. He did not awe Carmella. Instead, he interested her. She had read about butlers in the Sunday paper’s detective stories. Usually, she knew, a butler was suspected of the murder, which after all proved to have been committed by the guest who had been asked at the suggestion of Lady So-and-So. She gazed studiously at Hammond, trying to decide how many murders he might have been suspected of.
He was, to be sure, the ﬁrst actual butler she had ever seen, but he was the one to suﬀer as they talked. Later, in the servants’ dining room, he tried to explain it. There had been no little speculation as to the nature of the guest, after Mrs. Barrington’s daughter Margaret had told her mother’s maid who was coming. Hammond was promptly quizzed after he had admitted her.
“She’s not like anything you’d suspect,” he said. “She’s–she’s like she knows everything without having learned.”
“That’s quality,” said the cook promptly. “I’m glad I made a good salad dressing.”
“Quality!” The voice of the pseudo-French lady’s maid registered staccato scorn. “She’s only a dago kid from over Little Italy way. Miss Margaret told me. Her mother’s got something under her belt about that Hope House place. And this kid’s a keynote.”
Hammond the butler shook his head.
​“Whoever she is and whatever she is,” he said ﬁrmly, “She’s got something.”
Back in the reception room, Carmella was thinking over butlers in general and this butler in particular. But this pre-occupation did not prevent her from recording quick and accurate impressions of the room itself, done mostly in cream and rose, with carved needle-point chairs.
Carmella noted with some surprise that there was no Morris chair. She had expected to ﬁnd the place ﬁlled with them. She must look into this.
Mrs. Barrington’s greeting was informally cordial. Carmella quickly noted her gown. No, she had not dressed up. Her own school dress was in perfect keeping with the aﬀair. A slight ﬂutter of triumph set her heart to trilling.
And then, for a fractional thought, she was conscious of picturing her mother, that afternoon, asking her with anxious detail what was worn. Maria would want to know that, even before she asked what food was served. And Carmella would have to tell her that the school dress was right. There was an instant’s sympathy with Maria. But then Carmella thought of the conﬁrmation frock, and shuddered.
“Did Dixon bring you here without trouble?” asked Mrs. Barrington, motioning Carmella to a seat.
“Oh, yes! He’s a wonderful driver, isn’t he, Mrs. Barrington?”
“Dixon’s a very careful driver. By the way, Kate, ​we’re to have Mr. Barrington home to luncheon today. He’s just telephoned. He doesn’t usually come. He’ll be here a little later. We won’t wait.”
A sudden tremor shook Carmella. Mr. Barrington—to sit and eat with him, at his own table! Her mind surged into a thousand paths, and tried to hold to them all at once. Would there be a chance to talk real estate? Would there be a chance? Would there be?
Mrs. Barrington found her guest distracted for the next few moments, but thought it due to Carmella’s confusion at being in a boulevard home for the ﬁrst time. Carmella’s actual thoughts would have astounded her.
Presently Hammond announced luncheon. Mrs. Barrington’s two children followed the butler in, and she introduced them.
“My children, Kate. Margaret—and John. I want you to know each other.”
Carmella extended her hand to each, having mentally pre-viewed this scene for several nights. The trio solemnly shook hands.
I n the dining room Carmella was seated at Mrs. Barrington’s right. It interested her to see that Mr. Barrington’s chair was at his wife’s left. Her parents, now, sat at opposite ends of the table. She considered this deeply while waiting for the luncheon to appear.
The serving of the food interested her more than the food itself. She watched her hostess closely, as ​each dish was brought on, and imitated with a success that surprised her. Secretly she was terriﬁed, but outwardly she gave no evidence of her fears. Mrs. Barrington had purposely ordered a simple luncheon, and was deliberate in serving herself from the dishes that Hammond presented. She was determined that Carmella should have no cause to think of this aﬀair as “high hat.”
The two children studied Carmella closely. It was evident that their mother had told them something about the guest that stirred their curiosity. Margaret chatted freely, asking Kate, which was the only name for Carmella that she knew, whether she swam and rode and played basketball, and what dancing school did she go to and did she paddle a canoe and didn’t she hate piano practice, and didn’t she hate bedtime stories by radio and didn’t she simply adore Tom Mix.
With perfect frankness Carmella furnished negatives to most of the ﬂood of questions. John, two years older, said little. But occasionally he and his sister exchanged glances, as when Carmella admitted that she had no dancing teacher. He wondered why his mother’s guest could show so little embarrassment at having none of his sister’s major accomplishments.
Presently, seeing that she was being catechized, it amused Carmella to say:
“No, I don’t do practically a thing. All I do is go to school, see a movie when I can, and help dad on his real estate.”
​Whereupon John almost jumped out of his chair. He became garrulous on the instant.
“What do you mean, Kate?” he demanded. “Helping your dad on his real estate?”
“Oh,” said Carmella demurely, “dad digs foundations for a living. But he plays real estate on the side.”
“But you said you helped him. How do you do it?”
“By talking English. Dad don’t talk a word—or maybe a word and a half—of English. I’m his interpreter.”
Margaret and John both paid their guest new attention. John was especially eager.
“You mean you talk business for your dad?” he asked.
“Sure!” said Carmella calmly. “Don’t you?” she added, realizing suddenly that the boy was admiring her.
“Dad thinks I’m dumb,” he said, keeping his eyes on his plate. “If he’d only let me—gee! I’ll bet I could help him slip that Union Trust crowd a wallop.”
Carmella saw him straighten up and look as she wanted her man to look, when she had one. Now that she had discovered that to be a chauﬀeur was not the chief aim of human ambition, she felt humble and searching,
“Sure you can help him, John, if he’ll let you,” she said sympathetically. Now for the ﬁrst time she realized that she admired this boy of the other world. ​With this came realization that she hated his sister. Margaret’s questions had been petty, and all for purposes of comparison. She had set out to feed a superiority complex. John was just talking. His questions, and the discussion that followed, helped to let out feelings instead of imprison them.
“This,” said Carmella to herself, “is probably the only time I shall ever have luncheon here. But I should like to see John again. He’d make a wonderful bootlegger.”
Her interest in the food and service and the other children ceased abruptly, however, when she heard the front door open and a breezy masculine voice call from the hallway:
“Sorry to be late, m’ dear. Unexpected thing came up about that Greendale deal. Be right in, as soon as I wash up.”
Carmella almost jumped to her feet in her excitement. Her thoughts raced in a way she had learned to dread. For when they raced she usually did something to worry about later. But by the time Mr. Barrington entered the room, she was calm again.
Her teacher, Miss Kelly, had once told Principal Carroll that Carmella had wonderful control for so high-keyed a child.